Principles of western civilisation

vil THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE 233

plishing the complete annihilation of the latter amongst the softer peoples amongst whom it had been born into the world. Throughout Syria, into Egypt, westward throughout Northern Africa, and then northward into Spain and France, the movement was carried by the arms of its adherents in little more than a century ; the tide of conquest being only stayed at last, and finally, in the west, on the banks of the Loire, by Charles Martel in the sevenday battle of Tours in 732.

In the conditions of our modern civilisation, where the principles regulating a rule of force are often greatly misunderstood, the extreme rapidity and effectiveness with which, in certain circumstances, the future may be extinguished in the womb of the present is scarcely ever realised. There are certain simple and effective acts of war which a nation, a people, or even a civilisation cannot survive. One of these was that practised by the Mohammedan conquerors; namely, the confiscation of women. It was, as a modern writer points out,’ the institution of polygamy, based on the confiscation of the women in the vanquished countries, that permanently secured the Mohammedan rule in the countries in which it became established. For the children of the resulting unions immediately gloried in their descent from their conquering fathers, so that in North Africa, ‘‘in little more than a single generation, the khalif was informed by his officers that the tribute must cease ; for all the children born in that region were Mohammedans, and all spoke Arabic.”? In scarcely more

\ History of the Conflict between Religion and Science, by J. W. Draper, ch. ii. 2 Tbid.