Excerpt from Recollections and Reflections

It does not fall to the lot of many men to put in a record of upwards of forty years' service in the East. Still fewer can boast of the many advantages that I enjoyed of serving the greater part of my official life under chiefs like the late Lord Cromer, Lord Kitchener, Sir Eldon Gorst, and other Empire-builders. This must be my excuse for venturing to publish my Recollections and Reflections, a privilege usually reserved for men of some eminence.

As stated elsewhere in these pages, I have all my life been a great believer in writing annual reports - annual stocktakings, as I have termed them - both on account of the assistance which they afford to the official who may be recording the result of his labours, as welt as for the information which they convey to his successors in office.

These memoirs may be regarded as the stocktaking of my life's work, and although - unlike the official recorder - I personally cannot expect to reap any benefit therefrom, still I feel convinced that in the near future many of the problems which I have helped to solve will again have to be dealt with. For the close of the Great War will most assuredly see British officials administering the less civilised States with, and possibly without, the " self-determination " of their respective inhabitants.

To these British Administrators, as also to fellow-workers in India and Egypt, I trust that my " Reflections " may prove both useful and instructive. I hope, too, that the general reader may discover something of interest in my " Recollections, " even if he has to wade through much ancient history to find it.

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