Reading for Everybody.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2657, 12 November 1909, Page 3 (Supplement)

Reading for Everybody.

ASPEGTS Of THE EAST.; *

WESTERN CIVILISATION IN EASTERN COUNTRIES.

(BY HALL CAINE.)

One day, at the house of a notable in •Cairo, I was repeating (I trust with warm sympathy) something Lord Cromer had said in the latest of his wonderfully lucid and statesmanlike, reports about the great work England had done in carrying “the light of civilisation into a dark and backward country,” when niy Egyptian friend .interrupted me impatiently by saying, “When will you Western people see that while you talk about ‘civilisation’ you mean your civilisation, the civilisation of the West, and that we in the East have a civilisation of our own, an Eastern civilisation, which is just as real, only different?” Tile reproof was sharp, hut, I thought, not wholly unmerited, and I realised how excusable it was when, a few days later, I dined with an important British official. Sitting by my host, who had lived several years in Egypt without ever setting foot in a .native house (as guest at all events), I was describing in some detail a visit I had paid to the picturesque Oriental palace of the Sheikli Seyid el Bakri — the lunch I had taken there, its seventeen courses, consisting of every kind of food known to civilised mail, and all eaten with the fingers, the unexpected sense of cleanliness, the washing of hands before the meal and after—when the disgust of my compatriot broke out into,

• “What? Eating -with their fingers!’’ It occurred to me to ask my friend, who was a good Christian, what sort of knives and forks he thought the Foun"der of our faith used to eat with; and, indeed, when I went on to Palestine I often wondered if the thought was a pleasant one with which the philosophic .minds of some of my rich American .travelling companions contemplated the little Cali lean town of Nazareth, with its heap of mud huts, built without stylo, in the midst of a smiling but r.i----j tlier desolate landscape. The town is /probably not much changed, save for a certain barrenness which Islam brings since the day when it became the birthplace of Christianity; and look on the extreme simplicity and naked aspect of its houses, and to think that one of them (or such as one of them) may have been the home of -Josepli the Carpenter, and that out of it came the .spirit that has for 2.000 years been the civilising force of the Western world, and then t:> carry the mind by a swift flight across the Atlantic into the ‘-elegant” mansions of some American multi-millionaires, with their marble halls and silver baths, is to realise that .civilisation and the power that makes for great wealth are by no means the •same thing. THE FELLAH AND THE SHEIKH. It is no part of my present object to indicate the origin or to trace the pro- ! "ression of 'Western civilisation in j Egypt. Perhaps it began its active hie with Mohammed Ali, a great man, a • "reat ruler, and a great despot, obses- . sod in his own way by Western ideals. Perhaps it was developed by Ismail Pasha, who paid toll to its progress in the thousands of Egyptian lives that were sacrificed m scooping out the sand <of the desert to make a bed for the Suez Canal. It is not m v business to dwell upon that, neither is it my object to enter into any discussion or the vexed question of why England went to E"ypt —whether, in the disinterest•ed cause of humanity, to establish law and order, and to keep the gate open that led to our possessions m the l'ar East, or merely, in the character ©t official receiver, to manage a bankrupt , /•estate on behalf of European bondholders who had lent money on a stolen security. Only one fact enters into my ■ consideration at this moment that bein" in Egypt, we have done our best, by°help of a most capable most practical administrator, to establish what we believe to be the elements of Western civilisation in that country. And now I content myself with offering some "eneral observations on the broad ■ questiSn of whether our Western gam has suited the Eastern soil or whet er civilisation (as we understand it) lias done more harm than good. 4. high-minded Egyptian, Ibralnm Pasha Mured, who was old enough to remember the had days in Egypt, and could tell delightful stories ol General Gordon, and how sweet he had been to ' him when a boy, invited mo, through a well-known British official Jf to spend a ■day at his country village near lan tah. It was a delightful, experience for all the world like going back to Bible days and calling on Abraham the Hebrew,” and all “the souls born of his house.” While I was walking with the old Pasha, he bad occasion to call for one of his servants, and aftei he had clapped his hands m Eastern manner, the man came running up 'barefooted, and, having made lus salaam, stood waiting with a smile to his “father’s” command. It was little thing, but so eloquent of otherrelations between master and servant than any we know about in the West, that I began to talk of it, and then the old "entleman told me something the fellah had said to him on the previous •day. Somebody, it seems, at a coffee slion in the neighboring town had told the man that the English were going -v,. away from Egypt, so lie had come m T ' • -sincere distress to sa\ . “Didn’t you whip me with the cour>V bash in the old days, master? ’ > The Pasha admitted that perhaps ne dl “Well, if the British leave Egypt you will whip me again, so don t let them g °lt was a silly, semi-imbecile fPP'f !> perhaps, yet not wholly without significance; but more worthy of consideration was the reply of a Sheikh on the Pasha’s estate to the editor of aNa tionalist newspaper, who had conic to ask for his support (l • , , “I am old,” said the Sheikh , ami 1. re'member the former days. I h pay my taxes twice over, and my house was the house of the Governor. I was whipped with the courbash, m> sons were taken from me and my barns were empty. Now my barns are fu j my house is my own, and my son with-me in my family.” A Coptic friend, of my own whose family possess largo estates at Assiouat, • discussed with me the otlien daw the changes that had passed over Egyp

within the period of his not very protracted lifetime.

‘‘l can remember,” he said, “when the fellaheen who live rent-free on *my uncle’s land used to give us their work willingly, and without pay, whenever we wanted it. If a ditch got dammed they- came .running to clear it, and would labor for long hours up to their ivaists in water. It was an understood thing that, they were our servants, our serfs, if you like, in a sense our slaves. If they had not come when we wanted them we should have called them, and perhaps whipped them. But that’s all over now. They still live rent-free on our land which is worth £IOO an acre by this time, but if we want them to do a piece of work they a.sk us how much they are going to get for it.” 1 seem to remember that a little while ago Lord Cromer, not idly boasting, said it was sufficient to console him for some criticism from the upper classes in Egypt to remember that the people used to sav, “After all, he was a good friend to the poor, and they loved him.” My observations in the valley of the Nile lead me to the <•■ nclusion that there was a time when that statement was true.

THE FELLAH’S WORK AND PAY. But now, .granted that the prosperity of Egypt has gone up by leaps and bounds since Great Britain came into ! occupation of it; granted that the story of the re-creation of the old country i reads like a new chapter in the Book of Genesis: granted that the poor man is for the first time a free man, better housed, better fed, and better clad than before, is there nothing written on the other side of flic ledger t I think there is, and what is written there is the price which the Egyptian people have paid for Western civilisation. . First, they have paid for it ..n tnat injnrv to the moral nature which always" attends an effort; to become rich in a hurry. This is not by any means an evil peculiar to Egypt, but nowhere else in the world v so far as J know, not even in the United States, is it so obvious and so acute. It affects all classes of the community, from flic highest to the humblest, and assuredly the fellah does not escape. My principal object in visiting Ibrahim Pasha Mured was to get an insight into the conditions of the people working on the land, and, knowing his reputation as a just and generous landowner. J. felt that the state of his peasants would be the best. What were my conclusions? That the method of agriculture ordinarily adopted in Egypt now, the method of payment by results five-sixths to the landlord and onesixth to the farmers —while it led to greater material advantages for the peasants. kept their faces closer than ever to tlie ground, tempted them to put their children to work at the earliest possible age, increased their desire to beget offspring for purposes of mere gain, and even encouraged their tendency to polygamy by making it to a •man’s interest to take a second wue as soon as the first had ceased to bear. Do not let us be hard on the poor man, or imagine that in his new-:ound freedom, which affords him for the first time the just earnings of his labor, he has given way to unbridled greed. His utmost possibilities of gain can iiarlly be said to open up dreams of avarice. I asked Ibrahim Pasha how much the lellali might earn under the new system of agriculture by results. “An average man with an average familv, having an acre of his own and a quarter-share of the wool lie shears, may p* s make eight or nine pounds ;i vear • answered. “But a man with two wives and, sav, six or sevon children how much mav he earn?” I asked. “Perhaps £l2 a year,” said the Pasha. So for £l2 a year, representing a mud hut to live in, an angerib to sleep upon, a galabeah (costing 4s 6d) to clothe himself with, the fellah, must toil from sunrise to .sunset, his wife must become as much a creature for breeding as his sheep or his cow, his children must grow up without education of any recognisable kind, and his household must live and die without any apparent appeal being made to their higher nature their brains, their hearts, and their souls, in order that—-what? In order that Egypt may pay her debt to Europe and become a prospeious and civilised country! CHILD LABOR IN EGYPTIAN COTTON MILLS. But not by any means on the land onlv are the demoralising, or at least dwarfing, effects of our new system of civilisation to be seen. I heard or them in the cotton mills on the Delta. these places, which are owned chiefly by Europeans, are run largely on child labor. Boys, in some cases girls, of the tenderest years are worked as much as sixteen hours a day. Their day s wage is about 6d, and they are controlled by overseers, who sometimes go about the workshops with whips. Clouds of cotton dust fill the air of the mill-houses constantly, and after the children have breathed it all day long they go home at eight or nine o’clock at night to sleep in the close rooms of the close houses that are huddled together m narrow streets. , r , “They are free to come or go. ineie is no forced labor in Egypt now, ’ said a responsible person to Mr Brailsiord, the well-known authority,, but everybody on the Delta knows that, tempted by money,, the poor, ignorant Egyptian parents often drive * their children, to work and that cases of self-mutilation among the workers are not infrequent. The roots of English mills are laid m these misty and noisome places, and the prosperity of Lancashire is paid for partly by the labor of little Egyptian children! ,

I dare say this is all very necessary, almost inevitable, due to the operation of natural causes, and not an evil for .which the Government can be herd wholly responsible. 'I am not at present concerned to explain or account for it, still less to apportion responsibility and blame. I am merely tottin" iip a few items in the contra-ac-count against our much-vaunted civilisation in the East; but if I am asked for an opinion on the human issue involved, I will say at once , that, m my view, little Abdul would be better serviu" the purpose), for which God created’ him in chanting his Koran in the kliuttab (the vilfage school), or capering about the precincts of the mosque, or scampering on his donkey over the Delta, than- in choking his lungs with cotton-dust in order to earn 6d a day for his mother to bury in a hole m the earth of for his father to spend at the coffee shop, that the spinning-wheels ot Oldham may be kept whirring for the welfare of the British nation.

CRIME AND LAWLESSNESS.

The item I place next on the debit side/of the ledger as part of the price paid by a backward Eastern country for the rapid growth of Western civilisation is—crime. The increase of crime in Egypt during recent years is, perhaps, the most threatening fact of our rule thUro, and I have little doubt that if Sir Eldon Horst were asked to enumerate the' difficulties of his most unenviable task as Consul-General, lie would place crime and lawlessness among the native population at the head of the list. Statistics on this head are becoming every year more alarming, but I doubt if any statistics whatever can be made to convey an adequate sense of the increase of criminality in Egypt, so much of it having to go unpunished, and even unrecorded.

What is it due to? Political propaganda? No, most certainly not. Laxity of administration? Partly, perhaps. Want of moral conscience, moral courage among the people as a whole? I fear there can be no doubt about that, and therein lies the root of the mischief. What force is so sapping away the .moral sense of the Egyptian people that crime and lawlessness among them are greater now than they have ever been before? Let me make all allowance for the operation of natural passions, tlio same everywhere, as well as for the provocation to crime which comes of the survival of some bad Eastern customs. I have spoken already about the bloodfeuds in the villages that-, have their origin in jealousy about girls, and besides these there are, in all parts of Egypt, the quarrels, common to primitive communities, alxmt children. I hoard the other day of a terrible village light (I don’t know when it took place) not far from Assiout.. Apparently, it had its origin in a difference between two little boys about the possession of a small stick. One hold it, and the other tried to wrest it away. The hoy who held the stick gave the hoy who wanted it a whack on the top of his head. Result, loud cries; the mother of tho injured boy rushing out and belaboring his opponent; then the mother of 'tho other boy tearing down to her son’s rescue; then the father of the first boy leaping to the relief of his wife; then The father of the second boy falling upon the assailants of his family; and then the brothers and sisters on both sides joining in the indiscriminate struggle, until’the entire village became .engaged m a pitched and most bloody .battle. Save for some broken heads and the breeding of bad passions, which are certain to break out again, the riot was a ridiculous thing enough, with a sinister resemblance, perhaps, in its origin and development to certain national differences which we are compelled to discuss with serious faces. The quarrels which come of bad customs are often equally grotesque. There was one such a few months ago near to a village in which I was visiting, and I interested myself very much in it. Ahmed of, say, Sakkara, had a young Arab mare." Mohammed of, say, Mena, had a nice-looking young sister. Ahmed wanted a wife, and Mohammed wanted a horse. So Ahmed and Mohammed met in private conference, no one being witness. Alnned set £SO value on his horse, and Mohammed required the same sum as malir (bridal present) for his sister. They agreed to strike a balance. "When Alimed went home _to Sakkara lie took Fatiniah with him, and when Mohammed returned to Mena he took the Arab mare. A 'WIFE FOR A HORSE.

Then six months passed. The horse grew strong and beautiful and highspirited ; some Englishman offered £BO for it, and Mohammed was a proud and happy man. But Fatimali developed indifferently. She was disobedient, and after her husband had beaten hr-r she ran away. Thus Ahmed was ; of, ' —he had no wife, and he had lost y. horse without receiving a penny of money for it. So, after turning over his troubles in his bemuddled brain, he went over to Mena, found the Arab mare in a field, leapt on her back, and galloped home with her. Then a hue and cry, trackers employed, police notified, Ahmed arrested, evidence heard, fingerprints taken, and all the elaborate preliminary arrangements of the office of the examining magistrate most carefully gone through. When the trial came on the Egyptian judge (perhaps properly) would hear nothing about the sale of Fatimali, but, finding no evidence that! Mohammed had bought the Arab mare, there being no witness t<> the transaction, nobody who had seen the men exchanging money, he dismissed the charge against Ahmed and gave the Arab mare back to its original owner. Now it is Mohammed _ who is “out” —having lost Loth his sister and the £3O profit which he could have made out of the Englishman. Result, hatred between the brothers-in-law as hitter as gall, quarrels, recriminations, total contempt for the law as an instrument of justice, and the prospect of a sequel as certain and as tragic as death. ■Such, then, are some of the causes of crime in Egypt; but there are others more directly connected with the new civilisation, and the worst of them is drink. It is undoubtedly true that our Western rule in the East has led to a more equal distribution of property, but it is just as true that the sudden accession of wealth, of what stands for wealth, has led to drunkenness among the fellaheen. In the old days,, when, the grinding Pasha took everything, or nearly .everything, the poor fellah had nothing, dr next to nothing, . to spend. He went to the coffee- shop- occasionally perhaps, and sat all the evening over a penny cup, but now that he has an average’of lOtl a day he can buy strong drinks. It is against the tenets of his faith to do.so, but then he has less time than before to go to the mosque, and his., religion is slipping away. He sees Englishmen drinkin" and lie knows that lawless 'Greeks and lltalians are setting up shows where bad spirits may bo bought cheap. So Mahmud follows, the example of his betters, and, with two or three pennyworth of firewater m Jus untrained stomach, and the tunics of it in hiis giddy brain, he. goes flaming through his village like a blazing torch in a pit of inflammable gas. Result, lawlessness and crime which the machinery of the Government in remote places, paid for at the rate of 30s. a month for each native policeman, seems powerless to restrain. SATURDAY NIGHT IN THE ESBEKIAH. But, if' drink is a corrupter 'of the Egyptian fellah, I think it is often a totcil destroyer of the class that is & Lt-

tie above him. In the spring of the, present year a Bedouin friend of mine, of .good class and some position, was arranging for the marriage of his son, who was only 15 years of age, and I asked him why he wished the boy to take a wife so soon.

“To keep his eyes at home and to look after his religion,” he answered.

Goniati meant that the, temptation was great to young fellows living in the villages around Cairo to indulge in the sensual excesses of the capital. Dressed up in his best caftan and tarboosh, or perhaps donning a European suit of clothes, young Abdullah might cut off’ at night to the Fish Market, or the quarter called the Esbekiah. I know nothing quite like these places. Saturday night there is as near to being a devil’s festival as anything I have looked upon in any part of the world, and I think I could pass an examination not'- only on underground London as it used to be twenty years ago, but also on the “dives” of the Bowery as they are to-day. Windows of the upper storeys thrown open, and girls with powdered faces smiling down upon men who sit drinking at. tho tables in the streets below ; other girls giggling from behind grilles on the ground-floor, for the authorities pretend to be strict in enforcing the seclusion of these poor victims of man’s lust and the world’s grinding misery; halls for Orientadancing, living-picture places; shoot-ing-galleries for a sort of legalised gambling; and drinking-,shops everywhere ! This is one of the scenes in the pageant which our Western civilisation has exhibited to the East, and it is generally sufficient for the Englishman who looks at ib to think of its effect on the groups of British “Tommies” from the barracks at Abassiali or the Citadel, who spend their evenings there, protected by. the little corps of comrades who are kept marching to and fro, but if the observer is one who has any sense of the responsibilities of England in the occupation of a foreign country, ho has to remember the natives as well. There they are in hundreds, sometimes thousands, easily distinguishable in their red tarbooshes, drinking alcohol in defiance oF tlieir faith, and surrounded by all the worst of the evils, all the ugliest of the vices of the lowest plague-spots of the West. THE WILD RUSH FOR WEALTH. Do not let it be thought that I charge the British Government with all this evil or that I am blind to the operation of the wild confusion of powers which are called the Capitulations. Again, I am only totting up the contraaccount against 'Western civilisation in a backward Eastern country, and the next item I place on the debit side of the ledger is avarice. The greed of gain in Egypt betrays itelf in two ways, one of them sordid in its effects, the other almost noble in its manifestations. It was natural that the rapid development of the country under British administration .should lead to the exploiting of its resources for personal profit, and it is not a matter for much surprise that Egypt during the years of its late prosperity looked like a gigantic exchange for stock-jobbing. Europeans were the first to ,see their advantage in its markets, but Egyptians' were not slow to follow in their wake. Not for the first time had there been years of plenty in Egypt, and not for the first time were they followed by years of want. The result in economic disaster docs not fall within my province to explain, or come within my power to describe, but, as a student of life, I can have no doubt whatever about the consequences to the Egyptian character.

The mad rush after wealth which has been going on in Egypt during the prosperous periods of the British occupation lias demoralised a good many of the Egyptians who have taken part in it, uprooting the better part of their humanity and utterly destroying their religion. No longer Easterns, they are not Westerns; no longer Moslems, they are assuredly not Christians. 'Without faith, without too much morality, and almost without recognisable -race, they are rapidly developing all the characteristics of the nondescript class (always the worst in a community) that is usually to be . found on the borderlands of countries, and sometimes on the fringes of districts in the great cosmopolitan cities. And if it is argued that the same result attends the frantic chase after riches in all parts of the world; that wherever wealth i.s sought for its own sake it demoralises those who seek it; and that it is just as true now as ever it was that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven, 1 answer that there is no place known to me where those elements of Western civilisation which are at war with religion and morality—tho elements that make for vast trusts, gigantic syndicates, and monster corporations —are seen to be so actively at play as in that transfigured land, Egypt, where great prosperity has come at°*a bound, and the struggle between the old ideals and the new, the Eastern and the Western, is most fierce and threatening.