FAILURE OF "HOLY WAR" PROPAGANDA

One of the most interesting of the various phases of the war, so far as the participation of Turkey was concerned, was the religious development. Countless pages of learned speculation had been written for years before the struggle in an attempt to forecast the outcome of exactly the conditions that had arisen. It must be said at once that in the first six months of the war reality failed to live up to prophecy. The cataclysm that was expected by many to involve the revolt of millions and a vast change in the political color of much of the earth's surface did not appear. Any change that took place operated so quietly and on so comparatively small a scale that it was lost to view beside the greater interest of the struggle on the battle fields of France and Poland.

It is desirable, however, that the situation be examined. Abbas II, Khedive of Egypt, had early in the war openly shown his lack of sympathy with the British in Egypt. By his actions he left no doubt regarding his attitude. He not only vehemently expressed his adherence to Constantinople but left Cairo, and journeyed to Turkey, safe from British official pressure or persuasion. Whereupon the British Government called upon him to return, threatened him with deposition, and finally took that extreme step, setting up another in his place on December 18, 1914.

Furthermore, the day before, Great Britain declared Egypt a British protectorate independent of Constantinople. In this action Great Britain relied not upon any legal right to take such action, but merely upon the right of actual possession. Since Great Britain had taken over the government of Egypt in 1883, she had acknowledged the sultan's rights of suzerainty and had countenanced the payment to that ruler of certain considerable yearly sums from the Egyptian exchequer.

Indeed, Great Britain was in Egypt merely by virtue of an international understanding and on a definite agreement to release her control of the country when certain conditions of political and financial stability had been restored. The other nations had, willingly, or unwillingly, become resigned to her possession of this strategically important land. Great Britain a decade before the war, at the beginning of that rapprochement with France which led up to the Entente and which had so many fateful consequences for the whole world, sought to legalize her position in Egypt—at least so far as the other great north African power was concerned. A bargain was struck with France by which the English occupation of Egypt for an indefinite period was recognized in exchange for a free hand in Morocco. Great Britain could now urge that the coming of war, and especially the entry of Turkey into the struggle, placed her administration in Egypt in a position impossible to maintain. In theory she was, so long as she acknowledged the suzerainty of the sultan, in the country merely on that ruler's sufferance. She admitted his ultimate authority and especially the loyalty and duty of the Egyptian army and khedive to him. Strictly she could make no move to prevent an armed occupation of the country by the sultan's troops nor could she call upon the khedive and his cabinet to repudiate Constantinople's sway. To put an end to this condition of affairs was the most legitimate reason for England's action.

Although the native Egyptian is in religion allied to the Turk, his religious fervor was not great enough to induce him to rise against British control. Among the better educated of the Egyptians and especially among those who had traveled, there was a strong "Nationalist" movement. At times, even in the period of peace, this movement had threatened to make matters extremely unpleasant for the British rulers. For some years before the war, German and Turkish agents had been working among these ardent Egyptian patriots, encouraging and advising them, and when war with Turkey came England was seriously alarmed. Using the country as a central base for her Turkish, Persian, and Balkan operations, Great Britain imported thousands upon thousands of troops into Egypt. Just how many hundreds of thousands of armed men passed in and out of the country from first to last only the records of the British war office would show, but it can be said that England never had a force of less than 90,000 trained men in Egypt at any one time.

Any chance of effective action that the Egyptian nationalists might have had was neutralized by the indifference and lack of interest in the vast body of their countrymen. There were more than 10,000,000 Mohammedans in Egypt, but only a small minority of them, under the most promising of circumstances, could have been counted upon to pay the least heed to the call of Constantinople. The Egyptian fellah is anything but a fighter. Lazy, unlearned, unambitious, he is content to accept his daily lot, perhaps conscious that the British rule has brought a certain amount of comparative prosperity even to him.

On the other hand, there were in Egypt something like 600,000 nomads, a very large proportion of whom could be depended upon to follow the lead of Constantinople. The males of these wild tribespeople were remarkable fighters, subject to no control, hating the English sway, and so independent of roads and transport that they could keep busy an even larger force of less mobile troops. Their chief weakness was their lack of cohesion and the impossibility of any concerted action on their part.

This, then, was the native situation in Egypt. In other parts of the world, where Great Britain maintained sway over large numbers of Mohammedans, the situation was equally complicated. With the issue of a call for a Holy War by the Sheik-ul-Islam, the religious ruler of the Mohammedan world, many well-informed observers looked for a large measure of trouble in India. So many were the elements of dissatisfaction, and even open revolt, in India that it was believed the Sheik-ul-Islam's call would be the match applied to the powder magazine.

The attitude of the various Indian potentates was uncertain. Some of them were known to be only outwardly loyal to the British authority. The now famous incident at the visit of King George to India, some years before the war, when one of the richest and most important of the native princes refused to bend the knee, was indicative of very widespread dissatisfaction. Innumerable cases of individual and even concerted violence against British rule immediately preceded the war, and several of these were openly encouraged by native princes.

So far as definite action was concerned, the opening of the war with Turkey and the months that immediately followed falsified all these predictions of disaster to British rule in India. Many of the native princes were effusive in their professions of loyalty to the British Empire, and several offered personal service at the front or financial contributions to the huge cost of the struggle.

Notable, and perhaps decisive, was the open adherence to Britain of the Agar Khan, the immensely powerful ruler of millions of Indian Mohammedans. The Agar Khan had spent many of the years previous to the war in England in daily association with English high society and official circles. At the outbreak of the war with Turkey, in October, 1914, at the request of the British Government, he visited Egypt, and it was largely upon his advice that the former khedive was deposed and the new one elevated to the post. Indeed, at one time there were strong rumors, afterward energetically denied by the British Government, that the Agar Khan had advised a Mohammedan repudiation of the authority of the caliph and the elevation of another to his place under a British guarantee. In support of this plan it was pointed out that Great Britain, judged by the number of adherents under her rule, was the world's greatest Mohammedan power. It was intolerable to many English people, especially to those of strong imperialistic tendencies, that the real control, even in theory, of so large and important a section of the people of the British Empire should be in Constantinople, safe from the "influence" and "persuasion" of the British Government. By these people it was held that the sultan's lineal claim was weak, and that an even better claim to the headship of the Moslems could be established for any one of several other men who might have been named. However, the plan was never achieved.[Back to Contents]