he had pressed at first. ‘The Egyptians’, he now held, ‘should only be permitted to govern themselves after the fashion in which Europeans think they ought to be governed’; and no longer expecting this consummation from the existing generation of Egyptian officials, his mind postponed evacuation sine die, and grew somewhat less averse from the introduction of more British officials. But to the end he would always require very good reason for every British official the more, well knowing the danger of tutelage retarding, rather than promoting, the political education of a backward people. His own personal authority, which, backed by the small army of occupation, was the one effective power in the country, taking the place of an organized system, had to be exerted through the action of his forceful personality upon another, sagacious but not forceful—that of the Khedive Tewfik. ‘I had not to govern Egypt,’ he was to write, ‘but to assist in the government without the appearance of doing so, and without any legitimate authority over the agents with whom I had to deal.’ Only the khedive could without friction make his labours of practical effect. Therefore, he attached supreme (as the event showed, too great) importance to continued co-operation with a prince of Tewfik's character and disposition; and he received with lively consternation, as he himself confessed, the sudden intelligence, in 1892, that the khedive was dying. To forestall the Sultan or any other would-be wrecker, he lost not a moment in summoning Tewfik's eldest son from Europe. By European reckoning Abbas would still be a minor for some months to come; but Baring grasped at a suggestion that a Moslem prince's age should be counted by lunar years, and Abbas was duly installed. The Sultan laid by his rival candidate against a better day, and ordered a firman of investiture to be sent to Cairo. The delays and mysteries of its dispatch, arrival, and communication made sport for the world, whose amusement reached its height when the precious document proved to deprive Egypt of Sinai. Baring supported Abbas, and the chanceries tackled the Porte, with the usual result. When the dust had subsided, Abbas ruled all that his father had ruled, with Baring overruling as before, but under the new style of Baron Cromer.
For awhile all seemed well. Cromer buttressed the young khedive against the Sultan's commissioner, Mukhtar Pasha—sole and sore legacy of the Wolff negotiations—as effectively as against the Sultan himself. But as Abbas began to feel his feet, he turned from the authoritative tutor to counsellors of the closet. Tigrane Pasha expounded nationalism in admirable French, and Abbas wondered that an Armenian could be ‘so good an Egyptian’. The country, said Tigrane, had now acquired all the knowledge and all the resources requisite for its admission to the comity of nations. Let the occupying power be dismissed with thanks. But its congé could be given effectually by the sovereign alone. Therefore a deputation of notables should go quietly to Constantinople, and the khedive must follow to confirm their prayers. The Sultan would grant anything to get the British out of Egypt.
Cromer suffered Abbas to listen and obey; for he foresaw how Abdul Hamid would deal at Constantinople with such inconvenient precedents as a nationalist deputation, and a visit from an autonomous viceroy. He knew something of Turks, and to learn their tongue had been at pains which he declined to expend on Arabic, thinking the Turkish of the local pashas would help him, where the vernacular of the million might embarrass. As he expected, Abbas returned in autumn, sore and sulky, ready to vent his spleen in peevish complaints of British officials. These carried to Cromer incessant protests against the consequent insolence of subordinates; but he refused to move, and even compromised the dismissal of his ally, Mustapha Fehmi. It was not reasonable to expect as yet the confidence and friendship, which Tewfik, his equal in age and greatly beholden to him in the past, had shown. Moreover, the British public, which Cromer understood and kept always in view, would not, in the case of a boy still in his 'teens, distinguish necessary firmness from unnecessary bullying on any issue yet raised. Lord Rosebery, a reputed radical, had come to the Foreign Office in London, and Cromer saw that Nubar's mistake was being repeated by Tigrane. He had but to wait, and a better occasion would be offered by the court cabal.
It came in January 1894. On parade at Wadi Halfa, before the sirdar, and the listening ranks, Abbas rebuked British officers whom, to a man, their countrymen held to have performed a miracle in creating an army out of fellahin. The sirdar, Kitchener, tendered his resignation, and Cromer cleared decks for action. With no more demur than any previous foreign secretary,
25
