fellaheen and negroes as slaves. Had Great Britain in this instance yielded a jot of her just rights to the intriguing and bellicose spirit of French officialism Egypt would have been made an impossible place for our countrymen to remain in. Being in Cairo and Alexandria at the time I was privately assured by scores of my countrymen, men in business and in public offices, that they would be obliged to quit Egypt if France succeeded in her pretensions to the Nile Valley. Petty annoyances, tyranny, all manner of injustice and even violence would be resorted to, to force them to leave and to drive British interests to the wall. I avail myself again of the excellent synopsis of the official despatches dealing with the Fashoda incident, which appeared in the _Daily Telegraph_. The Parliamentary papers in question were issued on the 9th of October last. The official papers opened with a despatch from Sir Edmund Monson to the Foreign Secretary, bearing date December 10, 1897. Therein the British Ambassador says:-- "The despatches which I have recently addressed to your lordship respecting the reports of the massacre of the Marchand Expedition, and the comments made in connection with this rumoured disaster by the French Press, will have already shown your lordship how necessary it has become to remind the French Government of the views held by that of Her Majesty as to their sphere of influence in the Upper Nile Valley; and it has been with great satisfaction that I have found myself so promptly authorised to make a communication upon the subject to M. Hanotaux. Made in the way in which it has been suggested by your lordship, I see no reason why this communication should prejudice the chances of our coming to a satisfactory arrangement upon the question with which we are dealing in connection with the situation in West Africa." Sir Edmund Monson enclosed in the despatch a copy of a note he had addressed to M. Hanotaux, at that period French Minister of Foreign Affairs, as follows:--