TOPICS OF THE DAY.
EGYPTIAN UNREST. THE position in Egypt is undoubtedly serious, but there is no need for anything approaching despair if only the authorities here do not lose their nerve, and do not try some quack remedy as a cure for the political disease with which they have to deal. The Egyptian people, though they have changed superficially, have not changed fundamentally. The essential conditions remain as before. The people of the Delta and of the cultivated portion of the Nile Valley up to the Second Cataract are for the most part docile and ignorant, though no doubt easily misled—true peasants, though with dark faces. In the Sudan and in the deserts surrounding Egypt the tribes also retain their characteristics, which are lawlessness and the desire to plunder and fight amongst themselves. They may be said indeed to specialize in Frontier incidents. Next, in the two big cities of Cairo and Alexandria, and especially in the latter, there exists a dangerous predatory population, ethnologicrlly of uncertain origin, which loves riot for its own sake, and which eagerly grasps at any opportunity for looting. Alexandria, one of the very few cities of the world which have a continuous history from pre-Roman times, has always been one of the cesspools of the Mediterranean. Into it has poured the human sewage of the Levant. Last, but not least, Egypt has been for centuries a centre of Mohammedan culture, or, to give it an uglier name, of Mohammedan fanaticism. In the great Mosque, or rather University, of El Azhar an aggressive type of Mohammedanism has always been taught. It has for generations been the resort of students from all parts of the modern world. To this day students from India, from Afghanistan, and from Central Asia meet there their co-religionists from Persia, Turkey, Syria, Asia Minor, Arabia, and all parts of Africa.
But these elements, though they make for disturbance, have never, owing to the Egyptian climate and the Egyptian temperament, which is not hardy or courageous, caused any far-reaching trouble. They have been, that is, as a rule kept under control, and Egypt has not proved a difficult land to govern. At the present time, however, to these constant sources of disturbance have been added several new elements. First among these is the economic disturbance caused by the war. Egypt has no doubt been enormously enriched by the vast expenditure of English money within its borders during the past five years, and also by the rapid rise in prices which has enabled Egyptian produce to be sold at a tremendous advantage, and sold by people who, as they were often working for themselves, combined, as it were, the benefits of high wages and of soaring markets. Alongside this real enrichment is to be found, as elsewhere in the world, the false, disturbing, and inflammatory influence of monetary inflation. The Egyptians, like so many other peoples, have been bewildered and rendered irritable and suspicious by the rocketing of prices, the causes of which they could not even begin to understand. .
This economic revolution, dangerous in itself, has been intensified by developments which, though local and temporary, have proved sources of acute social and political inflammation. First of these must be placed the break-up of the Turkish Empire, both on its political and on its spiritual side. Not only has Turkey ceased to be a great Power and Constantinople become, as the Mohammedans would bitterly put it, a plaything for the Christian Peace Conference, but the old theocratic hegemony of Rum has also diiappeared, or at any rate is in solution. The Holy Places are under the protection of one who is under the protection of the League of Nations. The most important and the least dependent Mohammedan Sovereign of the day is the new King of the Hedjaz. Except in the case of certain sections of the Arab populations of Arabia, Syria, and of the Land between the Rivers, these changes are generally a cause of hatred and suspicion entertained in respect of all Europeans. When they do not excite these violent feelings, they at any rate produce an alniost intolerable sense of restlessness. In fine; the Mohammedan world is in a ferment, and Egypt is a place where that ferment is felt with special force.
Another source of trouble in Egypt is the fact that under the stress of war, and partly through a much-to-be-regretted change of policy, there has been a certain abandonment, or apparent abandonment, of Lord Cromer's cardinal principle of governing Egypt by Egyptian hands under the protection and direction of British heads. This meant a small but very efficient force of British officials at the centre, but very little direct administration by Englishmen. Unfortunately we were tending, even before the war, to use more Englishmen in the minor posts of Government, with the result that the educated Egyptians saw, or thought they saw, a yearly decrease in the offices which they could fill, and for which they pined. Remember that the Egyptian in spirit is very much akin to the Babu, and longs for a place under Government where he can spend his time writing and talking and exercising the arts of a petty tyrant under the security afforded him by an official position. The Egyptian does not so much mind the final policy being decided by a few big white men at the top, but he loathes to see Englishmen crowding him and his out of the well-paid secondary appointments. But the first result of the war was a large influx of English-speaking men of all kinds, British and Australian, men who did not necessarily treat the Egyptian with the same courtesy, patience, and kindliness which, whatever may be said to the contrary, were the tradition both of our civil and our military administration from Cairo to Khartum. Further, in the tumult of war many of the Egyptians, though not consciously treated with tyranny or cruelty, suffered a good deal. Especially was this the case in the matter of the labour exacted from the fellaheen. That labour was no doubt well paid, but in the eyes of the Egyptians it was regarded as the revival of the old forced labour of the Pashas. The men of Egypt were not made to fight, but they were made to " do their bit " in the way of labour in resisting the establishment of the world Empire of Germany. It was probably a necessary evil, but an evil it undoubtedly was.
A curious cause of the new hatred of the English which has undoubtedly sprung up in Egypt must now be noted. The Egyptians from time immemorial have hated the Syrians, but at the present moment in Egyptian eyes the Syrians—and by this we mean the true Syrians, not the Arabs of the Syrian Desert, or again the Jews—are believed by the Egyptians to have become the special " pets " of the English. There are not wanting indeed men who whisper into the ears of the poorer classes, and even of the intellectual class, in Egypt that they are going to be placed under Syrian officials and forced to be the bondmen of their hereditary enemies. There is of course no ground whatever for this suspicion, but this does not make it any the less dangerous.
This new emergence of the Syrian is a subject of no small interest. It would, however, require the pen of the youthful Disraeli to do it justice. That the Syrians will once more play a great part in the world is not very likely, but no doubt they have considerable intellectual qualities. Renan in his book on the Apostles has some very illumi- nating pages in regard to the influence exercised by the Syrians on the Roman Empire. Rome and all the great cities were full of Syrians, for these pliant Asiatics proved pleasant, easy, and capable servants of the Roman admin- istrators, though they were not beloved of the subject races. There is clearly no real reason for the Egyptians to fear the yoke of the Syrians—often, by the way, con- cealed under the general title of Levantines—under a British Protectorate, though the possibilities of the re- emergence of Syrian influence might afford a good subject for a prize essay at any institution devoted to Oriental Btu dies.
We have described above the seething-pot of Egypt, but we have still to deal with certain external influences which are being exerted strongly, and even bitterly, against the British. The first and most important of these is that world-wide anarchic movement which, for want of a better name, we call Bolshevism. The Bolsheviks, partly for their own purposes—their aim is the conversion of all mankind to their views—and still more with the desire to effect a counterstra:e against us, are working double tides wherever is to be found a Mohammedan population under the British Flag. In the great Indian centres, in Afghanistan, in Persia, in parts of Mesopotamia, in Syria, and in Egypt, Bolshevism with a Mohammedan flavour, Bolshevism cut with " an un-hammy knife," is endeavouring not only to instil principles which will overthrow our rule, but to instigate direct and immediate action. These conspirators can get plenty of money from Moscow, for, however deeply committed to communism in theory, the Bolshevik conspirator knows that if you want anything well done in the political line you have got to pay people in good coin to do it, and that prices rule high. Alongside the main Bolshevik conspiracy is the more restricted Mohammedan conspiracy engineered by the remnant of the Young Turks ; that is, of the Committee of Union and Progress. Finally, there is the tail-end of the old German anti-British Oriental Secret Service. The Germans, not unnaturally, throughout the war, and espe- cially towards the end of it, did their best to sow dissension among the Mohammedan subjects of the British Empire. When Germany fell, and the Kaiser was succeeded by a more or less revolutionary Government at Berlin, the direct inspiration of anti-British intrigues in Cairo may possibly have stopped, but the indirect did not, and we do not doubt that there are still echoes, not altogether faint, to be heard throughout Egypt of the old German Propaganda. The world is full of unemployed secret agents, and it is more than probable that gentlemen of this kind who are seeking jobs are at the moment looking to Egypt for work.
What is the proper way to handle a condition of things so eminently dangerous ? Perhaps the best way to answer this question is to point out what we ought not to do. We shall be very foolish if we imagine that a state of things such as we have described can be put right by a hasty and indiscriminate application of the principles of representative government and the transplantation of Parliamentary institutions. That will give no help whatever. What the Egyptian wants is firm and just government plus low taxation and the minimum of inter- ference with his local customs and way of life. It is possible, nay, probable, that in the future the Egyptians may really desire, and may be fit for, some system of representative government. At present, however, and until normal conditions are restored, what the Egyptian wants is the kind of government we have just defined. Such government means a return to the Cromer system of British heads and Egyptian hands, reinforced by a better legal and administrative system, and above all by better and more reasonable methods of education.
It is impossible on this occasion to deal in detail with the problem of Egyptian government, but we must not leave the subject before we men- ion a matter too often ignored, but one which we know was always in Lord Cromer's mind. He was by no means averse from political developments and reforms in Egypt, but he was wont to point out that people must never forget a fact which makes Egypt different from every other Oriental country—namely, the existence of large European colonies in the Delta and in Lower Egypt. Egypt, as every traveller knows, is full of Greeks, Italians, Levantines, men of Slavonic origin, Frenchmen, and Maltese, to name only the principal subjects of the Capitulations. These men are not emigrants who have come to earn money in Egypt and mean to leave her when their work is done. The majority of the Europeans in Egypt are the sons and daughters of former settlers who made Egypt their home. Egypt has a European and Christian population, the members of which not only own a great deal of the wealth of the country, but are exceedingly numerous and cannot be got rid of or ignored. The existence of this Christian population makes the problem of applying representative institutions to Egypt extremely difficult. At present they are, as will be known to most of our readers, governed largely under the legal systems of the countries from which they originally came. No doubt now that the war is over and Egypt is a Protectorate the Capitulations will be got rid of, but the conditions which brought them into existence will remain. The Europeans will always need separate treatment.
To conclude : what Egypt wants at the present moment is a wise and strong man to rule her, and to think out with the best aid procurable the whole problem of Egyptian government and the possible separation of the old Egypt from the new Empire of the Sudan. Could not the neces- sary man be found in Lord Milner ?—We assume that Lord Allenby will remain a soldier on the active list, and will not seek a permanent political career.—That Lord Milner can be ill spared from the Cabinet we admit, but the problem of Egypt is so important that we are inclined to think that, if his health allows, the path of wisdom would be to ask him to rule in Egypt for three or four years, and then report to the Home Government as to the best means for establishing a permanent system of government on the Nile.
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