When the Mission arrived it quickly discovered that there was no possible “Constitution under the Protectorate” which would satisfy the Egyptians, and that the sole alternatives were further suppression or the discovery of some means of settlement which dispensed with the Protectorate.  The Mission unanimously came to the conclusion that though the first was mechanically possible if the cost and discredit were faced, the second was not only feasible but far preferable, and that the right method was a treaty of Alliance between Great Britain and Egypt, recognising Egypt as a sovereign State, but affording all necessary guarantees for imperial interests.  Working on those lines the Mission gradually broke down the boycott proclaimed against them, convinced the Egyptians of their goodwill, induced all parties of Egyptian Nationalists to come to London, and there negotiated the basis of the Treaty which was described in the Report.  The main points were that there must be a British force in the country—­not an army of occupation, but a force to guard Imperial communications—­that there must be British liaison officers for law and order and finance, that the control of foreign policy must remain in the hands of Great Britain, and that the Soudan settlement of 1898 must remain untouched, but that with these exceptions the Government of Egypt should be in fact what it had always been in theory:  a Government of Egyptians by Egyptians.

Had the Government accepted this in December, 1920 (instead of in March, 1922), and instructed Lord Milner to go forward and draft a treaty on this basis, it is extremely probable that a settlement would have been reached in a few weeks; but Ministers, unhappily, were unable to make up their minds, and there was a further delay of three months before the Egyptian Prime Minister, Adli Pasha, was invited to negotiate with the Foreign Office.  By this time the Nationalist parties which the Mission had succeeded in uniting on a common platform had fallen apart, and the extremists once more started a violent agitation and upbraided the moderates for tamely waiting on the British Government, which had evidently meant to deceive them.  The situation had, therefore, changed again for the worse when Adli came to London in April, 1921, and it was made worse still by what followed.  The negotiations dragged over six months, and finally broke down for reasons that have never been explained, but the probability is that Egypt had now got entangled in Coalition domestic politics, and that the “Die-Hards” claimed to have their way in Egypt in return for their consent to the Irish settlement.  The door was now banged in the face of all schools of Egyptian Nationalists, and Lord Allenby was instructed to send to the Sultan the unhappy letter in which Egypt was peremptorily reminded that she was a “part of the communications of the British Empire,” and many other things said which were specially calculated to wound Egyptian susceptibilities.