unwillingly, become resigned to her possession of this
strategically important land. Great Britain a decade before the war,
at the beginning of that rapprochement with France which led up to the
Entente and which had so many fateful consequences for the whole
world, sought to legalize her position in Egypt--at least so far as
the other great north African power was concerned. A bargain was
struck with France by which the English occupation of Egypt for an
indefinite period was recognized in exchange for a free hand in
Morocco. Great Britain could now urge that the coming of war, and
especially the entry of Turkey into the struggle, placed her
administration in Egypt in a position impossible to maintain. In
theory she was, so long as she acknowledged the suzerainty of the
sultan, in the country merely on that ruler's sufferance. She admitted
his ultimate authority and especially the loyalty and duty of the
Egyptian army and khedive to him. Strictly she could make no move to
prevent an armed occupation of the country by the sultan's troops nor
could she call upon the khedive and his cabinet to repudiate
Constantinople's sway. To put an end to this condition of affairs was
the most legitimate reason for England's action.

Although the native Egyptian is in religion allied to the Turk, his
religious fervor was not great enough to induce him to rise against
British control. Among the better educated of the Egyptians and
especially among those who had traveled, there was a strong
"Nationalist" movement. At times, even in the period of peace, this
movement had threatened to make matters extremely unpleasant for the
British rulers. For some years before the war, German and Turkish
agents had been working among these ardent Egyptian patriots,
encouraging and advising them, and when war with Turkey came England
was seriously alarmed. Using the country as a central base for her
Turkish, Persian, and Balkan operations, Great Britain imported
thousands upon thousands of troops into Egypt. Just how many hundreds
of thousands of armed men passed in and out of the country from first
to last only the records of the British war office would show, but it
can be said that England never had a force of less than 90,000 trained
men in Egypt at any one time.

Any chance of effective action that the Egyptian nationalists might
have had was neutralized by the indifference and lack of interest in
the vast body of their countrymen. There were mo