496 



The Review of Reviews. 



yorember 1, 1906, 



rather than Turks, are the trusted denizens of 

 Veldiz Kiosk, a " strange medley of private secre- 

 taries and spies, aides-de-camp and eunuchs," with 

 behind all the extraordinary figure of Sheikh Abul- 

 Huda, a mysterious personage 



through whom in moments of crisis " the Shadow of God 

 on Eartli " receives *' revelations " equally potent to ex- 

 plain away failure and to invest success with a superna- 

 tural glamour. 



The Shadow of God on Earth seems to have 

 known extremely well what he wanted to do, and 

 he has done it. He has raised once more the 

 fallen standard of Islam, and 



Yeldiz Kifisk has hecome. within a quarter of a century, 

 the head centre of a great orgiuiisation which aims at em- 

 bracing the whole iliissulman world, and has certainly 

 alrefidy succeeded in spreading its ramifications over a 

 greater part of it. 



THE SURTAX'S INTERNAL POLICY. 

 Abdul Haniid came to the throne when European 

 intervention on behalf of the Christian races within 

 his empire had partly dismembered that empire — a 

 catastrophe which he probably attributed to the ill- 

 advised tolerance of his ancestors. Therefore he 

 determined that, at all costs, such a thing should 

 not occur again. His shrewdness told him that he 

 was quite safe in slaughtering Armenians or per- 

 petrating anv other atrocities so long as interna- 

 tional jealousies reduced the Concert of Europe to 

 impotence, and one of the greatest Powers re- 

 mained ■■ benevolently neutral.'' Secondly, he has 

 chieflv devoted himself to strengthening his hold 

 over Arabia, with which his claim to the headship 

 of Islam is naturally so closely bound up. Here 

 " he plaved off one tribe against another, one chief- 

 tain against another, stimulating their dissensions, 

 and always profiting by their divisions.'' There 

 have been reverses, even recently, but the writer 

 evidently thinks them only temporary. 



THE SUI.TANS PRESTIOE. 



This, we are told, is much higher among Mos- 

 lems outside than inside Turkey. Inside Turkey 

 his subjects see the many spots on the sun too 

 plainly — the impoverished exchequer (though the 

 Sultan will, it seems, draw on his private — and 

 deep — purse to prosecute a very favourite scheme), 

 the grinding taxation, the prostitution of justice, all 

 the infamous methods we are accustomed to asso- 

 ciate with Turkey. Outside Turkey the Sultan's 

 prestige is, unfortunately for us, greater than we 

 realise, 



PAN-ISLAM ISM. 



Because, says the writer — 



the mysterious cjrowth of a Pan-Islamic revival does not 

 easily lit in with the more familiar conceptions of our 

 materialistic age, we remain comfortably blind to it until 

 it reveals itself in a sudden burst of lurid ligjit., which 

 discloses the activity of elemental forces none the less 

 formidable because they work through hidden channels in 

 unexplored depths. 



It has revealed itself lately in the state of Egypt, 

 where it needs all Lord Cromer's experience and 

 .luthoritv to makr- us realise that the Pan-Islamic 



seed has fallen. The writer quotes a certain cor- 

 respondent of Lord Cromer's, who probably accu- 

 rately states the facts, and who never denies the 

 benefits of British rule. But when it comes to a 

 choice between the benefits of this rule and allegi- 

 ance to the Sultan as Khalif, plus the old evils, he 

 chooses the latter without hesitation. Here we may 

 find the clue to Abdul's recent action in Egypt, It 

 was not because of a remote strip of territory, bu' 

 because Pan-Islamism appeals to every grievance, 

 and teaches every Moslem to turn to the Khalif fcr 

 redress. The Sultan, the writer thinks, knows very 

 well what he is doing, even though we do not al 

 ways think so : — 



No (Uher Europe;in Power offers eo wide a field for Pan- 

 Islamic activity as the British Empire. But it is by no 

 means exclusively confined to the British Empire. The 

 French do not conceal their alarm at the progress which 

 it has made in their possessions in North Africa- 



No sooner has Abdul Hamid been repressed bv 

 us on the Egyptian border, th m he begins worry- 

 ing the French in the hinterland of Tunis. The 

 writer's moral is : — 



Eor no Power does Paii-Islumism constitute so great a 

 potential d,anger as for the British Empire, which we 

 sometimes ourselves describe with our usual lightr 

 heartedness as the greatest Mahomedan Empire in the 

 world, 



a phrase which has a very different meaning which 

 no one understands better than the Sultan himself. 



THE GROWTH OF THE TELEPHONE. 



The September Scribner celebrates the thirtieth 

 anniversarv of the invention of the telephone in an 

 article by Mr, John 'Vaughan, 



He quotes statistics to show the tremendous 

 growth of the telephone in America since Mr. Bel! 

 obtained his first patent : — 



To-day the exchanges are uiunbered by the thousand, the 

 telephones by the million. Various industries, unknown 

 thirty years ago, but now sources of employment to many 

 thousands of workers, depend entirely on the telephone for 

 support. Numerous factories making lead sheathing, dyu;i- 

 mos. motors, generators, batteries, othce equipments, cables, 

 and many other appliances, would have to close down and 

 thus throw their operatives into idleness and misery it the 

 telephone bell should cease to ring. 



The Bell Companies employ over 87,000 persons, and, it 

 may be added, pay them well. Many of these employes 

 have families to maintain; other support their parents, or 

 aid younger brothers and sisters. It is safe to say that 

 200,000 people look to the telephone for their daily bread. 



These figures may be supplemented by the number of 

 telephones in use '5,698.000) bv the number of miles of wire 

 (6,043.000) in the Bell lines, and by the ntimber of conver- 

 sations i4.479.5O3.g00), electrically conveyed in 1905. The net- 

 work of wire connects more than 33.000 cities, towns, \il- 

 lages and hamlets. 



Mr. Bell, who is still alive, is a Scotchman, having 

 been born at Edinburgh in 1847. As Professor of 

 V'ocal Physiology in Boston University he was try- 

 ing to perfect an apparatus to make language- 

 sounds \'isible to deaf-mutes, when he became con- 

 vinced that articulate speech could be conveyed 

 electrically. 



