Despite his ardent aspirations, Mustapha Kamel had a sense of realities, and recognized that, for the moment at least, British power could not be forcibly overthrown. He did not, therefore, attempt any open violence which he knew would merely ruin himself and his followers. Early in 1908 he died, only thirty-four years of age. His mantle fell upon his leading disciple, Mohammed Farid Bey. This man, who was not of equal calibre, tried to make up for his deficiency in true eloquence by the violence of his invective. The difference between the two leaders can be gauged by the editorial columns of El Lewa. Here is an editorial of September, 1909: "This land was polluted by the English, putrefied with their atrocities as they suppressed our beloved dustour [constitution], tied our tongues, burned our people alive and hanged our innocent relatives, and perpetrated other horrors at which the heavens are about to tremble, the earth to split, and the mountains to fall down. Let us take a new step. Let our lives be cheap while we seek our independence. Death is far better than life for you if you remain in your present condition."
Mohammed Farid's fanatical impatience of all opposition led him into tactical blunders like alienating the native Christian Copts, whom Mustapha Kamel had been careful to conciliate. The following diatribe (which, by the way, reveals a grotesque jumble of Western and Eastern ideas) is an answer to Coptic protests at the increasing violence of his propaganda: "The Copts should be kicked to death. They still have faces and bodies similar to those of demons and monkeys, which is a proof that they hide poisonous spirits within their souls. The fact that they exist in the world confirms Darwin's theory that human beings are generated from monkeys. You sons of adulterous women! You descendants of the bearers of trays! You tails of camels with your monkey faces! You bones of bodies!"
In this more violent attitude the nationalists were encouraged by several reasons. For one thing, Lord Cromer had laid down his proconsulate in 1907 and had been succeeded by Sir Eldon Gorst. The new ruler represented the ideas of British Liberalism, now in power, which wished to appease Egyptian unrest by conciliation instead of by Lord Cromer's autocratic indifference. In the second place, the Young-Turk revolution of 1908 gave an enormous impetus to the Egyptian cry for constitutional self-government. Lastly, France's growing intimacy with England dashed the nationalist's cherished hope that Britain would be forced by outside pressure to redeem her diplomatic pledges and evacuate the Nile valley, thus driving the nationalists to rely more on their own exertions.
Given this nationalist temper, conciliatory attempt was foredoomed to failure. For, however conciliatory Sir Eldon Gorst might be in details, he could not promise the one thing which the nationalists supremely desired—independence. This demand England refused even to consider. Practically all Englishmen had become convinced that Egypt with the Suez Canal was a vital link between the eastern and western halves of the British Empire, and that permanent control of Egypt was thus an absolute necessity. There was thus a fundamental deadlock between British imperial and Egyptian national convictions. Accordingly, the British Liberal policy of conciliation proved a fiasco. Even Sir Eldon Gorst admitted in his official reports that concessions were simply regarded as signs of weakness.
Before long seditious agitation and attendant violence grew to such proportions that the British Government became convinced that only strong measures would save the situation. Therefore, in 1911, Sir Eldon Gorst was replaced by Lord Kitchener—a patent warning to the nationalists that sedition would be given short shrift by the iron hand which had crushed the Khalifa and his Dervish hordes at Omdurman. Kitchener arrived in Egypt with the express mandate to restore order, and this he did with thoroughness and exactitude. The Egyptians were told plainly that England neither intended to evacuate the Nile valley nor considered its inhabitants fit for self-government within any discernible future. They were admonished to turn their thoughts from politics, at which they were so bad, to agriculture, at which they were so good. As for seditious propaganda, new legislation enabled Lord Kitchener to deal with it in summary fashion. Practically all the nationalist papers were suppressed, while the nationalist leaders were imprisoned, interned, or exiled. In fact, the British Government did its best to distract attention everywhere from Egypt, the British press co-operating loyally by labelling the subject taboo. The upshot was that Egypt became quieter than it had been for a generation.
However, it was only a surface calm. Driven underground, Egyptian unrest even attained new virulence which alarmed close observers. In 1913 the well-known English publicist Sidney Low, after a careful investigation of the Egyptian situation, wrote: "We are not popular in Egypt. Feared we may be by some; respected I doubt not by many others; but really liked, I am sure, by very few."[148] Still more outspoken was an article significantly entitled "The Darkness over Egypt," which appeared on the eve of the Great War.[149] Its publication in a semi-scientific periodical for specialists in Oriental problems rendered it worthy of serious attention. "The long-continued absence of practically all discussion or even mention of Egyptian internal affairs from the British press," asserted this article, "is not indicative of a healthy condition. In Egypt the superficial quiet is that of suppressed discontent—of a sullen, hopeless mistrust toward the Government of the Occupation. Certain recent happenings have strengthened in Egyptian minds the conviction that the Government is making preparations for the complete annexation of the country.... We are not concerned to question how far the motives attributed to the Government are true. The essential fact is that the Government of the Occupation has not yet succeeded in endearing, or even recommending, itself to the Egyptian people, but is, on the contrary, an object of suspicion, an occasion of enmity." The article expresses grave doubt whether Lord Kitchener's repressive measures have done more than drive discontent underground, and shows "how strong is the Nationalist feeling in Egypt to-day in spite of the determined attempts to stamp out all freedom of political opinion. As might be expected, this wholesale muzzling of the press has not only reduced the Mohammedan majority to a condition of internal ferment, but has seriously alienated the hitherto loyal Copts. It may be that the Government can discover no better means of recommending itself to the confidence and good-will of the Egyptian people; it may be that only by the instant repression of every outward sign of discontent can it feel secure in its occupation; but if such be the case, it is an admission of extreme weakness, or recognized insecurity of tenure." The article concludes with the following warning as to the problem's wider implications: "Egypt, though a subject of profound indifference to the English voter, is being feverishly watched by the Indian Mohammedans, and by the whole of our West and Central African subjects—themselves strongly Moslem in sympathy, and at the present time jealously suspicious of the political activities of Christian Imperialism."
Such being the state of Egyptian feeling in 1914, the outbreak of the Great War was bound to produce intensified unrest. England's position in Egypt was, in truth, very difficult. Although in fact England exercised complete control, in law Egypt was still a dependency of the Ottoman Empire, Britain merely exercising a temporary occupation. Now it soon became evident that Turkey was going to join England's enemies, the Teutonic empires, while it was equally evident that the Egyptians sympathized with the Turks, even the Khedive Abbas Hilmi making no secret of his pro-Turkish views. During the first months of the European War, while Turkey was still nominally neutral, the Egyptian native press, despite the British censorship, was full of veiled seditious statements, while the unruly attitude of the Egyptian populace and the stirrings among the Egyptian native regiments left no doubt as to how the wind was blowing. England was seriously alarmed. Accordingly, when Turkey entered the war in November, 1914, England took the decisive plunge, deposed Abbas Hilmi, nominated his cousin Hussein Kamel "Sultan," and declared Egypt a protectorate of the British Empire.
This stung the nationalists to fury. Anything like formal rebellion was rendered impossible by the heavy masses of British and colonial troops which had been poured into the country. Nevertheless, there was a good deal of sporadic violence, suppressed only by a stern application of the "State of Siege." A French observer thus vividly describes these critical days: "The Jehadd is rousing the anti-Christian fanaticism which always stirs in the soul of every good Moslem. Since the end of October one could read in the eyes of the low-class Mohammedan natives their hope—the massacre of the Christians. In the streets of Cairo they stared insolently at the European passers-by. Some even danced for joy on learning that the Sultan had declared the Holy War. Denounced to the police for this, they were incontinently bastinadoed at the nearest police-station. The same state of mind reigned at El Azhar, and I am told that Europeans who visit the celebrated Mohammedan University have their ears filled with the strongest epithets of the Arab repertory—that best-furnished language in the world."[150]
The nationalist exiles vehemently expressed abroad what their fellows could not say at home. Their leader, Mohammed Farid Bey, issued from Geneva an official protest against "the new illegal régime proclaimed by England the 18th of last December. England, which pretends to make war on Germany to defend Belgium, ought not to trample underfoot the rights of Egypt, nor consider the treaties relative thereto as 'scraps of paper.'"[151] These exiles threw themselves vehemently into the arms of Germany, as may be gauged from the following remarks of Abd-el-Malek Hamsa, secretary of the nationalist party, in a German periodical: "There is hardly an Egyptian who does not pray that England may be beaten and her Empire fall in ruins. During the early days of the war, while I was still in Egypt, I was a witness of this popular feeling. In cities and villages, from sage to simple peasant, all are convinced in the Kaiser's love for Islam and friendship for its caliph, and they are hoping and praying for Germany's victory."[152]
Of course, in face of the overwhelming British garrison in Egypt, such pronouncements were as idle as the wind. The hoped-for Turkish attacks were beaten back from the Suez Canal, the "State of Siege" functioned with stern efficiency, and Egypt, flooded with British troops, lapsed into sullen silence, not to be broken until the end of the war.