The same Imperial
cynic who wishes the Turks to submit to English science has himself
submitted to Turkish philosophy, to a wholly Turkish view of despotism and
destiny.
There is an obvious and amusing proof of this in a recent life of Rhodes.
The writer admits with proper Imperial gloom the fact that Africa is
still chiefly inhabited by Africans. He suggests Rhodes in the South
confronting savages and Kitchener in the North facing Turks, Arabs, and
Soudanese, and then he quotes this remark of Cecil Rhodes: "It is
inevitable fate that all this should be changed; and I should like to be
the agent of fate." That was Cecil Rhodes's one small genuine idea; and
it is an Oriental idea.
Here we have evident all the ultimate idiocy of the present Imperial
position. Rhodes and Kitchener are to conquer Moslem bedouins and
barbarians, in order to teach them to believe only in inevitable fate.
We are to wreck provinces and pour blood like Niagara, all in order to
teach a Turk to say "Kismet "; which he has said since his cradle. We are
to deny Christian justice and destroy international equality, all in order
to teach an Arab to believe he is "an agent of fate," when he has never
believed anything else.
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