University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XIV

A BARREN PERIOD OF DRIFT

Even the violence and suddenness of the March outbreak
and the grave disorder in the body politic of Egypt,
of which the prolonged strike of Government officials
was only one of the outward symptoms, did not suffice
to bring home to the British Government the urgency of
coming out into the open with a considered policy.
It was not till the middle of May that they were persuaded
to break the silence which they had maintained ever
since the proclamation of the Protectorate. Even then
they made no definite statement of policy. A good deal
was said about the "immense responsibility" taken
upon themselves by the Egyptian leaders "who had
precipitated this unhappy crisis," but very little about
official blunders and procrastination at home and in
Egypt which had equally contributed to precipitate the
crisis. An avowal rather than an explanation was
vouchsafed of the refusal to allow two members of the
Egyptian Government to come to England to confer
with British Ministers, and a perfunctory admission was
made that during the war there had been "a certain
amount of mishandling of difficult native questions by
inexperienced officers." Parliament was at any rate
definitely informed that Lord Milner would proceed to
Egypt at the head of "a strong mission" to inquire into
the causes of the recent outbreak and to draw up recommendations
which would assist the British Government in

"shaping for the Protectorate a system of prudent and
ever-enlarging enfranchisement" and in meeting "the
claims of the Egyptian people to a due and increasing
share in the management of the affairs of Egypt."

The mere fact, however, that the Egyptian extremists
were able to boast that even this belated announcement
had only been wrung out of the British Ministers by an
explosion of violence, which had found them, as they
confessed, totally unprepared, robbed it of much of its
value. Had even the Milner Mission followed hot-foot
on this announcement the effect would have been much
greater. But nothing more was heard of it for months,
and only towards the end of September was the composition
of the Mission announced. Ample time had been
given for the situation in Egypt to harden again, and
though there was a lull on the surface, it was hardening
again steadily.

The formation of the new Ministry under Mohamed
Said Pasha in April and the return of Government officials
to their work combined with a temporary reaction from
the fierce excitement of rebellion and repression to
create a somewhat calmer atmosphere in Cairo which
was perhaps quite as much due to the usual lassitude
induced by the return of the annual hot weather. The
seat of agitation, however, had only been transferred for
the time being to Paris. The primary object of Saad
Zaghlul and the Nationalist Delegation in proceeding
to Paris had been to seek a hearing for their case at the
Peace Conference. In this they failed, and the formal
recognition of the British Protectorate by the American
Government on April 22nd had been an even more distinct
blow to their hopes than Article 147 of the Treaty of Versailles
was a couple of months later, when the Protectorate
was placed on record in an instrument signed by all the
Allied and Associated Powers as well as by Germany.
But the Delegation were not discouraged, and they carried
on a very active propaganda, which was not altogether
unsuccessful, both in the European and in the American

Press. Two prominent members ultimately proceeded
to Washington, where they did their best, in co-operation
with every other element hostile to the Peace Treaty and
to Great Britain, to secure its rejection by the Senate,
even at the risk of destroying also the League of Nations,
upon which they sometimes professed to pin their faith.

It has been argued that Zaghlul committed a tactical
blunder in never visiting London, where, while refraining
from all contact with official circles, he might have made,
through various channels, a direct and perhaps not
entirely fruitless appeal to certain sections of the British
democracy. But though he was probably shrewd enough
not to overlook the advantages of such an appeal and
was indeed willing to allow one of his friends to go to
London, who was, however, refused a passport, he himself
could hardly have gone without departing to some extent
from the consistency of his attitude towards the "usurping"
nation. He was not going to recede from the
position he had taken up that Egypt was entitled to
"complete independence" and that the Protectorate
must be repealed. Our abortive attempt to intern him
in Malta had served merely to fortify his determination
and to enhance his prestige with his fellow-countrymen,
in whose eyes he in fact bulked larger from Paris than if
he had remained in Cairo. He doubtless realised also
that as martial law was still in force in Egypt, he could
count on greater freedom of action abroad, where he was
beyond its grasp. One cannot but admire the dexterity
with which he used Paris as a sounding-board for an
even more sensational propaganda throughout the valley
of the Nile than he had conducted before he left Egypt.
Long messages in the native Press which gave highly
coloured accounts of the Delegation's achievements in
arousing the interest and sympathy of foreign countries
were taken at their face value by the Egyptian public,
which was gradually taught to look to Zaghlul, and to him
alone, as the representative of the Egyptian nation
destined to work out its future salvation. The Committee

which he had left behind him in Cairo received constant
instructions from him and carried them out with unflagging
zeal, whilst he showered his telegraphic blessings upon its
achievements.

When the composition of the Milner Mission and its
impending departure for Egypt were at last announced,
it was from the Delegation that the mot d'ordre was given
for boycotting it if it ventured to go out. I landed
just then in Egypt—early in October, 1919—and found
the boycott campaign already in full blast. When I left
London, the few people who took any interest in Egyptian
affairs were discussing the date which had not yet been
definitely fixed for the Milner Mission to sail. When I
reached Cairo a week later, the point that was being
discussed there was whether its arrival might not prove
the signal for fresh disturbances as grave as those of
March and April. To the two popular catch-phrases,
"Complete Independence" and "Down with the Protectorate,"
a third one had been added: "Down with the
Milner Mission." The native Press wrote endless variations
on it and dug out of Lord Milner's "England in
Egypt," written more than a quarter of a century ago,
just after he had retired from the Egyptian service, every
phrase and every word which, snatched from its context,
could create the impression that he had always been an
inveterate detractor of Egypt, though the Egyptians
who had seen him then at work knew him to be one of
the best friends and ablest servants their country had had.

Public meetings, at which the Bar was conspicuous,
were held to denounce the Mission, and as the Legislative
Assembly and the Provincial Councils were still closed
down, their members held informal gatherings and
dispatched fierce telegrams of protest to the Egyptian
Ministers, to foreign Powers, to their representatives in
Cairo, and, of course, to the Delegation in Paris, vowing
that they would have nothing to do with the "accursed
thing." Notables and Ulema followed suit, and the
students of El Azhar and of the Government colleges,

the boys in the secondary and primary schools, and
even the girls' schools, in which the limit of age is between
five and eleven, joined in the boycott chorus. The newspapers
reproduced every day columns and columns of
telegrams, all protesting in suspiciously identical language
against the Mission. Any person of position who held
aloof from the movement was liable to be pilloried in
the Press or even to see his house invaded by bands of
students, whose remonstrances were not always limited
to wordy abuse. Egyptian Ministers themselves did not
escape, and it was in an interview with a group of excited
agitators that the Prime Minister, Mohamed Said, was
fain to declare that he had warned the British Government
against sending the Milner Mission out in existing circumstances,
and that if it came out in spite of his warnings,
he and his colleagues would resign. The Government in
fact professed to wash its hands of the whole business;
it was not concerned with politics and it only remained
in office to carry on the administration of the country.
Not that it even did that. Never had any Egyptian
Government been left so free from all interference by
the British controlling power; none had ever been so
impotent; not for years had corruption and nepotism
been so rampant, or crime so prevalent. Even such small
official fry as the Omdehs, or village headmen, of whom
there are 3,600 in Egypt, felt it was safe for them to
shout with the crowd without asking for permission
from their superior authorities, and from Paris Zaghlul
publicly addressed to them a telegraphic round-robin of
encouragement and approval. He controlled the policy
of his party, and it was the only party that had any
policy.

Very soon the agitation assumed a still more serious
aspect, reminiscent of the March troubles. Whilst
repression in the villages had dealt severely with the
wretched fellaheen found guilty of participation in the
actual outbreak of violence, most of the ringleaders in
Cairo and elsewhere escaped scot-free as soon as, in

July, the "special courts" were abolished and the
jurisdiction of the ordinary Egyptian tribunals revived.
Even the witnesses who had given evidence before the
special courts were no longer safe against vendetta.
Schools and colleges again went out on strike, and there
were threats of impending railway strikes and strikes
amongst Government officials. Big processions reappeared
in the streets of Cairo and of Alexandria, turbaned
ulema from El Azhar and Effendis in European
clothes, students and schoolboys galore, and always
a large tail of mere rabble out for any mischief that
might be going. And during the last weeks of October
and the first weeks of November there was grave mischief
in Alexandria. The Government, scenting danger, had
forbidden street demonstrations, but the Extremists
disregarded the prohibition and were able to do so at first
with impunity. The British headquarters had wisely
decided to keep the British troops as far as possible in
the background whilst holding them in reserve, should
the local authorities require their assistance in the event
of grave disorder. On several occasions, however, British
troops had to be sent in to reinforce the Egyptian police,
and affrays occurred between them and the more truculent
elements in the mob which led to some loss of life, unfortunately
not always confined to the rioters. When shots
are fired in the streets of a large city, there are almost
inevitably some innocent victims. As to the spirit
that moved some sections of the mob, the looting with
which these riotous demonstrations almost invariably
ended could leave no manner of doubt. It was antiforeign,
not merely anti-British. In fact it was Greek
and Jewish shops that suffered most. But though the
responsibility rested entirely with the leaders who organised
and incited these demonstrations and then remained
discreetly in the background, the Nationalists filled the
native Press and loaded the cable lines to Europe and
America with sensational accounts of Egyptian men,
women, and children being brutally shot down by British
soldiers whilst peacefully assembled to assert their
national rights.

The last and most serious of these riots, though it
was not accompanied by looting, took place near Abdeen
Palace on November 16th, on the day of Sultan Fuad's
return to the capital from his summer residence near
Alexandria. The mob attacked and set fire to a police
station close to the Palace and to another in the Muski,
the old street well known to tourists which leads to
the native bazaars. The Egyptian police did its best
to hold its ground, but it was overpowered and British
troops had to intervene. There were nearly a hundred
killed and wounded amongst the rioters before they were
finally dispersed. Yet on this as on other similar occasions
the mob would in one place see red and break out into
acts of brutal violence; in another place, perhaps quite
near by, it would good-humouredly refrain from molesting
in any way the few Englishmen whom curiosity or business
brought into contact with it. The Egyptian sometimes
seems to be like a child, easily moved to wrath and to
laughter, and just as unaccountably to the one or to the
other.

That the self-appointed leaders of the nation, who
must be credited with knowing their people, could not
resist the temptation to play with fire, and indeed provided
the inflammable materials, was indeed one of the most
striking proofs of their own political immaturity. Some
of them would admit that to allow demonstrations for
freedom and independence to degenerate into riots
in which foreigners' shops were smashed and foreigners'
heads were broken irrespective of nationality was hardly
the best way to inspire confidence abroad in the capacity
of a self-governing Egypt to safeguard the interests of
the foreign communities within her gates. They would
admit that for the Bar to go on strike and oblige the Courts
to suspend their proceedings until it pleased the barristers
to resume their pleadings was not calculated to enhance
public respect for the law. They would agree that the

importation of politics into the schools was bound to
demoralise the rising generation as well as to interfere
disastrously with their immediate course of studies;
and that in their anxiety to subvert British authority
they ran the risk of subverting the whole principle of
authority, beginning with that of parents in their own
families. But the perfunctory regrets they sometimes
expressed for such trifling blemishes on a splendid
demonstration of national solidarity showed that with
all their capacity for organisation, their dialectical resourcefulness
and their tenacity of purpose, they were
like children in their complete inability to see things
as they are.

That demonstration was to reach its climax in the
celebration on November 13th of the first "anniversary
of Egyptian Independence," as if it had been actually
achieved and placed for all time beyond dispute by the
visit to Sir Reginald Wingate on November 13th, 1918,
when, two days after the Armistice, Saad Zaghlul and
his friends had first put forward the claims of the Party
of Independence. The proposed demonstration ended
in an almost grotesque anti-climax. There was scarcely
any response to the exhortations of the native Press,
which had surpassed itself in its endeavours to tune up
popular feeling by lengthy and lyrical leaders. In view
of the recent unfortunate occurrences in Alexandria, the
Egyptian Government had renewed the prohibition of
street demonstrations, and this time it was only disregarded
by small groups of Egyptian women and by bands
of schoolboys, who stayed away from school and vied
with the ladies in storming tramcars and giving vent to
their vociferous patriotism in free "joy-rides" and much
flag-wagging. Some of the women found themselves
ultimately stranded in unfamiliar parts of the city and
had to be escorted home, tired out and weeping, by the
police. The result for the boys was perhaps less distasteful
to them than to their parents. As they had
absented themselves without leave, the Government

schools were closed against them for a week as a disciplinary
punishment.

One was sometimes tempted to ascribe to a strain of
African blood in the Egyptian people the sort of hysteria
which seemed to run through all this period of wild
political excitement just as it runs through the religious
frenzy of "revivalist" campaigns amongst the coloured
folk in the United States. But whatever may have been
the case in remote ages before the dawn of history, there
is very little purely African blood in the Egyptians of
to-day, and if there was much to perplex and repel one
in the methods of agitation which the Nationalist leaders
tolerated or encouraged, there was a background of
earnestness and a faith in the righteousness of their
cause which had to be seriously reckoned with. I found
them as a rule ready and anxious to talk, and indeed
grateful for any opportunity of placing their case before
the British public. Some of those whom I saw had been
with Zaghlul in Paris as members of the Delegation.
Though they objected to be called "Extremists," or
even "Nationalists," on the ground that national unity
of sentiment on all essentials had rendered party nomenclature
obsolete, their views could certainly be taken as
representing those of the most stalwart exponents of
Egyptian Nationalism, and it is only fair that I should
set them forth as faithfully as the frankness and courtesy
with which they expressed them to me deserve. I need
not again dwell upon their stock-arguments in support
of Egypt's claim to complete independence which they
drew from our repeated promises that the Occupation
would only be temporary, from our more recent declarations
during the Great War that it was being waged to give
freedom to small nations, and from our proclaimed
adhesion to the doctrine of self-determination and to
President Wilson's Fourteen Points. Nor need I expatiate
again upon their resentment of the British policy of
silence as to the meaning and purpose of the Protectorate,
by which, during the war, we forcibly modified the

status of Egypt and gave her a new ruler without vouchsafing
any explanation to her people or taking into our
confidence the representative bodies with which we had
ourselves endowed her.

Though they often seemed to have entirely misread
the history of their own country and to remain wilfully
blind to all considerations arising out of the new political
situation created in Europe by the war, they had carefully
followed every word uttered in England which could
reinforce their arguments. Thus they quoted to me with
great zest against the maintenance of our Protectorate
over Egypt, not only our recognition of the independence of
the new Hedjaz Kingdom, but also the language in which
Lord Curzon, when he explained the purpose of the new
Anglo-Persian Convention, emphatically repudiated any
idea of a British Protectorate over Persia as out of the
question, since neither party would ever have consented
to it. How could England therefore inflict a Protectorate
upon unconsenting Egyptians who may well claim to have
reached at least as high a plane of progress, civilisation,
and power as modern Persia, and a much higher one than
the subjects of the King of the Hedjaz?

The demand for independence was not, however, they
asserted, a mere matter of national amour propre. Independence
was essential to the introduction of those
democratic institutions which the example of England
herself had taught Egyptians to value. Without independence
they could never hope to have a national
Government solely responsible to an elected popular
assembly, with the head of the State bound down to the
functions of a strictly constitutional ruler. If it were
argued that Egypt was quite unripe for such democratic
institutions, was she more so, they retorted, than Greece
and Serbia and Bulgaria and many other nations had
been not so very long ago, who, in spite of many blunders,
had found in the practice of democracy the only real road
to national freedom and progress?

An independent Egypt, they hastened to add, would

not at all mean an Egypt unfriendly to Great Britain.
She would always need the friendship of Great Britain,
who on her side would be quite entitled to require from
Egypt the recognition of her Imperial interests in a
country which lies athwart her highways of Empire and
must always be at the mercy of her overwhelming power.
Let Great Britain act up to her principles and to her
promises; declare the Protectorate to have been, as
Egyptians were fain to believe at the time, a merely
temporary war measure; show that the war, in which
the Egyptians themselves rendered very substantial
services, was waged to give freedom to them as well as to
the other small nations it had liberated; and recognise
their title to independence. Then, once that principle
admitted, Egypt would welcome a treaty of alliance
with Great Britain in which specific guarantees could
be embodied for British strategical interests in the Suez
Canal, for the fulfilment of Egypt's financial obligations,
and for the maintenance of foreign trade and industry
and the security of the foreign communities in Egypt.

Nor should the ending of British domination involve
in their opinion the withdrawal of British help in the
progressive development of Egypt. She would still
require, as Japan did for many years, the assistance of
foreign coadjutors, and especially of technical and scientific
experts in many branches of her administration, and
she would certainly seek them in England rather than in
any other foreign country. Many of the Englishmen
who were here to-day would unquestionably be invited
to remain. But they would be the servants and not the
masters of the Egyptian Government, just as the foreigners
employed in Japan were the servants and not the masters
of the Japanese Government.

Some of these may have been purely ad captandum
arguments, and it was difficult to reconcile the assurances
which accompanied them that there was no real ill-feeling
towards England or towards Englishmen with
the extreme bitterness and hostility displayed every day

in the Egyptian Press and in popular demonstrations
resulting not infrequently in acts of violence which
none of the leaders had the courage to condemn or the
power to restrain. But it was at any rate a hopeful sign
that for many influential Egyptians, including not only
former Ministers who had served in the Rushdi Cabinet,
but also some of the less intemperate followers of Saad
Pasha Zaghlul, the main issue still appeared to be the
withdrawal of the hateful word Protectorate and the
substitution for the status of dependency, unilaterally
imposed during the war, of a bilateral contract which
should secure essential British interests and at the same
time recognise the principle of Egyptian independence.
Many Englishmen and even Anglo-Egyptian officials
were not unfavourably inclined to some such accommodation.
The term Protectorate was doubtless a very
elastic one, but it had to be admitted that no precedent
could be found for its use which did not involve a measure
of subjugation almost incompatible with any real autonomy
such as Egypt would have been entitled to expect
even if we had actually incorporated her into the British
Empire by formal annexation. The Arabic word Himaya
into which the English word Protectorate had been
translated was singularly ill-chosen, for it is the same word
that is used to connote the status of "protected foreign
subjects" in Egypt, i.e., of people who are not really
foreign born—not real Englishmen, or Frenchmen, or
Italians, etc.—but have acquired or inherited rights to
foreign protection by processes unknown in any European
State. Those rights, it must be confessed, often have
a somewhat tainted origin, and a good many who enjoy
them are not exactly an ornament to the foreign communities
they have joined. Hence Egyptians do not
feel flattered by having the same word employed to
describe their new relationship to the British Empire.
To anyone acquainted with the structure of our Indian
Empire it could not but occur that the native States,
though distinctly under the protection of the British raj,
are not termed Protectorates, and that their relations
to the paramount Power are quite adequately governed
by formal treaties of alliance, some of them more than
a century old. No ruling prince is prouder of his connection
with the British Empire than the great Mahomedan
ruler of Hyderabad, but he addresses the King-Emperor
as "my exalted ally." Might not the much looser ties
contemplated between Egypt and the British Empire
be made equally secure and far more acceptable to the
Egyptian people by a Treaty of Alliance in lieu of a
Protectorate or in definition of its purpose?

How far the British Government still was from entertaining
any idea of a compromise on such lines was
made manifest as soon as Lord Allenby returned on
November 10th from leave. He had been away for two
months, and though nobody could grudge him his first
holiday after the strenuous years of war in which he
had played so brilliant a part, it was high time he returned.
Political agitation had once more reached a degree of
violence which the Egyptian Prime Minister no longer
pretended even to control. In Lord Allenby's absence
there was no one at the Residency to speak with authority,
nor was there yet any sign of a more definite British
policy to which anyone could have spoken. Fortunately,
he was too much of a soldier to return to his post without
having his marching orders in his pocket. The very day
after the rather futile attempt to celebrate the first
"anniversary of Egyptian independence" Lord Allenby
tried to recall Egypt from the world of illusions by
delivering to the Egyptian Government the declaration
of British policy which he had at last extracted from His
Majesty's Ministers, and he took care that it should reach
the Egyptian people in the form in which he delivered it
to their Government by communicating it at the same
time to the Press.

The text deserves to be quoted in full as it was the first
explicit announcement to the people of Egypt of Great
Britain's intentions with regard to the future of their

country since the proclamation of the Protectorate,
already five years old:

That Lord Allenby had instructions not to allow
British policy as laid down in this document to be openly
flouted was shown a few days later when the Cairo Committee
of Independence issued a counter-manifesto in
which, after giving its own distorted version of the
declaration, it proceeded to reiterate the usual protests
and the usual demands. Lord Allenby signified to the
President and Vice-President of the Committee that they
had better retire for a time to the less heated atmosphere
of their country estates. The provocation had been open
and deliberate and could hardly be allowed to pass altogether
unnoticed. Whether the "internment" of a
few other more or less prominent Nationalist leaders,
who were during the next few days invited in the same
way to withdraw into the country, was always equally
deserved or wise may be doubted—especially in one
particular case which Egyptian public opinion, rightly or

wrongly, at once traced to the Sultan's personal influence.
More general was the acceptance, even by the more sober
Nationalists, of the revival of a certain measure of control
over the Press so long as it was confined within the limits
of the existing Press Law, under which two native newspapers
were suspended whose outrageous misrepresentations
of the Alexandria disturbances had been certainly
calculated, if not intended, to encourage further breaches
of the peace.

With the advent of the Milner Mission now clearly in
sight, Mohamed Said felt obliged to act up to his threat
that he would resign if it came out in spite of his warnings.
He did so on November 15th. Few regretted his disappearance,
and some of his colleagues remained on in
the new Cabinet formed by Yusuf Wahab Pasha, who,
mainly because a Copt, had sat in almost every Cabinet
since the murder of the Copt Prime Minister, Butros
Pasha Ghali, in 1910. Yusuf Wahab showed great
courage in accepting the post. The choice of a Copt was
unfortunate, though perhaps unavoidable in the circumstances,
as in a Mahomedan country the appointment of
a Christian as Prime Minister is always received with
suspicion. But even the Party of Independence could
not openly resent it on those grounds without estranging
some of their new Coptic allies. They were content to
denounce Yusuf Wahab as a traitor to the Egyptian cause,
and the chorus of abuse was taken up by his Nationalist
co-religionists, one of whom only a fortnight later made
an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate him in broad
daylight in a much-frequented thoroughfare of the European
quarter of Cairo. The new Cabinet was not a very
strong or representative one, but its members were men
of good standing and character, and it had a respectable
head. Its successful formation was in itself a
disappointment to the Party of Independence, who had
hoped that the Milner Mission would find no Egyptian
Ministers in office to receive it when it arrived.

For a moment there seemed some prospect of a more

peaceful atmosphere. On the surface there was undeniably
a very wide difference between the British declaration
of policy and the demands of the extreme Nationalist
Party. In substance, however, it might be held to
have gone some way to meet them. For if no reference
was made to their claim to an immediate recognition of
the principle of Egyptian national independence, a self-governing
Egypt, such as His Majesty's Government
appeared to contemplate, would in due course attain in
fact to such a measure of independence as it is possible
for a small country to maintain without the material
support of a Great Power interested in its conservation.
In proportion as that measure of independence increased,
Egyptians would presumably recognise that the word
"Protectorate," robbed of the imaginary terrors which
our silence as to its real significance had conjured up,
meant above all the assured protection against foreign
interference and aggression which many even of the
extremists admitted to be at present indispensable for
the safety of Egypt, together with the advice and cooperation
in the progressive development of their country
for which, they also declared, they would always look
to Great Britain rather than to any other Power. Those,
however, who were trying in Egypt to induce the
Egyptians to place a favourable construction upon the
declaration were not helped by the language of British
Ministers at home. To make up presumably for five
years of almost unbroken silence on Egyptian affairs,
British Ministers now suddenly let themselves go. Mr.
Balfour declared in the House of Commons with unaccustomed
energy that "British supremacy exists in
Egypt, British supremacy is going to be maintained, and
let nobody either in Egypt or out of Egypt make any
mistake upon that cardinal principle of His Majesty's
Government," and then proceeded to administer a special
rebuke to that particular section of the ruling classes in
Egypt who are of Turkish origin, though it was just
amongst them that at that time the few men of some
mark who favoured moderate counsels were to be found.
Lord Curzon in the House of Lords delivered a long
speech which was doubtless intended to be more conciliatory.
But the good impression made by his attempt
to explain or explain away the significance of the Protectorate
and by his assurances that we meant this time
to make a reality of Egyptian representative institutions
was largely marred by the unfortunate comparison he
drew at the end between the state of Egypt and "the
opposite and encouraging picture presented by the
Sudan." "It is bad enough," said one Egyptian to me,
"that himayat (the Arabic word for Protectorate) should
assimilate our status in the world to that of the `protected'
foreign subjects in our midst, of whom you
English people especially have never been very proud.
Are we now to be called naughty boys because we are not
prepared like the good Sudanese boys, barely reclaimed
from savagery, to kneel down and kiss Lord Curzon's
rod?"

Nor was it any more helpful that, just when the Mission
was arriving with the avowed object, amongst others,
of securing a larger share for the Egyptians in the
administration of the country, new appointments of
Englishmen to administrative posts and the arrival of
fresh batches of young Englishmen to pass into the
Egyptian public services continued to be announced in
the public Press. It was difficult to make Egyptians
understand that the old machinery had to be kept going
until the Mission had completed its labours. They
preferred to believe that an attempt was being made to
confront the Mission with accomplished facts.