184 Egypt
secondary personalities left the stage. Sir William
Garstin, the influential Adviser to Public Works, and
other real experts whose public services to Egypt had
earned general recognition, followed their chief into re-
tirement. The Financial Adviser and the Adviser to the
Interior had to be replaced under circumstances pre-
judicial to our prestige. The survivors of the old ruling
class like Nubar, Riaz, and Mustapha Fehmy were pass-
ing and leaving no successors on whom we could similarly
rely. The old social relations, always so easily established
between representatives of the British and the Turkish
ruling classes, were rapidly losing all political import-
ance in an Egypt that was taking its leaders from a new
middle class. With the effendiat of lawyers and journalists
British officers and officials had no even less social than
political contacts.
Moreover, the British official himself was changing in
character. Instead of a few Anglo-Indians of Eastern
experience, accustomed to a ceremonial and occasionally
cordial intercourse with Oriental notables, there was a
flood of minor officials, mostly young, whose interest in
Egypt did not extend beyond the playgrounds of
Ghezireh and the gaieties of the great hotels that were
converting Cairo, Heliopolis, and Helouan into winter
resorts for tourists. Ghezireh, with its three polo-
grounds, its two race-courses and golf-course, its tennis
and squash courts, its turf and sports clubs, and its
wholly insular interests, had, indeed, little in common
with Egypt. Even the Egyptian aristocracy did not
enjoy that honorary membership as guests extended by
Anglo-Indian communities to especially favoured natives.
"With the exception of Yasri Pasha, a Turk educated
in England, I never saw an Egyptian play polo/' writes
Coles Pasha (Recollections, p. 163). The British in-