England and Egypt 295
defence seems indeed to belong to ideas of imperialist
strategy long out of date. So long as the British Empire
commands sea and air and controls the Sudan, imperial
communications are secure whether there are British
troops in the Cairo citadel or no. The right to main-
tain an air base in the Canal zone would, in the military
sense, be far more valuable than the right to maintain
battalions of infantry in Cairo.
When we come, however, to the retention of British
troops as a protection for the treaty rights of foreigners
and the traditional rights of minorities we have to recog-
nise that this does no doubt give a guarantee that cannot
otherwise be got. We have, then, to examine the ques-
tion as to how far such a guarantee is now necessary
and how far such protection compensates for the preju-
dices that it causes to the relations between the English
and Egyptian peoples. We must note in the first place
that all such rights have been abandoned both in form and
in fact in respect of Constantinople and the Christians of
Turkey, and that that city and those communities are
of more international and of almost as much imperial
importance as are Cairo and the foreign or Christian
communities of Egypt. It must be admitted that this
abandonment has certainly not yet been generally ap-
proved, nor has it as yet proved altogether satisfactory
in application. Also that if a plebiscite were to be taken
of the foreign colonies of Cairo and Alexandria it would
probably show as large a majority in favour of maintain-
ing the British garrison as the majority that the native
Christian communities would produce against its reten-
tion. Which preference of the foreign communities for
British military protection would be due in part to the
impression left by recent disorders ; seeing that on these
and similar less serious occasions the mere appearance