Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/35

Rh as eager for power — in short, just as thorough Arabs — as the men whom they had displaced, while they showed a childish incapacity for government, putting up one day what they pulled down the next. This was not a government based on political principles, or even a government of party, but a government of mere caprice. They dictated to the Khedive the Ministers he should appoint, and then deposed the men of their own creation. This was repeated so often that it created in the foreign community a general feeling of insecurity. The Egyptian leaders themselves seemed to have a sense of their successive failures; but this, instead of leading them to adopt a more conciliatory policy, only enraged them to the point of taking still more desperate measures. They could go to any length, for there was no restraint upon their power. But one thing they could not do — they could not inspire confidence. The more changes they made, the more did they stir up uneasiness and alarm; and when at last it came to the point that troops surrounded the Palace, and gave the Khedive only till a certain hour in which to make his submission, with orders to fire upon him in case he refused, the best friends of Egypt said, This is Revolution! They saw that the country was drifting into hopeless anarchy; that the temper of the people was becoming more sullen; that the worst elements of the Arab nature were aroused, and would soon get beyond control. All the dangers which we fondly hoped were past, came back again more threatening than before. The temporary tranquillity which we had enjoyed was but the lull before the storm.