hat 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