296 Egypt
of British troops has been enough to save the persons
and properties of the foreign colonies from further appre-
hension. But on the other hand it must not be forgotten
that these disorders were in every case primarily caused
by the presence of British armed forces in Egypt. And
that there is every reason to suppose that were those
armed forces removed such disorders would not recur.
If all cause for anti-foreign agitation on the part of
Nationalists were thus removed, there are only two pos-
sible impulses to serious disorder left operative in Egypt.
One such impulse is ancient and oriental, the other novel
and now common to every European State. The first is
Islamic fanaticism, and danger from this source grows
daily less as the last echoes of Pan-Islamism die away
and Egypt slowly follows the lead of Turkey in reduc-
ing Islam from a political creed and a social code to
nothing more than a religious ritual subordinated to
the requirements of a Western civilisation. Moslem
fanaticism might still conceivably be fired to revolt in
the deserts of the Sahara or in the Sudan. But in the
lower valley of the Nile it can never again be a fuel with
which to superheat Egyptian nationalism as in the
revolts of 1882 and 1919.
The other danger of disorder, that which is common
to Europe in general, is the risk that labour disputes and
discontent among the workers may lead to revolutionary
socialism. But in spite of the suspicion that the cam-
paign of assassination which disgraced the last period of
nationalism had a " Red M origin there seems to be less
connection in Egypt between the nationalist revival and
the socialist revolution than in Turkey, China, or else-
where in the East. There was as elsewhere "unrest'3
in Egypt after the war owing to the high prices and the
contrasts between the war profits of the few and the