308 Egypt
Cromerist conviction that the recovery of Egypt is
wholly due to us, and that the country would rapidly
be ruined if left to itself. We now recognise that the
recovery of Egypt was so rapid largely because it was
the convalescence of a healthy and hard-working com-
munity from disorder for which it was only indirectly
responsible ; also that this convalescence being now com-
plete, the present rate of progress cannot be more than
the natural growth of an agricultural community that is
rapidly approaching its maximum output. We have,
moreover, now before us the surprising successes of self-
government in other new nations of the Near East that
have freed themselves from Western tutelage. And if
the results so far recorded in Egypt are not quite so
remarkable, we have to recognise that this (1926) has
been the first year in which Egyptian self-government
has had full opportunity of showing what it can do-.
Because the preceding four years after the Declaration
of 1922 were occupied with fighting for further independ-
ence. So that it is only now that Egypt is beginning to
use the large measure of liberty it then obtained.
The caution shown by the Egyptian Government in
its reconstruction when compared with the precipitancy
of neighbouring new nations has already been remarked.
Political parties are developing in Egypt on normal con-
stitutional lines into a Progressive and Conservative two-
party system; and there is no tendency towards a class
war between revolutionaries and reactionaries. The
democratic, almost diplomatic character assumed by
Egyptian politics has necessarily involved a loss of
driving power for reconstruction. Whereas such a re-
volutionary revitalisation was possibly the only substitute
for British rule that would have prevented a certain loss
of ground and loosening of grip in the transition from