[Note.—This account is from the journal of Bordeini Bey, an eminent Khartoum merchant, who willingly gave up his large stores of grain to Gordon for the supply of the garrison. He was taken prisoner at the fall of the city.]
[THE GOVERNMENT'S RESPONSIBILITY (1885).]
Source.—Lord Cromer's Modern Egypt, vol. i., p. 589. (Macmillans.)
It has been already shown that General Gordon paid little heed to his instructions, that he was consumed with a desire to "smash the Mahdi," and that the view that he was constrained to withdraw everyone who wished to leave from the most distant parts of the Soudan was, to say the least, quixotic. The conclusion to be drawn from these facts is that it was a mistake to send General Gordon to the Soudan. But do they afford any justification for the delay in preparing and in despatching the relief expedition? I cannot think that they do so. Whatever errors of judgment General Gordon may have committed, the broad facts, as they existed in the early summer of 1884, were that he was sent to Khartoum by the British Government, who never denied their responsibility for his safety, that he was beleaguered, and that he was, therefore, unable to get away. It is just possible that he could have effected his retreat, if, having abandoned the southern posts, he had moved northward with the Khartoum garrison in April or early in May. As time went on, and nothing was heard of him, it became more and more clear that he either could not or would not—probably that he could not—move. The most indulgent critic would scarcely extend beyond June 27 the date at which the Government should have decided on the question of whether a relief expedition should or should not be despatched. On that day the news that Berber had been captured on May 26 by the Dervishes was finally confirmed. Yet it was not till six weeks later that the Government obtained from Parliament the funds necessary to prepare for an expedition.
[THE VOTE OF CENSURE (1885).]
Source.—Hansard, Third Series, vol. 294, col. 1311. (House of Lords debate on Egypt, February 26, 1885.)
The Marquis of Salisbury: ... The conduct of Her Majesty's Government has been an alternation of periods of slumber and periods of rush, and the rush, however vehement, has always been too unprepared and too unintelligent to repair the damage which the period of slumber has effected.... The case of the bombardment of Alexandria, the case of the abandonment of the Soudan, the case of the mission of General Graham's force—they are all on the same plan, and all show you that remarkable characteristic of torpor during the time when action was needed, and hasty, impulsive, ill-considered action when the time for action had passed by. Their further conduct was modelled on their action in the past. So far was it modelled that we were able to put it to the test which establishes a scientific law. I should like to quote what I said on the 4th of April, when discussing the prospect of the relief of General Gordon. What I said was this: "Are these circumstances encouraging to us when we are asked to trust that, on the inspiration of the moment, when the danger comes, Her Majesty's Government will find some means of relieving General Gordon? I fear that the history of the past will be repeated in the future; and just again, when it is too late, the critical resolution will be taken; some terrible news will come that the position of Gordon is absolutely a forlorn and hopeless one, and then, under the pressure of public wrath and Parliamentary censure, some desperate resolution of sending an expedition will be formed too late to achieve the object which it is desired to gain." I quote these words to show that by that time we had ascertained the laws of motion and the orbits of those erratic comets who sit on the Treasury Bench. Now the terrible responsibility and shame rests upon the Government, because they were warned in March and April of the danger to General Gordon, because they received every intimation which men could reasonably look for that his danger would be extreme, and because they delayed from March and April right down to the 15th of August before they took a single measure to relieve him. What were they doing all that time? It is very difficult to conceive. What happened during those eventful months? I suppose some day the memoirs will tell our grandchildren, but we shall never know. Some people think there were divisions in the Cabinet, and that after division on division a decision was put off, lest the Cabinet be broken up. I am rather inclined to think it was due to the peculiar position of the Prime Minister. He came in as the apostle of the Midlothian campaign, loaded with all the doctrines and all the follies of that pilgrimage. We have seen on each occasion, after one of these mishaps, when he has been forced by events and by the common sense of the nation to take some active steps—we have seen his extreme supporters falling foul of him, and reproaching him with having deserted their opinions and disappointed the ardent hopes which they had formed of him as the apostle of absolute negation in foreign affairs. I think he has always felt the danger of that reproach. He always felt the debt he had incurred to those supporters. He always felt a dread lest they should break away; and he put off again and again to the last practical moment any action which might bring him into open conflict with the doctrine by which his present eminence was gained. At all events, this is clear—that throughout those six months the Government knew perfectly well the danger in which General Gordon was placed. It has been said that General Gordon did not ask for troops. I am surprised at that defence. One of the characteristics of General Gordon was the extreme abnegation of his nature. It was not to be expected that he should send home a telegram to say, "I am in great danger, therefore send me troops"—he would probably have cut off his right hand before he would have sent a telegram of that sort. But he sent home telegrams through Mr. Power, telegrams saying that the people of Khartoum were in great danger; that the Mahdi would succeed unless military succour was sent forward; urging at one time the sending forward of Sir Evelyn Wood and his Egyptians, and at another the landing of Indians at Suakin and the establishment of the Berber route, and distinctly telling the Government—and this is the main point—that unless they would consent to his views the supremacy of the Mahdi was assured.... Well, now, my Lords, is it conceivable that after two months, in May, the Prime Minister should have said that they were waiting to have reasonable proof that Gordon was in danger? By that time Khartoum was surrounded, the Governor of Berber had announced that his case was hopeless, which was too surely proved by the massacre which took place in June; and yet in May Mr. Gladstone was still waiting for "reasonable proof" that the men who were surrounded, who had announced that they had only five months' food, were in danger.... It was the business of the Government not to interpret General Gordon's telegrams as if they had been statutory declarations, but to judge for themselves of the circumstances of the case, and to see that those who were surrounded, who were only three Englishmen among such a vast body of Mohammedans, and who were already cut off from all communications with the civilized world by the occupation of every important town upon the river, were really in danger, and that if they meant to answer their responsibilities they were bound to relieve them. I cannot tell what blindness fell over the eyes of some members of Her Majesty's Government....