Sir Charles's insistence upon this matter is all the more notable because foreign complications were rapidly accumulating, and they were of a gravity which might well have seemed to dwarf all questions of the incidence of taxation. There were not only the difficulties with Germany. There was also the Soudan, where a large body of British troops was engaged, in a country the perils of which England had now to realize. 'On March 7th there was a Cabinet as to the Suakim-Berber railway. Northbrook and I, soon joined by Harcourt and Chamberlain, were in favour of stopping our impossible campaign. I argued that when we decided to destroy the power of the Mahdi, it was on Wolseley's telling us that he hoped possibly to take Khartoum at once. For some weeks after that he had intended to take Berber. Then he had told us that he at least could occupy Abu Hamed. Now he was in full retreat, and both his lines of supply--namely, that up the Nile and that from Suakim--seemed equally difficult. The Chancellor wrote on a slip of paper for me: "We seem to be fighting three enemies at once. (1) The Mahdi; (2) certain of our people here; (3) Wolseley." Nothing was settled, and we passed on to Egyptian finance.' March 11th, 'In the evening a despatch was circulated in which Wolseley said: "Please tell Lord Granville that I cannot wait any longer, and I must issue proclamation, and will do so on my own authority if I do not receive answer to this by the 14th. I hope I may be allowed to issue it as Governor-General." 'I at once wrote, "I understood that we had _decided_ that he was not to be Governor-General, and that the proclamation should not be issued in the terms proposed"; on which Lord Granville wrote, "Yes. Cabinet to-morrow.--G." 'On Thursday, March 12th, the first matter discussed was that of the arrest of Zebehr. Then came Wolseley's proclamation, which was vetoed. We decided that he should not be allowed to make himself Governor-General of the Soudan.' It now seemed more than likely that the British Government would have work on its hands which would render the employment of an army in the Soudan very undesirable; for more serious than the Mahdi's movements on the Nile, more serious than the operations of German Admirals in the Pacific, was the menace of a Russian advance upon Afghanistan.