EGYPT AND THE SUDAN.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16044, 7 February 1920, Page 10

EGYPT AND THE SUDAN.

Mr D, N. MaoDiamid, who is annon need to lecture in the Opera House next Thursday (February 12th), baa recently returned from a period of three years’ war work in Upper Egypt and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. Ho has been, in close touch with the officials, and is well acquainted with the resources and problems of the territories in question. The administration of the Eastern Sudan is entirely British, and very great commercial developments are anticipated in the near future, and the authorities are planning their railways with a view to having their own ports and harbours on the Bed Sea with easy access to the Indian Ocean. Just before the war Mr MacDiarmid completed a journey of some 4000 miles along the Nile valley f"om Cairo, past Khartoum and Fashoda, and overland on foot through Uganda, and then across the mountains of British East Africa to Mombasa. He is in New Zealand to concert measures for meeting the wishes of the Sudan administration which has opened negotiations with the Sudan United Mission Executive of the Australasian branch. Their desire is that the fine and numerous pagan tribes should receive a suitable education, and their conversion to Christianity is considered preferable by the Government to the certainty of their falling in a few years a prey to Moslem propaganda, which always brings with it the element of political unrest. The interest of friends of the mission in this locality may be gathered from the facts that Mr MacDiarmid was accorded a public reception by the Mayor before the war on the occasion of nis ) first visit here, and that the total of subscriptions and donations received from Wanganui and neighbourhood for the work on the Upper Nile during the last two years has amounted to over £330.