fined to that object. The cabinet decided against an immediate
expedition, one important member vowing that he would resign if an
expedition were not sent in the autumn, another vowing that he would
resign if it were. On April 7, the question of an autumn expedition again
came up. Six were favourable, five the other way, including the prime
minister.

Almost by the end of March it was too probable that no road of retreat was
any longer open. If they could cut no way out, either by land or water,
what form of relief was possible? A diversion from Suakin to Berber--one of
Gordon's own suggestions? But the soldiers differed. Fierce summer heat
and little water; an Indian force might stand it; even they would find it
tough. A dash by a thousand cavalry across two hundred miles of desert--one
hundred of them without water; without communication with its base, and
with the certainty that whatever might befall, no reinforcements could
reach it for months? What would be your feelings, and your language, asked
Lord (M64) Hartington, if besides having Gordon and Stewart beleaguered in
Khartoum, we also knew that a small force of British cavalry unable to
take the offensive was shut up in the town of Berber?(104) Then the
government wondered whether a move on Dongola might not be advantageous.
Here again the soldiers thought the torrid climate a fatal objection, and
the benefits doubtful. Could not Gordon, some have asked, have made his
retreat at an early date after reaching Khartoum, by way of Berber?
Answer--the Nile was too low. All this it was that at a later day, when the
time had come to call his government to its account, justified Mr.
Gladstone in saying that in such enterprises as these in the Soudan,
mistakes and miscarriages were inevitable, for they were the proper and
certain consequences of undertakings that lie beyond the scope of human
means and of rational and prudent human action, and are a war against
nature.(105) If anybody now points to the victorious expedition to
Khartoum thirteen years later, as falsifying such language as this, that
experience so far from falsifying entirely justifies. A war against nature
demands years of study, observation, preparation, and those who are best
acquainted with the conditions at first hand all agree that neither the
tribes nor the river nor the desert were well known enough in 1885, to
guarantee that overthrow in the case of the Mahdi, which long afterwards
destroyed his su