As for us British, if our object is to enhance the prestige of our race or creed, we fall very short of achievement. We have not even that reputation for integrity which usually attaches to us in other parts of the Moslem world. This may be partly due to our anomalous position in the country, which was thrust upon us, but the pleasure-seeking tourist of pre-War days has a lot to answer for. Some of them seemed to think that so far from home their conduct was of no account (at least, that is the only charitable explanation), and British personal prestige suffered in consequence. Anglo-Egyptian officials, especially the subordinate grades, which come into more direct contact with the people, tried to counteract this by increased dignity of demeanour, but the natives now knew them en déshabillé, or thought they did, and declined to keep them on their pedestals. The result is, familiarity without intimacy and detachment without dignity, while the pre-War official habit of going Home every year for some months has prevented even subordinates from studying their district or department consecutively.
Hence it is that a widespread Nationalist movement gathered force and perfected its plans for a detailed campaign which blended peaceful demonstration with sabotage, murder and violence, and took the Anglo-Egyptian Government completely by surprise, paralysing communications and intimidating the general public until the weight of Imperial troops, luckily still quartered in the country, was allowed to make itself felt and restored order.
This is not the time or the place to discuss these affairs, which are still sub judice, but one salient feature of the movement is pertinent to our subject, and that is the marked rapprochement between Moslems and Copts, who fraternised in each other's mosques and churches, carried flags bearing the device of Cross and Crescent and used American mission buildings to further their new-found brotherhood. These relations were somewhat marred by the wholesale devastation of Coptic property up-country, but the Copts took it very well and paraded the streets with their Moslem friends, if they could not hide away from them. The local Jew came in too, and the climax of this religious entente was reached when an Egyptian Jewess preached in the mosque of al-Azhar on the ancient relations between Jews and Arabs.
But we must not merely consider Egypt as a sort of religious and racial clearing house; it is also the main gate of Africa.
Southward, up the Nile valley and across grim deserts, lies Khartoum, the capital of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, only four days from Cairo by rail. This is a very tempting theatre for missionary enterprise, which is, however, held in check by the authorities, who decline to have their Sudan spiritually exploited and materially disturbed by futile efforts to evangelise the country. Missionaries say that this part of the Sudan, as well as Egypt, was once Christian; that discrimination is being shown in favour of Islam even to the extent of making pagans become Moslem on joining the Egyptian Army; that Gordon College is being run on non-Christian lines and that Islam is getting ahead of them in the race to convert pagans in this part of the world.
The case against them is that the fact of these regions being once Christian and now Moslem shows, if anything, that the latter religion is more suited to local requirements and conditions; Islam is naturally favoured in a Moslem country, though many Christian missions have been given facilities too, and have mostly failed owing to climatic conditions: the Egyptian Army is Moslem and under a Moslem Government; the conversion of pagan recruits to Islam is encouraged for the sake of discipline and soldierly conduct; missionaries themselves admit that even in civil life a Christian convert from Islam must be segregated or he will lapse under surrounding pressure—perhaps they will explain how that is to be done in a barrack-room or native infantry lines, or would they prefer such recruits to remain pagan? Presumably they would, as one of their complaints is that "it is a thousand times harder to convert a Moslem to Christianity than a pagan." Comment is superfluous; nothing could portray their attitude more clearly. As for Islam getting ahead of them in the race for pagan souls, it is so and will be so always among the black races unless Christian missions are bolstered up by all the resources of local authority; the reason is that Islam offers equal privileges and no colour-line, imposes easy spiritual obligations and is propagated fervently by its followers without the encumbrance of an organised priesthood. Just as commercial travellers consider a district neglected where a rival firm has got ahead of them, so missionaries are piqued at conditions in the Sudan; but even that does not excuse such statements as that women in the Sudan are free and not badly treated as pagans, but slaves and oppressed under Islam. Every student of the Islamic code knows that the status of women has been enormously improved thereby as compared with any pagan system. Missionaries must know this, for they are much better educated about Islam than they were a quarter of a century ago, yet they do not scruple to raise the partisan cry of a debased womanhood under Islam wherever local conditions involve domestic hardship. Such tactics are unworthy of them; an intellectual Moslem does not reproach Christianity because he has visited districts in the poorer quarters of our big towns and seen women lead lives of drudgery or being sometimes knocked about by their husbands.
Outside the Sudan and Nigeria we must keep to the eastern side of Africa in order to maintain touch with Islam. The negroid people of Italian Erythrea are Moslems, as are also the Somalis; but their racial cousins, the Abyssinians, are Christians of the Ethiopian Church, with the Negus as their temporal and spiritual ruler, who claims descent from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.
Abyssinia has been Christian ever since the fourth century, but the missionaries are not happy about the country at all. Here nothing impedes the entrance of the missionary as an individual, but the people will not have him as an evangelist at any price. The "fanatical and debased" priests of the Abyssinian Church and the drastic punishments inflicted by the local authorities on those suspected of favouring other forms of Christianity are described as grave hindrances. There is a large population of "black Jews," who will have no dealings with Christianity in any form. Meanwhile Islam gains ground steadily, especially in the south along the trade routes. A German missionary, writing from Strasburg in 1910, describes the situation as alarming, because "whole tribes of Abyssinians who still bear Christian names have become Muhammedans in the last twenty years." There is one Protestant mission up at Addis Abeba, but it confines its attentions to the semi-pagan Gallas, having given up Christian Abyssinia as a bad job.
Somaliland is a poor field for missionary enterprise, owing to the sparse, semi-nomadic population and the difficulties of getting about. In the French sphere there is connection by rail between Jibuti on the coast and Dera Dowa near the Abyssinian border; travelling musicians of the café chantant type used to use it a good deal before the War, but there was not much doing in the missionary line. Italian Somaliland, east of the British sphere to Cape Guardafui, is left to look after itself, except for the occasional visit of an Italian man-of-war; but south of that great headland there are Italian settlements.
In British Somaliland missionary enterprise has hitherto been Catholic, and even that ceased some years before the War when the authorities had to tell the mission that it must leave, as they could no longer protect it from the Mullah's people. It was a pity, as the mission was doing good work and was much respected in the country. There was a Brotherhood which taught and doctored, and a teaching Sisterhood. They were Franciscans and had their local headquarters and a tastefully designed little chapel in the native town of Berbera, but the Brothers had also an agricultural settlement up-country, where they tilled the soil and did their best to teach the natives to do so too. The Somali is much easier to convert than the Arab, as his versatile and superficial temperament induces him to imitate, if not to assimilate, alien forms and ceremonies from the correct procedure at the "Angelus" to the singing, with appropriate gestures, of "a bicycle made for two." Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to teach him to think, or to do a day's honest work; he will pull a punkah while you are awake to keep him at it, or row a boat if allowed to sing, and sometimes he will fish if hungry and quite near the sea; but agriculture involves the hard work of digging, and that is too much for him. The object of the mission was to give Somali boys and girls the rudiments of Catholic Christianity and habits of industry. The boys were well grounded in English and the three "R's" in their simplest form, while the girls were taught chiefly sewing and cooking. The idea was for boys and girls to marry each other in the fulness of time and beget Christian children, but, as one of the good Fathers used regretfully to say, it did not work out in practice. The boys learnt enough to become interpreters or obtain small clerkships in the post and telegraph offices of Aden and adjacent ports, whereupon they felt marriage with a "black woman" to be derogatory, and looked higher, to the less swarthy charms of some half-caste maiden met at Mass (for they usually remained Catholic, at least in outward form). The girls, on the other hand, with all their domestic training, were much sought after by local chiefs, who were prepared to give them a good allowance in beads, bangles and cloth, plenty of food and a fairly easy life. In such surroundings they naturally readopted Islam.