'On March 17th, I wrote to Lord Northbrook to protest against a proclamation which had been issued by the Admiral and General at Suakim offering a reward for Osman Digna, and I wrote also to Hartington upon the same subject, stating that I would not defend it, and that if it were "not disapproved, and the disapproval made public, I cannot remain a member of the Government." Northbrook would not admit that he had disapproved it, but Hartington did, and also informed me that Northbrook had telegraphed. Lord Granville agreed with me that the proclamation was not defensible, and it was as a fact withdrawn, although the Admiral was very angry. 'Mr. Gladstone had gone down to Coombe, near Wimbledon. On March 22nd we held a Cabinet without him.... Harcourt was now writing to me in favour of the view "that we must get out of Egypt as soon as possible at any price. The idea of our administering it or of the Egyptian army defending it is equally out of the question." On the 25th we had another Cabinet without Mr. Gladstone. Turning to Gordon, we decided that a force was not to be sent to Berber; but I noted in my diary: "It will _have_ to be sent next autumn, I believe"; but when I said to Berber, it must be remembered, of course, that there were two ways of reaching Berber, and Lord Hartington, Brett, and I, now turned steadily to the consideration of which of those two ways should be taken. It will be remembered that we already had a report in print as to the Suakim-Berber route. [Footnote: See p. 33; 'We had drawn up a route from Suakim to Berber.'] We now obtained from Wolseley a general report, which was afterwards printed and circulated to the Cabinet on April 8th. Lord Wolseley, preparing for the sending of a military force to Khartoum this autumn, stated that his force must be exclusively British, for he doubted whether the very best of our Indian regiments could stand the charges of the Arabs, besides which our natives took the field encumbered with followers. Lord Roberts, who was not given to boasting, told me, long afterwards, that he, on the other hand, was sure that he could have marched from Suakim to the Nile and Khartoum with an exclusively Indian force. It is the case that our best Gurkha troops have sometimes stood when white troops have run. Wolseley had now come round to a boat expedition, which I had been for a long time urging, upon information which I had obtained for myself from the Admiralty, and which was afterwards printed by the Foreign Intelligence Committee at the Admiralty, and circulated to the Cabinet in April, a further document upon the subject being circulated to the Cabinet in May. It must be remembered that the date of passing the cataracts was settled for us by the high Nile, and that there was only one time of year at which the expedition