LORD CROMER'S REPORT. T4 ORD CROMER'S annual Report on Egypt is
this year specially full of interesting things, and constitutes one of the most valuable lessons in the true Imperialism—the Imperialism of sanity and anti-Jingoism—that the British public has ever had put before it. In the details of the Report will be found practical hints and suggestions that are worth the consideration of administrators all the world over,—a fact, indeed, already recognised, for the Report tells us that in a particular case inquiries as to the action of the Egyptian Government have been received crom places as wide apart as New Zealand and Bosnia. But important as are the actual experi- ments 'vied and successes achieved, still more im- portant is the spirit in which Lord Cromer approaches his task. That is the real lesson that we ardently desire should be taken to heart, and be made a source of inspiration throughout the British Empire. We should sum up the nature of that spirit in three words,—sympathy, caution, vigilance. What strikes one as one reads the record of British action in Egypt is the way in which these qualities are applied. Take first the point of sympathy. One feels in all Lord Cromer's work that, though there is no gush, no sentimentality, no rhetorical enthusiasm, there is sympathy in the truest and most useful sense,— the sympathy of comprehension. He really understands the problem before him, and the people who are the breathing, hungering, thirsting human factors in that problem, and by and through this sympathy of comprehension he gets at the very heart of the matter. It was said of Miss Martineau when she visited Egypt that the natives were never any- thing more to her than part of the scenery. Too often to our Imperial politicians and Governors the natives are merely part of the statistics,—ciphers that move about in tables and reports. In Lord Cromer's case we always feel that the people of Egypt are never thought of by him as part of the political or statistical scenery. They are realities, not dark-coloured abstractions. But this sympathy of compre- hension is never allowed to obtain too complete a mastery. It is always balanced by a true caution and by that wise moderation which exacts a full view of all the circumstances, and does not exclude external conditions because they are disagreeable to the standpoint of sympathy. Burke laid it down that nothing absolute can be affirmed on any moral or political subject, and it is clear that Lord Cromer has realised to the full the meaning of the great Whig philosopher, and understands the dangers that lie in political panaceas. Lastly, and perhaps most important of all, comes the quality of vigilance. It is clear that Lord Cromer knows that it is not enough to have a good system and to give it the proper direction. Unless its workings are watched, and watched, not with mechanical precision, but with an eager, active, questioning spirit, an administration will never accomplish its true work. We talk of the administrative machine, but in reality it is not a machine but a living organism which is always growing and developing, and that growth and development, even when the stock is sound and good, is often in the wrong direction. Hence the effects of every change and every new development require to be continually and anxiously watched. The bad or the useless growths must be checked or cut off, and the good and the useful encouraged. An alteration must be made here, a new device introduced there, a tendency to overgrowth stopped somewhere else. A man cannot start a perfect administration, and then go home to dinner or to sleep in the assurance that it will go of itself. The vigilance required in watching is as great in degree, though different in kind, as the vigilance required in the work of creating.
We will take as a prime example of the spirit in which the British a m Egypt is conducted by Lord Cromer the working of the education system. Lord Cromer, like other wise men, is fully aware of the advantages of education to an Oriental people, but it is evident from his handling of the problem that he understands what kind of education is wanted by the Egyptian, and what also are the dangers that arise from applying European ideals of education in a non-European country. Hence he has avoided the tragic fiasco of so much of our Indian University education. Our Indian Administration a generation and more ago, fired by a zeal (in itself most com- mendable) to educate the people of India in Western know. ledge, established a great educational machine. But when they had established it they largely left it to itself. The result has been that this huge machine has been year after year grinding out a wholly unnecessary supply of " baboos," —Hindoos endowed with a parrot-like knowledge of English and English literature, whose only, or at any rate whose chief, conception of knowledge is something to be examined in, and whose one aim and object is to get a small post under Government, and to pass their lives in docketing papers, most of which had much better never have been written, or if written should have been destroyed on the day of their birth. Now Lord Cromer has realised_ the danger of creating a manufactory of " baboos " in Egypt. Therefore he has not made a great educational factory and then turned it loose to work its will. He has gone cautiously, and has kept a vigilant eye on the way in which the native regards Western learning. Let any one read the paragraphs on education (pp. 49, 50, and 51) in the new Report (Egypt No. 1, 1901), and they will realise at once what we mean. Lord Cromer tells us, in effect, that the Egyptian is eager to get his sons educated, and especially to have them taught English, because he wants them to get posts under Government, and believes that education is the royal road to this most coveted condition. But, as Lord Cromer points out, there are already far too many Government employs, and therefore the tendency ought to be, and must be, to diminish posts under Govern- ment. Hence it would be cruel to encourage a form of education which would only be adopted by the Egyptian as a means of getting Government employment. But Lord Cromer finds that while there is a tendency to too much literary education, there is a great neglect of technical schooling. The demand for craftsmen and artisans is in ex- cess of the supply, and it is also probable that many lawyers, engineers, doctors, skilled agriculturists, and electricians could find posts outside Government. Therefore Lord Cromer is determined to encourage technical rather than purely literary education,—the technical education involv- ing, of course, a good primary education. What Lord Cromer has to say on the question of teaching English to the Egyptian is so sound and so powerfully put, and so well illustrates our point as to the spirit in which he approaches the problems with which he has to deal, that we will quote it verbatim :—" Amongst the many anomalies which exist in this country, perhaps one of the strangest is that, to the best of my belief, the young Egyations generally are, at the present moment, more anxious to learn the English language than the English are to afford instruction in their own tongue. The reason is obvious. The Egyptians, as a rule, think that they will have a better chance of obtaining Government employment if they blow English than if they are ignorant of that language. Within . certain limits, they are probably right. The English, on the other hand, provided they are really acquainted with Egyptian circumstances and requirements, regard the matter wholly from an educational point of view. They have no desire to Anglicize the country. They wish to confine the study of foreign languages, whether English or French, to what is really necessary and useful to the Egyptians themselves. They are not led away by the superficial, and, in my opinion, generally erroneous view, that the study of French or English necessarily connotes the creation of French or English political proclivities. They would see with reluctance the undue growth of a class of Egyptians, many of whom would probably be doomed to disappointment in their aspirations for obtain- ing Government employment, who would, therefore, become discontented, and who would probably succeed better in life if the time passed in linguistic study had been devoted to other matters." Lord Cromer sums up his remarks on the general question of education as follows :—" I ven- ture to think that the efforts of those who are interested in this matter should, for the time being, be more especi- ally directed to the improvement and extension of technical instruction, to female education, and to the development of such a general system of primary instruction, through the agency of the village schools, as shall in some degree raise the general standard of knowledge throughout the country."
The sympathy, the caution, and the vigilance with which Lord Cromer here handles the education question is, as we have said, a good illustration of his method. We wish we had space to show these same qualities in action in the matter of that perennial question of the East, the indebtedness of the peasant cultivators, for here can be seen to perfection Lord Cromer's cautious and vigilant methods Joined with a true understanding of the issues. Lord Cromer's great contribution to this difficult problem is that, instead of attempting to control the moneylender and to coerce him by law, he has provided an alternative for the fellaheen borrower. He has enabled the Egyptian bank to compete with the moneylender on his own ground, and thus the Egyptian peasant can now borrow at 10 per cent. per annum, whereas before he often borrowed. at 5 per cent. per mensem, or 60 per cent. per annum. The way in which this has been accomplished is most original. The bank could not formerly successfully compete with the moneylender because the cost of collecting the interest• on the small loans was so excessive. But now the Government tax- collector collects the loan and interest instalments with the taxes, and thus the bank can afford to lend at a reason- able rate. At first it was said that cheap loans would only encourage over-borrowing and extravagance on the wt of the fellaheen, but apparently this has not hitherto been the result, and Lord Cromer does not think it will be. He regards his dealing with the moneylender problem as still in the experimental stage, but he is evidently hopeful. If it proves a success, as per- sonally we believe it will, the success will certainly be due to the spirit of sympathy, caution, and vigilance which we have described. Had Lord Cromer not had the true sympathy of comprehension for the fellaheen, he might very naturally have said it was impossible to help them. Again, had he let his sympathies carry him too far, he might have plunged either into some dangerous scheme of annulling usurious contracts under a system of equitable jurisdiction, or else have committed the Egyptian Exchequer to the work of financing the Egyptian culti- vator. His cautious habit of mind prevented him from falling into these errors, and his vigilance and command of detail may be relied on to prevent the system now under trial either from degenerating into a new form of taxation, or from hardening into a system too hidebound and un- elastic to be made use of by the ignorant tiller of the soil.
We must before we leave the Report say one word as to the remarkable story of administrative injustice described under the heading "Brigandage Commissions." It is a story of hasty and panic methods applied to the administration of justice, and the results. In 1884 certain Brigandage Commissions were issued by Nubar Pasha to deal with the exceptional crime with which the country was full owing to the relaxations too hastily made in the old- fashioned and drastic methods of native rule. But these Special Commissions, though-European in form, were carried out by natives, and under them many unfortu- nate men were condemned to long terms of imprisonment, not only on most insufficient evidence, but on evidence procured by torture. These sentences have now been care- fully revised, with the result that about half of the men in prison under them have been released. The whole story, which should be read at length, shows the extreme danger of hasty reform under unsuitable conditions. When the devil is driven out by a hasty and ill-considered reform as here, he is almost certain to return in a far worse shape than before. We abolished the Courbash and the old bad native Courts in a hurry and without due consideration, and the result was that the evil returned in sevenfold power in the shape of the Brigandage Commissions.
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