British Political Ambitions 45 Evacuating Sudan is not leaving it as common plunder.

If politicians had told a small or weak nation, "We occupy your land by force, not by any other right," the weak would have endured until they regained their strength and with it their kingdom and their right. But modern civilization, in its new development, has not managed to compel governments to abandon force for right, making it their foundation in speech and their constitution in action. Instead, they have clung to the old, i.e., force, and have begun to dress it in the guise of the new, i.e., the guise of right and law, in words only. There is no issue in the world more apparent and clearer than the issue of Sudan and Egypt. For England, which entered Egypt in the name of the powers, preceded by the proclamations of the Sultan of Turkey, considering it an Arab land, and with the efforts of Khedive Tewfik and the assistance of a large group of Egyptian notables and the consent of the powers, entered it to consolidate the throne of the Khedive, or rather, to keep Khedive Tewfik on the throne. The first action it took was to deny the Khedive the right to withdraw his troops from Sudan. But the Khedive, the master of Egypt and Sudan, the master of the Nile from its source to beyond its mouth, did not withdraw his troops from that land to leave it as open plunder for anyone who wished to possess it. Rather, he withdrew them "for military necessity and for war reasons." Thus, Sudan remained the property of Egypt in the eyes of the powers and in the eyes of the law, which they claim is the system by which all their actions are governed. It was said that before the Egyptian troops were withdrawn from Sudan, English troops landed in Suakin and the coasts of Somalia, and Italian troops landed in Massawa. Lord Dufferin, in his report in 1883, stated the necessity of withdrawing Egyptian troops from the eastern, western, and southern provinces, but his conscience did not allow him at that time to state the necessity of their withdrawal from the Nile Valley from its source to its mouth, saying: "Some individuals are trying to advise Egypt to withdraw from all of Sudan, but he does not expect it to agree to that, as it is difficult for it to live without the Nile."