insolence. This insolence, the Hybris of Pangermanism, will be finally crushed by democracy; that is the reason why the Russian revolution is so much feared by Germany and Austria-Hungary. These enemies of democracy know that the Russian revolution is the surest pledge of the Allies’ victory.
From Bagdad to Berlin
Even in this war, and to whatever extent it may have altered the scale of sizes, the triumphal entrance of the British troops into Bagdad is an event of the first magnitude. Those who would underrate its significance, because Bagdad is very far from the Western front or because the Turk is not our principal enemy, would fall into the very error that made us lose so many favourable opportunities in the Balkans. Indeed, there is little doubt that the ultimate struggle will take place in the West, that in the West we must shatter the military power of the enemy; but even if the fall of Bagdad is but a prologue to the impending drama, that prologue is full of meaning and throws a light on the coming dénouement. It does not mean only a substantial alteration of the war map and a valuable pledge in our hands. It is bound to have a direct effect on some of the most important issues of the present war.
The first fruit of the Bagdad victory is the unqualified restoration of the Allies’ prestige through the Moslem world. That prestige, it should be understood, had never suffered to the extent that the Germans would have impressed upon the world at the time of the fall of Kut el Amara. The inglorious failure of Turkish attempts against Egypt, the easy maintenance of order among the Mohammedan populations of India and in French North Africa—above all the revolt of Hedjaz and the liberation of Mecca, the holy city, from Ottoman rule—were so many disappointments for germanised Panislamism. To-day, the misfortune of Kut is retrieved; the town of the caliphs, the ancient political and economic centre of Arab civilisation, is in our hands. In the words of General Lyautey, one of the men who know it most intimately, Islam is like a great musical instrument, where a single stroke on the keyboard awakens long, deep resonances. Through the agency of brotherhoods, whose branches stretch from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, and from Turkestan to the Sudan, the
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