of
which he formed part. During the whole of that summer the present Duke
of Devonshire advocated the special claim of General Gordon on the
Government, whose mandate he had so readily accepted, and urged the
necessity of special measures being taken at the earliest moment to
save the gallant envoy from what seemed the too probable penalty of
his own temerity and devotion. But for his energetic and consistent
representations the steps that were taken--all too late as they
proved--never would have been taken at all, or deferred to such a date
as to let the public see by the event that there was no use in
throwing away money and precious lives on a lost cause.

If the first place among those in power--for of my own and other
journalists' efforts in the Press to arouse public opinion and to urge
the Government to timely action it is unnecessary to speak--is due to
the Duke of Devonshire, the second may reasonably be claimed by Lord
Wolseley. This recognition is the more called for here, because the
most careful consideration of the facts has led me to the conclusion,
which I would gladly avoid the necessity of expressing if it were
possible, that Lord Wolseley was responsible for the failure of the
relief expedition. This stage of responsibility has not yet been
reached, and it must be duly set forth that on 24th July Lord
Wolseley, then Adjutant-General, wrote a noble letter, stating that,
as he "did not wish to share the responsibility of leaving Charley
Gordon to his fate," he recommended "immediate action," and "the
despatch of a small brigade of between three and four thousand British
soldiers to Dongola, so that they might reach that place about 15th
October." But even that date was later than it ought to have been,
especially when the necessity of getting the English troops back as
early in the New Year as possible was considered, and in the
subsequent recriminations that ensued, the blame for being late from
the start was sought to be thrown on the badness of the Nile flood
that year. General Gordon himself cruelly disposed of that theory or
excuse when he wrote, "It was not a bad Nile; quite an average one.
You were too late, that was all." Still, Lord Wolseley must not be
robbed of the credit of having said on 24th July that an expedition
was necessary to save Gordon, "his old friend and Crimean comrade,"
towards whom Wolseley himself had contracted a special moral
obligation for his prominent share in inducing