Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/37

Rh Then ensued a veritable panic — a feeling almost as if a reign of terror had begun. Foreign consuls warned their countrymen that they could no longer be responsible for their safety, and advised them to get out of the country. To protect them as far as possible, the French and English fleets were ordered to Alexandria. This, in the opinion of many, was a fatal mistake. But for this, it is said, there would have been no massacre and no bombardment. This inflamed the feeling of the Arab population to the highest point, and precipitated the terrible events which followed. This is possible, and yet, looking at it calmly, I cannot see that England and France did any more than they ought to have done, or that there was any sufficient cause to rouse a populace to such rage and fury.

Let us make the case our own. Suppose for some cause — not our own fault, some action of our Government — Americans were suddenly to become unpopular in Mexico, so much so that American residents in Vera Cruz felt that their lives were not safe, and that for their protection the squadron in the Gulf of Mexico were ordered to that port. Would that have been an offence to the majesty of Mexico sufficient to justify, or to excuse, the Mexicans if they should rise and massacre every American whom they could find in their streets? Or suppose they should begin to throw up earthworks, and train their guns on our ships, should we strike our flag, and steal ignominiously out of the harbor? On the contrary, I think an American Admiral would have done just what the English Admiral did — that he would not have lifted an anchor under the compulsion of threats, but stayed where he was, and taken the consequences. The fleet was lying quietly in the harbor of Alexandria, not a gun had been fired, when there occurred in that city one of the most atrocious massacres