"That glorious memory is in no danger of perishing and needs no memorial.
Sackcloth and silence are what it suggests to those who have guided the
action of England; and Englishmen must bear the responsibility for that
action and share its shame. It is too early for atoning memorials; nor is
it possible for those who take part in them to dissociate themselves from
a repulsive hypocrisy.
"Let every one who would fain bestow something in honour of the great
victim, do, in silence, some act of help to our soldiers or their
families, or to others who are poor and suffering.
"In later days our survivors or successors may look back with softened
sorrow and pride to the part which men of our corps have played in these
passing events, and Charles Gordon far in the front of all; and then they
may set up our little tablets, or what not - not to preserve the memory of
our heroes, but to maintain the integrity of our own record of the
illustrious dead."
Happily Yule lived to see the beginning of better times for his country.
One of the first indications of that national awakening was the right
spirit in which the public, for the most part, received Lord Wolseley's
stirring appeal at the close of 1888, and Yule was so much struck by the
parallelism between Lord Wolseley's warning and some words of his own
contained in the pseudo-Polo fragment (see above, end of Preface), that he
sent Lord Wolseley the very last copy of the 1875 edition of Marco Polo,
with a vigorous expression of his sentiments.
That was probably Yule's last utterance on a public question. The sands of
life were now running low, and in the spring of 1889, he felt it right to
resign his seat on the India Council, to which he had been appointed for
life. On this occasion Lord Cross, then Secretary of State for India,
successfully urged his acceptance of the K.C.S.I., which Yule had refused
several years before.
In the House of Lords, Viscount Cross subsequently referred to his
resignation in the following terms. He said: "A vacancy on the Council had
unfortunately occurred through the resignation from ill-health of Sir
Henry Yule, whose presence on the Council had been of enormous advantage
to the natives of the country. A man of more kindly disposition, thorough
intelligence, high-minded, upright, honourable character, he believed did
not exist; and he would like to bear testimony to the estimation in which
he was held, and to the services which he had rendered in the office he
had so long filled."[73]
This year the Hakluyt Society published the concluding volume of Yule's
last work of importance, the Diary of Sir William Hedges.
