Parts 1 2 3 4 5 6
But Britain had a deeper game to play, and she could afford to seemingly neglect her interests in China. Quietly, the Soudan expedition organised by England and Egypt against the Khalifa, the rebel successor of the Mahdi and the tyrant of the Nile, was making its way to the Dervish stronghold, to secure in the future the right to construct and to safeguard a trans-African railway line from Cape Town to Cairo. At one stroke it was intended to revenge Gordon, though tardily, and to regain for Egypt and for England the sovereignty over the Bahr-el-Ghazal.
It was well known that France had long set herself to seize Fashoda, at the head of the Bahr-el-Ghazal; but the possession of this knowledge was kept secret carefully till the nick of time, instead of Major Marchaud entering the town as a conqueror, he virtually fled into it as one pursued. He stayed there, too, at the mercy of the Sirdar; and he might have starved there had Lord Kitchener not helped him in his need. The assumption by France that Marchaud had acquired the Bahr-el-Ghazal by right of entry upon land which had been abandoned by the Kheidve to the rebels, and which had thus become a no-man's-land, following upon French aggressions in the Niger, was more than England could suffer, patient as she was, and the British prepared for war.
France soon knew that her "bluff" was seen; that she could not expect help from Russia; that Germany was watching her; and above all that a new and most powerful alliance, tacit though none the less effective, had come into force ¨C the entente cordiale between America and Great Britain. Thereafter, a retreat was beaten, more or less gracefully, from the untenable position at Fashods; and Major or Colonel Marchaud is now wandering somewhere on the confines of Abyssinia, seeking territory which he might niche for France without complications with any other European power. Thus, with the fall of Omdurman and the dispersion of the vanquished Dervishes, England effected a military and diplomatic coup which completely overshadowed the seeming defeat she had sustained in China.
The attitude of cousinship and brotherhood England had shown to America when the nations sympathising with Spain were ready to take up Spain's cause now brought its reward ¨C and today the civilised world, if desiring to fight with Britain, would have to fight also the seventy millions of America ¨C and possibly the forty millions of Japan too. The China troubles have had at least the one good effect of making for England a potential ally in Japan: and the kindly affinity between the two great English-speaking nations in the abhorrence of oppression have brought England and America together in a sacred bond.
Read on ...
Parts 1 2 3 4 5 6
World Disasters: Air, Sea and Space
Tragedy in Klondyke
World Disasters Report 2002
World Disasters
World Disasters timeline
