Spinks Incident

From the British naval base on the Island of Malta two British battleships steamed last week to Alexandria and a third to Port Said. This show of British strength in two principal ports of Egypt was made because Premier Sarwat Pasha had presented to the British High Commissioner to Egypt, Baron Lloyd of Dolobran, a recommendation.

This document, virtually a petition, asked permission to place the Egyptian Army under an Egyptian Commander-in-Chief. Should this be done the office of Sirdar* would be taken from its present British incumbent, Major General Charlton Watson Spinks, or "Spinks Pasha" as Egyptians know him. That such a thing should even be thought of shocked the British Government so deeply that it despatched the battleships and sent a note declaring that the whole affair must be a "misunderstanding." Why should the independent Kingdom of Egypt want an Egyptian Commander-in-Chief, when Spinks Pasha is fulfilling that office, with the title of Inspector-General?

The British press reacted by explaining that the modern Egyptians are really a young people not yet competent to manage their own affairs. Meanwhile the retiring U. S. Minister to Egypt, Dr. Joseph Morton Howell, spoke at a luncheon tendered him by Egyptian friends at Cairo last week: "The Egyptian Chamber of Deputies is a wonderfully good and competent group of men. . . . I have not seen any Egyptian hostility to foreigners. . . . Saad Zaghlul Pasha/- has proved on all occasions a great patriot, sincere and intelligent and possessed of abilities and will power to a high degree, making him a great statesman. . . ."

These statements by the U. S. Minister were so different from what the normal Englishman likes to believe, that some few London papers came out in a healthy pox and said that, as everyone knows, Great Britain does what she does in Egypt to protect the main artery of her commerce, the Suez Canal, and will continue to do so indefinitely.

The British battleships sent to Egypt last week produced the desired effect, and the Egyptian Government soon despatched to London an utterly meek note of apology, declaring that the whole incident had been a complete "misunderstanding."

Spinks Pasha will continue to draw a salary and expense account of $60,000 per year from the Egyptian Treasury. He is nominally employed by fat King Fuad, in that monarch's interest. Actually his duties are to see that the Egyptian Army does not become potent.

*Inspector-General of the Egyptian Army.

/-The national hero of Egypt and the first native Egyptian to become Premier of Egypt since the days of Cleopatra. Zaghlul Pasha was compelled to resign as Premier (TIME, Dec. 1, 1924) when the British exacted within 24 hours a fine of $2,300,000 gold from the Egyptian Government because seven Egyptian students, later hanged, collectively shot and murdered Sir Lee Oliver Fitzmaurice Stack, British predecessor of Spinks Pasha as Sirdar. A year and a half later (TIME, June 7, 1926) the followers of Zaghlul swept to an overwhelming victory in the Egyptian parliamentary election but were prevented by British pressure from making Zaghlul Premier again.