n experience, testify to the fact that,
although there may occasionally be exceptions, the humanitarians
generally, however enthusiastic, are by no means unreasonable. On the
contrary, if once they are thoroughly convinced that the officials are
honestly and energetically striving to do their best to remove the
abuses of which they complain, they are quite prepared to make due
allowance for practical difficulties, and to abstain from causing
unnecessary and hurtful embarrassment. They are not open to the
suspicion which often attaches itself to Parliamentarians who take up
some special cause, viz. that they may be seeking to acquire personal
notoriety or to gain some party advantage. The righteousness and
disinterestedness of their motives cannot be doubted. The question of
the abolition of slavery in the Soudan presented many and great
difficulties, which might easily have formed the subject of acrimonious
correspondence and of agitation in Parliament and in the press. Any such
agitation would very probably have led to the adoption of measures whose
value would have been illusory rather than real, and which might well
have endangered both public security and the economic welfare of the
country. The main reason why no such agitation took place was that a
mutual feeling of confidence was established. Sir Reginald Wingate and
his very able staff of officials were left to deal with the matter after
their own fashion. The result has been that, without the adoption of any
very sensational measures calculated to attract public attention, it may
be said, with truth, that for all practical purposes slavery has quietly
disappeared from the Soudan. But if once this confidence is conspicuous
by its absence, a state of more or less latent warfare between the
humanitarians and the official world, such as that revealed in the
papers recently laid before Parliament, is almost certain to be created,
with the results that the public interests suffer, that rather heated
arguments and counter-arguments are bandied about in the columns of the
newspapers, and that the differences of opinion on minor points between
those who ought to be allies tend to obscure the main issue, and
preclude that co-operation which should be secured, and which in itself
would be no slight earnest of success.

Stress has been laid on this point because of its practical importance,
and also in the hope that, in connection with this question, it may be
found possib