On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II.
ENGLAND IN EGYPT.
"What business have the English in Egypt?" is a question often asked since the recent events. Without assuming to speak for those who are well able to speak for themselves, there are some plain principles of justice which must occur to all candid minds, and which may furnish at least a partial answer. Englishmen as individuals have just the same rights in Egypt which Americans have — no more and no less. We claim the right of going to Egypt, as we would go to France or Italy, and as long as we go quietly about our business, of having the protection of its laws. Certainly it is not unreasonable to insist that the Egyptian Government shall see to it that American citizens are protected in life and property, that they are not robbed or assassinated. If, in spite of all assurances of protection, they are robbed or murdered, the very least their Government can do is to make a demand, respectful but determined, that the robbers or murderers shall be punished. The most violent denouncers of English intervention can hardly deny that in this respect Englishmen have the same rights as Americans. But there was a time not many months ago when neither an Englishman nor an American could show himself anywhere in Egypt without danger of being both robbed and murdered; when the streets of Cairo and of Alexandria were as unsafe as if one were among the cannibals of New Guinea or the head-hunters of Borneo.
Then ensued a veritable panic — a feeling almost as if a reign of terror had begun. Foreign consuls warned their countrymen that they could no longer be responsible for their safety, and advised them to get out of the country. To protect them as far as possible, the French and English fleets were ordered to Alexandria. This, in the opinion of many, was a fatal mistake. But for this, it is said, there would have been no massacre and no bombardment. This inflamed the feeling of the Arab population to the highest point, and precipitated the terrible events which followed. This is possible, and yet, looking at it calmly, I cannot see that England and France did any more than they ought to have done, or that there was any sufficient cause to rouse a populace to such rage and fury.
Let us make the case our own. Suppose for some cause — not our own fault, some action of our Government — Americans were suddenly to become unpopular in Mexico, so much so that American residents in Vera Cruz felt that their lives were not safe, and that for their protection the squadron in the Gulf of Mexico were ordered to that port. Would that have been an offence to the majesty of Mexico sufficient to justify, or to excuse, the Mexicans if they should rise and massacre every American whom they could find in their streets? Or suppose they should begin to throw up earthworks, and train their guns on our ships, should we strike our flag, and steal ignominiously out of the harbor? On the contrary, I think an American Admiral would have done just what the English Admiral did — that he would not have lifted an anchor under the compulsion of threats, but stayed where he was, and taken the consequences. The fleet was lying quietly in the harbor of Alexandria, not a gun had been fired, when there occurred in that city one of the most atrocious massacres of modern times. Hundreds of Europeans were hunted down in the streets, clubbed to death or bayoneted: for soldiers, whose business it was to keep order, took part in the cowardly butchery.
Of this savage outbreak, a great many explanations have been offered. But we sometimes go very far round to find a reason for an act or an event, when the cause lies on the surface. The real cause was not a political one, not a sense of injury at the action of France or England, but the natural temper of the people. On board our ship from Naples to Alexandria was a gentleman who had been the French Consul at the latter port for more than twenty years; and to my inquiry for his opinion of the people among whom he had lived so long, he answered almost savagely, "Les Arabes sont bêtes féroces!" That tells the whole story. There is in the Arab nature an element of ferocity that may well liken them to wild beasts. It is a feeling compounded of hatred of foreigners and religious fanaticism, which only needs to be let loose from restraint to lead them to any act of violence and blood. It was with such a population that England had to deal.
From the moment of the massacre, the relations of England and Egypt were changed. It was no longer a question of Anglo-French Control. The blood of murdered Englishmen cried from the stones of the streets of Alexandria, and called for punishment. It is said that we must not hold either the government or the people responsible for what was merely the act of a mob. Certainly not, if either government or people at once disclaim all sympathy with the atrocious crime, and make haste to punish the perpetrators. For this measure of atonement England waited patiently, but none came. To be sure, the military party made a show of virtuous indignation. Hundreds were arrested, but not a man was punished. By the course of double-dealing and excuses for delay, it became evident that the sympathy of the army and the people was with those who perpetrated the massacre, and not with their unhappy victims. It then became necessary for England to take the matter into her own hands.
That Arabi Pacha was in any way responsible for the massacre is not pretended, for he was at the time in Cairo. But that he felt a keen regret for it, or that he took any decided measures to punish its perpetrators, I find no evidence. I fear that he was in this like his race — a true Arab in duplicity. He has shown many points of his character since that evening when I sat opposite to him at Cairo, and he touched his breast and forehead, and gave me the kiss of peace. He has been lifted up to a higher position, as the head not only of the army, but of the state. Perhaps I can judge him better now, can see him in his true proportions, and form a clearer idea of the real greatness or littleness of the man. I would judge him justly, with full recognition of all in him that is worthy of respect. I do not by any means regard him as a light and trifling character, to be dismissed with a sneer. He is a man of courage and capacity. No man could place himself at the head of a great national movement, as he has done, who did not possess both. Nor is he merely puffed up with conceit and vanity, with no serious purpose. There is in him an element of religious fanaticism, which makes him in dead earnest in anything he undertakes. Whatever education he has was obtained at the University of El Azhar in Cairo, which is the very centre and focus of Moslem fanaticism. One who was a fellow-student with him there, tells me that he was very religious and devout. Such a man is not a contemptible enemy. As to his patriotism, I neither dispute it nor doubt it, although I am very incredulous of patriotism among Moslems and Arabs — at least the word has to be understood in a peculiar way. Patriotism has its types, as it appears among different nations. The Bedaween are intensely patriotic, though their only country is the desert. Every sheikh is jealous for his tribe — that is, within its territory he is not willing that anybody should have the privilege of robbing but himself. In Mexico every man who makes a revolution is a patriot — that is, he believes (honestly, no doubt) that the good of the country requires that he should be the head of the state, and he gets up a revolution to carry out that patriotic purpose. Whether the patriotism of the Egyptian leader has any higher character than this, may be doubted. He seems to be compounded in about equal parts of three elements, which are the master-passions of his nature — hatred of foreigners, religious fanaticism, and personal ambition. These different impulses are so mixed up in him, that probably he does not know one from another. He does not stop to analyze his motives (the Arab intellect is not given to such fine distinctions), and so he might well think he was acting from one when he was really acting from another. When he was seeking his own ambition, he believed he was seeking the good of his country, and even doing God service: for it must be that Allah was pleased that honor should come to such a faithful servant. What a happy conjunction of circumstances, whereby he was able at one and the same moment to serve God, his country, and himself! We have no doubt that he wished Egypt to be independent of all foreign control — of the control of Turkey as well as of France and England, however he might profess loyalty to the Sultan, and then he would have liked to be the head of this independent African State. That is all that we can find in Arabi Pacha. Of such a man we cannot make, in any exalted sense, either a patriot or a prophet, a restorer of Islam or a savior of his country.
The massacre took place on the 11th of June; the bombardment followed on the 11th of July. One whole month England was waiting for some atonement for that horrible outrage, some show of a disposition to punish such barbarity and crime. But instead of that, the military party, which was now in full power, felt not so much shame at this inhuman massacre as annoyance at the continued presence of English ships in the harbor. They had a perfect right to be there, as American ships would have had a right to be there if Americans had been massacred in the streets of Alexandria; and if punishment had been so long delayed that the authorities, instead of punishing, seemed to justify the act, and to make it their own. Instead of seizing and punishing the murderers, they began to plot to drive out the fleet. If they had had torpedoes, they would have blown up the ironclads. As it was, they could only throw up breastworks and plant guns, with the plain intent, as soon as they were strong enough, to open fire. Now it is not in human nature, least of all in the military nature, to see such preparations for attack with a tranquil mind; and Arabi Pacha was politely requested to desist. Not only did the English Admiral request this, but the Khedive and the Sultan commanded it. The wily Arab professed compliance, and declared that all mounting of guns had been stopped; but when an electric light from the fleet was turned on the forts, the men were found as busily at work as ever. After this discovery of falsehood and treachery, the Admiral thought it prudent to take some other security than the word of a Moslem.
And so at last the war was begun. On Tuesday morning, the 11th of July, the English fleet commenced the bombardment of Alexandria, and in a few hours silenced the forts, and that afternoon or the next morning took possession. When we heard that the first gun had been fired, it was with a feeling of relief. The conflict was inevitable, and as it had to come, the sooner it came the better: for the sooner it began, the sooner it would be over, and thus an end be put to a state of things which was the ruin of Egypt, while it was a source of perplexity and uneasiness to all Europe. War is a terrible thing, but there are things worse than war. Anarchy is worse. Better a conflict on the battlefield or on the sea than such a state of things, that part of a city's population was in daily fear of massacre; that an European dare not walk the streets lest he should be the object of insult or of personal violence; and that the few remaining residents who could not flee were obliged to seek for safety by barricading themselves within their houses, with the dreadful prospect of having to fight with an infuriated rabble, intent on pillage and fierce for blood.
When it came to the point of actual hostilities, it pleased some who could see nothing in the course of England but injustice and oppression, to speak of it as a war against Egypt. Certainly it was a war in Egyptian waters and on Egyptian soil; but it was not a war against the Egyptian government, but, on the contrary, in support of that government against an armed rebellion which threatened to destroy it. To this intervention England was bound by every sentiment of justice and honor: for she had been the adviser, and as it were the protector, of the Khedive. Indeed it was because he was thought to be too much under her influence and control, that he became unpopular with the military party at home. After leading him into a position of such difficulty and such peril, it would have been an infamy to desert him in the very crisis of his fate. That shame was not to be put upon England. On the other hand, how loyally and faithfully she fulfilled her obligations to her ally, the world knows. The pretence of a great patriotic movement in Egypt, and a show of military power, were kept up until the troops could arrive from England and from India, when, on the 13th of September, starting a little after midnight, they stole silently across the sands up to the strongly-fortified position of the enemy, and as soon as daylight began to appear, in the gray of the early morning, stormed the intrenchments, and in one hour destroyed the whole Egyptian army. The collapse was complete; the defeat became a rout; men and horses fled in wild dismay on the road to Cairo, which the British troops entered the next day, cheered and welcomed by the very mob that, if it had felt strong enough, would have revelled with fiendish delight in the massacre of every man of the regiments that now marched through their streets. The Khedive was brought back, and received with every demonstration of enthusiastic loyalty; while the conquering army camped in the public squares.
The English being thus established in Egypt, the public feeling of Europe and America is much exercised as to how long they are to stay there. Hardly had they entered Cairo before the Porte addressed a letter to Lord Dufferin, intimating that as the object of their expedition was accomplished, there was no use for them to remain any longer, and asking how soon they would leave the country and return to England? To this modest inquiry, the accomplished diplomatist returned an answer, which it is to be hoped gave satisfaction, to the effect that England had no wish to prolong her occupation, but that she had made great sacrifices to restore order in Egypt, and could not leave the country until she had taken ample security against a recurrence of the same state of anarchy — which, being interpreted, signifies that the troops will remain just as long as it pleases the English government and people. They may well be excused if they take their own time about it, for if Englishmen, as individuals, have the same rights in Egypt as Americans, yet beyond these general rights, which are common to all foreigners, England as a country has some special claims to consideration. England has fought for Egypt and for Turkey again and again. Indeed it may be said that both owe to her their continued existence. When Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, he would have taken the country and kept it if it had not been for England. The Egyptians could do nothing: Napoleon swept away the Mamelukes at the Battle of the Pyramids. It was an English fleet under Lord Nelson which fought the Battle of the Nile. It was an English General, Sir Ralph Abercrombie, who gained the final victory on land which drove the French out of Egypt. Napoleon invaded Syria, and carried everything before him till he encountered the English at Acre, who soon put a stop to his victorious career. Again in 1831 Ibrahim Pacha invaded Syria, and would have marched on Constantinople if he had not been stopped by the European powers. In 1854 England and France went to war with Russia to preserve Turkey. Thus often has England fought for Turkey and for Egypt, and the bones of her soldiers who have fallen in defending those Moslem powers, are scattered on many battlefields in three continents — in Europe, in Asia, and in Africa. It is not yet five years since England put forth her powerful hand to save Turkey, which was at the feet of Russia. A Russian army was at the gates of Constantinople, and could have entered the city, and planted its guns on the heights overlooking the Bosphorus, and the Russian flag might have waved from all the minarets of the Turkish capital. When in that city a few months since, a friend pointed out the position of the Russian army, which was camped almost under the walls, and we asked, Why did it not march in and take full possession? The answer was, It was stopped by the English fleet, which came up the Dardanelles and through the Sea of Marmora, and anchored in sight of Constantinople. The Sultan, who has lately protested so energetically against an English fleet in the harbor of Alexandria as an invasion of his sovereign rights, was not at all disturbed at the sight then, but on the contrary felt an immeasurable relief, as if he had been reprieved from a sentence of death, when he saw the flags of the great English ironclads from the windows of his Palace. After thus saving both Turkey and Egypt again and again, it is not a great presumption for England to ask whether she has not some rights in the East which Turk and Arab are bound to respect.
Besides all this, England has great material interests in Egypt. We say nothing of the interest of bondholders, of money loaned for internal improvements — for railroads and canals, and piers and ports. This very harbor of Alexandria, which has been the scene of such great events, was built largely by English money. But leaving all this, the interest of England in the Suez Canal is greater than that of all the world beside. Eighty or ninety per cent. of the ships that pass through that Canal, are English. It is the highway from England to India. The distance from London or Liverpool to Bombay, is nearly five thousand miles less by the Suez Canal than by the old route around Africa. The control of this, therefore, is not only a commercial convenience; it is a military necessity. Suppose there were another mutiny in India, and that, Arabi Pacha had command of the Suez Canal, and should think it a good time to "get even" with England by stopping all transit, and that the English troops should have to be sent around by way of the Cape of Good Hope, the two or three weeks' delay might cause the loss of the English Empire in India. Can England leave a matter of such moment to the caprice of a military adventurer?
In the presence of such interests, it is not difficult to understand what England has been fighting for. Aside from her obligations to the Khedive, she had immense interests in Egypt, and Egypt was in a state of anarchy, which threatened to destroy those interests. England was fighting to put down that anarchy, and to restore order and good government. In this she was fighting for the real interest of Egypt as well as her own. If the recent state of things continued, the country was ruined. The only hope was in prompt and decisive action, which should crush rebellion and reëstablish order. At the same time, England was fighting for the Suez Canal, as she would for Malta and Gibraltar, as outworks of Britain, whose preservation concerned the integrity of her mighty realm.
For these reasons, which might be enlarged to any extent, it is clear that England had a right to send her troops to Egypt to settle this business between a faithful ally, the present Khedive (whom the military party would sacrifice simply because he had been such a friend of England), and his rebellious soldiers. She had a right to go there, if she had a right to go anywhere, to fight for the security of her Indian Empire. In the battle which she undertook, she was fighting for our interests as well as her own: to make it safe for Americans to visit Egypt, to go up the Nile, and to pursue their lawful callings — their travels, or their business affairs, or their missionary enterprises — in the East.
And so the English are masters of Cairo! One more victory for civilization! To some this may seem a very un-American sentiment. Do we not claim America for the Americans, and should we not concede also, as a matter of simple justice, Egypt for the Egyptians? But the course of events has so drifted within a few months, and so many new elements have come in to change the issue, that "Egypt for the Egyptians" would now mean Egypt to be given up to anarchy and ruin. It is not easy to apportion praise or blame between nations any more than between individuals. There may be wrong on both sides. I am far from thinking England blameless in her dealings with Egypt. In the matter of the Anglo-French Control, there is much which an Englishman would wish to forget. But that does not change the fact that when it came to the point of war, the issue was sharply defined between anarchy and order, between civilization and barbarism; and no friend of humanity could hesitate where to bestow his sympathies. It was precisely the same question in Egypt which so often recurs to the traveller in India. If we go back to the origin of English power in India, the world can hardly furnish a case of greater spoliation and robbery. All the denunciations of it by Burke were fully deserved. And yet in the course of a hundred years, things have so come round that to-day the maintenance of English power is the security of order and peace in India, and the hope of civilization in Southern Asia. And when I visited the Residency in Lucknow, and walked over the holy ground where so many of the best and bravest of England fought and fell, it was with no divided sympathies between its defenders and the murderous Sepoys that gathered round them for their destruction. No matter what were the wrongs suffered by another generation of Hindoos from another generation of Englishmen — that could not change the issue, that the battle then being fought around those walls was a battle between European civilization and Asiatic barbarism. And the same thrill of joy and pride that shot through every vein at the story of the coming of Havelock to the relief of the beleaguered garrison of Lucknow, now returned when I read of the Highlanders marching up the heights and taking possession of the Citadel of Cairo.
The war is over, but what shall come after it? That is the question which now troubles Europe and the East. As England has had to fight the battle alone, she is entitled to consider, first of all, her own security and protection. She can no longer leave the control of the Suez Canal, and with it her communications with India, to the mercy of any military usurper, who by getting control of the army, may be master of Egypt — only for a few weeks, it may be, yet long enough to work irremediable injury to the commerce of the world. How is this security to be obtained? Years ago Bismarck advised England to take Egypt and keep it. Mr. Gladstone disavows any such purpose, and no doubt with the utmost sincerity. But what may not be a matter of design, may be a matter of necessity. If it were so, it would be the best possible thing for that country. But the same end may be accomplished by England assuming a protectorate over Egypt, while leaving the Khedive as its nominal ruler.
As for Turkey, she has done nothing, and should get nothing. Indeed her part has been worse than nothing. Her whole course from the beginning has been one of falsehood and treachery. The Sultan encouraged the revolt of Arabi Pacha, and sent him a decoration at the very time that he was in arms against the Khedive, only to denounce him as a rebel as soon as (and not a moment before) it became evident that his cause was lost! The proper return for this duplicity would be that the Sultan should lose his hold in Africa. If, as the outcome of this war, the connection of Egypt with Turkey could be severed forever, the end would be worth all that it has cost.
France too can expect to reap little benefit from a war fought wholly by England. No great power ever acted a more contemptible part. After sending her fleet to Alexandria, then to withdraw it at the very moment when the affair threatened to become serious, and to sail away without firing a gun, was an exhibition of weakness such as hardly ever was given by a nation jealous of its military reputation and glory. After this, it is pitiful to read how, as soon as the English entered Cairo, the French officials came flocking back, like vultures to their prey; and that the French Controller reappeared on the scene, asking, in a surprised and injured tone, and with an assurance that was peculiarly French, why he was not invited to attend the meeting of the Ministers of the Khedive, as one of his recognized advisers! This bustling official soon received his quietus in a notice issued by the government, addressed not to him alone, but to all the powers, that the Foreign Control was abolished! France found that she could not leave it to England to fight the battle, and she come in to reap the fruits of victory. This is not the least of the good results of the war, that the Control, which has been such an offence to Egypt, and such a scandal to the world, is to cease to exist; and that England and France will no longer appear in the character of bailiffs engaged in the collection of private debts.
But it is not only the fate of Egypt that is at stake, but in some degree of all the East. It is a strange comment on our ideas of the natural progress of society or of civilization, that the border-land between Asia and Africa, which had on either side of it the greatest empires of antiquity, is to this day overrun by half-savage tribes — true sons of Ishmael, whose hand is against every man, and every man's hand against them. If indeed civilization is ever to invade those waste places of the earth — if law and order are to subdue the children of the desert, and make their roving-ground as safe from robbers as the sea is from pirates — it must be by the pressure of something stronger than Egyptian or Turkish power. This is a matter which concerns, not England alone, but all commercial nations as well, which have communication with the far East, and which, coming and going, have to traverse these desolate plains, that have been given up hitherto, in more senses than one, to the spirit of destruction.
And perhaps it would not be impertinent to inquire just at this time, whether Christendom has any rights in the East which Moslems are bound to respect? It is not a pleasant thing for the English or American traveller to find the land which was the cradle of his religion under the dominion of the Turk; to have the burial-place of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob covered by a mosque, which no Christian may enter; to see the Mosque of Omar standing on the ancient site of the Temple of Solomon; and to find even the spots connected with the life and death of our Saviour — the place of His birth in the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem, and of His burial in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem — guarded by those who despise the very name of Christ.
Now we do not propose to preach a crusade for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre; but we may be permitted to rejoice when, in the course of events, an end can be put to the humiliations of centuries. This can only be by a manifestation of superiority so great as to compel Arab and Turk to treat Christian powers and Christian peoples with common decency and respect. For we may as well understand first as last, that however much may be said of Oriental hospitality, yet to all true Mussulmans, in their hearts the foreigner, the Giaour, is an object of hatred, whom it would be doing God service to destroy. The American missionaries who were in Constantinople during the Russian war, told me that they could tell how the battle was going by the looks of the people; that every change was reflected in their faces; that when there was a report of Turkish victories, the populace at once became insolent toward foreigners, whom their fierce countenances seemed to say that they would be glad to massacre; but when the news came of the fall of Plevna, and the rapid march of the Russians on Constantinople, they collapsed into abject terror. A people of such a mood and temper are always safest when they are kept under the restraint of overwhelming power.
Seeing that such issues are depending on the action now to be taken, may we not say that there are interests involved higher than those either of England or of Egypt — the interests of Christendom and of civilization in the East? England has an opportunity to strike a blow at barbarism such as is not given to a nation in a hundred years. Our only fear is that she may weakly consent to give up her advantages, and thus lose by diplomacy what she has gained in war. If so, the latter end of this movement will be as impotent as its progress hitherto has been glorious. If she fails to complete what she has begun — if, after subduing the military revolt and restoring order, she abandons the country — it will quickly relapse into its former anarchy. Then indeed will ten devils enter in where one was driven out, and the last state of that country will be worse than the first. Let her not by any weak compliances throw away an opportunity such as may never be hers again. "Who knoweth but she has come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" The future of Egypt, and to a large extent of the whole East, is now in the hands of England, and may God give her wisdom and firmness to do her duty!