Sudan Archive

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KHARTOUM MEMORIAL COLLEGE. 271 to British schoolboys transcends all the learning of the wise in the Soudan. The people, Arabs and blacks, are docile and capable of readily learning everything taught in the ordinary scholastic curriculum at home. With a minimum annual income of £1500 a year, teachers and apparatus could, it was said, be provided, although in addition five or six thousand pounds sterling would be required for preliminary outlay. The land and part of the necessary buildings, the Sirdar intimated, would probably be presented as a gift by the Egyptian Government. It would be futile, as all knew, trying to succeed with a staff of native teachers. Tribal relations and other causes stood in the way, and unless the college was to be doomed to failure it would have to be launched and conducted by virile European professors. Muchif not all of the food required for the staff and scholars could be purchased cheaply or might be raised in the college grounds by the pupils themselves. Technical training would be taught hand in hand with the ordinary courses. These were the outlines of the Sirdar’s communications, who, by the way, at that date was already being known as Lord Kitchener of Khartoum. It having been noticed that certain dignitaries and others were, through the press, ruining the scheme by attempts to foist upon it theological and medical schools, a complete answer was found for their statements by a near relative of Gordon Pasha. In the course of conversation he referred to what I knew to be the facts, that the British and Egyptian army doctors wherever stationed in the Soudan, or from Assouan south, were wont to give

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