28o THE STORY OF THE KHEDIVATE.

/Mahometans, and literally in many cases beaten to death, is not open to discussion. Nor can there be \ any dispute as to the fact that the Egyptian police ] made no effort to suppress the riots for several hours, y but that the moment the military authorities came to the conclusion the outrages had better cease, order was restored at once. From 'these facts it is easy to form an opinion as to where the responsibility for the massacres ought by rights to rest If the riots had taken place at Tantah or Man-Isourah, or even Cairo, there would have been more /ground for the theory that they were due to a spon-/taneous outburst of religious fanaticism. But more I than twenty years ago Alexandria was, in outward Nspect, an European city, situated on Egyptian soil.

With the exception of the camels and the palm-trees, there was little to show that you were in the land of the Crescent. The trade was entirely in European hands ; the shops, stores, houses, and public buildings were of the European type. For all practical purposes, the E uropean element was then, as it is now, the dominant one in Alexandria, which was about the last place in all Egypt where a Mahdi would have ever dreamt of preaching a holy war for the destruction of the Giaour. The more one knows of the East, the less disposed one becomes to dogmatize about its creeds. But, in as far as I can form an opinion, I hold that wherever there is a Mahometan population, there is always a risk — a remote and latent risk, if you like — of an outburst of popular fanaticism against