Bonaparte in Egypt and the Egyptians of To-day

We have seen that, little inclined as the Egyptians were to welcome any prolongation of the occupation, they had accepted the evacuation of Fachoda as at least a temporary resolution of all the doubts and uncertainties that had worried them for so long. It was what those who understand them might have expected. They are essentially an impulsive people. In every emergency their decision is made without hesitation or faltering, too often without consideration or thought of any kind but the impulse of the moment. To such a people nothing could be more trying, more irritating than that they should be kept on from month to month and year to year helplessly waiting on the decision of others, or on a development of events they were powerless to control. This cause was alone almost sufficient to stay all progress, social or political, prior to the evacuation of Fachoda. For years they had been "waiting to hear the verdict," and when it came, the mere fact of the ending of their long, anxious suspense, took much of the sting from the bitterness the verdict itself might otherwise have created. And apart from all political and religious feeling there were two causes that greatly intensified the Egyptian's burthen during that trying wait. These were his love of freedom and his love of peace and concord. As an individual there is nothing the Egyptian prizes more than his freedom – not his liberty, but his freedom; not the legal and formal admission of his rights, but the absence of restraint that gives a sense of unfettered ease; not the liberty that is the birthright of every British subject, be he master or man, but the freedom the master enjoys as master. For this the Egyptian can and will make many sacrifices, even bartering much of his liberty that he may enjoy it. And this freedom he could not enjoy while yet the fate of the country was in the balance. Reticent to his nearest kin in the expression of his thoughts, he yet loves to speak freely within the limits he allows himself, and this he could not do while yet he had to guard against exciting the animosity of rival parties and interests. He was neither sitting on the wall nor trimming. On the broad general question at issue he was clear in his own mind and did not hesitate to say what he thought, but he could not get beyond that. He could not discuss men and matters as he should have liked to have done. Once the die was cast and the supremacy of the English settled, he was no longer tossed on the horns of the dilemma, Which of two evils is the least? but free to take a side and say as he would, This thing is good or bad. It was the same with his love of peace and concord. Hospitable and kindhearted, ever ready to surrender his own comfort and convenience, not only for his friends but for the stranger, the universally prevalent discord was to him a real grievance, so real that he would have accepted almost any solution provided only that it offered a reasonable hope of the re-establishment of harmony. When after the revolt of Cairo, and again after the siege, truce was declared, the people of the town accepted it loyally and kept it faithfully. They submitted to the rule of the French most unwillingly and only under compulsion, but having done so they adhered without murmur or quibble to the pact. It was the same after Marchand had left the Nile behind him on his homeward way. Finding themselves definitely under the English, they accepted the inevitable, and were, as they still are, ready to loyally, honestly, and fully discharge their acceptance.

There was therefore a complete change in the attitude of the people towards the English, and it was not unnatural for them to look for a corresponding change on the part of the English. No such change occurred. Up to Fachoda the Egyptians had been courted and flattered by the anti-English Europeans in the country. The English, with a few rare exceptions, held aloof from them. After Fachoda the anti-English quietly dropped the Egyptians. The English maintained their attitude of indifference, and to the Egyptian seemed rather to assume a haughtier air, to adopt more and more the tone of conquerors in a hostile land, to treat the people as enemies, and as enemies scarce worthy of a thought. The Boer War broke out, and in the torrent of disasters that pursued the British troops the Egyptians found excuse for the reserved and chilling manners of the English. But the closing of the war brought no change, and the Egyptians began to ask themselves, Of what avail is it that we seek to conciliate the English when they make no response? None the less they adhered to the position they had taken, and hoped, as they still do, that Englishmen would wake up to a sense of the injustice with which they were acting. Meanwhile the utter failure of the English to understand the real attitude and feelings of the people towards them lends weight and force to the evil wrought by the Mokattam. If, the Egyptians ask, the English are really anxious to benefit us, how is it that they thus hold us at arm's length? How can they benefit us without knowing or understanding what are our hopes, our wishes, our aspirations, our prejudices, our predilections? And how can they know aught of these while they sedulously avoid all intercourse, friendship, or familiarity with us?

But it is not simply English aloofness of which complaint is made, but the vulgar and aggressive self-assertion, the rudeness and want of common civility so many are constantly guilty of in their accidental intercourse with the people of the country. These are things complained of by Europeans, and, as is well known, in Europe as well as in Egypt. The Englishman flatters himself that these complaints are due to envy and fanaticism. Nothing could be more contrary to the fact. It is the expression, not of envy, but of contempt, the utter scorn of the man of the world for the uncultivated boor. That this is so is proved by the fact that this antipathy is felt and shown only towards two classes of Englishmen: classes that have unfortunately of late years grown – as other unhealthy excrescences are prone to do – rapidly, the cads and those who ape these under the guise of "good form." Men of the latter type are much too numerous in Egypt, and may claim the credit of placing endless difficulties and obstacles in the way of Lord Cromer and English interests. The men who have made the Empire were men cast in another mould. They were masterful men; men who could and did command respect through inherent force of character and ability; men born to command; men whom others followed and obeyed as a privilege. The men I speak of are of a different type. Lacking in the high qualities of their predecessors, and sensible of their defects, these seek to obtain by arrogance the respect they cannot command. With many it is their misfortune. The true cad owes his contemptible character to his narrow training and the want of a healthy, manly brain. "Born of a butcher, by a bishop bred, how high he holds his haughty head!" But the great majority of those who by their caddish behaviour, like the ill-birds of the old adage, foul their own nests, have not this excuse to offer. They sin wilfully, deliberately choosing to act as cads in toadying compliance with what the monied cads whose society they crave are pleased to consider "good form." Like the pariah dogs of the street, fawning upon all who perchance may have a bone to throw to them and snapping and snarling at all others, the true cad can never rise above his brainless, soulless self, but the man whose caddish manners are as the mud-stained garb of he who has rolled in the gutter is, often enough, at heart a sound and healthy-minded man, a brave and honest gentleman, a lion wrapped in the skin of an ass! Verily a wondrous spectacle, most strangely reversing the old fable! I have seen and known such men in times of stress and danger to be all that men should be, and I have marvelled to see them return to the old false, lying lives.

Happily the evil is one that will not last. Already he who hath eyes to see may see that once more a great revolution is in progress. The old English aristocracy of men who ruled at home and abroad by right of their high qualities is fast dying out. The stately old oak that has weathered the storms and stresses of so many long years is withering and perishing, smothered under the unhealthy growth of parasites that are sucking its life-sap. The old aristocracy is almost gone, the new with nothing but its money-bags to sustain it, has not succeeded, and never can succeed, to the political or social power of its predecessors, and these, therefore, are passing on to the strong men of the plebeian world, men who, without the polish, have much, if not all the virtues of the Empire-building classes of the past. For the last time that history will ever record a government that might by any just use of terms call itself "Conservative" has sat in the English House of Commons. Look back at the life of France ere yet the hurricane swirl of the red flag of revolution had scattered its aristocracy as a fierce autumn storm scatters the lingering leaves of the bygone summer. The lesson is an old, old one – one taught in many pages of history, one coming down to us from those far-off days wherein men first heard the proverb, "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall."

The evil is one that will not last. Pharaohs, Ptolemies, Mamaluks, Cesars, Bonapartes; patricians, feudal lords, aristocracies; in short, all caddisms and flunkeyisms and falsities and other abominations, however they may flourish and thrive for the moment, if it were not for the clamour and blare of their own conceit, would ever hear Time tolling the passing bell that tells of their open graves.

Meanwhile, in Egypt and elsewhere, the two cads, the real and the mock, are among the most potent and the most active of the enemies of England and the English Empire, and the most costly luxury that the easy-going British taxpayer allows himself. This is so, for the ill-will and hatred that these excite leads thousands who might be the friends and promoters of English interests to devote themselves to hindering and counteracting those interests in every possible way. And this same dislike serves as a bond of union between the enemies of England everywhere. It is doing more than all else to unite the people of India of all races and creeds in one compact nationality, and is elsewhere, and in other manners, working evil for the Empire.

There are other unhealthy influences retarding the work of the administration of the country and the progress of its people. Notable among these is the education question, or rather questions, for there are several. The system adopted in the Government schools is objected to as tending to the formation of a class separated from the rest of the people by special aims and interests, and having standards of life, of morals, of religion, entirely different from those of their own kith and kin; a class whose manners, customs, and habits are at variance with those of all their countrymen and co-religionists; a class slowly but surely drifting more and more apart from all who do not belong to it, and which is thus losing all possibility of exerting the healthy influence upon others it should be easy for them to do with the advantages they possess, or of becoming the leaven in the mass tending to raise the whole. There are men who have passed through the schools who are doing good work, but they are few in number, and the good they are doing is largely due to their having been subjected to influences counteracting the pernicious effects of their school training. A part of the evil thus charged to the schools, Government and others, is that they are destructive of the religious sentiments and aspirations of their pupils. They do not convert these to Christianity nor, as is so often said, to atheism, but they do lead them to despise the duties of their religion, to mock at its obligations, and to ignore its social and moral restraints, and thus destructive of all that goes to make the Moslem a worthy citizen and man, gives them nothing in exchange, and leaves them to go through life like wanton children drawn hither and thither by every passing whim or fancy. Is it a retribution that for the most part they go to swell the ranks of the anti-English party?

The direct result of this evil is that the whole of the people are being gradually divided into two classes – the so-called (and very much mis-called) "educated" class and the, by contrast of terms, uneducated class, the class which, by the perversity of facts, includes almost all who are really and truly educated, those who have had moral and religious training, have been taught to comprehend the most essential fact that can be taught, that every man has duties to perform, that he is not an isolated unit with nothing to think of but his own pleasure and profit, but one of the vast congregation of humanity whose members are linked together by the recognition of the obligations of their common duties to God and their fellow-men. It is true that the schools give their pupils lessons to this effect, but all the circumstances that surround the giving of those lessons and the whole tendency of the life of the schools is to render these lessons ineffective, mere tasks to be learned as part of the daily routine, pretty theories to be applauded and admired, not verities to be believed and put in practice. And since the education given in the schools is held up as the very life-blood of all progress, it follows that all that is best in the country turns aside and says, "If this is progress, then give us stagnation; if to be an 'educated,' 'advanced,' 'enlightened' man means to be a man who ridicules duty, despises religion, and mocks at piety, then, in the name of God, let us remain ignorant so only that we still worship Him, and strive as best we may to fulfil what we believe to be His law!"

Nor are the schools the only things mainly, if not wholly, due to the occupation that offend Moslem sentiment, and thus retard progress and decrease the sympathy there might be between the people and their rulers. I can only just mention two or three of these without staying to comment upon them, as perhaps the most active among many others. The sale and consumption of intoxicating drinks in the open streets, the almost unchecked promenading of brazen-faced European women in the busiest and most crowded thoroughfares; the open eating, drinking, and smoking during the Ramadan fast; quarantine and other sanitary measures frequently trenching upon Moslem sentiment, such as restrictions upon the pilgrimage and the holding of the religious festivals of the people. These things are to the Egyptian as the breaking of the Sabbath to the Scotchman. What would the Scotch Sabbatarians say if a number of Englishmen were to settle among them, and insist upon carrying on business, opening the theatres, and breaking the Sabbath in a dozen other openly offensive ways? Would they be considered "unreasonable" if they protested? Would they be regarded as "ungrateful" because they did not thank the invaders for the financial benefit they were conferring on the country? Yet when the Egyptians protest, however faintly, against such outrages upon their sentiments, they are told that they are "unreasonable," "backward," "unenlightened," "narrow-minded," and "fanatical."

There is another influence for evil to which my reference to Sabbatarianism naturally leads me – the Christian missions and their agents. Of the magnificent social and humanitarian work done by Christian missions and Christian missionaries in India no one has a higher opinion than I have. Years ago I spent a couple of days in one of the wildest parts of the Bengal Presidency as the guest of a grand old man who, with his wife – a worthy mate for him – were dwelling, as they had been for years, among the semi-savage tribes of the jungle, isolated from all the comforts and conveniences of civilisation, seeing no European faces other than their own save once or twice in the year when the Commissioner made his annual rounds. A grand old couple – labouring with endless self-devotion for the good of the stolid, stunted-brained, almost naked people, more than half savage in nature and habit, and by dint of tedious toil and never-resting effort lifting some few of these out of the depths, and winning them to humanity. I have met many men and many women in my life, but none that have claimed from me a more sincere or lasting respect than these. But there are missionaries and missionaries; and in Moslem lands there are some who do much ill, and not less by their speech than by the literature they circulate. In this they are backed up by missionary and other journals, which take a pleasure in representing Islam as a religion that inculcates bigotry and fanaticism. I have myself heard a missionary undertake to prove to Mahomedan hearers that unless they hated Christians they were no better than infidels. Taking passages from the Koran, ignoring their context and the teaching and interpretation placed upon them by the orthodox Ulema, he had little difficulty in apparently justifying his promise, with the result that some of his hearers went away filled for the first time with the conception that it was their duty to hate Christians. Such incidents are by no means rare, and it would be difficult to estimate the mischief they do. A few years ago the late well-known Canon MacColl flooded the Press at home for a brief time with speeches and writings of this kind. Every word of what he wrote was reproduced in oriental languages, and did far more to excite fanaticism than any of the most inflammatory articles that have ever appeared in any portion of the Moslem Press. How often have Pan-Islamists, advocating friendship with England and other European nations as a means of advancement for Moslems, been met with the reply, "But they themselves say that it is our duty to hate them"! So the bigotry that takes unholy pleasure in misrepresenting the truth reacts with fatal effect upon the cause it pretends to serve.

The unhealthy influences of which I have spoken so far all originate from sources outside the direct action of the Government. None the less, they are perhaps all influences that it lies within the province of the Government to correct, and so long as they are permitted to flourish so long will their existence be regarded by the people as subjects of grievance against the rulers of the land. It may be, and is, said that some of these matters are things in which it is wiser for the Government not to interfere. There is much to be said on both sides, but in all matters thus admitting of discussion there cannot be the least doubt that the deciding consideration should be the effect they produce upon the people at large. That which would be best in a country like England, the people of which have long been accustomed to look upon themselves as the final arbiters in all questions, is entirely out of place in a country like Egypt in which, almost for the first time, the people find themselves absolutely impotent to enforce their wills in any matter whatever. Under the Mamaluks, as we have seen, they had this power, and they did not lose it until Mahomed Ali had succeeded in enslaving them. If they exercised the power they possessed but rarely, to a limited degree, and mostly in a futile manner, this was largely due to the ignorance that prevailed, and to the violent methods of suppression to which their attempts in this direction were always liable. To-day the people no longer suffer from the crass ignorance of those of the past. The most illiterate peasant in the country is an enlightened man compared to his ancestor of the eighteenth century. Increased knowledge has brought, as it should do, increased desires and aspirations, and there is nothing that could testify to the sterling merits of the Egyptian character more than the fact that these desires and aspirations are such as the most enlightened cannot but approve. That the people, as a body, are not yet capable of giving their new-found ideas a healthy, practical issue without the aid of those more advanced than themselves is nothing to their discredit. The path of political progress is a long and difficult one to tread, and it is trodden most successfully by those who, like the Egyptians, advance diffidently rather than daringly, and the Egyptians have made such progress as entitles them to be heard. As yet, however, they have no adequate means of making known their views. The Press of the country is yearly filling better and better its duty in this respect, but under the occupation the true voice of the people – the Ulema, who in all times and in all countries have always been the natural and most fitting representatives of the people – has been, and is, practically silent. Among Moslems the authority of the Ulema is greater than that of the ruling prince of their country, and the Ulema, drawn from among the body of the people, have always exercised the beneficent influence Macaulay has ascribed to the Catholic priesthood, for, like it, the conditions of their existence are such that, as Macaulay expressed it, they "invert the relations between oppressor and oppressed, and force the hereditary master to kneel before the spiritual tribunal of the hereditary serf." So in the days of the Mamaluks, we see the people going for the redress of their wrongs to the Ulema, and these going to the Beys, and rarely failing to obtain some concession. Since the English occupation this primitive, but in its essentials most complete, measure of representative government, has been in abeyance.

The Ulema are no longer regarded as the spokesmen of the nation. Their voices are heard only indirectly, and then not as speaking for the people but as those of individuals. It is quite true that the people of to-day belong to a generation that has never had any experience of conditions other than those practically such as now exist; but that they do feel the need for some such system is certain, and it is their sense of this need that is giving force and body to the demand made by some of the "reformers" for the introduction of a representative government, after the pattern of those in being in Europe. For this the people have no real desire. What they want is what their ancestors had – an informal but ever-present means of making their wishes known to their rulers. No formally established body could supply their need. They have now the Legislative Council, which is intended expressly to be the voice of the people, but while, like the Press, this is yearly growing in merit and utility, it is not, and never can be, to the people that which the Ulema have been in the past, and should always be to the people of a Mahomedan country – the representatives to whom these can go at any time and in any manner to seek counsel and advice, and to consult with that they may act as their intermediaries with the administrative body of the country.

It may seem to the reader that in my last paragraph I have been wandering somewhat widely from the subject of unhealthy influences, but it is not so, for the Egyptians' sense of their inability to make their wishes known is unquestionably not only an unhealthy influence but one that is very steadily growing. The Press does much to instruct the Government as to what are the thoughts and feelings moving the people, but at best it can only do this as the Press of other countries does, rather as the expression of individuals or classes than of the masses, and while it thus acts as spokesman for the people to only a limited extent, it can never be, what is most needed, an intermediary that can not only speak for them but bring them a reply.

CHAPTER XX

MORE UNHEALTHY INFLUENCES

We come now to consider unhealthy influences arising either from the present constitution of the administration of the country or directly or indirectly from the action of the Government.

That we may understand the position taken by the Egyptians with respect to these matters, it is necessary to see what are the conditions they consider the English administrators of the country are bound to fulfil to justify official statements as to the objects and extent of the occupation. These, as seen by the Egyptians, may be summed up in one sentence and are – that the country is to be governed with due regard to the rights of the Sultan as sovereign, the religion of the people, the general interests of the country, and with a view to the ultimate independence of the native Government. On all of these points there is much dissatisfaction. Of the first two I have spoken in the last chapter. As to the third it is commonly admitted that the commercial and financial interests of the country are well cared for and administered, but the criticism is frequent that this is so, not for the sake of the country or of its people, but for the sake of the European interests involved. The Englishman's sense of, and devotion to, duty are recognised by all save perhaps a few, but the common feeling is that in Egypt this devotion is not stimulated by any feeling of duty or obligation to the country or its people, but solely by the desire to perpetuate the occupation. Englishmen of the cad type of which I have spoken, including unfortunately too many military officers and Government officials, by their behaviour towards the people do much to justify this conclusion and, if one may judge by their action in public places, even seem anxious to do so. That there are Englishmen in the country and in the Government service who are of a very different type is fully recognised, and the Egyptian is too just and too generous in sentiment to confound these with those, yet he cannot but feel that while such conduct is allowed, apparently unrestrained, and that even the men of the better type make no open protest, he can draw no other conclusion but the one that the Englishmen who really are honest in their desire to serve the country and conciliate its people are not only few in number but small in influence. It may be said that this is at most but a sentimental grievance, and that the solid good done in the country far outweighs, or should outweigh, such causes of complaint. Those who think so know nothing of human nature, and might, perhaps, benefit by studying Ruskin a little. Nor must it be overlooked that with this, as with other unhealthy influences, it is not the direct or isolated influence of each that is to be considered, but its cumulative effect as one of a large number of forces tending in the same direction. As a thousand feeble threads that an infant might snap one by one, scarce conscious of the effort it was making, when united may form a cable that will drag a mighty ship against wind and tide, so these little threads of discord united serve to draw the ship of State into troubled waters.