=Source.=--_General Gordon's Journal_, pp. 46, 56, 59, 93, 112.
(_Kegan Paul._)
_September 17._--Had Zobeir Pasha been sent up when I asked for
him, Berber would in all probability never have fallen, and one
might have made a Soudan Government in opposition to the Mahdi.
We choose to refuse his coming up because of his antecedents _in
re_ slave trade; granted that we had reason, yet as we take no
precautions as to the future of these with respect to the slave
trade, the above opposition seems absurd. I will not send up A.
because he will do this, but will leave the country to B., who will
do exactly the same.
_September 19._--I was engaged in a certain work--_i.e._, to take
down the garrisons, etc. It suited me altogether to accept this
work (when once it was decided on to abandon the Soudan), which,
to my idea, is preferable to letting it be under those wretched
effete Egyptian Pashas. Her Majesty's Government agreed to send me.
It was a mutual affair; they owe me positively nothing, and I owe
them nothing. A member of Parliament, in one of our last received
papers, asked "whether officers were not supposed to go where
they were ordered?" I quite agree with his view, but it cannot
be said I was ordered to go. The subject was too complex for any
order. It was, "Will you go and try?" and my answer was, "Only too
delighted." As for all that may be said of our holding out, etc.,
etc., it is all twaddle, for we had no option; as for all that
may be said as to why I did not escape with Stewart, it is simply
because the people would not have been such fools as to have let me
go, so there is an end of those great-coats of self-sacrifice, etc.
I must add _in re_ "the people not letting me go," that even if
they had been willing for me to go, I would not have gone, and left
them in their misery.
_September 19._--Anyone reading the telegram 5th May, Suakin, 29th
April, Massowah, and _without_ date, Egerton saying, "Her Majesty's
Government does not entertain your proposal to supply Turkish or
other troops in order to undertake military operations in the
Soudan, and consequently if you stay at Kartoum you should state
your reasons," might imagine one was luxuriating up here, whereas,
I am sure, no one wishes more to be out of this than myself; the
_reasons_ are those horribly plucky Arabs. I own to having been
very insubordinate to Her Majesty's Government and its officials,
but it is my nature, and I cannot help it.
_September 24._--I altogether _decline_ the imputation that the
projected expedition has come to _relieve me_. It has _come to
save our national honour in extricating the garrisons, etc., from
a position our action in Egypt has placed those garrisons_. As to
myself, I could make good my retreat at any moment if I wished.
_September 29._--My idea is to induce Her Majesty's Government to
undertake the extrication of all people or garrisons, now hemmed in
or captive, and that if this is not their programme then to resign
my commission and do what I can to attain it (the object).... I say
this, because I should be sorry for Lord Wolseley to advance from
Dongola without fully knowing my views. If Her Majesty's Government
are going to abandon the garrisons, then do not advance. I say
nothing of evacuating the country; I merely maintain that if we do
so, everyone in the Soudan, captive or hemmed in, ought to have the
option and power of retreat.