also with political inefficiency. Wolseley alluding, long after, to it in a speech made by him in connection with the proposed Channel Tunnel between England and France, said: "If Arabi had blocked the Canal, as he intended to do, we should be still at the present moment on the high seas blockading Egypt. Twenty-four hours delay saved us."
The date of Wolseley's occupation of Ismaïlia was the 21st of August, and from this point the defence of Egypt entered into a new and practically hopeless phase, though the campaign was not so wholly a walk over for the English as has been pretended. The British army was over 30,000 strong, and though probably of no great fighting value had it been opposed to European troops, was sufficient to deal with the scanty forces at Arabi's command. The whole strength at Kafr Dawar had never been more than 8,000 regulars, with 80 Krupp guns, nor in all Egypt could it be counted at more than 13,000 disciplined men, while the new levies got together within a month were unfit as yet for any service except that of manual labour at the trenches. Wolseley, therefore, had a comparatively easy job before him when once he found himself ashore with no obstacle between him and Cairo, except the unfinished lines of Tel-el-Kebir. The English intelligence department had, however, to make assurance doubly sure, already taken secret measures for success of a kind which is always employed in modern warfare but never avowed, and which it is right that I should here put on record, having by a curious accident the details of the most important of them in my possession. That Wolseley's advance was helped by bribery has always been indignantly denied by English writers, but it is time the truth should be authoritatively told.
The attack on Egypt from the side of the Suez Canal had been resolved on by our War Office and Admiralty early in the year, and it was determined about the middle of June to prepare the way betimes by a large operation of bribery, especially among the Eastern Bedouins. The credit of the particular modus operandi belongs personally to Lord