and experience of foreign affairs often led to his assisting
Lord Granville at the Foreign Office, offered the Egyptian Government
Gordon's services. They were declined, and when, on 1st December 1883,
Lord Granville proposed the same measure in a more formal manner, and
asked in an interrogatory form whether General Charles Gordon would be
of any use, and if so in what capacity, Sir Evelyn Baring, now Lord
Cromer, threw cold water on the project, and stated on 2nd December
that "the Egyptian Government were very much averse to employing him."
Subsequent events make it desirable to call special attention to the
fact that when, however tardily, the British Government did propose
the employment of General Gordon, the suggestion was rejected, not on
public grounds, but on private. Major Baring did not need to be
informed as to the work Gordon had done in the Soudan, and as to the
incomparable manner in which it had been performed. No one knew better
than he that, with the single exception of Sir Samuel Baker, who was
far too prudent to take up a thankless task, and to remove the
mountain of blunders others had committed, there was no man living who
had the smallest pretension to say that he could cope with the Soudan
difficulty, save Charles Gordon. Yet, when his name is suggested, he
treats the matter as one that cannot be entertained. There is not a
word as to the obvious propriety of suggesting Gordon's name, but the
objection of a puppet-prince like Tewfik is reported as fatal to the
course. Yet six weeks, with the mighty lever of an aroused public
opinion, sufficed to make him withdraw the opposition he advanced to
the appointment, not on public grounds, which was simply impossible,
but, I fear, from private feelings, for he had not forgotten the scene
in Cairo in 1878, when he attempted to control the action of Gordon on
the financial question. There would be no necessity to refer to this
matter, but for its consequences. Had Sir Evelyn Baring done his duty,
and given the only honest answer on 2nd December 1883, that if any one
man could save the situation, that man was Charles Gordon, Gordon
could have reached Khartoum early in January instead of late in
February, and that difference of six weeks might well have sufficed to
completely alter the course of subsequent events, and certainly to
save Gordon's life, seeing that, after all, the Nile Expedition was
only a few days too late. The delay was also attended with fat