150 Mustapha Kamel at Newbuildings [1906 



afternoon in the House, and altogether things seem warming up. At 

 least we have gained it that Parliamentary papers have been promised 

 for this day fortnight, and an opportunity of discussion before the 

 session closes. 



' 14th July. — Back to Newbuildings yesterday, much knocked up 

 by my work, leaving it to Neville to take my place at the luncheon I 

 was to give to Mustapha Kamel and Robertson on Monday. 



" 15th July (Sunday). — Mustapha Kamel arrived by the early train 

 and we spent the whole day together in the Jubilee garden. He is 

 certainly a very wonderful young man, more like a very clever young 

 Frenchman than an Egyptian, though it is physically quite evident that 

 he is really one, without any taint of northern blood, Circassian or 

 other. He tells me his family have lived for the last three genera- 

 tions at Cairo, though originally from the provinces, and he has the 

 good sense to pride himself on his pure Egyptian birth. He is en- 

 thusiastic and eloquent, and has an extraordinary gift of speech, but 

 he is no mere babbler, but a man with perfectly clear ideas — a thing 

 so rare in the East — and a knowledge of men and things really 

 astonishing. I take him, too, to be quite sincere in his patriotism, 

 and I could not detect throughout the whole of his talk to-day a 

 single false note. He also has great courage and decision of judge- 

 ment, not scrupling to disagree with any opinion expressed in con- 

 versation where his own differs. He has given me the information 

 I wanted about himself. First as to his relations with the Sultan, 

 he, like all educated Egyptians, hates and distrusts Abdul Hamid as 

 a tyrant and a dangerous man who at any moment, for some per- 

 sonal interest or through fear, might barter away Egyptian independ- 

 ence to England, and make some entente with her, such as the French 

 have made, a thing which would be death to all their hopes. For 

 this reason Egypt cannot afford to quarrel with Abdul Hamid, and 

 the connection of Egypt with the Ottoman Empire is a guarantee 

 to her, while it lasts, against annexation by an European Power. 

 His hope lies in Abdul Hamid's death, and in getting a liberal and re- 

 forming successor to the Caliphate. 



"Of the Khedive Abbas he tells me precisely what Abdu alway 

 said about him of late years, that he had become corrupted. ' 

 knew him well,' Mustapha said, ' before he came to his present posi- 

 tion, as we are exactly the same age within three months, and I saw 

 much of him while we were both being educated in Europe. He was 

 then charming, and full of patriotic ideas, and I was his devoted ad- 

 herent, absurdly so, but now he has fallen entirely into the hands 

 of rogues, and thinks of nothing but making money, and he is also 

 in the hands of his Hungarian mistress. He has in this way lost all 

 his friends and has ended by having no influence whatever in Egypt. 



