Financial Reconstruction 149
appeal by convincing Egyptians that British officials like
Cromer and officers like Kitchener were as anxious and
better able to carry out the required reforms than was
any " Turkish" Constitutionalist like Sherif or fellah
Colonel like Arabi. When, in addition to that, it became
clear that a British occupation meant a subordination of
French, Turkish, and other more suspect foreign influ-
ences, and that the British supremacy would only
be exercised diplomatically and indirectly, then the
nationalist movement collapsed. In other words, Egyptian
nationalism was put to sleep for twenty years, not so
much by the knock-out at Tel-el-Kebir as by the know-
ledge that it had very little to gain by coming up for
another round. It was perhaps well for us that the
Egyptian Nationalist had not the love of a fight for fight-
ing's sake nor the fuller growth reached in another genera-
tion, that kept the Turkish movement on its feet against
apparently hopeless odds. The Egyptians of that day
could not know that had they stuck to their guns they
might have swept away in Cairo, as the Turks later
swept away in Constantinople, all those barriers and
burdens, whether Islamic or international, financial or
legal, Capitulatory or Koranic, that for another genera-
tion were to stunt the growth of Egypt and stifle its
vitality.
The English of that day could not know that a radical
reconstruction in Egypt, impossible to themselves, was
within the power of Egyptians. We, however, review-
to-day the difficulties of the British reformers and their
ingenious diplomacies in circumventing them with admira-
tion, no doubt, but with a certain sense of their artifi-
ciality. There is a suggestion in it all of the ingenuity of
the Hodja Nasredin Effendi, who carried his donkey
over the stream on his back so that it shouldn't throw