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THE 1907 TREATY AND THE CALIPHATE

GREAT BRITAIN PROMISES CONSTANTINOPLE TO RUSSIA—ARAB NATIONALISM AND THE HOLY PLACES OF ISLAM—THE HEJAZ BECOMES INDEPENDENT OF CONSTANTINOPLE—THE BRITISH CAPTURE JERUSALEM—THE CALIPHATE AGITATION IN INDIA.

The Anglo-Russian entente which had been created by the 1907 Treaty, went to work in 1914 according to plan, the Russian mill-stone grinding in from the north and the British mill-stone from the south. The moment of the Ottoman Empire's final break-up had arrived, such a moment as had never occurred before in the history of modern imperialism and is unlikely to occur again.

Early in 1915, Great Britain and Russia wrote the sequel to the 1907 Treaty in the Sazonoff agreement, negotiated in London. The British surrender continued. Under the terms of this agreement, Constantinople, the seat of the Caliphate and the political capital of Islam, was surrendered to Russia and the neutral zone in Persia (exception being made for the town of Ispahan) was added to the British zone. The agreement was necessarily kept secret. At a moment when the Government of India was exerting every effort to re-assure Indian Moslems