Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/42

28 possession. When we heard that the first gun had been fired, it was with a feeling of relief. The conflict was inevitable, and as it had to come, the sooner it came the better: for the sooner it began, the sooner it would be over, and thus an end be put to a state of things which was the ruin of Egypt, while it was a source of perplexity and uneasiness to all Europe. War is a terrible thing, but there are things worse than war. Anarchy is worse. Better a conflict on the battlefield or on the sea than such a state of things, that part of a city's population was in daily fear of massacre; that an European dare not walk the streets lest he should be the object of insult or of personal violence; and that the few remaining residents who could not flee were obliged to seek for safety by barricading themselves within their houses, with the dreadful prospect of having to fight with an infuriated rabble, intent on pillage and fierce for blood.

When it came to the point of actual hostilities, it pleased some who could see nothing in the course of England but injustice and oppression, to speak of it as a war against Egypt. Certainly it was a war in Egyptian waters and on Egyptian soil; but it was not a war against the Egyptian government, but, on the contrary, in support of that government against an armed rebellion which threatened to destroy it. To this intervention England was bound by every sentiment of justice and honor: for she had been the adviser, and as it were the protector, of the Khedive. Indeed it was because he was thought to be too much under her influence and control, that he became unpopular with the military party at home. After leading him into a position of such difficulty and such peril, it would have been an infamy to desert him in the very crisis of his fate. That shame was not to be put upon England. On the other hand, how loyally and