Leading Articles in the Reviews. 



6i 



THE AWAKENING OF ISLAM. 



Hostility to Christianity. 



Writing on the recent disturbance in Tunis in the 

 first December number of the Rcfue des Deux Aloiides, 

 M. Louis Bertrand, who has lived ten years in North 

 Africa, has a great deal to say about the awakening 

 of Islam. 



effect of the war in TRIPOLI. 



The immediate cause of the rebellion, he says, was 

 the conduct of the Italians in Tripoli, and the dis- 

 turbance was directed against the Italians in Tunis, 

 but a good many Frenchmen were also molested or 

 assaulted. Many other causes, more or less complex, 

 have existed, and the general result was an explosion 

 of hatred for all foreigners. For some little time 

 a revulsion of feeling towards Europeans had 

 been perceptible among the natives, and it was 

 only the fear of reprisals which tempered the out- 

 burst. The war in Tripoli could not fail to produce 

 an evil effect in the French African provinces, yet the 

 Government seems not to have thought of such a 

 thing. Unfortunately the administrators make a 

 point of avoiding all contact with those whom they 

 govern, and in consequence show no foresight in 

 time of danger. In Europe it may be possible to 

 predict the birth and the advance of a popular move- 

 ment, but in North Africa that is not the case, and it 

 is necessary to be always on one's guard. One has 

 but to imagine the effect which the accounts of Italy's 

 conduct in Tripoli must have produced to understand 

 the fury and the mad desire for vengeance in every 

 Mussulman's heart. 



HATRED OF EUROPEAN CIVILISATION. 



It was inevitable that the Mussulmans of 

 North Africa should make common cause with 

 their co-religionaries in Tripoli. But let no one 

 be deluded as to the real meaning of the rising. 

 Besides the Italians and the French, all Europeans 

 were aimed at. Hatred of the Christians had 

 already seized the soul of the Mussulman, and 

 recent events in Morocco and in Tripoli have only 

 added to it. The causes of the new state of mind of 

 the natives are much older than these events, and. the 

 consequences arc more serious. With the agricultural 

 and industrial exploitation of the country the com- 

 plete conquest was begun. The European, it is 

 felt, has become the master of the soil — a master 

 daily more and more greetly and exacting. The 

 Arabs are realising that the French are indeed their 

 masters, and in consequence enemies — enemies who 

 at one time crush them and at another try to 

 manage them by weakness. 'I'hey resent being com- 

 pelled to work regularly for a living according to 

 European ideas, their whole natural mode of life is 

 u]>set, and the European method of administration is 

 repugnant to them. They hate all officials, abominate 

 the European conception of pro[x;rty, and regard 

 taxation as hateful robbery. They prefer to be 

 exploited by their own co-religionaries. A further 



grievance is that the natives are largely excluded 

 from all State appointments. 



A UNITED ISLA.M. 



To the Mussulman religion is everything, and 

 rancour and hatred are excited by religious fanaticism. 

 Islam is incapable of evolution, but the appeal to 

 religious feeling can unite in a solid and compact 

 body all its scattered forces. All the military opera- 

 tions in the Mussulman countries, all the projects of 

 methodical colonisation and industrial and agricultural 

 exploitation, all the vast plan of economic and political 

 conquest from Egypt to Morocco, has only ended by 

 awakening in the Mussulman peoples the instinct of 

 preservation, and this instinct is expressed in the 

 most powerful and redoubtable form — the union of 

 all souls in the faith. Henceforth the Mussulmans of 

 all countries will proclaim their desire to cease their 

 intestine divisions and to unite against the Christians, 

 and if this propaganda of religious unity is continued, 

 Europeans will find ranged against them a formidable 

 mass of Islamic nations, from India to Morocco, who 

 will have none of our customs or ideas, and especially 

 none of our methods of administration. At no very 

 distant date Christianity, in direct opposition to 

 Islam, may be a reality. After such a long struggle 

 for coarse material interests the two forces may find 

 themselves at war for ideas 



Christianising a Heathen People Wholesale. 



In the new Internationa/ Jiaiew of Missions Dr. 

 John Warneck describes the remarkable progress 

 made by the Rhenish Missionary Society among the 

 Bataks, a hill people in the interior of the Island of 

 Sumatra. They were animistic and materialistically 

 minded heathen, who were cannibals, and stubbornly 

 resisted the efforts of the missionaries until some 

 thirty years ago : but now " it is harvest time on a 

 great scale." The Bataks number, it is estimated, 

 between 600,000 and 700,000 souls; 103,000 of 

 these have been received into the Christian Church 

 by baptism, and there are in addition 11,200 can- 

 didates for baptism. Dr. Warneck discusses with 

 great shrewdness the problems opened up by the 

 " mass movement " towards Christianity. Not merely 

 have the aboriginal heathen been influenced, but in 

 Angkola nearly 8,000 converts have been won among 

 Mohammedans. The writer expects that the Chris- 

 tianisation of the Mohammedan Indonesian world will 

 be carried out for the most part by Indonesian 

 Christians. 



Features of the illustrations in January Person's 

 are Six full-page pictures illustrative of various stages 

 of Empire-building, portraits of the two \\'inston 

 Churchills, the .Xmerican novelist and the British 

 statesman : the two famous Sir William Smiths, one 

 director of naval construction, the other founder ol 

 the Boys' Brigade, and a paper by Italia Conti urging 

 that children should be taught to act. 



