1899] A Visit to Herbert Spencer 317 



pit looking south, and screened from all cold winds. Princess Christian 

 came in, but seeing strangers, decamped. 



" 24th March. — The Government has published a meagre parliamen- 

 tary paper upon the doings at Omdurman, and the desecration of the 

 Mahdi's tomb. Of course everything is denied, or made to appear to 

 be denied, except the fact, which could not be concealed, of the throw- 

 ing of the Mahdi's body into the Nile. As to the killing of the 

 wounded, the denial does not include the general order which, without 

 doubt, was given of killing men lying on the ground in battle after 

 they had fallen. This is thought to be excused by the story, much ex- 

 aggerated, of wounded men getting up and firing at our soldiers, but 

 the true reason of the slaughter is that Kitchener was campaigning on 

 the cheap, and did not wish to be encumbered with prisoners, and 

 especially wounded prisoners. This, and the desire to have ' a record 

 bae ' as a revenue for Gordon. The destruction of the tomb is a crime 

 of which Kitchener meanly excuses himself by saying he was away 

 when it was done, though he had given the order, and for the political 

 reason of preventing the tomb's becoming a centre of pilgrimage, and 

 so of fanatical feeling. This is mere fustian. The thing was done to 

 emphasize the revenge taken, young Gordon, Gordon's nephew, having 

 been sent for from Cairo expressly for the job, and given command 

 of the bombardment during the battle, with orders to fire at the tomb. 

 Afterwards he was intrusted with the blowing-up of the ruins and the 

 violation of the grave. Kitchener admits that ' the skull was preserved 

 and handed over to me for disposal,' which leaves it to be implied 

 that young Gordon performed the act of mutilation. 



" 27th March. — To Brighton to see old Herbert Spencer at his 

 house in Percival Terrace. I found him lying on a sofa in a dressing- 

 gown, with slippers on of an ornamental feminine kind. He began by 

 talking for ten minutes about his health, and explaining that his fresh, 

 rosy colour was no sign of health; then he got round to the subject of 

 my visit, the militarisms and brutalities of the day, the idealization of 

 football and all games of force, the rehabilitation of Napoleon and other 

 war-making scoundrels who had long been condemned as such, with 

 the rewriting of history to suit the agressive ideas now in fashion. 

 He repeated what he had said in his first letter to me, that if he did not 

 believe there would be a return to humane doctrines, it might be in a 

 hundred, it might be in two hundred or three hundred years, he would 

 not move a hand to prevent the destruction of the whole human race. 

 He applauded what I had said in writing to him of its being probably 

 necessary that we should be first beaten and invaded here in England 

 by a foreign enemy, and he thought it would be the best thing that 

 could happen. ' I am quite as pessimistic,' he said, ' as you are about 

 the present, only I foresee a change in the remote future.' ' In the 



