The Great Illusion: A Study of the Relation of Military Power to National AdvantageAngell, Norman
History
The Great Illusion: A Study of the Relation of Military Power to National Advantage
Angell, Norman
Commercial policy; Disarmament; Imperialism; War; War, Cost of
The fact is that for many years past Turkey has almost
invariably been at war in some part or other of Arabia.... At
the present moment Turkey is actually conducting three separate
small campaigns within Arabia or upon its borders, and a fourth
series of minor operations in Mesopotamia. The last-named
movement is against the Kurdish tribes of the Mosul
district.... Another, and more important, advance is against
the truculent Muntefik Arabs of the Euphrates delta.... The
fourth, and by far the largest, campaign is the unending
warfare in the province of Yemen, north of Aden, where the
Turks have been fighting intermittently for more than a decade.
The peoples of Arabia are also indulging in conflict on their
own account. The interminable feud between the rival potentates
of Nedjd, Ibn Saud of Riadh and Ibn Rashid of Hail, has broken
out afresh, and the tribes of the coastal province of El Katar
are supposed to have plunged into the fray. The Muntefik Arabs,
not content with worrying the Turks, are harrying the
territories of Sheikh Murbarak of Koweit. In the far south the
Sultan of Shehr and Mokalla, a feudatory of the British
Government, is conducting a tiny war against a hostile tribe in
the mysterious Hadramaut. In the west the Beduin are
spasmodically menacing certain sections of the Hedjaz Railway,
which they very much dislike.... Ten years ago the Ibn Rashids
were nominally masters of a great deal of Arabia, and grew so
aggressive that they tried to seize Koweit. The fiery old
Sheikh of Koweit marched against them, and alternately won and
lost. He had his revenge. He sent an audacious scion of the Ibn
Sauds to the old Wahabi capital of Riadh, and by a remarkable
stratagem the youth captured the stronghold with only fifty
men. The rival parties have been fighting at intervals ever
since.
And so on and so on to the extent of a column. So that what Venezuela
and Nicaragua are to the American Continent, Arabia, Albania, Armenia,
Montenegro, and Morocco are to the Eastern Hemisphere. We find exactly
the same rule--that just as one gets away from militancy one gets
towards advance and civilization; as men lose the tendency to fight they
gain the tendency to work, and it is by working with one another, and
not by fighting against each other, that men advance.
Take the progression away from militancy, and it gives us a table
something like this:
Arabia and Morocco.
Turkish territory as a whole.
The more unruly Balkan States. Montenegro.
Russia.
Spain. Italy. Austria.
France.
Germany.
Scandinavia. Holland. Belgium.
England.
The United States.
Canada.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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