GORDON'S RETURN Gordon sent to the Soudan to rescue the Egyptian garrisons — Lord Beaconsfield on Gordon.

One of the sayings attributed to Lord Palmerston is that, " when he was told that something had got to be done, he knew at once that what his informant really wanted was permission to do something foolish."

The truth of this saying was never more fully exemplified than in the days when Gordon was despatched to Khartoum. The British Government, rightly or wrongly, had decided that England, though occupying Egypt, had no obligation to interfere in the affairs of the Soudan, and had compelled the Egyptian Government, sorely against its will, to consent to the evacuation of all the Soudanese provinces. It followed, logically, that if the Soudan was not worth keeping, the fate of any Egyptians who might happen to be stationed at, or resident in, the Soudan, at the time the evacuation was decided upon, was a matter not worth fighting for. A general impression, as I have said, prevailed, not only in Ministerial circles, but amidst the British public, i