Archbishop of Alexandria, the Greek Patriarch of Abyssinia, and the Grand Cadi and the Grand Mufti, the heads of the Mohammedan community in the Sudan, he might well have exclaimed, “I did not die in vain.” * * * * * I have now sketched for you the conditions which prevailed in the Valley of the Nile before the English came and those which obtain there to-day. What its future is to be depends wholly upon the action of England. Were she to leave the country now, or within the near future, she would leave it under conditions which would soon result in chaos, and the good that she has done would be largely lost. The extensive schemes of irrigation upon which she has entered, and upon which the prosperity of this whole region so largely depends, could never be financed by an independent Egypt, and the same is true of the question of transportation, which is at the bottom of all the problems of economic development in the Sudan. That England's position in the Nile country is illegal and illogical her stanchest supporters do not attempt to deny, but those who are really familiar with Egyptian conditions and character will agree with me, I think, that Egypt could suffer no greater calamity than to have the English go. Not that I think that there is the slightest probability of their doing so, for Italy's aggression in Tripolitania, combined with the attitude of the other members of the Triple Alliance, has resulted in Britain strengthening, rather than relaxing, her grip on Egypt and the Suez Canal. The canal provides, indeed, the key to the entire Egyptian situation, for upon her control of it depends England's entire scheme of administration in India and the Farther East. To withdraw her forces from Egypt would be tantamount to leaving the gateway to her Eastern possessions unguarded, and that, I am convinced, she will never do. Two lesser, though in themselves important, reasons militate against her surrendering the control of the Valley of the Nile. One is her hope of eventually realising, in spite of German opposition, Cecil Rhodes's dream of an “All Red” route from the Cape to Cairo, of which Egypt and the Sudan would be the northern links. The other is the belief that in the scientific irrigation and cultivation of the fertile Nile lands lie the means of freeing British manufacturers from their dependence on American cotton. I am inclined to believe, therefore, that in the not far-distant future England will become convinced that candour is a better policy than hypocrisy, and will frankly add to her globe-girdling chain of colonial possessions the whole of that vast region lying between the mouths of the Nile and the swamps of the Sudd. CHAPTER VI IN ZANZIBAR