Letters to the Editor
The Despised Czeslaw fesma,, Comprehensive Education R. W. Powel, All-Star List Michael M. 12!..1 Crisis in Medicine Social Worker Keele Hon. Josiah Wedgwooa and Sir George Barnes Sorry: Aloysius C. Bickerstall
THE DESPISED
SIR,—Few will dispute that Egyptians ai endowed with some unlovely traits of charac• ter. Yet this does not explain why, in the course of the Second World War, the British did nothing to encourage the better side in them on 'an emotional and sentimental and thus, in the Levant, essential plane. Little or nothing was done to build up the self-respect of the Egyptians, to foster amongst them a conviction that they are, or could be, at least potentially. treated as equals by the British. Selective sympathies of Miss Freya Stark did little to counterbalance the hurt created by the British soldiery singing obscene versions of the Egyptian national anthem, whenever they had a chance, unchecked effectively by their officers. King Farouk was neither more corrupt nor worse than the present rulers of Egypt. He was certainly far more intelligent and pro- Western whilst, at least according to the Aga Khan, remaining a devout Muslim. Yet he was steadily and deliberately ridiculed and deni- grated by irresponsible drunks in uniform in the Long Bar of Shepheards's within the 'ear- shot of Egyptian servants—to quote but one glaring example. In the old days the counter- jumpers of John Company proceeding East were sternly warned that they would be sacked on the spot if they made fun of local customs and susceptibilities. Their remote descendants bedecked in finery of wartime commissioned ranks did impenitently an untold harm by their inane references to `Gypoes' and 'Wogs.'
Few, I fear, could compare the late Lord Cromer in stature and in intellectual lights with either Lord Killearn or Sir Brian Robertson, Bart. Furthermore these latter-day proconsuls lacked the bowels of compassion and warm- hearted sympathy with, the Egyptians which made the fits of autocratic temper of Cromer wholly acceptable to the inhabitants of the Nile Valley.
During the Second World War no leader- ship' from the Residency in Cairo restrained the racial conceit and zoological xenophobia of the hundreds of thousands of the British bearers of the white man's burden, both com- missioned' and uncommissioned. which ran amok in the Middle East in the Forties. The cold and repellent justice was debited by the Military Police while few Egyptian officers were welcomed at the Gezira and Maadi Clubs
No gesture was made to underline at least some community of aims and ideals with Egypt when the war against Germany was won. Why, for example, were such prestige points as Kasr El-Nil Barracks, Ezbekiyeh Gardens and the Citadel in Cairo not evacuated on May 7, 1945? Any amount of good will would have been generated if on that day Egyptian colours were broken over these obsolete symbols of foreign domination galling to any nation. No doubt there were valid A /Q reasons militating against such a step, but as a consequence these decayed monuments of a bygone era were evacuated a couple of years later under circumstances which convinced the Egyptian leaders that the British, for all their fine talk about human rights and democracy, respond only to a kick in the teeth, preferably a strong one. But then the British are impatient with emotional and historical susceptibilities, particularly of some• body else. It is a dangerous frame of mind when the opponent is no longer a Fuzzy-Wuzzy charging a machine-gun wielded by a hirsute and invincible Victorian in solar topee.
However, one should not despair. The English, like the newts, have the gift of spontaneous mutation. Once their Toynbean infatuation with their transient entity of self- righteousness and hypocrisy has been sloughed off, the qualities in them which have provoked St. Gregory the Great to an historical pun may yet shine. The profound, abiding sense of justice is not extinct at least in individuals. The salva• tion of the Continent may yet meander along the paths trodden by Boniface and his fol- lowers once the notion has been firmly grasped by the autochthonous population of the British islands that niggers do not start at Calais and that foreigners, with or without British pass- ports and regardless of pigmentation, are fundamentally exactly the same as the true- blue British working man and not just counters of political equations, or objects of worthy causes or plain nuisances, perhaps unavoidable tinder the circumstances, even when they do not happen to be Nazi generals, Princes Galitzin with a commission in the Brigade of Guards, Krishna Menon or Arthur Koestler. —Yours faithfully,
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