BY PRESIDENT D. H. WHEELER, D.D., LL.D.

Within two years there have been three prophets in Egypt. Arabi Pasha is in exile; Chinese Gordon is dead; El Mahdi, the mysterious voice in the Soudan wilderness, mutters his prayers in the mosque of Khartoum. England bombarded Alexandria; Arab loss in dead perhaps 5,000. Then England fought and conquered Arabi in the open field, captured him, and sent him into exile; Arab loss in dead perhaps 7,000. Next there is trouble on the Red Sea, and another English army killed perhaps 9,000 Arabs. And last a battle or series of battles in the heart of the Soudan; Arab loss in dead perhaps 12,000. Probably not less than 30,000 have been slaughtered by Englishmen in less than two years. English loss, a few hundreds. The butchers have been liberally rewarded; one soldier has become a “lord;” promotions and extra pay and pensions have fallen in a silvery shower on “our brave fellows” in Egypt. Only one Englishman got nothing. He disappeared one day in the desert, and his dromedary was said to carry the destiny of England; and perhaps it did. He was a soldier seeking peace at the meeting place of the Niles. Chinese Gordon entered Khartoum in triumph, and almost at once there rose a cry: “We must rescue Gordon.” Then came the long delayed march of an army in search of the English prophet at Khartoum; then the butcheries, called battles of Metemneh, and what not. And then in the last days of January there was a slaughter, not this time by Englishmen in person, and perhaps 5,000 more Moslems perish by Moslem steel in the sack of Khartoum. Then a wail rises on every breeze in Christendom; “Alas! alas! Gordon is dead!” The story of his death is a parable: “Stabbed in the back while leaving his house.” Make the “house” stand for England, and the knives that pierced him the indecisions, tergiversations, and infidelities of an English ministry with a great Christian statesman at its head. The world has supped full of the horrors of that kind of Christian statesmanship. We have believed in it; we have hoped that it meant something, even in those bloody Egyptian campaigns.

We are nearly at the end of our confidence. It is not merely the shade of Disraeli which calls mockingly for explanations; the world that believed in Gladstone when Disraeli was playing at fantastic military statesmanship, wants to know why Christian statesmanship in Egypt has, in a short time, spilt almost as much blood as was shed by one army in that American conflict which Mr. Gladstone thought so cruel and so useless. We can not even condone Mr. Gladstone’s offense against civilization by saying that it has been a less bloody assault on humanitarian ideas and plans than Disraeli’s was; for Gladstone has butchered twenty men to Disraeli’s one. There has, in fact, been nothing so bloody in this century—I mean no such large butchery by a small army. Ten years of such statesmanship would fill the Nile valley with human bones. It is high time to call for a full explanation. What does Mr. Gladstone mean? What does he expect to accomplish? If he has intended something exalted and noble, which we should wish to believe, it is time to say so with the breadth of statement and accuracy of detail by which he obtained renown. The personal question stands at the front, because England is governed by one man. It is a happiness of Englishmen that they are able to know whom to blame when things go wrong. Mr. Gladstone is the head of a government for whose acts and failures to act he is perfectly responsible. What England does in Egypt Gladstone does. It is the one governmental luxury of the English people—they know exactly who governs them. Mr. Gladstone has not been compelled to do this or that by parties or circumstances. If he turns butcher in the Delta, on the Nile, or on the Red Sea, he alone does it, and he does it because he chooses to do it. For, at any moment, he can shift disagreeable duties to another; three lines in the form of a resignation will relieve him of the burden of responsible government. So long as he remains at the head of the English ministry he is the man who shoots down Arabs by the thousand. In this country politicians have divided, dispersed and destroyed responsibility to such an extent that the people know not whom to blame for evil events. It is a devil’s art, from whose manipulations England has by some special favor of heaven escaped. There the ghosts of murdered men and things can “shake” their “gory locks” at the Prime Minister; and he may not reply:

Many of us have expected Mr. Gladstone to retire when each of these bloody episodes in Egypt has begun. His retention of power may be explained as an old man’s insane appetite for office, or as the surrender of a statesman to the logic of a situation. The first explanation we respect Mr. Gladstone too much to accept; the second is embarrassed by the absence of a clearly defined policy. We should understand Disraeli; but he would help us to understand him by making distinct proclamation of his purpose to govern and bless the Moslem world. He would have butchered less, but he would have planted an imperial stake on every battle-field. We should have known that he meant conquest and dominion. There would have been no meaningless carnage. A humanitarian war is a difficult conception; but it is not impossible to conceive of wars that produce beneficent results. We could conceive of the subjugation of Islam to British sway, and rejoice to see the Soudan like India, slowly but surely rising into civilization under English rule. But an army thrusting down no imperial stakes, going home after each slaughter to be paid, promoted and fÊted, is not doing work which opens any vistas of smiling peace and advancing light. It is only a bloody carnival. No petty cabinet differences, no outcry of public opinion, no Jingoism in the army or the royal family, no temporary exigencies of party, no domestic dangers nor foreign rivalries can explain and justify the responsible man’s conduct. Mr. Gladstone’s garments are dripping with Moslem blood, and the world can not find an explanation which explains.

It seems to the spectators that England is doing the one thing she should most carefully avoid doing. She is uniting Islam, and teaching Islam how to make war. In each new campaign the Soudanese are better armed, fight with better method, and kill more Englishmen. England is training them into sturdy and disciplined soldiers. A Moslem victory is proclaimed in every Arab tent, and in every Indian village. Such a victory is not merely a victory for El Mahdi; it is a hope for the whole Moslem world. Moslem defeats travel less swiftly, and mean only a delayed victory. What fierce resolutions are begotten in Moslem bosoms by Mr. Gladstone’s campaigns of butchery, we can easily imagine. Meanwhile, Christendom can only say: “Premier of England, your garments are soaked with blood; and, may God forgive you, the blood is not your own. We can not understand you, but we are painfully certain that you are arousing all Islam against us.” Meanwhile, the ancient spears are giving place in the Prophet’s armies to repeating rifles, and Krupp guns may soon guard every height along the Nile. Islam is strong in numbers. There are 75,000,000 of Soudanese, with a very large proportion of men just civilized enough to make terrible soldiers. It may happen some day that a military leader will arise in the front of this vast army, and that an effeminate Europe may find that its military science has gone over to the Moslems. Probably no one man’s policy could effect its transfer more rapidly than Mr. Gladstone’s. When that dark wave of the Moslem millions is gathered into conquering masses by a capable leader, it will have mighty winds of religious enthusiasm behind it, and plenty of room before it. The southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean would be swept clean of the petty European military establishments in a month. Morocco, larger than France, holds at least half of the western gate of the Mediterranean, while the Turk holds the eastern gate; and a month’s campaign might convert that sea into a Moslem lake, and leave its Italian, French, and Spanish and Greek shores to be ravaged again as in the crusading centuries, by Moslem piracy and brigandage. The one thing the Arab can learn thoroughly is the art of war. He was once great on the sea. That man may exult too soon, who, remembering the leviathans of the deep which destroyed Alexandria, trusts Europe’s safety to the great navies of Europe. Islam has some great ships in the Bosphorus, and is rapidly learning where the great ships grow. It is true that if splendid leadership does not arise, Islam may continue to bleed and die in vain; but wars produce great soldiers as regularly as oaks bear acorns. There is danger. Ten years of Gladstoneism in the Nile valley would make the danger a terrible reality. Christendom should rise up and condemn the bloody education which England is imparting to Islam.

Meanwhile, Germans and Frenchmen are in the armies of the Prophet, teaching the rude but vigorous men of the desert how to use arms of precision with deadly effect. In the process of creating a terrible peril for Europe, greed, personal ambition, and national jealousies are contributing to perfect the lessons in modern warfare which England is giving to Islam. No doubt it is true that a great man is needed to weld together the forces of Islam. But why should no strong man be expected to arise in a race so rich in warlike memories? When the Prophet is once crowned with the diadem of military success, there is an army of Mohammedans in India wearing the queen’s uniform, there are vast resources at Constantinople ready to fall from the helpless hands of the Sultan; there are millions of soldiers who require no pay, and have no scruples about the rights of private property. If one gives rein to his imagination, he is soon in a world of awful possibilities. There are two hundred millions of Mohammedans waiting for a leader to restore the glories of Islam.

The relations of England to Islam are logically and historically friendly. England has a Moslem army in India, and has long protected the head of Islam at Constantinople, from the consequences of his vices, extravagances and follies. The Indian mutiny had a religious source, but this was denied, and the spring covered up so successfully that, until Mr. Gladstone attacked Disraeli’s policy in the name of Christianity (such as it is) in Bulgaria, England had successfully encountered the difficulties of her position as a Christian power ruling directly and indirectly half the Moslem world.

Does Mr. Gladstone foresee an “irrepressible conflict” between England and Islam? Is he instinctively bringing on a conflict which will be the less perilous the sooner it comes? Will history add to his rare good fortune by making him glorious as the beginner of a defense of Christendom which he has never dreamed of organizing? Disraeli’s conception followed logic and history. He made a Christian queen empress of India, and he contemplated with composure a time when the descendant of Victoria should be born in India, and be reared in the faith of Mohammed, the center of the British empire having gone to its proper place. Against such ideas Christian England revolted. Is Mr. Gladstone reversing centuries of history and setting the Moslem and Christian worlds by the ears again? If he is moving on that line, his armies should conquer and hold Egypt and the Soudan, the Nile and the Red Sea, the ancient Delta and its modern canal, with the grip England once laid on North America. The audacity of the conquest would provoke diplomatic criminations; but it were easier far to face them than to answer the hard questions which are provoked by fruitless slaughter in Moslem lands. England is only the heart of the British empire. A quiet and gentle England is a possible dream; but the empire is war, conquest, dominion, at the expense of weak peoples. The empire can not survive the definitive abandonment of an imperial policy. The empire must dominate by force or fall to pieces.

It is not worth while to seek in the history of the Egyptian debt, and the “grasping disposition of the English bondholders,” for the key of the present situation. Those who make a religion, or at least a philanthropy, of heaping abuse on bondholders anywhere and everywhere, are the least reasonable of Christians. It is not a crime to deny ourselves, save money and lend it to others. To refuse to pay debts freely contracted is not the first of virtues or the best of policies. The bondholders are commonly poor people who have saved a little by pinching themselves, and have bought bonds for the holy purposes of family forethought. Repudiated debts are baptised in the self-renouncing spirit which is at the heart of our religion, and repudiators make war on the foundations of character and society. In so far as England protects her money lenders, she protects her noble middle class, whose honest thrift lies at the foundation of her wealth. It is among the strangest perversions of feeling that prodigals and prodigal governments should get the sympathy of mankind. Let England foreclose her mortgage on Egypt, and the honest world will thank her for abolishing one nest of spendthrifts. Much is said of the miserable Egyptian peasants, from whom the taxes to pay interest are wrung with every form of despotic oppression. Let us not be deceived by such false-toned appeals for sympathy. The fellaheen of the Nile are oppressed irrespective of the bondholders. Arabi or El Mahdi would maintain the oppressive systems if they were in power. If there were no bondholders, the backs of the miserable fellaheen would smart under the lash of the oppressor. The despotism is Egyptian, not English. English rule would gradually emancipate the oppressed classes. Nowhere, not even in Ireland, has England conquered a people without improving the condition of the poor. The interest on debts which she surrenders in the valley of the Nile does not go to the relief of the peasants; it is squandered in the harems of Cairo and Alexandria. The issue is strictly between the splendid, many-concubined lords in Egypt and the honest and self-denying people who have lent honest money on the faith of England.

Which way, then, will events march? Toward a war between Islam and Christendom, or back to the old imperial policy of England? It would seem that the world’s hope lies in a restoration of the ancient policy of the British empire. The events of 1885 in Moslem land will be full of interest, perhaps pregnant with destiny. A larger English army, perhaps 25,000 men, will soon be in Egypt. It will probably face a better trained foe. There will be more English graves in Egypt. To what end? The London Times says: “Gordon must be avenged.” England repeats the cry. But what end will the vengeance serve? And what if Arabi Pasha and the Emirs killed in the late battles, and the 30,000 to 40,000 Moslems slain, should be avenged? Soon or late—if she does not attempt it too late—England must return to her historical policy and stand among Christian powers the foremost ally of the sons of Mohammed. It is the inexorable logic of her greatness. Let us shut our eyes upon the horrible vision of the new crusades, as useless as the old and far bloodier. Christendom can hope for no more fortunate disposition of Mohammedanism than that it should be locked fast in the iron arms of the British empire; and on the other hand the failure of the British empire would involve the greatest possible disasters for Christendom. Many foolish things have been promised in the name of “manifest destiny.” Perhaps destiny is never so manifest that it may be read off by uninspired prophecy; but there is no other Power which seems fitted to play England’s imperial rÔle; and it does not appear how the progress and happiness of mankind can go forward without such an imperial force as England has been for two centuries. While we deprecate the effects of the Jingo spirit which Disraeli fostered, and repudiate the indifference to the progress of Christianity which the Hebrew statesman scarcely concealed, we can not look with complacency upon changes of British policy which would disintegrate the empire. Let England’s drum-beat go round the earth with the sun; for the sunrise of progress and civilization will awaken wherever that martial music falls upon the ear of mankind.