x Preface 



I will quote again from the summary: "At the time of his arrival 

 at Cairo Mr. Blunt was still in the good books of the Foreign Office 

 and in personal correspondence with Mr. Gladstone as an authority 

 on Oriental matters and had just published his first prose work 

 "The Future of Islam." But overborne by his strong natural 

 sympathy for liberty he espoused the cause of Egyptian National- 

 ism, and when the quarrel between England and the Egyptians 

 came to hostilities at the bombardment of Alexandria he refused to 

 abandon the cause that he had taken up, with the result that when 

 after the defeat of Tel el Kebir the Egyptian leader Arabi found 

 himself a prisoner of war threatened with death at the hands of a 

 court martial, he succeeded in rousing popular feeling in England 

 to shame at their betrayal of an honourable cause, the first of free- 

 dom in the East, and secured his release and honourable exile. 



"The public action taken by Mr. Blunt in opposition to the Foreign 

 Office, his first appearence in English political life, brought him into 

 close connection with the leading politicians of the day and amongst 

 others Parnell and the other members of the Irish Party and he joined 

 the new group of Tory Democrats founded by Lord Randolph 

 Churchill at that time in opposition which eventually succeeded in over- 

 throwing the Government at the election of 1885. His fearless action 

 with regard to Egypt ended his friendly relations with the Foreign 

 Office and resulted in his exile from Egypt and he was forbidden to 

 enter that country for some three years ; and came to be regarded as 

 the 'enfant terrible' in politics just as Samuel Butler was in art and 

 literature." 



I wrote to him a little while ago asking if he had any letters of mine 

 written from or to Egypt at the time of Arabi's rebellion for, I said, it 

 seemed to me I had made my education in politics there. And he an- 

 swered " You talk of having made your political education in Egypt, 

 and so too did I with you, for before that eventful year 1882 I had never 

 played a public part of any kind or written so much as a 1 etter to The 

 Times with my name to it and we made our education together over 

 it." All that story is told in his " Secret History of the Occupation of 

 Egypt"; and he records that among his most important supporters 

 there were Lord Houghton " who in early life had been an enthusi- 

 astic advocate of freedom in the East, and Sir William Gregory, an old 

 follower of Gladstone and well known Liberal and who sent more than 

 one powerful letter to what was then the leading journal of Europe 

 {The Times) giving the Nationalist side. . . It is hardly too much 

 to say that Gregory's letters and mine, especially his, were largely the 

 means of obtaining a respite for Egypt from the dangers that threatened 

 her." But after the war had been formally declared and at London 

 evening parties " everyone was rejoicing over the bombardment of 



