Typescript and printed cabinet papers and parliamentary papers on events in Egypt [‎69r] (137/520)

I [TMs Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty’s Government.!
CONFIDENTIAL.
The Marquess Curzon of Kedleston to Field-Marshal Viscount AUenhy (Cairo).
(No. 1255.)
My Lord,
Foreign Office, November 19, 1921.
IN my final conversation with Adly Pasha An Ottoman title used after the names of certain provincial governors, high-ranking officials and military commanders. to-day, while explaining to him the
procedure as regards publication of which the Cabinet had approved, I told him that
in my opinion he and his colleagues had made a mistake, as soon as they had realised
that their extreme demands could not be conceded, in not accepting, or, if that was too
much, in not expressing their willingness to treat the British proposals as a provisional
arrangement 1o which, in their own interests, they would be prepared to give a trial,
in order to demonstrate, by the good administration inaugurated and the perfect
security obtained under it, bow mistaken the apprehension which had justified the
British refusal of wider concessions had been. Taking the parallel of the ascent of
the Great Pyramid as representing the Egyptian aspirations for independence, they
had claimed to be transported by aeroplane straight to the summit/ instead of mounting
by laborious stages, as all of us who ha 1 scaled that great monument had been obliged
to do. In the present case the British Government had offered to help them, as the
Arabs were in the habit of doing with visitors to Ghizeh, more than half-way to the
top. But apparently the Egyptian Government, if they could not get there straight
away, preferred to remain stationary at the base.
Adly Pasha An Ottoman title used after the names of certain provincial governors, high-ranking officials and military commanders. asked me why we should not proceed ourselves to put into operation
scheme (Ab For the very obvious reason, I replied, that this could only be done
with Egyptian co-operation ; and yet he himself, the man most competent to give it,
had told me at our previous meeting that his first step on returning to Egypt would be
to resign.
I told him that the Egyptians could not have it both ways. They could not
both enjoy the luxury of refusing our proposals and posing as national heroes in
consequence, and at the same time expect us, without their assistance, to put into
operation the scheme of very considerable independence which they had chosen to
reject. The only consequence of their action would be to throw us back into the
status quo ante, which would be equally regrettable for both parties.
1 said I understood the difficulties of his position. But I rather wondered why,
on the one or two occasions on which I had suggested the possibility of a provisional
arrangement, to be replaced, after satisfactory experience, by something more liberal
or advanced, he had turned down the suggestion. 1 invited him, while on his return
journey, to consider very carefully whether on arriving in Cairo it would not be in his
power to make to the Sultan and to your Lordship some proposal more in harmony
with the lacts of the situation both here and in Egypt, than the attitude of blank
negation which he had hitherto assumed.
The Egyptian Prime Minister was far from rejecting these ideas, which I had
made with the object of allowing them to germinate in his mind before he arrived in
Egypt—although, naturally enough, he could express no acceptance of them. He left
me with the warmest expression of thanks for the courtesy with which he and his
colleagues had been treated at the Foreign Office and for the hospitality which they
had enjoyed in England, and 1 could certainly say in return, as 1 did, that 1 had found
him a very sincere and honourable negotiator with whom it had been a personal
pleasure to deal.
I am, &c.
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