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 rôle 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 régimes 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 rôle, 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 régime 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 régime 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 régime.
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.
CHAPTER IV
BLACK MAN’S LAND
Black Man’s Land is primarily Africa south of the Sahara Desert. Here dwell the bulk of all the 150,000,000 black men on earth. The negro and negroid population of Africa is estimated at about 120,000,000—four-fifths of the black race-total. Besides its African nucleus the black race has two distant outposts: the one in Australasia, the other in the Americas. The Eastern blacks are found mainly in the archipelagoes lying between the Asiatic land-mass and Australia. They are the Oriental survivors of the black belt which in very ancient times stretched uninterruptedly from Africa across southern Asia to the Pacific Ocean. The Asiatic blacks were overwhelmed by other races ages ago, and only a few wild tribes like the “Negritos” of the Philippines and the jungle-dwellers of Indo-China and southern India survive as genuine negroid stocks. All the peoples of southern Asia, however, are darkened by this ancient negroid strain. The peoples of south India are notably tinged with black blood. As for the pure blacks of the Australasian archipelagoes, they are so few in numbers (about 3,000,000) and so low in type that they are of negligible importance. Quite otherwise are the blacks of the Far West. In the western hemisphere there are some 25,000,000 persons of more or less mixed black blood, brought thither in modern times as slaves by the white conquerors of the New World. Still, whatever may be the destiny of these transplanted black folk, the black man’s chief significance, from the world aspect, must remain bound up with the great nucleus of negro population in the African homeland.
Black Africa, as I have said, lies south of the Sahara Desert. Here the negro has dwelt for unnumbered ages. The key-note of black history, like yellow history, has been isolation. Cut off from the Mediterranean by the desert which he had no means of crossing, and bounded elsewhere by oceans which he had no skill in navigating, the black man vegetated in savage obscurity, his habitat being well named the “Dark Continent.”
Until the white tide began breaking on its sea-fronts four centuries ago, the black world’s only external stimuli had come from brown men landing on its eastern coasts or ascending the valley of the Nile. As time passed, both brown and white pressures became more intense, albeit the browns long led in the process of penetration. Advancing from the east and trickling across the desert from the north, Arab or Arabized adventurers conquered black Africa to the equator; and this political subjugation had also a racial side, for the conquerors sowed their blood freely and set a brownish stamp on many regions. As for the whites, they long remained mere birds of passage. Half a century ago they possessed little more than trading-posts along the littorals, their only real settlement lying in the extreme south.
Then, suddenly, all was changed. In the closing decades of the nineteenth century, Europe turned its gaze full upon the Dark Continent, and within a generation Africa was partitioned between the European Powers. Negro and Arab alike fell under European domination. Only minute Liberia and remote Abyssinia retained a qualified independence. Furthermore, white settlement also made distinct progress. The tropical bulk of Africa defied white colonization, but the continent’s northern and southern extremities were climatically “white man’s country.” Accordingly, there are to-day nearly a million whites settled along the Algerian and Tunisian seaboard, while in South Africa, Dutch and British blood has built up a powerful commonwealth containing fully one and one-half million white souls. In Africa, unlike Asia, the European has taken root, and has thus gained at least local tenures of a fundamental nature.
The crux of the African problem therefore resolves itself into the question whether the white man, through consolidated racial holds north and south, will be able to perpetuate his present political control over the intermediate continental mass which climate debars him from populating. This is a matter of great importance, for Africa is a land of enormous potential wealth, the natural source of Europe’s tropical raw materials and foodstuffs. Whether Europe is to retain possession depends, in the last analysis, on the character of the inhabitants. It is, then, to the nature of the black man and his connection with the brown world that we must direct our attention.
From the first glance we see that, in the negro, we are in the presence of a being differing profoundly not merely from the white man but also from those human types which we discovered in our surveys of the brown and yellow worlds. The black man is, indeed, sharply differentiated from the other branches of mankind. His outstanding quality is superabundant animal vitality. In this he easily surpasses all other races. To it he owes his intense emotionalism. To it, again, is due his extreme fecundity, the negro being the quickest of breeders. This abounding vitality shows in many other ways, such as the negro’s ability to survive harsh conditions of slavery under which other races have soon succumbed. Lastly, in ethnic crossings, the negro strikingly displays his prepotency, for black blood, once entering a human stock, seems never really bred out again.
Negro fecundity is a prime factor in Africa’s future. In the savage state which until recently prevailed, black multiplication was kept down by a wide variety of checks. Both natural and social causes combined to maintain an extremely high death-rate. The negro’s political ineptitude, never rising above the tribal concept, kept black Africa a mosaic of peoples, warring savagely among themselves and widely addicted to cannibalism. Then, too, the native religions were usually sanguinary, demanding a prodigality of human sacrifices. The killings ordained by negro wizards and witch-doctors sometimes attained unbelievable proportions. The combined result of all this was a wastage of life which in other races would have spelled a declining population. Since the establishment of white political control, however, these checks on black fecundity are no longer operative. The white rulers fight filth and disease, stop tribal wars, and stamp out superstitious abominations. In consequence, population increases by leaps and bounds, the latent possibilities being shown in the native reservations in South Africa, where tribes have increased as much as tenfold in fifty or sixty years. It is therefore practically certain that the African negroes will multiply prodigiously in the next few decades.
Now, what will be the attitude of these augmenting black masses toward white political dominion? To that momentous query no certain answer can be made. One thing, however, seems clear: the black world’s reaction to white ascendancy will be markedly different from those of the brown and yellow worlds, because of the profound dissimilarities between negroes and men of other stocks. To begin with, the black peoples have no historic pasts. Never having evolved civilizations of their own, they are practically devoid of that accumulated mass of beliefs, thoughts, and experiences which render Asiatics so, impenetrable and so hostile to white influences. Although the white race displays sustained constructive power to an unrivalled degree, particularly in its Nordic branches, the brown and yellow peoples have contributed greatly to the civilization of the world and have profoundly influenced human progress. The negro, on the contrary, has contributed virtually nothing. Left to himself, he remained a savage, and in the past his only quickening has been where brown men have imposed their ideas and altered his blood. The originating powers of the European and the Asiatic are not in him.
This lack of constructive originality, however, renders the negro extremely susceptible to external influences. The Asiatic, conscious of his past and his potentialities, is chary of foreign innovations and refuses to recognize alien superiority. The negro, having no past, welcomes novelty and tacitly admits that others are his masters. Both brown and white men have been so accepted in Africa. The relatively faint resistance offered by the naturally brave blacks to white and brown conquest, the ready reception of Christianity and Islam, and the extraordinary personal ascendancy acquired by individual Arabs and Europeans, all indicate a willingness to accept foreign tutelage which in the Asiatic is wholly absent.
The Arab and the European are, in fact, rivals for the mastership of black Africa. The Arab had a long start, but the European suddenly overtook him and brought not only the blacks but the African Arabs themselves under his sway. It remains to be seen whether the Arab, allying himself with the blacks, can oust his white rival. That some such move will be attempted, in view of the brown world’s renaissance in general and the extraordinary activity of the Arab peoples in particular, seems a foregone conclusion. How the matter will work out depends on three things: (1) the brown man’s inherent strength in Africa; (2) the possibilities of black disaffection against white tutelage; (3) the white man’s strength and power of resistance.
The seat of brown power in Africa is of course the great belt of territory north of the Sahara. From Egypt to Morocco the inhabitants are Arabized in culture and Mohammedan in faith, while Arab blood has percolated ever since the Moslem conquest twelve centuries ago. In the eastern half of this zone Arabization has been complete, and Egypt, Tripoli, and the Sudan can be considered as unalterably wedded to the brown Islamic world. The zone’s western half, however, is in different case. The majority of its inhabitants are Berbers, an ancient stock generally considered white, with close affinities to the Latin peoples across the Mediterranean. As usual, blood tells. The Berbers have been under Arab tutelage for over a thousand years, yet their whole manner of life remains distinct, they have largely kept their language, and there has been comparatively little intermarriage. Pure-blooded Arabs abound, but they are still, in a way, foreigners. To-day the entire region is under white, French, rule. Algeria, in particular, has been politically French for almost a hundred years. Europeans have come in and number nearly a million souls. The Arab element shows itself sullen and refractory, but the Berbers display much less aversion to French rule, which, as usual, is considerate of native susceptibilities. The French colonial authorities are alive to the Berber’s ethnic affinities and tactfully seek to stimulate his dormant white consciousness. In Algeria intermarriage between Europeans and Berbers has actually begun. Of course the process is merely in its first stages. Still, the blood is there, the leaven is working, and in time Northwest Africa may return to the white world, where it was in Roman days and where it racially belongs. In the anti-European disturbances now taking place in Algeria and Tunis it is safe to say that the Arab element is making most of the trouble.
It is Northeast Africa, then, which is the real nucleus of Arabism. Here Arabism and Islam rule unchecked, and in the preceding chapter we saw how the Senussi Order was marshalling the fierce nomads of the desert. These tribesmen are relatively few in numbers, but more splendid fighting material does not exist in the wide world. Furthermore, the Arab-negroid peoples which have developed along the southern edge of the desert so blend the martial qualities of both strains that they frequently display an almost demoniacal fighting-power. It is Pan-Islamism’s hope to use these Arab or Arabized fanatics as an officers’ corps for the black millions whom it is converting to the faith.
Concerning Islam’s steady progress in black Africa there can be no shadow of a doubt. Every candid European observer tells the same story. “Mohammedanism,” says Sir Charles Elliott, “can still give the natives a motive for animosity against Europeans and a unity of which they are otherwise incapable.”[52] Twenty years ago another English observer, T. R. Threlfall, wrote: “Mohammedanism is making marvellous progress in the interior of Africa. It is crushing paganism out. Against it the Christian propaganda is a myth.... The rapid spread of militant Mohammedanism among the savage tribes to the north of the equator is a serious factor in the fight for racial supremacy in Africa. With very few exceptions the colored races of Africa are pre-eminently fighters. To them the law of the stronger is supreme; they have been conquered, and in turn they conquered. To them the fierce, warlike spirit inherent in Mohammedanism is infinitely more attractive than is the gentle, peace-loving, high moral standard of Christianity: hence, the rapid headway the former is making in central Africa, and the certainty that it will soon spread to the south of the Zambezi.”[53]
The way in which Islam is marching southward is dramatically shown by a recent incident. A few years ago the British authorities suddenly discovered that Mohammedanism was pervading Nyassaland. An investigation brought out the fact that it was the work of Zanzibar Arabs. They began their propaganda about 1900. Ten years later almost every village in southern Nyassaland had its Moslem teacher and its mosque-hut. Although the movement was frankly anti-European, the British authorities did not dare to check it for fear of repercussions elsewhere. Another interesting fact, probably not unconnected, is that Nyassaland has lately been the theatre of an anti-white “Christian” propaganda—the so-called “Ethiopian Church,” of which I shall presently speak.
Islam has thus two avenues of approach to the African negro—his natural preference for a militant faith and his resentment at white tutelage. It is the disinclination of the more martial African peoples for a pacific creed which perhaps accounts for Christianity’s slow progress among the very warlike tribes of South Africa, such as the Zulus and the Matabele. Islam is as yet unknown south of the Zambezi, but white men universally dread the possibility of its appearance, fearing its effect upon the natives. Of course Christianity has made distinct progress in the Dark Continent. The natives of the South African Union are predominantly Christianized. In east-central Africa Christianity has also gained many converts, particularly in Uganda, while on the West African Guinea coast Christian missions have long been established and have generally succeeded in keeping Islam away from the seaboard. Certainly, all white men, whether professing Christians or not, should welcome the success of missionary efforts in Africa. The degrading fetishism and demonology which sum up the native pagan cults cannot stand, and all negroes will some day be either Christians or Moslems. In so far as he is Christianized, the negro’s savage instincts will be restrained and he will be disposed to acquiesce in white tutelage. In so far as he is Islamized, the negro’s warlike propensities will be inflamed, and he will be used as the tool of Arab Pan-Islamism seeking to drive the white man from Africa and make the continent its very own.
As to specific anti-white sentiments among negroes untouched by Moslem propaganda, such sentiments undoubtedly exist in many quarters. The strongest manifestations are in South Africa, where interracial relations are bad and becoming worse, but there is much diffused, half-articulate dislike of white men throughout central Africa as well. Devoid though the African savage is of either national or cultural consciousness, he could not be expected to welcome a tutelage which imposed many irksome restrictions upon him. Furthermore, the African negro does seem to possess a certain rudimentary sense of race-solidarity. The existence of both these sentiments is proved by the way in which the news of white military reverses have at once been known and rejoiced in all over black Africa; spread, it would seem, by those mysterious methods of communication employed by negroes everywhere and called in our Southern States “grape-vine telegraph.” The Russo-Japanese War, for example, produced all over the Dark Continent intensely exciting effects.
This generalized anti-white feeling has, during the past decade, taken tangible form in South Africa. The white population of the Union, though numbering 1,500,000, is surrounded by a black population four times as great and increasing more rapidly, while in many sections the whites are outnumbered ten to one. The result is a state of affairs exactly paralleling conditions in our own South, the South African whites feeling obliged to protect their ascendancy by elaborate legal regulations and social taboos. The negroes have been rapidly growing more restive under these discriminations, and unpleasant episodes like race-riots, rapings, and lynchings are increasing in South Africa from year to year.
One of the most significant, not to say ominous, signs of the times is the “Ethiopian Church” movement. The movement began about fifteen years ago, some of its founders being Afro-American Methodist preachers—a fact which throws a curious light on possible American negro reflexes upon their ancestral homeland. The movement spread rapidly, many native mission congregations cutting loose from white ecclesiastical control and joining the negro organization. It also soon displayed frankly anti-white tendencies, and the government became seriously alarmed at its unsettling influence upon the native mind. It was suspected of having had a hand in the Zulu rising which broke out in Natal in 1907 and which was put down only after many whites and thousands of natives had lost their lives. Shortly afterward the authorities outlawed the Ethiopian Church and forbade Afro-American preachers to enter South Africa, but the movement, though legally suppressed, lived surreptitiously on and appeared in new quarters.
In 1915 a peculiarly fanatical form of Ethiopianism broke out in Nyassaland. Its leader was a certain John Chilembwe, an Ethiopian preacher who had been educated in the United States. His propaganda was bitterly anti-white, asserting that Africa belonged to the black man, that the white man was an intruder, and that he ought to be killed off until he grew discouraged and abandoned the country. Chilembwe plotted a rising all over Nyassaland, the killing of the white men, and the carrying off of the white women. In January, 1915, the rising took place. Some plantations were sacked and several whites killed, their heads being carried to Chilembwe’s “church,” where a thanksgiving service for victory was held. The whites, however, acted with great vigor, the poorly armed insurgents were quickly scattered, and John Chilembwe himself was soon hunted down and killed. In itself, the incident was of slight importance, but, taken in connection with much else, it does not augur well for the future.[54]
An interesting indication of the growing sense of negro race-solidarity was the “Pan-African Congress” held at Paris early in 1919. Here delegates from black communities throughout the world gathered to discuss matters of common interest. Most of the delegates were from Africa and the Americas, but one delegate from New Guinea was also present, thus representing the Australasian branch of the black race. The Congress was not largely attended and was of a somewhat provisional character, but arrangements for the holding of subsequent congresses were made.
Here, then, is the African problem’s present status: To begin with, we have a rapidly growing black population, increasingly restive under white tutelage and continually excited by Pan-Islamic propaganda with the further complication of another anti-white propaganda spread by negro radicals from America.
The African situation is thus somewhat analogous to conditions in Asia. But the analogy must not be pressed too far. In Asia white hegemony rests solely on political bases, while the Asiatics themselves, browns and yellows alike, display constructive power and possess civilizations built up by their own efforts from the remote past. The Asiatics are to-day once more displaying their innate capacity by not merely adopting, but adapting, white ideas and methods. We behold an Asiatic renaissance, whose genuineness is best attested by the fact that there have been similar movements in past times.
None of this applies to Africa. The black race has never shown real constructive power. It has never built up a native civilization. Such progress as certain negro groups have made has been due to external pressure and has never long outlived that pressure’s removal, for the negro, when left to himself, as in Haiti and Liberia, rapidly reverts to his ancestral ways. The negro is a facile, even eager, imitator; but there he stops. He adopts; but he does not adapt, assimilate, and give forth creatively again.
The whole of history testifies to this truth. As the Englishman Meredith Townsend says: “None of the black races, whether negro or Australian, have shown within the historic time the capacity to develop civilization. They have never passed the boundaries of their own habitats as conquerors, and never exercised the smallest influence over peoples not black. They have never founded a stone city, have never built a ship, have never produced a literature, have never suggested a creed.... There seems to be no reason for this except race. It is said that the negro has been buried in the most ‘massive’ of the four continents, and has been, so to speak, lost to humanity; but he was always on the Nile, the immediate road to the Mediterranean, and in West and East Africa he was on the sea. Africa is probably more fertile, and almost certainly richer than Asia, and is pierced by rivers as mighty, and some of them at least as navigable. What could a singularly healthy race, armed with a constitution which resists the sun and defies malaria, wish for better than to be seated on the Nile, or the Congo, or the Niger, in numbers amply sufficient to execute any needed work, from the cutting of forests and the making of roads up to the building of cities? How was the negro more secluded than the Peruvian; or why was he ‘shut up’ worse than the Tartar of Samarcand, who one day shook himself, gave up all tribal feuds, and, from the Sea of Okhotsk to the Baltic and southward to the Nerbudda, mastered the world?... The negro went by himself far beyond the Australian savage. He learned the use of fire, the fact that sown grain will grow, the value of shelter, the use of the bow and the canoe, and the good of clothes; but there to all appearances he stopped, unable, until stimulated by another race like the Arab, to advance another step.”[55]
Unless, then, every lesson of history is to be disregarded, we must conclude that black Africa is unable to stand alone. The black man’s numbers may increase prodigiously and acquire alien veneers, but the black man’s nature will not change. Black unrest may grow and cause much trouble. Nevertheless, the white man must stand fast in Africa. No black “renaissance” impends, and Africa, if abandoned by the whites, would merely fall beneath the onset of the browns. And that would be a great calamity. As stated in the preceding chapter, the brown peoples, of themselves, do not directly menace white race-areas, while Pan-Islamism is at present an essentially defensive movement. But Islam is militant by nature, and the Arab is a restless and warlike breed. Pan-Islamism once possessed of the Dark Continent and fired by militant zealots, might forge black Africa into a sword of wrath, the executor of sinister adventures.
Fortunately the white man has every reason for keeping a firm hold on Africa. Not only are its central tropics prime sources of raw materials and foodstuffs which white direction can alone develop, but to north and south the white man has struck deep roots into the soil. Both extremities of the continent are “white man’s country,” where strong white peoples should ultimately arise. Two of the chief white Powers, Britain and France, are pledged to the hilt in this racial task and will spare no effort to safeguard the heritage of their pioneering children. Brown influence in Africa is strong, but it is supreme only in the northeast and its line of communication with the Asiatic homeland runs over the narrow neck of Suez. Should stern necessity arise, the white world could hold Suez against Asiatic assault and crush brown resistance in Africa.
In short, the real danger to white control of Africa lies, not in brown attack or black revolt, but in possible white weakness through chronic discord within the white world itself. And that subject must be reserved for later chapters.