GLADSTONE AND MAJUBA 267 



for over six years, during which the Zulu and Afghan 

 Wars were very arduous enterprises. I shall never forget 

 hearing for the first time the newspaper boys shouting : 

 " Awful slaughter ! Heavy fighting ! " as they rushed 

 down the streets. 



This was when the news of the Isandula disaster had 

 just been received. We have grown so accustomed now 

 to such news cries that they are hardly noticed. 



In the Afghan War Lord Roberts had established a 

 reputation which all the later actions of his life served 

 only to strengthen. 



Then came in the Gladstone Government and, as by a 

 magician's wand, the whole aspect of affairs was changed. 

 The good that had been done in Afghanistan was deliber- 

 ately undone, and the Boers who had been saved from 

 the Zulus now seized the opportunity to declare their 

 independence. This was followed, in the spring of 1881, 

 by Majuba Hill, and Gladstone's decision not to fight any 

 more, for fear of bloodguiltiness. Lord Roberts, who had 

 been sent out with a sufficient force to effect a final 

 settlement, was recalled, and a patched-up suzerainty 

 was agreed on which rendered the future Boer War only 

 a question of time. 



Lord Randolph Churchill was beginning to come to the 

 front in Parliament in those days, though Jacob Bright 

 was supposed to have said something very much to the 

 point when by a pretended mistake he spoke of " the 

 noble Lord " as the Member for " Woodcock " instead 

 of Woodstock. Trouble was brewing in Egypt, where 

 again the hopeless Gladstonian weakness and vacillation 

 were destined to produce a plentiful crop of misfortune. 

 Altogether there was much to turn men's minds to active 

 thoughts of public life, for since the time of the Crimean 

 War our country had been suffered to go on in humdrum 

 fashion, not even venturing to intervene when the Prussians 

 annexed Schleswig-Holstein, though it would have been 

 possible then to check at its source the cancerous 

 growth which has since grown so widely over Europe, 



