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the Blue Nile, which rise in Abyssinia, and the White Nile which has its source in Uganda. The White and Blue Niles unite at Khartoum to form the main river, into which the Atbara falls some 200 miles further north. From the point where the White Nile enters the Sudan to the Egyptian frontier is over 2,000 miles. The "Black Country" is therefore twice as big as Germany and France together. It is practically as large as the cotton belt of the United States.

When the British in June, 1882, occupied Egypt, the nominal authority of the Khedive extended over this vast area. But the worst forms of misgovernment there obtained. The rich soil on the banks of the Nile which had once been highly cultivated was abandoned. To quote the graphic language of Lord Cromer, "there was not a dog to howl for a lost master. Industry had vanished; oppression had driven the inhabitants from the soil. The entire country was leased out to piratical slave-hunters under the name of traders, by the Khartoum Government".

Shortly before the English landed their troops at Alexandria a revolt broke out in the Sudan, led by Muhammed Ahmed, the son of a Dongola carpenter. He proclaimed himself to be the Mahdi or Messiah of his people. The masses flocked to his standard. The Egyptian troops were unable to resist him. The Mahdi pressed forward and menaced Khartoum. The Khedive sent General Gordon to bring help to the beleaguered garrison. But the tragic end of that heroic soldier in 1885 closed a sad chapter in the history of the Sudan. Egypt was forced to withdraw from that country and to fix her southern boundary at Wadi Halfa.

For ten years Dervish hordes led by the Khalifa Abdullah, who had succeeded the Mahdi, ravaged the land which had surrendered to the forces of anarchy. But during this time British statesmanship was not idle. On the contrary it recognized the fact that the most efficient way to reconquer the Sudan was to reorganize the finances of Egypt. It therefore allowed the "Black Country" to stew in its own juice until Lord Cromer got the Egyptian treasury into a condition of impregnable security. In the meantime British military experts took the army of the Khedive in hand and made of it an efficient fighting force. By 1896 it was felt that all preliminaries were ready and it was

VOL. OCXXIII.-NO. 830

decided to embark on the reconquest of the Sudan. The Dongola province was occupied, and in due course Sir Herbert Kitchener won the battle of Omdurman, annihilated the Dervishes, and became Lord Kitchener of Khartoum.

II

The Sudan having been reconquered, it was therefore decided that the new administration should create a partnership between England and Egypt for the government of the territory which this spirit of coöperation had redeemed. The country was accordingly officially designated as the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. A treaty was also drafted which provides that:

(1) the British and Egyptian flags should be used throughout the Sudan;

(2) the supreme military and civil command should be vested in an officer termed "the Governor-General of the Sudan" and to be appointed by Khedivial decree on the recommendation of the British Government; and

(3) proclamations of the Governor-General should have the force of the law.

This agreement, which created what has come to be known as the Anglo-Egyptian condominium, was signed in 1899. It is still in force. Under it everything worked out admirably until England, on February 28, 1922, announced that she abolished, in principle, her Egyptian Protectorate. From that day to this the fat has been in the fire. The condominium set up no claim to a share of the water of the Nile for the Sudan, even although that stream flows for two thousand miles across Sudan territory and for but one thousand miles across Egyptian soil. The Sudan, in other words, was for centuries but an aqueduct through which the Nile carried water to Egypt. Lord Cromer, whose personality dominated Egypt and the Sudan, did nothing to disturb what may be styled the de facto status of Nile water rights. On the contrary the benevolent autocrat of the Valley of the Nile gave the seal of his approval to existing conditions. This was done in no uncertain terms as early as 1903. At that time it was proposed to produce in the Sudan by irrigation exportable crops such

as sugar and cotton. The Anglo-Egyptian partnership did not then hold that as a riparian proprietor it had a right to draw water for its own purposes. Far from proceeding upon this theory, "as the available supply was strictly limited," writes Sir Murdoch Macdonald, then British Adviser to the Egyptian Ministry for Public Works, "an agreement was entered into between the Sudan and Egyptian Governments provisionally fixing the Sudan areas which could draw summer water at 10,000 feddans (approximately 10,000 acres). When the Assuan Dam was heightened a new agreement raised this figure to 20,000.”

The jealousy with which Lord Cromer safeguarded the principle of the Nile water monopoly of Egypt is readily understood when it is borne in mind that that country was the apple of the eye of her Regenerator. He had found Egypt a hopeless bankrupt, torn asunder by anarchy and drifting towards perdition. He made of her rejuvenation his life work. He conquered the Sudan in order to safeguard Egypt. Until February 28, 1922, when the British abolished their Protectorate over Egypt, the Nile was looked upon by England, by Egypt and by the Sudan as Egypt's river. Egypt was the exclusive beneficiary of this franchise, except to the limited extent that the Sudan had been graciously permitted to irrigate a small tract of land. Nothing was done officially until November 22, 1924, to impair the Nile water tradition which had become the cornerstone of the relation between Egypt and the Sudan.

III

Sir Lee Stack, the Sirdar of the Egyptian Army and GovernorGeneral of the Sudan, was assassinated on November 18, 1924. This brutal murder shocked the entire newspaper reading public of the whole world. It was a wanton crime, as stupid as it was cruel. It sent to an untimely grave a lovable Irish gentleman, a man overflowing with human kindness, generous to a fault, as brave as a lion and withal as gentle as a woman. I knew him but slightly, but there was something so contagious about his personality, something so irresistible about his smile, in a word something so very magnetic about him, that though I was in

America when he passed away I felt a sense of personal bereavement at his loss. I, therefore, can readily understand how so eminently human a diplomatist as Lord Allenby, the British High Commissioner at Cairo, felt when the bleeding body of his friend and fellow soldier was carried to the Residency on that fateful day. The hero of Jerusalem saw, and I admire him for so seeing, that this was not the time to mince words, it was not the moment to seek for euphemistic phrases or to cover a mailed fist with a velvet glove. It was the hour when a spade should be called a spade, when an honorable man was entitled to curse, and when the strongest language was the only appropriate mode of speech. Lord Allenby rose to the occasion, as he has risen to every emergency which it has been his lot to face. Englishmen who are in a position to know what goes on behind the scenes have assured me that his ire was epic in its righteous fury. It appears that certain Egyptians who called on him to express their sympathy received a raking over the coals which was as sincere as it was unexpected. Receiving what he did not consider an adequate reply, he forthwith advised the Egyptian authorities that "instructions are being sent to the Sudan Government:

"Firstly, to effect the withdrawal from the Sudan of all Egyptian officers and purely Egyptian units of the Egyptian Army," and

"Secondly, that the Sudan Government is at liberty to increase the area to be irrigated at Gezira from 300,000 feddans to an unlimited figure as the need may arise.

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The first part of this order deals with a matter which does not concern me. The second part of it is the pivot around which my story revolves.

As soon as the Egyptian public heard of this ultimatum it was flabbergasted, dumbfounded, petrified. The fine of 500,000 Egyptian pounds ($2,300,000) which Lord Allenby had assessed upon Egypt as punitive damages for the assassination of the Sirdar, was paid without hesitation and almost without a flicker. The money was in the bank. To withdraw it was a mere matter of bookkeeping which interested the Ministry of Finance, but which did not make any impression upon the fellah. But when Lord Allenby spoke in terms of water, his language went home

to every man and woman in Egypt. He touched upon the one subject which every Egyptian understands. And rightfully so, for, withdraw the water of the Nile from the Delta of Egypt, and its verdant fields will turn over night into a barren waste. The country is practically rainless. Without the Nile it would again become a desert-"for dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return".

I know that lawyers may argue that the Allenby ultimatum evolved a form of chastisement unknown to the penal code. I am aware of the fact that Edmund Burke insisted that he did not know how to draw up an indictment against a whole people. I do not attempt to controvert either of these propositions. All that I say is that the British were face to face with a condition and not with a theory. At least forty Englishmen had been sniped in broad daylight during the eighteen months which preceded the Stack murder. The killings had taken place in frequented parts of Cairo. The murderers wore no masks, and yet no witnesses could be found to identify any of them. Something had to be done, and this "water cure" was the most effective available remedy. But it was drastic. It turned the Egyptian water monopoly into a Sudan water monopoly. It did more than this; it potentially condemned 14,000,000 people to famine. It made future generations responsible for the crimes committed in 1924.

Strictly speaking, I am in no sense concerned with the punishment meted out to Egypt. If I have spoken of the matter at all it is only because the Southern States of the American Union are about to be made to suffer for the assassination of the Sirdar. Assuredly they had nothing to do with the crime. I, as a Southerner, cannot see them dealt a body blow without raising my voice. To make my meaning clear, to drive home my point, I shall be forced to examine in some detail the available water supply of the Nile. It may appear, at first blush, as if I am pleading Egypt's case. I shall not do so. I am thinking only

of my own flesh and blood. Every argument which I may adduce has but one impelling cause and but one aim-to save Louisiana and her sister States from paying the penalty for a crime committed by others.

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