UNREST IN EGYPT.

Auckland Star, Volume LI, Issue 73, 27 March 1920, Page 17

UNREST IN EGYPT.

BRITAIN AND THE FELLAHEEN

WHY WE ARE UNPOPULAR. To treat of Egypt without starting by the Sphinx and the Pyramids would be mere pretentiousness. Any decently brought-up article will begin by leaving its card upon them at once, writes Mr. J. 31. X. Jeffries, the special correspondent of the "Daily Mail" in Egypt. From the terrace of the Scmiramis Hotel, where Lord Milner's Commission is housed, the Pyramids show far off to the left beyond the Nile and the palmproves, looking even more than ancient, like parcels left by Fate in the charge of History. Who could omit them? yet one of tho greatest dangers of tho Egypt of to-dtiy is that, when certain vciuora in Britain and on the Continent and in the Lnitcil titutcs write of l.cr present tremors and ugitutions for "complcto independence," in ull that they tay oo many of them leave out the Pyramids. Xuey do not, or'will not, remind themselves that this is a country of Eastern blood and phraseology and habits of mind and ways of action. The agitators for complete independence here do indeed use \\ catcrn watchwords and. shout the political battlecries of Europe and America. You will indeed hear it repeated to you from across the Mediterranean that "the Egyptian people is solid"; that "Mohammedans a.nd native Christians have united in the demand for freedom"; that "all provincial assemblies and local councils have sent unanimously demanding complete independence to Saad Pasha Zaghlul in Paris," and so on. But, as the Americans so pithily say, ''Forget it!" These are phrases intended, to capture certain sensitive minds in Britain, minds so very sensitive, to ligh f that they must develop in the dark, to impress certain twittering, bird-like, English-speaking, rather than English, newspapers. THE MIND OF THE FELLAH. Eighty-five per cent, of the people of Egypt are tillers of the soil, Mohammedans nearly all of them, primitive men and women with the falling darkness of twilight on their faces and the dreams of night in their deep, unstable eves, but, when the mood seizes them, uproarious and chattering together, full of contentment and laughter nt some trivial joke. These are the two sides of their nature —they arc homely and they are strange. When they are homely, when they are nt work on their plots or conversing in squatting groups or busying themselves about their huts or their smnll stock of domestic animals —when, that is to say, they are leading the normal side of their lives —these fellaheen are as a rule only dissatisfied with the British in so far as the British leave them to the administrative mercy of their own race. When they are strange, when some flash of wild Islamic thought lias reddened out like a bonlirc in their brains, no being on earth would seem just to them, "were he a Chistian. And where the gross misrepresentation of the writers I have alluded to occurs is in putting forward some occasional rush of blood to these Moslem heads as a demand for political independence; some fanatics sacking a train in Tpper Egypt under the "influence of religious dementia as a quorum of the country ticking off reasoned demands against "post-war policy." Post-war policy, forsooth! Tlic eleven millions or so of peasants in Egypt do not know what the words mean. And, after all, the only thing that matters in this controversy, if controversy there be, is whether, and on what terms, the fellaheen arc content to have the British here. Their attitude in the business has undergone a certain change of recent years, more especially during the war, and it is of high interest to notice the cause of this. In Lord Cromer's • days, and in Lord Kitchener's, every fellah in the country looked upon the British Agency in Cairo rs a haven of justice where he could go and lay his least complaint against tyrannous village mayors or moneylenders, and from them right tip in the scale of oppressions to the Khedive, and Jiave certainty of a righteouß and stern decision. And while the English were thus so beneficently looking after them, like an old-established firm of archangels, you may be sure they desired the English to stay permanently and predominantly in their country. HOW WE LOST FAVOUR. But of later years, almost inevitably as the country grew and Ministries developed at tbe expense of tho Residency, a change set in. It set in like a flood during tho war. Petitions were sent or brought, as of old to Cairo, but during the four years' life-struggle the Residency had a thousand other things to decide. So petitions and pleas were not dealt with by Residency and British provincial inspectors, but sent over to the Ministry apparently concerned in them. There they were either properly pigeon-holed or docketed and properly sent on for reference and inquiry to the Moudir, the native Governor of the province of the petitioner. He would send it on to the Mainour, a subordinate native officer in charge of a district; the petition was in fact lauched on a career of complete independence; its writer's fellow-countrymen were judging it and him. The Mainour properly referred it to the Omdeh (village mayor) or Sheikh or other local notables for information. Hi ninety-nine cases the petition was against one of these gentlemen or somebody patronised by him. In due time, therefore, a report quashing the petition would be rchauled along the proper administrative chain to Cairo, and quite soon the petitioner learnt in his private life the undesirability of writing petitions. Out of the window and into the fields and gutters went British prestige: what was the good of. the English'/ What wero they doing? And what an excellent ground for the student-agitator who came along and said to disgruntled fellahs, "Is not the Englishman an infidel?" Was there ever a greater paradox? Because British insnectors were few and British advisers overburdened during the war; because the British did not interfere sufficiently to protect the fellaheen but left them to be ruled over by their own people: for these reasons we lost tome of our popularity. Yet in the recesses of their minds the toiling millions—and 1 repeat that it is only the millions who matter —remember how the British have been in the past their bulwark, and when good, welltrained inspectors return to watch over their interests the millions will thank Allah, I