The Last Frontier: The White Man's War for Civilisation in Africa

by E. Alexander Powell

“Riflemen made from mud.” A march past of Sudanese infantry.

THE SAVIOUR OF THE SUDAN AND SOME OF THOSE HE SAVED.

Here is another example of the harshness of the attitude which England has seen fit to adopt in her dealings with the Egyptian sovereign. In the days when Lord Kitchener, fresh from his triumphs in the Sudan, was still Sirdar of the Egyptian army, the Khedive announced that he would utilise the occasion of his approaching visit to Khartoum to review the troops of the garrison. For hours the sinewy, brown-faced soldiery marched and countermarched before the Khedive on the field of Omdurman. The infantry in their sand-coloured uniforms swept by with the swing of veterans; the field batteries—the same that had mown down the Mahdi's fanatic tribesmen—rumbled by at a gallop; the camel corps, the riders swaying on their strange mounts like vessels in a gale, paced past; then the cavalry came, as fast as the horses could lay foot to ground, lances levelled, the troopers cheering like madmen, thundering past the reviewing party in a whirlwind of colour and dust and noise. It was a fine exhibition and one of which any commanding officer might well have been proud, but the Khedive had received his military education in Austria, where faultless alignment and the ability to execute intricate parade movements are reckoned among the first requisites of a soldier; so when Lord Kitchener, the conqueror of the Sudan and the maker of the Egyptian army, reined up his charger before him, saluted, and perfunctorily asked, “I trust that your Highness is satisfied with the discipline and appearance of your forces?” Abbas Hilmi, probably as much from a spirit of hostility to the English as for any other reason, answered in a voice loud enough to be heard by all around him, “They are a fine body of men, Lord Kitchener, but I am far from satisfied with their discipline.” Officers who witnessed this incident have told me that Lord Kitchener was as amazed as though he had received a slap in the face. Within an hour his resignation as Sirdar was in the hands of the Khedive, who as promptly accepted it. But England could never permit her foremost soldier to be so wantonly and so publicly affronted, for to do so would be dangerously to impair her prestige among all classes of Egyptians. So the cable flashed a message from Downing Street to the British Agency in Cairo and a few hours later the Khedive was peremptorily informed that he could choose between apologising to Lord Kitchener and requesting him to withdraw his resignation or of abdicating in favour of his brother. Appreciating that it was wiser to apologise and keep his throne than to remain stubborn and lose it, Abbas Hilmi requested Kitchener to remain on as Sirdar—and he himself remained on as Khedive.

The men who really transact the business of the Egyptian Government are not the holders of cabinet portfolios, but the departmental under-secretaries, all of whom are English, their plans being perfunctorily submitted to their Egyptian chiefs for their approval, though they would be used whether they received it or not. The national revenues and expenditures are controlled by an English financial adviser, without whose permission the Khedive and his ministers cannot spend so much as a piastre of government funds. Similarly, the ministries of the interior, of justice, of communications, and of agriculture are dictated by English “advisers.” For upward of thirty years, in fact, the Nile country has been more absolutely governed from London than has India, or Canada, or Australia, or South Africa, or any of the Crown colonies, and this despite the fact that between England and Egypt there is no tie that is officially recognised by any foreign power. Now, thirty years is a considerable lapse of time anywhere, particularly in the East, where men mature rapidly, so that those who were children when the British came are in the prime of life now. The fact that in that interim England has had ample time to train them for the duties of governmental administration, as witness what we have accomplished among the Filipinos in less than half that time, but that she has made little, if any, effort to do so, is quite naturally taken by all thinking Egyptians as a proof that there is no sincerity back of her repeated assertions that she intends to turn Egypt over to them as soon as they are fitted to administer it. In fact, I have heard responsible British officials assert that, to their way of thinking, the natives were getting altogether too much education as it was, and that the less they were taught to think the easier it would be for England to hold the country. Frankly stated, England's attitude toward the Egyptians has been “You cannot go near the water until you know how to swim.”

Let it be perfectly clear, however, that nothing is farther from my intention than to intimate that British rule has not been beneficial to Egypt. No fair-minded person who was familiar with the appalling condition of the country and its people before the English came, and with their present state of prosperity, would cast so much as the shadow of a doubt on the wonderful improvement which has been brought about. The story of Egypt's rise from practical bankruptcy until its securities are now quoted nearly as high as English consols reads like a romance of the gold fields. During the last few years the country has been experiencing a land boom equal to that of southern California, property in Alexandria having sold at the rate of one hundred dollars a square yard; scientific irrigation, combined with the completion of the great dam at Assuan, has enormously enlarged the area of cultivation and has made Egypt the second greatest cotton-producing country in the world; the national debt has been materially reduced; and, most significant of all, Egypt's European bondholders have consented to have the interest on their bonds reduced from seven to three and a half per cent. Life and property have been made as safe in Port Said and Zagazig and the Fayoum as they are in Yonkers or Salem or New Rochelle; slavery has been abolished; official corruption has been rooted out; forced labour for public works is no longer permitted; an admirable system of railways brings the entire cultivated area within reach of the coast; hospitals have been established in all of the larger towns; while every phase of the public health has been so closely watched that the population of the country has actually doubled in the thirty years since the English came.

To my way of thinking, the most interesting chapter in the history of present-day Egypt is that which records the development of scientific irrigation. Northeast Africa being practically rainless, its sole source of water supply is the Nile, this mighty river created by torrential rains in the mountains of Abyssinia and by the overflow of equatorial lakes, and which is without tributaries in Egypt proper, having an overflow which varies with the seasons. For four months the flood rushing seaward, which is known as “high Nile,” enriches hundreds of square miles of what would otherwise be arid and worthless land. Then come eight months of low Nile, which, were it not for the genius of an English engineer, would mean unwatered fields, scanty crops, and probably famine. The British administrators, appreciating from the very outset that Egypt's entire future depended upon its agricultural prosperity, and that this, in turn, depended upon the fellaheen having an ample and steady supply of water for their farms, set their engineers at the task of devising some scheme for compelling the great river to pay tribute to the land through which it passed instead of wasting its fertilising waters in the Mediterranean. Hence the great barrage at Assuan, suggested by Sir William Willcocks, designed by Sir Benjamin Baker, built by Sir John Aird, and financed by Sir Ernest Cassel. A mile and a quarter long, containing a million tons of stone and creating a reservoir three times the area of the Lake of Geneva, this titanic barrier permits the additional irrigation of one million six hundred thousand acres of land. Though its cost was twelve million five hundred thousand dollars, it has already increased the earning power of Egypt fully thirteen million dollars annually, so it will be seen that it more than pays for itself to the country every twelvemonth. The systematic liberation, during the burning summer months, of the water thus conserved, means unfailing prosperity for Egypt, for it is almost unbelievable, to one who has not seen it with his own eyes, what agricultural magic water can work in this naturally fertile soil. As the regions capable of responding to irrigation are almost boundless, and as the water supply is almost inexhaustible, and as the engineers—and, what is far more important, the financiers—have come to appreciate that the pregnant soil can be made to pay for the cost of any reservoir, or series of reservoirs, which they may construct, it is only reasonable to assume that the great dam at Assuan is but the forerunner of many others, so that eventually the Valley of the Nile will be white with cotton and yellow with grain from the Delta to the Sudd.

But if Upper Egypt suffers from being too dry, Lower Egypt suffers from being too wet. The prosperity of the country, remember, depends almost entirely upon its cotton crop, which has an approximate value of one hundred million dollars annually, the cotton fields covering some one million six hundred thousand acres, most of which are in the Delta. That this source of revenue may be increased, the Egyptian Government has recently undertaken a huge drainage project, which will, it is estimated, when completed in 1915, redeem a great tract of flooded and hitherto worthless land, bringing a million additional acres under cultivation, almost doubling the production of cotton, and, incidentally, draining Lake Mariout, that historic body of water disappearing forever.

Agriculture and its attendant problems of irrigation and fertilisation constitute the sole hobby and amusement of the present Khedive, Abbas Hilmi II, and, consequently, he is keenly interested in anything that pertains to it, being a ready and liberal purchaser of all improved types of agricultural machinery, which he puts to practical use on the great estates which he owns near Alexandria, in the Delta, and in the Western Desert. It so happened that, while I was the consular representative of the United States at Alexandria, I received a call one morning from the president of an American concern engaged in the manufacture of agricultural and well-drilling machinery who explained that he was passing through Egypt and asked if it would be possible for me to obtain him an audience with the Khedive. The request was duly transmitted to the Grand Master of Ceremonies, and shortly thereafter a reply reached me naming the day and hour when his Highness would receive my compatriot and myself at the palace of Ras-el-Tin. Frock-coated and top-hatted, we drove to the palace on the day appointed, were received by the officials of the khedivial household, and shown into the salle de réception, where Abbas Hilmi stood awaiting us. After a cordial greeting—for the Khedive makes no secret of his liking for Americans—he drew me down beside him on a small sofa, motioning my companion to take a chair opposite us.

“It gives me particular pleasure,” I began, “to present Mr. K—— to your Highness, particularly as he is an authority on agricultural machinery—a subject in which your Highness is, I know, considerably interested.”