I have now come to a point in the history of this wonderful intrigue where, if I had not semi-official published matter in large measure to support me, I should find it hopeless to convince historians that I was not romancing. It seems so wholly incredible that a Liberal English Government, owning that great and good man Mr. Gladstone as its head, should, for any reason in the world financial, political, or of private necessity, have embarked on a plan so cynically immoral as that which I have now to relate. John Morley in his published life of Gladstone slurs over the whole of his astonishing Egyptian adventure that year in a single short chapter of fifteen pages, out of the fifteen hundred pages of which his panegyric consists, and with reason from his point of view, for he could have hardly told it in any terms of excuse. It is necessary all the same that historians less bound to secrecy should have the details plainly put before them, for no history of the British Occupation will ever be worth the paper it is written on that does not record them.
By the 1st of June it was generally acknowledged that the policy of intimidation by mere threat, even though backed by the presence of the fleets, had ignominiously failed. Mahmud Sami's Ministry indeed had resigned, but the initial success had been immediately followed only by a more complete discomfiture. The Ultimatum had expressly demanded that Arabi should leave Egypt, and not only had Arabi not obeyed, but the Khedive had been obliged by the popular voice to reinstate him as Minister of War, with even larger responsibilities than before, and in even more conspicuous honour. Our Foreign Office, therefore, found itself in the position of having either to eat its empty words in a very public manner, or to make them good against one who was now very