It is well known that the decadence of the Arabic-speaking countries had begun long before they were subjected by the Turks. It has even been noticed that Turkish domination in Arabia in 1513 checked the decline of Arabian civilisation, and roused the Syrians, who were in a similar predicament.
Besides, the prevailing and paramount concern for material prosperity which asserts itself in the above-mentioned document, together with the way in which business men, especially Anglo-Saxons, understand material prosperity, would account for the variance between the two civilisations, for it enhances the difference between their standpoints, and proves that the superiority conferred by spiritual eminence does not belong to the nations who consider themselves superior to the Turks.
The Turkish mind, enriched both by Islamic ethics and by Arabian, Persian, and Byzantine influences, has risen to a far more definite and lofty outlook on life than the shallow Anglo-Saxon morality. There is as much difference between the two as between the architecture of the Yeshil-Jami, the green mosque of Brusa, the dome of the Suleymanie, or the kiosk of Baghdad, and the art to which we owe the “sky-scrapers,” the “flat-iron” buildings, the “Rhine bridges,” and the “Leipzig buildings,” or between the taste of the man who can appreciate “loukoums” or rose-jam, and the taste of the man who prefers “chewing-gum” or the acidulated drops flavoured with amyl acetate, or even the sweets flavoured with methyl salicylate provided by the American Government for its army. In the same manner, a similar confusion is often made between comfort—or what vulgar people call comfort—and true ease and real welfare; or again between a set of practical commodities inherent in the utilitarian conception of modern life, and what makes up culture. The quality of culture evidently does not depend on the percentage of water-closets or bath-rooms, or the quantity of calico used per thousand of inhabitants, in a country where the walls of the houses were once decorated with beautiful enamels, where the interior courts were adorned with marble fountains, and where women wore costly garments and silk veils.
Before throwing contempt on Islam, despising the Arabian and Turkish civilisations, and hoping that the Moslem outlook on life will make way for the modern Anglo-Saxon ideal, Mr. Lloyd George and all those who repeat after him that the Turks have no peculiar gift for governing peoples, ought to have pondered over Lady Esther Stanhope’s words, which apply so fittingly to recent events. Being tired of Europe, she had travelled in the East, and, enticed by the beauty and grandeur of the Orient, she led a retired life in a convent near Said, dressed as a Moslem man. One day she was asked by the “Vicomte de Marcellus” whether she would ever go back to Europe, and she answered in some such words as these—we quote from memory:
“Why should I go to Europe? To see nations that deserve to be in bondage, and kings that do not deserve to reign? Before long the very foundation of your old continent will be shaken. You have just seen Athens, and will soon see Tyre. That’s all that remains of those noble commonwealths so famed for art, of those empires that had the mastery of the world’s trade and the seas. So will it be with Europe. Everything in it is worn out. The races of kings are getting extinct; they are swept away by death or their own faults, and are getting more and more degenerate. Aristocracy will soon be wiped out, making room for a petty, effete, ephemeral middle class. Only the lower people, those who plough and delve, still have some self-respect and some virtues. You will have to dread everything if they ever become conscious of their strength. I am sick of your Europe. I won’t listen to its distant rumours that die away on this lonely beach. Let us not speak of Europe any more. I have done with it.”
Besides, all religions accord with the character of the people that practise them and the climate in which they live. Most likely Islam perfectly fitted the physical and moral nature of the Turkish race, since the latter immediately embraced Mohammed’s religion, whereas it had kept aloof from the great Christian movement which, 500 years before, had perturbed a large part of the pagan world, and it has remained faithful to it ever since.
If the Allies tried to minimise the part played by that religion, which perfectly suits the character and conditions of life of the people who practise it, and attempted to injure it, they would really benefit the domineering aims of Rome and the imperialistic spirit of Protestantism. In fact, the Vatican tries to avail itself of the recent Protestant effort, as has already been pointed out, and as various manifestations will show, to bring about a Christian hegemony which would not be beneficial either to the peoples of the East or to the civilisation of the world.
By doing so, the Allies would drive those peoples towards Germanism, though they have no natural propensity for it, for they are averse both to the Lutheran spirit and to the Catholic spirit; yet Germanism has succeeded in finding its way and even gaining sympathy among them, because it pretended to come in a friendly spirit.
It cannot be denied that before the war the Turks endeavoured to find support among other nations to counterbalance German influence. But as, above all things, they dreaded the Russian sway—not without reason, as the latter had already grasped several Turkish provinces in Asia Minor and represented its advance as the revenge of Orthodoxy over Islamism—they had turned towards Germany, who, though it secretly favoured Tsardom, yet pursued an anti-Russian policy.
Of course, they could not have any illusion about what a German Protectorate might be to Turkey, for at a sitting of the Reichstag a German deputy had openly declared: “In spite of our sympathy for Turkey, we must not forget that the time of her partition has come.” As early as 1898 the Pan-German League issued a manifesto under the title Deutschlands Ansprüche an das Türkische Erbe (The Rights of Germany to the Heritage of Turkey). “As soon as the present events shall bring about the dissolution of Turkey, no other Power will seriously attempt to raise a protest if the German Empire lays a claim to a share of it, for it has a right to a share as a great Power, and it wants it infinitely more than any other great Power, in order to maintain the national and economic life of hundreds of thousands of its emigrants.” In the same manner, at the time of the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, von Aerenberg did not scruple to say: “The opening to economic life of Asia Minor and Mesopotamia will always be looked upon as a high deed of German enterprise.” And, alluding to the new field of activity which was thus opened to Austria-Hungary, he added: “The possession of Bosnia has made us a Balkan Power; it is our task and duty to discern when the time shall come, and to turn it to account.”