I read the draft of the letter over to General Gordon. He expressed to me his entire concurrence in the instructions. The only suggestion he made was in connection with the passage in which, speaking of the policy of abandoning the Soudan, I had said, "I understand also that you entirely concur in the desirability of adopting this policy." General Gordon wished that I should add the words, "and that you think it should on no account be changed." These words were accordingly added.
III.
Source.—Lord Cromer's Modern Egypt, vol. i., p. 428. (Macmillans.)
Looking back at what occurred after a space of many years, two points are to my mind clear. The first is that no Englishman should have been sent to Khartoum. The second is that, if anyone had to be sent, General Gordon was not the right man to send. The reasons why no Englishman should have been sent are now sufficiently obvious. If he were beleaguered at Khartoum, the British Government might be obliged to send an expedition to relieve him. The main object of British policy was to avoid being drawn into military operations in the Soudan. The employment of a British official at Khartoum involved a serious risk that it would be no longer possible to adhere to this policy, and the risk was materially increased when the individual chosen to go to the Soudan was one who had attracted to himself a greater degree of popular sympathy than almost any Englishman of modern times.
[DIFFICULTIES OF GORDON'S CHARACTER (1884).]
I.
Source.—Lord Cromer's Modern Egypt, vol. i., p. 432. (Macmillans.)
I must, for the elucidation of this narrative, state why I think it was a mistake to send General Gordon to Khartoum. "It is impossible," I wrote privately to Lord Granville on January 28, 1884, "not to be charmed by the simplicity and honesty of Gordon's character." "My only fear," I added, "is that he is terribly flighty and changes his opinions very rapidly...." Impulsive flightiness was, in fact, the main defect of General Gordon's character, and it was one which, in my opinion, rendered him unfit to carry out a work which pre-eminently required a cool and steady head. I used to receive some twenty or thirty telegrams from General Gordon in the course of the day when he was at Khartoum, those in the evening often giving opinions which it was impossible to reconcile with others despatched the same morning. Scarcely, indeed, had General Gordon started on his mission, when Lord Granville, who does not appear at first to have understood General Gordon's character, began to be alarmed at his impulsiveness. On February 8 Lord Granville wrote to me: "I own your letters about Gordon rather alarm. His changes about Zobeir are difficult to understand. Northbrook consoles me by saying that he says all the foolish things that pass through his head, but that his judgment is excellent." I am not prepared to go so far as to say that General Gordon's judgment was excellent. Nevertheless, there was some truth in Lord Northbrook's remark. I often found that, amidst a mass of irrelevant verbiage and amidst many contradictory opinions, a vein of sound common sense and political instinct ran through General Gordon's proposals. So much was I impressed with this, and so fearful was I that the sound portions of his proposals would be rejected in London on account of the eccentric language in which they were often couched, that, on February 12, I telegraphed to Lord Granville: "In considering Gordon's suggestions, please remember that his general views are excellent, but that undue importance must not be attached to his words. We must look to the spirit rather than the letter of what he says."