rther action be dissolved. Whatever loyalty the Sultan may have lately
achieved outside his dominions, there is not only no spirit of national
resistance in Asia Minor itself, but the provinces, even the most
Mussulman, would hail an invading army as a welcome deliverer from him.
Left to themselves they would abandon without compunction the Sultan's
cause, and the next war of an European state with Turkey will not only
be her last, but it will in all likelihood hardly be fought out by her.

Nor do I conceive that the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the annexation
of its Turkish provinces would be a mere political loss of so much
territory to Islam. It would involve moral consequences far greater than
this for the whole Mussulman world of North-Western Asia. I have the
authority of the most enlightened of modern Asiatic statesmen in support
of my opinion that it would be the certain deathblow of Mohammedanism as
a permanent religious faith in all the lands west of the Caspian, and
that even among the Tartar races of the far East, the Sunite Mussulmans
of Siberia and the Khanates, and as far as the Great Wall of China, it
would be a shock from which Sunism in its present shape would with
difficulty recover. What has hitherto supported the religious constancy
of orthodox believers in those lands, formerly Ottoman, which have
become subject to Russia, has been throughout the consciousness that
there was still upon the Russian border a great militant body of men of
their own faith, ruled by its acknowledged spiritual head.

The centre of their religious pride has been Constantinople, where the
Sultan and Caliph has sat enthroned upon the Bosphorus, commanding the
two worlds of Europe and Asia, and securing to them communication with
the holy places of their devotion and the living body of true believers.
Their self-respect has been maintained by this feeling, and with it
fidelity to their traditions. Moreover, the school of St. Sophia has
been a fountain-head of religious knowledge, the university at which the
Ulema of Kazan and Tiflis and Astrachan have received their spiritual
education; while at all times religious personages from Constantinople
have travelled among them, keeping alive the recollection of their lost
allegiance. On this basis their faith has retained what it has of
loyalty in spite of the political Russianising they have undergone; but
with their political centre destroyed, they would be as sheep without a