The Warwickshire Herald. — 1888-02-16 (Birmingham, West Midlands, England)

ERDINGTON INSTITUTE.  On Monday evening last, Mr. Henry H. S. Pears., the distiguished war correspondent to the Daily News, delivered a lecture in the Public Erdington, in connection with the above Institute, entitled "The British Square at AbuKlea," being a lecture of personal experience. The room was excedingly well filled, and the lecture was certainly worthy the most marked attention which it received from those present, for it was very powerfully delivered, and each incident was described in a most vivid and impressive manner. The lecturer, who was well received said he did not think any of them were likely to have forgotten, although more than three years bad elapsed since that battle had taken place, the dangers whieh the British column were put to enuounter, and the difficulties, hunger, and privation, their brave soldiers had to endure when finding their way across the desert. They would remember reading of that march, when Lord IVolseley determined that a relief column must strike across the desert, in the hope of being able to rescue the little band of General Gordon's, which could not be rescued in any other way. Those 1,400 men, had to undertake a march of 200 miles, across an almost waterless desert, to encounter unknown odds of fanatical and courageous dervishes, and to fight their way through those hordes, in the hope of being able to establish communication with Khartoum. There came out to them on Christmas day 1883, among a batch of English newspapers, a number of Punch, containing a cartoon, which represented the heroic Gordon, standing on the walls of Khartoum, looking across the heap of desert sand, shading his eyes with his hand, and asking anxiously, "What is it I seem to see across the desert waste; is it the quick glimmer of British steel, or the everchanging mirage." He (the lecturer) believed that that cartoon inspired every soldier of the little column, which had just been told off for the desert march, under the command of General Sir Herbert Stewart, with the fanaticism of the Arabs themselves, and that was saying a great deal. Those Arabs had a fanaticism for the Mandi, a fanaticism for which all the British army had the highest possible admiration, and they would much rather have had those Arabs on their side than against them; not from any fear, but simply from sheer admiration of their splendid soldierly qualities, and their great courage. But the fanaticism of the British soldiers was almost equal to theirs, if not quite, for, he believed, every soldier in that column would cheerfully have undergone any possible dangers if he could have secured the life of that hero, who for so long a time had been lying behind the walls of Khartoum. On the 24th Deeember they received a message from Gen. Gordon bearing the words, "Unless a relief column comes to our assistance within ten days the city must fall." The hero would have to take his choice either of falling into the enemy's hand, and bearing himself as well as he could for the battle, or of endeavouring to hold out until assistance arrived. The first course seemed to him to have the taste of suicide, although it was much the easier and much the simpler way out of the difficulty. But he decided for the other, and said that he hoped God would give him strength to bear himself in a way ,worthy of his country. Then he wrote, a few days later, the beautiful wonls, "I have done my beat for my country and my God," and those were the last words ever written by him. How the next month after that passed none of them would ever know, but in the hope of being in time to rescue that hero, they started from Khortee and marched to the Ghakdul Wells, where they stopped to supply themselves with suthcient water to carry them to the wells of Ablu Klan, and then they started on the exact route named y Sir Herbert Stewart, that would enable them to reach the wells of Ablu Klea on the 16th. He (the speaker) had heard, before leaving Khortee, from an Arab spy, who was in his pay is correspondent to the Laity Avtll'S, that 18,000 of those Arabs were collected there, and when they arrived at that place they found that a very much larger number were gathered there that they had any conception of. He had perfect liberties in talking to Sir Herbert Stewart during the march across that country, and he expressed to him only one fear, and that was that the Arabs would never meet them in such large numbers as would enable him to give them a decisive defeat, and so perhaps a little less precaution was taken than there might have been under any other circumstances. It was necessary for them to leave Ghakdul at an early hour, and so when they had as much water as was necessary for them—it seemed a matter of small importance if they could march to the wells of Ablu Klee without having to fight their way there —and when they had procured enough water to