ic and British arsenals. The insistence of the
Parisian Ministers in seeking to have other questions discussed side
by side with the demand for the evacuation of Fashoda and their
dilatory tactics but increased the feeling of irritation in the United
Kingdom. Statesmen seemed to be undecided and diplomacy, as usual,
revolving in a circle. Happily, this country was never better prepared
for war, and that in the end, as has so often been the case, proved
the best advocate for peace. It would be uncharitable to emphasise the
fact of the French Government slipping away from one after another of
the positions they had taken up in reference to the whole question.
That being Frenchmen they felt acutely the false moves they had made
goes without saying. Whilst war was impending and the French
Government seemed bent upon driving our Government to that point, the
anti-British Pashas and the Gallic set in Egypt were jubilant. The
Turkish Pashas and Beys were openly chuckling and romancing about
unheard-of things. It is in Egypt, as it is in Armenia and was in the
Balkans: the Turk is the enemy of good government and freedom for the
people. A check to British policy and rule meant to them a possible
return of the old corrupt days when they did as they liked, treating
fellaheen and negroes as slaves. Had Great Britain in this instance
yielded a jot of her just rights to the intriguing and bellicose
spirit of French officialism Egypt would have been made an impossible
place for our countrymen to remain in. Being in Cairo and Alexandria
at the time I was privately assured by scores of my countrymen, men in
business and in public offices, that they would be obliged to quit
Egypt if France succeeded in her pretensions to the Nile Valley. Petty
annoyances, tyranny, all manner of injustice and even violence would
be resorted to, to force them to leave and to drive British interests
to the wall.

I avail myself again of the excellent synopsis of the official
despatches dealing with the Fashoda incident, which appeared in the
_Daily Telegraph_. The Parliamentary papers in question were issued on
the 9th of October last. The official papers opened with a despatch
from Sir Edmund Monson to the Foreign Secretary, bearing date December
10, 1897. Therein the British Ambassador says:--

"The despatches which I have recently addressed to your lordship
respecting the reports of the massacre of the Marchand Expedition,
and the comments