Extract No. 3, apart from the extraordinary censure on Gordon for feeding the families of his enemies, and being moved to pity at the sight of the tears of starving women, calls for a more detailed reply to the criticism. Gordon, according to “Ten Years’ Captivity,” ought to have turned these women out of the town to be at the tender mercies of the “wild fanatical savages” and been responsible for the rehearsal under his own eyes of the hunt for lust which followed on the fall of Khartoum. Father Ohrwalder can never have heard of England’s proud roll of heroes who on land and sea have given their lives to save those of helpless women and children. In feeding these women—even had all been the wives of his enemies, which they were not—Gordon committed |316| no graver military crime than did the commander of the troops on board the _Birkenhead_, when, instead of seeing first to the safety of the soldiers for whose lives he was responsible, he placed the women and children in the boats which could have saved the troops, and called upon his men to present arms as the boats left the side of the ship—and to stand to attention as the vessel sank under them. So much for British principle, apart from Christ’s teachings, in peace and war; now for the facts in Gordon’s case. When Gordon arrived in Khartoum, he found wandering—hungry and helpless—the thousands of widows and orphans of the soldiers who a few months before constituted Hicks Pasha’s army. Throughout his journals you will discover constant reference to the food question, with accounts of his successful search for the _stolen_ biscuits, which had “enormously reduced” the supplies in the hands of the Government. Gordon had calculated that the relieving army would reach him at the beginning of November, so that we find him writing on the 2nd of that month that he has six weeks’ food supplies. In making this estimate he was allowing for full rations to the troops (who were also in receipt of the money with which to buy those rations), and the wants of the poor. On the 11th of that month he discovers nearly a million pounds of stolen biscuits. On the 21st he writes, “I do not believe one person has died of hunger during the months we have been shut up.” On December 14—that is a month after the latest date he had estimated for the arrival of the relief expedition, he |317| says that unless the troops come in ten days the town may fall, and this because he had on November 12 written, “Omdurman fort has one and a half months’ supply of food and water.” With the fall of this fort, he knew that the end would soon come.