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Show DE LESSEPS INTERVIEWED. The great canal constructor talks about the Egyptian war. Paris, Sept. 4.-De Lesseps, who has just arrived here, in an interview on Egyptian affairs said: "The first fact that should be drawn regarding the Egyptian matters is that the movement is a National one. He was convinced that Arabi has a whole Nation at his back. His force at present is between 25,000 and 30,000 Arabs. He has arms for 200,000 and when he needs men, he can get them. De Lesseps had every reason to be satisfied at the manner in which Arabi has behaved toward the canal. The English had no need of the canal for their operations. Arabi has not placed a price on his head. On the contrary, after the English had landed at Suez, he had received a letter from Arabi saying he knew it was not his fault, and giving him notice that the sweetwater canal would be cut. The English sailors have behaved very badly firing right and left in the streets and killing many Arab women and children, and one of De Lesseps's own employees. The English army was very well organized. He thinks the war will be a long one, and its final result cannot now be forecast. No serious operations could be undertaken until the hot weather and the overflow of the Nile were at end in October. It was not true that Arabi had mutilated the English dead and wounded. He had heard nothing of that from officers in Egypt. England has been long intending to get her finger into Egypt on one pretext or another. The whole trouble has been caused by the intrigues of Malet, and for the purpose of giving England this opportunity. He had not seen any of the actual fighting, but there had been many more killed and wounded among the English than reported. There were also many cases of sunstrokes and some cholera also. When he had been in Egypt before the troubles begun he had found some opposition to Arabi among the Bedouin chiefs, but now he believed they were all for Arabi. If Arabi was killed or captured the war would not on that account come to an end. The English might buy some of the chiefs but that would not help them much. The Khedive was a man who would never be able to govern the country, even if the English succeeded in establishing his authority. It would end, of the English were successful, in his being merely a nominal ruler. At present he is a prisoner and nothing he did had any weight with the Egyptian people. De Lesseps, in reply to the question if this Suez canal trouble was not what might seem with the Panama canal, said, "No, the Americans have never interfered in matters that did not concern them, while it has been invariably the practice of England to be always meddling in other people's affairs. No I have no apprehension that Panama will ever hear a cannon fired. De Lesseps then said that work on the Panama canal was progressing favorably and was being pushed forward with the greatest activity. He leaves Paris absolutely refusing the banquet from several sensational newspapers. |