BY J.A. SPENDER

Editor of the _Westminster Gazette_, 1896 to 1922; Member of the Special
Mission to Egypt, 1919-1920.


Mr. Spender said:--The Egyptian problem resembles the Indian and all
other Eastern problems in that there is no simple explanation or
solution of it. Among the many disagreeable surprises which awaited us
after the war, none was more disagreeable than the discovery in March,
1919, that Egypt was in a state of rebellion. For years previously we
had considered Egypt a model of imperial administration. We had pulled
her out of bankruptcy and given her prosperity. We had provided her with
great public works which had enriched both pasha and fellah. We had
scrupulously refrained from exploiting her in our own interests. No man
ever worked so disinterestedly for a country not his own as Lord Cromer
for Egypt, and if ever a Nationalist movement could have been killed by
kindness, it should have been the Egyptian. Nor were the Egyptian people
ungrateful. I have talked to Egyptian Nationalists of all shades, and
seldom found any who did not handsomely acknowledge what Great Britain
had done for Egypt, but they asked for one thing more, which was that
she should restore them their independence. "We won it from the Turks,"
they said, "and we cannot allow you to take it from us."

This demand was no new thing, but it was brought to a climax by events
during and after the war. When the war broke out, our representative in
Egypt was still only "Agent and Consul-General," and was theoretically
and legally on the same footing with the representative of all other
Powers; when it ended, he was "High Commissioner," governing by martial
law under a system which we called a "protectorate." This to the