CHINESE GORDON

Dunstan Times, Issue 1166, 4 July 1884, Page 3

CHINESE GORDON

As in many oases, so in Gordon’s, the opinions of men in the northern counties of England differ much from those held in London. Thus the Manchester Hews of

May 6 says . —“ An unprejudiced survey ot the proceedings in the Soudan will lead to the conclusion that we have reached the natural- the inevitable termination of what it is almost an exaggeration to call a campaign. We have defeated and dispersed the foe—the only foe within our reach . We ' cannot advance, because Nature prev n‘s u». It is impossihle to repeat General Gordon’s feat on a large scale. His remarkable 5y journey to Khartoum could not be performed ! by rao’ e than a few adventurous aid en),hu siastio spirits. General Gordon knows this. • and it cannot he doubted that his whole con- . duct has been squared to the fact. In some . ,f deadly, hut 'pertinent, an '• indeed exhaustive questions, Mr W. E. Forster analysed the whole matter. What could Ije done has been done ; the Goverment have used every resource at their command to keep General Gordon informed of what was being done, and have left him to his own discretion as

torepiai ingin orquitting Khartoum. What

e'se or more the Government could do it is impossible to imagine. The expedition always of a doubtful character, is being ca'ried out under inevitable conditions of risk and danger, but conditions which were fully understood by the m m whose person* alit.y and antecedents alone justified it.” The Livirpool Daily Post writes: “ London ai pears from some of its newspapers, to be strong'y excited about the necessity of relieving Gordon by force at all hazards. The difficulty would he so great, the effort would entail such cruel suff rings on tnousauds of men, and General Gordon’s conduct has been so o d, that we believe the feeling in favor of racking a great effort for him (never strong in the north) will probably diminish in the so”th. He takes the line he does because be pins his faith to the necessi y of subduing the Mah li. But tho Eng'ish people, while most to leave Gordon in personal dan- ** ;,x, have no sympathy for his policy of * (vity in the Soudan. They do not want to seek out his Apollyon ; they are inclined to let Apollyon seek them, and seek them on the frontier of Lower Egypt, it he is determined upon a fight. Once free of the Gordon trouble, the English Administration in Egypt could afford to await the Mahdi' on a convenient line, and in the meantime might hope to educe from the European Conference some guidance and security for a mitigation of the great strain which the sole responsibility for Egyptian affairs entails upon our statesmen.” According to the Chinese, cask-making has been known to them for many thousand years. They labored, however, under this drawback. They did not know how to give the final touch by which the lid is fastened in;, the only method , that struck them as feasible being to place a boy inaside whilst the cooper tightened the hoops and secured the lid in its position. But how, was ths boy to begot out ? • This remained an unsolved problem for three thousand

yean. Gordon most have heard this legend vhen in China. He reminds me of the boy. He jumped into the cask, and since then has been shouting through •' the bong-hole that he is going to “do for” all sorts of people, and always abusing those ■who will hot aid him, without considering that the really important question is how he himself is to be got out of the cask,— Truth