Nationalist Renascence £91
extradition. Nor did his lieutenant and the leading jour-
nalist, Sheikh Shawish, editor of El Alam, fare any
better. Having fled to Constantinople, he was sentenced
to three months for a literary offence. At Constantinople
he was arrested by the Turkish police at our request and
handed over to Egyptian police agents for deportation
to Cairo.
Nor was any distinction made between anti-British
nationalists and home-rulers who were ready to co-
operate. The General Assembly, on meeting (March,
1912), pressed for a constitution, and was at once dis-
missed. Soufani Bey, one of its prominent members and
a moderate, was prosecuted.
Zaglul Bey, another co-operator, whom Cromer had
recommended to his successors, was dismissed. And as
to the general effect of all this on the nationalist move-
ment, it may be of interest to record the parting speech
of a disappointed constitutionalist co-operator, Ismail
Pasha Abaza. " I take the British Agent to task for—
the Press Laws, which mean a reaction to conditions of
thirty years ago—for treating journalists as brigands, and
for attacking the authority of the Legislative Council.
We are progressing in brutality, loquacity, drink, and
debts. In 1884 we imported flour to a value of ^134,000,
in 1909 to ;£i,836,000. Under Mehemet AH we sent
nine hundred and five students to Europe, under Ismail
we sent one hundred and fifty-five, under Abbas we send
forty-three. What is the remedy ? Self-government!
And for the last thirty years we have not moved an inch
towards self-government."
History will probably decide that British Statesmen
were wrong in using the superior military power of the
Empire to break down the Egyptian Nationalist move-
ment under Arabi and Sherif in the 'eighties. It will, on