Prothero

“ Ford felt the story was untrue. Prothero was trying to frighten him. Out of pure bravado no sane man would boast of murder. But—and at the thought Ford felt a touch of real fear—was the man sane? It was a most unpleasant contingency. Between a fight with an angry man and an insane man the difference was appreciable. From this new view-point Ford regarded his adversary with increased wariness; he watched him as he would a mad dog. He regretted extremely he had not brought his revolver.
With his automatic pistol still covering Ford, Prothero spoke to Pearsall. ”

“ Tanqueray had just come back.
Involuntarily Brodrick looked at Jane.
Prothero had to defend her from a reiterated charge of neurosis brought against her by Henry, who observed with disapproval her rejection of roast mutton.
Over coffee and cigarettes Prothero caught him up and whirled him in a fantastic flight around his favourite subject.
There were cases, he declared, where disease was a higher sort of health. "Take," he said, "a genius with a pronounced neurosis. His body may be a precious poor medium for all ordinary purposes. ”

“ Brodrick had wanted to take him away to a sanatorium, but Prothero had refused flatly to be taken anywhere. The traveller was tired of travelling. He loved with passion this place where he had found peace, where his wandering genius had made its sanctuary and its home. His repugnance was so violent and invincible that the Doctor had agreed with Laura that it would do more harm than good to insist on his removal. She must do as best she could, with (he suggested) the assistance of a trained nurse. ”

“ We announce with much regret that Sir George Walter Prothero, K.B.E., Litt.D., the emininent Cambridge historian, died at 24, Bedford-square, on Monday, aged 73. His life was undoubtedly shortened by his patriotic labours during and after the war, first under the Admiralty and later as Director of the Historical Section of the Foreign Office. ”

“ Whether moved by Pearsall's words or by some thought of his own, Prothero nodded in assent. He addressed himself to Ford.
“I don't know what to do with you,” he said, “so I will consult with my friend outside this door. While we talk, we will lock you in. We can hear any move you make. If you raise the window or call I will open the door and kill you—you and that woman!”
With a quick gesture, he swung to the door, and the spring lock snapped. An instant later the bolts were noisily driven home.
When the second bolt shot into place, Ford turned and looked at Miss Dale. ”

“ A certain love of paradox, a shrewdness which some mistook for cynicism, a notable lack of unction, and occasional lapses into flippancy as a protest against cant or a refuge from boredom, sometimes conveyed a wrong impression, concealing the natural kindliness, the wide sympathy, the deep inner seriousness of a man who was more highly appreciated the more fully he was known. ”

“ There is an unerring sense of proportion, an admirable flair for the true causes of events, a searching insight into motives, combined with great caution in attributing them, a full appreciation of conditions as limiting action, with due acknowledgment of the capacity of character to override conditions. ”

“ Fuel is a vital want, but so far neither coal nor petroleum has been obtained in any quantity. That a profitable oilfield exists within the borders of Syria has yet to be proved; recent expert examinations of concessions in the neighbourhood of Latakia and to the east of the Jordan and the Dead Sea were not of a very hopeful character. ”

“ In the south the boundary between Egypt and Syria, settled in 1906, follows an arbitrary line drawn from slightly west of Rafa on the Mediterranean to slightly east of Taba, south of Akaba, on the Red Sea. The boundary is completed by a line starting south of Akaba and running north—eastwards towards Ma'an and the depression of El-Jafar, separating the vilayet of Damascus from the vilayet of the Hejaz. ”

“ In 1891 Butcher published a volume of essays and addresses, entitled 'Some Aspects of the Greek Genius,' mostly written or delivered during his residence in Edinburgh. These essays set forth, lucidly and attractively, the nature of the Greek mind, in some of its most striking and important aspects. From the point of view of scholarship, the most notable essay in the volume is that which analyses Aristotle's conception of fine art and poetry. ”

“ The limitations of the subject and the necessities of historical narrative help to correct that tendency to diffuseness, recurrence, and defective arrangement which are noticeable in the earlier works. Attention is mainly concentrated on political movements and ideas, but society, commerce, industry, art, and literature, and especially ecclesiastical affairs and religious thought, receive their share. ”

“ Even if Burton's gibe, that the Lebanese hide their weapons at the call of patriotism, be too bitter, it may be owned that they have turned their arms ninety-nine times in a hundred on one another, and have allowed Arabs, Turks, and Egyptians to ride roughshod over them, unopposed by any local patriotism worthy to be mentioned in the same breath with that of the Armenians, the Greeks, and the Balkan races, or even that of their own Druse cousins in the Hauran. ”

“ The most important foreign elements in the population of Syria are the Turks (and Turcomans) , who are mainly officials, Circassians, Kurds, Armenians, Persians, immigrant Jews, and a certain number of Europeans. The Jews have recently increased rapidly, owing to immigration from Russia and Rumania, and are most numerous in Palestine (about 90,000) [1] The Europeans are settled chiefly in the coast towns, and in Jerusalem, Aleppo, and Damascus. ”

“ The essence of the Zionist ideal is the desire to found upon the soil of Palestine a revived Hebrew nation based upon an agricultural life and the use of the Hebrew language. Just before the war, a struggle took place between the Zionists in Palestine and a body called the "Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden," over an attempt by the German Jews to introduce the German language into certain Jewish schools in Palestine. The whole secret of British popularity in Palestine depends upon our willingness to give the people freedom to develop their own national consciousness in their own way. ”

“ The Moslems of Damascus and Safed, for example, had to be compelled by force of arms to admit Christians and Jews to any rights at all, and to forgo the gratification of seeing them walk the gutters or dismount at sight of the faithful. ”

“ Syria found these words easy to act upon, since she had no such notoriously subversive elements in her population as existed, for example, in European Turkey and in some parts of Asia Minor; and, even in Damascus, there was not much bitterness between races or creeds. But with ideas of nationality, home rule, and representative institutions in the air, no wonder the Arabs thought of managing their own domestic affairs in their own language, of developing their own country, and of themselves enjoying the responsibilities and emoluments of its administration. ”

“ A believer in character as the most potent of social forces, he found in the motives and actions of the men with whom he dealt the main causes of great eveats, rather than in uncontrollable circumstances or inexorable laws of social development. ”

“ Always working as much for others as for himself, always slow to generalise, and apt to be led on from one field of research to another, he now found the obstacles to publication insurmountable. The superintendence of a great public institution occupied much of his time ; attacks of illness not unfrequently disabled him ; and towards the end of his life he took a larger part in the general affairs of the university. ”

“ A stagnating agriculture, affecting the prosperity of the whole country, has received some stimülus in Palestine from the Jewish and German colonies, and such advances as have been witnessed in the last decade or two are in no small degree the effect of their example. The spread of the colonies has also led to a substantial advance in the market value of agricultural land in their neighbourhood. ”

“ The measure of their happiness is their lack of history down to the outbreak of the recent war. Indeed, their danger, as time went on, lay in the uncompromising attitude of the Powers towards the charter of the Lebanon. ”

“ Creighton, is destined for the palace at Peterborough.
Few men engaged in administrative work have so tempered and enlarged their minds by historical study ; few have adopted more frankly or more effectively, in dealing with practical questions in church and state, the historical point of view. Few historians, on the other hand, have brought to bear on their literary work a mind more statesmanlike, more sagacious, more devoid of prejudice. ”

“ The knowledge had to be forced from him by stratagem. Proteus was in the habit of coming up out of the sea at mid-day to sleep under the shadow of the rocks, with his flock of seals about him. Instructed by his daughter Eidothea—who had taken pity on the wanderers—Menelaus and some of his comrades had disguised themselves in seal-skins [31] (though much disturbed, as he confesses, by the “very ancient and fish-like smell”) , and had seized the ancient sea-god as he lay asleep on the shore. Proteus, like the genie in the Arabian tale, changed himself rapidly into all manner of terrible forms ”

“ A certain amount of the traffic with the Aleppo district has already been diverted to Tripoli by the railway thence to Homs, which reduced the distance by rail to the sea by over 100 miles, besides obviating the reloading necessitated by the change of gauge at Rayak. The new branch from Alexandretta to Toprak Kale will make Alexandretta a still more attractive alternative for trade with Aleppo. The competition of Haifa with Beirut for the Damascus market is already felt.
Alexandretta is clearly marked out by nature as the harbour par excellence of northern Syria. ”

“ The children think and talk in Hebrew, and all the colonists possess the newly acquired national consciousness. They have their own newspapers, their own cultural institutions, and their own national anthem. They are all pioneers, and look forward to the day when they can acquire more land and can be joined by emigrants from all parts of the world inspired by the same ideals. ”

“ Such elements of the population as the Ansarie and the Druses preserve more purely than most the blood and customs of an early period; but they are not, therefore, distinct races from the Syrians. The native Christians, also, are a part of the same Syrian people as their Moslem neighbours, and even the Arabic-speaking Jews (as distinct from recent Jewish immigrants) cannot be sharply distinguished from a racial point of view. ”

“ The great question — the effect of democracy upon liberty — is obscured by the importation of many matters, such as marriage and divorce, whose connection with the main subject is not obvious, or of others, like nationality, the bearing of which upon it is insufficiently brought out. ”

“ During the summer months he was also in the habit of receiving two or three young men into his house as private pupils, to read for university degrees.
So many and such varied occupations would have absorbed the energies of most men ; but such was Creighton's capacity for economising time and disregarding interruptions that he was able, during his residence at Embleton, to accomplish in addition a great deal of literary work. ”

“ In 1835 a British Commission was studying a line for an overland route to the Euphrates; and the little opposition it encountered, in its extraordinary task of hauling steamers in sections overland from the Orontes to the Euphrates, is a testimony to Ibrahim's power, all the more significant because the British held their permission, not from him, hut from the Sultan with whom he was at war. During those ten years Europe progressed from mediæval ignorance of Syria to almost as much knowledge of it as she has had up to the present war. ”

“ Planting of trees is generally neglected, except in the immediate neighbourhood of towns and villages, and the more extensive plantations are generally owned by large proprietors or town capitalists. Here again development is hindered by poverty and the prevailing conditions of tenure. In the Lebanon, however, and about Damascus, tree culture is successfully carried on by small farmers, as also in the Jewish colonies. ”

“ The possibilities of the country as a health resort, which it is well fitted to become by virtue both of its climate and the presence of a number of hot springs, are as yet undeveloped. More adequate storage accommodation in the commercial centres, perhaps also provision for cold storage in connection with one or more of the shipping lines, are other needs. ”

“ With the development of trade there is a tendency to advance from indirect to direct relationship; Damascus, Jaffa, and Haifa, for instance, have to some extent established independent European connections. Beirut, however, remains the chief emporium for foreign manufactures, especially the valuable textile imports from England. It also has an active export business; its merchants and the local agents of Lyons firms control the silk industry, and wool, barley, eggs, and other produce are collected there for shipment. ”

“ After discussing the belief in magic and witchcraft and in miracles, the author examines the aesthetic, scientific, and moral developments of rationalism, pointing out the connection between artistic changes and the progress of physical science on the one hand, and the evolution of moral ideas on the other. ”