The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ABR INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1924. LABOUR AND EGYPT.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 283, 28 November 1924, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ABR INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1924. LABOUR AND EGYPT.

For the cauge that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance. And the good that vie can do.

Before the Labour party challenges in Parliament the reply of the British Government to the murder of the Sirdar, it had better study carefully the Egyptian policy of its own Foreign Minister. It is quite conceivable that one might approve of everything Mr. Mac Donald did in respect to Egypt, and yet not approve of the whole of the latest development of British policy, nevertheless these two chapters are connected, and it is impossible to understand fully the situation in Egypt to-day without knowing what happened during the Labour Government's term of office. Labour critics at Home and in the Dominions should read particularly the dispatch that Mr. Mac Donald sent to Lord Allenby in Egypt on October 7, after Zaghlul Pasha's visit to London. It is most illuminating. First of all, it shows clearly how impossible was Zaghlul's attitude. The Premier of Egypt wanted everything. All British forces were to withdraw from Egyptian territory; Britain was even to abandon all claim to share in the protection of the Suez Canal. There were to be no more financial and judicial advisers to the Egyptian Government; Britain was to abandon her claim to protect foreigners and minorities; and thprc was to be no supervision of foreign relations. The Sudan, of course, was to revert completely to Egypt. All this meant that Egypt was to bo in every way independent, and Britain was no longer to have any special interests in either Egypt or the Sudan. Forty years of work of reconstruction, to say nothing of the interest of the Empire in the Suez Canal, was to count for nothing. With such an impossible negotiator, Mr. MaeDonald could not get to grips, but he made him understand that in respect to Egypt and the Sudan Britain's attitude had not changed. Mr. MacDonald's statement to Lord Allenby of the- value of the Suez Canal to the Empire might have been written by any of his predecessors at Downing Street. What we wish to emphasise especially now, however, is Mr. Mac Donald's references to the Sudan, for they have an important bearing on the murder of the Sirdar and the British retaliation. Mr. Mac Donald pointed out that Zaghlul had described the British as usurpers in the Sudan, and had stated that the fact that a foreign officer was in command of the Egyptian army and the retention of British officers in that army, were inconsistent with the dignity of independent Egypt. The expression of such opinions about the army, said Mr. Mac Donald, had "obviously placed not only Sir Lee Stack, as Sirdar, but all British officers attached to the Egyptian army, in a difficult position," and the claim to possession of the Sudan, so expressed, "must inevitably have affected the minds of Egyptians employed in the Sudan, and of the Sudanese personnel of the Egyptian army." As a result, continued Mr. Mac Donald, there had been an entire change in the spirit of Anglo-Egyptian co-operation in the Sudan, and Egyptian subjects in the Sudan service had been encouraged to regard themselves as propagandists of Zaghlul's views. Mr. Mac Donald used the firmest language about the Sudan. The British Government had a duty to preserve order there, and it would do its duty. His Majesty's Government have no desire to disturb existing arrangements, but they must point out how intolerable is a status quo which enables both military and civil officers a.nd officials to conspire against civil order, and unless the status quo is accepted and loyally worked until such time as a new arrangement may be reached, the Sudan Government would fail in its duty were it to allow such conditions to In the face of this. Tits own dispatch, Mr. Mac Donald could hardly contend that Zaghlul had no responsibility for the murder of the Sirdar. Xor could he object to the decision of the British Government to purge the army in the Sudan of Egyptian elements. The diepatch, however, has a wider significance. It is a re-affirmation of the British policy of continuing to protect Britain's special interest in Egypt, which is what is really at stake. An honest attack by the Leader of the Opposition, therefore, will be concerned only with details in that policy.