te a problem. Two things at any rate were clear--one, that
Gordon should faithfully adhere to the policy of evacuation and
abandonment which he had formally accepted; the other, that the British
government should leave him a free hand. Unhappily neither of these two
clear things was accepted by either of the parties.

V

Gordon's policies were many and very mutable. Viewing the frightful
embarrassments that enveloped him, we cannot wonder. Still the same
considerateness that is always so bounteously and so justly extended to
the soldier in the field, is no less due in its measure to the councillor
in the cabinet. This is a bit of equity often much neglected both by
contemporaries and by history.

He had undertaken his mission without any serious and measured forecast,
such as his comrade, Colonel Stewart, was well fitted to supply. His first
notion was that he could restore the representatives of the old rulers,
but when he got into the country, he found that there were none; with one
by no means happy exception, they had all disappeared. When he reached
Berber, he learned more clearly how the question of evacuation was
interlaced with other questions. Once at Khartoum, at first he thought
himself welcome as a deliverer, and then when new light as to the real
feelings of the Soudanese broke upon him, he flung the policy of his
mission overboard. Before the end of February, instead of the suzerainty
of Egypt, the British government should control Soudanese administration,
with Zobeir as their governor-general. "When Gordon left this country,"
said Mr. Gladstone, "and when he arrived in Egypt, he declared it to be,
and I have not the smallest doubt that it was--a fixed portion of his
policy, that no British force should be employed in aid of his
mission."(96) When March came, he flung himself with ardour into the
policy of "smashing up" the Mahdi, with resort to British and Indian
troops. This was a violent reversal of all that had been either settled or
dreamed of, whether in London or at Cairo. A still more vehement stride
came next. He declared that to leave outlying garrisons to their fate
would be an "indelible disgrace." Yet, as Lord Hartington said, the
government "were under no moral obligation to use the military resources
of this empire for the relief of those garrisons." As for Gordon's opinion
that "indelible disgrace" would attach to the British government if they
were not relieved, "I do not admit,"