U4 Egypt
initiate intervention. This draft was accepted by Dilke,
our Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, who was then
negotiating a commercial treaty in Paris, and was forced
by him on Granville and on Gladstone. Their adhesion
to this threat of intervention, which was repugnant in
every respect to the principles of their foreign policy,
can certainly best be explained by their anxiety to score
off the Protectionist Conservatives through getting a
favourable commercial treaty with France on Free
Trade lines. But in view of the official denial of any
connection between the French Commercial Treaty and
the Egyptian Joint Note, we can only assume that the
Note was sent because Gladstone was too busy and
Granville too lazy to stop it.
Gambetta's Note was, indeed, well calculated to
create a crisis. It stated that: " Recent circumstances,
especially the meeting of the Chamber of Notables/' had *
caused the two Governments to exchange views. That,
as a result, they "consider the maintenance of the
Khedive on the throne ... as alone able to guarantee
the order and prosperity of Egypt/* and that they will
'( guard by their united efforts against all cause of com-
plication, internal or external, which might menace the
established order in Egypt/' What Gambetta meant by
that everybody knew. What Gladstone meant no one
could guess. And in vain did Lord Granville add a rider
to the Note that: "Her Majesty's Government must
not be considered as committing themselves thereby to
any particular mode of action/' In vain did Malet ex-
plain that the c< cause of complication " was really Abdul
Hamid and not ArabL In vain did Blunt, Gregory, and
other British patrons of the Nationalists protest that
Gladstonian Liberals would never try to conquer Egypt,
For were not those Liberals at the moment coercing