EGYPTIAN TROUBLES.

Evening Star, Issue 18810, 8 December 1924, Page 6

EGYPTIAN TROUBLES.

Aftkr the warnings which have been reccived by authorities any attempt which foolish young Egyptians may have, meditated either to blow up the. House of Commons or to clisposo violently of one of His Majesty’s Ministers probably will not bo made to-morrow, when Parliament is to be formally opened by the King. In view of tho Alarms which have been uttered, crowds attending that ceremony may be expected to be larger than usual, which would naturally be an advantage to conspirators, but onlookers with dark faces may bo certain of being very closelyshadowed. The Egyptian Association of Great Britain and Ireland protests indignantly against the dishonoring suggestion that any violence could bo possibly contemplated by high-souled Egyptian patriots against British Ministers. The murder of a British official in a Cairo street wns, in the eyes of its fanatical perpetrators, possibly an act of shining virtue. But to dream of taking vengeance in a London street for the punishment that has been visited upon that outrage is what the wildest of Egyptian plotters would never do. They aro all peaceful, honorable men. ‘'Egypt's national movement is purely legal, constitutional, and non-vio-lent.” It will be well for the world if tho Egyptian Nationalists should decide to make that tho character of their movement for tho future. In tho past it has not merited the description, A British Sirdar certainly has been assassinated within the last few weeks in Egypt, and the agitation by tho Nile has included always a strong dement of irresponsible violence, which the least efforts seem to have been made by its leaders to restrain. There have not only been riots, accompanied by bloodshed, in Egyptian cities. It is not many months since a fanatic for freedom fired his pistol at Zaghlul Pasha himself, outraged by tho thought that the Prime Minister was going to London to conduct negotiations with the Government of tho nation to which Zaghlul himself, in a speech from the Throne prepared for King Fuad (and amended by Lord Allonby), had referred as "our honorable adversaries.” If more Egyptian students in Europe and in Britain are of the type of this young man the police in Britain would be very foolish not to keep a close eye upon them during periods of tension, and the behaviour of Egyptian students in London during Zaghlul Pasha’s visit was not calculated to impress convictions of their capacity for self-control. No more than a general warning seems to have been given by Lord Allenby bo the authorities in his intimation that members of the “Wafd,” Zaghlul’s party organisation, of whom there arc many in England, were becoming restive, and were likely to bo disorderly, but the warning was too serious to be ignored. It is not the first time that British Ministers have had to bo guarded against tho risk of assassination, nor will they complain of having to discharge duties connected with their responsibiltics in foreign countries subject to the same risks as the man on the spot. British trade unionists, of a minority type, who have been visiting the Soviet have not disguised their sympathy with the Egyptian movement. Apparently they did not dissent from a resolution, passed by the enlightened world-movers of Baku, that Egypt’s victory is only possible by revolutionary action. The typo is not a rare one, for that matter, which is less shocked hy the assassination of one of its own countrymen than it would be by an execution for .the most dastardly crime. The Baku meeting decided to form a " Hands Off Egypt ” Society, and Mr A. Purcell—-whoever he may be—premised to create a similar society in Great Britain as soon as he returned. The worst harm that Britain has done to Egypt has apparently been in giving to her so much self-government as she has done. The first consequences of that concession have not taken long to reveal themselves. Foreign money comes less readily into Egypt than it used to do. According to a recent writer s “ Cairo itself is beginnipg to sink back into a state of medieval squalor and confusion. The public services are functioning with increasing waste and Inefficiency. Only the momentum gained in tho period of British administration and the existence, here and there, of a few

Egyptian officials who retain tho ideals of loyal service, thoroughness, honesty, and ability learned from the British, enable the machinery of government to run with some semblance of smoothness and adequacy. The State railways, once a model of punctual and comfortable facilities for travel, are now a scandal, with unclean!iness, overcrowding, reduced speed owing to deterioration of the permanent way, breakdowns, and accidents. The irrigation services in Egypt itself are manifesting signs of tho changed conditions. Villages are experiencing difficulty in obtaining water, n situation that never occurred under British control, and are learning that bribery is tho only way to secure their rights. But even bribery will fail if tho machinery is allowed to go to min.” And those conditions, with a hundred worse ones, if the rule of forty years ago makes an example', Egyptian Nationalists would extend to the Sudan.