BOOKS.

AN IRISH MOHAMMEDAN.*

THE whole scope of this book might be defined by saying that it is an essay on the difficulty the Western has in under- standing the Oriental. Bonaparte made ludicrous mistakes, and the late Haji Browne himself, an Irishman who turned Mohammedan, confesses that his understanding of the Egyptian after years of intimacy with him was still only partial. The difficulty, of course, is as great as ever, and in some ways it is insurmountable, for the Western, however deep his sympathy and penetration, cannot, and ought not to, change his own standards and his own

method of thought. Yet that which is a good reason for something in the West is a perfectly invalid reason in the brain of the Oriental. The two sides think in different terms. It is as though a man should argue with the most exact logic with another for whom all the logic has only the value of metaphor. We half expected that Haji Browne, whose superior enthusiasm in trying to get to close quarters with the Egyptian mind is completely symbolised in the fez he wears in the frontispiece and in the Egyptian servant who stands by him like the member of a bodyguard at attention, would have read his countrymen, from Lord Cromer downwards, a severe lesson. Some people act as though a half-way house of achievement were a position which entitles them to a withering haughtiness. But Haji Browne entirely upsets our expectation. He was evidently an exceptional man in more ways than one. Till we reached the end of the book we were not quite sure, it is true, how he would sum up on the British occupation ; but his postscript, after all that has gone before, comes with an almost sensational force. He wrote this postscript after the announcement of Lord Cromer's resignation, and the manner in which the news was received by many Egyptians of advanced political opinions was an eye-opener to him. He says, in substance, that he was prepared to hear, and in a measure to sympathise with, criticism of Lord Cromer, but the condemnation of Lord Cromer's work root and branch showed him the entire lack of balance in the Egyptian leaders, and convinced him that to give them self-government now would be a disastrous blunder :—

"No other person," he writes, "has ever had anything like the same opportunity of self-advancement, and keenly as I sympathise with them, warmly as I appreciate their good qualities, I am assured that if they do not attain self-govern-

ment the fault will be their own, and their own only The official statement that the administration is to be carried on by Lord Cromer's successor in the same spirit and on the same lines as those Lord Cromer has followed is the best guarantee that the Egyptians or European nations interested in the country could have that the magnificent work he has accom- plished is not to be lost."

Few classes in Egypt, indeed, provoke the author to harder words than the so-called " Nationalists." The explanation is

simple. He stands for Pan-Islamism (which, according to his definition, is not at all the dangerous thing it is often repre- sented to be), and the Nationalists are anti-Islamic. If any group of men seem to him more wrong-headed than the Nationalists, it is their allies in Britain, the extreme Liberals :--

"If there is a party in Europe essentially and wholly in all its forms and all its aspirations anti-Islamic, it is the ultra-Radical party. Yet it is this party that the 'Nationalist ' party of Egypt is pleased to accept as its ally. Radicals and Radicalism are the ideals that Mustapha Pacha Kamel holds out to the Egyptians. He does not use the terms, but the principles he advocates are those proper to the terms. He may .call himself a Mahomedan, but the policy he preaches is the policy of a Radical, and a man cannot be both a Radical and a Mahomedan. If, then, the Nationalists' desire to promote reform, to protect and develop their own interests, let them fling their Radicalism aside and return to Islam."

• Boeaparie in Egtipt and the Egyptians of To-day. Ity Haji A. Browne. London T. I'iMer Unwiu. [103. 6d. net.]

We have said that the author does not pretend to full success in his understanding of the Egyptian mind. In a deeply interesting autobiographical passage he describes the sacri- fices which must be made by an Occidental who orientalises himself. We only wish there were more self-revelation of this sort. We fancy that Haji Browne could have written a fascinating personal record, and we would willingly have forfeited for it all the not very important stuff be has written about Bonaparte :-

"Abandoning all that he has been he must seek to become that which he is not, and severing his life from all that has made it his, forego his tastes, stifle his prejudices, ignore his predilections, suppress his emotions, thwart his inclinations, and laughing when he would weep, weep when he would laugh. And with this slaying of his own individuality he must in all things strive to identify himself with those alien to him, ever seeking to see, hear, think, and act as they do. And he must do this not for a week, a month, or a year, but for many years. Not in one city, town or country, but in several, not merely mixing as best he may with the wealthy and the poor, the illiterate and the learned, but, learning to be at home in the abodes of the prosperous and the haunts of the miserable, become equally so with the merchant in the bazaar and the wandering fakir in the desert. And through it all he must ever be other than his home life and training have made him. Ceaselessly on the alert to detect the nature, feelings, and impulses of others and to hide his own. And he must be and do all this day and night, in the loneliness of the desert as in the busy haunts of men. And in doing this he is treading a road over which there is no return. The further he goes, the more perfect is his success, the more impossible it becomes for him to regain his starting-point. Never again can he be that which he has been before. He may quit the East, return to the home of his childhood and mix again with his fellows as one of them, but he can never recover the place he has left and lost, for he who goes down into the East, though his heart never cease to yearn for home and the things of home, is daily, slowly, imper- ceptibly, yet surely, being estranged, and he goes home to find that he no longer has a home, that neither in the East nor in the West is there any rest for him. Thenceforth and for ever he is alone in the world and, with his own sympathies enlarged and enriched, can hope for no sympathy, no fellowship, amidst all the teeming millions of the earth.'

There is surely pathos in that.

The dominant trait of the Egyptian character is, says Haji Browne, fidelity to Islam, and in consequence fidelity to the Sultan. We must say that we should not be prepared to back the Sultan in order to have it said of us that we have made a beginning in understanding the Egyptian mind. But we can nevertheless laugh over the bungling of Bonaparte, who, with " Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" running in his head, genially made proclamation that " all men are equal in the sight of God." Unfortunately, the Koran, the " Word of God," asserts the contrary in precise terms. That error was characteristic of all the Napoleonic attempt to found an Eastern Empire and " take Europe in reverse." The Egyptians on their side foolishly forgot sometimes that their submission to some one was inevitable. When they refused supplies to Nelson's ships they were only making the advent of the French easier ; antagonism to the Beys, again, only meant an indirect incite- ment to the rapacity of the Turks. In the long run the Egyptian's existence depended on his submission ; and we venture to say that, in a happier sense, the truth still holds good, and will do so for some time to come. The author's strictures on Bonaparte are a beating of the air. He speaks contemptuously again and again of the "historians." For " historians " perhaps we ought to read "French historians," for no others (and not even the French historians of to-day) would call Napoleon " the hero of our modern civilisation." The Egyptian's opinion of the Briton is different from the opinion he had of the Frenchman at the end of the eighteenth century. He regards the Briton as "a beast, but a just beast." (The author, by the way, attributes tbis precious phrase to an Etonian, but we have always heard that it was said by a Rugbeian of Dr. Temple, and Temple himself, we believe, used to quote it with pride.) Among the "healthy influences " which the author finds in Egypt to-day are the increased acquaintance of the people with European

civilisation, their increased knowledge of the Mohammedan countries of the world, and the development of the Arabic: Press. Among " unhealthy influences " he mentions the pro- British Arabic paper Mokattain, the aloofness and disdainful- ness of the British official, and the conduct of certain Britons (classed as " cads ") who outrage all the susceptibilities of the Egyptians. We cannot discuss these matters, but we are sure that Lord Cromer would not disagree in a single instancy

with the spirit of the author's aspirations for a deeper sympathy between Briton and Egyptian. As Pan-Islamism is a topic of the moment, we must end by quoting the author's own highly pacific conception of his own creed :—

"The yearly increasing facility of travelling in the East and the growth of the Arabic and Indian Mahomedan Press, have naturally tended to help forward the efforts of the more enlightened Moslems in various lands who were first stirred to movement by the discussion in the European Press, and to-day wherever Islam exists there is a Pan-Islamic party, generally small, but always having as its leaders the most enlightened and most advanced men. Under the guidance of these men Pan- Islamism is essentially a defensive and not an aggressive move- ment—one for the elevation of the people, and therefore an intellectual and peace-promoting and not a military or war- provoking one. That a few of the most ignorant of the people should attach some hazy idea of Moslem conquest to their conception of Pan-Islamism is but natural, but to assume that because their vague, ill-formed, and wholly undigested thoughts now and then find expression in the columns of irresponsible journals, run for the most part by men of no position, education, or influence, these are to be taken as the true exponents of Moslem thought is absurd. Instead of being a danger to Europe or civilisation Pan-Islamism is a movement that should have the support of every lover of peace and civilisation, and the fact that it is making progress in Egypt is but a proof that the Egyptians have awakened to the sense of the only way in which the best and truest interests of their country and their religion can be served."