CHAPTER VII
THE WAR
HUSSEIN—RUSHDI
" For the Egyptians shall help in vain, and to no purpose;
therefore have I cried concerning this, Their strength is to sit
still"—ISA. xxx. 7.
THE war created just the crisis contemplated by those
who justified our occupation of Egypt as being an indis-
pensable protection for the Canal and for our Imperial
communications in case of war. Yet it is difficult to see
how establishing a British administration of Egypt in time
of peace in any way facilitated our use, during the war,
either of the Canal as a line of communication or of Cairo
as a base of operations. Protectorate or no protectorate,
peace occupation or no peace occupation, we should in
any case have taken the necessary military and naval
measures to secure such a strategic point, even if we had
to do so by as cynical a coup as that of the Germans at
Constantinople. We could, in that case, have defended
the Canal without hampering ourselves with more political
responsibility in Egypt than was assumed by the Germans
in Turkey. In fact, our defensive in Egypt might have
been converted into an offensive much earlier had not
G.H.Q. become so involved in relations with, and in
responsibilities for, the government of the country. While
the use that we made in 1914-15 of States then neutral,
like Portugal, suggests that an independent Egyptian
Government could have given us all the military and
200