A statement, apparently official, was circulated on Friday through Renter's
Agency that the rumour so widely believed of an advance on Khartoum next year is, at all events, prema- ture. Sir H. Kitchener may advance from Dongola to a bend in the Nile which it is advisable to command, but "there is no thought of advancing to Khartoum." That is precisely the statement by which a General who intended to make a sudden dash upon a dangerous foe would remedy an indiscreet and premature disclosure of his plans, and is quite inconsistent with Lord Salisbury's own avowal that Dongola was occu- pied as a station on the road to Khartoum; but it is possible that something has arrested the forward project, perhaps a resolution to wait till the Italians have made up their minds about Kassala and Massowah, perhaps a desire not to impede the growing tendency of the French to come to an understand- ing. Khartoum does not matter to France, but to see the English in successful movement, whether on the Nile or the Niger, irritates French politicians. They want to succeed too, and in their own "Soudan "—which is not our Soudan— and in Madagascar they are perplexed and worried. The Madagascar outlook in particular is very threatening, the Queen under her mask of submission raging like a tigress.
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