While the master lives, things may go well. But the master dies, and is succeeded by his son. This son, even assuming that he has inherited much of his father's ability, has had the worst possible upbringing. Raised in the harem, surrounded by obsequious slaves and designing women, neither his pride nor his passions have been effectively restrained, and he grows up a pompous tyrant and probably precociously depraved. Such a man will not be apt to look after things as his father did. And as soon as the master's eye shifts, things begin to go to pieces. How can it be otherwise? His father built up no governmental machine, functioning almost automatically, as in the West. His officers worked from fear or personal loyalty; not out of a patriotic sense of duty or impersonal _esprit de corps_. Under the grandson, matters get even worse, power slips from his incompetent hands and is parcelled out among many local despots, of whom the strongest cuts his way to power, assuming that the decadent state is not overrun by some foreign conqueror. In either eventuality, the old cycle--David, Solomon, Rehoboam--is finished, and a new cycle begins--with the same destined end. That, in a nutshell, is the political history of the East. It has, however, been modified or temporarily interrupted by the impact of more liberal political influences, exerted sometimes from special Eastern regions and sometimes from the West. Not all the Orient has been given over to unrelieved despotism. Here and there have been peoples (mostly mountain or pastoral peoples) who abhorred despotism. Such a people have always been the Arabs. We have already seen how the Arabs, fired by Islam, established a mighty caliphate which, in its early days, was a theocratic democracy. Of course we have also seen how the older tradition of despotism reasserted itself over most of the Moslem world, how the democratic caliphate turned into a despotic sultanate, and how the liberty-loving Arabs retired sullenly to their deserts. Political liberalism, like religious liberalism, was crushed and almost forgotten. Almost--not quite; for memories of the Meccan caliphate, like memories of Motazelism, remained in the back of men's minds, ready to come forth again with better days. After all, free Arabia still stood, with every Arab tribesman armed to the teeth to see that it kept free. And then, there was Islam. No court theologian could entirely explain away the fact that Mohammed had said things like "All Believers are brothers" and "All Moslems are free." No court chronicler could entirely expunge from Moslem annals the story of Islam's early days, known as the Wakti-Seadet, or "Age of Blessedness." Even in the darkest times Moslems of liberal tendencies must have been greatly interested to read that the first caliph, Abu Bekr, after his election by the people, said: "Oh nation! you have chosen me, the most unworthy among you, for your caliph. Support me as long as my actions are just. If otherwise,