The Kingdom of Egypt 263
Eastern to European terminology had a result that was
probably intended. It confirmed the growing tendency
to regard the dynasty more as a symbol of the new nation
and less as a survival of the old Turkish regime, while
it encouraged the moderate nationalists to see in the
kingly dignity a crowning of Egyptian independence.
King Fuad had certain difficulties to deal with that the
earlier Khedives had not. There was now a declared
republican faction secured from suppression by demo-
cratic institutions. There was a general inclination among
Nationalists to regard the dynasty as the enemy of those
institutions and the ally of the British. On the other
hand, he had not to face, as had his predecessors, the
ambitions of rivals among the princes of the House
favoured by intrigues of the Ottoman Suzerain. The
succession was now constitutionally regulated beyond
question. Moreover, with a few honourable exceptions,
such as Omar Toussoum, his brother Mohamed, and
Prince Kemal-ed-Din, the princes of the House of
Mehemet AH showed the degeneration usual to Arnaut
stock when several generations removed from its native
rocks. They were all either run to seed or to a too
exuberant efflorescence. Fuad's career was indeed very
nearly cut short by his brother-in-law, Saif-ed-Din, son
of the half-mad Ibrahim, who took his sister's side in a
quarrel with her husband by shooting four bullets into
Fuad as he sat at dinner in the Khedival Club.1
There was only one competitor whose claims might
cause anxiety to King Fuad. The ex-Khedive, Abbas
* Saif-ed-Din was sentenced to seven years' Imprisonment,
during which his homicidal violence and royal immunity gave
great trouble to his warders. After he had been nearly smothered
in a door-mat he was certified as a lunatic and transferred to
a private asylum in England. Thence he recently escaped. His
large fortune was "administered " by the then Khedive Abbas*