mporary purpose," any expedition
into the Sudan would be highly undesirable on general as well as
diplomatic grounds.

Both of these views of duty are intelligible as well as creditable to
those who held them. But the former view is that of a high-souled
officer; the latter, that of a responsible and much-tried Minister and
diplomatist. They were wholly divergent, and divergence there
spelt disaster.

On hearing of the siege of Khartum, General Stephenson, then commanding
the British forces in Egypt, advised the immediate despatch of a brigade
to Dongola--a step which would probably have produced the best results;
but that advice was overruled at London for the reasons stated above.
Ministers seem to have feared that Gordon might use the force for
offensive purposes. An Egyptian battalion was sent up the Nile to
Korosko in the middle of May; but the "moral effect" hoped for from that
daring step vanished in face of a serious reverse. On May 19, the
important city of Berber was taken by the Mahdists[398].

[Footnote 398: Parl. Papers, Egypt, No. 25 (1884), pp. 129-131.]

Difficult as the removal of about 10,000 to 15,000[399] Egyptians from
Khartum had always been--and there were fifteen other garrisons to be
rescued--it was now next to impossible, unless some blow were dealt at
the rebels in that neighbourhood. The only effective blow would be that
dealt by British or Indian troops, and this the Government refused,
though Gordon again and again pointed out that a small well-equipped
force would do far more than a large force. "A heavy, lumbering column,
however strong, is nowhere in this land (so he wrote in his _Journals_
on September 24). . . . It is the country of the irregular, not of the
regular." A month after the capture of Berber a small British force left
Siut, on the Nile, for Assuan; but this move, which would have sent a
thrill through the Sudan in March, had little effect at midsummer. Even
so, a prompt advance on Dongola and thence on Berber would probably have
saved the situation at the eleventh hour.

[Footnote 399: This is the number as estimated by Gordon in his
_Journals_ (Sept. 10, 1884), p. 6.]

But first the battle of the routes had to be fought out by the military
authorities. As early as April 25, the Government ordered General
Stephenson to report on the best means of relieving Gordon; after due
consideration of this difficult problem he advised the despatch of
10,000 men to Berber from S