BOOKS.
LORD CROMER'S RECORD OF HIS TRUST.• [CONCLUDING NOTICE.]
OUR first notice of Lord Cromer's book was chiefly taken up with the Gordon tragedy. On the present occasion we shall deal with the other and less painful aspects of the work. Besides Modern Egypt being in general, as we have said, a guide and inspiration to Imperial administrators, it is in par- ticular a magazine of wise things in regard to Mohammedans and their creed. Fate has made us the greatest Mohammedan Power in the world, and in India, in the Malay Peninsula, in Egypt, and in other parts of Africa, both East and West, we are constantly brought into contact with the followers of the Prophet. Lord Cromer's diagnosis is specially useful and important, for no man, we venture to say, has ever obtained a clearer insight into the Mohammedan and Eastern mind, and into the Mohammedan and Eastern social organism, than he has. Others have lived closer to the Moslem, and felt more of the sympathy of approbation, but none have possessed more truly the sympathy of comprehension. Without being either fascinated or unduly exasperated—the two dangers which beset those who have to deal with Orientals—he realises the vast theatre of paradox in which the Eastern moves. He sees bow the Oriental mind works, and takes the necessary steps to keep his own mind free from either prejudice or entangle- ment. One of the most striking examples of the Eastern way of thinking is to be found in the delightful "trimming" letter which was sent by the Sheikh of Keneh to a Sheikh in one of the mosques at Cairo during a period of friction between Lord Cromer and the Khedive. It is difficult to imagine • Modern Eripe. By the Earl of Cromer. 2 robs. London: Macmillan and lo. 1248. net.] '
anything more naive, and also more subtle, than the Sheikh's attitude :— "February 2, 1894.
During these days, the talk has been 'great among the people, and tongues have wearied as to the difference which had sprung up, so they said, between our Lord the Khedive and Baring.
There were those who said : The English have many soldiers, and must prevail.' Others said, and among these many of the
Ulema : HE has said (Grace be on Him !) how often hath a small force overcome a great one by the aid of the Almighty, be His name exalted !' Then it was reported in our districts : ' Behold the Infidel is overcome, and Baring has fled in haste to his own country. The days of Abbas shall be like those of his fore- fathers ; the people and the Pashas shall be bread for him to eat ; the foreigner will be his servant.' So we took council, and thought to send a mission from Keneh to say : Good news! Effendina has returned to his fit place ! ' For the poet has said: 'The wise man gives honey to the bear in the day of his fatness, but the fool smites him on tho bead with a pole.' Then, while we still pondered, came a message from Cairo that Baring and his English walked in the city like leopards among dogs, and that Abbas had withdrawn into his castle and sat scowling, for the Government of Baring had said : `Be meat that we may devour you!' So we were hushed, and resolved to say nothing of any deputation. And, of a truth, I think that it is not easy, and will be less so in time to come, to send deputations of good tidings to our Lord the Khedive. Now, I had myself thought that the end could only be thus, for I have seen the English and I know them. But aloud I said : 'The blessing of God on the deputation, and the aid of His mighty arm ! for are we not all Moslems and brethren ? (God increase the might of Islam !) ' But, 0 my friend ! I beg you to keep this letter very secret, for the poet has said : 'Ill is his lot in the court whom the Kadi has heard to whisper, "There is justice amongst the unbelievers." '" The ignorant man and the rash man would take such a letter as an indication of the false-heartedness of the Eastern, and the Eastern, when he bad realised that the letter was regarded as a mixture of cowardice and bad faith, would be horrified at the injustice and stupidity of the European. The wise man, however, will realise that the letter is in reality only one of the many indications that what the Eastern looks for above all things in government is strength and stability. What he wants is not advice, nor influence, nor guidance, but to be told what to do, and to know that obedience will be exacted from him by the strong hand. Then be feels comfortable and is able to shape his course. He does not desire to be asked to select one of two policies. What he delights in is a definite order. There is a story of the earlier part of the Occupation—told, if we remember rightly, by Lord Milner—which relates bow an English official found himself in difficulty with a recalcitrant Turco-Egyptian official of the old school who showed strong dislike of the new regime, and did all he could to thwart it.
The Englishman, unwilling to be harsh, put off as long as he could recourse to an absolute command, for nominally he was only an adviser. At last, however, be became exasperated beyond endurance, and declared that he would have his way. The native official asked whether it was an order, and he was told that it was. Instantly his whole attitude changed. "Why," said he, " did you not tell me that before P If you had, I should of course have obeyed at once and there would have been no more trouble."
We feel that our survey gives but an imperfect account of the extraordinary charm and interest of Lord Cromer's book. It is throughout written, not only with the force, directness, and good sense which would be expected from its author, but also with no little insight and literary charm. Nor is the element of humour wanting, and humour displayed, not in the mere recounting of amusing sayings and anecdotes, but of an original kind. In the chapter entitled " The Workers " Lord Cromer calls up a most entertaining picture of the various duties which he had to perform. We need not give those which were political, but we cannot resist quoting his list of the kind of demands which were made upon him by natives and Europeans, who towards the end of his career came to regard him as a kind of universal Providence :— " Lastly, the most heterogeneous petty questions were con- tinually coming before me. If a young British officer was cheated at cards, I had get him out of his difficulties. If a slave girl wanted to marry, I had to bring moral pressure on her master or mistress to give their consent. If a Jewish sect wished for official recognition from the Egyptian Government, I was expected to obtain it, and to explain to an Egyptian Minister all I knew of the difference between Ashkenazian and Sephardic practices. If the inhabitants of some remote village in Upper Egypt were dis- contented with their Sheikh, they appealed to me. I have had to write telegrams and despatches about the most miscellaneous subjects—about the dismissal of the Khedive's English coachman, about preserving the lives of Irish informers from the Clan-na- Gael conspirators, and about the tenets of the Abyssinian Church in respect, to the Procession of the Holy Ghost.. I have been asked to interfere in order to get a German missionary, who had been guilty of embezzlement, out of prison; in order to get a place for the French and Italian Catholics to bury their dead ; in order to get a dead Mohammedan of great sanctity exhumed ; in order to prevent a female member of the Khedivial family from striking her husband over the month with a slipper; and in order to arrange a marriage between two other members of the same family whom hard-hearted relatives kept apart. I have had to take one English maniac in my own carriage to a Lunatic Asylum; I have .caused another to be turned out of the English church; and I lave been informed that a third and remarkably muscular mad- man was on his way to my house, girt with a towel round his 'loins, and bearing a poker in his hands with the intention of 4tsing that implement on my head. I have been asked by an Egyptian fellah to find out the whereabouts of his wife who had .eloped ; and by a German professor to send him at once six live -electric shad-fish, from the Nile. To sum up the situation in a 'few words, I had not, indeed, to govern Egypt, but to assist in the -government of the country without the appearance of doing so sand without any legitimate authority over the agents with whom
had to deal."
'Taken as a whole, the book is a splendid record, not only of individual genius for government, but also of the governing instinct of our race. What is apparent throughout is the Briton's extraordinary capacity for dealing with matters as they arise without troubling about non-essentials, or caring to analyse too deeply either the forces through which he is working or the instruments which he has in his bands. The lather of Mirabeau, "the friend of man," as Carlyle calls him, says somewhere of the English : " These miserable Islanders do not know, and will not know till their wretched system has brought them to utter ruin, whether they are living under a monarchy or a republic, a democracy or an oligarchy." To the Frenchman possessed by the desire for clarity and first principles such a situation is wholly intolerable. TO the Englishman it is the most natural thing in the world. There- fore an Englishman was able to carry on the work of goyern- ment in Egypt when a Frenchman would, we venture to think, have declared from the first that the task was absolutely impossible. Here, as so often, our want of sensitiveness or our " stupidity," as foreigners call it, stood us in good stead.
Those who perplex themselves with the question of the future of Egypt must turn to Lord Cromer's final chapter. For ourselves, we can only say that here we venture to differ somewhat from Lord Cromer. He seems to think that it is possible, though the period may be remote, that we shall be able to evacuate Egypt. We venture to doubt this, unless we shall some day become willing for Egypt te" sink back into the old slough, or at any rate to fall a prey to a form of government which those who have interested them- selves in the task of Egyptian administration would find it intolerable to contemplate. However, that is not a point which we desire to argue here. All we want to do on the present occasion is to congratulate Lord Cromer most heartily on a difficult task performed with vigour and discretion. We
cannot do better than give as our last quotation the words in which Lord Cromer concludes his book :- " Do not let us imagine that, under any circumstances, -we can ever create a feeling of loyalty in the breasts of the
Egyptians akin to that felt by a self-governing people for indigenous rulers if, besides being indigenous, they are also beneficent. Neither by the display of sympathy, nor by good ;government, can we forge bonds which will be other than brittle. -Sir Herbert Edwards, writing to Lord Lawrence a few years after • the annexation of the Punjab, said : We are not liked anywhere. . . . . The people hailed us as deliverers from Sikh maladminis- tration, and we were popular so long as we were plaistering • wounds. But the patient is well now, and ho finds the doctor a bore. There is no getting over the fact that we are not Mahom- -medans, that we neither eat, drink, nor intermarry with them.' ' The present situation in Egypt is very similar to that which existed in the Punjab when Sir Herbert Edwards wrote these > lines. The want of gratitude displayed by a nation to its alien benefactors is almost as old as history itself. In whatever degree . ingratitude may exist, it would be unjust to blame the Egyptians for following the dictates of human nature. In any case, what- - ever be the moral harvest we may reap, we must continue to • do our duty, and our duty has been indicated to us by the Apostle St. Paul. We must not be 'weary in well-doing.' I take leave of -, a country with which I have been so long associated with the expression of an earnest hope that, in the future, as in the recent 'past, Egypt will continue to be governed in the interests of the Egyptians, and I. commend to my own countrymen the advice which was given to Rome by one of the later Latin poets : Quod regnas minus est qualm quod realms-0 mereria."
Perhaps LordCromer's best memorial is to be found in 'a story once related in our columns. While a medical.officer was engaged in sanitary work in the Delta he had to order a polluted well to be emptied and cleansed. The woman to whose house the well belonged objected strongly, and denounced the tyrant in no measured terms. Her final word was to tell him that she would appeal to " the man Krahmer," for be would see that she had justice. No man could desire or obtain a nobler monument than that. To even the rudest and most ignorant peasant woman- Lord Cromer's name had become the sign and symbol of justice to the poor and protection to the oppressed.
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