it for themselves, but it is also their
duty to think of it for themselves. Self-government of a simple
kind has existed in numberless simple societies, and I shall
always think it a horrible responsibility to interfere with it.
But representative government, or theoretically representative government,
of an exceedingly complicated kind, may exist in certain complicated
societies without their being bound to transfer it to others,
or even to admire it for themselves. At any rate, for good or evil,
they have invented it themselves. And there is a moral distinction,
which is perfectly rational and democratic, between such inventions
and the self-evident rights which no man can claim to have invented.
If the Arab says to me, "I don't care a curse for Europe; I demand bread,"
the reproach is to me both true and terrible. But if he says,
"I don't care a curse for Europe; I demand French cookery,
Italian confectionery, English audit ale," and so on, I think he is
rather an unreasonable Arab. After all, we invented these things;
in _auctore auctoritas_.

And of this problem there is a sort of working model in the presence
of the snow in Palestine, especially in the light of the old proverb
about the impossibility of snow in Egypt. Palestine is wilder,
less wealthy and modernised, more religious and therefore more realistic.
The issue between the things only a European can do, and the things
no European has the right to do, is much sharper and clearer
than the confusions of verbosity. On the one hand the things
the English can do are more real things, like clearing away the snow;
for the very reason that the English are not here, so to speak,
building on a French pavement but on the bare rocks of the Eastern wilds,
the contact with Islam and Israel is more simple and direct.
And on the other side the discontents and revolts are more real.
So far from intending to suggest that the Egyptians have no complaints,
I am very far from meaning that they have no wrongs. But curiously
enough the wrongs seem to me more real than the complaints.
The real case against our Egyptian adventure was stated long ago
by Randolph Churchill, when he denounced "a bondholder's war"; it is
in the whole business of collecting debts due to cosmopolitan finance.
But a stranger in Egypt hears little denunciation of cosmopolitan finance,
and a great deal of drivel in the way of cosmopolitan idealism.
When the Palestinians say that usurers menace th