1th Sept. Yaw: telegram that we: publish this morning shows that, as before, Sir Kitchener, the Egyptian Sirdar, has taken care to make his victory complete, We do not know yet what has become of the Khalifa and the semi-mythical Osman Digna, who has already exhausted the cat's traditional supply of lives, but the whole of the Khalifa's force seems to be accounted for, Ihe deadliness of modern arms of precision in the hands of men who know now to use them, exemplified in the recent war between the United States and Spain, has been proved again in the battle of Omdurman, in which we are told that fifteen thousand Dervishes were slain, with total loss on the: Anglo-Egyptis side of only of is hutidred. We have still a great number of particulars to receive, but it is sufficiently remarkable that we in Shanghai should have the news of a victory on Sunday, and on Tuesday +morning even the most meagre details of a battle fought in the African desert on the previous Friday.
General Kitchener has covered himself with glory. He has not been fighting merely for England or for Egypt, he has been fighting the cause of civilisation—as the leading Paris papers admitted in their previous comments on the Buttle of Atbara—against the most barbarous and degraded tyranny to be found in the world. It is no child's play, no military promenade, to lead an army into the African desert. Hicks Pasha who was accustomed to desert fighting tried it, he foolishly tried to leud his army into a waterless desert, where his camels were a hindrance rather than an assistance as they could only carry enough water for themselves, and when he had got a little way his whole force was annihilated. Splendid fighting material, ton, are the Dervishes; have they not been known to perform that almost unparallelled feat of breaking a British square? It_makes one feel almost sad to think of those thousands of brave men charging repeatedly up to the muzzles of the Sirdar's artillery and magazine rifles, and being mown down in heaps, until, as Said Hassan of Morginani predicted some years ago, the great plain of Kerrere north of Omdurman is covered with skulls xs thickly as it was with white stones.
Me Sirdar has deserved his success, because he has left nothing to chance. He hus been his own Carnot, and has organised victory. His railway and his steam flotilla on the Nile have brought up his men in good condition to the front, and have kept them well supplied. Patiently he has moved -southwards, making "sure of- every step, and choosing the most favourable opportunities for Sighting.
His Exyptian fellaheen, agricultural labourers who were almost slaves a few. years ago, living as nearly on the ragged edge of poverty as their analogues in the districts terrorised by the Yellow River, have been.converted by their English officers into trustworthy and enthusiastic fighting men, and have been well backed by British regulars and best of all, he has had a free hand, and has not been hampered by instructions and remonstrances from official and officious ignorance at the British War Office. Gordon is avenged, but no one could feel more shocked than Gordon would have felt at the inevitable bloodshed with which that vengeance has been achieved, The gunboat flotilla has evidently finished what the army has done. On that desert the flying enemy must keep near the Nile for water; they hava unable to evade the Sirdar's gun-and they have surrendered.
magnificent deed, and well ray the Engl speaking nations claim that the Ang!
axon star is in the ascendant in 1898.
The Eastern Soudan, from whose neck the Sirdar has now removed the galling Dervish yoke, comprises an area of nearly a million square miles with a reported population of ten millions. It was in 1882 that the revolt of the Mahdi put an end to the Egyptian mie in the Soudan, and broke it up into various districts. After the death of the Maldi, one of his lieutenants, the Khalifa, the man that Sir H. H. Kitchener met and conquered last Friday, succeeded to his power, and' with Omdurman as his capital, has since ruled oyer some of the revolted provinces, Self-styled humanitarians have deprecated the attempt tu re-conquer the Soudan on the ground that the Dervishes were patriots rightly struggling to be free from the tyranny of their Egyptian rulers, That there were oppression and extortion in the Soudan under its Egyptian rulers in the past is confessed; but they never oppressed and harried as the Dervishes under the Mahdi and his successor have done, In 1885 the province of Dongola had a population of 75,000, who owned 36,000 head of cattle, used more especially in irrigation work, without which agriculture is impossible in the desert. In 1897, after 12 years of Dervish rale, the population of Dungola had fallen to 56,000 and the number of their cattle to 12,000. It is no wonder that the Sirdar, instead of being looked upon as the oppressor of patriots rightly struggling to be free, hins been welcomed everywhere as a deliverer. We are anxious now to know what has been become of Slatin Pasha's fellow-prisoners whom he left in captivity, when he escaped and brought to Ezypt the information which has done so much to smooth the Sirdar's path.
Omdurman taken and the Dervishes extinguished, what next? The dream of the Colonial Office is to see East Africa coloured red from Cape Agulhas to Alexandria, That the Nile up to Uganda is within our sphere of influence is recognised. he French from the Western Soudan and the French and Russians from Abyssinia, and possibly Menelik himself, have proposed to themselves to cut our red belt across at Fashoda, They have not {bad much success so far, a3 our Paris correspondent shows; and if our Government has determined that the Sirdar shall join hands with our forces in Uganda, Menelik will not prevent the junction,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.