A Pro-Consul on Egypt
BY SIR WILLIAM BRI.7..:YATE.
" LORD CROMER'S Modern Egypt," says Lord Lloyd, in the Preface to the volume before me,* " is the criterion by which all subsequent histories of the British sojourn in the Nile valley must inevitably be judged." Modern Egypt is, indeed, so much Lord Cromer's own creation, his book so essentially a personal record, as to suggest that future writers might do well to adopt a form which will best avoid the challenge of comparison. Lord Lloyd, however, has adopted the coura- geous course, and the very title of his book proclaims it a sequel, intended to bring the story of the British Occupation of Egypt down to the latest possible date. The period to be reviewed falls naturally into three phases—the Consul-General- ships of Sir Eldon Gorst and Lord Kitchener (1907-14), during which the Cromerian regime continued, though in other hands : the War and its immediate sequetae (1914-19), which is part of a wider story ; and the period from 1920 on, during which anything remaining of the Cromerian system was progres- sively jettisoned. Of the third phase the special characteristic is, perhaps, that since 1922 the High Commissioner has had no systematic access to the papers of the local government ; from being in large part an administrator he has become almost exclusively a diplomat.
The present volume ends with the end of the second of those two phases and with the arrival of Lord Milner's Mission. Volume II will contain Lord Lloyd's criticisms of the regime of his immediate predecessor, with his apologia for his own policy, and with his relations with the Foreign Office and with Egyptian Ministers. The prospect so opened up is a somewhat alarming one. Returning pro-consuls of a certain rank can secure a wide publicity for the results of their experience by debate inthe House of Lords, though it is sometimes doubt- ful how far they are wise to do so. That they should belabour each other in print, quoting freely from official papers written in some cases by officials precluded from public controversy, would be wholly unedifying. Even in the present volume Lord Lloyd expresses doubts as to the wisdom of Lord -Allenby's appointment as High Commissioner, strongly con- demns his decision to bring back Sa'ad Zaglul and his asso- ciates from Malta, and criticizes both the sending of Lord Milner's Mission and the delay in its despatch.
From the earlier chapters of the present volume it would appear that, however great his admiration for Lord Cromer's person and character, Lord Lloyd has but little sympathy with the principles on which his regime was founded. For Lord Lloyd is an avowed Imperialist and an open disbeliever in democratic institutions as a panacea for the distresses of Eastern peoples, while Lord Cromer was bred in an earlier Liberal school, and must be taken to have believed in the self-government for which he was preparing the Egyptians. The Gorst regime (1907-11) comes in for considerable and, in general, well-founded criticism. There is, however, no attempt to examine how far the melancholy experiences of those four years were due to the unsuitability of Lord Cromer's mantle for any but his own wear. Lord Kitchener's con- spicuous qualities—his idealism and his uncanny flashes of insight—have by this time become familiar to his fellow- countrymen, no less than his characteristic defects, and their interplay is well brought out in the chapters devoted to his regime (1911-14).
A special chapter (Chapter II) is devoted to the problem of the capitulations, the intimate connexion of which with the Egyptian problem Lord Lloyd fully recognizes—but, while
• Egypt Since Cromer. Vol. I. By Lord Lloyd. (Macmillan. 21s.) a technically accurate account is given of their main incidents there is no apparent grasp of the way in which they have, as the result of various palliatives and notably of the develop- ment of the Mixed Tribunals, become so interwoven with the whole fabric of Egyptian administration that their disappear-
ance would involve something like an entire re-casting of
Egyptian institutions. They appear again in Chapter XVIII where reference is made to the Report (drawn, if I may say so, without impropriety, by myself) of a Committee appointed by Lord Kitchener, on the instructions of the Secretary of State, to advise upon the measures proper to accompany the disappearance of the capitulations. The recommendations of the Committee are dismissed in five lines which deserve textual citation : " Their recommendations for amalgamation need not be considered, because the outbreak of War caused them to be irretrievably pigeon-holed until they were out-of-date, and because they were not in the form which the Secretary of State required."
Now it is far from easy to see how recommendations pigeon- holed in 1914, when they were still in the confidential stage, can have any connexion with political difficulties arising in 1917-18. But it happens that the statement is in direct opposition to the facts. The recommendations were closely followed in a Draft Organic Law for Unified Courts prepared in 1915. A Capitulations Commission was set up whose full proceedings were regularly forwarded to the Residency and to the Foreign Office ; and any adequate study of their origin would have precluded such a statement as that now under comment.
If I appear to dwell on this misunderstanding of the situ- ation, it is because a similar failure to grasp realities appears when Lord Lloyd comes to deal with the measures taken upon the outbreak of War. Lord Lloyd notes that this measure was taken by the Council of Ministers and that by the Com- mander-in-Chief, and refers to Chirol's Egyptian Problems as enumerating measures taken in India which were not taken in Egypt. But the measures proper to be taken by an autonomous Government are not necessarily open to one whose legislation is not binding upon foreigners. Suffice to say that, with every possibility of conflict with the Mixed Tribunals and with foreign Consuls, such conflict was, in fact, avoided. Friction between the civil and military authorities was equally non-existent.
Lord Lloyd would have preferred annexation to the declaration of the Protectorate when war with Turkey was
declared, if only as the most straightforward way of ending
the capitulations, and regards the action in fact taken as evidence of timidity. As one who saw events at close quarters.
I had no consciousness of a lack of courage on the part of those responsible. They realized the difficulties inherent in the sudden acceptance of responsibility for the government of a population of 13,000,000 through new channels : but primarily they were concerned with the continuity of our existing policy and with what was due to the Egyptian people. And the dangers of governing without Ministers were proved to be real enough in 1918-19.
The Egyptian problem still remains. As one who served for many years in Egypt I should be glad to see it settled on lines appropriate to existing conditions—quite other than the conditions with which I was once familiar. For that I take the first requisite to be the appearance of a High Commissioner with the personality and qualities necessary to capture the imagination of leading Egyptians.
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