ccessor.

On April 14 Sir E. Baring, while as keenly averse as anybody in the world
to an expedition for the relief of Khartoum if such an expedition could be
avoided, still watching events with a clear and concentrated gaze, assured
the government that it was very likely to be unavoidable; it would be well
therefore, without loss of time, to prepare for a move as soon as ever the
Nile should rise. Six days before, Lord Wolseley also had written to Lord
Hartington at the war office, recommending immediate and active
preparations for an exclusively British expedition to Khartoum. Time, he
said, is the most important element in this question; and in truth it was,
for time was flying, and so were events. The cabinet were reported as
feeling that Gordon, "who was despatched on a mission essentially pacific,
had found himself, from whatever cause, unable to prosecute it
effectually, and now proposed the use of military means, which might fail,
and which, even if they should succeed, might be found to mean a new
subjugation of the Soudan--the very consummation which it was the object of
Gordon's mission to avert." On June 27 it was known in London that Berber
had fallen a month before.

VII

Lord Hartington, as head of the war department, had a stronger leaning
towards the despatch of troops than some of his colleagues, but, says Mr.
Gladstone to Lord Granville in a letter of 1888, "I don't think he ever
came to any sharp issue (like mine about Zobeir); rather that in the main
he got what he wanted." Wherever the fault lay, the issue was unfortunate.
The generals in London fought the battle of the routes with unabated
tenacity for month after month. One was for the approach to Khartoum by
the Nile; another by Suakin and Berber; a third by the Korosko desert. A
departmental committee reported in favour of the Nile as the easiest,
safest, and cheapest, but they did not report until July 29. It was not
until the beginning of August that the House of Commons was asked for a
vote of credit, and Lord Hartington authorised General Stephenson at Cairo
to take measures for moving troops southward. In his despatch of August 8,
Lord Hartington still only speaks of operations for the relief of Gordon,
"should they become necessary"; he says the government were still
unconvinced that Gordon could not secure the withdrawal of the garrison
from Khartoum; but "they are of opinion that the time had arrived for
obtaining accurate infor