Having told them that "the Mahdi must be smashed up," he went on to say that "we cannot hurry over this affair" (the future of the Soudan) "if we do we shall incur disaster," and again that, although "it is a miserable country it is joined to Egypt, and it would be difficult to divorce the two." Within a very few weeks, therefore, the Government learnt that its own agent was the most forcible and damaging critic of the policy of evacuation, and that the worries of the Soudan question for an administration not resolute enough to solve the difficulty in a thorough manner were increased and not diminished by Gordon's mission. At that point the proposition was made and supported by several members of the Cabinet that Gordon should be recalled. There is no doubt that this step would have been taken but for the fear that it would aggravate the difficulties of the English expedition sent to Souakim under the command of General Gerald Graham to retrieve the defeat of Baker Pasha. Failing the adoption of that extreme measure, which would at least have been straightforward and honest, and ignoring what candour seemed to demand if a decision had been come to to render Gordon no support, and to bid him shift for himself, the Government resorted to the third and least justifiable course of all, viz. of showing indifference to the legitimate requests of their emissary, and of putting off definite action until the very last moment. We have seen that Gordon made several specific demands in the first six weeks of his stay at Khartoum--that is, in the short period before communication was cut off. He wanted Zebehr, 200 troops at Berber, or even at Wady Halfa, and the opening of the route from Souakim to the Nile. To these requests not one favourable answer was given, and the not wholly unnatural rejection of the first rendered it more than ever necessary to comply with the others. They were such as ought to have been granted, and in anticipation they had been suggested and discussed before Gordon felt bound to urge them as necessary for the security of his position at Khartoum. Even Sir Evelyn Baring had recommended in February the despatch of 200 men to Assouan for the moral effect, and that was the very reason why Gordon asked, in the first place, for the despatch of a small British force to at least Wady Halfa. It is possible that one of the chief reasons for the Government rejecting all these suggestions, and also, it must be remembered, doing nothing in their place towards the relief and support of their representative, may have been the hope that this treatment would have led him to resign and throw up his mission. They would then have been able to declare that, as the task was beyond the powers of General Gordon, they were only coming to the prudent and logical conclusion in saying that nothing could be done, and that the garrisons had better come to terms with the Mahdi. Unfortunately for