488 THE STORY OF THE KHEDIVATE.

conducted successfully without exhausting the meagre funds placed at his disposal. Whether this rigid economy, adopted in accordance with the fiction that the war was waged in the interest of Egypt, not of England, was not penny wise and pound foolish, may be matter for doubt. The advance beyond Dongola had meanwhile been greatly facilitated by the construction of a direct railway line across the desert, leaving the Nile at Wady Haifa, and rejoining it at Aboo Hamed. This line is said to have been completed at the rate of one mile a day.

After the meeting of Parliament in February, 1897, the British Government summoned up courage to drop the pretence that the campaign for the reconquest of the Soudan was a matter for which England was not directly responsible. In moving a vote for the expenses of the Dongola expedition of close upon ;8oo,ooo, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, stated — **that since the Dongola expedition was undertaken, the British Government had never concealed either from Parliament or the country that, in their view, there should be a further advance in the same direction; that Egypt could never be held to be permanently secured so long as a hostile Power was in occupation of the Nile valley up to Khartoum ; and that England, liaving compelled t/ie Egyptian Government to abandon the Soudan had incurred towards its inhabitants responsibilities for the fulfilment of which the moment had arrived, now that the hateful rule of the Khalifa was crumbling to decay."