Oliver Twist Pasha

The independence of India has just been proclaimed by potent Mahatma Gandhi at Lahore (see col. 3). Last week Englishmen were doubly vexed by almost exactly similar news from Cairo. There Mustapha Nahas Pasha, whose Wafd Party has just swept the country and won the Egyptian Parliamentary Election by a majority of more than 19 to 1 over their combined opponents, addressed the following letter to fat King Fuad, notoriously a British puppet:

"It becomes my duty to inform Your Majesty that as Prime Minister I shall proceed to effect a revision of the Constitution which will secure the full and complete independence of Egypt."

Of course King Fuad's realm is already "The Independent Kingdom of Egypt." But, as in the case of the so-called "Irish Free State," there is a catch in the name.* Ever since the Allies wrested Egypt from Turkey the Government at Cairo has humbly followed orders from London.

Until the present British Labor Government came in, the High Commissioner of His Majesty George V in Cairo was literally the Mussolini of Egypt, ruthless, ironhanded Baron George Ambrose Lloyd of Dolobran. Mr. MacDonald accepted and probably forced the resignation of Lord Lloyd. It was hoped that the Prime Minister's soothing proclamation soon afterward (TIME, Aug. 19) would reassure Egyptians and dispose them to wait until Britannia is ready to dole out their freedom, driblet by driblet. In asking for the whole bowl of porridge at once, last week, rash Prime Minister Nahas Pasha laid himself open to being considered at best an Oliver Twist. The original Oliver, as all remember, was locked up for a week in a "dark and solitary room" by the beef-eating Beadle.

* Witty and sagacious Timothy Michael Healy, first Governor of the Irish Free State, aptly said: "It is not Irish. It is not free. And it is not a state." It is in effect a dominion of the British Commonwealth of Nations, similar to Canada.

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