Pan-Islam

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PAN-ISLAM

MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited

LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA . MADRAS
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO
DALLAS . SAN FRANCISCO

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.

TOKUNTO

s=

PAN-ISLAM

G. WYMAN BURY

Author of " The Land of Uz," ^'Arabia Infelix.

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON

1919

COPYRIGHT

TO

MY WIFE

PREFACE

I HAVE written this book to present the main
factors of a many-sided problem — political, social
and religious — in a form which the generarpublic
can easily grasp.

Modern democratic principles tend to give the
public increasing control of international and
inter-racial affairs, and therefore any contribution
to public knowledge on such questions is in the
interests of sound administration.

The book is not intended to advise those who
actually handle these affairs : I give such advice,
when required, in more detail and not through
the medium of a published work.

" Pan-Islam " is an elementary handbook, not
a text-book — still less an exhaustive treatise, but
the questions it discusses are real enough. My
qualifications for writing it are based on a quarter
of a century's experience of the subject in most
parts of the Moslem world, and I have studied the
question in areas which I have not actually

vm

PREFACE

visited through intercourse with pilgrims from
those parts.

I have no axe to grind or infalHble panacea to
advocate ; I merely lay the result of my researches
before the public for its information, as failing
health has warned me to " pass the ball when
collared," and I would like to think that the land
where most of my Hfe's work has centred will not
be mishandled by cranks and opportunists after I
have left the game.

An arm-chair is a sorry substitute for an Arab
pony, and a garden plot for the highlands of
Arabia Felix, but the human mind is not neces-
sarily confined by such trammels, and if my
environment is narrow I hope my book is not.

G. Wyman Bury.

Helouan, 27th July, 19 19.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PAGE

ITS ORIGIN AND MEANING . . . .II

CHAPTER II

ITS BEARING ON THE WAR .... 24

CHAPTER III

ITS STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS ... 83

CHAPTER IV

MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY . . . .110

CHAPTER V

A PLEA FOR TOLERANCE .... 187

PAN-ISLAM

CHAPTER I

ITS ORIGIN AND MEANING

Much has been written about Christianity
and Islam, so I hasten to inform my readers that
this is not a religious treatise, nor do I class them
with the globe-trotter who searched Benares
brass-bazar diligently for "a really nice image of
Allah " and pronounced the dread name of
Hindustan's avenging goddess like an effervescing
drink.

I presuppose that Christians or Moslems who
read this book have got beyond the stage of
calling each other pagans or kafirs, and it will
have served its purpose if it brings about a
friendher feeling between the two great militant
creeds whose adherents have confronted together
many a stricken field.

Most people have heard of the pan-Islamic
movement, especially during the War. Some

12 PAN-ISLAM CHAP.

of us have called it a political bogey and some a
world-menace, but these are extremist views —
it is really the practical protest of Moslems against
the exploitation of their spiritual and material
resources by outsiders.

Pan-Islam (as its name implies) is a movement
to weld together Moslems throughout the world
regardless of nationality. The ethics and ideals
of Islam are more attainable to ordinary human
beings than those of Christianity : whether it
is better to aim high and score a partial success
or aim lower and achieve is a matter of personal
opinion and need not be discussed here, but one
tangible fact stands out — that Islam, with its
easier moral standard and frequent physical
discipline of attitudes and observances connected
with obligatory prayer, enters far more into the
daily life of its adherents than Christianity does
with us. Hence pan-Islam is more than a spiritual
movement : it is a practical, working proposition
which has to be reckoned with when dealing with
Moslems even in secular matters.

Pan-Islam is no new thing — it is as old as the
Hejira, and then helped to knit together Moslem
Arabs against their pagan compatriots who were
persecuting them. In the palmy days of the
Abbaside Caliphate it was quiescent enough,
and men of all creeds were welcomed at Baghdad

I ITS ORIGIN AND MEANING 13

for their art, learning, or handicraft when we
were massacring Jews in London as part of a
coronation pageant.

Medieval Moslems never fanned the movement
into flame as long as they were let alone, and
even now tribes living beyond the scope of
missionaries and traders prefer the Christian
traveller whom they know to the Moslem stranger
from the coast whom they usually distrust, and
who, to do him justice, seldom ventures among
them, unless compelled by paramount self-interest,
generally in connection with some European
scheme or other.

Hitherto pan-Islam had been an instinctive
and entirely natural riposte to the menace or
actual aggression of non-Moslems ; it assumed
the character of a definite organisation under
the crafty touch of that wily diplomat Abdul
Hamid, once called by harsh critics " the
Damned," though his efforts in that direction
have been quite eclipsed by more recent exponents.

In extreme evangelical circles it used to be
frequently urged that pan-Islam was a bugbear
discovered, if not created, by one of India's most
eminent Viceroys, whose remarks thereon are
said to have given Abdul Hamid the hint. This
method of eliminating a danger by denying its
existence has been discredited, since 1914, as

14 PAN-ISLAM CHAP.

completely as the somewhat similar one (attri-
buted to Mississippi engineers) of sitting on the
safety-valve just too long for safety. Moreover,
in view of Abdul's undoubted ability, he probably
discovered for himself its efficacy as a weapon of
reprisal when hard pressed by pertinacious and
inquisitive Ambassadors, for he often found himself
much embarrassed in his dealings with Armenia
and other domestic affairs by the intrusions of
the more formidable Christian Powers.

Great Britain naturally felt the point of this
weapon most as governing wide Moslem terri-
tories, and one can imagine some such interview
as this :

" Frontier rectifications, my dear Sir Nicholas ?
By all means — and, talking about frontiers, I do
hope affairs are quite quiet now on your north-
west frontier ; I take such an interest in my East
Indian correspondence."

And those Britons who have handled Oriental
affairs for the last twenty years can appreciate
the extent of that interest when we remember
that even while Yamen Arabs were fighting the
Turks, their neighbours on the Aden side of the
frontier were praying in their mosques that the
Sultan and his troops might be victorious " by
land and sea."

All this, however, was merely playing with

I ITS ORIGIN AND MEANING 15

intrigue as a political counterpoise ; it remained
for a Christian nation to put pan-Islam on a
business footing. First we have polite bagmen
calling at Stamboul with German guns and
a German military system. Then *' our Mr.
William" of the well-known Potsdam firm of
Hohenzollern and Sons made his great advertis-
ing campaign in the Near East ; many of us
remembered his theatrical visit to Saladin's tomb
and the tawdry wreath with its bombastic inscrip-
tion, " From the Emperor of the Franks to the
Emperor of the Saracens — Greeting."

That astute " pilgrim " made himself especially
affable to the American Protestant missionaries
in the Holy Land, preached to a small but select
congregation at the church of the Holy Sepulchre,
and posed alternately as a pious but militant
Moslem (when Hajji Guiyaum rode in miUtary
pomp into Jerusalem) and as a prince of peace.
That the hospice of Kaiserin Augusta Victoria
on the top of the Mount of Olives was loop-
holed for musketry and mounted a searchlight
in its tower that could signal with Haifa was
possibly due to some wajrward caprice of the
builder, but it came in very useful later on. So
did the scholarly researches of eminent Germans
in Sinai, assisted as they were by maps which the
Anglo-Egyptian authorities courteously placed

i6 PAN-ISLAM CHAP.

at their disposal, and which formed a basis for a
more detailed survey of wells and routes.

But the old firm at Potsdam excelled itself in
its representatives on the Palestine coast. There
was, for example, the German Consul at Haifa
famed for his culture and diplomacy (the Teutonic
brand), who also spoke Arabic, Turkish, French
and English fluently. This gifted official fre-
quented native cafes, where he fraternised with
the local Arabs and conducted a vigorous verbal
propaganda against the Entente. Then there
was the German engineer who wrecked the British
railway scheme to connect Haifa and Damascus
and re-naturalised as a German citizen after
being American Consul. The Belgian Vice-Consul
too, that merry Hun, who was also agent for our
Khedivial mail line. When the Turks came in
against us this good and faithful servant danced
on the Belgian and British flags and threw himself
heart and soul into pan-Islamic propaganda.

Nor must we overlook that reverend pastor
and Koranic scholar who distributed anti-
Christian and more especially ant i- British propa-
ganda by means of native emissaries. Last but
not least, the Herr Direktor of the Hejaz Railway,
who was collecting railway material for Sinai
before war broke out. Some time before the
Turks came in he imported, for the alleged

I ITS ORIGIN AND MEANING 17

use of the Jewish technical school, so great a
quantity of high explosives that it caused a panic
in Haifa. Yet it did not sufficiently impress our
Levantine Vice-Consul there for him to report it,
though the German Consul's remarkable activity to
get the stuff landed might have given him the hint.

At Jeddah our Khedivial Mail Agency, under
the good old English name of Robinson, was a
perfect nest of Germans and pro-German Dutch-
men when I called there in 191 2. They were
very active early in the War, but had wisely
disappeared before my last visit, when Jeddah
fell to our blockade and bombardment.

As for Hodeidah, the chief port of Yameri, it
was the happy hunting-ground of a great German
firm, and the American Consul was himself a
German.

Decidedly, for people who believed that they
had a monopoly of Divine assistance, they had
taken a lot of pains that their Holy War should be
a success.

To grasp the world-wide conspiracy which
hatched out so many formidable events during
the War and to appreciate the causes which
contributed to its final collapse we must take a
comprehensive glance at the Ottoman Caliphate
and how it came about.

Remember, the Ottoman Turks are not Semitic,

c

i8 PAN-ISLAM CHAP.

as is the bulk of the Moslem world. Tradition
derives them from Turk, son of Japhet, and they
are a Turco-Mongol blend which most people
agree to call Tartar. Their language is closely
allied to Mongolian, though written in Arabic,
or rather Persian, character, and its Arabic
words are pronounced unintelHgibly to an Arab.
A true Turk learns Arabic with difficulty, and a
far higher percentage of Britons in India speak
Hindustani than Turks do Arabic in Turkish
Arabia.

Then, again, look at their early history. Their
Mongol-Turkish ancestors were driven westward
because they made Mongolia too hot for them,
and we hear of Turks smelting iron for their Mongol
masters in what is now Eastern Turkestan until
they threw off the Mongol yoke in a.d. 552, when
Turkish history begins.

At the dawn of Islam (a.d. 632) Turks and
Mongols were harrying each other all over the
Caspian countries like rival wolf-packs, sometimes
combining for a raid on their neighbours and
then fighting over the loot. That is why you
find racial Turks in such outlandish places as
Merv, Khiva, Samarcand, Bokhara and Cabul, for
the Turkish race is not confined to Asia Minor
and Turkey in Europe, but is scattered over
parts of Russia and China and Afghanistan.

I ITS ORIGIN AND MEANING 19

Now to consider the Ottoman Turks, with
whom we are chiefly concerned. They were
superior to their Mongol fellow-wolves in that
they could smelt iron and had some idea of
constructive enterprise. They had also adopted
Islam, which was a great advance from the
Shamanistic wizardry and totem-worship they
used to practise, and their contact with the
Arabs who raided them and afterwards accepted
their military service to the Caliphate had
civilised them considerably. Their Seljouk cousins
were already ruling in Asia Minor, whither
they had been driven by the Mongols when
a wandering Turkish band sought similar asylum
there in the earlier part of the thirteenth century
and intervened most opportunely to help the
Seljouks repulse a Mongol raid ; in return, the
Seljouk Emperor gave them a grant of land in
Bithynia.

In 1300 the Seljouk Empire was finally smashed
by the Mongols, who withdrew eastward without
occupying the country, for they were merely
predatory and destructive and had no gift or
desire for permanent colonisation. So it came
about that the Ottoman Empire began in 1326
under Othman I in Bithynia and grew by
absorption and lack of effective opposition until,
in 1 51 7, we find it spreading under Selim I (the.

c 2

20 PAN-ISLAM CHAP.

Magnificent) to the gates of Vienna and extending
from Germany to Persia and from Arabia to the
Atlantic.

The benign sun of the Arabian CaHphate,
under which learning and industry flourished
securely, had long since set in blood under
circumstances of treachery and murder which
have hardly been surpassed even in the late war.

Under the later Abbasides, when the glories of
the Caliphate were waning, there were bitter
dissensions between Sunnis and Shiahs (the main
orthodox and schismatic sects of Islam) which
culminated in fierce rioting at Baghdad in 1258.
The then Caliph was foolish enough to appeal
for assistance against the schismatic seditionists
to his Mongol neighbours. It had been done
before under similar conditions, and even in these
days such a manoeuvre seems still to appeal to
some types of religious fanaticism, judging by
certain passages between our sister isle and the
modem Hun. On the above occasion, however,
it was practised once too often. Hulaku Khan,
the fierce Mongol chief, had long had his eye on
Baghdad as holding princely loot in all too slack
a grip, for the Caliphate had been relying on
Tartar mercenaries for years.

He approached that queen of cities, as she
then was, with a great host, lured the Caliph out

I ITS ORIGIN AND MEANING 21

to meet him by the promise of an alliance, and
murdered the whole party, the Caliph being
trampled to death. Then Baghdad was given
over to sack and massacre for more than a month,
by which time 1,800,000 people are said to have
perished.

The Caliphate was transplanted to Cairo,
where it dragged out an anaemic existence until
Selim I seized it, with the person of the then
Caliph, by right of conquest, and it has been an
appanage of the Ottoman reigning house ever
since.

Sehm the Magnificent may be called the Turk-
ish top-note. After him the Ottoman Empire
gradually declined. It has generally taken advan-
tage of disaster or dissension to extend its
borders — a precarious method of empire-building
unless consolidated by benevolent and sound
administration, which is not a feature of Turkish
rule. Add to this the facts that Turks are slack
Moslems, that the national party which ousted
Abdul Hamid (himself most orthodox) is not
religious at all, with all its barbarian, totemistic
nonsense of the " White Wolf," and that they
would pose as conquerors on insufficient grounds,
and we begin to see why they have been kicked
out of their Asiatic empire bit by bit.

If Turk and Mongol had been capable of dynastic

22 PAN-ISLAM CHAP.

evolution and co-ordinate policy they might
have shared most of the Eastern Hemisphere
between them. We have seen the high- water
mark of the Ottoman Empire ; Marco Polo has
told us of Kubla Khan's Chinese Empire, and
the Moguls did much for India in their prime.
But the wolf-taint was in their blood, and just as
a pet wolf gets fat and degenerate, so it has
been with these Tartars. Their undoubted
soldierly qualities are sapped by luxury, and
they possess no constructive gifts which peace
and prosperity might develop. Hence it is that
every empire they have founded has risen to a
culminating point of conquest and then dwindled
away in sloth and corruption.

The Turk is not fit to be put in charge of any race
but his own, for he is at heart a bitter wolt who
will turn and rend without ruth or warning. I
have met Turks who have shown tact, humanity,
and ability under trying conditions, and I have
met well-mannered wolves in captivity, but
would not trust the pack ranging in its native
forest. I once heard a member of our Ottoman
Embassy who has unique experience of the
Turk size him up as follows : " The Turk can be
a suave and cultured gentleman till his time
comes, and then he will tear your guts out and
dance on them." It was the Seljouk Turks whose

I ITS ORIGIN AND MEANING 23

persecutions caused the Crusades. Before them,
Arab rule in Palestine was tolerant enough, and
the Caliph Omar was scrupulously careful when he
entered Jerusalem as a conqueror to respect
Christian prejudices and the monuments of our
creed.

So it came about that their empire was dropping
from them piecemeal even before the War,
for a race that can no longer conquer and has
never learned to conciliate must draw in its
borders or cease to exist as a State.

When war broke out Turkey was just hanging
on to the last scrap of her empire in Europe
and had lost all but the shadow of sovereignty
in Egypt, while Arabia was seething with discon-
tent, where not in actual revolt, and regarded the
belated efforts of local officials to govern tactfully
as signs of weakness.

The colossal brigandage of Germany appealed
to her freebooting instincts, although it took
a corrupt, self-seeking Government and a final
push from the " Goeben " and the " Breslau "
to plunge her into war against her best friends.

To proclaim a jihad was her obvious course,
if only to keep Arabia moderately quiet, apart
from its value as a weapon against her Christian
foes. We will now see how she fared in the
*' Holy War."

CHAPTER II

ITS BEARING ON THE WAR

Quite early in the War those of us who had to
deal with pan-Islamic propaganda realised that
the widespread organisation which Germany had
grafted on to the original Turkish movement
must have existed some time before the outbreak
of actual hostilities.

For example, there was a snug, smooth-running
concern at San Francisco which spread its
tentacles all over the Moslem world, but specialised
in a seditious newspaper called EP-Ghadr,
which means treachery or mutiny. This was
particularly directed at our Indian Army, but
Egypt was not forgotten. A gifted censor sent us
an early copy, but had, unfortunately, lost the
wrapper, so our earnest desire to make the
addressee's closer acquaintance was thwarted.

Stamboul was naturally an active centre, and,
before the Turks entered the War, Turkish
officers in full uniform, and sometimes even

24

CH. II ITS BEARING ON THE WAR 25

wearing swords, permeated Cairo cafes with
espionage and verbal propaganda, trying to fan
into flame the military ardour of Egyptian
students and men about town. This last activity
was wasted effort, as anyone who knew the type
could have told them ; the effendis abstained
from the crudities of personal service and con-
fined themselves to stirring up the town riffraff,
who wanted a safer form of villainy than open riot,
and the fellahin, who wanted a safe market for
their produce and easy taxation, both of which
they stood to lose by violence. Many a fellah
still believes that the War was a myth created
by the authorities to put prices up. Even
Teuton activity failed to stimulate these placid
folk, and the glad tidings preached by the madder
type of German missionary that the Kaiser was
the Messiah left them unmoved.

When the Turks came in against us, and the
ex-Khedive, safe among his new-found friends,
threw off the mask, the Cairene effendis became
tremendously active. Forgetting how they had
disliked Abbas II and called him a huckstering
profligate, they mourned for his deposal by
wearing black ties, especially the students. Some
of these enthusiastic young heroes even went so
far as to scatter chlorate of potash crackers about
when their school was visited by poor old Sultan

26 PAN-ISLAM CHAP.

Husein (who was worth six of his predecessor),
and he got quite a shock, which was flagrantly
and noisomely accentuated by asaf oetida bomblets.
The ex-Khedive did not share their patriotic
grief. He was quite comfortable while awaiting
the downfall of British rule, for, with shrewd
prescience that almost seems inspired, he had
taken prudent measures for his future comfort
and luxury before leaving Egypt on his usual
summer tour to Europe. He had mortgaged
real estate up to the hilt, realised on immobile
property as far as possible, and diverted his
fluid assets through various channels beyond
the reach of his sorrowing subjects and the
Egyptian Government. When an official inven-
tory was taken in Abdin Palace at the accession
of the late Sultan Husein, it was ascertained
that the famous inlaid and begemmed coffee-
service, which, like our Crown jewels, was not
supposed to leave the country, had been sent after
the ex- Khedive to his new address — truly a man
of parts. I have often wondered whether his
Hunnish friends got him to disgorge by means of
a forced loan or war-bonds, or something of that
sort. If so, they achieved something notable, for
he has left behind him, beside his liabiUties, the
name of being a difficult man to get money
out of.

II ITS BEARING ON THE WAR 27

When the Turco-Teuton blade was actually
drawn in Holy War I was down with enteric,
which I had contracted while working in disguise
among seditious circles in the slums of Old Cairo.
I just convalesced in time to join the Intelligence
Staff on the Canal the day before Jemal Pasha's
army attacked. His German staff had everything
provided for in advance with their usual thorough-
ness. From the documents and prisoners that
came through our hands we learnt that the
hotel in Cairo where the victors were to dine
after their triumphant entry had actually been
selected, and some enthusiasts went so far as to
insist that the menu had been prepared. If so,
they omitted to get the Canal Army on toast,
and for want of this indispensable item the event
fell through. All the same, it was a soldierly
enterprise, and if the Senussis had invaded in
force or the population risen behind us, as they
hoped would be the case, the result might have
been different.

As it was they put up a very good fight and
their arrangements for getting across the Sinaitic
desert were excellent. For the last ten miles
they man-handled their pontoons to the edge of
the Canal. These craft were marvels of lightness
and carrying capacity, but, of course, no protec-
tion whatever against even a rifle-bullet, and they

28 PAN-ISLAM CHAP.

had not fully reckoned with the Franco-British
naval flotilla, which proved a formidable factor.

The morning after the main fight a little Syrian
subaltern passed through my hands. He had
been slightly wounded in the leg and still showed
signs of nervous shock, so I made him sit down
with a cigarette while I questioned him. He
had been in charge of a pontoon manned by his
party and said that they had got halfway
across the Canal in perfect silence when " the
mouth of hell opened " and the pontoon was
sinking in a swirl of stricken men amid a hail of
projectiles. He and two others swam to our
side of the Canal, where they surrendered to an
Indian detachment.

Our Indian troops on the Canal were naturally
a mark for pan-Islamic propaganda reinforced
by Hindu literature of the Bande Mataram
type — a double-barrelled enterprise to bag both
the great creeds of India. The astute propa-
gandists had a pamphlet or two aimed at Sikhism,
which they seemed to consider a nation, as they
spoke of their national aspirations, though an
elementary study of the subject might have
taught them that it was a religious and secular
movement originally intended to curb Moslem
power in India during the sway of the later
Moguls. Anyone but a Moslem can be a Sikh.

II ITS BEARING ON THE WAR 29

Naturally I was on the qui vive for signs of
pan-Islamic activity on the enemy's side, and
I questioned my little Syrian very closely to
ascertain how far the movement was used as a
driving force among the troops engaged against
us. He, personally, had rather a grievance on
the subject, for the Indian Moslems who took
him had reproached him bitterly for fighting
on the wrong side. " I fought," he said, " because
it was my duty as an officer of the Ottoman Army.
I know that men were invited to join as for a
jihad, but we officers did not deceive ourselves.
Par exemple, I think myself a better Moslem than
any Turk, but what would you ? " I consoled the
little man while concealing my satisfaction at the
feeling displayed against him. An extraordinarily
heterogeneous collection of prisoners came drib-
bling through my hands directly after the Turks
were repulsed. Most were practically deserters
who had been forcibly enrolled, given a Mauser
and a bandoleer, and told to go and fight for
the Holy Places of Islam. As one of the more
intelligent remarked, " If the Holy Places are
really in danger, what are we doing down this
way ? "

They came from all over the Moslem world.
There were one or two Russian pilgrims returning
from Mecca to be snapped up by the military

30 PAN-ISLAM chap.

authorities at Damascus railway station when
they got out of the pilgrim train from Medina.
There were cabdrivers from Jerusalem, a stranded
pilgrim from China, several Tripolitans who had
been roped in on the Palestine seaboard while
trying to get a passage home, a Moor who tried
to embrace my feet when I spoke of the snow-
crowned Atlas above Morocco City (Marraksh)
and told him that he would be landed at Tangier
in due course — Inshallah. Of course we released,
and repatriated as far as we could, men who were
not Ottoman subjects and had obviously been
forced into service against us. A few days later,
when Jemal Pasha's army was getting into
commissariat difficulties out in the Sinaitic
desert (for the Staff had rehed on entering
Egypt), we began to get the real Turks among
our prisoners.

I was very curious to ascertain if they had
been worked up with pan-Islamic propaganda
or carried any of it on them, for there was not
even a Red Crescent Koran on any of the Arabic-
speaking prisoners. A search of their effects
revealed a remarkable phase of propaganda.
There was hardly any religious literature except
a loose page or two of some pious work like the
*' Traditions of Muhammad," but there were
quantities of rather crude (and very lewd) picture-

II ITS BEARING ON THE WAR 31

cards portraying soldiers in Turkish uniform
outraging and murdering nude or semi-nude
women and children, while corpses in priestly
garb, shattered crucifixes, and burning churches
indicated the creed that was being so harried
and gave the scene a stimulating background.
From their appearance I should say these pictures
were originally engraved to commemorate Balkan
or Armenian atrocities, but their possessors, on
being closely questioned, admitted that the
impression conveyed to them was of the joyous
licence which was to be theirs among the Prankish
civilians after forcing the Canal. One Kurdish
gentleman had among his kit fancy socks, knitted
craftily in several vivid colours, also ornate
slippers to wear in his promised palatial billet at
Cairo. There were some odd articles among
the kit of these Turkish prisoners, to wit, a
brand-new garden thermometer, which some wag
insisted was for testing the temperature of the
Canal before immersion, and a lavatory towel
looted from the Hejaz railway. Still, nothing
was quite so remarkable as a white flag with a
jointed staff in a neat, compact case which had
been carried by a German officer. Among his
papers was an indecent post-card not connected,
I think, with propaganda of any sort, as it por-
trayed a bright-coloured female of ripe figure and

32 PAN-ISLAM CHAP.

Teutonic aspect, wearing a pair of long stockings
and high-heeled shoes, and bore the legend
" Gruss von Miinchen."

A certain coyness, or possibly an appreciation
of their personal value, kept most ot the German
officers from actual contact with our line. Only
one reached the Canal bank, and he is there still.
The German touch, however, was much in
evidence. There were detailed written orders
about manning the pontoons, not to talk, cough,
sneeze, etc., and for each man to move along the
craft as far as feasible and then sit down. They
seem to have relied entirely on surprise, and
ignored the chance of its occurring on the wrong
side of the Canal. The emergency rations too
which we found on the earlier batches of prisoners
had a distinctly Teutonic flavour — they were so
scientifically nourishing in theory and so vilely
inedible in practice. They were a species of
flat gluten cake rather like a dog-biscuit, but
much harder. An amateur explosive expert of
ours tested one of these things by attempting
detonation and ignition before he would let his
batch of prisoners retain them, which, to do their
intelhgence justice, they were not keen on doing,
but offered any quantity of the stuff for cigarettes.
We ascertained from them that you were supposed
to soak it in water before tackling it in earnest,

II ITS BEARING ON THE WAR 33

but as the only supply (except the runlet they
still carried on them) was in the fresh- water canal
behind our unshaken line, such a course was not
practicable ; the discovery of a very dead Turk
some days later in that canal led to the ribald
suggestion that he had rashly endeavoured to
eat his ration. Our scientist laid great stress on
its extraordinary nutritive properties, but desisted,
after breaking a tooth off his denture, in actual
experiment.

German influence, too, was apparent in the
relations between officers and men. A Turkish
yuzhashi was asked to get a big batch of prisoners
to form two groups according to the languages
they spoke — Arabic or Turkish. It was not an
easy task in the open on a pitch-black night, but
he did it with soldierly promptitude and flung
his glowing cigarette end in the face of a dilatory
private. As a natural corollary it may be
mentioned here that one or two of our prisoners
had deserted after shooting officers who had
struck them.

For some days after the battles of Serapeum
and Toussoum we expected another attempt,
but they had been more heavily mauled than we
thought at first. The dead in the Canal were
kept down by the weight of their ammunition
for some time, and the shifting sand on the

D

34 PAN-ISLAM chap.

Sinaitic side was always revealing hastily-buried
corpses on their line of retreat.

Jemal Pasha hurried back to Gaza and published
a grandiloquent report for Moslem consumption,
to the effect that the Turks were already in
Cairo (as was indeed the case with many hundreds),
and that, of the giaour fleet, one ship had sunk,
one had been set on fire, and the rest had fled.
Two heavy howitzers^ as a matter of fact, had
managed by indirect fire from a concealed
position to land a couple of projectiles on the
" Hardinge," which was not originally built for
such rough treatment, being an Indian marine
vessel taken over by the Navy. She gave more
than she got when her four-point-sevens found
the massed Turkish supports.

A great deal of criticism has been flung at this
first series of fights on the Canal, mostly by
Anglo-Egyptian civilians. They asked derisively
whether we were protecting the Canal or the
Canal us. The answer is in the affirmative to
both questions. Ordinary steamer traffic was
only suspended for a day during the first on-
slaught, and the G.O.C. was not such a fool as to
leave the Canal in his rear and forgo the defensive
advantage. There are some who, in their military
ardour, would have had him pursue the enemy
into the desert, forgetting that to leave a sound

II ITS BEARING ON THE WAR 35

position and pursue a superior force on an ever-
widening front in a barren country which they
know better than you do and have furnished
with their own supply-bases is just asking for
trouble. Our few aeroplanes in those days could
only reconnoitre twenty miles out, and there
was no evidence that the enemy had not merely
fallen back to his line of wells preparatory to
another attempt. We had not then the men,
material, or resources for a triumphant advance
into Sinai ; it was enough to make sure of keeping
the enemy that side of the Canal with the Senussi
sitting on the fence and Egypt honeycombed with
seditious propaganda.

x\nyone at all in touch with native life in Cairo
could gauge the extent of propagandist activity
by gossip at cafes and in the bazars. The
Senussi was marching against us. India was in
revolt and the Indian Army on the Canal had
joined the Turks. The crowning stroke of
ingenuity w^as a tale that received wide credence
among quite intelligent Egyptians. It was to
the effect that the Turks had commandeered an
enormous number of camels and empty kerosene
tins. This was quite true so far, but the yarn
then rose to the following flight of fancy : These
empty tins were to be filled with dry cement
and loaded on camels, which were to be marched

D 2

36 PAN-ISLAM chap*

without water for days until they reached the
Canal, when the pangs of thirst would compel
them to rush madly into the water. The cement
would solidify and the Faithful would march
across on a composite bridge of camel and con-
crete. Our flotilla was to be penned in by similar
means.

There must be something about a Turk that
hypnotises an Egyptian. His country has suffered
appallingly under Ottoman rule, and a pure-
blooded Turk can seldom be decently civil to
him and considers him almost beneath contempt.
This is the conquering Tartar pose that has
earned the Turk such detestation and final ruin
in Arabia, but it seems to have fascinated the
Egyptian like a rabbit in the presence of a python.
Quite early in the Turkish invasion of Sinai a
detachment of Egyptian camelry, operating
in conjunction with the Bikanirs, deserted en
masse to the enemy. It was at first supposed
that they had been captured, but we afterwards
heard of their being feted somewhere in Palestine.
On the other hand, an Egyptian battery did
yeoman service on the Canal ; I saw a pontoon
that looked like a carelessly opened sardine-tin
as a result of its attentions.

The most tragic aspect of this spurious and
mischievous propaganda was its victims from

II ITS BEARING ON THE WAR 37

Indian regiments. The Indian Moslem as a
rule has no illusions about the Turks, and will
fight them at sight, but there will always be a
few misguided bigots to whom a specious and
dogmatic argument will appeal. There is no
occasion to dwell on these cases, which were
sporadic only and generally soon met with the
fate incurred by attempted desertion to the
enemy.

We looked on the movement as an insidious
and dangerous disease and did our best to
trace it to its source and stop the distributing
channels. After events on the Canal had sim-
mered down, I was seconded to Cairo to help
tackle the movement there : to show how little
hold it had over the minds of thinking Moslems
I may mention that my colleague was a Pathan
major who was a very strict Moslem and a first-
rate fellow to boot.

We both served under an Anglo-Indian major
belonging to the C.I.D., one of the most active
little men I have ever met. There were also
several " ferrets," or Intelligence agents, who
came into close contact with the " suspects '*
and could be trusted up to a certain point if
you looked sharply after them. This is as much
as can be said for any of these men, though
some are better, and some worse, than others.

38 PAN-ISLAM chap.

On the Canal we employed numbers of them to
keep us informed of the enemy's movements
and used to check them with the aerial recon-
naissance— they needed it. It did not take
us long to find out that these sophisticated
Sinaites had established an IntelHgence bureau
of their own. They used to meet their " opposite
numbers " employed by the enemy at pre-
arranged spots between the lines and swop
information, thereby avoiding unnecessary toil
or risk (the Sinaitic Bedouin loathes both) and
obtaining news of interest for both sides. It
was a magnificently simple scheme ; its sole
flaw was in failing to realise that some of us had
played the Great Game before. We used to
time our emissaries to their return and cross-
check them where their wanderings intersected
those of others — all were supposed to be trackers
and one or two knew something about it. Of
course they were searched and researched on
crossing and returning to our outpost line, for
they could not be trusted to refuse messages to
or from the Turks. It was among this coterie
that the brilliant idea originated of shaving
a messenger's head, writing a despatch on his
scalp, and then letting his hair grow before he
started to deliver it. I doubt if any of our folk
were thorough enough for this, but we tested

II ITS BEARING ON THE WAR 39

for it occasionally, and an unpleasant job it was.
Generally they would incur suspicion by their
too speedy return and the nonchalant way in
which they imparted tidings which would have
driven them into ecstasies of self-appreciation
had they obtained such by legitimate methods.
Then a purposely false bit of information calcu-
lated to cause certain definite action on the other
side would usually betray them. Some purists
suggested a firing party as a fitting end for these
gambits, but that would have been a waste.
Such men have their uses, until they know they
are suspected, as valuable channels of misinfor-
mation. No doubt the enemy knew this too,
and that is how an Intelligence Ofiicer earns his
pay, by sifting grain from chaff as it comes in
and sending out empty husks and mouldy news.

But to return to Cairo. We netted a good
deal of small fry, but only landed one big fish
during the time I was attached. He was a
Mesopotamian and a very respectable old gentle-
man, who followed the calHng of astrologer and
peripatetic quack — a common combination and
admirably adapted for distributing propaganda.
He came from Stamboul through Athens with
exemplary credentials, and might have got through
to India, which was the landfall he proposed to
make, if his propagandist energy had not led him

40 PAN-ISLAM chap.

to deviate on a small side-tour in Egypt. Here
we got on his track, and I boarded the Port Said
express at short notice while he and the " ferret "
who had picked him up got into a third-class
compartment lower down. As the agent made
no signal after the train had pulled out, I knew
our man had not got the bulk of his propaganda
with him, otherwise I had powers to hold up the
express, for it was more important to get his
stuff than the man himself. At Port Said he
had a chance of seeing me, thanks to the agent's
clumsiness, and I had to shave my beard off
and buy a sun-helmet in consequence, for I was
travelling in the same ship along the Canal to
see that he did not communicate with troops
on either side of the bank, and on the slightest
suspicion he would have put his stuff over the side.
All went smoothly and he was arrested in Suez
roads by plain-clothes men with a sackful of
seditious literature for printing broadcast in
India. Of course they arrested the " ferret "
too, as is usual in these cases. I went ashore with
them in the poUce-launch as a casual traveller
and was amused to hear the agent rating the old
man for not having prophesied this mishap when
teUing his fortune the night before.

The propagandist was merely interned in a place
of security — it was not our policy to make

II ITS BEARING ON THE WAR 41

martyrs of such men, especially when they
were bona fide Ottoman subjects.

I was rather out of touch with the pan-Islamic
movement during the summer of 191 5, as my
lungs had become seriously affected on the
Canal, and the trouble became so acute that I had
to spend two or three months in the hills of
Cyprus. Before I had been there a week the
G.O.C. troops in Egypt cabled for me to return
and proceed to Aden as pohtical officer with
troops.

I was too ill then to move and had to cable
to that effect. My chagrin at missing a " show "
was much alleviated when I heard what the
show was. As it had a marked effect on the
pan-Islamic campaign by enhancing Turkish
prestige, it is not out of place to give some account
of it here.

While I was still on the Canal in February
(1915) a " memo " was sent for my information
from Headquarters at Cairo to say that the
Turks had invaded the Aden protectorate at
Dhala, where I once served on a boundary
commission.

I noted the fact and presumed that Aden
was quite able to cope with the situation, as
the Turks had a most difficult terrain to traverse
before they could get clear of the hills and reach

42 PAN-ISLAM CHAP.

the littoral, while the hinterland tribes are noted
for their combatant instincts and efficiency in
guerilla warfare, besides being anti-Turk. I
had, however, in spite of many years' experience,
failed to reckon with Aden apathy. True to
the policy of laissez faire which was inaugurated
when our Boundary Commission withdrew some
twelve years ago, Aden had been depending for
news of her own protectorate on office files and
native report, especially on that much over-
rated friend and ally the Lahej sultanate. The
Turks knew all about this, for the leakage of
Aden affairs which trickles through Lahej and
over the Yamen border is, and has been for
years, a flagrant scandal.

The invasion at Dhala was a feint just to
test the soundness of official slumber at Aden ;
the obvious route for a large force was down the
Tiban valley, owing to the easier going and the
permanent water-supply.

Our border-sultan (the Haushabi) was suborned
with leisurely thoroughness all unknown to his
next-door neighbour, that purblind sultanate at
Lahej, unless the latter refrained from breaking
Aden's holy calm with such unpleasant news.

In May Aden stirred in her sleep and sent out
the Aden troop to reconnoitre. This fine body
of Indian cavalry and camelry reported that

II ITS BEARING ON THE WAR 43

affairs seemed serious up the Tiban valley ; then
inertia reasserted itself and they were recalled.
Also the Lahej sultanate, in a spasm of economy,
started disbanding the Arab levies collected for
the emergency from the tribes of the remoter
hinterland which have supplied fine mercenaries
to many oriental sultanates for many centuries.

The watchful Turk, with his unmolested spy
system, had noted every move of these pitiful
blunders, and, at the psychological moment,
came pouring down the Tiban valley some 3,000
strong with another 5,000 Arab levies. They
picked up the Haushabi on the way, whose main
idea was to get a free kick at Lahej, just as an
ordinary human boy will serve some sneak and
prig to whom a slack schoolmaster has relegated
his own obvious duty of supervision. To do that
inadequate sultanate justice, it tried to bar the
way with its own trencher-fed troops and such
levies as it had, but was brushed aside contemp-
tuously by the hardier levies opposed to it and
the overwhelming fire of the Turkish field
batteries. Then a distraught and frantic palace
emitted mounted messengers to Aden for assist-
ance like minute-guns from a sinking ship.

Aden behaved exactly like a startled hen.
She ran about clucking and collecting motor-
cars, camel transport, anything. The authorities

44 PAN-ISLAM chap.

dared not leave their pet sultan in the lurch —
questions might be asked in the House. On the
other hand they had made no adequate arrange-
ments to protect him. Just as a demented
hen will leave her brood at the mercy of a hovering
kite to round up one stray chick instead of sitting
tight and calling it in under her wing, so Aden
made a belated and insane attempt to save
Lahe j .

The Aden Movable Column, a weak brigade
of Indians, young Territorials, and guns, marched
out at 2 p.m. on July 4, i.e. at the hottest time
of day, in the hottest season of the year and the
hottest part of the world. Motor-cars were used
to convey the infantry of the advanced guard,
but the main body had to march in full equipment
with ammunition. The casualties from sunstroke
were appalling. The late G.O.C. troops in Egypt
mentioned them to me in hundreds, and one of
the Aden " politicals " told me that not 'a dozen
of the territorial battalion remained effective at
the end of the day. Many were bowled over by
the heat before they had gone two miles.

Most of the native camel transport, carrying
water, ammunition and supplies, — and yet un-
escorted and not even attended by a responsible
officer — sauntered off into the desert and vanished
from the ken of that ill-fated column.

II ITS BEARING ON THE WAR 45

Meanwhile the advanced guard of 250 men
(mostly Indians) and two lo-pounder mountain-
guns pushed on with all speed to Lahej, which
was being attacked by several thousand Turks
and Turco- Arabs with 15-pounder field batteries
and machine-guns. They found the palace and
part of the town on fire when they arrived, and
fought the Turks hand-to-hand in the streets.
They held on all through that sweltering night,
and only retired when dawn showed them the
hopeless nature of their task and the fact that
they were being outflanked. They fell back on
the main body, which had stuck halfway at a
wayside well (Bir Nasir) marked so obviously
by ruins that even Aden guides could not miss it.
Shortage of water was the natural result of
sitting over a well that does not even supply a
settlement, but merely the ordinary needs of
wayfarers.

This well is marked on the Aden protectorate
survey map (which is procurable by the general
public) as Bir Muhammad, its full name being
Bir Muhammad Nasir. There are five wells
supplying settlements within half an hour's walk
of it on either side of the track, but when we
remember that the column's field-guns got no
further owing to heavy sand, and that the afore-
said track is frequently traversed by ordinary

46 PAN-ISLAM chap.

tikkagharries, we realise the local knowledge
available.

The column straggled back to the frontier
town of Sheikh Othman, which they prepared
to defend, but Simla, by this time thoroughly
alarmed, ordered them back for the defence of
Aden, and they returned without definite achieve-
ment other than the accidental shooting of the
Lahej sultan. This was hardly the fault of the
heroic little band which reached Lahej ; that
ill-starred potentate was escaping with his
mounted retinue before dawn and cantered on
top of an Indian outpost without the formality
of answering their challenge. He was brought
away in a motor-car and died at Aden a few days
later — another victim to this deplorable blunder.
Any intelligent and timely grasp of the enemy's
strength and intention would have given the
poor man ample time to pack his inlaid hookahs,
Persian carpets, and other palace treasures and
withdraw in safety to Aden while our troops
made good the Sheikh Othman line along the
British frontier. I am presuming that Aden
was too much taken by surprise to have met the
Turks in a position of her own choosing while
they were still entangled in hilly country where
levies of the right sort could have harried them
to some purpose, backed by disciplined, unspent

II ITS BEARING ON THE WAR 47

troops and adequate guns. What I wish to
impress is that the Intelligence Department at
Aden must have been abominably served and
organised, for I decline to believe that any
G.O.C. would have attempted such an enterprise
with such a force and at such a time had he
any information as to the real nature of his task.
As it was, the British town of Sheikh Othman,
within easy sight of Aden across the harbour,
was held by the Turks until a reinforcing column
came down from the Canal and drove them out of.
it, while the protectorate has been overrun by the
Turks and the Turco-Arabs until long after the
armistice, and the state of British prestige there
can be imagined.

Official attempts to gloze over the incident
would have been amusing if they were not
pathetic. Needless to say they did not deceive
Moslems in Egypt or the rest of Arabia.

Here is the most accurate account they gave
the public :

" TURKS AND ADEN.

" ENGAGEMENT AT LAKE J.

" The India Office issued the following corn-
munique last night through the Press Bureau :

" ' In consequence of rumours that a Turkish
force from the Yamen had crossed the

48 PAN-ISLAM chap.

frontier of the Aden Hinterland and was
advancing towards Lahej, the General
Officer Commanding at Aden recently dis-
patched the Aden Camel Troop to recon-
noitre.

" * They reported the presence of a Turkish
force with field-guns and a large number of
Arabs and fell back on Lahej, where they
were reinforced by the advance guard of
the Aden Movable Column consisting of
250 rifles and two lo-pounder guns.

" ' Our force at Lahej was attacked by the
enemy on July 4 by a force of several
thousand Turks with twenty guns and
large numbers of Arabs, and maintained its
position in face of the enemy artillery's
fire until night, when part of Lahej was in
flames. During the night some hand-to-
hand fighting took place, and the enemy
also commenced to outflank us.

" ' Meanwhile the remainder of the Aden
Movable Column was marching towards
Lahej, but was delayed by water difficulties
and heavy going. It was therefore decided
that the small force at Lahej should fall
back.

" ' The retirement was carried out success-
fully in the early morning of July 5, and

II ITS BEARING ON THE WAR 49

the detachment joined the rest of the
column at Bir Nasir. Our troops, however,
were suffering considerably from the great
heat and the shortage of water, and their
difficulties were increased by the desertion
of Arab transport followers. It was
therefore decided to fall back to Aden, and
this was done without the enemy attempt-
ing to follow up.
" ' Our losses included three British officers
wounded : names will be communicated
later. We took one Turkish officer (a major)
and thirteen men prisoners.' "

Aden seems to have made no attempt to stem
the tide of Turkish influence w^hile she could.
The best fighting tribe in the protectorate
stretches along the coast and far inland north-
east of Aden, and its capital is only a few hours'
steam from that harbour. The Turks made every
effort to win over this important tribal unit, which
might have been a grave menace on their left
flank. Its sultan made frequent representations
to Aden for even a gunboat to show itself off his
port, but to no purpose. After the Turks had
succeeded in alienating those of his tribe they
could get at, or who could get at them, a tardy
political visit was paid by sea from Aden. The

E

50 PAN-ISLAM chap.

indignant old sultan came aboard and spoke his
mind. " You throw your friends on the midden,"
he said bitterly, and departed to establish a
modus Vivendi on his own account with the
Turks.

The situation at Aden has had a marked effect
in bolstering up the Turkish campaign of spurious
pan-Islamism, and those of us who have been
dealing with chiefs in other parts of Arabia have
met it at every turn. It is idle to blame indivi-
duals— the whole system is at fault. The policy of
non-interference which the Liberal Government
introduced, after the Boundary Commission had
finished its task and withdrawn, has been over-
strained by the Aden authorities to such an extent
that they would neither keep in direct personal
touch themselves nor let anyone else do so.

As an explorer and naturalist whose chief
work has lain for years in that country, I have
made every effort to continue my researches
there until my persistency has incurred official
persecution. The serious aspect of this attitude
is that at a time when accurate and up-to-date
knowledge of the hinterland would have been
invaluable it was not available. The pernicious
policy of selecting any one chief (unchecked by a
European) to keep her posted as to affairs in her
own protectorate has been followed blindly by

II ITS BEARING ON THE WAR 51

Aden to disaster. The excuse in official circles
there is that the Haushabi sultan had been
suborned by the Turks without their knowledge
and he had prevented any information from
getting through Lahej to them. Can there be
any more damning indictment of such a system ?

The Aden incident is similar to the Mesopo-
tamian medical muddle, both being due to
sporadic dry-rot in high places which the test of
war revealed. The loyalty of its princes and the
devotion of its army prove that there is nothing
fundamentally wrong with British rule in India
to command such sentiments, but some of those
mandarins who have had wide control of human
affairs and destinies have ignored a situation
until it was forcibly thrust upon them and have
fumbled with it disastrously. It is difficult to
bring such people to book, for they shuffle respon-
sibihty from one to the other or take refuge in
the truly oriental pose of heaven-born officialdom.
Such types should be obsolete even in India by
now, but this war has proved that they are not,
and when their inanities fritter away gallant
lives and trail British prestige in the dust they
need rebuke. I hope some day, if I live, to deal
faithfully with Aden's hinterland poHcy.

In the autumn of 1915 I was fit enough to join
the Red Sea maritime patrol as political officer

E 2

52 PAN-ISLAM CHAP.

with the naval rank of Heu tenant. Our duties
were to harry the Turk without hurting the
Arab, to blockade the Arabian coast against the
Turk while allowing dhow-traffic with foodstuffs
consigned to Arab merchants and steamer-
cargoes of food for the alleged use of pilgrims
to go through. Incidentally we had to keep the
eastern highway free of mines and transportable
submarines, prevent the passage of spies between
Arabia and Egypt, and fetch and carry as the
shore-folk required.

Taking it all round, it was not an easy job, but
I think the blockade presented the most complex
features. You knew where you were with spies —
anyone with the necessary experience could spot
a doubtful customer as soon as the dhow that
carried him came alongside ; and irregular but
frequent visits at the various ports soon put a
stop to the mine-industry and prevented any
materialisation of the submarine menace except
in reports from Aden which caused me a good
many additional trips in an armed steam-cutter
to "go, look, see."

But the problems presented by the blockade
required some solving with very little time for
the operation, and if your solution was not
approved by the authorities on the beach they
lost no time in letting you know it — usually

II ITS BEARING ON THE WAR 53

by wireless, which was picked up by most ships
in the patrol by the time it reached you.

The basic idea was that if in doubt it was better
to let stuff through to the Turks than pinch
Hejazi bellies and get ourselves disliked. In
theory this was perfectly sound, for we wanted
the Hejaz to like us well enough to fight on our
side, and only the Huns think you can get people
to love you by afflicting them. In practice,
however, we soon found that the Hejazi merchants
were selling direct to the Turks and letting their
fellow-countrymen have what was left at the
highest possible price. On top of it all India
started a howl that her pilgrims in the Hejaz
were starving, and we had to defer to this outcry.
I have never had to legislate for highly-civilised
Moslems with a taste for agitation, but I have
always sympathised with those who have, and
could quite appreciate India's position in the
matter. Still, after comparing her relief cargoes
with the number of her pilgrims in the country
and finding that each had enough to feed him for
the rest of his natural life, I ventured to ask that
this wholesale charity might cease, more especially
as these big steam.er-cargoes were dealt with much
as the dhow-borne cereals and chiefly benefited
the Turks and local profiteers.

As regards dhows, our rule was to allow coastal

54 PAN-ISLAM chap.

traffic from Jeddah and empties returning there,
as it tended to distribute food among the Arabs
and get it away from the Turks. Dhows bringing
cargo from the African coast or from Aden were
permitted, provided they did not carry con-
traband of war ; this permitted native cereals,
such as millet, but barred wheat and particularly
barred barley, which the local Arab does not eat
for choice, but which the Turks wanted very badly
for their cavalry.

In this connection a typical incident may be
mentioned as illustrating the sort of thing we were
up against.

The ship I was serving in at the time lay off
Jeddah and had three boats down picketing the
dhow-channels leading in to that reef-girt harbour,
for which dhows were making like homing bees.
In such cases my post was usually on the bridge,
while the ship's interpreter and Arab-speaking
Seedee-boys went away in the boats. The
dhows were reached and their papers examined,
then allowed to proceed if all was in order.
Otherwise the officer examining signalled the
facts and awaited instructions. Usually it was
some technical point which I could waive, but
on this occasion one of the cutters made a signal
to the effect that barley in bulk had been found
in one dhow. I was puzzled, because all the

II ITS BEARING ON THE WAR 55

dhows were from Suakin or further south, quite
outside the barley-belt, except on very high ground
which rarely exports cereals. However, the
signal was repeated, and I had to have the dhow
alongside. Meanwhile the " o\\Tier " was anxious
to get steerage-way, for we were not at anchor
and in very ticklish soundings ; so I slid off the
bridge and had a sample of the grain handed
up to me : it was a species of millet, looking
very like pearl-barley as " milled " for culinary
purposes. I shouted to the rets to go where he
liked as long as he kept clear of our propellers,
which thereupon gave a ponderous flap or two
as if to emphasise my remarks, and he bore away
from us rejoicing. In the ward-room later on
I rallied that cutter's officer on his error. " Well,
it was just like the barley one sees in soup," was
his defence.

In the southern part of the Red Sea, which was
handled politically from Aden, the problems
of blockade were even more complex, for there
even arms and ammunition were allowed between
certain ports to meet the convenience of the Idrisi
chief, who was theoretically at war with the
Turks, but rather diffident about putting his
principles into practice, especially after the
Turkish success outside Aden.

This meant that the sorely-tried officers respon-

56 PAN-ISLAM chap.

sible for the conduct of the blockade in those
waters had frequently to decide on a cargo of
illicit-looking rifles and cartridges, not of Govern-
ment make, but purchased from private firms
and guaranteed by a filthy scrap of paper in-
scribed with crabbed Arabic which carried no
conviction. All they had to help them was the
half -educated ship's interpreter, with no know-
ledge of the political situation, for Aden had not
an officer available for this work. To enhance
the difficulties of the position, some of these
coastal chiefs were importing contraband of war
to sell to the Turks for private gain. Up north
there were no difficulties with ilHcit arms ; we
allowed a reasonable number per dhow, provided
that they were the private property of the crew,
and when rifles were dished out to our Arab
friends the Navy delivered the goods, which were
all of Government mark and pattern.

The political aspect of the blockade required
deHcate handhng anywhere along the Arabian
httoral of the Red Sea, but especially so on the
Hejazi coast. We were at war with the Turks
but not with the Arabs, whom it was our business
to approach as friends if they would let us.
The Turks, however, used Arab levies freely
against us whose truculence was much increased
on finding they could make hostile demonstrations

II ITS BEARING ON THE WAR 57

with impunity, as the patrol only fired on the
Turkish uniform, since few people can distinguish
between a Turco-Arab gendarme and an armed
tribesman at long range unless they know both
breeds intimately.

The general standard of honour and good faith
at most places along the Arabian littoral is not
high, even from an Oriental point of view, and is
nowhere lower than on the Hejazi coast. Fre-
quently an unattached tribesman would take a
shot at a reconnoitring cutter on general principles
and then rush off to the nearest Turkish post with
the information and a demand for bakshish,
and there were several attempts (one successful)
to lure a landing party on to a well-manned but
carefully hidden position. As for the actual
levies, they would solemnly man prepared posi-
tions within easy range of even a 3-pounder when
we visited their tinpot ports, relying on us not to
fire, and telling their compatriots what they
would do if we did.

Even when examining dhows one had to be on
one's guard, and it was best not to board them to
leeward and so run the risk of having their big,
bellying mainsail let go on top of you and getting
scuppered while entangled in its folds. African
dhows could generally be trusted not to resist
search, for when a reis has got his owners or

58 PAN-ISLAM chap.

agents at a civilised port like Suakin he likes to
keep respectable even if he is smuggling. Our
chief difficulty with such craft, before we tightened
the blockade, was due to the nonchalant manner
in which they put to sea and behaved when at
sea. Their skippers had the sketchiest idea of
what constituted proper clearance papers and why
such papers must agree with their present voyage.
Their confidence too in our integrity, though
touching, was often embarrassing. One of our
rules was that considerable sums in gold must
be given up against a signed voucher realisable
at Port Sudan. I was never very brisk at counting
large sums of money, and one day when hove to
off Jeddah there were five dhows rubbing their
noses alongside, with about £800 in gold between
them and very little time to deal with them, as
we were in shoal water with no way on the ship.
My operations were not facilitated by the biggest
Croesus of the lot producing some £400 in five
different currencies from various parts of his
apparel and stating that he had no idea how
much there was but would abide by my decision.
I believe he expected me to give him a receipt in
round hundreds and take the " oddment," as we
call it in Warwickshire, for myself. As it was,
I was down half a sovereign or so over the trans-
action, having given him the benefit of the doubt

II ITS BEARING ON THE WAR 59

over two measly little gold coins of unascertainable
value.

Some of them were just as happy-go-lucky
in their seamanship, though skilful enough in
handling their outlandish craft. Early one morn-
ing, about fifty miles out of Jeddah, I boarded
a becalmed dhow and found them with the
dregs of one empty water-skin between a dozen
men. Not content with putting to sea with a
single mussick of water, they had hove to and
slept all night, and so dropped the night breeze,
which would have carried them to Jeddah before
it died down. We gave them water and their
position, but I told the reis that he was putting
more strain on the mercy of Allah than he was,
individually, entitled to.

But the craft that plied along the Hejazi coast
were sinister customers and wanted watching.
Some time before I joined the patrol one of our
ships was lying a long way out off Um-Lejj, as the
water is shallow, and her duty-boat was working
close in-shore examining coastal craft. One of
these had some irregularity about her and was sent
out to the ship with a marine and a bluejacket in
charge while the cutter continued her task.
That dhow stood out to sea as if making for the
ship and then proceeded along the coast. The
cutter, still busied with other dhows, presumed

6o PAN-ISLAM chap.

that the first craft had reported alongside the
ship and been allowed to proceed ; the ship
naturally regarded her as a craft that had been
examined and permitted to continue her journey.
And that is all we ever knew for certain of her
or the fate of our two men. Their previous
record puts desertion out of the question ; besides,
no sane men would desert to a barren, inhospitable
coast among semi-hostile fanatics whose language
was unknown to them. On the other hand,
the men were, of course, fully armed, and there
were but five of the dhow's crew all told, of whom
two were not able-bodied. There must have been
the blackest treachery — probably the unfortunate
men goodnaturedly helped with the running
gear and were knocked on the head while so
engaged. Their bodies would, no doubt, have
been put over the side when the dhow was out
of sight, and their rifles sold inland at a fancy
price.

When I first joined the patrol we were not
allowed to bombard or land at any point between
the mouth of the Gulf of Akaba and the Hejaz
southern border. Jhe Turkish fort up at Akaba
had been knocked about a good deal by various
ships of the patrol, and the whole place was
uninhabited ; but we visited it frequently,
as drifting mines were put in up there, having

n ITS BEARING ON THE WAR 6i

been taken off the rail at Maan and brought down
to the head of the gulf, in section, by camel.
I always suspected the existence of a Turkish
observation-post, but no signs of occupation
had been seen for a long time till H.M.S. *' Fox "
went up one dark night without a light showing.
All dead-lights were shipped, and dark blue
electric bulbs replaced the usual ones where a
light of some sort was essential and visible from
out-board. The padre, who had opened the
" vicarage " dead-light about an inch to get a
breath of air, was promptly spotted by an in-
dignant Number One who said that it made the
ship look like a floating gin palace. This must
have been a pardonable hyperbole, for the
signal-fires ashore w^hich used to herald our
approach from afar were not lit.

We were off Akaba at peep of day, and two
armed cutters raced each other to the beach.
I went with the one that made for the stone
jetty in the middle front of the town ; we had to
jump out into four feet of water, as the port has
deteriorated a good deal since Solomon used it
and called it Eziongeber. A careful search
revealed no one in the town, but water had been
drawn recently from the well inside the fort,
and a mud hut out in the desert behind the town
seemed a likely covert to draw.

62 PAN-ISLAM CHAP.

The cutter's officer accompanied me, leaving
the crew ensconced in the cemetery, which was
a wise move, for, when we were close to the hut,
heavy fire was opened on us from a hidden trench
some three hundred yards away. We both
dropped and rolled into a shallow depression
caused by rain-wash, where we lay as fiat as we
could while the flat-nosed soft lead bullets kicked
sand and shingle down the backs of our necks.
As we had only revolvers — expecting resistance,
if any, to be made among the houses — we could
not reply, but the ship handed out a few rounds
of percussion shrapnel which shook the Turks
up enough for us to withdraw. Fortunately for
us, they were using black powder, and outside
four hundred yards one has time to avoid the
bullet by dropping instantly at the smoke.
Otherwise they should have bagged us in
spite of the support of our covering party
in the cemetery, for the ground was quite
open and so dusty that they could see the
break of their heavy picket-bullets to a
nicety.

We landed in force an hour later and turned
them out of it. On returning, the men who
searched the hut (which the ship's guns had
knocked endways) brought me a budget of
correspondence. It was chiefly addressed to the

II ITS BEARING ON THE WAR 63

officer in charge and told me that the detachment
was Syrian, which I had already suspected from
their using the early pattern Mauser. It gave
other useful information, and the men did
well to bring it along ; but I would have given
much to have found some channel through which
I could return it. Most of it was private ; there
were several congratulatory cards crudely illu-
minated in colours by hand for the feast of
Muled-en-Nebi (the birthday of the Prophet),
which corresponds with our Christmas. There
was also a letter from the officer's wife enclosing
a half-sheet of paper on which a baby hand had
imprinted a smeared outline in ink. It bore the
inscription " From your son Ahmed — his hand
and greeting."

Early in the spring of 1916 we managed to
persuade the political folk at Cairo to extend
our sphere of action. I had particularly marked
down Um-Lejj as containing a well-manned
Turkish fort which could be knocked about with-
out damaging other buildings in the town if we
were careful. It was also a rally ing-point for
Turkish influence, and it was not conducive to
our prestige or politically desirable that it should
flourish unmolested.

I was in the " Fox " again for that occasion,
she being the senior ship of the patrol and the

64 PAN-ISLAM chap.

only one that could land an adequate force if
required.

The evening before we anchored far out on the
fishing-grounds of Hasani Island, and I managed
to pick up a fisherman who knew where the
Turkish hidden position was, outside the town,
and, having been held a prisoner once in their
Customs building, could point that out too.
Next morning we stood slowly in for Um-Lejj
with the steam-cutter groping ahead for the
channel, which is about as tortuous a piece of
navigation as you can get off this coast, and that
is saying a good deal.

When we cleared for action I went to my usual
post on the bridge with the S.N.O. and took my
fisherman-friend with me. The civil population
was streaming out of the town across the open
plain in all directions like ants from an over-
turned ant-hill, probably realising that we meant
business this time. This was all to the good,
as otherwise I should have had to go close in
with the steam-cutter, a white flag and a mega-
phone to warn Arab civilians > thus giving
the Turks time to clear, besides the chance of a
sitting-shot at us if they thought my address to the
townsfolk a violation of the rules of war, which,
technically, it might be.

However, the fort was a fixture and our business

II ITS BEARING ON THE WAR 65

was first of all with it. Standing close in, the
ship turned southwards and moved slowly abreast
of the town. The port battery of four-point-
sevens loaded with H.E. and the two six-inchers
fore and aft swung out-board and followed suit.
The occasion called for fine shooting, as a nninaret
rose just to the right of the fort, and the houses
were so massed about it that there was only one
clear shot — up the street leading from the beach
past the main gate.

" At the southern gate of the fort, each gun to
fire as it comes to bear up the street from the
water-side."

As I turned my glasses on the big portico of
the southern gate, out stepped a Turkish officer
who regarded us intently ; the next instant the
bridge shook to the crashing concussion of our
forward six-inch, and through a drifting haze of
gas-fume I saw him blotted out by the orange
flash of lyddite and an up-flung pall of dust and
dehris.

There was a pause, cut short by the clap of
the bursting shell reverberating Hke thunder
against the foot-hills beyond the town.

A httle naked boy ran in an attitude of
terrified dismay up the water-street just as
the first four-point-seven fired. I saw him
through my glasses duck his head between his

F

66 PAN-ISLAM chap.

arms, then dive panic-stricken through a doorway
as the fort was smitten again in dust and thunder.
" Was the poor httle beggar hit ? "

" No, sir, only scared."

While the target was still veiled in its dust
the second four-point-seven spoke, and the
minaret disappeared from view behind a dun-
coloured shroud.

" Cease fire " sounded at once. '* Who fired
that gun ? Take him off," came in tones of
stem rebuke from the bridge. Luckily the
minaret showed intact as the dust drifted
clear and firing continued.

As the fort crumbled under our guns, Turkish
soldiers began to break cover at various points
of the town and fled across the plain. The cutter,
in-shore, opened with Maxim-fire, and so accu-
rately that we could see the sombre-clad figures
lying here and there or seeking frantically for
cover, while an Arab in their vicinity, leading a
leisurely camel, continued his stroll inland unper-
turbed. We drove the main body out of their
hidden position and into the hills with well-
timed shrapnel, and finished up by demolishing
the Customs (where a lot of ammunition blew up)»
to the temporary satisfaction of my fisherman,
who was curled up in a corner of the bridge,
nearly stunned by the shock of modern ordnance

II ITS BEARING ON THE WAR 67

in spite of the cotton-wool I had made him put
in his ears. Before we picked up our cutter the
civil population was already streaming back.

The incident is worth noting in view of remarks
made by a popular fiction-monger in one of his
latest works, that indiscriminate aerial raids on
civil centres in England are on the same level of
humanity as naval bombardments.

I visited the fishing-banks off Hasani Island
a week or so after to get the latest news of Um-
Lejj, which came from Turkish sources. There
was one civilian casualty — a woman who was in
the Turkish concealed position. No casualties
among Turkish officers, but one of them left in
charge of the fort had disappeared. There
were bits of the fort left, but the Commandant
had moved his headquarters to the school-house
within the precincts of the mosque — sagacious
soul. The object-lesson which we gave the Arabs at
Um-Lejj put a check to their irresponsible sniping
of boats and landing-parties, though one could
always expect a little trouble with an Arab
dhow running contraband for the Turks. In
these cases their guilty consciences usually gave
them away. Returning to the coast toward
Jeddah unexpectedly, having played the well-
worn ruse of ** the cat's away," we sighted a
small dhow close in-shore, and should have left

F 2

68 PAN-ISLAM chap.

her alone as she was in shoal-water, but, on
standing in to get a nearer view of her, she headed
promptly for the beach and ran aground, dis-
gorging more men than such a craft should carry.
I went away in the duty cutter to investigate,
and we had barely realised that she was heavily
loaded with kerosene in tins (a heinous contra-
band) when the fact was emphasised by a sputter-
ing rifle-fire from the scrub along the beach.
The ship very soon put a stop to that demonstra-
tion with a round or two of shrapnel, while we
busied ourselves with the dhow. There was no
hope of salving her, as she had almost ripped the
keel off her when she took the ground and sat on
the bottom like a dilapidated basket. We
broached enough tins to start a conflagration, lit
a fuse made of a strip of old turban soaked in
kerosene, and backed hard from her vicinity,
for the kerosene was low-flash common stuff as
marked on the cases, and to play at snapdragon
in half an acre of blazing oil is an uninviting
pastime. However, she just flared without ex-
ploding, and we continued our cruise up the coast
just in time to overhaul at racing speed a perfect
regatta of dhows heeling over to every stitch of
canvas in their efforts to make Jeddah before
we could get at them, for they had seen the smoke
of that burning oil-dhow and reahsed that the

II ITS BEARING ON THE WAR 69

cat was about. Good money is paid at Cowes
to see no more spirited sailing — we had to put a
shot across the bows of the leading dhow before
they would abandon the race.

There was always trouble off Jeddah — the
approaches to that reef-girt harbour lend them-
selves to blockade-running dhows with sound
local knowledge on board. At night, especially,
they had an advantage and would play *' Puss-in-
the-Comer " until the cutter lost patience, and
a flickering pin-point of light stabbed the velvet
black of the middle watch, asking permission to
fire ; one rifle-shot fired high would stop the
game, and I made them come alongside and take
a wigging for annoying the cutter and turning
me out ; there was seldom anything wrong about
the dhow — it was sheer cussedness.

All through the early part of 1916 we were
keeping in touch with the Sharif of Mecca by
means of envoys, whom we landed where they
listed, away from the Turks, picking them up
at times and places indicated by them. Sharif
Husein had long chafed under Turkish suzerainty,
in spite of his subsidy and the deference which
policy compelled them to accord him. He knew
that the Hejaz could never realise its legitimate
aspirations under Ottoman rule, which was a
blight on all Arab progress and prosperity, as the

70 PAN-ISLAM chap.

Young Turkish party was hardly Moslem at heart,
being more national (that is Tartar) — certainly
not pro-Arab.

Husein's difficulty was to get his own people
to rise together and throw off the Turkish yoke,
for the Hejazi tribesman, especially between the
coast and Mecca, has long been more of a brigand
than a warrior, as any pilgrim will tell you.
Such folk are apt to jib at hammer-and-tongs
fighting, and of course we could not land troops
to assist them, as it would have violated the
sacred soil that cradled Islam and merely stiffened
the bogus jihad which the Turks had proclaimed
against us, besides compromising the Sharif with
his own tribesmen.

The Hejazis' ingenuous idea was to go on taking
money from us, the Turks and the Sharif, while —
thanks to our lenient blockade — a regular dhow-
traffic fed them. We did not approve of this
Utopian policy, and the fall of Kut brought
matters to a climax. After certain communica-
tions had passed between the representatives of
His Majesty's Government and the Sharif, it was
decided to tighten the blockade and so induce
the gentle Hejazi to declare himself. The day
was fixed. May, 15, on and after which date no
traffic whatever was to be permitted with the
Arabian coast other than that specially sanctioned

II ITS BEARING ON THE WAR 71

by Government. In palaver thereon I managed
to get local fishing-craft exempted. The fisher-
folk are not combatants either on empty
stomachs or full ones, and could be relied on to
consume their own fish in that climate unless very
close to a market, where the pinch would be great
enough to make them exchange it for foodstuffs,
thus helping the situation we wished to bring
about. I knew that all bona fide fishing-craft
were easily recognisable by their rig and com-
paratively small size, and hoped that good will
would combine with freedom of movement to
make these folk useful agents for Intelligence.

I heard with some relief that the movements of
the patrol would place H.M.S. " Hardinge "
(a roomy ship of the Indian Marine) on station
duty off Jeddah, which was to be my post while
the enhanced blockade was in force — there are
few more trying seasons than early summer in
those waters. I joined her from Suez the day
after the blockade was closed, and found her
keeping guard over a perfect fleet of dhows.
There were about three dozen craft with over three
hundred people on board, for many native
passengers were trying to make Jeddah before we
shut down. The feckless mariners in charge had
made the usual oriental calculation that a day
more or less did not matter, but found to their

72 PAN-ISLAM CHAP.

horror that the Navy was more precise on these
points — and there they were.

The first thing to ensure was that the crew,
and especially the passengers, among whom
were a good many women and children, did not
suffer from privation. This had already been
ably seen to by the ship's officers — I merely went
round the fleet to sift any genuine complaints
from the discontent natural to the situation
in which their own slackness had placed them.
I insisted on hearing only one complaint at a
time, otherwise it would have been pandemonium
afloat, for they were anchored close enough to-
gether to converse with each other ; vociferous
excuses for their unpunctuality were brushed aside,
legitimate requests for more water or food or
condensed milk for the children or more adequate
shelter for the women from the sun were attended
to at once, and our floating village quieted down.

The craft were all much the same type of small
dhow or sanhuk which frequents the Red Sea
and the Gulf of Aden, having little in common
with the big-bellied buggalows which ply with
rice and dates between the Persian Gulf and
Indian ports but do not come into the Red Sea.
These were much smaller and saucier-looking
craft, some fifty to eighty feet long, with a turn
of speed and raking masts. All were lugger-

II ITS BEARING ON THE WAR 73

rigged with lateen sails, and only the poop and
bows were decked, the bulwarks being heightened
with strips of matting to prevent seas from
breaking in-board. Sanitary arrangements were
provided for by a box-like cubby-hole over-
hanging the boat's side ; inexperienced officers
often take it for a vantage-point to heave the
lead from, and only find out too late after attempt-
ing to board there, that things are not always what
they seem.

These little vessels are practically the corsair
type of Saracenic saiHng-galley which used to
infest the Barbary coast in days gone by. They
do everything different from our occidental
methods. For example, they reef and furl their
tall lateens from the peak, and have to send a
man up the long tapering gaff to do it. Their
masts rake forward and not aft, which enables
them to swing gaff, sail, and sheet round in front
of the mast when they come about, instead of
keeping the sheet aft and dipping the butt of
the gaff with the sail to the other side of the mast,
which would be an impossibility for that rig,
as the butt of their enormous mainyard or
gaff is bowsed permanently down in the bows,
while the soaring peak may be nearly a hundred
feet above the water. Cooking was done over
charcoal in a kerosene tin half full of sand, and

74 PAN-ISLAM chap.

the " first-class " passengers lived under an
improvised awning on the poop, the women's
quarters being under that gimcrack structure.
All the same, they are good sea-boats and re-
markably fast, especially on a wind, quite unlike
the big-decked buggalows which are built for
cargo capacity and have real cabins aft but sail
Hke a haystack on a barge.

It was inhuman (as well as an infernal nuisance)
to keep all those people sweltering indefinitely
at sea ; on the other hand, our orders as to the
strict maintenance of the blockade were explicit.
The " owner " and I conferred and decided
that the situation could be met by transferring
their cargo to the ship and letting the dhows
beach. This was referred and approved by
wireless. The job took us some days, as the
weather was rather unfavourable and all the
cargoes had to be checked by manifest with a
view to restitution later. Each dhow as she was
cleared had to make for the shore and dismast or
beach so that she could not steal out at night and
add to the difiiculties of the blockade. None
attempted to evade this order, most carried out
both alternatives ; perhaps a casual reminder
that they would be within observation and gun-
fire of the ship had some influence on their
action.

II ITS BEARING ON THE WAR 75

Hitherto the Turco-Teutonic brand of Holy
War had been fairly successful. The Allied thrust
at the Dardanelles and Gallipoli had failed, the
Aden Protectorate was in Turkish hands, we had
spent a most unpleasant Easter in Sinai, and
Kut had fallen. Still, the Turks were soon to
realise that a wrongly-invoked jihad, hke a mis-
handled musket, can recoil heavily, and, before
the end of May, signs were not wanting that
trouble was brewing for them in the Hejaz.

We were in close touch with the shore through
fishing-canoes by day and secret emissaries by
night, who brought us news that some German
" officers " had been done to death by Hejazi
tribesmen some eight hours' journey north of
Jeddah. They had evidently been first over-
powered and bound, then stabbed in the stomach
with the huge two-handed dagger which the
Hejazis use, and finally decapitated, as a Turkish
rescue party which hurried to the spot found
their headless and practically disembowelled
corpses with their hands tied behind them. Their
effects came through our hands in due course, and
we ascertained that the party consisted of Lieut. -
Commander von Moeller (late of a German gun-
boat interned at Tsing-Tao) and five reservists
whom he had picked up in Java. They had
landed on the South Arabian coast in March, had

76 PAN-ISLAM chap.

visited Sanaa, the capital of Yamen, and had
come up the Arabian coast of the Red Sea by-
dhow, keeping well inside the Farsan bank,
which is three hundred miles long and a serious
obstacle to patrol work. They had landed
at Konfida, north of the bank, and reached
Jeddah by camel on May 5. Against the
advice of the Turks they continued their journey
by land, as they had no chance of eluding our
northern patrol at sea. They were more than
a year too late to emulate the gallant (and lucky)
" Odyssey " of the Emden's landing-party from
Cocos Islands up the Red Sea coast in the days
when our blockade was more lenient and did not
interfere with coasting craft. They hoped to
reach Maan and so get on the rail for Stamboul
and back to Germany, as the Sharif would not
sanction their coming to the sacred city of
Medina, which is the rail-head for the Damascus-
He jaz railway. After so staunch a journey they
deserved a better fate. Among their kit was a
tattered and blood-stained copy of my book on
the Aden hinterland.*

Meanwhile affairs ashore were simmering to
boiling-point, and on the night of June 9
we commenced a bombardment of carefully
located Turkish positions, firing by " director "

* "The Land of Uz," Macmillan.

II ITS BEARING ON THE WAR ^^

to co-operate with an Arab attack which was
due then but did not materiaUse till early next
morning, and was then but feebly delivered.
We found out later that the rifles and ammunition
we had delivered on the beach some distance south
of Jeddah to the Sharif's agents in support of this
attack had been partly diverted to Mecca and
partly hung up by a squabble with their own
camel-men for more cash.

We continued the bombardment on the night
of the nth and were in action most of the day
on the 1 2 th, shelling the Turkish positions north
of Jeddah, which we had located by glass and the
co-operation of friendly fishing-craft who gave us
the direction by signal. During the morning the
Hejazis made an abortive and aimless attack
along the beach north of Jeddah, and so masked
our own supporting fire, while the Turks gave
them more than they wanted.

By this time the senior ship and others had
joined us, and the S.N.O. approved of my landing
with a party of Indian signallers to maintain
closer touch with their operations, provided
that Arab headquarters would guarantee our
safety as regards their own people. This they
were unable to do.

The bombardment grew more and more
strenuous and searching as other ships joined

78 • PAN-ISLAM chap

in and our knowledge of the Turkish positions
became more accurate. On the 15th it cul-
minated with the arrival of a seaplane carrier
and heavy bombing of the Ottoman trenches
which our flat-trajectory naval guns could hardly
reach. The white flag went up before sunset,
and next day there were pourparlers which led
to an unconditional surrender on June 17, 1916.

Mecca had fallen just before, and Taif surren-
dered soon after, leaving Medina as the only
important town still held by the Turks in the
Hejaz.

We began pouring food and munitions into
Jeddah as soon as it changed hands ; for the
rest of this cruise ray ship was a sort of parcels-
delivery van, and when the parcel happens to be
an Egyptian mountain battery its delivery is an
undertaking.

My personal contact with the Turks and their
ill-omened jihad ended soon after, as I was
invalided from service afloat, but I kept in
touch as an Intelligence-wallah on the beach and
followed the rest of it with interest.

They got Holy War with a vengeance. The
Sharif's sons (more especially the Emirs Feisal
and Abdullah, who had been trained at the
Stamboul Military Academy), ably assisted by
zealous and skilled British officers as mine-

II ITS BEARING ON THE WAR 79

planters and aerial bombers, harried outlying
posts and the Hejaz railway Hne north of Medina
incessantly.

The Turkish positions at Wejh fell to the Red
Sea flotilla, reinforced by the flagship. I
should like to have been there, if only to have
seen the Admiral sail in to the proceedings with a
revolver in his fist and the elan of a sub-lieutenant.
The Hejazis failed to synchronise, as usual, so the
Navy dispensed with their support.

On February 24, 1917, Kut was wrested from
the Turks again ; on March 11 they lost Baghdad ;
on November 7 their Beer sheba- Gaza front was
shattered, and Jerusalem fell on December 9.

Early next year Jericho was captured (February
21), a British column from Baghdad reached the
Caspian in August, and after a final, victorious
British offensive in Palestine the unholy alliance
of Turkish pan-Islamism and German Kiiltiir
got its death-blow when Emir Feisal galloped
into Damascus.

The Turks had drawn the blade of jihad from
its pan-Islamic scabbard in vain ; its German
trade-mark was plainly stamped on it. There
had been widespread organisation against us,
and the serpent's eggs of sedition and revolt
had been hatched in centres scattered all over
the eastern hemisphere, but their venomous

8o PAN-ISLAM chap.

progeny had been crushed before they became
formidable.

As a world-force this band of pan-Islamism
had failed because it had been invoked by the
wrong people for a wrong purpose. Such a
movement should at least have as its driving
power some great spiritual crisis : this Turco-
German manifestation of it had its origin in self-
interest, and if successful would have immolated
Arabia on the demoniac altar of Weltpolitik.
Seyid Muhammed er-Rashid Ridha, a descendant
of the Prophet and one of the greatest Arab
theologians living, has voiced the verdict of
Islam on this unscrupulous and self-seeking
adventure in a trenchant article published in
September, 1916. He showed up Enver and his
Unionist party as an atheist among atheists who
had deprived the Sultan of his rightful power
and Islam of its religious head, and contrasted
their conduct with that of the British, who
exempted the Hejaz from the blockade enforced
against the rest of the Ottoman Empire until it
became quite clear that the Turks were benefiting
chiefly by that exemption, and who, out of
respect for the holy places of Islam, refrained
from making that country a theatre of war.

True to the Teutonic tradition, the movement
had been laboriously organised, but lacked

11 ITS BEARING ON THE WAR 81

psychic insight, for the Turk is too much of a
Tartar and too little of a Moslem to appreciate
the Arab mind, and the German ignored it,
rooting with eager, guttural grunts among the
carefully cultivated religious prejudices of Islam
like a hog hunting truffles until whacked out of
it by the irate cultivators.

The following incident may serve to illustrate
their crude tactics. Soon after the Turks came
into the war the mullah of the principal mosque
at Damascus was told to announce jihad against
the British from his pulpit on the following
Friday in accordance with an order from the
Grand Mufti at Stamboul. The poor man
appears to have jibbed considerably and sent his
family over the Nejd border to be out of reach of
Turkish persecution. Finally he decided to con-
form, but when he climbed the steps of his " min-
bar " and scanned his congregation he saw a
group of German officers wearing tarboushes
with a look of almost porcine complacency.
His fear fell from him in a gust of rage and he
spoke somewhat as follows : "I am ordered
to proclaim jihad. A jihad, as you know, is a
Holy War to protect our Holy Places against
infidels. This being so, what are these infidel
j)igs doing in our mosque ? "

There was a most unseemly scuffle ; the Turco-

G

82 PAN-ISLAM CH. ii

German contingent tried to seize the mullah ;
the Arab congregation defended him strenuously
from arrest. In the confusion that worthy man
got clear away and joined his family in Nejd.
Jihad is incumbent on all Moslems if against
infidel aggression. We stood on the defensive
when the Turks first attacked us on the Canal,
and when we finally overran Palestine and Syria
it was in co-operation with the Arabs, who have
more right there than the Turks.

Those who forged the blade of this counterfeit
jihad could not temper it in the flame of religious
fervour, and it shattered against the shield of
religious tolerance and good faith : we make
mistakes, but can honestly claim those two
virtues.

CHAPTER III

ITS STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS

To gauge the strength or weakness of pan-
Islam as a world-force we may best compare it
with its great militant rival, the Christian Church,
chopsing common ground as the only sound basis
of comparison, and remembering that it is pan-
Islam we are examining rather than Islam itself —
the tree, not the root ; and though we cannot
study the one without considering the other,
Islam has already been extensively discussed
by men better qualified than myself to deal with
it : the requirements of this work only call for
comparison so far as the driving-power of pan-
Islam is concerned as a material force.

First of all we must discard common factors.
I set the great Shiah schism against the Catholic
Church (omitting the word " Roman " as a
contradiction in terms) and cancel both for the
purposes of comparison. Catholicism, is not, of
course, schismatic, otherwise there are points of

83 G 2

84 PAN-ISLAM

CHAP.

resemblance, such as observances of saints and
shrines, which have permeated the other sects to
a certain extent ; also the degree of antagonism
is about the same. Therefore we can ignore the
Cathohc Church in this chapter, and when we
are talking of pan-Islam we should consider it
a Sunnite (or Orthodox) movement, and count
the Shiites out, as they do not even recognise
the same centre of pilgrimage.

Perhaps the strongest factor in pan-Islam as a
political movement or a world-wide fellowship is
the Meccan pilgrimage. I have already alluded
to its cosmopolitan nature in the previous chapter,
but never realised it so much till after the sur-
render of Jeddah, when stately Bokhariots,
jabbering Javanese, Malays, Chinese, Russians,
American citizens and South Africans were
among those who beset me as stranded pilgrims.
This implies a very wide sphere of influence,
against which we can only set the well-known
immorality and greed which pilgrims complain
of at Mecca ; a huge influx of cosmopolitan visitors
to any centre will generally cause such abuses.
On the feast of Arafat there are normally 100,000
pilgrims in the Meccan area who represent
100 million orthodox Moslems throughout the
world, while the actual population of the city is
only 50,000.

Ill ITS STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS 85

The Arabic language is another strong bond of
brotherhood in Islam. I do not mean to say
that it is generally " understanded of the people,"
any more than Latin is throughout the Catholic
world ; but it is the language of most Sunnites
and is moderately understood in Somaliland,
East Africa, Java and the Malay peninsula as the
language of the Koran ; in fact, it is the only
written language in Somaliland, and Turkey uses
the script though not the tongue.

The daily observances of prayer, with their
simple but obligatory ceremonial, and the yearly
fast for the month of Ramadhan unite Moslems
with the common ties of duty and hardship, as in
the comradeship which sailors and soldiers have
for each other throughout the world.

Then, again, there is no colour-line in Islam ;
a negro may rise to place and power (he often
does), and usually enjoys the intimate confidence
of his master as not readily amenable to local
intrigue. Difference of nationality is not stressed
except by the Young Turks, who have shghted
Semitic Moslems to their own undoing. Contrast
this attitude with our Church and estimate the
precise amount of Christian brotherhood between
an Orthodox Greek, a Welsh Wesleyan, an Ethio-
pian priest, a Scotch Presbyterian, and an Anglican
bishop (since the Kikuyu heresy). Even within

86 PAN-ISLAM chap.

the narrow limits of one sect there is nothing
like the fellowship one finds in secular societies.
Which is the stronger appeal, " Anglican com-
municant " or " Freemason " ? Is a cross or the
quadrant and compasses the more potent charm ?
Arabs credit us Christians with a much stronger
bond of sympathy between co-religionists than is
actually the case. It is true that those who come
into any sort of contact with us realise that
there is a distinct difference in form of worship
aYid sentiment between Catholics (whom they call
Christy an) and Protestants (or Nasdra), but I
shall not readily forget the extraordinary conduct
of a Hejazi who boarded us off Jeddah with some
of the effects belonging to the murdered Germans
mentioned in the previous chapter. He must
have had the firm conviction that we Christians
would avenge the killing of other Christians by
Moslems, for he merely told me that he had in his
possession certain property of the Allemani,
and I told him that he would be suitably re-
warded on producing it ; I found out later that
he had boasted to our ship's interpreter (a
Mussulman) that he was one of the slayers, and
it occurred to me that if that were the case he
might be able to give me further information, or
perhaps produce papers of theirs which might
appear valueless to him but would be of interest

Ill ITS STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS Sy

to us. I interviewed him on deck and suggested
this, reminding him of what he had told the
interpreter, but laying no stress on the deed he
had confessed, for it was outside our jurisdiction
and no concern of mine.

" Papers ? " he said. '* By all means, I will
go and fetch them," and breaking from my
light hold of his sleeve he flickered over the rail
and dropped into the sea some thirty feet below.
Two armed marines stepped to the rail with a
clatter of breech-bolts and looked inquiringly
at me. Meanwhile my bold murderer was calling
on his God, for he wore a full bandoleer, which
was weighing him down. Out darted a fishing-
canoe from under our quarter and made for him,
but its occupants took the hint I conveyed
through a megaphone and confined their efforts
to saving him for the duty-cutter to pick up.

He was brought before me dripping w^et, with
the fear of death in his eyes. I thought this
was due to the foolish risk he had taken, and
spoke in gentle reproof of his conduct, pointing
out that if any boat had been alongside where
he leaped he would have met with a bad accident.
To my surprise he fell at my feet and scrabbled
at my clean white shoes, imploring me to spare
his hfe. I put him down as somewhat mad, and
asked " Number One " to put a sentry over him

S8 PAN-ISLAM chap.

to see that he did not repeat his attempt to
avoid our acquaintance. He clung to me Hke a
Umpet and had to be removed by force, with
despairing entreaties for mercy, disregarding
my still puzzled assurances as to his personal
safety. I learned afterwards his true reason for
alarm ; he thought that after leaving my presence
he would be quietly made away with in traditional
Eastern style.

Another very strong feature of pan-Islam is the
consistency of the creed from which it grows.
I do not necessarily imply that Islam itself is
benefited thereby, for consistency sometimes
means narrowness, and we are not considering
creeds ; but there is no doubt about the dynamic
force of a movement based on a religion which is
sure of itself. A Moslem has one authorised
version of the Koran, and only one ; his simple
creed is contained in its first chapter and is as
short as the Lord's Prayer, which it somewhat
resembles in style. Praising God as the Lord of
the worlds (not only of this world of ours), it
attributes to Him mercy and clemency with
supreme power over the Day of Judgment and is
an avowal of worship and service. Its only
petition is to be led in the way of the righteous,
avoiding errors that incur His wrath. Contrast
this with the many confusing aspects of Chris-

Ill ITS STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS 89

tianity. Perhaps diverse opinions tend to purify
and invigorate a creed, but they certainly do not
strengthen the cohesion of any secular movement
based on it.

Then, again, the Moslem conception of God
and the hereafter stiffens the backbone of pan-
Islam in adversity. They are taught to believe
that He is really omnipotent and that His actions
are beyond criticism — welfare and affliction being
alike acceptable as His will. We, on the other
hand, seem to be developing the theory of a
finite God warring against, and occasionally over-
come by, evil, which includes (in this new thesis)
human suffering and sorrow as well as sin. There
is a growing idea, pioneered partly by Mr. H. G.
Wells and apparently supported by many of the
clergy, that the acts of God must square with
human ideals of mercy or justice, and as many
occurrences do not, the inference is that evil gets
the best of it sometimes. Now the Moslem
slogan is " Allah Akbar " (God is Greatest),
and that seems to me a better battle-cry than, for
example, " Gott mit uns," as God will still be
great and invincible to Moslems in their victory
or defeat ; but the finite idea presumes, in disaster,
that you and your God have been defeated to-
gether. It is not my business to criticise either
conception from a reHgious point of view, but in

go PAN-ISLAM chap.

mundane affairs it is the former that will make
for fighting force, especially as we still insist
that our God is a jealous God, visiting the sins of
the fathers, etc. : surely this is not a human ideal
of justice ; the obvious deduction is that our
modern Deity is stronger to punish than protect —
hardly an encouraging attribute.

Whether a religion is the better for an organised
priesthood or not is irrelevant to our subject,
but the absence of it in Islam certainly strengthens
the pan-Islamic movement, as each Moslem may
consider himself a standard-bearer of his faith,
while we are apt to leave too much to our priests,
thus engendering slackness on our part and
meticulous dogma on theirs ; both undermine
Christian brotherhood. The fact that priestly
stipends seem to the ordinary layman as in
inverse ratio to the duties performed also widens
the breach between clergy and laity, besides
sapping clerical moral. This is not the particular
feature of any one sect — the reader can supply
cases within his own experience, but here is one
that is probably outside it and showing how wide-
spread the system is. The rank and file of the
Greek Orthodox clergy are notoriously ill-paid.
Yet their monastery at Jerusalem costs ££.15,000
per annum to maintain and pays ;£E.40,ooo
annually in clerical salaries to archbishops and

Ill ITS STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS 91

clergy who control the spiritual affairs of less
than fifteen thousand people. It derives ££.30,000
from its property in Russia, ££.25,000 from the
property of the Holy Sepulchre, and as much again
from visitors and other sources ; and this in a
region where the Founder of our faith was content
to wander with less certainty of shelter than the
wild creatures of the countryside.

Incidentally, the monastery seems to have been
unable to curtail its expenditure during the War,
for it has accumulated debts to the amount of
£E. 600,000, most of its sources of income having
ceased for the time. I quote from current
newspapers. Blame does not necessarily attach

to the monastery or its administrators, who
may have done their best to fulfil their obligations
under adverse circumstances ; I would merely
draw attention to the incongruity of the whole

system as regards a universal brotherhood based
on Christian teaching. There are no such exotic

growths to impede the march of pan-Islam.

So much for the strength of the pan-Islamic

movement. Now let us consider its weak points.
To begin with, the gross abuse of pan-Islam by

interested parties for non-spiritual ends during

the War has done the genuine movement harm.

That lying, political appeal to jihad has made

thinking Moslems mistrust the infallibility of

92 PAN-ISLAM CHAP.

organised pan-Islam, of which the cuhninating
expression is Holy War, one of the most sacred
Mussulman duties if justly invoked. We Chris-
tians do not make such mistakes. When Italy
was fighting the Turks in Tripoli the Pope himself
warned Christian soldiers against regarding the
campaign as a Crusade, and when we took
Jerusalem we took it side by side with our
Mussulman allies and forthwith placed an orthodox
Moslem guard on Omar's mosque. In this
connection it may be of interest to note that the
officer commanding a mixed Christian guard at the
Holy Sepulchre was a Jew.

Another source of weakness, so far as a united
Moslem world is concerned, may be found in the
antagonistic points of view between civilised
and unciviHsed Moslems (I use the attribute in its
modem sense). Uncivilised Moslems view with
suspicion and, in fact, derision the dress and
customs of their civilised co-religionists, insisting
that European coats and trousers display the
figure indecently and that their Prankish luxuries
and amusements are snares of Eblis. The en-
Hghtened Moslem, on the other hand, regards the
tribesman as a jimgliwala, or wild man of the
woods, derides his illiteracy, and is revolted by the
harsh severity of the old Islamic penal code as
practised still in semi-barbaric Moslem States.

Ill ITS STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS 93

Now we Christians are fairly lenient as regards
each other's customs, and still more so with regard
to dress (judging by the garb we tolerate), while
we have quite outgrown our old playful habits of
boiling, burning, or torturing our fellow-men
except on the battle-fields of civilised warfare.

Civilisation (as we understand it) is a two-edged
weapon and tool smiting or serving pan-Islam
and Christendom, but on the whole it serves the
latter rather than the former, as the superior
resources of Christendom can take fuller advantage
of it as a tool or a weapon, though both turn to
scourges when used against each other in battle.
Also its handmaid, Education, though in itself a
foe to no religion, does tend to tone down dogma
and engender tolerance, thus minimising the
dynamic force of bigotry in pan-Islam, though
consoHdating the real stability of religion on its
own base. Moreover, some gifts of civilisation can
do a lot of harm if wrongly used ; I refer more
especially to drink, drugs, and dress. Just as
hereditary exposure to the infection of certain
diseases is said to confer, by survival of the
fittest, a certain immunity therefrom — for ex-
ample, consumption among us Europeans and
typhoid among Asiatics — so moral iUs seem to
affect humanity to a greater or less extent in
inverse proportion to the temptation in that

94 PAN-ISLAM chap.

particular respect which the individual and his
forebears have successfully resisted. The average
European and his ancestors have been accus-
tomed to drink fermented liquor for many
centuries, and in moderation as judged by the
standard of his time, but he has always been
taught to avoid opium and has not known the
drug for long. The oriental Moslem, on the
other hand, has used opium as a remedy and
prophylactic against malaria for generations, but
is strictly ordered by his creed to consider the
consumption, production, gift or sale of alcohol
a deadly sin. In consequence, the European
can usually take alcohol in moderation, but almost
invariably slips into a pit of his own digging
when he tries to do the same with opium, while the
oriental Moslem can use opium in moderation
(provided that he confines himself to swallowing
it and does not smoke it), but when he drinks,
usually drinks to excess because he has not
learned to do otherwise. It is a melancholy fact
that hitherto in countries opened up by our
Western civilisation drink has got in long before
education, unless extraordinary precautions have
been taken to prevent it ; that is one reason
why Moslem States are so wary of civilised
encroachment. As for drugs other than opiirni
(and far more dangerous), civilised Moslems,

Ill ITS STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS 95

especially in Egypt, are alarmed at the spread of
hashish-smoking among their co-religionists, while
the cultured classes, including women-folk, are
taking to cocaine : the material for both vices is
supplied from European sources, mostly Greek.
Dress, compared with the other two demons, is
merely a fantastic though mischievous sprite
and can be quite attractive, but it breaks up many
a Moslem home when carried to excess in the
harem, as it frequently is in civilised circles,
while the younger men vie with each other in the
more flagrant extravagances of occidental garb :
prayers and ablutions do not harmonise with well-
creased trousers and stylish boots any more than
a veil does with a divided skirt. The native
Press is always attacking the above abuses, but
they are firmly rooted. All three undermine the
pan-Islamic structure by causing cleavage in
public opinion. European dress has already
been mentioned as widening the gap between
civilised and uncivihsed Moslems, but it also
tends to disintegrate cultured Moslem com-
munities, for the older men are apt to regard it
with suspicion or downright condemnation. I
once asked an eminent and learned Moslem
whether he thought modern European dress
impeded regular observance of prayers and
ablutions. He replied, " Perhaps so, but those

96 PAN-ISLAM chap.

Moslems who wear such clothes indicate by so
doing that the observances of Islam have little
hold upon them."

All these defects, however, are mere cracks in
the inner walls of the pan-Islamic structure
and can be repaired from within, but the Turkish
Government, which represented the Caliphate,
and should have considered the integrity of Islam
as a sacred trust, has managed to split the outer
wall and divide the house against itself, just as
the unity of Christendom (such as it v/as) has been
rent asunder by one of its most prominent
exponents. Pan-Islam has received the more
serious damage because the wreckers still hold the
Caliphate and the prestige attached thereto ;
it is for Moslems (and Moslems only) to decide
what action to take ; but in any case, the breach
is a serious one and has been much widened by
the action of Turkish troops at the Holy Places.
They actually shelled the Caaba at Mecca (luckily
without doing material damage), and their action
in storing high explosives close to the Prophet's
tomb at Medina may have saved them bombard-
ment, but has certainly not improved their
reputation as Moslems. Even before the War
I often heard Yamen Arabs talking of " Turks
and Moslems " — a distinctly damning discrimina-
tion— and the situation has not been improved

Ill ITS STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS 97

by Ottoman slackness in religious observances
and their inconsistent national movement.

At the same time, their rule in Arabia will be
awkward to replace at first. I described the Turks
in the final chapter of a book * published early in
the War as pre-eminently fitted to govern Moslems
by birthright, creed, and temperament, summing
them up as individually gifted but collectively
hopeless as administrators because they lacked
a stable and consistent central Government.
They have proved the indictment up to the hilt,
but that does not dower any of us Christians with
their inherent qualifications as rulers in Islam.
If any of us are called upon to face fresh responsi-
bilities in this direction, it would take us all our
time to make up for these qualities by tact, sound
administration, and strict observance of local
religious prejudice. Even then there is a Mussul-
man proverb to this effect : "A Moslem ruler
though he oppress me and not a kafir though he
work me weal " — it explains much apparent
ingratitude for benefits conferred.

The lesson we have to learn from pan-Islamic
activities of the last decade or two is that countries
which are mainly Moslem should have Moslem
rulers, and that Christian rule, however enlightened
and benevolent, is only permissible where Islam

* " Arabia Infelix," Macmillan.

H

98 PAN-ISLAM chap.

is outnumbered by other creeds. At the same
time, in countries where Christian methods of
civiUsation and European capital have been
invited we have a right to control and advise
the Moslem ruler sufficiently to ensure the fair
treatment of our nationals and their interests.
But with purely Moslem countries which have
expressed no readiness to assimilate the methods
of modem civilisation or to invite outside capital
we have no right to interfere beyond the following
limit : if the local authorities allow foreign
traders to operate at their ports their interests
should be safeguarded, if important enough, by
consular representation on the spot, or, if not,
by occasional visits of a man-of-war to keep
nationals in touch with their own Government,
presuming that the place is too small to justify
any mail-carrying vessel calling there except at
very long intervals.

There should always be a definite understanding
as to foreigners proceeding or residing up-country
for any purpose. If the local ruler discourages
but permits such procedure, all we should expect
him to do in case of untoward incidents is to
take reasonable action to investigate and punish,
but if he has guaranteed the security of foreign
nationals concerned, he must redeem his pledge
in an adequate manner or take the consequences.

Ill ITS STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS 99

There should seldom be occasion for an inland
punitive expedition ; in these days, when many
articles of seaborne trade have become, from
mere luxuries, almost indispensable adjuncts of
native life in the remotest regions, a maritime
blockade strictly enforced should soon exact the
necessary satisfaction.

Such rulers should bear in mind that if they
accept an enterprise of foreign capital they must
protect its legitimate operations, just as a school
which has accepted a Government grant has to
conform to stipulated conditions.

Where no such penetration has occurred, all we
should concern ourselves with is that internal
trouble in such regions shall not slop over into
territory protected or occupied by us, and this is
where our most serious difficulties will occur in
erstwhile Turkish Arabia.

The Turk, with all his faults, could grapple with
a difficult situation in native affairs by drastic
methods which might be indefensible in them-
selves, but were calculated to obtain definite
results. At any rate, we had a responsible
central Government to deal with and one that we
could get at. Now we shall have to handle such
situations ourselves or rely on the local authorities
doing so. The former method is costly and
dangerous, yielding the minimum of result to the

H 2

100 PAN-ISLAM CHAP.

maximum of effort and expense, while involving
possibilities of trouble which might compromise
our democratic yearnings considerably : the latter
alternative presupposes that we have succeeded
in evolving out of the present imbroglio respon-
sible rulers who are well-disposed to us and
prepared to take adequate action on our represen-
tations.
"^ In Syria and Mesopotamia, where communi-
cations are good and European penetration
an established fact, there should not be much
difficulty, but in Arabia proper the problem is a
very prickly one.

Beginning with Arabia Felix, which includes
Yamen, the Aden protectorate, and the vague,
sprawling province of Hadhramaut, we may be
permitted to hope that nothing worse can happen
in the Aden protectorate than has happened
already ; the remoter Hadhramaut has always
looked after its own affairs and can continue to do
so; but Yamen bristles with political problems
which will have to be solved, and solved correctly,
if she is going to be a safe neighbour or a reliable
customer to have business dealings with. Hitherto
none of her local rulers have inspired any con-
fidence in their capacity for initiative or inde-
pendent action. During the War the Idrisi,
who had long been in revolt against the Turks in

Ill ITS STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS loi

northern Yamen, kept making half-hearted and
abortive dabs at Loheia — Hke a nervous child
playing snapdragon — but his only success (and
temporary at that) was when he occupied the
town after the Red Sea Patrol had shelled the
Turks out of it. As for the Imam, he has been
sitting on a very thorny fence ever since the
Turks came into the War. We have been in
touch with him for a long time, but all he has
done up to date is to wobble on a precarious
tripod supported by the opposing strains of
Turks, tribesmen, and British. Now one leg of
the tripod has been knocked away he has yet to
show if he can maintain stability on his own
base, and, if so, over what area. The undeniable
fighting qualities of the Yamen Arab, which might
be a useful factor in a stable government, will
merely prove a nuisance and a menace under
a weak regime, and tribal trouble will always be
slopping over into our Aden sphere of influence.
Then the question will arise, What are we going to
do about it ? We cannot bring the Yamenis to
book by blockading their coast and cutting off
caravan traffic with Aden, because, in view of our
trade relations with the country by sea and
land, we should only be cutting our nose off
to spite our face. Moreover, the punishment
would fall chiefly on the respectable community.

102 PAN-ISLAM CHAP

traders, the cultured classes, etc., to whom sea-
borne trade is essential, while it would hardly
affect the wild tribesmen, except as regards
ammunition, and to prevent them getting what
they wanted through the Hejaz is outside the
sphere of practical politics.

In the Hejaz itself we can at least claim that
authority is suitably represented and accessible
to us. Before the War we kept a British
consul at Jeddah with an Indian Moslem vice-
consul who went up to Mecca in the pilgrim
season. A responsible consular agent (Moslem of
course) to reside at Medina, also another to
understudy the Jeddah vice-consul when he
went to Mecca and to look after the Yenbo pilgrim
traffic, would safeguard the interests of our
nationals, who enormously outnumber the pil-
grims of any other nation. Further interference
with the Hejaz, unless invited, would be un-
justifiable.

Trouble for us does not lie in the Hejaz itself,
but in its possible expansion beyond its powers of
absorption, or, in homely metaphor, if it bites off
more than it can chew. There is a certain ten-
dency just now to overrate Hejazi prowess
in war and policy ; in fact. King Husein is often
alluded to vaguely as the " King of Arabia,"
and there is a sporadic crop of ill-informed

Ill ITS STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS 103

articles on this and other Arabian affairs in the
EngHsh Press. One of the features of the
War as regards this part of the world is the
extraordinary and fungus-like growth of " Arabian
experts " it has produced, most of whom have
never set foot in Arabia itself, while the few now
living who have acquired real first-hand knowledge
of any part of the Arabian peninsula before the
War may be counted on the fingers of one hand.
Yet the number of people who rush into print
with their opinions on the most complex Arabian
affairs would astonish even the Arabs if they
permitted themselves to show surprise at any-
thing. These opinions differ widely, but have one
attribute in common — their emphatic " cock-
sureness." Each one presents the one and only
solution of the whole Arabian problem according
to the facet which the writer has seen, and there
are many facets. They are amusing and even
instructive occasionally, but there is a serious
side to them — their crass empiricism. Each
writer presents (quite honestly, perhaps) his
point of view of one or two facets in the rough-cut,
many-sided and clouded crystal of Arabian
politics without considering its possible bearing
on other parts of the peninsula or even other
factors in the district he knows or has read about.
The net result is an appallingly crude patchwork,

104 PAN-ISLAM chap.

no one piece harmonising with another, and, in
view of the habit Government has formed in
these cases of accepting empirical opinions if
they are shouted loud enough or at close range,
there is more than a possibility that our Arabian
policy may resemble such a crazy quilt. If it
does, we shall have to harvest a thistle-crop of
tribal and intertribal trouble throughout the
Arabian peninsula, and the seed-down of unrest
will blow all over Syria and Mesopotamia just
at the most awkward time when reconstruction
and sound administration are struggling to
establish themselves. Weeds grow quicker and
stronger than useful plants in any garden.

Empirical statements sound well and look
well in print, but they are no use whatever as
sailing directions in the uncharted waters of
Arabian politics. Putting them aside, the follow-
ing facts are worth bearing in mind when the
future of Arabia is discussed.

The Hejazi troops were ably led by the Sharifian
Emirs and Syrian officers of note, and had the
co-operation of the Red Sea flotilla on the coast
and British officers of various corps inland to
cut off Medina, the last place of importance held
by the Turks after the summer of igi6. Yet the
town held out until long after the armistice, and
its surrender had eventually to be brought

Ill ITS STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS 105

about by putting pressure on the Turkish Govern-
ment at Stamboul. On the other hand, the two
great provinces which impinge upon the Hejaz,
namely, Nejd and Yamen, have given ample proof
that they can hammer the Turks without outside
assistance. The Nejdis not only cleared their own
country of Ottoman rule, but drove the Turks
out of Hasa a year or two before the War, while
the Yamenis have more than once hurled
the Turks back on to the coast, and the rebels of
northern Yamen successfully withstood a Hejazi
and Turkish column from the north and another
Turkish column from the south. The inference
is that if the limits of Hejazi rule are to be much
extended there had better be a clear understanding
with their neighbours and also some definite
idea of the extent to which we are likely to be
involved in support of our protege.

I know that many otherwise intelligent people
have been hypnotised by the prophecy in " The
Wliite Prophet " :

•' The time is near when the long drama that has been
played between Arabs and Turks will end in the estab-
lishment of a vast Arabic empire, extending from the
Tigris and the Euplirates valley to the Mediterranean
and from the Indian Ocean to Jerusalem, with Cairo as
its Capital, the Khedive as its Caliph, and England as its
lord and protector."

While refraining from obvious and belated

io6 PAN-ISLAM chap.

criticism of a prophecy which the march of
events has trodden out of shape, and which could
never have been intended as a serious contribution
to our knowledge of Arabs and their politics, we
must admit that the basic idea of centralising
Arabian authority has taken strong hold of
avowed statecraft in England. It would, of
course, simplify our relations with Arabia and
the collateral regions of Mesopotamia and Syria
if such authority could establish itself and be
accepted by the other Arabian provinces to the
extent of enforcing its enactments as regards their
foreign affairs, i.e., relations with subjects (national
or protected) of European States.

If such authority could be maintained without
assistance from us other than a subsidy and the
occasional supply, to responsible parties, of
arms and ammunition, it would satisfy all
reasonable requirements, but if we had to intervene
with direct force we should find ourselves defend-
ing an unpopular protege against the united resent-
ment of Arabia.

I believe there is no one ruler or ruling clique
in Arabia that could wield such authority, and
my reason for saying so is that the experiment
has been tried repeatedly on a small scale during
the twenty years or so that I have been con-
nected with the country and has failed every

Ill ITS STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS 107

time. Toward the close of last century a sultan
of Lahej who had always claimed suzerainty over
his turbulent neighbours, the Subaihi, had to
enter that vagabond tribeship to enforce one of
his decrees, and got held up with his " army "
until extricated by Aden diplomacy at the price
of his suzerain sway. His successor still claimed
a hold over an adjacent clan of the Subaihi
known as the Rigai, but when one of our most
promising political officers was murdered there,
and the murderer sheltered by the clan, he was
unable to obtain redress or even assist us ade-
quately in attempting to do so. Early in this
century Aden was involved in a little expedition
against Turks and Arabs because one of her
protected sultans (equipped with explosive and
ammunition) could not deal with a small Arab
fort himself. This is the same sultanate which
let the Turks through against us in the summer of
1 91 5 and whose ruler was prominent in the
sacking of Lahej. I have already alluded, in
Chapter II, to the inadequacy of the Lahej sultan
on that occasion, yet Aden had bolstered up his
authority in every possible way and had rehed
on him and his predecessor for years to act as
semi-official suzerain and go-between for other
tribes — a withered stick which snapped the
first time it was leant upon. I could also point

io8 PAN-ISLAM chap.

to the Imam of Yamen, strong in opposition to
the Turks as a rallying point of tribal revolt,
but weak and vacillating on the side of law and
order. I might go on giving instances ad nauseam,
but here is one more to clinch the argument, and
it is typical of Arab politics. Aden had just
cause of offence against a certain reigning sultan
of the Abd-ul- Wahid in her eastern sphere of
influence. He had intrigued with foreign States,
oppressed his subjects, persecuted native trade
and played the dickens generally. Therefore
Aden rebuked him (by letter) and appointed a
relative of his to be sultan and receive his subsidy.
The erring but impenitent potentate reduced his
relative to such submission that he would sign
monthly receipts for the subsidy and meekly
hand over the cash : these were his only official
acts, as he retired into private life in favour of
Aden's hete noir, who flourished exceedingly until
he blackmailed caravans too freely and got the
local tribesmen on his track.

When we also consider how early in Islamic
history the Caliphate split as a temporal power,
and the difficulty which even the early Caliphs
(with all their prestige) had to keep order in
Arabia, it should engender caution in experiments
toward even partial centralisation of control :
apart from the fact that they might develop

Ill ITS STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS 109

along lines diverging from the recognised principles
of self-determination in small States, they could
land us into a humiliating impasse or an armed
expedition.

We parried the Turco-German efforts to turn
pan-Islam against us, thanks to our circumspect
attitude with regard to Moslems, but a genuine
movement based on any apparent aggression of
ours in Arabia proper might be a more serious
matter.

CHAPTER IV

MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY

Having weighed the influence which pan-Islam
can wield as a popular movement, we will now
consider the human factors which have built it up.

Just as we used Christendom as a test-gauge of
pan- Islam, so now we will compare the activities
of Moslems (who do their own proselytising)
with those of Christian missionaries, grouping
with them our laity so far as their example
may be placed in the scales for or against the
influence of Christendom.

To do this with the breadth of view which the
question demands we will examine these human
factors throughout the world wherever they are
involved in opposition to each other. We shall
thus avoid the confined outlook which teaches
Europeans in Asia Minor to look on Turks as
typical Moslems to the exclusion of all others, or
makes Anglo-Egyptians talk of country-folk in
Egypt as Arabs and their language as the standard

CH. IV MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY iii

of Arabic, or engenders the Anglo-Indian tendency
of regarding a scantily-dressed paramount chief
from the Aden hinterland as an obscure jungli-
wala because, in civihsed India, an eminent Moslem
dresses in accordance with our conception of the
part.

We can leave the western hemisphere out ,of
this inquiry, for though the greatest missionary
effort against Islam is engendered in the United
States, it manifests itself in the eastern hemi-
sphere, and the Moslem population in both the
Americas is too small and quiescent to be con-
sidered a factor.

We will begin with England and work eastward
to the edge of the Moslem world.

At first glance the idea of England as an arena
where two great religious forces meet seems
rather far-fetched, but there is more Moslem
activity in some of our English towns than
people imagine. Turning over some files of the
Kihla (a Meccan newspaper), one comes across
passages like the following : —

"The honourable Cadi Abdulla living in London
reports that six noted English men and women have
embraced the Moslem religion in the cities of Oxford,
Leicester, etc. The meritorious Abdul Hay Arab has
established a new centre in London for calling to Islam,
and the Mufti Muhammad Sadik has delivered a speech
in English in the mosque on 'the object of human life

112 PAN-ISLAM CHAP.

which can only be attained through Moslem guidance.'
Many English men and women were present and put
questions which were answered in a conclusive manner.
At the close of the meeting a young lady of good family
embraced Islam and was named Maimuna."

Then we have the scholarly and temperate
addresses of Seyid Muhammad Rauf and others
before the Islamic Society in London ; they are
marked by considerable shrewdness and breadth of
view, and though their debatable points may
present a few fallacies, their effective controversion
requires unusual knowledge of affairs in Moslem
countries.

It is not, however, the activities of Moslems
in England which damage the prestige of Christen-
dom ; it is the behaviour of English alleged
Christians themselves. Every missionary, poli-
tical officer, tutor, or even the importer of a
native servant — in short, anyone who has been
responsible for an oriental in England — knows
what I mean. I do not say that London (for
example) is any more vicious than Delhi or Cairo
or Cabul or Constantinople or any other large
Moslem centre, but vice is certainly more obvious
in London to the casual observer, even allowing
for the fact that many comparatively harmless
customs of ours (such as women wearing low-
necked^dresses and dancing with men) are apt to

IV MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY 113

shock Moslems until they learn that occidental
habit has created an atmosphere of innocence
in such cases which even bunny-hugging has
failed to vitiate.

The social life of London in all its grades and
phases operates more widely for good or ill on
Christian prestige among Moslems than Londoners
can possibly imagine. From the young princeling
of some native State sauntering about Club-
land with his bear-leader to the lascar off a
P. and O. boat, among East London drabs, or
the middle-class Mohammedan student who com-
pares the civic achievements that surround him
with the dingy dining-room of a Bloomsbury
boarding-house, all are apostles of life in London
as it seems to them. I have had the hospitality of
" family hotels " in the Euston Road portrayed
to me in the crude but vivid imagery of the East
when spooring boar in Southern Morocco with a
native tracker who had been one of a troupe of
Soosi jugglers earning good pay at a West-end
music-hall, and I once overheard a young effendi
explaining to his confreres in a Cairo cafe exactly
the sort of company that would board your hansom
when leaving " Jimmy's " in days of yore.

As for the news of London and its ways, as con-
veyed by its daily Press, educated Egyptians
were better posted therein than most Enghshmen

I

114 PAN-ISLAM CHAP.

in Cairo during the War, as their clubs and private
organisations subscribed largely to the London
dailies, which entered Egypt free of local censor-
ship, while Anglo-Egyptian newspapers were more
strictly censored than their vernacular or conti-
nental contemporaries, as they presented no
linguistic difficulties, but could be dealt with
direct and not through an understrapper.

Missionaries would have us judge Islam by the
open improprieties and abuses which occur at
Mecca, Kerbela, and other great Moslem centres.
How should we like Christianity to be judged by
the public behaviour of certain classes in London
or other big towns ? Remember, it is always
the scum which floats on top and the superficial
vice or indecorum that strike a foreign observer.

It is not my mission to preach — I am merely
pointing out a flaw in our harness which causes
a lot of administrative trouble out East. It is
difficult to check the hashish habit in Egypt
when the average educated effendi reads of drug-
scandals in London with mischievous avidity,
and the endeavours of a well-meaning Education
Department to implant ideals of sturdy manhood
are handicapped when the students batten on the
weird and unsavoury incidents which are dished up
in extenso by London journalism from time to
time. Such matters do no harm to a pubhc

IV MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY 115

with a sense of proportion, but the effendi is in
the position of a schoolboy who has caught his
master tripping and means to make the most of it.
He assimilates and disseminates the idea that
cocaine is as easily procurable as a cocktail in
London clubs, and that the Black Mass is at
least as common as the danse de ventre in Cairo.

We can leave England for our Eastern tour
with the conclusion that Islam is welcome to
any proselytes it makes there, but that the gravest
slur on Christian prestige is cast by our own
conduct.

There is only one bone of contention between
Moslems and missionaries in Europe now that
Turkey and Russia are knocked out of the ring
of current politics. Is St. Sophia to remain a
mosque or revert to its original purpose as a
Christian church ? Whatever may be Turkish
opinion on the subject, the tradition of Islam is
definite enough. When the Caliph Omar entered
Jerusalem in triumph, after Khaled had defeated
the hosts of Heraclius east of Jordan, he withstood
the importunate entreaties of his followers to
pray in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, saying
that if he did so the building would de facto
become a mosque, and such a wrong to Christianity
was against the ordinance and procedure of the
Prophet. It is worthy of note that Christians

I 2

Tie PAN-ISLAM CHAP.

were not molested at Jerusalem until after the
Seljouk Turks wrested the Holy City from the
moribund Arabian Caliphate in 1076 : their
persecution and the desecration of sacred places
by the Turks brought about the first Crusade in
1096. Again it was the Ottoman Turks who
stormed Constantinople and turned St. Sophia
into a mosque. According to the orthodox
tradition of Islam, once a church always a church.
When the ex-Khedive had the chance of re-
acquiring the site of All Saints', Cairo, owing to
the increasing noise of traffic in the vicinity, he
contemplated building a cinema-theatre there
(for he had a shrewd business mind), but he was
roundly told by Moslem legalists that it was out
of the question. Even if the Turks urge right of
conquest, victorious Christendom can claim that
too, and if they allege length of tenure as a
mosque in support of their case they put them-
selves out of court, as St. Sophia has been a church
for more than nine centuries and a mosque for
less than five.

If Turkey is allowed to remain in Europe at
all it will be on sufferance. Even in Asia Minor
signs are not wanting that Turkish rule will be
pruned, clipped and trained considerably, as
humanity will stand its rampant luxuriance of
blood and barbarity no longer. The Young

IV MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY 117

Turks were given every chance to consolidate
their national aspirations and have achieved
national suicide. One may feel sorry for the
patient, sturdy peasantry and the non-political
cultured classes who have been coerced or cajoled
into fighting desperately in a cause that meant
calamity for them whether they won or lost ; but
a nation gets the rulers it deserves and must
answer for their acts.

Asia Minor will probably be more accessible as
a mission- field in due course. The Moslem Turk
is not amenable to conversion ; in fact, during a
quarter of a century's wandering in the East I
have never met a Turkish convert. The American
Protestant Mission will probably be well to the
fore in this area in view of its excellent work on
behalf of the Armenians and other distressed
Christians during the War. Just as it has concen-
trated its principal energies on the Copts in
Egypt, so it may with advantage devote itself
to the education and '* uphft " of the Armenians,
and if its activities are as successful as with the
Copts, even the Armenians cannot but approve,
for the more enlightened individuals of that
harassed and harassing little nation admit that
the Armenian character could be considerably
improved, and that, though their hideous persecu-
tion is indefensibly damnable, their covetous

ii8 PAN-ISLAM CHAP.

instincts and parasitic activities are an incentive
to maltreatment.

One of the most difficult minor problems of
reconstruction in Eastern Europe and Asia Minor
will be how to safeguard the interests and modify
the provocative activities of such subject-races
as the Jews and the Armenians where established
among ill-controlled nations and numerically
inferior, though intellectually superior, to them.
With their natural gift for intrigue and finance,
they repay public persecution and oppression by
undermining the administration and battening
on the resources of their unwilling foster-
country until active dislike becomes actual
violence and outbursts of brutish rage yield
ghastly results. Deportation is not only tyran-
nically harsh but impracticable, for unless
they were dumped to die in the waste places of
the earth, which is unthinkable, some other
nation must receive them, and even the most
philanthropic Government would hesitate to
upset its economic conditions by admitting
unproductive hordes of sweated labour and
skilled exploiters. There are only two logical
alternatives to such an impasse. One is to treat
such subject-races so well that they may be trusted
not to use their peculiar abilities against the
interests of their adoptive country, which would

IV MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY 119

then be their interests too, and the other is to
exterminate them, which is inhuman. There
is no middle course.

It is a salutar}^ but humiUating fact that we
incur the worst human ills by our lack of human
charity. We starved and overcrowded our poor
till they bred consumption, and we enslaved
negroes till they degenerated our Anglo-Saxon
sturdiness of character, then plunged a great
nation into civil war, and have finally become
one of its most serious social problems. So
the Jews were debarred from liberal pursuits
and privileges until they concentrated on finance
and commerce, being also persecuted until they
perfected their defensive organisation. The con-
sequence is that they are individually formidable
in those activities and collectively invincible.
Similarly the Turks harried the Armenians to
their own undoing with even less excuse, for
those ill-used people were certainly not inter-
lopers, and so far from ameliorating their con-
dition in the course of time, as we have done with
the Jews, the Turks went from bad to worse till
they culminated in atrocities which no provoca-
tion can palliate or humanity condone.

But to return to Asia Minor ; there the Arme-
nians were first on the ground, and yet the
Moslems of Armenia outnumber them by three to

120 PAN-ISLAM CHAP.

one. Any sound form of government would
have to give equal rights, but it would have to
be strong and farseeing to prevent the greedy
exploitation and savage reprisals which such
conditions would otherwise evolve.

On entering Asia we shall find a somewhat
similar problem confronting the administration
in Syria and Palestine. Here we have several
mixed races and at least three distinct creeds —
Christianity, Islam, and Judaism,

The Zionist movement looks promising, every-
one concerned seems to be in accord, and a Jew

millennium looms large in the offing, but .

In Palestine there are normally about 700,000
Moslems and Christians (the latter a very small
minority) to 150,000 Jews. The lure of the
Promised Land will presumably increase the
Jewish population enormously, but they will
still be very much in the minority unless the
country is over-populated. The Zionist organisa-
tion will naturally try to select for emigration
agriculturists, mechanics, and craftsmen generally
to develop the resources of the country, but that
is easier said than done. If Palestine, in
addition to the sentimental aspect, is to be a
refuge and asylum for the downtrodden and
persecuted Jews of Eastern Europe, there would
be very few farmers among that lot — except

IV MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY 121

tax-farmers. Even in England, where he labours
under no landowning disability, the Jew thinks
that farming for a living is a mug's game and
confines his agricultural activities to w^eek-ends in
the autumn with a " hammerless ejector " and a
knickerbocker suit. As for mechanics and skilled
labour generall}^ such Jews as take to it usually
excel in such work and do very well where they
are. The bulk of the immigrant population —
unless Palestine is going to be artificially colonised
without regard for the necessitous claims of the
very people who should be drawn off there —
will be indigent artisans, small shopkeepers,
shop assistants, weedy unemployables, and a
sprinkling of shrewd operators on the look-out
for prey. If the scheme is going to be run entirely
on philanthropic lines (and there are ample
resources and charity at the back of it to do so)
the Zionists will be all right, and will, perhaps,
improve immensel}^ in the next generation under
the influence of an open-air life — if they adopt
it ; but the resident majority of Moslems and
Christians will not take too kindly to their
new compatriots, while the Palestine Jews are
already carping at the idea of so many trade
rivals and accusing them of not being orthodox.
None of this ill-feeling need matter in the long
run with a firm but benevolent government, but

122 PAN-ISLAM CHAP.

the authorities will have to evolve some legislation
to check profiteering and over-exploitation, or
there will be trouble. It is not only the new-
comers who will want curbing, but the present
population. During the War the flagrant profiteer-
ing of Jew and Christian operators in Palestine
and Syria did much to accentuate the appalling
distress and was the more disgraceful compared
with the magnificent efforts of the American and
Anglican Churches to relieve the situation.
The Jews nearly incurred a pogrom by their
operations, which were only checked by a wealthy
Syrian in Egypt starting a co-operative venture
of low-priced foodstuffs and necessities with the
support of the British authorities. As for the
local Syrians, some of them were even worse.
French and British officers speak of wealthy
Syrians (presumably Christian, certainly not
Moslem) giving many and sumptuous balls at
Beyrout, at which they lapped Austrian cham-
pagne while their wives, blazing in diamonds,
whirled with Hunnish officers in the high-
pressure, double-action German waltz. And this
with thousands of their compatriots starving
in the streets and little naked children banding
together to drive pariah dogs with stones from
the street offal they were worrying, if perchance
it might yield a meal. Meanwhile decent Anglo-

IV MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY 123

Saxon Christendom was battling in that very
town under adverse conditions to succour human
destitution which had been largely caused by the
callous operations of these soulless parasites.
The Christians of Syria have no monopoly of such
scandals. Yet there are otherwise intelhgent
people who speak of modern Christianity as an
automatic promoter of ethics, and have the
effrontery to try to thrust it on the East as a moral
panacea. It is human ideals which make or
mar a soul when once the seed of any sound
religion has been sown, and they depend upon
environment and climate more than our spiritual
pastors admit ; otherwise, why this missionary
activity among oriental Christians ? If you try to
grow garden flowers in the rich, rank irrigation soil
of the Nile valley they flourish luxuriantly, but
soon develop a marked tendency to revert to
their wild type, and it is permissible to suppose
that human character is even more sensitive to
its mental and physical surroundings. Any
observant teacher of oriental youth will tell
you that the promise of their precocious ability
is seldom fulfilled by their maturity. Even the
" country-bom " children of British parents
are considered precocious at their preparatory
school in England, and, if not sent home to be
educated, are apt to fall short of their parents'

124 PAN-ISLAM CHAP.

intellectual and moral standard in later years.
The Mamelukes knew what they were about when
they kidnapped hardy Albanian youths to carry
on their rule in Egypt and passed over their own
progeny. Kingsley has shown us in " Hypatia "
what the Nile valley did for the Christian Church.

It is not a question of Jew, Christian, or Moslem
that the administrative authorities in Syria and
Palestine will have to consider beyond ensuring
that each shall follow his religion unmolested.
They will have to defend the many from the
machinations of the few and the few from the
violent reprisals of the many. It is statecraft
that is wanted, not politics or religious dogma.

In Mesopotamia there has not been much mis-
sionary effort hitherto, and there is not a good
case for exploiting it as a missionary field beyond
certain limits. The riparian townsfolk are respect-
able people of some education and grasp of their
own affairs, and the country-folk are a harum-
scarum set of scallywags who used to attack
Turks or British indifferently, whichever happened
to be in difficulties for the moment. They
are best left to the secular arm for some time to
come. Medical missions, staffed by both sexes,
could do good work at urban centres, and a
few river steamers, or even launches, would
extend their efforts considerably.

IV MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY 125

We now come to Arabia itself, " the Peninsula
of the Arabs," where orthodox Islam has its
strongholds and missionary enterprise is not
encouraged.

Geographers differ somewhat as to what con-
stitutes Arabia proper, but for the purposes of
modern practical politics it may be considered
as all the peninsula south of a line from the
head of the Gulf of Akaba to the head of the
Persian Gulf, and consisting of Nejd, the Hejaz,*
Asir, Yamen, Aden protectorate, Hadhramaut
and Oman. Each of these divisions should be
dealt with separately in considering Arabian
politics nowadays, and it will be well for the
" mandatories " concerned if further sub-divisions
do not complicate matters ; I omit the sub-
province of Hasa (once a dependency of the
Turkish pashalik at Bussora) because, since the
Nejdi coup d'etat in 1912, the Emir ibn Saoud will
probably control its policy vis-d-vis of missionaries
and Europeans generally, though the Sheikh of
Koweit may expect to be consulted.

Nejd comes first as we move southward :

* The definite article precedes most Arabic place-names,
but is only retained in ordinary local speech as above, pre-
sumably to denote respect. I hold to native pronunciation,
except in cases of long-established custom, and consider " the
Yamen" as clumsy as "the Egypt" — both take the definite
article in Arabian script

126 PAN-ISLAM CHAP.

impinging as it does on Syria, Mesopotamia, and
the Hejaz, its politics are involved in theirs to a
certain extent and its affairs require careful
handling. It is certainly no field for unrestrained
missionary effort, but there is no reason why a
medical mission should not be posted at Riadh if
the Emir is willing. There are two rival houses in
Nejd — the ibn Saoud and ibn Rashid, the former
pro-British and the latter (hitherto) pro-Turk ;
Emir Saoud held ascendancy before the War and
should be able to maintain it now that Turco-
German influence is a thing of the past. He is an
enlightened, energetic man and was a close friend
of our gallant " political," the late Captain
Shakespeare, who was killed there early in the
War during an engagement between the two rival
houses. The question of missionary enterprise
in Nejd could well be put before the Emir for
consideration on its merits. Such procedure
may seem weak to an out-and-out missionary,
but even he would hesitate to keep poultr}^ in
another man's garden, even for economic purposes,
without consulting him. Fowls and missionaries
are useful and even desirable in a suitable environ-
ment, otherwise they can be a nuisance.

Next in order as we travel is the Hejaz, where
Islam started on its mission to harry exotic creeds
and nations, until its conquering progress was

IV MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY 127

checked decisively by reinvigorated Christendom.
In missionary parlance, Arabia generally is
referred to as "a Gibraltar of fanaticism and
pride which shuts out the messenger of Christ,"
and it must be admitted that the Hejaz has
hitherto justified this description to a certain
extent. Even at Jeddah Christians were only
just tolerated before the Wslt, and I found it
advisable, when exploring its tortuous bazars,
to wear a tarboosh, which earned me the respect-
ful salutations then accorded to a Turk. The
indigenous townsfolk of Jeddah are the " meanest "
set of Moslems I have ever met — I use the epithet
in its American sense, as indicating a blend of
currishness and crabbedness. They cringed to
the Turk when the braver Arabs of the south
were hammering the oppressor in Asir and Yamen,
but, like pariahs, were ready to fall on them and
their women and children when they had surren-
dered after a gallant struggle, overwhelmed by an
intensive bombardment from the sea. The alien
Moslems resident in Jeddah — especially the
Indians — are not a bad lot, but there is an atmo-
sphere of intolerance brooding over the whole
place which even affects Jeddah harbour. I
remember being shipmate in 1913 with some eight
hundred pilgrims from Aden and the southern
ports of the Red Sea. As we were discharging

128 PAN-ISLAM CHAP.

them off Jeddah, a plump and respectable Aden
merchant whom I knew by sight, but who did
not know me in the guise I then wore, was
gazing in rapt enthusiasm at sun-scorched Jeddah,
which, against the sterile country beyond, looked
like a stale bride-cake on a dust heap. " A
sacred land," he crooned. " A blessed land
where pigs and Christians cannot live." Inciden-
tally he made a very good living out of Christians
and was actually carrying his gear in a pigskin
valise.

At the same time, it is absurd for missionaries
to aver of Christians at Jeddah that " even those
who die in the city are buried on an island at sea."
The Christian cemetery lies to the south of the
town (we had to dislodge the Turks from it with
shrapnel during the fighting), and the only
island is a small coral reef just big enough to
support the ruins of a nondescript tenement once
u-ed for quarantine. No one could be buried
tnere without the aid of djmamite and a cold
chisel. Presumably missionary report has con-
fused Jeddah with the smaller pilgrim-port of
Yenbo, where there are an island and a sandy spit
with a Sheikh's tomb and a select burial-ground
for certain privileged Moslems of the holy man's
family.

The worst indictment of Jeddah (and Mecca

IV MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY 129

too, for that matter) is made by the pilgrims
themselves, though some of it may be exaggerated
by men smarting under the extortions of pilgrim-
brokers.

A pious Moslem once averred in my presence
that the pilgrim-brokers of Jeddah were, in
themselves, enough to bring a judgment on the
place, and that trenchant opinion is not without
foundation. Even to the unprejudiced eye of a
travelled European they present themselves as a
class of blatant bounders battening on the
earnest fervour of their co-religionists and squan-
dering the proceeds on dissipation. I have more
than once been shipmate with a gang of them, and
it is at sea that they cast off such restraint as the
critical gaze of other Moslems might impose.
As sumptuous first-class passengers they lounge
about the deck in robes of tussore, rich silks and
fancy waistcoats, though out of deference to their
religious prejudice and Christian table-manners
they usually mess by themselves. After dinner
they play vociferous poker in the saloon for cut-
throat stakes, evading the captain's veto by using
tastefully designed little fish in translucent
colours to represent heavy cash, and these they
invoke from time to time " for luck." As it is
usually sweltering weather, the occidental whiskey-
and-soda and the aromatic mastic of the Levant

K

130 PAN-ISLAM chap.

are much in evidence, and thus three of Islam's
gravest injunctions are set at naught. Their
chief fault, to a broad-minded sportsman, is that
they lack self-control, whatever their luck may be.
I have heard an ill-starred gambler bemoaning his
losses with the cries of a stricken animal, and
they are still more offensive as winners.

In Mecca such open breaches of the Islamic code
are not tolerated, but there are other lapses
which neither Moslem nor Christian can condone.
It is unfair and out of date to quote Burton's
indictment of Meccan morals, nor have we any
right to judge the city by its behaviour soon
after its freedom from the Turkish yoke, when
it may have been suffering from reaction after
nervous tension ; but, unless the bulk of respect-
able Moslem opinion is at fault, there is still
much in the administration of Mecca which cries
for reform. Harsh measures may have been
necessary at first, but to maintain a private
prison like the Kabu in the state it is can redound
to no ruler's credit, and for prominent officials
to cultivate an " alluring walk " and even practise
it in the tawdf or circumambulation of the holy
Caaba is beyond comment.

Also the mental standard of officialdom is low,
since Syrians of education and training do not
seem to be attracted by the Hejaz service for

IV MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY 131

long, and local men of position and ability are said
to have been passed over as likely to be formidable
as intriguers.

It may be reasonably urged that it is difficult
to improvise a Civil Service on the spur of the
moment, and it is permissible to anticipate a
better state of affairs now that war conditions are
being superseded. At the same time it is no use
blinking the fact that reform is indicated at
Mecca if that sacred city is to harmonise with its
high mission as the religious centre of the Islamic
world, and this affects our numerous Moslem
fellow-countrymen ; otherwise the domestic affairs
of the Hejaz are not our concern.

The Hejaz has been very much to the fore lately,
and ill-informed or biassed opinion has developed
a tendency to credit it with a greater part in
Arabian and Syrian affairs than it has played,
can play, or should be encouraged to play. Its
intolerant tone has, presumably, been modified by
co-operation with the civilised forces of militant
Christendom, but the new kingdom has got to
regenerate itself a good deal before it can cope with
wider responsibilities. Emir Feisal is, no doubt,
an enlightened prince, but one swallow does not
make a summer, and Hejazi troops have not yet
evolved enough moral to dominate and control
a more formidable breed or be trusted with the

K 2

132 PAN-ISLAM CHAP.

peace and welfare of a more civilised population,
especially where there are large non-Moslem
communities. There has been a great deal of
nonsense talked and written about their invin-
cible fighting prowess. They accompanied the
Egyptian Expeditionary Force in much the same
way as the jackal is said to accompany the lion,
with a reversionary interest in his kill, and their
faint-hearted fumbling with the Turkish defences
outside Jeddah was obvious to any observer.
They are what they have been since the fiery
self-sacrificing enthusiasm of early Islam died
down and left them with the half-warm embers of
their racial greed to become hereditary spoilers
of the weak, instinctively shunning a doubtful
fight. In guerilla warfare, leavened by British
ofiicers, they have shown an aptitude for taking
advantage of a situation, but they cannot stand
punishment and will not face the prospect of it
if they can help it. Their own leaders knew that
well enough when they refrained from taking
Medina by assault, bombardment being out of
the question, as buildings of the utmost sanctity
would have been inevitably damaged or destroyed.
Prince Feisal has, in a published interview with
a representative of the Press, disclaimed all
imperialistic ambitions for the Hejaz, but merely
demanded Arab independence in what was once

IV MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY 133

the Ottoman Empire. That being assured, the
new kingdom will be able to devote its energies
to internal affiairs, and the excellent impression
made by the Hejazi prince in Europe should be a
favourable augury of the future.

The missionary question should be left to the
reigning house for decision ; it is not fair to
hamper the Hejaz with unnecessary complications,
and to allow active missionary propaganda at a
pilgrim-port like Jeddah is asking for trouble,
apart from the flagrant violation of religious
sentiment. Imagine Catholic feeling if an enter-
prising Moslem mission were estabhshed at
Lourdes. Tact and expediency are just as
necessary in religious as in secular affairs — at least
so St. Paul has taught us; but the modem
missionary is too apt to regard these quahties in
Christianity as insincerity and the lack of them in
Islam as fanaticism.

South of the Hejaz lies that rather vague area
known as Asir. For geographical purposes we
may consider it as the country between two
parallels of latitude drawn through the coastal
towns of Lith and Loheia, with the Red Sea on
the west and an ill-defined inland border merging
eastward into the desert plateau of Southern
Nejd. Politically, it is that territory of Western
Arabia between the Hejaz and Yamen in which

134 PAN-ISLAM chap.

the Idrisi has more control than anyone since his
successful revolt against the Turks a year or
two before the War. In all probability its
northern districts with Lith will go to the Hejaz,
and the southern ones with Loheia to the Idrisi ;
but Western diplomacy will be well advised to
leave those two rulers to settle it between them-
selves and the local population, especially inland,
as tribal boundaries between semi-nomadic and
pastoral people are not for intelligent amateurs
to trifle with. Nor should the missionary be
encouraged ; Asir is not a suitable field for his
activities, and the trouble he would probably cause
is out of all proportion to the good he could
possibly do. The Asiri is a frizzy-haired fanatic
with a short temper and a serious disposition,
addicted to sword-play and the indiscriminate use
of firearms. I doubt if he would see the humour
of missionary logic. As for the Idrisi himself,
he is a tall, well set up man of negroid aspect
(being of Moorish and Soudani descent), and has
shown shrewdness as an administrator, though his
operations in the War have lacked " punch." He
is very orthodox, and from what I know of him
I should not say that religious tolerance was his
strong point. His capital is at Sabbia, in the
maritime foot-hills, with a very trying chmate.
Asir might suit the naturalist or explorer who

IV MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY 135

could adapt himself to his environment and
respect local prejudice. No one has yet entered
th? country in either capacity, but, from what
has been told me before the War by intelligent
Turkish officers who campaigned there, I think
that the birds and smaller mammals would repay
research, while the great Dawasir valley and other
geographical problems inland might be investi-
gated with advantage under the cBgis of local
chiefs. All that is required, besides the necessary
scientific knowledge and Arabic, is a certain
amount of perseverance and resolution blended
with a reasonable regard for other people's con-
victions. Most Arabian expeditions fail through
lack of time spent in preliminary steps. I have
tripped up in that way myself, but it was owing
to the restrictions of a paternal Government, and
not through lack of patience. Before I started
serious exploration in the Aden hinterland I
spent a year on the littoral plain getting in touch
with the people and mastering the dialect. Any
success I may have had up-country was due to the
foundation I laid in those early days, and it was
not until the Aden authorities closed their sphere
of influence against exploration in general and
myself in particular that my expeditions began
to miss fire, as I had to land at remote places
along the coast and hasten up-country before their

136 PAN-ISLAM chap.

fostering care could set the tribes on me. He who
would explore Asir should take a Khedivial mail
steamer from Suez to Jeddah, and there show his
credentials and explain his purpose to his consul
and the local authorities. The Idrisi has an agent
there, and it should not be difficult to pick up an
Asiri dhow returning down the coast to Gizan,
which is the port for Sabbia. He would have to
stay there until he got the Idrisi's permit and an
escort, without which he would be held up to a
certainty. In any case, no such enterprise need
be contemplated until Asiri affairs have settled
down a good deal.

In Yamen proper it should be feasible to travel
again within certain limits as soon as the Imam
can come to an understanding with the tribal
chiefs. There is not much left for the explorer
or naturalist to do, unless he goes very far inland
toward the great central desert, which project
is not likely to be encouraged by the local authori-
ties. There is, however, a possible field for the
mineralogist and prospector east and south-east
of Sanaa, which area also contains Sabaean ruins
and inscriptions of interest to the archaeologist.

The northern boundary of Yamen may be said
nowadays to trend north-east from Loheia inland
through highland country to the desert borders of
Nejran (once a Christian diocese). Its eastern

IV MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY 137

border is very vague, but may be said to coincide
approximately with the 45th parallel of longitude.
Southward the limit has been clearly defined by
the Anglo-Turkish Boundary Commission of
1902-5 inland from the Bana valley, about a
hundred map-miles north of Aden, to the straits
of Bab-el-Mandeb.

Within these limits the two great divisions of
Islam are represented in force — the orthodox
Sunnis on the littoral plain and far inland along
the upland deserts, while the highlanders among
the lofty fertile ranges separating these two
areas and forming the backbone of the country
follow the Shiah schism, being Zeidis, which of
all the schismatic sects approaches most nearly
to orthodox Islam and regards Mecca as its
pilgrim-centre. The feeling between these two
religious divisions may be compared with that
existing between Anglicans and Catholics. They
will occasionally use each other's places of
worship — more especially the upper or governing
classes — and seldom come to open loggerheads ;
when they do, it is usually about politics, and not
religion. At the same time, if you, as a Christian
traveller among both parties, want a scathing
opinion of a Zeidi, you will get it from an orthodox
lowlander, and the men of the mountains reci-
procate with point and weight, for the balance of

138 PAN-ISLAM chap.

religious culture and position is with them among
the big hill-centres; including Sanaa, the poUtical
capital where the Imam holds, or should hold, his
court as hereditary ruler spiritual and temporal.
This ecclesiastical potentate has backed the
Turk in a non-committal but flamboyant manner
during the War up to the turning of the tide
against them, when he sat on the fence until his
Turkish subsidy ceased. He now looks to Western
diplomacy in general and the British Government
in particular not only to continue but to
enhance this subsidy, in order that he may really
govern in Yamen. His attitude throughout is
natural and, indeed, justifiable in the interests of
himself and his dynasty ; at least occidental
politicians cannot cavil at his motives ; but
what they ought to ascertain is how far he can
fill the bill as a ruler in Yamen and the extent to
which he should be backed. Without a con-
siderable subsidy his administrative powers (not
hitherto very marked) will not carry far even in the
highlands.

Missionaries were allowed to enter Yamen before
the War, but did not establish themselves, even
on the coast. Some of them went up-country
and stayed there some time without being
molested. The average Yameni is not fanatical
by temperament ; there is more^ bigotry among

IV MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY 139

the urban Jew colonies than in the whole Moslem
countryside.

In the Aden protectorate there has been long
established the Falconer Medical Mission, which,
though actually at Sheikh Othman, just inside
the British border, has done splendid work among
natives of the hinterland, who visit it from all
parts. Its relations with the Arabs have always
been excellent, though the local ruffians looted the
Mission when the Turks held Sheikh Othman
temporarily.

The province of Hadhramaut, politically, in-
cludes not only the vast valley of that name with
its tributaries, but the whole of the western part of
Southern Arabia outside the Aden protectorate
from the Yamen border to the confines of Oman
near longitude 55. Mokalla is the capital and prin-
cipal port. Missionaries have been well received
there by the enlightened ruler — a member of the
Kaaiti house with the local title of Jemadar,
inherited from an ancestor who soldiered in the
Arab bodyguard of a former Nizam at Haider-
abad. The interior is not suited to missionary
enterprise.

Muscat, the capital of Oman, has already been
occupied by missionaries. The Sultan (at whose
court there is a British Resident) is well-disposed,
but has lost most of his influence inland.

140 PAN-ISLAM chap.

Further up the Persian Gulf missionaries have
long been established on the islands of Bahrein,
which are under British protection.

Continuing our journey eastward, we can
dismiss the Shiahs of Persia as outside our pan-
Islamic calculations, for their pilgrim-centre is at
Kerbela, some twenty odd miles west of the
Euphrates and the site of ancient Babylon.
This centre has been visited by missionaries.

Afghanistan and Beluchistan both bar mis-
sionaries, but there are C.M.S. frontier posts
from Quetta, in British Beluchistan, to Peshawar,
near the Afghan border. They do good hospital
work, otherwise their evangelising activities over
the border are confined to native colporteurs
and the circulation of vernacular Scriptures.
There is a fierce and barbarous Turcoman spirit
in both countries which their respective rulers
(the Khan of Kelat and the Emir at Cabul) do
their best to keep within bounds, aided by
British Residents. Missionaries seem to think
this spirit can be exorcised by their entrance into
the arena. You might as well throw squibs into
a cage full of tigers.

On entering India (that vast hunting-ground
of many sects and creeds), Moslem and missionary
are almost swamped in the flood of Hinduism.
There is no restriction on the^ activities of either

IV MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY 141

within the four corners of the King-Emperor's
peace, and there is very Httle antagonism between
the two in so big a field, where both are doing
good work. Although the Moslems outnumber the
Christians by seven to one, the honours of war
go to the missionaries. Their highly-organised
medical and educational missions do excellent
work — the Zenana Mission is, in itself, a justi-
fication of Christian mission work in India to any
humanitarian with some knowledge of zenana
conditions. The Moslems, on the other hand, in
spite of their high standard of education, in India
show a tendency among their less educated
classes toward the caste prejudices of Hinduism,
which are dead against the teaching of Islam
and a handicap to any social organisation.

Few people realise what a huge proposition
the Indian Empire is to solve in its entirety, with
its population of 315 millions, of whom over
90 per cent, are illiterate. Of the more or less
educated residuum, not quite 90 per cent, are
Brahmins having little in common with the
huge uneducated bulk of the population, which is
chiefly agricultural and, by its patient toil,
supplies most of the wealth of India. Yet it is
the cultured but unproductive Brahmin (organised
by a brainy old lady) who wants to control the
native affairs of India — and probably will.

142 PAN-ISLAM CHAP.

In Farther India the Brahmin is at a discount
and the Buddhist is to the fore, while Moslem
and missionary are far too busy among the
heathen to bother about each other ; as also in
Malay, where there is field enough and to spare for
both of them.

The only other debatable field in Asia is that
vast area which we call China, comprising China
proper, Manchuria, Mongolia, Tibet and Eastern
Turkestan. Moslem and missionary can hardly
be said to meet face to face, as missionary enter-
prise is chiefly in China itself, where the great
waterways have been of much assistance to
Christian activities, while Moslem efforts are
concentrated on Chinese Turkestan. Here there
are two Christian missions, at Yarkand and Kash-
gar, under the protection (as elsewhere in China)
of the Chinese Government. Moslem propaganda
is spread by traders and others working from
centres of Islamic learning outside Chinese terri-
tory, such as Bokhara and Samarkand in Russian
Turkestan, and Cabul, the Afghan capital. In
addition, there is a wave of Chinese secular culture
lapping in from the East, and missionaries ask that
existing missions be reinforced with funds to
take a more effective part in this battle for souls
(as they express it). They complain bitterly
that the upper classes will send their sons away to

IV MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY 143

places like Bokhara to be educated, and that
they come back Moslems. They also call for
ample funds to attack Islam on its own ground in
Russian Turkestan, as it is permeating Christian
Russia. This missionary point of view is natural
enough ; how far it is justifiable is for the con-
tributing public to decide. To the ordinary
mind Christian villages which can become Moslem
by the leavening influence of a few inhabitants
who have been to work in Moslem centres convey
one of two impressions, or both : either Chris-
tianity is not adapted to their requirements
so much as Islam, or they are too weak-kneed to
be a credit to any faith, and the one with the
most virile methods maj^ take them and make
men of them if it can. Moslem and missionary
activities in Chinese Asia remind one of cheese-
mites gnawing away on opposite sides of a Double
Gloucester. They are very active, and if they
keep at it may get through some day ; but mean-
while the cheese seems much the same as ever,
apart from its own internal changes which the
mites cannot control or affect.

We will now turn to Africa, the main theatre of
war between Moslem and missionary, who battle
with each other for pagan souls and each other's
proselytes.

We will first visit Morocco, the most westerly of

144 PAN-ISLAM chap.

Moslem countries. Here there is not much
missionary activity, either Protestant or CathoHc,
but the French have been doing some excellent
secular work there, and under their tutelage the
country is developing on lines of moderate
progress.

There is little antipathy shown to missionaries
here, at any rate on the coast, and medical
missionaries have been welcomed inland. Educa-
tion does not flourish, but the country might be
described by an unbiassed observer as enlightened
at least as far south as a line joining Mogador and
Morocco City (Marrakesh). In this northern area
you will find an industrious agricultural population
of small farmers scattered about the countryside,
which consists of wide, open tracts of arable
land under millet, maize, and other cereals,
dotted here and there with groves of olive and
orange and interspersed with large forests of
arga7t and other small trees. Desert country
encroaches more and more toward the south,
and in spite of several large streams draining into
the Atlantic from the snowcapped Atlas range,
the country becomes very wild and sterile the
farther south you go from Mogador until it
merges in the Sahara, across which lies the great,
bone- whitened highway that leads to Timbuctoo.

Whatever the indigenous Berber of the Atlas

IV MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY 145

may be, the northern Moor has never been a mere
barbarian, and Spain owes much to his culture
and industry. He certainly used to have a
bizarre conception of international amenities, and
got himself very much disliked in the Mediter-
ranean and even northern waters in consequence.
That phase, however, has long since passed ;
the last corsair has rotted at its moorings in Sallee
harbour, and I am told that to put a wealthy Jew
in a thing like a giant trouser-press and extort
money under pressure is considered now an
anachronism.

When I first knew the country, a quarter of a
century ago, it was just emerging from a revolu-
tionary war, and local relations with foreigners
or even neighbours were capricious. They mur-
dered a German bagman up the coast in an argan
forest, and the " Gefion " landed a flag-flaunting
armed party to impress Mogador, which dropped
water-pitchers on them from upper windows
and wondered what on earth the fuss was
about.

On the other hand, I was well received by one
of the revolted tribes, which had chased its
lawful Kaid into Mogador until checked by old
scrap-iron and bits of bottle-glass from the
ancient cannon mounted over the northern gate
of the town.

L

146 PAN-ISLAM chap.

I was treated with far more hospitality than
my absurd and rather rash enterprise deserved.
Imagine a callow youth just out of his teens
dropping in haphazard on a rebel tribe accom-
panied b}^ a mission-taught Moor and a large
liver-coloured pointer who had far more sense
than his master. My tame Moor was an excellent
fellow, who, beside keeping my tent tidy and
cooking, helped me to grapple with the derived
forms of the Arabic verb and the subtleties of
Moorish etiquette. I leamt to drink green tea,
syrup-sweet and flavoured with mint, out of
ornate little tumblers of a size and shape usually
associated with champagne, and, after assiduous
practice, I could tackle a dish of boiled millet,
meat, and olives with the fingers of my right
hand without mishap.

Beyond occasional brushes with adjacent sec-
tions of the neighbouring tribe which had declared
for the Fez central Government, I had very
little trouble, except that a peaceful boar-hunt
would occasionally degenerate into an inter-
tribal skirmish if I and my party got too near the
loyalist border. As all concerned had, thanks
to Western enterprise, discarded their picturesque
flint-locks in favour of Winchester or Marlin
repeaters, the proceedings required wary handling
if we were to extricate ourselves successfully,

IV MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY 147

but my long-range sporting Martini usually
gave me the weather-gauge.

I dressed as a Moor, and looked the part, but
made no attempt to pass for anything but a
Christian, nor did any unpopularity attach
thereto ; I was merely expected — as a natural
corollary — to have a little medical knowledge
(and it was a little).

I found the attitude of Moors generally towards
Christians curiously inconsistent. In the towns
there was a certain amount of formal fanaticism
which found vent in donkey-drivers addressing
their beasts as " Nasara " to the accompaniment
of whacks and yells, but public behaviour was
tolerant enough, and the attitude of Moorish
officialdom was almost courtly.

Jews had rather a bad time, if local subjects,
as their black slippers and furtive bearing outside
their own quarter made them a mark for naughty
httle boys, who flung their canary-coloured
slippers at them with curses and imprecations
deserving a more direct and personal application
of their footgear. Most of the wealthier Jews
had acquired European or American protection,
and were safe enough. They lived in the Frankish
quarter and dressed in ultra-European style.
They made rather a depressing spectacle on
Saturdays, when, garbed in black broadcloth,

L 2

148 PAN-ISLAM CHAP.

with bowler hats, they drifted through the
sunlit streets on their Sabbath constitutional
from one town gate to the next and back. They
were keen trade competitors, and gained or lost
fortunes by gambling in the almond export-
market or catching a grain-famine at the psycho-
logical moment. One of them had retired to a
leisured affluence on the proceeds that a big cargo
of almonds had yielded him at a startling turn
in the market. He was a hospitable soul who met
me once entering the landward gate in a travel-
stained burnoose and insisted on dragging me
into his gorgeously-carpeted house to drink
aquardiente and look at his " curios." These
consisted chiefly of modem firearms, some of
first-class London make, which hung on his
walls as ornaments, having been bought haphazard
without ammunition or sporting intent. I nearly
had a fit when he showed me a double .577
Express hopelessly rusted by the damp sea-air and
offered to lend it me if I could find " shots " for
it. The reverse of the shield was illustrated by
another acquaintance of mine who had made a
large fortune by importing Russian wheat to
Morocco in famine time and had lost it in a
short but striking career in England, during which
he was said to have entertained Royalty, aston-
ished the racing world and married a well-known

IV MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY 149

actress in light comedy. He, too, was of hospit-
able intent, but had generally left his purse at
home when the reckoning came. On the other
hand, he always carried the " stub " of the
cheque-book which had seen him to the apogee of
his meteoric career, and a glance at its counter-
foils (by his express invitation) was well worth the
price of a drink or two.

The local Islamic attitude toward Moorish
Jews was one of contemptuous tolerance. They
could certainly travel, in native dress, where no
Christian could. Once, in the patio or go-down of
a European merchant, I met a greasy, unkempt
Jew in a tattered gaberdine watching my com-
mercial friend as he weighed what I took to be a
double handful of crude brass curtain rings such
as traders used to sell by the gross along the
West African coast. They were solid gold and
represented the venture of a Jewish syndicate
which had collected it in pinches of gold-dust from
the river beds of southern Soos and hit on this
form of transport. A troop of horse could never
have brought it, as gold, a day's journey through
the lawless tribes of the south, but that tatter-
demalion Jew had done it at the price of a few
contemptuous buffets. He had, indeed, offered
one truculent gang of highwaymen a few of the
tawdry-looking rings to let him pass, but they

150 PAN-ISLAM chap.

had waved such obvious trash aside in their
eager search for actual cash, which they had
taken to the last rial.

The only other occasion on which I have knowoi
a Moor to be hoisted with the petard of his own
contemptuous fanaticism was an experience of my
own.

I was moving quietly through a belt of timber
just before dawn in the hopes of getting a shot at
a boar who was in the habit of feeding till day-
break among some barley that grew near a
caravan route. Before the light was quite strong
enough to shoot by I was more than a little
annoyed and astonished to hear cocks crowing all
over the place ; presuming an early caravan
with poultry for market, I pushed on to the track,
meaning to pass the time of day and ask if they
had glimpsed my quarry or heard him. I almost
ran into a town-bred Moor who was trying to
round up some scattered poultry in the gloom
and cursing volubly. He explained that he was
riding his donkey along the track perched between
two light reed cages containing fowls when the
donkey baulked as a boar snorted in the thickets
just off the road. He whacked the donkey and
cursed the boar as a pig and a Christian. There-
upon came a rush like cavalry, the donkey was
knocked from under him and he was lying amid

IV MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY 151

the wreckage of his flimsy crates with his poultry
scattered abroad. The boar, aheady angry and
suspicious, as anyone but a townsman would
have known by the noise he made, had charged
like a thunderbolt at the sound of a human
voice so close to him and galloped off with all the
honours of war.

The donkey was badty hurt and the man only
escaped because he was sitting high and just
above the point of impact. I helped him secure
his poultry and started back to my village to
send him another donkey. He thanked me in
brotherly style as one Moor to another. ''I'm
a Christian myself," I remarked at parting, and
added in my best beginner's Arabic as I turned
to go, " It is incumbent on me to assist you after
the aggression of my co-rehgionist."

This conventional attitude of arrogance toward
Christendom is perhaps traceable to Moorish
predominance in the Middle Ages and the importa-
tion of Christian slaves by the pirates of the
Barbary coast. In any case, it has been much
toned down of late years owing to contact with
capable and well-intentioned Franks as adminis-
trators and technical experts.

Morocco should never become a forcing-bed
of religious or racial antipathy, and will not so
long as France continues to develop the country

152 PAN-ISLAM CHAP.

by methods which the natives can assimilate,
and is not lured into over-exploitation of her
mineral resources or unwarrantable interference
with her spiritual affairs.

A perfectly justifiable missionary policy would
be the inauguration of industrial schools on the
coast and at one or two big inland centres, also
medical missions (with consent of the local
authorities) wherever feasible. Moorish crafts-
manship is worth stimulating, and doctors are
welcomed for their science. Both schemes would
redound to the credit of Christendom and be in
accordance with the best traditions of the Early
Church.

In the other Barbary states (Algeria, Tunis
and Tripoli) a few Cathohc missions have been
cstabhshed, and the North African Protestant
Mission has an advanced post at Kairwan in
Tunis. Here many routes converge, for Kairwan
is a great centre of pilgrimage and taps the
religious thought of all the Saharan tribes.
Under such conditions, Islam gets ahead every
time, as every caravan traveller is a potential
missionary, while Christian missions are anchored
to the spot or have to rely on native colporteurs,
who labour under the initial disadvantage of
being proselytes and seldom have the combination
of tact and staunchness which evangelists require.

IV MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY 153

It is in Egypt that we first find Moslem and
missionary at close grips arrayed against each
other. Cairo is a perfect cockpit of creeds.
Christianity is represented by Catholics, Copts,
Orthodox Greeks and Protestants, these last
being subdivided into Anghcans, Presbyterians,
Wesleyans and American Presbyterians and Con-
gregation ahsts. The main body of Islam — some
of my more fervent missionary friends allude
to it as " the hosts of Midian " — presents a
fairly solid front of orthodoxy, the bulk being
Hanifis, Shafeis, Maliki or Hanbalis (chiefly the
two former) ; but the irregular forces of Shiah
are well represented among non-indigenous
Moslems from Yamen, Persia and India, while
scattered groups of Wahabi ascetics, Sufi mystics
and esoterics of Bahaism skirmish on debatable
ground between the opposing lines, where range
such free-lance companies as Theosophists, Chris-
tian Scientists, Salvationists, etc., all with local
headquarters in Cairo and propaganda of their
own.

It must not be supposed that all this warlike
metaphor indicates actual strife or even severe
friction, any more than " the hosts of Midian "
represents the attitude of missionaries to Moslems
here. On the contrary, relations are for the most
part excellent, and the prevailing animosity is

154 PAN-ISLAM chap.

political, not religious, being directed against us
British much as normal schoolboys dislike their
form-master until they get a harsher one.

The Catholic Church confines most of her
energies to teaching her own people, who are
very numerous and well looked after ; she does
not do much alien mission work in this part of
the world. The most formidable band of gladi-
ators in the Christian ranks is the American
Protestant Mission, and next to them the Anglican
C.M.S. (chiefly distinguished in Egypt for its
medical work, which is excellent and has an
extraordinarily wide range). The Americans are
great on education and have done more for
the English language in Cairo than any Govern-
ment institution. I use the term " gladiators "
advisedly, for their most trenchant work is done on
their own side — they concentrate their chief
efforts on the Copts, and make a fairly good bag
of proselytes from them, apart from the great
number to whom they teach sound ideals of
duty as well as English and the three *' R's."
One of their leading missionaries has left it on
record that no one stands more in need of salvation
than the Copts, and as there is a Coptic Reform
Society the Copts must think there is room for
improvement too.

It has been found in practice that to convert

IV MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY 155

a bond-fide Moslem involves segregating him,
and that means finding him a living in a new
environment, otherwise he is almost bound to
" revert " under local pressure. Apart from the
strain on mission resources which such procedure
would cause if extensively followed, most mission-
aries rightly condemn such a system as
encouraging conversion for material motives.
Therefore they adopt a policy of " peaceful
penetration " against Islam, encouraging young
men to come to them unostentatiously (I call
them the Nicodemus-squad) in order to discuss
religious questions, which is usually done in a
temperate and intelHgent manner on both sides.
Even if they get no " forrader," it tends to
toleration and a better knowledge of each other's
language and ideals. A good deal of teaching is
done too with no expectation of making proselytes,
and solid friendships are formed. I have myself
known a convalescing lady missionary of the
C.M.S. to receive repeated calls of friendly
inquiry from former pupils ; when I first saw two
veiled young girls swing past with a palpably
British terrier and the crisp, vigorous step of
occidental emancipation, it puzzled my ethno-
logical faculties until I was told the object of their
visit.
All this is to the good, and it would be very

156 PAN-ISLAM chap.

good indeed if they let well alone. Unfortunately,
there is another cogent factor in the mission
field, and that is the sinews of war in hard cash.
Most people, even those who support missions to
Moslem countries, are human enough to like a
fight put up for their money. It is not enough for
them that a great deal of quiet, patient work is
being done by missionaries among Moslems in
the name of Christianity and the service of man-
kind. They want to hear about storming citadels
of sin and campaigning against the devil in the
dark places of the earth ; especially is this
so in America, where Moslem prejudice does not
have to be considered and rehgious organisation,
like most other concerns, is on a big scale.

As a natural consequence, missionaries have to
play up to this combatant instinct, and so we
read in their books and reports remarks calculated
to engender religious intolerance on both sides,
and which do not conform with the shrewd and
kindly work in the field of those devoted and often
scholarly men. I shall have occasion to allude
to some of these statements as we proceed, so
think it only fair to mention their justification
here.

Cairo is described as a " strategic centre "
in mission parlance, and so it is, being situated on
a great waterway with rail connection far south

IV MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY 157

into the heart of Africa and converging caravan
routes from every quarter. Along these arteries
of traffic many tons of tracts and propaganda
are hurled annually by train, felucca and
colporteur. Those who cannot read accept
such matter gladly to wrap things up in and
to show to their literate friends, who read what
resembles a bit of the Koran and find it carries
a sting in its tail, like a scorpion, aimed at Islam.
A great deal of this literature consists of the
Psalms of David, the Talmud or the Gospel, all
reverenced by Moslems if dished up without
trimmings. Not wishing to impose on that
hard- worked word " camouflage," I would merely
ask, as a naturalist, if such protective mimicry
is worth the irritation it causes. In any case,
the system reminds me of an old Highlander's
opening comment on a sword dance by a
rock scorpion in a Tangier saloon. " There is
a sairtain elegance aboot yourr grace-steps, but
get in between the swords."

No vicarious efforts by propaganda will ever
take the place of personal precept and example.
In hunting proselytes among the followers of
Islam it is not advisable to rely too much on the
Scriptures, as Moslems doubt the authenticity
of our version and point to our own divergent
copies in proof thereof. Nor is it any use asking

158 PAN-ISLAM chap.

them to believe as an act of faith ; if they did
they would need no proselytising : an appeal
must be made to their reason, and there is no
better appeal than the life, works, and conduct
of one who professes and practises Christianity.
Even if he makes no single convert he has leavened
the population around him with the dignity and
prestige of his creed which has produced such a
type. Unfortunately such results cannot be
scheduled in mission reports, though they are
real enough and well worth living for, whether
a man be a missionary or not ; only they cannot
be produced by brilliant wide-sweeping feats of
organisation and enterprise, but by persevering,
consistent lives, which are not easy or spectacular.
Egypt should be a great field of religious warfare
by personal influence, as Christians and Moslems
live side by side in daily contact and reasonable
accord, yet few of us take advantage of the fact
to uphold the prestige of our creed or even of
our race. We Europeans are busy with our
multifarious interests and duties, while Egyptian
Moslems are either entangled in the web of their
environment, as are ihefcllahin, or eager snatchers
at the gifts of civilisation, as are the more or less
cultured cffendis, or mere hair-splitters in futile
religious controversy, as are too many of the
itlcnia or sages at the great collegiate mosque of

IV MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY 159

al-Azhar. In each case, spiritual matters are
apt to get crowded out. The fault lies chiefly
with our cosmopolitan ingredients, w^hich engender
feverish living, if not actual vice, and the over-
strained effort on the one side to impart and on
the other side to assimilate a Western system of
education which has induced intellectual dys-
pepsia. So we hear of students mugging parrot-
like to pass half-yearly examinations, in the
hopes of getting Government appointments for
which there are far too many applicants ; these
young men besiege the Press with complaints of
unfair treatment if they fail, or even go to the
length of attempting suicide with carbolic acid
(fortunately with sufficient caution to ensure it
usually being but an attempt) ; this latter
petulant protest at the temporary thwarting of
their material hopes is dead against all the
teaching and tradition of Islam, but it has become
so frequent that a leading educational authority
suggests that no student who attempts suicide
shall be allowed to sit again for a Government
examination. Among their seniors up at al-Azhar
are men of real learning and remarkably perse-
vering scholarship (their theological course makes
the average brain reel to contemplate), but some
sheikh started a controversy^ as to whether
Adam was a prophet or not, which fell among those

i6o PAN-ISLAM chap.

sages with the disrupting force of a grenade,
causing much Htigation in the Islamic courts and
culminating in the divorce of the originator by
his wife for kufr, or heresy as ordained by Moslem
law. Beneath these troubled waters the fellah's
life flows placidly, bounded on the one hand by
his crops and on the other by the market ; his
spiritual stimulus being supplied by an occasional
rehgious fair or a visit to the shrine of some local
saint. He toils as patiently as his water-wheel
buffalo, and on that toil depends the wealth of
Egypt which supports saints and sinners, schools
and shops, with all our European schemes and
enterprises thrown in.

As for us British, if our object is to enhance
the prestige of our race or creed, we fall very short
of achievement. We have not even that reputa-
tion for integrity which usually attaches to us in
other parts of the Moslem world. This may be
partly due to our anomalous position in the
country, which was thrust upon us, but the
pleasure-seeking tourist of pre-War days has a
lot to answer for. Some of them seemed to think
that so far from home their conduct was of no
account (at least, that is the only charitable
explanation), and British personal prestige suffered
in consequence. Anglo-Egyptian officials, espec-
ially the subordinate grades, which come into

IV MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY i6i

more direct contact with the people, tried to
counteract this by increased dignity of demeanour,
but the natives now knew them en deshabille,
or thought they did, and decKned to keep them
on their pedestals. The result is, familiarity
without intimacy and detachment without dignity,
while the pre-War official habit of going Home
every year for some months has prevented even
subordinates from studying their district or
department consecutively.

Hence it is that a widespread Nationalist move-
ment gathered force and perfected its plans for
a detailed campaign which blended peaceful
demonstration with sabotage, murder and vio-
lence, and took the Anglo-Egyptian Government
completely by surprise, paralysing communica-
tions and intimidating the general pubHc until the
weight of Imperial troops, luckily still quartered
in the country, was allowed to make itself felt and
restored order.

This is not the time or the place to discuss these
affairs, which are still suh judice, but one salient
feature of the movement is pertinent to our
subject, and that is the marked rapprochement
between Moslems and Copts, who fraternised in
each other's mosques and churches, carried
flags bearing the device of Cross and Crescent
and used American mission buildings to further

M

i62 PAN-ISLAM CHAP.

their nev/-found brotherhood. These relations
were somewhat marred by the wholesale devasta-
tion of Coptic property up-country, but the
Copts took it very well and paraded the streets
with their Moslem friends, if they could not hide
away from them. The local Jew came in too, and
the climax of this religious entente was reached
when an Egyptian Jewess preached in the mosque
of al-Azhar on the ancient relations between
Jews and Arabs.

But we must not merely consider Egypt as a
sort of religious and racial clearing house ; it is
also the main gate of Africa.

Southward, up the Nile valley and across
grim deserts, lies Khartoum, the capital of the
Anglo-Eg3^ptian Sudan, only four days from
Cairo by rail. This is a very tempting theatre
for missionary enterprise, which is, however, held
in check by the authorities, who decHne to have
their Sudan spiritually exploited and materially
disturbed by futile efforts to evangelise the
country. Missionaries say that this part of the
Sudan, as well as Egypt, was once Christian ;
that discrimination is being shown in favour of
Islani even to the extent of making pagans
become Moslem on joining the Egyptian Army ;
that Gordon College is being run on non-Christian
lines and that Islam is getting ahead of them

IV MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY 163

in the race to convert pagans in this part of the
world.

The case against them is that the fact of these
regions being once Christian and now Moslem
shows, if anything, that the latter religion is more
suited to local requirements and conditions ;
Islam is naturally favoured in a Moslem country,
though many Christian missions have been given
facilities too, and have mostly failed owing to
chmatic conditions : the Egyptian x^rm}^ is
Moslem and under a Moslem Government ; the
conversion of pagan recruits to Islam is en-
couraged for the sake of discipline and soldierly
conduct ; missionaries themselves admit that
even in civil life a Christian convert from Islam
must be segregated or he will lapse under sur-
rounding pressure — perhaps they will explain
how that is to be done in a barrack-room or native
infantry lines, or would they prefer such recruits
to remain pagan ? Presumably they would, as
one of their complaints is that "it is a thousand
times harder to convert a Moslem to Christianity
than a pagan." Comment is superfluous ; no-
thing could portray their attitude more clearly.
As for Islam getting ahead of them in the race for
pagan souls, it is so and will be so always
among the black races unless Christian missions
are bolstered up by all the resources of local

M 2

i64 PAN-ISLAM chap.

authority ; the reason is that Islam offers
equal privileges and no colour-line, imposes easy
spiritual obligations and is propagated fervently
by its followers without the encumbrance of an
organised priesthood. Just as commercial
travellers consider a district neglected where
a rival firm has got ahead of them, so missionaries
are piqued at conditions in the Sudan ; but
even that does not excuse such statements as
that women in the Sudan are free and not
badly treated as pagans, but slaves and oppressed
under Islam. Every student of the Islamic
code knows that the status of women has been
enormously improved thereby as compared with
any pagan system. Missionaries must know this,
for they are much better educated about Islam
than they were a quarter of a century ago, yet
they do not scruple to raise the partisan cry of
a debased womanhood under Islam wherever
local conditions involve domestic hardship. Such
tactics are unworthy of them ; an intellectual
Moslem does not reproach Christianity because
he has visited districts in the poorer quarters of
our big towns and seen women lead lives of
drudgery or being sometimes knocked about by
their husbands.

Outside the Sudan and Nigeria we must keep
to the eastern side of Africa in order to maintain

IV MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY 165

touch with Islam. The negroid people of Italian
Erythrea are Moslems, as are also the Somalis ;
but their racial cousins, the Abyssinians, are
Christians of the Ethiopian Church, with the
Negus as their temporal and spiritual ruler, who
claims descent from King Solomon and the Queen
of Sheba.

Abyssinia has been Christian ever since the
fourth century, but the missionaries are not happy
about the country at all. Here nothing impedes
the entrance of the missionary as an individual,
but the people will not have him as an evangelist
at any price. The " fanatical and debased "
priests of the Abyssinian Church and the drastic
punishments inflicted by the local authorities
on those suspected of favouring other forms of
Christianity are described as grave hindrances.
There is a large population of " black Jews,"
who will have no deahngs with Christianity in
any form. Meanwhile Islam gains ground
steadily, especially in the south along the
trade routes. A German missionary, writing
from Strasburg in 1910, describes the situation as
alarming, because " whole tribes of Abyssinians
who still bear Christian names have become
Muhammedans in the last twenty years." There
is one Protestant mission up at Addis Abeba,
but it confines its attentions to the semi-pagan

i66 PAN-ISLAM chap.

Gallas, having given up Christian Abyssinia as a
bad job.

Somaliland is a poor field for missionary enter-
prise, owing to the sparse, semi-nomadic popula-
tion and the difficulties of getting about. In
the French sphere there is connection by rail
between Jibuti on the coast and Dera Dowa near
the Abyssinian border ; travelling musicians of
the cafe chantani type used to use it a good deal
before the War, but there was not much doing
in the missionary line. Italian Somaliland, east
of the British sphere to Cape Guardafui, is left
to look after itself, except for the occasional visit
of an Italian man-of-war ; but south of that great
headland there are Italian settlements.

In British Somaliland missionary enterprise
has hitherto been Catholic, and even that ceased
some years before the War when the authorities
had to tell the mission that it must leave, as they
could no longer protect it from the Mullah's
people. It was a pity, as the mission was doing
good work and was much respected in the country.
There was a Brotherhood which taught and doc-
tored, and a teaching Sisterhood. They were
Franciscans and had their local headquarters
and a tastefully designed little chapel in the
native town of Berbera, but the Brothers had also
an agricultural settlement up-country, where

V MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY 167

they tilled the soil and did their best to teach the
natives to do so too. The Somali is much easier *
to convert than the Arab, as his versatile and
superficial temperament induces him to imitate,
if not to assimilate, alien forms and ceremonies
from the correct procedure at the " Angelus "
to the singing, with appropriate gestures, of
" a bicycle made for two." Unfortunately, it is
almost impossible to teach him to think, or to do
a day's honest work ; he will pull a punkah while
you are awake to keep him at it, or row a boat if
allowed to sing, and sometimes he will fish if
hungry and quite near the sea ; but agriculture
involves the hard work of digging, and that is too
much for him. The object of the mission was to
give Somali boys and girls the rudiments of
Catholic Christianity and habits of industry.
The boys were well grounded in English and the
three " R's " in their simplest form, while the
girls were taught chiefly sewing and cooking.
The idea was for boys and girls to marry each
other in the fulness of time and beget Christian
children, but, as one of the good Fathers used
regretfully to say, it did not work out in practice.
The boys learnt enough to become interpreters or
obtain small clerkships in the post and telegraph
offices of Aden and adjacent ports, whereupon
they felt marriage with a " black woman " to be

i68 PAN-ISLAM chap.

derogatory, and looked higher, to the less swarthy
charms of some half-caste maiden met at Mass
(for they usually remained Catholic, at least in
outward form). The girls, on the other hand,
with all their domestic training, were much sought
after by local chiefs, who were prepared to give
them a good allowance in beads, bangles and cloth,
plenty of food and a fairly easy life. In such
surroundings they naturally readopted Islam.

Somaliland is not as barren as most people
suppose. Of course the littoral plain is com-
paratively sterile, as is the case on the Arabian
side, owing to the scanty rainfall, and the
maritime scarp of the hills that back it is not much
better, but the country improves as you go inland ;
there is good grazing on the intra-montane
plateau, and the watersheds of such massifs as
Wagr, Sheikh and Golis (7,000 ft. or so) are
thickly wooded, chiefly with the gigantic cactus
tree, which averages forty feet ; timber trees are
scarce, being mostly tall Coniferce in sheltered
glens at the higher altitudes. Inland of these
ranges the ground slopes gradually toward the
almost waterless Hand — a vast plateau sparsely
covered with tall mimosa bush or actual trees
attaining some thirty feet in height and striking
deep to subterranean moisture, which keeps them
remarkably fresh and green. Giraffe feed eagerly

IV MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY 169

on the tender upper foliage and herds of camel
graze there too, going six months without water,
for there is no known supply locally except in the
occasional mud-pans or hallis after a rainburst,
which may happen once a year. These camels
are kept for meat and milk only, and are no use
for transport, as they are too " soft " to carry a
sack of flour. They are rounded up and brought
in to wells twice a j^ear, where they water for a
week or so. Herdsmen moving with them live
on their milk, which is most sustaining. They
must be watered after a maximum interval of
half a year, or they get " poor " and will not
put on flesh. Needless to say, no transport
camel could be treated like that. A caravan
camel can go five days without water, but that
is about his limit while working, and he should be
allowed to rest and graze for some days afterwards
if he is to regain working condition. The giraffe,
as also antelope of various kinds, can support life
without water at all, though they trek greedily to
the hallis after rain. Here lion lie in wait for them
occasionally, and it is a frequent subject of
discussion among naturalists and sportsmen how
such heavy, thirsty animals can subsist in the
Haud. The most probable supposition is that
they only enter this region with the rains and
trek from one halli to another. I have met a

170 PAN-ISLAM chap.

lioness a long way out of lion country presumably
trekking from one water-hole to the next.
WHiat is still more remarkable is that heavy game
sometimes will do so too. Heavy firing was once
heard far south of Burao, and a mounted force
pushed out thinking it was the Mullah's people
going for our " friendlies " out grazing. A
rhinoceros on trek for water and nearly mad with
thirst had winded the waterskins in a Somali
grazing camp and charged through the zareba
to get at them. He was mobbed to death by the
herdsmen with the rifles which a benevolent
Government had given them for protection against
the dervishes.

To do them justice, the Somalis fear their fauna
very little and have more than once, when in
attendance on a European sportsman, driven off a
lion with spears and a resolute front after the white
man had failed to stop the beast with both barrels.

Even a woman will face a leopard with a torch
of dry grass to contest the ownership of a fat-
tailed sheep which he has tried to filch from the
zareba by night, fearing his snarling menace
far less than the wrath of her lord and master if
the marauder secures his prey.

As for the Midgan, that born hunter and
nomadic outcast whom other Somalis look down
upon, but who has more woodcraft in his touzled

IV MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY 171

head than any of them, he will deliberately hunt
the king of beasts, using some decrepit and almost
valueless camel as a stalking-horse. He is armed
with a bow having about as much apparent
" give " in it as the bottom joint of a fishing rod,
yet able to propel with surprising force a stumpy
arrow cunningly poisoned with a wizard brew of
viper venom and the root of the tall box tree.
His procedure is to drive his camel slowly grazing
toward some island of bush in which he has
marked down a lion, he himself being perched
a-straddle behind the hump and directing the
animal's movements with kicks from one or
other of his bare heels. From his lofty observa-
tion point he at once spots the crouching approach
of the lion and sHps off over the camel's rump to
cover, whence he speeds one of his venomous
little shafts at close range. The outraged monarch
attacks the camel and the hunter keeps well
aloof from the subsequent confusion until the
poison works and the lion is seized with muscular
convulsions, like those of tetanus, when he may
safely approach to gloat over his quarry. What
is really remarkable is that the camel is not
invariably killed. I once met a Midgan on trek
who showed me the unmistakable claw-marks of a
lion on his camel's neck and shoulders and said
he had used the animal on three such occasions ;

172 PAN-ISLAM CHAP.

compared with these desperate encounters the
exploits of our white shikaris armed with powerful
modem rifles are insignificant.

One beast of prey, however, is feared and
hated by every Somali man, woman or child —
hunter, shepherd or townsman — and that is the
great, spotted hyaena which slinks up by night
to snap at face or breast of sleeping folk and bolts
into the gloom at the agonised shriek of his
mangled victim. The brute is cowardly enough
to refuse encounter with an able-bodied man
awake and on the alert unless rendered desperate
by hunger, but his jaws are as strong as a lion's,
and one snapping bite does the mischief. I once
helped the P.M.O. at Berbera to tend some
half-dozen poor wretches who had been frightfully
mauled during the night on the outskirts of the
town itself and probably by the same hyaena.
Tne hot weather had induced many folk to sleep
outside their stifling huts and they will not take
the trouble to collect and build up a few thorny
bushes to keep the brutes off.

The Somali is about as incapable of hard work
as his " fat " camel, and the only time he may be
seen digging is among the convict gangs who till,
or used to till, the Government garden out at
Dubar on the inland edge of the littoral plain,
where the Berbera water supply bubbles out hot

IV MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY 173

from under the low maritime hills and trickles
through ten miles of surface pipe-line to supply
the " Fort," which is supposed to protect the
British cantonment straggling some distance
outside Berbera town. He feels such work dread-
fully, not only as an injury to his self-respect
(and he has all the puerile pride of the negroid
races), but as an irksome tax on his physical
powers, which are quite unaccustomed to
sustained and strenuous exertion. On the other
hand, he will make long journeys on short com-
mons and keep well and happy if allowed to
punctuate his hardships at long intervals with
debauches on meat and milk and fat. He excuses
himself from tilling the ground on the plea that
others might harvest the fruit of his labours,
as there is no individual land-tenure or any
definite divisions of land indicating ownership,
but only tribal grazing rights over ill-defined
areas and the parcel of land enclosed by his
zareba fence, of which he is but the tenant,
as it is free to anybody as soon as he leaves it
to trek to other pastures. Therefore, vegetables
are unattainable by him, and his cereals (rice,
millet and coarse flour) reach him by sea and
caravan or he does without. He appears immune
from scurvy and is seldom sick or sorry imless
he over-eats himself. He loves ghi (or clarified

174 PAN-ISLAM chap.

butter) and animal fat, which he swallows in
large gulps when he can get it, also rubbing it in
his frizzy hair and using it to sleek his black,
spindly shanks and smear his spear-blades —
on shikar he will " gorm " it all over your spare
gun if you do not watch him. His favourite
beverage is strong tea with lots of sugar in it
(when procurable) otherwise he will not touch it,
and he will drink water which a thirsty camel
would sniff at suspiciously before imbibing.
He dresses in a white sheet worn toga-wise
and not without a certain dignity, and his head
is usually bare except in towns or the partially
civihsed entourage of a white man, where he will
wear anything on his head from a tarboosh to a
topi as a mark of distinction, but seems to avoid
a turban, which he has not the knack of tying
properly.

To meet him and his family on trek is to ghmpse
an epitome of his life. First comes the able-
bodied though elderly sire carrying a few light
throwing-spears and a knobkerry or a gim-crack
stabbing-spear, and close behind him are the adult
males of his house similarly armed or with a
rifle or two supplied by a benevolent Government
for protection against the Mullah, to whom these
children of nature frequently offer them for sale
at very reasonable prices. After these come the

IV MOSLEM AND xMISSIONARY 175

women-folk in order of precedence, carrying
loads in inverse ratio thereto. The young,
favourite wife walks first, carrying her latest
addition to the family in a cotton shawl at her
hip ; she is followed by other wives of less social
standing, carrying household utensils, with the
smaller children at foot, and at the tail of the
procession stagger the old crones under heavy
burdens of pots, pans, pitchers and unsavoury
goat-hair rugs. A camel or two bring up the
rear with the conglomeration of sticks and hides
and matting which makes the home and looks
hke an untidy bird's nest. On the flanks and in
the rear skirmish the elder children, girls and boys,
with flocks and herds which graze as they go.
The big piebald sheep with their black heads and
indecently fat tails are not allowed to range far
afield, where lynx or leopard might stalk them
under covert, as they are valuable, succulent and
very foolish. They carry no wool — their coat
feels just like a fox-terrier's — but they have more
meat on them than three average goats, and the
huge pendulous flap of fat which does duty as a
tail is a delicacy to make a Somali mouth water
or a European gorge rise.

The only serious occupation a buck Somali will
permit himself is to sit under a tree and watch his
grazing flocks. He is fond of conversation.

176 PAN-ISLAM CHAP.

chiefly of a recriminative character, and gives
vent to his joie de vivre by prancing and singing
on two or three simple notes to the accompaniment
of his clapping hands and the thud of his horny
heels. His chief woe is drought and lack of
grazing, because he then has to get up off his
butt-end and take long treks to pastures new.
His ideas of earthly Paradise centre round the
cafes of Aden, where his countrymen are numerous
and where wages are so high that six grown Somalis
can batten in well-fed ease on the earnings of a
seventh, who keeps on till he wants a holiday
and then " goes sick " and sends another of the
syndicate to replace him. Qualifications do not
matter, as they all have sufficient to fumble
through their jobs and no more. If he lacks the
capital to start cab-driving and finds boat-
rowing or punkah- pulling too strenuous for him,
he sets himself to learn a little English and gets
a job as servant with some new-fledged British
subaltern at a minimum rate of £2 a month,
which is fixed by his union, for that is one civilised
device he really can handle. He is the slackest
oarsman, the laziest punkawala and the worst
whip east of Suez. His idea of driving is to sit
with knees drawn up toward his chin while he
lugs at the reins as if they were a punkah-cord,
urging his staunch little screw along with in-

IV MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY 177

effectual flaps of his whip and noises hke the
paroxysms of sea sickness.

He will ruin any saddle-camel for fast work
if allowed to ride one regularly, such animals
not being raised in his country, but he breeds a
small, hardy type of pony which he loves to
gallop in wild dashes, with flapping legs and
sawing hands, reining the poor little beast up
short on a bit Hke a rat-trap to witch beholders
with his horsemanship.

As a combatant you never know how to take
him. He may put up a hefty fight or he may
outrun the antelope in his precipitate retreat.
I was much impressed by the defences in barbed
wire and thorn trees considered necessary to ward
off the onslaught of dervishes by men who knew
them better than I did.

He is a cheery, irresponsible soul and has been
called the Irishman of the East. Missionaries
rather like him, because he is very teachable up to
a certain point, fond of learning new tricks if not
too difficult, and without that habit of logical
and consecutive thought which makes the real
Arab so difficult to tackle in argument.

No remarks on Somaliland would be complete
without some mention of the Mullah. That
astute personage has often been alluded to as
" Mad," but has proved himself far saner than the

N

178 PAN-ISLAM chap.

Government he was up against. In the early
'nineties he kept the Arabi Pasha coffee-house
opposite the cab-stand in the native town at
Aden, where he dispensed tea and husk-coffee
in Uttle bowls of green-glazed earthenware,
also raspberryade and other bright-coloured
** minerals " in bottles, with a small lump of
ice thrown in. His establishment was patronised
almost entirely by Somalis and largely by the
ghari-walas themselves. At the same time, he
was obliging enough to spare the servant of a
neighbouring sahib like myself a pound or two of
ice from his " cold box " on occasional application
to meet an emergency.

He had a good deal of property in flocks and
herds over in British Somaliland, • which he
visited from time to time. In the late 'nineties
he got involved in some suit or other and the local
authorities mulcted him of many camels. He
very much resented this decision and raised some
friends and sympathisers to resist its execution b}'
the police. An inadequate force was sent and
sustained a reverse, after which his following
grew enormously. Early in this century, when
I again had news of him, he had craftily cut in
between the Italian, Abyssinian and British
converging columns and annihilated Colonel
Plunkett's gallant Uttle band at Gumburu, but

IV MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY 179

sustained a severe defeat at Jidballi, where his
red flannel dressing-gown was sighted in early
and headlong retirement as his dervishes recoiled
from the embattled square.

All the same, he was still going strong long
after the South African War was over, and we
had more leisure to attend to him. When the
British frontier was drawn in to enable the
statement to be made in Parliament that " the
Mullah's troops were no longer within protectorate
limits," he took advantage of it to deal ruthlessly
with those tribes which had refused to join him
on the solemn and definite promise that Govern-
ment would protect them from his vengeance.
The unhappy Dolbahuntas were almost wiped out
as a tribal unit ; their zarebas and flimsy villages
were surrounded by the Mullah's men and fired,
leaving the occupants — men, women and chil-
dren— the choice of a dreadful end among blazing
thorns or red death on the spears of their fellow-
countrymen and co-religionists. A prominent
Nationalist has alluded to the Miillah and
his dervishes as " brave men striving to be
free."

In 1910 British prestige had shed its last rag in
Somaliland : we had withdrawn to the coast and
the Mullah's horsemen actually rode through
Berbera bazar on one of their raids and withdrew

N 2

i8o PAN-ISLAM chap.

unscathed. In 191 2 it was found necessary to
form a company of Somali police on camels to keep
the peace between " friendlies " who, to allay a
certain amount of indignation at home, had been
armed with rifles to protect themselves against
the Mullah's people, but were using these weapons,
in their light-hearted way, to argue questions of
grazing as they arose. Early in 1913 " a small
dervish outpost " was reported to be preventing
our friendlies from grazing in the Ain valley south
of Burao at a time when no other pasturage was
locally available, and the Somali camel-corps,
about a hundred strong with three white officers,
was sent to occupy Burao as its base and from
there to afford moral and material support
enabling the friendlies to graze unmolested in the
t hreatened area . This cheery opportunism was the
Government's wobbling attempt at equilibrium
between the barefaced desertion of our protected
tribes and its avowed policy of non-intervention
unless on the cheap. It was done too much on the
cheap ; that Uttle force was attacked by an
overwhelming force of dervishes while out on the
grazing grounds affording moral and material
support. The Maxim was put out of action by an
unlucky bullet, and the friendlies skedaddled
with their Government rifles at the first shot,
but returned later to loot the dead. The half-
trained Somali camelry suffered severely and were

IV MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY i8i

most unsteady, but the two white officers sur-
viving managed to extricate the remnant with
difficulty, the gallant commandant having died
for his trust early in the light. He was blamed
posthumously for having exceeded his orders ;
whether he ought to have exercised his moral and
material support at a safe distance from the place
where it was needed or have led his command in
headlong flight was not made clear, and they
were the only two military alternatives to the
action he did take. At all events the incident
shamed the Government into taking more adequate
measures to protect its friendlies in spite of bitter
NationaHst opposition.

Missionaries point to our long and fruitless
struggle in Somaliland as an illustration of the
force of fanaticism. It is nothing of the sort ;
the Mullah was a man with a grievance who was
driven into outlawry by the sequence of events,
and the movement was entirely political. Having
once tasted the sweets of temporal power, he
wanted to expand it, and used his spiritual and
material influence to that end, not hesitating to
order the wholesale massacre of other equally
orthodox Moslems when it seemed to him politi-
cally expedient. He owed his success to his
ruthless treatment of his compatriots, the difficult
and scantily watered terrain, our lack of co-
ordination with the Italians and Abyssinians,

i82 PAN-ISLAM CHAP.

but above all to our parsimonious method of
cadging and scraping a little money together for
an expedition and stopping when the funds gave
out, Uke a small boy with fireworks. Somali] and.
with its insignificant caravan trade, its wide,
waterless tracts and its sparse population of
shiftless, unproductive semi-nomads, is a bad
business proposition, and no Government can be
blamed for hesitating to spend money on it ; but
if half the expenditure had been concentrated on
one scheme at one time instead of being frittered
away on several divergent schemes over a lengthy
period the Mullah would have been brought to
book and the resources of the country developed
considerably.

South of Somaliland in British, and what was
once German, East Africa the missionary has
comparative freedom of movement, whereas in
Somaliland no white man has ever been allowed to
travel without the sanction of the local authorities.
He, however, complains that he is not encouraged
by the Administration in either colony, and
certainly makes no headway against Islam, which
has a very strong hold, especially in British East
Africa, with the SwahiHs. Still, he can point
to the inland kingdom of Uganda as one of his
successes, and it would be more so if the various
Christian sects would refrain from wrangling
among themselves.

IV MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY 183

We have now reached the southern hmit of
Moslem activity in Africa, for we are getting
among native races who do not take kindly to
asceticism in an}^ form, and beyond them are the
sturdy white Christians of South Africa. Curiously
enough, there is a flourishing Uttle colony of Mos-
lems at Salt River, the railway suburb of Cape
Town, where imported East Indian and Arab
mechanics have settled. They muster about
7,000 souls and have founded a school to educate
their children. An unbiassed English resident
states that they are far better citizens than
native Christians of the same class, owing to their
temperate habits. Drink is the undoubted curse
of the non-Moslem African. In South Africa no
native in white employ can get alcoholic drink
without the written authority of his employer,
but there are many illicit sources of supply. South
African colonists insist that the native Christians
are the worst — this should not be set down to
Christianity, but to the civilisation w^hich goes
with it, and, in place of Kafhr beer and such Hke
home-fermented brews of comparatively mild
exhilarant character, introduces the undisciplined
native mind to the furious joys of trade fire-
water.

Africa is the main battle-ground between
Moslem and missionary, for it is in that continent
that the forces of Islam and Christianity are most

i84 PAN-ISLAM chap.

nearly balanced. The American Protestant
^Mission, which is, as we have seen, one of the
principal belligerents, complains loudly on behalf
of Christendom that in Africa especially our
colonial administrations do not give the support
to Christian missions that Christian Governments
should.

Apart from the fact that we administer these
countries in trust for their indigenous population
and have no right to thrust our own creed upon
them to the exclusion of any other with a sound
system of ethics, it can most cogently be urged
that Islam is the only religion which insists on
total abstinence, and that seems to be the only
way in which the native African can avoid
alcoholic excess.

I have in front of me a letter written by an
American of Boston, Mass., to the Spectator
of February 15th, 1919. In it he alludes to a
report of the Committee for preventing the
demoralisation of native races by the liquor traffic
which is said to be " making Africa a cesspool of
alcohol, and statistics show that in this devil's
work Holland with her gin and, I regret to say,
the United States with its trade rum have been
the conspicuously worst offenders." The writer
goes on to say that the native races are morally
and intellectually children, and that has been
recognised in the States where it is a penal offence

IV MOSLEM AND MISSIONARY 185

to introduce alcoholic drink within the Indian
reservations.

This being so, the attitude of American Protes-
tants in attacking the only teetotal creed which is
working among natives in a continent where
total abstinence is unanimously declared to be
essential to native welfare indicates loose
thinking. It is still more extraordinary when we
remember that the teetotal party in the United
States have moved heaven and earth and every
device, legitimate or otherwise, to secure national
prohibition, about which, to put it mildly, there
appear to be two opinions among American
citizens. We are told that the South adopted
prohibition as a measure of protection against
the negro. Apart from the safety of white
colonists in Africa, is the w^elfare of African
negroes beneath the consideration of a free-born
American ? If so, why does he (or she) subscribe
so liberally to support missions in Africa ? Such
an attitude is incongruous, even if we adopt the
preposterous view that Christianity alone can
make a sober man of a negro. Imagine a munici-
pality which allowed a gang of hooligans to scatter
incendiary bombs broadcast and encouraged its
inadequate fire brigade to fight a rival organisa-
tion tooth and nail. Its avowed intention of
prohibiting the use of matches on its own premises
would not be considered a satisfactory amende.

i86 PAN-ISLAM chap, iv

I lay no more stress on American Protestant
activities against Islam than is their due. There
may be some opinions among Europeans that
their evangelising fervour might find a mission
field nearer home in South America or even in
Mexico. Such a criticism is not only ungrateful
but unreasonable. American missions have done
much for humanity in the East, while as regards
their own sub-continent the Catholic Church has
held that field for centuries, and no reasonable
being wants to see the two great divisions of
Christianity sparring with each other about the
spiritual education of greasers.

The Monroe Doctrine does not apply to mission-
aries, but I would point out to them that in
wrestling against Islam they are fanning the fires
of fanaticism and causing much material trouble,
and the net spiritual result is to lessen their own
power for good and embitter Islam for ill while
widening the breach between Christian and
Moslem.

This chapter is an attempt to give an impartial
glimpse at the relations between Moslem and
missionary throughout the Eastern Hemisphere.
With regard to their activities, it is neither a
detailed account nor an apology. No sincere
religious effort requires an apology, and if it is not
sincere no apology suffices.

CHAPTER V

A PLEA FOR TOLERANCE

The world just now appears to be awaiting a
millennium resulting from a concourse of more or
less brilliant and assertive folk with divergent
views. Presuming that the necessary change in
human nature will be wrought by enactment,
we have still to acquire more religious tolerance
if we are to live together in unity with our Moslem
fellow-subjects and neighbours.

What is the use of talking about a League of
Nations and the self-decision of small States if
we still seek to impose our religious views on
people who do not want them and encroach on the
borders of other creeds ? Are other people's
spiritual affairs of no account, or do we arrogate
to ourselves a monopoly of such matters ?
Both positions are untenable.

The justification of missionary enterprise is
based on Christ's last charge to His disciples :
"Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel

i88 PAN-ISLAM chap.

to every creature." He clearly defined that
gospel as " the tidings of the kingdom," and what
that kingdom was He has repeatedly told us in
the Sermon on the ^Mount, frequent conversations
with His disciples and others and the example of
His daily life. He never sought to change a man's
religious belief (such as it was) or his method of
livelihood (however questionable it might be),
but to reform him within the limits of his convic-
tions and his duties. He has also left on record an
indictment of proselytisers that will endure for
all time. Of course, if the Gospel narrative is
unreliable throughout (as the reverend and
scholarly compiler of the " Encyclopedia Biblica "
would appear to imply) then these arguments fall
to the ground, but so does any possible justification
of missionary enterprise. On the other hand,
Moslems do beheve and reverence the Engil or
Gospel, though they follow the doctrine and
dogma of a later revelation.

The logical deduction from these facts is that
moral training, education and charitable works
among Moslems are permissible and justifiable
features of missionary endeavour, if not forced
upon an unwilHng population, but attacks on
Islam itself are not only unmerited but unautho-
rised and impertinent.

Many missionaries of undoubted scholarship

V A PLEA FOR TOLERANCE 189

and breadth of view see this and model their
field work accordingly, with good results ; in
fact, most real success in the mission field has been
achieved by practical, Christian work on the above
lines, and not by religious propaganda ; but the
flag which missionary societies flaunt before a
subscribing Christian public is quite a different
banner, as can be easily ascertained from their own
published literature, which is very prolific and
accessible to all.

In writing about Islam the authors or compilers
of these works too frequently allow their zeal
to involve them in a web of inconsistency and
misstatement, or else they let their religious
terminology take liberties with their intellect
and that of the public.

We will glance briefly at their indictment of
Islam as presented in their quasi-geographical
works, disregarding their public utterances and
tracts as privileged, Kke the platform-speeches
and vote-catching pamphlets of a General Elec-
tion ; also we will keep to their own terminology
and expressions as far as possible.

First and foremost, especially in the United
States, where knowledge of non-Christian creeds
is not so general as with us, the literature of
foreign missions insists on grouping together all
regions as yet unexploited by them (whether

igo PAN-ISLAM * chap.

populated by heathen, Moslems, Buddhists or
any other non-Christian race) and describing
them indiscriminately as Gibraltars of Satan's
power, a challenge to Christendom and a reproach
to Zion (whatever that may mean). Yet the four
great Christian Churches — Greek, Russian,
Catholic and Protestant — seem powerless to
check the reign of hell in Bolshevist Europe,
where the liberty of man is demonstrated by
murder, rapine, torture and every fiendish orgy
or bestial lust which mortal mind can conceive.
The people among whom these devilries are being
enacted are Christians ruled by Christians, and
have been Christian for centuries. They are still
Christian so far as a blood-besotted chque will
let them be anything. And in the face of such
facts there are missionaries who enunciate in
cold print that without Christianity there could
be no charitable or humane organisation of
anv sort, or good government, or security of
property, and — clinching argument — trade would
suffer. Could there be any more glaring example
of the cart before the horse ? Does a dog wag his
tail or the tail wag the dog ? Is Japan hopelessly
benighted and devoid of the activities described
as the monopoly of Christianity ? Moreover :
Can Christian teaching or preaching pacify the
embittered struggle between labour and capital

V A PLEA FOR TOLERANCE 191

which threatens yet to wreck civiHsation ? Does
it even try ?

There is no more ridiculous or extravagant
boast among a certain class of self-appointed
evangelists than the oft-repeated statement that
all the modern blessings of Western civilisation
are the fruit of Christianity and that the backward
state of oriental Moslems is due to the absence of
Christianity.

Any thoughtful schoolboy knows that it was
the exploitation of coal and iron which lifted us
Western nations out of the ruck, backed by the
natural hardihood due to a bracing climate,
otherwise the Mediterranean might still be harried
by corsairs. Steam transport by land and sea
was the direct offspring of these two minerals.
Even then Western supremacy was gradual and
only recently completed by the exploitation of
petroleum, rubber and high explosives. Brown
Bess, as a shooting weapon, was far inferior to
the long-barrelled flint-lock of Morocco, and the
Arabian match-lock could out-range any firearm
in existence till sharp cutting tools made the
rifle possible. What does modern surgery, or
any other science of accurate manipulation, not
owe to modern steel ? When we turn from
metallurgy to medicine, let us not forget that
Avicenna was writing his pharmacopceia when

192 PAN-ISLAM CHAP.

Christian apothecaries were selling potions and
philtres under the sign of a stuffed crocodile.

Some exponents of Christianity would go further
and arrogate to her the inception of all arts and
handicrafts. Damascus blades, Cordovan leather,
Moorish architecture, Persian carpets, Indian
filagree, Chinese carvings and Japanese paintings
all give the lie to such claims.

If we are to measure Christianity by the material
progress of her adherents, what conclusions are
we to draw from the history of the Roman
Empire, the Byzantine Empire and the Copts ?
Fourteen hundred years after the birth of Chris-
tianity in Palestine the fall of Constantinople
shattered her last vestige of sovereignty in the
East after she had gone through centuries of
decadence, debauch and intrigue such as anyone
can find recorded by Gibbon or even in historical
novels like " Hypatia."

Islam, to-day, is about the same age as Chris-
tianity was then, and has gone through similar
stages, except that it has been spared the intrigues
of an organised priesthood and its comparative
frugality has protected it from oriental enervation
to a certain extent.

Compared with Western Christianity its present
epoch coincides with the era preceding the Refor-
mation, when religious teaching had become

V A PLEA FOR TOLERANCE 193

stereotyped and lacked vitality, as is now the
case with Moslem teaching as a rule. There is no
reason why Islam should not recover as Chris-
tianity did, and if it does not it will not be due
to any intrinsic defect, but to its oriental environ-
ment, which has already debased and wrecked
Eastern Christendom.

The respective ages of the two religions induces
another comparison. We are now in the four-
teenth century of the Hejira ; glance at European
Christendom of that period in the Christian era,
or even much later, and reflect on the Sicilian
Vespers, the Inquisition, the massacre of the
Huguenots, the atrocious witchfinders who served
that pedantic Protestant prig, James I, and all
the burnings, hackings and slayings perpetrated
in the name of Christendom. We must admit that
no Moslems anywhere, even in the most barbarous
regions, are any worse than the Christians of
those days, while the vast majority are infinitely
better, viewed by any general standard of
humanity. Christendom's only possible defence
is that civilisation has influenced Christianity for
good, and not the other way about. There is
one other loophole which I, for one, refuse to
crawl through — that Christianity is a greater
moral force than Islam or more rapid in its
action. Missionaries say that Islam is incapable

o

194 PAN-ISLAM chap.

of high ideals owing to its impersonal and inhuman
conception of the Deity, whom it does not limit
by any human standards of justice. They com-
plain that there is no fatherhood in the Moslem
God ; but — pursuing their own metaphor — what
would an earthly father think if his acts of correc-
tion were criticised by his children from their own
point of view ? He might be angry, but would
probably just smile, and I hope the Almighty
does the same. A child thinks it most unjust to
be rebuked or perhaps chastised for playing
at trains with suitable noises at unsuitable seasons
but it is that, and similar parental correction,
which makes him become a decent member of
society and not a self-centred nuisance.

Moslems shrink from applying any human
standards to the Deity, regarding Him as the
Lord of the Universe and not a popularly-elected
premier. " Whatever good is from God, whatever
ill from thyself," is a Koranic aphorism. Nor do
they seek to drive bargains with Him, as do many
pious Christians, and their supplications are
limited (as in our Lord's Prayer) to the bare
necessities of life — food and water to support
existence, and clothing to cover their nakedness.

The application of human ideals to the Almighty
places Him on a level with KipUng's " wise
wood-pavement gods " or the Teutonic conception

V A PLEA FOR TOLERANCE 195

of a deity who sent the Entente bad harvests to
help German submarine activities. Such absurdi-
ties incur the rebuke of the staunch old patriarch,
" Though he slay me yet will I trust in him '' ;
there is no excuse for seeking to inflict them on the
austerities of Islam.

Climate and terrain have a marked influence
on the form religion takes in its human manifesta-
tion. Missionary literature asserts this clearly
with regard to Islam, describing it, aptly enough,
as a rehgion of desert and oasis thence deriving
its austere and sensual features, but the thesis
applies with equal force to Christianity. The
marked cleavage of hermit-like asceticism and
gross sensuaHty which rock-bound deserts and
the lush Nile valley wrought in Egyptian Chris-
tendom has been described by every writer dealing
with that subject, and Arabian Christianity
drooped, and finally died, in the arid pastoral
uplands of Jauf and Nejran long before it suc-
cumbed in fertile, hard-working Yamen.

If the East became Christian next week there
would be the same rank growth and final atrophy
or disintegrating schism for lack of outside
opposition. Missionaries are quick enough to
remark on this process in Arabia where Islam is
practically unopposed, but will not apply it to
Christianity. They do not seem to reaUse that

196 PAN-ISLAM CHAP.

healthy competition maintains the vitahty of
rehgion no less than trade or any other form of
human effort requiring continuous energy and
application. Islam revivified a decadent Chris-
tianity, and the attacks of modern missionaries
are strengthening Islam. They justify these
attacks and urge further support for them on the
grounds that Islam is moribund and now is the
time to give it the coup de grace, or that Islam is
the most dangerous foe to Christendom in the
world and must be fought to a finish lest it unite
three hundred million Moslems against us. I
have seen both reasons given in the same mission-
ary book ; both are absurd. The latter is a
mere red herring drawn across the trail of existing
facts, more so, indeed, than the ex-Kaiser's
Yellow Peril, for that at least was trailed from a
vast country enclosing within a ring fence a
huge population of homogeneous race and creed.
As for crushing Islam by missionary enterprise,
you cannot kill a great religion with pin-pricks,
however numerous and frequent ; you can
only cause superficial hurts and irritation, as in
a German student's duel. Every religion con-
tains the germs of its own destruction within
itself (which it can resist indefinitely so long as it
is healthy and vigorous), but no outside efforts,
however overwhelming, can do aught but stiffen

V A PLEA FOR TOLERANCE 197

its adherents. The early Christian Church was
driven off the face of the earth into catacombs,
but emerged to rule supreme in the very city
which had driven her underground ; Muhammad
barely escaped from Mecca with his Hfe, but
returned to make it the centre of his creed,
and Crusaders died in hopeless defeat at Hattin
cursing " Mahound " with their last breath as
the enemy of their faith, yet their very presence
there showed how Islam had revived Christianity.
Per aspera ad astra : there is no easy road or
short cut to collective, spiritual progress. I am
not arguing against possible " acts of grace "
working on individuals, but the uplift of a race,
a class or even a congregation cannot be done by
a sort of spiritual legerdemain based on hypnotic
suggestion. Individuals may be so swayed for
the time being, and, in a few favourable cases,
the initial impetus will be carried on, but most
human souls are like locusts and flutter earthward
when the wind drops. They may have advanced
more or less, but are just as Hkely to be deflected
or even swept back again by a change in the wind.
Revivalist campaigns and salvation by a coup de
theatre do not encourage consecutive rehgious
thought, which is the only stable foundation of
religious behef ; second-hand convictions do not
wear well in the storm and sunshine of imsheltered

0*2

igS PAN-ISLAM chap.

lives, and a creed that has to be treated Uke an
orchid is no use to anybody.

If the same amount of earnest, consecutive
effort and clear thinking had been apphed to
reUgion as has gone to build up civilisation we
should all be leading harmonious spiritual Uves
to-day and sin and sorrow would probably have
been banished from the earth, but few people
think of applying their mental faculties to religion,
and its exploitation by modern mercantile methods
is not the same thing at all. CiviUsation is an
accretion of countless efforts and ceaseless
striving to ameliorate existing conditions,
whereas rehgion started as a perfect thesis
and has since got overgrown with human bigotry
and fantasies while absorbing very little of the
vast, increasing store of human knowledge.
That is why civiHsation has got so much in
advance of religion that the latter cannot lead
or guide the former, but only lags behind, like
a horse hitched to a cart-tail. Missionary writers
are rather apt to confuse the gifts of civiHsation
with the thing itself. A savage can be taught to
use a rifle or an electric switch or even a flame-
pro jecter, but this is no proof that he is really
civilised. On the other hand, the scholarly
recluse and philosopher whose works uplift and
refine humanity may bungle even with the

V A PLEA FOR TOLERANCE 199

'* fool-proof " lift which takes him up to his
own eyrie in Flat-land, but he is none the less
civiHsed.

They would have us believe that petticoats and
pantaloons are the hall-mark of Christian civilisa-
tion, and one of their favourite sneers at Arabia
(as a proof of its benighted condition and need
of their ministrations) is " a land without manu-
facture where machinery is looked on as a sort of
marvel." As a matter of fact, Arabia can manu-
facture all she really wants, and did so when we
blockaded her coasts ; nor is machinery any
more of a marvel to the average Arabian Arab
than it is to the average Occidental. Both use
intelligently such machinery as they find necessary
in their pursuits and occupations, though neither
can make it or repair it except superficially, and
both fiunble more or less with • unfamiliar
mechanical appliances. The young man from the
country blows the gas out or tries to Hght his
cheroot at an incandescent bulb, and may be
considered lucky if he does not get some swift,
silent form of vehicular traffic in the small of his
back when he is gaping at an electric advertisement
in changing-coloured lights. It has been my
object, and to a certain extent my duty, on
several occasions to try to impress a party of
chiefs and their retinue when visiting Aden from

200 PAN-ISLAIVI CHAP.

the wildest parts of Arabia Felix (which can be
very wild indeed). On the same morning I have
taken them over a man-of-war, on the musketry-
range to see a Maxim at practice and down into
a twelve-inch casemate when the monster was
about to fire. They never turned a hair, but
asked many intelligent questions and a few
amusing ones, tried to cadge a rifle or two from
the officer showing them the racks for small
arms, condemned the Maxim for " eating car-
tridges too fast " and were much tickled by the
gunner-ofhcer's joke that they could have the
big cannon if they would take it away with them.

These wild Arabians, when trained, make the
most reliable machine-tenders in the East, as
they have a penchant for mechanism of all sorts
and will not neglect their charge when unsuper-
vised.

We are all inclined to boast too personally of
our enlightened civilisation with its marvellous
mechanical appliances, but what is it after all but
the specialist training of the few serving the
wants of the many ? If the average missionary
swam ashore with an Arab fireman from a ship-
wreck and landed on an uninhabited island of
ordinary tropical aspect, the Arab would know
the knack of scaling coco-nut palms (no easy
task), the vegetation which would supply him

V A PLEA FOR TOLERANCE 201

with fibre for fishing-lines and what thorns
could be used to make an effective hook, while
the missionary would probably be unable to get
fire by friction with the aid of a bow-string and
spindle.

Missionary literature is very severe on Arabia
as a stiff-necked country which has hitherto
discouraged evangeHcal activities. " Hence the
low plane of Arabia morally. Slavery and
concubinage and, nearly everywhere, polygamy
and divorce are fearfully common and fatalism
has paralysed enterprise."

This indictment is not only unjust, but it
recoils on Western civilisation. Arabia is on
a high enough moral plane to refuse drink, drugs
and debauchery generally, while prostitution is
unknown outside large centres overrun by
foreigners, which are more cosmopolitan than
Arab. Sanaa, which is a pure Arab city with
little or no foreign element, is much more moral
than London or New York. To adduce slavery
and concubinage coupled with polygamy and
divorce as further evidence against Arabia is
crass absurdity ; slaves are far better treated
anywhere in Arabia than they were in the States
or the West Indies ; concubinage and polygamy,
as practised by the patriarchs of Holy Writ,
are still legal in that part of the world ; there is

202 PAN-ISLAM CHAP.

nothing sinful about them in themselves — ^a
Moslem might as well rebuke Western society
for being addicted to whisky and bridge. He
might even remind us that divorce is easier in
the States than in Arabia and quote the Prophet's
words on the subject : " Of all lawful acts divorce
is the most hateful in the sight of God." With us
a woman can be convicted of adultery in the
eyes of the world on evidence that would not
hang a cat for stealing cream, but in Islam the
act must be proved beyond doubt by two mt-
nesses, who are soundly flogged if their evidence
breaks down, and their testimony is declared
invalid for the future. This places the accusation
under a heavy disability, but it is better than
putting a woman's most cherished attribute at
the mercy of a suborned servant or two — a far
greater injustice to womanhood than bearing a
fair share of a naturally hard and toilsome life,
which is also a missionary complaint against
Arabia. As for fataUsm paralysing enterprise
there, perhaps it does to a certain extent, but it
cannot compare with our own organised strikes
in that direction.

Another charge is that Arabia has no stable
government and people go armed against each
other. Tribal Arabia has the only true form of
democratic government, and the Arab tribesman

V A PLEA FOR TOLERANCE 203

goes armed to make sure that it continues
democratic — as many a would-be despot knows
to his cost. They use these weapons to settle
other disputes occasionally, but Christian cowboys
still do so at times unless they have acquired grace
and the barley-water habit.

These deliberate misstatements and the distortion
of known facts are unworthy of the many earnest
workers in recognised mission fields, and they
become really mischievous when they culminate
in an appeal to the general public calling for
resources Siud personnel to " win Mecca for Christ,'*
and use it and the Arabic language to disseminate
Christianity and so win Arabia and, eventually,
the Moslem world.

Christianity had a very good start in Arabia
long before Muhammad's day, and (contrary to
missionary assertion) was in existence there for
centuries after his death. Not long before the
dawn of Islam, Christian and pagan Arabs fought
side by side to overthrow a despotic Jew king
in Yamen who was trying to proselytise them
with the crude but convincing contrivance of an
artificial hell which cost only the firewood and
labour involved and beat modern revivaHst
descriptions of the place to a frazzle as a means of
speedy conversion — to a Jew or a cinder.

Christianity lasted in Yamen up to the tenth

204 PAN-ISLAM chap.

century a.d. It paid tribute as a subordinate
creed, like Judaism, but had far more equable
charters and greater respect among Moslems. In
fact, it was never driven out, but gradually merged
into Islam, as is indicated by the inscriptions
found on the lintel of ruined churches here and
there, " There is but one God."

The published statement of a travelled mis-
sionary that the Turks stabled their cavalry
horses in the ruins of Abraha's " cathedral "
at Sanaa is misleading. The church which that
Abyssinian general built when he came over to
help the Arabs against the Jew king of prosely-
tising tendencies has nothing left of it above
ground except a bare site surrounded by a low
circular wall which would perhaps accommodate
the horses of a mounted patrol in bivouac. The
Turks probably used it for that purpose without
inquiry.

What is the use of bolstering up a presumably
sincere religious movement with these puerile
and mischievous statements ? Apart from the
rancour they excite among educated Moslems
(who are more familiar with this class of literature
than the writers perhaps imagine) they deceive
the Christian public and place conscientious
missionaries afield in a false position, for most
practical mission workers know and admit that

V A PLEA FOR TOLERANCE 205

the wholesale conversion of Moslems is not a
feasible proposition and that sporadic proselytes
are very doubtful trophies. Knowing this, they
concentrate their principal efforts on schools,
hospitals and charitable reUef, all based on
friendly relations with the natives which have
been patiently built up. These relations are
jeopardised by the wild-cat utterances which are
published for home consumption. If a Christian
pubHc cannot support legitimate missionary
enterprise without having it camouflaged by all
this spiritual swashbuckling, then it is in urgent
need of evangelical ministrations itself.

Missionaries in the field have, of course, a
personal view which we must not overlook, as it is
entirely creditable to all parties concerned. The
more strenuous forms of mission work in bar-
barous countries demand, and get, the highest
type of human devotion and courage. It is a
healthy sign that the public should support such
enterprise and that men and women should be
readily found to undertake it gladly. There is a
great gulf between such gallantry and the calcu-
lating spirit which works from a " strategic
centre," to bring about a serious poUtical situation
which others have to face.

Let us now examine the Islamic attitude toward
Christianity,

2o6 PAN-ISLAM chap.

The thoughtful Moslem generally admits the
excellence of occidental principles and methods in
the practical affairs of life, but insists that even
earthly existence is made up of more than civilised
amenities, economics and appliances for luxury,
comfort and locomotion. It is when he comes to
examine our social hfe that he finds us falUng
very short of our Christian ideals, and he argues to
himself that if that is all Christianity can do for
us it is not Hkely to do more for him, but rather
less. He admits that his less civiHsed co-
religionists in Arabia, Afghanistan, etc., lack half-
tones in their personalities, which are black and
white in streaks instead of blending in various
shades of grey. He considers that Islam with
its simple austerities is better suited to such
characters than Christianity with its unattainable
ideals. He himself has visited Western cities
and observed their conditions shrewdly. He
regards missionaries as zealous bagmen travelling
with excellent samples for a chaotic firm which
does not stock the goods they are trying to push.
The missionary may say that he has no " call "
to reform existing conditions in his own country,
just as the bagman may disclaim responsibility
for his firm's slackness ; but such excuses book no
orders. The travelled Moslem will shake his head
and say that he has seen the firm's showrooms,

V A PLEA FOR TOLERANCE 207

and their principal lines appeared to be Labour
trouble, profiteering and diluted Bolshevism,
with a particularly tawdry fabric of party poUtics.
He respects the spiritual commercial traveller
and his opinions, if sincere (he is a judge of
sincerity, being rather a casuist himself), but
wherever he has observed the workings of Chris-
tianity in bulk it has not had the elevating and
transcendental effect which it is said to have ;
that is, he has not found the goods up to sample
and will have none of them.

He seldom reahses (to conclude our commercial
metaphor) that most Christian folk in countries
which export missionaries are born with life-
members' tickets entitling them to sound, durable
goods which are not displayed in our spiritual
shop-windows or in the missionary hand-bag : —
the prayers of childhood and the mother's hymn,
the distant bells of a Sabbath country-side, the
bird-chorus of Spring emphasising the magic hush
of Communion on Easter morning, the holly-
decked church ringing with the glad carols of
Christmastide and the tremendous promise which
bids us hope at the graveside of our earthly love.
It is such memories as these, and not the stentorian
eloquence of some popular salvation-monger in an
atmosphere of over-crowded humanity, which go
to make staunch Christian souls.

2o8 PAN-ISLAM chap.

The possible proselyte from Islam has to rely
on what the missionary has in his bag. Large
quantities of faith are pressed upon him which
do not quite meet his requirements, as it is his
reason which should be satisfied first ; no one can
believe without a basis of belief.

There is also a great deal of slaughter-house
metaphor which does not appeal to him at all,
as he looks on blood as a defilement and a sheep
as the silliest animal in existence — except a
lamb. These metaphors were used by our Lord
in speaking to a people who readily understood
them, but for some obscure reason they have not
only been retained but amplified extensively to
the exclusion of much beautiful imagery which
is still apposite. We Christians reverence such
similes for their associations, but a Moslem misses
the point of them, just as we miss the stately metre
of the Koran in translation.

The would-be convert from Islam must, of
course, learn to stifle any fond memories of the
virile, vivid creed he is invited to renounce. No
longer must he give ear to the far-flung call
proclaiming from lofty minarets the unity of
God and the Prophet's mission or its cheery,
swinging reiteration as the dead are carried to the
magenna or " gate of Heaven." Certainly not ;
the less he contemplates their fate the better for

V A PLEA FOR TOLERANCE 209

his peace of mind, since (if the effort to convert
him is anything more than an outrageous piece of
impudence) their lot in the hereafter must be
appalHng and his own depends on the thoroughness
with which he steels his heart against all he ever
knew and loved before he met that pious man and
his little picture pamphlets.

Do proselytising missionaries in the Islamic
field ever sit down and think what they are
really trying to do ? Does the social ostracism of
a human being, the damnation of his folk and the
salvation of none but a remnant of mankind mean
anything to them ? If so they ought to be over-
come with horror — unless it is their idea of
humour, which I cannot believe.

To pester a man into abandoning a perfectly
sound and satisfying religion for one which may
not suit him so well is more reprehensible than
badgering a man to go to your doctor when his
own physician understands his case and has
studied it for a long time. At least his discarded
medical adviser will not make his Hfe a burden to
him — a burden which the proselytiser does not
have to share.

On the other hand, Moslems are often glad
enough to avail themselves of such Christian
works as mission education, medical treatment
and organised charity, so they should tolerate

210 PAN-ISLAM CHAP.

the proselytising propaganda which seems in-
separable from these enterprises.

Missionaries afield are usually justified by their
works ; it is the aggressive policy blazoned
abroad from mission headquarters which does
so much mischief. Islam was never intended
to overthrow Christianity, but to bring back
pagan Arabs to the true worship of God. Mission
pohcy clamours for attack on it as if it were an
invention of the devil and then complains of
Moslem fanaticism, forgetting that if it were an
artifice of Satan they cast doubts on the omnipo-
tence, omniscience or beneficence of God for
permitting it to exist and flourish. Otherwise,
they infer that they are in a position to correct
the Almighty in this matter. It is their com-
placent pedagogy which exasperates Moslems so.
It is not the way to treat people who beheve in
the Immaculate Conception, who call Christmas
Day " the Birthday " and respect us as " People
of the Book."

It is time some protest was lodged against this
poHcy if only on behalf of Christian administra-
tions in Moslem countries, which are always being
attacked by it and urged to give more facihties of
spiritual aggression, especially just at present when
Turkey's power has been shattered and mission
strategy thinks it sees an opening.

V A PLEA FOR TOLERANCE 211

There was never a less desirable moment for
unchecked religious exploitation than now, when
the war-worn nations of Christendom are trying
to reconstruct themselves, and the world is
seething with unrest and overstocked with
discarded weapons of precision.

There is no compromise in religion, nor should
there be ; you cannot go halfway in any faith,
and no one wants a mongrel strain begotten of
the two great militant creeds such as our
leading exponent of paradox wittily describes as
" Chrislam." Yet surely there is a reasonable
basis for a reUgious entente between Islam and
Christianity.

Think what Islam has done to advance the
knowledge of humanity long before the da^vn of
modern science. Moslems, too, would do well to
remember what Christian civilisation has done for
them in trade, agriculture and industries. If
you accept gifts from others you should tolerate
their ways ; it is but an ill-conditioned cur that
bolts the food proffered and then snarls.

A Moslem or a Christian worthy of the name
will remain so. He may expand or (more rarely)
contract his views, but will still be a Moslem or a
Christian, as the case may be.

No human being has the right to say that his
conception of the Deity is correct and all others

212 PAN-ISLAM CHAP. V

wrong, nor is such a conclusion supported by the
Gospel or the Koran.

It is the alchemy of the human soul which can
transmute the dross of a sordid environment
to the gold of self-sacrifice, and the gold of inspired
religion to the dross of bigotry.

Whether we beUeve, as Christians, that Christ
died on the Cross and rose the third day, or, as
Moslems, that He escaped that fate by an equally
stupendous miracle, we know that He faced
persecution and death for mankind and His
ideals, and that both creeds are based on the same
great doctrine — " God is a Spirit : and they that
worship him must worship him in spirit and in
truth."

FINIS

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