Translated to English from actual Arabic text written in Egyptian newspaper

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**The story of American Flag in the 1919 revoltion** 

Among the striking and often forgotten scenes was the appearance of the American flag amid the demonstrations during the 1919 Revolution. This caught the attention of a photographer from the international news agency “Reuters,” prompting him to capture that image, which became one of the iconic scenes of the 1919 Revolution. Dr. Abu al-Ghar reveals in his book “The 1919 Revolution and America” that the reason behind the association between the American flag and the 1919 Revolution was that the liberal American president Woodrow Wilson announced a document containing 14 principles, known as the document of independence or the right to self-determination—especially the twelfth principle, which emphasized the right of peoples to determine their own fate. However, shortly afterward, when attempts were made to apply these principles, it became clear that they were limited only to the peoples of the First World, while the peoples of the Third World did not deserve them!

The Egyptian national movement had placed great hopes on Egypt being represented by a delegation led by Saad Zaghloul at the Versailles Peace Conference, expecting that the delegation would return from the conference carrying a document granting Egypt independence in accordance with the principles of the American president Woodrow Wilson, the president of the conference. This is what led that man to raise the American flag during the demonstrations.

However, Britain prevented this, leading to the outbreak of the revolution, which Britain confronted with military force throughout the country. The popular national movement was shocked by President Wilson’s stance when he recognized the British protectorate over Egypt. His document of independence became like fragile glass, shattered at the first demand for its implementation.

Especially since Wilson went on to distort the 1919 Revolution and supported a propaganda lie spread by Lord Arthur Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary, which claimed that the Egyptian revolution was orchestrated by extremist nationalists who were actually agents funded by a revolutionary party in Turkey and by the Russian Bolsheviks, and that they were exploiting Wilson’s principles to ignite the flames of a holy war against non-Muslims. The depth of this betrayal was completed when the American president rushed to recognize full British control over Egypt and restricted the right to self-determination only to the colonies of Austria and Turkey in Europe.

However, it seems that fate eventually avenged Saad Zaghloul and his companions. Nearly a hundred years after Wilson’s death, Princeton University in the eastern United States announced in 2020 that it had decided to remove the name of the late American president Woodrow Wilson from its School of Public and International Affairs due to his “racist policies and views.” Christopher Eisgruber, President of Princeton University, said in a statement that “Wilson’s racist policies and views make his name inappropriate for a school whose students, faculty, and alumni must be fully engaged in combating the scourge of racism.”



1919 Egyptian Revolution: An Egyptian Protester Raising the American Flag (1919) [1024x661]