We shall not discuss the fate of Constantinople just now.
But we object most strongly to this kind of Mohammedan propaganda. It has always been a principle of British rule to respect Islam. We remember to have been told by a traveller who was in the Sudan soon after the fall of the Khalifa that the first building for religious worship which we erected at Khartum was a mosque, and that only when we had thus recognized the dominant creed of the population did we proceed to build a Christian church. Toleration could not be carried further than that. But while we respect Islam, as Queen Victoria said in her famous Proclamation to India in 1858, we must ask Mohammedans to respect our Christian beliefs and feelings. We cannot allow Islam to be used as an instrument of intirnida- tion, as it was by Mr. Montagu in his ill-judged speech on Indian reform, or as it is being used by the friends of the Turk. The Allies must do what they think right in regard to Constantinople without being influenced unduly by the alleged opinion of Islam. If we had listened to all the timorous or interested apologists of Islam, we should never have ventured to go to war with Turkey at all. Yet many thousands of our Moham- medan subjects have fought most valiantly and most loyally against the Sultan.
