DIFFICULTIES OF THE GOVERNMENT. II3 smashed. Remember that once Khartum belongs to Mahdi, the task will be far more difficult; yet you will, for safety of Egypt, execute it. If you decide on smashing Mahdi then send up another ,£100,000, and send up 200 Indian troops to Wady Haifa, and send officer up to Dongola under pretence to look out quarters for troops. Leave Suakim and Massowah alone. I repeat that evacuation is possible, but you will feel effect in Egypt, and will be forced to enter into a far more serious affair in order to guard Egypt. At present, it would be comparatively easy to destroy Mahdi."

We have already noted the reasonable considerations which caused the government to differ from Gordon, Stewart, and Baring, as to the employment of Zebehr, and his restoration to authority, and these objections were emphatically stated by Earl Granville; but events thickened fast, and Gordon repeatedly urged that every day made it more imperative that some steps should be taken to provide for the settlement of the government when the time came for him to retire; and, before retiring, he could place a man like Zebehr in authority. The imminent danger was that the advance of the rebellion might make it more and more difficult even for Zebehr to take the control, and that unless some steps were taken to provide for a strong government it might, and probably would, be impossible to fulfil the first part of the commission with which Gordon had been intrusted. Kassala, Sennar, Berber, would soon be in jeopardy unless some kind of aid were sent; and as neither a British nor an Indian force was to be suffered to make such a demonstration as might in itself aid in putting an end to the increasing desertion of the soldiers and the half-reluctant revolt of wavering tribes, and as, moreover, there seemed to be no expectation of the route being opened from Berber to Suakim, the necessity for the appointment, either by England or Egypt, of the only man who had the ability and the power to smite the rebellion, to encourage the tribal kings, and to rccal the people ol the Soudan to obedience to a regular government, was the only course left open.

" I see impossibility of immediate withdrawal of all Egyptian Vol. III. 44