BOOKS.
LORD Caonnm's two volumes are valuable in a high degree from the historical side, for they give at first hand a record of events which have profoundly modified the development of our Empire and of our international relations. Supremely interest- ing, however, as is the book from this point of view, its main importance is due to other considerations. It will prove a guide and an inspiration to all those who are engaged in the work of establishing and keeping secure the Empire, and of maintaining the character of British rule for justice and good government. In these pages is to be learnt how Imperial administrators may reconcile the double obligation of govern- ing in the interests of the governed, and of doing their duty to the people of Britain and of the Empire as a whole. While they prove by precept and example how'these obligations are to be carried out, they also show how the difficult work is to be performed of reconciling loyal service to the Government of the day—that is, to the administrator's immediate chiefs and masters—with what may be termed the local duty and the higher Imperial duty. Lord Cromer's record of his life and work in Egypt reveals that be always held it to be his first duty to govern in the interests of the governed, never to exploit them for some ulterior object, never to let them suffer in order that the British people should be the gainers. But though this was Lord Cromer's principle, it was never maintained on what we may 'term personal or egotistic or anti-Imperial grounds. He did not carry out this duty because he had ceased to place his country first in his affections, but rather because he realised to the full that the nation cannot flourish unless those who govern its dependencies are inspired with the sense of trustee- ship rather than of ownership. It was not because he became an Egyptian patricit,but because he was in the highest possible • Yoder* Rapt. By the Berl of Cromer. 2 vole. London: afecmilimead Co. DAL net..]
sense a British patriot, that he kept the ideal we have named always before him.
The distinction may seem a narrow one, but in reality it is of far-reaching importance. Unless the Empire is inspired by the sense of trust it is doomed. Lesser men in Lord Cromer's position have pressed this principle with a certain truculence and vanity which have made them very difficult to deal with from the point of view of the Home Government. There is no trace of such action in Lord Cromer's career. He never spent his time threatening to resign if this or that were not done. He assumed throughout that the aim of the Government and of the nation at home was his aim, and, as so often happens when good faith and good intentions are assumed, he was never disappointed. Though so strong and so faithful in his trust, Lord Cromer was always consistently just as well as loyal to those whom he served. He spoke frankly and freely to them when he thought them in the wrong ; but he never fell into the foolish error of thinking that the extremities can control the central power. All that he insisted upon was that they should understand what they were doing, and in the majority of cases this was quite sufficient. Again, he never made the fatal mistake of getting so deeply absorbed in his own piece of work as to forget that there were other parts of the Empire quite as important as Egypt, and that the Home Government must hold a balance between conflict. ing claims for attention. We have heard much of the " weary Titans" of Empire. Lord Cromer always shows himself a cheerful and optimistic Titan, never daunted, never depressed, always realising that half a loaf is better than no bread, and always patient and unexcitable. Even at the most critical moments he never despaired of the commonwealth with the government of which he was in effect charged, nor did he ever waste time and energy by upbraiding fate when the stream of tendency seemed to be turning against him. He realised the conditions under which as an administrator he had to work, and met them bravely and serenely.
It is worth while enumerating some of the difficulties with which at times of crisis an Imperial administrator in constant telegraphic communication with his chiefs at home has to struggle. First of these we should put the clever but per- fectly unfruitful hypercriticism of men of subtle mind who, though imperfectly informed on the facts, are able to make excellent dialectical points against any scheme proposed by their agents. The incident of Zobeir Pasha is a good example. Next we should place essential misunderstandings of the local situa- tion. Take as an example the belief held in London that the Mandi, though a savage, was a savage with whom it was possible to treat, and that if sufficient sacrifices were made the Soudan garrisons could be withdrawn under an arrangement. Third comes the refusal to allow initiative to the man on the spot. Lord Cromer was generally allowed it ; but in the case of Gordon it was disallowed. Next we may enumerate the demand for hurry when delay is essential, and pleas for dawdling when dawdling is most dangerous. Last, and perhaps the worst difficulty of all with which the Imperial administrator is liable to be confronted, is the sterilising process occasionally practised from home, under which movement of no kind is allowed, and the administrator seems to be isolated in a sort of charmed circle. We have noted some of the instances in which Lord Cromer was confronted with these difficulties. Other examples the reader may find for himself in the book. He will learn also how Lord Cromer met them, and to a great extent overcame them.
Readers who remember the sending of Gordon to Khartoum, and the anxious months which followed, will read with breath- less interest Lord Cromer's most just and most able narrative of the events which followed. We think that the impression left on any fair-minded reader will be that though the action of Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues cannot be defended, that action was in no sense open to the charge of callousness so often preferred against it, but was chiefly due to their unwillingness to face facts. In the first place, it is clear that they should never have sent Gordon to Khartoum, and for this very good reason,—they did not intend to do what it was almost inevitable Gordon would ask them to do as soon as he got there. It is very doubtful whether it would have been possible to find any individual made of such stern and unbending material that when he had reached Khartoum he would have had the strength of mind, or, as most people would have said, the hardness of heart, to insist upon the instant abandonment of the place, and the with- drawal of such portion of the garrison as could be got away. It would, indeed, have required a man with the heart of an iceberg to have done the work, even though we must admit that in the end the amount of actual human suffering would have been less than that caused by the policy which was pursued. In any case, it was clear that Gordon was not the man to carry out such a task, and this the Government ought to have realised. We fully admit that Gordon promised the Cabinet to do the impossible, but it is not for Governments to be carried away by such promises, however much it may be the fate of those who feed themselves on excitable newspaper articles. When, however, the Govern- ment had decided to send Gordon to do the impossible, and he had actually got to Khartoum, it was their business to face the consequences of their rashness, and to carry the thing through as best they could on the lines they had chosen.
Unfortunately they did not realise this. They sent Gordon into the Soudan on the assumption that he could, and would, act like an official machine, and when, of course, ho did nothing of the kind, but acted like the excitable, impulsive, sentimental hero he was, they were horrified. They realised too late that they were in the hands of one whom they soon came to regard as a fanatic or almost a lunatic. To make things worse, they imagined that their position could be justified by pointing to the fact that Gordon was not doing what he undertook to do, and declared it was possible to do. That was an entirely impotent way of treating the situation, and did not help matters in the least. Having begun by trusting Gordon too much, they ended by trusting him too little. They became obsessed by the thought of his fanaticism and incoherence of mind. Lord Cromer took a much juster view of the whole situa- tion. He did not approve of Gordon being sent, but when he was sent he was not frightened or forced into a violent reaction by Gordon's wild telegrams and letters. Instead, lie saw, and tried to explain to the Government, that many of Gordon's proposals were not really so mad as they seemed; that it was quite possible to extract from them a not impossible policy ; and finally, that the Government being committed to Gordon, the best plan was to give him a free hand and take the con- sequences,—consequences which in all probability would not turn out so very terrible. The Cabinet, however, had not Lord Cromer's fine combination of nerve and insight, and were, in effect, reduced to a kind of mental paralysis by the knowledge that they were in the hands of a man who did not realise that the British public would not readily understand how a person who had fought against the slave t:ade in the Soudan could ask that the chief slave trader should be made its ruler. It never seems to have occurred to the Government to look at the alternative, or to remember that even if Zobeir Pasha was a slave trader, the Mandi was ten times worse when considered in that capacity !
But not only did the Government refuse to face the con- sequences of their own actions in the matter of the withdrawal of the garrisons and of Gordon's preparations for such with. drawaL They also refused to face the facts in regard to the relief expedition, although Lord Cromer constantly urged them to do so. They could not think it possible that anything so terrible as having to send an expedition into the Soudan could happen. Thus, though unquestionably they never desired to leave Gordon to his fate, they contrived the supreme ineptitude of an expedition which was doomed, through its late start, to be entirely ineffective. Mountstuart Elphinstone, the great Indian civilian, used to say that he never could persuade statesmen at home that things could be and not be at the same time. The handling of the Gordon incident by Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet was a capital example of such Ministerial incapacity.
Lord Cromer's summing up of the whole Gordon incident is so fair and so plainspoken that we cannot do better than quote his conclusions in full. Nothing could be more just or more loyal to the men whom Lord Cromer served :- "Looking more closely to the details in the execution of the British policy, the following are the conclusions at which I arrive:—In the first place, it was a mistake to send any British official to Khartoum. The task he had to perform was well-nigh impossible of execution, and his nomination involved the assump- tion of responsibilities on the part of the British Government, which it was desirable to avoid. Secondly, if any one was to be sent, it was a mistake to choose General Gordon. In spite of many noble traits in his character, he was wanting in some of the qualities which were essential to the successful accomplish- ment of his mission. Thirdly, when once General Gordon had been sent, he should have been loft a free hand so long as he kept within the main lines of the policy which he was authorised to execute. It is, in my opinion, to be regretted that General Gordon was not allowed to employ Zobeir Pasha, but any view held as to the probable results of employing him must be conjectural. Fourthly, the question of whether an expedition should or should not have been sent from Suakin to Berber in the spring of 1884 depends on the military practicability of the undertaking, a point on which the best military authorities differed in opinion. Fifthly, a great and inexcusable mistake was made in delaying for so long the despatch of the Gordon relief expedition. Sixthly, the Government acted wisely, after the fall of Khartoum, in eventually adopting a defensive policy and in ordering a retreat to Wadi Haifa. Lastly, it may be said that the British Government were extraordinarily unlucky. Whatever amount of foresight be shown, success in doubtful and difficult enterprises, such as the Gordon Mission and the Nile Ex- pedition, must always depend a good deal on adventitious circumstances, which cannot be foreseen, and over which no Government can exercise any control. I am far from saying that in all the matters which are discussed in these pages the British Government exorcised a proper amount of foresight, but it must be admitted that whenever the goddess Fortune could play them a trick, she appeared, with proverbial fickleness, to take a pleasure in doing so. Tho British Government made at the time a great stir in the world. The result in the end was that no object of any importance was attained.
Gratis anhelans, multa agendo nihil agens.
But the situation was one of inordinate difficulty, and those who have had most experience in the conduct of political affairs, and who know how difficult it is to be right and how easy it is to make mistakes, will be least of all inclined to criticise severely the principal actors on the scene."
In our concluding notice we shall deal with the more general aspects of Lord Cromer's work in Egypt.
Previous page
