GORDON OF KHARTOUM

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 626, 1 April 1929, Page 11

GORDON OF KHARTOUM

MEMORIALS IN EGYPT CATHEDRAL DEDICATED Major-General Charles George Gordon, variously known in history as “Chinese Gordon,” ‘Gordon Pasha” and "Gordon of Khartoum,” is to have a unique memorial. Not only a cathedral. the Khartoum Cathedral will be dedicated to him, but a church at Port Sudan and edifices at Atbara and other places throughout the Upper Nile

Valley, the scene of so many of his triumphs and of his tragic death. The idea for this memorial was proposed by Sir John L. Mafifey, Gover-nor-General of British Sudan, to Gordon’s comrades-in-arms dispersed all over the world. He asks for contributions toward a fund of £60,000. The appeal is made just forty-four years after Gordon’s death. The force reluctantly sent by the British Government to rescue Gordon after his siege of ten months within Khartoum was only a two-days’ march from the place -when news reached it that it had fallen and with it Gordon under the spears of the fanatical Dervishes, just as he was leaving his office in the early morning. In two days more he would have- been 52 years old.

Gordon is one of the most romantic figures in British military history. He was born in the Royal Military Academy of Woolwich, where his father, Lieutenant-General Henry William Gordon, v r as in command, and where he himself was to have his first lesson in soldiering. He fought as a lieutenant throughout the Crimean War and then joined the AngloFrench Army in its war against China. He commanded the “Ever Victorious Army,” which suppressed the Taiping rebellion in 1874. He was next farmed out to Ismail Pasha, Khedive of Egypt, to suppress the slave trade in the Upper Nile Valley. He suppressed it and became Governor-Gen-eral of the Sudan. There he cleaned out the slavers and drove the Dervishes from all the oases.

Next, on a vacation, he went as private secretary to the new Viceroy of India, the Marquis of Ripon. The latter, with the consent of India House, lent him to the Chinese Government, who knew from experience his qualifications as a soldier, to be its military adviser. In 1883, however, he was back in the Nile A alley again under mandate from the British Government to rescue the Sudanese on the sweeping return of the Dervishes. The Gladstone Government had ordered the Khedive to abandon the Sudan and Gordon not to light, but to rescue as many as he could. After he had sent whole villages to safety in the North he might have followed them, but there were still others to be rescued. He tarried too long, with a handful of Sudanese was besieged in Khartoum. For nine months the Gladstone Government waited tor him to rescue himself. Then, urged on by public opinion, it ordered General Sir Garnet Wolseley to rescue the rescuer When only a two-days march away Wolseley heard that the town had fallen through treachery, and that the gallant Gordon was beyond all rescue. Thirteen years later Kitchener with his machine-guns revenged Gordon. ... „ Sir John Maffey’s appeal bids Gordons comrades-in-arms to. raise a fitting memorial to the man. who at all times and everywhere gave ms strengTh to. the weak his su^tance to the poor, his sympathy ttv the sut fering, his hea-rt-to God.