TOPICS OF THE DAY.
WAR WITH THE MAHDI.
IT is with a reluctance amounting to pain, and overcome only by long reflection, that we admit the Government to be in the right in declaring war upon the Mandi,—for that is the meaning of the decision to advance upon Khartoum. Every reason upon the surface is against undertaking such an enterprise. The original motive of the invasion of the Soudan has vanished. We have expended invaluable lives and some millions of the nation's money in an effort to save a national hero ; and we have been baffled, not by the force opposed to us, or by any failure of our own, but by that inscrutable will of Providence before which soldiers and statesmen can only bow. If we take Khartoum again, we cannot help General Gordon ; and we utterly reject the idea either of a war of vengeance or of a war of conquest. We have no excuse for waging a war of vengeance, for the Soudanese have a right to drive out the Egyptians if they can ; and to them General Gordon, with the fez on his head, was simply the greatest of Egyptian officers, whom they were as much bound to slaughter as any other Pasha. No man would reject the idea of piling-up mounds of dead Arabs in Khartoum in revenge for his fall more earnestly than General Gordon himself, who, in his own eyes, died for the very people whom fools demand that we shall sacrifice in thousands to his manes. And we reject also the theory of the Times, that we are to build up a British authority at Khartoum, and from thence exert direct dominion from Wady Haifa to the frontier of Abyssinia. We do not deny that a European Power might govern that region better than any native Prince ; but we do deny utterly that "the weary Titan" is bound to take up that new load, and civilise Ethiopia at the cost of the burdened taxpayers of these islands. If Italy likes to undertake the task, well and good, but it is not ours ; and to accept it, overtasked as we are throughout the world, would be almost insanity. The work before us must be done for other reasons than these, and it will be terribly heavy. We are not, it is true, of those who underrate the ultimate resources of Britain, or doubt that she has strength within her for any needful task, even if it were facing Germany or France ; and we see no reason to believe that we cannot take Khartoum as well as Magdala. The Soudanese are as brave as their ancestors, and are learning to use the rifle ; but Abou Klee showed clearly that they cannot attack Englishmen successfully, while Kerbekan, a really splendid little battle, in which we fought in the old way, and were only partially protected by superior weapons, showed that Englishmen can drive Arabs out of almost any position. We shall retake Khartoum ; but in doing it we shall expend hundreds of good soldiers, and millions of useful money. The idea of a rush has evidently been abandoned. It could only be justified to rescue Gordon ; and General Wolseley, by speaking so plainly of the heat, by demanding a force of 20,000 men, and above all, by agreeing to the Suakim-Berber route, shows that a different plan is in his thoughts. It will be-weeks before Berber is taken, though the road may now be clear ; and till Berber is taken, the corps darine'e of 10,000 Europeans and 2,500 Indians now concentrating at Suakim is useless for the advance. The plan, as we read it, is to take Berber with the force advancing up the river, and that descending from lubat on Metemmeh ; to clear away Osman Digna with General L `ham's corps now forming at Suakim ; to concentrate the art. \ at Berber with a forward post at Metemmeh, and in Arm) advance straight upon Khartoum. All concentra autumn en have been made, all supplies will have been tions will numbers will be adequate, we may even have gathered, th \ri the river—for the Nile will have risen—and new steamers \&andi's dervishes may be, fanaticism is no fanatical as thbets and we do not doubt the result. defence against vell, thousands of English homes will But before it is ach s English house will be poorer ; and be desolate and every 't one thing will have been gained when it is achieved, bt, We shall have acquired no that was worth gaining. \ that is worth having,—think new Empire, and no prestig. ‘k of Theodore,—and no satis how the world forgot the fa, shall have checked, perhaps faction to our consciences ; but wt. if aggressive and martial stopped, that extraordinary revival Nita its old offer of con Mahominedanism, Mahommedanism once more threatens version, submission, or the sword, whit.it is not stopped, the progress of civilisation, and may, ii ..iea centuries back throw Western Asia, India, and Northern Af. upon their path. That is the sole reason for attacking the Mandi. He has declared war upon us without a reason,—for we had announced our intention of retiring with the Egyptian garrisons—and in the most unmistakable and bloodthirsty manner ; but we are not bound to accept his challenge. As regards the Soudan, he is probably the most effective native ruler the country could have ; and even as regards Arabia, it is no more our business to throw ourselves across a natural and national movement than it was our business to storm Nejd and crush the Wahabees, whose ideas, we may add, both were and are more formidable to India, where they spread like wildfire, and made a million converts, than the Mandi's mission will be. But it is the curse of every great Mussulman revival that its leader, if he claims to be an agent from on high, must be aggressive, must slaughter-out all who oppose, must claim and invade every territory recognised by his doctors as belonging to the Mussulman world. The Mandi cannot reign in the Soudan—or even in the Soudan and Arabia—in peace. He must call out that wonderful people, who can fight as no other Asiatics have ever done, to the conquest of the Eastern world ; must pour hosts of brave barbarians over Egypt, Syria, North Africa, Turkey, India, and Persia. He cannot stop without proclaiming himself impostor, cannot fight without making each battle a massacre, cannot conquer without extinguishing all vestiges of existing civilisation. He can spare none who do not acknowledge him, not even the solitary white man in Khartoum who had offered him a throne ; but must press on, as steady, as remorseless, and as destructive as a tidal wave. England, as the great Asiatic Power which • claims always to be in the East the protector of civilisation, which is even now in that capacity warring in Ethiopia, has the right, and may have the duty, to arrest that terrible rush, to fire a cannon, as it were, into that sand-column which is now careering across the Desert, and which, if unbroken, may overwhelm the cultivated land. And the best place to fire the shot may be Khartoum. It may well be that if we retreat, even with the resolve to fight farther north, all Arabs may see in that movement the signal from above ; that the Soudanese tribes from Egypt to the Lakes, and in all that wild country behind Tunis, in which the Senioussi dervishes have for twenty years been collecting rifles, may acknowledge the Mandi ; and that after a dreary and costly waiting of three years we may have to face a hundred thousand Soudanese pouring northward for conquest, all armed with rifles, and all disciplined by the renegades from Europe whom every Mussulman movement has hitherto attracted. We say nothing of India; for though there is danger in the Deccan, the warrior races of our great Empire there—Sikhs, Goorkhas, Rajpoots, and Mahrattas—are all Hindoo, and could all, if that bewildering crisis should ever arrive, be called to arms upon our side. It may be better, in view of such a prospect, to stop the Mandi at Khartoum, as it would have been better if Europe had faced the Turk when he first beseiged Constantinople ; and this, it is clear, is the decision of the wisest men we have,—men who certainly disbelieve in all plans of African conquest, men who have faced painful obloquy, and put down their own pride rather than needlessly shed blood. By that mysterious law which makes all right-doing ultimately a source of strength, it is the retreat after Majuba Hill which will enable us as an undivided people to face the Mandi, and arrest an outpouring of Asia, which, if successful, would cost mankind the intellectual gain of centuries. Let us do the work then as it must be done, and do it thoroughly and well ; but for God's sake let us do it as a work, a burdensome work which we are ordered by our duty to perform, and not rave like the evil spirits among us of " vengeance," and "conquest," and " the Empire," and all things for which no Christian man in his senses can fight with his whole heart. It is not as a shrieking crowd that we shall stop the Arab march, but as a grave and even sad Army, stepping on resistlessly because we believe in our discipline, our science, and our cause. And let us also remember that when such work has to be accomplished it is merciful to be strong, and that it is by using enough both of men and treasure that we can enable ourselves to spare when otherwise we must slay.
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