is in Boston, to come away each time filled with wonder at a charm and comic spirit that have never flagged. Not the Janauschek of the thunderous and bosom-beating times, but the kindly Hausfrau who used to search her memories of the palmy days as she rocked comfortably in the evenings on the veranda of Mrs. Fiske's home in New York.

And if it were left for me to write that story, I would certainly want some reference to "Fogg's Ferry," the wild Western melodrama with which in the early eighties Miss Maddern herself came out of the West. Only the other day the man who wrote it passed on. It was her first appearance in our part of the country as a star, and she could not have been more than sixteen at the time. Not from her, but as a friend of a friend of Frohman's, I learned how profound was the impression she made then on two young adventurers of the theater who crossed her trail in Boston and aspired to place her under contract forever and ever. One was named Charles Frohman, the other was named David Belasco. One evening they met in the lobby of the old Boston Museum and poured forth to each other their faith in the new star that had shot across the theatrical firmament. Soon Frohman became so worked up that he borrowed two dollars and

man made his way to a florist's and demanded as fine a bouquet as his funds would buy. Then, with his arms full of flowers and his head full of dreams, he made for the theater where "Fogg's Ferry" was the bill. As he approached the alley leading to the stage-door his heart sank at a strange apparition. There,

hurried away. It is not puzzling that

he should have had to borrow that staggering sum in those lean days, but it is a little mysterious that Belasco should have had it to lend. With it Froh

entering the same alley, with the same. token under his arm, was the young Belasco. It was too much. The two met at the stagedoor, each grimly determined that his flowers and his offer should go in first.

A scuffle followed, and soon the stagehands were rushing to the heroine of the story with accounts of the pitched battle between her admirers. She could not have guessed that the fight for her favor was between two who would achieve inin the theater of She was merely

ternational reputation twenty years after. gratified, exhilarated, and delighted beyond measure. by the flowers and the fight. I have never been able to learn whose bouquet did pass the door first, but

I suspect it was Frohman's, for thirty years later when he hobbled back-stage at the Hudson Theater when she was playing there in "The High Road," his first greeting was, "Did you keep the flowers?" Whereat she beamed upon him and held out both her hands.

"O my dear Mr. Frohman," she said, "would that I could have!"

But, then, that is just a scrap from a story I hope will be written one of these fine days by somebody else.

DURING the thousand years between

the Battle of Tours and the Battle of Vienna, which marked the extreme advance of Islam in western and eastern Europe, Mohammedan states and Mohammedan races were a constant menace to the security and prosperity of Europe because of their military strength, their control of the Mediterranean, and the temptation alliance with them afforded to European states to strike at one another to the detriment of Christianity. and civilization. In the decadence of Islam, Mohammedan states have remained a menace to the development of European civilization and to international harmony and understanding. Their flags no longer float on the Mediterranean, their military power is broken; but their very impotence makes them. more dangerous than ever before. They

are

more susceptible to diplomatic intrigues. Their defenselessness has kept whetted the territorial appetite of the European powers. Some choice morsels have already been devoured: Russia was eating steadily until she reached Armenia across the Caucasus in 1878; France and England did not stop for half a century until Tunis was consumed in 1881 and Egypt in 1882; Austria revived the European traditions of the generation before in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908; Italy and France in Tripoli and Morocco in 1911.

And after the present war, what more? Russia already has her hands on the rest of Armenia, and has publicly stated that

her allies have "awarded" to her Constantinople in the future treaty; French public opinion claims Syria; Great Britain, ensconced in Mesopotamia, is making desperate efforts to reach Bagdad; Persia is the scene of bitter struggles between the belligerents, none of whom has paid the slightest attention to Persian protests against the violation of her neutrality; Italy makes no secret of her intentions in regard to Albania and Asia Minor; Austria-Hungary holds most of Albania, and is credited with ambitions in Macedonia to the detriment of Bulgaria and Greece; and Germany, with one foot on Belgium and the other on Serbia, declares her own territorial disinterestedness, and claims to be the protector of the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, and the sole friend left to Islam.

When one is writing on a special phase of a complex problem there is danger of over-emphasis, of exaggerating the importance of the particular phase under consideration. Perhaps it would be as naïve and as oblivious to a multitude of issues to say that the present war arose in the near East as to say that Great Britain came into the war to defend the principle of Belgium's neutrality. And yet the history of international relations during the last hundred years shows in almost every decade the decisive influence. of the question of the devolution of Mohammedan lands in the foreign policy of the great powers. Who can deny that the Eastern Question, created by the decadence of Islam and kept in the foreground of diplomatic preoccupations by the fear of each power that every other

power was trying to "get in on the ground floor" in Mohammedan countries, has been the principal factor in European alliances and European conflicts since the Congress of Vienna?

Napoleon's lack of success in holding Alexander after the Tilsit interview; the impairment of the Holy Alliance over the questions raised by the War of Greek Independence; the policy of England toward France in regard to Mohammed Ali; the Crimean War and the Treaty of Paris; French intervention in Syria; Bismarck's bribe to Russia in 1870; the attitude of England and Austria toward Russia in the Turkish war of 1877 and the Congress of Berlin; Italy's entrance into the Triple Alliance after France took Tunis; the Anglo-French Agreement of 1904, with Egypt and Morocco as the principal "compensations"; the AngloRussian Agreement of 1907, for which Persia paid the piper; Russia's use of her opportunity in Serbia after AustriaHungary annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina; the effect of maritime considerations upon Italy's international relations when she found herself in Tripoli and Rhodes; the change in the attitude of the Balkan States toward one another when the powers imposed the Albanian embargo -had all these events no part in preparing and precipitating the Great War? Are they not exercising a potent influence upon the course of the war? Shall we not have to go back to them, and take them into account, in the reconstruction of Europe? To put Prussian militarism in the place of devolution of Mohammedan territories as the summum malum from which Europe is suffering does not augur well for the world's hope of a durable

peace.

The bearing of the Islamic problem upon the Eastern Question has an importance all its own. Here we have the aspirations of Mohammedan races, independent and under European control, and the sufferings and hopes of Christian races still in subjection to Mohammedans. The difficulties that will arise in connection with acting justly and

wisely toward these races of the near East when their claims come before the peace conference, and the adoption of a pan-European policy toward the problem of the califate, are questions of vital importance in the reconstruction of Europe.

II

We do not know how many Moslems there are in the world. It is impossible to arrive at even approximate figures. Missionaries and travelers speak "in round numbers," sparing round numbers," sparing or generous with millions to such an extent that the student, astounded and bewildered by the discrepancies in estimates, becomes skeptical of statistics. In many parts of Asia and Africa the absence of data upon which to compute population, much less the religions professed by the people, puts estimates of Mohammedan totals into the field of speculation. But where the population of states or regions has been compiled by government officials who have facts to go upon, and where that population is preponderantly Moslem, fairly reliable estimates are possible. Such is the case along the Mediterranean littoral of Africa, in a few African protectorates, in Russia and portions of Asiatic Russia, in India, and in the Dutch East Indies.

A conservative estimate of Moslems under European rule or effective European protection is as follows:

European powers can easily be controlled. Great Britain, Russia, and France, on the other hand, cannot divorce the problem of Islam from their general colonial and foreign policy. Their unique position in the Mohammedan world was one of the compelling forces that gave birth to the Triple Entente. The necessity, perhaps unconsciously divined, of standing together to protect their Mohammedan interests led them to compound colonial rivalries. Thus "the next European war" showed a grouping of powers very different from that which the observer of European affairs might reasonably have prophesied at the beginning of the twentieth century.

In 1900, Great Britain

was not yet ready to abandon to Germany the title of defender of the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, and British statesmen were in a frame of mind to look upon France and Russia rather than upon Germany and Austria as the disturbers of world's peace who had to be fought and cured of unhealthy ambitions. The new orientation of British foreign policy began in 1902, and was determined by the French Agreement of 1904 and the Russian Agreement of 1907.

Most Russian Moslems are Russian subjects. They form compact masses in southern and southeastern Russia, the Caucasus, the trans-Caspian district, central Asia (with Turkestan), and the protectorates of Khiva and Bokhara. Although Russian Moslems are in contact with their coreligionnaires in Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan, and India, they have no pronounced separatist tendencies, and have not been a source of anxiety to Rus⚫sia except in the Caucasus and on the Persian frontier. On the other hand, Russia has used her Moslems to make trouble for Great Britain and Turkey. During the first decade of the twentieth century Turkey conducted an agitation against France from Tripoli and Egypt. But the Italian and Senussi wars have shut off French Moslems from Cairo and Constantinople for the last five years. Only upon Great Britain is the necessity imposed, as it has been since the begin

ning of her imperial policy, of watching Islam in every place where Islam is indigenous. Great Britain cannot afford to be ignorant of any question, of any movement, that affects Islam. Eastern Africa and Zanzibar and Somaliland come into contact with Arabia, western Africa with the Sudan and Tripoli, Tripoli and the Sudan with Egypt. Egypt is adjacent to Arabia and Turkey. The Malay states and Ceylon are in communication with Java and Sumatra and India. India comes into contact with central Asia and by way of Afghanistan with Persia. Aden, the Persian Gulf states, and Baluchistan are invariably affected by events in Turkey and Arabia and Mesopotamia. Moslem penetration into central Africa has become a subject of study and reports on the part of Nyasaland and Rhodesian officials. It is not beyond the province of British prudence to watch Islam in Siam and to wonder how many Moslems there are in China.

The establishment of the French protectorate over Morocco in 1912 left very little of the Moslem world outside of European control or "protection." The five remaining Mohammedan countries, all of them except Afghanistan struggling at the present moment to prevent being subjugated by Europe, have an approximate Mohammedan population as follows: