Ministers. With his eminent sense of justice, Lord Cromer, therefore, had recourse to the compromise embodied in the Anglo-Egyptian Agreement of Jan. 19, 1899. It was based on the recognition both of Egypt's earlier right of sovereignty, held to have been merely in abeyance during the intervening fifteen years, and of Great Britain's claim, by right of conquest,' to a predominant share in the administration of the reconquered territories. It established a joint sovereignty of the two States throughout the Sudan, and, as a symbol thereof, the British and Egyptian flags have ever since been flown there side by side. The supreme executive authority has been vested in the Sirdar (or Commanderin-Chief) and Governor-General, chosen by the British Government, but formally appointed by the ruler of Egypt. The Provincial Governors and all the higher officials have been British, and a regular Sudan Civil Service has been created and recruited in England. The number of Egytians in civil employ has been relatively small, and natives of the Sudan have been drafted in as fast as they could be trained up-chiefly in the Gordon College at Khartum. The Egyptian army has been used to supply the greater part of the garrison, with, as a rule, one British battalion and detachments of other arms as a stiffening. About half the Egyptian garrison consisted of Egyptians from Egypt proper, and the other half of Sudanese, who have always been impressed in large numbers into the Egyptian army since Mohamed Ali first conquered the Sudan about 100 years ago. British officers held all the higher commands. Until 1910 the Egyptian Treasury made up the annual deficit in the Sudan budget, and has continued to make certain contributions direct and indirect to the cost of the administration even since revenue began to balance expenditure. With the restoration of peace and security the Sudan has had a new lease of life, and as its soil, if adequately watered, is admirably adapted to the cultivation of cotton, great irrigation works have been initiated which are capable of immense extension, and already promise to inaugurate an era of almost immeasurable prosperity.

The curiously dual relationship of the Sudan to Great Britain and Egypt could, however, only endure so long as

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perfect goodwill and confidence existed between the jointly sovereign States. Whilst British control was for all practical purposes paramount in Cairo, as well as in Khartum, all went well; but when the equipoise was disturbed by the growth of a militant Egyptian Nationalism after the Great War, and was finally upset by England's recognition of Egypt as a sovereign and independent State, the maintenance of the joint sovereignty was in obvious jeopardy. On to the Nationalist agitation for the complete independence of e Egypt a claim was grafted for the restoration of the e Sudan to full Egyptian sovereignty, and it was loudly pressed when a great controversy broke out over the Sudan irrigation schemes, and the Egyptians, backed by f some British experts, alleged that they might dangerously curtail Egypt's vital supply of Nile water. Again, when Great Britain finally recognised the independence" of Egypt, differences arose over King Fuad's title. He claimed to be styled King of Egypt and the Sudan. England naturally objected to the second part of the title, which ignored her joint-sovereignty over the Sudan. The only logical solution would have been for Fuad to style himself King of Egypt and half or joint Sovereign of the Sudan. But that would have been almost a Gilbertian solution, and, under pressure from the British Government, King Fuad temporarily waived the point, holding it over for final agreement between the British and Egyptian Governments as to the reservations made by the former-one of them concerning the Sudan-at the time of the abolition of the Protectorate.

The agitation had so far been to all appearances confined to Egypt only, whilst we flattered ourselves that in opposing any interference with the status quo in the Sudan we could rely on the old hatred of Egyptian rule throughout the country, and the obvious inability of the Egyptians to restore it-even if we were willing to give them the chance-in the face of any resistance from the people of the Sudan, who are far better fighters than the Egyptians, and much better equipped to fight than in former times. This was doubtless an accurate estimate of the attitude of the majority of the Sudanese people towards Egypt, though a generation was already growing up which remembered neither Egyptian rule in

pre-Mahdi days nor the Mahdi himself and the days of his oppression. But, however much a Mohamedan people may hate to have some of their co-religionists as their rulers, they cannot in the long run have much love for Infidel rulers, and whilst this does not apply to the Sudanese of the Southern provinces, who are mostly Pagans, those of the Northern provinces are almost all Mohamedans, singularly liable, as the Mahdi showed us, to be swept by sudden waves of religious passion. Nowhere has Islam made greater conquests in our time than in Africa, and there are many roads across the Sudan along which fiery messages travel from the hotbeds of Mohamedan fanaticism on the fringe and in the oases of the Saharan desert to other parts of the Mohamedan world beyond the Red Sea. Bolshevism has also now a convenient agency in the Soviet Consulate at Jeddah for distributing through the Mecca pilgrims returning to the Sudan and other parts of Africa the anti-British literature, which Moscow schools of Eastern propaganda turn out in large quantities, specially adapted for use in Mohamedan countries. But though the Sudan authorities had their misgivings, the British public, at least, was completely taken by surprise when it heard last summer of the outbreak in the Sudan itself of serious disturbances in the Egyptian interest.

In the middle of August there was a mutinous demonstration made by cadets of the military school in Khartum; there was serious mutiny and rioting at Atbara, quelled, not altogether without bloodshed, by Sudanese troops, who in the emergency acted spontaneously without orders from the British authorities; there was trouble at Port Sudan, where the police instead of maintaining order had to be confined to barracks, and all these incidents occurred within such a few days that they were clearly part of a pre-arranged movement intended to provide Egyptian propaganda with fresh arguments in support of Egypt's claim to the Sudan. Were any further proof needed, the Egyptian Government quickly furnished it by circulating gross misrepresentations as to the character of the Sudan disturbances, and as to the methods used for their repression. There could be no other purpose than that of inflaming Egyptian opinion when, with all the official reports before

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them, Egyptian Ministers tried to make out that the dan rioters at Atbara had been shot down by British soldiers, whilst there was not a British soldier in the place, and, when pressed to issue the necessary corrections, they the went on prevaricating and talked about the protests they were entering in London, as if the restoration of order in the Sudan was an act of hostility towards Egypt. All this was a bad preparation for the longdeferred conversations between Zaghlul and the British Prime Minister. When eventually they took place in London, early in October last, they had no other result than to lay bare Zaghlul's utter lack of statesmanship and even of ordinary adroitness. For before entering into any discussions Mr Ramsay MacDonald succeeded in extracting from Zaghlul what had never been extracted from him before, viz. a definite statement of his demands. Once that was done, Mr Ramsay MacDonald was in a position to make an equally definite reply. And he did. For he rejected every one of Zaghlul's demands, and none more categorically than with regard to the Sudan. 'His Majesty's Government,' as he afterwards wrote to Lord Allenby, 'have contracted heavy moral obligations by the creation of a good system of administration; they cannot allow that to be destroyed; they regard their responsibilities as a trust for the Sudan people; there can be no question of their abandoning the Sudan until their work is done.' He adhered to the statements he had made on the subject in the House of Commons, adding, that ‘neither in Egypt nor in the Sudan should there be any doubt. If there is, it will only lead to trouble.' Nor did he leave Zaghlul in doubt as to the consequences of such trouble.

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Before, however, Mr Ramsay MacDonald had time to give practical effect to this warning, he was in the throes of the domestic upheaval which ended in the downfall of the Labour Government, and before Mr Austen Chamberlain had time to follow up and develop his predecessor's policy, the catastrophe of Nov. 19 took place in Cairo. Sir Lee Stack, Governor-General of the Sudan and Sirdar, was foully murdered, a victim only more conspicuous than not a few others to the long campaign of hatred which, tolerated if not instigated by the Zaghlulist Government, had created an atmosphere of

murder. The dramatic events which immediately followed must be so fresh in the reader's recollection that there can be no need to recall in detail the terms of Lord Allenby's ultimatum delivered with a great display of military force within a few hours of Sir Lee Stack's funeral; Zaghlul's rejection of most of the demands and his resignation after the seizure of the Egyptian customs at Alexandria; the formation of a new and colourless Cabinet under Ziwar Pasha, a respectable official of the old Turco-Egyptian type, who had been a familiar, if minor, figure in many Ministerial reconstructions; the prorogation of the Egyptian Assembly, after it had fully endorsed Zaghlul's reply to Lord Allenby, and dispatched a long appeal to the League of Nations; and then the formal submission of the new Egyptian Government to all the terms imposed by the High Commissioner.

An outrage so dastardly required swift and stern action; but several points in the ultimatum went beyond or beside the mark, and there was something unworthy of our traditions in the exacting of a pecuniary 'fine,' closely akin to blood-money, fixed at precisely the same amount as the fine exacted from Greece after the murder of an Italian General last year near Janina, as if half a million sterling was the international tariff for murdered generals, and in the threat, as Egyptians read it, of extending the irrigation of the Sudan without any regard for the vital supply of water to Egypt proper. There was impolitic haste also in the importation of various conditions concerning the Egyptian administration and the pensioning of foreign officials in the Egyptian service, which, having no clear connexion with the Sudan or with the murder of its Governor-General, might more properly have been reserved for treatment entirely apart from the tragic issues of the moment. One may perhaps assume that the terms of the ultimatum originated rather with Lord Allenby than with Downing Street, and that the High Commissioner, who, as the dashing soldier that he essentially is, had seen red' and forced the pace. In his somewhat reticent statement in the House on Dec. 15, Mr Chamberlain carefully abstained from making any specific reference to the terms of the ultimatum, except to repudiate firmly, but rather apologetically, the construction placed in Egypt on Lord