THE REOCCUPATION OF NORTHERN AFRICA 379 
aided to get ahead as never before. In addition, some 
£E12,000,000 were devoted to irrigation, the Assuan Dam 
and the Assiut Barrage built, and over 500,000 acres re- 
claimed for farming in Middle Egypt. 
“He must be blind,” wrote an unbiased and competent 
Egyptian authority in 1906, “who sees not what the Eng- 
lish have wrought in Egypt: the gates of justice stand open 
to the poor; the streams flow through the land and are not 
stopped at the order of the strong; the poor man is lifted 
up and the rich man pulled down; the hand of the op- 
pressor and briber is struck when outstretched to do evil. 
Our eyes see these things, and we know from whom they 
come. ...And very many of us...are thankful. But 
thanks lie on the surface of the heart and beneath is a deep 
well.” In this “deep well” there always remained a spirit 
of unrest and of suspicion, which manifested itself occasion- 
ally at the call of Pan-Islamism, of the Caliph who sat at 
Constantinople, of party leaders and of false prophets. For 
it is difficult for the European and the Oriental to attain 
the highest sympathy and cooperation in the joint rule of 
any country — no matter how great their respect for, and 
obligation to, one another may be. The volatile nature of 
the Egyptian makes him an easy victim of the political 
demagogue. It is, therefore, remarkable that, in thirty 
years, no far-reaching movement against the existing govern- 
ment was successfully launched. The agitation caused by 
such skillful leaders of the so-called “National Party” as 
Mustapha Pasha Kamel (who died in 1908) and the excite- 
ment created by the unhappy “Denishwei Affair” in June, 
1906, did not vitally impede the development and progress 
of the country or visibly weaken the position of England. 
The chief reason was that the National Party, though led 
by able men who naturally desired to rule the country them- 
selves, never produced an enlightened, constructive, and