192
the other hand, probably decide that they were justified
in using their superiority in the art of democracy and in
the craft of diplomacy to break up this nationalist move-
ment of the effendiat a quarter of a century later. For
co-operation, such as would have been possible with
the Constitutionalists and Colonels of the earlier move-
ment, was almost inconceivable with these later cafe
politicians and boulevard propagandists. While the com-
plete independence of Egypt under their guidance would
have been almost certainly a calamity. Nor does the
precedent of the Young Turk revolution contradict this
conclusion. For in 1908 the Young Turk Committee kept
itself in the background and left the reins in the hands of
elder statesmen with a diffidence that was not in the
make-up of the Egyptian Nationalists. And Turkish
nationalism, after the war, was a military mass-move-
ment, very different from any superficial ebullition of the
Egyptian effendiat.
Lord Kitchener, who came back to Egypt as Gorst's
successor, is generally credited with having put an end
to this phase of Egyptian nationalism. But Gorst had
already so dismembered it that it easily disintegrated
under the heavy heel of the successful soldier. And it was
curiously enough international, not internal, difficulties
that called for all the prestige acquired by the Sirdar in
reconstructing the Egyptian army and in reconquering
the Sudan. For his arrival coincided to a day with the
declaration of war on Turkey by Italy. And the conse-
quent institution of an Italian buffer state in Tripoli
between Tunis and Egypt, acceptable as it was to British
interests in Egypt, was distinctly awkward in view of the
nominal suzerainty over Egypt still retained by the
Sultan. For the Egyptian army was still, in name, an
Ottoman force. The very title of Sirdar was an invention