EGYPT FOR THE EGYPTIANS.
[To rid Eorroa or Ms SreCrirol."] Sia,—The excellent letter in your issue of March 12th from my old Egyptian friend and colleague, Sir Walter Bond, helps to clear something from the Egyptian-fog. Lord Milner% Report, like that of Lard Dufferin's in 1883, is a State Paper of the highest value, a counsel of perfection,-filled with pious wishes. Its generous sentiments may be adequately translated into Arabic, but would that the natives could read its transporting style in the original English! That is the difficulty. My criticism is on another plane, the question of language. Remove every British official from Egypt, put the clock back to 1875, just before Mr. Disraeli bought the Suez Calial shares, regard the Nile Delta as a Tierra del Fuego in which we have no interest, no trade, no road to India, nothing but a clean slate. The difficulty of language remains. Forty years' study of Arabic has convinced me that the noble Arabian language is entirely unsuited for modern European civilization —a civilization of finance, banking, shipping, commerce in the fullest sense of the world. The Arabic language and alphabet are, almost as useless as cuneiform Assyrian for modern pur- poses. Imagine the business of our city carried on in foreign languages with superior foreign competitors while English was reserved merely for servants. Education is impossible in Arabic. Every intelligent Egyptian lad is anxious to master French (or English) in order that he may qualify in European, foreign, Christian medicine, law, or engineering. Many en- lightened natives are sending their sons to be educated on the Continent, and several Egyptian students are to be found in London, working at Economics (Iktisdd) with a view to a career on their return home. There is little hope of any career because Egypt, an artificial oasis fed by the life-giving streams of Abyssinia, is occupied by millions of ignorant peasants who can never be educated, and whose trade is in the hands of the Levantines. The Capitulations can never be abolished ih sub- stance, because they mean Capital and Commercial Credit, having existed from time immemorial, like the pyramids and palm-trees. They will be stronger than ever with the Mixed Tribunals reinforced. New presbyter will be but old priest writ large. The more it changes the more it will be the same thing. There is no need to quibble over words. "Hinitiga " in Arabic means both protectorate and protection. Abolish the former, if offensive; but we must protect the native Moelems from the Levantines, because the Arabio language is but a clumsy knife as compared with our modern high-speed tool of speech in English, French, Italian, or Greek.—I am, Sir, &e., DONALD A. CAMEROM4
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