The War 209
distrustful of British gratitude than were those in Egypt.
Or possibly Egypt was doing better out of the war than
Ireland. Certainly the British forces then in Egypt were
large enough to discourage any disloyalty. For there
were at times as many as two hundred thousand British
troops there. So disproportionate, indeed, was this war
machine to its military task that it consumed a good deal
of energy in making its own wheels go round.
Quite possibly the most important result of this re-
organisation of the command in Egypt and of its transfer
from Ismailia to Cairo was that it shook a certain young
second lieutenant out of the Maps Department of the
Cairo Intelligence and set him free to make war on his
own account. Mr. Lawrence very soon recovered for the
British the initiative on this front that the M.E.F. had
let pass over to the Germans.
Kress von Kressenstein, that bold Bavarian, had
deserved well of his country by immobilising such a mass
of men so far from the seat of war. As Cairo had become
the centre of the vast spider's web of our Near Eastern
Intelligence Service, there was little risk of any surprise
revolt. But, unfortunately, the Germans had allies in
Egypt more deadly to us than spies or conspirators. That
Port Said had quarters more infamous and filthy even
than other Levantine towns, while Cairo and Alexandria
were little better, was more the fault of the Capitulations
than" of Egypt. Any responsibility that the British may
have had for not relieving Egypt of these restrictions now
met with heavy retribution. Drink and drugs the British
military authorities could deal with ; disease, such as
dysentery or cholera, only gave a passing anxiety. But in
combating venereal diseases they were so hampered by
the Capitulations and by conventional prejudices, and so
vacillated between prohibitions and prophylactics, that
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