A PEREMPTORY MESSAGE. 5

only kind of authority which would keep them under control.

In such an event the possession of Khartum might mean the

opportunity of regaining the lost provinces.

But the avowed policy of the British government had been to

limit intervention to the lending of a military force to the khedive

for the purpose of suppressing a rebellion within his own proper

territory, and to leaving a much-reduced but sufficient body of troops for the protection of foreigners and the support of the eovernment during the reconstruction and reform of the internal

administration. It did not include military aid in retaining or reconquering the extensive provinces which Egypt had never been able to govern with unquestioned authority, nor could it be interpreted to mean the detention of a British army to protect Egypt while the government of the khedive concentrated its resources for the recovery of the Soudan.

The proposals of the Egyptian ministry were answered by a decided message requiring that all the Egyptian forces should be recalled to the territory within a line drawn at Wady Haifa (the second cataract of the Nile, 350 miles north of Khartum), and

that they should be concentrated for the defence of the country, in

which, as an implied concession, they would be assisted by British

troops should the invasion of this line be threatened. It was also

represented that there would be no objection offered to the cession

of the Eastern Soudan to Turkey so long as it was taken over at

the expense of the Turkish government and that no part of the

cost of taking possession should fall upon Egypt. This message

had the intended effect of causing a crisis in the Egyptian cabinet. Cherif Pasha and his ministry resigned, and a new cabinet was formed under Nubar Pasha, the man of whom Gordon said that

he would have to be made prime minister if anything was to be

done to hold the Soudan provinces. Mustapha Pasha Fehmi was appointed minister of finance.

But events were too rapid and circumstances too difficult to be

controlled either by the advice of the British government or the compliance or redetermination of the Egyptian ministry. Colonel Coetlogon, who had cleared the White Nile of the rebels and had