RED TAPE IN EGYPT.

Evening Star, Issue 12943, 5 May 1908, Page 8

RED TAPE IN EGYPT.

Lord Cromer's book on his work as a ProConsu] in Egypt contains the following amusing illustration of Egyptian fidelity to the traditions of red tape:— “ A case occurred of a station-master declining to send a fire engine by a train which was about to start in order to help in putting down a serious fire. He pointed with inexorable logic to the regulations, which did not permit of trucks being attached to that particular train. No exception was to be found in the code with wliich he had been furnished to meet the case of a burning town to which a fire engine had to be spatched-- Again, at one time it was the practice, if an accident occurred in the streets not to transport the individual who had been injured at once to the hospital, but to leave him lying on the ground, whatever midit be his condition, until the proper official had arrived to make a proces-verbal of the facts connected with the accident. On one occasion a doctor was sent to examine into tho condition of a station-master supposed to be insane. On entering tho room he was attacked and nearly strangled by the madman. He was able, after a sharp struggle, to call on two orderlies, who had been present all the time, to seize live man. They saluted and did so. On being asked why they had not interfered sooner, they replied that they bad received no orders to that effect. Without doubt they considered that tho struggle on the floor, which they had witnessed, was part of some strange European process, with which they were unfamiliar, for dealing with insane station-masters.”