THE ROAD TO RUIN. 93 be completed, the Soudan railway had to be carried on, the Equatorial provinces had to be conquered and j annexed, not only to gratify his ambition, but to stave I off, if possible, the collapse of his repute for boundless / wealth, on whose continuance there lay his one hope \ of escaping ruin. / If, at this period of his career, it had been possible for Ismail to have made out an honest and complete statement of all the liabilities he had incurred in his dual capacity of Khedive and of sole controller of the domain of Egypt, and if he had submitted this statement to any shrewd man of business, and had asked advice as to what course he ought to pursue, I am inclined to think the advice tendered — if the adviser had spoken not as a moralist, but as a man of the world — would have been to the effect that Ismail's financial position was so desperate it could hardly be made worse than it was, and that his best chance of extricating himself from his financial embarrassments was to keep up appearances. It is very easy to say what abstract integrity would dictate, but it is by no means easy to say how the dictates of abstract integrity are always to be carried out in practice.

For a time the effort to maintain the semblance of wealth after the reality had vanished proved successful, r By hook or by crook money was found to meet the constantly increasing expenditure. All debts that it\ was not imperatively necessary to pay in cash, were / paid by Treasury bonds, which, as a matter of fact, V were mere promissory notes guaranteed by the\