had the right to interfere in
practically all financial questions, and could make any logical
financial reorganisation, and any free use of the country's financial
resources for the restoration of its prosperity, all but impossible.

Yet in the space of a very few years an amazing work of restoration and
reorganisation was achieved. Financial stability was re-established,
while at the same time taxation was reduced. The forced labour which
had been exacted from the peasantry was abolished; they were no longer
robbed of their property under the lash; they obtained a secure tenure
in their land; and they found that its productive power was increased,
by means of great schemes of irrigation. An impartial system of justice
was organised--for the first time in all the long history of Egypt
since the fall of the Roman Empire. The army was remodelled by British
officers. Schools of lower and higher grade were established in large
numbers. In short, Egypt began to assume the aspect of a prosperous and
well-organised modern community. And all this was the work, in the
main, of some fifteen years.

Meanwhile in the Soudan triumphant barbarism had produced an appalling
state of things. It is impossible to exaggerate the hideousness of the
regime of Mahdism. A ferocious tyranny terrorised and reduced to
desolation the whole of the upper basin of the Nile; and the population
is said to have shrunk from 12,000,000 to 2,000,000, although exact
figures are of course unattainable. One of the evil consequences of
this regime was that it prevented a scientific treatment of the flow of
the Nile, on which the very life of Egypt depended. Scientific
irrigation had already worked wonders in increasing the productivity of
Egypt, but to complete this work, and to secure avoidance of the
famines which follow any deficiency in the Nile-flow, it was necessary
to deal with the upper waters of the great river. On this ground, and
in order to remove the danger of a return of barbarism, which was
threatened by frequent Mahdist attacks, and finally in order to rescue
captives who were enduring terrible sufferings in the hands of the
Mahdi, it appeared that the reconquest of the Soudan must be undertaken
as the inevitable sequel to the reorganisation of Egypt. It was
achieved, with a wonderful efficiency which made the name of Kitchener
famous, in the campaigns of 1896-98. The reconquered province was
nominally placed under the joint administration of