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The Denshawai Prisoners,

We have pleasure in printing the following correspondence. Further comment than has already appeared in THE NEW AGE is quite unnecessary.

Right Hon. SIR EDWARD GREY, M.P., etc., etc., Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.

Sir,—

We, the undersigned, respectfully invite you to consider the advisability of an immediate release of the persons concerned in an assault on certain British officers near the village of Denshawai on Wednesday, June 13, 1906.

The impression under which public opinion was reconciled to the Denshawai sentences (always excepting the resort to flogging, which many Englishmen consider inadmissible under any circumstances) has been completely changed by the publication of the official papers (White Papers, Egypt, 1906, Nos. 3 and 4). That impression was that a party of British officers had been attacked without provocation in an Egyptian village, and one of them put to death in an outburst of anti-English prejudice and Moslem fanaticism.

The White Papers prove that the affair had no political or religious significance; that the officers thoughtlessly gave very serious provocation; that those officers who did not escape were rescued from the mob by the sheikhs and gaffirs of the village, and sent on to the British camp; that the deceased officer, who took to flight, died of sunstroke at a considerable distance from Denshawai; that one of the prisoners, now undergoing penal servitude for life, assaulted the officers under a reasonable (though mistaken) impression that the wound his wife had received m consequence of the discharge of Lieut. Porter's gun was fatal; and that, in short, nothing had happened that might not have been expected in any British village if a shooting party of foreigners, ignorant of our language and customs, had begun to shoot the domestic animals and farm stock under the impression that they were feræ naturæ.

When we add that the tribunal which awarded the sentences of hanging (4), flogging (8), penal servitude for life (2), and a number of shorter sentences, including one for 15 years, was constituted in a manner altogether repugnant to British practice, in that there was no jury, we have said enough to show how strong and justifiable the feeling in Egypt (and in the British Isles) is against the sentences, and how many of our country-men are deeply discouraged, as long as the sentences are maintained, in their faith in the impartiality, equity, and humanity of the British administration in Egypt.

We deeply regret that the severest sentences are beyond recall; the hangings and floggings are irrevocable; but we would urge you to remember that every day's delay creates an impression unfavourable to the Foreign Office and to British justice in Egypt.

Under these circumstances, without asking you to retract your personal support of what we may call the official view of the calamitous incident at Denshawai, we do venture most strongly to press upon you, Sir, the necessity of relieving the present strain and anxiety by the speedy release of the prisoners from an imprisonment which has already lasted fifteen months.

We have the honour to be, Sir,

Your most obedient, humble servants,

Coleridge, Courtney of Penwith, Eversley, Weardale, Augusta Gregory, Alice Meynell, Saml. A. Barnett, H. Granville Barker, G. K. Chesterton, John Clifford, Edward Clodd, Walter Crane, Robert Donald, James Douglas, W. J. Evelyn, A. G. Gardiner, R. B. Cunninghame Graham, Frederic Harrison, L. T. Hobhouse, G. W. Kitchen, D.D., Neville S. Lytton, J. Ramsay Macdonald, Frederic Mackarness, Hector Macpherson, Aylmer Maude, George Meredith, J. H. Muirhead, H. Belloc, Max Beerbohm, Edward Spencer Beesly, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, H. R. Fox-Bourne, W. F. Butler, Lt.-Gen., Edward Caird, R. J. Campbell, Edward Carpenter, A. F. Murison, Gilbert Murray, Mark F. Napier, C. H. Norman, Ernest Parke, John M. Robertson, V. H. Rutherford, G. Bernard Shaw, Will Thorne, G. M. Trevelyan, Alfred. E. Turner, Edmund Verney, Alfred R. Wallace, Robt. Spence Watson, Sidney Webb, W. Wedderburn, H. G. Wells, C. Rivers Wilson, W. B. Yeats.

(REPLY.)

Foreign Office, Oct. 16, 1907.

Sir,—

I am directed by Secretary Sir Edward Grey to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 9th inst., forwarding a memorial on behalf of the Denshawai prisoners.

I am to inform you in reply that the subject has been recently discussed in Parliament, and that Sir E. Grey cannot at present add to the statements which he then made concerning it.

I am, Sir,

Your most obedient, humble servant,

W. LANGLEY.

C. H. Norman, Esq.,
4N, Hyde Park Mansions, N.W.