r own independent
nationhood. In that light they saw in the British occupation of Egypt,
in the Anglo-French agreement with regard to Morocco and the
Anglo-Russian agreement with regard to Persia, and last but not least,
in the Italian invasion of Tripoli, the gradual development of a scheme
in which all the powers of Christendom were involved for the extinction
of the temporal power of Islam and, with it inevitably, according to
orthodox doctrine, of its spiritual authority. The Ottoman Empire had
been saved for a time by the protection extended to it for her own
purposes by Germany who had alone stood between it and the
disintegrating machinations of the "European Concert" in
Constantinople, bent on undermining the ascendancy of the ruling
Mahomedan race by its menacing insistence on reforms for the benefit of
the subject Christian races which could result only in the further
aggrandisement of the independent Christian states already carved out of
the Sultans' former dominions in Europe and in the introduction of
similar processes even into their Asiatic dominions. The Balkan wars of
1912-1913 appeared to bear out the theory of a great European conspiracy
directed against Turkey as "the sword of Islam," and whilst the
sympathies of Indian Mahomedans of all classes and schools of thought
were naturally enlisted in favour of their Turkish co-religionists, the
leaders of the advanced Mahomedan party themselves went to
Constantinople in charge of the Red Crescent funds collected in India
and got into close personal touch with the Turkish Nationalists who
ruled in the name of the Sultan but derived their authority from the
"Committee of Union and Progress." The same party had in the meantime
gone a long way towards capturing the All-India Moslem League and
bringing it into line with the advanced wing of the Indian National
Congress. The fusion between the League and the Congress, which was
still very repugnant both to the politically conservative and to the
religious orthodox majority of the Indian Mahomedan community, was not
completed, nor was the reunion of the Moderate and Extremist parties
within the Congress itself, when India was caught up with Great Britain
and most of the nations of the world into the whirlpool of the Great War
on August 4, 1914.

CHAPTER VIII

THROUGH THE GREAT WAR TO THE GREAT INDIAN REFORM BILL

The genuine outburst of enthusiasm with which India, whether under
direct British admini