The Egyptian Problem

XIV
A BARREK PERIOD OF DRIFT
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m^rk who favoured moderate counsels were to be found. Lord Curzon in the House of Lords delivered a long speech which was doubtless intended to be more conciliatory. But the good impression made by his attempt to explain or explain away the significance of the Protectorate and by his assurances that we meant this time to make a reality of Egyptian representative institutions was largely marred by the unfortunate comparison lie drew at the end between the state of Egypt and is the opposite and encoift-aging picture presented by the Sudan." " It is bad enough/3 said one Egyptian to me, " that Mmayat (the Arabic word for Protectorate) should assimilate our status in the world to that of the * protected ' foreign subjects in our midst, of whom you English people especially have never been very proud. Are we now to be called naughty boys because we are not prepared like the good Sudanese boys, barely reclaimed from savagery, to kneel down and kiss Lord Curzon's rod ? "
Nor was it any more helpful that, just when the Mission was arriving with the avowed object, amongst otherSj^ of securing a larger share for the Egyptians in the administration of the country, new appointments of Englishmen to administrative posts and the arrival of fresh batches of young Englishmen to pass into the Egyptian public services continued to be announced in the public Press. It was difficult to make Egyptians understand that the old machinery had to be kept going until the Mission had completed its labours. They preferred to believe that an attempt was being made to confront the Mission with accomplished facts.
s 2with unaccustomed energy that ** British supremacy exists in Egypt, British supremacy is going to be maintained, and let nobody either in Egypt or out of Kgypt. make any mistake upon that cardinal principle, of His Majesty's Government," and then proceeded to administer a special rebuke to that particular section of the. ruling classes in Kgypt who are of Turkish origin, though it was just amongst them that at that time the few men of someys invited in the sai way to withdraw into the country, was always equa deserved or wise may be doubted—especially in o particular case which Egyptian public opinion, rightly that Egypt' wan quit** unripe for such democratic