3°4
Copts and Moslems flock to the fairs of the same local
saints. They tell the same stories and sing the same
songs. They live in separate villages, but have the same
views of life, the same virtues, and the same vices. So
that the fraternisation of Copts and Moslems in the last
phase of nationalism had nothing in it either novel or
phenomenal, and merely showed that nationalism had
come to take the same place in the life of the people as
the Nile flood or a local fair.
Nor do the Copts suffer under any disabilities which
they require our help in redressing. Their most difficult
time was probably under the later Mamelukes when de-
fections to Islam had reduced them from six jnillions at
the Arab conquest to a few hundred thousand. But even
then, though debarred from bearing arms, they had a
position of considerable power as the clerical class.
Mehemet Ali allowed them to bear arms and admitted
them to the highest offices of State. Ismail even had a
Coptic Minister of War. By then they had grown greatly
in numbers and in influence. It was, as above reported,
the advent of the British that, so far from being an
advantage to these fellow-Christians, again reduced their
community to a subordinate status. For the British,
desiring to conciliate the Moslems and disliking the less
independent and more intelligent Copts, excluded them
from their previous employments. Their grievances, as
put forward by the Coptic Congress in 1911, are directed
rather against the English than against the Egyptians.
They then demanded equal pay with Moslems in Govern-
ment service, proportional representation in elected
Councils, a proper share of appointments as Mudirs, and
a rest day on Sundays. But these differences with their
Moslem fellow-citizens, due mainly to a British discrim-
ination against tKem that was partly political and partly