310 Egypt
plaint before the war, has of late been greatly accelerated
by the reckless extension of cotton cultivation owing to
exaggerated post-war prices. Deterioration is already
reaching dimensions very damaging to the reputation of
Egyptian cotton, and the present Government have so
far found no remedy other than the restriction of cultiva-
tion and the guaranteeing of prices. A reorganisation of
scientific supervision is essential if this main source of
Egyptian prosperity is not, in the end, to pass to the
more efficient foreign cotton-growing syndicates of the
Sudan. There is still, however, time to reform, as the
Sudanese production is as yet less than one per cent.
of the Egyptian.
In other less important regions of national activity a
falling away from English, and even occasionally from
European, standards may be traced to overhasty sub-
stitution of the beledi for the franghi. The rail-
way services are not so punctual nor so plentiful; and
foreign managers get on with difficulty and even go off
in disgust. The Egyptians at first did not realise that
expenditure on upkeep and renewals is an economy, and
thinking that they were cutting down British extrava-
gance, rather starved the railway system. But some new
construction, such as the doubling of the Luxor-Assuan
line, has been well done, and more is included in the
proposed outlay on the railways, which amounts to some
£9,000,000.
A more serious question is whether Egypt will main-
tain the English campaign against dirt and disease. For
it must be confessed that we did not succeed in educating
the nation as a whole out of its Eastern indifference to
these evils by the example that we set it in the European
quarters of its cities or in our campaigns against endemics
like malaria or against epidemics like cholera and plague*