"are doing all in their power to improve the condition of
the people and help them forward on sound lines, both as
regards their material and political progress"; and there
is ample testimony on all sides to prove his contention. The success of their efforts depends very largely, he claims,
upon a steady and healthy financial and economic progress. Among other things, the importance of the cotton crop and
the maintenance of the price of this staple export cannot
be overstated. The country has now recovered from the
fall in prices of 1895 to 1900 and the speculation which
followed the rise of prices in 1907. The fellaheen are at
length protected from the usurers and their own tendency
to extravagance and mismanagement by the Five Feddan
Law of 1912, which forbids the alienation of small farms
for debt and provides government assistance in many dis-
tricts on an easy loan plan. ¹

Thus the country has been set on a fair way, under full
sail, toward a prosperous and successful future. And Great
Britain has most happily demonstrated how an enlightened
European state can free an oppressed and impoverished
people from the rule of a corrupt and selfish oligarchy,
furnish them with an efficient administration, equal justice
and protection for all, and a sound economic and financial
system, and set them on the highroad of peace and happi-
ness, without taking possession of their land or submitting
them to an "irritating tutelage." And this without a cent
of return, save what comes through the legitimate channels
of trade!

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