NOT KNOWING AND NOT DOING. 1 55 of the case into an urgent demand for prompt and effectual aid. The government had been so very willing to exercise patience that it was not to be startled, especially as Gordon had also said, "As to sending forces to Suakim to assist withdrawal, I would care more for rumour of such intervention than for forces. What would have greatest effect would be rumour of English intervention."

The time had come when the swift operation of the forces at Suakim to open the road to Berber was, perhaps, the one act necessary for early success, but the effort was never made, and there was scarcely a rumour of it either. When the people of Berber were at the last gasp, having held out in the hopes of some aid, nothing was done. Step by step the want of knowledge, the want of any sort of appreciation of the actual position of the man to whose commission they had been parties, and of the peril of the people to rescue whom they had sent him, prevented the accomplishment of anything that might have been done if the ministry had been able to realize the situation. One after another opportunities were allowed to pass, appeals were unheard, entreaties were stifled with official formulas, till the world saw the strange spectacle of a British army gathering on the Nile, and crossing the desert to achieve acts of gallantry which made the world ring, but yet accomplishing only a splendid failure; the place which they had gone to deliver lay half in ruins in the hands of a multitude of barbarous fanatics, the followers of an impostor; the people whom they had gone to protect, massacred in the streets or taken into .slavery; the hero himself slain, the manner of his death uncertain, the story of his mortal ending and of that of the men who remained faithful to him a mere hearsay, vague and contradictory.

On the 1 st of May Earl Granville telegraphed a despatch to Mr. Egerton, who had at that time taken the place of our representative at Cairo, calling his attention to a pn\ ions message sent on the 23d of April, instructing him to send several messengers to Gordon through Dongola as well as Berber, or in such other way as might be deemed most prompt and certain. I he message to be sent was that Gordon "should keep her majesty s