A PROUD RECORD.

195

to go," says he; "as I say, your action here is an abomination"- he does say so, too"but as for me, I go also by the last boat before you do."

And that is what would happen. The wise virgins would leave by the last boat before us, with their realised property; the foolish ones would leave by the first boat after, without it. We have done much for the Egyptian; we have given him security, justice, water, better times than he has ever had before. We have even gone far to make a soldier of him. Our record is one which any other nation would be proud of, which no other nation could achieve. But one thing, so far, we have failed with the Egyptian. We have not made a man of him. Take the very best of them—an intelligent, industrious, honest official, whom his English chief is sincerely trying to push forward into a commanding position. He will come to that chief, and beg and pray to be relieved of responsibility. He doesn't like it. It terrifies him. He is not a man.

There are only two forces in Egypt today. Of the two forces, one you know-Lord Cromer, Sir William Garstin, who gives water, and Sir John Scott, who gives justice, and the screw-guns on the Citadel, which can shell any street in Cairo at the call of a telephone. The other force you may see on one side in the gabbling fanaticism of El Azhar Mosque, on the other in the Turkish aristocracy. If we go, the Turk must rule again. The Turk is a gentleman, and a man, and a ruler of men. Only he would rule the Arab in his own way-the old way. The water would all go to his fields; the cases would all go in his favour; the labour would all go, unpaid, to build his palace; his rent and his taxes would be thrashed out of the Arab with a stick. And then-since the Arab is by now accustomed to other things-another Arabi.

Therefore, we shall go on ruling in our

way.

XVII.

BITS OF OLD AND NEW.

RUMOURS OF WAR-THE PYRAMIDS-THE VIEW FROM THE GREAT PYRAMID-A VISIT TO THE ARSENAL.

January 28. I thought I

I thought I was leaving

Egypt, not for good-one does not like the idea of never seeing Egypt again—but at any rate for a good while. back again in a fortnight.

Now here I am

And if the air

breathed war when I went away, it breathes fire and slaughter now. The Government, you must know, in pursuance of that policy which has always drawn a mysterious and perhaps prudent veil over its intentions about the Sudan, has decided that correspondents are not to be allowed to go to Berber, which is a little behind the actual front. There are fifteen thousand men or so beyond Mail

head, so that it can hardly be want of transport that prompts the decision; besides which, correspondents always find their own transport.

Moreover, there were half-a-dozen correspondents at Berber last year, who did the place no harm I ever heard of; moreover, there is a censor.

All this is of more interest to me than it is to you, perhaps. But I am moved to reflect on it by the fact that, thanks to the Government's obscurantism, all Cairo at this moment is rustling with the wildest rumours. There has been a defeat at the front with heavy loss; the gunboats are partly stranded and partly captured; Slatin Pasha - O malheureux, remarks a French organ with feeling has been retaken by the dervishes.1 As for the Egyptian army, the gloomiest reports go abroad concerning it. The Egyptians, they say, have been harried to mutiny over the railway; the Sudanese deprived of their women till they mutiny, too; you

1 February 18.-Need I say that the first person I saw at Wady Halfa was Slatin?

shot away

would think half the army was for insubordination by this time. Of course all these stories are the wildest nonsense : that is declared sufficiently by the stamp of the people that circulate them. But the fact remains that Cairo is very uneasy. It doesn't matter much, to be sure; but so far as it does matter, the Government is to blame for acting as if it had things to conceal.

January 29.-To relax my mind for you can't show yourself in hotel or restaurant or street without being told or asked for some new thing I have been taking a morning with the Pyramids. There is no fretful rumour - mongering about them. They have looked down quite apathetically on more great things than you or I or any history-book ever heard of, and they are not going to trouble themselves now about the movements of dervishes or anybody else. It was a great refreshment to go out and look at them-so enormous, so moveless, so battered by time and spoilers, and yet so imperturbably indestructible.