THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, JULY 23, 1907. THE MAKER OF MODERN EGYPT.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8493, 23 July 1907, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, JULY 23, 1907. THE MAKER OF MODERN EGYPT.

The London Times-published a striking article on Lord Cromer, the maker of modern Egypt, on the morning of his return to England, "to live with his own people, conscious that his name will go down for ever as one of the gieatest and most successful of the long line of illustrious rulers whom England has sent forth to make her sway a symbol of jus tice and of enlightenment to the ends of the world." "It is our privilege amongst the nations," remarked the Times, "to breed men of Lord Cromer's stamp, and to give them the careers for which they are fit. Laurelled soldiers and triumphant statesmen make their entry into other capitals, but the men who have built up Empire by the arts of peace come back to London alone. From our shores only go forth the great administrators, who, with a wisdom and a courage unrivalled since Rome sent her proconsuls to the banks of the Orontes and of the Rhine, mould the destinies of alien million:? on the ideals of our race. With the same wisdom and the same courage, but with a sense infinitely deeper of the responsibilities they bear, they labour at the same Imperial task. They bring justice and righteousness to the dark places of the earth; they strike down oppression, and corruption withers before them; they lift the yoke from the necks of the lowly; they wrestle with famine and pestilence and ignorance; they 'make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.' The work is not grateful to the lower sorts of able men; it is not showy; it is often unappreciated; it is sometimes traduced ; it seldom bears its full fruits in the lifetime of the worker. Though the rich harvests which Egypt has gathered and is gathering from the seed sown by Lord Cromer are as nothing to those which it promises to yield hereafter, he is singularly

happy in that the return has been so abundant in his day. He has had the rare good fortune—the supreme reward to men of his temperament—of carrying out, as completely as is possible in politics, the task he had set himself to dc. His success is. no doubt, due to many causes, but foremost amongst them has been his characteristic resolution to make the regeneration of Egypt the business of his life. It was a bold resolution when he took it, ai>d we can well believe that it was not taken without hesitation; but, being taken, Lord Cromer never swerved from it. He had put his hand to the plough; he has not looked back. He had taken Egypt for better or worse; he has cleaved to her. He has never thought of making his work, as men of ambitions less pure nnd less virile : often do, a stepping-stone to promo- ! tion in some other field. That is an infirmity which has marred many a career that might have been great, and many a character with fine qualities and noble instincts. Lord Cromer has given his whole self to his work, and therefore his work is good."