The Egyptian Problem

EGYPT DURING THE WAR
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laave been done. But the fiction of volunteering up, whilst Mudirs were given to understand :*3o.en were required and that no efforts should be ge^ng them. The Mudir transmitted the to his Mamours and these in their turn to the AU through 1917 and 1918 the screw was put and more severely as. the military operations and the lines of communication grew longer, ' ^X ;porience had proved that there are no better workers Egyptians, whether on roads or railway embank-In some places the fellaheen began to fly from villages, and soldiers and police had to scour the to bring the " volunteers " in under escort to depots. The British military authorities the men and asked no questions. The British 'il authorities, harassed and overworked, had lost touch bli -trlote people. So many officials had been allowed to to -fcjhe front or diverted to other kinds of war work, *-t £ o,r too few were available to exercise any control or -wtiat was going on in the interior. Such supervision attempted had to be in most cases entrusted to officers, entirely ignorant of the country and the , who could only work through native officialdom, omen picked up in highways and byways who knew ~t>oo well how to work in with native officialdom. native officialdom, left to itself, was callous or The chief anxiety of the higher provincial Uioiri/ties, even of the better type, was to shuffle respon-on to the lower ones, and these in their turn it on to those beneath them. Those of a worse $c set^w opportunities of gaining kudos for zeal with the itisli "whilst feathering their own nests. It •\v€ts in the villages themselves that the worst things ppoxxed. The whole system of village governance in ;yj>-b cries out for inquiry and reform. It assumed its form under Mehemet Ali, and many Egyptians Jastve closely studied it maintain that the French of which it was a clumsy adaptation, was never
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uhich the people were already accustomed in the Egyptian army, and had they seen to it that it was fairly enforced all round, not nearly so much harmholesale