Chapter I: Preface

IN the present volume, which is a continuation of my “Secret History of the Occupation of Egypt,” I take up once more the task of chronicling the events of my time. Lord Cromer’s recent book, “Modern Egypt,” makes this a duty to the truth which I feel ought not to be postponed, while there is also the hope that by insistence it may still be possible to direct those in power with us to adopt an attitude towards the Mohammedan World less antagonistic than in the past to its thoughts and feelings.

The period treated here, between 1882 and 1886, is the darkest of the whole Anglo-Egyptian record, a monument indeed of perverse unwisdom recognized by all. But I doubt if it is yet fully understood how immense a wrong was inflicted by our English mismanagement of affairs at Cairo, not only on Egypt and the Upper Nile, but on all Mohammedan lands hindered by it in their work of liberal enlightenment, and thrown back for a whole generation on lines of fanatical reaction. This I hope to make clear. Lord Cromer would have us believe that it was contrary to our Government’s desire that we remained on in Egypt in spite of repeated declarations of an intention to withdraw. It will here be shown that there was never any such intention at the Foreign Office, and that if it existed in Mr. Gladstone’s mind it was of that barren kind which refuses to take the means which alone can lead to the desired result. With regard to the Soudan and the series of barbarous campaigns which signalized those three disastrous years, the explanation, too, has been made that these were forced by circumstances upon our Government, as was also the separation of the Upper from the Lower Nile, a separation brought about under conditions of violent disruption, which made it a permanent injury to Egypt and absolute ruin to the Soudan, with the depopulation of whole provinces through famine and disease and chronic warfare. It will be shown that European action alone was the initial cause of the trouble, that the fanatical character of the Soudanese revolt was due solely to the intervention of the Christian Powers at Cairo and that its extent and violence were increased by each successive step of English intervention, also that to the refusal to make peace with the Mahdi, either before or after the fall of Khartoum, may fairly be ascribed all that subsequently happened of misfortune to the tribes of the Upper River. These were realities that needed placing in their proper perspective, and I have endeavoured in this volume to present them as they to my knowledge were.

My personal position while the chief tragedy of the time, Gordon’s fatal mission to Khartoum, was being enacted was one singularly advantageous for my present purpose of accurate narration. Occupying no official post, I nevertheless found myself a deeply interested spectator behind the official scenes in London, as well as behind those of the Oriental world, and from time to time playing a small part myself in the drama, close enough to the chief personages to observe the details of their action, and in near view of the machinery used for their stage effects. The diary, which with an instinct of its future importance I kept carefully written at the time, remains with me as a sure guide on which I can rely for each day’s happenings, and this, in spite of its many crudities of thought and expression, and much in it that I am conscious is to my own disadvantage, I have decided to print almost uncensored as it stands. It is the strongest evidence I can offer of the accuracy of my narrative, and the best refutation of the pseudo-history which has grown up about the mission. On many points I am very conscious that my diary needs apology. It was written with no thought of publication, and contains harsh judgements of men and things with many of which I have since come to disagree, violences of language of which I am now ashamed, and expressions of feeling softened since by years and by that tolerance of view taken in old age of human insanities. Much in it I would willingly not have written, or written otherwise, and much recording my own sayings and doings I would suppress in publishing if it were not for the feeling that to do so would impair its entire sincerity. In telling things disadvantageous to others I could not in fairness be sparing of my own mistakes. Therefore I leave all unexplained to its own justification and the indulgence of my readers.

On one point only have I thought it necessary to reconsider at any length my attitude of the time. This is in respect of the blame laid by me on Gordon for the failure of his mission on lines of peace. As will be seen from my diary I was one of the few Englishmen who, with a strong feeling of esteem and affection for Gordon, disapproved from the first of his mission, suspecting what was indeed the fact, that there was in it a political intrigue connected with the continued occupation of Egypt, and I was one of the very few who rejoiced at the failure of the relief expedition and the fall of Khartoum. My belief, however, at the time, that Gordon was himself through his soldier’s obstinacy mainly responsible for the failure, and that he did, as was being pretended by Ministers, exceed his instructions, wantonly changing the character of his mission from a peaceful one to one of war, was unjust, and I recognize the necessity of correcting my misjudgement. The publication of Lord Cromer’s book four years ago, with its exaggerated attack on Gordon on these very heads, roused my suspicion and caused me to re- examine the evidence connected with the whole matter, and I speedily discovered that, though Gordon made without doubt many mistakes in its discharge, the prime responsibility of the mission as one necessarily of war was certainly not his, but that of those who sent him; also, on further examination, that in spite of Lord Cromer’s denial the failure of the mission was principally due to no other than Lord Cromer’s self.

I have consequently devoted several chapters of the present volume to clearing up this much vexed matter, and I have added to them, for the special benefit of Egyptian readers ignorant of Gordon’s superlative moral merit and regarding him only as a too zealous agent of the British Government, and so their enemy, a memoir of this great man’s life and character, gathered in part from his published letters scattered through many works now out of print and notably from those wonderful letters to his sister collected by Dr. Hill, in part from my own recollection of him, and that of others who knew him personally. In this, which has been to me a labour of love as well as of reparation, I have been powerfully assisted by Gordon’s nephew and literary heir, Colonel Louis Gordon, by his sole surviving sister, Mrs. Moffitt, and by his niece, Miss Gordon, who are the chief living authorities on all things concerning him. These have not only put me on the track of all published knowledge, but have been good enough to entrust to me many important documents not hitherto printed, which will be found either in the text of this volume or the Appendix. One of these is of deciding value to the case, a letter which Lord Cromer in his _apologia_ seems to have forgotten, and which fixes on himself the responsibility of the mission as one far wider in scope than has hitherto been admitted.

If I have anything to add to these few words of preface it is this—I have been reproached with lack of patriotism in that I have made it my business of late years to denounce the errors and political misdeeds of my fellow countrymen in Egypt. In answer to this I can only say that I belong to a generation of Englishmen holding an idea of patriotism entirely different from that now accepted, and one that I think saner. According to the teaching of my youth the patriotic idea was essentially connected with the love of the land of one’s birth, the passion of courage which prompted Thermopylae and Bannockburn and the thousand and one battles where men have stood up in defence of their homes against invading strangers; also with that other moral courage which strengthened a man to oppose in speech the folly of his fellow men whom he saw doing dishonour to that land. It had nothing whatever to do with the modern idea, now prevalent among Englishmen, of solidarity with the enterprises, often criminal, of the cosmopolitan finance of London and Liverpool and Manchester, which has usurped control over our lives and honour in its dealings with our national affairs abroad, which controls our press, manipulates our parliament, and uses our ancient and honourable English name for its base un-English purposes. There is no lack of patriotism in refusing to bow to this new leadership in evil, or in denouncing its ungodly doings.

I am by instinct of birth a conservative to my inmost fibre, that is to say a believer in tradition and the value of all that is ancient in our national institutions and creeds and moralities. I remember the disgust of my older Tory friends when, under Semitic influence thirty-five years ago, the new-fangled style of Empress was proposed to be added to the time-honoured title inherited by our Sovereign Lady Queen Victoria, and when the British Empire first began to be talked about as an improvement in nomenclature on our long sufficing Kingdom of England. What was good enough for the “spacious days of great Elizabeth” was surely, we protested, good enough for us. We wanted none of the imperial nonsense. As to a transfer of our patriotic loyalty from our good island realm of England to a colonial monarchy beyond the seas, it seemed not only a vulgarity but a contradiction in physical terms. We did not spare our mockery and contempt for the whole “Brummagem” innovation.

This is my sentimental view of British imperialism still, nor is it a matter of sentiment alone with me. My reading of history has taught, and practical experience has confirmed to me the fact that the task undertaken by a nation of ruling other nations against their will is the most certain step for it upon the road to national ruin. It is impossible to exercise tyrannical authority abroad and retain a proper respect for the dignity of liberty at home. The two things are not permanently compatible. The virus of lawlessness in foreign lands infects the body politic at home by a gradual process of contempt for human brotherhood and equal right, which are the basis of all law and the only guarantee of freedom in free nations. Nor, on the other hand, can a community afford to distribute its energies in a hundred different directions without injury to its mental balance and danger of intellectual decay. The British Empire of the present day is being run on lines of speculation which is often sheer gambling. It has lost the sense of all economy in its finances, and all moderation in its spendthrift ways. How can it be moderate with a thousand speculative ventures to uphold in all four quarters of the globe? Moreover—and this is perhaps the most dangerous feature of it all—the vanity of imperialism, of being members of an imperial caste, is rapidly teaching Englishmen to rely, wherever possible, for their living upon the labour of others rather than their own. The great Crown Colonies, the Indian Empire, and the South African federation are all slave communities in disguise, where white men do not work themselves but live by “native” labour. The example of their sloth is gaining rapid ground at home, and soon all will be too proud to do any manual service. The virile part of the community is flocking already to lands where they can live in less laborious ways; the feebler part remains to propagate and starve at home. Who shall say that England is not on a perilous downward path?

What moves me most to anger is to note how, just as four hundred years ago the Spanish race, urged by the speculative lust of gold and a belief in their own supreme imperial and Christianizing mission, rushed out upon the innocent New World and enslaved and slew its primitive peoples happier far than they, so we English-speaking men enslave and slay in the name of civilization—here, there, and everywhere—races less well armed, but in other respects more fit for survival in the spaces they have primitively occupied than ourselves. The work of subjugation goes on under a score of false pretences; and these, officially recorded, remain for the misleading of posterity in the pages of our printed Blue Books. History thus comes to be written in a sense suited to the self- satisfaction of those who would like to think themselves God’s messengers to an unenlightened heathendom, while in reality they are only gathering in its wealth, and their crimes of conquest are concealed. In the days of Spain’s madness there was a single honest monk who denounced his fellow countrymen for their misdeeds, and dared to love the Indians more than his own people, because he saw these suffering atrocities of injustice at their conquerors’ hands. He was not popular in Castile for his plain speaking. Yet where—among the nations—is imperial Spain to-day? And which has the better title now to be called a patriot, Las Casas or Pizarro?

There will be found at the end of the volume an Appendix containing a selection of papers forming the _pièces justificatives_ of this portion of my history. Some of these are of considerable intrinsic value, others of less importance but needed for the refutation in detail of the historic inaccuracies of Lord Cromer’s book, and in answer to certain remarks found in it concerning myself. Such especially are the additional evidence here brought forward of the Khedive Tewfik’s connection with the riots at Alexandria and Tantah in 1882, which, without reason given, Lord Cromer has pronounced to be unproved; and my correspondence with 10, Downing Street, which he has in a few sentences attempted to discredit. The correspondence makes my position towards Mr. Gladstone absolutely clear, as does, in another direction, my more generally interesting correspondence with my Oriental friends.

The pencil drawing of Gordon, reproduced as frontispiece to the volume, is by Edward Clifford, and is now in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery. Though inadequate as displaying Gordon’s more popularly heroic attitude, it is the only one that at all reveals his inner and more mystic mind, or which I recognize as a true presentment of the man as I personally remember him.

W. S. B.

_13th September_ 1911.

Twenty-ninth anniversary
of Tel-el-Kebir.

CONTENTS

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GENERAL GORDON _Frontispiece_