324 Kitchener Explains [1899 



with the wretched Morley, and in proving to him conclusively that 

 Kitchener was absolutely justified, indeed bound by every principle of 

 right feeling to blow up the tomb, dig vip the body, chuck it into the 

 Nile, and what he called ' disperse the remains.' Absurd as his argu- 

 ment was it was conclusive with the House, and Morley had not even 

 the wit to ask what became of the poor head, or who was entrusted 

 with the various operations. I doubt if Morley will ever make a speech 

 again in the House, I should not if I were he. 



: ' Personally I am not altogether dissatisfied with the result. We 

 have gained at least this, that we have forced Balfour and the Govern- 

 ment and the House of Commons to declare themselves in favour of 

 the extreme abominations of war, and have in so far exposed the 

 hypocrisy of modern England. It is better so than that the country 

 should have it in its power to boast that it did not approve, although 

 it did the deed. Kitchener got his £30,000, his money perish with him! 

 I was glad to notice that, except old Roberts, who came with him to 

 the House, none of his brother Peers in the gallery offered him a 

 congratulation, or spoke a word to him. 



" Jth June. — In all the newspaper articles on the Kitchener Debate, 

 not one has the wit to see the flaw in Balfour's argument. It rests 

 entirely on Kitchener's assertion that he had the Mahdi's tomb pro- 

 faned, and the body dispersed deliberately with a political intention, 

 that of publicly showing the Mohammedan world of Africa that the 

 Mahdi was an impostor. The untruth, however, of this is easily dis- 

 coverable even in the meagre Blue Book published. If it had been 

 true it is certain Kitchener would have reported the fact with the rea- 

 sons to Cromer at the time, and that Cromer would have reported them 

 at the time to the Foreign Office. But though the thing happened in 

 September, and though Kitchener in the meanwhile had been back in 

 London, and in personal communication with everybody, including 

 her gracious Majesty the Queen, the Government professed to be ig- 

 norant of the facts until the month of February, the earliest document 

 in the Blue Book being one of February 17, when Cromer sent home 

 a communication of February 1 from Kitchener. Kitchener then for 

 the first time gives his explanation thus : ' I would add,' he says, ' that 

 my action regarding the tomb of Mohammed Achmet, the so-called 

 Mahdi, was taken after due deliberation, and prompted solely by po- 

 litical considerations.' How anybody at all conversant with the way 

 in which Blue Books are edited can be simple enough to believe in 

 face of this comparison of dates, that the ' political considerations ' were 

 not an afterthought passes my understanding, yet is clear that Morley 

 and even the Irish overlooked the absurdity. The whole discussion in 

 Parliament was unreal, nobody wanted to believe, except perhaps Mor- 

 ley. The Irish look on Kitchener with a sneaking regard, as in some 



