EGYPT’S RULER

Evening Star, Issue 21823, 12 September 1934, Page 7

EGYPT’S RULER

A MUCH-TRAVELLED MONARCH Time was—and not so long ago either —when royal progresses usually meant that something important was afoot—perhaps a secret treaty: maybe a princely ,marriage for political reasons. Those exciting days ended with the enunciation of President Wilson’s four-teen-points, but even in our post-war democratic world, there still survives a, glamour surrounding the movements of those who still wear crowns and live in palaces particularly when the crowns and palaces have their setting in the romantic East (writes Owen Tweedyin in the ‘ Christian Science Monitor ’). .... King Fuad of Egypt is visiting Greece. He has already made foreign tours to most of the great capitals of Europe, and is not only almost the most-travelled monarch of our times, but also by far the best-informed monarch that Egypt with all its past pharaohs and satraps, khedives and sultans, has ever had.

I remember five years ago, at a dinner party in Cairo, sitting between two distinguished men—an American and a Belgian—who had both had royal audiences that very morning. The American was a missionary from Northern Kurdistan. “ The King,” he told me, “talked of my work among the Assyrian Christians on Lake Urmia, and seemed to know everything about their, history and the conditions of their life; even the details _ of their terrible war sufferings. My interview was delightful—just one sympathetic expert talking to another.” The Belgian had been equally impressed. “ He discussed our colonisation of the Congo with astounding detail—how our occupation had begun the story of Stanley’s treaty, the regretted horrors of ‘ Red Rubber,’ and finally the serious tackling of a mishandled problem by our enlightened King Albert. A charming experience for me and deeply affecting. Egypt is lucky in her King.” There is a real spice of romance—that perhaps overused word—in the fact that King Fuad is to-day King of Egypt. Born in 1868, Prince Fuad was the youngest son of the Khedive Ismail, during whose short reign of fifteen years the country was reduced from comfortable solvency to utter bankruptcy and misery. But for the first five years of Prince Fuad’s life ho lived brilliantly and easily. _ From the windows of his nursery in the Palace of Giza, near Cairot he saw his father, seated beside the Empress Eugenie ot the French, ride gaily past as he escorted her to see the Pyramids along the marvellous four-mile road which in the incredible time of four short weeks he had had built on a' 20ft high dyke planned sheer across the Nile mud flats. That was in 1869, and the Empress had come to open the Suez Canal. THE LAST EPISODE. But that great pageant was the last episode of the great days of Ismail. Soon his debts began to smother him, and in 1876 French and British financial commissioners arrived to take charge on behalf of the European bondholders. For two years they strove vainly to bring order into the country s finances. But when a crisis arose in which the commissioners all but lost their lives, Ismail had to abdicate, and his eldest son, Sewfik, succeeded him as Khedive; while his youngest, Fuad, accompanied him into exile in Italy. An exiled family—especially a discredited and impoverished royal family —is a pathetic spectacle, and the young Prince’s adolescence was not promising. He was educated simply in Naples and later graduated through the Military College of Turin into the Italian Corps of Artillery; but, until 1895, when lus father: died, he lived the unsatisfying existence of a Prince away from home, apparently without a future. Ismail’s passing, however) altered the current of his life. Permission was given him to return to Egypt, and a post was found for him in Cairo in the Egyptian Court of his nephew, the young Abbas Hilmi, who had 'meanwhile succeeded to the Khedivate of Egypt. For the next fifteen years the Prince —one of many Prinoes of the Khedivial House—remained in Cairo almost unnoticed. Yet during this time he organised the Egyptian University on a more modern basis. And then came the first great event of his life. During his long residence in Italy he had made for himself many important friends, who had, formed a high and well-founded opinion of his quality and intelligence; and in 1913, the precari-ously-neld-togther Ottoman Empire suffered complete defeat at the hands of M. Venizelos’s Balkan League. As a result all the old Turkish provinces in Europe were put into the melting pot, and, when the pre-war concert of Europe decided that Albania must become an independent kingdom, Italy proposed Prince Fuad as'a candidate for the Albanian throne, Albania would have welcomed his selection. He was a Moslem, and Albania was a Moslem country; and into the bargain ho had in his veins pure Albanian blood from his great-grandfather, Mohamed Ali the Great, who had come _ to _ Egypt from Kavalla in Napoleonic times to found the present Egyptian dynasty. KHEDIVE DEPOSED' But Italian and Albanian support in those days was far too weak to withstand the pressure of Germany’s Weltpolitik. Berlin had determined to control the Balkans politically, and Albania must not become an Italian appanage. So the German Prince William of Weid became—for a fortnight in the summer of 1914 —the Mpret of Albania, and Prince Fuad remained in Egvpt. It is old history now, on the outbreak of the Great War, the Khedive Abbas Hilmi threw in his lot with Turkey and Germany and -was deposed. He was succeeded by his uncle, Hussein, another brother of Prince Fund, and the British Government declared its protectorate over Egypt, which .simultaneously became a Sultanate. Sultan Hussein died in 1917, and as his successor, the choice fell on Prince Fuad. His position was undeniably

difficult. The fortunes of the Allies, whose' cause he had espoused, were at a low ebb. The Germans were still successfully Invading France, and had overrun Rumania and Northern Italy, and Russia was in revolution, and had seceded from the Allies, Sultan Fuad’s situation was still very uncertain, with a rival nephew in Constantinople only ® waiting for the final German triumpa to return to his Egyptian throne. 1918 .saw the collapse of the Central Powers, but it also witnessed the sudden rise of a sturdy Egyptian nationalism which demanded the summary abolition of the British protectorate. Early in 1919 this agitation came to a head, and for three* terrible weeks Egypt was plunged in revolution. The revolt was suppressed, but the work of pacification was a slow and difficult process. 'lts ultimate success was due in no small part to Sultan Fuad. Unostentatiously, he somehow kept Government going, and eventually reaped where he had sown. In February, 1922, the British Government removed the protectorate, and recognised the independence of Egypt, and Sultan Fuad became her first King. That was - twelve years ago; and twelve years ago many there were who prophesised the early dissolution and decay of a young and unstable kingdom. Bad times there have been—times of bloodshed and times of bitter political strife with, in the earliest days, an unpleasant unsettling sequence of unhappy short-lived ministries. But somehow Government did survive, and gradually Egypt found her feet. History traditionally writes its pages slowly, but, when the history of Egypt’s first decade of independence comes to be written, it undoubtedly will be written around the personality of her first King. Through those difficult years he has been the deciding factor of stability. And to-day he does rule Egypt, and to-day the Egypt, which he rules is peaceful and progressive, aryl, despite the storm of the world depression, has consistently balanced her Budget without resort to excessive taxation. Above all, however, Egypt has become very Egyptian. To-day there is an Egyptian Conservatoire of Music, Egyptian schools of painting and sculpture, and an Egyptian drama. Egypt plays in the Davis Cup, and her athletes compete in the Olympic Games. In a word, Egypt—a national Egypt—has been put on the map. And for this phenomenon King Fuad as universal patron of his country has been very largely responsible. Of him it may be said, without paradox: “ Some are born great; some achieve greatness; and some have greatness thrust upon them.” Born a Prince, he had a Sultanate thrust upon him and has achieved kingship. And as it were, to epitomise' the facts of ,bis eventful life, one of the_ feaures ot his visit to Greece in his unveiling at Kavalla, as King of Egypt, of the statue of his great-grandfather, Mohamed Ali, whose Albanian blood all but placed him—now King Fuad of Egypt—on the throne of Albania.