THE REIGN OF TERROR 3 The true civilization came too late on the scene.

Its spasmodic efforts had been stemmed by the dead-weight of vested interests in Cairo and Khartoum ; Great Britain would not move, being jealously watched by the Powers and fearful of the magnitude of the task as compared with the apparent ultimate gain ; Gordon had died after being sent to Khartoum to retire the alien civilians and garrisons ; and not until dreadful developments had ensued was it thoroughly realized that the alternatives had been civilization or virulent barbarism, and that barbarism triumphantly menaced a continent.

When a people's nerves get out of joint, the very violence of the cataclysm leads to a cure through sheer self-exhaustion. This was the case in the great revolution of France, when, though so many innocent suffered, the bad also turned upon bad to the community's purification. So also in the Dervish Sudan, more or less honest ideals deteriorated on achievement of victory, or the need of the mask was lost sight of; Arab fell upon Arab while the slow insistence of an inexorable wave gathered strength in the north. Murder and extermination, vice and corruption, did their work, and while the warlike qualities of the people, their faith in the Khalifa as a soldier, and their hatred of the Christian, sufficed to give cohesion to many, their numbers were not as before, neither was the vigour of their fanaticism so overwhelming nor the power of resistance so great.

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