character by loudly slapping the picture of him and his cruelty. If there were no picture, we slapped the monstrous words that chronicled such dark behavior. Thus the wicked stepmother in 'Snow White,' in the guise of a peddler, with her fatal apple and her poisoned comb, was early and often rewarded by a shower of serious and righteous blows, as was also dastardly Big Klaus who slew his grandmother, and the wolf who drew near, with mincing step and heart of darkness, to the home of Red Riding Hood.

In recent years my mother has apologized for this teaching. She fears now, she says, that it inculcated prejudice and intolerance; but, being in league with the Comic Spirit, she claims an excuse for it on the modern grounds that she married before she had had time to express herself' sufficiently! The habit stayed long with Cynthia and me; indeed, it was not so many years ago that I discovered my hand pounding away in fury upon the Thwackum and Square pages in Tom Jones; and I doubt not that the custom might have lingered up to this very day were it not that the old and completely satisfying villains have passed out of books and of life, and that all conceivable modern behavior, actual or fictional, has become, in the light of the new learning, neither righteous nor unrighteous, but merely problematical!

With the old secretary and mornings thereon is the habit indissolubly associated. Reading in The Scottish Chiefs of the cruel death of the Lady Marion, the Sweet Lady of Ellerslie, at the hands of that venomous Heselrigge, tyrant of Lanark, her small, high voice vibrant with contempt and anger, Cynthia, her hand poised to strike, moved the book toward me, and together we thundered upon the picture or the page just retribution. Thus we dutifully gave visible and vigorous sign of our disgust for all

meretricious behavior on the part of witches and stepmothers, elder sisters, grudging schoolmasters, and wicked kings, although it is but fair to say that we were often impatient at the necessary interruption.

But there came a morning, and that early, when there was seemingly no place to slap, when Cynthia's tearfilled eyes looked at mine and mine looked at Cynthia's, and when there drifted about our warm, quiet kitchen, above the sunlight on the floor, within the fragrance of things cooking, a shadowy perception, strange and disturbing. We had been reading a new Hans Andersen which had come for Cynthia's birthday, in gay red covers with eleven white swans winging their way toward Elsa and her magical shirts; and for the first time we had become acquainted with the Little Match Girl. There she sat in the cold dawn, with red cheeks and a smile upon her lips, in the corner, leaning against the wall, frozen to death on the last evening of the Old Year, so pitiful a figure we both forgot that in her death she had visions for her company.

And who was there to blame for it all-who to slap? Not the boy who had run away with her slipper, cruel though he was. Not her father, who, if she went home, would surely beat her. No, it was not they who had done this thing.

Then, as to Job in the Land of Uz and to Sophocles by the Ægean, there came thus early to Cynthia and me on the top of the old secretary the dim knowledge of that sad and eternal questioning, encircling and uniting all mankind. But for a short moment, a little while, it was clearly better with us than with Job and Sophocles. For we in those days could turn at once to the witch in 'Hansel and Gretel,' who was surely to blame for it all, and slap away to our hearts' content.

It is perhaps a mischoice of words to attempt, as we propose, to discuss Egypt and its recent history in the .terms of Egyptian milestones. For in Egypt there are still only a few of the arterial roads which have become so great a feature of communication in other countries, and such few roads as there are are unadorned by milestones, or, indeed, by any other indication of distances. This phenomenon is eloquent of the Egyptian mentality even of to-day. For time and distance mean little or nothing to the average dweller in the delta and valley of the Nile. He rises with the sun and retires at nightfall, and he gauges distance, not in terms of miles or kilometres, but by the time it takes him to patter on his fast little donkey from one village to another.

So, just as the everyday housewife would not discuss with her cook the merits of her oven or gas stove in terms of heat calories, no student of modern Egyptian history would discuss with a native of Egypt the historical development of that country during the last century in terms of milestones. But in Western circles a review of the history of the land of the Pharaohs from 1800 until the present time can be lucidly and conveniently contemplated as if it were the passage of the political coach over the long and perilous road of Oriental pomp and circumstance, with its spurts and disasters, its hopes and despairs.

Modern Egypt dates from the rise to

power, in the early years of the last century, of Mohammed Ali the Great, an Albanian adventurer, whose first connection with Egypt has come down in the record of his rescue from drowning in 1801 by British bluejackets then operating against Napoleon's Army in Cairo. Fortune favored him then and continued to be his friend for the next forty years, during which, by a process of intrigue and ruthlessness, he rose to be master of Egypt and the Sudan; to be the conqueror of Arabia and the deliverer of the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina from the power of a heretic Moslem sect, the Wahabis; and finally, after a successful military campaign against his suzerain lord, the Sultan of Turkey, to become a menace to Constantinople itself and sufficiently formidable to range against himself the concert of Europe, under threats from which he was forced to retire once more within the original territorial boundaries of the then Turkish province of Egypt. But, though thus rebuffed, he received lasting and practical compensation. He had had to reaffirm his tutelage to the Sublime Porte; but in return the Sultan recognized him and his heirs as the hereditary governors of the province of Egypt, under Turkish suzerainty and paying a yearly tribute, and since that time the house of Mohammed Ali the Great has been de jure as well as de facto the controller of Egyptian destinies. That is the first milestone in

Egypt then had thirty-eight years of independent freedom under two very unsavory rulers and a third remarkably clever and ludicrously extravagant one. The last-named was Ismail Pasha the Magnificent, who has to his credit the sanctioning of the building of the Suez Canal, but who otherwise ruined Egypt. His extravagance was unbounded and almost Bourbonesque. He made futile wars here, there, and everywhere; he built palaces, built roads, built canals, built anything, and, having pauperized and tyrannized his people and country, whose resources were totally inadequate to compete with such fantastic schemes, he turned to foreign capital for assistance, borrowed right and left, and finally went bankrupt with his country. He was deposed in 1878, when, on the demand of his European creditors, an international control of Egyptian finance was imposed on the country. For four years this inevitably unwieldy control worked somehow, though hampered at every turn by smouldering Egyptian nationalism, which eventually, in 1882, burst into flame in the Arabi rebellion. Chaos ensued, and on May 11, 1882, there was a massacre of Christians in Alexandria. The result was the bombardment and capture of the town by the British fleet, and the subsequent British occupation, by way of the Canal, of Cairo and the Nile Valley. This event constitutes the second milestone in modern Egyptian history.

The occupation was not a conquest, and did not alter the status of Egypt. The suzerainty of Turkey was confirmed, and indeed the occupation was really only the natural corollary to the institution, four years before, of international control of finance, to which Turkey had been a consenting party. The payment of the tutelar subsidy to

European bondholders was resumed, and the house of Mohammed Ali, which during the Arabi agitation had been reduced to complete impotence, was rehabilitated and restored. The moral and financial regeneration of Egypt dates from 1882. Under the patient and farseeing guidance of Lord Cromer, the Egyptian army was reorganized and rejuvenated; Egyptian credit was reestablished in Europe; the masses mostly illiterate of the Egyptian proletariat were raised from the abject poverty and servility into. which they had fallen under Ismail Pasha to prosperity and content; agricultural and irrigation schemes were inaugurated and developed; and finally the Sudan, which had been allowed during the decadent rule of Ismail Pasha to pass into fanatic anarchy under the Mahdi, was patiently recovered under British leadership and reorganized under a benevolent and liberal government of its own, as the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. But, as was perhaps inevitable, the recovered prosperity and tranquillity of the country revived that feeling of nationalism which is after all the prerogative of every nation. Those who were mere children in the bad old days grew up in an atmosphere of freedom and emancipation. They were citizens of a modernized country, no longer puppets of an autocratic line of selfish rulers; and as they came to realize that independence of opinion was no more a menace to their existence, there arose an agitation against all form of control by a foreign Government that was Christian and not Mohammedan. For, whatever may be said on the banks of the Nile by Egyptians, the Egyptian question is at bottom the problem of religion.

Lord Cromer had marked the development of Egyptian nationalism during the close of his proconsulship.

He had repeatedly checked the dangerous intrigues of the new young Khedive, Abbas Hilmi, who had no memories of the past and vast ambitions for the future; and although up to 1914 the agitation for independence had kept within legitimate bounds, it persisted throughout as a vivid and ever growing force. British policy during this difficult period was one of gradual disengagement from executive control. As the country righted itself, more and more responsibility was placed on native shoulders, and it cannot be denied that progress was being made - faster, maybe, in some spheres than in others, but sensible.

The outbreak of war at once drew attention to the importance of Egypt's strategic position, lying, as she did, athwart British and, to a lesser extent, French communications with their wide and essential Eastern colonies. The British garrison was strengthened against invasion, — and, as justification of these precautions, be it noted that Egypt was the first object of Turkish attack, — and the British Government publicly declared that it would guarantee the integrity of Egyptian frontiers against encroachment by land or sea. Meanwhile Abbas Hilmi, the Khedive of Egypt, who had never ceased to scheme for the advancement of his personal ambitions, was at Constantinople — ostensibly on a summer holiday. He never returned. The Turks soon entered the war on the side of the Central Powers, and, in the mistaken idea that they were bound to win, he ranged himself and his ambitions on their side. He was deposed in November 1914, and simultaneously the British Government declared a protectorate over Egypt. We have reached the third milestone in modern Egyptian history.

The declaration of the protectorate severed Egypt once and for all time

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from Turkey; it assured her position through the period of hostilities, and it changed to an amazingly small degree the existing methods of her government. The new ruler was of the house of Mohammed Ali, and a native ministry remained in power. The change from Turkish suzerainty was accepted with absolute calm, and indeed throughout the war the behavior of the Egyptian people was highly praiseworthy. But the calm of the country did not mean that the old nationalistic ideas were dead. They were only dormant in the minds of all Egyptians, who suddenly found their whole attention concentrated on the abnormal prosperity which came to them from the war. Egypt became a huge base for British and French effort in the Near East, and money flowed into her coffers. On the other hand, it cannot be overlooked that the Allies owe Egypt a debt of gratitude. She supplied vast labor corps in more than one theatre of hostilities, and she placed unreservedly the products of her fertile land at their disposal. But as it is true that Egyptians never remember the benefits and advantages which accrued to them from the immunity they enjoyed, thanks to the Allies, from the horrors of war, so it is equally a fact that, amid the strain and stress of post-war developments in Egypt, there was a corresponding inability in Great Britain to appreciate at its true value the help Egyptians rendered to the Allied cause.

The three years from the outbreak of the Egyptian rebellion in March 1919 up to March 1922, when the war-time measure proclaiming a British protectorate over Egypt was revoked by Mr. Lloyd George's Government on the advice of Lord Allenby, were years of tension and disappointment, of sporadic outbreak and repression, difficult and harassing for British and Egyptians alike. But though, at the time, the

situation often appeared well-nigh hopeless of solution, these years were not barren and eventually bore fruit. Slowly a section of the Egyptian political world came to realize that the British Government was vitally in terested in the integrity of Egypt and the maintenance of that integrity against aggression from without, and that, as guardian and sponsor of the rights of all Europeans in Egypt, it would not abandon its obligations in this direction. At the same time there developed in British circles a readiness to appreciate the advance which Egyptians themselves had made, under British guidance, toward a capacity for independent self-government. The result of these mutual adjustments of ideas was the famous declaration of the British Government to Egypt of February 28, 1922, which was accepted by the existing Egyptian Government and by the Sultan, who after an interval of a fortnight proclaimed Egypt as an independent sovereign State and himself as her first king, to rule as a constitutional monarch with a free parliament which would be elected by popular suffrage. Thus a new state of things was established in Egypt, a great advance registered toward her complete independence, and a partial solution reached of the vexed AngloEgyptian question. In its declaration the British Government reserved for future discussion and solution four points, on which no decision was possible at the time. They are as follows: (1) the safeguarding of communications through Egypt, particularly the Suez Canal; (2) the British Government's retention of the control of the Sudan; (3) the protection of British and foreign interests in Egypt; (4) the defense of Egypt against foreign aggression.

The promulgation of this declaration marks the fourth milestone in modern Egyptian history.

II

The reader who has persevered thus far through what can only be a cursory study of modern Egyptian political history may perhaps be wondering at the absence of reference to Saad Zaghlul Pasha, who is, and has been for the last ten years, by far the most prominent figure in Egyptian politics. His power over his countrymen is undeniable, but the absence of reference to his activities has been intentional. This article is set forth to register the political emancipation of Egypt since 1800 milestone by milestone. Zaghlul Pasha has not materially contributed to this advancement. Such a highly controversial statement calls for elaboration and explanation, and we feel that the enlightenment of our readers will best be effected by a summary of the career of this very remarkable and personally sympathetic old For he is very old.

man.

He was born about 1850, the son of farmer parents, in the Nile Delta an origin of which he is justly proud. He is and boasts himself to be an Egyptian of the Egyptians, a son of the soil and, in his own vernacular, a fellah of the fellahin (a peasant of the peasants). He did not, however, remain on the soil, but early migrated to Cairo, studied the law in the great Moslem university, El Azhar, and, once qualified, started a practice in the courts and dabbled in Arabic journalism. He soon attracted attention both as a lawyer and as a pressman. It is said of him by his own people that he has a tongue of gold, a pen of fire, and an eye bright as the stars; and the description is not excessive. He has tremendous personal magnetism. As an orator, he is amusing, persuasive, and impulsive, inspiring and combative, and his early training in the Mohammedan law has left him with a unique knowledge of the