n6 A Short History of the Middle East
his first inflammatory speeches against the British occupation. On
his return to Egypt about 1895 ^c formed the Nationalist Party,
al-Hizb al-Watani, founded a newspaper, and set up a school for
propagating his political creed among the young men. The Anglo-
French Entente of 1904 was a setback for the Nationalists, since the
French could no longer actively support Britain's enemies in
Egypt. But the defeat by Asiatic Japan of Russia, the European
Great Power that had encroached so extensively and so consistently
on the Dar ul-Islam, encouraged them greatly; and they were
fanned to fury in 1906 by the 'barbarity dictated by panic' with
which the British-controlled administration, during Cromer's
absence on leave, punished the villagers of Dinshawai for a mur-
derous attack on British officers who had mistakenly shot their
tame pigeons. In the following year Lord Cromer retired from his
long proconsulsliip. He was not a man who sympathized with the
pretensions of mediocrities nor, as he grew older, with the head-
strongness of youth; and Ms final Annual Report did not spare the
weaknesses of the Nationalist movement: It can be no matter for
surprise that the educated youth should begin to clamour for a
greater share than heretofore in the government and administra-
tion of their country. Nothing could be more ungenerous than to
withhold a certain amount of sympathy for these very legitimate
aspirations. Nothing, on the other hand, could be more unwise
than to abstain, at this early period of the National movement,
from pointing out to all who are willing to listen to reason the
limits which, for the time being, must be assigned to those aspira-
tions. .. . The programme of the National Party is quite incap-
able of realization at present^ and it may well be doubted whether,
in the form in which it is now conceived, it can ever be realized. .. .
In any case I must wholly decline to take any part in furthering
proposals, the adoption of which would in my opinion constitute a
flagrant injustice, not only to the very large foreign interests in-
volved, but also to those ten or twelve millions of Egyptians, to the
advancement of whose moral and material welfare I have deyoted
the best years of my life.' While Cromer did not reject the idea of
self-government as the ultimate goal of Egypt's political evolution,
he had many doubts of Egyptian administrative capacity, and the
Very large foreign interests' he had in mind comprised not only the
2-^ per cent, of the population that was foreign, but the fact that
78 per cent, of the Egyptian public debt and joint-stock capital was