Page:Mexico under Carranza.djvu/244

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228
MEXICO UNDER CARRANZA

to the majority has ever resulted. Students wno are interested in this phase of government will find a striking parallel between the history of Mexico during the four hundred years that her territory has been occupied by a majority aboriginal race, and a governing minority alien race, and that of Egypt, during the more than twelve hundred years since that country was conquered by the Mohammedan Arabs. When this race conquered Egypt, they became the possessors of its land and of what educational opportunities existed, and thereby became the governing element, although they were always much in the minority.

The majority native race became the labouring class, commonly known as the fellaheen the hewers of wood and the drawers of water for the governing class. This condition continued for about nine hundred years until the country was conquered and its government taken over by the Turks. Afterward the Turks, associated with the Arabs, who were of the same religion, continued to be the governing element, with the fellaheen majority still continuing to furnish the common labour of the country. Just how this minority of property-owning and educated aliens controlling the non-property-owning majority of the native race has worked out for twelve hundred years, is shown in a most interesting way in Lord Cromer's great book "Modern Egypt." We find there the same