Not So Important To Make Others Feel Important

Queen Victoria once shared her impressions of her two most famous prime ministers.  Of William Gladstone, she said, "When I am with him, I feel I am with one of the most important leaders in the world."

On the other hand, she confessed that when she was with Disraeli, he made her feel "as if I am one of the most important leaders of the world."

- Haddon Robinson, "On Target," Focal Point, quoting from David Smith, The Friendless American Male

Costly Rescue, Gracious Rescue

For four years Emperor Theodore III of Ethiopia had held a group of fifty-three European captives (thirty adults and twenty-three children), including some missionaries and a British consul. By letter Queen Victoria pleaded in vain with Theodore to release the captives, who were held in a remote nine-thousand-foot-high bastion deep in the interior.

Finally, the queen ordered a full-scale military expedition from India to march into Ethiopia, not to conquer the country and make it a British colony, but simply to rescue a tiny band of civilians.

The invasion force included thirty-two thousand men, heavy artillery, and forty-four elephants to carry the guns. Provisions included fifty thousand tons of beef and pork and thirty thousand gallons of rum. Engineers built landing piers, water treatment plants, a railroad, and a telegraph line to the interior, plus many bridges. All of this was necessary to fight one decisive battle, after which the prisoners were released. Then everyone packed up and went home. The British expended millions of pounds to rescue a handful of captives.

 — Jim Reapsome, 
Current Thoughts and Trends (May 1999)