That political conditions arc to-day in an unprecedented state of
flux is a commonplace, but one can hardly imagine a more vivid illustration of this fact than that the whole system of -government in one of the most ancient of the nations was changed on July 5th last, from dependence to autonomy, almost without so much as a passing paragraph in the Press of the world. It is only now, when the inevitable consequences of this change are beginning to be felt, that Egyptian affairs are coming into prominence. July 5th was the date on which British martial law ended. Egypt had been under British military control for nearly nine years. True a system of civilian Egyptian administration had been built up, but each Egyptian official had a British " adviser " with whom the real power lay. Now sud- denly, with a stroke of the pen, this position is entirely changed. British officials are now, in fact as well as in theory, only the advisers of the Egyptians, and under the recent Foreign Officials' Compensation law they will almost all have left in four years time. * * * *
