MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
DURING the Boa War we had a large map of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State mounted upon cardboard and propped upon the blackboard easel in Great School. The head- master, having read the morning newspapers, would emerge through the baize door which separated his chill study from the turmoil of the school-room and would adjust the little flags which marked our successive encirclements and defeats. Even to my young and in- expert eye it became obvious that we were surrounded at Ladysmith, surrounded at Mafeking, surrounded at Kimberley, and badly beaten at Lombard's Kop. As winter approached, the cardboard began to curve in the heat of the adjacent fireplace, and the headmaster removed the map to his own study, where it remained for the rest of the war cockled and dusty, leaning against the cupboard where he kept his canes. In the Firs: German War also we had our maps and flags. The latter were removed hurriedly across Belgium and down to Compiegne, leaving pin-holes behind them well within the German lines. But when trench-warfare set in, the names of our local battles were not marked upon the maps which we had bought in August, 1914, nor could we discover upon their already dusty surfaces such places as Gheluvelt or Zillebecke, as Albert or Messines. Once again the great cardboard maps were taken off their easels, the little flags hung limply as their pins rusted, and we settled down to following the war upon the maps provided for us day to day by our enterprising and efficient newspapers. In this war we have long since been rolled off the maps which we bought in 1939, and nothing short of Mercator's Projection, showing the great tilted continents of Europe, Africa and Asia, can cope with its fluidity. So once again we have come to rely upon the sketch-maps which the newspapers provide. The charts of the Western front now lie discarded, their pin-holes pricking-points of forgotten pain.
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During this week I have been scanning with anxious eyes, not merely the great bend of the Don, but also the flat fan which marks the delta of the' Nile. War brings fame to the geographically obscure, immortalising villages such as Blenheim or Waterloo, and conferring the glamour of the Iliad upon some unknown beach. It is strange to observe how quickly recondite names become intimate, or how places which in one's memory basked placid in the sunshine of eternal peace now stand lit luridly in smoke and fire. The heat- haze which hung about the harbour of Alexandria would, as one approached it slowly from the sea, show a faint ochre band across its centre, and gradually this band would detach itself from the haze of sky above it and the haze of water below, becoming a line of houses which, as one came nearer, turned from ochre into sparkling white. Trees there were, and great moles and breakwaters and villas and school buildings mounting among green parks. There was a sense of affluence about Alexandria, and the villas of the rich merchants—the "nitids mercanti alessandrini"—were gay with oleanders and green grass. Within their shuttered rooms, which smelt of turpentine, the chandeliers tinkled as one walked across the parquet and the mirrors reflected slits of sunshine through the blinds. When I last saw Alexandria it was at dawn and from the air. The great hydroplane churned the cool waters of the harbour, and one could see, although not hear, the splash it made ; up we circled above that ever-luxurious town, villas and gardens swinging together in a circle of green and white, and then northwards across the sea, while Alexandria sank into its haze and the mountains of Crete rose out from the circle of blue in a tangled pattern of amethyst and snow.
* * * * As I gazed this morning at the sketch-map with which my newspaper had provided me, letting my eyes wander eastward from Tel El Eisa past El Alamein to the point where the lush delta firs. fades into the desert, the name of Burg El Arab sprang out at me with a stab of memory. I recalled a visit which I had paid to that strange village in November, 1925. I remembered the high
walls of the place, the Saracenic battlements, the closed balconies which hung suspended above the desert, the huge gateway which opened upon the enclosure. I could see again the Egyptian Camel Corps passing slowly from deep shade to sharp sunlight under the gateway, the camels turning their swinging heads to the breath of the desert as they stepped delicately through the arch, the men sitting hunched upon their saddles, their rifles propped against the pommel. Around us swept the Libyan sand, and by the side of the - sea were the scattered stones of past civilisations, the headpieces of Arabian tombs, the stones of Roman temples. Burg El Arab in those days had been constructed as a model village ; it contained a market to which the desert folk would come to buy their provisions; there were warehouses and store-rooms and cool white-washed offices for the Egyptian and British officials. Coming out from Alexandria to Burg El Arab one had the impression of having set foot upon the desert which spreads to south and west as a vast ocean of sand ; coming from the west; however, the little place must seem the first outpost of the delta, and to bring with it the expectation of water and green fields and the great trees which line the irrigation canals and the sound of frogs croaking in the night.
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I was passing through Egypt at the time on my way to Persia, and had been invited by Lord Lloyd, then High Commissioner, to accompany him on a visit of inspection. " I have to go," he said, " to Alexandria on Thursday to see the King, and after that I want to visit a model market-village we are constructing at the very edge it of the desert, at a place called Burg El Arab.' There was a political sl crisis at the time, and Lord Lloyd, who had an acute sense of occasion, wished to give to his audience with King Fuad an atmo- sphere of special solemnity. The cars dashed through the streets of Cairo, preceded and accompanied by police on motor-bicycles. The members of the Egyptian Cabinet were waiting upon the steps of the station and conducted Lord Lloyd along a carpet edged with ferns towards the waiting train. At every station on the route to Alexandria the local authorities and mayors were gathered upon the platform ; the military and the police stood to the salute and the civilians inclined their bodies in respectful welcome as the long white train slid slowly by. On reaching Alexandria the High Com- missioner and his staff were driven to the palace with all pomp and security. I remained behind in the train, which chunked leisurely round the outskirts of Alexandria until it reached the western station, where Lord Lloyd, after his audience, was to join it.
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He came briskly along the platform, officials hurrying after him, and the train steamed out towards the desert. At luncheon he told me in high glee of what he had said to King Fuad and of what King Fuad had replied. He sent for his secretary and the red boxes were got out and the necessary telegrams were drafted. It was still early in the afternoon when we reached Burg El Arab. We remained there two hours and then the train slid back to Cairo, and there was the carpet again and the ferns, and the lights of boulevards twinkling behind trees. The memory of my visit to Burg El Arab, that happy pause for me on the edge of a great desert, on the edge of a longer journey, is darkened by a sense of loss. Lord Lloyd lived at a time when great energies were inconvenient and as such unpopular ; he died at the very moment when the splendour of his energy was recognised and required. He had no admiration either for those abroad who mouthed our democratic formulas for purposes of personal advancement, or for those at home who, in their ignorance, confused empire-building with Imperialism. He had even less admiration for those who ought to have known, but who persuaded themselves and others that self-government and good government were in some way identical terms. To him progress meant something far wider and far firmer than it meant to lacer minds. He knew that our imperial mission was but half begun- And I shall remember him always as on that November day, giving crisp beneficent orders amid the sands and sun of Burg El Arab.
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