Folk v. Zaghlul

The Cairo Mixed Court handed down an extraordinary decision last week ordering Saad Zaghlul Pasha, leader of the potent Wafd (Nationalist party), to pay $55,000 to Mrs. Joseph Wingate Folk, widow of the late Governor of Missouri.

Mrs. Folk originally sued for $602,924. Her attorneys produced documentary evidence that an agent for Zaghlul Pasha contracted with Lawyer Folk in 1919 to further the cause of Egyptian independence by propaganda in the U. S. at a salary of $5,000 a month. In addition he was to receive approximately half a million dollars upon the successful conclusion of his work. All this was to be paid "by the Egyptian people."

Mr. Folk carried on his propaganda from July, 1919, to January, 1921, but received only $5,000 up to the time of his death (1923). The Zaghlulist Wafd subsequently repudiated the entire debt on the ground that Zaghlul's agent was not empowered to make any such arrangement with Mr. Folk. Per contra, the Folk attorneys contended that Zaghlul Pasha and his agent, Mohamed Mahmoud Pasha, did authoritatively represent "the Egyptian nation" in 1919. Zaghlul, famed as "the first native Egyptian Premier (1924) since Cleopatra's day," was, in 1919, President of the Egyptian delegation to the Peace Conference. Both before and after that year he rallied Egyptians about him with the cry -- he is a peerless orator -- that the British were persecuting him -- as indeed they were.* He has lost much of his influence over the Egyptians since the British House of Commons proclaimed the independence of Egypt (1922) and since he himself was released from all British coercion and became Premier (1924). He still reigns over the Wafd, but has been too thoroughly "unmartyred" to retain his once Messiah-like popularity.

*Imprisoned at Malta 1918, released but imprisoned at Suez 1921.