Kourds, and Turks, and a host of other small races, are mainly Sunnite Moslems, and they as well as the Shiites worship in the same mosques and offer much the same prayers. The distinction between these peoples is distinctly racial, not religious, but between the Moslem races and the Jews and Christians the cleavage is racial-religious, the Albanians being the only nationality in the Turkish Empire whose members may be either Moslem or Christian without sacrificing race along with their change of religion.

Apart from the antagonism and jealousy natural to religious differences, the policy pursued by various Sultans, and especially by Abd-ul-Hamid, tended to cause still greater division among the people. Thus when restless Moslem elements, and especially of recent years the Kourds, have threatened trouble for the government, the trouble has often been averted by turning the Moslems loose to pillage and abuse their Christian neighbours. If in this way a people who ask only to be left to till their fields in peace have been goaded to desperation and to armed rebellion, the government has suppressed the rebellion by associating the regular troops with the pillaging hordes. And when the Christians, decimated by famine, fire and sword, have appealed to Europe in vain and have at length resorted to bomb-throwing and anarchistic tactics, "freedom loving" Saxons and Teutons have been known to blame the Christians for their rebellious and disorderly spirit. And as if it were not enough to have turned Moslem against Christian, the further divisive policy was pursued of granting special privileges to one or other of the non-Moslem communities while curtailing the privileges of another, thus creating a spirit of jealous rivalry and suspicion. By such a policy of division and repression did Abd-ul-Hamid justify the decree of his deposition in 1909. But the Turkish constitutional government has unfortunately inherited the traditions and inefficiency of a corrupt officialdom schooled under Abd-ul-Hamid, and has pursued, less flagrantly perhaps, but none the less disastrously, the policy of armed repression which has just lost to them the provinces of European Turkey; while Asia Minor, neglected perforce during the Italian and Balkan wars, has become the scene of increasing pillage and desolation. And the Arabspeaking population of Syria and Mesopotamia is finding in

the loss of Turkish prestige encouragement for pressing their demands for decentralization, i.e. for a modified system of Home Rule; for hitherto it has been the prestige of the Caliphate that bound the Moslem races of the Turkish Empire to the throne of the Sultan. Indeed, there is little love lost between Arab and Turk and it is only their mutual suspicion and hatred of Christian rule that has kept the Moslem races of Turkey from falling apart long ago. Thus to the Young Turk, who as often as not is at heart an atheist or sceptic, the maintenance of his religion has seemed to be a political necessity, for not only did the submissiveness which Mohammedanism teaches prevent a popular uprising among the Moslem subjects against a revolution for which the common people were not prepared and which they did not understand; but at the same time, through the prestige and sympathy which Turkey enjoys among the Mohammedans of the world as the standard-bearer of Islam, her religion has won for her a degree of prestige which neither the competence of her government nor the efficiency of her army justified. This is a fact which has been overlooked both by those Christians who have regarded the Balkan war as a struggle of the Crescent against the Cross, and by the All-India Moslem League who, in the name of Britain's Mohammedan subjects, have asked her to intervene in Turkey's behalf. For in the first place this is not a war between the Crescent and Cross, but between, on the one hand, an incompetent and decaying empire, whose decay may be due to other causes as well as to her religion, and on the other, four small states who themselves have only recently been freed from the Turkish yoke and have wished to free their fellows. And in the second place, the humiliation of Turkey was made possible not through the sympathy of the British or of any other Christian people with the Balkan States, although such sympathy was not wanting, but through years of Turkish misrule which made war necessary and defeat possible. For the Moslems of India to expect Britain to give Turkey her moral support was to expect that not only the Christian but also the Moslem population of European Turkey should, through Britain's influence, be kept under an unbearable yoke. On the other hand, the struggle between Mohammedanism and Christianity is a moral struggle, not a struggle of arms, and Chris

tianity will not have won a victory over Islam until the Christian governments succeed in ruling the diverse peoples of European Turkey better than a Moslem government has done. And even that will not be a conclusive proof, for the misrule of the Turk can be traced to a racial incapacity for government and affairs even more than to the influence of his religion; while, on the other hand, the success of the European powers in business and in politics is due, at least so it seems to the Turk, to the degree to which they have ignored the Christian precepts of unselfishness, justice and brotherly love.

And it must be admitted that the record of Europe's dealings with Turkey has not been such as to inspire either friend or foe with confidence in the Christianity of politics. The powers have continually interfered in Turkey's affairs, ostensibly in the name of humanity, but in reality to further their own interests. The presence of Christians among the Sultan's subjects has been a chief pretext for interference, the RussoTurkish wars and Britain's occupation of Cyprus being occasioned by demands for reforms in the treatment accorded to Christians, especially in the Eastern provinces, i.e. in Armenia or Kourdistan, according as the district is named after the one or the other race that forms its population. Russia, as the greatest orthodox state, has sought to pose as the protector of all orthodox Christians in Turkey, but her pretensions were not recognized by the larger number of the people whom she sought to protect, for the Ottoman Greeks resented Russian interference and looked to Greece for their protection. Russia secured, however, the liberation of a large number of Balkan Christians in 1878, and she has also felt justified in pressing for reforms in those districts of Asiatic Turkey adjacent to her domains in the Caucasus and has occupied as large a strip of Armenia as British rivalry would allow her to retain; and all this is done in the name of the liberation of Christian peoples from Turkish misrule. But the treatment the Russian government accords the Jews, the Poles and others of her disaffected subjects has disabused the peoples of Turkey as to her humanitarian intentions, her real purpose being the acquisition of new territory. With the Armenians, indeed, the question of remaining under Turkish rule or of courting Russian is a question as to which is the frying pan and which the fire. Britain,

by the part she played both in the Crimean war and in the framing of the Treaty of Berlin, constituted herself, presumably in the interests of the Christian population in Turkey, sponsor for the good government of the Ottoman Empire whose integrity it has been her settled policy in the past to maintain. Indeed the convention of Cyprus, made secretly between Britain and Turkey, stipulates for specific reforms in the Eastern provinces, in recognition of which Britain undertook to defend Turkey's territorial rights. But the latter state of the Armenians has been worse than the former, and Britain's prestige in the Near East has served not to secure reforms in Turkey, but only to check Russian aggressiveness and assure Britain's own supremacy in the Eastern Mediterranean. It is then little wonder that her more recent policy in reference to affairs in the Near East, which is evidently less selfish than was her policy of a generation ago, should meet with scepticism so long as she fails to throw the whole weight of her influence into some measure for securing adequate protection of life and property for all of Turkey's subjects. Unfortunately the situation which Britain seemed to dominate one or two decades ago has become so complicated through the introduction of new interests that it would seem as if her opportunity to be Turkey's good angel has been irretrievably lost. Her interest, indeed, in preserving the status quo in Turkey has not been so much the hope that is cherished by most of the European Powers that when Turkey falls, as they believe she is bound to do, they may be in a position to drive a better bargain for themselves than they are at present; as it has been the sincere desire to see Turkey remain an independent country because, on the one hand, Britain was convinced that Turkey would never become strong enough to menace India, and on the other hand she felt that even a weak Turkey would be an obstacle to the Indiaward advance of any European Power. Had she coupled with this selfish interest in Turkey's integrity the sincere desire to see good government established in Turkey, towards which end she could have used her moral and her financial influence, she would have been Turkey's good angel. She is even yet the one power who wants to see Turkey not divided up, but reformed. But to act up to the responsibility laid upon her by her treaties with Turkey and see that good government is established,

would involve expense, difficulties and European complications out of proportion to her profits. So she has satisfied herself with striving unsuccessfully to preserve the integrity of the Ottoman Empire and with uniting with the other Powers in insincere and ineffective verbal protests against massacre and misgovernment. Unable to stomach Abd-ul-Hamid's monstrosities and unwilling to risk the task of ending them, England has gradually resigned her predominant position in Turkey, and German trade and political influence has partly supplanted the British, while the German Emperor visited Turkey shortly after the massacres of 1895-96, and while the ground was still reeking in Armenian blood (none of which did his discreet eyes behold), called the Sultan his brother, and secured the concession for the construction of the railway to Baghdad. The history of Turkey since then, and particularly since the constitution, has been the history of the relative rise and fall of one or other of these two influences-British and German. Those constitutional Turks who stand for economic reform and political peace are Anglophile, while those of the military class who will have only "peace with honour" and believe that Turkey should enter the mad race for armaments are Germanophile. Meanwhile the Baghdad railway has not yet been built, and an immense area which might have been opened to traffic has been deprived of a railway because of European jealousies. Similarly the very fertile Black Sea coast and the mountainous Armenian provinces, which are rich in mineral wealth and forests, have remained unopened to trade except by miserable roads and narrow trails, because Russia some time. ago secured the promise from Turkey to build no railway leading up to the Black Sea coast or to the Russo-Turkish frontier without Russia's permission and co-operation, and this permission and co-operation Russia is by no means anxious to give until she can build and control those lines herself. As a matter of fact, Turkey owns and controls not a single mile of railway except the "Holy Railway" from Damascus to near Mecca, which world-wide Moslem fanaticism alone prevented from being financed by a foreign company. How has Turkey come to be economically so dependent upon Europe?

It is to be noted, in the first place, that the Turk is a fighter and not a man of affairs. In the land of his adoption he has