But Mr. Gladstone was not
to be caught napping a second time. When the agitation rose, when
popular sentiment was deeply stirred, when the country, the
Press, the Sovereign herself, declared that the national honour
was involved with the fate of General Gordon, Mr. Gladstone
remained immovable. Others might picture the triumphant rescue of
a Christian hero from the clutches of heathen savages; before HIS
eyes was the vision of battle, murder, and sudden death, the
horrors of defeat and victory, the slaughter and the anguish of
thousands, the violence of military domination, the enslavement
of a people.
The invasion of the Sudan, he had flashed out in the House of
Commons, would be a war of conquest against a people struggling
to be free. 'Yes, those people are struggling to be free, and
they are rightly struggling to be free.' Mr. Gladstone--it was
one of his old-fashioned simplicities--believed in liberty. If,
indeed, it should turn out to be the fact that General Gordon was
in serious danger, then, no doubt, it would be necessary to send
a relief expedition to Khartoum. But, he could see no sufficient
reason to believe that it was the fact. Communications, it was
true, had been interrupted between Khartoum and Cairo, but no
news was not necessarily bad news, and the little information
that had come through from General Gordon seemed to indicate that
he could hold out for months.
Pages:
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376