222 Egypt
conquest of Syria did not affect the allegiance of the
Egyptian force, though it made heavier and heavier calls
on its endurance. There were eventually about one
hundred and thirty-five thousand men engaged on six
months' contracts—that is about a quarter of a million per
year, not including those sent on foreign service. This,
out of a male military-age population of one and a half
million. Transport, both camel and rail, water and food
supply, entrenching and camps all depended on Egyptian
labour. Official records and Lord Allenby's despatches
bear enthusiastic witness to its reliability.
By 1917 there were twenty-one thousand Egyptians
serving in camel transport—a service of hardship, in
which two hundred and twenty were killed, fourteen,
thousand were wounded, and four thousand died in
hospital. Service in the Labour Corps was less exacting.
But, even so, the " Saidi," or central Egyptian, would
never re-enlist, though of finer physique than the Delta
fellaheen. Consequently, by the summer of 1917
voluntary recruiting was failing, and the difficulty of
repatriating time-expired men from Palestine within the
term of their contract caused general complaint and gave
volunteering the coup de grace. Various inducements
failed to provide the seventeen thousand men required.
The Egyptian Government were then asked to supply
conscripts from the one hundred and thirty thousand
youths annually liable for conscription, of whom about
half were balloted to supply the three thousand recruits
required for the standing army. This would have got the
men without unfairness or friction. But instead, the
Egyptian Government took the curious step of re-
introducing the old corv&e system with all its abuses. The
provincial Mudir was ordered to produce a quota of con-
scripts, and the village Omdeh selected them as of old,