March 2, 1885.—Dined with Mrs. Gladstone. After dinner, sat for half an hour or more with Mr. Gladstone, who is ill with cold and hoarseness. Long talk on Egypt. He said he had suffered torment during the continuance of the difficulty in that country. The sending Gordon out a great mistake,—a man totally unsuited for the work he undertook. Mr. Gladstone never saw Gordon. He was appointed by ministers in town, and Gladstone concurred, but had never seen him.
At this moment clouds began to darken the remote horizon on the north-west boundary of our great Indian possessions. The entanglement in the deserts of the Soudan was an obvious temptation to any other Power with policies of its own, to disregard the susceptibilities or even the solid [pg 178] interests of Great Britain. As we shall see, Mr. Gladstone was as little disposed as Chatham or Palmerston to shrink from the defence of the legitimate rights or obligations of his country. But the action of Russia in Afghanistan became an added and rather poignant anxiety.
As early as March 12 the cabinet found it necessary to consider the menacing look of things on the Afghan frontier. Military necessities in India, as Mr. Gladstone described to the Queen what was in the mind of her ministers, “might conceivably at this juncture come to overrule the present intentions as to the Soudan as part of them, and it would consequently be imprudent to do anything which could practically extend our obligations in that quarter; as it is the entanglement of the British forces in Soudanese operations, which would most powerfully tempt Russia to adopt aggressive measures.” Three or four weeks later these considerations came to a head. The question put by Mr. Gladstone to his colleagues was this: “Apart from the defence of Egypt, which no one would propose to abandon, does there appear to be any obligation of honour or any inducement of policy (for myself I should add, is there any moral warrant?) that should lead us in the present state of the demands on the empire, to waste a large portion of our army in fighting against nature, and I fear also fighting against liberty (such liberty as the case admits) in the Soudan?” The assumptions on which the policy had been founded had all broken down. Osman Digna, instead of being readily crushed, had betaken himself to the mountains and could not be got at. The railway from Suakin to Berber, instead of serving the advance on Khartoum in the autumn, could not possibly be ready in time. Berber, instead of being taken before the hot season, could not be touched. Lord Wolseley, instead of being able to proceed with his present forces or a moderate addition, was already asking for twelve more battalions of infantry, with a proportion of other arms.
Mr. Gladstone's own view of this crisis is to be found in a memorandum dated April 9, circulated to the cabinet three or four days before the question came up for final settlement. [pg 179]
Change Of Soudan Policy
It is long, but then the case was intricate and the stages various. The reader may at least be satisfied to know that he will have little more of it.[114]
Three cabinets were held on three successive days (April 13-15). On the evening of the first day Mr. Gladstone sent a telegram to the Queen, then abroad, informing her that in the existing state of foreign affairs, her ministers felt bound to examine the question of the abandonment of offensive operations in the Soudan and the evacuation of the territory. The Queen, in reply, was rather vehement against withdrawal, partly on the ground that it would seriously affect our position in India. The Queen had throughout made a great point that the fullest powers should be granted to those on the spot, both Wolseley and Baring having been selected by the government for the offices they held. No question cuts deeper in the art of administering a vast system like that of Great Britain, than the influence of the agent at a distant place; nowhere is the balance of peril between too slack a rein from home and a rein too tight, more delicate. Mr. Gladstone, perhaps taught by the experience of the Crimean war, always strongly inclined to the school of the tight rein, though I never heard of any representative abroad with a right to complain of insufficient support from a Gladstone cabinet.[115] On this aspect of matters, so raised by the Queen, Mr. Gladstone had (March 15) expressed his view to Sir Henry Ponsonby:—
Sir Evelyn Baring was appointed to carry onwards a declared and understood policy in Egypt, when all share in the management of the Soudan was beyond our province. To Lord Wolseley as general of the forces in Egypt, and on account of the arduous character of the work before him, we are bound to render in all military matters a firm and ungrudging support. We have accordingly not scrupled to counsel, on his recommendation, very heavy charges on the country, and military [pg 180] operations of the highest importance. But we have no right to cast on him any responsibility beyond what is strictly military. It is not surely possible that he should decide policy, and that we should adopt and answer for it, even where it is in conflict with the announcements we have made in parliament.
By the time of these critical cabinets in April Sir Evelyn Baring had spontaneously expressed his views, and with a full discussion recommended abandonment of the expedition to Khartoum.
On the second day the matter was again probed and sifted and weighed.