Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/49

Rh France too can expect to reap little benefit from a war fought wholly by England. No great power ever acted a more contemptible part. After sending her fleet to Alexandria, then to withdraw it at the very moment when the affair threatened to become serious, and to sail away without firing a gun, was an exhibition of weakness such as hardly ever was given by a nation jealous of its military reputation and glory. After this, it is pitiful to read how, as soon as the English entered Cairo, the French officials came flocking back, like vultures to their prey; and that the French Controller reappeared on the scene, asking, in a surprised and injured tone, and with an assurance that was peculiarly French, why he was not invited to attend the meeting of the Ministers of the Khedive, as one of his recognized advisers! This bustling official soon received his quietus in a notice issued by the government, addressed not to him alone, but to all the powers, that the Foreign Control was abolished! France found that she could not leave it to England to fight the battle, and she come in to reap the fruits of victory. This is not the least of the good results of the war, that the Control, which has been such an offence to Egypt, and such a scandal to the world, is to cease to exist; and that England and France will no longer appear in the character of bailiffs engaged in the collection of private debts.

But it is not only the fate of Egypt that is at stake, but in some degree of all the East. It is a strange comment on our ideas of the natural progress of society or of civilization, that the border-land between Asia and Africa, which had on either side of it the greatest empires of antiquity, is to this day overrun by half-savage tribes — true sons of Ishmael, whose hand is against every man, and every man's hand against them. If indeed civilization is ever to invade those waste places of the earth — if law and order are to