LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE STATE OF EGYPT.
(To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.") SIR,—Since I last wrote to you six weeks have elapsed, during which cholera has been sweeping with a heavy hand over Egypt, an event surely calculated to call forth any vigour that might exist in the Government; an event which has called forth at the best apathy, at the worst obstruction.
I have no intention of distressing your readers with an account of the miseries of Damietta and Mansourah, perishing and starving inside a cruel police cordon. They have heard all about that already. What I wish to lay before you is the action of the Government, and what may be inferred from that action. The action of the Government !—better say the inaction. Sir A. Colvin left for Europe on June 26th. Since that date not a single meeting of the Council has been held. A few of the Ministers are in Cairo. The Khedive, Cherif Pasha, the President, and some others of the Cabinet are in Alexandria. That city, thanks to the purging by fire which it underwent last year, and probably to its constant sea breezes, has so far only slightly suffered from cholera. But its zealous citizens have taken other means to keep off the dreaded enemy. When cholera appeared in Cairo, now more than three weeks ago, Alexandria cut itself off by a cordon from all the rest of Egypt. All trains were stopped, and a strict quarantine put on every one wishing to enter the town. So that if I had a matter of the first political ittiportance to communicate to Cherif Pasha, I should have to wait seven days on the outsikirts of Alexandria before being admitted to his presence.
Now, no one accuses either the Khedive or Cherif of being cowards. But, really, it is unpleasantly hot in Cairo, and it is disagreeable to be constantly meeting funerals. And it is much cooler at Alexandria, and so there they stay, cut off from their country, and—this is the main point—perfectly contented to leave the Government of the country at a critical period in the hands of English strangers. For the one prominent subject is cholera, and General Stephenson and Surgeon-General Hunter will tell you that all they ever expect from their Egyptian colleagues, in the Sanitary Council which has so successfully grappled with the disease in Cairo, is not to be thwarted.
In my last letter, I said we English had not done much to make ourselves popular in Egypt. We have done something now, and the quarter of the community from which that some- thing has come is not, perhaps, where it would have been looked for,—it is the Army. When Italians, Greeks, and Levantmes were fleeing the country in abject terror, when one of the Cabinet Ministers was imploring to be allowed to resign office, and flee too, when Egyptian doctors were refusing to attend their dying countrymen, the brave old Guardsman who commands our Army here was going round the Arab hospitals with a kind look and a shake of the hand to the wretched patients. It was General Stephenson, who, before Dr. Hunter's arrival, in the interests of his Army summoned the Sanitary Council in Cairo, and from that date remedial measures have been taken. Cairo owes many a life to the English General.
The English Army is, of course, supplied with surgeons who have faithfully done their duty, as might have been expected. Not so Sir Evelyn Wood's Egyptian Army. In it, with one ex- ception, the doctors are Egyptians, and they have not distin- guished themselves. When the cholera broke out in the Army, Sir Evelyn himself was half-way through the Suez Canal on his way home. The next day, to the amazement of his men, he was back at his post in Cairo. The shortcomings of the doctors only proved the opportunity for his officers to show what was in them. They have doctored, they have nursed, they have fed, they have even buried their young Arab soldiers with a devo- tion beyond all praise ; and if that Army is called on to fight, whether nuder the Crescent or the Cross, we may be assured it will faithfully follow its English leaders. An old Egyptian Pasha, high in the Government service, said to me the other day that the conduct of our English Army in Cairo was a constant source of wonder to him. "Your men go in and out among the Arabs. ride donkeys, frequent the shops, and no one takes the least notice of them as strangers. All the months they have been here there has not been one single dis- turbance between them and the people ; while," he added, "I venture to say, if it had been a French or an Italian army, there would have been squabbles every day." From which I argue, that if we succeed in attaining to popularity here, it will be first due to the conduct of our Army, from the General down to the honest lads in the ranks. But when we turn from the Army, there is little good to be reported. The Constabulary are still in a muddle, the English officers complaining of want of support from their chief, and sending in their resignations. People ask, when they see that chief, "Is it possible that this easy- going, mild-eyed Pasha was once the darling of the British Cavalry, and the General that kept Russia out of Constantinople- with his famous lines ?" There seems little left of that energy now.
Sir Benson Maxwell and the Belgian Judges are exactly as they were six weeks ago, and absolutely nothing has been done to start their Courts. I told you how a Commission had ap- proved of the Berber and Souakim Railway, but nothing had been done. Now, the reason has come out. While the traffic of the Soudan comes down the Nile Valley, it is safe from foreign interference. Not so, if it finds a seaport at Souakim. Egypt has no ships to protect its Red-Sea trade. Who knows how it might be cut off, how the Soudan itself might, with this outlet, get independent of Egypt, and slip out of its nerveless, grasp altogether? But if England would guarantee the Red- Sea trade, then, says the Egyptian, we will make the railway. And this is the point all is coming to. The old Pasha I have above quoted said to me, "There are some things a nation may do, and some that they must do. Now, God will force you English to take charge of Egypt, whether you like it or not."' I have heard almost the same words from one of Lesseps' French engineers, from whom I should have least expected it. I have been assured by a Swiss landholder well known in Egypt that this was the conclusion arrived at by the foreign' community of Alexandria. In old days, he told me, when suffering from the misgovernment of the country, that he could always go straight to Ismail, who would, on the spot, write out such an order as no Muir would dare to dispute. That cannot be done now. The Mudir has nothing to fear- from despotism. He shelters himself behind, routine, offers passive resistance to all movement, and feels secure. Un- happy Egypt! Her Fellahin can send up only a dumb cry to Heaven, "Come over, and help us !" Last year she had war, then came cattle disease. A worm is eating the cotton, pestilence. is raging through the land, and a wail is going up, for, as in that awful night when the Passover was instituted, in Damietta and Mansourah, Chebin and Boulak, Giseh and Old Cairo, there are not many houses where there has not been one dead. Now yet another calamity threatens the land. The Nile is rising with quite abnormal rapidity, and there are grave apprehensions of an inundation. Lower Egypt is everywhere protected by em- bankments, within which at present the country is one great. green field of cotton, maize, and millet. It is the yearly duty of the corv4es to repair these embankments, but they have been much neglected since the war. Now the Mndirs are being ordered to arouse the village Sheiks, and the wretched peasants mustrise from their cholera-beds and work as best they can. Should the embankments be breached, wide-spread misery, per- haps famine, must follow.
War, blight, murrain, pestilence, floods ! Surely these are mis- fortunes enough for one year. I challenge any fellow Anglo- Egyptian to say that I am drawing too dark a picture. And' through it all, the tribute must be paid. The peasant may have to sell his all, but he must pay his share of the
incurred by the heartless despot Ismail (who, by the way, has just bought an estate in Egypt for 2280,000). The foreign Bondholder must get his dividends. Turkey must get her tribute, Turkey, that never rendered one single service to Egypt. In my last letter, I pointed out that unless we have increased our Army by a number of men equal to those serving in Egypt, we are really reducing our Army Estimates at the expense of Egypt. Can you not, Sir, lay this before England, and ask whether it is just ? Supposing we were suddenly to require these men, say, for an Indian mutiny, should we not remove them from Egypt at once ? Is it just, then, to make Egypt pay for them ? Is the Government too much afraid of its electors to act justly to this poor little country in this matter? Are the electors so hard-hearted ?
I must not write more, or there might be something to say from Egypt's side about the Suez Canal.—I am, Sir, &e.,
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