University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XI

PASSIVE REBELLION

When the storm burst in Egypt, Sir Reginald Wingate
(who was still High Commissioner, though he never
returned to Cairo) was in England, having left Sir Milne
Cheetham in charge of the Residency, and whilst it
was raging at its worst, General Allenby, who had been
summoned over by the British Plenipotentiaries to the
Peace Conference in his capacity of Commander-in-Chief
in Egypt and Syria, was in Paris. As the news grew from
day to day more ominous, British Ministers had at last
to admit that there was an Egyptian question, and that
they were face to face, not with a mere frothy agitation
to be put down by the deportation of a few leaders, but
with a widespread and indeed national upheaval throughout
the country. Never having had any policy and still
too busy with other matters to conceive one, they no
doubt thought themselves fortunate in having ready at
hand a "strong man" who would tide them over the
crisis. General Allenby was sent straight back to Cairo,
having spent only two days in Paris, as Special High
Commissioner. In the curious phraseology of his instructions,
he was "directed to exercise supreme authority in
all matters military and civil, to take all such measures
as he considers necessary and expedient to restore law
and order, and to administrate in all matters as required
by the necessity of maintaining the King's Protectorate
over Egypt on a secure and equitable basis."

The appointment, though announced in London on
March 22nd, was not announced in Egypt till the day
of General Allenby's return to Cairo, March 25th.
By that time the storm was already abating throughout
the Delta, and even in Upper Egypt the worst was over.
In the capital itself the public peace had not been seriously
disturbed since the riotous demonstrations which had
set the fiery ball rolling in the early part of the month,
and whilst there was still an underswell of dangerous
agitation, there was a distinct lull on the surface. The
most serious symptom was the continuance of a veritable
epidemic of strikes. Some of these strikes may have
originally had some economic justification or excuse.
But they were now clearly being promoted or engineered
by political agitators. Not only railwaymen and tramway-men,
but even the Cairo scavengers and road waterers
were more or less continuously on strike, and whenever
they were induced by fairly liberal concessions to return
to work for a few days, they at once began to threaten to
go out on strike again. The schoolboys and students
were perpetually deserting their class-rooms in order
to demonstrate their patriotism in the streets, and to
these noisy demonstrations they also applied the quite
inappropriate name of strikes.

The lawyers had been the first to set a mischievous
example by remaining away from the Law Courts as
a protest against the deportation of the four Pashas.
It was believed, however, that they could not go indefinitely
on strike without breaking the rules of their profession.
But they found a way round that difficulty
by causing their names to be transferred from the list of
practising to that of inscribed but non-practising lawyers.
Even then it was hoped that they would absent themselves
only for a short time by way of recording their
displeasure, and then resume their duties. Such was
perhaps originally their intention. But their attitude
merely stiffened when the Government, faced with a
paralysis of justice, stepped in and instructed the Law

Courts that all cases had to be proceeded with as usual
and that none were to be adjourned without legally valid
reasons being produced. It was an obviously proper
step. The barristers nevertheless took it as a slight on
their dignity. They held a meeting, two meetings, ten
meetings, and after much debate they decided to send
a protest to the Ministry of Justice. It was difficult to
believe that a body of men, all of them intelligent and
educated above the average of their countrymen, and
who prided themselves on representing not only a very
responsible profession but the intellectual élite of Egypt,
could regard it as a patriotic duty to paralyse the administration
of justice, which it was their special function to
aid. But they persisted in doing so.

Worst of all was the spread of this strike contagion
amongst Government officials. Only a few of them,
mostly from the Ministry of Public Works, had at first
stayed away from their offices, and only for a day, as a
manifestation of their sympathy with Zaghlul. The
majority remained at their posts during the worst part
of the disturbances, though they showed signs of increasing
unrest, and it was not till the very day of General Allenby's
arrival from Paris that things assumed a much more
serious aspect with the formation of a Special Committee
of officials, some of them of very high rank, who took it
upon themselves to examine the position of public servants
"with regard to the existing situation" and to decide on
any course which might be found necessary "in the
interests of the country." The Under-Secretary of State
for Public Works played a particularly prominent part
in this movement, and the significance of such a self-constituted
body assuming such functions under such
auspices was unmistakable. It was nothing less than
a threat of passive rebellion at the headquarters of
Government, and General Allenby had to meet it at the
same time as he had to complete the repression of active
rebellion in the provinces.

Military operations continued and the rigour of martial

law could not be relaxed. But General Allenby lost
no time in seeking contact with whatever law-abiding
elements there might yet be in the country. Egypt
was still without a Government, and as there were no
Ministers whom he could consult, he invited a number of
Egyptian notables to the Residency the day after his
arrival, and he informed them, according to his instructions,
that his threefold object was, first, to restore order,
secondly, to inquire into the causes of discontent, and
thirdly, to redress justifiable grievances. He added
that it was their duty to help him in the restoration
of order and they ought to trust him to work for the
redress of grievances and the welfare of the country.
Meanwhile he appealed to them warmly to co-operate
with him in calming the "passions now let loose."

The immediate results seemed promising. A circular
was issued on the following day by some fifty of the
most influential personages in Egypt, including the
Rector of El Azhar, the Grand Mufti, the Coptic Patriarch,
nine ex-Ministers, and other Moslem and Coptic notables,
and it was circulated at once all over the country. It
was in the form of an appeal to the Egyptian nation to
return to peace and order, and was drafted in such a
way as to lay special stress, not only on the wickedness,
but also on the uselessness of acts of violence. The appeal
read like that of men who were in earnest and who
genuinely desired to put an end to a state of anarchy.
How much effect it may have actually had it is not
easy to say, nor whether all were equally in sympathy
with the document to which they affixed their names,
for order was already being fast re-established manu
militari.

On March 31st the High Commissioner was in a position
to announce that he was "glad to see that disturbances,
outrages, and the destruction of property have largely
subsided. . . . He thinks the time has come when
responsible Egyptians with the interest of their country
at heart should submit to him a statement showing

what steps they consider necessary to restore tranquillity
and content."

This announcement was the result of consultations
with two groups of leading Egyptians who had called
on him that morning, one consisting of all the Ministers
in the late Cabinet, and the other of the members of
the Cairo Committee of Independence. General Allenby
urged on both groups the necessity of arriving at some
understanding with a view to the formation of a new
Cabinet. He met with some response. The ex-Ministers
were willing to resume office, for they felt that things could
not be expected to improve so long as administrative chaos
prevailed. But their way must at least be smoothed
by the release of the interned Four, an essential prelude
to the return of normal conditions. The same view was
put forward still more emphatically by the members of
the Committee of Independence. Ex-Ministers and Committeemen
were ready to give a solemn undertaking
that on those conditions they would work towards the
restoration of good will, reserving the solution of the
larger problems of future policy until passions had calmed
down. Only the release of Zaghlul and his companions
was to be the first step. General Allenby himself was by
this time quite convinced that he could not hope for
the co-operation of any Egyptian Cabinet until the
measure which had immediately provoked the upheaval
was repealed. He promised to communicate the views
expressed to him to His Majesty's Government, and he
presumably gave them his own strong support. For on
April 7th a Proclamation appeared in which General
Allenby announced "in agreement with H.H. the Sultan"
that there were "no restrictions on freedom to travel"
and that the four deportees to Malta would "be released
from internment and given similar freedom of movement."
On the following day Hussein Rushdi Pasha, as Prime
Minister, and most of his former colleages resumed
office. The few changes in the composition of the new
Cabinet were unimportant.

The immediate effect was like a wonderful transformation
scene. Only a few days before there had been
fresh rioting in Cairo, and on the 3rd a great demonstration
which was to have ushered in a big strike of officials
ended in an ugly affray in Abdeen Square when the mob
set fire to a house from which an Armenian was believed
to have fired a fatal shot at the crowd. British troops
had to use their rifles, and nine rioters were killed and
sixty wounded. Now the streets of Cairo surged with
delirious crowds as drunk with joy as they had been
a week before with fury. Throughout the whole of Egypt
the news that Zaghlul and his three colleagues had been
released and were free to proceed from Malta to Paris
was greeted as a great national triumph. With the
consent of both Egyptian and British authorities, public
demonstrations were held and went off everywhere at
first quite peacefully. But in Cairo there were still very
mischievous forces at work. It may be that they represented
merely a small minority whom even the Committee
of Independence could no longer really control—hot-headed
students, fanatics from El Azhar, with a sprinkling
of disgruntled lawyers, discharged officials, and disappointed
candidates for Government appointments,
and behind them a residuum of reckless spirits who did
not want peace and who had fled back to Cairo when the
provincial risings were repressed. There were those
amongst them who believed that though they had failed
to organise resistance to mobile columns and aeroplanes,
they could still defeat General Allenby's endeavour to
effect a real reconciliation by a campaign of underground
intimidation. They were thoroughly familiar
with all the arts of social terrorism so powerful in Oriental
countries, and they knew exactly how to work on the
weaknesses of their fellow-countrymen, and especially
on their innate credulity and timidity, if once they
were possessed by the vague dread of some unknown and
unseen danger. Hence the power of the "Black Hand"
and other mysterious societies which, if they had no very

substantial existence, were at any rate names to conjure
with.

The influence of all these desperate elements quickly
changed the temper of the Cairene crowds. On April 7th
they had paraded the streets waving flags and branches
stripped off the trees. Even the Sultan was, for the
first and so far for the last time, acclaimed in his palace
at Abdeen. Rushdi Pasha, who had not then actually
resumed office, was recognised and effusively embraced
by a group of excited Effendis. Zaghlul's house was,
of course, the chief centre of popular enthusiasm, but all
the foreign Consulates were visited in turn and shouts
raised for the Allied Powers, even sometimes for the
English. But two days later collisions with the military
began again. A British colonel was severely wounded
and two British soldiers were beaten to death in Abdeen
Square. Some incidents probably originated in unfortunate
misunderstandings, but in most cases the crowd
wantonly attacked isolated Englishmen, and between
April 9th and 11th four officers were wounded and eight
soldiers killed and fifteen wounded. Nor was it only
against the British that the mob let themselves go.
The Armenian who had fired or was supposed to have
fired on the crowd on April 3rd had escaped. This
had rankled, and, as reprisal, seven Armenians were
killed in unpatrolled quarters of the town before any
troops could come to their rescue. The Armenian community
was panic-stricken and whole families had to be
shifted into safer quarters both in Cairo and in Alexandria,
where there was also an angry hunt for unfortunate
Armenians.

In spite of all these ugly incidents, the troops, judiciously
handled, succeeded in checking any further
outbreaks of wholesale violence, and order was once
more restored in the streets of Cairo. In the provinces
the active rebellion was practically over. But strikes
and incitements to strike continued. The Strike
Committees clearly took their orders direct from political

wirepullers. Picketing assumed the form of open intimidation.
The wretched scavengers who wanted to resume
work were driven off by these pickets, and convicts had
to be mobilised who, under guard of British soldiers,
swept the streets as best they knew. The postal sorters
and distributors, also under threats from picketers,
had to shut their doors and windows, and for a whole
week no postman dared come out with a satchel. Tram-waymen,
after fitful spells of strike and service, resumed
their occupation escorted by British soldiers. The
extremists retorted by vitriol-throwing, which had been
first used against strike-breakers on the railways. Several
cases were reported on April 12th against both tramway-men
and quiet shopkeepers who had refused to put up
their shutters as a political demonstration; eleven more
on the 14th; four more on the 15th. On the 16th a
notice under martial law appeared stating that the
penalty for vitriol-throwing was to be death. The
notice was effective, and vitriol-throwing ceased. A
force styling itself the National Police sprang into existence,
ostensibly to help in the preservation of order,
in reality to extend the operations of the terrorists.
It had its own badge, its own officers, its own organisation,
until General Allenby ordered its suppression under
martial law. More difficult to reach was an undercurrent
of agitation kept up by secret leaflets, lampoons, and
unlicensed newspapers, published "without the authority
of His Excellency the Censor," in which extravagant
abuse, sometimes facetious and sometimes obscene, was
lavished on the Sultan, the Ministers, the non-strikers,
and all "traitors" in general, a term of opprobrium
used to cover all law-abiding people.

The students and schoolboys were as deaf to the
entreaties of many of their parents as to the admonitions
of the Ministry of Education, and they continued to
subordinate their love of work to the love of their country
which required them to remain patriotically idle. Some
of them were ripe for any mischief. Others were naïvely

convinced that they were making history. An English
teacher who remonstrated with one of his best pupils
was solemnly asked by him in a phrase that had evidently
been carefully rehearsed: "But really do you not
think our Egyptian revolution is more glorious than
that of France?" The members of the Egyptian Bar
took equally little notice of a Proclamation issued under
Martial Law dispensing with the presence of advocates
and empowering the Courts to determine all matters within
their jurisdiction and to raise of their own motion a
legal plea benefiting any party; while any party to the
suit, criminal or otherwise, could be represented by
any person appointed for the purpose. Under that
Proclamation the Law Courts were enabled in theory
at least to resume work, but the lawyers knew how to
make it in practice a dead letter.

Most extraordinary of all was the pretext seized upon
by the malcontents amongst the Government officials
to carry the doubters with them and bring off the strike
which they not unnaturally regarded as their trump-card.
News reached Cairo of a statement made by Lord
Curzon in the House of Lords that "one gratifying
feature of these deplorable occurrences in Egypt has been
the behaviour of many of the Egyptian officials and of
the army and police. These last have behaved especially
well." This statement was in accordance with fact,
and was if anything an understatement. The Special
Committee of Officials did not dispute its accuracy, but
they took exception to their action being looked upon
as "a gratifying feature." If they had stuck to their
work, it was only, they declared, because they had
thought it was their duty to do so, and not at all because
they did not share in the general sentiment of the
country, still less by remaining at their posts had they
intended to imply any opposition to or disapproval of
it. A pronouncement to this effect was drafted by the
Special Committee and presented to the Sultan on
April 1st, together with an intimation that they proposed to

go on strike for two days as a protest against Lord Curzon's
praise.

Accordingly, on April 3rd all the native officials remained
away from their offices. In some departments,
including the State Telegraphs, the strike had been already
started the day before owing to a misunderstanding.
The grand demonstration arranged for the same day to
lend greater emphasis to the strike of officials had ended
disastrously in the big riot in Abdeen Square. The
next day being a Friday and the Mahomedan day
of rest was, according to the usual custom in Egypt,
a holiday in all Government offices. On Saturday
the strike was supposed to end and a great number
resumed work, mostly, however, those who had been
reluctant to go on strike at all. But the majority
still remained away. On Sunday the Special Committee
met and a compromise was arrived at. It was agreed in
principle that work should be resumed, but that once
a week—every Monday—officials were to absent themselves
as a formal protest "until the wishes of the nation
were fulfilled." This was greeted as a triumph for the
moderates, but it was anyhow of short-lived duration, for
the Extremists made the very fulfilment of "the wishes
of the nation," which was to put an end to all idea of a
strike, a new excuse for prolonging it. As soon as the
news of the release of the four Pashas arrived on the
Monday (April 7th), the Extremists prevailed on the
officials to desert their posts again in order to take part
in the national rejoicings over that auspicious event,
and before the rejoicings were over, they persuaded them
to remain away until they obtained "satisfactory pledges"
from the new Cabinet which was at last being formed.
Rushdi Pasha took office on April 9th, and he at once
gave an interview in the native Press in which he warmly
urged the people and the officials to return to their
normal occupations. As far as the officials were concerned,
this did not have the desired effect. On the
contrary, their demand for "pledges" had by that time

developed into a demand for definite guarantees before
they would return to work. The principal conditions
set forth in their ultimatum were:—

The new Prime Minister and his colleagues showed
even under this provocation the most exemplary forbearance.
They entered daily into interminable discussions
with the Special Committee of Officials. No
Government could possibly accept such conditions at the
hands of its own servants, and Rushdi told them so.
They raised issues which could not be settled off-hand,
and which it was not within the power of Egyptian
Ministers to settle. But he went on arguing with his
mutinous subordinates, held up to them the example
which Ministers themselves had set by agreeing to return
to work, and entreated them to do likewise and to leave
larger political questions over for subsequent decision.
For three whole days the Cabinet sat almost continuously,
sometimes until midnight, and they interviewed the
official strikers jointly and separately. It was a nauseating
spectacle, said an eye-witness, to watch these interviews
between harassed Ministers and a crowd of loud-voiced
and hectoring Effendis, whose arrogance grew
from day to day. Some of the saner members of the
Special Committee themselves took fright. They felt
that the movement was getting beyond their control too,
and they offered to support Rushdi Pasha if he issued
another appeal, addressed, however, not merely to the
officials, but to other strikers too, calling upon them
to return to work. This appeal was issued on April 13th,

but it merely spurred the agitators to further efforts.
They denounced not only the Ministers but with even
more vehemence the "traitors" with whose disgraceful
concurrence it had been issued, and forced the dissolution
of the Special Committee, which was replaced by another
and larger body who repudiated the appeal and decreed
a strike à outrance. The Government retorted by yet
another appeal (April 15th) curtly enjoining upon
officials to return to work forthwith. In support of it
a Notice under Martial Law was published the next
day, stating that "a campaign of intimidation having
been carried on against Government servants and others,
the Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian Expeditionary
Force has given orders for the arrest of all persons
detected in such activities."

But the recalcitrant officials snapped their fingers
at appeals and warnings. They remained on strike,
not to enforce any service grievances, but in order to
dictate by disorderly threats the whole policy of the
Egyptian Government. The Prime Minister, driven to
despair, resigned on April 21st. The Cabinet had lived
for just twelve troublous days. General Allenby, once
more left solely responsible for carrying on the affairs
of the country, was compelled to take action. He had
held his hand as long as there was any chance of Egyptian
Ministers showing that they were once more able to
govern. But they had failed, and the country could not
go on indefinitely, not only without a government, but
without an administration. The strike of Government
officials had not, it is true, spread to the provinces, and
barely even to Alexandria, which is the second most
important administrative centre in Egypt. But Cairo
is the seat of administration, and for nearly six weeks
the work of every public department upon which the
administration of the country depended had been thrown
into utter confusion, and whilst the great majority of
Egyptian officials, even when not actually on strike,
were engrossed in strike talk and strike schemes, the

British Advisers and their British subordinates had
carried on as best they could with the help of the few
Egyptians who had the courage to stick to their posts
and to run the gauntlet of the strike pickets, largely
composed of Egyptian women, who held the gates of the
Ministries and not only cursed every blackleg as a
"traitor" to his country, but often hung on forcibly
to his coat-tails. Intimidation played as large a part
in the strike of officials as in all the other strikes which
were going on at the same time, and it was useless to
look for any abatement of the universal strike fever so
long as such an evil example continued to be set to the
whole community by a large body of public servants,
many of whom occupied positions of exceptional responsibility
and influence in the State. Nor could any new
Cabinet, even if it had been possible to form one, be
expected to cope with the situation which the Rushdi
Cabinet had confessed itself powerless to master.

So on the day after Rushdi had resigned, General
Allenby asserted his authority, and asserted it not merely
as High Commissioner, but as Commander-in-Chief in
Egypt, armed with all the powers of martial law. He
issued the following Proclamation:—

The effect was instantaneous, and reinforced the very
same day by the announcement that the High Commissioner
had received a Note from the American
Diplomatic Agency and Consulate - General in Cairo,
communicating the recognition of the British Protectorate
by President Wilson. The Party of Independence was
for the moment staggered by such a blow to all its hopes
of support from the Peace Conference. The official
strikers realised that, if General Allenby was determined
to put down "passive rebellion" in Cairo as effectively
as "active rebellion" had already been suppressed in
the provinces, they would be marked men and much
more easily brought to account than the political wirepullers
of the rising, who had for the most part managed
to escape scot-free.

Of all the various strikers, the officials were now the
first to resume work. They flocked back to their different
Ministries, some with evident alacrity, the majority

still in a sullen and vindictive mood. Another stiff
Proclamation threatening to close the Government
Colleges and Secondary and Special Schools if a sufficient
number of pupils failed to return by a given date had
an equally salutary effect, and the strike demon amongst
the students and schoolboys was at least temporarily
exorcised. It required even less pressure to induce the
barristers to return to the Law Courts. All the other
strikes too collapsed almost automatically, showing how
much more politics had had to do with them than
economics. Every other overt form of agitation rapidly
subsided, or lingered on only in inflammatory speeches
delivered in the mosques and in scurrilous literature
which could be surreptitiously circulated. But a whole
month passed before General Allenby was able to find
any Egyptian of real standing to accept the burden of
office. The strike of the officials had shaken all sense of
political stability.

From this point of view the passive rebellion of April,
1919, though confined almost entirely to Cairo, was an
event of graver significance and had more enduring results
than the active and violent rebellion which had spread
over the whole country in the preceding weeks of March,
1919. It disclosed for the first time the intense resentment
of British control which had been slowly accumulating
at the headquarters of Government in the public
departments most closely and intimately associated
with the chief agencies of British control; and it gave
thereby a fresh and powerful impetus to the political
campaign of which it was itself the outcome for the
abolition of the Protectorate and the complete emancipation
of Egypt from the tutelage of the British "usurpers."
Moreover, such an unprecedented strike as that of Government
officials, in common with, and even more than, the
lawyers' strike and the strikes of students and schoolboys,
largely aided and abetted, it must be remembered, by
their native teachers, dealt a blow to the whole principle
of authority from which no community could easily or
speedily recover. Though, in the particular form it then

assumed, passive resistance collapsed outwardly under
the compulsion of martial law, it had defeated the
Egyptian Government, and the spirit which inspired it
quickly recovered from its collapse and produced a
political deadlock which mere Ministerial changes in
Cairo were henceforth powerless to affect. By driving
the Egyptian Ministers to resign, it had gone far to discredit
the theory maintained until then throughout the
Occupation, that whilst Egyptian Ministers were expected
to act in all important matters in conformity with British
advice, not only would the British control be exercised
in consultation and co-operation with them, but they
would receive from it such effective support as would be
required to uphold their authority in the country. The
Rushdi Cabinet had resigned, not as the result of differences
with, or in obedience to, the wishes of the British
Government, but simply because the forces controlled
by the Party of Independence were too much for it.
Though British Ministers took a long time still to look
the fact in the face, the maintenance of British control
was henceforth to be a straight issue between them and
the Party of Independence, the immediate result being to
reduce the position of Egyptian Ministers to that of heads
of departments carrying on merely routine work, and
without any influence whatever on the general political
situation. General Allenby succeeded after four weeks'
laborious effort in inducing Mohamed Said Pasha to form
a new Cabinet. As the event was to show, Mohamed
Said, even if he had cast off his inveterate habit of hunting
with the hounds and running with the hare, could no
more than Rushdi prevail against the flowing tide of
Nationalism, and during his eight months' tenure of office
the centre of Egyptian political activities was steadily
transferred from Cairo to Paris, whence Zaghlul Pasha
with far more authority than any Prime Minister gave
its marching orders to his Cairo Committee, and through
it to the politically-minded classes that stood for the
Egyptian nation.