Discussing in the new edition of his erudite 'Preaching of 'Islam' the causes of the continued spread of the faith in the almost entire absence of systematic missionary organisation, Professor T. W. Arnold lays stress on the non-political PanIslamic movement rendered possible to a degree undreamt of by earlier generations by modern means of communication, and seeking to bind all nations of the Moslem world in a common bond of sympathy:

'This trend of thought gives a powerful stimulus to missionary labours; the effort to realise in actual life the Moslem ideal of brotherhood of all believers reacts on collateral ideals of the faith, and the sense of a vast unity and of a common life running through the nations, inspirits the hearts of the faithful and makes them bold to speak in the presence of the unbelievers; . . . The spiritual energy of Islam is not, as has been so often maintained, commensurate with its political power.'

During the currency of the Balkan war we were needlessly told that Great Britain could not allow her international policy to be dictated by the wishes of the King's Moslem subjects. For this no sane Mussulman asks. It is obvious that a great variety of factors have to be taken into account in the shaping of British foreign policy; but surely one of these, which should be entitled to the fullest consideration, is the sentiment of a people, nearly 100 millions of whom are under the sovereignty or protection of King George. It should at least be held as a working thesis for the Foreign Office that when British interests generally coincide with Moslem wishes, the combination is advantageous. But when the Prime Minister publicly lectured the Porte for reoccupying Adrianople by force of arms and warned her to clear out, Indian Moslems asked in vain what British interests would be served by turning Turkey out of Adrianople and installing the Bulgarians against the wishes of the inhabitants. I have a firm conviction that if important British interests were disturbed by Turkish policy—if, for example, we can imagine the Ottoman Government threatening the independence of Holland or Belgium-the Indian Moslems would give no moral support to such a policy, and indeed would loyally uphold England in taking active measures for its frustration. But why should England have gone out of her way to support Bulgarian aggression in Thrace, contrary to the strong wishes of her Moslem subjects, and to local sentiment and interests?

The events of the last two years have not shaken the conviction of Indian Moslems that Great Britain in her own interests should be the friend and supporter of the Ottoman power. It is all very well to say that the Young Turks have forfeited the hopes and good wishes entertained when they overthrew the Hamidian régime. It is not fair to judge the administrative capacity of a people unversed in the great art of constitutional government when they are engaged in a life-and-death struggle, brought upon them in the first instance by the unprovoked aggression of one of the Great Powers of Europe. Their dissensions, and at some critical moments their incompetence, have to be recognised; but they must be judged by their powers of statesmanship when there is some recovery from the exhaustion of the fighting and tumults of the last two years, and the great and difficult work of reconstruction has been entered upon. After all, their misdeeds bear no comparison with those of the sanguinary Commune ushering in the Third Republic of France, which has now stood unshaken the test of more than forty years' existence.

Indian Moslems strongly hold that in the reconstructive work before the Constantinople Government the moral support of Great Britain is called for in her own interests. The breakup of Turkey and the partition of her Asiatic provinces must be disadvantageous to Great Britain in any conceivable scheme of distribution. France would lay claim to Syria, Germany to Anatolia with Northern and Central Mesopotamia, and Russia to Kurdistan and Armenia. Great Britain would be left to take Arabia and Southern Mesopotamia, and would thus become possessed of another wild country without possibilities of great development and with a long and exposed frontier. Side by side with this cumbersome and barren increase of territorial responsibility, the British Empire would be brought into closer contact with the great continental Powers whose immense armies would be less dependent on the sea for their communications. The route to India, already removed from exclusively British keeping, would then be further exposed to attack by several other Powers. For these reasons a strong and stable Turkish Government in Asia ought to be a cardinal principle of British international policy. To Mahommedans it is reassuring to know that

the above considerations are duly recognised by the just and wise statesman who now rules India. Lord Hardinge won the grateful thanks of the community by the ready encouragement he gave to their practical sympathy with the Turkish troops and people by placing himself at the head of the Red Crescent movement, which was so splendidly responded to by all classes of Moslems. He has further consoled and gratified Mahommedans by the assurance he gave in the Imperial Legislative Council on the 17th of September last, that:

'The British Government, who fully realise the importance of the existence of Turkey as an independent Power, and, in view of the religious interests of the Mahommedans of India, the necessity for the maintenance of the status quo as regards the Holy Places in Arabia, are still anxious and ready to help the Turkish Government to introduce reforms and good government, and to consolidate the position of Turkey. There is absolutely no reason why Turkey, while pursuing a steady policy of reforms, should not still be strong and powerful and the second greatest Mahommedan Power in the world.'

The Indian Moslems are also grateful to Lord Hardinge for the withdrawal of the regiment of the Central India Horse which was sent to Southern Persia some time ago, and for his recognition in the speech just quoted of the anxiety of the Moslem peoples that no step should be taken calculated to further weaken the sovereignty and independence of Iran. But they feel that Great Britain has been far too complaisant in respect to the arbitrary proceedings of Russia in the north. Mindful of the history of Muscovite absorption of the Central Asian Khanates, they fear that annexation, in fact if not expressly in name, will be the inevitable sequel of Russian policy. If Russia took the north, England would have to make another Afghanistan, much less easily defensible, out of the south. The Indian Moslems are also concerned to see Great Britain taking part with apparent readiness in the formulation of projects for a trans-Persian railway that can benefit only Russia. Great Britain continually claims to be the friend of Persia, and it may be hoped that she will exercise the duties and privileges of friendship by giving moral and financial support only to railways designed for Persia's commercial development instead of consenting to a strategical line through the unpeopled deserts of Yezd, Kerman, and Baluchistan. Any line designed to develop Persian or Anglo

Indian commerce would run from the head waters of the Gulf to the centres of population in Persian Irak and join the Russian section at Ispahan. But a trans-continental line for the convenience of travellers to India, and avoiding all the potentially rich parts of Persia, will do little or nothing to regenerate that country or further develop Anglo-Indian trade. In this matter also British and Moslem interests converge. A railway through Eastern Persia into India would be a constant menace on the frontier, and British participation or acquiescence therein would be at variance with the traditional policy pursued with watchful vigilance and at heavy if necessary cost to India for a century past.

The Indian Moslem does not ask for the surrender of any British interests; he simply points out that these interests are in accord with Moslem sentiment and wishes. Yet his incursion into international politics is frowned upon in reactionary Anglo-Indian quarters as if it were in some mysterious and inexplicable way disloyal. People who make these charges might reflect that the Mussulmans of India gain absolutely nothing for themselves, in any material or political sense, from the preservation of the Moslem States; they are simply animated by the sentiments of unity and brotherhood above referred to, which are stronger than these unsympathetic and unimaginative critics can realise.

But with the Turkish reoccupation and retention of Adrianople the tension has been relaxed and the Indian Moslems are once more turning their thoughts to internal affairs. The critics have been perturbed by the appearance on the scene of a new type of Moslem, who, apart from Islamic religion and sentiment, has gone through exactly the same education and training as young Hindus of the same social class. This type did not formerly exist, for in the old days the Hindu and the Mussulman of the same social class were brought up on an entirely different educational basis. The young Mussulman had to make it his chief concern to be well cultured in Persian and Arabic. There were thus few points of contact between Mahommedan and Hindu, and, in the stage of political development India had reached, much less ground for and possibility of unity of effort than now. Take any typical young Mahommedan of the upper middle classes to-day, and it will be found that, apart from the traditional religion of his family inculcated by his mother, his

education has been entirely on the lines of a Hindu of the same class. Even in the case of a student from a Moslem institution like the Aligarh College, the course of studies, the training of the teachers and their outlook, and the probable profession of the student in the future, are the same as in a Government or a Hindu college.

These considerations are even more applicable to the increasing throng of Moslems coming to England and joining Hindu fellow-countrymen at the Universities, the Inns of Court, and the Technical Schools. This potent change, which has attracted much less attention than it has deserved, is not much if any older than the still youthful twentieth century, and it has only begun to make itself felt effectively in actual political life within the last two or three years. The men brought up under the new system are coming to the front, and have influenced the increasing approximation of political views and sentiments among educated men of the different communities. This unity is a measure of the growth of Indian nationhood, and it is the part of wise statesmanship, British and Indian, in the domain of internal affairs, to seek, not so much to satisfy the Mussulmans as Mussulmans or the Hindus as Hindus, as to win the hearty co-operation of all moderate, loyal, and reasonable opinion wherever it exists. It is the only policy that will succeed, in Lord Morley's phrase, in' rallying the Moderates,' and thus forming the most effective instrument in the discomfiture and impotence of the small but active element in Indian life which, as Lord Sydenham has said, must be reckoned as permanently hostile to British rule. While at the one extreme there is a handful of revolutionaries, at the other there is a worthy, substantial but decreasing class of men of the old school who think it right to accept whatever the Government, or even the officials, may decree without exercising any critical faculty thereon. But between these two there is a vast mass of Indian opinion passing through a transition stage, alert, sometimes fault-finding, perhaps suspicious, perhaps not very clearly knowing what it wants, and greatly perplexed and disheartened by such questions as the treatment of Indians in South Africa, greatly anxious and worried about the future of Indians in East Africa and in the island of Zanzibar. With all his weaknesses, this type of man, if rightly handled, is essentially reasonable at bottom, loyal to the King, and fully aware that India's