1906] Cromer's Book of Genesis 141 



and there probably exists none now, the whole district being many miles 

 away from any Arab camping ground. 



" As to the excitement in Egypt, it is the natural consequence of 

 the system of a ' Veiled Protectorate ' which we have been pursuing 

 there for the last twenty years, and of the repression of all political 

 liberty or exercise of self-government. Before we came with an 

 army of occupation to Egypt we were popular with the natives of all 

 classes, and the Sultan was either ignored or despised. Now it is we 

 who, in spite of the material prosperity fostered by Cromer, are hated 

 and despised ; and it is the Sultan who is looked upon as the only 

 possible protector against perpetual foreign domination. Cromer, 

 though a very able administrator, is no statesman in any constructive 

 sense. He has allowed nothing in the way of self-government to make 

 even the beginning of a reappearance in Egypt from the day when it 

 was put down at Tel-el-Kebir. He has governed through the weakness 

 not through the strength of the native population, and more and more 

 every year through Englishmen. Whatever patriotism there is left in 

 Egypt is strongly anti-English, and it is just as well that our credulous' 

 people here should learn how things stand politically and morally, and 

 should discount Cromer's self-glorifying annual Reports on any point 

 but that of Egypt's material progress. These Reports always remind 

 me (to compare small things with great), of the first chapter of 

 Genesis, where ' the Lord saw all the things that he had made and 

 found that they were very good.' This calling for reinforcements by 

 Cromer, who less than two years ago boasted that he could govern 

 Egypt without any army of occupation at all, would be amusing if it 

 was not likely to lead to a collision. I suspect the Khedive is playing 

 partners with the Sultan in the Akabah affair. Certainly a quarrel on 

 such a question, involving as it does the protection of the pilgrim road, 

 will make a great ferment in the Mohammedan world from China to 

 Senegal and may cost us dear. 



" I should be glad if you would show this letter to some of the 

 Labour members and those Radicals who care more about peace and 

 retrenchment than Imperial glory — and get them to try and put a 

 little sense into the Government — or they will go exactly the same 

 way to ruin as Gladstone went after the elections of 1880. I see all 

 the Radical papers are beating the war-drum just as they did in 1882, 

 but perhaps something may be done in the House of Commons. 



" It is worth noting that on the 23rd of March, 1886, just twenty 

 years ago, the excellent Campbell Bannerman, as representing the 

 War Office, announced to the House that the evacuation of Egypt 

 would be effected with as little delay as possible. 



" You will of course consult Dillon, to whom I wrote about the 



