expression in a variety of ways. But it is most instructive to note that it did not express itself in any attempt at rebellion against Infidel rule. Neither we in India and Egypt, nor the French in Tunis and Algeria, suffered from the agitation which the Italians created in Tripoli ; the seismic disturbance, contrary to anticipation, produced no sympathetic shock outside the Tripolitan area. Why?

There are two principal reasons-one positive and the other negative. The positive reason is the satisfaction of all those Moslem populations with Christian rule-a satisfaction based upon a shrewd appreciation of the practical benefits of that rule, and one that can co-exist with much sentimental discontent, without being seriously affected by it. Observers who read the nationalist newspapers of Young Tunis, Young Egypt, and Young India are often misled into the belief that the able editors of those journals are ripe for sedition. No graver error, or one betraying a more fatal ignorance of human nature, could well be made. Even if the writers of those articles mean what they say (which is far from being always the case, though the writers themselves may think it is), few of their readers are impressed otherwise than in a febrile way by them. No true Mohammedan, if he were offered the choice between the two ideals, would choose Infidel rule. But we are not living in an ideal world. The average African and Asiatic has this fundamental quality in common with the average European-he knows on which side his bread is buttered. They have never experienced under Moslem domination the personal freedom, the equality of justice, the security of life and property, the protection against disease and famine, the commercial prosperity, which they experience now under the British and French flags; and they know it. One of the main arguments I heard advanced against the Italians by the leaders of the Arab resistance in Tripoli was not the religion of the invaders, but their poverty and their inability to do much more for the Arabs than their Turkish rulers had done for them. I am not concerned here to judge the soundness of the argument, but only to state it, as being significant. And its significance was enhanced by the fact that the men who put it forward would then go on to contrast these

shortcomings of the Italians with the wealth and administrative competence of the English and the French on either side of Tripoli. Indeed, a number of Tripolitans had appealed to France to take them under her flag.

This appreciation of material advantages, though keenest among Arabs of culture and substance, is just as noticeable among the most ignorant and indigent. One instance will suffice. On the Tripoli-Tunis frontier there is a rain-water cistern built by the French. On my return from the desert, I pointed it out to my cameldriver, who was not aware of its existence. After quaffing some of the clear liquid-so different from the mud he was used to on the other side of the border-and making certain noises of satisfaction with his throat and lips, he said, 'Praise be to Allah, and to the French Government. Ah, sir. The French can think; they are not like us or the Turks!' In addition to these practical advantages which it shares with ours, I found the French administration popular for a quality which ours lacks. The French appeared to me to have found their way to the Arab's heart, as well as to his head. I have found in Tunis a camaraderie between alien rulers and native subjects which, after some experience of AngloIndia and Anglo-Egypt, struck me as a most exhilarating novelty.

This sound estimation of the beneficent and liberal nature of French and British rule has already, since the outbreak of the war, manifested itself in the loyal and cordial support which both Powers have received from their Moslem subjects. Fifty thousand African Arabs are at this moment fighting for France, and fighting as cheerfully as any other citizens of the Republic. We have to acknowledge with gratitude, and a perfectly legitimate self-gratulation, the devotion of British Moslems from one end of the Empire to the other. Such men of light and leading in Islam as the Agha Khan and the Nizam of Hyderabad have given magnificent tokens of the spirit which animates them and their followers. All the Mohammedan communities in India have hastened to renew to the Viceroy their expressions of hearty adherence to our cause, and to add to them expressions of unqualified disgust at Turkey's action. Egypt has

done nothing to justify the hopes based upon her by the Sultan and his advisers, while from farther south the Mohammedans of Sierra Leone, through their religious ministers (imams), send spontaneous messages of loyalty, in which we are told that they are incessantly praying that Allah may grant victory to England. They, being honest folk unversed in the frothy sophisms with which our journalists confuse our and their own minds, candidly explain, as the Agha Khan has also done, that the ground of their attachment to the British throne is not sentimental but practical. Some of us,' they say, 'have had the privilege of travelling to foreign parts, and from our experience of the treatment received by natives at the hands of their foreign rulers, especially the Germans -whose destruction may God expedite-we cannot but come to the above conclusion.'

The negative reason why Moslems in general have not responded to the Caliph's call is an absence of cohesion which renders any common movement impossible in the Mohammedan world. Islam still is, to a very large extent, where Christendom was in the Middle Ages. It possesses that unity of creed which rendered the Crusades possible. But this religious unity is accompanied neither by political coherence nor by community of culture. It is a far cry from the educated graduate of Oxford or Paris to the Bedouin of the Sahara. The Turkish Sultan, by virtue of his position as Caliph, and as the head of the greatest Moslem State still free, might have supplied a rallying-point to the scattered forces of Islam. But he has always failed to do so. The causes of that failure are even more instructive than the fact itself.

First comes a difference of temperament which marks off the Turk from the Arab as sharply as the extreme type of Teuton is marked off from the extreme type of Latin. There can be, and there is, no sympathy between the stolid, taciturn, slow-moving Turk and the impulsive, talkative, nimble Arab. The depth of the mental and moral chasm that separates the two races becomes apparent whenever and wherever representatives of each are brought into physical proximity, as was the case in the Tripoli camp. There I had a daily demonstration of its existence and of the mutual distrust and dislike

that resulted therefrom. The Turks despised the Arabs for their excitability, and were despised by them for their own stupidity, want of dash and initiative, and general incompetence-an incompetence particularly galling when accompanied by arrogance. The antipathy was shared by every Arab I came across, but it found most eloquent utterance among those Arabs who had come under European influence and were able to contrast the sloth they saw in the Turkish headquarters with the conditions which prevailed in Tunis under the French. Tunisian male nurses could find no words with which to express their disgust at the chaos of the Turkish hospitals; and a Tunisian who had served for some years in the French army stood aghast at the sight of the ill-clad, ill-fed, slovenly, uncared-for Ottoman troops.

Equally instructive was the Turk's indifference to, or rather unconsciousness of, the contempt he inspired. Nothing was done to bridge over by tact the chasm fixed by nature. The result was perpetual animosity, which at times developed into dangerous friction. All this was only a fresh illustration of the Turk's familiar want of imaginative comprehension-the want which has always caused him to fail as a leader of alien races. What was

new was a feature imported into the picture since the Revolution. The Old Turk, whatever his deficiencies might be, was at least a True Believer; his piety made up, in a measure, for his stupidity. The Young Turk had accentuated, in the eyes of his Arab comrades, the inherited arrogance and unintelligence, by adding to it a religious indifference which in some cases amounted to rank infidelity. During the four months I spent among them, I saw only three Turks (all three men over fifty) pray; and I heard an Arab sheikh give vent to a horrified suspicion that there were among us Turkish officers who denied the existence of God. There is reason to believe that this attitude is not confined to the Arabs of North Africa-it is general among all the Arab populations, from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. Even the dreamers who dream of a Day of Redemption and Retribution are shrewd enough to see that the Turk is not the man appointed for the task. The prophet whom I have already quoted summed up this feeling to me in these weighty words:

'There are many Pashas in Stambul, but not a single wise man among them. One pursues an English, another a German, a third a French policy-and they all take bribes. No; that is not the sort of people to do the great work. We want men with a Moslem policy-men who have faith in Allah. And these men are to be found in the Sahara, not in Stambul.'

The Tripolitan campaign, far from drawing the Arab closer to the Turk, had the opposite effect. The Turks had there a chance of earning Arab loyalty. Through the causes mentioned, they missed it. One result of their failure was the collapse of Arab resistance to the Italians, the disintegration of the forces which a common hope had brought together, and a bitter disillusion. Another result, equally important with reference to the present situation, was a deepening of the sense of the Turk's unworthiness and weakness. The Tripolitan fiasco was an object-lesson which has sunk deep into the heart of the Moslem world. The Holy Warriors carried away from the Ottoman headquarters an ineffaceable impression of Ottoman incompetence and infidelity. Nor is this impression likely to be modified by the knowledge that the Turkish armies at the present hour are controlled by Christian generals, and that the summons to the Faithful which has gone forth from Stambul was dictated by a commander whose name is Wilhelm. Enver Pasha and his friends realise this as keenly as they fail to realise other important facts. Hence the clumsy attempt to persuade the Arabs of Syria that the Kaiser has embraced the faith of the Prophet-an attempt which affords but another proof of the Turk's ludicrous under-estimation of Arab intelligence. In this connexion I may cite a little incident that occurred in Tripoli. We had there four young German officers who had come out to help the cause, and incidentally, to promote German prestige in the Moslem world. In the very first engagement in which one of these gentlemen participated he was barely saved from death at the hands of an Arab warrior, who, suddenly discovering that the officer in a Turkish headgear was an infidel in disguise, turned his rifle upon him.

I have dwelt on this point at some length, because it appears to be vital in a consideration of the effects of