matter of vast satisfaction to them that, even after defeat, they will have their way, at least partially. In accordance with its usual policy, the Government has confronted us with an accomplished fact. It has not taken the people into its confidence, it has not sought the opinion of the country. When the egregious Mr E. S. Montagu had made up his mind to hand over India to Mr Gandhi and his friends, he sprung his purpose suddenly upon the nation, and declared that, on account of a single answer to a casual question asked in the House of Commons, opposition to the scheme which he had fathered would be an act of bad faith. It is an ill method of government, and it has an awkward look, when it is followed by the avowed champions of democracy. And the same method has been followed in Egypt. Half a dozen wiseacres have framed, in fear, a brand new scheme, and those who dare to oppose it will presently be told that they are endangering the peace of the world. Its purpose, it will be said, is to strengthen the bonds of good will between England and Egypt. A new friendship, we shall be assured by our Ministers, will be formed between the two countries. And even the Ministers, when they repeat the formula, will know that it is baseless. No friendship ever was, or ever will be, built upon a weak foundation, and we are giving Egypt her independence at this moment, not because we believe it to be the right thing to do, but because we shrink from holding fast to ing fast to our firm timehonoured policy. Egypt will not love us the more; she will merely honour us the less for our conduct. We are breaking faith with the Arabs in Mesopotamia, we are pursuing a mad will-o'-the-wisp in Palestine, and we can no longer trouble our heads about the security of Egypt, of which, said Bismarck, already cited, England has a greater need than of her daily bread. What, then, is to be done in the name of "self-determination," that dangerous formula, invented in Germany for the dismemberment of the British Empire, and thrust upon the father of all evil-President Wilson? Great Britain will recognise the independence of Egypt and will guarantee her integrity against foreign aggression. In exchange for these boons Great Britain will be permitted access to Egyptian territory in case of war, and will also maintain a garrison in the Canal zone. There the connection between England and Egypt will cease, and time will show whether "the spinal cord" of the British Empire is sufficiently defended against the breakage of our enemies. For the rest Egypt will go her own way at home and abroad. There will be no more British advisers, except one, who will watch over the Public Debt Commission, and another who will supervise such legislation 88 affects foreigners. The capitulations are to be abolished, as should If have been done long since, and changed the situation. there has been any change, Let us turn, for instance, to Mr Milner's well-known book, Now, even the politicians who 'England in Egypt.' That disdefend the secret and sudden tinguished statesman was reaction of the British Govern- solute upon one point-that it ment do not pretend that the was impossible to say when change will enhance the hap- our work in Egypt would be piness or the prosperity of finished. "The truth is," he Egypt. The Egyptians are wrote, "that the idea of a not trained in the wiles and definite date for the conclusion tricks of democracy, and since, of our work in Egypt is wholly of course, they will enjoy all misleading. The withdrawal of the blessings of popular govern- Great Britain, if it is not to ment, since they will start at end in disaster, can only be a the point whereat we have gradual process." So far as arrived after centuries of ex- we can understand the purperience, the result of the pose of our present Governhazardous experiment can ment, there will be nothing easily be foreseen. Nor can gradual in the process. Our the debt which Egypt owes retirement is to be sudden and to England be easily estimated. complete. Then, proceeds Mr We have brought the Egyp- Milner, "no doubt the presence tians out of the land of bank- of the troops is even now an ruptoy and set their feet upon important element in the the solid rock of health and maintenance of our influence. wealth. We have built the .. Nor can retirement at dam at Assouan and given any time be contemplated fertility to the Egyptian soil. without uneasiness. But it And we take our dismissal does not follow that if, for without reason and without whatever reasons, it should argument. The work which be thought desirable to withhas been done by English draw the troops at some wisdom and English courage future date, our influence goes for naught. It may well would necessarily suffer. No be in vain that Lord Cromer doubt it would, if they were worked and Gordon died. Nor withdrawn in deference to oan the plea be advanced menaces - if any one could that the war has completely say that we had been pushed out." That is precisely what every one can and will say. We have been pushed out by the menaces of Zaghlul and his friends. We have not gone at our own time, but at theirs. And our departure is a triumph not of British policy but of Egyptian nationalism. Even if we had withdrawn our troops at our own free will, it would still be necessary, thought Mr Milner, "that the position of the British officers in the Egyptian Army should be maintained." That position is not likely to be maintained. And Mr Milner closed his argument by asserting that the case for perseverence held the field. "If it can be proved," he wrote, "and I maintain it is proved, that we have been true to the spirit of our declarations, and that the literal fulfilment of them would be fraught with ruin to the Egyptian people, and with mischief to Great Britain and to Europe, then we are undoubtedly justified in persevering in the course on which we are engaged." As we were justified then, so we should be to-day, if we had not renounced our responsibility under pressure. Our governors do not seem to care whether the Egyptian people be ruined or not. The word "self determination " has been whispered in their ears by interested Germans, and they have forgottten that ever they assumed the burden of governing Egypt with wisdom and justice. Whether Lord Milner is in agreement with Mr Alfred Milner or not we do not know. There is not much doubt what Lord Cromer's opinion would be. "Is it," he asks, "possible to ensure the existence of a fairly good and stable government in Egypt if the British garrison were withdrawn? That is the main question that has to be answered. . . . I can only state my deliberate opinion, formed after many years of Egyptian experience and in the face of a decided predisposition to favour the policy of evacuation, that at present, and for a long time to come, the results of executing such a policy would be disastrous. Looking to the special intricacies of the Egyptian system of government, to the licence of the local press, to the ignorance and oredulity of the mass of the Egyptian population, to the absence of Egyptian statesmen capable of controlling Egyptian society and of guiding the very complicated machine of government . . . it appears to me impossible to blind oneself to the fact that, if the British garrison were now withdrawn, a complete upset would probably ensue. . . . A transfer of power to the present race of Europeanised Egyptians would, to say the least, be an extremely hazardous experiment-so hazardous, indeed, that I am very decidedly of opinion that it would be wholly unjustifiable to attempt it." Lord Cromer wrote these words twelve years ago, and events have made what seemed unjustifiable then far less justifiable to-day. And that there might be no uncertainty, Lord Cromer brought that part of his argument to an end with these memorable words: "It may be that at some future period the Egyptians may be rendered capable of governing themselves without the presence of a foreign army in their midst, and without foreign guidance in civil and military affairs; but that period is far distant. One or more generations must, in my opinion, pass away before the question can be even usefully discussed." Twelve years have passed away, and the question has not been discussed; it has been settled without discussion, and in a sense which Lord Cromer would justly and indubitably have deplored. handed in treachery, is con- He was We can no longer hope for any sense of proportion in the treatment of public affairs. The essential and superfluous long since changed places, and nobody can be sure of universal applause save the convicted oriminal. Some eighty brave and honest members of the Royal Irish Constabulary have been foully assassinated this Now what happened to the year for no other reason than Lord Mayor of Cork was not that they have done their duty. of national importance. If he They have gone to their graves chose to starve himself to unhonoured and unsung. The death, and if he could square rascals who are responsible for the sin of suicide with the their deaths, and who intend, tenets of his Church, there if they can, to set up an in- was not another word to say. dependent republic in Ireland, And what happened? The utter no word of protest. Fine press, which should have governors they would make, known better, wrote daily whose hands are foully stained leaders, published daily bulwith the blood of innocent letins, and set a criminal upon men ! And then the Lord a throne of martyrdom. The Mayor of Cork, caught red- Americans, after their in variable fashion, found in a trivial incident another chance of insulting Great Britain, and heaped upon us the flattery of their insults. In brief, all the world of fools and sentimentalists, whose sympathy is always with the murderer and never with the murderer's victim, made 8 public advertisement of their fatuity, and left us with the pleasant calculation that the deliberate suicide of a Lord Mayor is a far worse blot upon those who tried their best to thwart it than is the cruel murder of eighty honest men upon those who brutally and ounningly contrived it. we have seen nothing for many a day fit to be compared with a book entitled 'A Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth,' by Sidney and Beatrice Webb (London: Longmans, Green, & Co.) Everything in this work is out and dried. The authors live and move in a vacuum. The book is close and stuffy from beginning to end, as though it had been written in a house where the windows were never opened, and where the sun had never a chance to penetrate. And the whole argument is based upon a misstatement. "The manual-working wage-earners, comprising two-thirds of the So we live in a world of population, obtain for their topsy-turveydom. So, when maintenance much less than honour is to be done to the half the community's net narrow-minded fanatics now product annually." So say called the Pilgrim Fathers, it Mr and Mrs Webb, and we is the Earl of Reading, a noble- prefer to accept the evidence man of Jewish blood, who is gathered by Mr A. L. Bowley despatched to Plymouth, that in his analysis of the national he may make an appropriate income before the war. oration upon the rebellious 1911, he tells us, that 42 per Christians of three centuries cent of the aggregate income ago. The Pilgrims were was paid in wages, and 42 per solemn gentlemen no doubt, cent cannot be described as but even they, if they could "much less than half." And look upon the earth, would this is not all. The amount of laugh at the pompous incon- old-age pensions, free educagruity. Lord Reading and tion, and free meals at school, the Pilgrim Fathers! There must be included in the sum has been no episode like it paid to the wage-earners. since Sir Alfred Moritz Mond And if, as we should, we described Stonehenge as the class with the wage-earners place in which "our ancestors" those who are in receipt worshipped. of salaries less than £160 But for sheer lack of humour a year, we shall find, with In 1 It is noteworthy that before Mr Bowley published his analysis, Mr and Mrs Webb roundly asserted that "two-thirds of the population, that is to say, the manual workers, obtain for all their needs only one-third of the produce of each year's work." They have modified their statement now, but not enough. |