EVER since the beginning of the century England and Egypt have been at loggerheads over the waters of the Nile. Great Britain desires to divert part of those waters from the Nile's upper course - especially from the Blue Nile -to irrigate the arid but fertile plains of the Sudan, which have proved to be excellent cotton country. When Lord Kitchener was Great Britain's representative at Cairo, a plan for this was submitted to the Government of the Government of Egypt; but the proposal met violent opposition, as it was thought to threaten that country's very existence. So it was not until shortly before the World War, after long negotiations and the exercise of much pressure on the part of London, that the Egyptian authorities finally reluctantly consented to the erection of the Makwar Dam on the Blue Nile, which will provide water to irrigate about five hundred and thirty square miles of land, in the Gezira district, lying between the White and the Blue Nile.

When the Nationalist movement swept everything before it in Egypt, after the war, this concession was a thorn in the flesh of the Cairo Cabinet. The members knew that the amount of water to be taken from the Blue Nile would not seriously threaten Egypt's supply. Furthermore, in 1920 Lord Allenby promised again, in the name of the British Government, that the quantity called for in the original plan 1 From Frankfurter Zeitung (Liberal daily), May 3

was all that would ever be diverted. But the Egyptians could not help asking themselves whether such a promise would be kept forever. Moreover, Egypt's population is growing rapidly - almost twice as fast as that of Germany, for instance- and she needs more land for her own people. Her population density is already 417 per square kilometre, while it is only 2.7 in the Sudan itself. In Egypt millions of people depend on agriculture for their daily bread. In the Sudan agriculture is pursued for the profit and convenience of Manchester spinners.

If Egypt and the Sudan were under the same Government the respective interests of the two countries might be reconciled, for all of the Nile's waters are never used for irrigation; great quantities flow undiverted to the sea, and there is plenty for all. Plans have been in existence for a long time to build dams and reservoirs in the vicinity of the Delta to irrigate larger areas there. A single Government might handle all the development along the entire river as one enterprise, and ensure that every part of its riparian area received equal justice.

These were the considerations that have moved successive Egyptian Cabinets, especially the one presided over by the Nationalist leader, Zaghlul Pasha, to assert so vigorously their jurisdiction over the Sudan. Their members do not think their country can be independent unless she controls that territory, for whosoever possesses the Sudan has a strangle hold on Egypt

571

herself and can starve her into submission at will.

So matters remained at an impasse until November 1924, when certain hotheaded Egyptian conspirators assassinated Sir Lee Stack, the GovernorGeneral of Sudan, at Cairo. Great Britain had a Conservative Cabinet at the time, which promptly seized the chance thus offered to gain a coveted possession for the Empire. So an ultimatum was presented to the Cairo Government demanding that all Egyptian troops be withdrawn from the Sudan and that all restrictions previously in force upon the right to take water from the Nile to irrigate that province should be canceled. Zaghlul Pasha resigned, and a new Cabinet, formed by Ziwar Pasha, without the coöperation of Parliament, accepted Great Britain's demands.

Since then England has managed the Sudan as if it were a British colony. Although the new Governor-General, like his assassinated predecessor, was nominally appointed by the King of Egypt, the Sudan Administration pays no attention whatsoever to Cairo. This was strikingly shown during the ceremonies attending the opening of the Makwar Dam last January, when Sir Geoffrey Archer, the Governor-General, sent King George a telegram assuring him of the 'loyalty of the Sudanese people.' The Egyptians note with growing bitterness that the Khartum authorities act as if the Agreement of 1899 between Egypt and Great Britain, establishing their joint sovereignty over that province, were a dead letter, and treat Egypt's officials at Khartum merely as tolerated guests. Probably the people of Sudan sympathize with the Egyptians, as the two nations are of the same faith, but they are a primitive nation who have no way to express their opinions, unless it be by the tribal rebellions that are con

stantly breaking out in the remoter districts.

Nor is there any prospect of an immediate change in the political situation. The new elections which the Egyptian Government has been forced to call by the pressure of the united Opposition will presumably give the Nationalist Parties an overwhelming majority, and result in a new Cabinet under Zaghlul Pasha. In view of this prospect, the English authorities have of late been slightly more conciliatory. The Sudan Government has informed the Egyptian Ministry that it is ready to reserve all the waters of the White Nile exclusively for Egypt's use. It has proposed to erect another great dam at Jebel Aulia on the White Nile near Khartum, to ensure a constant supply of water for the lower valley. Surveys have been made for a reservoir with a capacity of 2.1 billion cubic metres, which will make it possible considerably to increase the present cultivable area in Egypt. It is also proposed to transfer the Sudanese population along the White Nile to the territories irrigated by the Makwar Dam on the Blue Nile, in order that there may be no diversion even for riparian crops from the former stream. Other details of this vast enterprise include a reservoir at Lake Albert, the source of the White Nile, and a second retaining dam at Nagh Hamâdi in Upper Egypt.

But the Egyptian Nationalists protest: 'What do all these big projects mean for us so long as they lie outside our jurisdiction. Provided the Government of Sudan is willing, we shall have water. But if that Government changes its mind, it can cut us off in a moment.' On the other hand, England reflects: 'So long as the key to the Nile waters is in Sudan, we can control Egypt and the Suez Canal, even without keeping a military garrison there. But, after all, we are not absolute masters, because

Tsana Lake, in the northwestern corner of the Abyssinian plateau, is the source of the Blue Nile, whose annual flood is fed by its waters. In order to regulate the flow of that river, therefore, it is necessary to convert this lake into an artificial reservoir. For years that problem has hovered before the minds of British administrators, and as long ago as 1900 Sir Murdock MacDonald, then Undersecretary in the Egyptian Ministry of Public Works, drafted plans for such a project. When the Boundary Treaty between Sudan and Abyssinia was signed in May 1902, England followed it up by an accord with Emperor Menelik for regulating water rights at Tsana Lake and along those portions of the Blue Nile which flow through Abyssinian territory, by which Abyssinia engaged not to build any new irrigation works there, and Great Britain was conceded the right to construct retaining dams at the Lake itself. The Emperor declared himself ready to negotiate further concerning this, subject to the condition that nothing be done that impaired Abyssinia's sovereignty. That very year an Egyptian topographical commission studied the project on the ground, and two years later published its report.

After that the project slept for several years. At last, in 1915, a new mixed commission, consisting of representatives of Egypt, Sudan, and Abyssinia, took up these interrupted labors, and still another body of the same character did some work in 1920. All three commissions agree in their findings, which are to the effect that Tsana Lake ordinarily contains about three and one-half billion cubic metres of water. By blastings and excavations

its capacity can be increased to eight billion cubic metres, which will retain water enough to supply the irrigable lands along the course of the Nile for two years even were there a season without rain or snow. The necessity for so large a reserve is due to the fact that the amount of water in the Lake varies greatly from year to year, and is often considerably less than the minimum supply just mentioned.

In 1906 England, France, and Italy concluded a treaty in which Great Britain was recognized to have special interests in the Nile Basin, which of course includes Tsana Lake; France was given a guaranty for the railway which she was then building from Jibuti on the Red Sea to Addis Abeba, the Abyssinian capital; and Italy was conceded priority right to a concession for a railway connecting her colonies of Eritrea and Somaliland. The last provision contemplated ultimately a railroad from Mogadishu, in Italian Somaliland, through Addis Abeba, to Eritrea. All these agreements stipulated that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Abyssinia should be respected.

Now that Great Britain has set herself earnestly at work to build up a great irrigation system in the Sudan, Abyssinia has suddenly acquired new importance for her. Quite apart from England's interest in providing her cotton spinners with an ample supply of raw cotton independent of American control, she has an even more vital object in view the protection of the Suez Canal. If she is to control that narrow highway, upon which the very existence of her Empire depends, she cannot let Egypt become a really sovereign State or control the Sudan. Inasmuch, however, as both the Sudan and Egypt live from the waters of the Nile, the territory that feeds the Nile must be kept in England's hands. We

may therefore expect her next political move to be to fasten her control more firmly over Northwestern Abyssinia.

Shrewdly foreseeing what was in the air, the Abyssinian Prince Regent, Ras Taffari, applied in 1923 for Abyssinia's admission to the League of Nations. England promptly protested; her representatives declared that Abyssinia had not yet abolished the slave trade, and therefore was unworthy to be a member of so high-minded an international body. But when it came out, in the course of the debates, that members of the British Legation in Addis Abeba - to be sure, not born Britishers, but Levantines in the British Government Service were themselves slaveholders, a quietus was put upon that argument; and Abyssinia was admitted to the League, after engaging to suppress the slave trade. But she would hardly have won her case

without the vigorous support of France, who does not intend to surrender the economic advantages her long and consistent friendship for Abyssinia have gained for her in that country.

Now we learn that England and Italy have negotiated a new agreement regarding their Abyssinian interests. The British assert that they have merely reaffirmed their water rights on Tsana Lake, and the Italians claim that they have only cleared the diplomatic right of way for the railway they propose to build through Abyssinia to connect their African colonies. But Mussolini's eagerness to gain new territories, and Fascist irritation at the stigma of Italy's disastrous defeat by the Abyssinians in 1896, belie such modest aims. At the very least, we may feel sure that Europe is about to bless another backward country with more beneficent 'spheres of influence.'

As one travels about in the Far East and observes the growing unrest in China and Japan one cannot but be struck by the constant reports in the daily press which seem to indicate that the unsettled conditions already noted have their counterpart in one form or another throughout the Orient. In the Malay States it is true that firm government has the situation more or less under control, but even there one is told that the authorities feel the danger presaged by the antiforeign movement in China on the one side and the constant activities of agitators from India on the other.

This being so, one is tempted to inquire, 'What is the matter in India, and how is it that conditions there have become so uncertain as to threaten the stability of the whole British Empire?' Naturally enough, this is a question so wide that a dozen answers might be given to it, all of them possessing more than a modicum of truth, and the writer himself has heard fully half a dozen differing but feasible theories propounded by Anglo-Indians all within the space of half an hour's conversation.

Therefore it is that he would not presume to pretend to answer in full the problem which he propounded above, but instead would present a brief consideration of a few aspects of the case as they have been discussed with him, leaving the reader to draw therefrom his own deductions.

1 From the China Weekly Review (Shanghai American English-language weekly), April 24

To get at the first cause of the trouble in India to-day it is necessary to go back many years to the moment when Lord Macaulay and the great Sanskrit scholar, Mr. H. H. Wilson, opposed each other in a great debate as to the form of education in India. Wilson, long since forgotten, was in favor of teaching the peoples of India their own religions and their own languages, while Lord Macaulay advocated the ordinary curriculum of an English education, premising that by this means India would be not only Westernized but Christian within a few decades at most. As is well known now, this policy proved to be but a partial success, for, although it may be said that the British did introduce their language and culture into India, that culture remained as but a thin veneer over the fundamental character of the Oriental. Residents in the Far East will readily appreciate the truth and the importance of this fact, for they can study very similar conditions in either China or Japan and deduce therefrom the difficulty which now besets the governing power in India.

Then too it should be noted that in the early days the British sent comparatively few of their number to India in positions of authority, and these few were men of notable intellect and character who could not fail to acquire great influence over the natives. As methods of transit grew better and trade increased the number of whites coming to the country was naturally augmented, but unfortunately the quality