In the fourth volume—the shortest of all—Gordon continues his narrative of events, and shows how numerous and how wearisome are the internal troubles with which he has to contend at Kartoum. Treachery is silently at work, while indolence, selfishness, and dishonesty make those who are not treacherous almost useless. He is the referee of every petty dispute, as much as he is chief justice, administrator, and commander-in-chief. The people demand his decision on every point, political or personal, and wish to leave it to him to do or not to do, irrespective of his knowing anything of the merits of the case they bring before him. His counsellers say: “Do what you think right, you will do better than we;” and his reflection is, “I, poor devil, do not know where to turn.” Then in sorrow he exclaims, “Oh, our Government, our Government! What has it not to answer for? Not to me, but to these poor people. I declare if I thought the town wished the Mahdi I would give it up: so much do I respect free will.” It is doubtless these internal troubles which lead him to say: “It is of course on the cards that Kartoum is taken under the nose of the Expeditionary Force, which will be just too late.”
✽
✽✽
In Vol. V., which begins on the first day of the Arab New Year, the arrival of the Mahdi at Omdurman is reported. The treachery referred to in the previous volume had led General Gordon to make numerous arrests—a necessity he deplored; but these arrests in all probability saved the fall of Kartoum on October 21st, for the Mahdi had evidently speculated on either a rising in the town on that day, or on the gates being opened to him by some of those who were then imprisoned. On this day Gordon also received the news of the treaty concluded between King John of Abyssinia and Admiral Sir William Hewitt, and his anger at the injustice of such a treaty is as apparent as is the bitterness of his satire: throughout the whole volume, indeed, he cannot get away from this subject, and, though the frequent effort to dismiss it in disgust from his mind is evident, he continually reverts to it. He considers it discreditable, and does not hesitate to say so. Moreover, he contends that by the Treaty of Paris, and also by that of Berlin, the integrity of the Ottoman Dominion is guaranteed by the Powers, and that it is therefore a farce to say Egypt ceded Kassala.
His views on the whole policy of Her Majesty’s Government are summed up in an imaginary scene in the House of Lords. “The noble Marquis asked what the policy of Her Majesty’s Government was? It was as if he asked the policy of a log floating down stream—it was going to sea, as any one with an ounce of brains could see. Well, that was the policy of it, only it was a decided policy, and a straightforward one to drift along and take advantage of every circumstance. His lordship deprecated the frequent questioning on subjects which his lordship had said he knew nothing about, and, further, did not care to know anything about.”
Fielding, had he been alive, would have envied Gordon the completeness of this humorous satire. The results of the policy, as far as it has gone, he shows to have been the loss of some 80,000 lives and the effectual restoration of the slave-trade and of slave-hunting: “a miserable end to diplomacy when it would have been so easy in 1880 to have settled the Soudan with decency and quiet, giving up Kordofan, Darfur, the Bahr Gazelle, and the Equator.”
✽
✽✽
In the latter part of Vol. V., but especially in the early part of Vol. VI., Gordon fully realises the Abbas catastrophe. He knows Stewart and Power are dead. There is no expression of personal regret, though he is “sorry for their friends.” He loved them both, and he pays the highest tribute he can to their merits; but he is sure that in their present they are happier than in their past. Moreover, he had done his best, for every precaution human foresight could conceive he had taken; having done this, the rest was in the hands of God, and the disaster was “ordained.” But these views do not prevent him from courting all inquiry; and he even holds a court-martial on himself. His verdict is, that if the Abbas was attacked and overpowered, he is to blame; but that if she was captured by treachery, or if she struck a rock, he is not to blame. In the one case he should have foreseen the chance, and prevented her going; in the others he could foresee nothing. It was out of his power to avert treachery; and the Abbas drew under two feet of water, and was accompanied by two sailing boats.
He explains with care and clearness why Stewart and Power left him; they went of their free will, not by his order; for he would not “put them in any danger in which he was not himself.” If they went they did him a service, for they could telegraph his views; if they stayed, they could not help him. They could go in honour, for they had promised the people nothing; he could not go in honour, for he had promised them himself. If Gordon were alive, and thought any one could misinterpret what he says, and thus cast a slur on the memory of either Stewart or Power, he would be greatly pained. His love and admiration for them both was evident; and he knew that, had it been their duty to remain, they would have stayed to die with him at Kartoum. “If Zubair had been sent in March, when I asked for him, we would not have lost Berber, and would never have wanted an expedition;” and, if Berber had not fallen, Stewart and Power would have been alive. Zubair had been his almost first request, and he never ceases to regret that one who had devoted his life to the Soudan should not have been allowed to comprehend its requirements better than those who sat in Downing Street.
Within a week of beginning this volume of his Journal, Gordon expected the town of Kartoum to fall; the recovery of an enormous quantity of stolen biscuit enabled him to hold his own for more than another month. During this time a notion of his troubles may be gathered from what he says up to December 14th; his real suffering must for ever remain unknown. That it depended upon the suffering of others we may feel assured; he never knew what it was to feel for himself. He felt for his country; he felt for all he tried to help, and if he was among such as were killed first, his dying thought would have been, “What is to be the future of all I leave behind?”
✽
✽✽