Egypt and the Sudan 339
and a rectification of frontier. Applying this to the Sudan
we should expect that the League would maintain the
present Sudanese administration but would recognise
Egyptian rights in Nile water and in part of the Northern
Sudan. It would, of course, be open to us, once the rights
of Egypt were fixed, to arrange a bargain on a financial
basis, as was done in the case of the oil rights assigned
to Turkey in Mossul.
What then might be a settlement of the Sudan question
based on an award by the League ? In the first place
it is clear that the most Egypt could hope territorially
from an award would be the towns of Khartum and
Kassala as having been founded by Egypt, leaving all to
the south, including the Gezireh, to a British ruled Sudan.
But such a partition separating the capital from the
Central and Southern Sudan would be so calamitous for
the country that it is very improbable. It would also, at
present, have political risks for Egypt, as this territory of
turbulent and only half-tamed tribes, which contains the
pilgrim route from French and Italian North Africa,
would lie between the Italian colonies of Tripoli and
Erithrea and would adjoin French North Africa. If, how-
ever, as seems more likely, the award adjudged to the
British Sudan, Khartum and the line to Port Sudan, a very
large extension of territory could still be allowed to Egypt
without incurring the objections above mentioned. For
there is, in Northern Kordofan and in the Eastern Sudan
about the Great Bend of the Nile, a large area in which
conditions only differ in degree from those in Egypt.
Provided the railway line from Khartum to Port Sudan
remained well within Sudanese territory, there would be
nothing in this area that the Central and Southern Sudan
could not very well do without. A line could be drawn
from Fasher, between Abu Hamed and Berber, that