BEARDING THE LION.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXXV, Issue 13034, 30 March 1910, Page 4

BEARDING THE LION.

The fact that he was attacked by the Egyptian Nationalist newspapers, and that he was threatened with a hostile reception at Cairo if he ventured to reiterate opinions he had previously expressed about the benefits of British rule in the Soudan did not deter Theodore Boosevelt from giving the Egyptian journalists a bit of ms mind. The cable states that he gave them a stirring address on their duties and responsibilities, and it may be taken for granted that the man who would not quake on meeting a lion face to face on the.African veldt, or who conld remain unruffled at the sight of some of the mobs of humanity which American politics produce, would not be deterred from speaking his mind fully and fearlessly in Egypt. Details of his utterance will be awaited with interest, but we can imagine that he .did not fail to again remind the Egyptian journalists of the great benefits their country had received from British rule, but for which most of those he was addressing- would in all human probability be occupying a very different position to that which they now hold. He would doubtless recall the condition of the country before Britain set about the reforms: the poverty, the wretchedness of the, masses; the intriguing, the ‘bribery and corruption which at one tinfe were so prevalent in Egypt, which evils' are even now.only dying a lingering death. And the inference any intelligent person can draw is that if the claims of the Nationalists were acceded to some of the worst evils of former years would speedily re-appear. Britain, and Egypt too, is indebted to exPresident Boosevelt for his outspokenness.