He was, as it were, born to work with us Hebrews for Zionism. The spirit of the East breathed in this Yorkshire gentleman. In his earliest youth he showed a keen interest for Arabia, for Islam and the Turkish Empire. At Cambridge he studied Arabic under Professor E. G. Browne, and there also he met the lady who was afterwards to be his wife and true helpmeet, a daughter of Sir John Gorst, who was at the time one of the members of parliament for the University. In the year 1898 Sykes, then a young student, undertook a second journey to the East, and stayed much of his time in the Hauran. He devoted himself with the entire freshness and sincerity of his youth (he was then but twenty years old) to his observations as a traveller. In the year 1900 appeared his first book, which recounts his impressions in an elegant style and light form.¹ In this book he ascribes to his guide, a Christian Arab named Isa, the following words apropos of the Jews there, that they were “dirty like Rooshan and robber like Armenian.”² Sykes himself had at that time no clear idea of Jews or of Armenians――of the two peoples for whom he strove and died nineteen years later. He cites an expression of opinion and repeats it in the bad English of an Arab guide. After his return from the East, he devoted his attention to military studies, in which he distinguished himself. He served in the South African War in 1900‒2. He gave a proof of his technical knowledge in his work on strategy and military training which he had compiled in collaboration with Major George d’Ordel.³ In the year 1904 he was travelling again, and the literary product of his later and earlier journeys was his second considerable book on Islam and the Orient.⁴ This book is dedicated to his fellow-soldiers in the South African War.⁵ In this work already speaks to us a young but mature man who had travelled much in four continents and had been through the South African Campaign. Here we already perceive the fundamentals of his later Zionism. As regards the future of the Orient he looks not to modern civilisation and capitalism, but to the latent force of national life. He was not deceived by the specious platitudes so dear to that deplorable product of modern European democracy ‘the man in the street’ as to ‘extending the blessing of Western civilisation’; he regarded rather with unconcealed apprehension the contingency of the Western Asiatics becoming ‘a prey to capitalists of Europe and America,’ “in which case a designing Imperial Boss might, untrammelled by the Government, reduce them to serfdom for the purpose of filling his pockets and gaining the name of Empire-maker.” (Prof. Browne’s Preface, _Dar-ul-Islam_, p. iv.). He had a great predilection for all national individualities, and detested the desire to imitate and assimilate. “He hated the hybrid Levantine ... and faithfully portrayed the Gosmopaleet (Cosmopolite)” (_ibid._). He condemned interfering tutelage. “Orientals