"The conduct of the Most Christian Powers during the past few years has borne a striking resemblance to that of robber-bands descending upon an unarmed and helpless population of peasants. So far from respecting the rights of other nations, they have exhibited the most complete and cynical disregard for them. They have, in fact, asserted the claim of the strong to prey upon the weak, and the utter impotence of all ethical considerations in the face of armed force, with a crude nakedness which few Eastern military conquerors could well have surpassed.
"The great cosmic event in the history of the last quarter of a century has been the awakening of Asia after centuries of somnolence. The East has suddenly sprung to life, and endeavoured to throw itself vigorously into the full current of Western progress. Japan started the enterprise; and, fortunately for herself, she entered upon it before the new Western policy had fully developed itself, and while certain archaic ideals about the rights of peoples and the sanctity of treaties still prevailed. When the new era was inaugurated by the great Japanese statesmen of the nineteenth century, Europe did not feel called upon to interfere. We regarded the Japanese renaissance with interest and admiration, and left the people of Nippon to work out the difficulties of their own salvation, unobstructed. If that revolution had taken place thirty years later, there would probably have been a different story to tell; and New Japan, in the throes of her travail, would have found the armed Great Powers at her bedside, each stretching forth a mailed fist to grab something worth taking. Other Eastern countries which have endeavoured to follow the example of Japan during the present century have had worse luck. During the past ten years a wave of sheer materialism and absolute contempt for international morality has swept across the Foreign Offices of Europe, and has reacted disastrously upon the various Eastern nations in their desperate struggles to reform a constitutional system. They have been attempting to carry out the suggestions made to them for generations by benevolent advisers in Christendom.
"Now, when they take these counsels to heart, and endeavour, with halting steps, and in the face of immense obstacles, to pursue the path of reform, one might suppose that their efforts would be regarded with sympathetic attention by the Governments of the West; and that, even if these offered no direct aid, they would at least allow a fair trial." But, on the contrary, "one Great Power after another has used the opportunity presented by the internal difficulties of the Eastern countries to set out upon a career of annexation."[86]
We have already seen how rapid was this career of annexation, extinguishing the independence of the last remaining Mohammedan states at the close of the Great War. We have also seen how it exacerbated Moslem fear and hatred of the West. And the West was already feared and hated for many reasons. In the preceding chapter we traced the growth of the Pan-Islamic movement, and in subsequent chapters we shall trace the development of Oriental nationalism. These politico-religious movements, however, by no means exhaust the list of Oriental reactions to Westernism. There are others, economic, social, racial in character. In view of the complex nature of the Orient's reaction against Westernism, let us briefly analyse the problem in its various constituent elements.
Anti-Western feeling has been waning in some quarters and waxing in others during the past hundred years. By temperamental reactionaries and fanatics things Western have, of course, always been abhorred. But, leaving aside this intransigeant minority, the attitude of other categories of Orientals has varied greatly according to times and circumstances. By liberal-minded persons Western influences were at first hailed with cordiality and even with enthusiasm. In the opening chapter we saw how the liberal reformers welcomed the Western concept of progress and made it one of the bases of their projected religious reformation. And the liberals displayed the same attitude in secular matters. The liberal statesmen who governed Turkey during the third quarter of the nineteenth century made earnest efforts to reform the Ottoman State, and it was the same in other parts of the Moslem world. An interesting example is the attempt made by General Kheir-ed-Din to modernize Tunis. This man, a Circassian by birth, had won the confidence of his master, the Bey, who made him vizier. In 1860 he toured Europe and returned greatly impressed with its civilization. Convinced of Europe's infinite superiority, he desired passionately to transplant Western ideas and methods to Tunis. This he believed quite feasible, and the result would, so he thought, be Tunis's rapid regeneration. Kheir-ed-Din was not in the least a hater of the West. He merely recognized clearly the Moslem world's peril of speedy subjection to the West if it did not set its house rapidly in order, and he therefore desired, in a perfectly legitimate feeling of patriotism, to press his country along the road of progress, that it might be able to stand alone and preserve its independence.
So greatly was the Bey impressed by Kheir-ed-Din's report that he gave him a free hand in his reforming endeavours. For a short time Kheir-ed-Din displayed great activity, though he encountered stubborn opposition from reactionary officials. His work was cut short by his untimely death, and Tunis, still unmodernized, fell twenty years later under the power of France. Kheir-ed-Din, however, worked for posterity. In order to rouse his compatriots to the realities of their situation he published a remarkable book, The Surest Means of Knowing the State of Nations. This book has profoundly influenced both liberals and nationalists throughout the Near East, especially in North Africa, where it has become the bible of Tunisian and Algerian nationalism. In his book Kheir-ed-Din shows his co-religionists the necessity of breaking with their attitude of blind admiration for the past and proud indifference to everything else, and of studying what is going on in the outer world. Europe's present prosperity is due, he asserts, not to natural advantages or to religion, but "to progress in the arts and sciences, which facilitate the circulation of wealth and exploit the treasures of the earth by an enlightened protection constantly given to agriculture, industry, and commerce: all natural consequences of justice and liberty—two things which, for Europeans, have become second nature." In past ages the Moslem world was great and progressive, because it was then liberal and open to progress. It declined through bigotry and obscurantism. But it can revive by reviving the spirit of its early days.
I have stressed the example of the Tunisian Kheir-ed-Din rather than the better-known Turkish instances because it illustrates the general receptivity of mid-nineteenth-century Moslem liberals to Western ideas and their freedom from anti-Western feeling.[87] As time passed, however, many of these erstwhile liberals, disillusioned with the West for various reasons, notably European aggression, became the bitterest enemies of the West, hating the very spirit of Western civilization.[88]
This anti-Western feeling has, of course, been greatly exacerbated since the beginning of the present century. As an influential Mohammedan wrote just before the Great War: "The events of these last ten years and the disasters which have stricken the Mohammedan world have awakened in its bosom a sentiment of mutual cordiality and devotion hitherto unknown, and a unanimous hatred against all its oppressors has been the ferment which to-day stirs the hearts of all Moslems."[89] The bitter rancour seething in many Moslem hearts shows in outbursts like the following, from the pen of a popular Turkish writer at the close of the Balkan Wars: "We have been defeated, we have been shown hostility by the outside world, because we have become too deliberative, too cultured, too refined in our conceptions of right and wrong, of humanity and civilization. The example of the Bulgarian army has taught us that every soldier facing the enemy must return to the days of barbarism, must have a thirst of blood, must be merciless in slaughtering children and women, old and weak, must disregard others' property, life, and honour. Let us spread blood, suffering, wrong, and mourning. Thus only may we become the favourites of the civilized world like King Ferdinand's army."[90]
The Great War itself was hailed by multitudes of Moslems as a well-merited Nemesis on Western arrogance and greed. Here is how a leading Turkish newspaper characterized the European Powers: "They would not look at the evils in their own countries or elsewhere, but interfered at the slightest incident in our borders; every day they would gnaw at some part of our rights and our sovereignty; they would perform vivisection on our quivering flesh and cut off great pieces of it. And we, with a forcibly controlled spirit of rebellion in our hearts and with clinched but powerless fists, silent and depressed, would murmur as the fire burned within: 'Oh, that they might fall out with one another! Oh, that they might eat one another up!' And lo! to-day they are eating each other up, just as the Turk wished they would."[91]
Such anti-Western sentiments are not confined to journalists or politicians, they are shared by all classes, from princes to peasants. Each class has its special reasons for hating European political control. The native princes, even when maintained upon their thrones and confirmed in their dignities and emoluments, bitterly resent their state of vassalage and their loss of limitless, despotic power. "Do you know, I can hardly buy a pen or a sword for myself without asking the Resident for permission?" remarked an Indian rajah bitterly. His attitude was precisely that of Khedive Tewfik Pasha, who, in the early days of the British occupation of Egypt, while watching a review of British troops, said to one of his ministers: "Do you suppose I like this? I tell you, I never see an English sentinel in my streets without longing to jump out of my carriage and strangle him with my own hands."[92] The upper classes feel much the same as their sovereigns. They regret their former monopoly of privilege and office. This is especially true of the Western-educated intelligentsia, who believe that they should hold all government posts and resent bitterly the reservation of high-salaried directive positions for Europeans. Of course many intelligent liberals realize so fully the educative effect of European control that they acquiesce in a temporary loss of independence in order to complete their modernization and ultimately be able to stand alone without fear of reaction or anarchy. However, these liberals are only a small minority, hated by their upper-class fellows as time-servers and renegades, and sundered by an immense gulf from the ignorant masses.