Page:PhilipK.Hitti-SyriaAShortHistory.djvu/252

Rh state, repairing roads, establishing public education on a systematic basis and developing the natural resources.

Slowly the mandatory established comparatively modern administrative machinery, carried on land registration, organized an educational system, encouraged archaeological researches, gave fellowships for study in France especially in such neglected fields as art, set up a department of public health and sanitation and developed public security. Modern codes of law were promulgated. The customs were organized jointly with Lebanon, whose capital Beirut re- mained the chief port of entry for the entire hinterland. Public works, including roads, were not carried out on as large a scale as in Lebanon. But on the whole the govern- ment's energies were directed to political rather than economic problems and the people themselves concentrated on the political struggle.

They felt that mandatory administration differed more in theory than in practice from colonial rule. To them French control was more direct and more hateful than that exercised by the Turks. The first three high commissioners, Henri Gouraud (1919-1923), Maxime Weygand (1923- 1925) and Maurice Sarrail (1925), who were also com- missioners to Lebanon and commanders-in-chief of the armed forces, were military generals who had distinguished themselves in the World War. For aides they drew largely upon the reservoir of officers with colonial experience in Africa. Repeated attempts to reach a compromise between nationalist aspirations and French rule failed. A draft constitution submitted in August 1928 by an elected con- stituent assembly was rejected by the commissioner and the assembly itself was dissolved. Until 1930 the country was governed without a constitution. Even the one then pro- mulgated was drawn up by the commissioner himself but embodied much material, with reservations, from the one submitted by the assembly. Potential separatist movements — regional and religious — were given a chance to be Rh