heir place. The proceeding gave rise to much bickering
and bitterness in certain quarters. An attempt, I believe, was made to
send half of the Royal Irish Fusiliers to the front, but that fell
through owing to various causes. According to the War Office
requirements, the Royal Irish Fusiliers were not in a satisfactory
condition. There were serious drawbacks which would have terribly
militated against the effective employment of the battalion as a
first-class fighting unit. Individually, the men were all right, but
the battalion record in certain respects was held to be very faulty. I
have no wish to cavil at the War Office authorities' honest desire to
serve the public and yet temper their judgment with mercy to
individuals. But the case was one where they should not have
temporised in any way. As matters turned out, the Royal Irish
Fusiliers were very angry at being passed over at the eleventh hour
for another regiment. For several generations they have never had a
chance of being in action. They were fairly spoiling for a fight, and
it was hard, at the last moment, to have the road to glory closed in
their faces for the deficiencies of the few.

He whom Arabs and blacks of the whole Soudan call the "Grand Master of
the Art of Flight," our old friend Osman Digna, was with the Khalifa
in Omdurman. Osman was wily and experienced, and his counsel, had it
been listened to by his chief, would have added to the difficulties of
carrying the Mahdist stronghold by assault. I have some knowledge of
that astute ex-slavedealer and trader's ways in the Eastern Soudan and
elsewhere. He, many years ago, even condescended to honour me with his
correspondence and an invitation to join the true believers, _i.e._,
the Mahdists. I have no doubt he meant well, but the land and the
dervishes were alike abhorrent to me. Osman had quietly come to the
wise conclusion that Mahdism was near its end. With his usual
prescience he made his own arrangements without consulting the
Khalifa. Early in the year he had all his women and children and such
wealth as he could smuggle out of the country sent over to Jeddah.
There his family are now living under the protection of some of his
old friends and kinsmen. When Omdurman fell he had no intention, the
Hadendowas said, of sharing the Khalifa's further fortunes in hiding
among the wilds of Kordofan. He would instead try and escape across
the Red Sea and rejoin his family. The Arab clansmen are like the