Everywhere it has been the same story. In Asia Minor, Mustapha Kemal has arrested Bolshevist propaganda agents, while Turkish and Russian troops have more than once clashed on the disputed Caucasus frontiers. In Egypt we have already seen how an amicable arrangement between Lord Milner and the Egyptian nationalist leaders was facilitated by the latter's fear of the social revolutionary agitators who were inflaming the fellaheen. In India, Sir Valentine Chirol noted as far back as the spring of 1918 how Russia's collapse into Bolshevism had had a "sobering effect" on Indian public opinion. "The more thoughtful Indians," he wrote, "now see how helpless even the Russian _intelligentsia_ (relatively far more numerous and matured than the Indian _intelligentsia_) has proved to control the great ignorant masses as soon as the whole fabric of government has been hastily shattered."[304] In Afghanistan, likewise, the Ameer was losing his love for his Bolshevist allies. The streams of refugees from Sovietized Turkestan that flowed across his borders for protection, headed by his kinsman the Ameer of Bokhara, made Amanullah Khan do some hard thinking, intensified by a serious mutiny of Afghan troops on the Russian border, the mutineers demanding the right to form Soldiers' Councils quite on the Russian pattern. Bolshevist agents might tempt him by the loot of India, but the Ameer could also see that that would do him little good if he himself were to be looted and killed by his own rebellious subjects.[305] Thus, as time went on, Oriental nationalists and conservatives generally tended to close ranks in dislike and apprehension of Bolshevism. Had there been no other issue involved, there can be little doubt that Moscow's advances would have been repelled and Bolshevist agents given short shrift. Unfortunately, the Eastern nationalists feel themselves between the Bolshevist devil and the Western imperialist deep sea. The upshot has been that they have been trying to play off the one against the other--driven toward Moscow by every Entente aggression; driven toward the West by every Soviet _coup_ of Lenin. Western statesmen should realize this, and should remember that Bolshevism's best propagandist agent is, not Zinoviev orating at Baku, but General Gouraud, with his Senegalese battalions and "strong-arm" methods in Syria and the Arab hinterland.