There was, naturally, “nothing doing” at the station till very late that night, when we should have to pass the dark hours in a luggage train. Just before it was due to start, however, the Governor arrived with sardines, fruit, and bread, of which we managed to make a good dinner “on board,” actually our first meal that day, except for the commandant’s almonds.
A chair was found for me in the empty carriage, but others had to sit on the floor. We had candles and, by some means, word was sent in advance of our approach. They tell me it is quite a short journey, but I cannot help wishing that we had been able to stay in the bullock-carts.
Through that strange night—not so cold, indeed, as yesterday—we seemed to crawl on one mile and then shunt back two, to an awful accompaniment of clanging metal that made it impossible to sleep. I had only to close my eyes for a moment and our train was certain to be violently thrown back. Really, I thought my head would be shaken off my body.
As always, the cheik made heroic efforts to wile away the dark hours and distract my mind. There was no question I could ask him about Islam in vain. Here is the best I can reproduce of that fascinating lesson in faith and philosophy delivered in a luggage train by night:
“The very word Obedience (i.e. Islam) is contrary to all Bolshevist ideas, just as Bolshevism itself is contradicted by the Reign of Terror in Russia. Islam teaches the ‘preservation of property,’ Bolshevism destroys it. Verily, the Turks must have passed through sorrow and tribulation before they could ever have felt any temptation to ally themselves with the Russia of to-day. Yet the Soviet has helped us in our time of need, and we owe our fidelity to the alliance.”
I spoke of the vast sums paid out by Russia to Abdul Hamid to maintain enmity between the Turks and Great Britain.... “That you have made friends with your hereditary enemy surely means grave peril to India.”
“So we all feel,” answered the cheik. “But we can never forget the shock to the Moslem world of the ‘rumour’ that Constantinople (the seat of Caliphat) would be handed over to Russia. England had gone back on her word and lost our respect for ever. Henceforth we could be deceived no longer. We were cyphers, mere pawns, on the political chess-board of the Powers. The principles of Islam were distorted without hesitation to prove that no Christian peoples could live unmolested under Turkish rule. How could Great Britain be so blind to the unbounded respect she had earned from Islam by her fine tolerance of all religions in India? Now she has ‘changed all that,’ and the war in the Near East was a religious war.”
When I attempted to frame some excuses for the pro-Greek attitude of the British Government, he reminded me of our “old pride in Moslem allegiance. You have more Moslem than Christian subjects.... Is not your Prime Minister, Mr. Lloyd George, a democrat? Where can he find more perfect democracies than in the East, under Moslem rule? It is a ‘new’ ideal in the West. When President Wilson began to preach it, he was derided as a Utopian, because he was three centuries ahead of his time! Every Moslem has always been equal before the law—the Sultan stands with his subjects.”
“That does not quite ‘explain’ Abdul Hamid,” I said.
“He was the exception we shall never repeat. You cannot argue from exceptions.... It is the English who have ceased to value the precepts of Islam. The Koran bids us obey those in authority. Rather than rebel, we leave the country.”