THE FASHODA AFFAIR. 299 outposts, he is to halt, report the circumstance, and wait for further instructions.

**In dealing with any French or Abyssinian authorities who may be encountered, nothing should be said or done which would in any way imply a recognition on behalf of Her Majesty’s Government of a title to possession on behalf of France or Abyssinia to any portion of the Nile Valley.”

Although everybody engaged in the Fashoda expedition was repeatedly warned not to disclose anything about it, and to forget all they had seen or heard, I was enabled very shortly after the event to wire, day by day, the whole story of the enterprise. It was General Grant, who, during the Civil War in the United States of America, terribly vexed at the newspaper correspondents, on one occasion vowed he would send them all away and not have a press-man in his army. ‘‘ Then, General,” said the American journalist addressed, ‘‘ may I ask what are you going to do without soldiers, every man of them can speak and write ?”

General Grant saw the absurdity of the position and smiled, and there was an end of the matter. It was, perhaps, a choice of one of two evils, either accepting and making the best of the situation to allow the trained journalists to remain, or to prepare to meet a tremendous inundation of wild letter-writing from all ranks that would find its way into the public press and do incalculable harm. ‘‘ Other times, other manners,” and those modern generals discredit themselves who fail to recognise at the close of the nineteenth century that the schoolmaster and the press must be reckoned with.

The information given me by the reis of the ‘‘ Tewf-