A place better fitted for its purpose than Jof it would be hard to imagine. Here, surrounded by inhospitable desert, with wells a long day's camel-ride apart, and the route known only to experienced and loyal guides, the Senussi has been free to educate, drill, and arm his disciples, to accumulate great stores of arms and ammunition, and to push forward his propaganda of a regenerated and reinvigorated Islam, without any possibility of interference from the Christian nations. There seems to be but little doubt that factories have been erected at Jof for the assembling of weapons of precision, the materials for which have been systematically smuggled across the Mediterranean from Greece and Turkey for years past. Strange as it may sound, these factories are under the direction of skilled engineers and mechanics, for so well laid are the plans of the order that it annually sends a number of Moslem youths to be educated in the best technical schools of Europe. Upon completing their courses of instruction [Pg 102] they return to Jof, or other centres of Senussiyeh activity, to place their trained services at the disposal of the order, others being sent Europeward to be educated in their turn. The Senussiyeh's military affairs are equally well organised, the Arabs, than whom there is admittedly no finer fighting material in the world, being instructed along European lines, modified for desert warfare, by veteran drill-masters who have learned their trade in the native armies of England and France. The nucleus of this mobile and highly effective force is, so I am told by French officials in Africa, an admirably mounted and equipped camel corps of five thousand men which the Senussi keeps always on a war footing in the Kufra oases.
prove definitely that it would be no sporadic resistance, but a vast, organised movement, armed with improved weapons, trained by men who learned their business under European drill-masters, and directed by a high intelligence, with which Italy would have to reckon should she attempt the hazardous experiment of an advance in the real hinterland of Tripolitania.

Let me make it perfectly clear that the grand master of the Senussiyeh is a man of altogether exceptional ability. Under his direction the order has advanced with amazing strides, for he is a remarkable organiser and administrator, two qualities rarely found among the Arabs. The destruction of the Mahdi and of the Khalifa, and the more recent dethronement of Abdul-Hamid, resulted in bringing a large accession of force to his standard by the extinction of all religious authority [Pg 103] in Africa except his own. Though the Sultan of Turkey is, as I have said, the titular head of the Moslem religion, and is venerated as such wherever praying-rugs are spread, the chief of this militant order is undoubtedly regarded by the average Mohammedan as the most actively powerful figure, if not as the saviour, of Islam. The first Senussi was powerful enough to excommunicate the Sultan Abdul-Medjid from the order because of his intimacy with the European powers; the father of the present Khedive of Egypt was accustomed to address the second Senussi in such terms as a disciple would use to a prophet, while Abbas Hilmi II, the reigning Khedive, a few years ago journeyed across the Libyan desert to pay his respects to the present head of the order  the scene of a violent and murderous attack..

Those who are in a position to know whereof they speak believe that the Senussiyeh would actively oppose any attempt on the part of the Italians to occupy the hinterland of Tripolitania, for it is obvious that such an occupation would not alone bring the Christian in dangerous proximity to the chief stronghold of the order, but it would effectually cut off the supplies of arms and ammunition which caravans in the pay of the Senussiyeh have regularly been transporting to Jof from obscure ports on the Tripolitanian coast. It has been the policy of the Senussiyeh, supported by the Turkish administration in Tripolitania, to close the regions under its control to Christians, so it is scarcely likely that it would do other than resist an Italian penetration of the country, even in the face of a Turkish [Pg 104] evacuation. Though the order encouraged resistance to the French advance in the Sudan, considering that the extension of the French sphere of influence threatened its own prestige in those regions, it has, as a rule, refrained from displaying antagonism toward the rulers of the adjoining regions. Aside from proselytism, the Senussiyeh has performed a great work in the Sahara in the colonisation and cultivation of the oases, the encouragement of trade, the building of rest-houses, the sinking of wells, and the protection of trans-Saharan caravans.