256 • 15 EGYPT'S STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCEEgypt's independence. Wingate counseled patience but agreed to wire
home for instructions. The Foreign Office, preoccupied with the ap¬
proaching Paris Peace Conference, refused to meet this delegation of "dis¬
appointed and disgraced" politicians, or even to receive Husayn Rushdi,
who had stayed on as premier through the war, expecting Britain to end its
protectorate as soon as peace returned.
During the winter Sa'd announced that he would head a six-man dele¬
gation to present Egypt's case for independence before the Paris Peace
Conference. Though made up of landowning moderates, this delegation,
the Wafd, enlisted the aid of the remaining supporters of the National
Party to circulate throughout Egypt a petition whose signers authorized
the Wafd to represent them in demanding complete independence, mean¬
ing an end to the British protectorate and evacuation of all foreign troops
from Egypt and the Sudan. In March 1919 the Rushdi cabinet resigned,
and the British exiled Sa'd and his friends to Malta, whereupon the move¬
ment to support the Wafd became a popular revolution, the largest of all
that have occurred in modern Egypt. Students and teachers, lawyers and
judges, government employees and transport workers, went out on strike.
Riots broke out in the villages, railroad stations were attacked, and tele¬
graph lines were cut. Every class demonstrated against the British protec¬
torate; even women from wealthy families took to the streets. Muslim
ulama preached in Christian churches, and Christian priests gave Friday
mosque sermons, as Copts and Muslims walked hand in hand, demanding
"Egypt for the Egyptians." A new national flag appeared, with the Chris¬
tian cross where the star within the Muslim crescent had been. Only when
Britain's government recalled Wingate, appointed as its new high commis¬
sioner General Edmund Allenby (who had commanded the Egyptian Ex¬
peditionary Force that had taken Palestine), and freed Sa'd to go to Paris
did the Egyptians go back to work.
When the Wafd went to Paris to present its case to the peace conference,
Egyptians had high hopes. Would President Wilson, known for upholding
the political rights of subject nations, ignore those of the world's oldest
one? Was Egypt not as entitled as the Arabs of the Hijaz to a hearing in
Paris? Did it not have as much right to independence as, say, Yugoslavia or
Albania? Apparently not. On the day the Wafd arrived in Paris, the US gov¬
ernment formally recognized what Egypt's nationalists were fighting
against—the British protectorate. The Wafd was never invited to address
the peace conference. Sa'd and his colleagues could only make speeches
that were unheeded and draft letters that went unanswered by those with
the power to redraw the political map of the Middle East.