THE FASHODA AFFATR. 315 been to Fashoda and Sobat were officially warned to keep the matter a profound secret. The case | thought was too serious to be left hidden in the breasts of a few where the issues involved were so tremendous. So | openly set myself to learning what had happened, and wiring every scrap of information for publication. Several officers were sent down from Omdurman with special despatches. Long before they arrived even in Cairo, cypher messages extending to many folios had been forwarded day after day direct from Khartoum to Downing Street.

The Sirdar reached Cairo on the 6th of October and left for England on the 21st of the same month. By that time much had happened. The official despatches had been published in a Parliamentary paper and there were ominous preparations for war in both France and Great Britain. Fleets were being got ready for sea and feverish activity prevailed in Gallic and British arsenals. The insistence of the Parisian Ministers in seeking to have other questions discussed side by side with the demand for the evacuation of Fashoda and their dilatory tactics but increased the feeling of irritation in the United Kingdom. Statesmen seemed to be undecided and diplomacy, as usual, revolving in a circle. Happily, this country was never better prepared for war, and that in the end, as has so often been the case, proved the best advocate for peace. It would be uncharitable to emphasise the fact of the French Government slipping away from one after another of the positions they had taken up in reference to the whole question. That being Frenchmen they -felt- acutely