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Show iion Interactional cond itlon! could not lit; subject to a foreign censor, During the course of even's I more than nn .rH-riMon'-'! to Genera! rfjlayfon th5 futility of fp:.so!'sh;p, as an American would find many vr.iyn of getting out his reports. My aru'l.;s havi already appeared In tho .Vf-.v York H-rald and Its associated ne wspap-rs, so that thu public has had opportunity to judge whether their ron-tirnts ron-tirnts aie of a sort that shouid have been su pprey.s.'d. So far as I am aware, tho acuracy of thesn artlc'es lias not been 4 U'-stionod In any particular. That I made nationalist speeches In K3 Azhar is also prated as a fact by the state department. The statement is wholly untrue. un-true. I'nequivocally, I declare that neither In ;! Azhar or elsewhere, indoors or out i of doors, to Egyptians or to Americans I or to any other body of people, did I make any nort of speech while in Egypt. Either the state department, or the Cairo of f i - dais whrj doubtless are Its authority, should name tin: time or place of such a speech, and produce at least one person who heard it, or else it should apologize to the senate and to rne for an outrageous misstatement. Even a government department de-partment or official may not he permitted ' to lie concerning a man's reputation. ATTACKS ACTION OF U. S. MILITARY ATTACHE. If commonplace, industrious activity, such as is exercised every day by thousands thou-sands of American reporters, In trying to see for myself the conflicts and demonstrations dem-onstrations (n Cairo, may be called "con-nptcuous "con-nptcuous activity in nationalist movements," move-ments," then I suppose I must ' plead guilty. I lad I followed the example of the A merican military attacho, and stayed snugly In Fhepheard's hotel, drinking with British officers, and cursing the Egyptians Egyp-tians and the American principles, when the city was In a ferment of excitement and deadly disorder, I certalnlv would Ippnccc jj 0 Correspondent Claims j i Direct Misstatements Made by Department '? of State to Senate. -Reasons Given for De- tention of Himself r and Son at Variance "r With Facts, He Says By WILLIAM T. ELLIS. "Special to The Tribune. i.1" NEW YORK, Aug. 13. It gives a home-axomlng home-axomlng American a queer feeling to discover dis-cover that a department of his own government gov-ernment can as shamelessly conceal or misrepresent facts as any of the Kuro--poan nations w'no:?e intrigues and propaganda propa-ganda In the near east disiiearten Americans Ameri-cans and at present menace world peace. :I' have hastened directly homo from Constantinople, Con-stantinople, aboard a warship, to tell the .facta about Turkey. Upon arrival, 1 am Blown an amazing statement by our state department to a senate committee, and -published broadcast, concerning the detention de-tention of myself and my son In Cairo Lfor nearly a month, by order of Acting Pocrotary of State Polk. I have a copy Jot tho order. While held In Cairo I could learn noth-i'lng noth-i'lng from our government representatives, ,Iior from the British, concerning the 'Muse of our mysterious holdup. The tX!rltlsh disavowed in writing all responsibility, respon-sibility, declaring that whatever they did 'nas only at the request of the American Tauthoritles. They stated categorically Vthat they did not knosv why we were de-stained de-stained by the American authorities; and Uliat as soon as the officials of our own government would permit them to do so Ijhey -would glvo us military permits to T-proceed wherever w-e desired. Bertrand TGottlleb, the acting American consul, had 'ja copy of this official statement, and 1 '-baked him to send it to Washington, rt The reasons contained In the official , declaration by tho state department to 'the senate certainly never could have been !put forward In Cairo, where they were susceptible of Immediate and complete 'disproof. The charges aro three: That J was conspicuously active in the Egyptian Egyp-tian nationalist movement; that I made an address at El Azhar, and that I evaded '-the censor. EVASION OF CENSOR 'CLAIMED AS RIGHT. -'J To answer them in reverse order in ,-easy. I certainly evaded the censor, as 2 had a porfect right to do, as an American Ameri-can citizen; although I did also send copies Cf everything I wrote to the censor. ."openly told him that, of course, what an "American wrote for an American paper have been safer from flying bullets, but the American public would not have had the only eyewitness account of events which have affected the history of the entire near east, if not of the British empire. em-pire. My "activity," which could be "conspicuous" "con-spicuous" only by contrast with the conduct con-duct of the Ono American official whose business, it was to know the facts and report to Washington upon them, was merely that of an impartial onlooker; to say the contrary is to utter a slanderous misrepresentation. In no way was I otherwise a participant in any of the nationalist na-tionalist activities; nor had I any foreknowledge fore-knowledge of them except such as was supplied by tho British Intelligence service ser-vice which usually proved wrong. Nor was I in any manner or degree in the confidence of the Egyptian leaders ; nor did I onco privately or publicly avow even that measure of sympathy which every normal American must feel for an oppressed op-pressed nation seeking liberty from a foreign for-eign yoke. The quality of my reports, which are now going Into a book, is sufficient answer an-swer to the charge that I had associated myself with tho Egyptian nationalist cause. It is true that the British made a post-facto post-facto protest against my visiting El Azhar to see the national soviet in session, as was my simple duty; that story, written long before my detention, is already fully In print. I went to El Azhar one afternoon, after-noon, accompanied by an Arabic-speaking American missionary, and apparently the British never knew I had gone until I myself told them. The absurd report that I had made a speech at El Azhar was not circulated until after the missionary had left Cairo for America; he Is now in this country and available as a witness. Official? Criticized. The military officials objected also to my interviewing Egyptian nationalist leaders; they wanted me to confine myself my-self to their daily official communiques, which I early discovered did not tell the whole truth, and occasionally deliberately misstated the facts. If I veered at all from the straight line of strict Journalistic Journal-istic impartiality it was in devotng myself my-self to the larger issues of the Insurrection, Insurrec-tion, and in falling to report the charges and evidences of atrocities committed oy British soldiers. Such details I preferred to leave to the Mllner commission which the Brtish government is sending to Egypt to Investigate these and other more general allegations. I have unshaken faith in the British people, who ultimately remedy tho mistakes of their foreign servants ser-vants who have departed too far from Brltfsh ideals. If I have criticised the blunders of the Cairo officials, so has the British parliament criticised them. As for the Incident of our American uniforms, uni-forms, that would be amusing as weli as trivial, did it not connote so much that is serious. Our military attache, who had gone into the service from a Standard Oil post in Syria, apparently did not know enough about army matters to be familiar with a war correspondent's uniform, such as, becati30 working in a military zone, we were wearing at the express suggestion sugges-tion of the press section of the A. E. F. in Paris. I noticed Mr. Gregory Mason of the Outlook wearing a correspondent's uniform In Constantinople last month, as was entirely proper. Perliaps annoyed because I had called him to account for publicly echoing the British criticisms of America's war ideals, Brewster, Instead of asking for our credentials, cre-dentials, cabled the department that he had discovered two suspicious characters in American uniform! If there were not important matters to engage my pen I could write an entertaining column about this Anglo-phile, un-American military ! attache in Cairo. Doubtless the depart-: depart-: ment, which knows the facts of the ridiculous ridic-ulous incident of his spasm over the war correspondents' uniform, has already dealt with him. Investigation Invited. The essential point to which I respect-full respect-full v invite the attention of the senate committee which is investigating this matter is that the state department has offered to the senate and to the public a series of definite charges which are utterly ut-terly false, and an outrageous slander upon an American citizen who had been conscientiously fulfilling his plain duty to the American public. without transgressing trans-gressing any law or code cr precedent, American or foreign. Concerning the central fact, about whieh the senate Inquired, that I was denied de-nied all explanations by our consular representative, rep-resentative, or any reason for our mysterious mys-terious holdup, and that I was refused permission even to send a telegram at my own charges, to tho secretary of state or to other government officials, the statement of the department to the senate sen-ate Is ent ireiy silent. Until I reached Constantinople and received private advices ad-vices from the Herald, I was entirely In the dark as to why I was recalled to Cairo and kent there. I shall be happy to have opportunity to submit some pertinent per-tinent documents to the senate committee. commit-tee. The nature of the charges shows how complaisant our officials In Cairo are to even the modt absurd schemes of those Brit ish authorities whose blunders are entirely responsible for the Egyptian Insurrection In-surrection and its consequences. The department might at least have paid the senate the compliment of making even a superficial independent examination examina-tion of tho facts in the case, when requested re-quested to do so by the highest lawmaking law-making body in the land. WASHINGTON', Aug. IS. Tn a brief filed today with f he foreign relations committee of the United StatPS senate. Jopfph W. Folk", formerlv governor of Missouri, counsel for th- Egyptian commission, com-mission, charges that "England, under the guise of a r rot ec torn te over Egypt, prnrtlcallv has seized that country as a British possession"; that "In an annex to the peace treaty the status of Egypt wf 'jld be made an 'internal question' and beyond the jurisdiction of the council of the league of nat ions, which council the Egyptians desire to pass upon the status of Egypt." British Give Pledge. Tho document sets forth that the original orig-inal occupation of Egypt by British troops, brs:inniiig in was claimed by the Bri : ish govern men t to be merely temporary, for the purposes of suppressing "rebels" and cnl!rrt Ing debts due to Europeans. The British government, says Mr. Polk, pledged Egypt and the world that t'.U occupation would be only temporary. A fter giving a runtime of the political history of modern Egypt and the "alleged wrongs done In thn t country to enforce British rule in the last several decades." the brief recites the story of "the killing of 800 and the wounding of 1G00 Egyptian natives last April in the streets of their cities while holding demonstrations for freedom under the "self-determination clauses of the peace treaty." Mr. Folk, who was formerly solicitor for the state department and who now represents the commission which was named by the legislative assembly of Kgvpt, a majority of whom were elected by ' the people, he says, colls attention to the fact that Kgyptlan troops, numbering number-ing one million, "fought on the side of the allies to make, as they believed, the world 'safe for democracy and for the right of national self-determination for ail peoples.' Remove Egyptian Ruler. Kgypt bofore the war, he says, was independent in-dependent for all practical purposes, though under the nominal sovereignty oT Turker and subject to an annual tribute to Turkey. On December IS, m-i, it is stated, Great Britain removed the ruler of Egypt and appointed Prince Hussein es "sultan," ostensibly as a war measure, and assumed by the Egyptians to be such. When tho time came for making peace, Mr. Folk observes, "tho Egyptian people naturally concluded that since, under the league of nations, they would bo preserved pre-served from external a g.7res:-ion. the protectorate pro-tectorate of G reat Britain would be removed. re-moved. TUit they were doomed to disappointment." dis-appointment." The Egyptian legislative assemblv commission, com-mission, on the wny to Paris to present that country's c'aims, !t is charged, wtis "interned by order of the British government govern-ment upon reaching Malta." Released upon the recommendation of General Al-lenby. Al-lenby. It is said, it reached Paris "only to find, with amazement, that a recognition recogni-tion of the British protectorate over Egypt had been written into the treaty." 1 |