it is a
practical, working proposition which has to be reckoned with when
dealing with Moslems even in secular matters.

Pan-Islam is no new thing--it is as old as the Hejira, and then helped
to knit together Moslem Arabs against their pagan compatriots who were
persecuting them. In the palmy days of the Abbaside Caliphate it was
quiescent enough, and men of all creeds were welcomed at Baghdad for
their art, learning, or handicraft when we were massacring Jews in
London as part of a coronation pageant.

Medieval Moslems never fanned the movement into flame as long as they
were let alone, and even now tribes living beyond the scope of
missionaries and traders prefer the Christian traveller whom they know
to the Moslem stranger from the coast whom they usually distrust, and
who, to do him justice, seldom ventures among them, unless compelled by
paramount self-interest, generally in connection with some European
scheme or other.

Hitherto pan-Islam had been an instinctive and entirely natural
_riposte_ to the menace or actual aggression of non-Moslems; it assumed
the character of a definite organisation under the crafty touch of that
wily diplomat Abdul Hamid, once called by harsh critics "the Damned,"
though his efforts in that direction have been quite eclipsed by more
recent exponents.

In extreme evangelical circles it used to be frequently urged that
pan-Islam was a bugbear discovered, if not created, by one of India's
most eminent Viceroys, whose remarks thereon are said to have given
Abdul Hamid the hint. This method of eliminating a danger by denying its
existence has been discredited, since 1914, as completely as the
somewhat similar one (attributed to Mississippi engineers) of sitting on
the safety-valve just too long for safety. Moreover, in view of Abdul's
undoubted ability, he probably discovered for himself its efficacy as a
weapon of reprisal when hard pressed by pertinacious and inquisitive
Ambassadors, for he often found himself much embarrassed in his dealings
with Armenia and other domestic affairs by the intrusions of the more
formidable Christian Powers.

Great Britain naturally felt the point of this weapon most as governing
wide Moslem territories, and one can imagine some such interview as
this:

"Frontier rectifications, my dear Sir Nicholas? By all means--and,
talking about frontiers, I do hope affairs are quite quiet now on your
north-west frontier; I take such an interest in my East Indi