Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Holy War, Made in Germany (1915).djvu/80

 Rh "The Young Turks had hoped [after the Russo-Turkish War of 1878] to put an end by their reforms just to that religious element, which made of the Sultan above everything else the Caliph, the protagonist of Islâm, and thus made impossible the normal development of the Ottoman Empire, which after all is mainly made up of Christians." And in the German translation of the above-mentioned lecture, which was delivered in Paris in 1910, the following additional passage occurs: "The Caliphate of the Sultan of Constantinople was, up to the time of the Young-Turkish revolution, the basis of Turkey's Islâm-policy. To be sure Young Turkey has not abandoned the claim to the Caliphate; but if she wishes at all to grow into a constitutional state, she will have to make as little use of it as possible.