came from Egypt and took a useful and prominent part in the 'conversations' which followed. These lasted from June till the end of November 1920, and were throughout entirely amicable on both sides. The outlines were quickly agreed on. The Egyptians said with one accord that, though they objected to having an inferior status imposed upon them by the British Government, they would welcome a Treaty of Alliance freely entered into on both sides, which, while establishing the independence of Egypt, would give to Great Britain all the safeguards and guarantees which the Protectorate was intended to secure. They desired no other foreign influence in Egypt; they recognised that there must be a British force in the country to guard the great Imperial communications which ran through it, and that we must be satisfied of their ability to keep order and protect the interests of the important foreign communities resident in it. They were aware, they said, of the great danger of any sudden break in administration, and desired to enlist the services of a considerable number of the British officials now in the country. To make an end of the Protectorate and to substitute for it a Treaty of Alliance in which Egypt should freely accord to us the guarantees we needed was, therefore, it seemed to the Mission, the right and obvious line of advance.

There were, of course, lively discussions about the 'guarantees,' but only one of these is now a first-class issue. This is the location of the British force to guard Imperial communication. As the Egyptians know, there is no possible position from which it could not be rapidly concentrated upon their principal cities in case of grave emergency, but they regarded its actual presence in those cities as visibly stamping it with the character of an army to keep them in subjection; and the Mission were of opinion that Egyptian susceptibilities should be deferred to in this respect after a longer or shorter interval in which the new accommodation might be provided and incidentally the Egyptian capacity for keeping order be tested. Some military opinion has objected that a force situated outside the cities would be liable to have its water-supply cut by a hostile Egypt; but, if it is thought necessary to provide against this risk, it should not be difficult to find a site which could

be supplied, like the district of Tanta in the Delta, by artesian wells. The Egyptians realised during those discussions and, I hope, will continue to realise, that the solution of this and many other problems lies in giving time for the necessary changes and avoiding sudden breaks with the present order before they are sure of their ground. The Mission, I may add here, were of opinion that all possible steps should be taken to procure the release of Egypt from the 'capitulations' which now hamper her financial freedom and compel her to submit to a multitude of foreign jurisdictions, to the great detriment of law and order and effective police control. International relationships have unfortunately not been favourable to this part of the scheme, but no one who knows the conditions can doubt that a serious attempt will sooner or later have to be made to effect this reform.

Lord Milner's Report was presented at the beginning of December 1920; and, if the Government had been prompt in accepting it and had commissioned him to go forward and negotiate the proposed treaty, I believe that a settlement would have been reached within a very few weeks. There was at that moment the great advantage that all the Nationalist parties were united and that none of them had any motive for the jealous and hostile scrutiny of each other which is the besetting sin of Nationalists everywhere. But the Government unfortunately could not make up their minds; and it was not until the middle of February 1921 that they decided to go forward tentatively on the basis of the Report, and took the initial step enabling Adli Pasha to form a Government and to undertake the negotiations with London. But by that time trouble had broken out among the Nationalists; and Zaghlul Pasha, who had declared himself unwilling to form a Government, returned from Paris and took up an attitude of hostility to Adli, whom he charged with a weak complaisance to a British Government which evidently meant to yield nothing. Riots attended with some loss of life took place in Alexandria; and, though they were not more serious than those which had been daily incidents in certain Irish towns, they afforded the opponents of a settlement the opportunity of saying that the Egyptians were evidently incapable of keeping order in their their own Vol. 237.-No. 471.

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country. When, therefore, Adli Pasha came to London in May to negotiate the treaty, the situation was definitely worse than when the Milner Report was presented. Once more there were long delays, which showed little consideration for the Egyptian Prime Minister's position and the effect produced among his own countrymen. Finally, in November 1921, the negotiations broke down, for reasons which have never been sufficiently explained. Egypt at that moment had apparently got involved in the politics of the United Kingdom; and the 'die-hards,' who had reluctantly consented to the settlement with Ireland, rejoiced that they had at all events been spared the mortification of a similar 'surrender' in Egypt. Egyptian hopes were now at their lowest ebb; and on Dec. 3 Lord Allenby was instructed to present a letter to the Sultan which seemed finally to extinguish them. Whoever was the author of this letter, he must be congratulated on having packed into a thousand words the largest number of expressions calculated to wound the susceptibilities of Egyptians and to kill their gratitude for the many and great benefits which they have undoubtedly received at the hands of Great Britain. Egypt was now sternly reminded that she was a part of the communications of the British Empire.' So might a Roman Emperor have spoken to a Province of Gaul in the first century.

We had thus had and lost three opportunities of settling with the Egyptians, first after the Armistice, secondly after the return of the Milner Mission, thirdly in the negotiations with Adli Pasha. We are now (at the time of writing) starting on a fourth in which Lord Allenby, the High Commissioner, himself is taking the principal part. It was a fair presumption, on reading the letter to the Sultan, that the Government intended to close the Egyptian question, at least for their term of office. The Egyptians would not yield what the Government thought necessary, and the Government would not yield what the Egyptians claimed as their rights; therefore the question was at an end. But this was not and could not be the view of the High Commissioner and the British officials who had to carry on in Egypt. They were confronted with the old dilemma. Either Egypt had to be governed by force and martial law and even

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the vestiges of Egyptian independence wiped out, or a friendly settlement had somehow to be reached. The first alternative was possible with a certain expenditure of force, but it was an expensive adventure for a Government compelled under pressure of opinion to make drastic economies, and almost certain, before it was ended, to bring discredit on the name of Great Britain and to cause serious reactions in other parts of her Eastern Empire. The other alternative, in the opinion of these experienced administrators, was always feasible and had only been prevented by blundering and misunderstanding. What followed may be read in or between the lines of the White Paper (Cmd. 1592) issued at the end of February last. Under pressure from the men on the spot, the Government was compelled, during the three months following the failure of the Adli negotiations, to revise its opinion that Egyptian Nationalists would succumb to the firm language of the December letter. While this letter remained the last word of British policy, Lord Allenby found himself unable to obtain the services of any Egyptian Ministers or to discover any way of governing the country which would not have required a far larger army than any British Government has ever stationed permanently in Egypt.

But the old story of the Sibylline books applies in Egypt as in Ireland; and there are certain difficulties in the fourth approach to this question which need not have been encountered at the first. Lord Allenby's proposals differ in no material respect from Lord Milner's. He too relies on the abolition of the Protectorate, the recognition of Egypt as a 'Sovereign Independent State,' and the settlement by agreement with that State of the essential requirements of Great Britain. But since he has to find a way round the door that was closed last December, his approach is necessarily different. He makes unconditionally the concessions to Egyptian Nationalism that Lord Milner desired to be part of a Treaty, which in return gave the necessary guarantees to Great Britain; and he leaves these guarantees 'until such time as it may be possible by free discussion and friendly accommodation on both sides to conclude agreements with regard thereto between his Majesty's Government and the Government of Egypt.'

There are, I think, great advantages in proceeding by treaty which we shall not easily obtain in any other way. The Egyptians, like most Eastern peoples, are sensitive on the point of honour; and a Treaty of amity and good will would have touched their imagination as no other procedure can. Eventually, the contemplated agreements' should be cast in the form of a Treaty.

In the meantime, Lord Allenby has succeeded, by these concessions, in obtaining the formation of an Egyptian Government under Sarwat Pasha, an able and influential Nationalist; and at the time of writing, steps are being taken for the removal of martial law and the election of an Assembly under free and uncensored conditions. These beginnings are all to the good, but it would be foolish, after three years of unrest, to expect a complete settlement in as many weeks. Lord Allenby has felt compelled to take the strong step of banishing the Nationalist leader Zaghlul, who for two years out of these three was the most popular figure in Egypt; and, until the Assembly is elected and comes to grip with the 'guarantees,' we shall not know for certain what the strength of his following may be or what demands it may make. In the meantime we must exercise patience and be prepared for hitches. The one thing to be guarded against is the hasty seizing of pretexts to swing back to the policy of force on the plea that conciliation has been tried and failed. Let the British people realise that what is being asked of them is not the surrender of anything that is legally theirs but the performance of promises many times repeated. All intelligent Egyptians are aware that the interests of Great Britain in the Suez Canal and in the Nile Valley require that British influence shall be paramount over all other foreign influences in their country, and that British relations shall continue to be intimate with their Government and Administration. They think, however-and we have professed to agree with them-that this influence and these relations should be conformable with their status as an independent self-governing people.

Such being the general course of events, it remains to deal with certain of the more specific causes of the recent unrest. There is no need to rehearse the benefits