Then finding withdrawal from the Sudan too unpopular in Egypt for any decent Egyptian to wish to undertake it, and himself left alone in his objection to Gordon, he gave way and asked for the man he mistrusted. How Gordon left London on 18 January 1884, commissioned by an informal meeting of ministers to proceed up the Nile (Baring vetoed his going to Suakin, and lived to repent) and to report from Khartoum on ways and means of withdrawal; how, bethinking himself on the voyage that evacuation must not mean abandonment, he asked for the supreme command, was supported in his request by Baring, and in the latter's presence interviewed his blood-foe, Zobeir, with a view to calling him up later to take over evacuated Khartoum; how he pledged himself to arrange withdrawal as soon as possible, and to submit in all things to Baring's instructions—these facts are well known. Less certain is it what happened to bring Gordon's mission to naught after he had departed up the river with Colonel Stewart. Meanwhile, over and above the arduous task of listening to Gordon at the end of a wire and of endeavouring, by analysis of ten messages a day, to recommend to London what an erratic Bayard really desired, Baring had the finance, and consequently the irrigation, of Egypt ever on his mind. To increase the taxable area, not the taxes, was his policy, but to that end capital must first be found for new canals and drains. Further, the clamour for Alexandrian indemnities, overdue since 1882, threatened a financial crisis, which could hardly fail to end in fresh international control. Baring took a bold line. In the face of an annual deficit he projected a loan, and referred the proposal to London for discussion in the summer. All other matters of reform he deferred sine die, whether at the ministry of the interior, whence he suffered Nubar Pasha to oust Clifford Lloyd, or in justice, or education, or sanitation, or the army.
What could not stand over was withdrawal from the Sudan. By the end of March 1884 it was clear that the mission of Gordon had only added to the imprisoned Egyptians a man, in whom all Europe was interested, for some one else to rescue. The question now, wrote Baring to the Foreign Office, ‘is how to get Gordon and Stewart out of Khartoum’. He saw no way but a British relief expedition, to which, since February, Gordon had been trying to force the hand of Whitehall. By whose fault, if any one's, things had come to this pass, it is not easy to determine. Gordon, faithful to a self-imposed duty not to abandon the Sudan to the Mahdi's mercies, made no serious effort to withdraw, waiting assent to one proposition after another, which he made through Baring to London, to be, one after the other, rejected. He might not have Zobeir, because Mr. Gladstone and the British public would not hear of a slave-raider being preferred to power under their joint ægis. He was not to retire southwards, because so he would be committing Egypt to hold equatorial provinces. Turkish troops must not be used except under conditions that the Sultan would not accept. A British-Indian force operating about Suakin was able to relieve Tokar at the end of February; but only if the road were opened by co-operation from Gordon's end could it send a flying column to Berber. Baring tardily supported this last scheme, but failed to persuade the War Office. Gordon, proclaiming to the Sudan that a British advance-guard was even now at Wadi Halfa, dug himself in. His fighting instinct, his pride of race, his sense of high command, made him refuse all thought of abandoning Khartoum to howling savages, in whose permanent cohesion he did not believe. He railed at Baring and every one else, sent off Stewart, and held on. Mr. Gladstone's government reluctantly admitted Baring's logic, and referred to the War Office the question by what route the relief should go.
Baring himself, over-worked and exasperated by international intrigue, came home in April to push his loan, and hurry the relief expedition, which, however, was delayed till the autumn. The loan, also, hung fire, France refusing to strengthen British hands in Egypt; and Baring had to return in the autumn only to take in financial sail. Nor dared he hope anything from the mission of his cousin, Lord Northbrook, who arrived presently to report to Mr. Gladstone on ‘the exigencies of Egyptian finance’. Cordially sympathizing with the ex-viceroy's desire to free Egypt from internationalism and foreign privileges, Baring watched without surprise another report go the way of many predecessors to the pigeon-hole. That winter saw the zenith of French obstruction and the nadir of Egyptian powers. The Caisse ignored Lord Northbrook's recommendation that Egypt should have the spending of her own savings, and pocketed all the surplus of provincial receipts; Nubar and Baring suffered a fall when together they tried to suppress the scurrilities of a Franco-
23
