In the House of Commons on Friday, July 15th, Lord
Charles Beresford asked the First Lord of the Treasury a question as to the National Bank which has been formed in Egypt, and went on to ask "whether, in view of the establish- ment of this bank, the advance of £838,000 as a loan from this country, the construction of the barrage, and other signs of a prolonged occupation, the Government were prepared openly to declare that we intended to stop there, in view of the great sacrifices in British men and money on behalf of Egypt ? " The question, as worded, was no doubt somewhat of a verbal blunderbuss, but we entirely sympathise with the man behind the gun and his intention, and regret that Mr. Balfour—who, of course, spoke as the mouthpiece of the Cabinet rather than in his personal capacity—did not boldly admit that circumstances had rendered it impossible for us to carry out our declarations as to evacuation. Instead, he merely evaded the question by remarking that "neither the establishment of the bank, nor the advance made for the purposes of the Soudan expedition, nor the construction of the barrage, which I may remind my noble and gallant friend is to be done at the cost of the Egyptian Government, seem to call for any declarations of policy beyond those which have been already made." As we have explained elsewhere, this evasion of the real issue is to be deprecated. The time has come to take a manly and straightforward course about Egypt, and to admit that when we talked about evacuation we were very foolish, though at the moment perfectly sincere.
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