Word: druse
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...into Palestine. Syria is a protectorate of France but her civilized soldiers have never been able to quell the wild, rebellious Sultan El Atrash who lives in a mud palace high in the remote mountains and sallies forth on sporadic raids at the head of his hard-riding, fanatical Druse tribesmen. Last week the dread Atrash was reputed to be rampaging toward Palestine with 800 of his own horsemen and 2,000 Bedouins who recently joined his plundering banner...
Word came, early in June, that one Bennet J. Doty of Memphis, Tenn., legionnaire, had left the French lines in southern Syria where the Foreign Legion is campaigning against the Druse tribesmen. He had deserted his post before armed rebels. Last week Damascus courts martial eyed the facts that M. Doty's attitude was defiant, that his offense was so grave that its penalty is death, that desertions were becoming all too frequent in the Legion, that "home-sickness" is an insipid plea...
Syrian and Druse representatives, unofficially present, protested so violently against Senator de Jouvenel's report that they were expelled from the session, departed vociferously calling upon Heaven to witness the perfidy of the French...
Speaking in straightforward fashion, M. de Jouvenel described the bombardment of Damascus (TIME, Nov. 9) as a police necessity, characterized the savage Druse tribesmen as "inveterate trouble makers." Even as he spoke French machine guns were crackling in Syria. More than 100 Druses were slain during "mopping up" operations by French troops last week...
Recently conditions have if anything been aggravated. As an outcome of the Druse warfare which took place in Syria last year, during which parts of Damascus were bombed and laid in ruins, and villages in the Lebanon Mountains were destroyed, many of the orphans who had been placed with relatives by the efforts of the Near East Relief were made homeless. And now the city of Beirut is filled with refugees chiefly women and children, penniless and without any means of support or protection, who have only the rags they are wearing to shield them from the chill Syrian winter...