THE ANOMALOUS SOUDAN.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLI, Issue 8545, 27 March 1908, Page 6

THE ANOMALOUS SOUDAN.

"An anomaly within an anomaly" is Mr Sidney Low's impression of the Government of the Soudan. Watching an Egyptian battalion on parade at Omdurman,' he noticed that the men were Arabs and negroes, dressed in English uniforms, that officers were English, that the band played "The March of the Men of Harlech," that the colours bore the Khedival crescent, but that the colonel rapped out orders in Turkish, which was as much a foreign tongue to all grades as Chinese. This use of Turkish was a reminder that he was still under the shadow of the Sultan, "in a land which is still, according to vague political fiction, linked on to that queer conglomerate, the Ottoman Empire. , ' It is a strange irony that this splendidly governed country, which is being surely lifted from chaotic barbarism to ordered civilisation, should be an appanage of an Empire where good Government is unknown. But of course the appanage is only a fiction. The political situation in the Soudan is distinctly complicated in theory, but in reality it is very simple. The English official does not worry about the interests of the Khedive and the Sultan, but does his work as it comes, and does it very well. To all intents and purposes the country is 'under British rule. The military and civil hierarchy is entirely English in its higher grades, the subordinates are mostly Egyptians. These Egyptians, who are really foreigners, may be supplanted in time by young Arabs and negroes from the Gordon College, the military school, and the workshops. The English army of occupation in Egypt is represented by one batalion, but four-fifths of the Egyptian army is in the Soudan. The duty of looking after Egypt devolves mainly on English trops. It is thought that in time the defence of the Soudan may be left entirely to battalions of Soudanese, officered partly by the sons of fighting chiefs, instead of by Egypt- j tians as at present. Mr Low was struck with the youth and enthusiasm I of the English officials. There are only three or four over fifty; most are well under forty, and many below thirty. Sport is followed purely as a recreation; the real business of life is work, into which all throw themselves heartily, with a kind of schoolboy gaiety. #