St. Landry democrat. (Opelousas, La.) 1878-1894, 1880-01-31
England's New Danger in the East.

England's New Danger in the East.
1t is principal article in the Moslem
creed and Of firm belief among Asiatic
Mohammedans that the general proc
lamation of religious war must be
obeyed at all hazards BY careful stu
dents of the Moslcm faith and distii-
guished Anglo-Indians, practical men,
this spectral danger has been held one
of the most serious to which the great
empire of England in India is exposed.
If the great Moslem populations ever
rise in such q war, a "Jehad,' the
fight will be long and to the death. Moth
ing is more significant to the danger into
which Lord Beaconsfield, and Lord
Lytton, twin literary earls together, have
brought the empire of Great Britain than
the free declaration in English papers
and magazines that the invasion of
Afghanistan and the butchery to which
Gen. Roberts has descended sinceG abul
was occupied, may bring this thunder
bolt down on British rule in India. The
odds in favor of civilized troops are so
enormous nowadays, the bare solitary
fact that in all British India there is not
in native hands any modern artillery,
these and the score Of other advantages
by which the English conquest of Iddia
was effected, make revolt almost hope
less. Still the fact remains that for the
first time in years a Moslen rising is
beginning: to be discussed as a possibility.
Lord Beaeonsfeld, who took to him
self credit for making the discovery at
Guildhall speech, early in his admins
tration, that Queen Victoria ruled the
greatest Moslem empire in the world,
has managed in five years to break up
and destroy the confidence which Mos
lem princes and subjects alike felt in the
power of Great Britain. The most
powerful prince of Central Asia,
Shere Ali, the sole survivor of that chain
of khanates which once stretched under
various titles from the mountains which
rim the valley of the Indus to the Ural
range, had been for a generation the
ally of England. Like other independ-
ent princes in and about India, of whom
the two most powerful are MosIem, he
had come to rest in confidence on the
pledge that so long as he was loyal his
boundaries would be respected. The
moral support given him and score of
others had raised among the Moslems of
Central Asia a belief that England was
the friend of the faith, and when some
years ago the sacred Sheik at Mecca
decided that the rule of England could
be conscientiously observed by devout
Moslems the decision was accepted as
solving the doubts of many a bigot.
Under Lord Lytton the pledge given to
Shere Ali has been broken and his pow
er crushed in an unjust war His son
was first set on a doubtful throne, and
is now prisoner carried swiftly through
Moslem districts in Northern India, lest
his bare presence breed riot. His fate
and his fathers unsettles the hope of
Moslem princes, the natural leaders of
the fighting strength of India, that the
English greed Of conquest had been
stayed by the solemn treaties of the last
generation and Moslem forbearance in
the great mutiny.
This is not all. The English column
under Gen. Roberts remains in occupa-
ton Of one of the few districts left in the
Moslem world, the pride and glory of
whose inhabitants is that no white in
fidel dwells among them. Mecca and
Medina are such and Cabul is another.
The murder of Cayagnari was one of
those acts which, if an oriental popula-
ton is to be governed at all, had to be
wiped out in abundant blood The muir
der of an envoy was as much against
ha pafh 81
death was rude and bloody way of de-
claring war to the knife. 1t is not long,
as history counts time, since the Sultan
himself declared war against French
sovereign by beheading his ambassador.
Unfortunately, having set out to punish
Cavagnari' death, Gen. Roberts did not
or could not stop there. He punished
resistance to the English advance as
!" rebellion, and hung men in cold blood
by scores, one of those brutal bits of ter
rorism on which English rule, one may
as we'll say all rule, in Asia is based. A
holy war was proclaimed against him,
and the ancient standard brought
out of the great mosque of Cabul.
A "Jehad' y is the one great browning
danger to which an invading column in
is exposed. It had come,
and with odds twenty to one against
him outside his intrenchments, Gen
Roberts hung the chief Mollah in his
camp. Frederick Harrison rightly COM
pares the act to Napoleon hanging Plus
VII. To Moslems the shock is as great
as such an act would have been to Cath
olics. For a full month without trial
and without right, save the bloody and
inevitable prescription Of Asiatic con-
quest, Gen Roberts has been hanging
prisoners in great patches and butcher
ing every man his troops meet in open
fight. He is doing in other words ex-
actly what every European power has
always done in the full tide of Asiatic
subjugation, and his acts will make as
a page in history as Pelis-
sier's in Algeria or Kauffman's in Bak-
hara. A great storm of protest has
arisen in England over his barbarity,
but if he wins small account will be
made of the means he has used. Gen.
Roberts still remains safe with grave
doubt as to his ability to maintain him
self, but the real danger lies not in the
fate of his column, but in the effect his
barbarous course will have in setting
MOS1ems auainct Rr;t;cb milo an rolf