_locus standi_ on the Nile. The French Government before
long gave way and recalled Major Marchand, who returned to France by way
of Cairo. This tame end to what was a heroic struggle to extend French
influence greatly incensed the major; and at Cairo he made a speech,
declaring that for the present France was worsted in the valley of the
Nile, but the day might come when she would be supreme.

It is generally believed that France gave way at this juncture partly
because her navy was known to be unequal to a conflict with that of
Great Britain, but also because Franco-German relations were none of the
best. Or, in the language of the Parisian boulevards: "How do we know
that while we are fighting the British for the Nile valley, Germany will
not invade Lorraine?" As to the influences emanating from St. Petersburg
contradictory statements have been made. Rumour asserted that the Czar
sought to moderate the irritation in France and to bring about a
peaceful settlement of the dispute; and this story won general
acceptance. The astonishment was therefore great when, in the early part
of the Russo-Japanese war, the Paris _Figaro_ published documents which
seemed to prove that he had assured the French Government of his
determination to fulfil the terms of the alliance if matters came to
the sword.

There we must leave the affair, merely noting that the Anglo-French
agreement of March 1899 peaceably ended the dispute and placed the whole
of the Egyptian Sudan, together with the Bahr-el-Ghazal district and the
greater part of the Libyan Desert, west of Egypt, under the
Anglo-Egyptian sphere of influence. (See map at the end of this volume.)

The battle of Omdurman therefore ranks with the most decisive in modern
history, not only in a military sense, but also because it extended
British influence up the Nile valley as far as Uganda. Had French
statesmen and M. Marchand achieved their aims, there is little doubt
that a solid wedge would have been driven through north-central Africa
from west to east, from the Ubangi Province of French Congoland to the
mouth of the Red Sea. The Sirdar's triumph came just in time to thwart
this design and to place in the hands that administered Egypt the
control of the waters whence that land draws its life. Without crediting
the stories that were put forth in the French Press as to the
possibility of France damming up the Nile at Fashoda and diverting its
floods into the Bahr-el-Ghazal distri