BROWN MAN'S LAND
Brown Man's Land is the Near and Middle East. The brown world stretches in
an immense belt clear across southern Asia and northern Africa, from the
Pacific to the Atlantic Oceans. The numbers of brown and yellow men are
not markedly unequal (450,000,000 browns as against 500,000,000 yellows),
but in most other respects the two worlds are sharply contrasted. In the
first place, while the yellow world is a fairly compact geographical
block, the brown world sprawls half-way round the globe, and is not only
much greater in size, but also infinitely more varied in natural features.
This geographical diversity is reflected both in its history and in the
character of its inhabitants. Unlike the secluded yellow world, the brown
world is nearly everywhere exposed to foreign influences and has undergone
an infinite series of evolutionary modifications. Racially it has been a
vast melting-pot, or series of melting-pots, wherein conquest and
migration have continually poured new heterogeneous elements, producing
the most diverse racial amalgamations. In fact, there is to-day no
generalized brown type-norm as there are generalized yellow or white
type-norms, but rather a series of types clearly distinguished from one
another. Some of these types, like the Persians and Ottoman Turks, are
largely white; others, like the southern Indians and Yemenite Arabs, are
largely black; while still others, like the Himalayan and Central Asian
peoples, have much yellow blood. Again, there is no generalized brown
culture like those possessed by yellows and whites. The great spiritual
bond is Islam, yet in India, the chief seat of brown population, Islam is
professed by only one-fifth of the inhabitants.
Nevertheless, there is a fundamental comity between the brown peoples.
This comity is subtle and intangible in character, yet it exists, and
under certain circumstances it is capable of momentous manifestations. Its
salient feature is the instinctive recognition by all Near and Middle
Eastern peoples that they are fellow Asiatics, however bitter may be their
internecine feuds. This instinctive Asiatic feeling has been noted by
historians for more than two thousand years, and it is just as true to-day
as in the past. Of course it comes out most strongly in face of the
non-Asiatic--which in practice has always meant the white man. The action
and reaction of the brown and white worlds has, indeed, been a constant
historic factor, the roles of hammer and anvil being continually reversed
through the ages. For the last four centuries the white world has, in the
main, been the dynamic factor. Certainly, during the last hundred years
the white world has displayed an unprecedentedly aggressive vigor, the
brown world playing an almost passive role.
Here again is seen a difference between browns and yellows. The yellow
world did not feel the full tide of white aggression till the middle of
the last century, while even then it never really lost its political
independence and soon reacted so powerfully that its political freedom has
to-day been substantially regained. The brown world, on the other hand,
felt the impact of the white tide much earlier and was politically
overwhelmed. The so-called "independence" of brown states has long been
due more to white rivalries than to their own inherent strength. One by
one they have been swallowed up by the white Powers. In 1914 only three
(Turkey, Persia, and Afghanistan) survived, and the late war has sent them
the way of the rest. Turkey and Persia have lost their independence,
however they may still be painted on the map, while Afghanistan has been
compelled to recognize white supremacy as never before. Thus the cycle is
fulfilled, and white political mastery over the brown world is complete.
Political triumphs, however, of themselves guarantee nothing, and the
permanence of the present order of things in the brown world appears more
than doubtful when we glance beyond the map. The brown world, like the
yellow world, is to-day in acute reaction against white supremacy. In
fact, the brown reaction began a full century ago, and has been gathering
headway ever since, moved thereto both by its own inherent vitality and by
the external stimulus of white aggression. The great dynamic of this brown
reaction is the Mohammedan Revival. But before analyzing that movement it
would be well to glance at the human elements involved.
Four salient groupings stand out among the brown peoples: India, Iran,
"Arabistan," and "Turkestan." The last two words are used in a special
sense to denote ethnic and cultural aggregations for which no precise
terms have hitherto been coined. India is the population-centre of the
brown world. More than 300,000,000 souls live within its
borders--two-thirds of all the brown men on earth. India has not, however,
been the brown world's spiritual or cultural dynamic, those forces coming
chiefly from the brown lands to the westward. Iran (the Persian plateau)
is comparatively small in area and has less than 15,000,000 inhabitants,
but its influence upon the brown world has been out of all proportion to
its size and population. "Arabistan" denotes the group of peoples, Arab in
blood or Arabized in language and culture, who inhabit the Arabian
peninsula and its adjacent annexes, Syria and Mesopotamia, together with
the vast band of North Africa lying between the Mediterranean and the
Sahara Desert. The total number of these Arabic peoples is 40,000,000,
three-fourths of them living in North Africa. The term "Turkestan" covers
the group of kindred peoples, often called "Turanians," who stretch from
Constantinople to Central Asia, including the Ottoman Turks of Asia Minor,
the Tartars of South Russia and Transcaucasia, and the Central Asian
Turkomans. They number in all about 25,000,000. Such are the four
outstanding race-factors in the brown world. Let us now examine that
spiritual factor, Islam, from which the brown renaissance originally
proceeded, and on which most of its present manifestations are based.
Islam's warlike vigor has impressed men's minds ever since the far-off
days when its pristine fervor bore the Fiery Crescent from France to
China. But with the passing cycles this fervor waned, and a century ago
Islam seemed plunged in the stupor of senile decay. The life appeared to
have gone out of it, leaving naught but the dry husks of empty formalism
and soulless ritual. Yet at this darkest hour a voice came crying from out
the vast Arabian desert, the cradle of Islam, calling the Faithful to
better things. This puritan reformer was the famous Abd-el-Wahab, and his
followers, known as Wahabees, soon spread over the length and breadth of
the Mohammedan world, purging Islam of its sloth and rekindling the fervor
of olden days. Thus began the great Mohammedan Revival.
That revival, like all truly regenerative movements, had its political as
well as its spiritual side. One of the first things which struck the
reformers was the political weakness of the Moslem world and its
increasing subjection to the Christian West. It was during the early
decades of the nineteenth century that the revival spread through Islam.
But this was the very time when Europe, recovering from the losses of the
Napoleonic Wars, began its unparalleled aggressions upon the Moslem East.
The result in Islam was a fusing of religion and patriotism into a "sacred
union" for the combined spiritual regeneration and political emancipation
of the Moslem world.
Of course Europe's material and military superiority were then so great
that speedy success was recognized to be a vain hope. Nevertheless, with
true Oriental patience, the reformers were content to work for distant
goals, and the results of their labors, though hidden from most Europeans,
was soon discernible to a few keen-sighted white observers. Half a century
ago the learned Orientalist Palgrave wrote these prophetic lines: "Islam
is even now an enormous power, full of self-sustaining vitality, with a
surplus for aggression; and a struggle with its combined energies would be
deadly indeed.... The Mohammedan peoples of the East have awakened to the
manifold strength and skill of their Western Christian rivals; and this
awakening, at first productive of respect and fear, not unmixed with
admiration, now wears the type of antagonistic dislike, and even of
intelligent hate. No more zealous Moslems are to be found in all the ranks
of Islam than they who have sojourned longest in Europe and acquired the
most intimate knowledge of its sciences and ways.... Mohammedans are
keenly alive to the ever-shifting uncertainties and divisions that
distract the Christianity of to-day, and to the woful instability of
modern European institutions. From their own point of view, Moslems are as
men standing on a secure rock, and they contrast the quiet fixity of their
own position with the unsettled and insecure restlessness of all
else."[34]
This stability to which Palgrave alludes must not be confused with dead
rigidity. Too many of us still think of the Moslem East as hopelessly
petrified. But those Westerners best acquainted with the Islamic world
assert that nothing could be farther from the truth; emphasizing, on the
contrary, Islam's present plasticity and rapid assimilation of Western
ideas and methods. "The alleged rigidity of Islam is a European myth,"[35]
says Theodore Morison, late principal of the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental
College at Aligarh, India; and another Orientalist, Marmaduke Pickthall,
writes: "There is nothing in Islam, any more than in Christianity, which
should halt progress. The fact is that Christianity found, some time ago,
a _modus vivendi_ with modern life, while Islam has not yet arrived
thither. But this process is even now being worked out."[36]
The way in which the Mohammedan world has availed itself of white
institutions such as the newspaper in forging its new solidarity is well
portrayed by Bernard Temple. "It all comes to this, then," he writes.
"World-politics, as viewed by Mohammedanism's political leaders, resolve
themselves into a struggle--not necessarily a bloody struggle, but still
an intense and vital struggle--for place and power between the three great
divisions of mankind. The Moslem mind is deeply stirred by the prospect.
Every Moslem country is in communication with every other Moslem country:
directly, by means of special emissaries, pilgrims, travellers, traders,
and postal exchanges; indirectly, by means of Mohammedan newspapers,
books, pamphlets, leaflets, and periodicals. I have met with Cairo
newspapers in Bagdad, Teheran, and Peshawar; Constantinople newspapers in
Basra and Bombay; Calcutta newspapers in Mohammerah, Kerbela, and Port
Said."[37]
These European judgments are confirmed by what Asiatics say themselves.
For example, a Syrian Christian, Ameen Rihani, thus characterizes the
present strength and vitality of the Moslem world: "A nation of
250,000,000 souls, more than one-half under Christian rule, struggling to
shake off its fetters; to consolidate its opposing forces; replenishing
itself in the south and in the east from the inexhaustible sources of the
life primitive; assimilating in the north, but not without discrimination,
the civilization of Europe; a nation with a glorious past, a living faith
and language, an inspired Book, an undying hope, might be divided against
itself by European diplomacy but can never be subjugated by European
arms.... What Islam is losing on the borders of Europe it is gaining in
Africa and Central Asia through its modern propaganda, which is conducted
according to Christian methods. And this is one of the grand results of
'civilization by benevolent assimilation.' Europe drills the Moslem to be
a soldier who will ultimately turn his weapons against her; and she sends
her missionaries to awaken in the ulema the proselytizing evil."[38]
Typical of Mohammedan literature on this subject are the following
excerpts from a book published at Cairo in 1907 by an Egyptian, Yahya
Siddyk, significantly entitled "The Awakening of the Islamic Peoples in
the Fourteenth Century of the Hegira."[39] The book is doubly interesting
because the author has a thorough Western education, holding a law degree
from the French university of Toulouse, and is a judge on the Egyptian
bench. Although writing as far back as 1907, Yahya Siddyk clearly foresaw
the imminence of the European War. "Behold," he writes, "these Great
Powers ruining themselves in terrifying armaments; measuring each other's
strength with defiant glances; menacing each other; contracting alliances
which continually break and which presage those terrible shocks which
overturn the world and cover it with ruins, fire, and blood! The future is
God's, and nothing is lasting save His Will!"
He considers the white world degenerate. "Does this mean," he asks, "that
Europe, our 'enlightened guide,' has already reached the summit of its
evolution? Has it already exhausted its vital force by two or three
centuries of hyper-exertion? In other words: is it already stricken with
senility, and will it see itself soon obliged to yield its civilizing role
to other peoples less degenerate, less neurasthenic; that is to say,
younger, more robust, more healthy, than itself? In my opinion, the
present marks Europe's apogee, and its immoderate colonial expansion
means, not strength, but weakness. Despite the aureole of so much
grandeur, power, and glory, Europe is to-day more divided and more fragile
than ever, and ill conceals its malaise, its sufferings, and its anguish.
Its destiny is inexorably working out!...
"The contact of Europe on the East has caused us both much good and much
evil: good, in the material and intellectual sense; evil, from the moral
and political point of view. Exhausted by long struggles, enervated by a
brilliant civilization, the Moslem peoples inevitably fell into a malaise,
but they are not stricken, they are not dead! These peoples, conquered by
the force of cannon, have not in the least lost their unity, even under
the oppressive regimes to which the Europeans have long subjected them....
I have said that the European contact has been salutary to us from both
the material and the intellectual point of view. What reforming Moslem
Princes wished to impose by force on their Moslem subjects is to-day
realized a hundredfold. So great has been our progress in the last
twenty-five years in science, letters, and art that we may well hope to be
in all these things the equals of Europeans in less than half a
century....
"A new era opens for us with the fourteenth century of the Hegira, and
this happy century will mark our renaissance and our great future! A new
breath animates the Mohammedan peoples of all races; all Moslems are
penetrated with the necessity of work and instruction! We all wish to
travel, do business, tempt fortune, brave dangers. There is in the East,
among the Mohammedans, a surprising activity, an animation, unknown
twenty-five years ago.... There is to-day a real public opinion throughout
the East."
The author concludes: "Let us hold firm, each for all, and let us hope,
hope, hope! We are fairly launched on the path of progress: let us profit
by it! It is Europe's very tyranny which has wrought our transformation!
It is our continued contact with Europe which favors our evolution and
inevitably hastens our revival! It is simply History repeating itself; the
Will of God fulfilling itself despite all opposition and all
resistance.... Europe's tutelage over Asiatics is becoming more and more
nominal--the gates of Asia are closing against the European! Surely we
glimpse before us a revolution without parallel in the world's annals. A
new age is at hand!"[40]
If this be indeed the present spirit of Islam it is a portentous fact, for
its numerical strength is very great. The total number of Mohammedans is
estimated at from 200,000,000 to 250,000,000, and they not only
predominate throughout the brown world with the exception of India, but
they also count 10,000,000 adherents in China and are gaining prodigiously
among the blacks of Africa.
The proselyting power of Islam is extraordinary, and its hold upon its
votaries is even more remarkable. Throughout history there has been no
single instance where a people, once become Moslem, has ever abandoned the
faith. Extirpated they may have been, like the Moors of Spain, but
extirpation is not apostasy. This extreme tenacity of Islam, this ability
to keep its hold, once it has got a footing, under all circumstances short
of downright extirpation, must be borne in mind when considering the
future of regions where Islam is to-day advancing.
And, save in eastern Europe, it is to-day advancing along all its
far-flung frontiers. Its most signal victories are being won among the
negro races of central Africa, and this phase will be discussed in the
next chapter, but elsewhere the same conditions, in lesser degree,
prevail. Every Moslem is a born missionary and instinctively propagates
his faith among his non-Moslem neighbors. The quality of this missionary
temper has been well analyzed by Meredith Townsend. "All the emotions
which impel a Christian to proselytize," he writes, "are in a Mussulman
strengthened by all the motives which impel a political leader and all the
motives which sway a recruiting sergeant, until proselytism has become a
passion, which, whenever success seems practicable, and especially success
on a large scale, develops in the quietest Mussulman a fury of ardor which
induces him to break down every obstacle, his own strongest prejudices
included, rather than stand for an instant in the neophyte's way. He
welcomes him as a son, and whatever his own lineage, and whether the
convert be negro, or Chinaman, or Indian, or even European, he will
without hesitation or scruple give him his own child in marriage, and
admit him fully, frankly, and finally into the most exclusive circle in
the world."[41]
Such is the vast and growing body of Islam, to-day seeking to weld its
forces into a higher unity for the combined objectives of spiritual
revival and political emancipation. This unitary movement is known as
"Pan-Islamism." Most Western observers seem to think that Pan-Islamism
centres in the "Caliphate," and European writers to-day hopefully discuss
whether the Caliphate's retention by the discredited Turkish Sultans, its
transferrence to the rulers of the new Arab Hedjaz Kingdom, or its total
suppression, will best clip Islam's wings.
This, however, is a very short-sighted and partial view. The Khalifa or
"Caliph" (to use the Europeanized form), the Prophet's representative on
earth, has played an important historic role, and the institution is still
venerated in Islam. But the Pan-Islamic leaders have long been working on
a much broader basis. Pan-Islamism's real driving power lies, not in the
Caliphate, but in institutions like the "Hajj" or pilgrimage to Mecca, the
propaganda of the "Habl-ul-Matin" or "Tie of True Believers," and the
great religious fraternities. The Meccan Hajj, where tens of thousands of
picked zealots gather every year from every quarter of the Moslem world,
is really an annual Pan-Islamic congress, where all the interests of the
faith are discussed at length, and where plans are elaborated for its
defense and propagation. Similarly ubiquitous is the Pan-Islamic
propaganda of the Habl-ul-Matin, which works tirelessly to compose
sectarian differences and traditional feuds. Lastly, the religious
brotherhoods cover the Islamic world with a network of far-flung
associations, quickening the zeal of their myriad members and
co-ordinating their energies for potential action.
The greatest of these brotherhoods (though there are others of importance)
is the famous Senussiyah, and its history well illustrates Islam's
evolution during the past hundred years. Its founder, Seyyid Mahommed ben
Senussi, was born in Algeria about the beginning of the nineteenth
century. He was of high Arab lineage, tracing his descent from Fatima, the
daughter of the Prophet. In early youth he went to Arabia and there came
under the influence of the Wahabee movement. In middle life he returned to
Africa, settling in the Sahara Desert, and there built up the fraternity
which bears his name. Before his death the order had spread to all parts
of the Mohammedan world, but it is in northern Africa that it has attained
its peculiar pre-eminence. The Senussi Order is divided into local
"Zawias" or lodges, all absolutely dependent upon the Grand Lodge, headed
by The Master, El Senussi. The Grand Mastership still remains in the
family, a grandson of the founder being the order's present head. The
Senussi stronghold is an oasis in the very heart of the Sahara. Only one
European eye has ever seen this mysterious spot. Surrounded by absolute
desert, with wells many leagues apart and the routes of approach known
only to experienced Senussi guides, every one of whom would suffer a
thousand deaths rather than betray him, El Senussi, The Master, sits
serenely apart, sending his orders throughout North Africa.
The Sahara itself is absolutely under Senussi control, while "Zawias"
abound in distant regions like Morocco, Lake Chad, and Somaliland. These
local Zawias are more than mere "lodges." Their spiritual and secular
heads, the "Mokaddem" or priest and the "Wekil" or civil governor, have
discretionary authority not merely over the Zawia members, but also over
the community at large--at least, so great is the awe inspired by the
Senussi throughout North Africa that a word from Wekil or Mokaddem is
always listened to and obeyed. Thus, beside the various European
authorities, British, French, or Italian as the case may be, there exists
an occult government with which the colonial authorities are careful not
to come into conflict.
On their part, the Senussi are equally careful to avoid a downright breach
with the European Powers. Their long-headed, cautious policy is truly
astonishing. For more than half a century the order has been a great
force, yet it has never risked the supreme adventure. In all the numerous
fanatic risings against Europeans which have occurred in various parts of
Africa, local Senussi have undoubtedly taken part, but the order has never
officially entered the lists.
These Fabian tactics as regards open warfare do not mean that the Senussi
are idle. Far from it. On the contrary, they are ceaselessly at work with
the spiritual arms of teaching, discipline, and conversion. The Senussi
programme is the welding, first of Moslem Africa, and later of the whole
Moslem world, into the revived "Imamat" of Islam's early days; into a
great theocracy, embracing all true believers--in other words,
Pan-Islamism. But they believe that the political liberation of Islam from
Christian domination must be preceded by a profound spiritual
regeneration, thereby engendering the moral forces necessary both for the
war of liberation and for the fruitful reconstruction which should follow
thereafter. This is the secret of the order's extraordinary
self-restraint. This is the reason why, year after year, and decade after
decade, the Senussi advance slowly, calmly, coldly, gathering great latent
power but avoiding the temptation to expend it one instant before the
proper time. Meanwhile they are covering Africa with their lodges and
schools, disciplining the people to the voice of their Mokaddems and
Wekils--and converting millions of pagan negroes to the faith of Islam.
And what is true of the Senussi holds equally for the other wise leaders
who guide the Pan-Islamic movement. They know both Europe's strength and
their own weakness. They know the peril of premature action. Feeling that
time is on their side, they are content to await the hour when internal
regeneration and external pressure shall have filled to overflowing the
cup of wrath. This is why Islam has offered only local resistance to the
unparalleled white aggressions of the last twenty years. This is the main
reason why there was no real "Holy War" in 1914. But the materials for a
Holy War have long been piling high, as a retrospective glance will show.
Europe's conquests of Africa and Central Asia toward the close of the last
century, and the subsequent Anglo-French agreement mutually appropriating
Egypt and Morocco, evoked murmurs of impotent fury from the Moslem world.
Under such circumstances the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 sent a feverish
tremor throughout Islam. The Japanese might be idolaters, but the
traditional Moslem loathing of idolaters as beings much lower than
Christians and Jews (recognized by Mohammed as "Peoples of The Book") was
quite effaced by the burning sense of subjugation to the Christian yoke.
Accordingly, the Japanese were hailed as heroes throughout Islam. Here we
see again that tendency toward an understanding between Asiatic and
African races and creeds (in other words, a "Pan-Colored" alliance against
white domination) which has been so patent in recent years. The way in
which Islamic peoples began looking to Japan is revealed by this editorial
in a Persian newspaper, written in the year 1906: "Desirous of becoming as
powerful as Japan and of safeguarding its national independence, Persia
should make common cause with it. An alliance becomes necessary. There
should be a Japanese ambassador at Teheran. Japanese instructors should be
chosen to reorganize the army. Commercial relations should also be
developed."[42] Indeed, some pious Moslems hoped to bring this heroic
people within the Islamic fold. Shortly after the Russo-Japanese War a
Chinese Mohammedan sheikh wrote: "If Japan thinks of becoming some day a
very great power and making Asia the dominator of the other continents, it
will be only by adopting the blessed religion of Islam."[43] And _Al
Mowwayad_, an Egyptian Nationalist journal, remarked: "England, with her
60,000,000 Indian Moslems, dreads this conversion. With a Mohammedan
Japan, Mussulman policy would change entirely."[44] As a matter of fact,
Mohammedan missionaries actually went to Japan, where they were smilingly
received. Of course the Japanese had not the faintest intention of turning
Moslems, but these spontaneous approaches from the brown world were quite
in line with their ambitious plans, which, as the reader will remember,
were just then taking concrete shape.
However, it soon became plain that Japan had no present intention of going
so far afield as Western Asia, and Islam presently had to mourn fresh
losses at Christian hands. In 1911 came Italy's barefaced raid on Turkey's
African dependency of Tripoli. So bitter was the anger in all Mohammedan
lands at this unprovoked aggression that many European observers became
seriously alarmed. "Why has Italy found 'defenseless' Tripoli such a
hornet's nest?" queried Gabriel Hanotaux, a former French minister of
foreign affairs. "It is because she has to do, not merely with Turkey, but
with Islam as well. Italy has set the ball rolling--so much the worse for
her--and for us all."[45] But the Tripoli expedition was only the
beginning of the Christian assault, for next year came the Balkan War,
which sheared away Turkey's European holdings to the walls of
Constantinople and left her crippled and discredited. At these disasters a
cry of wrathful anguish swept the world of Islam from end to end. Here is
how a leading Indian Moslem interpreted the Balkan conflict:
"The King of Greece orders a new crusade. From the London Chancelleries
rise calls to Christian fanaticism, and Saint Petersburg already speaks of
the planting of the cross on the dome of Sant' Sophia. To-day they speak
thus; to-morrow they will thus speak of Jerusalem and the Mosque of Omar.
Brothers! Be ye of one mind, that it is the duty of every true believer to
hasten beneath the Khalifa's banner and to sacrifice his life for the
safety of the faith."[46] And another Indian Moslem leader thus adjured
the British authorities: "I appeal to the present government to change its
anti-Turkish attitude before the fury of millions of Moslem fellow
subjects is kindled to a blaze and brings disaster."[47]
Still more significant were the appeals made by the Indian Moslems to
their Brahman fellow countrymen, the traditionally despised "Idolaters."
These appeals betokened a veritable revolution in outlook, as can be
gauged from the text of one of them, significantly entitled "The Message
of the East." "Spirit of the East," reads this noteworthy document, "arise
and repel the swelling flood of Western aggression! Children of Hindustan,
aid us with your wisdom, culture, and wealth; lend us your power, the
birthright and heritage of the Hindu! Let the Spirit Powers hidden in the
Himalayan mountain-peaks arise. Let prayers to the god of battles float
upward; prayers that right may triumph over might; and call to your myriad
gods to annihilate the armies of the foe!"[48] In China also the same
fraternizing spirit was visible. During the Republican Revolution the
Chinese Mohammedans, instead of holding jealously aloof, co-operated
whole-heartedly with their Buddhist and Confucian fellow citizens, and
Doctor Sun-Yat-Sen, the Republican leader, announced gratefully: "The
Chinese will never forget the assistance which their Moslem compatriots
have rendered in the interest of order and liberty."[49] The Great War
thus found Islam deeply stirred against European aggression, keenly
conscious of its own solidarity, and frankly reaching out for colored
allies in the projected struggle against white domination.
Under these circumstances it may at first sight appear strange that no
general Islamic explosion occurred when Turkey entered the lists at the
close of 1914 and the Sultan-Khalifa issued a formal summons to the Holy
War. Of course this summons was not the flat failure which Allied reports
led the West to believe at the time. As a matter of fact there was trouble
in practically every Mohammedan land under Allied control. To name only a
few of many instances: Egypt broke into a tumult smothered only by
overwhelming British reinforcements, Tripoli burst into a flame of
insurrection that drove the Italians headlong to the coast, Persia was
prevented from joining Turkey only by prompt Russian intervention, and the
Indian Northwest Frontier was the scene of fighting that required the
presence of a quarter of a million Anglo-Indian troops. The British
Government has officially admitted that during 1915 the Allies' Asiatic
and African possessions stood within a hand's breadth of a cataclysmic
insurrection.
That insurrection would certainly have taken place if Islam's leaders had
everywhere spoken the fateful word. But the word was not spoken. Instead,
influential Moslems outside of Turkey generally condemned the latter's
action and did all in their power to calm the passions of the fanatic
multitude. The attitude of these leaders does credit to their
discernment. They recognized that this was neither the time nor the
occasion for a decisive struggle with the West. They were not yet
materially prepared, and they had not perfected their understandings
either among themselves or with their prospective non-Moslem allies. Above
all, the moral urge was lacking. They knew that athwart the Khalifa's writ
was stencilled "Made in Germany." They knew that the "Young Turk" clique
which had engineered the coup was made up of Europeanized renegades, many
of them not even nominal Moslems, but atheistic Jews. Far-sighted Moslems
had no intention of pulling Germany's chestnuts out of the fire, nor did
they wish to further Prussian schemes of world-dominion which for
themselves would have meant a mere change of masters. Far better to let
the white world fight out its desperate feud, weaken itself, and reveal
fully its future intentions. Meanwhile Islam could bide its time, grow in
strength, and await the morrow.
The Versailles Peace Conference was just such a revelation of European
intentions as the Pan-Islamic leaders had been awaiting in order to
perfect their programmes and enlist the moral solidarity of their peoples.
At Versailles the European Powers showed unequivocally that they had no
intention of relaxing their hold upon the Near and Middle East. By a
number of secret treaties negotiated during the war the Ottoman Empire had
been virtually partitioned between the victorious Allies, and these secret
treaties formed the basis of the Versailles settlement. Furthermore,
Egypt had been declared a British protectorate at the very beginning of
the European struggle, while the Versailles Conference had scarcely
adjourned before England announced an "agreement" with Persia which made
that country another British protectorate, in fact, if not in name. The
upshot was, as already stated, that the Near and Middle East were
subjected to European political domination as never before.
But there was another side to the shield. During the war years the Allied
statesmen had officially proclaimed times without number that the war was
being fought to establish a new world-order based on such principles as
the rights of small nations and the liberty of all peoples. These
pronouncements had been treasured and memorized throughout the East. When,
therefore, the East saw a peace settlement based, not upon these high
professions, but upon the imperialistic secret treaties, it was fired with
a moral indignation and sense of outraged justice never known before. A
tide of impassioned determination began rising which has already set the
entire East in tumultuous ferment, and which seems merely the premonitory
ground-swell of a greater storm. Many European students of Eastern affairs
are gravely alarmed at the prospect. Here, for example, is the judgment of
Leone Caetani, Duke of Sermoneta, an Italian authority on Oriental and
Mohammedan questions. Speaking in the spring of 1919 on the war's effect
on the East, he said: "The convulsion has shaken Islamitic and Oriental
civilization to its foundations. The entire Oriental world, from China to
the Mediterranean, is in ferment. Everywhere the hidden fire of
anti-European hatred is burning. Riots in Morocco, risings in Algiers,
discontent in Tripoli, so-called Nationalist attempts in Egypt, Arabia,
and Lybia, are all different manifestations of the same deep sentiment,
and have as their object the rebellion of the Oriental world against
European civilization."[50]
The state of affairs in Egypt is a typical illustration of what has been
going on in the East ever since the close of the late war. Egypt was
occupied by England in 1882, and British rule has conferred immense
material benefits, raising the country from anarchic bankruptcy to ordered
prosperity. Yet British rule was never really popular, and as the years
passed a "Nationalist" movement steadily grew in strength, having for its
slogan the phrase "Egypt for the Egyptians," and demanding Britain's
complete evacuation of the country. This demand Great Britain refused even
to consider. Practically all Englishmen are agreed that Egypt with the
Suez Canal is the vital link between the eastern and western halves of the
British Empire, and they therefore consider the permanent occupation of
Egypt an absolute necessity. There is thus a clear deadlock between
British imperial and Egyptian national convictions.
Some years before the war Egypt became so unruly that England was obliged
to abandon all thoughts of conciliation and initiated a regime of frank
repression enforced by Lord Kitchener's heavy hand. The European War and
Turkey's adhesion to the Teutonic Powers caused fresh outbreaks in Egypt,
but these were quickly repressed and England took advantage of Ottoman
belligerency to abolish the fiction of Turkish overlordship and declare
Egypt a protectorate of the British Empire.
During the war Egypt, flooded with British troops, remained quiet, but the
end of the war gave the signal for an unparalleled outburst of Nationalist
activity. Basing their claims on such doctrines as the "rights of small
nations" and the "self-determination of peoples," the Nationalists
demanded immediate independence and attempted to get Egypt's case before
the Versailles Peace Conference. In defiance of English prohibitions, they
even held a popular plebiscite which upheld their claims. When the British
authorities answered this defiance by arresting Nationalist leaders, Egypt
flamed into rebellion from end to end. Everywhere it was the same story.
Railways and telegraph lines were systematically cut. Trains were stalled
and looted. Isolated British officers and soldiers were murdered. In Cairo
alone, thousands of houses were sacked by the mob. Soon the danger was
rendered more acute by the irruption out of the desert of swarms of
Bedouin Arabs bent on plunder. For a few days Egypt trembled on the verge
of anarchy, and the British Government admitted in Parliament that all
Egypt was in a state of insurrection.
The British authorities, however, met the crisis with vigor and
determination. The number of British troops in Egypt was very large,
trusty black regiments were hurried up from the Sudan, and the
well-disciplined Egyptian native police generally obeyed orders. The
result was that after several weeks of sharp fighting, lasting through the
spring of 1919, Egypt was again gotten under control. The outlook for the
future is, however, ominous in the extreme. Order is indeed restored, but
only the presence of massed British and Sudanese black troops guarantees
that order will be maintained. Even under the present regime of stern
martial law hardly a month passes without fresh rioting and heavy loss of
life. Egypt appears Nationalist to the core, its spokesmen swear they will
accept nothing short of independence, and in the long run Britain will
realize the truth of that pithy saying: "You can do everything with
bayonets except sit on them."
India is likewise in a state of profound unrest. The vast peninsula has
been controlled by England for almost two centuries, yet here again the
last two decades have witnessed a rapidly increasing movement against
British rule. This movement was at first confined to the upper-class
Hindus, the great Mohammedan element preserving its traditional loyalty to
the British "Raj," which it considered a protection against the
Brahmanistic Hindu majority. But, as already seen, the Pan-Islamic leaven
presently reached the Indian Moslems, European aggressions on Islam
stirred their resentment, and at length Moslem and Hindu adjourned their
ancient feud in their new solidarity against European tutelage.
The Great War provoked relatively little sedition in India. Groups of
Hindu extremists, to be sure, hatched terroristic plots and welcomed
German aid, but India as a whole backed England and helped win the war
with both money and men. At the same time, Indians gave notice that they
expected their loyalty to be rewarded, and at the close of the war various
memorials were drawn up calling for drastic modifications of the existing
governmental regime.
India is to-day governed by an English Civil Service whose fairness,
honesty, and general efficiency no informed person can seriously impugn.
But this no longer contents Indian aspirations. India desires not merely
good government but self-government. The ultimate goal of all Indian
reformers is emancipation from European tutelage, though they differ among
themselves as to how and when this emancipation is to be attained. The
most conservative would be content with self-government under British
guidance, the middle group asks for the full status of a Dominion of the
British Empire like Canada and Australia, while the radicals demand
complete independence. Even the most conservative of these demands would,
however, involve great changes of system and a diminution of British
control. Such demands arouse in England mistrust and apprehension.
Englishmen point out that India is not a nation but a congeries of
diverse peoples spiritually sundered by barriers of blood, language,
culture, and religion, and they conclude that, if England's control were
really relaxed, India would get out of hand and drift toward anarchy. As
for Indian independence, the average Englishman cannot abide the thought,
holding it fatal both for the British Empire and for India itself. The
result has been that England has failed to meet Indian demands, and this,
in turn, has roused an acute recrudescence of dissatisfaction and unrest.
The British Government has countered with coercive legislation like the
Rowlatt Acts and has sternly repressed rioting and terrorism. British
authority is still supreme in India. But it is an authority resting more
and more upon force. In fact, some Englishmen have long considered British
rule in India, despite its imposing appearance, a decidedly fragile
affair. Many years ago Meredith Townsend, who certainly knew India well,
wrote:
"The English think they will rule India for many centuries or forever. I
do not think so, holding rather the older belief that the empire which
came in a day will disappear in a night.... Above all this inconceivable
mass of humanity, governing all, protecting all, taxing all, rises what we
call here 'the Empire,' a corporation of less than 1,500 men, partly
chosen by examination, partly by co-optation, who are set to govern, and
who protect themselves in governing by finding pay for a minute white
garrison of 65,000 men, one-fifth of the Roman legions--though the masses
to be controlled are double the subjects of Rome. That corporation and
that garrison constitute the 'Indian Empire.' There is nothing else.
Banish those 1,500 men in black, defeat that slender garrison in red, and
the empire has ended, the structure disappears, and brown India emerges,
unchanged and unchangeable. To support the official world and its
garrison--both, recollect, smaller than those of Belgium--there is, except
Indian opinion, absolutely nothing. Not only is there no white race in
India, not only is there no white colony, but there is no white man who
purposes to remain.... There are no white servants, not even grooms, no
white policemen, no white postmen, no white anything. If the brown men
struck for a week, the 'Empire' would collapse like a house of cards, and
every ruling man would be a starving prisoner in his own house. He could
not move or feed himself or get water."[51]
These words aptly illustrate the truth stated at the beginning of this
book that the basic factor in human affairs is not politics but race, and
that the most imposing political phenomena, of themselves, mean nothing.
And that is just the fatal weakness underlying the white man's present
political domination over the brown world. Throughout that entire world
there is no settled white population save in the French colonies of
Algeria and Tunis along the Mediterranean seaboard, where whites form
perhaps one-sixth of the total. Elsewhere, from Morocco to the Dutch
Indies, there is in the racial sense, as Townsend well says, "no white
anything," and if white rule vanished to-morrow it would not leave a human
trace behind. White rule is therefore purely political, based on
prescription, prestige, and lack of effective opposition. These are indeed
fragile foundations. Let the brown world once make up its mind that the
white man _must_ go, and he _will_ go, for his position will have become
simply impossible. It is not solely a question of a "Holy War"; mere
passive resistance, if genuine and general, would shake white rule to its
foundations. And it is precisely the determination to get rid of white
rule which seems to be spreading like wild-fire over the brown world
to-day. The unrest which I have described in Egypt and India merely typify
what is going on in Morocco, Central Asia, the Dutch Indies, the
Philippines, and every other portion of the brown world whose inhabitants
are above the grade of savages.
Another factor favoring the prospects of brown emancipation is the lack of
sustained resistance which the white world would probably offer. For the
white world's interests in these regions, though great, are not
fundamental; that is to say, racial. However grievously they might suffer
politically and economically, racially the white peoples would lose almost
nothing. Here again we see the basic importance of race in human affairs.
Contrast, for example, England's attitude toward an insurgent India with
France's attitude toward an insurgent North Africa. England, with nothing
racial at stake, would hesitate before a reconquest of India involving
millions of soldiers and billions of treasure. France, on the other hand,
with nearly a million Europeans in her North African possessions, half of
these full-blooded Frenchmen, might risk her last franc and her last
_poilu_ rather than see these blood-brothers slaughtered and enslaved.
Assuming, then, what to-day seems probable, that white political control
over the brown world is destined to be sensibly curtailed if not generally
eliminated, what are the larger racial implications? Above all: will the
browns tend to impinge on white race-areas as the yellows show signs of
doing? Probably, no; at least, not to any great extent. In the first
place, the brown world has within its present confines plenty of room for
potential race-expansion. Outside India, Egypt, Java, and a few lesser
spots, there is scarcely a brown land where natural improvements such as
irrigation would not open up extensive settlement areas. Mesopotamia
alone, now almost uninhabited, might support a vast population, while
Persia could nourish several times its present inhabitants.
India, to be sure, is almost as congested as China, and the spectre of the
Indian coolie has lately alarmed white lands like Canada and South Africa
almost as much as the Chinese coolie has done. But an independent India
would fall under the same political blight as the rest of the brown
world--the blight of internecine dissensions and wars. The brown world's
present growing solidarity is not a positive but a negative phenomenon. It
is an alliance, against a common foe, of traditional enemies who, once the
bond was loosed in victory, would inevitably quarrel among themselves.
Turk would fly at Arab and Turkoman at Persian, as of yore, while India
would become a welter of contending Hindus, Moslems, Sikhs, Gurkhas, and
heaven knows what, until perchance disciplined anew by the pressure of a
Yellow Peril. In Western Asia it is possible that the spiritual and
cultural bonds of Islam might temper these struggles, but Western Asia is
precisely that part of the brown world where population-pressure is
absent. India, the overpeopled brown land, would undergo such a cycle of
strife as would devour its human surplus and render distant aggressions
impossible.
A potential brown menace to white race-areas would, indeed, arise in case
of a brown-yellow alliance against the white peoples. But such an alliance
could occur only in the first stages of a pan-colored war of liberation
while the pressure of white world-predominance was still keenly felt and
before the divisive tendencies within the brown world had begun to take
effect.
Short of such an alliance (wherein the browns would abet the yellows'
aggressive, racial objectives in return for yellow support of their own
essentially defensive, political ends), the brown world's emancipation
from white domination would apparently not result in more than local
pressures on white race-areas. It would, however, affect another sphere of
white political control--black Africa. The emancipation of brown, Islamic
North Africa would inevitably send a sympathetic thrill through every
portion of the Dark Continent and would stir both Mohammedan and pagan
negroes against white rule. Islam is, in fact, the intimate link between
the brown and black worlds. But this subject, with its momentous
implications, will be discussed in the next chapter.