ne. From the young princeling of some native
State sauntering about Clubland with his bear-leader to the lascar off a
P. and O. boat, among East London drabs, or the middle-class Mohammedan
student who compares the civic achievements that surround him with the
dingy dining-room of a Bloomsbury boarding-house, all are apostles of
life in London as it seems to them. I have had the hospitality of
"family hotels" in the Euston Road portrayed to me in the crude but
vivid imagery of the East when spooring boar in Southern Morocco with a
native tracker who had been one of a troupe of Soosi jugglers earning
good pay at a West-end music-hall, and I once overheard a young
_effendi_ explaining to his _confreres_ in a Cairo cafe exactly the sort
of company that would board your hansom when leaving "Jimmy's" in days
of yore.

As for the news of London and its ways, as conveyed by its daily Press,
educated Egyptians were better posted therein than most Englishmen in
Cairo during the War, as their clubs and private organisations
subscribed largely to the London dailies, which entered Egypt free of
local censorship, while Anglo-Egyptian newspapers were more strictly
censored than their vernacular or continental contemporaries, as they
presented no linguistic difficulties, but could be dealt with direct and
not through an understrapper.

Missionaries would have us judge Islam by the open improprieties and
abuses which occur at Mecca, Kerbela, and other great Moslem centres.
How should we like Christianity to be judged by the public behaviour of
certain classes in London or other big towns? Remember, it is always the
scum which floats on top and the superficial vice or indecorum that
strike a foreign observer.

It is not my mission to preach--I am merely pointing out a flaw in our
harness which causes a lot of administrative trouble out East. It is
difficult to check the hashish habit in Egypt when the average educated
_effendi_ reads of drug-scandals in London with mischievous avidity, and
the endeavours of a well-meaning Education Department to implant ideals
of sturdy manhood are handicapped when the students batten on the weird
and unsavoury incidents which are dished up _in extenso_ by London
journalism from time to time. Such matters do no harm to a public with
a sense of proportion, but the _effendi_ is in the position of a
schoolboy who has caught his master tripping and means to make the most
of it. He assimilates and dissemi