How formidable her Turkish strength was, a glance at the map will show. Not only were the Turks a great military nation, with warlike traditions and a population capable of raising two millions of fighting men, but Turkey stood across the Straits between Europe and Asia, and while guarding them could throw her weight freely upon the East. India was England’s most sensitive point, the one where she was exposed to military aggression by land. Strike her there, the Kaiser thought, as Napoleon had thought before him, and the clay feet of the great image would crumble under her. Between Europe and the Indian frontier lies a stretch of country 2500 miles in breadth, held by three independent powers, Turkey, Persia, and Afghanistan.[14] All these powers are Mahomedan, and of the three Turkey is, or was in 1914, by far the most powerful. Not only was she the strongest from a military point of view, but in the eyes of countless millions of Mahomedans the Sultan of Turkey was the head of the faith, the true successor of the Prophet; and he was entirely in German hands. His power extended over a thousand miles, to the frontier of Persia, which was not only weak, but at the moment unlikely to use such strength as she had on England’s side. Turks and Persians certainly did not belong to the same sect of the Mahomedan faith, and had often been enemies in the past. But the Persians after all were Mussulmans, and their religious sympathies in any quarrel between Mahomedans and Christians were sure to be against the Christians. Persia held a thousand miles more of the space between Europe and India. Beyond her again to the eastward, right up to the Indian border, lay the third of the independent powers--Afghanistan. The external relations of Afghanistan were supposed to be under British control, and her ruler enjoyed a British subsidy. But his people were turbulent and fanatical, and belonged for the most part to the same religious division of Islam as the Turks. They were believed to have little love for the British, who had more than once invaded their country. Finally, along the Indian border itself, and inside India, there were perhaps seventy millions of Mahomedans, some belonging to wild mountain tribes, constantly at war against the British, and most of the rest inclined to acknowledge the religious supremacy of the Sultan. These Mahomedans had, as a rule, served the British Government with fidelity, and formed a considerable part of the Indian Army. But they too were of the faith. Surely the Germans had some ground for hoping that if the Turks made a vigorous push towards India from their own Asiatic territory, their armies, organised and commanded by German officers, and supported by a hot religious propaganda, would succeed in doing much evil to England. They might, perhaps, succeed in sweeping the independent Mahomedan States with them into a great invasion of India. In any case they would