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have seen the Dar-ul-Islam shrinking steadily for several centuries past, and the Dar-ul-Harb encroaching upon them in almost every direction, especially during the last hundred years. The Turks, who once threatened Vienna, had been driven back almost to the walls of Constantinople. The Crimea and the Caucasus, and then Transcaspia and the whole of Central Asia, had passed under Russian rule, whilst with the transfer of the government of India to the British Crown in 1858, the last vestige of the Moghul Empire disappeared out of a sub-continent which contained a larger number of Mahomedans than any other country in the world. In Egypt and the Sudan, in Tripoli and Tunis, in Algeria and the Sahara, in Zanzibar on the Indian Ocean and in Morocco on the Atlantic, and even on the upper waters of the Niger, all independent power had passed out of the hands of the Mahomedans even when the trappings of titular sovereignty were left to the reigning dynasties. At the outbreak of the great war in 1914 Turkey was the one Mahomedan State left that could claim to rank as a great power, and Persia and Afghanistan were the only two others that still enjoyed a certain measure of independence. Turks, Persians and Afghans together numbered only some 20 or at the utmost 25 millions, while at least 80 or 90 million Mahomedans owned allegiance to Great Britain, some 20 millions to Russia, and a like number to France.

When Germany dragged Turkey into the great war as its ally, none could predict with absolute assurance what would be the attitude of Islam as a whole towards a conflict which threatened to rend the Mahomedan as well as the Christian world in twain, and to array Mahomedans against Mahomedans, even on the battlefield. Most Englishmen had been content to repeat light-heartedly the stock phrase that the British Empire was also the greatest Mahomedan Empire in the world, without realising that the phrase might in certain circumstances have a deep and ominous significance, which Germany with her usual thoroughness had been labouring for years past to bring home to us at the appointed hour. That hour had now struck.

In an article entitled 'Turkey in the Grip of Germany' I have already described in this Review (January 1915)

the policy, as deep laid as it was skilfully and patiently carried out, by which Germany, under William II's inspiration, had in the course of two decades established her military, political and economic hold over Turkey. He had built scarcely less on the spiritual influence of the Sultan as Khalif with the Mahomedan world outside Turkey. He had himself set the seal of his approval on Abdul Hamid's Pan-Islamic propaganda in the flamboyant speech he delivered as far back as 1898 in Damascus. That Abdul Hamid did succeed in making some impression upon the Mahomedan world is beyond doubt. It was admitted at the time that the great rising of fanatical tribesmen on the north-west frontier of India, which was only quelled with difficulty by the Tirah campaign of 1898, was mainly an echo of the Turkish victories of the preceding year in Thessalyvictories which the German Emperor applauded as the first-fruits of the reorganisation of the Turkish armies by his own officers. From that time onwards the Sultan's name came to be introduced more and more generally into the Khutba during the Friday prayers in the Mosques of India. The growing ascendancy of their Hindu rivals, as well as the gradual subjection of other Mahomedan states to European tutelage, induced many Indian Mahomedans to turn wistful eyes towards Constantinople as the one remaining bulwark of Islam; and the Turkish disasters during the first Balkan War aroused amongst them an amount of genuine distress and sympathy far in excess of any feeling they had manifested during the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78.

In Persia, a general state of anarchy, checked only by Russian intervention in the north, and by our own command of the Persian Gulf in the south, had created an atmosphere eminently favourable to Turkish intrigue; and the young' Persians of Teheran seemed as ready to forget that they were Shias as the 'young' Turks of Constantinople to forget that they were Sunnis in their common detestation of the Anglo-Russian rapprochement. In Afghanistan, as amongst the tribes of the Indian frontier, the fierce fanaticism of the mullahs needed very little encouragement from Turkish PanIslamism. In Egypt Abdul Hamid had been in close touch both with the so-called 'liberals' of the Nationalist

Party and with the Khedive, Abbas Hilmi, whose autocratic instincts resented the restraints placed by British tutelage on the revival of ancient methods of oppression; and after Abdul Hamid's fall the Committee of Union and Progress maintained even closer relations with the discontented elements on the Nile and in every Mahomedan country under alien rule. The part which Enver Pasha played in organising Arab resistance to the Italian occupation of Tripoli is well known, and he brought about for the first time an understanding between Constantinople and the widespread organisation of the Senussis of North Africa, to whose school of religious thought the Turks had hitherto been as abhorrent as any infidel power. Pan-Islamic agents were also occasionally discovered to be busy in Tunis and Algeria; and, though Abdul Hamid had been too astute to give prominence in Morocco to his spiritual claims as Khalif, which would only have aroused the jealouy of the Moroccan Sultan, he had sought to revive long-forgotten relations between Constantinople and Fez by means of friendly letters and complimentary missions, following clearly enough the lead given to him by the German Emperor, who during his sensational visit to Tangier at the time of the first Moroccan crisis' in 1905 constituted himself the champion of Mahomedan sovereignty and independence in Morocco in language as unequivocal as that in which he had, a few years earlier, proclaimed himself at Damascus the friend and defender of the Sultan and Khalif.

It was not, therefore, unnatural that Germany and Turkey should have reckoned on some response from the Mahomedan world beyond the pale of Turkish rule when the Sultan was induced to proclaim a Holy War against the infidel Powers of the Entente, and William II allowed the report to spread throughout the whispering galleries of the East that he himself had embraced Islam and assumed the title of Hajji Wilhelm Mahomed. From German writers themselves we know very well what Germany's expectations were. She had steadily supported the Pan-Islamic movement in the belief that it was bound to cause embarrassment to every European power that had to reckon with a large Mahomedan element in its colonies and dependencies, whilst she herself,

having practically no Mahomedan subjects to speak of, had nothing to fear from the explosion for which she was helping to lay the train. The least that she looked for was that in the event of a great war, in which Turkey was to side with her, neither England nor France would be able to move the white troops required to secure the maintenance of order amongst the Mahomedan populations of their respective possessions, and still less would venture to employ their Mahomedan regiments in the field, either against Turkey or against the allies of Turkey. Germany's hopes, however, went much further than this. How far they went can be gathered from the stories circulated by German wireless from Berlin during the early stages of the war-Mahomedan risings against the French in Tunis and Morocco, antiBritish riots in Egypt, the Nizam of Hyderabad, the premier Mahomedan ruling prince of India, overthrown by his people on account of his loyalty to the British raj, mutinies and risings in the principal Mahomedan cities of India, Mahomedan sepoys refusing to sail for Europe and seizing the arsenals and barracks at Bombay, and many other fairy tales of the same type.

Why did none of these things happen? Why did Pan-Islamism prove a broken reed in the hands of the Berlin and Constantinople plotters? Why did the Jehad -the proclamation of the Holy War-fail even in Turkey to kindle any real religious fervour? Why did Mahomedan troops fight gallantly not only shoulder to shoulder with the British and the French against the Germans on the Western front, but against the Turks themselves in Egypt and Mesopotamia ? Why did the great Mahomedan communities in India and in Egypt, in Tunis and Algeria, and even in the more remote regions of Central Asia, far from being stirred to rebellion against their alien rulers, give demonstrative proofs of their undiminished loyalty, and bear willingly their share in all the sacrifices required of them during this long and arduous struggle? How is it that the fundamental conception of the religious unity of Islam has proved a less potent force than the accident of political allegiance to one or other of the Christian Powers engaged in war with the one great Mahomedan Power that claimed spiritual overlordship in the

Mahomedan world? How is it, in fact, that Pan-Islamism, when put to the supreme test, has, so far, failed?

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Amongst the more general causes of its failure must no doubt be reckoned the fatalism common to most Orientals, and especially characteristic of all Mahomedans, which leads them to accept all things-including alien rulership-as preordained. Nor had they any serious grievance against their alien rulers, who, as a rule, scrupulously respected their religious and domestic customs, and where, as in India, they formed only a minority of the population, effectively guaranteed their rights against the encroachments of other communities. So far as material prosperity is concerned they were unquestionably far better off under their alien rulers than their coreligionists under Mahomedan rulers. Least of all had the Mahomedan troops, who eat the salt' of alien rulers, any cause to be discontented with their lot. The Indian sepoy and the Algerian spahi—which are only different forms of the same word-had generally far more confidence in, and often far more personal devotion to, their Christian officers than to those of their own stock. Even in the Russian service Mahomedans were exceptionally well-treated, and sometimes rose to very high rank, much higher than they could attain to in the British or French services. The Mahomedan, moreover, has an innate respect for constituted authority; and, though at times he may see red' and break through the accustomed bonds of discipline, there was nothing at the first outbreak of war to tempt him to incur the tremendous risks of disloyalty. For, when the war began, it involved only two groups of European powers-infidels all in the eyes of the orthodox Mahomedan; and, though in India particularly our alliance with Russia was distasteful to him, there was nothing to attract him towards Germany. Many Indian sepoys, indeed, retained a vivid memory of the overbearing attitude of the Germans in China during the joint operations against the Boxers, and of their brutality towards the unfortunate Chinese people.

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By the time Turkey came into the war German 'methods of frightfulness' had already acquired a sufficiently sinister notoriety to discredit any ally who took sides with Germany. Some thoughtful Mahomedans

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