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Excerpt from The Tragedy of the Pyramids: A Romance of Army Life in Egypt
The fact that I have written a novel on the coming revolution in Egypt, simultaneously with Mr. Hall Caine, is not due to accident.
I had, before he began the serial publication of the "White Prophet," written about half a novel inspired by the humours of travel in Egypt.
But when I had read the first two instalments of the "White Prophet" I felt constrained to put aside what I had written, and write a counterblast to Mr. Hall Caine. I read no more of his book until I had finished mine. "The Tragedy of the Pyramids" is, therefore, a counterblast, not an answer, to his. It is my idea of the form a revolution in Egypt will assume, if the Egyptian Nationalist ever takes his courage in both hands. He will not do so unless the British Government and its Representative in Egypt are incredibly foolish, because, since the success of the Young Turk, there is no present chance of the agitation against the British in Egypt being Pan-Islamic. The dangerous element in the Egyptian Nationalist movement during the past few years has been Mohammedan fanaticism. While the old Sultan and the Reactionary Party were in power in Turkey, the Nationalists hoped to put all the forces of Islam in North Africa in motion against Great Britain. But when the chief religious and chief political authorities at Constantinople proclaimed that Great Britain was the friend of liberty and the friend of Islam, and that the British rule in Egypt had given Young Turkey its ideals, the chief motive force of the Egyptian Nationalist conspiracy was gone.
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