derably augmented the
adversary's force of resistance. I mean by this the sentiment of
solidarity which is becoming livelier of late years among the peoples of
Islam, and which in our age of rapid communication is no longer a
negligible quantity, as it was even ten or twenty years ago.

"It may not be superfluous to draw the attention of our
nineteenth-century Crusaders to the importance of the Moslem press,
whose ramifications extend all over Asia and Africa, and whose
exhortations sink more profoundly than they do with us into the souls of
their readers. In Turkey, India, Persia, Central Asia, Java, Egypt, and
Algeria, native organs, daily and periodical, begin to exert a profound
influence. Everything that Europe thinks, decides, and executes against
Islam spreads through those countries with the rapidity of lightning.
Caravans carry the news to the heart of China and to the equator, where
the tidings are commented upon in very singular fashion. Certain sparks
struck at our meetings and banquets kindle, little by little, menacing
flames. Hence, it would be an unpardonable legerity to close our eyes to
the dangers lurking beneath an apparent passivity. What the _Terdjuman_
of Crimea says between the lines is repeated by the Constantinople
_Ikdam_, and is commented on and exaggerated at Calcutta by _The Moslem
Chronicle_.

"Of course, at present, the bond of Pan-Islamism is composed of tenuous
and dispersed strands. But Western aggression might easily unite those
strands into a solid whole, bringing about a general war".[60]

In the decades which have elapsed since Vambery wrote those lines the
situation has become much more tense. Moslem resentment at European
dominance has increased, has been reinforced by nationalistic
aspirations almost unknown during the last century, and possesses
methods of highly efficient propaganda. For example, the Pan-Islamic
press, to which Vambery refers, has developed in truly extraordinary
fashion. In 1900 there were in the whole Islamic world not more than 200
propagandist journals. By 1906 there were 500, while in 1914 there were
well over 1000.[61] Moslems fully appreciate the post-office, the
railroad, and other modern methods of rapidly interchanging ideas.
"Every Moslem country is in communication with every other Moslem
country: directly, by means of special emissaries, pilgrims, travellers,
traders, and postal exchanges; indirectly, by means of Mohammedan
newspapers, books, p