The Egyptian Problem

PASSIVE BEBELLION
195
•The immediate effect was like a wonderful transformation scene. Only a few days before there had been fresh rioting in Cairo, and on the 3rd a great demonstration which was to have ushered in a big strike of officials ended in an ugly affray in Abdeen Square when the mob set fire to a house from which an Armenian was believed to have fired a fatal shot at the crowd. British troops had to use their rifles, and nine rioters were killed and sixty wounded. Now the streets of Cairo surged with delirious crowds as drunk with joy as they had been a week before with fury. Throughout the whole of Egypt the news that Zaghlul and his three colleagues had been released and were free to proceed from Malta to Paris was greeted as a great national triumph. With the consent of both Egyptian and British authorities, public demonstrations were held and went off everywhere at first quite peacefully. But in Cairo there were still very mischievous forces at work. It may be that they represented merely a small minority whom even the Committee of Independence could no longer really control—hotheaded students, fanatics from El Azhar, with a sprinkling of disgruntled lawyers, discharged officials, and disappointed candidates for Government appointments, and behind them a residuum of reckless spirits who did not want peace and who had fled back to Cairo when the provincial risings were repressed. There were those amongst them who believed that though they had failed to organise resistance to mobile columns and aeroplanes, they could still defeat General AUenby's endeavour to effect a real reconciliation by a campaign of underground intimidation. They were thoroughly familiar with all the arts of social terrorism so powerful in Oriental countries, and they knew exactly how to work on the weaknesses of their fellow-countrymen, and especially on their innate credulity and timidity, if once they were possessed by the vague dread of some unknown and unseen danger. Hence the power of the " Black Hand " and other mysterious societies which, if they had no very
o 2t it represents only a small part of the dan remaining at Assiut to restore order in that neighbourhood. . . . Major-General Sir John Shea is moving south from Wasta with a strong column of all arms, restoring order as he goes. . . ."