Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/40

26 patriotism among Moslems and Arabs — at least the word has to be understood in a peculiar way. Patriotism has its types, as it appears among different nations. The Bedaween are intensely patriotic, though their only country is the desert. Every sheikh is jealous for his tribe — that is, within its territory he is not willing that anybody should have the privilege of robbing but himself. In Mexico every man who makes a revolution is a patriot — that is, he believes (honestly, no doubt) that the good of the country requires that he should be the head of the state, and he gets up a revolution to carry out that patriotic purpose. Whether the patriotism of the Egyptian leader has any higher character than this, may be doubted. He seems to be compounded in about equal parts of three elements, which are the master-passions of his nature — hatred of foreigners, religious fanaticism, and personal ambition. These different impulses are so mixed up in him, that probably he does not know one from another. He does not stop to analyze his motives (the Arab intellect is not given to such fine distinctions), and so he might well think he was acting from one when he was really acting from another. When he was seeking his own ambition, he believed he was seeking the good of his country, and even doing God service: for it must be that Allah was pleased that honor should come to such a faithful servant. What a happy conjunction of circumstances, whereby he was able at one and the same moment to serve God, his country, and himself! We have no doubt that he wished Egypt to be independent of all foreign control — of the control of Turkey as well as of France and England, however he might profess loyalty to the Sultan, and then he would have liked to be the head of this independent African State. That is all that we can find in Arabi Pacha. Of such a man we cannot make, in any exalted sense, either a patriot