When I first arranged with Mr. Blunt to publish The Secret History
of the English Occupation of Egypt, I suggested that he write for the
American Edition a brief foreword bringing the book into even closer
relation to the Anglo-Egyptian situation as it stands today. He thought
this idea a good one, and agreed to write such a note. But Mr. Blunt
was born in 1840, and has for a number of years been in failing health.
In June he wrote me that he was so ill as to be quite unable to finish the
foreword, which he had actually commenced to write. He felt further-
more that any advantage the edition would gain by having a new preface
by him would be more than counterbalanced by any delay in the appear-
ance of the book "at the present extremely critical moment."

He remarked further: "What could I have said more appropriate to-
day as a new preface than the few words which already stand as the short
preface I set to the first edition of my Secret History (published in Lon-
don and which you reprint in this new edition). This and my poem The
Wind and the Whirlwind (which you also give as an Appendix). Both
are absolutely true of the present shameful position of England in Egypt
and the calamity so closely threatening her Eastern Empire. What could
I say more exactly suited? This is the punishment we are reaping today
for our sin of that sad morning on the Nile which saw the first English
gun open its thunder of aggression just forty years ago at Alexandria in
the name of England's honour. What could I add to my words of grief
and shame then uttered and repeated here? Let these stand for my new
preface. My day is done. Alas! that I should have lived to see those
words come true of England's punishment, more than true."

A. A. K.

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