The Second World War and After 227
the military necessity of keeping the Wafd in power no longer so
compelling in 1944 as it had been previously; and though it was
said that in the first half of that year Lord Killearn fought a rear-
guard-action for Nahhas, for whom he evidently had a personal
regard, by the late summer the situation was becoming untenable.
Had Britain persisted in supporting the Wafd regardless of the
hostility of the influential upper-class and the wider circle of the
King's supporters, she might have had to face widespread agitation
in Egypt and the resignations of many key officials. This in turn
might have paralysed the complex Egyptian administrative
machine at a time when the country was still intended as an im-
portant link in communications for the war against Japan; for the
Wafd is notoriously lacking in trained and efficient administrators,
and there were no British personnel available for an emergency.
The suggestion that a continuation of the Killearn-Nahhas com-
bination would have prevented or moderated the subsequent
• Egyptian demand for radical revision of the 1936 Treaty argues
a fundamental ignorance of the Egyptian political character,
i since the Wafd would have demanded a handsome reward
, for its collaboration during the war. The Foreign Office wisely
decided that its support of Nahhas should cease, and that internal
Egyptian politics must be allowed to take their course. Nahhas was
dismissed from office in terms of ignominy by a royal rescript of
October 1944, and succeeded by an anti-Wafdist coalition which
secured a majority in an election which the Wafd boy-
cotted.
When the Allied victory in the war had become clearly only a
^matter of months, it became evident that as soon as it was over
. Egypt would ask for a revision in her favour of the 1936 Treaty.
Revision after ten years was provided for, on the understanding
that the alliance should be preserved. Nationalist feeling in Egypt
was rising, particularly after the fall of the Wafd. The Prime
Minister who succeeded Nahhas was murdered by an extremist
because he was believed to be too pro-British. With the close of
the war the Wafdist press began to clamour for treaty revision.
The Prime Minister Nuqrashi Pasha tried to temporize, but
nationalist pressure forced him to present a Note in December
1945 requesting the evacuation of all British troops and the estab-
lishment of effective Egyptian sovereignty over the Sudan—the
so-called 'unity of the Nile Valley9. Britain announced her willing™