DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE EAST UNDER BRITISH

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 2, 1 October 1948, Page 5

DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE EAST UNDER BRITISH

Adaptability Of Native Sudanese Guest speaker at the Whakatane Rotary Club’s gathering on Tuesday night was Mr John S. Bowman, who dealt with the vast development which had taken place in the Middle East under British influence. Mr Bowman, present proprietor of Willowbank Nurseries, Whakgtane, was until recently chief mechanical engineer to the Egyptian Irrigation service in the Sudan and later industrial manager for the land development scheme of Egypt, a staff of 2,000 men. He said the damming of the Nile by British engineers in no less than nine separate localities had meant the salvaging of untold thousands of acres of desert, and the famous Assuam Dam, which was completed in 1937, afforded the latest and greatest instance of British foresight and planning. In general, the work was carried out by native Sudanese, but invariably ..the engineers in control were British. The adaptability of the natives was an astonishing feature of recent progress, arid bid fair to veto the old idea that Egypt was an unchanging land where customs and habits 5,000 years old were likely to remain. Mr Bowman excused the backwardness of the fellahin by saying that Egypt had for untold centuries been the battlefield of the nations and that ever since the Roman conquest which swept away the last remnants of Egyptian civilisation she had been subjected to successive waves of invaders. Consequently, submissive obedience had become inherent in the rank and file. With the unification of the kingdom and the development of modern commercial ventures, there were likely to be the usual industrial upheavals which inevitably followed the emancipation of the serfs.

In answer to questions,. Mr Bowman v dealt with the possibility -of generating , electrical energy in Egypt, pointing out that the great drawback lay in the general flatness of the country, which gave no fall for the water required to drive turbines. Generating stations could be; established at the feet of some of the higher dams, but the most recent suggestion was a scheme to turn the waters of the Mediterranean into a vast chasm known as the Quatarra Depression which stretches from one end of the desert to the other. It was considered it would take centuries to fill the gap from a canal, or the water might even evaporate in the intense heat and arid sand after passing through the turbines.