The kiosk at Philæ, as it appeared before the dam was built at Assuan cerning the boundaries of the AngloEgyptian Sudan. The Anglo-French Convention of 1899 settled the local difficulties raised by the Marchand expedition to Fashoda. When French obstruction and ill will, which stood in the way during the first few years of reconstruction, were removed by the epoch-making AngloFrench Agreement of 1904, the frontier with Abyssinia and the Italian colony of Eritrea was arranged by several successive agreements. Soon after the British and Egyptian went back into the Sudan, the problem of irrigation began to be studied. In 1901, Sir William Garstin reported on the possibility of using the equatorial lakes as reservoirs. Lake Victoria Nyanza was rejected because a rise in its level would flood shores that were thickly populated, and half of which was German territory. Although the German factor may now be eliminated, the lake has become far more important than at the time of this report through the wonderful development of the colonies on its shores. It is hardly possible to believe that the opinion of Sir William Garstin will be revised. For the colonies bordering the lake would never consent to having the level raised and lowered for the convenience of the Nile territories. Lake Albert Nyanza presented similar difficulties, for Belgium owns the western shore. Then, too, the utility of irrigating the White Nile Valley is at the best questionable, for it passes through unreclaimable swamp-lands for hundreds of miles. Irrigation in the Blue Nile Valley, and the freer navigation of that river resulting from a control of the watersupply, would bring a rich return. Lake Tana, in northern Abyssinia, on the western side of Mount Guma, would make, according to Sir William Garstin, an ideal reservoir. The surrounding country is uninhabited, and engineering difficulties are much fewer than in the case of Lake Victoria or Lake Albert. By her treaties with Abyssinia, France, and Italy, Great Britain became ten years ago politically in a position to carry through the Garstin scheme. It has not yet been done. Reports on the Sudan have emphasized year after year the necessity and value of irrigation, and in 1913 the imperial Parliament guaranteed a loan, part of which was to be spent in irrigating the Gezira district, on the west bank of the Blue Nile south of Khartum. The success of the Tayiba demonstration station, in this district, in raising fine staple cotton proved, just before the European War broke out, that the irrigation scheme was financially a sound proposition. A wonderful development in cotton-growing may be expected after the plan is carried through, and cotton may before long surpass the gum of the Kordofan forests as the premier export article of the Sudan. In this necessarily incomplete survey of the Sudan I have saved the political aspect of Sir Reginald Wingate's problem to the last not because the task of pacification has been any less difficult or less important than the solution of the financial problem, but because the extension of civil administration through military opera tions had to follow rather than to go hand in hand with economic development. After the battle of September 2, 1898, the Khalifa escaped from Omdurman, and had to be pursued and put out of harm's way. When Sir Reginald Wingate succeeded in killing the Khalifa and his companions a year later, Mahdism as a military menace disappeared. But the country was vast, and could not be penetrated in a few months or even a few years. The only policy with any chance of success was to direct the efforts of the Government' toward the speedy amelioration of the unfortunate victims of the dervish rule, and to win their allegiance through lending them a helping hand. Their memory of Egyptian rule was hardly of the nature to recommend the new Government, and Egyptian soldiers were not looked upon as redeemers, even from Mahdism, to which many of the most influential sheiks remained profoundly attached as a religious dogma. The British administration. had to make itself known not by force, but by winning confidence through refraining from exploiting the people and giving them as much material benefit as possible in as short a time as possible. This was Sir Reginald Wingate's policy, and I have been able to see with my own eyes the magic that it has worked upon people who are fanatical only if you pro voke them to fanaticism, and savage only if you give them reason to be. From the very beginning of the new administration at Khartum the process of pacification has been disturbed only by the ineluctable necessity of enforcing prematurely a too drastic anti-slavery policy. Not often during the fifteen years from the death of the Khalifa to the outbreak of the European War has Sir Reginald been compelled to show the mailed fist. In 1903 a new Mahdi arose in southern Kordofan. He was immediately pursued, captured, and hanged at El-Obeid. The criticism from England against his summary execution was very hard to bear, even though it was inspired by sentimentality and total ignorance of the problem with which the officials in the Sudan had to deal. From 1884 to 1898, Mahdism had meant the extinction of nearly six million lives.1 The only way to prevent a return to the most intolerable and cruel despotism the valleys of the upper Nile tributaries had ever known was to snuff out at the beginning every pretender to the Mahdi's succession. In 1908 a body of ex-dervishes attacked and killed the deputy inspector of the Blue Nile province. This was just at the time the "Young Egypt" party was beginning to grow formidable, and their emissaries were working everywhere in the Sudan. A punitive expedition resulted in twelve death-sentences, which were commuted to life imprisonment. The pessimism of Sir Eldon Gorst's report for 1909 extended to his remarks on the Sudan. He declared that the tenth year of the reoccupation was full of tribal unrest, and that Mahdism was not extinguished as a faith, and had to be watched carefully and checked at every turn. There was much lawlessness along the Abyssinian border. The most dangerous 1 The population of the Egyptian Sudan was believed to be between eight and nine millions at the beginning of the Mahdi's reign. Five years after the reconquest it was still less than two millions. In the last decade the increase has been very rapid, so that, despite sleeping-sickness in the south, it now exceeds three millions. The steady increase in population is the most striking proof of the benefit of British rule. Intertribal warfare has ceased. Security from raiding, and government aid in combating districts were so unhealthy that the only means of maintaining order was to increase the Sudanese battalions. In 1912 there was an expedition into Mongalla and an outbreak in southern Kordofan. There were nine distinct military operations during 1914. If one had only reports to go by, he would gather that the fifteen years of Anglo-Egyptian occupation had not brought peace to the Sudan. But one has to consider the enormous extent of the country and the difficulties of communication. Punitive expeditions and local uprisings stand out, for they are news. When one reads in the newspapers only reports of divorces, does he argue that marriages are generally unhappy? Sir Reginald Wingate was home on a vacation when the European War began. He hurried back to his post, and there were many who said that he had dangerous days before him. The entry of Turkey into the war was expected by the Germans to have serious consequences throughout northern Africa; but especially did they hope for trouble in the Sudan. When I was in Berlin, in December, 1914, the collapse of British. power in the Moslem portion of Africa and Asia was confidently predicted. There was faith in the fetish of Panislamism. A year later, when Germany seemed to be planning the invasion of Egypt and the newspapers were full of alarming reports, I traveled all over Egypt, and went to Khartum to see how matters stood in the Sudan. Although the Turks were heralded to be moving for the second, and this time serious, attempt against the Suez Canal, and fighting was going on with the Senussi in the west, my journey of four days by rail and steamer from Cairo was exactly as in peace days. I found that no insurrectional movement was anticipated or feared by the disease, make cattle-raising once more profitable. There has been immigration from Abyssinia and from western Sudan Government. One fourth of the British military and civil staff-there were fewer than four hundred in all-had been allowed to return home to rejoin regiments or to volunteer. No increase in the British effectives had been asked for or was contemplated. For nearly a million square miles there were fewer than a thousand British soldiers. At the beginning of the entrance of Turkey into the war the sirdar received telegrams and letters from the principal chiefs of the Sudan, condemning the action of the Young Turks and expressing whole-hearted loyalty to the British Empire. Of all who came forward at that time with declarations of sympathy and loyalty only two have since been put under formal restraint for political intrigue with the enemy. Seeing is believing. The Egyptians are so unwarlike a race and so lacking in personal courage that it was easy enough to discount the German stories of the storm that was going to break in Cairo. I did not have to go to Egypt to reassure myself on this point. But the Sudanese, from the blackest of blacks to the most chocolatecolored of Arabs, have no fear of death, and are heroes of many a charge that surpasses Balaklava. The Sudanese, too, are fanatical Moslems, with the zeal and enthusiasm of primitive races and neophytes. I had been living for years in an atmosphere where Panislamism was the absorbing topic of conversation and the nightmare of my British official friends. So I needed to go to Khartum. By pure chance the trip into the Sudan was well timed. I was there for the two important fêtes of the year, the birthday of the prophet (muled-el-Nebi) and the anniversary of the visit of the King and Queen of England, who had stopped at Port Sudan on the way back from India, and had held a review at Sinkat, on January 17, 1912. King's day was celebrated by an impressive service at the Khartum Cathedral. The garrison stood on parade, and the sirdar read a cablegram from the king. It was a stirring sight to see these few hundred British soldiers, the only military evidence of British power in the midst of war in one of the largest Moslem regions of Africa. After dinner, on the evening of King's day, Sir Reginald took me down into the palace garden to see the Sudanese band that had been playing during the meal. We passed through the circle around the conductor, and stood among them while they played the Nyam-Nyam marches. The sirdar was in full-dress uniform and bareheaded. A couple of torches gave light. The black faces and weird music made me feel that I was certainly surrounded by savages in the heart of Africa. But they were savages whose affection for their big chief was evident in the way they looked at him and the vim with which they played. I thought back a year, and I was in the Vaterland Café in Berlin. There was music, too, and I was listening to an authority on the near East. "The Sudanese, you know," he said, "are certainly coming in with us when they realize that the sultan has raised the green standard. They are devils, and the black pagan tribes will readily follow the Moslems. They really hate the British rule. What happened to Gordon will seem little beside this approaching tragedy, just as the Sepoy Mutiny will seem little compared with what is going to happen in India." Sir Reginald Wingate asked me to accompany him to Omdurman to the dervish celebration of the prophet's birthday. We were a party of about thirty. We left the palace steps at nine o'clock in the evening for the trip on the Blue Nile to Omdurman. Our steamer was the Elfin, which was used by Gordon more than thirty years ago. At the landing-stage, about half a mile from the city walls, a great crowd of white-robed dervishes was waiting to form the guard of honor. Each held a flaming torch. The Sudan women, harking back to the jungle days, greeted the sirdar with a shrill cry, which they made tremolo by pressing fingers on their lips. Into the city, past the Mahdi's tomb and the Khalifa's ruined palace, we rode to a large open space, where hundreds of gay tents |