Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/562

558 == THE FALL OF KHARTOUM, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. ==

betrayal of Khartoum was one of those stunning blows which occasionally fall on a nation for their sins or for the folly and incapacity of their rulers. It would be difficult to exaggerate the gravity of the crisis with which England is now confronted. The local and immediate consequences of the calamity are serious enough; what its far-reaching effects on the Mohammedan world may be, it is impossible to forecast. At a time, too, when England has not one ally and only one friend – if one – in Europe, she is obliged, in order to remedy the imbecility of her rulers, to lock up for nearly a year, in a miserable war against African savages, the flower of her army, which it is quite possible may, before long, be urgently wanted elsewhere; her home garrisons meanwhile consisting of line battalions, for the most part of weak strength, four-fifths being recruits of under a year's service, and of embodied militia. But for all the consequences that may result from the fall of Khartoum, whatever they may be, one man is primarily responsible; for the members of Mr Gladstone's Cabinet have never had a will or a mind of their own. Our disasters are mainly due to the man of whom Carlyle said, he "believed Mr Gladstone to be one of those fatal figures created by England's evil genius to work irreparable mischief which he alone could have executed;" of whom we believe history will say that, with the best intentions, he worked more mischief to England than the very worst Minister that ever ruled the country; that he sacrificed the noblest and purest character, the Sir Galahad of his age, besides a hecatomb of other victims, to his insatiable egotism and arrogance; and that he crowned a long series of administrative failures with the most disgraceful catastrophe that ever overwhelmed an English Minister.

The day of retribution will come, but it is not yet. What we have to do now, is to endeavour to repair the breaches he has made in our walls. The one thing that stands out clearly is, that Khartoum must be taken, and by English soldiers. The monstrous proposition has been put forward in certain quarters, that Turkish troops should be employed for that purpose. What! are we to give the finishing stroke to that prestige on which our imperial power so largely depends, and which has recently sustained so many damaging blows, by proclaiming that England is not strong enough, or spirited enough, or – what it would really amount to – that she is unwilling to spend money enough, to retrieve the situation in Egypt without foreign assistance? Especially would it be a fatal mistake if it should go forth to the Mussulman world, that England, herself a great Mohammedan Power, had been obliged to crave aid from Turkey in suppressing a Mohammedan insurrection.

The triumph of the Crescent over the Cross, of which Khartoum, for the Soudanese tribes, is now the visible symbol, must be reversed – can only be reversed – at Khartoum itself, the city which will always remain sanctified to English hearts by the sacrifice of the Christian champion. The power of the Mahdi was certainly overrated in the beginning; but, like a rolling snowball, it has gathered volume from the supine-