EGYPT
By J.A. Spender
Editor of the Westminster Gazette, 1896 to 1922; Member of the Special Mission to Egypt, 1919-1920.
Mr. Spender said:—The Egyptian problem resembles the Indian and all other Eastern problems in that there is no simple explanation or solution of it. Among the many disagreeable surprises which awaited us after the war, none was more disagreeable than the discovery in March, 1919, that Egypt was in a state of rebellion. For years previously we had considered Egypt a model of imperial administration. We had pulled her out of bankruptcy and given her prosperity. We had provided her with great public works which had enriched both pasha and fellah. We had scrupulously refrained from exploiting her in our own interests. No man ever worked so disinterestedly for a country not his own as Lord Cromer for Egypt, and if ever a Nationalist movement could have been killed by kindness, it should have been the Egyptian. Nor were the Egyptian people ungrateful. I have talked to Egyptian Nationalists of all shades, and seldom found any who did not handsomely acknowledge what Great Britain had done for Egypt, but they asked for one thing more, which was that she should restore them their independence. “We won it from the Turks,” they said, “and we cannot allow you to take it from us.”
This demand was no new thing, but it was brought to a climax by events during and after the war. When the war broke out, our representative in Egypt was still only “Agent and Consul-General,” and was theoretically and legally on the same footing with the representative of all other Powers; when it ended, he was “High Commissioner,” governing by martial law under a system which we called a “protectorate.” This to the Egyptians seemed a definite and disastrous change for the worse. Throughout the forty years of our occupation we have most carefully preserved the theory of Egyptian independence. We have occupied and administered the country, but we have never annexed it or claimed it to be part of the British Empire. We intervened in 1882 for the purpose of restoring order, and five years later we offered to withdraw, and were only prevented from carrying out our intention because the Sultan of Turkey declined, at the instigation of another Power, to sign the Firman which gave us the right of re-occupying the country if order should again be disturbed. In the subsequent years we gave repeated assurances to Egyptians and to foreign Powers that we had no intention of altering the status of the country as defined in its theoretical government by Khedive, Egyptian Ministers, and Egyptian Council or Assembly. And though it was true that in virtue of the army of occupation we were in fact supreme, by leaving the forms of their government untouched and refraining from all steps to legalise our position we reassured the Egyptians as to our ultimate objects.
In the eyes of the Egyptians the proclamation of the Protectorate and the conversion of the “Agent and Consul-General” into a “High Commissioner” armed with the weapons of martial law seriously prejudiced this situation, and though they acquiesced for the period of the war, they were determined to have a settlement with us immediately it was over, and took us very seriously at our word when we promised to review the whole situation when that time came. The truth about the “Protectorate” was that we adopted it as a way out of the legal entanglement which would otherwise have converted the Egyptians into enemy aliens when their suzerain, the Sultan of Turkey, entered the war against us, and we did it deliberately as the preferable alternative to annexing the country. But we have neither explained to the Egyptians nor made clear to ourselves what exactly we meant by it, and in the absence of explanations it was interpreted in Egypt as a first step to the extinction of Egyptian nationality.
After-War Mistakes
Had we acted wisely and expeditiously at the end of the war we might even then have avoided the trouble that followed. But when Egyptian ministers asked leave to come to London in December, 1918, we answered that the time was not opportune for these discussions, and when the Nationalist leaders proposed to send a delegation, we said that no good purpose could be served by their coming to Europe. This heightened the alarm, and the Nationalists retorted by raising their claims from “complete autonomy” to “complete independence,” and started a violent agitation. The Government retaliated by deporting Zaghlul to Malta, whereupon the country broke into rebellion. Lord Allenby now came upon the scene, and, while suppressing the rebellion, released Zaghlul and gave him and his delegation the permission to go to Europe which had been refused in January. It was now decided to send out the Milner Mission, but there was a further delay of seven months before it started, and during all that time agitation continued.
When the Mission arrived it quickly discovered that there was no possible “Constitution under the Protectorate” which would satisfy the Egyptians, and that the sole alternatives were further suppression or the discovery of some means of settlement which dispensed with the Protectorate. The Mission unanimously came to the conclusion that though the first was mechanically possible if the cost and discredit were faced, the second was not only feasible but far preferable, and that the right method was a treaty of Alliance between Great Britain and Egypt, recognising Egypt as a sovereign State, but affording all necessary guarantees for imperial interests. Working on those lines the Mission gradually broke down the boycott proclaimed against them, convinced the Egyptians of their goodwill, induced all parties of Egyptian Nationalists to come to London, and there negotiated the basis of the Treaty which was described in the Report. The main points were that there must be a British force in the country—not an army of occupation, but a force to guard Imperial communications—that there must be British liaison officers for law and order and finance, that the control of foreign policy must remain in the hands of Great Britain, and that the Soudan settlement of 1898 must remain untouched, but that with these exceptions the Government of Egypt should be in fact what it had always been in theory: a Government of Egyptians by Egyptians.