Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/43

 1899.] The Administration of the Soudan. [35

policy of the Soudan advance had been an error from the first, and was now drawing us on rapidly to new responsibilities, new entanglements, and fresh outlay. He wished to know the exact position of this new arrangement announced by Lord Cromer, and what were the relations of Lord Kitchener to the Govern- ment of Egypt. What was the nature of the control to which he was to be subject from home, and to what department in London would he report? From what instrument did Lord Kitchener derive his authority, and had he received any such instructions as were given to General Gordon ? He also wished to know whether the resources of Egypt were to bear the cost of Lord Kitchener's administration. Another point on which he wanted information was the extent of the area over which the Queen had claimed effective sovereignty with the Khedive. He believed that circumstances would now push the Government into the province^ south of Khartoum, for it would be impossible to keep their new dominion in a ring fence. Mr. Brodnck, who had succeeded to the Under-Secretaryship for Foreign Affairs on Mr. (Lord) Curzon's appointment to India, replied on behalf of the Government — many of the events referred to having occurred during his period of service as Under- Secretary for War. He stated that in the coming year the cost of administering the Soudan, which would fall upon Egypt, would be about 317,000/. The sums we had advanced during the last ten or fifteen years, either in protecting the frontier or in re- establishing the power of the Khedive — amounting as they did to nearly 10,000,000/. — justified us in calling on Egypt to con- tribute her share ; the more so that under our rule the revenue of the country had increased in less than ten years by 1,500,000/., though taxes had been remitted to the extent of 1,000,000/. Meanwhile, it was the confident opinion of persons qualified to judge that in about five years, if no unforeseen contingency happened, the Soudan would be able to pay its own way. In any case the absolute control of the Nile was indispensable to the prosperity and security of Egypt. Mr. Brodrick summed up the case for the Government with the remark that they had spent less than 1,000,000/. in regaining what their predecessors had spent 9,000,600/. in losing. Mr. L. Courtney (Bodmin, Cornwall), from the other side of the House, and as a Liberal Unionist, had held throughout very similar views to those expressed by Mr. Morley in Opposition. He was therefore able to protest against the advance of our troops into the Soudan, holding the view that no occupation of Upper Egypt by a hostile Power could materially injure those on the banks of the Lower Nile. Sir Edward Grey (Berwick-on-Tweed, Northumberland), who had been Foreign Under-Secretary in the Government in which Mr. Morley held a seat in the Cabinet, boldly dissociated himself from his former colleague's attitude. He held that the expedition into the Soudan, which had always been inevitable, had been undertaken at an opportune moment. Where Egyptian territory

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