han mine. I have little hope that I can add anything
to the picture that has been already drawn [allusion to previous
speeches made by the Earl of Cambridge, Lord Lansdowne, and Lord
Rosebery], but no one can wonder at the vast enthusiasm by which the
career of this great soldier has been received in this city. It is not
merely his own personal qualities that have achieved it. It is also the
strange dramatic interest of the circumstances, and the conditions under
which his laurels have been won. [Cheers.]

It has been a long campaign, the first part of which we do not look back
to with so much pleasure because we had undertaken a fearful task
without a full knowledge of the conditions we had to satisfy or the real
character of the foes to whom we were opposed. ["Hear! Hear!"] The
remembrance of that heroic figure whose virtues and whose death are
impressed so deeply upon the memory of the whole of the present
generation of Englishmen, the vicissitudes of those anxious campaigns in
which the most splendid deeds of gallantry were achieved are yet fresh
in the minds of the English people and Lord Rosebery has not exaggerated
when he has said that the debt was felt deeply in the mind of every
Englishman, however little they might talk of it at the time and when
the opportunity arrived with what eagerness, in spite of any possible
discouragement--with what eagerness the opportunity was seized.
[Cheers.] It was a campaign--the campaign which your gallant guest has
won--it was a campaign marked by circumstances which have seldom marked
a campaign in the history of the world. [Cheers.] I suppose that
wonderful combination of all achievements and discoveries of modern
science, in support of the gallantry and well-tried strategy of a
British leader--I suppose these things have not been seen in our history
before. [Cheers.] But the note of this campaign was that the Sirdar not
only won the battles which he was set to fight, but he furnished himself
the instruments by which they were won, or rather, I should say, he was
the last and perhaps by the nature of the circumstances the most
efficient of a list of distinguished men whose task it has been to
rescue the Egyptian army from inefficiency and contempt in order to put
it on the pinnacle of glory it occupies now. [Cheers.]

I remember in our debates during that terrible campaign of 1884-85 a
distinguished member of the Government of that day observing with
respect to Egyptian tro