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RELIGION

translated edition of the Koran, with a short life of Mohammed. This will give more insight into the religious side of Arab life than endless treatises on the matter. And it would be a good thing if more of our soldiers who come into contact with the Moslems all over the British Empire were more acquainted with these details. At first the French did not grasp the significanceof Islam in their North African territories; now that they have, they use it to advantage, and they give absolute liberty on these questions to their subjects. Even the orders of the White Fathers and the White Sisters do nothing to try to convert the Arab. They realize the little good it would do and the general hostility it would create. They therefore set a good example, teach the boys and girls how to work and lead a clean life, and, if one or two lean toward Christianity, they help them; but it is rare, very rare to find converts. The Arab dislikes domination, but he realizes the advantages brought by a civilized race who give him roads, laws, railways, commerce; yet he will not tolerate his private life or religion being encroached upon, and if this liberty is granted him he will accept all the rest. Unfortunately there are missionaries, I hastily add well-meaning missionaries, chiefly from England, who have settled in North Africa, as they have in other Moslem countries, in order to convert the natives. They are too few to do any real harm, but they are wasting their time and their money on people who consider that their own religion is far superior to any other and who see no necessity to change it—a religion which preact es charity and which carries it out, for it is by the rich that the poor live. "After all," said an Arab chief one day, "our

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