'"I have received and read this morning Sir Cooper Key's very interesting paper on an expedition to Khartoum. I write, however, to suggest that it would be a great advantage if two suggestions it contains were to be fully examined and developed. (1) The _small_ river expedition which he thinks practicable. (2) The small desert expedition from Korosko to which he also adverts as an auxiliary method.... Clear as is the case for the railway from Suakim, as against the large expedition by the Nile, in every other view it is attended with the most formidable difficulties of a moral and political kind ... whether the 'turning of the first sod' of a Soudan railway will not be the substitution for an Egyptian domination there, of an English domination ... more unnatural, more costly, more destructive, and altogether without foundation in public right. It would be an immense advantage that the expedition (should one be needed) should be one occupying little time, and _leaving no trace behind it_. '"Yours sincerely, '"W. E. Gladstone." 'Of this letter a copy was made by Edward Hamilton, and enclosed to me with an autograph letter from Mr. Gladstone. 'On May 31st I had received a further letter from Mr. Gladstone about the Soudan expedition, in which he said: "Suakim and Berber route has utterly beaten Nile route for a large expedition.... But the question of a small expedition has hardly yet been touched, while some believe Gordon is or will be free, and there need be no expedition at all." I sent this letter to Lord Northbrook, and to Lord Hartington, pointing out that Colonel Sartorius had written a letter to the papers in favour of an expedition of a thousand picked men armed with repeating rifles; and after receiving replies, I wrote to Mr. Gladstone on June 4th that I had not had much encouragement from Hartington and Northbrook, the fact being that Hartington was determined on giving Wolseley his big job. [Footnote: See _Life of Granville_, vol. ii., p. 395.] 'On June 6th Lord Granville called a meeting to ask us whether, Waddington having now agreed to all our demands, we could devise some plan of getting out of them. He said that for his own part he should not have asked the question, but that Hartington had suggested it.... He said: "I must rather complain of Hartington's conduct--from so intimate a friend. If it had been Dodson I should have been very angry." After such an introduction, the meeting could hardly come to a conclusion favourable to Hartington's views.