Читать книгу Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt - Blunt Wilfrid Scawen - Страница 3

Since the first brief preface to my manuscript was written twelve years ago, events have happened which seem to indicate that the moment foreseen in it has at last arrived when to the public advantage and without risk of serious indiscretion as far as individuals are concerned, the whole truth may be given to the world.

Already in 1904 the original manuscript had been thoroughly revised, and in its purely Egyptian part remodelled under circumstances which add greatly to its historic value. My old Egyptian friend, Sheykh Mohammed Abdu, of whom so much mention is made in it, had taken up his country residence at my doors at Sheykh Obeyd, and I found myself in almost daily intercourse with him, a most precious accident of which I did not fail to take full advantage. That great philosopher and patriot – now, alas, lost to us, for he died at Alexandria, 11th July, 1905, the day being the twenty-third anniversary of the bombardment of that city – after many vicissitudes of evil and good fortune had attained in the year 1899 to the supreme position in Egypt of Grand Mufti, and having thus acquired a wider sphere than ever of influence with his fellow countrymen, had it at heart to bequeath to them a true account of the events of his time, events which had become strangely misunderstood by them, and clothed with legends altogether fantastic and unreal.

On this subject he often spoke to me, regretting his lack of leisure to complete the historic work, and when I told him of my own memoir, he urged me very strongly to publish it, if not in English at least with his help in Arabic, and he undertook to go through it with me and see that all that part of it which related to matters within his knowledge was accurately and fully told. We had been personal friends and political allies almost from the date of my first visit to Egypt, and with his garden adjoining mine it was an easy matter for us to work together and compare our recollections of the men and things we had known. It was in this way that my history of an epoch so memorable to us both took final shape, and I was able (how fortunately!) to complete it and obtain from him his approval and imprimatur before his unlooked-for death closed forever the chief source of knowledge which he undoubtedly was of the political movement which led up to the revolution of 1881, and of the intrigues which marred it in the following year.

The Mufti's death, a severe blow to me as well as to Egypt, postponed indefinitely our plan of publishing in Arabic, nor till the present year has the time seemed politically ripe for the production of my work in English. The events, however, of 1906, and now Lord Cromer's retirement from the Egyptian scene, have so wholly changed the situation that I feel I ought no longer to delay, at least as far as my duty to my own countrymen is concerned. We English are confronted to-day in our dealings with Egypt with very much the same problem we misunderstood and blundered about so disastrously a generation ago, and if those of us who are responsible for public decisions are, in the words of my first preface, to "re-examine their position there, political and moral," honestly or to any profit, it is necessary they should first have set before them the past as it really was and not as it has been presented to them so long by the fallacious documents of their official Blue Books. I should probably not be wrong in asserting that neither Lord Cromer at Cairo nor Sir Edward Grey at home, nor yet Lord Cromer's successor Sir Eldon Gorst, have any accurate knowledge of what occurred in Egypt twenty-five years ago – this notwithstanding Lord Cromer's tardy recognition of the reform movement of 1881 and his eulogium of Sheykh Mohammed Abdu repeated so recently as in his last annual Report. Lord Cromer, it must be remembered, was not at Cairo during any part of the revolutionary period here described, and, until quite recently, has always assumed the "official truth" regarding it to be the only truth.

For this reason I have decided now finally on publication, giving the text of my Memoir as it was completed in January, 1905, the identical text of which my friend signified his approval suppressing only certain brief passages which seem to me still too personal in regard to individuals living, and which could be excised without injury to the volume's complete historic value. I can sincerely say that in all I have written my one great aim has been to disclose the vérité vraie as it is known to me for misguided History's sake.

If there is at all a second reason with me, it must be looked for in a promise publicly made as long ago as in the September number of the "Nineteenth Century Review" of 1882 that I would complete some day my personal Apologia in regard to events then contemporary. At that time and out of consideration for Mr. Gladstone, and for the hope I had that he would yet repair the wrong he had done to liberty in Egypt, I forbore, in the face of much obloquy, to exculpate myself by a full revelation of the hidden circumstances which were my justification. I could not clear myself entirely without telling facts technically confidential, and I decided to be silent.

There is, however, a limit to the duty of reticence owed to public men in public affairs, and I am confident that my abstention of a quarter of a century will excuse me with fair judging minds if I now at last make my conduct quite clear in the only way possible to me, namely, by a complete exposure in detail of the whole drama of financial intrigue and political weakness as it was at the time revealed to me, substantiating it by the contemporary documents still in my possession. If the susceptibilities of some persons in high places are touched by a too candid recital, I can but reply that the necessity of speech has been put on me by their own long lack of candour and generosity. During all these years not one of those who knew the truth has said a confessing word on my behalf. It will be enough if I repeat with Raleigh:

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt.

Newbuildings Place, Sussex.

April, 1907.