Report of the Special Mission to Egypt under Lord Milner, and related papers [‎58r] (115/473)

APPENDIX.
LORD MILNER ??aid th&t he had been occupied for practically
eleven monthe in considering the question of Egypt. For
four months it had taken up practically his whole tine, and
for seven months the greater part of it. He thought that
everyone would admit that if Egypt were a friendly and allied
country which was decently governed and able to stand on its
own feet, and if it were prepared to give us of its o ,rr n accord
a strategic base at all tines and to place its harbours,
railways, and othe/means of communication at our service not
only in time of war but even in time of peace, it would be
better, ■Prom the purely British i)oint of view, than ix wgypt
were to be a British Possession, kept in subjection by force
and requiring in time of peace a large permanent gainson.
He foresaw considerable danger if the present situation were
allowed to continue, as it was, in fact, a reproduction of
that in Southern and Western Ireland, He would not go so far
as to say it was so bad as in Ireland, bu - it was rapidly
moving that way, and quite needlessly so. The quarrel with
the Iris/, people was really a secular one, whereas in Egypt
the trouble was really a new ono and was, in his opinion,
due to remedial causes. He saw no reason utj , «i ,h o - 0 d
statesmanship and patience, we should not get on the same
tolerable terms with the Egyptians as w* ''ere twenty years
previously. Even now there was no very bad feeling amongot
the greater number of people in rgypt towrdo the
The Fellahln did not really care whether there was t. British
Protectorate or not, and this was even true' of the Fe: tahin
in the large to-na. In fact, it might b<= said that Sy «-
cent, o' the people in p g 7 T't d'.d not take
on? way or the other, and he was quite sure that a very -arge
number of them did not know what the extremists were filing
for. To put it broadly, the Fallahin Arabic for ‘peasant’. It was used by British officials to refer to agricultural workers or to members of a social class employed primarily in agricultural labour. neithc* xC
us, and,as he had always been go-emod by so, ebody, hi, "^s
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