MAKER OF EGYPT

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 104, 29 October 1932, Page 13

MAKER OF EGYPT

GREAT LORD CROMER

A MODERN IMPERIALIST

LITE OF DEVOTION

Imperialism is said to be out of Jashion at the moment. So much the "srorse, in that case, for the Empire if it neglects to hold in honourable and living remembrance Imperialists cf the stamp of the late Lord Cronier, writes J. B. Firth in the London "Daily 'i'elegraph."

Lord Zetland is well qualified to write Lord Cromer's biography. Lord Zetland is himself if not a great.proconsul at least a highly distinguished pro-praetor, and thoroughly in sympathy with the Maker of Modern Egypt.

In modern times there is no more inispiring example than Egypt of a country being rescued from complete bankruptcy and degradation, owing, in part, to the scandalous maladministration of its Viceroys—under the nominal sovereignty of the Turk—and to the brutal misgovernment of a people who, bullied and enslaved for centuriosj had sunk into abject hopelessness. This was Lord Cronier 's supreme achievement after a quarter of a century's unremitting toil. He told the story—as a chapter of history—in his own classic books on Egypt; Lord Zetland makes no attempt to tell it over again. He has "painted in that part of the canvas which Cromer himself intentionally left bare." Hence, he has produced that miracle of miracles ■ —a one volume biography of a really great man. It is a 'skilful piece of work, better even than his "Life" of Lord Curzon, perhaps because he was dealing with a grander, though less showy, figure.

Lord Zetland, gives a speaking and intimate likeness of Lord Crpmer, the intellectual thinker and strong man of action, deriving his strength, as Lord Zetland says, from three main sources— "his owe. complete disinterestedness, his power of mind, which was such as to render any necessity for the reconsideration of conclusions at which he had arrived extremely unlikely, and, finally, Jus highly developed moral sense." HONEST DIPLOMAT. It is specially stressed that Lord Cromer was absolutely straight in. his diplomacy. . He hated crooked ways. "Bigots and rhapsodists exasperated jhim.' * He distrusted phrase-makers, sentimentalists, and all extremists. He had to work entirely on his own. Cromer won. implicit trust. Witness the story of the cipher telegram which Jie sent to Lord Salisbury, then in the pouth of Prance, at a moment of great ' prisis. Lord Salisbury had with him the box containing the Foreign Office code, but he had mislaid the key, and so could 3iot read the cipher. But that did not trouble him. Guessing that the matter was urgent, he telegraphed back: "Do sis you like!" And Cromer did as tie liked. • Only the highest sense of duty kept him at his post during the early period of the British occupation, and especially during the Gordon episode. Cromer hated vacillation, and Gladstone and Granville vacillated and quivered like aspens. It is now generally agreed that Gordon was the worst choice that could have been, made for the purpose of evacuating the garrisons of the 6udan, because there was no keeping 3iim to his orders —which were to withdraw as quickly as possible. From the start Gordon's behaviour Hrove Cromer to despair, but when he iallowed himself to be cooped up ■in Khartoum Cromer was urgent that it was; "our bounden'duty both as a jmatter of humanity and policy not to abandon him." The Gladstonian Government delayed and delayed till in the end its frantic effort was just too Jate. GLADSTONE'S OPINION. ■Tears later, in 1913, Lord Cromer £poke his mind about Mr. Gladstone in &. letter to Lord Newton:— "He was generally thought to be [very pusillanimous in dealing with foreign affairs. That is not at all the impression I derived. He was wholly ignorant. Whenever he made an incursion into that domain he rarely lost .the opportunity of saying or "doing Something foolish." That was scathing, but not unfair.

After the tragedy at Khartoum LoTd jCromer set his face against those who urged a large British expedition for its immediate recapture. His ruling idea jvas to consolidate Egypt \v«hile Kitchener remade the Egyptian Army. ■ When, in 1596, Lord Salisbury's Government suddenly decided to advance to pDongola, Lord Cromer would have preferred the reconquest of th* Sudan to be postponed till Egypt was in a more secure Jfinancial position. But his hands were forced by the Italian disaster in Abyseinia and by the dangerous activities of the French on the Upper Nile, which culminated in the dramatic scene with JMarchand at Fashoda.

Lord Cromer's relations with Kitchener are skilfully analysed. He admired Kitchener's single-minded devotion to hard work, and was delighted to find p.t- least one soldier who was convinced that military efficiency and military economy were not necessarily opposing forces. ■ ll b

But Cronier disliked Kitchener's (Severity and his way of riding rough(shod over English and Egyptian officers alike. "He is, I fear"—Lord Cromer [Wrote in IS99—"terribly bureaucratic land docs not see with sufficient clearness the difference between forming a (country arid commanding a regiment. Kitchener could not brook opposition •—though he had, perforce, to yield to Cromer—and when the fierce controversy broke out later between' Kitchener and Curzon in India, and the British Government asked Lord Cromer ■to state his views on the merits of the subject in dispute, Cromer wrote a long memorandum endorsing the view taken by Curzon. "The Commander-in- j phiof," he said, "should be the seryant of the Viceroy and his Council: under Lord Kitchener's system he will inevitably tend to become their rnasicr." SOLDIERS' PART. ! The British Government, as usual, .temporised and compromised. Lord jCromer distrusted the judgment of soljdiers on matters of policy. "I have the greatest respect for their 'pdvice as regards tho conduct of war," lie once said to Lord Eosebery, "none .•whatever for their opinions as to tho Jjoliey which dictates war." "The exiercise of the military profession," he Jtvrote in 1596, "appears to engender a somewhat unchristian spirit of dislike toward one's military neighbours; to inthers, who are not soldiers, this is at jimes rather tiresome." Nicknames are often illuminative. jLord Zetland tells us what were Lord jCromer's:—

"In India (whfcre he had been seercitary, to Lord Northbrook) he had been "known as the Vice-Viceroy; in Egypt he was christened 'Over-Baring,' and 3ater, after his elevation to tho peerage, 'The Lord.' The use of the latter Boubriquet was not' confined to the English population; to the Egyptians, down to the very donkey-boys in the streets of "Cairo, he was equally 'El Xiord.' In his later years in Egypt he iformed the habit of taking long walks with his British secretary and trusted ifriend, Mr, Henry Boyle, in the course jjf which—a modern. Haroun. al Kaschid.

—he mixed with and talked daily to the humble dwellers in the Nile Valley. | Hence the nickname Enoch, by which Henry Boyle came to be known, for, like his prototype before him, ' he walk cd daily with the Lord.'."

DESPOTIC BULB.

Several examples are given of his dry but not unkindly humour and of the ueat efficiency of his official rebukes. Outwardly he was always imperturbable. During the worst of the crisis with Abbas II in 1593 he played lawn tennis every day. "It gave confidence to the English," he said, "and annoyed the French and others extremely —and I did it partly on purpose to annoy them." ' r

Lord Cromer's great work in Egypt has been largely undone through wilful refusal to pay heed to his warnings. He held that for Eastern peoples Western domoerac y is a purely exotic growth.

"Do not let us imagine," he wrote, "that the fatally simple idea of despotic rule will Teadily give way to the far more complex conception o£ ordered liberty. The transformation, if ever it takes place, will probably be a work uot of generations, but of eeuturies." In his farewell speech, Lord Cromer had said that "a steady jog-trot" was the pace best suited to advance the interests of Egypt; a quickened pace might bring the horse down and break its knees. It is enough to say that the horse has been down once or, twice in the interval.

Lord Cromer in 1909 foresaw the Great War. It was bound to come, he believed, because the doctrine of "the will to power and of ■war as '' part of the universal order of things instituted by God" had taken firm and increasing hold of the military and ruling powers of Germany, The menace of a Eadical-Socialist democracy and the menace of a ■world conflagration— these were the two perils he saw and feared.

His last act of public duty was to accept the chairmanship of the Dardanelles Commission. "I know it will kill me," he said; "but young men are giving their lives for their country, so why should not I, who am old?"

It was a noble saying, worthy of and inspired by the heroes of the ancient world, with whom, almost as familiarly as with his own contemporaries, he lived and moved and had his being.