ll."

Yahya Siddyk considers the Western world degenerate. "Does this mean,"
he asks, "that Europe, our 'enlightened guide,' has already reached the
summit of its evolution? Has it already exhausted its vital force by two
or three centuries of hyperexertion? In other words: is it already
stricken with senility, and will it see itself soon obliged to yield its
civilizing role to other peoples less degenerate, less neurasthenic,
that is to say, younger, more robust, more healthy, than itself? In my
opinion, the present marks Europe's apogee, and its immoderate colonial
expansion means, not strength, but weakness. Despite the aureole of so
much grandeur, power, and glory, Europe is to-day more divided and more
fragile than ever, and ill conceals its malaise, its sufferings, and its
anguish. Its destiny is inexorably working out!...

"The contact of Europe on the East has caused us both much good and much
evil: good, in the material and intellectual sense; evil, from the moral
and political point of view. Exhausted by long struggles, enervated by a
brilliant civilization, the Moslem peoples inevitably fell into a
malaise; but they are not stricken, they are not dead! These peoples,
conquered by the force of cannon, have not in the least lost their
unity, even under the oppressive regimes to which the Europeans have
long subjected them....

"I have said that the European contact has been salutary to us from both
the material and intellectual point of view. What reforming Moslem
princes wished to impose by force on their Moslem subjects is to-day
realized a hundredfold. So great has been our progress in the last
twenty-five years in science, letters, and art that we may well hope to
be in all these things the equals of Europe in less than half a
century....

"A new era opens for us with the fourteenth century of the Hegira, and
this happy century will mark our Renaissance and our great future! A new
breath animates the Mohammedan peoples of all races; all Moslems are
penetrated with the necessity of work and instruction! We all wish to
travel, do business, tempt fortune, brave dangers. There is in the East,
among the Mohammedans, a surprising activity, an animation, unknown
twenty-five years ago. There is to-day a real public opinion throughout
the East."

The author concludes: "Let us hold firm, each for all, and let us hope,
hope, hope! We are fairly launched on the path of progress: let us
profit by it! It is Europe'