The Season Of The Year Was
Unfavourable To Military Operations.
The hot weather was at hand.
The Nile
was low. Lord Cromer's report, which had been published in the early days
of March, had in no way foreshadowed the event. The frontier was tranquil.
With the exception of a small raid on a village in the Wady Halfa district
and an insignificant incursion into the Tokar Delta the Dervish forces had
during the year maintained 'a strictly defensive attitude.' [EGYPT, No. 1,
1896.] Lord Cromer, however, realised that while the case for the
reservoirs would always claim attention, the re-conquest of the Soudan
might not receive the support of a Liberal Government. The increasing
possibility of French intrigues upon the Upper Nile had also to be
considered. All politics are series of compromises and bargains, and while
the historian may easily mark what would have been the best possible
moment for any great undertaking, a good moment must content the
administrator. Those who guarded the interests of Egypt could hardly
consent to an empty demonstration on the Wady Halfa frontier at her
expense, and the original intention of the British Government was at once
extended to the re-conquest of the Dongola province - a definite and
justifiable enterprise which must in any case be the first step towards
the recovery of the Soudan.
* * * * * *
It will be convenient, before embarking upon the actual chronicle
of the military operations, to explain how the money was obtained to pay
for the war. I desire to avoid the intricate though fascinating tangles
of Egyptian finance. Yet even when the subject is treated in the most
general way the difficulties which harass and impede the British
administrators and insult the sovereign power of Egypt - the mischievous
interference of a vindictive nation, the galling and almost intolerable
financial fetters in which a prosperous country is bound - may arouse in
the sympathetic reader a flush of annoyance, or at any rate a smile
of pitying wonder.
About half the revenue of Egypt is devoted to the development and
government of the country, and the other half to the payment of the
interest on the debt and other external charges; and, with a view
to preventing in the future the extravagance of the past, the London
Convention in 1885 prescribed that the annual expenditure of Egypt
shall not exceed a certain sum. When the expenditure exceeds this amount,
for every pound that is spent on the government or development of Egypt
another pound must be paid to the Commissioners of the Debt; so that,
after the limit is reached, for every pound that is required to promote
Egyptian interests two pounds must be raised by taxation from an already
heavily taxed community. But the working of this law was found to be so
severe that, like all laws which exceed the human conception of justice,
it has been somewhat modified. By an arrangement which was effected
in 1888, the Caisse de la Dette are empowered, instead of devoting their
surplus pound to the sinking fund, to pay it into a general reserve fund,
from which the Commissioners may make grants to meet 'extraordinary
expenses'; those expenses, that is to say, which may be considered
'once for all'(capital) expenditure and not ordinary annual charges.
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