efforts, would perhaps never know of
them, filled his mind with a sense of wrong and injustice which preyed
upon his spirits. The miseries of the townsfolk wrung his noble,
generous heart. The utter loneliness depressed him. And over all lay the
shadow of uncertainty. To the very end the possibility that 'all might
be well' mocked him with false hopes. The first light of any morning
might reveal the longed-for steamers of relief and the uniforms of
British soldiers. He was denied even the numbing anaesthetic of despair.

Yet he was sustained by two great moral and mental stimulants: his
honour as a man, his faith as a Christian. The first had put all courses
which he did not think right once and for all out of the question, and
so allayed many doubts and prevented many vain regrets. But the second
was the real source of his strength. He was sure that beyond this
hazardous existence, with all its wrongs and inequalities, another life
awaited him--a life which, if he had been faithful and true here
upon earth, would afford him greater faculties for good and wider
opportunities for their use. 'Look at me now,' he once said to a
fellow-traveller, 'with small armies to command and no cities to govern.
I hope that death will set me free from pain, and that great armies
will be given me, and that I shall have vast cities under my command.'
[Lieut.-Colonel N. Newham Davis, 'Some Gordon Reminiscences,' published
in THE MAN OF THE WORLD newspaper, December 14, 1898.] Such was his
bright hope of immortality.

As the severity of military operations increases, so also must the
sternness of discipline. The zeal of the soldiers, their warlike
instincts, and the interests and excitements of war may ensure obedience
of orders and the cheerful endurance of perils and hardships during a
short and prosperous campaign. But when fortune is dubious or adverse;
when retreats as well as advances are necessary; when supplies fail,
arrangements miscarry, and disasters impend, and when the struggle
is protracted, men can only be persuaded to accept evil things by the
lively realisation of the fact that greater terrors await their refusal.
The ugly truth is revealed that fear is the foundation of obedience. It
is certain that the influence of General Gordon upon the garrison and
townspeople of Khartoum owed its greatest strength to that sinister
element. 'It is quite painful,' he writes in his Journals in September,
'to see men tremble so, when th