AMONG THE PAGANS OF THE SOUTHERN SUDAN LOSE to the Sirdar’s palace, in the centre of Khartoum, stands the statue of one of Britain’s noblest soldiers — General Gordon. He is seated on his camel with his back to the palace, gazing out towards the desert.

Some time ago two Englishmen were looking at the statue, and remarked on its position to their Arab guide. ‘* Ought not the statue to have faced the palace gardens?’’ they said. ‘‘ Oh no,’’ replied the Arab; ‘‘ Gordon: Pasha is. looking at the right place—the Sudan. See, it was for the Sudan that Gordon Pasha died; so they put him looking, not at the palace, nor to the north whence help was coming, nor to the Nile where he might have escaped, but to the great Sudan, for which he fought so hard and for which he gave his life. He is waiting for the morning, and with you English the dawn is come.”’

Sudan (from the Arabic ‘‘ sawad’’) means “‘ land of darkness,’’ and the name is appropriate, for from the earliest times the vast tract of country, stretching across Central Africa from the Atlantic to ‘the borders of Abyssinia, has been in darkness—religious, social, and political. Its many kingdoms and tribes have been engaged if constant warfare, both among themselves, and, in the case of the region which we now know as the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, with the successive conquerors of the adjoining land of Egypt.

In 1874 General Gordon was appointed Governor of the Equatorial Province of the Sudan, under the Khedive of Egypt, and later was made Governor-General of the ‘Sudan, a post which he resigned in 1879. During his time of office, he made the welfare of the peoples of the Sudan his one great aim, and it says much for his energy