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XVI.

LORD CROMER AND HIS WORK.

VELVET AND STEEL-A MAN WHO KNOWS HIS OWN MIND-A DIPLOMATIC TRIUMPH-WHEN IS ENGLAND GOING TO LEAVE EGYPT ?—THE ATTITUDE OF FRANCE-THE FRENCH ABROAD -NATIVE VIEWS OF THE ENGLISH OCCUPATION-A FRENCH EDITOR'S OPINION - OUR ONE FAILURE ENGLAND TURKEY.

OR

January 13.-To read Egyptian-French accounts of Lord Cromer, you would picture him a stiff-browed, hard-mouthed, cynical, taciturn martinet. To look at the real man, you would say that he gave half his time to sleep, and the other half to laughing. Lolling in his carriage through the streets of Cairo, or lighting a fresh cigarette in his office, dressed in a loose-fitting grey tweed and a striped shirt, with ruddy face, short white hair, and short white moustache, with gold - rimmed

eye-glasses half-hiding eyes half-closed, mellow of voice, and fluent of speech,—is this the perfidious Baring, you ask yourself, whom Frenchmen detest and strive to imitate? this the terrible Lord Cromer whom Khedives obey and tremble? His demeanour is genial and courteous. His talk is easy, open, shrewd, humorous. His subordinates admire, respect, even love him. He is the mildest - mannered man that ever sacked Prime Minister. Only somehow you still feel the steel stiffening the velvet. He is genial, but he would be a bold man who would take a liberty with him he talks, only not for publication; he is loved, yet he must also be obeyed. Velvet as long as he can, steel as soon as he must-that is Lord Cromer.

He has had the hardest row to hoe of any British representative abroad in our generation, and out of it he has raised the best crop. Few men have ever had to face so much opposition: few have so triumphantly parried and quelled it. He has stood for

THE RESULT OF RESOLUTION.

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years in the van of British diplomatic battle; yet the shock of it has never moved, never so much as ruffled, him. Time upon time the strongest coalitions have been formed against him; the Khedive, the Cabinet, France, Russia, Turkey have combined to humiliate him. At his back he has had England, only often an England that did not know her mind. But his own mind Lord Cromer has always known, and when things went too far his opponents came to know it too.

At one time it was the recognised rule of Egyptian Prime Ministers-when in doubt attack Lord Cromer. They don't do it now. At one time it was the favourite diversion of the Khedive; he is not so fond of it now. At one time France was never weary of it; she lets him alone now. They have mistaken accidents for essentials, things that did not matter for things that did; Lord Cromer has not. They have lost their tempers, and he has not. They have failed in their resolution; he has not. Often he has appeared beaten on single points and for the time; on the

main issue and in the end he has beaten them all. And at present, thanks to Lord Cromer, there is no Egyptian question.

The Egyptian question has been answered. Lord Cromer has sat still, declining to be worried or flurried, until it has answered itself. The question was, When is England going to quit Egypt? The right answer was, Never. The provisional answer given from time to time has been, When, first, it is quite certain that no other Power will enter Egypt; and, second, Egypt is capable of setting up a tolerable Government for itself. In the course of the past fifteen years the latter answer to the question has gradually approximated to the former. When" has come gradually nearer and nearer to "Never." Twice in these times we have voluntarily entered upon negotiations with a view to withdrawal; each time France has petulantly frustrated them. We need not be surprised at France's irritation. If we in 1882 had incomparably the greater interest in Egyptian trade, it must be owned that France had done

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FRANCE AND EGYPT.

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more for the country. France gave Egypt the Canal-perhaps a doubtful blessing from the native point of view; she commenced giving her the Barrage; she gave her the law. French manners, habits, ideas had spread far more deeply into the social daily life of the country than ours-more deeply than any European influence except Italian. The French language was more generally known; it was even the official language of the country, and in theory is still. But if, having done so much, France drew back at the critical moment and declined to risk her skin to save her work, it is with herself she should be angry, not with us.

But France has sulked, and because she has sulked her policy in Egypt has been a string of blunders. She locks up Egypt's money in the Caisse de la Dette: well, then, it will only take us the longer to put the country in order. She refuses funds for the reconquest of the Sudan: well, then, Britain advances it, and is it likely Britain will let go of territories conquered with her own

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