The Egyptian Problem

xii INTRODUCTORY
the confidence of many of them. These are my credentials which I must leave the reader to appraise for himself. I have seldom introduced personal reminiscences, as they are generally irrelevant to an impersonal study of a difficult political problem. But it is scarcely a disadvantage to have been able to study the Egyptian problem in the light of knowledge acquired, on the spot and at the time, of the many different phases through which it has passed within the now fairly long span of my own lifetime.estions for a solution that should give reasonable satisfaction to Egyptian political aspirations and restore confidence in our good will and good faith without endangering the foundations of national prosperity and individual freedom which, for the first time in her history, at least since the Pharaonic age, Egypt owes to British intervention and British control. My readers, however, will probably be already in possession, of the recommendations of the Milner Commission, which naturally has had at its disposal far more abundant materials than can be available to any non-official inquirer. But whatever its recommendations —and I do not profess to be acquainted with them—it will, I feel confident, bear me out in testifying to the urgency as well as to the possibility of finding an issue from a deadlock as damaging to our own reputation as to the well-being of Egypt.