The Washington herald. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1906-1939, 1915-02-14

racks that are modestly tucked away
inconspicuously in the outskirts. No
where did 1 come in contact with an
Englishman in the exercise OF any Of
fetal duty excepting the curator of a
museum. and he wore a red fezI
Near the end Of my stay I was driv-
ing over the Great Nile Bridge at Cairo
when an automobile whirled by. My
rectpn of its dust and said. "Keetch-
ener. And a momentary glimpse of
Lord Kitchener's back was the nearest
/ came to seeing any of the real rulers
of Egypt.
Behind the Scenes.
Yet somewhere in the background
of every Egyptian official in the Gus
tom-house, in the postOffice and in the
railway station, of every Egyptian po-
liceman and soldier. of every shiek and
pasha, there sat an Englishman issu-
ing orders and handling the money.
The Egyptian pays his taxes to an
Egyptian collector. is arrested by an
Egyptian policeman and tried by an
Egyptian judge holding court in the
name of an Egyptian monarch. But
the men the public sees have no more
mayor of New York. only the man
higher up" in Egypt has won the rep
utation of being clean handed.
Behind the khedeval throne there
ever stands a whispering but positive
English commissioner. At his whisper
khedive has been dethroned within
a few weeks and new khedive en-
throned; at his nod the yoke OF Turkish
suzerainty was thrown off after 400
Iyears and the very flag of Egypt was
changed. but not by the insertion of
more five-pointed Egyptian stars were
added to the crescent.
Not a few English officials and many
soldiers wear the fez, for an Egyptian
full English churchmen keep holy the
Mahometan Sabbath. which is Friday.
stay at their desks Sunday. and in the
month of Ramadan they would not for
place between sunrise and sunset.
where they might be seen breaking the
fast which the pious Mahometan OBJ
serves even to the extreme of refusing
to swallow his saliva.
The Man Who Pays.
1t is an extraordinary masquerade.
But whoever is behind the domino. ut
is much the same to the poor. toiliS
peasant farmers of the delta. WhoeVS
danced. whether it be the builders of
the Pyramids. those mountains of van
ity and unrequited toll, or whether it
be Darius or Alexander, Pompey or
Caesar. the Ptolemies or Cleopatra,
Antony or Constantine, Omar or the
Mamelukes, the Turks, Napoleon or the
English bondholder. the poor fellahin
always have had to pay the fiddler.
The laborious race of blue-skirted
men that the passenger in the AleXan-
dria-Cairo train sees, today. scratch
ing with wooden plows the narrow
strip of black soil between the two
deserts which are forever threatening
to close in upon the Nile, have been
sowing for others to reap through 200
generations that are of record. Twice
a year for sixty or seventy centuries
at least that wonderful garden has
yielded its fat harvests, but never to
the planter; The eEops have gone in
Babylonians. the Persians, the Greeks,
the Romans. the Turks, to the British;
but never to those who raised them.
No wonder IL all that patient. unre-
warded labor eXcites the contempt of
the Bedouins. who toll not, neither do
they spin, but who are freer and hap
pier in their tents "Whatr' those
wise loafers of the desert Indignantly
exclaim when asked to go to work,
would you reduce US to fellahin?'