Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/126

 118] ENGLISH HISTOBY. [ram

or in the open plain near Omdurman. They should think of him through those long months and years of patient, arduous, anxious preparation. They should think of him as the man whose foresight never was at fault ; who never turned his eye from the objective which he had in view ; who immersed himself with unwearied and almost superhuman industry in every detail which could secure the final triumph ; who never, even amid the utmost complexity of detail, allowed himself to lose sight of the final object towards which every measure was intended to con- verge. He had the art of extracting from every shilling of public money everything it was worth, and of extracting from every one of the distinguished men under his command all that they were capable of doing. Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman associated him- self with all that the First Lord of the Treasury had said in praise of Lord Kitchener, and he should cordially support the vote. Indeed, if he thought that silence on his part regarding certain matters of controversy would influence the House to pass a unanimous vote he would not say a word about them. But it was notorious that objections were taken to the vote. The disentombment of the Madhi's remains, and their dispersal under circumstances which seemed to show a vindictiveness unworthy of this country, appeared to him an infraction not only of sound policy, but of good taste, of good feeling, he would even say of good manners. But they could not set a detached and comparatively unimportant event against the body of Lord Kitchener's splendid services.

In opposing the grant Mr. Morley refused to allow that the dispersal of the Madhi's remains could be justified on any plea of political necessity. Against Lord Cromer's view of the subject they had the contrary opinion of Slatin Pasha. He (Mr. Morley) was sorry to think the Madhi had set a better example than our own by the respect which he showed to Sir Herbert Stewart's remains. In conclusion Mr. Morlejr warned the House and the country against the danger of lowering the standard of right feel- ing and right doing in Europe. " We must teach those whom we entrust with power far away from our control and observation that we insist that that power shall be used in conformity with our own principles of humanity." Mr. A. J. Balfour in defending Lord Kitchener, warmly repudiated the idea that vengeance had anything to do with his course of action. It was necessary to make the overthrow of Mahdism final, and it would have been unwise and impolitic to expose our troops to a recrudescence of fanaticism. There were still large bodies of Dervishes in the Soudan, and to allow a centre of superstitious reverence for the Mahdi to exist would have been to jeopardise the safety of the small force left in the Soudan at the close of the campaign. Lord Kitchener believed that if he had not taken the course for which he was now blamed by Mr. Morley, the tribesmen of the interior, instead of throwing in their lot with us, would have adhered to Mahdism, upon which rested the strength of the