 | CHAPTER VI The Egyptian problem |  |
CHAPTER VI
THE SECOND PHASE OF THE OCCUPATION
The first period of British control had been one of
high endeavour and great achievement. There was a
unity and vigour of direction which could be perhaps
only maintained by one who had himself shaped the
whole system and whose personal authority and experience
could to a great extent mitigate the defects arising
out of the extraordinarily anomalous conditions under
which it had grown up. With Lord Cromer's retirement
British control passed into a second and chequered
phase, of which it is far more difficult to attempt a sketch.
It is more deeply affected by cross-currents of Oriental
intrigue. There are fewer authoritative documents to
draw upon. One has to piece together the testimony
of many witnesses whose evidence cannot always be
unbiassed, and however anxious one may be to avoid
invidious reflections upon individuals in criticising a
system of which they formed part, conclusions have to
be drawn which can hardly fail to offend some personal
susceptibilities.
Lord Cromer's first two successors only held the post
for very brief terms compared with his long tenure of
office. Sir Eldon Gorst, who had spent many years in
Egypt under Lord Cromer and was practically designated
by him to be his successor, died soon after retiring in
1911 and had been a sick man for some time before he
left Cairo. When Lord Kitchener, who had succeeded
out, and he was fated never to return to Egypt. Neither
Sir Eldon Gorst nor Lord Kitchener himself, with all
his great prestige in Egypt and the Sudan and his
occasional flashes of intuition, ever filled the stage
as Lord Cromer had done. Their temperaments were
different, but both differed still more from Lord
Cromer's, and for different reasons they put a different
interpretation upon the exercise of British control.
Sir Eldon Gorst had not the authority, and Lord Kitchener,
masterful as he was, had not the capacity, or the patience,
required to exercise the same close supervision and steadying
influence over a bureaucracy which, as it grew in size,
tended to become more mechanical and to split up into
groups and cliques, often divided by personal antagonisms
and jealousies.
A great deal of useful and excellent work still continued
to be done, but, as compared with the earlier
period of the Occupation, the later period has very
few great measures of administrative policy to show.
This was perhaps inevitable, for it was no small task
merely to carry on and complete the work that was already
under way. Irrigation still remained in the forefront.
In Sir Eldon Gorst's time the great dam at Assuan was
heightened so as to bring nearly a million acres of land
lying waste in the northern Delta under cultivation,
and large drainage works to relieve waterlogged tracts
were taken in hand. Schemes for storing the waters of
the Blue and White Nile in the Sudan were prepared
under Lord Kitchener's personal direction, and he took
the keenest interest in them, not only because they
opened up prospects of an almost unlimited supply of
water to Egypt as well as the Sudan, but because he
saw what big political issues were bound up with the
permanent control from the Sudan of the Nile waters
upon which the very existence of Egypt depends. The
war delayed them, and in the shape which they finally
assumed they have provoked, partly owing to the secrecy
which would have been avoided had the example
set by Lord Cromer been followed, when he submitted
the projects for the Assuan dam to a committee composed
of the most highly qualified non-British experts, free from
all suspicion of subserviency to British interests, before
he applied to the Caisse to sanction the heavy expenditure
required from the Egyptian Government.
This is only one of the instances that have shown
the disappearance, after the Anglo-French Agreement,
of the rigid financial control exercised by the Caisse to
have been not altogether an unmixed blessing. Whilst
the prosperity of Egypt increased almost uninterruptedly
and revenue continued to expand, the Financial Adviser
no longer had to reckon with the vigilant criticism of
unfriendly foreigners, nor had he Lord Cromer's expert
eye upon him. Hence economy ceased to be a cardinal
virtue, and money was spent much more freely. During
Lord Kitchener's tenure of office, especially, the old
parsimony was maintained only in regard to education
and other things in which he took no very lively interest.
None could drive a harder bargain than Lord Kitchener
when he chose, but after Sir Paul Harvey resigned the
Financial Advisership, no one was inclined to press
financial objections to any scheme that found favour
with him. He had the soldier's eye for the importance
of communications, and to him Cairo owes, not only the
opening of many new roads and the clearing of many
open spaces, but also the construction of excellent highroads
to Alexandria and other parts of the country,
which the growth of motor traffic required. Appreciating
fully the agricultural interests of Egypt, he encouraged
also the development of light railways and the introduction
of special grain depots and cotton markets to assist
the small cultivator and protect him from fraudulent
practices. To him too belongs the credit of having
created in 1911 a special Ministry of Agriculture. The
establishment of an Agricultural Bank, which it was
extortionate village usurers, had not stopped the alarming
growth of their indebtedness. Prosperity seemed to
stimulate rather than to arrest it. Lord Kitchener took
up the question with his customary energy, and the
most important measure with which his name will remain
associated in Egypt was that known as "The Five
Feddan Law" (one feddan equals one acre roughly).
It was enacted in 1912 on the Indian analogy of the
Punjab Land Alienation Act, which was passed in order
to save the ryot of Upper India from the worst consequences
of his inexperience and improvidence. Though
hastily prepared and open to much criticism, it was a
real boon to the small peasant proprietary, as it made
it illegal in future to sell up the land or agricultural
chattels of any owner of less than five feddans. Over
a million fellaheen came into this category.
Though Lord Kitchener travelled a great deal about the
country and had through his former connection with the
Egyptian army a large circle of personal acquaintances,
to whom he was always very accessible, amongst all
classes in the rural districts as well as in Cairo, he could
not make good, even if he was conscious of it, the gradual
loss of contact between many of the most important
agencies of British control and the people, which was due
to a variety of causes. In the early days, when a small
body of British officials was engaged in planning and
carrying out great schemes of reconstruction, whether
irrigation works or readjustment of land tax or administrative
reforms, they spent the greater part of their time
moving up and down the country, living mostly in camp
and always in close contact with the people, always
ready to listen to their stories and to hear their grievances,
and the fellaheen, simple and good-natured folk on the
whole, who love to hear themselves talk, learned to
regard them as their friends. Then, as the tremendous
pressure of work subsided, and the original pioneers passed
off the stage, the system of personal co-operation was
direction and control. Bureaucratic centralisation increased,
and inspectors, younger and less experienced,
brought less enthusiasm into their work and were tempted
to grudge the time spent away from the more leisured
atmosphere of departmental headquarters and the greater
social attractions of the capital. Less careful and less
patient vigilance was brought to bear on subordinate
Egyptian officials, wretchedly ill-paid, who when left
too much to themselves were prone to relapse into the old
ways of Oriental officialdom. Though the days of
financial stringency were over, the Finance Department
could not apparently realise that it is useless to preach
honesty to men to whom you deny a living wage. At
the same time, both under Sir Eldon Gorst and Lord
Kitchener it was sometimes deemed expedient to turn
an indulgent eye on malpractices in high places, and
there is nothing that the Egyptian is more quick to note.
The people were not only less closely in touch with British
officials, but no longer ventured or were encouraged to
come forward and air their grievances. The importation
of the motor and the motor cycle widened the breach.
Officials covered greater distances, but saw less and heard
far less, for as they hurried round their districts there
was no longer the same easy access to them as in the
old days when they rode leisurely through the fields and
along the canal banks on horseback or on the humble
Egyptian donkey, and camped for the night and often
for days together outside the village.
Many Englishmen did their best to keep up the old
practices and the old traditions, but the newcomers were
numerous, and the more the number of British officials
increased, the greater was naturally the likelihood of some
amongst them being men inclined by temperament to
ride roughshod over the susceptibilities of others, and
especially when the others belonged to a different race.
Imagination is not the quality usually most conspicuous
in Englishmen, and without it there can seldom be
in seeing and making allowance for one's neighbour's
point of view. It had not been altogether a happy idea to
turn Ghezireh into a great residential quarter for British
officials in close proximity to the Sporting Club, where
the social life of the British community tended more and
more to centre round tennis and golf and polo. There
was originally no desire to exclude Egyptians from a
club which they had helped to found, but most of them
gradually dropped out when they found that their room
was preferred to their company. The question of social
relations between Englishmen and Egyptians must always
be a very difficult one, as, outside the office hours, which
bring them into close and often, but not always, friendly
contact, they have, as a rule, few interests or pursuits in
common, and Egyptian domestic institutions and the
whole Egyptian outlook where women are concerned
practically rule out any intimate intercourse in the home
circle. Many Englishmen feel strongly that so long as
they are shut out from the Egyptian home, they are
entitled to discriminate very carefully in welcoming
Egyptians to their own homes. Such intercourse as there
is between their wives and Egyptian ladies, who can
only receive them in the seclusion of the hareem, and
cannot return their visits, is apt to be very formal even
when the latter are highly educated and speak excellent
English or French, as is now not very infrequently the
case. More might doubtless be done by Englishmen and
more still by Englishwomen to bridge this social gulf,
and it might well be regarded as part of the duty of those
who hold a position in the official world to exert themselves
in that direction. Unfortunately, after Lord Cromer left
there was no lady holding the recognised position of
leader of Anglo-Egyptian society to set the example.
Egyptians maintain, and many Englishmen regretfully
admit, that during the later years of the Occupation
some British officials, even in high positions, showed
not only aloofness but often actual discourtesy in social
colleagues and subordinates as mere servants who were
there to take orders and nothing else. Grievances of this
sort are hard to probe, and the Egyptians are extraordinarily
sensitive and apt to think that offence is
meant when none is quite intended. But they could
hardly be so common and rankle so deeply had there
not been a good deal of substance in them. The resentment
was all the greater as the assumption of superiority
seemed to have coincided, generally speaking, with a
diminution of real capacity. For it happened that
just at this time the effect of creating a regular Civil
Service with a necessarily very small cadre made itself
felt in the difficulty of satisfying reasonable claims to
promotion within so narrow a field of selection. So
whilst on the one hand a considerable increase was
taking place in the total number of Englishmen employed
in relatively subordinate positions, which created great
discontent amongst the Egyptians, there was a frequent
shuffling and reshuffling of posts in the higher ranks,
and appointments even of Advisers, which gave rise to
equally adverse criticism. If, as Lord Cromer had
always insisted, we were acting as trustees for the people
of Egypt, it was our bounden duty to select men for
the discharge of the different branches of our trust who
could show at least prima facie evidence of qualification.
When all that an Egyptian could be told in justification
of the appointment of a particular Adviser to his Department
was that he would soon learn his work, the Egyptian
could well reply that Advisers were supposed to be
appointed, not to learn their job, but to teach it. The
confused cross-currents of Cairo politics were another
disturbing factor that tended to increase the friction,
always more or less unavoidable, under a system in
which both power and responsibility are ill-defined, and
the British official who is supposed only to advise is
often sorely tempted, however scrupulous he may be,
to trespass on the executive authority, usually reserved
agitators or secretly encouraged by Palace friends, the
Egyptian stood more and more on his dignity, and the
Englishman was inclined to retaliate by showing less
and less consideration for susceptibilities behind which
he suspected sheer obstruction. It must be remembered
too that the virulent campaign of insult and calumny
against British officials conducted in violent Nationalist
and anti-British papers, believed to be subsidised by the
Khedive, was not calculated to maintain an atmosphere
of sympathy and good will amongst its victims.
Sir Eldon Gorst had served for many years under
Lord Cromer in different branches of the Egyptian
administration, and though he had been back for some
little time to the Foreign Office before he returned to
Egypt as representative of the British Government, he
had an intimate acquaintance with the whole system
and the whole personnel. But for the very reason that
he had been part of it himself, he lacked enough prestige
to assert his authority effectively, and the machine had
in fact grown too unwieldy to be controlled by any one
individual. Lord Kitchener had the defects of his great
qualities. He threw himself into the work that interested
him with extraordinary energy, but he was impatient
of any contradiction, even when his contempt for details
often stood badly in need of correction. Two British
Advisers were thus driven to resign, and their places
were not taken by men who inspired the same public
confidence. He was a great hustler, but not a great
administrator, and he even more than Sir Eldon Gorst
reaped the dead-sea-fruits of the change of British policy
which at the beginning of the second phase of the Occupation
restricted the degree of British control to be
exercised over the Egyptian organs of government.
British policy had set before itself in 1907 a higher
aim than that to which Lord Cromer's mainly administrative
policy had been directed so long as there was no
other practical policy compatible with the restraints
own position in Egypt and the constant fear of international
complications. The Liberal Government,
recently returned to power in England, eagerly adopted
the suggestion, which had originated with Lord Cromer
himself, that with the end of Anglo-French rivalry we
could afford to give the Egyptian Government greater
freedom of action in matters both of policy and of administration,
even at the cost of less efficiency. Their
idea was that by relaxing British control they would
help the Egyptian people to learn for themselves the
first lessons of self-government, which some measure
of responsibility, however slight, could alone teach them.
But in effect the result was very different. For one
essential fact had been overlooked. Though the Occupation
itself was brought about by the Arabi rebellion,
the control which we then assumed into our own hands
had been only an extension of the Anglo-French control
imposed with the consent of other Powers a few years
before the Occupation in order to curb the autocratic
power of the Khediviate, which under Ismail had
plunged Egypt into financial ruin and consequent chaos.
Any relaxation of British control was therefore almost
bound to result in a revival of that autocratic power
which represented the ancient order of things in Egypt
before the Occupation, and was inevitably bound to
do so if the Khedive happened to be, as Abbas was,
a man of peculiarly autocratic temperament. It was,
however, believed or hoped in England that in any case
the representative bodies created by the Organic Statute of
1883 in accordance with Lord Dufferin's recommendations
would supply any necessary check. But they were far too
inexperienced to play a preponderating part. They were
swept off their legs by the rising tide of an extravagant
Nationalism, which the Khedive, who had no sympathy
with its democratic tendencies, covertly sought, and with
no little success, to divert into anti-British channels.
He did not mind even if the authority of his own Ministers
British inspiration. His personal authority was enhanced.
Yet Sir Eldon Gorst had lost no time in giving an
earnest of the British Government's liberal intention
by pushing on the scheme already initiated in Lord
Cromer's time for the development of local self-government
"as the best preparation and education for the
ultimate exercise of more responsible functions." The
Egyptian Provincial Councils owed their origin to the
Organic Law of 1883, and they had fulfilled their principal
duty, which was to depute from amongst their own
members representatives to the Legislative Council.
Their other opportunities of usefulness had been small.
In order to meet the most reasonable demands for reform
the property qualification was halved for those who held
higher education certificates, the official element was
reduced, and though the Mudir was to continue as
ex-officio President of his Provincial Council, the framing
of by-laws and the convocation of Council were no
longer to be left to his good will. He had henceforth
to convoke it on a requisition from one-third of the
members. Its powers were enlarged, and most of all
in regard to elementary education and trade schools,
in which the people had begun to take an active interest,
and to some extent in regard to more advanced education.
The foreign Capitulations here again hampered reform,
as they stood in the way of any general scheme of local
taxation, but some tentative financial powers were
conferred upon the Councils, who were authorised,
subject to the general control of the Ministry of Education,
to establish or take over schools and to give grants-in-aid.
They were also empowered to appoint managing committees
for schools or groups of schools and to co-opt
additional members for educational purposes.
It was a distinctly progressive measure, and after
lengthy debates in the Legislative Council effect was
given to it in a law promulgated in June, 1908. But
of the Legislative Council and the General Assembly,
who had begun to clamour for full rights of self-government.
At the same time, a violent anti-British
feeling displayed itself in the discussion, not only of
questions which they were entitled to discuss, but also
of international questions which were specifically outside
their constitutional province. Under the influence of
the Turkish revolution and the less remote inspiration
of Abdeen Palace they allowed themselves to be made so
clearly the mere tools of an organised campaign against
the Occupation that Sir Eldon Gorst was compelled to
admit that the attitude he had been instructed to take up
in 1907 had failed, and to warn the British Government
that "the policy of ruling Egypt in co-operation with
native Ministers was incompatible with that of encouraging
the development of so-called representative institutions."
Had he added "so long as the Khedive Abbas
is the head of the State," the statement would have
been unimpeachable.
Sir Eldon, however, was already a dying man, and
was very soon compelled to retire. The mere appointment
of Lord Kitchener to succeed him had an
immediately sobering effect upon all parties. As the
Sirdar of the Egyptian army and the victor of Omdurman,
he had left a great reputation behind him which his
subsequent career had further enhanced, and the Khedive
had not forgotten the unpleasant consequences to himself
that had attended his rash attempt to try a fall with
him shortly after his accession to the Khediviate. Lord
Kitchener, who had a sentimental side to him of which
the public, looking upon him only as the strong, stern
man, knew very little, was really fond of Egypt and
of the Egyptians, and especially of the fellaheen, whom
he had turned into very serviceable soldiers. Having
in former times accomplished the feat, deemed impossible
by most people, of fashioning an Egyptian army out of
such unpromising materials, he was now prepared to
political life of the Egyptian people. The relative
calm that supervened on his arrival in Cairo was more
apparent than real, but he himself believed in its reality
sufficiently to initiate a much larger measure of constistutional
reform than Sir Eldon Gorst's Provincial Councils
Bill. The Organic Law of 1913 represented a really
big advance on the Organic Law of 1883.
It did not touch the recently enlarged powers and
duties of the Provincial Councils, but it separated them
definitely from the one legislative body into which the
earlier Legislative Council and Provincial Assembly
were now merged. This new body, styled the Legislative
Assembly, consisted of a much larger proportion of
elected members (sixty-six) returned by indirect suffrage
and of a much smaller one of members (seventeen)
nominated by Government, and nominated solely for
the purpose of securing the representation of minorities
and of interests which might otherwise have been
unrepresented. It remained, however, essentially a
consultative and deliberative body, with no power
over the Executive except in restraint of any increase
of direct taxation, and to the subjects hitherto excluded
from discussion were specifically added all questions
affecting the relations between Egypt and foreign
countries, and—to meet the Khedive's wishes—the
Civil List. But the proceedings were made public, and
new or increased powers were given to the Assembly to
delay legislation, to compel Ministers to justify their
persistence in passing any legislation of which the popular
body disapproved, to initiate measures on its own
responsibility, and to elicit information and give its
opinion on all matters of administrative policy. The
Egyptian legislation of 1913 moved in many ways on
the same lines as the India Councils Act of 1909, which
carried the well-known Morley-Minto reforms into effect.
Lord Kitchener, who had shown his interest in the poorest
class of the fellaheen by the enactment of the "Five
create a moderate party out of the smaller landowning
class, which is the backbone of the country. Even the
first session, however, was not very encouraging, but
Lord Kitchener remained hopeful. He had begun to
see through Abbas II, and he realised that a great part
of the political mischief in Egypt had been due to the
revival of the autocratic power of the Khedive, whom
he himself, like his predecessor, had too long humoured.
The Khedive had played his cards with undeniable
astuteness, and for a long time circumstances had favoured
him. For he had been able at first to play off the two
sections into which the new Nationalist party was
divided against each other, and both ultimately against
us. When Lord Cromer left Egypt, one section consisted
of the more moderate representatives of the newly
educated classes and of notables and landowners who
were ready to unite with them in resisting a revival
of the old autocratic methods to which the Occupation
had set a term. To that extent they accepted British
control, though they wanted a larger share for Egyptians
in the conduct of public affairs. This section was known
as the "hasb-el-oumm" or "popular" party. The
other section, which called itself the "hasb-el-watan"
or "patriotic" party, was much more aggressive. It
was bitterly anti-British and to some extent Pan-Islamic,
and looked to Constantinople for support. Its first
leader had been Mustapha Kamel, whose mantle after
his death fell on to Mohamed Ferid. Both were men
of great eloquence and magnetism. Its organ, the
Lewa, conducted with no little ability a relentless campaign
against the Occupation. The "popular party"
had received a good deal of encouragement from Lord
Cromer, who had prevailed on the Prime Minister,
Mustapha Pasha Fehmi, whom he trusted entirely, to
take Saad Zaghlul, one of its most promising members,
into the Cabinet. Abbas II hated Zaghlul in consequence
almost as much as he had hated Mustapha Pasha
in the early days of his Khediviate "to do nothing
without consulting Lord Cromer." The year after
Lord Cromer left Egypt Mustapha Fehmi retired on the
plea of ill-health, and with him the staunchest believer
during more than thirteen years of unselfish service
in loyal co-operation in Egypt's best interests with the
British controlling power.
The Khedive had now for the first time a considerable
share in the formation of the new Cabinet. He deferred
to Sir Eldon Gorst, with perhaps Macchiavellian alacrity,
in the appointment of Butros Pasha Ghali, a Copt, who
had been Minister for Foreign Affairs in the late Cabinet,
to be Prime Minister, for to a Mahomedan people the
appointment of a Christian to the highest post in the
Government is always repugnant. He acquiesced also
in the retention of Zaghlul as Minister of Education,
and in the nomination of Ismail Pasha Sirri, an able
engineer who had served under the great pioneers of
irrigation, to be Minister of Public Works. But he got
into the very important Ministry of the Interior a man
after his own heart in Mohamed Said Pasha, who promptly
introduced the apple of discord into the Cabinet. Fifteen
months later, in February, 1910, when Butros was
murdered by a young Nationalist fanatic, it was Mohamed
Said who succeeded him in the Premiership at the
Khedive's prompting. Some other Ministers exchanged
portfolios and Zaghlul was shifted from the Ministry of
Education to that of Justice, where he was far more
certain to come some day into direct collision with
the Khedive, and in 1912 he was, in fact, driven
to resign.
The "patriotic" or extremist section of the Nationalist
party, secretly backed by the Khedive for the purpose,
had by that time killed the "popular" or more moderate
section, who had ceased under the new dispensation to
receive the British support which Lord Cromer had
encouraged them to expect. Many of its former members
bitterness of their hearts with the more advanced party,
as Zaghlul did when, after his resignation, he entered
the first Legislative Assembly elected under the new
Organic Law and was chosen by it to be its only nonofficial
Vice-President. Some among this more extreme
party were, however, like Zaghlul, anti-Khedivial rather
than anti-British, and their hostility to the Occupation
was largely due to the acquiescence of the British control
in the revival of many of the old abuses of Khedivial
autocracy—an acquiescence which they regarded as a
betrayal of the Cromer tradition and of themselves.
Meanwhile the "patriotic" section of the Nationalist
party had itself been broken up into two factions. For
when once it had fulfilled the main purpose for which it
had been originally favoured by Abbas and destroyed the
"popular" party, it lost its chief usefulness in the eyes
of the Khedive, who began in turn to be alarmed at the
very intimate relations entertained by some of its members
with the most advanced wing of the "Young Turk"
Committee of Union and Progress. A crisis had already
occurred in 1911, when some of the Egyptian extremists
had to fly to Constantinople, whilst others saved themselves
by making their submission to the Khedive and
forming a new "Khedivial" group of their own.
The time was bound to come when even such a master
of Oriental intrigue as Abbas would show his hand too
clearly and too often not to exhaust even Lord Kitchener's
somewhat cynical tolerance. He skated for years on
very thin ice with undeniable adroitness. He felt his
way at first cautiously. He had a real personal regard
for Sir Eldon Gorst, who had been always inclined to
indulge him as a spoilt child since the time of his accession
to the Khediviate, and on more than one occasion he
showed himself willing to listen to a personal appeal
from Sir Eldon to redress some particular act of gross
injustice. One of the very few acts of unselfish kindliness
which stand to Abbas's credit was the visit which he
Cromer nevertheless has told us that from conversations
he himself had with Sir Eldon shortly before his death
"his honeymoon with the Khedive" had approached its
close before he left Cairo. It was part of the tragedy
of his premature death that time was not allowed him
to undo the mischievous results of a policy for which
he was not primarily responsible, as it had been imposed
upon him from home under a curious misconception
of its almost inevitable consequences. Abbas, who
could be extremely plausible and even agreeable
when he liked, put on his best manners when Lord
Kitchener first arrived, and Lord Kitchener was himself
at pains to show the Khedive that he bore him no malice
for their former differences. So for some time, just as
he made light of the extremists' plots against his own
life, Lord Kitchener continued to treat the intrigues
of the Khedive and of his creatures with a somewhat
contemptuous indifference so long as any vital British
interests or the particular spheres of Egyptian administration
in which he himself took a special interest were
not seriously affected. When they were, as, for instance,
when he discovered that the Khedive proposed to sell
the Mariut railway, constructed mainly for the development
of one of his own estates, to the Banco di Roma,
acting, it was believed, on German account, he did not
hesitate to put his foot down very heavily.
One of the most ill-advised concessions made to Abbas
was to leave him complete discretion in the bestowal
of titles and decorations. He trafficked in them un-blushingly,
selling them for money down or conferring
them upon his obsequious tools. He quite openly
professed a far greater admiration for his grandfather,
the Khedive Ismail, whose misrule had brought Egypt
to ruin, than for his far more respectable father the
Khedive Tewfik, who never forgot what his dynasty
owed to the British occupation and never refused his
loyal co-operation to the British controlling power.
astute and very grasping man of business, and he ran
his large estates himself and distinctly for profit. He
was quick to seize any opportunity of making money.
For instance, Lord Kitchener having on one occasion
dropped a hint to him that he ought to visit the provinces
more often, so as to show himself to his subjects, he
promptly let it be known, through suitable channels,
that he was about to make a progress through the country
and would do the chief notables and landowners the
honour of a visit to their estates if they made it worth
his while. He came back to Cairo some £40,000 to the
good. The malversation of funds in the Wakf Department
which administered under the Khedive's sole
control the very large trust funds placed under the
illusory protection of Mahomedan Pious Foundations
became such a crying scandal that Lord Kitchener had
to insist in 1913 on a revival of a separate Ministry to
take charge of that department, as had been the practice
in former times. Covetous as he was, Abbas always
professed to be in financial straits, and doubtless
much of his wealth went to provide the sinews of
the underground war he was ceaselessly waging against
the British in Cairo, in Constantinople, and elsewhere.
Though he was almost universally hated, for he was
capable of the pettiest meanness and cruelty, he was
a power in the land, for he was feared.
The first session of the new Legislative Council elected
under the Organic Statute of 1913 was a great disappointment
to Lord Kitchener. The elections themselves
had passed off quietly and the results on the face of them
had seemed to justify his expectations. A large majority
consisted of respectable landowners personally known
to the voters, and carpet-baggers met with scant success.
With Saad Zaghlul, who had several years' experience
of Ministerial responsibility, and another distinguished
lawyer, Abdul Aziz Bey Fehmi, to play the part of
legitimate opposition, there seemed some reason to hope
spirit displayed by the old Legislative Council and General
Assembly. In the last of his annual Reports from
Cairo for the year 1913, Lord Kitchener wrote that the
success of the recent constitutional reform would depend
upon one factor and one only, namely, the spirit in which
it was carried out. If the new Assembly co-operated
loyally and earnestly with the Government for the good
of the people of Egypt, it would mark an important
step along the path of true progress. "If, on the other
hand, outside influence and foolish counsels prevail, and
the Assembly indulges in unjustified hostility, unseemly
bickering, and futile attempts to extend its own personal
importance, . . . not only will it destroy itself, but it
will convince all reasonable men that Egypt is not for
the present fitted for those representative institutions
which are now on their trial."
Unfortunately, when the new Assembly met, it was
the "outside influence and foolish counsels" which
Lord Kitchener had deprecated that once more prevailed.
The preliminary question of the Standing Orders engrossed
most of its attention and time, and served as a
pretext for interminable and angry discussions which
betrayed the bitter antagonism between the Prime
Minister and Zaghlul. The latter carried the Assembly
with him, but he showed then, as he was to show afterwards
as leader of the Party of Independence, that with
all his forensic ability he lacked the qualities of judgment
and discrimination between essentials and non-essentials
that are required of a statesman. Abdul Aziz Bey
Fehmi failed for much the same reasons. The first
part of the session was barren of any useful or important
legislation. But if it did little credit to the Assembly,
it entirely discredited the Prime Minister, who had himself
outlived the Khedive's favour. For Mohamed Said
had already had more than one hint that Lord Kitchener's
attitude towards Abbas was stiffening, and the counsels
of discretion which he began to urge on his august master
gained nothing by the change, as it was Hussein Rushdi
Pasha who succeeded him and remained Prime Minister
throughout the war, after as well as before Abbas was
deposed.
Lord Kitchener realised, not for the first time, where
the real source of mischief lay. It was hopeless to reform
the Khedive, and so long as he occupied the dominant
position which he had steadily regained during the
second phase of the Occupation at our expense as well
as at the expense of his own people, there could be no
real progress, but only retrogression in the very task
which British policy had assigned to itself in relaxing
British control. Not under such a ruler as Abbas could
the Egyptians ever have a chance of learning even the
elements of self-government. His religion sat light
upon him, but he was quite ready to mobilise for his
own ends the forces of Mahomedan fanaticism, and
not the least of his achievements was to manœuvre
himself under the guise of a reformer into a position of
supreme authority over the ulemas and grand ulemas
of the University of El Azhar before whose fetwas the
rulers of Egypt had in olden times trembled. With
all the despotic instincts of an Abdul Hamid, whom
he courted as long as he reigned in Constantinople, he
was just as ready to come to terms with the Committee
of Union and Progress after the Turkish revolution.
A Turk at heart, imbued with the contempt so common
amongst all Turco-Egyptians for the fellaheen, as they
are apt to call all who are of unmixed Egyptian descent,
he contrived to rob Egyptian Nationalism of its best
elements by instilling into it an anti-foreign and more
specifically anti-British virus. Brought up in Vienna
to despise Parliamentary institutions and to believe in
the divine right of kings and Khedives, he succeeded
in perverting the immature representative bodies we
had called into existence in Egypt, and lest they should
grow to be a check upon his own arbitrary tendencies, he
denunciation of the British controlling power, that
alone stood between them and the revival of the old
methods of Khedivial misrule from which Egypt had been
rescued by British intervention.
So when Lord Kitchener left Cairo for England in the
early summer of 1914 he went home determined to get
the Khedive's claws effectively clipped, and, should he
prove recalcitrant, to face the necessity of removing
him. The war brought Lord Kitchener's great career to
a tragic close, and Abbas made an end of himself as
Khedive by throwing off the mask he had so long and
too successfully worn and siding openly with our enemies
when the war broke out. But the mischief he had done
remained, and if for reasons inherent to the system
itself, or from the general tendency of a bureaucracy to
supineness and self-satisfied arrogance, the second phase
of the Occupation was marked by an appreciable deterioration
in the quality of British control, it was the
sinister influence of the Khedive Abbas that more than
anything else cast a blight upon it.
The Great War came and found the machine ill-prepared
for the tremendous strain that was to be put
upon it. As long as the war lasted martial law supplied
a driving power which, however baneful were the aftereffects,
kept it going under the highest conceivable
pressure. It was not till the war was over that it plainly
displayed internal signs of collapse.
| CHAPTER VI The Egyptian problem | |