BRITAIN IN EGYPT.

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 168, 18 July 1910, Page 2

BRITAIN IN EGYPT.

INTERVIEW WITH REV. D. J. O'SULLIVAX. STRONG DEFENCE OF BRITISH RULE. A WONDERFUL RECORD. A traveller from the far-off land of the Pharaohs, the Very Rev. D. J. O'Sullivan, late of Cairo, preached to very large congregations morning and evening in St. Patrick's Cathedral, Auckland, yesterday, l-'or some time past Fr. O'Sullivan's name has been prominently before the pnblic of the South Island as a successful lecturer in aid of the work of the African Mission Society, of which he is a member, lie will deliver a series of lectures in Auckland and in the neighbouring centres. Seen by a representative of this paper he gave for publication the following information on current Egyptian affairs, which will be read with interest in view of the recent cables respecting the political unrest in that country. "The Society of African Missions, which I represent," remarked Father O'Sullivan. "is a congregation of missionary priests who have prominently identified themselves with Egypt and with British West Africa for more than 50 year>. Although the central house of tlie Mission Society is at Lyons, France, many of the missionaries are, like myself, British subjects. These are mainly supplied from three house which we possess in Ireland —two in Cork and one in Ballinafad, County Mayo. A membership of 20 years in the Society of African Missions and a connection of 24 years with our Egyptian missions, have enabled mc to speak on the subject of Africa with intimate knowledge, and from a source of information perfectly authentic. Although a native of Ireland, Egypt has been from my youth the land of my adoption." "You have had good opportunity, then, of observing British rule at close quarters?" "Yes, I am perfectly acquainted with the working of the British Protectorate along the Nile Valley almost since its inception, and I have no hesitation in affirming that .never since the days of Egypt's ancient greatness has the country been governed so wisely and so well. As an instance of the British administration of Egyptian affairs, I may point to the vastly increased value of agricultural land, which has, in some cases, actually trebled its former worth during the past 19 years of the existence of the Protectorate. This increase in value is due to the greater security of life and property ; afforded through the offices of British; statesmen and the more abundant supply of irrigation water from the Nile, prucured through British and Irish engineers. • Such a huge undertaking as the great Assouan Dam, a mighty mountain wall of gigantic masonry, constructed right across the Kile's bed where the river is more than a mile in width, and measuring more than a hundred feet in height—such a colossal feat of engineering conld never have been attempted by any native administration unless we go back to the days of the Pyramid builders. It was accomplished by British engineers in a few years, has reclaimed hundreds of thousands of acres from barren desert to fertile land, and enriched the country by millions. The conditions which called for its existence are peculiar to the Nile Valley. In Egypt there is no rainfall month after month, and sometimes an entire year will pass without a single drop of rain. Day after day there is the same cloudless, sunlit sky, and night after night the same star-bespangled heavens, without a solitary speck of cloud to mar their peerless beauty. Hence it is that every plant and every animal, and every blade of grass and tree and flower in Egypt have to depend for their existence on the waters of the Nile. Were those waters to fail, Egypt would return to the deserts of the Sahara., from which the Nile reclaimed it. The all-important function of the great dam is to store up these waters when abundant against their scarcity when the Nile is low. This explains why a little spot of oasis and desert like Fashoda could have occasioned, a few years ago, a war between France and England. The French, envious as they were of the success of the British Protectorate in Egypt, and holding possession of Fashoda-, situated more thajs 1500 miles up the Nile from Cairo, could have constructed there a dam similar to that of Assouan, and turned the entire volume of the Nile into the desert. This done, Egypt in IS months would have returned to the desert, too, and the French engineers, from their strategic position at Fashoda. would have put an end to the British Protectorate in the Nile Valley." JUDICIAL REFORMS AND RAILWAY ENTERPRISE. "In what other direction hare the advantages of British rule been specially manifested?"

"The success which has attended the British administration of the Irrigation Department in Egypt is only a fraction of its entire success in the general management of the affairs of the country. The army, the police, the tram service in Cairo, the judicial department, have been in great part purged of the corruption which infested them under native rule, and raised to a standard of efficiency never before known in the Orient. The weekly steamer from Marseilles reaches Alexandria punctually about 7 o'clock on Tuesday morning. The traveller by that steamer can conveniently catch the express train for the South at 9 o'clock, and in three hours he Tenches Cairo, distant 135 miles. He passes on the way nearly all the principal population centres of the Delta, and notes that the remaining towns of any importance are accessible by branch lines. In the typically Oriental' city of Cairo he notes that one of the most efficient tram services in the world embraces all the principal streets and whirls the traveller far beyond the city to the great pyramids of Gbiscb., on the borders of the western desert, eight miles distant, and to the newly-erected suburb of Heliopolis, a new Palmyra in the wilderness, distant eight miles to the north-east. He will note that the northern section of Cairo is provided with splendid hotels, theatres, palaces and boulevards, nearly all of recent origin. The magnificent railway terminus—also a new building—is scarcely surpassed by any similar construction in Europe. Every morning at S o'clock a beautifully equipped train starts for Upper Egypt, and every evening another express, provided with sleeping-carriages, leaves for the same destination. In eleven hours it reaches the -world-famed Louxor, nearly five hundred miles southward. Here, after an inspection of some of the mightiest and some of the most ancient monsters of architecture the world has ever seen, the traveller again boards the train for the farther south, and in seven hours arrives at Assouan. Here, as at Lousour, the hotel accommodation, as well as the tourist arrangements, are everything that could be desired. All

along this route, and for thousands of miles farther southward along the Nile, almost into the heart of Africa, the police system, organised and officered by the British administration, affords the traveller the most absolute security and protection advantages, which are never to be had, at least so far inland, in any other country in the Orient. From Assouan, the railway now extends away beyond Khartoum —altogether nearly 1,500 miles along the Nile inland from Alexandria; while from the southern extremity of the great continent the British railways are gradually creeping northwaTd, and will continue to do so until the Cape to Cairo line, completed in the near future, will offer to home-ward-bound travellers from New Zealand three thousand miles of the most picturesque scenery in the world, through Rhodesia, Uganda, and the valley of the Nile, with which to break the monotony of the old sea voyage of forty days. THE EGYPTIAN ARMY. "The efficiency of the Egyptian Army to-day, in contrast with its miserable condition seventeen years ago, when Arabi Pascha, at the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, was obliged to chain the Fellaheen artillerymen to their guns to prevent their running away, speaks magnificent testimony to what British military training ha 3 accomplished in this department. Had it not been for the strong hand of the Protectorate, the half-savage and fanatical hordes of the Soudan would long since have overrun the Nile Valley from Khartoum to Alexandria, and yet it was an army mainly composed of Egyptian troops, but trained and officered by Britishers, and commanded by an Irishman, that completely smashed the power of the Mahdists at the memorable battle of Omdurman, in 1883. THE FINANCIAL REFORMS. "In the management of the financial affairs of the country, the British administration has been eminently successful. The last independent native ruler, Ismael Pascha, had plunged the country into a state of indebtedness and financial difficulty that seemed utterly hope-' less. The native rising which ensued under Arabi Pascha, the Egyptian national movement of ISS2, had" as one of the items of its programme the repudiation of the national indebtedness. To-day, as a result of British administration, the financial condition of Egypt is one of the most satisfactory in the world." i THE NATIONALIST MOVEMENT.

I "And, now, in the face of those facts, |an organisation inspired und directed i mainly by young Egyptian students from European universities, and allegedly representative of Egyptian national sentiment, calls upon the world to favour its demand that Britain should immediately withdraw from the «Nile Valley and hand over management of Egyptian affairs to these youthful patriots. These are the veteran statesmen who would manage those affairs better than Britain has been managing them—noisy youths j of twenty or twenty-five, flattered and encouraged in the anti-English salons of Paris. In the first place, are those students really representative of that section of the population of Egypt which is capable of judging what is best for the j country ? I think I can furnish a proof i that they are not. From a large number ' of colleges in Egypt there are presented at the Government examinations every year several hundred candidates for the B.A. degree. Of more than sis hundred examined this year, while I was still in Egypt, more than 75 per cent of those Egyptian students were presented for the English B.A. degree. Those students undoubtedly represent the better classes of the entire population; and if they or their families or friends desired or expected the termination of the British protectorate in Egypt, they certainly would not have gone to the expense and trouble of an English education. No, the withdrawal of the protecting arm of Britain from Egypt at the present time, or at time now in view, would be disastrous to the country. The great mass of the people are no more capable of governing themselves, or of protecting themselves, than mere children. REVIVAL OF ANCIENT CORRUPTION AND TYBJEtANY. An independent native government, even in the hands of Egypt's best citizens, would infallibly degenerate into what tue British Protectorate found it some twenty years ago—a government of 'bribery., corruption, and backsheesh. I am a firm believer in the general law of nature that one country should never manage the internal and domestic affairs of another country, the arrangement of Providence supplying to every country, all that is necessary to govern itself, But as it is in the case of the individual so it is in the case of a nation, there are exceptions to that general rule. The child or the sick man is incapable of managing his own domestic affairs, and for analogous reasons so is Egypt.

EGYPT AND PALESTINE CONTRASTED.

I The withdrawn* of the British troops I would mean in the course of a few years a state of things similar to that j which obtains to-day in Palestine and I throughout every Moslem country of the Orient. Travelling through Syria and the Holy Land recently, 1 noticed that 1 every traveller at a distance from the population centres went heavily armed. The reason was obvious —there was no 'police protection. Individuals must pay for that protection in exorbitant taxes, but they have to protect themselves. Pilgrims to Jerusalem, wishing to visit the Dead Sea, twenty miles away, must pay for an armed escort of soldiers to I protect them from the Bedouins, by whom the route is infested. At Beyrout I learned that all the tram conductors of the city were of a necessity Moslems, for if a Christian conductor dared to attempt the expulsion of a Moslem who refused to pay his fare, the Moslem would certainly use his knife, knowing perfectly well that he would in all probability get off unpunished, even for the murder of a- Christian. Jit Damascus. I visited salons of Oriental splendour in homesteads possessing the meanest and humblest exterior. The explanation was this: The wealtny Christian of places remote from European influence lives in constant dread of being one day robbed and murdered, and he consequently conceals his wealth. Such is the state of things which obtains everywhere under Turkish rule. It would be an inestimable boon to Palestine if only some European Power would take over the administration of its affairs, but the jealousy of the European nations will prevent, perhaps for ever, any Christian nation from thus saving the unfortunate country from itself. And what is universally and invariably true of Moslem rule in Palestine and in other countries would be equally true of it in Egypt were the protecting arm of Britain withdrawn. But that, I feel confident, is a contingency of the remotest probability, for Britain is in Egypt to stay.