Note 9 — Chapter VIII · ISLAM'S FAILURE

Whatever may be the rearrangement of the map of Europe and Western Asia to which the Great War will lead, it is clear already that the problem of Islam will have assumed a new importance and a new urgency. For Moslem Turkey has been courted and won in alliance by great European powers, and armed and organized for their support. It has already been terribly proved that Germany feels herself unable to curb the passions she has roused—witness the wholesale massacre of Armenian Christian populations in the Turkish Empire, of which Lord Bryce, speaking in the House of Lords (on 6th October, 1915), said: 'It would seem that three-fourths or four-fifths of the whole nation has been wiped out. There is no case in history, certainly not since the time of Tamerlane, in which any crime so hideous and upon so large a scale has been recorded.'

It is clear enough that for Germany, or for us, or for any other nation, there is only one means ultimately of making the Turk a healthy influence in the world and a worthy member of the commonwealth of nations, and that is to change his heart—which indeed is the programme of the Christian Gospel.