To detach Arabia from a shadowy allegiance to the Sultan of Turkey and bring it within the uplifting sphere of British activity was part of the political program elaborated at Downing Street after the bombardment of Alexandria in 1882. In pursuance of this policy British influence is now markedly felt along Arabia’s three coasts. It is firmly planted on the southeast, where Arabia is nearest to India. From Koweit to Muscat every petty potentate exercising an antiquated patriarchial authority has learned to rely on British protection against Turkish encroachments. Aden, on the southwest coast, is a lone outpost of civilization from which western ideas radiate and occasionally reach the plateau land of Yemen or the niggardly wastes of Hadramut. This British seaport is the natural outlet of Yemen. Products of the favored districts around Kataba, as well as between this town and Sana’a, can be transported with greater facility to Aden than by the arduous routes which lead to Red Sea harbors. The question of Arabia involves other considerations. Mecca and Medina, its holy cities, are essentially the religious center of the Islamic world. From their sites Mohammedanism has spread about 4,000 miles both east and west. Among Arabs as well as the majority of Mohammedans outside of Turkey desire for the restoration of the Caliphate at Mecca is strong. Arabs especially consider the Sultans as usurpers of the title. Selim I had been the first to adopt it after the conquest of Egypt and Arabia in 1517. Arabs however refuse to recognize the right of any but descendants of the Prophet’s family to this supreme post of the Mohammedan ecclesiastical hierarchy. According to Islamic traditions the Caliph must be a member of the Koreishit tribe. This explains why any ambitious leader who succeeds in circulating the report of his relationship with Mohammed’s progeny has always secured a following among his co-religionists in Asia or Africa. The Arabs have aired this chief grievance of theirs in English ears. They found ready sympathy among British officials no less than among the leaders of their faith in Egypt or India. The complete severance of the Mohammedan Caliphate from the Turkish Sultanate will, therefore, be a probable result of Franco-British success in the present war. The reëstablishment of the Prophet’s family in its hereditary right and capital will have the advantage of providing Islam with a geographical center at the very point of its birth.