The Egyptian Problem

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THE EGYPTIAN PROBLEM
CB.
extended to Mansourah and other towns, not only in t Delta, but in Upper Egypt, laid itself out at once" discriminate between those who clearly deserve relief ai those who do not, whereas the Government scheme 1« many loopholes for the well-to-do and especially for t big traders to reap the benefit of the sale of foodstu under cost price. Lord Allenby very wisely did n allow himself to be deterred from giving official suppc to this promising movement by the prejudice which Nationalist origin seemed at first to jpaise against it^
To the inveterate habit of procrastination and secrec which are not altogether of recent growth in Ang Egyptian administration, may be still more direcl traced the sudden exacerbation of Egyptian feeling o^ the projects for the storage of the Nile waters in t Sudan, which coincided with the resignation of the Minisl of Public Works, Ismail Sirri Pasha. His resignatk it was authoritatively stated, had nothing to do with tt question, but was due solely to reasons of health. ] too had been bombed, and though he escaped any acti injury, he had suffered severely from the shock. I resignation nevertheless came at a singularly awkwa moment. The bitter controversy that had raged for me than a year over the Nile projects had not been arrest by the appointment, long overdue, of a fresh Commiti of Inquiry, consisting of three independent experts, fr of them Anglo-Indian engineers and one an America The British Government had still failed to measure t distrust provoked in Egypt by the mystery in which t projects had been enveloped from the start and t persistent refusal to take the Egyptian, public into th confidence with regard to schemes involving not mer< a large expenditure of Egyptian money but the p manent and vital interests of Egypt, whose very ] depends upon an abundant supply of water from the B] and the White Nile that flow down together from 1 Sudan. No Egyptian was put on to the Committee, a this was a fresh and not unreasonable grievance. Tciation which he initiated in Ms own native town, one of the poorest in Egypt, where 24,000 out of a total population of 32,000 were in sore need of assistance, and which he subsequently know where to look for guidance, and ^