The essential point in the agreement was the recognition, by the Sultan, of England's right to reoccupy Egypt, on emergency, and this at once gave rise to trouble.
As soon as the terms of the Convention were communicated to the French Government, the French Ambassador was rampant everywhere, and both he and his Russian colleague at Constantinople made the most violent opposition. They lost no opportunity of putting pressure on the Sultan, who at first was disposed to abide by the arrangement. They went so far as to declare that, if he ratified the Convention, France and Russia would thereby have a right to occupy provinces of the Turkish Empire, and to leave only after a similar convention should be concluded with them. They also hinted that France might do this in Syria, and Russia in Armenia. Austria, Germany, and Italy, on the other hand, urged the ratification of the Convention, but the poor Sultan was too much alarmed to consent, and, on the 14th July, proposed to England to throw over the agreement which his Ministers had signed, and to reopen negotiations for a new convention altogether.
This was a little too much for Lord Salisbury, then Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister. Needless to say the mission of the British envoy, upon which £25,046 in money and two years in time had been wasted, came to an end, and Sir H. Drummond-Wolff, who had already been waiting for a month to obtain the desired ratification, left Constantinople on the 15th. His colleague, Moukhtar Pasha, whose occupation was now gone, nevertheless remained in Egypt, where he is to be found at the present date, drawing a handsome salary, but with no defined duties.
The failure of the negotiations was probably as little regretted by Lord Salisbury as it was by everybody else having the welfare of Egypt at heart. Although the time may arrive when that country will be in a position to walk alone, in 1890 (the period fixed for the withdrawal of the Army of Occupation) that time had not been reached. The reforms inaugurated were then only beginning to bear fruit, and, without the supporting influence afforded by the presence of British troops, ran the risk of being only imperfectly carried into effect, even if they did not perish altogether.
It must be conceded that, considered merely as a military force, the presence of the Army of Occupation has for years ceased to be necessary. British Ministers have over and over again declared that England's intervention in Egypt was for the purpose of suppressing anarchy, supporting the authority of the Khedive, and restoring public order. No one can deny that all these objects have long since been attained, and those who attempt to justify the retention of the British troops on the supposition that their withdrawal might be followed by fresh troubles adopt an argument similar to that of a person who, having extinguished a conflagration in his neighbour's house, should persist in occupying it on the pretence that the fire might break out again.
But regarded as a moral support to England in carrying out her extended programme of reforming Egyptian institutions, the presence of the Army of Occupation may be for some time to come a necessity.
Writing on this subject, Sir Alfred Milner, in his admirable work "England in Egypt," remarks as follows:—
"The British troops have of course no sort of status in the country. They are not the soldiers of the Khedive, or foreign soldiers invited by the Khedive; they are not the soldiers of the protecting Power, because in theory there is no protecting Power. In theory, their presence is an accident, and their character that of simple visitors. At the present moment they are no longer, from the military point of view, of vital importance, for their numbers have been repeatedly reduced, and for several years past they have not exceeded, and do not now (1892) exceed, 3,000 men. It is true that their presence relieves a certain portion of the Egyptian army from duties it would otherwise have to perform, and that, if the British troops were altogether withdrawn, the number of Egyptian soldiers might have to be somewhat increased. But its value as part of the defensive forces of the country does not, of course, constitute the real importance and meaning of the British Army of Occupation. It is as the outward and visible sign of the predominance of British influence, of the special interest taken by Great Britain in the affairs of Egypt, that that army is such an important element in the present situation. Its moral effect is out of all proportion to its actual strength. The presence of a single British regiment lends a weight they would not otherwise possess to the counsels of the British Consul-General. Take the troops away, and you must either run the risk of a decline of British influence, which would imperil the work of reform, or devise, for a time at least, some new and equivalent support for that influence, a problem not perhaps impossible, but certainly difficult of solution."