Correspondence
A LETTER FROM CAIRO. [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sua,—Cairo in the days of Lord Lloyd was enlivened by a series of crises politiques, while battleships kept steaming into Alexandria harbour to the rapturous joy alike of Thais and Hypatia. Had Sir Percy Loraine anticipated a lotus-eating life in The Residency gardens, the Wafd would have un- deceived him : once they had assumed office and dismissed all the senior officials whose politics did not bear the true stigma of the Beit el Omma, they demanded a visit to London to discuss treaty negotiations. London agreed, and Nahas Pasha sailed from Alexandria with a troupe of satellites into whose political and police record it was tactful not to probe too deeply. The astrologers of the Turf Club immediately " got busy." Nahas, they predicted, glowing with jealousy and hate for Mohammed Pasha Mahmud, would sooner cut off his right hand than accept the Henderson-Malunud proposals unchanged ; to win a hero's plaudits in the fierce limelight of the secondary schools he would demand absolute sovereignty not only in Egypt, but also over the Sudan, the Sudd, the Equator ; and then there was the patient Henderson, chained, like Prometheus on the rock, to his inexorable dictum of" the extreme limit " ; with these antagonistic forces were not discussions bound to end in a deadlock ?
So for weeks we followed proceedings in London with
alternating spasms of hope and fear : from the Hyde Park Hotel would come roseate stories couched in true Oriental hyperbole, to which Reuter would administer a cold douche of sober fact. Easter holidays came and went ; 'twas whis- pered that negotiations were practically dead hut for the efforts of Dr. Dalton and his labour gang, when suddenly the absurd episode of the courier set everyone rocking with derisive laughter. Both in London and Cairo the Wafd delegates became the butt for sarcastic jests, their 'prestige fell heavily, and political experts foresaw that the treaty was doomed. The end was inevitable. Nahas Pasha, with one eye focused on personal and party difficulties in Cairo, used the camouflage of the Sudan to evade the responsibilities
'of signing the treaty, and packed his kit for Parts. From an Egyptian standpoint it was unfortunate, for, by overcalling his hand, Nahas rejected the substance of an agreement really advantageous to Egypt for the shadow of a Sudan which no British Government can ever yield to Egyptian rule. ,
• The Cairo Ataiteur Dramatic Society gave a series of excellent performances of The Pirates of Penzance, the success being largely due to the efforts of the musical director, Flt.-Lt. E. A. Sutton Jones, and the producer, Mr. C. H. Workman, who also played the part of the Major General By an odd coincidence the production synchronized with the opening week of the treaty negotiations in London : as Egypt is habitually called the land of paradox, the harassed British delegates might perhaps have adapted Gilbert's delightful trio in the play, and used' it to express their feelings somewhat thus :— " A most Egyptian paradox !
At common sense it gaily mocks !
We've quips and quibbles heard in flocks, But none to beat this paradox ! "
The Etian envoys, who are said to have described London aS " vile triste et lugubre," might have retorted, had they knoWn their Patience by saying : "Oh, to be wafded away from this black Aceidama of sorrow ! "
If it be incumbent on H.M.G. to protect Egypt against foreign invasion, an opportunity for exercising this prerogative was surely provided by the recent attack on our eastern frontiers by devastating swarms of locusts. Like the Mongol hordes of Gengis Khan, they came from Asiatic uplands in myriad hosts, destroying and devouring everything in their path. Egyptian forces were mobilized in Sinai under Major Jarvis and other British officers of the Frontier Districts Administration. Mr. Ballard and his colleagues worked like Trojans ; men :Were rushed about in lorries with flammen- 4eifer to 'repel the invaders with petrol gas ; but it was
"locusts, locusts everywhere," and they succeeded, where the Turkish Army failed, in crossing the Suez Canal. The situation then re-echoed certain familiar aspects of the War : there were communiques from the different locust fronts, people were described as joining up for the locust campaign, there was even talk of " conscription " by applying the law under which all able-bodied males could be corveed for a national emergency.
At last—a long last—that much discussed project, a new Iiasr el Nil bridge over the Nile, is to take definite shape. For years the present structure has been quite inadequate as the principal bridge in Cairo ; nor is one much astonished at the apocryphal story that its breadth, when completed, was distinctly less than that stipulated in the original contract. British trade scores a point this time, as the two lowest tenders for the new bridge were submitted by Messrs. Dorman, Ding & Co., and the Cleveland Bridge Co. of Darlington. The final award is still sub judice. To adorn one end of the bridge will be erected, we hear, a statue of Saad Pasha Zaghlul measuring some 55 ft high with pedestal, for which, oddly enough, English firms were not invited to tender. For this and for a companion statue, apparently destined for Alex- andria, the Chamber of Deputies voted the modest sum of L.E. 43,000.-1 am, Sir, &c., Cairo, May 13th, 1930. YOUR CAIRO CORRESPONDENT.
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