Public opinion in England was deeply stirred by the disaster at Shekan, and one of those popular cries that are so often and so disastrously interpreted as heavenly voices went up all over the land. The nation called for Gordon. The question of Gordon's mission has been exhaustively discussed from every point of view. The responsibility for his failure and tragic death is apportioned by Lord Cromer between Gordon himself and the Government who overruled his (Cromer's) objection to employing him, and went on to make every mistake they could. Gordon misinterpreted his orders, and the Government was then made responsible for the consequences of a policy of which they had never dreamt. He thus placed himself in a situation from which it was impossible to extricate him in time. Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, on the other hand, places the responsibility of the tragedy principally at the door of Cromer. I am not here concerned with this delicate controversy. Of this at least there is no doubt, Gordon's mission was understood by the country and Parliament to be of a purely peaceful nature. Its avowed object was one which approved itself to Liberal ideas, _i.e._ the disengaging of British responsibility from a purely Egyptian matter and the rescue of the Egyptian garrisons. Radicals understood that these purposes were to be achieved by purely peaceful means. The Mahdi was presumably to be approached by recognised methods of negotiation. It is well known that when Gordon got to Khartoum, these instructions went by the board. He had been nominated, while on his way, at Cairo, Governor-General of the Soudan, and the Government left, by means {213} of supplementary clauses in their instructions, a considerable latitude to Baring under whose orders, at his (Baring's) request, Gordon was placed. Lord Cromer has told the world in his _Modern Egypt_ of the difficulties of the situation. Gordon was a mystic and suffered chronically from "inspirations," which changed a dozen times a day. He does not seem to have made any attempt to carry out his mission by diplomatic methods. He soon came to conceive of that mission as a sort of rival "Mahdism." He became the Angel of the Lord fighting with Apollyon. All this must have been inexpressibly disconcerting to the prudent _homme d'affaires_ at Cairo, and no less so to his nominal superior in Downing Street.