25 FEBRUARY 1899, Page 2

The controversy over the remains of the Mabdi, and as

to whether all or only part of those remains were thrown into the Nile, strikes us as somewhat absurd. When bodies are daily dissected, skeletons freely sold, and pieces of mummy hawked about—a mummy is only a body a good deal older than that of the Mandi, and probably a far more reputable person—we cannot profess to feel any great solicitude about the matter. The Mandi was not a generous, high-minded Oriental of the Abd-nl-Kadir type, but a cruel and brutal savage who refused quarter. That Lord Cromer was quite right to sanction the destruction of his tomb we do not doubt for a moment. His was a shrine that might have become the object of dangerous pilgrimage, and its destruction was needed to impress Soudanese imagination.