Egypt and the Sudan 333
of the Gezireh, the arrogation to ourselves of sole
authority over a matter of such vital importance to
Egypt, and the assertion implied that we would promote
our interests in the Sudan as a penalty to Egypt, all
combined to convince Egyptian opinion that our com-
mand of the Sudan and our control of the Nile would be
used, at the worst, to check the development of Egypt,
and, at best, to keep it dependent on our good will. It
is that unfortunate, and no doubt unforeseen, impression
that we now have to remove before we can restore good
relations with Egypt or reach a satisfactory regulation
of the rights of Egypt and of the Sudan to the Nile
water.
Welnow come, therefore, to this most difficult re-
sponsibility of regulating the rights of these two countries
in the Nile. Egypt's political frontiers show on the map a
compact four-square territory. But economic Egypt is
just the delta and then the desert through which runs the
irrigable strip of the Nile Valley. Egypt is, in fact, so
ancient a civilisation that its cultivation has reached the
artificial condition that we suppose to exist in that elder
planet, Mars—a desert irrigated scientifically from a
seasonal inundation. And even if the preceding pages
have been more concerned with politics than economics
they will yet have shown the following fundamental facts
of Egyptian economy : that the country is, and probably
will remain, almost entirely agricultural, and that its
agricultural area is limited by the amount of irrigable land
and by the amount of water for irrigation. To this may be
added the general admission that the recent remarkable
increase in the prosperity and population of Egypt has
been produced by British improvements in irrigation,
To use the favourite axiom of Egypt, "the Nile Is
Egypt, and Egypt is the Nile.J' But of late it has suddenly