THE MAHDI AND GENERAL GORDON.

Evening Post, Volume XXX, Issue 58, 5 September 1885, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE MAHDI AND GENERAL GORDON.

Regarding £f proposal stated to have been at one time made to ransom General Gordon, Baron de Billing, in a letter to M. Henri Roohefort, in reference to the death of Olivier Pain, relates the following story : — VAV A few months before the fall of Khartoum a group of influential Moslems called upon me. It is now no secret for anyone that the Mahdi maintained in Europe, at Paris, Berlin, and London numerous agents who kept him admirably informed of every project of the British Government. The Mahdi so little intended killing Gordon that his friends in Europe came to see me, and knowing that for many years past I had had the honour of Lord Granville's and LordLyon's acquaintance, they asked me to communicate the following proposals to the Embassy. The Mahdi undertook to send Gordon to Souakin or any other post on the Red Sea, or to the British outposts at Dongola, as the British Government might prefer. Lord Lyons was to pay 50,000 francs (£2000) in' ready money to a person residing in Paris to be named to him by me, and a further sum of 1,200,000 francs £48,000 pounds) to a Paris banker known to me, on receipt in Paris of the official news that Gordon had been handed safe and sound to the British authorities. I called upon j Lord Lyons, who hastened to transmit to his Government the proposal of the Mahdi's agents. The Cabinet met on the following day, but on the recommendation of Lord Granville it was decided to take no notice of an offer which would assuredly have saved Gordon's life, and saved England the expenditure of many millions, Lord Lyons, with his habitual couriesy, immediately acquainted me with Lord Granville's reply, of which, in my turn, I communicated the substance to the parties concerned. We have reasons which it

is unnecessary to make known to to any one but you to know that there exists a direct connection between the offering a reward for the head of poor Olivier Pain and the proposal of the Mahdi's agent for the ransom of Gordon. For the present it remains established beyond the possibility of controversy that it is to Lord Granville that England owes the failure of the Soudan expedition and the death of Gordon, It is owing to the refusal of a miserable fifty thdusand pounds that the British taxpayers will find their burdens materially increased. Make of this letter what use you think fit. I believe that the proposal of the Mahdi's was a real bonafide one, and that Lord Granville is all the more guilty for not having taken it into consideration.