238 Egypt
what is the action appropriate to a military authority in
respect of agitations. He sent for Zaglul and the leaders
of the Wafd (March 6, 1919) in order to warn them that
the country was still under martial law, and that any
action against authority would be severely dealt with.
The delegates said nothing, nor were they asked to.
But the next day they published a protest so lively that
it led to the immediate arrest of their four most prominent
spokesmen (March 8, 1919). Those selected for arrest
were Saad Pasha Zaglul; Hamid Pasha el Bassal, a
leader of the Bedawin ; Ismail Pasha Sidki, the ablest
of the Egyptian administrators ; and Mohamed Pasha
Mahmoud, a Balliol man and a provincial Governor.
Which fairly representative collection was immediately
shipped off to Malta (March 9). And this measure had
just the same effect on Cairo as it had had in similar
circumstances on Constantinople. It fairly blew the lid
off the whole seething pot of sedition, which boiled over
and went up in a blaze.
The Egyptian Nationalists had pressed their claim on
us which we had repudiated—they had presented a case
to the Peace Conference which, at our instigation, it had
refused—they now set to work to produce such a condi-
tion of chaos in the country itself as would compel atten-
tion. Pre-war nationalism had been safely ignored because
it could only assert itself through the Press. Post-war
nationalism, owing to the growth of popular grievances
during the war, could get action through the proletariat
and even through the peasantry. Moreover, it could not
only provoke such action, but could direct and control
it. In the reports of the rising that now broke out we
can read between the lines evidence not only of an
organising head, but also of a restraining hand.
The first move came, of course, from the students