"You know all about the riots at Alexandria?"
"Only what I've learned from the London papers, sir.
"Well, for some time past the people there have been showing signs of effervescence. First, strikes of cabmen, carters, God knows what—all concealing political issues. Then, open disorder. Europeans hustled and spat upon in the streets. A sheikh crying aloud in the public thoroughfares, 'O Moslems, come and help me to drive out the Christians.' Then a Greek merchant warned to take care, as the Arabs were going to kill the Christians that day or the day following. Then low-class Moslems shouting in the square of Mohammed Ali, 'The last day of the Christians is drawing nigh.' As a consequence there have been conflicts. The first of them was trivial, and the police scattered the rioters with a water-hose. The second was more serious, and some Europeans were wounded. The third was alarming, and several natives had to be arrested. Well, when I look for the cause I find the usual one."
"What is it, sir?" asked Gordon.
"Egypt has at all times been subject to local insurrections. They are generally of a religious character, and are set on foot by madmen who give themselves out as divinely-inspired leaders. But shall I tell you what it all means?"
"Tell me, sir," said Gordon.
The Consul-General rose from his chair and began to walk up and down the room with long strides and heavy tread.
"It means," he said, "that the Egyptians, like all other Mohammedans, are cut off by their religion from the spirit and energy of the great civilised nations—that, swathed in the bands of the Koran, the Moslem faith is like a mummy, dead to all uses of the modern world."
The Consul-General drew up sharply and continued—
"Perhaps all dogmatic religions are more or less like that, but the Christian religion has accommodated itself to the spirit of the ages, whereas Islam remains fixed, the religion of the seventh century, born in a desert and suckled in a society that was hardly better than barbarism."