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LORD CROMER IN EGYPT

man and his work have gained the confidence of his fellow-countrymen, till Lord Cromer's name has become a proverb for single-minded policy and honest administration. The advantage to Egypt and her hard-working population has been great. The European, after years of study amongst the people of the East, finds difficulty in arriving at even a moderate understanding of their customs, habits of thought, and prejudices. It is not, therefore, surprising that the intervention of those who have no such specific knowledge generally produces more harm than good. Good intentions cannot supply the place of knowledge of local conditions and racial peculiarities, and Egypt has lost nothing by having been saved from the invasion of the faddist and the doctrinaire politician. This attitude of non-intervention in Egyptian matters on the part of the British public has been gradually transformed into a generous recognition of the value of the work accomplished under Lord Cromer's direction. Only those who serve the State in foreign lands can rightly estimate the immense advantage to the Anglo-Egyptian Administration of the knowledge that its actions were meeting with the approval and support of the British nation. As a general rule, the British public is nervously suspicious of any information with an official taint; when the best men have been selected to watch over the interests and carry out the policy of the country in other parts of the world, public opinion usually seems to think it has done enough. It neglects their advice and recommendations, and prefers to listen to the ignorant criticism of irresponsible globe-trotters, or the suggestions of interested parties who have axes of their own to grind in secret. From obstacles of this description the work of the English in Egypt has been singularly free. From the first the British people and the British Press seem to have realized that they could place the fullest confidence in Lord Cromer's execution of the great task that had been confided to him. In moments of difficulty and crisis—and there have been many such in the last twenty years