Soudan
ever was and ever would be a useless possession, and that he thought the
Queen's ministers "fully justified in recommending evacuation, inasmuch as
the sacrifices necessary towards securing good government would be far too
onerous to admit of such an attempt being made." Colonel Stewart quite
agreed, and added the exclamation that nobody who had ever visited the
Soudan could escape the reflection, "What a useless possession and what a
huge encumbrance on Egypt!" As we shall see, the time soon came when
Gordon accepted the policy of evacuation, even with an emphasis of his
own. The second remark is that the reconquest of the Soudan and the
holding of Khartoum were for the Egyptian government, if left to its own
resources, neither more nor less than impossible; these objects, whether
they were good objects or bad, not only meant recourse to British troops
for the first immense operations, but the retention of them in a huge and
most inhospitable region for an indefinite time. A third consideration
will certainly not be overlooked by anybody who thinks on the course of
the years of Egyptian reform that have since elapsed, and constitute so
remarkable a chapter of British administration,--namely, that this
beneficent achievement would have been fatally clogged, if those who
conducted it had also had the Soudan on their hands. The renovation or
reconstruction of what is called Egypt proper, its finances, its army, its
civil rule, would have been absolutely out of reach, if at the same time
its guiding statesmen had been charged with the responsibilities
recovering and holding that vaster tract which had been so rashly acquired
and so mercilessly misgoverned. This is fully admitted by those who have
had most to do with the result.

III

The policy of evacuation was taken as carrying with it the task of
extricating the Egyptian garrisons. This aim induced Mr. Gladstone's
cabinet once more to play an active military part, though Britain had no
share in planting these garrisons where they were. Wise men in Egypt were
of the same mind as General Gordon, that in the eastern Soudan it would
have been better for the British government to keep quiet, and "let events
work themselves out." Unfortunately the ready clamour of headlong
philanthropists, political party men, and the men who think England
humiliated if she ever lets slip an excuse for drawing her sword, drove
the cabinet on to the rocks. When the decision of t