When M. Gambetta rose, he complimented M. de Freyeinet on
having "reverted to that co-operation with England which at one time he seemed inclined to abandon." The convention just concluded with England for the protection of the Suez Canal, showed that the English alliance was once more the key- stone of the French policy. " I trembled," said M. Gambetta, "lest it should be otherwise. That is the true national policy, which should not be departed from." The vote of credit, M. Gambetta declared, was utterly inadequate to the crisis. More- over, the worst solution of all would, in M. Gambetta's view, be the intervention of Turkey in Egypt. "None of us can be sure that the Ottoman troops would not join the Arabs." Nor did M. Gambetta favour the idea of France going to Egypt as the man- datory of Europe,—she would be accepting an utterly derogatory part, he said, if she went to Egypt as the gendarme of Europe. The true course was to go to Egypt as the ally of England, and never to break off the English alliance. If there should be a rupture with England, "all would be lost." As for the national party in Egypt, M. Gambetta spoke of it with the greatest scorn. "There are people who fondly fancy that the Egyptians, after forty centuries of slavery, have found in the sepulchres of their mummies the principles of 1789. They have discovered a young nationality in Egypt, and want to take it in hand and dry-nurse it." England knew better, and, anxious as she was to emancipate peoples fit for emancipation, she knew that the cause of the Fellah will not be served by flattering what is absurdly called the national party. M. Gam- betta supported the Ministry, because he gathered that it was their policy to wrest Egypt from Moslem fanaticism and military revolution, and bring it under the influence of Western policy.
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