pe_, p. 128.

[106] I have dealt with it at length in my _Rising Tide of Colour
against White World-Supremacy_.

[107] Townsend, p. 97.

[108] Rev. C. F. Andrews, _The Renaissance in India_, p. 4 (London,
1911). For other similar accounts of the effect of the Russo-Japanese
War upon Oriental peoples generally, see A. M. Low, "Egyptian Unrest,"
_The Forum_, October, 1906; F. Farjanel, "Le Japon et l'Islam," _Revue
du Monde musulman_, November, 1906; "Oriental Ideals as Affected by the
Russo-Japanese War," _American Review of Reviews_, February, 1905; A.
Vambery, "Japan and the Mahometan World," _Nineteenth Century and
After_, April, 1905; Yahya Siddyk, _op. cit._, p. 42.

[109] A. Vambery, "An Approach between Moslems and Buddhists,"
_Nineteenth Century and After_, April, 1912.

[110] For the effect of the war on Asia and Africa, see A. Demangeon,
_Le Declin de l'Europe_ (Paris, 1920); H. M. Hyndman, _The Awakening of
Asia_ (New York, 1919); E. D. Morel, _The Black Man's Burden_ (New York,
1920); F. B. Fisher, _India's Silent Revolution_ (New York, 1919); also,
my _Rising Tide of Color against White World-Supremacy_.

CHAPTER IV

POLITICAL CHANGE

The Orient's chief handicap has been its vicious political tradition.
From earliest times the typical form of government in the East has been
despotism--the arbitrary rule of an absolute monarch, whose subjects are
slaves, holding their goods, their honours, their very lives, at his
will and pleasure. The sole consistent check upon Oriental despotism has
been religion. Some critics may add "custom"; but it amounts to the same
thing, for in the East custom always acquires a religious sanction. The
mantle of religion of course covers its ministers, the priests forming a
privileged caste. But, with these exceptions, Oriental despotism has
usually known no bounds; and the despot, so long as he respected
religion and the priesthood, has been able to act pretty much as he
chose. In the very dawn of history we see Pharaoh exhausting all Egypt
to gratify his whim for a colossal pyramid tomb, and throughout history
Oriental life has been cursed by this fatal political simplicity.

Now manifold human experience has conclusively proved that despotism is
a bad form of government in the long run. Of course there is the
legendary "benevolent despot"--the "father of his people," surrounded by
wise counsellors and abolishing evils by a nod or a stroke of the pen.
That is all