RED-TAPE IN EGYPT.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIII, Issue 9142, 11 May 1908, Page 6

RED-TAPE IN EGYPT.

“ Lord Cromer’s book on Ins’work as a Pro-Consul in Egypt contains the following amusing illustration of Egyptian fidelity to the traditions of red tape:— ‘*A case occurred of a stationmaster declining to send a fire engine by a train which was about to start in order to help in putting down a serious fire. He pointed out with inexorable logic to the regulations, which did not permit of trucks being attached to that particular train. No exception was to be found in the code with which he had been furnished to meet the case of a burning town to which a fire engine had to be despatched. Again, at one “time it was the practice, if an accident occurred in the streets, not to transport the individual who had been injured at once to the hospital, but to leave him lying on the ground, whatever might be his condition, until the proper official had arrived to make a proces-verbal of the facts connected with the accident. On one occasion a doctor was sent to examine into the condition of a stationmaster supposed to be insane. On entering the room he was attacked and nearly strangled by the madman. He was able, after a sharp struggle, to call on two orderlies, who had been present all the time, to seize the man. They saluted and did so. On being asked why they had not interfered sooner, they replied that they had received no orders to that effect. Without doubt they considered that the struggle on the floor, which they had witnessed, was part of some strange European" process, with which they were unfamiliar, for dealing with insane stationmasters. ’ ’