The End of the Ottoman Empire

THE WORLD to which I, restored at last to health and eager to get back into harness again, returned in that summer of 1919 had undergone vast and far-reaching changes in the three years of my seclusion: the collapse of the Czarist regime in Russia, and the passage granted by the Germans to Lenin and his fellow conspirators to let them loose in their native land; the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk; the complete defeat of the Central Powers on all fronts in 1918; the abdication of the Kaiser and the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; the emergence of the militant Socialist revolutions in sundry European countries; in the Near and Middle East the end of the Ottoman Empire. President Wilson seemed in those months an almost apocalyptic figure of deliverance, with his doctrine of "selfdetermination" for all peoples. Everywhere the war had unleashed huge tides of political feeling which were not to be smoothed or subdued. The peacemakers assembled in Paris to contemplate, with profoundly mingled and complicated emotions, a world scene bristling with difficulties and dangers, an awe-inspiring chaos which the peoples of many nations looked to them to resolve immediately and tidily into an ordered millennium. Relief at the end of the long, bloodstained nightmare of the war mingled with a naïve but vigorous optimism. Peace was to usher in an epoch of unmarred political, social and economic tranquillity. Even so august a figure as my old friend, Lord Curzon, then Leader of the House of Lords, was affected by the prevailing mood, and in his speech in the House of Lords, in November, 1918, announcing the Armistice he intoned with fervor Shelley's lines which begin: "The world's great age begins anew."

India was far from unaffected by all that had happened. In 1917 when the conflict was at its sternest, there was a general feeling in Britain, official and unofficial, that India's contribution to the Empire's war effort, the valor of her soldiers, the staunchness of her leaders and people, earned more than formal recognition. On the strong recommendation of the Viceroy and of the Secretary of State for India, Edwin Montagu, the Government on August 20, 1917, published a statement of its aims in respect to India.

"The policy of His Majesty's Government," said this statement, "is that of increasing association of Indians in every branch of the administration and the gradual development of self-governing institutions with a view to the progressive realization of responsible government in India as an integral part of the British Empire."

This was a momentous pronouncement. It marked the explicit commitment of the then British Government and its successors to a radical departure from what, in conflict with the principles of the Act of 1833, had grown to be the basic and accepted purposes of British rule in India. In the earlier schemes of administrative reform, the Cross-Lansdowne proposals of the 1890's and the Morley-Minto of the early 1900's, there had been no hint of any intention to transfer fundamental power and responsibility from British to Indian hands; self-government in India had never been mentioned. Now, there it was in words that all could read. I have been told that in the original draft which went to the Cabinet the words "self-government" were used; Lord Curzon -- of all people -changed them to "responsible government." He thus made it inevitable that when the constitutional reforms to implement the declaration were introduced, they took the pattern which came to be known as "dyarchy"; for the word "responsible" implies in those who exercise it, responsibility to someone -- to whom? To Governor or Viceroy, and thus to Britain and British Parliament, or to the Indian electorate and people? Dyarchy, workable compromise though it was sometimes made, was bound to present this dilemma to ministers, both in the provinces and at the center. It was the expression, in terms of practical and day-to-day administration of that almost schizophrenic duality of outlook -- that split between ideal intention and workaday application -- which henceforth characterized the British attitude toward India. Schizophrenia is not a basis for happy relations; in it, however, is to be found much of the explanation of the estrangement, deepening to embittered hostility which ended only, and then with miraculous swiftness and completeness, with the final and total withdrawal of British rule in India.

In 1919 all this lay in the future, and I for my part was taken up with a wider, bolder vision in which -- formulated first in my book, India in Transition -- I sought to interest everyone who had any responsibility for Indo-British relations, principally, of course, Edwin Montagu, the Secretary of State. Edwin Montagu was a Jew, totally assimilated into the British pattern and way of life, brilliant and lovable, a member of that interlocked Montagu-Samuel-Isaacs Anglo-Jewish group of families which has made so notable a contribution to British life in the past half century.

I was eager in 1919 that under British inspiration and guidance there should be built up a South Asian federation of self-governing states extending from the Malayan Peninsula to the confines of Egypt -- a federation on what may loosely be termed Commonwealth lines, and within the framework of the British Empire (Commonwealth, of course, was a word which had not come into use in 1919). It seemed to me -- it still seems to me now -- that this was then a feasible scheme and a better solution to world troubles than that adopted. Had the British Government accepted it, and had it been executed resolutely, I am certain that there would have developed in southern Asia a strong power -- an association of powers -- in which healthy democratic institutions would have evolved naturally and easily and which would have provided effective support for Britain and (as it turned out) the United States and the Southern Dominions in an hour of grave need and a permanent bulwark against aggression.

In a measure these proposals of mine were a fulfillment and an extension of ideas and hopes which had been implanted in my mind during my years of close association with Gokhale. In the autumn of 1914 when I hastened back to London from Africa to make as effective a contribution as I could to the war effort, I was met by Gokhale, who, though extremely ill at the time with diabetes -- and constitutionally averse to London's mild, foggy climate -- had prolonged his stay there in order to see me. Amid the pressure of a great deal of other work, we saw much of each other and discussed freely and frankly all our hopes and fears for India. We strove to compose a draft memorandum which we intended to address to the Government embodying the very large measure of agreement which we had hammered out in our conversations.

Early in 1915 Gokhale was dead. But before he died he completed his political testament which he addressed to me, with the request that I should make it public in two years' time, when (as he hoped) the war might be over and India capable of facing the supreme task of working out her own destiny.

In due course I published Gokhale's testament as he bade; and on my own behalf I added a memorandum pleading that after the war East Africa might be reserved for Indian colonization and development in recognition of India's war services.

However these were and are dreams of what might have been. History has taken a different road. The final scheme of reform, as it was promulgated in the Government of India Act of 1919, was very different, on a far smaller scale, and limited only to India. And, alas, it produced not the peaceful, gradual evolution, slow step by step, toward responsible government that had been hoped for, but instead a phase of extreme unrest and violent political turbulence. Moderate, constitutional-minded leaders in Indian politics, such as my friends Sir Pherozeshah Mehta and Gokhale, were dead. A new generation sought for new methods of achieving much more farreaching aims -- and in a hurry.

Even before Parliament considered the Government of India Bill, the situation in India had taken several turns for the worse. A committee set up under the chairmanship of Lord Justice Rowlatt to consider the juridical aspects of political agitation issued its report which recommended the establishment of special courts to deal with acts of sedition. The report had a hostile reception. The example of Ireland was not lost on India. Extremism on both sides took charge. The Rowlatt Committee's recommendations were accepted by Parliament; and as soon as the bill embodying them became law Congress declared a hartal, a general strike, in protest. More than once during these harsh and distressing months, I urged restraint, not only on the part of my followers but of the Muslim community in general; less than a fortnight later, however, occurred the dreadful "Amritsar incident" which set back by many years any hope of constructive and abiding amity between Britain and India.

The shock of this episode and the bitter memories it left behind poisoned relations for years. I suppose that if I had been the sort of person to despair, I should have despaired then. But I was so actively engaged in seeking from the British Government a clear and honorable line of conduct on a matter involving the highest political principles that despair was a luxury for which I had neither the will nor the time.

One effect of dyarchy was that it involved the transference of a good deal of authority in internal matters in India from the center to responsible officials in the provinces. The effects of a centralized bureaucracy were as notable in the India Office in London as they were in Simla or New Delhi. I was asked to be a member of a committee in London charged with the task of decentralizing and reorganizing the work of the India Office. It was mainly a matter of clearing some of the channels by which the Secretary of State got his information and defended his department and himself in the eyes of those to whom he was ultimately responsible, the elected members of the British House of Commons. It was hard work, but it gave me a clear picture from the inside of the workings of the great administrative machine by which a modern State is conducted.

It coincided, as I had indicated, with a period of strenuous political activity, in which I directed my efforts mainly to trying to prevent the complete dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire and to establishing a peace settlement in the Near and Middle East which would be not only just and equitable but also practical.

I must therefore describe in some detail the background to the swirl of political and diplomatic work in which I was caught up. One of the countless major questions which faced the victorious Powers in the immediate postwar period was. What was to be done about the Ottoman Empire, over vast regions of which the Allies were, by the end of 1918, in military occupation? It was true that the Turks retained control of their own homeland, Anatolia, and of the historic, ancient capital, Constantinople, but from Tripolitania in the west to Kurdistan in the east, from north of Aleppo to Wadi Halfa, in enormous territories whose populations, in a great diversity of races and culture but predominantly Muslim, had once owed allegiance to the Sultan of Turkey, the controlling authority was now an Allied Military Governor.

In the heat of the war many promises of spoils in the hour of victory -- spoils to be torn off the vanquished body of Turkey -- had been made; by the beginning of 1919 few were capable of fulfillment, nearly all were irreconcilable one with another. The MacMahon letters, addressed by the acting High Commissioner in Egypt in 1915 to the Sharif Husan in Mecca, could not possibly be reconciled with the Balfour Declaration issued in 1917; both conflicted sharply with the Sykes-Picot agreement, by which Britain and France shared out huge areas of the Ottoman Empire as "spheres of influence." The most flagrantly impossible undertaking of all was that Constantinople (since Czarist Russia had retained an historic interest in what had once been the Graeco-Roman city of Byzantium) should be given to Russia. This at least could be ignored, since the Bolshevik leaders had made their own peace arrangements with the Germans in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and since the Soviet regime and the Western Allies were in a state of undisguised hostility. But for Turkey as a whole the hopes of a tolerable peace settlement looked slender.

Almost all the British political leaders who were to have any influence over the peace discussions were markedly anti-Turkish. Lloyd George, the Prime Minister, was a friend and admirer of Venizelos, the Greek leader; he saw certain similarities in historical experience and outlook between Greece and his own Wales; he was therefore enthusiastically pro-Greek, and though not actively anti- Turkish, he was quite indifferent to the fate of the Ottoman Empire. Arthur Balfour, the signatory of the letter to Lord Rothschild announcing that it was Britain's intention to establish a National Home in Palestine for the Jews, was openly and actively pro-Zionist, and he was also extremely prejudiced against the Turks historically and racially.

Now Zionism, I may say in passing, was something of which I had had long and by no means unsympathetic experience. My friend of the early and strenuous days in Bombay, Professor Haffkine, was a Zionist -- as were many other brilliant and talented Russian Jews of his generation who escaped into Western Europe from the harsh and cruel conditions imposed upon them by Czarist Russia. Haffkine, like many of the earlier Zionists, hoped that some arrangement could be made with the Turkish Sultan whereby peaceful Jewish settlement could be progressively undertaken in the Holy Land -- a settlement of a limited number of Jews from Europe (mainly from the densely populated areas then under Russian rule) in agricultural and peasant holdings; the capital was to be provided by wealthier members of the Jewish community, and the land would be obtained by purchase from the Sultan's subjects. As Haffkine propounded it, I thought this sort of Zionism useful and practical. It contained no hint, of course, of the establishment of a Jewish National State, and it seemed to me worth putting before the Turkish authorities. There were, after all, precedents for population resettlement of this kind within the Ottoman Empire, notably the Circassians -- of Muslim faith, but of purely European blood -who were established by Abdul Hamid in villages, in what is today the Kingdom of Jordan, with excellent results. Abdul Hamid could well have done with the friendship and alliance of world Jewry; and on the broader ground of principle, there is every natural reason for the Jews and the Arabs, two Semitic peoples with a great deal in common, to be close friends rather than the bitter enemies which unfortunately for both sides the events of the past thirty years or so have made them. In furtherance of what was then a shared interest in Zionism, Haffkine gave me, when I first went to Paris in 1898, letters of introduction to a number of his Jewish friends including the savant and Rabbi Zadek Kahn, * and through him I met the famous Baron Edmond de Rothschild. Baron Edmond was a princely benefactor of the early Zionist experiments; some of the first settlements in Palestine were financed by him and owed their ultimate prosperity to his generous support and interest. When I called on him I was introduced to his two sons, James, then an undergraduate at Cambridge, and Maurice, a boy in the uniform of a naval cadet. Baron Edmond remained my friend until his death; and for well over fifty years now both James Rothschild and Baron Maurice de Rothschild have been good and close friends of mine.

* There are sometimes complications in nomenclature. Long afterward in London I was introduced to a well-known American society woman, Mrs. Corrigan, by a friend of mine simply as "Aga Khan" with no titles and no further explanation. Brightly smiling Mrs. Corrigan said that she was a great friend of my brother, Otto Kahn, of New York's Metropolitan Opera House!

Rabbi Kahn prepared a statement of his and his friends' ideas on Jewish settlement in Palestine. It was an elaborate plan for colonization on a scale and in a manner which would have helped and strengthened Turkey; and one of its most logical claims to consideration was that the Ottoman Empire was not a national state but multinational and multiracial. With the Rabbi's proposal I made my approaches to Abdul Hamid through Munir Pasha, the Turkish Ambassador in Paris, and through Izzet Bey, the Sultan's confidential secretary. However, the scheme, good or bad as it may have been, was turned down by the Sultan, and I heard no more of it. I must say its rejection has always seemed to me one of Abdul Hamid's greatest blunders.

But just as the defeated Turkey of 1917-1918 was a different country from the Ottoman Empire of the nineties, so the Zionism of 1917-1918 and on was, of course, a very different matter. And the Zionists were only one group among many, anxious to extract all they could from the carve-up of Turkey. Arab nationalism was scarcely less strongly in the ascendant, and it possessed many powerful friends and zealous advocates in and near the British Government. Sir Gilbert Clayton, T. E. Lawrence and many other socalled "political officers" who had served in the Middle East had -- I must say, from my own knowledge -- encouraged Arab nationalism in and out of season, sometimes openly and sometimes secretly, long before the fall of Turkey. The British had already established a military administration in Palestine. The French advanced the remarkable claim that they had an historic right to protect the Holy Places in Jerusalem. The Greeks, encouraged by another group of romantic, philhellene Englishmen, were in a mood of dangerous expansionism. And at the very heart of real power in the Peace Conference, Clemenceau had no love for the Turks; and President Wilson, in the one interview which I had with him, frankly admitted that he really knew very little about the whole problem.

Almost the only support on the side of the victors that Turkey could muster was Indian. The greater part of Muslim interest in India in the fate of Turkey was natural and spontaneous, and there was a considerable element of sincere non-Muslim agitation, the object of which, apart from the natural revolt of any organized Asiatic body against the idea of European imperialism, was further to consolidate and strengthen Indian nationalism in its struggle against the British.

The reasons for Muslim concern were profound and historic. Turkey stood almost alone in the world as the sole surviving independent Muslim nation, with all its shortcomings; the Imperial regime in Constantinople was a visible and enduring reminder of the temporal greatness of Islam's achievements. In the Khalifate there was too, for all of the Sunni sect or persuasion, a spiritual link of the utmost significance. As the war drew to its close, anxiety had intensified in India in regard to the safety of the Holy Places of Islam and the future of the Khalifate. Gandhi, who had succeeded my old and dear friend, Gokhale, as leader of Congress' political movement and organization, shrewdly seized what he saw to be a chance of maintaining and heightening anti-British sentiment throughout the whole subcontinent. The storm of agitation that swept India on this issue was formidable. The Indian delegates at the Peace Conference, the Maharajah of Bikaner and Lord Sinha, heartily and sincerely supported by Edwin Montagu, the Secretary of State for India, made an emphatic protest against the various proposals for the partition of Turkey and the practical dissolution of the Khalifate that were being eagerly canvassed around and about the conference.

It had been decided to settle the fate of defeated Germany first. This thorny task was accomplished in considerable haste, and the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919. Thereafter protracted discussions continued about the treatment of the other vanquished nations. My friend Syed Amir Ali and I began an energetic campaign to put the real issues, so far as Turkey was concerned, before British and indeed world public opinion. I had private interviews with numerous influential statesmen, together we wrote long letters to The Times; on every possible public and private occasion we made our views known.

We drew vigorous attention to certain specific pledges given by the Prime Minister, and in a letter to The Times quoted these pledges verbatim:

"We are not fighting," Lloyd George had said, "to deprive Turkey of its capital or of the rich and renowned lands of Asia Minor and Thrace. While we do not challenge the maintenance of the Turkish Empire in the homelands of the Turkish race with its capital at Constantinople, the passage between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea being internationalized and neutralized, Arabia, Armenia, Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine are in our judgment entitled to a recognition of their separate national condition."

We tried to sum up the outlook of those for whom we knew we had a right to speak:

What do the Muslims want? What do we plead for? Neither they nor we ask for any new status for Turkey. We consider it, however, our duty to urge, for the fair name of England, nay of the British Empire, that the pledge the Prime Minister in the name of England gave to the world, and in particular to the world of Islam, should be maintained; and that the Turkish Sovereign, as the Khalif of the vast Sunni congregation, should be left in absolute possession of Constantinople, Thrace and Asia Minor stretching from the north of Syria proper along the Aegean coast to the Black Sea -- a region predominantly Turkish in race. It would, in our opinion, be a cruel act of injustice to wrench any portion of this tract from Turkish sovereignty to satisfy the ambitions of any other people.

Instead of bringing peace to Western Asia, such a settlement will sow the seeds of constant wars, the effect of which cannot be expected to remain confined to the country where they happen to be waged. For the defection of the adventurers who dragged their stricken people, who had already undergone great misery, into the world war, Turkey has been sufficiently punished by the secular expropriation of some of her richest provinces. But we submit that the maintenance of the Ottoman Sovereign' spiritual suzerainty in these countries, whilst maintaining his prestige and thus conciliating Muslim feeling, would be the means of making the position of the Muslim rulers or governors of those countries unimpugnable. But so far as Thrace, Constantinople and the homelands of the Turkish race are concerned, Muslim feeling is absolutely opposed to any interference under any shape with the Sultan' sovereignty.

In India itself, as the months wore on, and as the time came near for signing a treaty with Turkey, the agitation grew to such proportions and was of so unanimous a character as gravely to worry the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford and the Secretary of State, Edwin Montagu (whose personal sympathies, as I well knew, were warmly engaged on the Turkish or Asiatic side). Most of all they were disturbed at the thought that the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms, on which such high hopes had been pinned, were to be launched in practice into this atmosphere of turbulence and hostility.

In the Viceroy' Legislative Council it was proposed that I should be sent to London as the leader of a deputation to the Prime Minister, representing the views not only of Muslims but of the whole articulate population of India.

The other members of the deputation were the president of the Khilafat movement, Mr. Chatani; one of India' most eminent advocates, Hassan Imam; and Dr. Ansari, a leading member of Congress. Lloyd George saw us, but we realized that our mission was doomed to failure, for meanwhile the Turkish treaty, known to history as the Treaty of Sèvres, was being prepared, with strangely little regard for the realities which, within a few years, were to shape the Near East anew. The unfortunate Sultan was under rigorous supervision, a solitary and helpless prisoner in Constantinople. Turkish, Arab and Greek deputations were hurrying back and forth between the Mediterranean and London. Sometimes their arguments were listened to; often they were not. The Treaty of Sèvres was to be an imposed, not a negotiated, treaty.

Constantinople was at first promised to the Greeks; then this promise was taken back. It was at last decided that Thrace and Adrianople in European Turkey should be Greek, and Smyrna in Asia Minor. Turkey was reduced to a sort of "rump" state in the highlands of Asia Minor, with a strip of coastline along the Black Sea. There was even talk of an independent, sovereign State of Armenia in the far Northeast -- if the Russians could be persuaded to stomach it. Some sort of order was hacked out of all these conflicting claims. In August, 1920, the hapless Turkish representatives appended their signatures to the document which embodied them all.

This concluded in a sense the first phase of my own campaign for a just treatment of defeated Turkey. Before I record the events of the second phase which rapidly followed, it may be proper to consider the effect of the decisions which the peacemaking politicians took in 1919-1920, in stubborn and bland disregard of the advice which we proffered them.

Muslim opposition to the break-up of the Turkish Empire had a basis -- however much misunderstood it may have been -- of true statesmanship and understanding of the absorbing political realities of the Middle East. First we felt that the separation of the Arabs from the Turks (hailed at the time as emancipation from a tyranny, but within a few years all Arab nationalists were singing a very different tune) would not lead to the emergence of a single strong Arab nation extending from Egypt to Persia and from Alexandretta to Aden and the Indian Ocean. We foresaw in large measure what actually happened: the formation of a number of small Arab nations, for many years of little more than colonial status, under British and French overlordship. We predicted that the Arabs would in fact merely be changing masters, and where these masters had been Muslim Turks, they would now be Christians or (as ultimately happened in a large part of Palestine) Jews. Even now after the lapse of thirty years or more, the Arab states that succeeded the Ottoman Empire -- though the ignominious protectorate and mandated status has been abolished -- are nothing but an aggregation of small kingdoms and republics, not one of them capable of standing up alone in the face of any powerful opposition and, despite the Arab League, incapable of maintaining either individually or collectively real resistance to the influence of Soviet Russia or the Western democracies. Neutrality in any conflict between these two is a forlorn dream.

Consider for a moment how different matters might have been had these emerged after the First World War a federal union of Turkey, the Arab states of the Middle East and Egypt, with a single defense force and a united foreign policy. Our instinctive Muslim faith in the idea of the continuance of Turkey as a great power had wisdom in it, for it would have achieved practical results, in the security and the stability of the Middle East, far transcending anything that the makeshift, haphazard policies of the years since the end of the Second World War -- piecemeal withdrawal of political suzerainty by Britain, piecemeal financial, economic and military aid by the United States -- have been able to effect. Consider the disruption and the political malaise which have been the lot of the Middle East in recent years; consider all the unavailing effort that has gone into the attempt to build up a Middle East Defense Organization, in any degree paralleling NATO, and ponder how easily, how honorably all this might have been avoided.

It is, however, no use crying over spilled milk. The victors of the First World War, unlike the victors of the Second World War, were intoxicated with their triumph and the sense of their own victory and believed that they could build a brave new world according to their heart' desire. History was as tragically as categorically to give the lie to that belief.

The Treaty of Sèvres, harsh though it was, was practically stillborn. Even by the following spring of 1921 events had overtaken it, and it was obvious that it must be urgently reconsidered. A new conference was called in London. At the Viceroy' request I put the Muslim point of view to this gathering. Its sittings however proved abortive. For what everyone in West and East alike had ignored was the emergence from the ruin of Turkey of a soldier and statesman of genius, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who in the time of their deepest tribulation had rallied his sorely stricken but indomitable people. Denied access to Constantinople, he had set up a provisional capital at Angora -- now Ankara -- high on the Anatolian plateau; he had rebuilt, re-equipped and retrained the shattered Turkish Army. Having obtained a secret understanding with Russia, he could arm his troops, and he was assured of protection in his rear. He was thus prepared to defend his country' cause, not around some distant conference table, but in his homeland and on the field of battle. Few were at first aware of the magnitude of this new development.

The Greeks who, being nearest of all to the scene, should have known most, were blinded by their own lust for military victory and territorial expansion. Taking exception to the establishment of the Turkish provisional government in Angora, they began an ambitious, grandiose, and as it proved, utterly disastrous series of military operations in Asia Minor.

To add to the complications, the British Government became restive over their demands for the release of certain British prisoners held in Turkey. Over this, at least, I was able by direct intervention and a direct appeal to the new Turkish authorities to secure a certain relief in an increasingly critical situation. The Turks released the prisoners, and this crisis blew over.

By the late summer of 1922, however, the prospect looked blacker than ever. Mustafa Kemal' tattered but valiant armies had stood at bay in their own hill country, had stemmed the tide of Greek invasion, and now were in the full flush of victorious advance. They captured Smyrna, the great Graeco-Levantine port on the coast of Asia Minor, put it to the sack, and before the eyes of the crews of Allied warships lying in the harbor, set whole areas of it on fire. It was the Greek army now which was a tattered, defeated remnant in flight. Mustafa Kemal' forces stood at the gates of Constantinople and demanded the right of free, unimpeded passage to reoccupy Thrace and Adrianople.

The whole situation was both ominous and confused. A mixed Allied military force, under the command of a British General, Sir Charles Harington, held Chanak and the approaches to Constantinople, which the Turks had already renamed Istanbul. A vigilant, cautious but resolute man, Harington awaited orders from London. A single reckless or inconsidered action on his part, even a stray shot developing into a fusillade, might precipitate a general conflict a little less than four years after the cease fire at the end of the First World War. But the character of the military commander on the spot was not the only factor in this grave and delicate crisis. The British Government was in a curiously unrealistic and bellicose mood. A long, trying period of industrial unrest, with a protracted coal strike and a huge roll of unemployed, had been succeeded by the difficult and involved negotiations which ended the worst of the "troubles" in Ireland and which were clinched by the signing of the Irish treaty. But Lloyd George' second Coalition Government, returned to power with a huge majority in the "coupon" election of 1918, had run its course. The Liberals had never really forgiven Lloyd George for his brusque ousting of Asquith in December, 1916, in the central political crisis of the war. The Conservatives supplied the bulk of his Parliamentary support, but they were becoming increasingly restive and suspicious of the Prime Minister' incurable political adventurism. Did he think that in the Chanak crisis, as it was called, he perceived an opportunity to end the dissension and dissolution in the ranks of his supporters, to prevent his own increasing isolation and to rally Parliament and people behind him in a great united effort? Was it a gambler' throw or was it gross miscalculation?

I was in London when the crisis was at its worst, and I exerted every effort to prevent its culminating in what I knew would be a disastrous as well as an unjust war. This time I was not fighting a solitary battle against an overwhelming tide of contrary opinion. Now I had powerful allies and supporters. The columns of The Times, as so often in my public career, were open to me. The first Lord Rothermere, who had just assumed personal control of the group of newspapers built up by his brother, Viscount Northcliffe, was my staunch supporter. And Lord Beaverbrook, the man by whose influence and eager advocacy exercised at the right moment Lloyd George had come to supreme power as Prime Minister in 1916, was now as sincerely convinced that Lloyd George was set on a course that would bring nothing but suffering and hardship. However, the first concern was not to encompass Lloyd George' fall but to prevent -- of all unnecessary wars -- the most unnecessary that could ever have been waged.

Early in September the British Government issued a statement on Chanak which was both pugnacious and injudicious, and ended with an appeal to the Dominions for their help in the event of another war with Turkey. The tone of this pronouncement thoroughly alarmed British public opinion, which was in no mood to contemplate all the pain and sacrifice involved in another war in support of what could only be described as Greek intransigence and stubbornness. Protests were loud from all sides. The faction that was pro-Government and philhellene had only one strong card to play: Turkish forces were then almost in contact with the Allied -predominantly British -- occupying forces in the Straits of Constantinople area. General Harington on his side was quietly determined to avoid any action which might involve his slender forces and commit them to any form of hostilities with the veteran, tough and resolute forces which Mustafa Kemal had already deployed with skill. On the other hand, at the earnest request of my friend, Lord Derby, * I was able to get in touch with the Turkish leaders and point out the grave perils inherent in any attack on the Allied forces; and I assured them that, pending a provisional settlement, their troops' strategic position would not in any way be prejudiced if they abstained from any offensive action. I pressed these considerations on my Turkish friends with all the urgency I could command. I am glad to say that sanity prevailed. An important contributory factor was that France had come to a secret understanding with Kemal and his Government; and French influence exerted by Monsieur Raymond Poincaré was all for a peaceful settlement. The decision for war could only have been a rushed one; once British public opinion had time to ponder the issues, it could crystallize and express itself, and it was firmly for peace. The very real menace of another war in the Middle East was averted.

*We met, I remember, at Newmarket, and Lord Derby asked me to use all the influence which I possessed.

A vivid account of the handling of this crisis has been given by Lord Beaverbrook. * Throughout it Lord Beaverbrook was as active as he was staunch. Seriously worried by the drift in affairs, he often discussed this matter with me. I was happy to see that we were in full agreement and that in all my endeavors to assist the Turks I had his moral support. He too had reached the eminently sound and practical conclusion that "for Britain to fight Turkey in pursuance of the exploded policy of supporting Greek imperialism was a monstrous error which must be avoided at all costs." Beaverbrook sought the support of his friend and fellow Canadian, Bonar Law, then leader of the Conservative party, which supplied the bulk of the Government' voting strength in the House of Commons.

* In Politicians and the Press.

Beaverbrook' words to Bonar Law were blunt. "These men mean war," he said.

Those four words spelled doom for Lloyd George' Coalition Government. A meeting of the Conservative party was held at the Carlton Club, the party' great sociopolitical stronghold; the speech that swayed the meeting and brought about its decision to withdraw support from Lloyd George was made, not by Bonar Law, who was already an extremely sick man, but by a comparatively unknown back bench M.P., Stanley Baldwin, who less than a year later was to succeed Bonar Law as Prime Minister.

Lord Beaverbrook maintained his onslaught on the pro-Greek, anti-Turkish policy of the Coalition Government. On December 16, 1922, the day after the House of Commons had adjourned for the Christmas recess, The Daily Express gave a sensationally detailed account of the happenings of the previous September. It said that within ten days of the fall of Smyrna, when the Greek rout had already begun and it had been recognized by the Greek Government in Athens that their military position in Asia Minor was hopeless, Lloyd George encouraged them to continue fighting. Lloyd George (said The Daily Express) took this step after having inquiries made by his principal private secretary, Sir Edward Grigg, * of someone attached to the Greek Legation, who had said that the Greek army could not possibly hold out longer without active British assistance in munitions and in credit. On September second, The Daily Express went on, when the Athens Government appealed to Lloyd George to arrange an armistice, another of his private secretaries telephoned the Greek Legation advising them that "their government should be very careful to avoid the mistake made by the Germans in 1918 and not conclude an abject armistice in a moment of panic."

*Now Lord Altrincham.

Lloyd George never returned to office. In spite of our difference over Turkey, I am glad to think that he and I, even as late as 1940, when he came and lunched with me at Antibes, remained on terms of firm and sincere friendship until the very end of his life. Lloyd George was a man of infinitely compelling charm. His effective career as a politician was short, from 1905 to 1922. Its brevity may be explicable in terms of his personality, which was like a diamond cut in many facets; every facet had a brilliant light to throw out, but their number and their variety were so great that often contradictions occurred. There was only one phase in his life in which these contradictions and conflicts were resolved, and he appeared -- and was -- wholly consistent; this of course was during his first two years as Prime Minister, from 1916 to 1918 -- a period of supreme effort and greatness. Then, in spite of all the efforts of his critics to belittle him, he was as much "the man who won the war" as his great successor Churchill was in the Second World War. With the exception of that one triumphant phase, the brilliant and powerful manysidedness of Lloyd George' character prevented him from influencing the history of his time to the extent which his talents -- his imagination, his practical capabilities and his intellectual superiority -- gave his admirers (such as myself) every hope to expect. As one of the Big Four who formulated the Treaty of Versailles, he was convinced -- a conviction which I fully shared -- that he would have used the power over Germany, which under its terms were given to the victorious nations, in a very different manner from that employed by his less imaginative and competent successors. Of all the statesmen of that time whom I knew, Lloyd George alone, I feel sure, was capable of evoking and sustaining in the Weimar Republic in Germany of the late 1920' and early 1930' that self-respect and that genuine understanding and use of democratic institutions which could have saved it and the world from Adolf Hitler and the Second World War. But, alas, by then the volcano was exhausted not by its internal weakness but by its brilliance. The views which I have expressed here about Lloyd George and Germany were shared, I know, by Lord D'Abernon with all his profound knowledge and experience of Germany.

For myself an eventful period of close association with the politics and diplomacy of the Middle East in general and Turkey in particular drew to a close. The first abortive Lausanne Conference was followed by a second, more fruitful, during which I held what may be described as a watching brief. Britain' new Conservative Government was represented by Lord Curzon, the Foreign Secretary; the Turks sent a strong and capable delegation. Britain' mood was realistic and sensible. It was decided to accept the facts, to give de jure as well as de facto recognition to the new Turkey, and to let this revived and vigorous Uninational State retain not merely its homeland in Anatolia, and the sea coast of Asia Minor, but also Thrace, Adrianople and Istanbul. Along these lines agreement was reached and the Treaty of Lausanne signed. Subsequently the Montreux Convention regularized arrangements for dealing with the passage of international shipping through the Dardanelles.

It might be possible to construe all this as a diplomatic defeat for Britain, but what in fact were its main results? A long period of growing harmony and understanding between Britain and Turkey and a Brito-Turkish relationship in the Second World War which, despite severe strain put upon it, was of great assistance to Britain and her allies. Think too what might have happened had Turkey been rebuffed once more: Russia would long since have been installed in Istanbul and, if not in Smyrna itself, along the coast to the north with her ships and aircraft ranging far out into the Medi terranean. The statesmen of the West, heady with the sense of their own political and military power, would have brought about endless complications and misery in an important and sensitive region; destiny and history itself, tugging the other way, gave Asia Minor years of tranquil development and reorganization, social, economic and spiritual. A complement to and a striking contrast with the new Turkey' experience was that of the Arab states in this same epoch -a story of division and weakness, of active nationalist elements in the various countries in constant conflict with Britain and France, and of a relatively submissive minority, installed in office, and therefore loyal to their British or French masters. Such in brief was the history of the Near East from the rise of Ataturk to the outbreak of the Second World War. Of all that happened in those sad and troublous years I was a spectator -- occasionally in the columns of The Times a critic -- but thenceforward I ceased to be, as I had so long been, an active participant.

One other political issue of some complexity and importance to which I devoted a good deal of time and interest in those immediate postwar years was the question of Indians in East Africa, especially in the rapidly developing colony of Kenya. As I have narrated in earlier chapters there had long been Indian settlements along the coastline of East Africa; these settlements contained a considerable and growing number of my own Ismaili followers, who contributed an influential and stabilizing element to the community. In Kenya, where in the 1950' race relations became a political issue of the most crucial significance, there were already clear signs, thirty years ago, of the dangers that were looming ahead. In the so-called "White Highlands" of Kenya there was a rapidly developing area of European -- predominantly British -- settlement, on the high rolling plateaus which lie between the coastal belt and the Rift Valley and Africa' great lakes and which constitute a temperate region in equatorial latitudes, fertile, climatically agreeable and eminently suitable to intensive agricultural development. The whole of Kenya was administered by the British Colonial Office as a Crown Colony. The British settlers, whose unofficial leader was Lord Delamere, a tal ented and highly individualistic English peer, had of recent years been demanding an increasing measure of self-government for themselves. They differed from the usual British community in a tropical country in that they were settlers, and they intended to make -- and did make -- Kenya their permanent home, bringing up their children there, and not merely live there for short tours of duty as did (in general) British officials, traders and planters in India, the Far East and West Africa. But the Indians, rapidly growing in numbers, saw in the settlers' agitation for self-government the imposition of racial, "white" supremacy, and their own permanent political and social exclusion and subjugation. They in their turn demanded complete political and electoral equality. The Colonial Office officials wavered; and they were not themselves competent to take the effective decisions which were made in Whitehall and Downing Street. At no time has it been possible for Kenya to settle its own destiny for itself; all of Kenya's problems have been subject to outside interference, influence and -- in the final analysis -- external decision.

The end of the First World War had seen in Kenya, as elsewhere, a release of pent-up and sharply conflicting political ambitions and emotions. The British electorate and its representatives in the House of Commons were -- although theirs was the final decision in Kenya's affairs -- in the great majority massively ignorant of Kenya's problems. From 1920 a series of decisions was made within the Colonial Office in respect to Kenya; each new decision appeared to cancel its predecessor. Matters were not helped by the fact that there were several Governors of Kenya and several Secretaries of State for the Colonies within a very few years. By the end of 1922 and the beginning of 1923 the situation in Kenya was confused and inflammatory. So strong were the sentiments of the British settlers that they had established a militant, secret organization of their own with which -- in the event of the British Government's deciding, as they thought, against them -- they proposed to take over the administration of the country. Indian opinion, both in Kenya and at home, was greatly agitated. It is fair to say, however, that even in the period of greatest tension no single incident of violence, involving a European and an Asiatic, was recorded in Kenya; in spite of the deep political gulf between them, the communities remained on good personal terms.

To me the whole situation -- had I not in my addendum to my friend Gokhale's political statement suggested that East Africa be set aside for Indian colonization? -- was deplorable. I took my customary step of making my views known in a letter to The Times. The immediate danger, as I saw it, was that a few hotheads might commit acts that would affect the mind and imagination of Indians not only there and then but all over India and far into the future. In particular I urged that if the settlers really accepted the view that the British Empire of the future (we still had not evolved the concept of the Commonwealth, but we were moving rapidly toward it) was to be a truly co-operative association between men of all races and creeds and customs, then indeed in East Africa more than anywhere else in the Empire they should use their full influence and power to bring about a better general feeling and wholeheartedly accept the fact that, short-term feelings apart, in the long run their own interests made it necessary that the Indian community in Kenya should be as prosperous and as happy as it was large.

The Government of India was fully alive to the dangers of the whole situation. Lord Reading, the Viceroy, Lord Peel, the Secretary of State, and Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru who was one of India's representatives at the Imperial Conference of 1923, urged that there should be a conference -- or if necessary a number of conferences -between representatives of India and all concerned with the administration of colonial territories, such as Kenya, Uganda and Figi, where there was any sizable element of Indian settlement, to establish the political rights and responsibilities of Indians in those regions.

Faced with this cogent and powerful request, faced too with the grim possibility of armed rebellion by British settlers in a Crown Colony, the British Government was by now far from unaware of the urgent need for action that would end the dispute. In this somewhat explosive atmosphere I was asked by the Government of India if I would lead the Indian delegation to a committee under the chairmanship of Lord Zetland, charged with the task of finding a solution to the whole delicate and difficult problem.

By the time we were appointed, Lord Zetland had become a member of Mr. Baldwin's short-lived first Government. I was asked to take the chair, but I felt that since I was a party to the dispute and the chief spokesman of the Indian viewpoint, it would be unfortunate for me to be chairman of the committee. We therefore had as our chairman Mr. J. Hope Simpson, M.P.; the other members were Sir Benjamin Robertson, a member of the Viceroy's Executive Council who had paid an official visit to Kenya in 1920, Diwan Bahadur T. Rangachariar and Mr. K. C. Roy. We began our work in April and finished it in July; and by August of that year, 1924, a Labor Government -- Britain's first -- was in office, and when our report was presented to the House of Commons, the Minister who presented it was Mr. J. H. Thomas, the new Secretary of State for the Colonies.

Jim Thomas and I became fast friends and remained so to the end of his life. I never believed that in the unhappy affair which cut short his political career he acted otherwise than in good faith. His open and genial nature may have landed him in a difficult and distressing situation, from which the only way out -- resignation -- was the one which he took unhesitatingly. Jim Thomas was a greathearted man, of fine and generous feelings, whom I always admired and respected.

Though we had spent many weeks of that summer in committee rooms in the India Office and in long discussions with the Colonial Office, our discussions did not receive the seal or hall-mark of any Act of Parliament embodying our suggestions and recommendations. Yet they had, I think, as a compromise, their own genuine value; true, they were only half measures, but they were all that we had either the power or the authority to recommend.

Of one fact my years in public life have convinced me: the value of a compromise is that it can supply a bridge across a difficult period, and later having employed that bridge, it is often possible to bring into effect the full-scale measures of reform which originally would have been rejected out of hand.

On the questions of electoral equality and of unrestricted settlement in the highlands there was no change; Delamere and his friends held their position. But on immigration we secured the abandonment of an offensive ordinance which the Kenya Government had already adopted and which would virtually have put an end to Indian immigration into East Africa; the Secretary of State, however, retained the right to enact any measure at any time should African interests appear to be threatened by the influx of immigrants from abroad. Mr. Thomas announced that certain districts in the coastal lowlands were to be reserved for agricultural immigrants from India. These were to some extent gains. But it was obvious then and it is obvious now that logicality and permanence are impossible of attainment in the whole difficult and complex racial situation which, because of half measures and compromises, has been allowed to develop in East Africa. In some measure, I think, we may claim that we did create a better atmosphere and a wider understanding of the Indian viewpoint, and the fairly practicable modus vivendi which subsisted in Kenya for many years, and also in Uganda and Tanganyika, was the result of our committee work and the detailed recommendations which we made.

One fact was apparent then and still deserves emphasis thirty years later: East Africa's problems must not be allowed to become a matter of contention between opposing political parties in Britain. I cannot be disinterested in this issue, for my own followers of purely Indian origin number in East Africa nowadays some fifty thousand -- seventeen thousand in Kenya, twenty-seven thousand in Tanganyika and six thousand in Uganda. As recently as July, 1953, I contributed a turnover article to The Times in which I set out my views, in principle unchanged by all that had happened in the years between.

"For as long as we can foresee," I said, "the British people are the trustees of the population of East Africa, irrespective of race and color. That trusteeship can never be adequately exercised unless there is a firm bipartisan understanding and interpretation of that duty between the two main political parties and informed public opinion among all classes in Great Britain. There can be no real union in East Africa among the races if any portion of them believes that the trustees are divided or that they have particular favorite wards. The trusteeship of the African colonies is a great responsibility, a touchstone of success or failure for the British race in one of the greatest challenges placed before it by destiny."

Time alone will show how that responsibility is discharged. As a tailpiece to my account of these happenings in East Africa, however, it may be agreeable to mention that Sir Evelyn Baring, the Governor of Kenya, issued a statement on the occasion of the sixtyeighth anniversary of my inheriting the Imamate of the Ismailis, which was of the greatest warmth, kindness and courtesy.

The year 1924 marked the conclusion of a phase of my public life, of five or six years of strenuous and varied activity. Thereafter until 1929 or thereabouts I entered a period devoted almost exclusively to my own personal and private life.

I think, however, that I should make it clear that in public affairs I have always been in a sense an amateur. My public life, as I have shown, has moved in successive, fairly clearly defined phases. But the duties and the responsibilities which are mine by inheritance have never for an instant abated. My normal work as Imam of the Ismailis consists of a constitutional leadership and supervision of the various councils and institutions of all the numerous and farscattered Ismaili communities, self-administered as they are in each region. In addition, I am in constant communication with thousands of individuals in the community, on all sorts of diverse matters about which they seek guidance, and it is -- as I have indicated -a community spread across the globe from the Great Wall of China to South Africa. This is my job, and it has been a regular part of my daily life for nearly seventy years, from childhood into old age.

The First World War

THE EARLY MONTHS of 1914 found me on another visit to Burma. I then took a step of some importance in respect to my Ismaili followers. I advised them to undertake a considerable measure of social and cultural assimilation. Burma, although annexed to the British Empire and at this time under the control of the India Office, was a country in which national, patriotic sentiment was strong, and nationalism a spontaneous, natural and continuous growth. I was convinced that the only prudent and proper policy for my followers was to identify themselves as closely as possible with the life of Burma socially and politically, to give up their Indo-Saracen names, habits and customs and to adopt, permanently and naturally, those of the people alongside whom they lived, and whose destiny they shared.

From Burma I made a brief trip to Europe in that last spring and early summer of the old epoch; and thence I went to East Africa. Somewhat to my surprise and greatly to the distress and indignation of my followers there, the authorities in German East Africa requested me not to visit their territory. While I was on my way to Africa, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated in the little Bosnian border town of Sarajevo; and the casus belli had been provided. By the time I reached Zanzibar the situation had become critical; in the last days of July and the first days of August there was an exchange of ever graver and more grave telegrams. Russia and Germany were at war; the Germans invaded Belgium; and on August fourth Britain declared war on Germany. I had no hesitations, no irresolution. Ambitions, aspirations, hopes and interests narrowed down to one or two intensely personal, solitary decisions. I had one overruling emotion -- to go to England as fast as I could and offer my services in whatever capacity they could best be used. I was in good health; I was still young and strong; my place was with the British. I returned immediately and without comment the insignia of the Prussian Order of the Crown (First Class), which the Kaiser had conferred on me. I telegraphed instructions to my followers in and on the borders of all British territories that they were to render all possible help and support to the British authorities in their area. I offered my personal services to the British Resident in Zanzibar, and I took the first steps in organizing, from among members of the Indian community, a transport corps to assist in maintaining communications from the coast to the interior. Then I made haste to get to England. There were rumors -- well-founded as it proved -- of a German sea-raider at large in the Indian Ocean, and the authorities in Zanzibar asked me not to go to Mombasa as I had intended and thence to England by the first available ship, but to proceed by way of South Africa. From the Union I got passage to England, and I was in London by mid-September. I had had no practical military experience, so it seemed to me that my immediate contribution to the war effort was likely to be humble. I volunteered for service in the ranks in any unit in the British or Indian Army. I called on Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War, whom I had known well in India and with whom I had served on the Viceroy's Legislative Council more than a decade earlier; I urged that I should be enlisted as a private in the Indian contingent then on its way to the Western Front.

Kitchener, however, whose knowledge and experience of the East were massive and profound, had other views as to the sort of service I could render. He was fully cognizant of both the perils and the possibilities latent in the involvement of Eastern, predominantly Islamic, peoples in a conflict of these dimensions. Germany's intrigues and influence in Constantinople had greatly increased in recent years; the great dream of a German hegemony extending from Berlin to Baghdad was one of the many fantasies on which German imperialist thinkers and teachers had dwelt eagerly and lovingly. The Turkish Government seemed deeply disrupted and drained of the capacity to take independent and effective decisions of its own. For Britain it was essential to retain control over the then vital artery of Empire: the seaway through the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, which led not only to India but to Australia and New Zealand and to the Colonial territories of Southeast Asia. In all this complex of political and strategic needs and obligations, it seemed to the British Government that I held a position of considerable importance. Soldiering in the ranks was not, Kitchener gave me firmly to understand, for me.

Most significant of all, it had not passed unnoticed by the British Government that I had won and held the respect and trust of many important Turks. Lord Kitchener requested me to use all my influence with the Turks to persuade them not to join the Central Powers, and to preserve their neutrality. I discovered that Kitchener was by no means alone in his idea of the sort of employment to which I could best be put. His opinion was shared and supported by the Secretary of State for India, by the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, and by the Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith. Indeed even the King, when I had the honor of lunching with him, referred to it.

Therefore while overtly I busied myself with rallying young Indians in England -- of whom there were considerable numbers -to volunteer for the Indian Field Ambulance Corps, and in raising a comforts fund for them, discreetly and urgently I got in touch with the Turkish Ambassador, Tawfiq Pasha. At my request he sent an invitation to the Young Turks, who had assumed power in Turkey's revolution of 1908, to send a ministerial delegation to London to enter into direct negotiations with His Majesty's Government. Britain was prepared, on her own behalf and on behalf of Russia and her other allies, to give Turkey full guarantees and assurances for the future.

We had high hopes of bringing off what would have been, fromevery point of view, a diplomatic victory of first-rate importance. I was quite aware that my own emotions were deeply involved. As a Muslim I was most anxious that Turkey should be spared the trials and the horrors of renewed war, not against a ramshackle alliance of small Balkan states, but against the mighty combination of some of the greatest industrial and military nations in the world. The Turks had but lately emerged from their earlier ordeal; they were in desperate need of a breathing space; it seemed impossible that they could enter a new struggle and not face almost illimitable catastrophe. It had to be admitted that the Turks were justifiably suspicious of "guarantees," however specific, offered by the Western Powers; they had had too recent and too rueful an experience of similar guarantees which seemed to them promises made only to be broken. Yet even allowing for the most cynically realistic appreciation of the situation, as it existed in the last months of 1914, neutrality (which was all the Western Powers asked of Turkey) would have given the Young Turks the time they needed in which to carry out their program of social, economic and military reform.

Tawfiq Pasha was a key figure in our approaches. He had been for many years the Sultan Abdul Hamid's Foreign Minister. The Young Turk Revolution had displaced him from that office; nevertheless the new regime maintained their trust in a most experienced and capable statesman. In London and other Western capitals he was held in the highest esteem. Venerable, sage and shrewd, he was a good friend of mine; he and I trusted each other implicitly. What was even more important, he was in full agreement with my attitude in this business.

He took occasion immediately, however, to warn me that our negotiations would have had a much greater chance of success if the Allies had asked Turkey to come in on their side rather than proposed mere neutrality, for which at the end of the conflict nobody would thank her. He went on to say that he was convinced also that Russia would never agree to Turkey's joining the Allies, as such a step would put an end to all Russia's hopes of expansion at Turkey's expense, either in the northeast, around Erzerum, or southward from the Black Sea. In confidence I communicated these observations to Lord Kitchener. Within a few hours he told me that the Allies had no desire to bring Turkey into the war on their side. In view of this preliminary exchange, we entered negotiations under a considerable handicap. Nevertheless I was an optimist for several days, and my optimism seemed far from groundless.

Suddenly it became known that two German warships, the Goeben and the Breslau, had evaded Allied naval vigilance and were lying at anchor off Constantinople. Their presence drastically altered the whole situation. The Turks accorded them hospitality and protection. They were a visible sign of German naval vigor and capacity. Combined with the remarkable moral ascendancy which had been established in Constantinople by the German Military Mission, under its extremely able and resolute commander, General Liman von Sanders, the ships presented the gravest possible menace to our hopes -- lately so high -- of maintaining Turkish neutrality. By the close of 1914 the Central Powers were confident of a quick victory on their own terms; an elderly Prussian general named von Hindenburg had inflicted a crushing defeat on the immensely gallant but incompetently led Russian armies in the marshes of Tannenberg in East Prussia; in the west the German armies, held almost within the sight of Paris, had stabilized themselves along that six hundred-mile front which, with pitiably little variation and at appalling cost of life on both sides, was to be maintained until August, 1918; a solitary cruiser, the Emden, at large in the Indian Ocean, had inflicted spectacular shipping losses on the Allies, and turned up impudently in Madras Roads. Tragically misled by all these signs and portents dangled before their eyes by the exultant Germans, the Turkish Government took the irrevocable step of declaring war on Russia. This automatically involved the Ottoman Empire in war with Great Britain and France.

To a strategist like Churchill this decision offered an opportunity (which was never fully seized) of ending the slaughterous deadlock on the Western Front and of striking at Germany and Austria from the southeast. To me at that moment it was a shattering blow. Its sharpness and severity were mortifying in the extreme; and when the Turkish Government, striving to put a respectable and popular façade on what was in fact unprovoked, inexcusable aggression, proclaimed this a jehad, a holy war against Christendom, my distress and disappointment crystallized into bitter resentment against the irreligious folly of Turkey's rulers. My resentment was given a razor edge by my knowledge of how near we had been to success in our negotiations. The fruit was just about to be plucked from the tree when not merely the tree but the whole garden was blown to pieces.

I reacted strongly. I joined with other Muslim leaders in an earnest appeal to the whole Islamic world to disregard the socalled jehad, to do their duty and stand loyally with and beside the Western Allies -- especially Britain and France in whose overseas possessions the Muslim population could be counted in many millions. On my own responsibility I published a manifesto setting out my view of the grievous error committed by Turkey. I pointed out that the Ottoman Government and such forces as it would dispose of were bound to be regarded as pawns in Germany's aggressive, imperialist strategy; that in declaring war on Britain and the Allies the Turks were acting under the orders of their German masters; and that the Sultan and his advisers had been compelled by German officers and other non-Muslims to take this step. I stressed the fact that neither Turkey in particular nor Islam in general need have any apprehension about the purely defensive actions of the Western Powers.

"The British and Russian Empires and the French Republic," I said, "have offered to guarantee Turkey all her territories in complete independence on the sole condition that she remain neutral. Turkey is the trustee of Islam, and the whole world is content to let her hold the holy cities in her keeping. All men must see that Turkey's position was not imperiled in any way and that she has not gone to war for the cause of Islam or in defense of her independence. Thus our only duty as Muslims is to remain loyal, faithful and obedient to our temporal and secular allegiance."

It is not, I think, an unjustifiable claim that these words of mine, coming when they did and whence they did, had a genuine and steadying effect when it was needed. The vast majority of Muslim subjects of the Western Powers faithfully preserved their allegiance; Muslim soldiers fought and died alongside their Christian comrades on battlefields all over the world. The whole ugly idea of a jehad, manufactured and exploited by the Kaiser and his advisers for their own purposes, collapsed and little more was heard of it after the early months of 1915.

However, I do still regard the failure of our attempt to open my negotiations with the Sublime Porte in the last months of 1914 as a tragic turning point in modern history. Had Turkey remained neutral, the history of the Near East and of the whole Islamic world, in the past forty years, might have been profoundly different. What had been Islam's natural center and rallying point for hundreds of years, the Sultanate in Constantinople, was destroyed. Turkey, as we shall see later, emerged from her tribulations under the inspiring leadership of Mustafa Kemal, restored and purified in spirit, but shorn of her Empire. Millions of Arabs, who had lived for centuries under the tolerant suzerainty of the Turks, discovered, not only on the high plateau of central Arabia but in the lands of the fertile crescent, the joys and sorrows, the difficulties and the ardors of nationalism. And the British Empire, in the years from 1918 on, fell heir -- by accident rather than by intention -- to that Near and Middle Eastern hegemony so long exercised by the Ottoman Empire; and to vilayet and pashalik succeeded mandatory government. French involvement in Syria, the Greek adventures and disasters in Asia Minor, the clash of Zionism and Arab aspirations, Ibn Saud's carving of a new kingdom in Arabia, the emergence of the Sharifi family from a local chieftainship in Mecca to the foundation of ruling dynasties in two kingdoms -- all these complex consequences and many more were to flow from the Young Turks' rejection, under German pressure, of the advances made to them at the end of 1914.

Kitchener, whatever doubts may have begun to make themselves felt in early 1915 as to his capacity to organize and conduct Britain's war effort in the West, was certainly alert to every contingency in the East. It was not long before he sent for me with another proposal, for a diplomatic or quasi-diplomatic task, which had Cabinet backing, and indeed the personal approval and interest of King George V. This concerned Egypt, where the political situation was confused and delicate. Kitchener himself had been peremptorily recalled to take up his duties at the War Office, when he was about to board the cross-Channel steamer on his way back to his post as British Representative in Cairo. Egypt was nominally part of the domain of the Ottoman Emperor, the Khedive was nominally his viceroy. This status had been preserved -- in name, though in nothing else -- after the British Occupation in 1882. As every Egyptian statesman and politician for many years past has had occasion to point out times without number, the British Occupation of Egypt was always said -- by the British -- to be purely temporary. Yet somehow in defiance of logic and in defiance of promises and undertakings, it continued; until in the early years of this century, as I have recorded in an earlier chapter, Egypt looked to all intents and purposes like a British colony.

In the First World War, as in the Second World War, Egypt was a military base of the highest strategic and logistical importance for Britain and her allies. By the beginning of 1915 the number of British, Indian and Dominion troops stationed in Egypt was large and growing steadily. Alexandria was a great naval harbor and dockyard. The Suez Canal was a vital strategic waterway. On its Sinai banks, however, although Sinai was theoretically part of Egypt, were units of the Turkish Army, whose role at this time was purely static and defensive. But British strategic thinking had not cast Egypt for any quiescent, nonactive role. It was to be the base whence every offensive against Turkey was to be launched. Already thousands of transports were bringing to Alexandria, Port Said, Kantara and Ismailia the men from Britain, from Australia and New Zealand and from India, who were to fight and die, with unforgettable heroism and to no avail, on a barren, rocky little peninsula that guarded the European shore of the Dardanelles Straits leading to Constantinople. As great a degree of certainty and stability as possible in Egypt's internal political situation was, from the military point of view, a prerequisite if this huge operational base was to be preserved in good order.

The confusion began at the top. There was no Egyptian political leader of any caliber, and the Khedive himself, Abbas Hilmi, was in, of all places, Constantinople. Since he had not returned to Egypt when called, it was perhaps inevitable that Allied opinion should believe him to be pro-German and that Allied propaganda should portray him as such in the crudest terms. However, I came to know Abbas Hilmi well in later years during his long exile in Europe, and I am convinced that he was wronged and misjudged. I developed a real affection for him and a real admiration for the clarity and brilliance of his intellect. He told me what I am convinced was the true story of his "defection." Shortly before the Turkish declaration of war, he was attacked by a would-be assassin and wounded in the face and jaw. For the rest of his life he carried the heavy scar which was the effect of this attack.

From 1920 until his sudden death at the end of the Second World War, I saw a great deal of Abbas Hilmi and we became very firm friends. He had a beautiful yacht called Nimat Ullah which was more or less his home on the Riviera during the winter months and the early spring; and he usually spent the late spring and summer in Paris and Switzerland. I often lunched with him aboard the Nimat Ullah, and in Switzerland I saw a great deal of him. Of one thing I am convinced; he was never anti-British, and he had the greatest affection for his English friends. Naturally when he was Khedive he greatly resented the fact that, without any legal right or authority and no moral claim to power and prestige, the British occupation authorities were treating his country as a colony and he himself more or less as a glorified maharajah. This brought him constantly into conflict with Lord Cromer, who was in fact though not in name the absolute ruler of Egypt. However, he always told me that Cromer was a great gentleman, that his word was his bond and that however bitter their personal relations because of their political differences, he for his part never lost his respect for Lord Cromer. With Lord Kitchener the personal differences had led to bitterness, and he never forgave Kitchener for the strife between them. He told me that he thought it most unfortunate that Lord Kitchener was never grateful to him for having helped him to become Sirdar of the Egyptian Army at the beginning. When Kitchener's predecessor retired, there were two or three candidates for the post; and Abbas Hilmi maintained that he himself sent a telegram to Queen Victoria particularly asking for Kitchener's appointment.

He told me that had he not been wounded, he would certainly have escaped from Constantinople. He had no wish nor desire to remain, and as soon as he got better he wanted to go to Egypt; but the British authorities were by no means keen to have him there. It was his opinion that while he was shown that he was not wanted, he was at the same time made the scapegoat. However there was no bitterness toward the English either as a people or as individuals. He accepted the whole episode as a game of cricket in which he had been the loser; and as a good sportsman he said, "The game is over and done with -- now let's have a drink together."

Though he was a good Muslim, a real believer who said his prayers regularly, he also had a great admiration for the Catholic hierarchy and was in touch with them in Paris; and I believe that his donations to their charities and good works were on a large scale. He always told me that the Church of Rome could do far more for their friends when they were in trouble than any freemasonry. He was a brilliant financier; he made a large fortune for himself even after he had lost the greater part of his original capital in Egypt. He had, however, a curious trait. After his death it became apparent that he had often put his money on the wrong horse. Shrewdly suspicious of all respectable bankers, high-class agents de change on the Continent or stockbrokers in England, he was yet capable of being taken in by a lot of fourth-rate intriguers, and he would hand over large sums of money to them for all kinds of wild-goose projects. Apart from this, he had some extremely doubtful characters in his entourage -- hangers-on who won his confidence, goodness knows how. I believe that after his death his heirs found that he was nothing like as rich as he had been and that a considerable portion of his fortune had disappeared. I think I can explain how this must have happened. Before and during the Second World War he often told me that in view of the uncertainty of the future and the possible difficulties of movement or of getting control of his investments in America or Canada or even in South America (though he knew all the tricks of forming holding companies in harmless places such as Cuba or Tangiers and transferring large blocks of stocks and securities to them), he felt that he might be stranded in wartime without getting the benefits of his investments. He dreaded the possibility of years of want and difficulty in which, like Midas, he might be full of gold and yet die of hunger.

In telling me these things he was really advising me to follow his example. I asked him therefore how he got around it. Was it by having a considerable part of his fortune with him in safes and vaults? Naturally I pointed out that bank notes in such amounts in wartime would be a real hindrance, whereas gold in the quantities that he wanted would be too heavy and not practicable except for comparatively small sums. Ah, he said, but the finest type of jewelry -- that which is the very best and free from taint -- like gold maintains its value. If it is perfect -- large or small -- jewelry can always find a purchaser; and it has the advantage that its possessor has a large fortune at his disposal wherever he happens to be. I naturally concluded from this argument that he had vast sums invested in jewelry, particularly since he frequently urged me to do likewise.

He died of heart failure suddenly about three o'clock one morning in an apartment in Geneva; and it was not until much later, about mid-morning, that people came and opened his various boxes and vaults. I naturally informed his son and his heir of what he had told me about having large amounts of jewelry with him, but to my surprise and rather to my distress his son told me that they found nothing except small amounts of cash. There are two possible solutions: first, that if he had had the jewelry he had sold it at the end of the Second World War when he thought there was no immediate possibility of a third war, or, second, that it had vanished during the hours between his death and the official opening of his personal effects.

To return to his miscalculations in 1914-1915, in the fog of war the Allies could not be expected to have any accurate knowledge either of Abbas Hilmi's real views or intentions, or of the way in which those intentions were frustrated. The result in Egypt, however, was something near chaos; the confusion was deepest about Muslim opinion, and for the reasons which I have outlined it was essential to maintain the internal security of Egypt.

My mission therefore was to clarify and stabilize opinion. I was asked to take a colleague with me, and I therefore turned to an old and dear friend, Sir Abbas Ali Baig, who was then the Indian member of the permanent Council which advised the Secretary of State for India in London. We set off for Cairo as soon as we could; and we were received there with almost royal honors. We were there as the official guests of the British Commander in Chief; and we addressed ourselves forthwith to a delicate and difficult task, with many ramifications into many levels of Egyptian society.

First there was the palace to be won over, or rather the principal personages in the Egyptian ruling dynasty. There was the Sultan who had been nominated in Abbas Hilmi's absence; there was his brother, Prince Fuad, who later became King Fuad I, who had both German and Italian affiliations; there were several other influential princes, and most important of all the Sultan's son who was married to the Khedive's sister. There were the Ulema, the Muslim divines who were the heads of Al Azhar University, the great, intensely conservative and traditional theological school which is a center of religious life not only in Egypt but in the whole of Islam. And there were the ordinary people of Egypt -- the literate who sit in their cafes endlessly and eagerly discussing every edition of every newspaper, and the villages and peasants, the fellahin who from time immemorial have been the real source of Egypt's strength.

We conceived of our task as one of explanation and exhortation. We had to convince those to whom we spoke, in private as well as in public, that not only their interest but their duty, as good Muslims, lay in supporting and sustaining the cause of the Allies. I could, of course, speak with authority, from recent and personal knowledge; I pointed out that the Turks had had every possible chance of fair terms from the Allies, that Great Britain and France were willing to exert all their influence on Russia to safeguard Turkey's interests for the future, and most important of all, that neutrality would have given Turkey that breathing space she needed. While Europe was engaged on its grim process of selfdestruction, Turkey would have had time to reorganize the whole loose, vast system of provincial administration, to conciliate the increasing discontent of the Arab nationalists, and to carry out all those social, political and economic reforms which would have strengthened and unified the Empire. All these advantages had been lost in a single gambler's throw; gamblers, after all, are not winners, and history shows that political punters have as little chance of success as punters on the racecourse or at the casino.

Our mission produced the effects for which we had hoped. The internal stability of Egypt throughout the First World War and the assistance that this tranquillity gave to the Allies were factors of notable and continuing importance right up to the time of General Allenby's final victorious advance across Palestine and Syria to Aleppo and the foothills of the Anatolian mountains.

From Egypt I made my way to India, having visited the Indian forces -- already of considerable strength -- who were encamped in the Canal Zone, having encouraged them (many, of course, were Muslims) and having exhorted them to do their duty, to fight loyally for the King-Emperor, the Sovereign to whose service they were bound by oath. In India I realized -- by the volume of enthusiastic praise and thanks that greeted me, from the Viceroy downward -- that we had done a good job. One particularly agreeable personal consequence of this mission to Egypt was the strengthening of my affection for Sir Abbas Ali Baig, who became and thenceforward remained one of my closest, lifelong friends. In a new generation his sons, incidentally, are no less distinguished public servants than he was; one is now Pakistan's Minister in Moscow and the other, formerly permanent head of the Foreign Office in Karachi, is now High Commissioner in Ottawa.

Later in the year I went back to London, and once more was heartened by the sense of success in our mission in Egypt. The Kinghimself, the Prime Minister and other members of the Cabinet thanked me warmly, and I was genuinely gratified to feel that I had been of real service.

In April 1916, His Majesty accorded me an honor of very special personal significance. He sanctioned the grant to me of a salute of eleven guns and the rank and precedence of a First Class Ruling Prince of the Bombay Presidency. The end of the Indian Empire, and the vast political and social changes consequent on that passing, have deprived this gesture of any contemporary meaning, but in the circumstances and conditions of 1916 it was a high honor and a most generous and thoughtful action on the part of the King. The salute granted to a Ruling Prince, and the number of guns in it, was an important matter of precedence and prestige; there was only one previous instance of such a salute being granted to anyone who was not a territorial Prince, and that was to Sir Salar Jung, the Prime Minister of Hyderabad, who in 1857 was chiefly responsible for keeping Central India and the Deccan loyal to British authority. The Times, commenting on this honor in an editorial, observed: "It has fallen to the Aga Khan to serve in vastly wider fields than Sir Salar Jung and to exert much more than local or provincial influence in a crisis of British rule even greater than that of the mutiny."

Inevitably sorrow and loss came, as the result of war, to me and to my family, as to so many other families across the width of the world in those harsh times. My cousin, Aga Farrokh Shah, while engaged at my request on a political mission to the tribes and my own Ismaili followers in Kerman, was assassinated at the instigation of German agents. India's losses on the battlefield in Flanders and in Mesopotamia were grievous. I myself was laid low with a difficult, painful and protracted illness. Early in 1916 I began to be aware of considerable ocular distress and difficulty; my pulse was extremely irregular, and although I was on no diet and was eating well, I began to lose weight rapidly. A physician in Paris diagnosed my malady as Graves' disease, of which the symptoms were protruding eyes and a small goiter. I went to Switzerland to the famous Dr. Kocher at Berne, who was the greatest contemporary authority on all forms of goiter, to see if my case was operable. After I had been under observation in a Swiss sanatorium for several weeks, I was told that it was inoperable. Frankly I seemed to be going downhill fast; for eighteen months and more I stayed in Switzerland, making no progress at all but rather deteriorating steadily.

Suddenly the British Government took urgent and alarmed cognizance of what subsequently became known, in Swiss legal history, as the affair of the Lucerne bomb. The German Secret Service did not believe that I was really ill. They thought, however, that their country's cause would be well served were I put out of the way for good. They arranged to have a bomb thrown at me; and to make the operation certain of success they also arranged, with typical German thoroughness, to have my breakfast coffee poisoned. The bomb did not go off; I did not drink the coffee. For years after the war ended the Swiss painstakingly investigated the whole episode and the inquiry attained a good deal of notoriety at the time. In 1917, however, all that the British Government saw fit to do was to request me to leave Switzerland. So I returned to Paris.

My host of friends there, including those of the American colony to whom I have referred elsewhere, were thoroughly shocked and alarmed; I was (so they told me later) in their view a lost case. For myself, I still kept hope -- though it flickered feebly. It seemed to me that many famous doctors had seen me in Switzerland and in France. All kinds of treatments, batteries of drugs, had been tried on me to no avail. Then a Professor Pierremarie examined me and produced a startlingly novel diagnosis. I had not been suffering from goiter at all. He began a fresh line of treatment, and within a year I was thoroughly on the mend. One effect remained, however, in that my eyes never quite resumed their normal position.

However, this long illness meant that I was of necessity withdrawn from all public activity for more than three years, until the summer of 1919.

It was a long seclusion which I ameliorated slightly in its later stages by writing a book, called India in Transition, which set forth my views on the future of India and of all Southeast Asia, and to which I shall have occasion to refer later.

In Czarist Russia

THE YEARS 1910 to 1914 were eventful, busy and active. Joy and sorrow, work and travel, disappointment and fulfillment, sport and friendship -- I had my ample share of them all during these years. My wife lived largely in France. In 1909 my first son was born to her, to whom I gave the name Mehdi. His brief little life ended in February, 1911, and my second son, Aly, was born in the following June. His birth was a profound solace and joy to my wife and me, but for her the happiness of his babyhood was tinged with a solemn sense of responsibility. Long years had passed since there had been a son in our family. The grief we felt at the loss of our first-born gave an especial sharpness and watchfulness to the care which we exercised over his brother's upbringing. When he was quite little he was pronounced to be delicate; one of the leading child specialists of the time had a great belief in the healthgiving and health-maintaining properties of the Normandy coast in summertime, especially the sea air and bathing. From the time that he was two or three, therefore, my wife took him each summer to Deauville, and their winters they spent in the south of France. For some years my wife lived in Monte Carlo and then she moved to Cimiez.

In May, 1910, my great and good friend, King Edward VII, died in London. As loyal duty and friendship bade, I hastened to attend his funeral; and I had an audience with his successor, King George V.

The King was buried in St. George's Chapel at Windsor; myplace in the procession and my seat in the chapel were near the Royal Family and the Royal guests from foreign countries. In the procession the German Emperor walked beside King George V. This placing provoked a minor but significant diplomatic incident. When a number of sovereigns are assembled together in one place, the protocol is that they take precedence, not according to the size or importance of their countries nor alphabetically (as do delegates at an international conference), but according to seniority of accession to the throne. Thus if the King of Bulgaria (in the days when there was a reigning King of Bulgaria) had been longest on the throne, he would take the head of any procession, and if the sovereign of the United Kingdom or the Emperor of Japan had only just acceded, he would go last. But on this occasion the German Emperor was put next to King George V, the principal mourner, and all the other monarchs followed him. The storm arose indirectly because the King of Greece, who was senior in the matter of accession, walked ahead of the King of Spain. Now the King of Spain had acceded to his throne in babyhood, before the German Emperor had come into his inheritance; and King Alfonso considered himself every whit as good as the Kaiser, if not his superior. As soon as the various sovereigns had taken leave and were on their way home, the Spanish Ambassador made a formal protest on behalf of his Royal Master and his Government against the affront offered by the placing of the German Emperor ahead of His Most Catholic Majesty, and added that since the King of Greece had been put ahead of the King of Spain on the grounds of seniority of accession, then both the King of Greece and the King of Spain should have preceded the German Emperor if protocol were to be properly observed. This put the Foreign Office and the Court in a quandary. An apology would have been worse than useless because high officials of Court and State are not expected to make mistakes of this sort. Finally the problem reached the King. He solved it diplomatically and ingeniously: the Kaiser, he said, was King Edward's nephew and his own first cousin, and for these reasons alone he had been given precedence, not as a reigning sovereign, but as a family mourner. This rather pitiable little complication aside, the whole ceremony was deeply affecting.

Later there was trouble too about the precedence accorded to the former President of the United States, Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, who was his country's official representative. Since he was not a Royal personage, his place in the funeral procession and at other solemn functions was a lowly one. The United States and France both protested at this procedure which, although it was in full accord with international custom in those days, seemed even then both undignified and anachronistic. From that time on, the representatives of republics were deemed to rank with royalty and a new and more fitting order of precedence was established.

There were many wet eyes that day -- mine, I am not ashamed to admit, among them. Shortly afterward King George V issued instructions to the India Office that I was to be invited to the Coronation as a special and honored guest of his own, and the invitation was to cover not merely the ceremony but all the functions, banquets, state receptions and so forth. I sat in his box at the special gala performances at the Royal Opera House.

The Coronation of King George V was held in June, 1911. It was one of great pomp and splendor, a stately showing forth of all Britain's grandeur, wealth and power. The year 1911, however, was a year of increasing international tension; and the internal political conflict in Britain over Mr. Lloyd George's budgetary measures, over Ireland and over the constitutional position of the House of Lords had become extremely embittered. Against the dark clouds of the approaching storm, the Coronation Season shone with a special brightness of its own. I have two vivid recollections of this time. The first is of the ballet that was given at the gala performance at Covent Garden; it was Pavilion d'Armide -- surely the most appropriate ballet possible for such an occasion -- and the principal dancers included Nijinsky and Karsavina. It was of unforgettable beauty and grace; it stands out in my memory as one of the most exquisite theatrical experiences that I have ever seen.

My other lasting impression is of the presence of the Crown Prince of Germany, of the attention that was paid to him, of the real and sincere effort made by everyone, from the King and Queen down, to convince him of Britain's good will and peaceful intentions toward his country. I recall that at Covent Garden he sat on Queen Mary's right, and I saw that she engaged him in earnest conversation and that her courtesy to him was not formal or chilly.

A few months later the King and Queen set out on their journey to India -- the first and only reigning Sovereign and his Consort to visit India during the period of British rule. Early in 1912 the magnificent Coronation Durbar was held in Delhi; it was announced that the capital and seat of government were to be transferred to Delhi from Calcutta, and a new city built commensurate with the dignity, authority and (as it seemed then) permanence of the Indian Empire. The partition of Bengal was annulled, and -as a climax and crown to my work in past years, and the work of those who had co-operated with me zealously and so steadfastly -Aligarh was given the status of a university. The King-Emperor personally bestowed on me the highest decoration which it was possible for any Indian subject of the Crown to receive, a Knight Grand Commander of the Star of India.

Splendid as were the Durbar ceremonies, they were marred by two curious contretemps. At the great state banquet, to which most of the notables of India had been invited, some disaster occurred in the kitchen, and the food that emerged was just enough to give the King and a handful of people sitting near him a full meal. For almost all of the guests it was the only chance in their lives that they would ever have of dining in the King's company, but most of them had no dinner.

The other had far more alarming implications. The investiture, at which I received my decoration of the G.C.S.I., was held at night in an enormous and brilliantly lighted tent. It was a full state ceremony: the King-Emperor and his Consort sat enthroned; the Viceroy, the Provincial Governors, the Commander in Chief and the senior military commanders, a superb assemblage of Ruling Princes, all the leading officials, Indian and British, from every corner of India, were gathered in honor of a stately and memorable occasion. Suddenly one of the electric light bulbs, high up near the canvas canopy of the roof, began to play pranks. All eyes went to its flickerings. Suppose it were to explode -- in that instant the same silent, horrifying thought occurred to almost everyone present. Whistles were blowing, we could hear fire engines clanking up; behind their Majesties' thrones officers had already drawn their swords and were hacking at the hangings and the canvas to make a way out for the King and Queen. But the rest of us were trapped. Had the tent caught fire it would have blazed up like a celluloid pingpong ball put near the hearth, and scarcely one of us inside would have survived. The humanitarian aspect of the disaster which we contemplated was appalling enough. Even more fearful to most of us was the thought of the political, administrative and social chaos all over India that would have followed. The country would have been left without a single leading figure. Next day both the King and the Viceroy told me that instant orders had gone forth that no ceremony of this sort was ever to be held again by night in a tent.

A great military parade was a central feature of the Durbar celebrations. Many of us, Indian and British alike, were becoming more acutely aware of the importance of the Indian Army in Britain's world-wide imperial strategy, with her vast commitments and the growing sense of international tension. Britain's own Regular Army, a considerable portion of which was habitually stationed in India, was -- though well trained and of admirable morale -- small in comparison with those of any of her possible challengers. Haldane, as Secretary of State for War, had thoroughly reorganized the military machine and had brought into being the volunteer and part-time Territorial Army; but Britain had refused to heed the urgent pleas of the veteran Field Marshal, Lord Roberts, for a Continental system of universal national service. I was able to link the developing recognition of Britain's military needs and of India's position in relation to those needs with my own passion for Indian education.

In an article which I contributed to Leo Maxse's National Review in July, 1911 (it was not a journal whose imperialist politics I shared, but it was widely read by people whom I was eager to reach with my views), I put my arguments as forcefully as I could.

Educate, educate, educate. Look for a passing moment at the question of manpower. India could put troops into South Africa as quickly as they could be sent from England; she could land soldiers in Australia long before England could so do; and forces from India could reach western Canada almost as soon as from England. If by education the myriads of India can be taught that they are guardians and supporters of the Crown, just as are the white citizens of the Empire, then the realization that India and the self-governing dominions stand and fall together, bound by a community of interests and a common cause to maintain, will have come. It is imperative to give Indians the education to fit them for their future role in the British Empire.

In two world wars, one of which was to break out only three years after these words were written, my arguments were justified to the hilt.

The autumn of 1912 found me on my travels again -- this time to Russia. The Czar Nicholas II, in appearance almost the double of his cousin, King George V, had visited India when he was Czarevitch; however, that was a good many years earlier, and I had never met him since. Many of his relatives habitually visited the south of France -- the Grand Dukes Boris and Nicholas among them, and the Czar's own brother, the Grand Duke Michael -- and with several I was on terms of warm friendship; they had often asked me to visit them at home.

Patrician and aristocratic life in England and in many other European countries had its own magnificence and stateliness; but they were as nothing compared with the luxury and opulence of the elaborate and gilded existence that was led by the Russian aristocracy in Saint Petersburg, as I saw it that winter.

More than thirty years have passed since the Revolution shattered their world; many were murdered, many went into exile, in towns like Harbin and Shanghai, in Constantinople, in Berlin, Paris and the south of France. Among those who had to refashion life from its foundations was a distinguished soldier, formerly Military Attache in London, General Polovtsoff, who for many years has been a well-known and much-liked figure in Monte Carlo. Like many of his companions in exile, he has borne his vicissitudes with courage, dignity and a fine, high spirit. It happened that in 1912 I was the guest of General Polovtsoff and his brother in the house -- the palace -- which they had inherited from their father who had been a minister of the Czar.

The splendor of that house was beyond description. The banquet hall, in which my hosts gave a luncheon party in my honor, was, I am sure, fully three times the size of the great salon of any eighteenth-century Italian palazzo. Its walls were hung with magnificent pictures and tapestry; there were great, many-colored, strongly scented banks of hothouse flowers, and the luncheon itself was on a prodigious scale. And this was only one of many similar functions at which I was entertained in similar houses of almost fairy tale magnificence that I visited.

Life was adjusted to a curious and, at first, somewhat unsettling timetable, for which -- accustomed as I was to social life in London and Paris -- I was not immediately prepared. The first of my many invitations to supper showed me what I had to learn. I had been asked to what I knew was to be a big supper party at a famous general's house, to be attended by several of the grand dukes and a number of leading ladies of the theater. With my notions of this kind of entertainment in London or in Paris, I arrived at the house a little after midnight. To my surprise there was no one else there; even the servants looked as if they had just awakened, as they scurried around turning on the lights. For an hour or thereabouts I waited in some embarrassment until at last my host and hostess came downstairs. Between half past one and two the other guests began to arrive and the vast salon began to look a little less empty. It was well after two o'clock when we went in to supper. After supper there was some music, and it was nearing half past four when the party broke up and we went home. This, I quickly learned, was the normal convention.

Saint Petersburg was a winter capital. Its season was a winter season. I arrived there near its beginning, in late November. The cold was already intense. The days were dark and short, the nights long and bitter, and the city itself snowbound. Here are -- to me -- the reasons for the unusual tempo and rhythm of life there. The day ordinarily began about noon; shops, banks and offices remained open until late in the evening. Work was done and business transacted from midday on; and the nights were given up to the varied and elegant pursuits and distractions of a gay, cultivated and sophisticated society. The theaters were excellent, so were the opera and the ballet. There were innumerable parties; there were moonlight drives in troikas across the icebound Neva to some of the islands that were not too far distant from the capital. In the few hours of daylight there were often shooting parties in the surrounding countryside; enthusiastic sportsmen hunted not only game birds and deer but also bears.

All the houses were, to my way of thinking, grossly overheated and thoroughly underventilated. In cities like London and Paris I had grown accustomed to houses in which, even in cold weather, the windows and the doors were constantly open, and I was shocked and not a little disgusted by Russian habits in this matter. All houses were built with double glass windows. Some time in early November, when winter was setting in, workmen would nail down all these windows so that they could not be opened again until the end of April. One small pane was left free at the top of each window; every morning this would be opened for an hour or so and then shut again. This was all the fresh air that any room got. On my very first night at the British Embassy I said to my hostess, the Ambassador's wife, Lady Buchanan, that I thought this a most unhygienic and most unpleasant custom. She answered me that when she and her husband first went to Saint Petersburg, they tried to live as they would in England with the windows hardly ever fully shut, either by day or by night. However, the whole family fell ill. They had had to adopt the custom of the country, and since then there had been no illness. She told me too that in all the big houses, at which parties were given and large numbers of people gathered together, the rooms were scented and the air specially sweetened and purified.

The corollary of this permanent overheating of the houses was that Russians of all classes had comparatively light indoor clothing. But when they went out of doors everyone piled on heavy furs. The well-to-do would be thickly wrapped in sables, the poorer classes in sheepskin. Everyone had sheepskin caps, thick warm gloves and snow boots. I had been accustomed to being told that one ought not to go suddenly from warm rooms into bitter cold outside, and at first I thought the whole Russian way of life -- similar to some extent, I suppose, to that in Canada in the winter and in many of the northerly states of the United States -- "unhealthy"; but a few weeks in Saint Petersburg and Moscow rid me of this prejudice.

I soon came to the conclusion that the Hermitage Museum was the finest I had ever seen, far superior to the Louvre, the National Gallery or New York's Metropolitan Museum. Its superiority lay in its rigid selectivity. There was nothing indifferent or third-rate on view; everything shown was of supreme merit. There was no need, as in every other big museum or art gallery that I have ever been to, to trudge mile after mile past inferior works, questionable attributions, copies and studies by the pupils of great masters. At the Hermitage, under the direction of Count Tolstoy, a relative of the great novelist, all this had been sternly relegated to the vaults. He had instituted, so I was given to understand, a regime whereby everything was taken off the walls which, whether by a great artist or merely alleged to be by him, did not possess its own intrinsic beauty and merit. The effect therefore was of a small, pure collection of masterpieces, and it was extraordinarily refreshing.

One of the treasures of the Hermitage was a wonderful collection of old English silver of the period of Charles II, when the art of the silversmith in England was at its height. The collection, so I believe, was made by Peter the Great, who visited England as a young man and worked in the shipyards at Deptford. Half savage, half genius, he had a strong and genuine aesthetic streak in him, excellent taste -- witness the pictures which he chose while he was in Holland -- and sure, clear judgment.

I remember being transported with delight by the choral singing in the Cathedral of St. Isaac in Saint Petersburg. I have often listened to fine singing in both Catholic and Anglican cathedrals in Western Europe, but never have I heard a choir whose singing was as pure and as majestic as that. Boys were recruited, I was told, from all over Russia, trained from an early age and given sound professional or technical schooling at the same time.

Despite the full social life that I led with the Czar's brother, the Grand Duke Michael, his cousins, and the officers of his crack regiments, I never met or had an audience with the Czar. He lived a strangely secluded existence; and in the last years of his sad and troubled reign his seclusion deepened and his circle narrowed. He was of a nervous, shy and naturally melancholy disposition; his Empress was superstitiously pious, courageous and dignified but utterly out of touch with reality; his son and heir was delicate and ailing. All the circumstances of his life combined to encourage him in a somber remoteness. I was told that if I wanted to see him, an official approach and a request for an audience would have to be made through diplomatic channels and that it would have to have the character of an official visit. I did not, therefore, even make the attempt. One of the Czar's few sociable characteristics, so I was informed, was his love and enjoyment of the theater, especially ballet and the opera. He had a habit of coming into a theater after the performance had started, accompanied only by one or two officer friends, and would slip unobserved into a small stage box. The only indication of his presence would be the loud and enthusiastic applause, the hurrahs and bravos, which were heard behind the curtain of his box. Perhaps only there, a few feet from the make-believe world beyond the footlights, could this shy, sad, solitary man forget his sorrows and shed his inhibitions.

From Saint Petersburg I went on to Moscow. Moscow's prosperity in those days was founded on commerce and industry. The court and the aristocracy made Saint Petersburg their headquarters; rich industrialists were the chief citizens of Moscow. Their wealth was derived from various sources: sugar, the rapidly developing oil industry of the Caspian Sea region, and piece goods from the cotton factories of Moscow. They bore a considerable similarity to the same powerful capitalist class in the United States. They lived in magnificent style; their houses were virtually palaces and museums, for, like the nobles of Saint Petersburg, many of these merchant princes were connoisseurs of the arts. I noticed, incidentally, that Moscow's tastes seemed more catholic than Saint Petersburg's; my favorite French impressionists had to some extent taken their fancy, whereas in Saint Petersburg all the paintings that I saw were of the classical schools.

The gulf between rich and poor was truly appalling. I took some trouble to study labor conditions in the mills and textile factories; they resembled in many ways Bombay's cotton mills, but conditions in them were infinitely worse. I have no hesitation in saying that, poor, miserable and ill-fed as were the Bombay mill hands of those days, they looked happier and livelier than the Moscow workers of the same sort. In Bombay you could at least see smiles; every Moscow mill hand looked drawn, haggard and tired to death. Yet I doubt if either in the matter of wages or diet the Moscow worker was worse off than his Bombay counterpart. The reason for the difference lay, I think in one simple fact -- the climate. In his hours off work, for at least eight months of the year, the Bombay mill hand, however poor and downtrodden, could walk in the fresh air, could see the sun and the moon and the stars. For eight months of the year life for the Moscow worker, on the other hand, was only possible indoors -- in the hot, steamy atmosphere of the mill or in an overheated, overcrowded little room in one of the great, grim barracklike buildings that served so many of them as homes.

An odd custom prevailed in those days in the public baths of Russia's great cities -- I visited one in Moscow, so I am not talking from hearsay -- in the administration of what were known as Russian steam baths, really very like our Turkish baths. The attendants who looked after you, who gave you your soap and your towels, massaged you, looked after all your wants, were women -- but elderly and of so plain and sour a visage that it would have been utterly impossible to imagine even the slightest misbehavior with them. Nor, I was assured, did misbehavior occur. This was simply regarded as useful employment for women past middle age; and no one -- except the raw foreign visitor like myself -- thought it in the slightest degree unusual.

While I was still in Russia the first match was set to the conflagration that soon was to engulf the whole world. The Balkan Wars -first the attack by a combination of small Balkan countries on the Ottoman Empire, and then their ferocious quarrels with each other -- were not then merely localized conflicts, which many tried to convince themselves that they were; in fact they were unmistakable indications of what was to come. Turkey, whose internal difficulties and troubles had accumulated and deepened in recent years, reeled under successive blows from her enemies. Day after day news of fresh disasters reached the outside world. By the time I returned to Paris and before I left for India the extent of Turkey's plight was obvious; it seemed to be only a matter of time before her foes had her completely at their mercy. The feelings of Muslim India, indeed of the whole Islamic world, were deeply stirred. I made as much haste as I could to get back to Bombay. My closest political friends and associates were active on behalf of the Turks. An organization had been set up, representing all branches of Muslim opinion in India and including many of those most closely concerned with Aligarh, the purpose of which was to render all possible assistance to Turkey and to bring maximum pressure to bear on the British Government in order that Britain's influence should be exerted in the Concert of Europe to make defeat tolerable and honorable for the Turks. A practical gesture of help had been made in the equipment and dispatch to the war area of a Red Crescent medical mission, led by Dr. Ansari -- one of India's outstanding medical practitioners. This was the kind of worthwhile, humane work which I was happy to support. I contributed too to Turkey's war loans; but I found myself involved in a distressing difference of opinion with the majority of my Muslim brethren in India over our attitude toward this conflict -- a difference of opinion which, I am sorry to say, disrupted for some time the hitherto close and intimate associations, in thought and action, which had subsisted between myself and other Muslim leaders in India.

We were giving as much aid as we could to Turkey, but how much, in fact, did it amount to? The honest answer was -- very little. We were not, of course, our own masters; and our real influence on British policy toward the whole Turco-Balkan issue was negligible. The Government lent a courteous if distant ear to our earnest supplications, but they could well afford to pay no practical attention to us. British opinion in general about the Ottoman Empire -- "the Sick Man of Europe," as portrayed by the political cartoonists of Punch and other papers -- was at best lukewarm. The European political situation was tense and precarious. Britain's friends in the Concert of Europe -- France, Russia and to a lesser extent Italy -- were anything but pro-Turkish, and the main concern of all of them was to avoid an open breach with Germany and Austria. A delicate but chilly policy of nonintervention was the furthest that Britain was willing to go. But the general run of Muslim opinion in India was far more fiery; the honor and integrity of Islam were at stake; and we should urge the Turks to hold on, to face every risk and accept every sacrifice and to carry the war on to the utmost end.

Fine sentiments, but I demurred from them. I pointed out that it was not really in our power to help the Turks; great and generous as our emotions doubtless were, we were quite incapable at that time of turning our feelings into action. To call on the Turks to stand, fight and die for the cause of Islam, to the last piastre and the last Turk, while we survived was unfair and unjust to the Turks. Far from helping them, it was actually worsening their plight.

I did not mince my words. I gave an interview along these lines to The Times of India, the most widely read and most responsible newspaper in the subcontinent. I observed that it was all very well to send heartening telegrams to the Turks: GO ON, FIGHT ON! DO NOT ACCEPT DEFEAT, WHATEVER THE SACRIFICE! But we who had sent the telegram could then go home and sleep soundly in our peaceful beds. These were not popular comments, and they evoked a storm of protest from Muslims all over India. However, as such storms will, it passed, and soon enough this controversy was forgotten in the whirlwind of perils and problems of the First World War.

The Edwardian Era Begins

THE MURDER of my kinsman at Poona in the summer of 1898 had emphasized, in the most sensational and unpleasant fashion, the disruptive qualities latent in the huge, ramshackle, feudally extravagant household and entourage which I had inherited, and which I have in previous chapters described at some length.

I was responsible by now for a dependent population of about two thousand people in my households in Bombay and Poona. I actually supported them -- most of them in idleness. They were housed and fed at my expense. The financial burden, considerable as it was, was not as worrying as certain other thoroughly undesirable aspects of their manner of life.

When my grandfather left Persia, he took with him -- as seemed to him natural and proper -- the train of a medieval prince. But in Bombay in the last years of the nineteenth century we were not living in the Middle Ages.

There was not only the immediate family, which was large enough. During the earlier part of his wanderings my grandfather was accompanied by a troop of cavalry, who fought under his command in Persia and in Afghanistan, and later rendered redoubtable assistance to Sir Charles Napier in his conquest of Sind. At the beginning these numbered probably some two hundred, some of princely birth, some knights and peasants, but all devoted in their allegiance to my grandfather. When he settled in Bombay they settled around him -- were they not his liegemen who had endured and fought in his company? -- and long before I was born and throughout my childhood, there they were, aging warriors whose battles were done, in houses or rooms dotted about the rambling estate, with their families growing up around them. Some of them, after they had settled down, sent for their wives from Iran, but most of them married Indian wives.

These ex-soldiers and their families were not all. During the fifties followers came in fair numbers from Central Asia, from Turkestan and Sinkiang, from Bokhara and Afghanistan, to offer their loyalty and bring their tribute to my grandfather. Some returned to their own distant homes, but some stayed, and those who stayed took Indian wives or married the daughters of those who had settled earlier. Some Ismailis came from Africa and they brought Negro slaves, but when they went home some of their slaves refused to go and stayed in Bombay. Intermarrying and multiplying, all these diverse elements had grown, by 1898 or thereabouts, into a vast assembly of two thousand people, men, women and children, with little or nothing to do and nothing to occupy them, with no background and no roots. In my grandfather's time and in my father's time (though they were not of course as numerous), their dependent status was taken for granted, and throughout my long minority my mother really had no choice but to go on housing and feeding them. As one generation aged and another grew up (after all, half a century and more had gone by since my grandfather exiled himself from Persia), the whole affair took on, in the view of those who accepted our bounty, the air of a custom established in right.

The old soldiers, of course, took pensions from my grandfather. As they died off, the pensions continued to be paid, first by my father and then by my mother during my minority; but the original sum had to be divided among its first recipient's descendants. These were often so numerous that by the late nineties the actual incomes received by all these beneficiaries were small. Most of them augmented their incomes in one way or another -- as racecourse tipsters or as stable-hands, for example. Long years of this rather raffish, irresponsible life, in and around the rapidly growing city and port of Bombay, had not tended to make particularly worthy or useful citizens of them. But they came of high-spirited, proud stock, and their natural energies and abilities were now being dissipated in intrigues and feuds. Quick to take offense, they were apt to be quick, too, in drawing the knife.

Dangerous as the potentialities were, the situation had not been too bad until the murder of my kinsman in Poona. This, as it were, touched off a fuse. From then on any attempt to control this nest of hornets, internally by the household or from the outside by the police, met with fierce threats. While I was on my travels I was warned that if I tried to clear up a clutter of ne'er-do-wells, who had become a scandal and a menace, my life too would be in danger.

I was determined however to put an end to this situation. The police in Bombay were extremely anxious for me to do nothing too summary or too rash, such as stopping all pensions and turning the lot out into the street. Idle, well-fed, unruly, two thousand of them from half-a-dozen races in Africa, Central Asia, Persia and Afghanistan, suddenly loose among the population of Bombay as vagrants, would be a real public danger. And it was a danger which the Government -- as I was given firmly to understand -- was not prepared to allow.

It was essential, therefore, that if I were to deal with my problem, I must act all the time with the full support of the Government and in close co-operation with the police. It was particularly fortunate that I was on terms of warm friendship and understanding with Sir William Lee Warner at the India Office. He was a tower of strength in the background. In Bombay itself a new Governor, Lord Northcote, had succeeded Lord Sandhurst; he too sustained me with his constant friendship and helped me through an extremely difficult task. Without allies of this stature and authority it would have been immeasurably more difficult.

As it was, I went at it gradually and persistently. Some of the rowdiest and unruliest of all were technically not British subjects; these were deported to the Persian Gulf and turned loose in regions where their propensities were less dangerous than in populous, urban Bombay. To a number I gave lump-sum gratuities, on condition that they too took themselves off. One group I got sent off, with the help of the police, to remote hill stations, whence they were forbidden to make their way back to Bombay. With the removal of the worst among the older malcontents, we were able to get down to the more agreeable task of reclaiming and educating their children. We set up schools for them and some went to the Jesuit schools nearby; some who were conspicuously bright went on to a higher university education. They all went out to work, and the majority of them are now, I am glad to say, and have long since been, worthy and law-abiding citizens. Among them may be counted barristers, engineers, senior officers of the I.M.S. and prosperous members of other professions.

But the clean-up was not an easy job, and it was not completed in a day. It was a long struggle that was with me for many months.

Meanwhile, engrossed as I was in this arduous and unpleasant job, I had not lost touch with the wider world. Queen Victoria's death in January, 1901, seemed the end of an age to those of us who had been born and had grown up under the ample and glorious shade of her long reign. We were conscious that Finis had been written to a mighty chapter.

My friend and patron, the Prince of Wales, was now upon the throne, with the title of Edward VII. He graciously honored me with a personal invitation to be present at his Coronation in 1902. Therefore, to London I returned that summer, to a London which I knew well, to a society in which I had many friends and where I was made warmly and happily welcome. Already it was possible to recognize that the Edwardian Age was opening. There was a new tone noticeable in society, a shift of standards, a recognition of the meaning and challenge of the new century.

At first it was a gay and eventful summer. There was a whole round of shows and entertainments, and a great deal of hospitality was shown to me and the other Indian Princes and Maharajahs who had been invited. Suddenly on the eve of the Coronation the King, who was no longer a young man, was taken ill. Few, I think, at the time were really aware of the gravity of the King's illness, and the narrowness of his escape. Appendicitis was not in those days the almost routine affair it is considered today, and an appendectomy was a serious and danger-fraught operation. The Coronation had to be postponed; the ceremonies and rejoicings were held in suspense; many of the distinguished foreign Royal guests, unable to wait as long as was obviously necessary, took their leave and went home. The King made a wonderful, rapid recovery from his operation, and by August was willing, nay eager, to face the strain and fatigue of the elaborate and beautiful Coronation ceremony. It was not generally realized at the time that during much of the service the King, who bore himself with great dignity throughout, was in considerable pain.

For myself there was one particularly gratifying circumstance connected with the Coronation. The King advanced me from the rank of K.C.I.E. to G.C.I.E. in his Coronation Honors.

In accordance with custom there was a great Coronation naval review at Spithead, which I had the privilege of attending as the King's guest aboard his own yacht. Among the other guests there was, I remember, the thin, slight but formidable figure of Ras Makonen, the Abyssinian feudal chieftain who was the victorious general, right-hand man and Viceroy of the Emperor Menelik, whom he subsequently succeeded. He possessed the quality of inscrutability. I recall that the British Minister in Addis Ababa told me that he could always read Menelik's mind and divine his intentions, but never Ras Makonen's. The mutability of human affairs is aptly illustrated by the vicissitudes endured by his son, Ras Tafari, who became the Emperor Haile Selassie, resisted the Italian invasion of his country in 1935, was defeated and driven into exile, pleaded his cause before the League of Nations in Geneva, then bided his time in exile and in 1941, when the Italians were crushingly defeated in East Africa (by a small, valiant army to which India contributed magnificently), returned in triumph to his throne. Surely this is one of the most extraordinary romances of our time, in danger of being forgotten because there have been so many other romantic and strange stories.

I returned to India in November of that year, 1902. I was surprised to find waiting for me a letter from the Viceroy, Lord Curzon, asking me to become a member of his Legislative Council. This was a considerable honor to a young man still in his twenties (I was by far the youngest member), for the Viceroy's Legislative Council in those days was a small, select body of influential people, wielding real authority. My acceptance necessitated my moving, for the time being, to Calcutta, which was then the seat of British power in India.

The two years in which I was a member of the Legislative Council (I was asked if I would accept nomination a second time, but I refused) had a profound and permanent effect on my life and character, in their private and personal as well as their public aspects. For the first time in my life I had a real, normal home of my own, with the ordinary complement of servants and the ordinary social and domestic life of a man in my station, free of the extraordinary accretion of hangers-on and ne'er-do-wells (remnants of whom never entirely disappeared from Bombay and Poona) whose disruptive and menacing activities I have described earlier in this chapter.

The effect on my public and political life was hardly less marked. I found myself working alongside men of the caliber and quality of Lord Curzon himself and of the Commander in Chief, the redoubtable Field Marshal Lord Kitchener of Khartoum. Among my Indian colleagues there was the brilliant Mr. G. K. Gokhale, the outstanding Indian nationalist statesman until the rise of Mahatma Gandhi and the Nehrus, father and son. Gokhale and I struck up a friendship which ended only with his death. He was a caste Hindu and I was a Muslim, but our friendship crossed the barriers of creed and race. He was a man of vision, courage and generosity. His influence on my thought and outlook was probably considerable. Not of course that he was the first political thinker of a different background from my own with whom I had come in contact, or with whom I found the exchange of ideas stimulating. Some years previously in Bombay I had come to know and like Mr. Navroji Dumasia, a talented Parsee in the service of The Times of India and Mr. (later Sir) Frank Brown, a British journalist and publicist who was on the staff of The Bombay Gazette and subsequently of The Times; to these friends I owe a great deal, both in what I have done and what I have tried to do in my political work.

In Gokhale I encountered a powerful as well as a lovable personality. I realized how deep and strong were the forces in India of which he was the spokesman. I also saw that the Government had become remote from the people of India, not the masses only, but the increasing and ever more articulate and active intelligentsia. I saw at close quarters how foreign the Government was in spirit and in atmosphere. On the other side, I saw that India's political leaders, dissatisfied at not having succeeded in obtaining their earlier moderate demands, had begun to seek not merely administrative reforms but the full control of their own political destiny.

For myself, I continued to pin a great deal of faith on educational advancement. Illiteracy I saw as a menace to people and Government alike. Poverty and disease were its sinister consequences and accompaniments. More than once my speeches in the Legislative Council turned into strong pleas for generous and judicious expenditures on education. I urged the adoption of a system of universal primary education such as almost every civilized country possessed, and pointed out as often as I could that in my view the fundamental cause of India's extreme poverty was India's extreme ignorance.

At the same time I began to realize, during these two crucial years, that the Congress party, the only active and responsible political organization in the country, would prove itself incapable -was already proving itself incapable -- of representing India's Muslims, or of dealing adequately or justly with the needs and aspirations of the Muslim community. The pressure of Hindu extremism was too strong. Already that artificial unity which the British Raj had imposed from without was cracking. Deep-seated and ineradicable differences expressed themselves, once political activity and aspirations had advanced beyond the most elementary stage. The breach was there -- in Hindu intransigence and lack of perception of basic Muslim ideals and hopes. I did all I could to prevent the breach's being widened. I maintained a campaign of remonstrance with Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, who was high in the counsels of the Congress party, who was a friend of my family and who had known me since childhood. I begged him to use his influence and to make Congress realize how important it was to win Muslim confidence, but all to no avail.

Whatever the reason for their attitude, the Congress leaders persisted in ignoring the realities of the communal situation. There were provinces in which the Muslims were in a clear majority: in Bengal, for example, and in the Punjab, out of which the Northwest Frontier Province had not then been carved. And about Delhi, Agra and Aligarh there had been built up a spiritual home, sanctified by some of the most valuable of Muslim traditions and adorned with imperishable treasures of Islamic art and culture. Some comprehension of what this meant in Muslim minds was all we asked. And the time was propitious -- as never again -- for an understanding; earlier grave differences of opinion with Congress had dwindled into comparative insignificance, and even the memory of them that remained could have been wiped out -- as I argued as forcibly as I could -- if certain of our proposals for equitable representation and a fair ratio of Government employment for Muslims had been accepted and acted upon.

The primary step was that Congress should choose as its representative on the Viceroy's Legislative Council a Muslim from Bengal or the Punjab. We drew a blank there. For Congress obstinately continued to send third-rate Muslims from preponderantly Hindu provinces like Madras and Bombay. Gokhale, I am convinced, was sincerely anxious to do all he could to change his party's attitude. He could never publicly admit it, but privately he was deeply distressed to watch his political friends and associates thus deliberately sowing the seeds of permanent disunity between Hindu and Muslim. I made frequent, urgent representations of practical, feasible steps by which we could have integrated Muslim political feeling into the Congress party and presented a united front to the British Government. Yet even the private support which Gokhale gave to my representations brought no change of mind or heart.

I turned to my friends at Aligarh, and in particular to Nawab Mohsen-ul-Molk, who had succeeded Sir Syed Ahmed as Muslim leader. Mohsen-ul-Molk was not hidebound; he was moderate and realistic and not at all antagonistic either to Congress or to Hindus in general. If there had been give-and-take in what were then quite minor matters, he would have been willing to join forces with Congress. In such an atmosphere -- assisted by the existence of a joint electorate and joint representation -- a political alliance between the two communities was possible. Our hopes were dashed again and again. Conditions deteriorated at the next elections; and by 1906 Mohsen-ul-Molk and I, in common with other Muslim leaders, had come to the conclusion that our only hope lay along the lines of independent organization and action, and that we must secure independent political recognition from the British Government as a nation within a nation.

While I lived in Calcutta, I came to know the Right Honorable Syed Amir Ali, later a Privy Councilor, then a Judge of the High Court in Calcutta. I had of course read his famous books on Islam; my admiration for his learning, and for his capacity to expound and interpret our Muslim religion, was unstinted. Although he was excluded from any participation in politics, I had no hesitation in going to him for advice and help in my own political endeavors -above all, to secure equitable representations of Muslims and to open the eyes of the Congress High Command to the perils of the course on which they seemed set. But when our hopes were frustrated, it was encouraging that Syed Amir Ali, with all his personal prestige, and his great knowledge of Hindu-Muslim political relations (especially in Bengal), urged us on in our efforts for the establishment of a separate Muslim organization and gave us quiet, constant support when Nawab Mohsen-ul-Molk and I argued that our only hope of getting a fair deal from the British was to convince them of the width of the gulf -- historical, cultural and religious -between us and our neighbors.

The Congress party, by its blindness to legitimate claims and aspirations, and by its persistence in its ridiculous habit of choosing Muslim yes-men from Madras and Bombay as its representatives on the Viceroy's Legislative Council, lost a great opportunity which was not to occur again. These then were critical years, not merely in my own political development but in that vast and complex process which brought about, in little more than forty years, the partition of the Indian subcontinent into the separate states of Bharat and Pakistan.

A notable event during my period of service on the Viceroy's Legislative Council was the Coronation Durbar in Delhi, the climax of which was a magnificent parade of some forty thousand troops who, headed by the Commander in Chief, Lord Kitchener, marched past the representative of the King-Emperor. That representative was the King's brother, my watchful and kind friend since my childhood, the Duke of Connaught. Immediately after the Durbar we held a Muslim Educational Conference in Delhi, at which I spoke at some length on several of the educational projects in whose furtherance I was active -- most important of all, Aligarh.

I ventured to make a direct plea to my friends and colleagues: "I beg of you that the cause of a Central University -- a university which, please Heaven, may rank some day with Oxford and Leipzig and Paris as a home of great ideas and noble ideals -- a university where our youth may receive the highest instruction in the sciences of the West, a university where the teaching of the history and literature of the East may not be scamped over for a mere parrotlike knowledge of Western thought, a university where our youth may also enjoy, in addition to such advantages, a Muslim atmosphere. I earnestly beg of you that the cause of such a university should not be forgotten in the shouts of the market place that daily rise among us."

Those sentences of mine, spoken fifty years ago, sum up the aspirations which I cherished from the outset on behalf of Aligarh and which I have been happy to live to see fulfilled.

I had had two arduous and formative years on the Viceroy's Legislative Council. In the summer of 1904 I returned to Europe and picked up the threads of my social and personal life there. In the political sphere there were big changes impending. Arthur Balfour had succeeded his uncle, Lord Salisbury, as Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative party, but it was obvious that the long epoch of Conservative dominance in British politics was drawing to a close. The dynamic Joseph Chamberlain had flung the issue of Protectionism into the ring, and in so doing had gravely split the Conservative party. The Liberals were steadily gathering their forces; the Irish Question, after some years of deceptive calm, was simmering again; and the emergence of the Labor party -still very small in numbers -- was a portent well worth noting.

I had as yet formed no intention of racing or breeding horses in Europe, and was not to do so until many years had elapsed, but my interest in these matters was unabated. I went regularly to race meetings while I was in England, and it was during this summer, as I recall, that I first made the acquaintance of Colonel Hall Walker (later Lord Wavertree), who was one of the outstanding personalities of the British turf, immensely knowledgeable about everything to do with horses, independent in his judgment, outspoken and didactic. Some people considered his views and his methods so eccentric that he was nicknamed "Whimsical Walker," but I would be the last to impugn his wisdom, his sagacity and experience. He was then the owner of the famous Tully Stud in Ireland, which later became the Irish National Stud, and with which in afteryears I had much to do.

I returned to Bombay that winter and set out in the following year, 1905, on my second visit to East Africa. I urged on my Ismaili followers there some of the ideas, in intellectual and physical education, which I was practicing and preaching in India. I was especially distressed by the low standards of physique noticeable in Zanzibar; the incidence of tuberculosis was high. If it was argued that the fierce tropical climate enervated those who lived in it and induced listlessness and apathy, I could point out that the same could be said of India, and there we were beginning to take energetic steps to combat it. In Zanzibar I had consultations with the mukhis, the leaders of the local communities. I had a palace turned into a sports club and center for physical training, with a running track and football and cricket pitches. I gave prizes in all sorts of competitions, from billiards to cycling. I am glad to say that my innovations proved a marked success.

While I was in Africa a suit was brought against me in the Bombay High Court by certain discontented members of my family, collateral descendants of my grandfather. A series of claims, financial and otherwise, were made against me. This case, which dragged on for many months, was not so much a sequel of the earlier case brought against my grandfather in the sixties, by dissident elements among the Khojas (to which I have referred in a previous chapter), as a consequence of the generous, feudal manner in which my grandfather's establishment in Bombay had been set up and maintained. During the protracted proceedings a great deal of the history and background of my family and the Ismaili sect were gone into again, commissions of inquiry were sent into distant regions of Asia and Africa to collect evidence about my ancestors' property and affairs. My mother gave evidence on my behalf and was complimented by the judge, who said that she had "displayed an extraordinary memory." I was fortunate in my counsel, Mr. Inverarity, a keen and able lawyer. When at length the hearings ended and the presiding judge, Mr. Justice Russell, summed up, his judgment proved to be a classic example of its kind -- a masterly, lucid, wide-ranging survey of Islamic history, religion, custom and law. At the conclusion of the long and costly business, I was fully and finally confirmed in my rights and status, and have never thereafter been subjected to a similar challenge.

I returned to India for the cold weather of 1905-1906, in time to pay my respects to the Prince of Wales (later King George V) in Calcutta. He was there, of course, in the middle of that state visit to India which had been under discussion when I was in England in 1904. This was not my first meeting with His Royal Highness (as he then was). My friendship with him and with his beloved consort, Queen Mary, was of long standing. I first met Queen Mary in 1898 when she was Duchess of York; she was at home in England with her three young children ( King Edward VIII, later the Duke of Windsor, the late King George VI, and the Princess Royal) while her husband was out of the country on his first tour of duty as a naval officer.

All my memories of this good and gracious pair are warmly affectionate. I have always been proud that I won King George V's friendship and maintained it to the end of his life. He gave me his confidence to the same degree as his father had done. He talked to me always with utter frankness on all sorts of subjects, personal, political, sporting and social. I often had the honor of being his guest at luncheon, first at Marlborough House when he was Prince of Wales, and after his accession at Buckingham Palace. Luncheon was an informal, quiet family affair, with Queen Mary and one or two of their children and myself the only guest. Usually these luncheons were noted in the Court Circular; but from time to time, for special reasons, public reference was not made to them. King George carried all his life the stamp of his early training as a professional officer in the Royal Navy, with his trim and elegant figure, his strong, fresh complexion, his nautical beard, and the tone and accent of his admirably clear voice -- an especially vivid reminder that he had exercised command at sea for many years before the death of his elder brother had placed him directly in the succession to the Throne. He had a short temper and was apt to show it when small things went wrong, but he quickly got over his anger. He had a very kind heart that was easily stirred to sympathy by the suffering of others.

I know of one example of the spontaneity and generosity of his sympathy. During the King-Emperor's Coronation Durbar in Delhi, the Maharajah of Baroda resented the fact that he had to go and make a public bow to the King. He demonstrated his resentment by performing his homage in a haphazard and casual fashion. This shocked everyone who saw it, British and Indian alike, because there was no justification for his showing open discourtesy to the King-Emperor. He apologized in writing to the Viceroy, and, although the apology was accepted, the King naturally felt sore about the episode and went on feeling sore for some years. But later misfortune descended upon the Maharajah of Baroda; more than one of his sons died in their young manhood, and then another fell grievously ill. When the King learned of these sorrows, he forgave the Maharajah wholeheartedly, blotted out the memory of the insult, and more than once I heard him refer to the Maharajah of Baroda as "that poor, unfortunate man" in tones of sincere commiseration.

King George V, like his father, was extremely meticulous about the way in which orders and decorations were worn, and, again like his father, had an extraordinarily keen eye for the slightest mistake in their arrangement on anyone's chest.

He once remarked to me: "Some people are surprised that my father and I are so particular about these things. But wouldn't it be peculiar if in ordinary society people turned up with their shirts outside their trousers, their collars or their neckties on back to front, and the buttons of their coats and waistcoats all wrong? Just as ordinary society has its rules for the proper wearing of clothes, so a King and his Court must have their rules for the proper wearing of unifoms, decorations and orders."

Once at some big Court function the late Maharajah of Rajpipla appeared in the King's presence not wearing -- as he should have worn -- the collar of one of his decorations because it caused him discomfort. The King was angry and showed that he was angry, but Queen Mary made a quick, conciliatory gesture toward the unhappy young man, as if to say, "Don't worry, it'll blow over." It did, and the King soon forgave him.

In connection with this same Maharajah of Rajpipla, I can give an example of King George V's pertinacious and all-round interest in all sorts of matters. The Maharajah won the Derby in 1934 with a horse called Windsor Lad. He had somehow delayed giving to his trainer the present which it is customary for a winning owner to give to his trainer after the Derby. His trainer was Mr. Marcus Marsh, the son of King George's former trainer. Weeks passed and the Maharajah still gave no present. One afternoon I was at a solemn and imposing state ceremony, where Ambassadors, Cabinet Ministers and exalted Court functionaries abounded. The King caught sight of me in the august throng, took me quietly into a corner and told me that he knew Marsh had not had his present.

"You were a great friend of his father's, weren't you?" he said earnestly, "and you know the young man himself. Do please tackle him and make him see that this present is a normal affair, and he's got to give it."

Naturally I did as the King asked, and the Maharajah belatedly sent Marsh his present. Nearly twenty years afterward I told Marsh my side of the episode. Now, although Marsh was the son of the King's trainer and quite often saw the King, he had never mentioned it to the King but had told a friend of his about the Maharajah's curious absence of mind. The friend was a general on the King's staff; he told the King and the King decided to use me as a gobetween.

During the thirty-four years that I knew him I saw a great deal of King George V, at his home, at race meetings at Ascot and Epsom and elsewhere, and on his two visits to India as Prince of Wales and as King.

On the former visit in 1905, which has set me off on this train of reminiscences, there was a state ball in the Viceroy's House in Calcutta. The Prince of Wales took me into his room and told me that he was fully in favor of the appointment of Indians to the Viceroy's Executive Council and that he considered it most unfortunate that there were no Indians on it at the moment. He said, "I have strongly urged both Lord Morley and Lord Minto that an Indian be appointed."

He went on to talk to me at length about the Calcutta hospitals, to which his father had referred a year before; he was not at all happy about them.

The Morley-Minto reforms (of which I shall have much to say a little later) were promulgated in the following year. In private the Prince of Wales made no secret of the fact that he regarded these reforms as necessary and right. Like Queen Victoria, he had a quick and real sympathy for his Indian subjects, and he understood the real needs of India, above all, for a vigorous, united drive against ignorance and poverty and the appallingly low standard of living. During the Round Table Conferences he sent me more than one message urging me on and encouraging me in my efforts to bring about a settlement of Hindu-Muslim differences in order that we might then get on with the practical, economic and social reforms which were so long overdue. One day after I had the honor of lunching with him at Ascot, he spoke to me warmly along the same lines.

I remember that when the news leaked out from Berlin during the First World War that Indian anarchists were being trained in Germany, the King was shocked and grieved at the thought that the Kaiser could demean himself to countenance such underhanded and savage tactics. In the same way his grief was profound but private at the dreadful murder of the whole Russian Royal Family, his cousins, the Czar and Czarina and all their children, at Ekaterinburg in 1918. He never made any public reference to it, but more than once in our private talks he had no hesitation in opening his heart to me and telling me of his sorrow.

Sir Harold Nicolson, in his recently published biography of King George V, lays stress on the fact that the King was always fully aware of the constitutional proprieties, and of his inability to intervene in politics, however strong his private wishes or feelings might be. Sir Harold gives a vivid account of the way in which, after he had aired his views -- vigorously, doubtless, and with singular pungency of phrase -- he would make a gentle gesture, his right hand passing across his body, and say with a resigned smile, "It's not for me to have opinions, or to interfere." I so well remember that gesture and that smile. I have seen them so often, in many an after-luncheon talk. The most industrious, diligent and hard-worked of men, King George yet possessed the delightful faculty of collecting and remembering small personal details about his friends' private lives. Some years before the First World War the Maharajah of Gwalior was affianced to the Maharajah of Baroda's daughter (now the Maharani of Cooch Behar). During the Delhi Durbar of 1912 she broke off the engagement. Outwardly the Maharajah of Gwalior took his disappointment bravely, but inwardly he was greatly distressed. The King heard about it. He knew that Gwalior and I were close friends. At one of the state functions he sent for me, told me how grieved he was for Gwalior, and asked me to do all I could to ease matters.

As I have said, I knew Queen Mary even before I met her husband. For well over fifty years I was proud and glad to be counted among her friends. In 1952 -- less than a year before she died -- I had two affectionate personal messages from her; the first, a telegram of congratulations after my horse Tulyar won the Derby, and with it a solicitous inquiry about my health, for she knew that I had been gravely ill and was glad to hear that I was on the mend; and the other (the last message I ever had from her) was when the same horse, Tulyar, won the King George and Queen Elizabeth Cup at Ascot, and she got an equerry to convey her congratulations and her regards to me.

She was a staunch, invaluable support to King George; a truly great English lady, she seemed to me to mingle in herself all the best qualities of royalty in the constitutional pattern, of wifely, maternal, domestic excellence, and of sturdy middle-class realism.

One of the most touching -- in a way, one of the most painful -- experiences of my life was a conversation which I had with Queen Mary shortly before King Edward VIII's abdication. I had just had a long audience with King Edward VIII, having returned to London from Geneva after one of the interminable conferences of the League of Nations, and in this audience I made my report to the King. I spoke fervently and sincerely to Queen Mary of my great admiration for King Edward, for his clarity of view, for his realism, and, above all, for his full appreciation of the dangers of the coming war. I could see that she was immensely proud of her son, yet I could see too that she was holding back tears -- tears which were an indication of her awareness of the sorrow that impended for the Royal Family. No open hint did she give of it, and no reference could I make, or would I have made, to it. Having come from abroad I had had no sense of how near and how great was King Edward's danger. Realization in that sad silence was all the more shocking. In all that we did not say, in the quiet of her drawing room, there was a profound and tragic apprehension, a sense of the clouds massing for the terrible storm that was to burst around her and around those she dearly loved.

In the summer of 1906 I was again in England. There had been a General Election since my last visit, the Conservatives had been heavily defeated, and the Liberals were in power with a record majority and a Government under the Premiership of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. Assembled in the Cabinet room and on the Front Bench was a galaxy of brilliant and able men, unequaled in recent British history: Asquith, Grey, Haldane, Lloyd George, John Morley, Herbert Samuel, and Winston Churchill, to name only a few of that memorable Administration. Morley -- Gladstone's intimate friend, Cabinet colleague and biographer, the possessor of one of the most powerful, constructive intellects of his day -- held what was to me and my political associates the supremely important post of Secretary of State for India. Soon his name was to be associated with that of the Viceroy, the Earl of Minto, a Scottish nobleman of Liberal outlook, sagacity and equability, in the Morley-Minto reforms, which marked so momentous an advance in India's journey to political emancipation. Asquith was Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lloyd George was president of the Board of Trade; and Winston Churchill, then just turned thirty, and a recent recruit from the other side of the House, held at first a minor ministerial post but was soon to rocket into prominence.

I have had the privilege and pleasure of Sir Winston Churchill's friendship for over half a century. As I recall, it was at Poona in the late summer of 1896 that our paths first crossed. A group of officers of a British cavalry regiment, the Fourth Hussars, then stationed at Bangalore, called on me. I was ill at the time and did not meet them, but my cousin Shamsuddin entertained them and showed them my race horses. When he later told me of their visit he said that among the officers none had a keener, more discriminating eye, none was a better judge of a horse, than a young subaltern by the name of Winston Spencer Churchill. My cousin described him as perhaps a little over twenty, boyish-looking, eager, irrepressible, and already an enthusiastic, courageous and promising polo player.

It is impossible to think of the young Winston Churchill without recalling his mother, the brilliant and much-loved Lady Randolph Churchill. Her beauty, her grace and her wit have now a legendary quality. The wife of one famous man, the mother of another, she herself was a woman of the utmost distinction.

From many recollections of Lady Randolph, on many occasions and in many places, I choose one saying of hers that seems to me especially typical of the felicity and the pointedness of her wit. One day at Aix-les-Bains, Sir Rufus Isaacs (later the first Marquis of Reading) observed, about some particular action of which he disapproved, "No man would respect a woman who would do that."

"No woman," said Lady Randolph gently, "wants to be respected."

In later life our paths were destined to cross again and again. We met in the summer of 1902, King Edward VII's Coronation Year, at Warwick Castle as guests of Lord and Lady Warwick over a long week end. In six years the ebullient cavalry subaltern had traveled far and achieved much; wherever there had been fighting he had contrived to be, regardless of the views of senior officers -Malakand, about which he wrote the first of his many books, Kitchener's "River War" along the upper reaches of the Nile, the cavalry charge at Omdurman; as a war correspondent in South Africa he had been taken prisoner, escaped and had had a price put on his head by Kruger; and by 1902 he was Conservative member of Parliament for Oldman. At Warwick that week end he was in a holiday mood. He and I involved ourselves in a vigorous argument about the comparative merits, in sheer sporting quality, of polo and hunting. He was firmly for polo; I who had followed hounds from boyhood was as stubbornly for hunting. But I recall another conversation that same summer week end which was less lighthearted. He, with his imperialist traditions and outlook, reverted -- as so many politically minded Englishman had to in those days -- to the question of Ireland; he echoed something that Lord Spencer had said to me some years earlier: "Twenty years of firm government is no solution of the Irish problem.

"So long as the people of Ireland are dissatisfied," continued the young Tory M.P, the nominal supporter of Arthur Balfour, "there can be no solution. Only when the Irish people are politically satisfied will we be able to solve the Irish problem."

As young men will, we talked a great deal about a great many subjects. Churchill, whose verbal memory is one of his many remarkable characteristics, quoted freely from Fitzgerald's translation of Omar Khayyám. He assured me that he knew virtually the whole poem by heart. I remember being genuinely surprised by the enthusiasm which he displayed, for to those of us whose mother tongue is Persian, Omar Khayyám seems a minor poet with a very limited outlook. I tackled Churchill along those lines, and he countered me by saying that what he admired in Omar Khayyám was not his philosophy but his poetic power. Then suddenly he made a dialectical volte-face and said: "You know, there's a great deal in his philosophy. After all, it doesn't greatly matter what we do now -- it'll be all the same in a hundred years."

I took strong exception to this flippant observation.

"What you do now," I said, "may be of little account a thousand years from now. But certainly events a hundred years hence will very much be the direct results of our present deeds and misdeeds."

As I remember, he came round into agreement with me. Now a good deal older, and with a good deal more experience behind me, I think that I would argue that events a thousand years hence can be strongly affected by what we do now -- or leave undone.

Think of my own august ancestor, Mohammed the Prophet of Islam. If Mohammed had been killed in his first encounter with his enemies, Islam would never have arisen; Arabia might have been the home of a number of minor Christian sects; the Middle East would have been Christian instead of predominantly Muslim; and that part of the Indian subcontinent which became Muslim might have been converted to some version of Christianity. I go further: if after our Holy Prophet's Ascension into Heaven the succession had gone to the Ansar of Medina -- a kindly, steadfast clan of yeomen, content to live on and work by the land -- instead of to the Prophet's own tribe, the Quraish of Mecca -- internationally minded, virile, reckless folk with a lust for travel and adventure, who journeyed to Constantinople and Alexandria, to Rome even, to Iran and by sea to India in search of trade -- then Islam would have taken a totally different turn. Under the leadership of the Ansar of Medina it would have been today -- if indeed it still survived -- one of many minor, little-known Eastern sects.

It needed the imagination, the international experience of the trade-conscious Quraish, the citizens of Mecca, to have made Islam a world religion whose call was spread abroad to all mankind.

In our own time too, there are many examples of decisions -political and otherwise -- whose influence stretches far beyond the immediate present into a distant future. If in 1871 Bismarck had left Alsace and Lorraine out of the peace terms which he imposed on France in his hour of victory, would there ever have been the cry of "Revanche, revanche!" which echoed fiercely down the years afterward? The Franco-Prussian War might have slipped into oblivion with the other vainglorious follies of the Second Empire; and that United Europe, which is the eager hope and desire of us all today, would have come to pass without the bitter experience of two world wars. Even after the First World War had the Western Powers hearkened to the advice of men like Lord D'Abernon during the early, critical years of the Weimar Republic, we might never have heard of Adolf Hitler; the old League of Nations which had many good points -- not least of which was its rapid acceptance of Stresemann's Germany into full membership -- would have gone a long way to heal the wounds of the First World War. But there were other less enlightened counselors to whom the peoples of Western Europe listened, and in the succeeding years nothing was left undone to show the German people that there was one way in which they could get what they wanted, and that was by power politics.

Ah, well, the two young men who sat talking so ardently at Warwick Castle long ago had much to learn; and, if I may say so, one of Sir Winston Churchill's outstanding characteristics -- perhaps the most valuable of all to him in his career as a statesman -- has been his capacity to learn by experience and, having learned, to wipe the slate clean.

In 1906, four years after our memorable encounter at Warwick Castle, he was a junior Minister in Campbell-Bannerman's Liberal Government, and I remember that John Morley, his senior Cabinet colleague, said to me, "The young Churchill, like the young Joseph Chamberlain that I knew, possesses the greatest natural political sense. There is in Churchill the same innate and natural readiness to tackle and solve problems as they arise that there was in Joe."

Sir Winston Churchill unites and blends in his strong personality two usually conflicting strands: the romantic, the deeply emotional and poetic interpreter of history and the common sense, practical, down-to-earth realist, the hardheaded and coolly calculating strategist. It is an irresistible, at times a majestic, combination.

And he accepted the fact that India was to remain in the Commonwealth on her own terms and as a republic. As he himself has said to me, "Half a loaf is better than none."

His whole relationship with the problem of India is a manifestation on the highest political plane of these two interlinked facets of Churchill's character. Part of his being responds with instantaneous romanticism to a highly colored conception of Empire, to the Union Jack unfurled to the breeze in some distant outpost, to the vigilant picket-keeping guard in the desolate Khyber, to all the trumpet calls of more than a century of British Imperial history. But in another part of his being he is capable of resolute practicality and common sense, solid and realistic yet magnanimous. It is this latter facet which has predominated since 1947; he has cheerfully accepted a political fact for what it is, and has striven -- with a good deal of success -- to make the best of a quite new situation.

I would have wished, though, that his connection with India (after his brief period of soldiering there was over) had been closer, and his responsibility for decisions on Indian matters more immediate, at some time or another in his career.

I saw a good deal of him during the First World War, and we often discussed politics. Not long after the end of the war, when Lord Chelmsford's term as Viceroy was ending and before the appointment of Lord Reading, Lloyd George asked two of us, myself and an intimate friend of mine, Mr. Bassou, a member of the Council of India, to come and see him on the matter of a successor. I suggested to Mr. Lloyd George, on behalf of the pair of us, two candidates for this great post: Lord Derby and Winston Churchill. He did not turn down either of them outright. He then turned to Mr. Bassou. Mr. Bassou's suggestions of course coincided with mine. To me Lloyd George had made no comment on either name. With Mr. Bassou, as with me, he passed over Lord Derby's name in silence. Then he turned round sharply and said to Mr. Bassou, "Do you know Churchill?"

Mr. Bassou admitted that he had not the pleasure of Mr. Churchill's personal acquaintance.

"I know Churchill," said Lloyd George with finality.

Looking back, and with the knowledge of all the great positions under the Crown which Sir Winston Churchill has occupied with such luster, I still think that it was a pity Lloyd George did not accede to our joint suggestion. If Churchill had had direct and recent Indian experience, his whole outlook at the time of the Indian Round Table Conference from 1930 on, and his speeches in the Parliamentary debates leading up to the passing of the Government of India Act in 1935, would, I am certain, have been different. And the effect of that changed outlook would have been felt throughout the whole later history of Anglo-Indian relations. I go further; I believe that with the direct knowledge of India which he would have acquired as Viceroy, he might have found other and far less terrible means of bringing about the downfall of Hitler and the saving of Germany for Western civilization.

Every time that I have discussed political matters with Sir Winston, I have been impressed anew by the extraordinarily practical realism of his outlook. He is never the slave of his past ideas, his desires or his dreams; he is their master.

During the First World War, when so many British statesmen were anxious to save Turkey from the doom which seemed bound to engulf her, I remember Churchill's telling me brusquely that Turkey would be the victor's prize. Turkey, he said, was the sick man of Europe, dying and degenerate, whom it was no use trying to save.

Who in the Second World War and since has been a warmer admirer, a more staunch supporter and friend of modern Turkey than Winston Churchill? He has come round to a firm belief in the vitality and stubborn strength of the contemporary Turkish character, nurtured in the Anatolian Highlands, and to a genuine admiration for the vigor of Turkey's revival under Kemal Ataturk -- a revival like that of the phoenix out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, whose disasters were the result of the blind and foolish policy of her leaders.

So far as India is concerned, the evolution in Churchill's outlook is even more startling. I remember his attitude at the time of the Round Table Conference, the whole tone in which he addressed us, and his determined opposition to the very idea of Dominion status. Yet this was the Churchill who in 1942 sent Sir Stafford Cripps to India with a directive which could only lead in the end to complete independence and to the emergence of the Indian Republic. And when the severance was finally accomplished, when the highest jewel in the British Crown was no more, when the last British soldier and the last British administrator had left Indian soil, Churchill's acceptance of the fact of Indian independence was made sincerely and with good grace.

Churchill, as leader of the Conservative party, faced with equanimity the momentous sequence of events which brought about Indian independence, the partition of the subcontinent into the two new and sovereign states of Bharat and Pakistan, and the division of the Indian Army.

As I look back down the long vista of the years that I have known Sir Winston, I am sure that the greatest blessing God has given him has been his health. He has a constitution of iron, and all his life he has taxed it to the uttermost. He has disregarded all the do's and don't's which doctors impose. He has worked unceasingly; he has played hard, he has excelled in countless activities from polo to painting, and have I ever seen him refuse any good dish put in front of him, or a liqueur glass of brandy, or a cigar? This gusto and this vitality have been sustained by his magnificent constitution. The young subaltern who came to look at my horses had it, and the veteran statesman, honored and revered by the whole civilized world, has it.

The electoral change in England in that crucial year 1906 had its effect on India. While I was in England that summer my friends in India wrote and told me that at last the Government was beginning to realize that there was something called a Muslim problem in India and that they could no longer dismiss it as an idle fabrication.

Since 1857 and the transference of authority in India from the East India Company to the Crown, the Muslims had, in a political sense, been more or less ignored by the British. Perhaps not unnaturally the new rulers of India turned away from those who, by religion and by language, were connected with the rulers who had been ousted. Muslims were not brought into the administration or into politics; few studied or read English. If the end of the Moghul emperors was pitiable, its effects lingered on for two generations in the sense of isolation and powerlessness which enveloped the Muslims of India in their own land. The Hindu majority were in an advantageous position under their new rulers; and they made full use of it. The Muslims had been for long what the French call "quantité negligeable," but at long last we were going to be heard. The Viceroy, Lord Minto, had agreed to receive a deputation from us and I was to lead that deputation.

We were acutely aware that we had long been neglected, that to the Hindu majority -- as represented by its leaders in the Congress party -- we seemed a tiresome splinter in the flesh of the body politic, and that though there was great talk of nationalism, we were not ever considered in the aspirations that were being fostered, the plans that were being laid. They continued to send to the Viceroy's Legislative Council third-rate yes-men instead of truly representative Muslims, with the result that our separate identity as a community and the status that would have appertained to it had been forgotten by the British.

Now we decided that the time had come to make a stand for a change in attitude. If constitutional advancements were to be mooted, we must have our say in their disposition. Reform was in the air, but it must be understood -- in the utterly different political atmosphere of more than forty years later -- that it was reform within extremely limited terms of reference. British supremacy in India, administrative and legislative, was to remain uninfringed, unaltered. In the Morley-Minto reforms, as they came to be known, and in the Indian Councils Act of 1907 in which they were embodied, there was no hint of a process of evolution toward ultimate Indian self-government, no hint of transference of power from British to Indian hands. John Morley himself said, "A fur coat may be all very well in Canada, but no use at all in India" -- the political and constitutional evolution which had been Canada's experience was thus by implication rejected for India (though not, of course, by India). All that the Morley-Minto proposals were intended to achieve, and did achieve, was a modest devolution in communal and local matters and the admittance of Indians, on a rigidly restricted basis, to consultation -- though not to decision -- about their own affairs.

Within these limits, however, they were an advance, and from the Muslim point of view they were especially significant. Our experience from the time of the Cross-Lansdowne reforms in 1892 had pointed the way; there was no hope of a fair deal for us within the fold of the Congress party or in alliance with it. Now in 1906 we boldly asked the Viceroy to look facts in the face; we asked that the Muslims of India should be regarded not as a mere minority, but as a nation within a nation whose rights and obligations should be guaranteed by statute. History has amply demonstrated since then, after the First World War and again and again later, that the existence of minorities -- of one nationally conscious community within another, numerically weaker perhaps but not less firmly aware of itself as a nation than the majority -- is one of the major issues of our time. Ireland, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia -- the world's maps are plentifully dotted with these minority problems, with all their complexity and difficulty.

For ourselves in 1906 we asked for the establishment of a principle, a principle which would have to be embodied in any legislation as a consequence of these proposals for reform. We asked for adequate and separate representation for Muslims both on local bodies and on the legislative councils, we asked that this representation be secured by a separate communal franchise and electoral roll. In short, we Muslims should have the right of electing our own representatives on it. We conceded that in areas where we were in the majority, like the Punjab and what was then the Province of Eastern Bengal, we would give a certain number of extra seats to the Hindus, in order to safeguard their interests, but in return we asked that in areas in which there was a big Hindu majority we likewise should be conceded a certain number of extra seats.

Lord Minto listened with sympathy to the statement of our case. He assured us that the political rights and interests of the Muslim community would be safeguarded in any change in administration that might occur. Our principle was accepted. Most of our demands in detail were conceded, though not all. It would, in my view, have been better had there been provision for two Indian members of the Viceroy's Executive Council -- one Muslim and one Hindu -- instead of the one finally provided for. But after all, it was John Morley himself who said to me when I raised this point, "You mustn't get too much power, you know."

It is perhaps unnecessary to stress the irony of history's comment on that observation. But within their own time, the Morley-Minto reforms were a genuine step forward. We had had established a major political principle; its application was henceforward to be a permanent feature of all constitutional developments in India. It was not conceded however without opposition. And if in retrospect there is an element of irony about Lord Morley's remark which I have just quoted, there is a much more freakishly ironic flavor about the name and personality of the chief Muslim opponent of the stand which we took. For Lord Minto's acceptance of our demands was the foundation of all future constitutional proposals made for India by successive British Governments, and its final, inevitable consequence was the partition of India and the emergence of Pakistan.

Who then was our doughtiest opponent in 1906? A distinguished Muslim barrister in Bombay, with a large and prosperous practice, Mr. Mohammed All Jinnah. We first became acquainted when he, having been called to the English Bar, settled in Bombay and -- entirely without private fortune and without influence -- rapidly built up his successful practice there. We had always been on friendly terms, but at this juncture he came out in bitter hostility toward all that I and my friends had done and were trying to do. He was the only well-known Muslim to take this attitude, but his opposition had nothing mealy-mouthed about it; he said that our principle of separate electorates was dividing the nation against itself, and for nearly a quarter of a century he remained our most inflexible critic and opponent. In a later chapter I shall discuss more fully the circumstances -- most of all the stubborn folly and intransigence of the Hindu majority in Congress -- which converted this stoutest champion of Indian unity into its most determined opponent; and I shall trace in detail the paths of destiny which brought him, as the unchallenged leader of eighty million Muslims, that victory -- the creation of the separate and independent State of Pakistan -- for which we at the beginning were working unconsciously and indirectly, and he at the end consciously and directly and with all the force of his will and intellect. For the moment I merely reflect upon the irony implicit in it all.

Our achievement in 1906 seemed important enough; and it was obvious to those of us most closely associated with it -- especially Nawab Mohsen-ul-Molk and myself -- that since we had obtained separate electoral recognition, we must have the political organization to make that separate representation effective. The All-India Muslim League was therefore founded at a meeting at Dacca later that year at which, as it happened, I was unable to be present. I was, however, elected its first President, and as such I remained until 1912.

All these events -- our deputation to the Viceroy, his acceptance of our demands, the subsequent foundation of the All-India Muslim League and my election as its President -- marked for me the culmination of a period of concentrated political effort. The strain had shown itself physically and during our visit to Simla to see the Viceroy, I fainted. I needed physical recuperation and I thought that I would combine this with widening my experience and knowledge. I set out on a world tour in the company of a French friend of mine, Monsieur Rene Talomon, who subsequently became a professor of French literature in the United States, and who died recently. We headed east, going first to Malaya and Singapore and then on to China.

China's condition at that time was saddening. In Peking the aged Dowager-Empress dwelt in seclusion within the vast confines of the summer palace; beyond its walls her Empire was crumbling in confusion and decay. In towns along the seaboard and far up the great navigable rivers that were the arteries of China's lifeblood, foreign -- European -- trading communities had established an elaborate system of treaty ports and concessions. Here on the territory of a country which was in no sense a colony of any of the European nations involved, it was astonishing, and disquieting, to see that the most arrogant and hidebound kind of colonialism prevailed. The foreign concessions in towns like Shanghai, Hankow and others were alien cities and strongholds of power, political and financial. It was indeed merely a matter of extraterritorial foreign administration within the various concessions and settlements; the power and prestige of the foreigner was so great, and the authority of the Manchu Government so feeble, that the real rulers of China in those days were the consuls of the European Powers, chief among them the British Consul General in Shanghai. In the disintegration from which China's administration was suffering, wealthy Chinese brought their money and their investments into the foreign settlements for safety and protection -- just as today many Europeans send their capital to the United States and Canada.

The atmosphere of colonialism was as nauseating as it was allpervasive. In the P & O ship in which I traveled from Hong Kong to Shanghai, one of my fellow passengers was the Imperial Viceroy of the Province of Yunnan -- a personage, one would have supposed, of some consequence in his own country. When we reached Shanghai I was genuinely astonished, and a good deal shocked, to see the way in which the officials of the so-called Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs -- after all, they were nominally the servants of the Chinese Government -- treated this dignitary, compared with their attitude toward the British passengers, myself and even my Indian servants.

For us there was every mark of consideration and courtesy. He was dealt with brusquely and rudely, all his baggage was opened, and the customs officials ruffled busily through his robes and his mandarin orders. It was a nastily enlightening comparison which I have never forgotten.

Within the foreign settlements the general attitude toward the Chinese was little short of outrageous. All the better hotels refused entry to Chinese, except in wings specially set aside for them. It was the same in restaurants. From European clubs they were totally excluded. Even in shops a Chinese customer would have to stand aside and wait to be served when a European or an American came in after him and demanded attention. We hear a great deal about the color bar in South Africa today. In the early years of this century in China the color bar was rigidly imposed -- not least offensively in discrimination against officials of the very government whose guests, under international law, all foreigners were supposed to be. Is it any wonder that the Chinese intelligentsia long retained bitter memories of this attitude?

The old mandarin class, of course, did not travel and knew little of the world outside China, but already, even in 1906, there were a number of Chinese students attending universities in the United States and then returning home. Their bitterness was probably sharper and deeper than the cool, self-isolating disdain which was the natural reaction of the mandarin class.

In Shanghai Talomon and I were entertained at dinner -- Chinese style -- by some wealthy Chinese merchants to whom we had letters of introduction from a Chinese friend in Singapore.

We had the usual chicken dishes and something which they called tartar grilled meat, which was really a kebab similar to that which is eaten in Persia, Turkey, Egypt and all the Middle Eastern countries, and even in the Caucasus. When we remarked that it was a well-known dish in a large part of the world and a part with which I particularly was familiar, our hosts said, "Yes, it has been prepared for us by a Chinese Muslim cook." There followed the classical Chinese dishes, such as bamboo shoots and buried eggs. And then we were offered a dish which at first we thought was eel.

Luckily -- oh, how luckily! -- Talomon said, "We know this very well."

Our host laughed in courteous deprecation of Talomon's little mistake. "Oh, no," he said, "this is snake."

There is a limit, and for us this went beyond it. Under the cover of our napkins, and with what we hoped was the greatest care so that we should not be seen, we got rid of it. I remember, long years later, reading a newspaper account of the effect of a similar dish on some foreigners at a Chinese official dinner. All were very ill and some died.

Students of sociology may be interested in the existence in those days, both in Shanghai and Hong Kong, of what were called "welcome houses," maintained by small groups of American women. There was not a hint of coarseness or vulgarity about these establishments; they were enveloped in an almost oppressive atmosphere of decorum. The first impression on any novice who walked into one of them for the first time was that he had entered an agreeable but fairly strait-laced social gathering. Only Europeans and Americans of impeccable social background were admitted. The women who ran them -- many of whom were known to be well-to-do, several indeed owning race horses in Shanghai -- were regarded with a proper degree of respect. They resembled, shall I say, the Greek hetaera rather than the fashionable lady of the European demimonde of that time. Most of the women were of Scandinavian origin and had come, I believe, from the vicinity of Minnesota where there is a considerable degree of Scandinavian settlement. The current theory in the Far East was that they came thither with one set purpose: to accumulate a dowry which their families could not afford to give them and that having in a few years piled up quite sizable fortunes, home they went to be absorbed into a respectable and blameless family life.

Talomon and I went on to Japan. Since the world picture has changed so irrevocably in the years since then, it may perhaps be necessary to recall two important facts in connection with Japan in 1906: first, that Britain and Japan were allies, under the terms of an agreement signed early in the century and, second, that Japan had just emerged victorious from the Russo-Japanese War, the first in modern times in which an Asiatic Power had taken on and soundly defeated a European Great Power in a combat on modern terms and with modern arms and equipment. The Foreign Minister, Count Hayashi, who had been Ambassador in London at the time of the signature of the Treaty of Anglo-Japanese alliance, gave a big luncheon in my honor. During the course of the meal he and I discussed the Anglo-Japanese alliance; and Count Hayashi, whom I had known quite well in London, assured me that influential military circles in Japan had been opposed to the idea of an alliance with Britain and had advocated an alliance with Russia. Simultaneous negotiations had in fact been conducted, and the Russian plan failed only because Russia's acceptance of the terms proposed arrived after the treaty with Britain had been initialed. It is interesting and a little awe-inspiring to speculate on how different the history of our century would have been had the Czar's Government moved more speedily. There would have been no Russo-Japanese War to weaken -- as it in fact did irreparably -- the Czarist regime; might not Lenin have remained an obscure agitator in permanent exile?

Among Japanese leaders whom I met was Field Marshal Oyama. I remember being struck by his modesty of demeanor, absence of self-satisfaction and lack of any display of power, and I remember thinking -- for, after all, he was one of the men who had just led their country to victory in the war against Russia -- that his bearing was very different from that which a European or American military leader would have adopted in a like situation. Friends told me that the bearing of Admiral Togo, the victorious commander in the great naval battle of Tsushima, was very similar to that of the Field Marshal.

I was fortunate enough to be granted an audience with the old Emperor, the great Mikado of Japan's revolution, the Emperor during whose reign Japan had stepped at one bound from a medieval way of life to a modern industrial and military power able to challenge the West in its own terms. As a boy before the Revolution, although he was the Mikado, he had been kept in Kyoto by the Shogun in obscurity and something near poverty, rationed daily to a small issue of rice by those who were supposed to be his servants. He threw off this overweening tyranny -- with tremendous results. What surprised me was that he was a tall, powerful, robust man; he would have been thought a big man anywhere, but in Tokyo his size seemed much more conspicuous. My audience with him was a noisy affair. He talked at the top of his powerful voice, shouting questions at me and shouting back his answering comments. When he wasn't shouting he was uttering loud, explosive exclamations. The courtier who acted as interpreter told me afterward that these exclamations indicated that the Emperor approved of my answers to his questions.

We took a Japanese boat across the Pacific and called at Honolulu. People who know Honolulu nowadays can have no idea of what it was like then -- its charm and its quiet air of absolute peace and happiness. There were no trans-Pacific clippers bringing holidaymakers overnight from the United States. It had not been discovered and exploited by the cinema; its romance was genuine. There was no tourist industry, and there were no vast naval and air bases.

All the young women of the island went about garlanded, and whenever we were introduced to any of them they took off their garlands -- so gay and beautiful were their smiles, so graceful and delicate the movements and touch of their hands -- and put them round our necks. Talomon and I were still young and impressionable; we were both pleased and gratified by this courteous custom.

On we went toward the United States and reached San Francisco in December, 1906, in the aftermath of the earthquake. The whole city was one vast ruin. People talk of the material havoc of war in France and in Germany, and I myself have seen, at the conclusion of two world wars, many cities and towns in ruins, but San Francisco in 1906 exceeded anything I have ever seen. It was difficult to find a shop open, but we chanced on a drugstore; it was a curious experience -- amid all this devastation -- to be served with ice cream and cold drinks in what elsewhere in the world we call a chemist's shop. One or two hotels and restaurants were open, but in general life and work were only just beginning again in that terrible and pitiable havoc.

From California we crossed the continent by train, stopping off from time to time and staying a day or two in various cities on the way. In Chicago we were taken on a conducted tour of the stockyards and slaughter houses. Not long before this, Upton Sinclair's propagandist novel about the slaughter houses had been published and caused a considerable sensation. I must say the conditions in the slaughter houses which I was shown bore no similarity to the lurid horrors described in the novel.

Perhaps I ought to point out that such knowledge of America as I then possessed was not derived from novels. I had read Lord Bryce's classic work on the American Constitution, I knew the writings of authors as diverse as Walt Whitman, Hawthorne, Thoreau, Henry and William James and Mark Twain (whom, as I have recorded, I had met in Bombay). I had many American friends and acquaintances in Europe. Like all visitors to the United States I suppose I had my preconceived notions, but they were founded on some real, if academic, knowledge of the structure of American social, economic and political life.

Just after the New Year of 1907 we reached New York. It was the height of the city's winter season. Talomon and I went to stay at the St. Regis; forty years later it was the habit of my younger son, Sadruddin, when he was a Harvard undergraduate, to stay there whenever he was in New York.

From all that my friends tell me, there is no comparison between the social life of New York as it was in those days and the swift, swirling existence of the city today. Of course I had many introductions, largely from my American friends in Europe, and I was immediately and generously entertained. Americans are the most hospitable people in the world, and they receive foreigners with so much kindness, their welcome is so open and so goodhearted, that anyone who has once been to the United States never forgets his time there. I seemed to be invited out to luncheon and dinner every day, and night after night I was someone's guest at the opera. The Metropolitan Opera House in those days was like a superb exhibition of jewelry and fashion. I knew the Opera in Paris and London, but for elegance and opulence among the audience neither was comparable with New York's Metropolitan in the early years of this century.

One New Yorker of some consequence to whom I had an introduction was the then District Attorney, Mr. Jerome, Lady Randolph Churchill's cousin. He was kind enough to arrange for me a special pass which enabled me to watch one of the most interesting and sensational causes célèbres of the time. This was the trial of Harry K. Thaw, accused of the murder of Stanford White, the architect and designer of skyscrapers.

At his trial Thaw was found guilty but insane and thus escaped execution. It seemed that Mrs. Thaw had confessed to her husband that before her marriage she had been taken by Stanford White to his apartment, given drugged champagne, and seduced. This confession aroused Thaw to maniacal jealousy, all the more ferocious because he suspected (groundlessly) that White was still pursuing his wife. In the ballroom of Madison Square Roof Garden White was waltzing with a girl friend when Harry Thaw strode across the floor and fired six shots into his body.

I was especially interested in this melodramatic and colorful affair, for two years before I had met Thaw and the former Evelyn Nesbit together in Paris. Thaw, whose fortune was derived from railroads, cut something of a figure in international society at that time. He had, however, an uncontrollable temper and was an extremely jealous and possessive individual. I met them once at dinner and later on that evening I was talking pleasantly and lightheartedly with the young woman, who was extremely beautiful and attractive. Thaw in the background looked grim and preoccupied, and a friend who was in the party quietly warned me that there was a dangerous streak in Thaw.

There was a grim but bewildering fascination about the trial. I had grown up accustomed to British methods in a court of justice; the whole system of questioning and cross-examination and all the rules of evidence in an American court were startlingly different. It took me a little time to realize that, although the basis of the criminal law is the same in the United States as in England, it has developed along different lines since the eighteenth century and the American legal profession has evolved its own technique and traditions.

By 1907 the motorcar was coming into its own and was no longer the despised and smelly toy it had been a decade earlier, New York was still a city of fine carriages and glossy and well-groomed horses, and the taxi had not yet replaced the elegant hansom cab. How affable and good-tempered American people of all classes were in those days. The clerks and the assistants in the shops and stores seemed friendly and alert, never giving one those sour, disapproving looks that one got in shops in Europe. The policemen on the beat, the New York cops, were genial and talkative when you asked them the way, not curt like the Paris gendarme or aloof and majestic like the old-fashioned London bobby.

I realize that I was extremely fortunate both in the time of this my single visit to New York and in the social world -- now almost entirely vanished -- to which I had the entree. I met the great hostesses and leaders of society of those days: Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Mrs. John Jacob Astor, Mrs. Whitelaw Reid, Mrs. Phipps, Mrs. Ogden Mills and others. How kind and hospitable they were, how stately were the parties and the dances they gave -- more than one, I may add, in my honor.

I spent a good deal of time in the museums, as I always do in any city that I visit for the first time. Many of the wealthier private houses, of course, were museums and art galleries in their own right. It was curious, I remember remarking, that although in Europe the heyday of the French impressionists had dawned and connoisseurs were already beginning to collect their work, American taste remained still classical and traditional, and the walls of many of the big houses that I visited were hung with examples of English, Italian, German, Flemish and Dutch painting of many epochs.

I was made an honorary member of the Union Club. I discovered the joys of native American cooking; surely canvasback duck and terrapin are two of the best dishes in the world. I went to the theater a great deal, and here "modernism" -- as it was then understood -- had certainly hit New York. Ibsen was the rage, and several of his plays were being performed at theaters around the town. But it was also, of course, the day of the musical comedy, before it had been displaced by other noisier, more synthetic forms of amusement.

It was a time of great expansion and prosperity for New York and for America generally, an outward and visible sign of which was the rising skyline of New York. We talked about skyscrapers then, but they were modest little affairs of twenty or thirty floors -- still, they seemed to us gigantic.

Altogether I had a wonderful time in New York. I have never forgotten it. I only wish that I had been able to go back again. That this has never proved possible has been my misfortune and, I may say, a cause of great and lasting regret.

My tour had set me up in health and in spirits. The year 1907 saw the Morley-Minto constitutional reforms in India turned from tentative proposals, whose shape and pattern we had been able effectively to influence, into law. John Morley, with his liberal background and outlook of the purest theoretical and academic kind, was extremely reluctant to accept the principle of separate electoral representation for the Muslims. It went against the grain of his character. However, the Viceroy, Lord Minto, had given his assent to the undertaking, and Morley -- however scrupulous his theoretical objections -- could not be permitted to go back on it. For Syed Amir Ali and myself, 1907 was a period of what I can best describe as guerrilla warfare, whose aim was to keep up to the mark. We won in the end, but it was hard going.

In my personal life I was able to effect radical and permanent adjustments. Any hope of reconciliation with my wife, Shahzadi Begum, had unhappily but finally receded; we agreed to a deed of separation and, not long afterward, to a divorce under Muslim law. While of course I remained responsible for her maintenance until her death, she passed completely out of my life and we never met again.

From 1907 I visited Europe every year. My life moved in an agreeable and spacious round. As a shy, raw young man on my first visit to Europe in 1898, I had lost my heart to the French Riviera. Now in my maturity my affection for it had deepened and ripened, and I found myself returning to it again and again. In 1908 this affection found a personal focus. I made the acquaintance of Mlle. Theresa Magliano, one of the most promising young dancers of the Ballet Opéra of Monte Carlo, a ballerina who -- in the opinion of the teachers of both the Paris Opéra and of La Scala in Milan -- was assured of a brilliant future in her profession. She was then just nineteen. We fell deeply in love. In the spring of that year she accompanied me to Egypt and we were married in Cairo in accordance with Muslim law.

My new marriage brought me spiritual and mental satisfaction and enrichment. It also opened for me a path into a new and absorbing world. My young wife's nature was intensely aesthetic. She was a truly creative artist. Although inevitably she gave up the stage after our marriage, she turned to a serious study first of painting and later of sculpture. It was here that her talents flowered. She took the professional name of Yla. Her work was exhibited on the Continent and in England.

Before she died in 1926, at the tragically early age of thirtyseven, my wife had attained recognition as a sculptor of merit and high artistic capacity. She had been asked to design a number of war memorials in England and France and also a number of those monuments to Unknown Soldiers which so poignantly expressed the emotions of the interwar years. The last commission which she was offered gave her especial satisfaction; it was from the city of Vienna, obtained in open competition with a strong candidature of more than a hundred, to design a fountain in which statuary was an important part of the decorative scheme.

My wife's aesthetic interests and tastes encouraged me to explore the world of art for myself.

My own first loves in the world of aesthetic experience were always music and the ballet. My reactions to music and to dancing have been emotional and sensuous. I have a vivid recollection of the first time I ever heard a waltz played and watched it danced. I was a boy of thirteen or fourteen at the time. The scene was a ball at Government House in Poona. I daresay the orchestra was worse than mediocre; I doubt if the dancers were particularly expert. I had no standards to judge by. My taste was utterly unformed. But there in the brightly lit ballroom the dancers swirled before me; it was as if the figures on some beautifully carved frieze had come suddenly to warm and glowing life; the lilt and sway of the music swept into my heart like a flooding tide of joy. The lights that shone in that ballroom have been extinguished sixty years and more, and the dancers are all gone, but the memory of the music and movement has never faded.

I had discovered a source of happiness which I was never to lose. As life has gone on I have become more and more interested and I have found more and more refreshment and solace in music, in the ballet, the opera and the theater. These for me have ranked first among the arts. Pictures I have liked, but in a comparatively restricted field. Like many others of my generation I was brought up on the work of the great masters of the Italian and, to a lesser extent, the Dutch and British schools; but dutifully though I went around the art galleries, they never stirred me. It was when I first saw Turner's work that I saw what painting really could mean. Then about 1904 I saw my first French impressionists; here for me was an extension and development of the same satisfaction that Turner gave me -- their early landscapes, not their portraits. Turner, Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, those are my painters. In sculpture and in furniture my taste is sheerly Egyptian -- the great statuaries of ancient Egypt, the simple, pure, formal yet flowing lines of the ordinary, day-to-day furniture that you see exhibited in the Cairo Museum, those are enough for me. English and French furniture, even of the "great" periods, leaves me cold. I care little for jewelry or work in precious metals, except silver; beautiful silver has always held a considerable attraction for me.

But in those realms of aesthetic experience that I do care about, much have I traveled and much have I profoundly enjoyed. I am proud to recall that I have counted among my personal friends many of the great artists of this century. I know Stravinsky well, and my knowledge of much of his early work was close and intimate. In his association with Diaghilev he wrote, as everyone knows, the music for some of the finest ballets ever created by that master impresario; I heard much of that music before it was orchestrated.

I knew Puccini quite well. I think I must have been one of the first of his friends to notice a troublesome and increasing hoarseness in Puccini's voice, a hoarseness which was the first indication of the malady which ultimately killed him -- as tactfully as I could, I suggested to him that instead of perpetually sucking cough lozenges, he ought to go to see a doctor. Massenet was another friend of mine, and we often dined together at the Hôtel de Paris in Monte Carlo. Once when he was, as I had been given to understand, laid low with bronchitis, I drove over from Cannes to see him at the Hôtel de Paris. I was shown up immediately to his sitting room. He was stark naked in the room next door in a marble bathtub before a blazing fire. He was busily dictating music to a woman secretary. Neither he nor she seemed at all discomposed; I was, I must confess, somewhat taken aback. Massenet, however, was voluble in his explanation. He had had a rush of creative ideas which had to be put down on paper. Since I had come all the way from Cannes to call on him, would it not have been discourteous to refuse to see me?

"Please sit down," he said. "I must just finish this piece of work."

For nearly an hour he sat on in the bath, turning the hot tap on from time to time, repeating and trying out bars and single notes of music, and making his secretary sing them back to him, so that it began to sound as if he were giving her a singing lesson. At last the flow of inspiration ceased, the young woman shut her notebook and hurried away, and only then did the old gentleman -- he was, after all, about seventy -- realize that he was sitting there naked and that the water had grown chilly. He jumped out of the bath, ran into his bedroom, put on a bathrobe, and came back to bid me a friendly and courteous good-by.

I have known many actors and singers: Madame Bartet of the Comédie Française; Jean de Reszke, the great tenor and teacher of a new generation of singers; Caruso, whose magnificent voice seemed literally to shake Covent Garden to its foundations when he soared to his highest notes. Though perhaps not as pure an artist as Tomagno, I think that he was, without doubt, the greatest tenor of my time. I remember Melba in her magnificent prime; it was told of her that when she first presented herself at the Opéra in Paris the director, though he recognized the potentialities of her voice, said that her Australian accent was so formidable that he would be able to do nothing with her. Like many other great singers Melba was a hearty eater; she liked a good, rich supper after the opera, and to top it off she had a habit of ordering ice cream, a fresh peach, strawberries, and cream and consuming the lot together. Escoffier, the famous restaurateur, heard about this habit, made an established dish of it and named it in her honor. So was born the now universally known Pècbe Melba.

In England I knew well many of the most famous figures of the stage, from Sir Henry Irving (whom I often visited in his dressing room at the Lyceum Theater) to the George Alexanders, the Trees, Sir Seymour Hicks and his wife Ellaline Terriss, and many, many others. I made the acquaintance of Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson through a friend of mine, a fellow member of the Marlborough, Douglas Ainsley. Ainsley himself was a man of originality of character and some talent; formerly a member of the diplomatic service, he established in his own person a kind of unofficial liaison between the world of society and the world of the stage. Forbes-Robertson suggested that I should write an Oriental tragedy for him on an historical theme, leaving it to me to choose my subject out of the great mass of Islamic lore and legend. I chose the sad and stirring story of the murder of the Prophet's grandson, my ancestor, Hussein, at Kerbela, and made a beginning with it. One day in the summer of 1904 at Douglas Ainsley's house I read Forbes-Robertson what I had written; I don't think he liked it very much. Thenceforward I abandoned any idea of writing dramatic poetry.

To return to composers -- when I first arrived in Europe the great controversy about Wagner was still in full swing. But it was of course, as all musical appreciation was in those days in every Western European country except Italy, restricted to a comparatively few. One of the great changes that I have seen in my lifetime has been the vast extension of musical understanding, taste and appreciation through all sections of society. The old, snobbish glamour may have departed; but the breakdown of class distinction not only in England but in France and Switzerland too has, in my opinion, done a great deal of good. It is especially noticeable over the ballet; and here I may claim that I have watched, from very close quarters, an immense revolution in taste from its beginnings.

Diaghilev was the creator and inspirer of this revolution. As Caesar in Britain, so was the Russian, Diaghilev, in prewar Western Europe -- he came, he saw, he conquered. He himself maintained that he would never have had a chance to demonstrate his originality or exert his influence as he did in Western Europe had he remained in Russia, where -- although it was the home of the ballet in a certain sense -- the classical mold was firmly fixed, and there was no opportunity for that creative fire which, once he was abroad, Diaghilev set burning so furiously.

From the first I was one of Diaghilev's enthusiastic and unwavering supporters, and so I remained till his untimely death. I doubt if the magnitude of Diaghilev's achievement is generally realized today. A new generation takes it all for granted. Ballet, as it was understood and practiced in Western Europe, before he came on the scene, was a sterile and virtually static minor art form from which real vitality and excitement -- as distinct from mere repetitive prettiness -- seemed to have ebbed away. Then in 1909 and 1910 Diaghilev burst like a bomb on the aesthetic consciousness of Europe. His dynamic influence was not confined to the ballet; it spilled over into all the allied arts and revolutionized their fundamental ideas, creative and critical. On the concepts of uniting music and motion and the representation of abstract ideas and ideals through movement as much as through music, Diaghilev's influence was tremendous and lasting. This obviously was the core of his unique achievement; but what would stage décor, costume design, feminine fashion, furnishings and interior decorations have been in the first half of this century without Diaghilev? His impact on the major plastic arts of sculpture and painting was no less revolutionary. Yet his wonderful, unique quality was one of indirect creativeness. It is possible to argue that he himself in fact never created anything, but the truth is that the creative work of everyone who collaborated with him was, profoundly and really, his creation too. How many artists did what the world now recognizes to be their best work for him and with him? Not only dancers like Karsavina, Nijinsky, Lifar and Massine, but a painter like Bakst, a musician like Stravinsky. He was an impresario of genius, and he was something more. He so infused and inspired others that, working for him, they were better and bigger than they ever could have been without him and the result of the association has been that some of them have become today the most famous and wonderful choreographers in the world. Nijinsky was the supreme and tragic example of this mysterious power which he exerted, of genius evoking genius. But his influence was no less important on many others, over whom his hold was not so obviously hypnotic. Imposing his strong, original taste on a band of talented artists and extracting from them their best and most original work, he imposed that taste on Europe -- with unforgettable, immeasurable effect.

I often used to be present at his conferences with all of his leading associates -- "heads of departments" as he called them: Stravinsky, Bakst, Nijinsky, Karsavina, his ballet master, his choreographer in chief, a young poet perhaps, a venerable and venerated artist like Rodin. A conference was like a council of war. Each would pour out his ideas into a common pool, but Diaghilev -- have no doubt of it -was the supreme commander; he imposed a unity of form and aesthetic conception, he turned a mass of brilliant projects into an ordered and coherent work of art. The clash of ideas was subdued and hammered into shape, and the final result, far more often than not, was a masterpiece.

The practical foundation, on which this exuberance of talent was based, seemed at first sight fragile in the extreme. Diaghilev was always in debt; he never -- apparently -- had a penny in hand. His creative imagination -- and his own faith in it -- outsoared these (as it seemed to him) minor considerations. He knew that he was creating a masterpiece, a series of masterpieces; he trusted implicitly that his audiences would recognize the value of his work. He possessed that faith which moves mountains -- and mountains of difficulty dissolved as he went along. Whenever the financial situation looked most desperate, some new wealthy patron, some Maecenas would turn up; the most immediate and pressing difficulties would be smoothed away; and he would sweep in confidence to his next triumph. On the stage, too, his capacity for improvisation and his total reliance on it were all-pervasive. Until the last minute every new production bore the appearance of total chaos, but somehow by some magic of his own, between the final rehearsal and the first night, when everyone else around him was despairing and on the edge of nervous collapse, Diaghilev would induce order out of the hurly-burly; and another thunderously acclaimed success would be added to the lengthening roll. Night after night the HOUSE FULL board would go out in front of the theater. The whole season would be triumphant. At its close, off Diaghilev and the company would go to London and to other capitals and provincial centers, to the same acclamation, with the same story of success, until the money ran out. He was indeed unique, but the revolution in art which his genius precipitated has continued to run its course since his death. The revitalized and flourishing art of the ballet all over the world -- in Paris, London and the United States -- is the beautiful and fruitful tree whose seeds this strange, turbulent and brilliant man so lavishly sowed. It is a profound cause of satisfaction to those who, like myself, saw his work at close quarters and almost from its inception to know that this great aesthetic revolution, as fundamental and as far-reaching as that which Wagner brought about in the world of music, was the work of a genius whom we were privileged to know as a friend.

Diaghilev and the ballet were the center of that fascinating world of highly sophisticated, highly cultivated creative work and critical appreciation in which, during those years immediately before the First World War, I lived so full and so zestful a life. Time, chance, war, economic and social change have wreaked havoc with the rich fabric and pattern of a civilization and a way of life which then seemed indestructible. However, if much is lost, much has been gained in those magnificent and widespread effects of the revolution in all artistic matters achieved by Diaghilev. While the classes have lost, the masses have gained. The diffusion of culture is not just a textbook phrase nowadays; it is a reality. When I think of the theaters and opera houses, the concert halls and art galleries of Western Europe today, and of the people of all social classes (and not just a wealthy and leisured few) who throng them, whose pleasure and mental and spiritual enrichment are so obvious; when I think of how real and eager understanding and appreciation of the arts have extended in recent decades to every level of society -- then I see far more reason to rejoice than to lament. There are some, however, who cannot share my optimism. The sadness of one facet of the years of transition is for me summed up and symbolized in an encounter which I had in the theater in Zurich, in the middle of the Second World War, with Richard Strauss. I had known him well at the height of his international fame. Around us there was a continent, a world, locked in relentless conflict, a nightmare projection into grim reality of all Wagner's most terrible imaginings and forebodings. Strauss was an old, heartbroken man. He saw me, flung up both his arms in a sad, despairing gesture, rolled his eyes upward and muttered some incoherent phrase in which I could just catch the word "God," and stumbled forlornly away.

From 1907 until the outbreak of war I was in Europe for some part of every year. Movement from country to country, from continent to continent, though more leisurely than it is today, was also a great deal easier and freer. Civilization had not learned all the tortuous refinements of passports and visas, of exchange control and security regulations. The number of Americans who were coming to Europe was increasing year by year; many of them were affluent; many were people of cultivated and sophisticated tastes; some stayed permanently, some came back and forth, some maintained largescale establishments on the Riviera or elsewhere. Many of them were "characters" in their own right -- the remarkable James Gordon Bennett, for example, the famous proprietor of the New York Herald who had a villa at Beaulieu-sur-Mer. He was then an old man, and he looked his age. He was apt to be short-tempered and peppery, but he had a warm, kind heart. The hospitality which he and his delightful wife most liked to dispense was breakfast, big and elaborate meal with every kind of characteristic American dish. I recall that during the First World War he developed the strongest antipathy to bad news of any kind. If his attention were drawn to any tactical or strategic reverse suffered by the Western Allies, his temper became terrible, the unhappy bringer of bad tidings was so abused and berated that it was difficult not to believe that he was not actually responsible for the reverse which he had been so rash as to mention.

Others whose acquaintance and friendship I made at this time included Mr. Harjes, of Morgan's Bank, a staunch supporter of the Allied cause from the day war broke out, and his wife -- one of the world's most beautiful women, a queenly, glorious, magnificent woman; Mr. Ralph Curtis -- a lively amusing conversationalist -and his wife; Mr. and Mrs. James H. Hyde; Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Berenson; and Walter Berry, who had been a judge of the mixed courts in Cairo, and who was a lifelong friend of Edith Wharton, the novelist-historian of New York.

Bernard Berenson took considerable pride in the care and precision with which he pronounced the English language. His verbal armor, however, had one curious chink in it; he pronounced the simple word "corkscrew" as if it had a third syllable in it -- "corkerscrew." Some of his friends who knew of this little vagary, having got him off his guard, mischievously put him to the test one April Fool's Day. To everyone's delight out popped "corkerscrew"; and for years afterward if he dared to take up a stand on correct pronunciation, he would be vociferously reminded of that intrusive syllable.

Ralph Curtis had an addiction to puns; years before I knew him he happened to be in Bombay when Mr. W. K. Vanderbilt (the father of Consuelo, Duchess of Marlborough, later Madame Balsan) arrived in his yacht. Lord Harris, then Governor, held the erroneous opinion, frequently held by Englishmen, that American society was built on money. Aware that the Vanderbilts were very rich, he condescendingly asked Ralph Curtis if he knew Mr. Vanderbilt, clearly implying that it would be quite an honor if he did.

"I never knew the Vanderbilts," said Ralph Curtis, demurely, "for when I lived in New York they were still Vanderbuilding."

At James Hyde's house I met several times Monsieur Hanotaux, the famous historian, member of the Académie Française, and statesman, who had been France's Foreign Minister from 1894 to 1898. He took a fancy to me and often we found ourselves discussing politics. I remember that he affirmed with great earnestness that if the Méline Cabinet of 1898, of which he had been a member, had not fallen, and if the coalition of parties that had put Méline in office had maintained their support of him instead of backing Delcassé, it might have proved possible to achieve a fair and friendly solution of the problem of Alsace-Lorraine which would have been honorable and satisfying to both France and Germany. If Hanotaux's assertion was right, here was another of those missed chances in diplomacy, another wrong turning, where if the right decision had been taken, the First World War need never have happened.

Walter Berry brought me into acquaintanceship with Mrs. Edith Wharton and with Marcel Proust. Walter Berry, a bachelor and an agreeable and charming conversationalist, had somehow or another achieved among the women members of the little circle in which he and I then moved the reputation of being the greatest marital submarine torpedo that had ever existed. The ladies averred that he had told each of them separately that she was far too good for her husband; he was a distinguished man, a famous lawyer -- what could they do but believe him? And every time there was another marriage torpedoed. It was the kind of joke which a small, sophisticated society can get hold of, work almost to death and never let go. But Walter Berry had one remarkable claim to fame. He was one of the few people in the world who could at any time ask Proust to dinner and always be sure of an acceptance. Oddly enough, I never met Proust at the Ritz, where he used to go a great deal, but I did meet him several times at dinner at Walter Berry's. What I remember most about Proust was his silences; I recall only one remark of his. A Mademoiselle Atoucha, an Argentine lady who was affianced to a French Marquis, was Berry's fourth guest. Proust surveyed her, observed that she looked like Cleopatra, and said nothing else for the rest of the dinner. On this, as on other occasions, Berry and I did our best to sustain the conversation, and the great novelist sat silently watching and listening to us; it was a slightly disconcerting experience.

This was the society, these were some of the friends of my leisure in these happy and agreeable years. Work, of course, continued unabated. I spent a considerable part of each year in India, concerned not only with my duties toward my followers but with the interests and the responsibilities which I had acquired in Indian politics. These were the years in which the Morley-Minto reforms were being put into practice. It was proved that the principle of separate electoral representation for Muslims, which we had fought so hard to have established, was sound and workable as well as theoretically just. Muslim political consciousness, under the leadership of men like Nawab Ali Chowdry and the Nawab of Dacca in Bengal, and of Sir Mohammed Shaffi and Sir Sulfiqar Ali Khan in the Punjab, matured and strengthened steadily.

I myself was devoting a good deal of time, energy and interest to the affairs of Aligarh. I suppose that I was a sort of one-man "ginger group" on behalf of the project of converting Aligarh into a great Muslim university. Steadily during these years we aroused interest in and extended support for our project. Of course it provoked opposition from that powerful British element whose argument was that a Muslim university would be undesirable and that its tendencies and teachings would be narrowly sectarian and particularist. I strove hard to counter these criticisms, making it a cardinal point of all my appeals for help, all my speeches and articles, that the sons of Aligarh University would go forth "through the length and breadth of the land to preach the gospel of free inquiry, of large-hearted toleration and of pure morality."

I was not without support in high places. Lord Minto was succeeded by Viceroy Lord Hardinge of Penshurst, a statesman and diplomat with a wide and long experience of life with and among Muslim people in Iran and throughout the Near East. As the member of the Viceroy's Executive Council responsible for education there was a brilliant and devoted administrator, Sir Harcourt Butler, uncle of Mr. R. A. Butler, Chancellor of the Exchequer in Sir Winston Churchill's Government of 1951 onward, and the minister responsible for Britain's great Education Act of 1944. Interest in education is a tradition in the Butler family. Both Lord Hardinge and Sir Harcourt understood our Muslim position and were aware of the fundamental differences in the social, cultural and spiritual background of Muslim and Hindu. For myself, I tried again and again to make it clear that I regarded Muslim educational advancement not as an end in itself, but as a means to an end. If we were to advance down the road toward independence and self-government -- however distant that goal might seem -- we must, as a community, possess the knowledge and the intellectual equipment to cope with the political responsibilities to which we were beginning to aspire. I had no narrow sectarian purpose in view. I urged from the outset that Sanskrit should be taught, and with it the history and evolution of Hindu civilization, religion and philosophy, in order that our people should be able better to understand their neighbors. A university of our own was essential because it was the best and most enduring means of developing the spiritual unity of Islam.

The work of converting others to this belief which I held so ardently, of building up support for it and of raising funds was extremely strenuous. I traveled all over India. I went to great Muslim leaders, to the poor and to the rich, to princes and to peasants. My own monetary contribution was one hundred thousand rupees, which was quite a sum in those days; in all I collected more than three million rupees. These were years of unremitting hard work. For days and weeks at a time, it seemed, I lived in railway trains. In every town at which the train stopped I would address Muslim gatherings on the platform of the railway station. At every opportunity I preached the cause of Aligarh. My honorary private secretary, and my right-hand man throughout the campaign, was the late Maulana Shakak Ali; without his steadfast, unwearying helpI doubt if I should ever have been able to make a success of it.

We reached a climax in the long campaign with the Muslim Educational Conference at Nagpur in 1910 at which the Aligarh project was the principal item on the agenda, and indeed dominated the proceedings. Our aims were well expressed by the chairman of the conference, Mr. Yusuf Ali, who defined the scope of the university which we hoped to establish in these words: "It will have no tests; freedom and originality of thought will be encouraged. It will be a Muslim university in the sense that it will promote the ideals which the Muslims of India have evolved out of the educational experience of two generations."

Now when all is said and done, when I look back on all that the Muslim University of Aligarh has stood for and achieved in the past forty years, this is without doubt one of the facets of my life which I can record and contemplate with real and abiding satisfaction. I do not want to stress only its political consequences, momentous as those have been. Where else than in a Muslim university would it have been possible to establish and maintain, alongside and fully integrated with the libraries, the laboratories and all the facilities essential for a full understanding of our world and our time, a true center of Islamic faith and culture, in which can be expounded and practiced the principles of our religion, its universality and its real modernity, its essential reasonableness, its profound spirit of tolerance and charity and respect for other faiths? That I played my part in establishing such a center is for me one of the happiest, most consoling and most fortifying thoughts to take into old age.

Monarchs, Diplomats and Politicians

MY EXPERIENCES IN LONDON and during my Continental tour widened my horizons and stimulated my growing interest in -and desire to play my part in -- the world of politics and diplomacy. Not long after my arrival in England I was in touch with and was soon fully in the confidence of Sir William Lee Warner, the head of the Political Department of the India Office, the department which handled all the secret and confidential aspects of foreign relations. Through my friendship with a leading race horse owner, Sir J. B. Maple (founder and head of the big furniture store which bears his name), I made the acquaintance of his son-in-law, Baron von Eckardstein, who, since the Ambassador was a sick man, was in virtual charge of the German Embassy.

In the close and frequent company of these friends of mine I was able to observe at first hand the working out of a series of diplomatic moves of considerable importance. There was a growing awareness in certain circles in Britain that that "splendid isolation," which had seemed so natural and desirable only a short time before, had its grave disadvantages. The South African crisis was soon to reveal sharply how truly isolated Britain was; the depth and bitterness of anti-British feeling throughout Europe were far too pronounced to ignore. The leading spirit in Lord Salisbury's Cabinet in these years was Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, the Colonial Secretary, a realist, despite the sometimes visionary nature of his imperialist ideals, who was acutely cognizant of the dangers of Britain's situation. Surveying the trends of world power at that time he believed that it might be possible to reach an understanding with Germany, and he saw clearly the perils ahead if that understanding were not reached. His official biography * has lately revealed the extent and the pertinacity of Chamberlain's efforts to secure an Anglo-German entente.

* The Life of Joseph Chamberlain, Vol. III, by J. L. Garvin; Vol. IV, by Julian Amery ( London, Macmillan & Co. Ltd.).

My own recollections confirm this to the hilt. It was a sincere and strenuous effort on Britain's part to achieve an understanding; and it failed solely because of the German attitude, which was the result of the outlook and prejudices of the chief German negotiators, Prince von Bülow and Herr von Holstein. Not only did I watch the British approaches; I was fully cognizant of the German reactions to them, through my friendship with von Eckardstein. I could see how sad Eckardstein became at the constant rejection of Britain's sincere hand of friendship -- a rejection always based on new and artificial pretexts and evasions. It is sad indeed to reflect on the long-term results of the breakdown of these negotiations. Might not the course of history in the twentieth century have been profoundly different had Chamberlain succeeded in averting the steady, implacable growth of Anglo-German antagonism? Would we not quite possibly have avoided two world wars? Had the Germans played the game, this would certainly have happened; but the great question mark for European peace lay always in Germany's attitude.

The temperament of the two Germans involved in these negotiations prevented them from rising to the greatness of the chance they were given. They had grown up in the shadow of the great Bismarck, but they were not of his quality of statesmanship. They were essentially small bureaucrats with all of Bismarck's arrogance, and they were ineradicably suspicious of what they thought of as British cunning and perfidy.

Long, long afterward Lord Rennell -- formerly Sir Rennell Rodd, and for many years British Ambassador in Rome -- told me that after the First World War, when Prince von Bülow was living in retirement in Rome, they discussed this whole episode. Von Bülow admitted with great hesitation and ruefully that he had been wrong to reject the hand of friendship which had been offered by Britain in sincerity and earnestness of purpose.

When my first European tour ended, I set off for East Africa. This, however, was no pleasure jaunt. One or two delicate and important tasks demanding the exertion of a certain amount of diplomatic skill and finesse awaited me there. There were several Ismaili settlements down the coast, which were rapidly increasing in numbers and in wealth; and more than one of these communities was involved in disputes -- by no means of a trifling character -with the local authorities.

East Africa was at the beginning of its rapid, even sensational, opening up and development, but at the turn of the century it presented a very different picture from that which it presents today. Several European powers with colonial aspirations were embroiled, down the thousands of miles from the Red Sea to the Cape, in what proved to be a late but dramatic phase of the scramble for Africa. Abyssinia, the only native African state with expansionist ambitions, had lately collided, bloodily but victoriously, with the Italians. At the Battle of Aduwa in 1896 Ras Makonen, the able lieutenant and ultimate successor of the Emperor Menelik, had heavily defeated an Italian army and put an end, for over thirty years, to Italy's efforts to extend her somewhat precarious coastal foothold. The British, having entered into a treaty with the Sultan of Zanzibar, established what was then known as the East African Protectorate (today the flourishing colony of Kenya with its complex multiracial community), with its base at Mombasa, under the supervision of the Foreign Office; and shortly afterward there were projects of settlement being put forward by Lord Delamere and others, in what came to be called "the white highlands" in the hinterland of the Protectorate.

Southward the Germans had staked their claims inland from Dar es Salaam in the territories now known as Tanganyika. Farther south the Portuguese, who were the first Europeans to venture into these regions in the great age of exploration, had an old-established colony. And inland from this, Jameson and his pioneers were carving out of the empty veld and savannahs the lands which were to become Northern and Southern Rhodesia. And to the south again the British and the Boers were already committed to the long, grim struggle of the South African War.

If the beginnings of future economic prosperity and greatness were already visible in the Africa which I visited for the first time in 1899, no less noticeable were the seeds of future political and social difficulties and problems.

Zanzibar, which I visited first, was an ancient seat of Arab culture. The Sultan no longer exercised absolute powers but was a constitutional sovereign, acting on the advice of his British Resident and officials. Between these officials and my Ismaili followers there had arisen a complicated dispute concerning the ownership and tenure of a tract of land on the seashore, the value of which had rapidly increased but which was an Ismaili burial ground. The dispute had been stubborn and protracted. I was able, however, to arrange a settlement which was admittedly a compromise. I confess that I have worked all my life on the principle that a compromise is better than rigid and unyielding disagreement. The compromise which we reached in Zanzibar was workable to this extent that there has never been any other major dispute in the years since then between the Ismailis and the British authorities.

In Dar es Salaam I was faced with a similar sort of conflict, in this case between the German authorities and my followers over land trading rights. This dispute had smoldered and flickered throughout the nineties; the Germans were suspicious of my Ismaili followers, and there were accusations that they were smuggling in arms and had had a hand in the Arab rebellion of some ten years before. There was a certain stiffness on the part of the German Governor and his officials when I first arrived. However I persevered, and before I left I was able to see the dispute settled and the suspicions (which were probably one cause of the stubbornness of the dispute) thoroughly dissipated. When I left, it was in the knowledge that there was a clean slate, so far as differences between my followers and the German administration were concerned.

From East Africa I went back to Europe for a short time. Then, as winter set in, I turned south and east. On my way home to India I visited Egypt for the first time. Those who have not experienced it, who have not been lucky enough to fall under Egypt's spell, will find it difficult, I suppose, to realize the sheer magic of the first sight of Egypt. Add that my first sight was on a perfect early winter day, and need I say that all my life since then I have had a special corner in my heart for Egypt and that I have returned there as often as I could.

There is a unique quality about Egypt's charm; the wide, tranquil skies, the extraordinary clarity of its light and atmosphere, the glories of its sunsets and its starlit nights, and its tremendous monuments of a majestic past. But I had other objects than mere sightseeing. I wanted to make personal contact with the large Ismaili community of Syria and the remnant of Egyptian Ismailis who had not yet come to see me in India. I also visited the great seat of Muslim learning, the Al Azbar University.

It was a time of momentous and stirring events. Lord Kitchener's great victory at Omdurman in the Sudan was still fresh in everyone's mind. General Wingate had just returned from the south. The Khalifeh had been killed, and the last of his dervish following exterminated.

I called on Lord Cromer, the British Resident in Egypt, whose power and authority in Egypt at that time were paramount. He said that Egypt badly needed a man like Sir Syed Ahmed, to do for its Muslim population the sort of educative and regenerative work which he had done in Aligarh. There was in Egypt at that time a deep rift between, on the one hand, the old-fashioned conservative, pious Muslim, who was contemptuous of modern science and techniques and who spoke and read Arabic and, on the other hand, the Frenchified upper classes, whose reading matter was mainly French yellow-back novels, whose meeting place was the club, whose diversions were cards and nocturnal gambling, who detested the British, yearned to see them out and longed for a return to the regime of the Khedive Ismaili. There was nothing like Aligarh to show the vast Muslim population the way toward a compromise with and understanding of modern, Western science, and to raise an elite capable of co-operating with British administrators and technicians in that process of economic and social uplift of which the country was in such desperate need.

Unfortunately the Khedive Abbas Hilmi was ill at the time -- it was suspected that he had some form of paratyphoid -- and I was therefore unable to see him. In later years we became great and intimate friends and I admired the brilliance of his intellect and his wide and deep knowledge of politics and history. I will have occasion to refer to him later. The Egyptian Ministers whom I met were merely nominees of the British -- of Lord Cromer, in fact.

People who know only the Cairo of today can have no idea of the social conditions of the early 1900's. The hotels were full of rich foreigners, who were "wintering in Egypt," then a highly fashionable pastime. They would make trips up the Nile in hired dahabiyehs or in one of Messrs. Thomas Cook's steamers. They spent money profusely and had a high old time, surrounded by magnificent-looking Egyptian guides and alleged interpreters, who were apt to speak the most grotesque pidgin variety of every European language.

The contents of the Cairo Museum were as fascinating as they have always been, and always will be; although of course Lord Carnarvon's magnificent Tutankhamen discoveries had not yet been made, there was more then enough to see, but the arrangement of it all was less convenient than it is today. A disagreeable and irreverent custom prevailed of exposing in full view, for anyone who wanted to see them, the actual mummies -- not merely the sarcophagi -- of all the great Pharaohs. You could see Rameses II, with his noble hawklike features, lying in his coffin -- looking almost as he had in life all those centuries ago -- and other former mighty kings and conquerors, at the feet of any chance passer-by.

To me, however, more concerned with the present than the past, possibly the most remarkable fact about Cairo in those days was that it was for all practical purposes another Poona or Simla. It was even more of a citadel of British supremacy than India. The British were not merely in political control of the country; they assumed a social superiority which the Egyptians appeared humbly to accept. What little political agitation that existed was attributed to the "machinations of the Palace." The general attitude of all classes toward the British Occupying Power -- its agents and officials, the British Army officers and the growing number of employees of British firms -- was one of outward submissiveness and obedience. Unhappily, just as in India in the late nineties and early nineteen hundreds, there was scarcely a link between the British community, political, military and commercial, and either the Egyptian aristocracy or the well-to-do bourgeoisie of Cairo and Alexandria. When rich Egyptians came to Europe, they went to Paris, to Switzerland, to Austria or Germany or Italy; they carefully kept clear of England. Few of the winter tourists, except for some individuals from the Continent, bothered to get to know Egypt's upper and middle classes. Even the Gezira Sporting Club, in the heart of the metropolitan Cairo, barred Egyptians from its membership other than in very exceptional cases. The only non-British whom the British encountered -- except for their office subordinates and their servants -- were the members of a few wealthy Levantine families who sought to identify themselves completely with the ruling power and were thus accepted. The depth and virulence of this social division can be seen in the fact that I myself, who naturally in my European travels met Egyptians -- largely of the aristocracy and members of the ruling dynasty -- seldom met one of them when I was in Cairo except in their own homes. There was really no common ground of social intercourse. Inevitably, therefore, behind the façade of humility there developed a sullen and brooding, almost personal, resentment which later on needlessly, bitterly poisoned the clash of Egyptian nationalism with Britain's interests as the Occupying Power. After three weeks or so in Cairo I went home to India, where the work I had done had not passed unnoticed by those concerned. The Sultan of Zanzibar bestowed on me the highest order in his gift, the Brilliant Star of Zanzibar, and later the German Emperor awarded me the Royal Prussian Order of the Crown (First Class).

From India I made a brief tour of Burma and met my follow ers there for the first time. I recall one somewhat daunting experience. A Muslim of my acquaintance -- not one of my followers -- had been very kind to me and had helped me in a variety of ways. I called on him to thank him, and as we exchanged courtesies he sent for a glass of sherbet for me. It was brought. The tall tumbler was held out toward me by a servant, and I saw that the hands that held it were the hands of a leper. Time seemed suspended as I stared horror-struck. I found every excuse I could, said that I was not thirsty, tried to get out of accepting the tumbler still held out toward me. But my host earnestly pressed me and went on pressing me. At last I shut my eyes, took the tumbler and gulped the sherbet down; but the horror of those hands remained.

I was back in Europe in 1900, and in Paris in that year -- the year of the Great Exhibition -- met the Shah Musafaradin of Persia. No other Shah, in my view, did more to harm Persia than he did. He was sickly, he was weak and he was grossly ignorant. He was capricious and extravagant, squandering gifts on his favorites, and incapable of any awareness of his duties and obligations as Shah. All the treasure which his father, Nasruddin, had amassed in fifty years of prudent and capable rule, he dissipated in folly and waste. He had a childish, pitiable passion for the silliest, most costly gadgets -- musical boxes, for example, adorned with jewels and gold and silver, and on these and similar trumpery objects he spent a fortune. It was no wonder that making a pun on his name, Musafaradin, the Persian intelligentsia nicknamed him "mauvaise affaire," and their gibe was taken up by foreigners in Tehran.

He was indeed a "mauvaise affaire" for his country. Since I was his relative, connected with him on my father's and my mother's sides of the family, he received me with eager affection, gave me one of his highest decorations and made me presents of diamond ornaments. But he was a sad nincompoop. Talking to him was like talking to a child -- and not a very intelligent child at that. His infantile outlook and behavior were sustained and exploited, for his own purposes, by his Prime Minister, the all-powerful Atabeg, who in his morning audiences with his sovereign did not give him serious reports but told him the sort of fantastic fairy tales a grown-up man will tell a small child to keep him entertained.

When I saw the poor man I happened to mention that I had just been to Burma. "Oh!" said he, "haven't the Burmans heads far bigger than other human beings?"

When he was in Paris he heard about Monsieur and Madame Curie and their discovery of radium. He asked to be shown radium at work. The two distinguished scientists said that they would come to his hotel and give him a demonstration of the properties of radium; but they explained that absolute darkness would be necessary for the demonstration. One of the hotel cellars was turned into a dark room; black curtains were put up and all light was completely shut out. The Shah and some of his courtiers went down to the cellar. Monsieur and Madame Curie arrived and produced a piece of radium whose vivid glow lit up the whole room. Suddenly the Shah took fright. He began to scream and shout and run round the room. He raved and ranted and accused the Curies of trying to murder him.

The Curies were not used to this kind of treatment and, much affronted, they took their leave. The Shah was at last made to understand that he had gravely hurt their feelings. As a recompense he awarded each of them one of his highest decorations, and for good measure he ordered each star to be set in diamonds. Off went the baubles to the Curies, who stiffly returned them with formal thanks, pointing out that they had been exposed to far too gross an insult to be able to accept anything of this kind.

Naturally the Shah had to go up the Eiffel Tower, and, naturally, about halfway up he panicked; the lift had to be stopped and he had to be brought down again.

His behavior in public and in private was deplorable. Since I am myself of Iranian descent and a member of the then ruling dynasty, the Kajar family, I was acutely aware of the shame and humiliation of it. So too were Iranian statesmen and diplomats, who were scandalized at what he was doing to his own and his country's reputation. We all tried to cloak it as much as we could and made excuses about his ill health, which had a certain basis of truth because he was a chronic sufferer from kidney trouble.

His folly, of course, had different, deeper roots. He exhibited, in an especially lurid light, all the dangers of the old-fashioned autocratic Oriental monarchy. However incompetent, silly or criminal such a despot was, not one of the able and intelligent statesmen of the world around him ever stood up to him and told him the truth about himself. The mysterious prestige surrounding kingship and the blood of kings induced a kind of mental paralysis even in good and sincere men, so that they were quite unable -- in the interests of their king and their country, even in their own interests -- to give true advice and guidance. From what I have been told by distinguished Russian friends, this sort of atmosphere prevailed in Czarist Russia. Did it disappear, I wonder, even in Stalinist Russia? You could not call the men who were thus paralyzed cowards; they were not time-servers, they were not utterly lacking in courage or scruples. It was simply that for them such divinity hedged their king that it was not a matter merely of pardoning his follies and weaknesses -- for them those follies and weaknesses simply did not exist. Again and again history teaches this lesson: a tough, self-made man founds a dynasty, his frailer descendants bolster themselves with this atmosphere of semidivinity, and then the dynasty collapses and the process starts anew, unless, as happened in Japan for centuries, the semidivine monarch is shut up in his palace, unapproachable, invisible, and all power is exercised on his behalf by mayors of the palace. Poor Musafaradin was a glaring example of the more pitiable defects of this kind of despotism.

From Paris I went on to Berlin. There I met von Holstein at luncheon -- one of the two men responsible for frustrating the attempts to achieve an Anglo-German understanding. He was a gray, withdrawn, taciturn man who ate heartily and said little. I also had an audience with the Kaiser at Potsdam. William II was then, I suppose, at the summit of his strange and ill-starred career. To me he was gracious and cordial. I had been warned that he was acutely sensitive about his physical deformity and disliked having his withered left arm looked at. But members of his court and others who knew him said that the curiosity of human beings is such that everybody, meeting the Kaiser for the first time, found his gaze drawn automatically and irresistibly to the left side of his uniform. While I awaited my audience I said to myself over and over again, "You won't look at his arm, you won't look at his arm."

He strode into the room; my eyes became a law unto themselves, and there I was staring at his left arm. Fortunately for me, I suppose, he must have been so accustomed to this that he did not let it diminish the warmth and courtesy of his greeting.

He held out his right hand and shook hands with me. This was literally a crushing experience. As a compensation for his deformity the Kaiser had, from childhood, determined that his right hand and arm should be so strong that they would do the work of two. He took constant, vigorous exercise; every day he had at least twenty minutes' fencing; he played lawn tennis often for two hours at a time, and undertook all manner of other remedial exercises. The result was an immense development of strength in his right hand and arm; one of its effects was this appallingly powerful handshake. I am told that mine was no unusual experience. The Duchess of Teck (later the Marchioness of Cambridge) told me that she -- like most other women with whom His Imperial Majesty shook hands -- had the greatest difficulty in not letting out a cry of pain as he took her hand in his.

I am sure that he was quite unconscious of what he was doing. He was far too great a gentleman to do it on purpose; but just as our eyes went to his withered arm, so his subconscious made him exert this violent physical strength.

Looking back, I realize that I was having a good many audiences with monarchs at this time. Later in this same year I went to Constantinople. The Sultan, Abdul Hamid, made me his guest at the Pera Palace Hotel, and I had a long audience with him at the Yildiz Palace. This encounter was the subject of a good deal of rather wild political speculation -- most of it arrant guesswork -- at the time and subsequently. The Sultan was also Caliph and therefore the recognized head of the whole Sunni branch of the Islamic world, and I was the head of the Ismaili section of the Shias. The grounds for speculation were obvious.

Our meeting had for me, I must say, its own rather curious flavor of drama. Abdul Hamid lived then in neurotic fear of assassination. * He was a chain smoker, and I have all my life been, as they say, allergic to cigarettes. When I was ushered into his room, the doors were immediately locked, and the Sultan and I were alone except for an interpreter. I do not speak Turkish and Abdul Hamid, though I believe he could read both Arabic and Persian, refused to speak either of these languages. The room was warm and cigarette smoke hung stale and heavy in the air. The Sultan sat huddled in an enormous greatcoat, with field marshal's epaulettes heavy on its shoulders. Slowly I realized that this bulky and cumbrous garment was armored, and about as bulletproof as was possible in those days. Did he think, I wondered, that I had come there to murder him?

* It is interesting and not without irony to realize that the word "assassin," which has its special contemporary meaning, was first applied many centuries ago to my ancestors and their Ismaili followers. From time immemorial, small and oppressed minorities have had to be given a bad name -- after all, you cannot kill a dog unless you give it a bad name -- and in the Middle Ages the Ismailis were such a minority, fighting for their lives and their rights. Their oppressors had to give them a bad name, they associated the Ismailis with the manufacture and use of the drug hashish, and it was alleged that they were addicts. The bad name, thus invented, stuck.

Over the lapels of the overcoat a strange and somewhat sinister countenance confronted me. For Abdul Hamid wore heavy make-up -- his beard dyed black, his lips carmined, his cheeks rouged and his eyebrows made up to an extent that was comic. He might have been a clown in a circus, but his eyes glowed in this preposterous make-up. Yet this maquillage was no expression of the effeminacy of perversion; he was most virile, the sire of many children and the affectionate husband and protector of a large harem.

Our conversation was amiable and courteous. I recall that he was interested and impressed by the fact that I, by way of Kashgar and Sinkiang, had up-to-date and reliable information about the Muslims of western China.

It was said that as an aspect of his neurosis about assassination, every particle of food sent up to him had to be tasted by several people on the way, including the cook. As I had no meal with him I cannot vouch fully for the truth of this story, but I do know that he had an idea that the food at my hotel was not particularly good, so twice every day a landau drove up from the palace with a cargo of china wash basins filled with excellent dishes, both Turkish and Persian, prepared for me in the palace and sent to me by Abdul Hamid's express command.

From Constantinople I made my way home to India to tackle a task in my household and entourage -- a cleaning-up job of nightmare complexity which was to demand a great deal of energy, patience and endurance for many months to come.

I Visit the Western World

WITH APPROACHING MANHOOD my life shaped itself into new channels of its own. More and more the duties and decisions implicit in my inherited position devolved on me. I was never indeed subject to any Regency, in the accepted sense, and as my capacity to make decisions increased, so my mother and my uncles encouraged me to accept responsibility. My mother, who had insisted on the educational discipline of my early boyhood, was as shrewd and watchful as she was loving. She and I remained, throughout her long life, in the closest, most affectionate intimacy. Every night in those years I would go to her apartments and join with her in prayer -- that prayer for unity, for companionship on high, which is the core of Muslim faith. This shared experience gave us both, I think, the strength to bear our load of fatigue and anxiety, mental and spiritual, which was by no means light during these difficult years. But my mother's religion was resolutely practical as well; she saw no virtue in faith without works, and from the outset of my public career I accepted and sought to practice the same standards.

My education continued until I was eighteen. Mr. Kenny, my English tutor, once more exerted his beneficent influence and persuaded my mentors that I could give up my hated calligraphy. My mind was opening rapidly to new horizons; in my reading I began to range widely, in English and French as well as in Persian and Arabic; I discovered the intellectual delight -- the precision and clarity -- of Mill's system of logic. I read voraciously in history and biography, and with my cousin Shamsuddin I became an insatiable reader of novels -- a diversion, I may say, whose pleasures have never faded.

On my father's death his racing stables, of course, became my property; and although I was a minor my horses raced under my name year after year, and long before I was out of my teens His Highness the Aga Khan's horses were well known -- and not without their successes -- on the turf of Western India. There my inherited and environmental influences made themselves obvious from the first. All my family -- my mother not excluded -- were keen followers of racing form, English as well as Indian. We were knowledgeable about the English turf; Ormone's glorious triumphs, for example, meant almost as much to us as they did to his backers on English racecourses. I well remember that when I was quite small the victor in any pony races between myself and my cousins was hailed for the rest of the day as "Fred Archer." Archer's death in tragic circumstances plunged us all in gloom, almost as if a close friend had committed suicide.

My successes as an owner were not insignificant. I may claim that for a time I -- and my cousin Aga Shamsuddin, who was part owner with me of a number of excellent horses -- dominated the turf in Western India. Four times in succession I won the Nizam's Gold Cup -- the most important and valuable race in Western India. With a horse called Yildiz I won the Governor's Cup in Poona during these years, and again somewhat later.

I took up hunting, not of course fox hunting as in England, but jackal hunting both in Poona and Bombay. It happens that I have never hunted the fox in England, but frankly I know no more exhilarating sport than jackal hunting over the rice fields in Bombay on an early, cold winter morning when the scent is good and the hounds get a good long run after the wily jackal.

I was a pioneer of another sport in India -- hockey, which nowadays is one of the main national games of both India and Pakistan. I began to play it with my cousin and other companions of my own age in the early nineties. I encouraged interest in the game; I gave the cups; I got the Indian Army to play. Teams were built up among the various communities in Bombay, and competitions extended steadily all over India. Hockey and cricket developed at much the same time in India, cricket fostered and encouraged by the then Governor of Bombay, Lord Harris; young Indians who had been to England for some part of their education continued the game when they came home, and it exerted an appeal which it has never lost and which has extended to wider and wider circles in India and Pakistan, both of which now produce teams of Test Match caliber and quality.

In my late teens I took up boxing, and made a serious study and use of Eugene Sandow's System of Physical Culture. All my life I have been a keen advocate and practitioner of simple, forthright principles of physical fitness. I have always been a believer in steady exercise. I was a great walker, I took up golf after I was fifty, and one of the catchphrases which journalists used about me was that my two great ambitions were "to win the Derby and the Open Golf Championship." Well, I have won the Derby -- and more than once; the other ambition (if it was ever more than a journalist's invention!) is unfulfilled, but my handicap for years was twelve. I have never believed, as many Englishmen do, in cramming a great deal of exercise into a few hours over the week end, and taking little or none during the rest of the week; a certain amount of steady exercise every day has been my habit -- exercise to be fitted into the program of a busy day.

A memorable experience of my later boyhood was meeting Mark Twain. I spent a whole afternoon in his company and finished by having dinner with him at Watson's Hotel in Bombay, where he was staying. He had a pleasant, utterly unassuming charm and a friendliness of manner which captivated the serious-minded lad that I was.

He had amassed a considerable fortune, I believe, and had lost it in bad speculation. Now in old age he had to begin to earn his living all over again; therefore he was traveling around the world and interviewing people on the way. * He showed absolutely no sign of bitter ness or resentment against his misfortune. He seemed to me dear, gentle and saintly, sad and immensely modest for so great and famous a genius.

* Incidentally, he refers to our encounter in his subsequent book, Following the Equator.

More and more as my teens advanced, my days were busy. I was keenly aware that I possessed a dual responsibility, perhaps a dual opportunity: first, in India, as the leader of an influential group within the wide Muslim community at an epoch when political aspirations were stirring and second, as the head of a far-ranging international community, a spiritual chief whose authority extended, in a tenuous yet sensitive network, into the heart of many lands and many peoples. I could never be solely an Indian nationalist, although from 1892, under the influence of wise and good men such as Sir Pherozeshah Mehta and Mr. Badruddin Tyebjee, I took the standpoint of moderate Indian nationalism of that time. My unique task, in a world in which the first hints and rumbles of impending conflict were to be discerned, was surely international. My followers were to be found in Burma and Southeast Asia, in greater and greater numbers along the East African seaboard from Mombasa to East London and inland in South Africa; in Syria, Persia, Afghanistan, in Chinese Turkestan, in Russian territories in the heart of Central Asia, and the Mesopotamian provinces of Turkey which were later to be known as Iraq. My home inevitably was a sounding board of ideas and beliefs, hopes, fears and aspirations from all over the Islamic world. My primary advice, indeed my mandate, to my followers who were citizens of many countries had to be then -- and always has been -- that the loyalty which they owe to my house and person is a spiritual and nontemporal loyalty, that their temporal allegiance is fully engaged to the State of which they are citizens, and that it is an absolute part of their duty to be good citizens. All my work, in politics and diplomacy all my life, is comprehensible in terms of this dual responsibility with which from my earliest days I have been charged.

At the end of 1895 and the beginning of 1896 I was on the verge of manhood. The reins of my life's task were now fully in my hands. My tutors took their farewell and bowed their way out of my life.

I, like many youths of my age in the East, thought of marriage; and naturally enough I looked around me in the small, confined family circle in which I had grown up. One of my earliest playmates in my childhood had been my cousin, Shahzadi Begum, whose father, Aga Jungishah, was my uncle and one of my early mentors and exemplars. In our adolescence, as was usual in our time and society, we saw little or nothing of each other, but as I approached manhood I became sharply aware of my cousin's beauty and charm, and I fell in love with her. It has been alleged, unkindly and unjustly, that my first marriage was a "state marriage," arranged for my cousin and myself by our parents for dynastic reasons. Nothing could be further from the truth. I was a youth in love, groping toward that experience, that mingling of joy and pain, which turns a boy into a man. Mine and mine only was the initiative in the matter of marriage. I told my mother of my feelings and begged her to approach my uncle and his wife on my behalf, and ask their permission for me to marry Shahzadi. The overtures were made, my formal proposal was accepted. We were to be married within the year. Meanwhile my uncle and aunt, with their daughter and her brother, Shah Abbas, set forth on a pilgrimage to Mecca. The party, having made the Haj, set out for home, and on their way stayed for a time, as was customary, in Jeddah, the port on the Red Sea through which the vast majority of pilgrims to Mecca come and go. My uncle and cousin were assassinated in brutal and violent circumstances; and my aunt and her daughter were in the house when the murders were committed. Police investigation in the Western sense did not exist in Jeddah in those days; communications were scanty and unreliable. The Bombay police closely questioned returning Indian pilgrims and though much about the affray was, and has always remained, obscure, and although the assailants were said either to have immediately poisoned themselves or to have been beaten to death by the horror-struck attendants and bystanders, it is at least clear that my uncle and his son were the victims of dastardly religious fanaticism.

This ghastly tragedy had a profound effect on me, both physically and emotionally. All through that summer I was seriously ill, a prey to a succession of fevers, with painful rheumatic symptoms. In October, when the great heat of the summer was over and the monsoon rains had passed, I made my first journey to Northern India. Hitherto my traveling outside Western and Southern India, except for visits to Baghdad and to Bushire and Muscat, had been extremely restricted. I now, however, acquired a taste for travel which I have certainly never abandoned. On this first trip I visited the great shrines and centers of Muslim India at Agra, Delhi and Lahore: that magnificent group of monuments to Islamic civilization and culture -- the Taj Mahal, the Red Fort in Delhi, and the Friday Mosque, and those exquisite gems, the Pearl Mosques at Delhi and Agra. My way led me, too, to the Anglo-Muslim College (as it then was) at Aligarh, where I met Sir Syed Ahmed and Nawab Mohsen-ul-Molk. This was the origin of what was for many years one of the crucial concerns of my life -- my interest in the extension and improvement of Muslim higher education, and specially the college and university at Aligarh.

I took up its cause then with a youthful fervor which I have never regretted. Aligarh in the 1890's was an admirable institution, but it was hampered and restricted by lack of funds and lack of facilities. Did I realize then, young as I was, that it had in it to become a great powerhouse of Muslim thought and culture and learning, in full accord with Islamic tradition and teaching, yet adapted to the outlook and the techniques of our present age? No one could have foretold all that did in fact happen; but I do know that I was on fire to see Aligarh's scope widened and its usefulness extended, and to find the money for it, by any short-cut means if necessary. Why not, said I in my youthful rashness, go to some great American philanthropist -- Mr. Rockefeller or Mr. Carnegie -- and ask for a substantial grant?

My new friends were older and sager. It was our responsibility, they said, within our own sixty or seventy million-strong Muslim community in India; if we sought for outside help, even from the richest and most philanthropically inclined of American multimillionaires, we should be dishonored for all time. They were right, of course. For this was an age which had not experienced two world wars and had never heard of Point Four. But that decision, and my own zeal in the cause which I had taken up, led (as such decisions are apt to lead) to years of arduous and all-demanding toil, the journeyings, the speechmaking, the sitting on committees, the fight against apathy and the long, long discussions with those in high places, which are the lot of those who commit themselves to such an endeavor.

Often in civilized history a university has supplied the springboard for a nation's intellectual and spiritual renascence. In our time it has been said that the American Robert Missionary College in Constantinople led to the re-emergence of Bulgaria as an independent, sovereign nation. Who can assess the effect on Arab nationalism of the existence of the American University of Beirut? Aligarh is no exception to this rule. But we may claim with pride that Aligarh was the product of our own efforts and of no outside benevolence; and surely it may also be claimed that the independent, sovereign nation of Pakistan was born in the Muslim University of Aligarh.

Reinvigorated and restored to health by my travels I went home at the end of the year to our wedding ceremonies and celebrations. It was a double wedding. For at the same time Shahzadi's brother, my trusted friend Aga Shamsuddin, was married to another of our cousins. Our nuptials were celebrated with all the appropriate ritual and rejoicing; and then sorrow beset myself and my bride.

It is a long-ago story of young unhappiness, and it can be briefly and sadly told. We were both ignorant and innocent; our ignorance and innocence set a gulf between us which knowledge, wisely and salutarily applied, could have bridged. We were too shy to acquire that knowledge, too innocent even to know how to set about getting it. Tenderness and diffused affection -- and my wife had all that I could give -- were no use for our forlorn plight. Ours was no less a tragedy because, under the iron conventions of the time, it was both commonplace and concealed. Mine, I thought, was the blame for the grief and misunderstanding that embroiled us; and this deepened my affection for my wife; but for her, baffled and bewildered as she was, the affection I offered was no substitute nor atonement. Inevitably we drifted apart, she to a private purgatory of resentment and reproach, and I to the activities and interests of the outside world.

For me relief was legitimately much easier, for my official and political life rapidly became full and vigorous, and there was a great deal of sheer hard work to be done. If my marriage was a sour sham, my duties and responsibilities were real and earnest in this year of 1897.

During the previous year there had been sinister rumors that an epidemic of bubonic plague was sedulously and remorselessly spreading westward across Asia. There had been a bad outbreak in Hong Kong; sporadically it appeared in towns and cities farther and farther west. When in the late summer of 1897 it hit Bombay there was a natural and general tendency to discredit its seriousness; but within a brief time we were all compelled to face the fact that it was indeed an epidemic of disastrous proportions. Understanding of the ecology of plague was still extremely incomplete in the nineties. The medical authorities in Bombay were overwhelmed by the magnitude, and (as it seemed) the complexity, of the catastrophe that had descended on the city. Their reactions were cautious and conservative. Cure they had none, and the only preventative that they could offer was along lines of timid general hygiene, vaguely admirable but unsuited to the precise problem with which they had to deal. Open up, they said; let fresh air and light into the little huts, the hovels and the shanties in which hundreds of thousands of the industrial and agricultural proletariat in Bombay Presidency lived; and when you have let in fresh air, sprinkle as much strong and strong-smelling disinfectant as you can. These precautions were not only ineffective; they ran directly counter to deep-rooted habits in the Indian masses. Had they obviously worked, they might have been forgiven, but as they obviously did not, and the death roll mounted day by day, it was inevitable that there was a growing feeling of resentment.

It was a grim period. The plague had its ugly, traditional effect on public morals. Respect for law and order slipped ominously. There were outbreaks of looting and violence. Drunkenness and immorality increased; and there was a great deal of bitter feeling against the Government for the haphazard and inefficient way in which it was tackling the crisis. The climax was reached with the assassination (on his way home from a Government House function) of one of the senior British officials responsible for such preventative measures as had been undertaken.

Now it happened that the Government of Bombay had at its disposal a brilliant scientist and research worker, Professor Haffkinez, a Russian Jew, who had come to work on problems connected with cholera; he had induced the authorities to tackle cholera by mass inoculation and had had in this sphere considerable success. He was a determined and energetic man. He was convinced that inoculation offered a method of combating bubonic plague. He pressed his views on official quarters in Bombay -- without a great deal of success. Controversy seethed around him, but he had little chance to put his views into practice. Meanwhile people were dying like flies -- among them many of my own followers.

I knew that something must be done, and I knew that I must take the initiative. I was not, as I have already recounted, entirely without scientific knowledge; I knew something of Pasteur's work in France. I was convinced that the Surgeon General's Department was working along the wrong lines. I by-passed it and addressed myself directly to Professor Haffkine. He and I formed an immediate alliance and a friendship that was not restricted solely to the grim business that confronted us. This, by now, was urgent enough. I could at least and at once give him facilities for his research and laboratory work. I put freely at his disposal one of my biggest houses, a vast, rambling palace not far from Aga Hall (it is now a part of St. Mary's College, Mazagaon); here he established himself, and here he remained about two years until the Government of India, convinced of the success of his methods, took over the whole research project and put it on a proper, adequate and official footing.

Meanwhile I had to act swiftly and drastically. The impact of the plague among my own people was alarming. It was in my power to set an example. I had myself publicly inoculated, and I took care to see that the news of what I had done was spread as far as possible and as quickly as possible.

My followers could see for themselves that I, their Imam, had in full view of many witnesses submitted myself to this mysterious and dreaded process; hence there was no danger in following my example. The immunity, of which my continued health and my activities were obvious evidence, impressed itself on their consciousness and conquered their fear.

I was twenty years old. I ranged myself (with Haffkine, of course) against orthodox medical opinion of the time -- among Europeans no less than among Asiatics. And if the doctors were opposed to the idea of inoculation, what of the views of ordinary people, in my own household and entourage, in the public at large? Ordinary people were extremely frightened. Looking back across more than half a century, may I not be justified in feeling that the young man that I was showed a certain amount of courage and resolution?

At any rate it worked. Among my own followers the news circulated swiftly, as I had intended it to do, that their Imam had been inoculated and that they were to follow my example. Deliberately I put my leadership to the test. It survived and vindicated itself in a new and perhaps dramatic fashion. My followers allowed themselves to be inoculated, not in a few isolated instances, but as a group. Within a short time statistics were firmly on my side; the death rate from plague was demonstrably far, far lower among Ismailis than in any other section of the community; the number of new cases, caused by contamination, was sharply reduced; and finally the incidence of recovery was far higher.

A man's first battle in life is always important. Mine had taught me much, about myself and about other people. I had fought official apathy and conservatism, fear and ignorance -- my past foretold my future, for they were foes that were to confront me again and again throughout my life.

By the time the crisis was passed I may have seemed solemn beyond my years, but I possessed an inner self-confidence and strength that temporary and transient twists of fortune henceforth could not easily shake. A by-product of the influence and the authority which I had exerted was that others than my own Ismaili followers looked to me for leadership. The year 1897 was Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. It was natural enough that I should go to Simla to present to the Viceroy, Lord Elgin, an address of loyalty and congratulations to Her Majesty as hereditary Imam of my own Ismaili sect; but, in fact, I went in a triple capacity. I presented three addresses, one from my own community, another as leader and representative of the Muslims of Western India, and a third on behalf of a representative assemblage of the citizens of Bombay and Poona.

Lord Elgin received me graciously and hospitably. I was invited to luncheon by Field Marshal Sir George White, then Commander in Chief in India. The Field Marshal's nickname was Sir George the Dragon Killer, and no man could have better looked the part than this gauntly handsome, old warrior -- immensely tall, strong and stern of visage. Sitting there beside him at luncheon I had a sudden vision of the old man kilted, claymore in hand, fiercely challenging all comers, human and animal, a dragon or two, a squadron of cavalry or a herd of rhinoceros. There was still, you see, a vein of romanticism in the young man who had with gravity and propriety presented his three official addresses to His Excellency, the Viceroy.

I returned to Bombay to prepare for my biggest and most important journey hitherto.

I set out to discover the Europe of which I had read and heard so much, which beckoned with so insistent and imperious an attraction.

In our distracted and war-battered epoch there is a deep, nostalgic sadness in recalling the splendors and the security-both seemingly unshakable -- which Western European civilization had attained in the last decade of the nineteenth century. As a young man I saw that old world at its zenith. I have lived to watch all the vicissitudes of its strange and swift decline. When I first set foot on the soil of Europe, just half a century had elapsed since the convulsions of 1848. Peace, prosperity and progress seemed universal and allenveloping. True enough the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 had flashed grim warnings for those prescient enough to see them, but to many that conflict seemed a temporary and regrettable divagation from the general and steady trend toward human betterment. Britain, whose world hegemony, founded on absolute naval supremacy, seemed unchallengeable, was powerful and prosperous as never before under the rule of her august Queen; not since 1815 had she been compelled to intervene in any major Continental conflict, and generations of her statesmen and diplomats were trained in the essential art and duty of retaining the balance of power in Europe. In spite of a few minatory signs of military, social and economic danger or discontent, the dominant notes in the Europe of 1898 were those of serenity and affluence.

Thither I set out from Bombay early in February. I was a little more than twenty years of age. Two members of my household accompanied me as personal attendants. We traveled to Marseilles in a brand-new liner of the Messageries Maritime fleet. In passing I may say that -- at any rate so far as the routes to India, Africa and the Far East are concerned -- the crack ships of the late nineties were really much better to travel in than their alleged "luxury" twentieth-century successors. Their cabins were more spacious and comfortable and all their amenities were on a far more civilized scale. A great deal of show and chromium plate does not, to my mind, compensate for a decrease in solid comfort.

From Marseilles I went straight to Nice. It was the height of the Riviera winter season; in those days the south of France had no summer season. Every hotel in every resort along the Côte d'Azur was packed, and I had the greatest difficulty in finding accommodation. After all, a considerable proportion of the royalty, nobility and gentry of Europe was concentrated along this strip of coast line. Queen Victoria was at Cimiez; and at length I found myself a room in the hotel in which the Queen was staying. Of pretty small account I was in the vast, glittering, aristocratic and opulent company gathered for the Riviera season: the Emperor Franz Joseph at Cap Martin, a score or so of Russian grand dukes and Austrian archdukes in their villas and palaces, half the English peerage with a generous sprinkling of millionaires from industry and finance; and most of the Almanach de Gotha from Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Balkan countries lately "emancipated" from Ottoman rule, and Czarist Russia. The young man from Bombay was dazzled and awed.

I knew nobody. I think the only people, other than my own personal attendants, to whom I spoke half a dozen words were the hotel staff and the officials at the Casino in Monte Carlo. But I enjoyed myself enormously -- looking and listening. I went out for long drives from Cimiez along the coast to Monte Carlo and Menton. I stared at the shop windows -- and what shop windows, those of jewelers especially! After more than fifty years I have a vivid recollection of the solid wealth on display for the eyes of the wealthiest people in Europe, whether they were financiers or landowners from England or Moscow millowners. There were none of your present-day bits and pieces of gold and silver and worthless stones made up into trumpery trinkets; no -- this was real jewelry, great sparkling diamonds, pearls, rubies, emeralds and sapphires winking and gleaming in the bright winter sun.

At Cannes, at Nice, at Monte Carlo the streets were packed in the fashionable hours with the carriages of the great and the wealthy, handsome landaus and victorias with fine, high-stepping horses and coachmen and footmen in dashing liveries. I remember that there were one or two automobiles on show as curiosities in front of the Hôtel de Paris at Monte Carlo. How elegant was the disdain with which the fashionable crowd regarded these noisy, smelly toys! Few then had the foresight to see in them the predecessors not only of today's Concours d'Élégance but of the great, silver-winged, jetpropelled aircraft which shoot across the sky.

Though prosperity was to some extent diffused through all the towns and villages along the Côte d'Azur and though there was no hunger and there were no rags, and the poorest had at least one solid meat meal a day, it cannot be said that living was cheap on the Riviera in the nineties. For accommodations and service at the best hotel for myself and two valets, my daily bill -- with no extravagance and no entertainment of any kind -- was about two hundred gold francs. That translated into present-day terms would be nearly forty thousand francs a day. But were it possible to live at the same rate and on the same scale as I did on that first trip of mine, I daresay my bill -in contemporary terms -- would work out at about six thousand to seven thousand francs a day. So in relation to the gold standard of the nineties, the cost of living -- my sort of living in those days -- was five or six times as high as it is now.

Since I was staying in the same hotel as Queen Victoria, I had frequent opportunities of watching her go out to and return from her daily drives in her landau. She was helped in and out of her carriage by Indian servants from her personal household. I and my own attendants reached the same, rather strange conclusion, and, I may say, it was reinforced later when I saw her servants at closer quarters at Windsor: they were distinctly second-class servants, of the kind that you find around hotels and restaurants, the kind that the newly arrived or transient European is apt to acquire in the first hotel in which he stays -- very different from and very inferior to the admirable, trustworthy and very high-grade men whom, throughout the years of British rule in India, one would encounter at Viceregal Lodge or at Government House in any of the provinces. It seemed highly odd, and frankly it still does. Was the explanation possibly that the pay offered was not good enough to attract the first-rate man overseas? Of course after Queen Victoria's death there was a change; successive King-Emperors had no Indian menial servants, but there were several posts of honor in the Royal Household for Indian aides-de-camp and orderly officers.

I had ten memorable days on the Riviera, and then off I set for Paris. I have praised the comfort of the liners of those days, but no, not the sleeping cars -- anyone who knows the modern wagon-lits or Pullman car, and the glories perhaps of the Blue Train, can have no idea of the cramped, primitive, alleged sleeping car of the nineties and the early 1900's. However, it took me to Paris. I repeat: I was twenty years old, I had steeped myself in French literature and French history of the whole nineteenth century and earlier. I knew the names of the streets, I knew the way Parisians lived, acted and thought. Mine in dreams and in reading was the Paris of the two Napoleons, the Paris of Balzac and of Barrès, of the boulevards and the barricades. Where did I stay but at the famous Hôtel Bristol? What did I do on my first morning in Paris but pay my call at the British Embassy?

I have hinted that I was a solemn young man, very serious about my cultural and scientific interests. In the absence of the Ambassador, the Minister gave me the introductions that I wanted and supplemented those that I had brought with me. To the Carnavalet Museum I went, to the Louvre, to the Bibliothèque Nationale. There I was shown around by the curator of Oriental books and manuscripts, accompanied by M. Solomon Reinach, an eminent archaeologist. He was astonished, he said, that a young man who spoke English and French so fluently could read with case ancient classical Persian and Arabic manuscripts. I was astonished in my turn (though I did not say so) that so distinguished a savant should forget that Persian and Arabic were, after all, my native languages, the languages which my forebears had spoken for hundreds of years.

My friend Professor Haffkine in Bombay had given me a letter of introduction to Dr. Roux of the Pasteur Institute. In the evenings I sallied forth to the theater and the opera. It was not the season in Paris, and therefore there was not the display and the elegance that I had seen at the Riviera. Still I saw Madam Bartet at the Comédie Française and thought her the most enchanting and accomplished actress I had ever seen -- and now with a lifetime in between, that is a verdict which I see no reason to alter. I saw Sarah Bernhardt, but frankly she disappointed me. I never thought she came up to Bartet. I went several times to the opera and except for Faust, every opera that I saw was by Meyerbeer. Who ever hears an opera by Meyerbeer nowadays? His reputation suddenly dropped like a plummet, and yet I think he has been unfairly treated, with a fierce contempt which he does not merit. I know that he is no Wagner; I know that he cannot compare with the best of Mozart or Verdi, but I have a hankering belief that a Meyerbeer revival might prove quite a success.

Not all my time in Paris was spent on culture. I did have letters of introduction to members of the Jockey Club; I did go to the races. And after a fortnight I headed for London.

The private, incognito status in which I had hitherto traveled was no longer possible. I had reached the capital and center of the Empire. At the station to meet me when I arrived was an equerry from Buckingham Palace, representing Her Majesty; and from the India Office, representing the Secretary of State, there was the Political Aide-de-Camp, Sir Gerald Fitzgerald. I went to the Albemarle Hotel in Piccadilly, which was my headquarters and base throughout that spring and summer.

Soon after I reached the hotel the Duke of Connaught, who had known me in my childhood and boyhood at home, paid a call and stayed for a long time. The British Royal Family's watchful and friendly interest in me had not abated.

London in the nineties has been written about ad nauseam, yet it is difficult to exaggerate the magnetic effect and the splendor of London in that sunlit heyday of the Victorian age -- the ease, the security, the affluence, the self-confidence. The City was the financial center of the civilized world, immensely rich, immensely powerful. From Westminster a great Empire was governed with benevolent assurance. If the Foreign Office were dowdy and inconvenient, if the India Office's methods of administering a subcontinent were tortuous and archaic, who could deny the irresistible sense of power and authority concentrated in those few small acres? The outward show of that power and that authority was magnificently impressive. The pound sterling was a gold sovereign, and purchased about eight times what its paper equivalent does today. The gradations from rich to poor were steep; yet throughout much of society there was diffused a general sense of prosperity. There was no welfare state, but there was a robust, genial feeling that Britain was top dog, and there was gaiety, vigor and adventurousness about life for the mass of the people.

Real power, political and economic, was in the hands of a few. The rulers of England and the Empire consisted of a small closed circle of the aristocracy and those members of the rising plutocracy who had attached themselves to, and got themselves accepted by, the aristocracy. To that circle my own rank and the august connections which I possessed gave me a direct and immediate entry. I who have lived to see the demagogue and the dictator in power in a large part of what was once civilized Europe saw in my young manhood, at very close quarters, the oligarchy which controlled Victorian England and the Empire.

The London season was just beginning when I arrived. I was immediately swept into the middle of it all. All doors in society were open to me. I took my place in a glittering, superbly organized round and ritual: Epsom, Ascot, Newmarket; a dinner at Lansdowne House, at Lord Ripon's or Lord Reay's; the opera and a ball at a great ducal mansion; garden parties, country-house week ends. Formal clothes were de rigueur in London, a frock coat or a morning coat, a stiff collar and a silk hat and gloves, however hot the weather. Church parade on a Sunday morning in Hyde Park was a stately occasion, with its own elaborate ceremony. There was the detailed ritual of calling. From royalty downward the whole of society was organized with a care and a rigidity inconceivable today. To recall it all now is indeed to evoke a vanished world.

In due course I was summoned to an audience with Her Majesty at Windsor Castle. She received me with the utmost courtesy and affability. The only other person in the room during this first audience was my old patron, the Duke of Connaught, in whose presence I did not feel shy or overawed. The Queen, enfolded in voluminous black wraps and shawls, was seated on a big sofa. Was she tall or short, was she stout or not? I could not tell; her posture and her wraps made assessments of that kind quite impossible. I kissed the hand which she held out to me. She remarked that the Duke of Connaught was a close friend of my family and myself. She had an odd accent, a mixture of Scotch and German -- the German was perfectly explicable by the fact that she was brought up in the company of her mother, a German princess, and a German governess, Baroness Lehzen. She also had the German conversational trick of interjecting "so" -- pronounced "tzo" -- frequently into her remarks. She observed that since I was a prince myself and the descendant of many kings, she would not ask me to kneel, or to receive the acco lade and the touch of the sword upon my shoulder, but she would simply hand the order to me. I was greatly touched by her consideration and courtesy. This, the K.C.I.E. was the first British Order which I received.

A little later I was bidden to stay the night at the castle and dine with Her Majesty. This too was a memorable experience. I sat at dinner between the Queen and her daughter Princess Beatrice -Princess Henry of Battenberg, mother of Queen Ena of Spain. The Queen was wearing her customary black -- that mourning which, from the day after her husband died, she never put off. On her wrist she wore a large diamond bracelet set in the center of which was a beautiful miniature of the Prince Consort, about three inches long and two inches wide. The Queen was then seventy-nine; the vigor of her bearing and the facility and clarity of her conversation were astonishing.

There were several high officers of State present, including the Lord Chancellor, the Earl of Halsbury, a small, squat, unimpressive looking man. I was both surprised and amused when the Queen murmured to me that Lord Halsbury, though not much to look at, was a formidable lawyer and statesman. The Queen talked to me especially about India. Were British senior officials and representatives, she asked, civil or were they wanting in manners toward Indian Princes and gentry? I replied truthfully that so far as I and my family were concerned, we had always been treated with impeccable kindness and courtesy by British officials with whom we came in contact. Throughout dinner the Queen and the two guests to right and left of her -- myself and the Lord Chancellor -- were served by her Indian attendants, who were the same kind of rather second-rate servants whom I had noticed in her entourage at Nice.

The dinner was long and elaborate -- course after course, three or four choices of meat, a hot pudding and an iced pudding, a savory and all kinds of hothouse fruit -- slow and stately in its serving. We sat down at a quarter past nine, and it must have been a quarter of eleven before it was all over. The Queen, in spite of her age, ate and drank heartily -- every kind of wine that was offered and every course, including both the hot and the iced pudding. After dinner, in the state drawing room each guest was presented to Her Majesty and had a few moments' conversation with her. She gave me a jeweled portrait of herself, decorated with the rose of England, the thistle of Scotland and the harp of Ireland -- and the harp was in emeralds. Next morning her munshi, her Indian secretary, came to me and gave me something which the Queen had herself written in Urdu and Arabic characters.

To be Queen-Empress was for Queen Victoria to possess no formal and remote title. She was keenly alert and sensitive to the views and needs of her Indian subjects, and her liking and sympathy for them were warm and genuine. I particularly remember that at dinner she said to me with great earnestness she hoped that when British people in India visited mosques and temples, they conducted themselves with respect and reverence as they would in cathedrals in their own land.

During this visit to England I first made the acquaintance of various other members of the British Royal Family -- first among them, of course, the Prince of Wales, later to become King Edward VII. From the first the Prince was extremely kind to me. He had me at once made an honorary member of his own club, the Marlborough, and some months later, early in 1899, he himself nominated me for full membership. In those days membership in the Marlborough, thus conferred, had a special social and personal significance; one was stamped, as it were, as a personal friend of the Prince of Wales. I may mention in passing that I am still, after more than fifty years, a member of the Marlborough-Windham; and when I am in London, I still drop in there to look at the newspapers. The head hallporter and I are by now quite the oldest inhabitants; he entered the service of the Club in, I think, 1896 or 1897. Together he and I recall old times, and our conversation evokes many, many ghosts whose living presence, as we knew them in our youth, are very real to us.

For the last decade of his life I was honored with the warm, personal friendship of King Edward VII. My association with him was far from formal. He was elderly and I was young, and at the outset a stranger, but he treated me always with the greatest kindness and benevolence. Indeed if I search for a word in which to sum up King Edward's character, the answer is to be found in "benevolent." He wished everybody well. It is perfectly true that he had a great taste for the good things in life, that he enjoyed having a good time; but sincerely and steadily he wanted everyone else -- the humblest as well as the highest of his subjects -- to have a good time too.

He cared a great deal about the alleviation of pain and suffering. His patronage of hospitals was something which he undertook not as a mere Royal duty, nor for that matter as a fad or personal fancy; it was one expression of a deeply felt attitude toward life, a spontaneous and generous sympathy with suffering in all its forms.

Two of his remarks on this subject have been often quoted. I who knew him so well know that they came from the bottom of his heart. "The man who discovers a cure for cancer ought to have a statue to his memory in every capital of Europe." I can bear the very inflexion in his voice as he said that; and the other, about certain diseases which doctors describe as preventable, "If preventable, why not prevented?"

In 1904, when a state visit to India by the then Prince of Wales -later King George V -- was being discussed, I happened to be in England, and the King sent for me in private audience at Buckingham Palace. He questioned me closely and at length about hospital conditions in India, and disclosed considerable knowledge as well as great concern. He was especially worried about the terrible state of hospitals in the big cities, particularly Calcutta, and he told me that he proposed to brief his son thoroughly on this subject and make him insist on a close, personal report on several city hospitals. He said too that he advocated the establishment of homes in the mountains, and in healthier areas of the country, for the prevention and early treatment of tuberculosis.

Nearly two years later, in the summer of 1906, the King, in another long private conversation, reverted in great detail to this subject. He commended the Prince of Wales' work along the lines he had himself indicated, and it was a commendation which I could support from my own knowledge. The King had also had a series of independent reports, and he knew that I, with a group of friends, had established a sanatorium in a hill station for the treatment of tuberculosis in its earlier stages.

King Edward's close interest in pain and sickness and their alleviation (had it something to do perhaps with his own attack of typhoid, which so nearly proved fatal?) was not prompted by his sense of kingly duty, but sprang -- I am convinced -- from his real humanity. It is significant, I think, that it was enhanced and deepened after his own other grave illness, just before his Coronation. He himself was dignified and brave in face of physical pain; but he disliked it exceedingly and sought to diminish its assaults -- for others more than for himself.

It has been widely held that King Edward was anti-German, and that he had a prejudice against Germany as a nation because he did not get on well with his nephew, the Kaiser William II. The evidence to the contrary is strong, both from the King's own lips and from witnesses as reliable as Baron von Eckardstein and Count Wolf Metternich -- both of whom held positions of influence and authority in their respective periods in the Embassy in London -- who went out of their way to tell me that the King was completely sincere in his desire for friendship between Britain and Germany, and that he strove, to the utmost of his ability, to remain on good terms with his nephew. That there were deep and subtle personal differences and difficulties between them cannot be denied. The relationship was almost bound to be strained. The Kaiser acceded to his throne as a very young man, and for a decade or more he was in full control of all the affairs of state in his own country; whereas his uncle, a middle-aged man, chafed at not being allowed any sort of responsibility and indeed not being allowed even to read the Foreign Office papers. The Kaiser was never the most tactful or self-effacing of men; in twentieth-century terms he suffered from an enormous inferiority complex. He never forgot to assert himself. His uncle strove valiantly to repress his natural irritation; it was rarely indeed that he blew up, or behaved toward his nephew other than with courtesy and consideration, albeit tinged with the irony which a sage and experienced man of the world could command.

King Edward had a stern sense of decorum; he knew what was fitting in a King and what was fitting in behavior toward a King. He strongly disliked anybody's taking liberties or taking advantage of his own urbanity and kindness. But I do know of several examples of lapses which earned his peremptory disapproval; yet when the delinquent either wrote directly to His Majesty and apologized or asked for pardon through one of the officials of the palace, and demonstrated that he sincerely regretted his offense, the King not only forgave but forgot, and the offender was never shown the slightest hostility or coldness. King Edward was genuinely magnanimous.

He also possessed a great fund of considerate tact in matters great and small. One winter a wealthy and well-known American resident in Paris, a Mrs. Moore, who was the King's friend and mine (the King was often her guest at dinner at Biarritz), was visiting London. The King called on her one bleak afternoon, when there had been a hard frost all day. Mrs. Moore received the King in her warm drawing room upstairs, and he stayed to tea by her fireside. A few minutes after he had taken his leave there was a knock on the drawing-room door. A Royal footman came in and gave her a note. It was a habit of the King always to have paper, pencils and small envelopes close at hand so that he might jot down any ideas that occurred to him. The King's note to Mrs. Moore that winter afternoon warned her that when she went out she must be very careful because the pavement was slippery and she might easily fall and hurt herself. The King sat waiting in his car until the footman came back from delivering the message.

I recall one occasion when he showed the same tact toward me, and after forty-four years I can still give the precise time and place. It was the Friday of Ascot Week in 1909. The King had asked me to luncheon in the Royal Box. I was sitting at His Majesty's table. When the main dish was served, the waiters by-passed me, a little to my surprise, and then a couple of cutlets were put in front of me.

The King called to me across the table in his strong, deep voice. "I thought you wouldn't like the thing on the menu," he said, "so I ordered those cutlets for you."

I glanced at my neighbor's plate and saw a piece of ham on it. The King had realized that I, as a Muslim, would not want to eat the ham, nor would I like to refuse what was put before me at his table, so carefully he had made his own arrangements.

Digressing for a moment, may I say this sort of tact is essential for people in high places. During Lord Curzon's viceroyalty the eldest son of the then Amir of Afghanistan paid a state visit to Calcutta. On the night of his arrival a special state banquet was given in his honor. I was one of the guests; I sat opposite the Afghan Prince and had a front-row view of a lamentable affair. To my dismay I realized that the soup was well laced with sherry; before the Prince had time to lift his first spoonful to his lips, the political agent who was sitting beside him said in officious and self-important tones: "Your Highness, there is sherry in this soup."

In supposed strict conformity with Muslim canons, the Prince put aside his soup untouched. His fish course had nothing obnoxious about it and he tucked into it happily enough. The first entree had some slices of ham in it, and sadly the Prince watched that go past him. Then there was a vegetable dish, and it was clearly, blatantly decorated with bits of bacon fat. All the main part of the dinner was thus an unprofitable blank for the poor Prince. At last came the ice cream. Eagerly the Prince prepared to attack it.

"Your Highness," said the officious politico, "it's got chartreuse in it."

Resignedly the Prince put his spoon down again -- and compensated himself, in the end, with a cheese savory and some dessert. It was curious that Lord Curzon never had the slightest awareness that his chief guest left the table hungry. It was all the more odd in that Lord Curzon in his own house -- I was more than once his guest at Hackwood -- was the most considerate and thoughtful host imaginable. The explanation was, I suppose, that as Viceroy he left the day-to-day running of his house to his staff, and someone blundered -- in a fashion which Lord Curzon would never have permitted in his own home.

I will confess that I myself have been embroiled in a similar disaster -- in Bombay, and at the Willington Club of all places, whose head steward was a Parsee. I gave a big dinner party at which a number of Hindu Maharajahs were my guests. I went to the Club beforehand and told the steward who my guests were to be; I said that they were very strict about their food and that of course on no account should beef be served.

"I understand, Your Highness," said he. "I shall be very careful. Nothing wrong will happen, I assure you."

We sat down to dinner, quite an assemblage of Hindu Maharajahs, some of them Rajputs of the most orthodox religious outlook. Everything went along agreeably until the main course was served. Then to my horror I saw plate after big plate of ox-tongue. My guests could well construe this miserable faux-pas as a direct and studied insult; I apologized abjectly. As soon as dinner was over, I found the steward and rated him soundly.

"What on earth were you up to? I warned you not to serve beef!"

"But, Your Highness," he expostulated, "they were ox-tongues." He was a Parsee, he had lived in India all his life, and incredible as it may seem, he still thought that ox-tongue would not count as beef.

The effect of this kind of prohibition or instruction about diet, imposed in one's childhood, with the sanction of religion to support it and the tradition probably of many centuries, is strong and long enduring. I remember that I was once dining in Europe with an Indian friend, a Hindu, a man of profound learning and wide culture, whose reaction when a calf's head was put on the table was one of obvious shock and deep distress. He seemed to be almost on the edge of a nervous collapse. A few days later when I asked him why -- apart from a quite understandable religious disapproval -he had been so upset, he said that for him to see a calf's head thus displayed on a table was as immediately horrifying as if a human baby's head had been offered.

"How would you feel," he said, "if the chef cooked you a baby's head and served it in aspic, tastefully garnished?"

There is no ready answer. I once asked another friend, a wise and highly educated Brahmin, a Cambridge scholar, whether he -who had never had any animal food in his life, except milk products, and whose ancestors for two thousand years or so had never touched eggs, fish or meat -- had any instinctive feeling of repulsion to this kind of food.

He hesitated for a long time and at length answered, "You know, if you had been brought up as I have been, I doubt if you would ever, all your life, get over the instinctive horror of the stink of meat or fish or eggs."

Well, I have wandered some distance from London in that faroff summer of 1898, a long way from my first introduction to London society. I have spoken of its gaieties, its splendors, its race meetings, its garden parties, its great dinners, its nights at the opera, perhaps after the opera a final, late-night call at the Marlborough, and a chat with the Prince of Wales -- he had a way of dropping in at the club on his way home for a last drink (hot water, lemon and gin it always was) -- but I must not give the impression that I spent all my time frivolously.

My friend Professor Haffkine in Bombay had given me more than one introduction to distinguished scientists in England, including Lord Lister, the great surgeon, who was most hospitable. I also met Lord Kelvin, then the doyen of English scientists, who (as I have remarked elsewhere) assured me that flying in heavier-than-air machines was a physical impossibility. I was often the guest of the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, at whose house I met several of the leading spiritualists of the period.

I called too on Miss Florence Nightingale. She and the Baroness, next to Queen Victoria herself, were the most eminent women of the time. Though by now advanced in years and a complete invalid, confined to a sofa in her drawing room in her Park Lane home, Miss Nightingale retained a formidable interest in affairs. One of the topics on which she kept herself most closely and fully informed was the British administration of India -- especially so far as it concerned matters of health and hygiene. Over the years she had constituted herself an august unofficial adviser to the Raj, although she had never been to India. Both the India Office and the War Office knew the strength and urgency of Miss Nightingale's memoranda. No newly appointed Viceroy would have dared, before he left England to take up his appointment, to omit a call on Miss Nightingale, and for all of them a profitable and helpful experience it proved to be. She laid out the plans for the system of military cantonments established for British garrisons all over India; she devised a medical administrative system, and systems of pay and allowances which subsisted almost without change in detail, certainly without change in principle, until the end of British rule in India.

It was perfectly natural that I should call on her. Lytton Strachey, that entertaining but far from reliable historian, chose in his essay on Miss Nightingale in Eminent Victorians to give an account of my first visit to her which is a ludicrous caricature. What he omits to mention is that we became fast friends and that I went back to see her again and again. Naturally enough she talked at length, eloquently and earnestly, about what could and could not be done for the betterment of health in India, particularly among women and children.

I ventured, however, on more general topics. I was, as I have indicated, a serious young man, and I asked Miss Nightingale whether she thought that there had been any real improvement in human affairs since her youth, whether faith in God had extended and deepened. Lytton Strachey waxed sarcastic about my question, but I still think it was very much to the point. Miss Nightingale, anyway, saw it as such, and discussed it with the gravity with which I had propounded it. After all, there had occurred in Miss Nightingale's lifetime (and in mine it has been redoubled) a vast and rapid increase in man's power to exploit his natural resources -- from steam propulsion to the internal combustion engine and thence to atomic fission -- whose relation to or divorce from faith in God and all that such faith means in action, is a topic of some importance. Miss Nightingale did not see fit, like Mr. Lytton Strachey, to dismiss it with a snigger; she gave me her views on it and she honored me henceforth with her friendship.

That same summer I met another great figure in the history of the British Army, Field Marshal Lord Wolseley. Sir Alfred Lyall gave a breakfast party at which the guests were Leonard Courtney, the Liberal writer and politician (later Lord Courtney), Mr. Paul, historian and editor, Lord Wolseley and myself. Somebody mentioned Mr. Gladstone, and the Field Marshal immediately launched into a passionate denunciation of Gladstone and all his works; there was no word too bad for him, none of us could get a sentence in, and we sat listening to an unbridled tirade. Gladstone was the most evil and destructive influence of his time, responsible for a catastrophic decline in Britain's prestige and authority in Europe and throughout the world, responsible for the disaster in the Sudan, personally accountable for the death of General Gordon -in short and despite the fact that at least half the population of England idolized him (irrespective of what the other half thought), a malefactor who ought not to be at large in civilized society.

Although Lord Wolseley's depth of feeling and degree of outspokenness surprised me greatly at Sir Alfred Lyall's breakfast table, I subsequently came to recognize this attitude and manner, in regard to Gladstone, as not unusual. I remember that when Gladstone died, although the tone of public comment was respectful, society's private remarks as I heard them at dinner parties or in great country houses (and the most influential sections of society were Conservative and Unionist) were fiercely critical and unforgiving. In latter years too I recall how the same people talked about Lloyd George (of whom I shall have a good deal to say). Even now, so I believe, a certain member of the Labor party, of Welsh origin like Lloyd George, is a ferocious bogey to his Tory opponents.

Of course in purely liberal circles one heard very different opinions. I was the guest that summer of Lord Spencer, who had been a close colleague of Gladstone's and a member of his Cabinet. He took a small house near Birmingham for the agricultural show. On the last night of my stay, when all the other guests had gone, Lord Spencer talked freely if somberly about that perennially critical issue in British politics in the Victorian Age, the Irish Question. This was 1898; Gladstone's attempt to introduce Home Rule had long been shipwrecked; Lord Salisbury's Unionist Government was securely in power, and its Irish policy consisted of "firm government" -- associated with Arthur Balfour's name -- and attempts to tackle the thorny problem of land tenure. Lord Spencer insisted that there was no way of settling Ireland's problems except by giving her full political freedom, that twenty years -- or two hundred years -- of police rule would not make the Irish "loyal" or submissive; that a great chance had been missed in 1886 and that it would not occur again; the inevitable consequences, soon or late, would be an armed rebellion, with all its accompanying bloodshed and murder, and at the end the loss of Ireland to the Empire. Within a quarter of a century every detail of the prophecy to which I listened that summer night in 1898 was to be meticulously fulfilled. And in India there were those who watched the working out of Ireland's destiny and were fully cognizant of the lessons it taught, the message it signaled across the world.

Back in London I saw the season through to the end; and then in August when English society began its stately annual exodus to Cowes and to Scotland, I set forth on my European travels again, to Paris once more and thence to Geneva and Lausanne, to Italy and to Vienna, still then the capital city of a great, historic Empire.

During this otherwise pleasant summer I was greatly shocked and saddened by a grievous piece of news from India. A near kinsman, Hashim Shah, whose father was my elder half-brother, was murdered by a steward in my house in Poona. Mercifully this was not, as the assassinations in Jeddah in 1896 had been, prompted by motives of religious fanaticism, but the outcome of personal resentment and some personal grudge. However, its warning could not be discounted; there was an element of lawlessness and violence in my own close surroundings which would, sooner or later, have to be dealt with firmly if it were not to become a running sore in the life of Bombay and Poona.

Boyhood in India

MY FIRST CONSCIOUS MEMORY is of something that happened when I was a child of three and a half. I have a clear recollection of an old man, almost blind, seated on a gray Arab horse, peering to watch a line of horses galloping in training. The time was February or March, 1881; the old man was my grandfather, the Aga Khan, whose name, title, privileges and responsibilities I was to inherit. I too was on a pony, standing near my grandfather, and I was held up in the saddle by a man on either side of me. The scene was Bombay, where my grandfather, after the years of wandering and various vicissitudes described earlier, had settled with most of his family and a considerable retinue.

I was born in Karachi on November 2, 1877, but I spent the whole of my boyhood and youth in Bombay and Poona. That was a Bombay in countless respects inconceivably different from the huge, glittering, commercial and industrial city that is present-day Bombay. It is true that it was a large and prosperous port, the capital of the Bombay Presidency, one of the leading provinces of British India, the seat of a Governor and his Administration, and of an impressive judicature, and the headquarters of a not inconsiderable army. The outstanding difference between that Bombay and Bombay today lies, of course, in the two words "British India." If the capital and focus of the British Raj in India lay, in those days, many hundreds of miles to the northeast in Calcutta (and in the summers in the hill town of Simla), there was in Bombay a long and close tradition of association with Britain. Had not indeed Bombay first been joined to the possessions of the British Crown as part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza, the wife of Charles II?

The Bombay of the mid-nineteenth century in which my grandfather settled was a much smaller, more compact city than its present-day descendant. The home -- or homes -- of my family covered a great deal of some of the more densely populous and prosperous parts; even in my childhood in the eighties it was a huge rambling place, taking in most of two divisions of the present city, Mazagaon and Byculla, stretching from Nesbit Road to Hassanarbad, my grandfather's tomb. This would be comparable to a large part of the West End of London or downtown Manhattan being a single enclosed estate; or to put it in terms of Paris, an enclosure in length from, say, the Madeleine to well beyond the Opéra, and in breadth from the Madeleine to the Pont d'Iena. Within this great area there were several big palaces and innumerable smaller houses and outbuildings; there were gardens and fountains and also a small zoo. There were many stables, since the equine population of the estate -- evidence of my grandfather's inherited and persistent interest in and love for horse racing and horse breeding -- never numbered less than a hundred.

The human population, of course, was far more numerous, and with endless ramifications, divisions and subdivisions. It was the household of a political pretender (in the proper sense of that word) of accepted standing. My grandfather in his migration from Persia had brought with him more than a thousand relatives, dependents, clients, associates, personal and political supporters, ranging from the humblest groom or servant to a man of princely stature, a direct near-descendant of Nadirshah of Delhi fame, who had taken my grandfather's side in the disputes and troubles in Persia and with him had gone into exile.

With the passage of years, however, it had become no longer exile. My grandfather had been confirmed in his rights and titles by a judgment of the Bombay High Court in 1886. * He was an accepted and honored leader of the community, accorded princely status by the British Raj and its representatives in India. Aga Hall, our Bombay home, was his chief seat, but he had another palace, or group of palaces, in Poona, whither we all made seasonal migrations. His life and his world, the life and world into which I was born, were feudal in a fashion far removed from, and indeed not understood by, people of the present day. He was the head and center of a loose but clearly comprehended system of allegiance and adherence; wherever he went, his home, even if only temporary, was a focus of loyalty and homage -- in the Ismaili word, a durkhana, a place of pilgrimage to be visited from time to time by as many of his associates and supporters as possible. This necessitated the maintenance of an impressive establishment -- a need reinforced by the circumstances of my grandfather's departure from Persia and by the number of dependents whom he brought with him.

His family and his dependents, his sons and their wives, his officials, servants and followers, were disposed in a series of houses and palaces around him, both in Bombay and in Poona. In course of time many of his Persian followers married Indian wives, many of them of Ismaili families. They and their children remained under my grandfather's protection and, after his death, under my father's and then under mine. When my grandfather died, there was a rough-and-ready and unofficial division of property, though not of leadership and responsibility, between my father -- his sole rightful heir as Imam -- and my various uncles and aunts. I was my father's sole and unique heir in accordance with Muslim law -- unlike my father in relation to his grandfather.

From my earliest childhood I was trained to be conscious of my inheritance, and of the magnitude of its responsibilities. My early years were in many ways difficult, even harsh. I was the only surviving heir, for my two full brothers both died in infancy and my two half-brothers in their young manhood. I was known to be delicate -a succession of English doctors had prophesied, with somber unanimity, that I would not live to be twenty-five. I was therefore watched over by my mother with extreme vigilance and trepidation. I was petted and spoiled by nurses and foster-mothers and by a group of my mother's ladies in waiting, many of whom were already elderly, in whose eyes I was the "petit prince chéri

* The judgment delivered on November 12, 1866 by Mr. Justice Arnold, contains a classic, fully detailed account of the origins of Ismailism and of the beginnings of my family.

My childhood was saddened -- and complicated -- by my father's sudden death from pneumonia, only a little over four years after my grandfather's. My father had inherited to the full my grandfather's sporting interests, not only in horse breeding and racing but as a shot and hunter of big game. In this latter pastime he was extremely skilled and utterly fearless, for his bag over years consisted not only of thousands of deer of every kind and every sort of game bird but of a great many tigers. In tiger shooting his courage was as great as his skill. When the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) paid his state visit to India, he was entertained at Aga Hall by my grandfather, and commented with interest on the number of tiger skins displayed. How, he asked, did my father get them?

Perhaps I should explain that ordinarily a tiger-shoot in India is conducted either (in the north) from the back of a specially trained elephant or (elsewhere) from a platform constructed in a tree overlooking a tiger's known or suspected haunt or lay.

"Do you go up trees?" asked the Prince of Wales, who -- being stout -- had doubtless recent and rueful memories of being pushed and pulled up trees in this most exciting and aristocratic of all varieties of big-game shooting.

"No," said my father, whose girth, though considerable, was not as great as his guest's, "I am too fat for tree work. I can't climb up. I stand and shoot."

My father's death was occasioned not by any mishap when he was out after tiger, but by a long day's water-fowling near Poona in August, 1885. There were several hours' heavy rain, the going under foot was heavy and wet and my father was soaked to the skin. He caught a severe chill which turned swiftly and fatally to pneumonia. He was dead eight days later.

This was, I can see now, the first big emotional and spiritual crisis of my life. It ended the only carefree period I had ever known. There was at once a forlorn and kindly attempt to prevent me from missing my father or being allowed to feel unhappy. But the prevalent sense of deep mourning and sadness enveloped the eight-yearold boy that I was. As his heir I was in a sense the immediate focus of a great new and pressing sense of responsibility. Our family, our émigré dependents, our Ismaili supporters all over the Islamic world deeply mourned my father's death, but they also turned to me, child as I was, now and for the rest of my life henceforth entrusted with the sacred charge to which I had been born. The change in my circumstances came home to me early and insistently. My father's body was embalmed and brought from Poona to Bombay and thence sent to be buried at Nejaf on the west bank of the Euphrates, near Cufa and the tomb of our ancestor the Imam Ali -- One of the holiest places on earth for the Shias. No sooner were these rites accomplished than a new regime was immediately instituted for me.

It was, of course, a direct consequence of my new station, but to this day I cannot understand why I did not die or turn into an utter dunce under the treatment which I was given. My education for the responsibilities and tasks which I had inherited was serious and strenuous, and it had to be fitted into a regular system of seasonal family migration. From November to April during the cold weather of each year we were in Bombay; in April and May we were at Mahabaleshwar; from June to October we were in Poona and in October we went for a short spell to one of the smaller hill stations, thence back to Bombay. For ten years -- from 1885 to 1895 -- this system continued unchanged; there was no room for a holiday for me, a month, a fortnight, even a week off the chain -- at the most a rare day. And relentlessly was I held on the chain.

This was the typical and unchanging pattern of my days: I was called between six and half past and had my breakfast -- a weak tea, bread, butter, jam and a Persian sweet. At seven, whether I wanted to or not, I had an hour's riding -- a canter or sometimes a gallop on one of the Poona rides or on the racecourse or, at Bombay, along the sands. From eight to half-past eleven I had lessons with my English and French teachers. Then I had luncheon, and I was free until two o'clock. Thereafter I had three hours' instruction in Arabic. A drive or some tennis in the garden or some sort of relaxation was then permitted until dinner at seven o'clock. After dinner came the horror of horrors. I was set down to two hours of calligraphy of the dreariest and most soul-destroying kind. My mother had been impressed by the advice -- the foolish advice as it turned out -- of Arabic and Persian scholars and pedants, who had assured her that calligraphy in the classical Persian and Arabic scripts was of the highest importance, and they pointed out to her that my two halfbrothers who had died had both had beautiful handwriting. My mother, my uncles and everyone else in our household united in compelling me to this horrible calligraphy. It was in fact a very real martyrdom for me because no one had realized that I was from birth so shortsighted that to read or write I had to hold a book or paper an inch or two from my nose, and in my vision of the world further than those few inches from my nose there was no definition and no delight, for everything I saw -- gardens, hills, sea or jungle -was a haze. The simplicity and the sadness of my affliction were for years unnoticed, and how in the end it came to be rectified I shall describe a little later.

The discipline to which I was subjected was rigid, and even the little free time that I was allowed was subject to invasion. For it was my duty, young as I was, to receive those of my followers who came to our home to offer their loyal respect. Saturdays and feast days were the usual occasions of the receptions, and my guests would sit in the garden, bowing and paying compliments, bringing gifts and receiving thanks, blessings and benedictions. My part in these ceremonies was august and ordained by tradition -- but a child resented the fact that they came in the small amount of free time allowed by the curriculum and never, never in lesson time.

Such was the regime to which, at eight, I was subjected. Perhaps it might be appropriate to give a brief account of my way of life in later years. However, I must stress that although I have not changed my basic principles in outlook, there have obviously been certain marked modifications in my pattern of existence. The Aga Khan who dined with Queen Victoria in 1898 was not quite the same person as the Aga Khan who had tea with Queen Elizabeth in 1953. But throughout this long period I snatched hours out of my daily routine as even now I snatch them for reading poetry, fiction, newspapers and literary and critical periodicals. This has been a persistent trait in my character for sixty years. In the same way I have daily given a certain amount of time to physical exercise. Until I was about fifty, the time that I gave to physical exercise was devoted to boxing, Sandow's exercises, Indian clubs, long walks, and, in the early years of the century, long cycling tours through France, Italy, Germany, and other European countries. After I was fifty I had to substitute tennis and golf for these more violent forms of exercise. And since I became sixty I have had to confine myself to golf and walking.

My social life also has naturally varied -- not only because I myself have grown older but because the economic conditions of the world before 1914 were totally different from those of today. In the spheres in which I lived forty years ago and more, social activity was intense. If not daily, certainly four or five days a week there were either dinner parties or luncheon parties wherever I happened to find myself, and there was the same round of theater and opera parties. Between the two wars this part of life very much decreased, and I might say that social engagements dropped in the ratio of twenty to one hundred. After the Second World War these social engagements have withered away -- except when my wife and I ask a few friends wherever I may be to lunch or opera or theater parties. The great social epoch was between 1898 and the opening of the 1914 war. I knew most of the members of the royal families of Europe whom I met over and over again, with the aristocracy and plutocracy that were like satellites revolving about major planets whether in London or Paris, Rome, Berlin, Monte Carlo or Cannes, Nice or Saint-Moritz. That social life is a thing of the past for me. Really it came to an end with the outbreak of the 1914 war because the society I met between the two wars was fundamentally a different one. To give an idea of the social change I might say that between 1898 and 1914 I was a guest ninety-nine times out of one hundred and only one per cent a host -- between the two wars it became about fifty-fifty and gradually it came down to be less and less; and since the last war I find that it is I who am the host nine times out of ten.

Now with the changes in my own life and the society in which I move thus briefly assessed against the background of nearly sixty years, how do I live now, when I am at home in my villa at Cannes, when we are in our house in Bombay, or when we are in hotels in London or Paris, in Venice, Geneva or Evian -- some eight months in every year?

The day begins for me -- as it has begun since my early youth -- at 4 A.M. I wake up automatically about that time and spend the first hour -- between four and five -- at intense prayer. There are no statues in my bedroom but a special prayer carpet is always prepared and my tasbee, my rosary, is always with me. At five I go back again to sleep and wake up some time between eight and nine when I have immediately a breakfast of toast, tea, and honey -- but no butter. By ten I have looked at the newspapers, had a wash, am dressed and then usually go out for a walk of anything between one and two miles, or I play nine holes of golf. If there is rain I do not go out. Until about one o'clock I am at work with my secretaries, dealing with my correspondence, writings and various business matters. I rarely leave anything undone from one day to another and usually have very little leftovers. At one or one thirty I lunch at Cannes in our own house, but everywhere else at some restaurant or other -rarely in the hotel restaurant. Lunch is my main meal of the day and consists of fish, eggs or meat, but only one of the three, and never a combination of the three -- rice regularly, two vegetables and cooked fruit, ice cream or sometimes pudding.

When in Paris or London, sometimes in the afternoon I may go to a race meeting, or I may catch up with activities such as my correspondence, or my reading. About five or six a cup of tea and then until seven or eight I usually try to read again, poetry, works of fiction, magazines of literary criticism, and I read thoroughly the morning and evening newspapers. Dinner consists only of fresh fruit. I never take anything cooked or salty at night. If the fruit is not good, then a salad. When on rare occasions I am asked to dinner, I usually ask the host to give me salad and fruit or such raw vegetables as celery, tomatoes, etc.

Both my wife and I are devoted to the theater, the opera, and the ballet. In towns like London and Paris we go to one or the other four or five times a week and usually take a few friends with us. In places like Cannes we occasionally go to the local theater during the season -- sometimes to the Nice opera or to Monte Carlo or similar places. I usually go to bed quickly after the theater. My lifelong experience has taught me that sleep is like walking -- you can derive from four or five hours of sleep as much benefit as you can from eight or nine hours, just as in twenty minutes' brisk walk you can get as much benefit as from two hours of loitering about the streets and looking in shop windows. In a word, you can either sleep slow or sleep fast. I am a firm believer in brisk sleeping. I am happy to say that while I sleep I sleep; when I go to bed I have no time to lose -- even if they wake me up for anything, I immediately fall back; and practically all my life I have never had dreams. I think that is owing to the fact that I have rationalized my sleep as I have rationalized my exercise. Those who suffer from dreams may find a measure of peace and may overcome physical and moral strain if they can so arrange their habits as to concentrate on the business at hand.

To return to earlier days and disciplines: I had three English tutors -- a Mr. Gallagher, who was Irish, a Mr. Lawrence and another Irishman, Mr. Kenny. All three were found for me by the Jesuits in Bombay. It may seem strange that my family turned to the Jesuits for my education in Western matters, but both in Bombay and in Poona there are big and important Jesuit schools, and both quite near where we lived -- St. Mary's in Bombay and t. Vincent's in Poona. All the children of our considerable household -- the evermultiplying descendants of my grandfather's hangers-on, pensioners, relatives and old soldiers -- went to these Jesuit schools. The whole household knew the Jesuit fathers well, and nothing was easier than to get their advice and help.

Incidentally, there was never a hint of their attempting to convert any of our Muslim children to their own creed. They respected Islam, and never by open argument, by suggestion or insinuation did they seek to weaken a Muslim's faith. This is one of the clearest recollections of my childhood, and I have seen the same phenomenon repeated in contemporary Egypt and Pakistan. One day a few years ago I discussed it with an eminent Jesuit, a Spaniard, and cross-examined him about it.

"What the devil do you want to come and waste your time for?" I said. "You're a missionary, and you've got all these opportunities to do your missionary work, but you never try to convert a single boy! What are you here for? What do you get out of all these huge sums you're spending on teachers and building? What's it all about?"

The Jesuit, who was an old friend of mine, smiled his sidelong smile and said: "Don't you see what we're getting out of it?"

"No."

"You are paying us. To every Muslim and non-Christian boy we give the best education we can. But we make them pay through the nose for it. For those who pay, our school fees are enormous, but our poor Catholic children get their education free. So indirectly you're paying for it, and our poor get a first-class education at your expense."

So far as I was concerned, the three teachers the Jesuits found for me were all excellent men. The schooling which they gave me was not in the least narrow or restricted. They lifted my mind to wide horizons, they opened my eyes to the outside world. They were wise, broad-minded men, with a stimulating zest for knowledge and the ability to impart it -- whether in science, history or politics. Most important of all perhaps they encouraged me to read for myself, and from the time I was ten or thereabouts, I burrowed freely into our vast library of books in English, French, Persian and Arabic. My three tutors gave me the key to knowledge, and for that I have always been profoundly grateful to Mr. Gallagher, Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Kenny.

Of them I can say nothing but good. But, alas, of the man responsible for my education in Arabic and Persian and in all matters Islamic I have nothing but bad to say. He was extremely learned, a profound scholar, with a deep and extensive knowledge of Arabic literature and of Islamic history, but all his learning had not widened his mind nor warmed his heart. He was a bigoted sectarian, and in spite of his vast reading his mind was one of the darkest and narrowest that I have ever encountered. If Islam had indeed been the thing he taught, then surely God had sent Mohammed not to be a blessing for all mankind but a curse.

It was saddening and in a sense frightening to listen to him talk. He gave one the feeling that God had created men solely to send them to hell and eternal damnation. However deep and precise his knowledge -- and I admit that in both these respects it was almost unique -- it had withered into bitterness and hate. In later years he returned to Tehran, where he became a great and renowned teacher of Islamic lore and acquired the reputation of being one of the most learned scholars in all Iran; yet to the end, I think, he must have remained the bigoted mullah whom I knew.

Perhaps it was this early experience which for the rest of my life has given me a certain prejudice against professional men of religion -- be they mullahs or maulvis, curates, vicars or bishops. Many of them I admit are exemplary people. The simple religious -- village curés in France, the humbler priesthood in rural Italy, humble, pious and gentle sisters in hospitals all over the world -- I have known, admired and revered. In England I have had many friends all my life among the Quakers, and I am aware of a tranquil sense of mental and spiritual communion with them, for our mutual respect for each other's beliefs -- mine for their Quakerism, theirs for my Islamic faith -- is absolute. The vast majority of Muslim believers all over the world are charitable and gently disposed to those who hold other faiths, and they pray for divine forgiveness and compassion for all. There developed however in Iran and Iraq a school of doctors of religious law whose outlook and temper -- intolerance, bigotry and spiritual aggressiveness -- resembled my old teacher's, and in my travels about the world I have met too many of their kind -- Christian, Muslim and Jew -- who ardently and ostentatiously sing the praises of the Lord, and yet are eager to send to hell and eternal damnation all except those who hold precisely their own set of opinions. For many years, I must confess, I have sought to avoid this sort of person.

It was strange and it was out of place that a boy, whose home and upbringing were such as mine in India, should have been submitted in adolescence to a course of this narrow and formalist Islamic indoctrination. For my early environment was one of the widest tolerance; there was in our home never any prejudice against Hindus or Hinduism, and a great many of our attendants and servants -- our gardeners, messengers, sepoys and guards, and many of those whose work was connected with buying and selling, marketing and rent collection -- were Hindus.

In addition, my mother was herself a genuine mystic in the Muslim tradition (as were most of her closest companions); and she habitually spent a great deal of time in prayer for spiritual enlightenment and for union with God. In such a spirit there was no room for bigotry. Like many other mystics my mother had a profound poetic understanding. I have, in something near ecstasy, heard her read perhaps some verses by Roumi or Hafiz, with their exquisite analogies between man's beatific vision of the Divine and the temporal beauty and colors of flowers, the music and magic of the night, and the transient splendors of the Persian dawn. Then I would have to go back to my gloomy treadmill and hear my tutor cursing and railing as was his habit. Since he was a Shia of the narrowest outlook, he concentrated his most ferocious hatred not on non-Muslims, not even on those who persecuted the Prophet, but on the caliphs and companions of the Prophet, his daughter and two grandchildren, his son-in-law Ali and about four or five of the closest companions of Hazrat Ali; all others were enemies of God and of His Prophet, who had striven to encompass the Prophet's death and after his death had brutally murdered Ali -- his adopted son and natural successor -- and Ali's sons, his beloved grandchildren. This form of Shiaism attains its climax during the month of Muharram with its lamentations and its dreadful cursings. Reaction against its hatred, intolerance and bigotry has, I know, colored my whole life, and I have found my answer in the simple prayer that God in His Infinite mercy will forgive the sins of all Muslims, the slayer and the slain, and that all may be reconciled in Heaven in a final total absolution. And I further pray that all who truly and sincerely believe in God, be they Christian, Jew, Buddhist or Brahmin, who strive to do good and avoid evil, who are gentle and kind, will be joined in Heaven and be granted final pardon and peace. I could wish that all other creeds would have this same charity toward Muslims; but -- with those honorable, humble exceptions whom I have mentioned -- this is not an attitude that I have encountered among Christian divines. It is a sad and harsh thing to say, but I believe it to be true that, in general, the higher a man's position in any of the various churches, the more severe and the less charitable is his attitude to Muslims and to Islam.

The home in which I was brought up was, as you can see, a literary one. I have referred to my mother's poetic sense. She was deeply versed in Persian and Arabic literature, as were several of her ladies in waiting and closest women friends. My mother knew a great deal of poetry by heart and she had a flair for the appropriate classical quotation -- a flair which, I may say, she never lost throughout her long life. Even when she was nearly ninety she was never at a loss for the right and apt quotation, not merely from one of the great poets such as Hafiz and Firdausi or Roumi but from many a minor or little-known writer.

One little anecdote may explain it. Shortly before she died a cousin of mine quoted one night at dinner a verse of Persian poetry which is rarely heard. In order not to bother my mother or worry her, I attributed it to Hafiz. Not at all, said my mother, that is not by Hafiz, and she gave the name of the poem and the name of the rather obscure poet who had written it.

A consequence of this characteristic was that mealtimes at my mother's table were no occasions of idle gossip or tittle-tattle. Our conversation was of literature, or poetry; or perhaps one of the elderly ladies who traveled to and from Tehran a great deal would talk about her experiences at the Court of the Shah.

A clear light shines on this phase of my boyhood. Was I happy or unhappy? I was solitary, in the sense that I had no companions of my own age, except my beloved cousin Aga Shamsuddin and his brother Abbas who were of the same age and the same outlook and were the closest and dearest friends of my youth, but I had so few holidays and so little free time, what could I have done with a host of friends? One fact stands out extremely clearly -- I worked hard, a great deal harder than most young schoolboys. By the time I was thirteen I could read and write English, tolerable French, perfect Persian and fair Arabic; I had a sound knowledge of Roman history as well as of Islamic history. I was well grounded in at least the elements of science -- chemistry and physics, botany, biology and zoology. Nor was my scientific education merely theoretical; in each of our houses I had a small laboratory and I had a set period of practical, experimental laboratory work every day.

As I have remarked, I early acquired an insatiable taste for reading. It developed rapidly from the time that I was ten or so, and when I had temporarily, at any rate, plumbed the resources of our library, I looked elsewhere. I wanted to buy books for myself. But there was one small impediment: my mother allowed me no pocket money. My cousin and I organized ourselves a brilliant way around this difficulty. Each of us put on an abba (a wide, all-enveloping cloak which is, or used to be, a universal piece of clothing in Persia and the Arab countries). Thus garbed we made our way to a wellknown Bombay bookshop. One of us engaged the shopkeeper in eager conversation, and the other slid some books into the folds of his abba. Our little device was pretty soon spotted, and the proprietor of the shop told my uncle and my mother. Naturally our bill was promptly settled, but the family decided that we should be taught a lesson. Nothing was said to us and we continued our naughty little game. We were at it one day when into the shop walked my uncle.

"Take off your abbas!" he ordered sternly.

As we did so, the books which we had stolen tumbled to the floor. Our shame and our mortification were immediate and complete, and from that day to this I don't think I have ever so much as picked a flower in anyone else's garden without telling him.

I continued my reading -- but not with stolen books. And a year or two later my reading and indeed my whole outlook on life were profoundly and permanently transformed by a small, wise decision; much that had hitherto been pain and hardship became pleasure and delight, my health was immediately improved, and I am sure I was saved much trouble and misfortune in later life. Mr. Kenny, the third and last of my European tutors, had at one time been employed by a firm of opticians. As soon as he saw me settle down to work he realized how terrible -- and how dangerous -- was the torture to which, through my congenital short sightedness and the ignorance on these matters of those by whom I was surrounded, I was being daily and hourly submitted.

It is strange and sad to recall that already, more than once before Mr. Kenny's arrival, I had in fun picked up and put on a pair of glasses left lying about by one of our family or friends. The moment I put them on I discovered the joy of a new and exciting world: a world of human beings of definite and different shapes, a world of green trees and brightly colored flowers, and of sharp, strong light instead of the perpetual haze and fog, the world blurred at the edges, which was all that an extremely myopic little boy could see. But those minutes of joy were of short duration, and were indeed forbidden, for the servants had orders to take the glasses away from me, since my family could not believe that a child could be short-sighted and thought that I was being self-indulgent and silly. Mr. Kenny immediately recognized my present plight and its implications for my future. He insisted on taking me to the firm of opticians whose employee he had been; he had my eyes tested and had me fitted with proper glasses both for reading and for distance. My uncles strove to interfere, but Mr. Kenny was adamant; he carried with him the prestige of the West, and he won the day. This sensible and kindly action saved me infinite pain and worry, and gave me a new world in which to live.

What sort of world was it to which my boyish eyes were thus opened? What sort of life was it to which I was being educated? First and most important, I was by inheritance the spiritual head and leader of a far-flung, extremely diverse community of far from negligible significance in the Islamic world. As soon as I was capable of doing so, I had to assume responsibility and take decisions. I was installed on the Gadi of Imams in 1885, when I was eight years old, and there is a photograph in existence of this ceremony, which vividly recalls a vanished epoch. A few years later I found myself exercising my influence and authority in a matter of considerable importance in the life of Bombay -- a security matter as we should say nowadays. In the early nineties there was an outburst of savage communal rioting in Bombay. I issued strict orders to all my followers that they were to avoid participation in the disturbance. The effect of my order was not merely negative; it helped to abate anger and re-establish peace in Bombay between Muslims and Hindus. This -- my first independent political action -- earned the thanks of the Governor and the Commissioner of Police in Bombay, and boy though I still was, it did much to win for me the regard of political leaders of all communities.

For by this time my household, followers, supporters, relatives and hangers-on made up an important element in the population of Bombay, and (as I shall have to relate shortly) they ultimately eated a security problem of their own. My grandfather, conscious that he was an exile from Persia, and conscious perhaps that the greater part of his adventurous and exciting career was over when he settled in Bombay, took no part in Indian politics. My father, during the Governorship of Sir James Fergusson, accepted a seat on the Bombay Legislative Council. In my maturity my political interests and ideals were to take me far afield, but the domain to which in the late eighties and early nineties I was growing up was not without its own political, administrative, social and economic problems and perplexities.

My grandfather, both in Poona and Bombay, had been able to lead a largely insulated life of his own, almost medieval in its style and pattern, the like of which has long since passed away. He brought with him from Persia the pastimes of Persian noblemen of that era, and the splendid and feudal manner of organizing those pastimes. Field sports were a major passion in the society in which he grew up; lavish racing stables were maintained; packs of hounds were bred, and there was continual searching for the best hawks to be found in Iran and Iraq. All these interests he brought with him into exile -- and a great retinue of followers who were identified with them. As soon as he settled in Bombay he bought and raced horses -- Arab, English, Australian, even Turkoman; he collected hawks and hounds anew; and the pattern of his life was arranged round these diversions. His day began at six in the morning either with a deer hunt or after birds, or -- in the racing season -- a visit to the training grounds to watch his horses being put through their paces. By nine o'clock he would be home. He would have a substantial breakfast, and then go to bed. In the middle of the afternoon he would get up, go to a race meeting or more hunting until dusk. Then he would come home and spend the night on his tasks as the leader of his community -- receiving his followers, conducting his correspondence, looking into matters of finance and the like. He would break for a fairly big meal about nine o'clock, and then work on until five in the morning, when he would have a light meal before beginning the day's round again. These were habits familiar to him and many others of the ruling class of his time in Iran and Afghanistan, and he saw no reason not to maintain them in the surroundings of his later life.

I may say, incidentally, that my grandfather had a run of success as an owner on the Indian turf, in the fifties, sixties and seventies of the last century, very similar to my own in England and France from the twenties to the fifties of this century.

My father, during his brief reign, continued much the same manner of living, widening and increasing the stud and organizing his hawks and his hounds in a fashion and on a scale that evoked the admiration of everyone who understood these matters, travelers from Europe, for example, and members of the British ruling class who held high official positions in India. It was to fall to me to adapt and modify this outlook and way of life to changing times.

It was inevitable that during my minority the British Raj and its representatives in Bombay should take a close interest in my welfare and my upbringing. My boyhood coincided with what was no doubt the heyday of British paternalism in India. The Raj seemed effortlessly secure and unshakable; its representatives and officials -- most of whom were enlightened and liberal men whose minds were in tune with the temper of the high Victorian age in which they had matured -- were serenely self-confident. Their actions and their decisions found their source in a mental and spiritual strength which their successors were to lose. The mutiny was a far-off memory, and indeed its effect had seemed to be almost totally confined to Northern India. Nationalism was only just beginning to stir in the womb of time. Congress existed, having been brought into being in the early eighties by the energy and effort of a British member of the Indian Civil Service, a Mr. Hume. A similar Muslim organization was established a little later, and my eldest half-brother was one of its founders. But few would have believed that these were the first portents of all the stress and upheaval of later years.

Relations between British and Indians were in general easy, amiable and without strain. The then Governor of Bombay, Lord Reay, was a Gladstonian Liberal, high principled, benevolent and affable, and sustained in his duty by a charming and talented wife. And the Bombay Army Commander was no other than H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught, Queen Victoria's youngest son, who made soldiering his career, as befitted a godson and namesake of Arthur, first Duke of Wellington. From the first it was my particular good fortune that the Duke and Duchess of Connaught took in me a close, affectionate and continuing interest. They would come to tea at our house several times a year, and I, as a child, was more frequently asked to their home and there agreeably spoiled and given perhaps more toffee and chocolate than was altogether good for me. These visits back and forth were red-letter days for me. At Poona and at Mahabaleshwar the Duke was a very near neighbour; every day, and often several times a day, we would encounter him out riding, and we would stop and the Duke would have a talk with me. Thus in a fashion I was brought up close to the British Royal Family and in later years, when I met Queen Victoria, she said at once, I remember, that she had heard all about me and my home from her son.

Similar frequent and informal visits were exchanged between my family and the Governor; and as a boy in the Reays' time I was often taken to tea at Government House. There was in these relationships at this period no sense of tension, no standoffishness and no condescension; they were cordial and confident -- very different relationships from those that developed in later years. The narrow, intolerant "imperialistic" outlook associated with Kipling's name, and with some of his more unfortunate observations (of the order of "East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet," for example), had not then emerged. Had social life and relations between British and Indians continued to be as they were in the eighties, I greatly doubt whether political bitterness would have developed to the extent it did, and possibly something far less total than the severance of the Republic of India from the Imperial connection would have been feasible.

Queen Victoria herself was of course sharply conscious of the responsibilities, not only political but personal and social, which she had assumed with the splendid title of Empress of India. She insisted that Indian Princes and Indian gentlefolk should receive the respect and the dignified status accorded in those days to European princes and gentlefolk. The Duke of Connaught faithfully practiced her principles during his time in India. The Viceroy and Vicereine, Lord and Lady Dufferin, were, like Lord and Lady Reay, people of kind and gentle sensibility, warm hearts and graceful manners. A tone thus set could not be ignored, and Indo-British relationships in general were in this pattern. There was agreeable and unstrained social mixing at receptions, on the racecourse, or on the polo ground.

There is an outstanding example that I recall: Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy, a notable figure in the Parsee community in Bombay, gave a reception for the Viceroy and Vicereine, Lord and Lady Dufferin, for the Governor of Bombay and his wife, Lord and Lady Reay, and for the Duke and Duchess of Connaught. All the leading representatives of all the communities in Bombay were present, and just as would have happened in England or any other country, Sir Jeejeebhoy, as host, offered his arm to Lady Dufferin and went into the supper room, and the Viceroy followed with his hostess, Lady Jeejeebhoy, and everyone else went after in turn. A few years later -and thereafter, until the end of the Indian Empire -- it would have been inconceivable that the Viceroy, a Prince of the British Royal House and the Governor of the great province of British India, would have gone to a reception at the house of a Parsee gentleman, however distinguished, and allowed him to lead the Vicereine in first and then have followed with his hostess. Rigid protocol replaced easy good manners -- to the grave detriment not only of social life but of something, in the end, much more important. But in those happy days Empire did not mean "imperialism" -- social vulgarity, and worse, social aggressiveness and highhandedness. It is true that the clubs were closed to Indians but that fact had none of the neurotic significance which it took on subsequently; nobody minded Europeans having a small enclave of their own, and social relations outside were on a basis of free equality.

A curious fact not without a tinge of irony is that in the eighties many Indian ladies on their own initiative were coming out of purdah and were receiving Europeans in their homes with cordial hospitality. It was the result of a spontaneous feeling among Indian ladies that they could not keep back in the general atmosphere of good will and the removal of restraint. Had this atmosphere been maintained it is possible that, in Western India at any rate, purdah would have broken down gradually among the upper classes decades before it did.

This was a happy period whose temper and outlook I have sought to evoke in some detail, for in the harsh and strained years which followed, it was forgotten. The change, it seems to me, set in sharply in 1890. The Duke of Connaught went home and his great influence for good in all social matters was lost. He was followed as Army Commander by General Sir George Greaves (reputedly the original of General Bangs in Kipling's "A Code of Morals"). * Lord Reay too retired and was succeeded by Lord Harris, a famous and enthusiastic cricketer, but a Conservative of the rising new imperialist school of thought. Our relations with Government House, though perfectly friendly, became more formal and less familiar. The whole tone of relationships stiffened. No longer were the easy, frequent receptions and entertainments attended by people of all communities. At Government House there were merely a few rigidly formal garden parties at which social mingling began to be discouraged. Less and less did Europeans invite Indians to their houses, and soon it became rare for the races to meet around a luncheon or dinner table. Even on occasions where rigid separation was obviously impossible, as at race meetings, color differences began to show themselves. Sets were formed, not on the natural basis of personal sympathy and antipathy, but on the artificial and unwholesome basis of race and color. This is an outlook against which I, who had spent my most impressionable years in a totally different atmosphere, was to react strongly.

* Years later, long after he had retired, I encountered General Greaves on the DoverCalais steamer. He was alone, and I put the conventional question that courtesy prompted: "Is Lady Greaves going with you to Paris?" To which the warrior replied, "I don't take a ham sandwich when I go to a banquet."

In Bombay in the nineties perhaps the first sufferers were the Parsees. Energetic, efficient, socially as well as commercially gifted and adapted, they played an important role in easing and smoothing relations between British and Indians. They now suffered the fate of the go-between who is no longer wanted. They were looked down on by both sides, and were more and more isolated to their own company and that of a few advanced Hindu and Muslim families. Europeans would no longer associate with them because they were Asiatics; Hindus and Muslims considered that they had thrown in their lot with the Europeans and then had been cast aside. It was a disagreeable and unjust plight.

An even unhappier change -- and much more far-reaching in its effects -- came over the official British view of nascent political feeling. Congress, benevolently encouraged in its beginnings in the eighties and regarded (probably rightly) as a sign of maturity in one or more members of the great Imperial family, was now thought to be a hostile political organization whose ultimate aim could only be to weaken and destroy the British connection. The alienation of the British ruling classes (or at any rate, the greater number of those they sent to India) from India's educated classes, who were growing in numbers and capacity, was both mental and spiritual. There was frigidity where there had been warmth; and in this process there were sown almost all the seeds of future bitterness.

What happened to the Englishman has been to me all my life a source of wonder and astonishment. Suddenly it seemed that he felt his prestige as a member of an imperial, governing race would be lost if he accepted those of a different color as fundamentally his equals. The color bar was no longer thought of as a physical difference, but far more dangerously -- in the end disastrously -- as an intellectual and spiritual difference. As long as Indians who adopted and imitated the European way of life were few, it was possible for a servant and upholder of the Raj to feel that there was little danger that his unique position would be undermined by familiarity and overthrown by numbers. But now racialism -- on both sides -marched on with giant's strides. It was soon not merely a matter of the relationship between British rulers and the Indian ruled. The pernicious theory spread that all Asiatics were a second-class race and "white men" possessed some intrinsic and unchallengeable superiority.

The infection had, I will admit, its ridiculous aspects. The Turkish Consul General in Bombay happened -- like many of the ruling and official classes in Ottoman Turkey -- to be a Bosnian, a Slav, of one hundred per cent European stock, but because he was a Muslim ignorant prejudice set him down as an "Asiatic"! Some English acquaintances took him into one of their clubs. Other members made such a row about it that the Consul General said flatly that, as a Muslim and the representative of a semi-Asiatic Empire, he had been treated with discourtesy and contempt on racial grounds, and while he would do his duties as Consul General, his contacts with the British in Bombay would henceforth be severely official and he would have no personal relations with them. The Persian Consul shared his experience and his sentiments. The Japanese, who were emerging from their long seclusion from outside contact, moved cannily; they established their own commercial undertakings first, so that when their Consul came he found Japanese clubs and social gatherings already organized and did not feel isolated or dependent on the good graces of the Anglo-Indian community -- in the oldfashioned sense of that word, Anglo-Indian.

A root cause of the new attitude was fear and lack of inner selfconfidence. A contributory factor was the presence, in increasing numbers, of British wives, with no knowledge of or interest in the customs and outlook of Indians. Fear afflicted people in trade and commerce just as much as-perhaps even more than -- officials. The rift deepened and widened as time went on. The color bar had to be kept rigid and absolute, or (so fear nagged at those in its grip) some mysterious process of contamination would set in, and their faith in their own superiority and in their right -- their moral, intellectual and biological right -- to rule others would be sapped.

It was a neurotic attitude, very different from that of earlier times when men like Sir John Malcolm, Sir Mountstuart Elphinstone and, later, Lord Ripon and Lord Reay, took it sublimely for granted that England's duty -- once she had brought peace, unity and prosperity to India and had taught its peoples the secrets of liberal government -- would be in the fullness of time to depart. There was no talk then of Dominion status, but the precedents of Canada and of the rapidly growing colonies of Australia and New Zealand were clear to see. But by the nineties all ideas of this sort had been thrown overboard as inimical to the security of the Raj, disloyal and seditious.

I recall a breakfast party which I gave in Bombay for some senior British officials. Another guest was a cousin of mine -- a devoted and loyal subject of the Queen and profoundly pro-British. But he was a student of history. He discoursed on the fact that an Asiatic race, the Arabs, had ruled Spain for five hundred years and, after their departure, had left indelible and splendid marks of their civilization all over southern Spain; and on the fact that another Asiatic race, the Turks, had established a major empire in the Balkans and around the Eastern Mediterranean and were still ruling it after several centuries. My British guests took this as an affront.

"We will not have such comparisons made," they said. "Our rule is permanent, not something that lasts a few centuries and then disappears. Even to think as you think is disloyal." Ideas like these seem strange indeed now in the 1950's, when we have seen British rule in India dissolve and pass away like early morning mist before strong sunlight. But this was the atmosphere in which my later boyhood was spent, with its unhappy, brooding awareness of deepening difference and of growing misunderstanding and hostility.

Islam, the Religion of My Ancestors

THE ORIGINS of man's religious aspirations are to be found in what we nowadays call science. Those who have studied mythology and primitive psychology know that magic in various forms started various trains of thought in primitive man by which he achieved what seemed to him to be rational accounts of the natural phenomena around him. It seemed to him rational that these phenomena, these events like the rising and the setting of the sun, the passage of the seasons, the flowering of the bud and the ripening of the fruit, the wind and the rain, were caused and controlled by deities or superior beings. Primitive religious experience and primitive scientific reasoning were linked together in magic, in wizardry. Thus, at one and the same time mankind's experiences in the realm of sensation and his strivings to explain and co-ordinate those experiences in terms of his mind led to the birth of both science and religion. The two remained linked throughout prehistoric and ancient times, and in the life of the early empires of which we have knowledge. It was difficult to separate what I may call proto-religion from proto-science; they made their journey like two streams, sometimes mingling, sometimes separating, but running side by side.

Such is the background to Greek and Roman thought and culture as well as to ancient Iranian and Hindu philosophy before the beginning of the Christian era. Aristotle, however, gave a more scientific turn to this mingling, introducing categories and concepts which were purely reasonable, and shedding those vestiges of religious awe and mystery which are visible even in Plato.

With the decline of the Roman Empire and the break-up of the great and elaborate system of civilization which Roman law and administration had sustained for so many centuries, the Dark Ages enfolded Europe. In the seventh century of the Christian era there was a rapid and brilliant new flowering of humanity's capacity and desire for adventure and discovery in the realms of both spirit and intellect. That flowering began in Arabia; its origin and impetus were given to it by my Holy ancestor, the Prophet Mohammed, and we know it by the name of Islam. From Arabia the tide of its influence flowed swiftly and strongly to North Africa and thence to Spain.

Ibn-Rushd, the great Muslim philosopher, known to Europe as Averroes, established clearly the great distinction between two kinds of apprehensible human experience: on the one hand, our experience of nature as we recognize it through our senses, whence comes our capacity to measure and to count (and with that capacity all that it brought in the way of new events and new explanations); and on the other hand, our immediate and immanent experience of something more real, less dependent on thought or on the processes of the mind, but directly given to us, which I believe to be religious experience. Naturally, since our brain is material, and its processes and all the consequences of its processes are material, the moment that we put either thought or spiritual experience into words, this material basis of the brain must give a material presentation to even the highest, most transcendent spiritual experience. But men can study objectively the direct and subjective experiences of those who have had spiritual enlightenment without material intervention.

It is said that we live, move and have our being in God. We find this concept expressed often in the Koran, not in those words of course, but just as beautifully and more tersely. But when we realize the meaning of this saying, we are already preparing ourselves for the gift of the power of direct experience. Roumi and Hafiz, the great Persian poets, have told us, each in his different way, that some men are born with such natural spiritual capacities and possibilities of development that they have direct experience of that great love, that all-embracing, all-consuming love, which direct contact with reality gives to the human soul. Hafiz indeed has said that men like Jesus Christ and Muslim mystics like Mansour and Bayezid and others have possessed that spiritual power of the greater love; that any of us, if the Holy Spirit * ever present grants us that enlightenment, can, being thus blessed, have the power which Christ had, but that to the overwhelming majority of men this greater love is not a practical possibility. We can, however, make up for its absence from our lives by worldly, human love for individual human beings; and this will give us a measure of enlightenment attainable without the intervention of the Holy Spirit. Those who have had the good fortune to know and feel this worldly, human love should respond to it only with gratitude and regard it as a blessing and as, in its own way, a source of pride. I firmly believe that the higher experience can to a certain extent be prepared for by absolute devotion in the material world to another human being. Thus from the most worldly point of view and with no comprehension of the higher life of the spirit, the lower, more terrestrial spirit makes us aware that all the treasures of this life, all that fame, wealth and health can bring are nothing beside the happiness which is created and sustained by the love of one human being for another. This great grace we can see in ordinary life as we look about us, among our acquaintances and friends.

But as the joys of human love surpass all that riches and power may bring a man, so does that greater spiritual love and enlightenment, the fruit of that sublime experience of the direct vision of reality which is God's gift and grace, surpass all that the finest, truest human love can offer. For that gift we must ever pray.

Now I am convinced that through Islam, through the ideal of Allah, as presented by Muslims, man can attain this direct experience which no words can explain but which for him are absolute certainties. I have not discussed experience of this order with nonMuslims, but I have been told that Buddhists, Brahmins, Zoroastrians and Christians -- I have often heard it of Jews, except perhaps Spinoza -- have also attained this direct, mystical vision. I am certain that many Muslims, and I am convinced that I myself, have had moments of enlightenment and of knowledge of a kind which we cannot communicate because it is something given and not something acquired.

To a certain extent I have found that the following verse of the Koran, so long as it is understood in a purely nonphysical sense, has given assistance and understanding to myself and other Muslims. However, I must warn all who read it not to allow their material critical outlook to break in with literal, verbal explanations of something that is symbolic and allegorical. I appeal to every reader, whether Muslim or not, to accept the spirit of this verse in its entirety:

Allah is the light of the heavens and the earth; His light is as a niche in which is a lamp, and the lamp is in a glass, the glass is as though it were a glittering star; it is lit from a blessed tree, an Olive neither of east nor of the west, the oil of which would well-nigh give light though no fire touched it, -- light upon light; -- Allah guides to His light whom He pleases; and Allah strikes our parables for men; and Allah all things doth know.

(CHAPTER XXIV "Light," 35)

From that brief statement of my own personal beliefs, I move on to as concise and as uncontroversial an exposition as I can give of Islam as it is understood and practiced today. The present condition of mankind offers surely, with all its dangers and all its challenges, a chance too -- a chance of establishing not just material peace among nations but that better peace of God on earth. In that endeavor Islam can play its valuable constructive part, and the Islamic world can be a strong and stabilizing factor provided it is really understood and its spiritual and moral power recognized and respected.

I shall try to give in a small compass a clear survey of the fundamentals of Islam, by which I mean those principles, those articles of faith, and that way of life, all of which are universally accepted among all Muslim sects. First therefore, I shall propound those Islamic tenets which are held in common by the larger community of Sunnis, and by Shias as well. Having thus made as clear as I can the faith which binds us all as Muslims, I shall then give a brief sketch of Shia doctrine and of those special tenets held by that sub division of the Shias known as the Ismailis, the sect of which I am the Imam.

First it must be understood that, though these fundamental ideals are universally accepted by Muslims, there does not exist in Islam and there has never existed any source of absolute authority; we have no Papal Encyclical to propound and sanction a dogma, such as Roman Catholics possess, and no Thirty-nine Articles like those which state the doctrinal position of the Church of England. The Prophet Mohammed had two sources of authority, one religious which was the essential one of his life, and the other secular which, by the circumstances and accidents of his career, became joined to his essential and Divinely inspired authority in religion.

According to the Sunni school -- the majority of Muslims -- the Prophet's religious authority came to an end at his death, and he appointed no successor to his secular authority. According to Sunni teaching, the faithful, the companions of the Prophet, the believers, elected Abu Bakr as his successor and his Khalif; but Abu Bakr assumed only the civil and secular power. No one had the authority to succeed to the religious supremacy, which depended on direct Divine inspiration, because the Prophet Mohammed and the Koran declared definitely that he was the final messenger of God, the Absolute. Thus, say the Sunnis, it was impossible to constitute an authority similar to that of the Papacy; it remained for the Faithful to interpret the Koran, the example and the sayings of the Prophet, not only in order to understand Islam but to ensure its development throughout the centuries. Fortunately the Koran has itself made this task easy, for it contains a number of verses which declare that Allah speaks to man in allegory and parable. Thus the Koran leaves the door open for all kinds of possibilities of interpretation so that no one interpreter can accuse another of being non-Muslim. A felicitous effect of this fundamental principle of Islam that the Koran is constantly open to allegorical interpretation has been that our Holy Book has been able to guide and illuminate the thought of believers, century after century, in accordance with the conditions and limitations of intellectual apperception imposed by external influences in the world. It leads also to a greater charity among Muslims, for since there can be no cut-and-dried interpretation, all schools of thought can unite in the prayer that the Almighty in His infinite mercy may forgive any mistaken interpretation of the Faith whose cause is ignorance or misunderstanding.

I am trying to put before my Western readers, not the doctrine of the Ismaili sect to which I belong, not Shia doctrine, nor the teachings of the Sufi school of Islamic mysticism, of men such as Jalaleddin Roumi or Bayazid Bostami, nor even the views of certain modern Sunni interpreters who, not unlike certain Christian sects, look for literal guidance in the Koran as Christians of these sects find it in the Old and New Testaments; but the main and central Sunni stream of thought, whose source is in the ideas of the school founded by al-Ghazali and whose influence and teaching have flowed on from century to century.

First, however, we must ask ourselves why this final and consummate appearance of the Divine Will was granted to mankind, and what were its causes. All Islamic schools of thought accept it as a fundamental principle that for centuries, for thousands of years before the advent of Mohammed, there arose from time to time messengers, illumined by Divine Grace, for and among those races of the earth which had sufficiently advanced intellectually to comprehend such a message. Thus Abraham, Moses, Jesus and all the Prophets of Israel are universally accepted by Islam. Muslims indeed know no limitation merely to the Prophets of Israel; they are ready to admit that there were similar Divinely inspired messengers in other countries -- Gautama Buddha, Shri Krishna and Shri Ram in India, Socrates in Greece, the wise men of China, and many other sages and saints among peoples and civilizations, trace of which we have lost. Thus man's soul has never been left without a specially inspired messenger from the soul that sustains, embraces and is the universe. Then what need was there for a Divine revelation to Mohammed? The answer of Islam is precise and clear. In spite of its great spiritual strength, Jewish monotheism has retained two characteristics which render it essentially different from Islamic monotheism: God has remained, in spite of all, a national and racial God for the children of Israel, and His personality is entirely separate from its supreme manithere can be no cut-and-dried interpretation, all schools of thought can unite in the prayer that the Almighty in His infinite mercy may forgive any mistaken interpretation of the Faith whose cause is ignorance or misunderstanding.

I am trying to put before my Western readers, not the doctrine of the Ismaili sect to which I belong, not Shia doctrine, nor the teachings of the Sufi school of Islamic mysticism, of men such as Jalaleddin Roumi or Bayazid Bostami, nor even the views of certain modern Sunni interpreters who, not unlike certain Christian sects, look for literal guidance in the Koran as Christians of these sects find it in the Old and New Testaments; but the main and central Sunni stream of thought, whose source is in the ideas of the school founded by al-Ghazali and whose influence and teaching have flowed on from century to century.

First, however, we must ask ourselves why this final and consummate appearance of the Divine Will was granted to mankind, and what were its causes. All Islamic schools of thought accept it as a fundamental principle that for centuries, for thousands of years before the advent of Mohammed, there arose from time to time messengers, illumined by Divine Grace, for and among those races of the earth which had sufficiently advanced intellectually to comprehend such a message. Thus Abraham, Moses, Jesus and all the Prophets of Israel are universally accepted by Islam. Muslims indeed know no limitation merely to the Prophets of Israel; they are ready to admit that there were similar Divinely inspired messengers in other countries -- Gautama Buddha, Shri Krishna and Shri Ram in India, Socrates in Greece, the wise men of China, and many other sages and saints among peoples and civilizations, trace of which we have lost. Thus man's soul has never been left without a specially inspired messenger from the soul that sustains, embraces and is the universe. Then what need was there for a Divine revelation to Mohammed? The answer of Islam is precise and clear. In spite of its great spiritual strength, Jewish monotheism has retained two characteristics which render it essentially different from Islamic monotheism: God has remained, in spite of all, a national and racial God for the children of Israel, and His personality is entirely separate from its supreme manifestation, the Universe. In far-distant countries such as India and China, the purity of the Faith in the one God had been so vitiated by polytheism, by idolatry and even by a pantheism which was hardly distinguishable from atheism that these popular and folklore religions bore little resemblance to that which emanated from the true and pure Godhead. Christianity lost its strength and meaning for Muslims in that it saw its great and glorious founder not as a man but as God incarnate in man, as God made Flesh. Thus there was an absolute need for the Divine Word's revelation, to Mohammed himself, a man like the others, of God's person and of his relations to the Universe which he had created. Once man has thus comprehended the essence of existence, there remains for him the duty, since he knows the absolute value of his own soul, of making for himself a direct path which will constantly lead his individual soul to and bind it with the universal Soul of which the Universe -- as much of it as we perceive with our limited vision -- is one of the infinite manifestations. Thus Islam's basic principle can only be defined as monorealism and not as monotheism. Consider, for example, the opening declaration of every Islamic prayer: "Allah-o-Akbar." What does that mean? There can be no doubt that the second word of the declaration likens the character of Allah to a matrix which contains all and gives existence to the infinite, to space, to time, to the Universe, to all active and passive forces imaginable, to life and to the soul. Imam Hassan has explained the Islamic doctrine of God and the Universe by analogy with the sun and its reflection in the pool of a fountain; there is certainly a reflection or image of the sun, but with what poverty and with what little reality; how small and pale is the likeness between this impalpable image and the immense, blazing, white-hot glory of the celestial sphere itself. Allah is the sun; and the Universe, as we know it in all its magnitude, and time, with its power, are nothing more than the reflection of the Absolute in the mirror of the fountain.

There is a fundamental difference between the Jewish idea of creation and that of Islam. The creation according to Islam is not a unique act in a given time but a perpetual and constant event; and God supports and sustains all existence at every moment by His will and His thought. Outside His will, outside His thought, all is nothing, even the things which seem to us absolutely self-evident such as space and time. Allah alone wishes: the Universe exists; and all manifestations are as a witness of the Divine will. I think that I have sufficiently explained the difference between the Islamic doctrine of the unity of God and, on one side, the theistic ideas, founded upon the Old Testament, and on the other, the pantheistic and dualistic ideas of the Indian religion and that of Zoroaster. But having known the real, the Absolute, having understood the Universe as an infinite succession of events, intended by God, we need an ethic, a code of conduct in order to be able to elevate ourselves toward the ideal demanded by God.

Let us then study the duties of man, as the great majority interpret them, according to the verses of the Koran and the Traditions of the Prophet. First of all, the relations of man to God: there are no priests and no monks. There is no confession of sins, except directly to God.

A man who does not marry, who refuses to shoulder the responsibilities of fatherhood, of building up a home and raising a family through marriage, is severely condemned. In Islam there are no extreme renunciations, no asceticism, no maceration, above all no flagellations to subjugate the body. The healthy human body is the temple in which the flame of the Holy Spirit burns, and thus it deserves the respect of scrupulous cleanliness and personal hygiene. Prayer is a daily necessity, a direct communication of the spark with the universal flame. Reasonable fasting for a month in every year, provided a man's health is not impaired thereby, is an essential part of the body's discipline through which the body learns to renounce all impure desires. Adultery, alcoholism, slander and thinking evil of one's neighbor are specifically and severely condemned. All men, rich and poor, must aid one another materially and personally. The rules vary in detail, but they all maintain the principle of universal mutual aid in the Muslim fraternity. This fraternity is absolute, and it comprises men of all colors and all races: black, white, yellow, tawny; all are the sons of Adam in the flesh and all carry in them a spark of the Divine Light. Everyone should strive his best to see that this spark be not extinguished but rather developed to that full "Companionship-on-High" which was the vision expressed in the last words of the Prophet on his deathbed, the vision of that blessed state which he saw clearly awaiting him. In Islam the Faithful believe in Divine justice and are convinced that the solution of the great problem of predestination and free will is to be found in the compromise that God knows what man is going to do, but that man is free to do it or not.

Wars are condemned. Peace ought to be universal. Islam means peace, God's peace with man and the peace of men one to another. Usury is condemned, but free and honest trade and agriculture -- in all its forms -- are encouraged, since they manifest a Divine service, and the welfare of mankind depends upon the continuation and the intensification of these legitimate labors. Politically a republican form of government seems to be the most rightful; for in Islamic countries, which have witnessed the development of absolute monarchies with a great concentration of power within them, the election of the monarch has always remained a lifeless formula which has simply legitimized the usurpation of power.

After death Divine justice will take into consideration the faith, the prayers and the deeds of man. For the chosen there is eternal life and the spiritual felicity of the Divine vision. For the condemned there is hell, where they will be consumed with regret for not having known how to merit the grace and the blessing of Divine mercy.

Islamic doctrine goes further than the other great religions, for it proclaims the presence of the soul, perhaps minute but nevertheless existing in an embryonic state, in all existence -- in matter, in animals, trees, and space itself. Every individual, every molecule, every atom has its own spiritual relationship with the All-Powerful Soul of God. But men and women, being more highly developed, are immensely more advanced than the infinite number of other beings known to us. Islam acknowledges the existence of angels, of great souls who have developed themselves to the highest possible planes of the human soul and higher, and who are centers of the forces which are scattered throughout the Universe. Without going as far as Christianity Islam recognizes the existence of evil spirits which seek by means of their secret suggestions to us to turn us from good, from that straight way traced by God's finger for the eternal happiness of the humblest as of the greatest -- Abraham, Jesus, Mohammed.

Thus far I have described those tenets of Islam which are professed and held in common by all Muslims of any and every sect or subsect. I now come to the divergence of the streams of thought. The Sunnis are the people of the Sonna or tradition. Their Kalama or profession of faith is "There is no God but God and Mohammed is the Apostle of God." To this the Shias add: "And Ali, the companion of Mohammed, is the Vicar of God." Etymologically the word "Shia" means either a stream or a section.

The Prophet died without appointing a Khalif or successor. The Shia school of thought maintains that although direct Divine inspiration ceased at the Prophet's death, the need of Divine guidance continued and this could not be left merely to millions of mortal men, subject to the whims and gusts of passion and material necessity, capable of being momentarily but tragically misled by greed, by oratory, or by the sudden desire for material advantage. These dangers were manifest in the period immediately following our Holy Prophet's death. Mohammed had been, as I have shown, both a temporal and a spiritual sovereign. The Khalif or successor of the Prophet was to succeed him in both these capacities; he was to be both Emir-al-Momenin or "commander of the true believers" and Imam-al-Muslimin or "spiritual chief of the devout." Perhaps an analogy from the Latin, Western world will make this clearer: he would be Supreme Pontiff as well as Imperator or temporal ruler.

Ali, the Prophet's cousin and son-in-law, the husband of his beloved and only surviving child, Fatima, his first convert, his bold champion in many a war, who the Prophet in his lifetime said would be to him as Aaron was to Moses, his brother and right-hand man, in the veins of whose descendants the Prophet's own blood would flow, appeared destined to be that true successor; and such had been the general expectation of Islam. The Shias have therefore always held that after the Prophet's death, Divine power, guidance and leadership manifested themselves in Hazrat Ali as the first Imam or spiritual chief of the devout. The Sunnis, however, consider him the fourth in the succession of Khalifs to temporal power. The Imam is thus the successor of the Prophet in his religious capacity; he is the man who must be obeyed and who dwells among those from whom he commands spiritual obedience. The Sunnis have always held that this authority is merely temporal and secular, and is exerted only in the political sphere; they believe therefore that it appertains to any lawfully constituted political head of a state, to a governor or to the president of a republic. The Shias say that this authority is all-pervading and is concerned with spiritual matters also, that it is transferred by inherited right to the Prophet's successors of his blood.

How this came about is best described in the words of Mr. Justice Arnold in his judgment delivered in the High Court of Bombay on November 12, 1866, in the great lawsuit brought against my grandfather, to which I later refer.

"The influence of Ayesha, the young and favorite wife of Mohammed, a rancorous enemy of Fatima and of Ali, procured the election of her own father Abu Bakr; to Abu Bakr succeeded Omar, and to him Osman, upon whose death, in the year 655 of the Christian era, Ali was at last raised to the Khalifat. He was not even then unopposed; aided by Ayesha, Moawiyah of the family of the Ummayads, contested the Khalifat with him, and while the strife was still doubtful, in the year A.D. 660, Ali was slain by a Kharegite, or Muslim fanatic, in the mosque of Cufa, at that time the principal Muslim city on the right or west bank of the Euphrates -- itself long since a ruin, at no great distance from the ruins of Babylon."

Mr. Justice Arnold's judgment gives a lucid and moving account of the effect on Muslim life and thought of this assassination and of the subsequent murders -- nine years and twenty years after their father -- of Ali's two sons, Hassan and Hussein, the Prophet's beloved grandchildren whom he himself had publicly hailed as "the foremost among the youths of Paradise"; of the tragic and embittered hostility and misunderstanding that developed between the two main Muslim sects, and all the sorrow and the strife that afflicted succeeding generations.

Of the Shias there are many subdivisions; some of them believe that this spiritual headship, this Imamat which was Hazrat Ali's, descended through him in the sixth generation to Ismail from whom I myself claim my descent and my Imamat. Others believe that the Imamat is to be traced from Zeid, the grandson of Imam Hussein, the Prophet's grandson martyred at Kerbela. Still others, including the vast majority of the people of Persia, and Indian Shias, believe that the Imamat is now held by a living Imam, the twelfth from Ali, who has never died, who is alive and has lived thirteen hundred years among us, unseen but seeing; those who profess this doctrine are known as the Asna Asharis. The Ismailis themselves are divided into two parties, a division which stems from the period when my ancestors held the Fatimite Khalifat of Egypt. One party accepts my ancestor, Nozar, as the rightful successor of the Khalif of Egypt Mustansir; whereas the other claims as Imam his other son the Khalif Mustalli.

Thenceforward the story of the Ismailis, of my ancestors and their followers, moves through all the complexities, the ebb and flow, of Islamic history through many centuries. Gibbon, it has been said, abandoned as hopeless the task of clearing up the obscurities of an Asiatic pedigree; there is, however, endless fascination in the study of the web of characters and of events, woven across the ages, which unites us in this present time with all these far-distant glories, tragedies and mysteries. Often persecuted and oppressed, the faith of my ancestors was never destroyed; at times it flourished as in the epoch of the Fatimite Khalifs, at times it was obscure and little understood.

After the loss of the Fatimite Khalifat in Egypt my ancestors moved first to the highlands of Syria and the Lebanon; thence they journeyed eastward to the mountains of Iran. They established a stronghold on the craggy peak of Alamut in the Elburz Mountains, the range which separates from the rest of Persia the provinces lying immediately to the south of the Caspian. Legend and history intertwine here in the strange tale of the Old Man of the Mountains, and of those hereditary Grand Masters of the Order of the Assassins who held Alamut for nearly two hundred years. In this period the Ismaili faith was well known in Syria, in Iraq, in Arabia itself, and far up into Central Asia. Cities such as Samarkand and Bokhara were then great centers of Muslim learning and thought. A little later in the thirteenth century of the Christian era, Ismaili religious propaganda penetrated into what is Sinkiang and Chinese Turkestan. There was a time in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries when the Ismaili doctrine was the chief and most influential Shi'ite school of thought; but later with the triumph of the Saffevi Dynasty in Iran (particularly in its northwest province, Azerbaijan) the Asna Ashari, or Twelfth Imam, sect established its predominance. Remnants of the Ismaili faith remained firm and are still to be found in many parts of Asia, North Africa and Iran. The historical centers of Ismailism indeed are scattered widely over all the Islamic world. In the mountainous regions of Syria, for example, are to be found the Druzes, in their fastness in the Jebel Druze. They are really Ismallis who did not originally follow my family in their migration out of Egypt but remained with the memory of my ancestor, Al Hakem, the Fatimite Khalif of Egypt, but they established their doctrines on lines very similar to those of the Syrian Ismailis, who, in present times, are my followers. Similar Ismaili "islands" exist in southern Egypt, in the Yemen and of course in Iraq. In Iran the centers are around Mahalat, westward toward Hamadan and to the south of Tehran; others are in Khorassan to the north and east around about Yezd, around Kerman and southward along the coast of the Persian Gulf from Bandar Abbas to the borders of Pakistan and Sind, and into Baluchistan. Others are in Afghanistan, in Kabul itself; there are many in Russia and Central Asia, around Yarkand, Kashgar and in many villages and settlements in Sinkiang. In India certain Hindu tribes were converted by missionaries sent to them by my ancestor, Shah Islam Shah, and took the name of Khojas; a similar process of conversion occurred in Burma as recently as the nineteenth century.

Now that I have brought this brief record of Ismaili origin, vicissitudes and wanderings within sight of the contemporary world, it may be timely to give an account in some detail of the life and deeds of my grandfather, the first to be known as the Aga Khan, who emerged into the light of history early in the nineteenth century of the Christian era. His life was (as Mr. Justice Arnold observed) "adventurous and romantic." He was the hereditary chieftain of the important city of Kerman and the son-in-law of the powerful and able Persian monarch, Fateh Ali Shah, holding considerable territorial possessions in addition to his inherited Imamat of the Ismailis.

In 1838 he was involved in conflict with the then ruling Emperor Mohammed Shah, for reasons of which Mr. Justice Arnold gave the following account: "Hadji Mirza Ahasi, who had been the tutor of Mohammed Shah, was during the whole reign of his royal pupil (from 1834 to 1848) the Prime Minister of Persia. A Persian of very low origin formerly in the service of the Aga Khan, had become the chief favorite and minion of the all-powerful minister. This person, though his patron, had the impudence to demand in marriage for his son one of the daughters of the Aga Khan, a granddaughter of the late Shah-in-Shah! This, says the Persian historian, was felt by the Aga Khan to be a great insult; and the request, though strongly pressed by the Prime Minister, was indignantly refused. Having thus made the most powerful man in Persia his deadly enemy, the Aga Khan probably felt that his best chance of safety was to assert himself in arms -- a course not uncommon with the great feudatories of disorganized Persia. Making Kerman his headquarters, he appears to have kept up the fight with varying fortunes through the years 1838-1839 and part of 1840. In the latter year, overpowered by numbers, he was forced to flight and with difficulty made his escape, attended by a few horsemen, through the deserts of Baluchistan to Sind."

In his wanderings of the next few years my grandfather encountered and rendered stout assistance to the British in their process of military and imperial expansion northward and westward from the Punjab. In Sind he raised and maintained a troop of light horse (the descendants of whose survivors were so grave an anxiety to me many years later) and during the latter stages of the first Afghan War, in 1841 and 1842, he and his cavalry were of service to General Nott in Kardahar and to General England when he advanced out of Sind to join Nott. For these services and for others which he rendered to Sir Charles Napier in his conquest of Sind in 1843-1844, my grandfather received a pension from the British Government.

In 1845 my grandfather reached Bombay where -- as Mr. Justice Arnold expressed it -- "he was received by the cordial homage of the whole Khoja population of this city and its neighborhood." For a year or two from 1846 he was in Calcutta as a political prisoner because Mohammed Shah had remonstrated to the British Government about his presence in a port of such ready access to Persia as Bombay. However, in 1848 Mohammed Shah's reign came to an end, and my grandfather settled peaceably in Bombay and there established his durkhana or headquarters. Not only was this a wise and happy personal decision, but it had an admirable effect on the religious and communal life of the whole Ismaili world. It was as if the heavy load of persecution and fanatical hostility, which they had had to bear for so long, was lifted. Deputations came to Bombay from places as remote as Kashgar, Bokhara, all parts of Iran, Syria, the Yemen, the African coast and the then narrowly settled hinterland behind it.

Since then there has been no fundamental or violent change in the Ismaili way of life or in the conditions in which my followers can pursue their own religion. At present no deputations come from Russia, but Ismailis in Russia and in Central Asia are not persecuted and are quite free in their religious life; they cannot of course send the tribute, which is merely a token tribute and never has been the sort of mulcting which a few fanatical enemies of the Ismailis have alleged it to be.

With Sinkiang, Kashgar and Yarkand we have no communication at present, since the frontier is closed -- no more firmly against Ismailis than against anyone else -- but we know that they are free to follow their religion and that they are firm and devoted Ismailis with a great deal of self-confidence and the feeling that they constitute by far the most important Ismaili community in the whole world. From Iran representatives and commissions come and go; from Syria they used to come to India regularly, but now from time to time members of my family go to Syria, or my Syrian followers come and visit me in Egypt. Not long ago I went to Damascus where a great number of my followers came to pay their respects. In nearly all those countries the greater part of the tribute to the Imam is spent on schools, or prayer houses, and on the administration of various religious and social institutions. A considerable measure of local responsibility prevails; questions of marriage and divorce, for example, are entirely the concern of the local representative of the Imam. At times prosperous communities among the Ismailis help less prosperous ones in respect to similar institutions. I issue general instructions and orders; but the actual day-to-day administrative work of each local community is done by the Imam's representative and local chief. Many of these local headsbips throughout Central Asia, for example, are hereditary. But we have no general, regular system. Sometimes a son succeeds, sometimes a grandson. Sometimes he is known as Vizir, or Kamdar (a title which by constant use has degenerated into Kamria). Sometimes he is Rais or Rai. In Syria the Imam's representatives are known as Amirs; in some parts of Central Asia such as Hunza, the word "Amir" has been colloquialized and shortened to Mir.

The headship of a religious community spread over a considerable part of the world surface -- from Cape Town to Kashgar, from Syria to Singapore -- cannot be sustained in accordance with any cut-anddried system. Moral conditions, material facilities, national aspirations and outlook and profoundly differing historical backgrounds have to be borne in mind, and the necessary mental adjustments made.

There is therefore great variety and great flexibility of administration. In the British, Portuguese and French colonies of East Africa, in Uganda, Portuguese East Africa, Madagascar, Natal and Cape Colony there is a highly developed and civilized administrative system of councils. Educational administrators, property agents, executive and judicial councils all perform an immense amount of day-today administrative work, and under my general orders vast financial administration as well.

In India and Pakistan there is a similar technique of administration but in a less developed and looser form. In Burma and Malaya the organization closely resembles that of the Ismailis in Africa. Syria, Iran and the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan are all countries with their strongly marked individuality, historical background and traditions. These historical variations over centuries, the accessibility, or lack of it, for many of the more isolated communities, and the development of communications between my family and my followers have all had their effect.

In Central Asia the leadership of the Ismailis is by inheritance in the hands of certain families and has been handed down in continuous line through centuries. This is true of my followers in Afghanistan, and in Russia and Chinese Turkestan, where certain families have been since their conversion to Islam administrators and representatives of the Imam. The local leadership passes down in a close connection of kinship from one generation to another. Sometimes it is the hereditary chieftain and occasionally -- as in the case of Hunza -- the secular king, himself an Ismaili, who is the administrator of the religious brotherhood.

The correspondence which I maintain with all these far-scattered communities is affected by local circumstances. In Baghdad I have special representatives who deal with Arabian matters; in Iran I have special representatives in every province who deal with Ismaili affairs, who are also generally members of families that have as a matter of inheritance supplied local Ismaili leaders for probably as long as these people have been linked with my family. In Syria, one such family of representatives has retained an unbroken connection with my family for more than a thousand years.

Ismailism has survived because it has always been fluid. Rigidity is contrary to our whole way of life and outlook. There have really been no cut-and-dried rules; even the set of regulations known as the Holy Laws are directions as to method and procedure and not detailed orders about results to be obtained. In some countries -India and Africa for example -- the Ismailis have a council system, under which their local councilors are charged with all internal administrative responsibility, and report to me what they have done. In Syria, Central Asia and Iran, leadership, as I have said, is vested in hereditary recommended leaders and chiefs, who are the Imam's the organization closely resembles that of the Ismailis in Africa. Syria, Iran and the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan are all countries with their strongly marked individuality, historical background and traditions. These historical variations over centuries, the accessibility, or lack of it, for many of the more isolated communities, and the development of communications between my family and my followers have all had their effect.

In Central Asia the leadership of the Ismailis is by inheritance in the hands of certain families and has been handed down in continuous line through centuries. This is true of my followers in Afghanistan, and in Russia and Chinese Turkestan, where certain families have been since their conversion to Islam administrators and representatives of the Imam. The local leadership passes down in a close connection of kinship from one generation to another. Sometimes it is the hereditary chieftain and occasionally -- as in the case of Hunza -- the secular king, himself an Ismaili, who is the administrator of the religious brotherhood.

The correspondence which I maintain with all these far-scattered communities is affected by local circumstances. In Baghdad I have special representatives who deal with Arabian matters; in Iran I have special representatives in every province who deal with Ismaili affairs, who are also generally members of families that have as a matter of inheritance supplied local Ismaili leaders for probably as long as these people have been linked with my family. In Syria, one such family of representatives has retained an unbroken connection with my family for more than a thousand years.

Ismailism has survived because it has always been fluid. Rigidity is contrary to our whole way of life and outlook. There have really been no cut-and-dried rules; even the set of regulations known as the Holy Laws are directions as to method and procedure and not detailed orders about results to be obtained. In some countries -India and Africa for example -- the Ismailis have a council system, under which their local councilors are charged with all internal administrative responsibility, and report to me what they have done. In Syria, Central Asia and Iran, leadership, as I have said, is vested in hereditary recommended leaders and chiefs, who are the Imam's representatives and who looks after the administration of the various Jamats, or congregations.

From all parts of the Ismaili world with which regular contact is politically possible a constant flow of communications and reports comes to me. Attending to these, answering them, giving my solutions of specific problems presented to me, discharging my duties as hereditary Imam of this far-scattered religious community and association -- such is my working life, and so it has been since I was a boy.

Much of the work of the Ismaili councils and of the Imam's representatives nowadays is purely social, and is concerned with the proper contractual arrangement of matters such as marriage and divorce. On this subject I should perhaps say that nowhere in the world where Ismailis are now settled is there any persecution of them or interference with their faith and customs except if and when the general laws of the country are contrary to institutions, such as plurality of wives. It is generally overlooked that among Ismailis no one can take a second wife or divorce his first wife for a whim or -- as is sometimes falsely imagined in the West -- some frivolous or erratic pretext. There are usually, to our way of thinking, some very good reasons for either action. To beget children is a very proper need and desire in every marriage; if after many years of married life there is still no issue, often a wife herself longs to see her home brightened by the presence of children with all the laughter, hope, joy and deep contentment that they bring with them. In other instances there is so profound a difference of character that a divorce is found to be the best solution for the happiness of both parties. But in every case -- whether a second wife is taken or a divorce is granted -- the various councils or (where there are no councils) the representatives of the Imam have an absolute duty to safeguard the interests of the wife; if a second wife is taken, it is a matter of seeing that full financial protection is assured to the first wife, or if there is a divorce, of seeing that there is a generous, adequate and seemly monetary settlement. It is important that it should be realized among non-Muslims that the Islamic view of the institution of marriage -- and of all that relates to it, divorce, plurality of wives and so on -- is a question solely of contract, of consent and of definite and mutually accepted responsibilities. The sacramental concept of marriage is not Islam's; therefore except indirectly there is no question of its religious significance, and there is no religious ceremony to invest it with the solemnity and the symbolism which appertain to marriage in other religions, like Christianity and Hinduism. It is exactly analogous to -- in the West -- an entirely civil and secular marriage in a registry office or before a judge. Prayers of course can be offered -- prayers for happiness, prosperity and good health -- but there can be no religious ritual beyond these, and they indeed are solely a matter of personal choice. There is therefore no kind of marriage in Islam, or among the Ismallis, except the marriage of mutual consent and mutual understanding. And as I have indicated, much of the work of the Ismaili councils and of the Imam's representatives in all our Ismaili communities is to see that marriages are properly registered and to ensure that divorce, though not a sin, is so executed that the interests of neither party suffer from it, that as much protection as possible is given to women, and most of all that the maintenance of young children is safeguarded.

The past seventy years have witnessed steady, stable progress on the part of the Ismailis wherever they have settled. Under the Ottoman Empire, in the reign of Abdul Hamid, there was a considerable degree of persecution. A minority, like several other minorities in his empire, they suffered hardship, and many of their leaders endured imprisonment in the latter years of his despotic rule. With the Young Turk revolution, however, the period of persecution ended. And now, in spite of all the vast political shifts and changes which the world has undergone, I think it may reasonably be claimed that the lot of the Ismailis in general throughout the world is a fairly satisfactory one; wherever they are settled their communities compose a happy, self-respecting, law-abiding and industrious element in society.

What has been my own policy with my followers? Our religion is our religion, you either believe in it or you do not. You can leave a faith but you cannot, if you do not accept its tenets, remain within it and claim to "reform" it. You can abandon those tenets, but you cannot try to change them and still protest that you belong to the particular sect that holds them. Many people have left the Ismaili faith, just as others have joined it throughout the ages. About a score of people out of many millions -- a small group in Karachi and in India -- pretended to be Ismailis but called themselves "reformers." The true Ismailis immediately excommunicated them. There has never been any question of changing the Ismaili faith; that faith has remained the same and must remain the same. Those who have not believed in it have rightly left it; we bear them no ill-will and respect them for their sincerity.

What about political guidance? It has been the practice of my ancestors, to which I have strictly adhered, always to advise Ismailis to be absolutely loyal and devoted subjects of the State -- whatever its constitution, monarchical or republican -- of which they are citizens. Neither my ancestors nor I have ever tried to influence our followers one way or another, but we have told them that the constituted legal authority of any country in which they abide must have their full and absolute loyalty. Similarly if any government approaches me and asks me for my help and my advice to its subjects, this advice is invariably -- as was my father's and my grandfather's -- that they must be loyal and law-abiding, and if they have any political grievances they must approach their government as legally constituted, and in loyalty and fidelity to it. All my teaching and my guidance for my followers has been in fulfillment of this principle: render unto God the things which are God's and to Caesar those which are Caesar's.

In matters of social reform I have tried to exert my influence and authority sensibly and progressively. I have always sought to encourage the emancipation and education of women. In my grandfather's and my father's time the Ismailis were far ahead of any other Muslim sect in the matter of the abolition of the strict veil, even in extremely conservative countries. I have absolutely abolished it; nowadays you will never find an Ismaili woman wearing the veil. Everywhere I have always encouraged girls' schools, even in regions where otherwise they were completely unknown. I say with pride that my Ismaili followers are, in this matter of social welfare, far in advance of any other Muslim sect. No doubt it is possible to find individuals equally advanced, but I am convinced that our social conditions as a body -- education for both boys and girls, marriage and domestic outlook and customs, the control over divorce, the provision for children in the event of divorce, and so forth -- are far ahead. We were pioneers in the introduction of midwifery, and long before any other Muslim community in the Middle East, we had trained nurses for childbirth. With the support and help of Lady Dufferin's nursing association in India, I was able -- at a time when normal conditions in these matters were terribly unsanitary -- to introduce a modern outlook on childbirth, with trained midwives, not only in India and Burma but in Africa and (so far as general conditions permitted) in Syria and Iraq.

In Africa, where I have been able to give active help as well as advice, we have put the finances of individuals and of the various communities on a thoroughly safe basis. We established an insurance company -- the Jubilee Insurance -- whose shares have greatly increased in value. We also set up what we called an investment trust, which is really a vast association for receiving money and then putting it out on loan, at a low rate of interest, to Ismaili traders and to people who want to buy or build their own houses.

About my own personal wealth a great deal of nonsense has been written. There must be hundreds of people in the United States with a larger capital wealth than mine; and the same is true of Europe. Perhaps not many people, in view of the incidence of taxation, even in the United States, have the control over an income that I exercise; but this control carries with it -- as an unwritten law -- the upkeep of all the various communal, social and religious institutions of my Ismaili following, and in the end only a small fraction of it -- if any -- is left for members of my family and myself.

When I read about the "millions of pounds a year" I am supposed to possess, I know only that if I had an income of that size I should be ashamed of myself. There is a great deal of truth in Andrew Carnegie's remark: "The man who dies rich, dies disgraced." I should add: The man who lives rich, lives disgraced. By "lives rich" I mean the man who lives and spends for his own pleasure at a rate and on a scale of living in excess of that customary among those called nowadays "the upper income group" in the country of which he is a citizen. I am not a communist, nor do I believe that a high standard of private life is a sin and an affront to society. I feel no flicker of shame at owning three or four cars; in India, where a great many people from outside come and go, I always have more cars for their use.

Nor am I ashamed of being the owner of a big racing stable, about which I propose to say something in a later chapter. My family, as I have indicated, have had a long, honorable and affectionate association with horsemanship in all its forms. Had I to contemplate either giving up a considerable number of horses in training or turning the stable into a paying concern, I have no doubt that by selling a considerable proportion of my stock I could turn it into a paying business any day of the week. Neither my grandfather, my father nor I have ever looked on our racing as simply a money-making matter, but as a sport which, by careful attention and thoughtful administration, could become self-supporting and a permanent source of pleasure not only for ourselves, as owners, but for thousands -- indeed for millions -- who follow our colors on the turf; and we have considered our studs and our training stables as sources of wealth for the countries in which they are maintained and of practical usefulness from the point of view of preserving and raising the standard of bloodstock.

A specific charge of extravagance against our family related to the period in which some two thousand people a day were living and feeding at our expense. These two thousand were, after all, descendants and dependents of people who had exiled themselves from Iran with my grandfather and had given up their homes and estates, and in the conditions of the time we, as heads of the Ismaili community, were responsible for their welfare and maintenance. As soon as I could, and as thoroughly as I could, I dealt with that problem, so that now their descendants are far happier and far more self-reliant than they were, and I have nothing on my conscience about the way in which I dealt with it.

I would have been a profoundly unhappy man if I had possessed one tenth of the fabulous amount of wealth which people say that I have at my disposal, for then indeed I should have felt all my life that I was carrying a dead weight -- useless alike to my family and my friends or, for that matter, to my followers. Beyond a certain point wealth and the material advantages which it brings do more harm than good, to societies as to individuals.

So far as their way of life is concerned, I have tried to vary the advice which I have given to my followers in accordance with the country or state in which they live. Thus in the British colony of East Africa I strongly urge them to make English their first language, to found their family and domestic lives along English lines and in general to adopt British and European customs -- except in the matter of alcohol and slavery to tobacco. I am convinced that living as they must in a multiracial society, the kind of social life and its organization which gives them the greatest opportunities to develop their personalities and is the most practically useful is the one which they ought to follow. On the other hand, to those who live in Burma I have given the same sort of advice -- but that they should follow a Burman way of life rather than any other. In Muslim countries like Syria, Egypt, Iraq and Iran of course there are no difficulties at all. My own family's home and social life has always followed an Iranian-Muslim pattern; this has involved no violent or radical readjustment wherever I have lived, so that the European ladies whom I have married, one after the other, have in fact easily and happily acquired an Iranian-Muslim outlook and rhythm of life.

In Africa, however, my followers faced a much more acute problem. They arrived there with Asiatic habits and an Asiatic pattern of existence, but they encountered a society in process of development which is, if anything, European-African. To have retained an Asiatic outlook in matters of language, habits and clothing would have been for them a complication and socially a dead weight of archaism in the Africa of the future. In Pakistan and modern Bharat the Ismailis are likely in the future to assume two totally different patterns of culture. In West Pakistan they will probably speak Urdu or what used to be called Hindustani, and their social habits and customs will be molded accordingly. In East Pakistan Bengali dress and language will play a major part in Ismaili life. In Bharat the languages which they will speak will probably be Gujerati and Marathi, and their outlook and way of life similarly will take on a Gujerati-Marathi shape. Yet I am certain that so long as they retain their faith the brotherhood of Islam will unite all these people of varying social outlook and patterns of behavior and will keep them together in spirit.

-31-

Part One
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

I

A Bridge Across the Years

THE TRUTH about a man as much as about a country or an institution is better than legend, myth and falsehood. I am someone about whom a whole fabric of legend has been woven in my own lifetime. Of recent years I have often been urged by editors and publishers to write my memoirs, my own account of my life and experiences, of my beliefs and opinions, and the way in which they have been molded. Friends have advised me that it is my duty to my own reputation, now and in the future, to tell the truth about myself as I see it, and to refute the falsehoods that have gained credence. Flattering this persuasion may have been, kind in intention certainly.

There are certain obvious and gross fictions which need to be corrected -- the grandiose estimates, for example, of my own and my family's wealth. I have seen estimates both of my capital and my income so inaccurate that not one but two noughts at the end should have been knocked off. Not long ago an alleged biography was published; in the matter of dates the margin of error in it was anything from one to ten years. If there is this amount of misinformation on simple, easily discoverable fact, what sort of veracity is likely in wider, more profound and more intangible matters?

My life in many ways has been a bridge across vastly differing epochs. Looking at it for the moment simply from the Western point of view -- I had a full life in the Victorian era, and I am leading now an equally full life in this new Elizabethan era. When I was a young man I sat next to Queen Victoria at a dinner party and talked to her throughout it; the other day I sat next to Queen Elizabeth II at a tea party and talked to her throughout it. In my youth the internal combustion engine was in its early, experimental phase, and the first motorcars were objects of ridicule; now we all take supersonic jet propulsion for granted, and interplanetary travel is far more seriously discussed today than was even the smallest flying venture at a time when I was quite grown up and had already lived a full and active life. I had the great honor of knowing Lord Kelvin, in his time the greatest physicist in the world; he assured me solemnly and deliberately that flying was a physical impossibility for human beings and quite unattainable. Even H. G. Wells in his early book, Anticipations, put off the conquest of the air and the discovery of atomic power for two or three centuries. Yet these and much more have come to pass in a brief half century.

During this period I have been not only an onlooker but by the accident of birth an active participant in affairs. The extent of the revolution which I have witnessed is not yet to be measured, but we can see manifestations of it at many levels of human experience. Throughout the Western world the whole way of life has undergone fundamental and far-reaching changes, perhaps the greatest of which is that the expectation of life has been increased by nearly twenty years. Old age begins for men and women in the West at anything from ten to twenty years later than it did in my youth, and in India and in the East generally a similar, though at present smaller, extension of the span can be noted. In Europe and America it is most marked. There are far, far more old men and women alive and active. Walking along a busy street like Piccadilly or any of the Paris boulevards, a man of my age sees the difference. In Europe there has been a widespread restriction of families among the upper and middle classes; the family of the nineties, with seven or eight children, has almost completely disappeared. In no European country is divorce looked upon as anything unusual; when I was young, men of the stature of Charles Dilke and Charles Stewart Parnell were driven out of public life -- Dilke not indeed because he was a "guilty party," nor even as a principal, but solely on the grounds of association with a divorce case. Today all over Europe men to whom the strictly legal term "guilty party" is applicable are to be found in the highest, most responsible positions in the state. Indeed the only penalty to which they are subject seems to be nonadmission to the Royal Enclosure at Ascot -- a privilege which, I daresay, few of them care about anyway.

The changes in the status of women, economic and social, have been enormous; fifty or sixty years ago almost the only career open to them was marriage or indirect dependence on man's protection, but today they possess the avenues of countless honorable and profitable callings, and they carry themselves with selfconfidence and self-assurance. Homosexuality was looked upon very much like leprosy. Today in most European countries either there is Freudian pity or there are excuses, and by men like André Gide and others, open justification if not glorification.

I was a grown-up man in that old world. I feel that it is therefore my duty to give an account in some detail of my experience over this long, momentous epoch, and to record my personal acquaintance -often indeed my real and deep friendship -- with some of those who have had their share in bringing about its vast political, social and economic changes.

England -- we still talked naturally of England when I was young -dwelt then in "splendid isolation," a state of affairs which stimulated a far deeper, stronger pride than did the more extreme American isolationism of the twenties and the early thirties. To that England, France was the traditional enemy and Germany the only potential friend in Europe. Only a handful of men whose thoughts converged from very different origins -- Sir Charles Dilke, imperialists like Admiral Maxse, and a few radical "Little Englanders" -- championed friendship with France and distrust of Germany.

In vast regions of the East, England's hegemony was virtually undisputed, and her Indian Empire seemed among the most solidly based and most durable of contemporary political organizations. A man like Lord Curzon -- and indeed I should say ninety-nine per cent of the British ruling class -- would have been horror-struck at the thought of the formation of an Indian Republic, or its inevitable corollary, and even more appalled by the prospect of the partition of the enormous Indian Empire and the emergence of two healthy national states each with its own historic personality. Even as late as the 1930's, when the promise of eventual Dominion status had been made, this same British ruling class permitted itself to be obsessed with the childish delusion that the Indian Empire, which their predecessors had built up, could be handed on -- like an estate after the owner's death -- to successors who would preserve the artificial unity of the structure as if it were a true unity rooted in spiritual and intellectual foundations. Even in the 1940's men like Lord Wavell and others hoped and believed that even after the British quitted India, it would be possible to maintain a united Indian Army. Other European colonial powers nourished delusions no less futile. Less than a decade ago it was seriously held in France that the three Indo-Chinese states would join, humbly and as junior partners, in a French Union of which Paris must be the head and heart.

I have seen the long revolution of Asia against European rule. In the nineties it was a cloud no bigger than a man's hand. What did it seem to amount to then? The mild little hope of a few jobs, and a few honorific titles. Today in Asia the revolution is accomplished, everywhere east of the Middle East there has been an end of European rule in fact and in name; and I have lived long enough to see the same process begin in Africa. But fortunately the western European governing classes have learned the lesson of Asia. The British in West Africa, the Belgians in the Congo and the French in their African Equatorial possessions are preparing and planning that transfer of power for which in Asia they were never prepared.

I have had my share in these changes. However, I must stress that whatever part I may have played in public affairs and in political developments in India and elsewhere, none of it has been my main task or duty. Since my childhood my chief concern, my chief responsibility, throughout the whole of my life, has been the great charge which I have inherited as Imam of the Ismaili branch of the Shia sect of Muslims. Elsewhere in this book I shall give a detailed account of what I mean by this statement. Here, however, I must only affirm that my duties in this task have always been my prime concern; in all aspects -- in a vast and varied correspondence, in the maintenance of countless links of personal and religious loyalty and affection -- they have occupied a large part of every day of my life.

As I look back, there is one memory, one piece of self-knowledge, which gives me the utmost satisfaction. I was myself personally responsible for the conversion to Islam of some thirty thousand to forty thousand caste Hindus, many of them of the upper and professional classes. They had been people without a faith, and they found a faith. Neither my father nor my grandfather had attempted a religious task of this magnitude. Its fulfillment has had one important and interesting effect: the great majority of these converts lived in what is now Pakistan; had they remained Hindu they would in all probability have been involved in and suffered by the mass displacement and all the other terrible and horrible happenings that accompanied Partition in 1947.

Everything else that I have done or striven to do, enjoyed or suffered, has been of necessity secondary. With this important reservation clearly stated, I think I can give an account of many of the other events and experiences of my life. I have tried all the years I spent in public life to do my best so far as I could. It is not possible for me to assess the success or failure of what I have tried to do; final judgment lies elsewhere.

But since I have witnessed this rapid and all-developing process of change in every domain of human interest and experience -- the technical and mechanical revolution of our time, man's developing mastery of natural forces, the recognition of the importance of the subconscious, the vast increase in longevity, the rise of new moral standards and the corresponding profound changes in outlook, and great political changes undreamed of in my youth -- I hope in these coming chapters to give some picture of each epoch as it unfolded before the eyes and in the mind and heart of one who was usually an onlooker but sometimes and actively a participant.

PREFACE

by W. Somerset Maugham

I HAVE KNOWN the Aga Khan for many years. He has been a kind and helpful friend. The introductions he gave me when I spent a winter in India enabled me to profit by the rich experience of my sojourn in that wonderful country as otherwise I could never have done, so that when he paid me the compliment of asking me to write a preface to his autobiography I was glad to be given the opportunity to do him this small, and really unnecessary, service. For the book speaks for itself. It was not till I had read it that it was borne upon me how difficult a task I was undertaking. The Aga Khan has led a full life. He has been a great traveler and there are few parts of the world that he has not visited either for pleasure or because his political and religious interests made it necessary. He has been a great theater goer; he has loved the opera and the ballet. He is an assiduous reader. He has been occupied in affairs in which the fate of nations was involved. He has bred horses and raced them. He has been on terms of close friendship with kings and princes of the blood royal, maharajahs, viceroys, field marshals, actors and actresses, trainers, golf professionals, society beauties and society entertainers. He has founded a university. As head of a widely diffused sect, the Ismailis, he has throughout his life sedulously endeavored to further the welfare, spiritual and material, of his countless followers. Toward the end of this autobiography he remarks that he has never once been bored. That alone is enough to mark the Aga Khan out as a remarkable man.

I must tell the reader at once that I am incompetent to deal with some of his multifarious activities. I know nothing of racing. I am so little interested in it that one day when I was lunching with the Aga Khan just before Tulyar won the Derby we talked only of India and I never thought of asking him whether his horse had a chance of winning. I know no more of politics than the ordinary newspaper reader. For long years the Aga Khan was intimately concerned with them. His advice was constantly sought, and it was generally sound. He believed in moderation: "Of one fact," he writes, "my years in public life have convinced me; that the value of a compromise is that it can supply a bridge across a difficult period, and later having employed it it is often possible to bring into effect the fullscale measures of reform which, originally, would have been rejected out of hand." He knew well the statesmen on whose decisions during the last fifty years great events depended. It is seldom he passes a harsh judgment on them. He pays generous tribute to their integrity, intelligence, patriotism, wide knowledge and experience. It seems strange that with these valuable qualities they should have landed us all in the sorry mess in which we now find ourselves.

The Aga Khan is a charitable man, and it goes against his grain to speak ill of others. The only occasion in this book of his on which he betrays bitterness is when he animadverts on the behavior of our countrymen in their dealings with the inhabitants of the countries in which in one way and another they held a predominant position, in Egypt and India and in the treaty ports of China. During the eighties relations between British and Indians were in general easy, amiable and without strain, and had they continued to be as they were then, "I greatly doubt,"he writes, "whether political bitterness would have developed to the extent it did, and possibly something far less total than the severance of the Republic of India from the Imperial connection would have been feasible." It is a disquieting thought. He goes on as follows: "What happened to the Englishman has been to me all my life a source of wonder and astonishment. Suddenly it seemed that his prestige as a member of an imperial, governing race would be lost if he accepted those of a different color as fundamentally his equals. The color bar was no longer thought of as a physical difference, but far more dangerously -- in the end disastrously -as an intellectual and spiritual difference.... The pernicious theory spread that all Asiatics were a second-class race, and 'white men' possessed some intrinsic and unchallengeable superiority." According to the Aga Khan the root-cause of the attitude adopted by the ruling class was fear and a lack of inner self-confidence. Another was the presence in increasing numbers of British wives with no knowledge of or interest in the customs and outlook of Indians. They were no less narrow and provincial when forty years after the time of which the Aga Khan writes I myself went to India. These women who for the most part came from modest homes in the country and, since taxation was already high, had at the most a maid of all work to do the household chores found themselves in spacious quarters, with a number of servants to do their bidding. It went to their heads. I remember having tea one day with the wife of a not very important official. In England she might have been a manicurist or a stenographer. She asked me about my travels and when I told her that I had spent most of my time in the Indian States, she said: "You know, we don't have anything more to do with Indians than we can help. One has to keep them at arm's length."

The rest of the company agreed with her.

The clubs were barred to Indians till by the influence of Lord Willingdon some were persuaded to admit them, but so far as I could see, it made little difference since even in them white and colored kept conspicuously apart.

When I was in Hyderabad the Crown Prince asked me to lunch. I had spent some time in Bombay and was then on my way to Calcutta.

"I suppose you were made an honorary member of the Club when you were in Bombay," he said, and when I told him I was, he added: "And I suppose you'll be made an honorary member of the Club at Calcutta?"

"I hope so," I answered.

"Do you know the difference between the Club at Bombay and the Club at Calcutta?" he asked me. I shook my head. "In one they don't allow either dogs or Indians; in the other they do allow dogs."

I couldn't for the life of me think what to say to that.

But it was not only in India that these unhappy conditions prevailed.

In the foreign concessions in China there was the same arrogant and hidebound colonialism and the general attitude toward the Chinese was little short of outrageous. "All the best hotels refused entry to Chinese, except in wings specially set aside for them. It was the same in restaurants. From European clubs they were totally excluded. Even in shops a Chinese customer would have to stand aside and wait to be served when a European or an American came in after him and demanded attention." Lord Cromer was the British Resident when the Aga Khan went to Egypt. He found the British were not merely in political control of the country, but assumed a social superiority which the Egyptians appeared humbly to accept. "There was no common ground of social intercourse. Therefore inevitably behind the façade of humility there developed a sullen and brooding, almost personal, resentment which later on needlessly, bitterly, poisoned the clash of Egyptian nationalism with Britain's interests as the occupying power." Now that the foreign concessions in China exist no more, now that the last British soldiers are leaving Egypt, now that, as the Aga Khan puts it, British rule in India has dissolved and passed away like early morning mist before strong sunlight, the British have left behind them a legacy of hatred. We too may ask ourselves what happened to Englishmen that caused them so to act as to arouse an antagonism which was bound in the end to have such untoward consequences. I am not satisfied with the explanation which the Aga Khan gives. I think it is to be sought rather in that hackneyed, but consistently disregarded aphorism of Lord Acton's: Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

It is no good crying over spilt milk, so the determinists tell us, and if I have dwelt on this subject it is with intention. In the world of today the Americans occupy the position which the British so long, and for all their failings not ingloriously, held. Perhaps it would be to their advantage to profit by our example and avoid making the errors that have cost us so dearly. A brown man can fire a Sten gun and shoot as straight as a white man; a yellow man can drop an atom bomb as efficiently. What does this mean but that the color bar is now a crass absurdity? The British wanted to be loved and were convinced that they were; the Americans want to be loved too, but are uneasily, distressingly, conscious that they are not. They find it hard to understand. With their boundless generosity they have poured money into the countries which two disastrous wars have reduced to poverty and it is natural that they should wish to see it spent as they think fit and not always as the recipients would like to spend it. It is true enough that the man who pays the piper calls the tune, but if it is a tune the company finds it hard to dance to, perhaps he is well-advised to do his best so to modify it that they find it easy. Doubtless it is more blessed to give than to receive, but it is also more hazardous, for you put the recipient of your bounty under an obligation and that is a condition that only the very magnanimous can accept with good will. Gratitude is not a virtue that comes easily to the human race. I do not think it can be denied that the British conferred great benefits on the peoples over which they ruled; but they humiliated them and so earned their hatred. The Americans would do well to remember it.

But enough of that. The Aga Khan is descended from the Prophet Mohammed through his daughter Fatima and is descended also from the Fatimite Caliphs of Egypt. He is justifiably proud of his illustrious ancestry. His grandfather, also known as Aga Khan, by inheritance spiritual head of the Ismailis, was a Persian nobleman, son-in-law of the powerful monarch, Fateh Ali Shah and hereditary chieftain of Kerman. Smarting under an insult that had been put upon him he took up arms against a later Shah, Mohammed by name, was worsted and forced to make his escape, attended by a few horsemen, through the deserts of Baluchistan to Sind. There he raised a troop of light horse and after various vicissitudes eventually reached Bombay with his two hundred horsemen, his relations, clients and supporters. He acquired a vast estate upon which he built palaces, innumerable smaller houses for his dependents and outbuildings, gardens and fountains. He lived in feudal state and never had less than a hundred horses in his stables. He died when the author of this book was a child and was succeeded by his son who, however, only survived him a short time, upon which the Aga Khan whom we know, at the age of eight, inherited his titles, wealth and responsibilities, spiritual and temporal. His education was conducted to prepare him for the sacred charge to which he was born. He was taught English, French, Arabic and Persian. Religious instruction was imparted to him by a renowned teacher of Islamic lore. No holidays were allowed him. The only relief from work was on Saturdays and feast days when he received his followers who came to offer gifts and do him homage.

The Aga Khan, raised to such eminence at so early an age, was fortunate in that his mother was a highly cultivated woman. She was deeply versed in Persian and Arabic poetry, as were several of her ladies in waiting, and at mealtimes at her table "our conversation was of literature, of poetry; or perhaps one of the elderly ladies who traveled to and from Teheran a great deal would talk about her experiences at the Court of the Shah." The Begum was a mystic and habitually spent a great deal of time in prayer for spiritual enlightenment and union with God. "I have, in something near ecstasy," he writes, "heard her read perhaps some verses by Roumi or Hafiz, with their exquisite analogies between man's beatific vision of the Divine and the temporal beauty and colors of flowers, the music and magic of the night, and the transient splendors of the Persian dawn." The Aga Khan is a deeply religious man. One of the most interesting chapters in this book is that in which after telling of his personal beliefs, he gives a concise exposition of Islam as it is understood and practiced today. It is there for the reader to read and I will say no more about it than that it is sympathetic and persuasive. It may be that it will occur to him that the duties of man as he may learn them from the verses of the Koran and the Traditions of the Prophet are not very different from those he may learn from the Sermon on the Mount. But man is an imperfect creature, at the mercy of his passions, and it should surprise no one that too often these duties are no more practiced by Muslim than by Christian.

The general public knows the Aga Khan chiefly as a racing man and it is not unlikely that the reader of the book, remembering pages in which he narrates his experiences as a breeder of bloodstock and the happy winner of many classical events, will be a trifle taken aback by this moving, thoughtful and sincere chapter. There is no reason why he should be. The chase was the main occupation of the Iranian nobles from which he is descended. It is part of the tradition he inherited and the environment in which he was brought up. His grandfather, his father, had hounds, hawks and horses, the swiftest and finest money could buy or they could breed. On the death of his father only twenty or thirty of the ninety race horses he had possessed were kept and they, through the Aga Khan's minority, were raced under his colors all over Western India. Racing is in his blood. But first and foremost he is the spiritual head of a sect of Islam which counts its adherents by the million. He has a secure belief in the faith which was the faith of his great ancestors and he is ever mindful of the sacred charge, with the great responsibilities it entails, which is his by right of birth. We are none of us all of a piece. The Aga Khan says somewhere that we are all composed of diverse and conflicting elements: of few men could this be more truly said than of himself. But he is fortunate in that the elements in him only superficially conflict; they are resolved by the strength and consistency of his character.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I MUST RECORD my deep and warm gratitude to my old friend, Mr. Somerset Maugham, for the foreword which he has been kind enough to write for this book, and for the agreeable and gracious observations that he has made. To Miss Merioneth Whitaker go my thanks for her invaluable skill and patience in the preparation of the manuscript, without which it would have been a far more arduous labor.

A recent portrait of His Highness the Aga Khan.

A recent portrait of Her Highness the Begum Aga Khan.

The Aga Khan's grandfather, Aga Khan I.

Aly Shah, the Aga Khan's father.

Her Highness Lady Aly Shah, mother of the Aga Khan.

The Aga Khan as a young boy.

At his installation as Imam, the Aga Khan ascends the Gadi (the seat of office) in Bombay in 1885.

The Aga Khan as a young man.

A portrait of the Aga Khan taken during the reign of George V. Created G.C.I.E. in 1902, he is shown wearing the Badge of the Order of the Indian Empire.

The Aga Khan with his younger son, Prince Sadruddin, and his two grandsons, Prince Karin Aga and Prince Amyn Mahomed.

The Aga Khan leads in Blenheim, winner of the 1930 Derby (Associated Press).

With Mahatma Gandhi and Mrs. Sarojani Naidu in London during the Round Table Conference of 1931 (Planet News).

The Aga Khan's being weighed against diamonds at his Diamond Jubilee celebration in Bombay, 1946. The diamonds are in plastic boxes on the scale (Associated Press).

With the Begum Aga Khan and Prince Sadruddin at the Diamond Jubilee celebration.