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.

The Dongola expedition was begun, as has been s