TROUBLES IN EGYPT.

Evening Star, Issue 18030, 26 July 1922, Page 4

TROUBLES IN EGYPT.

Titeue is no cause for surprise in the fact that tire abolition of the protectorate and the promise of self-government to Egypt , should have been followed by a new outbreak of political crimes. Experience lias shown that self-government in its first effects on countries that aspire to it is most like a violent medicine which only benefits the patient’s health—when it does | benefit it—after racking him nearly to | death. It is too soon to say yet whether i Ireland, ■ India, or Egypt will in the long I run bo better off for the doses of Bellgovernment which have been given them to satisfy their importunate desire; but Egypt will be luckier than the other countries if the first working of its) coveted panacea causes no worse disturbances than those of which Lord Allenby has complained. The British protest has been made against outrages on British officers and soldiers, which have been aggravated by the failure of Sarwat Pasha’s Government to arrest any of the criminals. Sarwat Pasha has replied that to prevent these outrages, or apparently even to punish them, has so far been beyond his Government’s power, but it hopes to do better in the future. The disorders, which have been aided by feeble, administration, have been bad so far chiefly for the foreigner; but Lord Allenby has made it plain that they will be bad for Egypt if they are continued. It is a Provisional Government that exists now in Egypt. No system of rule can be changed in a day. To the Egyptians themselves has been referred the task of preparing a constitution that will satisfy | at once their own requirements and the reservations that were provided for by the proclamation issued at the end of February. The new Government can only be finally established, after elections have been held, and it is not expected that the time will be ripe for them until early next year. Meanwhile, however, the British authorities have given an earnest of their good faith by abstaining from interference with the Government just as far as possible. A correspondent of the ‘ Round) Table,’ writing in April, stated that, the Advisers to the Ministers of Education and the Interior were leaving immediately; and, though the Financial and Judicial Advisers were staying on, their functions had been changed. The former was described in Lord Milner’s book as the corner stone of British influence inside the Egyptian Administration. The Financial Adviser, however, now no longer attends the Council of .Ministers, and it was understood that executive responsibility would be entirely theirs. Egyptian Under-Secre-taries had been appointed. But Sarwat Pasha’s Government has not been popular. The stars in their courses have fought against it. It has not prevented the price of cotton from falling or the Nile from failing for the second time running. Ofily a people’s idol could avert such calamities, and such an idol exists for the Egyptian town workers, who are fierce politicians, in the extremist Saad Zaghlul, whom *tho British banished. “He is anything but a traditional hero,” states this correspondent, “being sixty-five and diabetic; but he is an orator, and in spite of serious temperamental defects—a curious timidity seems to be one of them—he has the indefinable thing we call character.” If the result of the elections should bo insistence on his return, it would be a bad outlook for the new, independent Egypt. The outlook is at best a doubtful one, even in the eyes of many Egyptians. Not all who havo clamored for the ending of British authority, when that was the popular thing to do, have been anxious to see it ,end. Lord Cromer has told the story of an old sheikh, known to be an Anglophile, who was asked why he had signed a petition against British rule. He smiled and answered: “It is all empty words. I often say to my camel or to my horse, if in some trifling way he tries my patience: ‘ Curses on you! May Allah strike you dead, 0 son of a pig!’ If I thought % would) really happen I should be silent• but I. know that the beast will remain unharmed, So also I know that , the English will stay here whether I- sign a petition or not. What does- it matter, then? I please our lord, the Khedive. The English remain all the same and look after my interests, and everyone is happy all round.” There qre Egyptians’to-day, according to the ‘Round Table’ writer—himself a believer in self-government—who have made common cause with the Nationalists because that was the popular side to take, and out-shouted them in the hope that, by asking for impossibilities, they would prevent any change being made. The correspondent himself admits that he has misgivings, not , about Ihc principle of self-government, but the time for its application. “I should, I frankly admit, have preferred to wait till the coun. try was more ready. It is not that ability is wanting in the upper classes or even backibone-rthough the latter quality is rarer—and there is also administrative experience. But with 92 per cent, of the people illiterate, and with the past history of Egypt in mind, no one can feel sure of success. There-must, in any event, be a long, trying period.” It would be hard to take a more hopeful view of the prospects.