FROM the Gulf of Bengal to the farthest limits of Morocco the Mohammedan world is in a ferment. Those enemies of Mohammedanism who have learned nothing from the war call this Pan-Islamism. Others have erased that word from their vocabulary, but talk of Mussulman nationalism. Still others attribute all this turmoil to a vast Bolshevist conspiracy. The truth is, none of them is right. Whatever explanation they may advance, they all make the fundamental mistake of considering the Mohammedan world a homogeneous unit impelled by a single impulse.

Yet the most cursory examination of facts proves the falsity of this assumption.

Islam is a religion. Like every religion, it is divided into sects which differ widely from each other. First, it has its four distinct and hostile orthodox rites or creeds. Then, like every religion, it has its schisms, a veritable chaos of conflicting beliefs, compared with which the worst theological factionalism in the Christian church, even during the tumultuous days of Byzantium and Alexandria, was but child's play.

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Last of all, like other faiths, perhaps more than most of them because of its simple creed and the ease with which it spreads,-Islam is modified by climate, customs, and previous beliefs. In Persia the mosques are adorned with vast mosaics portraying scenes of life and movement; and under the golden dome of their

lofty cupolas magi-featured soufis perform the Shiite rite. What have these in common with the Sumite mosques, with their scrupulously plain walls? At Stamboul resides the Caliph, toward whom all Asia turns its eyes; but in Morocco they pray in the name of the Sultan of Fez, while the Mzabites, and the faithful of Mascat and Zanzibar, repudiate any human intercessor between God and his creatures. Some Bedouins venerate the holiness of Senoussi; others reverence as their patron saint Sidi Abdelkader of Bagdad. Aissaui practise fire-dancing and eat powdered glass, under the reproving eyes of the disciples of Sidi Ech Chadhli. The dervish mystics of Skutari profess their faith by inarticulate cries and epileptic contortions, while the learned doctors of the University of El Asar grow pale patiently studying the writings of the Prophet in the light of Aristotle and Plato.

Then consider the influence of climate and of old, half-remembered pagan beliefs. A Senegal soldier will proclaim himself a good Mussulman and yet wear his heathen fetishes. The believer of Lahore is a dreamer whose soul is still wrapped in the doctrine of Karma. The faithful of Jaipur are still as casteproud as their Brahman ancestors. And one meets Mohammedans in Calcutta with all the modernist ideas of their Parsi inheritance.

Then, too, there are equal differences in culture and enlightenment. The blue-robed women who hang offerings on the fig trees of Djurjura doubtless

still hear in their rustling leaves the faintly echoing laughter of ancient Numidian goddesses. The Sahara nomad reverences his Marabouts to-day just as, in the time of Sallust, he reverenced his sorcerers and diviners. On the other hand, the educated Mohammedan of Tunis or Algiers, with his Young-Turk sympathies and affiliations, is preoccupied with the political and economic aspects of his faith, rather than with its spiritual teachings.

Amid all this diversity, where is the common, impulse that will sweep the whole world of Islam into one current? In the early days of the hegira, a prophet might command his disciples to raise the standard of djehad, of the Holy War, and to convert the infidels by force. But we should not forget that he meant by infidels Arab idolaters, not Christians, or even Jews. Leaving that aside, however, it is very debatable whether the djehad was the sole force which enabled the early caliphs to conquer half the world. Is a holy war something to be feared to-day? That is almost a childish question. Pan-Islamism is a word without meaning.

Does this mean that we can abolish or humiliate the caliphate with impunity? India replies with a savage, menacing 'No,' and England listens. But Morocco and Mzab, schismatic lands, which reject the Sultan's religious authority and whose lingering friendliness for Turkey is merely historical and sentimental, remain indifferent. The rest of our African empire receives the suggestion with sad resignation rather than with such fanatical protests as stir all British India. Why is this? It is simply because the discipline of Brahma still sways the Indian Mohammedans. So true is this that agitation for the Sultan has already ceased to be solely religious. Even the most zealous of the faithful now subordinate the caliphate issue to a strictly

Aryan ideal, appealing equally to Brahmans and Mussulmans constitutional liberty.

It is the same with Egypt. Egyptian nationalism is no more Mohammedan than it is Copt. The ancient kingdom of the Ptolemies needed no religious incentive to revive the memories of its former glory. It may even be argued that Islam was for centuries one source of the country's weakness. Was it not precisely when Egypt threw off the fetters of Islam's narrow dogma, under the influence of Sheik Abdu and his disciples, that the nation's dream of liberty revived? No, even here, the new ferment in the Mohammedan world bears no likeness to that Islamic nationalism of which alarmists make so much.

We are told that the movement in Egypt is having a powerful effect in Tunis and farther West. It is true that the people of Tunis are demanding certain constitutional rights; but those rights do not involve secession from France. Let me quote the words of one of these young patriots whom timid politicians here in France persist in picturing as dangerous revolutionists:

We would favor full independence if Tunis were ripe for independence; but we are quite aware that our people have by no means reached that stage of evolution and progress which would enable them to govern themselves.

A second Mohammedan friend in Northern Africa writes regarding another aspect of this new spirit:

We favor the Socialists because the Socialists are the only people who will receive us. Other parties neither understand us, nor encourage us. The administration is definitely hostile to all native influence in the government. That forces us into the arms of the Socialists. But rest assured that we shall not compromise the native movement by Bolshevism.

We can hardly criticize this attitude, though we should be alive to its perils. We must not be surprised if the alliance becomes, unintentionally on their part, more compromising than the native leaders now design, and if it eventually makes them agents of the Red tyranny at Moscow. We have seen the Bolshevist infection infiltrate itself into Turkey, even among those who distrust ordetest those doctrines. Only the other day the Turkish heir-apparent, warned us:

Our people do not sympathize with Bolshevism and are not disposed to accept its plans or its obligations. But Mustapha Ke

Pan-Islamism, Nationalism, Bolshevism, are not powerful enough in themselves to unite that great mass of divergent and conflicting peoples which we call the Islamic world. Why then is that whole world in a ferment? A glance at the map is enough for an answer. Every Mohammedan nation is governed, or threatened with government, by a Christian power. All of them have been filled by the war with an ardent longing for justice and fair play. That is the key to the puzzle. We need not seek it in the shade of the mosques and the tumult of public meetings. We shall find it in the universal resentment at

the Treaty of Sèvres and has thus come into conflict with the Entente. Although he is not otherwise at variance with the Entente, he welcomes assistance from any source in this struggle. The Bolsheviki wish to destroy the existing order. The Kemalists simply wish to destroy a treaty which they reject. The gentlemen at Moscow do not sympathize with the Nationalist objects of the government of Angora, nor does the government of Angora approve the Communist programme of the Soviets. But the two are just now fighting the same enemies. Their paths run parallel for the moment, and they follow it together, though each is traveling to a different destination.

to have a share in the work of rebuilding the world—a world which should hold forth equal promise and hope for the whole human race.

Are these legitimate aspirations? Can we deny that? Do they constitute a peril for old Europe? It is for old Europe to answer. Everything depends on the course we take toward our dependencies. If we adopt a liberal policy, Islam will open its heart to us. Let us not forget the costly lesson which the war has taught us, the fearful fallacy of trying to rule by force alone.

BLACK has never invaded white, not because it cannot fight, but because, presumably, the curse of Ham has never been lifted through all the ages. No considerable body of black men has ever fought upon the soil of Europe until the French brought over the Senegalese during the Great War. It is a significant fact that France alone of all the white races does not pay any particular attention to the color bar, and that 'the new world which she is calling in to redress the balance of the old' is black Africa. Her new Empire is policed and defended by white-drilled blacks. For, to the keenly logical French mind, one man is as good as another provided he possesses a trigger finger, and the day may yet come when the balance of power in Europe will be suddenly overturned by the French African legions.

The erudite reader will remember that once, and once only, Africa has of her own strength invaded Europe, and that the flood was only arrested sixty miles from Paris. But Abderahman, who lost the battle of Tours, was as white as Charles Martel who won it; and the Moors who followed Abderahman were physically far more akin to the legionaries of Rome than the Gauls and Germans who had inherited from Rome the defense of the West. The Moorish invasion was the inroad, not of a different race, but of a different reli

gion; and the campaign of 732 was in reality the first of those great religious wars in which the two contending parties mercilessly destroyed the bodies and the property of men, in the hope of saving their souls. As Gibbon says, but for the battle of Tours 'perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcized people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet.' Indeed, there seems to have been no particular reason why the goad which in one hundred and fifteen years had pricked the hosts of Islam on from Arabia to the Loire should ever have lost its efficacy. The still more extraordinary phenomenon is that, having once been checked, this people which had accomplished so marvelous a military feat never returned to the assault, but comparatively soon decayed into just one more African tribe that fell an easy prey to the nations it had once subdued.

The explanation of this phenomenon was the first thing I sought in Spanish Morocco. For not merely have the Moors ceased to be a formidable military power, but even the Berbers, once the terror of the Mediterranean, have completely abandoned the life of the sea. The pirates of the Rift are there, but they are pirates no longer they are not even sailors. The three divisions of the Moorish hosts - Arabs,

Berbers, and Vandals seem to have seem to have lost alike their efficiency and their ambition. The population is there, but it seems to stroll negligently through life instead of trying to make something of it; and in so far as the Spanish zone is typical of the rest of Morocco, I should judge that there remains to this people of their former greatness nothing except their physique, their dignity, and their color.

The main reason for this decline is that same religion which was responsible for their rise. Success in the field makes a military sect, but failure breaks it. When a nation which believes itself called to conquer and evangelize the world finds the world successfully recalcitrant, that nation comes to believe in its religion in spite of facts and not because of them. The drive is gone, the petrol tank is empty, and after a certain period of disuse the machine first rusts and then disintegrates. Thus the Moors, under the drive of success, were a disciplined, cohesive, fanatical, and efficient nation. Once they ceased to move forward and settled down to consolidate what they had won, they were undone by 'the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches.' They began to think of what their religion meant, instead of what it impelled them to do. It became almost possible to live in the same world as Christians without fighting them. The result was that the once united Moorish Spain split up into a variety of Emirates and Caliphates, such as Cordoba, Granada, and Sevilla, which were taken in detail by the Spaniards and destroyed.

Secondly, the homeland of the race itself suffered a similar process of disof disintegration; and, finally, the whole of Morocco became a mere agglomeration of clans, wasting their strength in fighting and robbing each other, and united neither in a common hatred nor by a common love. The Sultan of

Morocco lost the reality, while he retained the pretense, of universal authority, and his officers, the governors of the walled towns, could hardly move outside the precincts of their own palaces. The urban tribes did indeed keep up some show of civilization and maintain some degree of commerce with the outside world; but the rural tribes reverted entirely to a life of nature, and, though numerically very powerful, in fact they are capable of practically no resistance against modern weapons, and possess no indigenous culture of any kind. For example, the population is of such density that in some places it reaches a figure of 200 to the square mile; but yet it is almost completely invisible, tucked away in the crevices of the hills, in miserable thatched huts surrounded by inexpressibly ugly hedges of giant cactus. I believe that all the Moorish culture was, in its origin, Christian. Its finest achievements in buildings and mosaic are frankly figurative; and therefore it is little marvel that, left to themselves, they produce nothing artistic.

Islam has largely lost its fighting force, but it has thereby intensified the evil effects of the later doctrines of Mahomet as to slavery and the family. If Mahomet had died ten years earlier, it is probable that sheer sensuality would have been as vigorously excluded from the Moslem's life as wine in fact is. But, as matters stand, so long as a Moor is poor, he is hard-working and ascetic; as soon, however, as he becomes rich, he thinks of little but following the precept of the Prophet as to slaves and their uses. Thus the Moors have no leaders to fan into flame the spark of their hatred against the Christians; and, excellent fighting material as they still are, any European power will have no difficulty, for many years to come, in using them against each other.