The War 201
naval facilities we required, without our incurring the
responsibility of forcing belligerency on a peaceful people
or of involving ourselves in the regulation of Egyptian
economics during the war. It looks, indeed, as though
the whole argument, still confidently advanced, that our
Imperial interests in the Canal require an administrative
or military control over Egypt during peace is very clearly
contradicted by the severest practical test to which those
arguments could have been put. And as this consideration
is still of crucial importance in our relations with Egypt it
should be borne in mind -while reading the record that
follows of our war experiences in Egypt.
The British Government, on the outbreak of war,
seems to have hoped it might keep Egypt neutral in spite
of the fact that it was in British occupation. Thus they
declared that they '' did not propose to alter the status
of Egypt " if Turkey stayed neutral. But any weight
this may have had as a bribe for Turkish neutrality was
discounted by what had to be done owing to our responsi-
bility for the government of Egypt. For, at the same
time, there was published (August 6, 1914), in the name
of the Egyptian Government, and on the ground that
" the presence of the British army of occupation in Egypt
renders the country liable to attack/' such hostile
measures against enemy subjects and shipping as made
Egypt de facto a belligerent. Egypt, being still de jure
a neutral as a province of the Ottoman Empire, these
measures did therefore effect in fact a most essential
alteration of status. And the practical grounds for this
action do not seem to have been such as made it indis-
pensable. A German police officer in the Egyptian
service was convicted for incitement to insurrection,
German political agents, like Dr. Pruffer, were becoming
active, and a Pan-Islamist propaganda in favour of the