The Waikato Times With which Is Incorporated The Waikato Argus. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26, 1930. BRITAIN AND EGYPT.

Waikato Times, Volume 107, Issue 17979, 26 March 1930, Page 4

The Waikato Times With which Is Incorporated The Waikato Argus. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26, 1930. BRITAIN AND EGYPT.

The cablegrams recently informed us that Nahas Pasha, the Prime Minister of Egypt, with his colleagues have left for England, where, with the consent of the Egyptian Parliament, they will conclude a treaty with Britain on the basis of the British proposals. There were only four dissentients to the motion, and in acknowledging the vote Nahas Pasha said, “He was glad to- say that a real reciprocal spirit of friendship now existed Ik*. ween Britain and Egypt and lie strongly hoped this would result in an agreement. When the spirit of justice reigns,” he concluded, “agreement is possible, and this, (bank God, exists on both sides.” Some time ago Mohammed Pasha Mahmoud, then Dictator of Egypt, after negotiations in London, took to Egypt proposals for a treaty of alliance which it was understood were to be submitted to the Egyptian people. This was not clone. Mahmoud Pasha no doubt had some idea of getting a verdict on the proposals, but he recognised that it would have to be obtained in an indirect way. it has been tacitly admitted by all concerned that the huge illiterate electorate of Egypt would be incapable of considering the proposals even if they were lo be laid before it. It has, therefore, not been asked to consider them. Instead, a Parliament has been elected composed almost entirely of Hie members of one party. The elected, knowing their own .weaknesses and those of their leaders, have avoided any debate in which those leaders might have handicapped themselves by the kind of demagogic utterance to which they have in the past shown themselves inclined. A certain show of activity by the minute Opposition on the occasion of the discussion of the reply to the Speech from the Throne, served to harden the unwieldy majority less in support of the proposals Ilian in resentment of their opponents’ efforts to “draw” them, with the result that, with much less difficulty than seemed probable, the Cabinet of Nahas Pasha has been given a free hand lo negotiate with England on the basis of the proposals brought back to Egypt last summer by Mohammed Pasha Mahmoud. We may therefore expect that in the immediate j future Nahas Pasha will meet Mr Henderson in London, and after a friendly discussion the British proposals will once more form part of the luggage of an Egyptian Prime Minister returning to Egypt, with the difference that the label will bear a new name and that tho declaration of contents will describe them as a “ treaty ” instead of as proposals. Tho difference is of greater importance than it might seem. Twice before satisfied negotiators have taken a draft treaty to Egypt in vain. For good or for iil the political party known as the Wafd has acquired for itself a prescriptive monopoly, a sort of option, in the matter of tho eventual settlement of Anglo-Egyptian relations. Nothing has come of treaties brought lo Egypt by persons who were not members of that party. It has been often said that if Zaghlul had brought back the treaty that was negotiated by Sarwat it would have been accepted with enthusiasm and he himself acclaimed on account of it. But present treaty proposals were so good from the Egyptian point of view that they could not be rejected out of hand even by the Wafd. But the Wafd would have been untrue to itself if it had accepted them from an anti-Wafdist Prime Minister. This difficulty will be removed if Nahas Pasha returns from London to lay a Wafd treaty before a Wafd Chamber. But the path of the treaty is not yet wholly clear. It may be blocked indefinitely unless both parties to the negotiations remember that the- proposals could not go farther to meet- Egyptian wishe-s without so strengthening opposition to them in this country that no British Government could afford to put its seal to Hie resulting document. Nahas Pasha can thus easily evade responsibility for a settlement by asking the impossible. But his actions so far, like the temper-of the Chamber that lias by so overwhelming a vote expressed its approval of his negotiating on the basis of the existing proposals, induce Hie belief that lie is prepared to lake Ihc more difficult and more honourable part of the man who brings a long discussion ti an end.