Financial Reconstruction 175
lost on the swings of Egyptian nationalism, because this
removal of the French menace from the Nile Valley had
much the same effect on the movement for Egyptian
independence as the removal of the French from the
Mississippi Valley had on the independence of the United
States. Thereafter, the British were the sole obstacles
between that movement and its objective.
We therefore come now to the first serious collision
between Egyptians and English as such, as distinct from
conflicts between their governors. Which collision was
the result of the virulence of a nationalism that had been
refused all proper expression, and therefore had had re-
course to a campaign of Press calumny against the
English. For this campaign, though not the cause of
violence by the Egyptians, at that time so scared the
English as to frighten them into vigorous action. The
Denshawi incident was significant in itself. Some British
officers in uniform, shooting pigeons by invitation of a
village sheikh, accidentally shot a woman and came to
blows with the villagers (June 13, 1906). They had to
run for it, and, though unpursued, one of them fell dead
on the road from shock and sunstroke. An innocent
young villager, who hurried up to help, was found by the
body, and angry soldiers of the dead officer's regiment
clubbed him to death. The British colony, as liable to
panic as are all communities who govern others without
their consent, interpreted the incident as the beginning of
an insurrection. As in 1882 it was commonly believed
that a general massacre was imminent. Similar incidents
in the past, such as the collision between British officers
out shooting and villagers at Ghizeh in 1887, were
forgotten. The Press did its deadly work, and the foreign
papers of Cairo, followed by the London "heavies/*
bombarded the Government with demands for exemplary