Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Holy War, Made in Germany (1915).djvu/41

as a kind of Mohammedan papacy. Most of all did this conception find adherents in England at the time when that country was still considered to be the protector of the Turk against danger threatened by Russia. It was thought useful to make the British-Indian Moslim believe that the British Government was on terms of intimate friendship with the head of their church. Turkish statesmen made clever use of this error. Of course they could not admit before their European friends the real theory of the Caliphate with its mission of uniting all the faithful under its banner in order to make war on all kâfirs. They rejoiced all the more to see that these had formed about that institution a conception which, to be sure, was false, but for that very reason plausible to non-Mohammedans. They took good care not to correct it, for they were satisfied with being able, before