The Rulers of the MediterraneanDavis, Richard Harding
History
The Rulers of the Mediterranean
Davis, Richard Harding
Mediterranean Region -- Description and travel
Three-fourths of the officers in the army of the Khedive are English
boys, who rank as second lieutenants at home and as majors in Egypt.
They are paid just twice what they are paid in the English army, and it
is the Khedive who pays them and not the English. In this way England
obtains three things: she is saved the cost of supporting that number of
officers; she gets the benefit of their experience in Egypt, which is an
excellent training-school, at the expense of the Egyptians; and she at
the same time controls the Egyptian army by these same officers, and
guards her own interests at Egypt's cost. And as if this were not
enough, she plants an Army of Occupation upon the country, and with it
menaces the native authority. The irrigation of Egypt has of late been
carried on by Englishmen entirely and paid for by Egypt; her railroads
are built by the English; her big contracts are given out to English
firms and to English manufacturers; and the railroad which will be built
to Kosseir on the Red Sea may have been designed in Egypt's interest to
carry wheat, or it may have been planned to carry troops to the Red Sea
in the event of the seizure of the Suez Canal or of any other impediment
to the shortest route to India. We may not believe that the Egyptians
are capable of governing themselves, we may believe that it is written
that others than themselves shall always rule them and their country,
but we must prefer that whoever do this should declare themselves
openly, and act as conquerors who come and remain as conquerors, and not
as "advisers" and restorers of order. Napoleon came to Cairo with flags
flying and drums beating openly as an enemy; he did not come in the
disguise of a missionary or an irrigation expert.
And there is always the question whether if left alone the Egyptians of
the present day could not govern themselves. Those of the Egyptians I
met who were in authority are not men who are likely to return to the
debauchery and misrule of Ismail. They would be big men in any country;
they are cultivated, educated gentlemen, who have served in different
courts or on many important diplomatic missions, and whose tastes and
ambitions are as creditable and as broad as are those of their English
contemporaries.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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