The occupation of the Soudan has been a tremendous blow to slavery; one of the principal recruiting-grounds for slaves has practically been closed. A certain amount of slave-raiding goes on along the Abyssinian frontier. Descents are periodically made by parties one to two hundred strong, well armed, from the south-western districts of Abyssinia. They raid the Barun negroes, and carry off the women and children. The same kind of thing is apt to happen on the Darfur frontier, and some of the remote tribes in the same quarter sometimes raid each other with the object of getting slaves. Some of these, but not many, find their way to Dongola, or the Ghezireh; others are taken to Tripoli. Special steps have now been taken by the Anti-Slavery Department of the Egyptian Government, which now has its headquarters at Khartoum, to put down this traffic. Two extra English inspectors have been posted, one at Rosaires, on the Blue Nile, the other at El Obeid. They are to form small mounted corps of the best Arabs and patrol the disturbed districts.
Apart from the actual work done, it will be a great thing to enlist the best of the Arab tribesmen in the Government service, and it is hoped that they will in time form the nucleus of an effective native police. These men have been in the past some of the principal exponents of slave-catching themselves; they ought to be very adept at their new business. With these exceptions the slave-trade within the borders of the Soudan has practically disappeared. During the first year or two captures were occasionally made of small caravans, but very heavy penalties were imposed. There is still a constant demand for slaves in Arabia, and once a slave is shipped over the Red Sea a good profit is assured. But it is too dangerous now for anyone to try to make a regular livelihood by it. There are still, however, about twenty cases a year of trials for offences against the slavery laws, mostly isolated cases of kidnapping a woman or a child, and probably there is besides a fair proportion of undetected cases. But the regular trade is pretty well stamped out.
The benefits of the abolition of slave-raiding and kidnapping are immediate and obvious to everyone. Even the Arab can understand them, but he finds it very difficult to appreciate our attitude—which, needless to say, is uncompromising enough—towards slavery as a domestic institution. It is the one serious complaint which he has against the new government. His domestic habits and customs have been completely based on slavery for centuries. Slavery is permitted and recognised by the Koran. In most cases the slaves themselves have been treated more like members of the family than as slaves, and no doubt many of them have had far happier lives than they would have had in their own villages. Nor is it difficult to point to evils which have arisen from the emancipation of the slaves. It is a melancholy fact that many of the towns in the Soudan are crowded with freed slaves, too lazy to do anything but steal, while the women have recourse to an even less reputable occupation. It is easier to break down the social system of centuries than to build up a sounder fabric in its place. But the thing had absolutely to be done if the Soudan was to have a real regeneration. Even when the slaves have been well treated, the demoralization caused by slavery has been great. The Arabs have all the vices of a slave-owning people. It was a good time to make an absolutely fresh start. All changes of such magnitude are bound to produce dislocations. The evils of the change will die out with the present generation. The good must be waited for patiently, but it is sure to come.
CHAPTER XIX
EDUCATION AND THE GORDON COLLEGE
Probably the last thing that a military government might be expected to take an interest in is education, and yet few educational establishments are so widely famous as the Gordon College at Khartoum. As yet it owes its reputation to the fact that it was founded by one great soldier in memory of another, not to its achievements; it was born great. But already it has justified its founders; its mere existence marks an extraordinary contrast between the character of the present régime in the Soudan and that of any preceding.
Whenever the Soudan is mentioned, the first question asked is, ‘How is the Gordon College getting on?’ and the question cannot be answered in a word. The actual building is indeed for the present complete. It is a handsome structure of native red brick, built in the Moorish style, but retaining the collegiate character. It occupies two sides of a square, the front facing on the river. In the centre is the principal entrance, and over it a tower. If the original design is finally carried out, the whole quadrangle will be completed. Along the inside runs a cool and airy cloister, with winding stairs leading to the upper story; the class-rooms are spaciously designed. Its commanding position at the east end of the town makes it a conspicuous landmark for many miles round. From no point is this so remarkable as from the hill of Surgham, which overlooks the battlefield of Kerreri. Here is summed up much of the past and the future of the Soudan. On the one hand is the scene of the final overthrow of the forces of darkness and ignorance by war; on the other the symbols of that longer contest for the conquest of the Soudan by the peaceful arts of science and learning.
With the eye of faith it is easy to look forward into the future, and to imagine the time, generations hence, when the Gordon College will be a true centre of learning for all these vast territories. Then it will stand, a completed quadrangle, in the middle of large gardens, its own territory, as green and cultivated as they are now arid and dusty. Its halls and class-rooms will be crowded with picked students from all the provincial centres, not vainly pursuing a dry and vain scholasticism, as in the other degenerate Universities of the Mohammedan East, but eagerly following in the paths of living science, and learning by practical teaching in the laboratory and workshop to wrest from Nature her secrets, and to absorb the principles underlying practice in the departments of chemistry and medicine, mechanics, agriculture, and the arts. Perhaps once more, in years to come, the culture and science of the Arabs will be as famous as they were in the great days of Arab dominion.
It is a long way to travel from such stimulating forecasts to the actual state of learning and education in the Soudan to-day. There was not much learning under the Egyptians, but at least a certain amount of theological study went on. Under the Khalifa even that was sedulously discouraged, and the books were ordered to be destroyed because he feared that they might tend to discredit the unorthodox doctrine of Mahdism. Reading and writing were not likely to flourish under a ruler who, possessing neither of these arts himself, and entertaining strong suspicions of those who did, was wont to give drastic expression to his views. As a consequence, there never was a country more absolutely and wholly illiterate. Writing is practically an unknown art, and reading hardly less so. It is perfectly useless to post a Government Proclamation unless a competent person is stationed by it to read it out to any passer-by. At the same time, there flourishes the most exaggerated respect for a written document, which is regarded as a kind of magic book, and cases have been known in which swindlers have extorted large sums of money by going round exhibiting a paper professing to be an order to pay issued by the Government. Obviously, education has had to be on very humble lines at first, and must continue so for some time.
Was, then, the Gordon College a too ambitious attempt to anticipate the future? Is it a mere white elephant, doomed to be a vain monument of an ill-directed wave of enthusiasm? Such a view is far from the truth. It would be strange indeed if a project so dear to the heart of Lord Kitchener was of such a nature. Certainly, it is impossible to start a complete University right away with a building and an endowment of some £4,000 a year. Time is of the essence of the question. It is possible to argue that the money used in the building might have been more advantageously expended in other ways. But, apart from the fact that the subscribers doubtless wished to see some immediate result for their munificence, I am sure that it was the right policy to build at once.