ption of the occupation of
Cyprus, which, as Lord Goschen very truly said at the time, "prevented
British Ambassadors from showing 'clean hands' to the Sultan in proof of
the unselfishness of British action," the policy of England in the Near
East has been actuated, ever since the close of the Napoleonic wars, by
a sincere and wholly disinterested desire to save Turkish statesmen from
the consequences of their own folly. In this cause no effort has been
spared, even to the shedding of the best blood of England. All has been
in vain. History does not relate a more striking instance of the truth
of the old Latin saying that self-deception is the first step on the
road to ruin. Advice tendered in the best interests of the Ottoman
Empire has been persistently rejected. The Turks, who have always been
strangers in Europe, have shown conspicuous inability to comply with the
elementary requirements of European civilisation, and have at last
failed to maintain that military efficiency which has, from the days
when they crossed the Bosphorus, been the sole mainstay of their power
and position. It is, as Sir Edward Grey pointed out, unreasonable to
expect that we should now save them from the consequences of their own
action. Whether Moslems all over the world will or should still continue
to regard the Sultan of Turkey as their spiritual head is a matter on
which it would be presumptuous for a Christian to offer any opinion, but
however this may be, Indian Moslems would do well to recognise the fact
that circumstances, and not the hostility of Great Britain or of any
other foreign Power, have materially altered the position of the Sultan
in so far as the world of politics and diplomacy is concerned. Whether
the statesman in whose hands the destinies of Turkey now lie at once
abandon Adrianople, or whether they continue to remain there for a time
with the certainty that they will be sowing the seeds of further
bloodshed in the near future, one thing is certain. It is that the days
of Turkey as an European Power are numbered. Asia must henceforth be her
sphere of action.

That these truths should be unpalatable to Indian Moslems is but
natural; neither is it possible to withhold some sympathy from them in
the distress which they must now feel at the partial wreck of the most
important Moslem State which the world has yet seen. But facts, however
distasteful, have to be faced, and it would be truly deplorable if the
non-recognition