I think its inconvenience would more than outweigh the sentimental gratification of keeping up a phantom of the old Ottoman Empire.  But if the Indian Mahomedans want the Sultan to retain his place in Constantinople I think the assurances given officially by the Viceroy in India now binds us to insist on his remaining there and I think he will remain there in spite of America.”

This is an extract, from the letter of an Englishman enjoying a position in Great Britain, to a friend in India.  It is a typical letter, sober, honest, to the point and put in such graceful language that whilst it challenges you, it commands your respect by its very gracefulness.  But it is just this attitude based upon insufficient or false information which has ruined many a cause in the British Isles.  The superficiality, the one-sidedness the inaccuracy and often even dishonesty that have crept into modern journalism, continuously mislead honest men who want to see nothing but justice done.  Then there are always interested groups whose business it is to serve their ends by means of faul or food.  And the honest Englishman wishing to vote for justice but swayed by conflicting opinions and dominated by distorted versions, often ends by becoming an instrument of injustice.

The writer of the letter quoted above has built up convincing argument on imaginary data.  He has successfully shown that the Mahomedan case, as it has been presented to him, is a rotten case.  In India, where it is not quite easy to distort facts about the Khilafat.  English friends admit the utter justice of the Indian-Mahomedan claim.  But they plead helplessness and tell us that the Government of India and Mr. Montagu have done all it was humanly possible for them to do.  And if now the judgment goes against Islam, Indian Mahomedans should resign themselves to it.  This extraordinary state of things would not be possible except under this modern rush and preoccupations of all responsible people.

Let us for a moment examine the case as it has been imagined by the writer.  He suggests that Indian Mahomedans want Turkish rule in Arabia in spite of the opposition of the Arabs themselves, and that, if the Arabs do not want Turkish rule, the writer argues, no false religions sentiment can be permitted to interfere with self-determination of the Arabs when India herself has been pleading for that very status.  Now the fact is that the Mahomedans, as is known to everybody who has at all studied the case, have never asked for Turkish rule in Arabia in opposition to the Arabs.  On the contrary, they have said that they have no intention of resisting Arabian self-government.  All they ask for is Turkish suzerainty over Arabia which would guarantee complete self-rule for the Arabs.  They want Khalif’s control of the Holy Places of Islam.  In other words they ask for nothing more than what was guaranteed by Mr. Lloyd George and on the strength of which guarantee Mahomedan soldiers