Читать книгу An Englishwoman in Angora онлайн

111 страница из 116

“The very word Obedience (i.e. Islam) is contrary to all Bolshevist ideas, just as Bolshevism itself is contradicted by the Reign of Terror in Russia. Islam teaches the ‘preservation of property,’ Bolshevism destroys it. Verily, the Turks must have passed through sorrow and tribulation before they could ever have felt any temptation to ally themselves with the Russia of to-day. Yet the Soviet has helped us in our time of need, and we owe our fidelity to the alliance.”

I spoke of the vast sums paid out by Russia to Abdul Hamid to maintain enmity between the Turks and Great Britain.... “That you have made friends with your hereditary enemy surely means grave peril to India.”

“So we all feel,” answered the cheik. “But we can never forget the shock to the Moslem world of the ‘rumour’ that Constantinople (the seat of Caliphat) would be handed over to Russia. England had gone back on her word and lost our respect for ever. Henceforth we could be deceived no longer. We were cyphers, mere pawns, on the political chess-board of the Powers. The principles of Islam were distorted without hesitation to prove that no Christian peoples could live unmolested under Turkish rule. How could Great Britain be so blind to the unbounded respect she had earned from Islam by her fine tolerance of all religions in India? Now she has ‘changed all that,’ and the war in the Near East was a religious war.”