EGYPT AND THE SOUDAN.

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 138, 10 May 1930, Page 8

EGYPT AND THE SOUDAN.

At first sight it may appear very invidious for the British Government to deny to Egypt that measure of control over the Soudan which the Wafdists are so anxious to secure. But there are solid reasons why Great Britain should not lightly relinquish her hold of the great province, which has been administered under her guidance since 1899, and from which all Egyptian troops were withdrawn in 1924, following the outbreaks fostered by the latter with the object of eliminating British rule. The Soudanese have been very contented under British Government for the last thirty years, and the province has made material progress during that period, educationally, commercially and otherwise. The fact that Mr Arthur Henderson resisted the Wafdist claims to take over the government of the Soudan is, in itself, proof that even the Socialist-Labour Government recognises the danger that would follow an Egyptian battalion being allowed to reenter. and take possession of the country. Sir Austen Chamberlain, Mr Henderson’s predecessor at the British Foreign Office, speaking in the House of Commons on December 23, urged that such a step would be both dangerous and retrograde, and said he regretted to find that some sort of conditional promise had been made in that direction, as, if for any reason, His Majesty’s Government found it impossible to implement that promise when the time came, it would certainly be cast up against them as a breach of faith, and would bring discredit on Britain’s good name. The time had not come —if it ever should come—when Britain could again share the responsibility of governing the Soudan with Egypt. Sir Austen Chamberlain went on to point out that they were pledged under the guarantee they gave to the Soudanese people at the time of the reconquest of the Soudan to protect them, and by that pledge they must ever remain directly and nationally responsible. Mr Henderson has probably found that this is so since he has gone more fully into the question, and hence he and his colleagues were “opposed to the thesis that Egypt and the Soudan are ethnologically one,” and it was pointed out that, but for British aid and diplomacy, the Soudan would have been irreparably lost to Egypt, owing to the latter’s misgovernment.