The Egyptian and Arabian Problems

Gentlemen,--To quote from an old reading book, "The atrocious crime of being not a British subject I will neither attempt to palliate nor deny." (Laughter) As far as possible by the limitations of American birth and environment I have identified my life with the life of the British Empire in that the better-half of my life became mine at Baghdad twenty-five years ago, when a British lady joined me for life service in the Persian Gulf (applause); and for over thirty years I have lived happily under the British flag and carried on work as a missionary

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Samuel M. Zwemer, D.D., LL.D., F.R.G.S., is a missionary of the Reformed Church in America. He lived from 1891 to 1906 in Arabia, travelled extensively in the East, and is an international authority on topics pertaining to Mohammedanisin. He is director of the "Nile Mission Press," editor of "The Moslem World," an outstanding missionary statesman, and an eloquent speaker,

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in Arabia and in Egypt. I count myself fortunate today speaking of those two countries-Egypt and Arabia-in their relation to the strength and influence of the British Empire; because I believe the map behind me shows at a glance that those two countries are so located that, strategically, and therefore historically and politically, they lie at the very heart of the Empire, and bind together its far-distant possessions and dominions in the Far East to those further west in Nigeria and Canada.

It has been my great pleasure during the years of missionary service to have met personally some of the great builder:: of the British Empire, namely Lord Curzon, in the Gulf; Lord Kitchener, in Egypt; Sir Reginald Wingate, in the Sudan; and Lord Allenby while I was at work for the Y. M. C. A. in Egypt during the period of the war. It was Lord Allenby who, in one of our meetings of the committee in Cairo, paid a high tribute to the work of the Y.M.C.A. He spoke of this work in terms which I quote on this occasion, because we are here through the invitation of the Y.M.C.A., and under their auspices I have come to Toronto. Lord Allenby stated that: "A broad-minded Christianity, a self-regardless devotion to work, a spirit of daring enterprise, and sound business guidance, have built up in the Y.M.C.A. an organization which has earned the gratitude of the Empire." (Applause)

I realize, Gentlemen, the difficulty of speaking on these two countries, which today are still under the mist and shadow of the smoke of battle, and where men's hearts are failing them for fear, not knowing the future.

Now, these two countries--Arabia and Egypt--are first of all closely related in geography because of their proximity, and yet distinguished by their great diversity. Arabia has an area of over a million square miles. It has 4,000 miles of coast, and yet the population of that vast area is probably less than three and ahalf, at the most four millions. The provinces are not marked on this small map, but they are generally known as Hadramaut on the south, Hejaz, the kingdom of Mecca, on the west coast, Nejd in the centre, and then Hassa on the east, with Oman on the south-east, and on the far north the Jezireh country, which is no man's land, between Mesopotamia and Syria. The whole of that land is largely desert, with rockbuilt cities-Mecca, Medina, Damascus, Baghdad, and Busrah on the north. Between the great stretches of Arabian desert, we have the fair oases that make it a land of beauty and charm to all those who have visited it. I always think of those lines of Bayard Taylor describing Arabia itself, when he said

Next to Thee, O fair gazelle, A Bedouin girl, beloved so well; Next to ye both I love the palm Whose glittering shadows wrap us three With love and silence and mystery.

Arabia flourishes on the date palm, and even the growth and culture of the pearl industry are subsidiary to that original industry of the desert-the cultivation of the date palm. All the way from the head of the Persian Gulf to Baghdad, for five hundred miles as steamers sail, you pass these great date orchards, and the export of the date is one of the chief industries of Mesopotamia, controlled for many years by British and American merchants.

Arabia, perhaps, has a large economic future, but Arabia still remains to be discovered. We have better maps of the North Pole and of the moon than we have of South Eastern Arabia for the obvious reason that more money, by far, has been spent in exploring the north polar regions, and on telescopes for exploring the moon, than has ever been spent by any geographical society for the exploration of Arabia. Yet throughout the war period brave people like Captain Shakespeare and Colonel Philby, Miss Gertrude Bell, and especially Colonel Lawrence have re-discovered that unknown country, and we have today a new hand-book, published by the Admiralty, giving a complete geography of the whole Peninsula, and maps on a fairly large scale of practically every one of the provinces; and this rediscovery was possible, most of all, through the splendid efforts of the men who served the British Empire. (Applause)

Egypt is a country whose history and whose geography is known to the last square mile or quarter of a mile, because of its intense cultivation. On the map, Egypt has an area of 400,000 square miles, but the actual Egypt, the Egypt of practical politics and economics, has an area of only 12,976 square miles. Egypt on the map is ten times as large as Ohio, but Egypt of actual administration and population is smaller than the State of Vermont. Yet, crowded in that narrow area, running for a thousand miles up the Nile, sometimes only a mile or two wide, and at the Delta only 100 or 150 miles wide, there is crowded a population of not less than 12,500,000 souls.

It has three layers of civilization. It is really the palimpsest of history. First there is the old Egyptian civilization of the Pharaohs. Over that, the Christian civilization of the Greco-Roman period, and then for 1300 years, writ large, the third civilization of Mohammedanism. Any one of us could refresh our memory on those three great periods by reading again three remarkable novels that deal with each period respectively--Ebers' "Bride of the Nile", Kingsley's "Hypatia", and either Burton's or Lane's translation of the "Arabian Nights". And the strange thing is that in "Hypatia" or in the "Bride of the Nile" or in the "Stories of the Arabian Nights" the same characteristics stand out-the old Egypt has never changed. The fanatic priest, the sensual masses, and the environment and background have practically remained the same, so that superstition and art and architecture can be traced all through those three lavers, and you find a marvellous similarity in the life of Egypt.

In their relations with the British Empire, Arabia and Egypt have had a history, especially during the last hundred years. British ships, and afterwards British gunboats, explored the coasts of Arabia from Aden to Maskat, and from Maskat all the way to Busrah. The hydrographic charts used today by all the powers were prepared in those early days by Captain Constable and others, and you will find on the corner of all the charts of the Indian Ocean the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, the witness of that early exploration which mapped out the highways of the Near East.

Great Britain also has won her right to the coasts of Arabia by the suppression of piracy. All the east coast of Arabia, especially the south east coast of Oman, once consisted of pirate nests until the British Navy made the Arabs behave themselves as regards British commerce and trade. The treaties made between the Indian Government and the peoples on the south coast and the east coast of Arabia were the beginning of economic progress and the beginning of real civilization for all that part of the world. That history has not yet been told. A Frenchman has just written a book on the Persian Gulf in which he pays a high tribute to the civilizing influence of British Navy efforts in those early days which followed the history of the Portuguese East India Companies and the Dutch East India Companies.

Then Great Britain has suppressed the slave trade, and thus has brought great blessing to the East coast of Arabia. I was present when Lord Curzon, as Viceroy of India, made his famous tour from Bombay to Maskat, and from Maskat to all the ports of the Persian Gulf, and finally to Busrah, Nejo, and on to Baghdad. It was then that he made his famous statement regarding the special rights of the Empire in the waters of the Persian Gulf, to the effect that any power attempting to find a centre there in opposition to the British Empire would be challenged. Referring to this in one of my books I spoke of the Persian Gulf as having become a British lake, because I think that, for all practical purposes, the only flag, the only authority, the only survey, the only lighthouses, the only commercial development in the Persian Gulf is British. (Applause)

Now, as to the political map of Arabia; the political connections of Great Britain with Arabia were not only in the Persian Gulf. She never annexed a port in all those years; she simply patrolled the seas; not a single place was marked British on the map. The first place in all Arabia to become British was Aden, which was annexed to the Empire in 1837, the year of Queen Victoria's accession to the throne. So, for over a hundred years the Persian Gulf has been a part of the British Empire by exploration, by hydrographic charts, by the suppression of piracy and the slave trade; and since 1837 the Aden protectorate has been one of the great foci of that vast ellipse which covers British trade and British enterprise in the Near East.

The political map of Arabia in 1914, that is, before the war, would have been something as follows: The Province of Hejaz running along the coast almost as far as Mecca was under the government of Turkey, and thus was part of the Turkish Empire, also the Province of Hassa and the vilayets of Baghdad and Busrah. Except for those two strips of territory along the east and west coast, the whole of Arabia had not paid tribute or owned the power of Turkey for many centuries. They tried to hold Yemen, but the Arabs were always in rebellion, and the British protectorate gradually extended its power all along this coast and across to Hadramaut.

When the war broke out the Arabs revolted, and the revolt was not first at Mecca and in the Province of Hejaz, for before the end of 1914 the Turks had been turned out of all East Arabia. Busrah and Baghdad still held out until the British troops took that country in the war. When, as you know, Colonel Lawrence was sent to promote negotiations with the Hejaz king, and with his sons, the Shieks of Mecca, including Faisul, the result was that the Hejaz kingdom became one of the allies on the side of Great Britain and France in the great world war. I suppose it is unnecessary to speak of the details of that alliance. The magazines have made us quite familiar with the brilliant character of the work done by Colonel Lawrence. They have also indicated that he used not only diplomacy and his keen knowledge of the Arab mind and the Arab heart, but that he was enabled to persuade many tribes by the use of gold to cast in their lot with the allies. The result of that policy remains yet to be seen. It is always dangerous to employ mercenary troops and the Arab who knew how to get gold now knows how to ask for more. Conditions politically are still very unsettled.

During the war there was a great revival of Mohammedanism in East Arabia, in the territory of Nejd. The Ikwan movement, "the Brethren", is a revival of the old Wahabi spirit which arose in Arabia at the beginning of the nineteenth century, which then spread to India and North Africa in the Senoussi order. . Now, this revival movement of "the Brethren" has spread all over East Arabia until practically from the confines of Nejo and Busrah the whole interior up to the walls of Mecca sweeping south, is held by those Puritan Mohammedans -filled with the old Mohammedan spirit of intolerance and fanaticism. What the future of that movement holds, nobody can tell.

The British have, of course, since the occupation of Busrah and Baghdad, made this an Arabian Kingdom or an Arabian protectorate under King Faisul, who, we are told, is now welcomed at Baghdad as the ruler of the new province of Irak. Oman is practically a British protectorate, with a Sultan at Maskat. The tribes of Hadramaut and the tribes along the Ornan littoral are all closely bound to the British by treaty. Aden is a British protectorate. So, for all practical purposes, except for the indigenous movement which is religious in character, the whole of Arabia has only one dominant power, and that is Great Britain. For better or for worse these million square miles of territory from Baghdad all the way to Aden can at present expect no sovereignty and no foreign domination except it be the power and influence or diplomacy of the British Empire. If the Arabs need a friendly ally could they find any better ?

When we come to Egypt the story is too well known to need repetition. I suppose the first actual political power exercised by Britain in Egypt was after the bombardment of Alexandria and the occupation in 1880, although long before that Great Britain claimed her share, in the Suez Canal, which I think can best be designated as the jugular vein of the British Empire. It unites the two extremes of Empire-the far-off country of Australia, India, Singapore and the Malay Strait Settlements. All this vast population, including also the City of Hongkong, through one narrow gateway, with the British Isles and Greater Britain across the Seas. Now, that narrow gateway, the Suez Canal, is undoubtedly the most strategic place of the whole British Empire. To be wounded there is to suffer a death blow. To lose that is to lose everything as far as the connection and bond of Empire goes; and so to the outsider it seems almost logical that the occupation of 1880 should have been continued and should have been emphasized and become a protectorate during the war. It also seems almost obvious that the strength of the enemies of the allied powers, Germany, Turkey and the Central powers, should have been thrown with extreme violence into that particular sector of the great battle line, namely, the Suez Canal. It was along that Canal and in Egypt that we learned to know the representatives of the Empire that came to defend the Empire and flocked from every quarter of the earth to Egypt like doves to their windows.

There we met men from Jamaica and the West Indies, fighting for Great Britain; men from South Africa; from Hongkong; from every part of India; your Canadian units, some of them also came right to that great centre; and there, finally, the Canal was not only defended, but a railway was laid, and the water pipes connecting the Nile with the Jordan were completed, until on the great battlefield of Armageddon, Lord Allenby, with the armies of every part of the Empire represented, had his signal victory over Turkey, which was the deathknell of Turkish power, as we believe, in that part of the world. (Applause)

Now, you ask me as an American, was the long continued occupation of Egypt justified? I speak not as a politician; I speak as a man who looks upon Egypt as one of the great portions of the world that has not been favoured as we have and that therefore merits at the hand of humanity economic progress, social uplift, and spiritual blessings. I believe that Lord Cromer's famous book on Egypt, or Lord Milner's book, or the reports from year to year that came from the hand of the great Empire-builders abundantly justify the occupation in the evidence they laid before the world. (Applause) Great Britain raised Egypt from bankruptcy to financial stability. She changed Egypt from a land of dire poverty to one of astonishing economic prosperity. I have spoken with farmers whose land was worth $40 an acre in the Delta before the British occupation; since the British occupation you cannot buy that land for $250 or $300 an acre. The population has increased enormously. The Turkish system of bribery and corruption-which is not peculiar to Turkey (laughter)-rather the Oriental system of bribery and corruption has been practically abolished, and you will find everywhere, to the smallest village of Egypt, a British system of common justice based on common law, and so administered with very few exceptions that whether you spoke to the carriage driver on the streets of Cairo or the poor fellaheen in the villages before the war, they all admitted that the scales of justice hung even, and that British equity was not a byword, but a reality. There is also religious liberty.

Now, as far as regards education, I think in a measure we may with justice criticise the British policy. One of the Mohammedan papers put it all in a sentence. It said, "quoting from the words of your Saviour, 'Man shall not live by bread alone.' Man shall not live by irrigation alone, but by education." And the educational policy of Great Britain in the Nile valley has not been up to the ideals of other Anglo-Saxon powers, as, for example, the American policy in the Philippine Islands. Otherwise, how would it be possible that the last census of Egypt should actually tell us that illiteracy among the women and girls of Egypt is still over ninety-nine per cent? Three women out of a thousand can read and write their own names in the Nile valley! And the illiteracy of the male population still remains over ninety per cent, varying a little according to the location of the provinces.

In the second place, education was not only neglected on a large scale, but the type of education was sadly inopportune, and not fitted to produce the principles of democracy of self-rule and self-determination from an intelligent standpoint in that great section of the world. The education produced annually a large crop, a supercrop, of government clerks and men who desired government positions; whereas the country, being agricultural, and in need of engineers for irrigation, and the scientific production of new crops, and the rotation of crops, should have had a type of education such, for example, as we have across the border in the Tuskegee Institute, or the Hampton Institute of our Southern States-an education which dignifies labour, which produces men with technical knowledge for the every-day walk of life, and not merely men who are ambitious and eager to have a part in the government of the country.

Now, aside from these mistakes-which I believe were mistakes-ever since the occupation of the country influences have been at work to undermine British prestige. They were many; they were often from surprising quarters. Just before the war those influences, whatever may have been their motive, were directed by Germany, and a system of propaganda, the systematic undermining of British authority, became very active during the whole war period. Egypt was honeycombed with spies and agencies that were against all that Great Britain had done for Egypt. The Nationalist movement which arose to fury after the Armistice was simply one of the fruits of this programme. When Germany willed the war she also planned a Pan-Islamic rising. In 1907 the German traveller, Karl Peters, wrote these words in one of the German reviews:--"In case of a world war, if German policy is only bold enough she will be able, through PanIslamism, to fashion the dynamite which will blow to atoms British and French rule from Morocco to Calcutta." When I read those astonishing words; I quoted them in my book entitled, "Islam, a Challenge to Faith", in the chapter on the Political conditions of the Moslem World. My book was published in 1908 or 1909, and yet I never realized that here, in a missionary text-book, was the actual programme which was being followed by those who had far larger influence than Karl Peters. When this programme of universal propagandism among the Mohammedans against France and Great Britain failed, and the Holy War proved a fiasco, the dynamite that had been laid in Singapore, in India, in North India, in Afghanistan, in Egypt-when it did not go off at the proper moment, remained, like hidden mines that in some parts of the world are still a constant peril to political navigation. In my opinion the Nationalist uprising, although it had economic causes and educational grievances, and was in some respects a natural response to the watchwords of the programme of self-determination at Paris, and was a recoil due to the sense of injustice because Arabia was represented at the Council of Versailles, while Egypt was not; nevertheless the great motive in this revolt and attempt at revolution was due to outside propagandism and Mohammedan intolerance rather than any just cause of not having "life or liberty and the pursuit of happiness" under the British flag. (Hear, hear)

Perhaps the best statement of the present situation is that given a few weeks ago, in an article in The Nation. I quote the words:--"The only official statement of British policy that I know of is Lord Allenby's assertion that whatever the government granted to Egypt it will be in the direction of increasing self-government for the Egyptians. That is a wise formula, for sudden and complete independence would find Egypt ill-equipped to manage herself. It would put in power the land-owning and city professional classes who have had little experience in government, and might conceivably bring about chaos in a few years' time. I think that the evidence of Britain's good intentions towards Egypt would be found not in a sudden dramatic withdrawal, but in a deliberate, gradual and honest withdrawal from Egyptian affairs ....She could in this interval undo some of the wrong committed against the peasants, and fortify their position in the commonwealth. She could, and of course she would, protect what she considers the essential interests of the Empire and of foreigners by measures similar to those contemplated in the Milner memorandum. This would offer a good chance to permanent peace and prosperity for all who are concerned." I believe this is a moderate expression of the views of outsiders regarding their desire as to Britain's future policy in the Nile valley.

Lastly, I would speak of the solidarity of Arabia and Egypt in their future interests because they are knit together by a common faith. No one can understand the Eastern question who refuses to investigate and therefore fails to understand that which lies deepest and most fundamental in the Eastern mind, namely, the Mohammedan faith. There are four things that bind men together in daily life-a common faith, a common hope, a common task and a common peril. Now, those four have simply knit together, as with bands of steel, 200,000,000 people stretching from Morocco to the western provinces of China, and from Central Asia to Zanzibar. I refer to the common faith of Mohammed, to a common hope of a future kingdom of Islam, the common task of Moslem propagandism among pagan tribes, and, lastly, the common peril that faces every thinking Moslem whether it be in America or Singapore or Calcutta--the peril of Western civilization which undermines all its old institutions, slave-trade, polygamy, Moslem law, and the peril, which to them is also a real one, of Christian propagandism through hospitals, schools, preaching, Bible distribution, and Y.M.C.A. work.

The centres of that religion are principally three, great cities. Mecca is the heart; Cairo is the brain; and Constantinople is the strong arm of Islam; This they have been for at least five hundred years, not to go further back in history. Now, if you will realize that Mecca is today practically governed by a king appointed by the British Empire; that Cairo, the centre of Moslem journalism, education, and their great university, is under the British flag, and that necessarily and for their own good the censorship controls the Moslem press; and that the fleet of the allies, especially that of Great Britain, is guarding not only the Dardanelles but controls the issues at Constantinople, you can put yourself in the place of the Mohammedan. This is why the Egyptian and the Arab, the Persian and the Afghan, the Punjaubi and the Bengali and the Moplas of South India, can only feel that this world-war has shaken the foundations of their faith. They are disillusioned, disappointed and distracted by the wide-reaching issues of a world-war which many of them never willed, but of which they were the unwilling victims.

The bulk of the people are Moslems, all are also Orientals; and they are Orientals in Arabia and Egypt who belong to the desert--a special type of civilization-for Arabia is a desert with oases, and Egypt is a desert with one long oasis, the Nile valley. The type of architecture, the type of home, is the same everywhere; and when you scratch the surface you find in the effendis and the fellahin, between the Arab of the desert and the Arab of the town, similar characteristics. I believe I am fair towards these people because I love them; I expect to go back and work among them-and yet their characteristics are not easy for us of the West to understand. They are distinguished, because of illiteracy, and much superstition. In the second place, they possess marvellous politeness and hospitality, and in these two graces, in those two great gifts of the Spirit of God, they excel the Christian world. They are distinguished also for cheerfulness and patience-not the patience of perseverance, for that they have not, but the patience of endurance. I have often been put to shame when travelling with Arabs, working with Arabs, suffering with Arabs, hungry, cold, naked, beholding this cheerfulness and patient endurance of hard things because they came from Allah. from God-why should not they be accepted without any murmur! On the other hand, they are distinguished also for utter conservatism, for unwillingness to change the path of the fathers, whether it be a pathway running through the forest or through the deserts, or a pathway running through their own minds and hearts. They have also a fierce religiousness. Our religion seems cold and indifferent to the Arab and Egyptian mind. In "Hypatia", in the "Bride of the Nile", and the "Arabian Nights" you can read it-how those men, when they say their creed whatever the words may be not only say it, but shout it. Within them there are only two great personalities to be considered, self and God; and everything is interpreted under the constant realism of this strong theism.

For example, recently I happened to purchase a copy of the New York Times, one of our best American dailies It was the Saturday morning edition. I think it had thirty-two pages, including advertising. I also had with me a copy of the Mecca Daily called "El Kibla". In the Mecca daily I found the word "Allah"-God-almost in every paragraph, surely in every column. He had His place in the programme of the world events, and their interpretation. After looking through that Saturday number of the Times I did not find the word "God" except two references in the list of subjects for Sunday services, and once the word "Jesus Christ". And what is true of the newspapers is true of daily life. Their religiousness is always to the front; ours is often only in our subconsciousness. An English boy would be ashamed to be caught praying; a Mohammedan boy would be ashamed to be caught not praying at the proper hour; and in that statement you have the difference.

Now, what is to be the future of these two great nationalities in the British Empire?-because undoubtedly the responsibility for Arabia, the responsibility for Egypt, rests on no one's shoulders, so much as on the shoulders of the British Empire. What is the future of those two countries looked at from the standpoint of the outsider? One can be a pessimist and follow Omar Kahyyam, or be an optimist and follow Isaiah. There is the answer. If it is all "a checkerboard of nights and days", then perchance one government will succeed another, and chaos and night may follow dawn. But, if we believe, as most of us here do, that God is at the helm of the world, that the war did not happen by chance that even the wrath of man praises Him, that, as Tennyson puts it, choosing the words almost in words of Scripture, there "is one far-off divine event to which the whole creation moves", then, Gentlemen, I believe I can carry you with me when I say that we missionaries are following that programme, (and do it gladly under the British flag,) and propose to open in all those countries centres of Christian influence and education and life and light and uplift until the kingdoms of Mohammed shall have become part of the great and glorious kingdom of Jesus Christ and of His Church.

There are forces on the map of the world that are not visible. There are forces not advertised in the newspaper press. Can you estimate the power, for example, of the Christian leadership at Beyrout, with its university of 1000 students going out into all this region? Every newspaper editor of Egypt was trained in Beyrout College. Can you imagine the influence of one hospital, and that noble Scotchman, Doctor John C. Young, at Aden, where for thirty-three years he has been treating some 30,000 Arab patients a year? Can you estimate the influence of forty hospitals like that on the map of the Near East, hospitals in the Persian Gulf and in the great cities of Egypt? And American mission schools all the way from Alexandria and Cairo to Khartoum and far beyond into the upper reaches of Abyssinia?

In the building of an empire you cannot afford to neglect those spiritual forces which have been introduced by British subjects and by American citizens as the hope of humanity long before Great Britain occupied any portion of Egypt or established herself in any part of the Persian Gulf. May those great forces be increased and multiplied. The reconciliation of races and classes made possible in the Y.M.C.A. huts or the Red Cross hospitals during the war will prove possible also in peace to bring together alien races. The Christian message of love and fellowship and equality and forgiveness and education, the uplift of womanhood, the rights of childhood, shall spread themselves over all these regions. If ever the day comes when you receive missionary reports of the Cathedral Church not of Uganda but of Hejaz, and when we have bishoprics or presbyteries again in Arabia as there were before Mohammed declared himself an apostle of God, then those bishops and preachers and missionaries and leaders in education will perchance look up and see the Cross of St. Andrew, the Cross of St. Patrick and the Cross of St. George on the same old flag. It will still be the flag that has the most respect and is the most feared and loved of any banner in Arabia or Egypt by the peoples that shall live in independence under its folds as somehow a part of the Empire. (Applause)

PRESIDENT MITCHELL asked Mr. Warburton to express the thanks of the Club to the speaker of the day.

MR. WARBURTON said: As a guest of your Club today I wish, first of all, to pay my tribute to the Club itself because of the breadth of its programme and the sagacity which it shows in bringing before representative men of this community these great questions of the Empire. I am permitted to speak for you as well as for your guests today in moving a vote of thanks to the speaker. I frankly confess that not very often have I heard such a combination of instruction and inspiration as we have listened to today. Mr. President, it seems to me that nothing is needed in Canada today more than that the Canadian people should realize that we are a part of the British Empire, and that we are vitally concerned with Oriental questions. (Applause) We have had altogether too narrow a view with respect to our own obligations and with respect to our own relations; and it strikes me that this Washington conference that is to be held will have as important a bearing upon the history of Canada as it will upon the history of any part of the British Empire and therefore anything that leads us to lift up our eyes, to rid ourselves of narrowness and smallness, and to help us to think in terms of the whole world, and especially to fix our eyes upon Asia as the future danger spot in the history of the world, is something for which we ought to be thankful. On that account, as well as because of the very happy spirit in which we have been addressed today-the wonderful felicity of phrase, the abundance of information that has been given us-I move a vote of thanks to the speaker of the day.

The motion was carried amid loud applause, the audience rising and giving three cheers.