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educated people began to grow up in the country to form ready tools for any campaign of revolution. Such education as they had received gave them a distaste for the cultivation of the land, and they formed a band of idle café loafers in all the big towns. They had, perhaps, some little cause for grievance, but this they magnified out of all sense of proportion. There had been a tendency in the zeal for efficiency to increase the number of Englishmen in the Egyptian service. This was particularly the case with regard to some of the smaller posts, which could equally well have been filled by Egyptians, who make excellent subordinates. Naturally, the matter was greatly exaggerated, but there is no doubt that the appointment of Englishmen to minor posts, besides giving rise to dissatisfaction amongst the natives, who had visions of seeing their sons, whom they had educated, deprived of their prospect of government employ, materially diminished the authority and prestige of those Englishmen who were really necessary for the advancement and well-being of Egypt. Zaghlul showed a profound knowledge of the psychology of his fellow-countrymen, and to each class he made the right appeal. During the years of the war the government of Egypt had been carried on by the momentum which it had inherited from the days of Cromer. Those amongst the British officials who were left in the Ministry of the Interior seemed to have lost touch with native affairs and failed to sound any note of warning. Zaghlul and his party, seeing that there was no check upon their activities, became more and more audacious, and their demands increased with their growing influence and power. It was at this juncture that Sir Reginald Wingate was called home to advise His Majesty's Government on the position of affairs in Egypt. Never was it more essential that a man should have been left at his post.

At the beginning of 1919, a document was addressed to the foreign representatives and residents in Egypt announcing the constitution of a 'Delegation' of twelve members under the chairmanship of Zaghlul, which proposed to lay the legitimate aspirations of Egypt before other countries. On March 3 this Delegation presented to the Sultan a petition which was generally interpreted

as an attempt to intimidate His Highness and deter him from appointing a new Ministry. This proceeding was felt to be a challenge which could not be declined, and Sir Milne Cheetham, acting for the High Commissioner, decided with the approval of the British Government to deport Zaghlul and three of his most active adherents to Malta. For a day or two nothing happened, and the authorities were beginning to congratulate themselves that they had nipped the agitation in the bud. Their optimism was short-lived-it was only the dead calm which preceded the storm. Without warning the storm burst, and Egypt, from Alexandria to Aswan, was in the throes of open revolution. The students in Cairo started the ball rolling with anti-British demonstrations which quickly necessitated military intervention. Similar outbreaks were soon reported from the provinces. On March 12, disturbances broke out at Tanta, the seat of a large Mohamadan theological college and always noted for the turbulence of its inhabitants. By March 14 and 15 the trouble had spread to most of the Delta provinces, where attempts to interrupt communications had become general. Looting, pillaging, attacks on British troops, and murders of British soldiers and civilians were reported from many quarters. On the 16th, the railway and telegraphic communication between Cairo and the Delta as well as with Upper Egypt was broken. By the 18th, the provinces of Behera, Gharbia, Menoufia, and Dakhalia were in a state of open revolt. Upper Egypt and the foreigners living there were completely cut off. They were besieged at Assiut, Minia, and Beni Suef, where their situation for some days was most critical, and they were fortunate to escape massacre. At Deruit two British officers and five other ranks and an English Inspector of Government prisons, all of whom were unarmed, were murdered in cold blood in the Assiut-Minia train under circumstances of revolting savagery. The people in their fanaticism drank the blood of their victims and cut pieces of flesh from their bodies as trophies and souvenirs. It is impossible to acquit Zaghlul and his advanced Nationalists of complicity in all these murders of Englishmen. When they started their campaign in the big towns and country districts they well knew the

material which they were handling. They were cognisant of the turbulent nature of the people, once the hand of authority was removed. They were fully alive to the fact that their murderous and destructive instincts could be easily aroused, and that subversive teaching could only result in murder and rapine. Their dupes paid in many cases the extreme penalty of the law, while they themselves carefully abstained from taking an overt part in actual murder and destruction of property. Yet they should have been held responsible for the effects of which they were the cause. night long the streets of Cairo swarmed and hummed with yelling men. Pandemonium seemed to have broken loose. The yelling was punctuated by rifle shots. The Egyptians had gone mad.

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By March 26, the situation, from a purely military point of view, had become stabilised. The main railway and telegraph communicatiens had been re-established, and the necessary disposition of troops had been made for their adequate protection. It was a most fortunate thing that there were enough troops still in the country, and still more so that they were commanded by General Sir Edward Bulfin, who very quickly had a firm grasp of the situation and acted with energy and decision. The Commander-in-Chief in Egypt, Field Marshal Lord Allenby, had left to join the Peace Conference in Paris on March 12. He was, however, back again in Cairo by the 25th, having been in the mean time appointed Special High Commissioner, during the absence of Sir R. Wingate, the High Commissioner, in England. His instructions were 'to restore law and order and to administer in all matters as may be required by the necessity of maintaining the King's Protectorate on a secure and equitable basis.' The military measures which had been taken had rendered the situation outwardly calm. But there was little diminution of antiBritish sentiment, which was now chiefly manifested against the military element, whose behaviour during the repression was speciously represented. Lawyers and students continued to strike, and many officials continued to absent themselves from their duties. In the opinion of many competent observers at the time, it was thought that if Lord Allenby had postponed his arrival and Vol. 249.-No. 494.

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General Bulfin had had another fortnight, the situation in Egypt would have materially changed for the better, and the historian would have had to record events which were more consonant with British dignity and prestige.

When Mr Lloyd George, with his usual Celtic impulsiveness, appointed Lord Allenby to the post of Special High Commissioner in Egypt, he probably never asked himself whether a successful soldier without any previous experience of the East and its problems was the right man for the most difficult and complicated post of all in our foreign relations, requiring not only the skill of the diplomatist and statesman, but the craft necessary to combat Eastern guile. Allenby had none of these qualifications, and his usual reply to Egyptian delegations was: I am here to maintain order,' and even that he did not succeed in doing in a way that commended itself to his fellow-countrymen and some of the thinking men among the Egyptians. Harmless and innocent Englishmen were murdered in broad daylight in the most frequented streets of Cairo, and he took no adequate steps to prevent a recurrence. In reality he was a weak man, and this was soon realised in Egypt. The conciliatory disposition which he adopted in addressing a group of notables who visited him by invitation shortly after his arrival in Egypt on his appointment as High Commissioner, did not prevent the outbreak on April 2 of a general strike. He adopted a policy of conciliation, which to the Egyptian politician meant a policy of weakHis first act was to remove the embargo on the departure of Egyptians desiring to travel, a measure which carried with it the release from Malta of Zaghlul Pasha and his three associates. Thus within a month of their deportation, the policy then adopted was reversed, and the leaders of the revolutionary movement became free either to return to Egypt or to proceed elsewhere to renew their campaign of agitation. In Egypt it was called by the foreigners with an accompanying shake of the head, the 'beau geste' of Allenby. By his own countrymen who knew anything of Egypt it was called 'Allenby's folly.' It was characteristic of the

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man.

He deluged the country with futile proclamations only to climb down almost immediately from the attitude he had taken up. There was only one of his proclama

tions which was a success, and that was a clear and explicit statement that the salaries of Egyptian teachers would be docked if there were any more strikes in the schools. It must have been inspired by some one who knew the psychology of the Egyptian. It was a striking contrast in its effective simplicity to many of the futilities which had been issued under the name of proclamations.

The consequences of deporting the Nationalist leaders were not rightly understood, and the revoking of that measure after serious disturbances had taken place, necessarily gave the impression that British policy was wavering and liable to quick changes under the pressure of agitation. In the next stage, punitive measures for the murder of British officers and other outrages committed during the rebellion became a necessity, and though carried out, on the whole, with moderation, they inevitably prolonged the period of exasperation. The Administration endeavoured to conciliate political sentiment by transferring a large number of the trials, after the most urgent cases had been dealt with by martial law, to the ordinary tribunals; but by this time Nationalist opinion as the result of Lord Allenby's conciliatory measures had hardened, and the almost inevitable result was that evidence ceased to be forthcoming and the accused were acquitted.

In the mean time Zaghlul Pasha and his colleagues had, on their release from Malta on April 11, proceeded to Paris, in the hope of obtaining a hearing for Egypt's claim to independence from the Peace Conference. On failing to achieve this object they devoted all their energies to obtaining foreign support for their cause, and an emissary was dispatched to America to canvas opinion in the United States. The only outcome of this latter step appeared to be an action recently brought by the widow of an American lawyer to recover the sum which had been stipulated for his services. At the same time their adherents in Egypt worked with the greatest industry to complete their organisation, levying large sums of money and extending their propaganda to all parts of the country. Their activities were also largely concentrated upon the exploitation of existing conditions of industrial unrest, resulting in a succession of more or

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