formation of a new
administration for the Soudan, or to bring back the garrisons, was
taken in ample time to ensure the personal safety and rescue of
General Gordon. In the literal sense of the charge, history will
therefore acquit Mr Gladstone and his colleagues of the abandonment of
General Gordon personally.

With regard to the third phase of the question--viz. the failure of
the attempt to rescue General Gordon, which was essentially a
military, and not a political question--the responsibility passes from
the Prime Minister to the military authorities who decided the scope
of the campaign, and the commander who carried it out. In this case,
the individual responsible was the same. Lord Wolseley not only had
his own way in the route to be followed by the expedition, and the
size and importance attached to it, but he was also entrusted with its
personal direction. There is consequently no question of the
sub-division of the responsibility for its failure, just as there
could have been none of the credit for its success. Lord Wolseley
decided that the route should be the long one by the Nile Valley, not
the short one from Souakim to Berber. Lord Wolseley decreed that there
should be no Indian troops, and that the force, instead of being an
ordinary one, should be a picked special corps from the _elite_ of the
British army; and finally Lord Wolseley insisted that there should be
no dash to the rescue of Gordon by a small part of his force, but a
slow, impressive, and overpoweringly scientific advance of the whole
body. The extremity of Gordon's distress necessitated a slight
modification of his plan, when, with qualified instructions, which
practically tied his hands, Sir Herbert Stewart made his first
appearance at Jakdul.

It was then known to Lord Wolseley that Gordon was in extremities,
yet when a fighting force of 1100 English troops, of special physique
and spirit, was moved forward with sufficient transport to enable it
to reach the Nile and Gordon's steamers, the commander's instructions
were such as confined him to inaction, unless he disobeyed his orders,
which only Nelsons and Gordons can do with impunity. It is impossible
to explain this extraordinary timidity. Sir Herbert Stewart reached
Jakdul on 3rd January with a force small in numbers, but in every
other respect of remarkable efficiency, and with the camels
sufficiently fresh to have reached the Nile on 7th or 8th January had
it pressed on. The more