Most significant of all were the appeals made at this time by Moslems to non-Mohammedan Asiatics for sympathy and solidarity against the hated West. This was a development as unprecedented as it was startling. Mohammed, revering as he did the Old and New Testaments, and regarding himself as the successor of the divinely inspired prophets Moses and Jesus, had enjoined upon his followers relative respect for Christians and Jews ("Peoples of the Book") in contrast with other non-Moslems, whom he stigmatized as "Idolaters." These injunctions of the Prophet had always been heeded, and down to our own days the hatred of Moslems for Christians, however bitter, had been as nothing compared with their loathing and contempt for "Idolaters" like the Brahmanist Hindus or the Buddhists and Confucianists of the Far East.
The first symptom of a change in attitude appeared during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904. So great had Islam's fear and hatred of the Christian West then become, that the triumph of an Asiatic people over Europeans was enthusiastically hailed by many Moslems, even though the victors were "Idolaters." It was quite in keeping with Pan-Islamism's strong missionary bent that many pious Moslems should have dreamed of bringing these heroes within the Islamic fold. Efforts to get in touch with Japan were made. Propagandist papers were founded, missionaries were selected, and the Sultan sent a warship to Japan with a Pan-Islamic delegation aboard. Throughout Islam the projected conversion of Japan was widely discussed. Said an Egyptian journal in the year 1906: "England, with her sixty million Indian Moslems, dreads this conversion. With a Mohammedan Japan, Mussulman policy would change entirely."[50] And, at the other end of the Moslem world, 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."[51]
Of course it soon became plain to these enthusiasts that while Japan received Islam's emissaries with smiling courtesy, she had not the faintest intention of turning Mohammedan. Nevertheless, the first step had been taken towards friendly relations with non-Moslem Asia, and the Balkan War drove Moslems much further in this direction. The change in Moslem sentiment can be gauged by the numerous appeals made by the Indian Mohammedans at this time to Hindus, as may be seen from the following sample entitled significantly "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!"[52]
To any one who realizes the traditional Moslem attitude towards "Idolaters" such words are simply amazing. They betoken a veritable revolution in outlook. And such sentiments were not confined to Indian Moslems; they were equally evident among Chinese Moslems as well. Said a Mohammedan newspaper of Chinese Turkestan, advocating a fraternal union of all Chinese against Western aggression: "Europe has grown too presumptuous. It will deprive us of our liberty; it will destroy us altogether if we do not bestir ourselves promptly and prepare for a powerful resistance."[53] During the troublous first stages of the Chinese revolution, the Mohammedans, emerging from their sulky aloofness, co-operated so loyally with their Buddhist and Confucian fellow-patriots that Dr. Sun-Yat-Sen, the Republican leader, announced gratefully: "The Chinese will never forget the assistance which their Moslem fellow-countrymen have rendered in the interest of order and liberty."[54]
The Great War thus found Islam everywhere deeply stirred against European aggression, keenly conscious of its own solidarity, and frankly reaching out for Asiatic allies in the projected struggle against European 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 Caliph 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 Russo-British intervention, while the Indian North-West 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 West 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 waiting for in order to perfect their programmes and enlist the moral solidarity of their followers. 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 war, 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 set already the entire East in tumultuous ferment, and which seems merely the premonitory ground-swell of a greater storm. So ominous were the portents that even before the Versailles conference had adjourned many European students of Eastern affairs expressed grave alarm. Here, for example, is the judgment of Leone Caetani, Duke of Sermoneta, an Italian authority on Mohammedan questions. Speaking in the spring of 1919 on the war's