The Future of Islam Part 6

"What Christian soever shall refuse these my requests, he shall not partake of the privileges of this covenant which I have made with the bishops, monks, and the rest, the followers of Christ. And I call G.o.d to witness with my followers and command them to keep faithful to this my precept, now and till the day of judgment.

"The above was written in the presence of the under-signed persons, dictated by the Apostle of G.o.d, and written down by Mawiyeh Ibn Abu Sofian, on Monday, at the end of the fourth month, of the fourth year, of the Hejira, in Medina, peace be upon its Lord.

(Signed) "ABU BEKR ES SADIK.

"OMAR IBN EL KHOTTUB.

"OTHMAN IBN AFFAN.

"ALI IBN ABU TALEB.

And thirty-one other signatures.

"G.o.d be witness of what hath been said in this treaty. Praised be G.o.d the Lord of the Earth."

In conclusion, I would urge that while it is to Mohammedans themselves that we must look to work out their ultimate regeneration according to the rules of their own law and conscience, Christendom can still do much to influence immediate results. The day of religious hatred between Moslem and Christian as such is, I hope, nearly at an end; and though political strife is unfortunately renewing the old quarrel in North Africa, there is no danger now of its becoming on Europe's part a crusade. Christendom has pretty well abandoned her hopeless task of converting Islam, as Islam has abandoned hers of conquering Europe; and it is surely time that moral sympathy should unite the two great bodies of men who believe in and wors.h.i.+p the same G.o.d.

England, at least, may afford now to acknowledge Mohammedanism as something not to be merely combated and destroyed, but to be accepted by her and encouraged--accepted as a fact which for good or evil will exist in the world whether she will or no--encouraged because it has in it possibilities of good which she cannot replace by any creed or philosophy of her own. She can do much to help these possibilities, for they depend for the moment on her political action. There is a good cause and a bad in Islam as elsewhere in the world, and though hitherto England's physical help has been given all to evil, it has been through ignorance of the issues at stake; and I am confident that as she learns these, she will acknowledge the wrong she has unconsciously been doing, and repair while there is yet time her error.

In my next and concluding chapter I propose to sketch a policy towards Islam worthy of England's high sense of duty, and conformable to her true interests.

FOOTNOTES:

[16] A remarkable coincidence of prediction, Christian and Mohammedan, has been pointed out to me in Rohrbacher's History of the Church, published in 1845, where by an elaborate calculation based on the Old Testament prophecies he arrives at the conclusion that the Turkish Empire will fall in 1882, the date a.s.signed it also by the Mohammedan prediction quoted in my last chapter--that is to say A.H. 1300.

[17] This claim has been endorsed by Abd el Mutalleb, who is issuing a _Resalat rayiyeh_, or pastoral letter, this year to the pilgrims in support of Abd el Hamid's Caliphate.

CHAPTER V.

ENGLAND'S INTEREST IN ISLAM.

Nothing now remains for me but to point the moral which these essays were designed to draw. It will have been observed that hitherto I have avoided as much as possible all allusion to the direct political action which Christendom is exercising, and must ever more and more exercise, upon the fortunes of Islam; and in this I have been guided by two motives. I have wished, first, to give prominence to the fact that in all great movements of the human intellect the force of progression or decay should be looked for mainly from within, not from without; and, secondly, to simplify my subject so as to render it more easily intelligible to the reading public. We have reached, however, the point now when it will be necessary to take different ground, and look at Islam no longer as regards her internal economy, but as she is being affected by the world at large. We must inquire what influence the material pressure of Europe is likely to have on her in the Levant, and what in Africa and Central Asia; and, above all, we must examine closely our own position towards her, and the course which duty and interest require us to pursue in regard to the vast Mussulman population of our Indian Empire.

I take it the sentiment generally of Continental Europe--I do not speak of England--towards Mohammedanism is still much what it has always been, namely, one of social hostility and political aggression. In spite of all the changes which have affected religious thought in Catholic Europe, and of the modern doctrine of tolerance in matters of opinion, none of the nations by which Islam is immediately confronted to the north and west have really changed anything of their policy towards her, since the days when they first resolved on the recovery of "Christian lands lost to the infidel." It is true that most of them no longer put forward religious zeal as the motive of their action, or the possession of the Holy Sepulchre as its immediate object; but under the name of "civilization" their crusade is no less a continuous reality, and the direction of their efforts has not ceased to be the resumption by Europe of political control in the whole of the provinces once forming the Roman Empire. The sentiment in its origin was a just one, and, though now become for the most part selfish with the various Christian states, who see in the advantage to Christendom only an advantage to themselves, it appeals to an ancient and respectable moral sanction which is in itself no inconsiderable power. It is certain that the national conscience neither of France, nor Spain, nor Italy, nor Austria would repudiate an aggression, however unprovoked, upon any of the still independent Mussulman states of the Mediterranean, and that the only judgment pa.s.sed on such an act by public opinion would be one dependent on its failure or success.

Thus in estimating the future of Islam as a political body, and in view of the disparity proved to exist at all points between modern Europe and its ancient rival in the matter of physical strength, we must be prepared to see the latter submit at no distant date to great territorial losses along the whole line of its European frontier. Few, I think, to begin from the extreme west, will be inclined to doubt that, should the French succeed in thoroughly crus.h.i.+ng the Arab movement which they have provoked in Tunis, and which will in all probability be extended next summer to Morocco and Tripoli, the beginning of the next century will see what is left of the Barbary Coast in their possession, or in that of Spain or Italy; and the greater part of the cultivable lands fronting the Mediterranean occupied by their immigrants. What France has done or attempted to do in Algiers her two neighbours may possibly achieve with even more success in Morocco and western Tripoli, for the Spaniards and Italians are both eminently colonizing races, and the hill country of Barbary is little different in climate from their own. Tripoli, on the break up of the Ottoman Empire, will certainly tempt Italian statesmen, and Spain has already a footing on the African coast in Tetuan. It is therefore conceivable that the better lands on the seaboard will receive a flood of such agriculturists from either country as now seek their fortunes on the River Plate and elsewhere.

Should such be the case, the Mohammedan population may be ousted from their possession of the soil, and driven southwards, at least for a time, and a considerable decrease of the political strength of Islam be witnessed in that quarter. I do not, however, conceive that Europe will ever obtain a sure colonial footing south of the Atlas, or that the Mussulmans of the Sahara will lose anything of their present religious character. At worst, Southern Morocco and Fezzan will always remain independent Mohammedan States, the nucleuses of religious life in Barbary, and links between the Mussulmans of Northern and Central Africa, while further east the growing influence of Egypt will make itself felt intellectually to the advantage of believers. It is, however, to Central Africa that Islam must in the future look for a centre of religious gravity westwards. There, in the conversion of the negro race of the Tropics, already so rapidly proceeding, she has good prospect of compensation for all losses on the Mediterranean coast; and, screened by the Sahara and by a climate unsuited to European life, she may retain for centuries her political as well as her religious independence. The negro races will not only be Mohammedanised; they will also be Arabised; and a community of language and of custom will thus preserve for Soudan its connection with Mecca, and so with the general life of Islam. The losses, then, to Islam in Africa will be rather apparent than real, and may even in the end prove a source of new strength.

Nor must we lose sight of the possibility of a French defeat I believe that at no time during the past forty years has the military position of "our allies" been in a graver peril in their colony than now, or the resources of their antagonists greater. It is a weakness of the French system in Africa that it has made no attempt to a.s.similate the native population; and it is the strength of that population, in as far as it is Arab, that it does a.s.similate French thought to its own advantage. It is far from certain whether the conquest of Algiers may not some day have for its effect the renewal of Mohammedan political vitality in all the Barbary Coast.

A more absolute and immediate loss must be antic.i.p.ated in Europe and Western Asia. There it is pretty certain that in a very few years Ottoman rule will have ceased, and the Turkish-speaking lands composing the Empire been absorbed by one or other of the powerful neighbours who have so long coveted their possession. Austria, in person or by deputy, may be expected by the end of the present century to have inherited the European, and Russia the Asiatic, provinces of Turkey proper, while the fate of Syria and Egypt will only have been averted, if averted it be, by the intervention of England. That a dissolution of the Empire may and will be easily accomplished I have myself little doubt. The military power of Constantinople, though still considerable for the purposes of internal control, will hardly again venture to cope single-handed with any European State, nor is it in the least probable that the Sultan will receive further Christian support from without. The fall of Kars has laid Asia Minor open to the Russian arms, and the territorial cessions of San Stefano and Berlin have laid Roumelia open to the Austrian. On the first occasion of a quarrel with the Porte a simultaneous advance from both quarters would preclude the chance of even a serious struggle, and the subjugation of the Turkish-speaking races would be effected without more difficulty.

The weakness of the Empire from a military point of view is, that it is dependent wholly on its command of the sea, a position which enables it to ma.s.s what troops it has rapidly on the points required, but which even a second-rate Mediterranean power could wrest from it. Its communication cut by a naval blockade, the Empire would almost without further action be dissolved. Whatever loyalty the Sultan may have lately achieved outside his dominions, there is not only no spirit of national resistance in Asia Minor itself, but the provinces, even the most Mussulman, would hail an invading army as a welcome deliverer from him.

Left to themselves they would abandon without compunction the Sultan's cause, and the next war of an European state with Turkey will not only be her last, but it will in all likelihood hardly be fought out by her.

Nor do I conceive that the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the annexation of its Turkish provinces would be a mere political loss of so much territory to Islam. It would involve moral consequences far greater than this for the whole Mussulman world of North-Western Asia. I have the authority of the most enlightened of modern Asiatic statesmen in support of my opinion that it would be the certain deathblow of Mohammedanism as a permanent religious faith in all the lands west of the Caspian, and that even among the Tartar races of the far East, the Sunite Mussulmans of Siberia and the Khanates, and as far as the Great Wall of China, it would be a shock from which Sunism in its present shape would with difficulty recover. What has. .h.i.therto supported the religious constancy of orthodox believers in those lands, formerly Ottoman, which have become subject to Russia, has been throughout the consciousness that there was still upon the Russian border a great militant body of men of their own faith, ruled by its acknowledged spiritual head.

The centre of their religious pride has been Constantinople, where the Sultan and Caliph has sat enthroned upon the Bosphorus, commanding the two worlds of Europe and Asia, and securing to them communication with the holy places of their devotion and the living body of true believers.

Their self-respect has been maintained by this feeling, and with it fidelity to their traditions. Moreover, the school of St. Sophia has been a fountain-head of religious knowledge, the university at which the Ulema of Kazan and Tiflis and Astrachan have received their spiritual education; while at all times religious personages from Constantinople have travelled among them, keeping alive the recollection of their lost allegiance. On this basis their faith has retained what it has of loyalty in spite of the political Russianising they have undergone; but with their political centre destroyed, they would be as sheep without a shepherd, scattered in little groups here and there among a growing Christian population, and shut out from the fold of their belief.

Constantinople is the a.s.sembling place of pilgrimage for all Mohammedans west of the Ural Mountains, who reach it by the Black Sea, and could never be replaced to them by any new centre further south among the Arab races, with whom they have little sympathy or direct religious connection. A Caliph at Mecca or in Egypt could do little for them, and the Turkish-speaking Sunites would have no university open to them nearer than Bokhara. In this respect they would find themselves in a far worse position than the Moors, however universally these may become subject to Europe, and their religious disintegration would be a mere question of time. I believe, therefore, that Islam must be prepared for a loss, not only of political power in Europe and in Western Asia, but also of the Mohammedan population in the Ottoman lands absorbed by Russia. It will be a strange revenge of history if the Ottoman Turks, whom Europe has for so many centuries held to be the symbolic figure of Mohammedanism, shall one day cease to be Mohammedan. Yet it is a revenge our children or our grandchildren may well live to see.

How far eastward the full results of this religious disintegration may extend, it is perhaps fanciful to speculate. The north-western provinces of Persia, which are inhabited by Mussulmans of mixed race speaking the Turkish language and largely interfused with Christian Armenians, would, I am inclined to think, follow the destiny of the West, and ultimately accept Christianity as a dominant religion. But, east of the Caspian, Sunite Islam, though severely shaken, may yet hope to survive and hold its ground for centuries.

The present policy of Russia, whatever it may be in Europe, is far from hostile to Mohammedanism in Central Asia. As a religion it is even protected there, and it is encouraged by the Government in its missionary labours among the idolatrous tribes of the Steppes, and among the Buddhists, who are largely accepting its doctrines in the extreme East. Hitherto there has been no Christian colonization in the direction of the Khanates, nor is there any indigenous form of Christianity.

Moreover, Central Asia, though connected by ties of sympathy with Constantinople, has never been politically or even religiously dependent on it. It has a university of its own in Bokhara, a seat of learning still renowned throughout Asia, and it is thither and not to St. Sophia that the Sunite Mussulmans east of the Caspian proceed for their degrees.

Mohammedanism, therefore, in Eastern Asia is not exposed to such immediate danger as in the West. Bokhara may lose its political independence, but there is no probability for many generations to come of its being Christianized as Constantinople certainly must be, and it may even on the fall of the latter become the chief centre of Sunite orthodoxy of the existing Hanefite type, remaining so perhaps long after the rest of Islam shall have abandoned Hanefism. It is obvious, however, that cut off geographically as the Khanates are from the general life of Islam, Bokhara can but vaguely represent the present religious power of Constantinople, and will be powerless to influence the general flow of Mohammedan thought. Its influence could be exerted only through India, and would be supported by no political prestige. So that it is far more likely in the future to follow than to lead opinion. Otherwise isolation is its only fate.

The future of s.h.i.+te Mohammedanism in Persia proper is a still more doubtful problem. Exposed like the rest of Central Asia to Russian conquest, the Persian monarchy cannot without a speedy and complete revolution of its internal condition fail to succ.u.mb politically. The true Irani, however, have an unique position in Mohammedan Asia which may save them from complete absorption. Unlike any Mohammedan race except the Arabian, they are distinctly national. The Turk, conqueror though he has always been, repudiates still the name of Turk, calling himself simply a Moslem, and so likewise do the less distinguished races he has subjected. But the Persian does not do this. He is before all things Irani, and to the extent that he has made for himself a Mohammedanism of his own. He boasts of a history and a literature older far than Islam, and has not consented to forget it as a thing belonging only to "the Age of Ignorance." He runs, therefore, little risk of being either Russianised or Christianised by conquest; and being of an intellectual fibre superior to that of the Russians, and, as far as the ma.s.s of the population is concerned, being physically as well gifted, it may be supposed that he will survive, if he cannot avert, his political subjugation.

There is at the present moment, I am informed, a last desperate effort making at Teheran for the re-organization of the Empire on a liberal basis of government, and though it would be folly to count much on its success, it may conceivably succeed. Mohammedanism would not there, as at Constantinople, be found a barrier to reform, for Persian s.h.i.+sm is an eminently elastic creed, and on the contrary may, it is thought, be made the instrument of a social reformation; only, as I have said it would be folly to count on its success; and there are certain moral defects in Persian character which do not encourage lookers-on. s.h.i.+te Mohammedanism, however, whether Persia be absorbed or not by Russia, is of little importance in a general review of Islam's future, and may safely be dismissed as not directly relevant to the main question before us.

Admitting, then, the probability, nay, the certainty, of considerable political and territorial losses northwards, caused by the violent pressure of a hostile Europe, let us see what yet remains to Islam as her certain heritage, and how the changes foreshadowed may affect her general life. I cannot myself find any cause of despair for Mussulmans in the prospect of a curtailment of their religious area in the directions indicated, or any certain reason of exultation for their enemies in the thought that with the fall of Constantinople Islam, too, will have fallen. On the contrary, I see in the coming destruction of the Ottoman supremacy, and in the exclusion of the northern races, even at the cost of their religious support, from the counsels of the faithful, an element of hope in the future far outweighing the immediate chagrin which may be caused by loss of sovereignty or loss of population.

The Mohammedan population which the fall of Constantinople would conceivably cut off from the main body could not at most number more than some twenty millions, and when we remember that this is no more than a t.i.the of the whole Mussulman census, and that the proportion is a constantly decreasing one, it will be evident that there is little ground for looking at the loss as one necessarily fatal to religion. The northern races still give to Mohammedanism an appearance of physical strength; but it is an appearance only, and it is given at the cost of its intellectual vigour. The political success of the Turks has for centuries thrown Islam off its moral equilibrium, and their disappearance from its supreme counsels will give weight to races more worthy of representing religious interests. Constantinople will be replaced by Cairo or Mecca, and the Tartar by the Arab--an exchange which, intellectually considered, no lover of Islam need deplore.

One great result the fall of Constantinople certainly will have, which I believe will be a beneficial one. It will give to Mohammedanism a more distinctly religious character than it has for many centuries possessed, and by forcing believers to depend upon spiritual instead of temporal arms will restore to them, more than any political victories could do, their lost moral life. Even independently of considerations of race as between Turk and Arab, I believe that the fall of the Mussulman Empire, as a great temporal dominion, would relieve Islam of a burden of sovereignty which she is no longer able in the face of the modern world to support. She would escape the stigma of political depravity now clinging to her, and her aims would be simplified and intensified. I have already stated my opinion that it is to Arabia that Mussulmans must in the future look for a centre of their religious system, and a return of their Caliphate to Mecca will signify more than a mere political change. It is obvious that empire will be there impossible in the sense given to it at Constantinople, and that the display of armies and the mundane glory of vast palaces and crowds of slaves will be altogether out of place.

The Caliph of the future, in whatever city he may fix his abode, will be chiefly a spiritual and not a temporal king, and will be limited in the exercise of his authority by few conditions of the existing material kind. He will be spared the burden of despotic government, the odium of tax-gathering and conscription over unwilling populations, the constant struggle to maintain his authority in arms, and the as constant intrigue against rival Mohammedan princes. It is probable that all these would readily acknowledge the nominal sovereignty of a Caliph who could not pretend to coerce them physically, and that the spiritual allegiance of orthodox believers everywhere would accrue to him as other Mohammedan sovereignty relaxed its hold. Thus the dream of what is called Pan-islamism may yet be fulfilled, though in another form from that in which it is now presented to the faithful by Abd el Hamid and the Ulema of Constantinople.

That Islam in this spiritual form may achieve more notable triumphs than by arms in Eastern and Southern Asia we may well believe, and even that it may establish itself one day as the prevailing religion of the Continent. Its moral advance within recent times in the Malay Archipelago, in China, in Tartary, and in India, encourages the supposition that under alien rule Mohammedanism will be able to hold its own, and more than own, against all rivals, and that in the decay of Buddhism it, and not Christianity, will be the form under which G.o.d will eventually be wors.h.i.+pped in the Tropics. Its progress among the Malays under Dutch rule is certainly an astonis.h.i.+ng phenomenon, and, taken in connection with a hardly less remarkable progress in Equatorial Africa, may well console those Mussulmans who see in the loss of their temporal dominions northwards signs of the decay of Islam. Could such a reformation as was suggested in my last chapter be indeed effected, the vigour of conversion would doubtless be redoubled, independently of any condition of political prosperity in the ancient seats of Mohammedan dominion. I do not, therefore, see in territorial losses a sign of Islam's ruin as a moral and intellectual force in the world.

It is time, however, to consider the special part destined to be played by England in the drama of the Mussulman future. England, if I understand her history rightly, stands towards Islam in a position quite apart from that of the rest of the European States. These I have described as continuing a tradition of aggression inherited from the Crusades, and from the bitter wars waged by the Latin and Greek Empires against the growing power of the Ottoman Turks. In the latter England took no part, her religious schism having already separated her from the general interests of Catholic Europe, while she had withdrawn from the former in the still honourable stage of the adventure, and consequently remained with no humiliating memories to avenge. She came, therefore, into her modern relations with Mohammedans unprejudiced against them, and able to treat their religious and political opinions in a humane and liberal spirit, seeking of them practical advantages of trade rather than conquest. Nor has the special nature of her position towards them been unappreciated by Mohammedans.

In spite of the deceptions on some points of late years, and recent vacillations of policy towards them, the still independent nations of Islam see in England something different from the rest of Christendom, something not in its nature hostile to them, or regardless of their rights and interests. They know at least that they have nothing to dread from Englishmen on the score of religious intolerance, and there is even a tendency with some of them to exaggerate the sympathy displayed towards them by supposing a community of beliefs on certain points considered by them essential. Thus the idea is common among the ignorant in many Mussulman countries that the English are _Muwahedden_, or Unitarians, in contradistinction to the rest of Christians, who are condemned as _Musherrakin_, or Polytheists; and the Turkish alliance is explained by them on this supposition, supplemented in the case of the Turks themselves with the idea that England is itself a part of Islam, and so its natural ally.[18] These are of course but ideas of the vulgar. Yet they represent a fact which is not without importance, namely, that England's is accepted by Mussulmans as a friendly not a hostile influence, and that her protection is sought without that suspicion which is attached to the friendly offices of other powers.

Even in India, where Englishmen have supplanted the Mussulmans as a ruling race, the sentiment towards British rule is not, as far as I can learn, and compared with that of other sections of the Indian community, a hostile one.

The Mussulmans of Delhi and the Punjab would no doubt desire a resumption by themselves of practical authority in the country where they were till lately masters; but they are conscious that they are not strong enough now to effect this, and their feeling towards English rule is certainly less bitter than towards the Hindoos, their former subjects, now their rivals. Were they in any way specially protected in their religious interests by the Indian Government, they would, I am confident, make not only contented but actively loyal subjects.

As things stand, therefore, it would seem natural that, in the general disruption which will follow the fall of Constantinople, it is to England the various nations of Islam should look mainly for direction in their political difficulties. The place of adviser and protector, indeed, seems pointed out for her. With the disappearance of the Ottoman Sultan there will be no longer any great Mussulman sovereignty in the world, and the Mohammedan population of India, already the wealthiest and most numerous, will then a.s.sume its full importance in the counsels of believers. It will also a.s.suredly be expected of the English Crown that it should then justify its a.s.sumption of the old Mohammedan t.i.tle of the Moguls, by making itself in some sort the political head of Islam. Her Majesty will be left its most powerful sovereign, and it will be open to her advisers, if they be so minded, to exercise paramount influence on all its affairs. I do not say that they will be so minded, but they will have the power and the opportunity to a degree never yet presented to any Christian Government of directing the tone of thought of Mussulmans throughout the world, and of utilizing the greatest religious force in Asia for the purposes of humanity and progress. I am myself profoundly convinced that on England's acceptance or refusal of this mission the future of her dominion in India will mainly depend, and with it the whole solution of the problem she has set to herself of civilizing Southern Asia.

Let us see what our actual relations with Mohammedanism are, and what is the value of its goodwill to us in Asia. And first as to India. I find in _Hunter's Gazetteer_, our latest authority, the following figures:--

MUSSULMAN CENSUS OF INDIA.

Bengal 19,553,831 a.s.sam 1,104,601 North-West Provinces 4,189,348 Ajmere 47,310 Oudh 1,197,724 Punjab 9,337,685 Central Provinces 233,247 Berar 154,951 Mysore 208,991 Coorg 11,304 British Burmah 99,846 Madras 1,857,857 Bombay 2,870,450 ----------- Total 40,867,145

These are large figures taken merely as they stand, but in point of fact they represent far more than is apparent. To understand them at their full value it must be remembered--First, that the Mussulman population is a largely increasing one, not only in actual numbers, but in its proportion to the other races and sects of the Peninsula, a fact which I believe the census returns of 1881, when published, will amply prove.

Secondly, that its geographical distribution coincides pretty closely with that of the political life and energy of the country. The Punjab and the North-West Provinces alone contain an aggregate of thirteen million Mussulmans. Thirdly, that it is h.o.m.ogeneous to a degree shown by no other Indian community. Though less numerous by two-thirds than the whole Hindoo population, it is far more so than any coherent section of that population, and is thus the largest body of opinion in the Empire.

Fourthly, it is also the most generally enlightened. It is the only section of the community which knows its own history and preserves the tradition of its lost political importance; and if it has held itself aloof hitherto from compet.i.tion with other races for the public service, it has been through pride rather than inability. What Mussulmans there are who have entered the service of Government have been men of distinguished capacity. And lastly, it is no isolated body, but remains in close communication with the ma.s.s of its fellow-believers throughout the world. The Mohammedan population of India is, therefore, an exceptional as well as a large one.

Our second interest in Mohammedanism lies in Egypt. Here, standing at the threshold of our commerce with the East, we find another large community almost wholly Mussulman, for whose well-being we are already to a certain extent pledged, and in whose political future we perceive our own to be involved. A hostile Egypt we rightly hold to be an impossibility for our position; and religious antagonism at Cairo, even if controlled by military occupation, would be to us a constant menace.

Nor must it be supposed that Egypt, like the Barbary coast, will, into whose hands soever it falls, change its religious aspect. The population of the Delta is too industrious, too sober, and content with too little, to fear compet.i.tion as agriculturists with either Italians, Greeks, or Maltese; and the conditions of life under a torrid sun will always protect Egypt from becoming an European colony. The towns may, indeed, be overrun by foreigners, but the heart of the country will remain unchanged, and, like India, will refuse to remodel itself on any foreign system of civilization. Mohammedanism, therefore, will maintain itself in Egypt intact, and its good-will will remain our necessity.[19]

A third interest lies in Asiatic Turkey. This we have guaranteed by treaty against foreign invasion; and though our pledge is nominally to the Sultan, not to the people of the Empire, and though that pledge is contingent upon an impossibility, administrative reform, and is therefore not strictly binding, it is impossible to escape the admission that we have a moral obligation towards the Mussulmans of Asia Minor and Syria. How far we may be disposed or able to fulfil it remains to be seen. I do not myself antic.i.p.ate any further intervention on the part of England in defence of the Turkish-speaking lands. These, from their geographical position, lie outside our effective military control, and, dishonourable as a retreat from our engagements will be to us, it may be a necessity.