onsciousness is slowly beginning to awaken," he wrote. "The
Egyptians are still very far from being a true Nationality, but the
beginning has been made."[147]

With the opening years of the twentieth century what had previously been
visible only to discerning eyes burst into sudden and startling bloom.
This resurgent Egyptian nationalism had, to be sure, its moderate wing,
represented by conservative-minded men like Mohammed Abdou, Rector of El
Azhar University and respected friend of Lord Cromer, who sought to
teach his fellow-countrymen that the surest road to freedom was along
the path of enlightenment and progress. In the main, however, the
movement was an impatient and violent protest against British rule and
an intransigeant demand for immediate independence. Perhaps the most
significant point was that virtually all Egyptians were nationalists at
heart, conservatives as well as radicals declining to consider Egypt as
a permanent part of the British Empire. The nationalists had a sound
legal basis for this attitude, owing to the fact that British rule
rested upon insecure diplomatic foundations. England had intervened in
Egypt as a self-constituted "Mandatory" of European financial interests.
Its action had roused much opposition in Europe, particularly in France,
and to allay this opposition the British Government had repeatedly
announced that its occupation of Egypt was of a temporary nature. In
fact, Egyptian discontent was deliberately fanned by France right down
to the conclusion of the _Entente Cordiale_ in 1904. This French
sympathy for Egyptian aspirations was of capital importance in the
development of the nationalist movement. In Egypt, France's cultural
prestige was predominant. In Egyptian eyes a European education was
synonymous with a French education, so the rising generation inevitably
sat under French teachers, either in Egypt or in France, and these
French preceptors, being usually Anglophobes, rarely lost an opportunity
for instilling dislike of England and aversion to British rule.

The radical nationalists were headed by a young man named Mustapha
Kamel. He was a very prince of agitators; ardent, magnetic,
enthusiastic, and possessed of a fiery eloquence which fairly swept away
both his hearers and his readers. An indefatigable propagandist, he
edited a whole chain of newspapers and periodicals, and as fast as one
organ was suppressed by the British authorities he started another. His
uncompro