Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit FRIDAY, JANUARY 3, 1936. BRITAIN AND EGYPT.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 69, 3 January 1936, Page 4

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit FRIDAY, JANUARY 3, 1936. BRITAIN AND EGYPT.

The reply which the British Foreign Secretary has given to the United Front’s demand for complete independence for Egypt is said to be favourable, though Nahas Pasha has asked for time to consider it. If any degree of independence is granted it will not be because Britain is influenced by the demonstrations that have occurred recently but because she is satisfied, firstly that the demand is a justifiable one, secondly that the Egyptians are capable of controlling their own destiny* and thirdly that her interests in the Suez Canal and the Sudan, but especially the former, will not' be jeopardised. The most militant section of Egyptian political thought has declared its readiness to accept the draft treaty negotiated in 1929 by Mr Arthur Henderson as Foreign *Secretary in a Labour Government, and Mahmond Pasha, the then Prime Minister. It was described by Mr Henderson as the extreme limit that he was prepared to recommend to his Government. It certainly represented a marked advance beyond anything previously offered to the Egyptians, its main points were the evacuation of Lgypt and the withdrawal of all British troops to the western bank of the Suez Canal; abolition of the capitulations if the other nations concerned would agree; and withdrawal ot British personnel from the Egyptian Army. It the capitulations were swept away foreigners would become subject to Egyptian law and taxation, and would no longer be tried for offences in the Consular Courts. It British personnel were withdrawn, the Lgyptian Army would be entirely native-led, though it would stilt be trained on the British model. The main point, however, was that affecting the garrison, for the draft included a provision that after evacuation there would be no British troops nearer Cairo and the Nile valley than 32 degrees east longitude, or, roughly speaking, a line twenty-hve mites west of the canal. There would then be no effective base in Egypt for whatever force the authorities considered necessary to guard the canal. Buch terms would have been regarded ten years earlier as going far beyond anything Lgypt could expect. Actually, they were rejected in 1930 by Nahas Pasha, whom an election had put into power, because he could not get even greater concessions embracing an increased share in the administration cf the Sudan.