Part 2 — CHAPTER X

THE FRENCH INVADE MOROCCO

[1911]“2nd Jan., 1911.—The birthday honours list gives Jameson a baronetcy who ought to have had a rope.

“3rd Jan.—There has been a battle between the police, helped by sixty men of the Scots Guards on the one hand, and two men on the other, described as anarchists and assassins, who defended themselves in a house in the East End of London for a whole day. Winston in his character of Home Secretary put himself in command of the forces of the Crown, and advanced under fire.

“12th Jan.—Farid Bey has returned to Cairo and is to be prosecuted for an introduction he wrote some time ago to one Ghyati’s poems. Also Ismaïl Abaza, the only independent member, has been turned out of his place in the General Assembly. All this is disheartening. There is much discussion at Paris, Berlin and Petersburg as to the meaning of the Potsdam arrangement made between Germany and Russia about Persia. It would seem directed against the Anglo-French Entente, but does it not also mean a further division of the spoils in Asia and Egypt? The danger we have to face is a possible Anglo-German Entente. This would be fatal and final—may God forbid it. [Compare Dr. Dillon’s ‘Eclipse of Russia.’]

“26th Jan.—Farid has been sentenced at Cairo to six months’ imprisonment, a really outrageous sentence, for having written a few words of introduction in a volume of poems, one of which contained praise of Wardani. His defence is that he never read the poems, and being a very busy man it is more than likely that that is the fact. The sentence was, no doubt, dictated by Gorst to the Assize Judge whom he appointed to deal with the case. It is just the same old way of manipulating the law in political cases we used to know in Ireland.

“Dilke is dead. I hardly know what to say of him except that he was in politics, what I most distrust, a Radical Imperialist. The extreme Radicals here had come to look upon him as one of their stalwarts, and only a few days ago Mackarness wrote to me proposing him as Chairman of a new Egyptian Committee, knowing nothing of his past history at the Foreign Office in 1882. Dilke remained very secretive about Egypt, speaking constantly in the House on every other subject but not on this. I advised Mackarness to ask Dilke whether he repented of his Egyptian sin, and he did so and found him unrepentant. Dilke was possessed, as the papers say of him, of ‘an almost encyclopædic knowledge’ on foreign affairs especially, but he had long ceased to be a force in the House of Commons though made use of now and then. The scandal of his connection with the Crawford divorce suit stood always in the way of his regaining office, and he had no wit or personal charm to attract to him a party below the gangway. Politically and morally he seems to have formed himself on the model of his friend Gambetta, a republican at home and an Imperial expansionist abroad. It is not for me to cast a stone at him for anything but his betrayal of Egypt to the Jews in 1882. Peace be with him.

“27th Jan.—Cotton, Mackarness, Rutherford and Rothstein came to tea with me, to arrange about our Egyptian Committee, of which I am to be Chairman, and our monthly newspaper, ‘Egypt.’ We are to publish a first number as soon as possible.

“28th Jan.—Lunched in Eccleston Square with Winston and Clementine; Birrell also there, and we renewed acquaintance on the ground of my former friendship with his father-in-law, Frederick Locker, and my character as a poet. Birrell has a pleasant reputation in the House of Commons as a gay trifler, covering his personal appearance of pedagogue to the extent that his style of wit has been called ‘Birrellism,’ and he made play on these lines in conversation during our meal, his forehead still dotted with sticking-plaster, as sign manual of his adventure with the suffragettes three months ago. I made him give a narrative of this. He had been walking home alone, he said, and was crossing the open space by the Duke of York’s column when he suddenly found himself in the middle of a group of wild women who thrust their ugly faces close to his and told him he was a bad, wicked man for not giving them the vote, and hustled him so that he had to defend himself with his umbrella, ineffectively, as they caught hold of his arms and the struggle between them lasted six or seven minutes. Then a weak knee which he had gave way and he fell down and was helpless, until Lionel Earle, who happened to be passing in a motor, stopped and rescued him. He was considerably mauled, and has been more or less on the sick list ever since. The recollection of it excited him and he talked of it with resentment, and now he had come to Churchill for sympathy and to consult how to meet the assaults to be expected at the opening of Parliament on Monday. I was sworn to secrecy while they discussed their plans of action. [On account of my oath I do not transcribe it here.] My contribution to the conversation was that I suggested that instead of being forcibly fed, which savoured too much of the ways of the Spanish Inquisition, the imprisoned women should have their own meals and their own medical attendants, and that the Ritz Hotel should be engaged for their accommodation, also that if I were a Cabinet Minister I would promise everything and do nothing. Also that if assaulted as Birrell had been I would go down on my knees and say ‘Ladies, have mercy on me, I am a poor weak man and appeal to your chivalry; spare me in consideration of my sex.’

“From this we went on to Ireland, about which Birrell was sensible and interesting. He confirmed all that Dillon had told me about the improved condition of the small farmers and especially of the labourers, for whom cottages had been built. These had given superior ideas of comfort to all. He also praised the new local administration which had superseded the old system. It was surprising, he said, how quickly the small tradesmen in the towns, who now managed it, have picked up the way of dealing with local matters. The only real difficulty now in Home Rule was the financial one, caused by the old age pensions. The English Treasury would have to provide two more millions yearly for this, and forego all charge for army or navy or interest on the National Debt. Birrell, however, foresees great difficulty in getting certain sections of the Liberal party to agree to Home Rule on these generous lines. Much would depend on how the Irish received the King on the occasion of his visit to Dublin in the summer. If the King were not well received it would be difficult to pass a Home Rule Bill. The whole thing depended for its value to us on our getting the Irish to join with us in loyalty to the Empire. I pricked up my ears at this but said nothing. I am sorry to find that Winston is getting more and more Imperialist. I asked what the King’s personal feeling was about Home Rule, and he said it was favourable. ‘It is a common mistake,’ he said, ‘to suppose that the late King was more in favour of it than the present King. The contrary is the case. All King Edward would listen to was “something in the way of councils,” whereas this one has quite colonial views about it. He is altogether colonial about Home Rule and the Empire.’ It is useful to know this, but is of evil omen to that other half of the British Empire where my interest lies, the coloured half. As I was going away Churchill called to me, ‘What will you say to our making a large increase in the Cairo garrison and putting the expense of it on Egypt as a result of your inflammatory pronouncements?’ ‘You may keep 100,000 men there if you like,’ I said, ‘It will make no difference to the result.’

“30th Jan.—Called on Weardale at his house in Carlton House Terrace and asked him to join our Egyptian Committee. Our manifesto he entirely approves, but like all of them, he is afraid of offending Grey by putting his name to it. He looks upon Grey as an ignorant commonplace man, quite incapable in foreign affairs, but he, Weardale, is interested in the question of the Declaration of London, and dares not quarrel with him on that account.

“1st Feb.—We launched the manifesto about our paper ‘Egypt’ this morning, with my sole name on it as provisional Chairman, none of my fellow Committeemen being willing to attach their signatures. English Radicals are timorous folk. Parliament met yesterday. The principal incident was a protest made by one Ginnell, an Independent Irish Nationalist, against the system of excluding private members from all opportunity of speech.

“5th Feb. (Sunday).—Two young Egyptians, came from Oxford to see me. They described the régime of political terror at Cairo as closely resembling what I remember there in 1883, the city honeycombed with spies, with delation, arrests and imprisonments under the new Press Law. They told me also that two months ago the German Consul General at Cairo, Prince Hatzfeldt, issued an invitation to young Egyptians to go for their education to Berlin. This was published in the ‘Mowayyad.’

“Later Dillon looked in. I urged him to bring forward the subject of Egypt in the Debate on the Address to-morrow, but he tells me Redmond would not support any attack on Grey just now, nor will the Irish Party move any amendment. The Labour members cannot be relied on. They are choosing Ramsay Macdonald as their leader. Talking about Ireland he said the King’s visit was most unfortunate; he would be badly received in Dublin, but the King had insisted upon going there. Ginnell he described as a clever but quite wild man, who would not conform to the rules of the House of Commons. They had had to carry him out of the House on one occasion by the arms and legs. At one time he had been his, Dillon’s, private secretary. Of Birrell he has a high opinion.

“Meynell tells me the Pope has forbidden mixed marriages in Ireland unless solemnized by Catholic rite, and has made the rule retrospective. This will raise trouble, and is contrary to all the formerly received canon law, where the declared consent of the parties followed by consummation was considered to constitute a binding marriage even without any religious ceremony.

“6th Feb.—I have been arranging Lytton’s letters to me, some two hundred of them, a really wonderful series, from 1865 to 1891, when he died. They are as good as Byron’s or Shelley’s, and far better than Trelawney’s, whose letters to Clare and Mary Shelley I have just been reading. These last are disappointing, being for the most part very badly written; the older ones school-boyish, the later less vigorous than one would have expected from the old buccaneer Trelawney posed as being. Both these women seem to have played with him; Mary certainly did, and it does not appear from the letters that with Clare there was anything more than a single brief passionate episode, never quite realized.

“9th Feb.—Rumbold and Lascelles lunched with me. We discussed the fortification of Flushing, which is exercising the minds of diplomatists just now. I told them of Usedom’s words about the eventual union of Holland with Germany which interested them. As to the motives that might induce Holland to unite with Germany, they suggested that the danger to the Dutch Colonies from the Naval power of Japan might be one, as Germany might guarantee these to Holland. Rumbold has a poor opinion of Grey. When the revolution happened at Constantinople he expostulated with Grey on its recognition by England, but Grey told him he did not agree with him. There is no doubt Grey entirely misunderstood what was happening, and was likely to happen. Lascelles told a story about Kaiser Wilhelm’s infatuation for Lord Lonsdale, whom he regarded as the most reliable of advisers about English things. Lonsdale had told the Kaiser once that he, Lonsdale, was in King Edward’s black books on account of his being unwilling to give up the Kaiser’s friendship. ‘I told the King, however,’ said Lonsdale, ‘that this I would not do. I was ready to lay down my life for the Crown as my ancestors had done, but not to betray my friends.’ This is considered a good joke.

“13th Feb.—To London to interview Miss Howsin, whom I have engaged at five pounds a month to edit our paper ‘Egypt’ under my direction. She is an intelligent young woman of about thirty-five.

“15th Feb.—To see Maud Allan dance, a great performance, in the Palace Theatre. It was finer than anything of the kind I have ever seen, especially the Mænad prancing, which one cannot doubt is a true reproduction of the old Greek way. She is a very beautiful woman.

“17th Feb.—Lunched in Downing Street. [I had so far avoided going there though often asked.] A large casual luncheon party of unexpected guests, for luncheon is an occasion for Margot’s friends to drop in. I found myself next to Julia McGuire, with Asquith beyond her, who came in rather late, and chattered gaily during the meal. I had not seen him to speak to since he became Prime Minister.

“Phil Burne-Jones dined with me and Meynell and his daughter Viola. George Wyndham came in immediately after in uniform from the Speaker’s banquet. He was in one of his most loquacious moods, and entertained us with theories of Post-Impressionism and art in literature. He out-stayed the rest and sat on with me well into the night, explaining to me the troubles of his Conservative Party, which is at sixes and sevens, Balfour away and no two of the others of the same opinion how to act on the Veto Bill. ‘In the House of Commons,’ George said, ‘there is an absolute dearth of ability. The Leadership in Balfour’s absence is disputed by Walter Long and Austen Chamberlain, a choice of mediocrities. Both look to Arthur’s succession, and Arthur is tired of politics and affects to be unwell, though he has nothing at all the matter with him, and has taken a holiday exactly at the crisis. Walter is ambitious without ability; Austen plodding and industrious; neither has any imagination. He, George, is the only one with brains, and he is standing aside, as he does not care to give up his literature and social amusements for the mere chance of being some day Prime Minister. Still, it lies within his reach, he says, if he wishes it, and he wants my advice. If he goes in for it, it will mean ten hours’ work daily, taking on three or four Secretaries, spending all his money and abandoning romance and friendship. What is he to do? If it was a question of saving the Empire from ruin, he would, of course, do it. But can the Empire be saved? His plan would be, when Asquith faces them with the Veto Bill to dare him to do his worst, to say ‘You threaten us with a revolution, we threaten you with a counter-revolution; create the five hundred peers if you can, we refuse to have the constitution destroyed.’ If Arthur would call a meeting in St. James’s Hall and declare war in this way he would carry the country with him, only Arthur won’t. Arthur is not sufficiently interested in the issue. He is disgusted with the way things have gone, he does not want to fight. He takes too scientific a view of politics. He knows that there was once an ice age, and that there will some day be an ice age again. This makes him indifferent.’ My advice to George was that if he cared about it enough to make a real revolution on these lines it would be worth doing, but that otherwise he had better enjoy himself.

“19th Feb. (Sunday).—Yesterday I stayed in all day writing. I have done three articles for ‘Egypt,’ the leading article, ‘Secrecy in Foreign Affairs,’ and ‘The Bagdad Railway,’ besides most of the rest of the first number. I never had such work.” [The article on “Secrecy in Foreign Affairs” was the reproduction of an old protest against the ways of the Foreign Office which I had first made as long ago as 1885 at a meeting at Islington Hall presided over by Frederic Harrison, and was at that time a novelty in politics.]

“To-day Dillon came to luncheon and stayed three hours talking. He approves of all I have written, especially about the Bagdad railway (see ‘Egypt,’ No. 1), and will get the new labour leader, Ramsay MacDonald, to bring our Egyptian questions forward in Parliament. About home politics, he told me the Opposition was all at sixes and sevens; they had no leader. He did not believe in the Lords throwing out the Veto Bill; the threat of creating the peers would be enough. The King would write a letter to Asquith promising the necessary number, and the Lords would give in. Still it all depends upon the King. I told him what I have often told George—that the obstinacy of the Tory party about Ireland was like the obstinacy of Pharaoh. They had been refusing for the last thirty years to let the Irish go, and had sacrificed first the House of Commons, now the House of Lords, and to-morrow very likely would sacrifice the Monarchy, and all for nothing. This pleased him. We talked about Asquith, whose intellectual power he greatly admires, though he says his range of interest is too narrow to govern an Empire. For myself I consider that Asquith has always been a wet Home Ruler, if one at all. Asquith is above all things a lawyer, and knows how to talk both ways.

“21st Feb.—With Phil Burne-Jones to his studio. He has done several nice little portraits on a very modest scale, the best being one of his father. It is not great art, but respectable and good. He is a pleasant, good fellow.

“Neville took me in the evening to a prize fight, where four or five thousand persons had collected to see a battle in gloves between a black man and a white man. It was very interesting, indeed exciting, as it involved a question of race superiority. The white man (Lang) was an English Australian, six feet and an inch high, with an immense width of shoulders, and limbs which looked as if they could smash everything; while the black man (Langford) was short, only five foot six, Neville said, but astonishingly well put together head to heel, lithe and strong. The contrast in build was great, but that of morale was still more remarkable, contradicting all my expectations. Lang was nervous, and though he had never been beaten was manifestly afraid of his enemy, who from the beginning took the offensive with a quiet, persistent attack which demoralized the other, and a rapidity of striking power which left him no chance. At the end of the fifth round Lang was smashed flat, so that I thought him killed, and though he got up pluckily his face was a mask of blood, and he staggered like a drunken man. The end of the fight was disappointing. Lang, to save himself more punishment, hit a foul blow. The black man, while pommelling him, happened to slip down on one knee, and Lang struck him while down. This disqualified him and ended the fight. It was a great triumph for the black, and I was pleased to see that the feeling of the spectators was mostly on his side, which was right, for he fought not only fairly, but with a certain generosity, while the other showed poor courage. Neville tells me the blacks as fighters have far better nerve than the whites, and are much more dogged. A fight between two blacks generally goes over forty rounds.” [The result of this fight was a surprise to me. I had expected to see a gigantic black man subdued by the scientific persistence and higher morale of his smaller white opponent, a triumph of white mind over black matter, but it turned out absolutely the reverse. It was the black man that wore the white down by superior science and superior courage.]

“25th Feb.—We have got our first number of ‘Egypt’ into print, every word of it written by myself, except a review of Rothstein’s book by Sir Henry Cotton. Miss Howsin, though enthusiastic and painstaking, is, I fear, useless as editor, as she has had no literary experience.

“Savarkar’s case has been given in favour of the English demand, which refuses to send him back to France. I am sorry for the poor young man, whose real crime in Anglo-Indian official eyes has been his authorship of the ‘History of the Indian Revolution.’

“26th Feb. (Sunday).—Newbuildings. Belloc to dine. Very cock-a-hoop about the success of his ‘Party System,’ which has come very opportunely. It is most amusing, though, unlike his books, is written seriously. He tells me he gets constant letters about it and invitations to lecture at £20 a night. We discussed, among other things, the fortification of Flushing, which he declares the French Government would make a casus belli, but I doubt the French fighting for it.

“28th Feb.—Chapel Street. Beauclerk brought Lord Ronaldshay to luncheon, a pleasant young man of thirty-five, who has travelled much in Asia, and is now in Parliament, with aspirations of being some day Viceroy of India. He was A.D.C. to Curzon for a year, and regards him with much admiration, though understanding the weak points of his character. My view of Imperial matters was entirely new to him, as it is to most people, though it is really forty years old. He, like everybody else, confuses the meaning of the word Empire, which has only quite recently been applied to our white colonial system, which is no more imperial than was the Greek colonial system in the days of Pericles. Empire properly means what the Roman Empire was, the subjugation of a number of races by a single race or a single man. This is the Imperialism I repudiate, not the other.

“1st March.—Called in Park Lane and found George Wyndham working up a speech on the Veto Bill. He told me the party had made up its mind to fight. The Lords would not pass the Bill, whatever threat of creating peers might be used.

“2nd March.—There is a new Ministry at Paris, Monis, Prime Minister; Delcassé, Marine; and Cruppi, Foreign Affairs.

“Mrs. Harrison told me of a luncheon at which her husband had been present at Morley’s, there being Alfred Lyall also there and Chirol. Morley had put to them three questions. (1) Was the entente with France less cordial than when it was made? (2) Was it possible to improve it? (3) How could it be improved? All but Morley agreed that it had ceased to be effective; that the French were disappointed at the results, and that the only thing that could make it effective would be the introduction of some form of conscription in England which would enable us to place an army at the service of France in the case of a war with Germany. Also that it is impossible we should raise such an army. The Entente is pretty nearly dead.

“3rd March.—The first number of ‘Egypt’ was distributed this morning, sixteen hundred copies. It happened to be the bicentenary to a day of the first issue of Addison’s ‘Spectator.’

“5th March (Sunday).—Newbuildings. Belloc to dinner. He assures me Haldane has not got 50,000 men to send to Egypt if they want to do so. He thinks it more likely that the condominium will be reestablished there, with a joint French and English garrison.

“Eddy Tennant has been made a peer (yet another member of the Crabbet Club arrived at high honours). He is also made Lord Commissioner of the Church of Scotland.

“7th March.—There was a pronouncement yesterday in all the papers from Berlin and from Constantinople, in which it was clearly declared that England will not be allowed to meddle with the Bagdad railway, a final blow to Grey and the Foreign Office in exact confirmation of what I had just written about Grey’s blundering. Happening to meet Belloc, I asked if he had noticed it, and what would be the result. He said: ‘The danger is that Grey may make a coup de tête and rush into a war with Germany.’

“9th March.—There has been a debate on the Bagdad Railway. Dillon writes excusing himself for not having taken part in it, but he has arranged with Ramsay MacDonald that they are to act together.

“10th March.—With Beauclerk to the National Gallery, where we looked at the Lansdowne Rembrandt. This, though a good landscape, is not at all worth the £100,000 Lansdowne has been offered for it, nor, I think, 100,000 pence. It is ridiculous giving long prices of this kind for small unimportant pictures, however good, and here we have nothing very wonderful. The new rooms at the Gallery do not display the pictures to such advantage as the old ones, and the walls are decorated too much like a railway restaurant.

“12th March (Sunday).—Chapel Street. Dillon came to lunch, and we had another long talk about the Bagdad Railway, Persia, and Egypt. As to Ireland, he thinks Home Rule will be come to by agreement, the younger Tories seeing now that their party has been ruined by its obstinacy in opposing it. He gave an interesting account of the Irish debate on Thursday, an all night sitting, where, Asquith having been called away, Churchill was for the first time left Leader of the House. A band of young Tories, Hugh Cecil, Winterton, Castlereagh, and one or two others, took the occasion to rag Winston, and succeeded in making him lose his temper by continual noise and calling out ‘Rats!’ so that he was driven to a standstill. It is strange to see him thus hoist with his father’s petard.

“14th March.—My cousin, Percy Wyndham, George’s father, is dead. Here is a good photograph of him. It gives all his best qualities of honour and benignity. I know of no one who in these had his equal. His death leaves me without anyone now with a right to lecture or reprove me, for he was my elder by over five years, and had the position with me through life of an elder brother. George was with him when he died.

“15th March.—The papers have been full of the Bagdad Railway all the week, while Grey’s climb-down seems to have satisfied the German Government, and now he has made another speech about disarmament. Both speeches are very able, and Dillon tells me that the first about the railway was admirable in style. Grey has a fine House of Commons manner, which imposes on his hearers. Indeed, he seems to fulfil the ideal of British statesmanship as it is described by Wells in his ‘New Macchiavelli,’ a dignified attitude which is always ready under pressure ‘proudly and quite firmly to take the second place.’ The ‘Temps,’ however, calls his disarmament speech childish, which is also true, inasmuch as it does not deal with the reality, that in order to economize in war preparations you must have a peace policy abroad. It is impossible to run high Imperialism on the cheap.

“As to Bagdad, I see Curzon has given notice of a motion in the House of Lords to move for papers. This ought to clear the atmosphere and bring to light at last the text of his secret treaty with Mubarak at Koweit in 1899. I have been looking through my diaries of 1898, and find that at the time of Curzon’s going to India the young Tories, of whom he was the leader on foreign affairs, looked to a partition of the Ottoman Empire between England, Russia, and Germany, England to have the Arabic speaking provinces. Curzon’s intrigue with Mubarak was one of his first moves in preparation for it. My chief fear now is least the German Government may after all weaken in its Bagdad policy and come to terms with England for an immediate division of the Ottoman spoils. There was a little paragraph the other day in the papers saying that Frank Lascelles, who has been passing through Berlin on his way back from Sweden, dined with the Emperor. May he not have been used by the Foreign Office to negotiate this?

“19th March (Sunday).—Newbuildings. Belloc came to dinner. He says of Grey’s arbitration alliance with America that such an alliance will certainly bring about a rapprochement between France and Germany, and the uniting of all Europe against us. He also says, speaking of the threatened quarrel between America and Mexico, that the United States have not a strong enough army to coerce the Mexicans.

“20th March.—Beauclerk went up to London with me, and we went to his rooms in Mount Street, where we met a certain Fielding, a mining engineer, whom he had made acquaintance with in Persia. Beauclerk explained the position of the Russians with a map on the Chinese frontier. The Russians have two strong military stations on the frontier, the one at Tashkend, the other at Kiahta, threatening Kulja and Urga respectively. The Russian colonists cannot in any way compete with the Chinese, and it is difficult to see what they want with extending their Empire in the Chinese direction, except that just over the frontier towards Kulja there is a valuable coal mine, which they covet.

“21st March.—Browne came to luncheon and brought with him Mirza Abdul Ghaffar, of the Persian Legation, an intelligent man, with whom we discussed the Persian and other Eastern questions for full three hours.

“22nd March.—To the House of Lords to hear the debate on Bagdad. It was a disappointing affair. Curzon made a long, dry, and pompous exposition of the case, carefully avoiding, however, the point of real interest, namely, his own intrigue with Mubarak Ibn Sbaa at Koweit. He just mentioned that place, mispronouncing it Ko-ite (as one might say ‘go right’) instead of Quate, but only to say that it need not be discussed. His whole speech was a shirking of the real matters in dispute, and Morley, who followed him, in reply, was only too glad to leave it so. I never saw anything feebler or less imposing than Morley showed himself on this occasion, unless it was the same Morley twelve years ago dealing with Kitchener at Omdurman in the House of Commons. He seemed ashamed of himself there in the House of Lords, a little old senile vestryman fumbling with his papers, ignorant of the whole case he had to state, timid in addressing his brother peers, contradicting himself and saying the wrong thing, at times quite inaudible. It seemed absurd that he and Curzon between them had had the whole fortunes of the British Empire in the East in their hands for the last dozen years, and that the Empire should have survived it. The debate ended in the non sequitur of Curzon withdrawing his demand for papers.

“Beauclerk on Sunday repeated to me the account of Major Sykes having fortified his house at Meshed. When Beauclerk stayed with him there three years ago, Sykes had 200 Indian Sepoys as his Consular guard, and he used to drill them daily to rifle practice. Also he had dug a mine from his garden 100 yards long, passing under the street to that of the Governor of the town, and had even undermined the Governor’s house. He learned this from Sykes himself. [A pleasant instance of what diplomatists call ‘peaceful penetration.’]

“24th March.—Bain, the author of the ‘Digit of the Moon,’ dined with me. He is less interesting than his books, a typical Anglo-Indian with more knowledge than sympathy in Indian things, and no sympathy at all with modern India.

“25th March.—Dillon lunched with me to concert measures about ‘Egypt,’ which seems to have been put on the official black list at Cairo. I am off now to Newbuildings till after Easter.

“26th March (Sunday).—Newbuildings. Belloc came to dinner with Maurice Baring. Baring is intelligent and pleasant, but showed no extraordinary brilliancy in talk.

“11th April.—Moberley Bell’s and Alfred Lyall’s deaths are announced to-day. Bell I never knew personally, but Lyall was for many years my friend. He died suddenly of angina pectoris at Farringford, where he was staying, apparently in good health, at the age of seventy-six. He had a successful Anglo-Indian official life, and twenty years ago was much cherished in London society; but, as old people are obliged to do, had dropped out of it latterly, and we had not met for the last eight or nine years. Without being a poet, he wrote some good verse, and had much knowledge of the East with as great sympathy for it as an Indian official dared to show.

“12th April.—Laid the foundation stone of my new Manor House in Worth Forest.

“18th April.—George Howard Lord Carlisle is dead. He was one of the best of men, as well as one of the most domestically tried.

“19th April.—Newbuildings. One Duse Mohammed, who has written a good book on Egypt, cribbed, nearly all of it, from me and Rothstein, came to see me. He is an odd creature, an Egyptian mulatto, he says, but knowing no word of Arabic; a Mohammedan, but unable to recite the formula of the faith; an Egyptian historian with almost no knowledge of Egypt. He tells me he was circumcised a Mohammedan, that his name is properly Mohammed Ali Ibn Abd El Salaam, but was taken to England by a Frenchman named Ducey when he was ten years old, and has only once been in Egypt since, namely from May 1882 till February 1883, when he returned to England. There he went on the stage, and later in America, lecturing on Shakespeare and writing for the Press. To test him I tried whether he could recite the Fatha, but he was unable to so much as repeat the words after me. It reminds one of the Tichborne claimant, who, asserting that he had been brought up a Catholic, was unable to repeat the ‘Hail Mary.’ He has married an English woman and goes sometimes to church, but has always refused, he tells me, to be baptized.

“22nd April.—The French Government seems drifting into an invasion of Morocco, just as Gladstone drifted into invading Egypt in 1882. Our fine Liberals here are all applauding out of ‘loyalty to France’; this is their thieves’ honour.

“25th April.—Rothstein is furious about Duse Mohammed’s appropriation of his work, which is more flagrant than I thought. Also, I fear, we may have trouble about the management of our paper, as Keir Hardie wants to run it his own way. Dillon advises me to get rid of the Committee.

“28th April.—It has been decided by the Committee that ‘Egypt’ is to remain under my sole political and financial direction with no other interference than the advice of an Executive Committee, consisting of myself, Ryan as Editor, Miss Howsin as Sub-Editor, Dr. Rutherford and El Alaili. Ryan and Miss Howsin will be paid by me. This leaves me in sole control.

“1st May.—Newbuildings. Belloc dined with us last night. He has been in Germany and has come back more than ever certain that in the next war the French will beat the Germans. His new paper is to be called ‘The Witness,’ with £2,000 to start it, and much promised help.

“6th May.—The event of the past week has been the invasion of Morocco by the French, a scandalous affair, exactly on the same lines of financial speculation and Colonial and Imperial intrigue which were followed by us in Egypt thirty years ago. Belloc tells me that the French Government has this time defied the German Government. He has information that a few days ago Delcassé (who manages French Foreign Policy, though not Minister of Foreign Affairs) had the German Ambassador at Paris invited, a very unusual thing, to attend a Cabinet meeting convened to discuss the Moroccan question, and that, on the Ambassador’s observing that the Algeciras Convention would have to be respected and that the German Government’s information about Fez was that there was no danger for Europeans there, Delcassé told him roundly that France was determined to march on Fez, and this time would do so whether Germany liked it or no. Belloc declares the French army to be better than the German, and that Germany will not dare to go to war.

“7th May (Sunday).—Chapel Street. Dillon and the Persian Consul, Ghaffar Khan, came to luncheon, and we had a long talk on Eastern affairs. Ghaffar would like England and Germany to compose their differences and unite in an alliance with Turkey and Persia, Turkey abandoning Egypt to England, a fanciful idea, which would only mean an end of all things for Islam in Turkey as well as elsewhere. There is but one chance for Islam, and that is Germany’s friendship, not, of course, a disinterested one, but still one that would protect them from the other European Powers until Islam is strong enough to stand alone. I explained the same thing to an intelligent young Egyptian from Oxford, Abd el Ghaffar, who came to consult me. He is of St. John’s College. He tells me there are about eighty young Egyptians in London, who are here studying.

“Yesterday, while at Newbuildings, three aeroplanes passed over at a great height, racing from Brooklands to Shoreham. We first heard shouts of boys and then the rattle of the machines. They were near enough for us to be able to make out with a glass that there was somebody in each. The leading one was a monoplane, a much more workmanlike machine than the others and extremely like a bird. Machinery, however, does not interest me, and I have not the smallest wish to take a flight in one.

“11th May.—Worth Forest. Gorst’s Egyptian Report is published, a lame affair, which will do him little credit. It justifies all I have written about him and the advice I have given to the Egyptians. He admits that there was never anything at all serious in his Constitutional reforms. There is no chance whatever for Egypt, and has not been since 1904, except in the revival of Turkey’s military power and the intervention of Europe.

“14th May (Sunday).—Newbuildings. Meynell is here, with his nephew, Captain Butler, of the Royal Irish Fusiliers, Sir William’s son, an exceedingly nice young fellow, of thirty, with all his father’s anti-imperial ideas, an unusual phenomenon in a soldier; clever, original, a Home Ruler and a pious Catholic, who would like to fight for the Pope. I asked him how he managed to get on with his fellow-officers, having such ideas. He answered, ‘They do not think, and I play polo.’ He is just back from India where he saw a good deal of the German Crown Prince, who was travelling there during the winter. He confirms Philip Napier’s account of his unconventional ways. The Crown Prince would not pay attention to the official big-wigs or be bored with German deputations, but he made great friends with the English officers, ‘messing with them like a subaltern and playing polo. We all liked him much.’ At Cairo, according to Napier, he gave great offence, refusing to wear uniform on solemn occasions or keep tiresome engagements. When he was to visit the Khedive on one occasion he was not ready, being occupied with a lady, and sent his Aide-de-camp on in the Khedivial carriage intended for him, arriving too late himself in a taxicab (with the lady) in a suit of overalls. Butler understands horses and took an intelligent interest in everything here.

“17th May.—Ryan enters on his duties as editor of ‘Egypt’ from the 15th. I like him much.

“19th May.—A great fuss is being made in London about the Kaiser Wilhelm’s visit, and a gala representation of that ancient play ‘Money’ is being given in his honour. I only hope this visit to London is not to be another Reval meeting, with some ‘plot of peace’ involving the ruin of some Eastern nation. That is always the danger on these gala occasions. It is easy for robbers to make friends over a corpse, and Morocco is there ready to their hands.

“22nd May.—The French Prime Minister, Monis, and the War Minister, Marceaux, have been, the one killed, the other seriously hurt by an aeroplane which they were watching the start of in an air race from Paris to Madrid yesterday. This may make a difference in the political world, and just possibly save Morocco from being invaded by the French. May God confound them! I fear it is as Belloc told me, the German Government have either given in or come to an arrangement about Morocco, for the occupation of Fez is no longer concealed, the price perhaps of France’s and Russia’s withdrawal of their opposition to the Bagdad railway. [Compare Dr. Dillon’s ‘Eclipse of Russia.’]

“24th May.—The French have entered Fez, it is said, without opposition, the whole story of Europeans whose lives were reported to be in danger having proved to be a fable of the same kind as that invented about Johannesburg at the time of the Jameson raid (N.B.—Jameson has just been made a knight by our Liberal Government), and now the same course of lying is to be pursued by the French about remaining there as we pursued in Egypt.

“26th May.—There has been a report of a threat issued by the Russian Government to Turkey in regard to Montenegro, but to-day it is announced that its arrogant tone is apologized for. Germany once more has intervened.

“28th May (Sunday).—Newbuildings. Shane Leslie, Patrick Butler, Francis Meynell, and Ryan were here for the week end, and yesterday Mallock. Young Meynell is clever and interesting, and Butler a good young man, with no little wisdom too. With Belloc and his wife who came to dinner, an entirely Catholic party.

“1st June.—The foolish Lords have passed the Veto Bill, and so have committed suicide without a division and without glory. Never was a position so frittered away. Arthur Balfour is principally responsible for this, acting on the advice of the two Whig deserters, Rosebery and Lansdowne. If he had stood firm two years ago and risked a civil war he would have had all the physical force of the country with him, and popular opinion, at least in England, too. There would have been no civil war, and he would have come back to office and stayed there for twenty years. It was the Whig obstinacy about Home Rule in Ireland that prevented it, and has caused their ruin.

“6th June.—A young Copt, Louis Aknoukh Fanous, came to consult me as to how to bring about a reconciliation between the Copts and Moslems in Egypt, in which I was very ready to help on two conditions—that the Copts should declare themselves (1) honestly for evacuation and (2) for the maintenance of the connection with the Ottoman Empire. He told me that the younger generation of Copts were quite ready for this. They did not want foreign rule, or to be separated from the Empire, where they were more at home than they would be in any European hands. Only they insisted that in their schools they should not be forced to learn to read out of the Koran, and that they should have Sunday as their holiday in the public offices, and should have a share in the provincial administration. I promised to speak to the Nationalist leaders about this. The young man is extremely intelligent, speaks English perfectly, and took a degree in Oxford three or four years ago. His father is one of the richest and most influential Christians in Upper Egypt.

“11th June (Sunday).—There is more trouble brewing in Albania, the Catholic Mirdites having joined the Rebellion, and the Austrian Government having issued a warning of a moderating kind to Turkey. It would alarm me more if there was not news from Berlin which seems to show that the Turks are still backed by Germany. Goltz has publicly expressed his entire confidence in the Ottoman army, and the Emperor William is to receive a deputation from the Ottoman Parliament. But for this I should say the situation was very serious. The Bellocs dined with us and Cecil Chesterton, with whom he is collaborating his paper, ‘The Witness.’ They have asked me for some verse, and I have given them my ‘Coronation Ode.’ Belloc is delighted with it, and will print it on the first page of his paper.

“14th June.—There is a new complication in Morocco, the Spanish Government having sent troops into the country in exact imitation of the French.

“15th June.—Newbuildings. Yusuf Bey el Moelhi and a friend, Doctor Rashad, arrived to consult me in Egyptian affairs. He is all for alliance with Constantinople and Berlin, and is starting for Berlin to-morrow. He complains of the inefficiency of Hatzfeldt, the German Consul-General at Cairo, and of the little pains taken by him to strengthen German influence. Yusuf Bey is intelligent and patriotic, but, like most of them, looks to money as the main object in life. It is only the younger generation which has larger ideas. He has had my ‘Secret History’ translated at his own cost, but doubts whether it will not be seized under the new Press laws.

“17th June.—The Albanian quarrel seems arranged, and the Sultan recited the prayer yesterday at the tomb of Sultan Mourad at Kossovo, 80,000 Albanian clansmen praying with him.

“19th June.—Dr. Rifaat, a Nationalist exile, arrived from Paris; he, too, to consult me. He is an extremist in his views, very hostile to the Khedive, and without much confidence from any quarter in the future. He looks upon the Ottoman connection as the best chance for Egypt, but is gloomy about the Ottoman Empire. The Egyptians are easily cast down, just as they are too ready to shout victory.

“20th June.—Drove over to Greatham to call on Meynell at his new home there, a most beautiful site. He has just secured between Parham Park and the Amberly Marshes eighty acres of waste land, where he intends to found a family colony, wild heath, overgrown with fern, for which he has paid no more than £20 an acre. We found him in high delight at his sudden good fortune as a landed proprietor, a good fortune he deserves, and made our picnic under a clump of hollies, discussing the sites of cottages he intends to build.

“Belloc’s paper is published under the title ‘The Eye Witness,’ with my ‘Coronation Ode’ occupying the most prominent position.

“21st June.—Old Riaz Pasha is dead, the last of the old Pasha gang in Egypt. He began life as a dancing boy of Jewish origin at the Court of Abbas I, and has ended in high consideration and respect, though his subservience to English policy had lost him latterly the popularity he enjoyed twenty years ago, a patriot according to his lights, but these were never clear. I liked him personally much. Allah kerim.

“22nd June.—Coronation Day. We drank the King’s health and the Queen’s and all the Royal Family’s, not, I fear, very devoutly.

“28th June.—Hassan Bey Sabri, an old disciple of Abdu’s, came to see me. He belongs, if anybody in Egypt does, to the English party, expecting to be one of the nominated members of the Legislative Council, and is a follower of Saad Zaghloul. He thinks there is some new Liberal policy being planned for Egypt. Gorst, poor fellow, is dying, and his successor is to be Arthur Hardinge, and if the Nationalists will only be quiet, and not oppose English policy, something in the way of a Constitution will be given them. Personally I always liked Gorst, and used to find him more amenable to my ideas than Cromer, but he has proved a bad friend to Egypt, because, knowing her better than Cromer, he was better able to betray. Arthur Hardinge is a man of the same school, both having been Cromer’s pupils, Hardinge probably the cleverer of the two. The Legislative Council will be allowed to pass laws, and even to control finance, as far as these relate to internal affairs. I asked him what his ultimate plan was, and he said he wanted evacuation, but not yet. I found him an honest man but timid, and as such in favour of half measures. Talking about Mohammed Abdu’s death and in answer to my question whether he thought the Mufti had been poisoned, he said he was sure of it. He had been with Abdu at Alexandria on the 13th of June (Abdu died on 11th July) and he had suspicions then which have since been confirmed. He believed the same plan had been pursued with Abdu as with Seyyid Jemal ed Din, cancer had been communicated by means of a poisoned toothpick.

“2nd July (Sunday).—There is a sensational announcement in the ‘Observer’ of the landing of German troops in Morocco. Belloc, who dined with us, declared the French Government will not fight. The French Government are in the throes of the reconstruction of their Cabinet, Monis having resigned, and the moment has been well chosen by the Germans for their coup.

“5th July.—The ‘Daily Telegraph’ has a paragraph saying that Kitchener is to have Gorst’s place at Cairo.

“7th July.—The position in Morocco is very serious. I have been talking it over with Belloc. He is sure there has been an understanding between the German and French Governments about Agadir, and that the quarrel will be settled at our English expense. Agadir, he says, is of great importance to Germany, as the only possible seaport on the Moroccan Atlantic coast, and is of no importance to France in any hostile sense. The hostility is all towards us. Also he says that the French and Germans are too much afraid of each other to go to war, and that France will not join us in any attempt to expel Germany from its African position (at Agadir) unless we can guarantee her the support of a hundred and fifty thousand men landed on her frontier in France, a force we are unable to provide. We shall have therefore to make up our minds either to submit to the German seizure of Agadir or to go to war with Germany alone or find her compensation elsewhere. Where can we find such? Our Government seems aware of the position, for Asquith made a declaration yesterday in Parliament that England had interests of her own in Morocco separate from those entailed on her by her engagements to France. The question may possibly lead to war, though more likely to Germany’s keeping Agadir.”

[This shows, as an early link, the connection between France’s invasion of Morocco in 1911 and the great war of 1914, with the part we played in it as France’s ally, supplying a contingent in a land campaign against Germany.]

“9th July (Sunday).—Lady Gregory is here. She has been very successful this year with her plays, having cleared £500 by her theatrical visit to London, and got £3,000 of subscriptions, while Yeats has received a Government pension of £150. The King and Queen are in Ireland, where they are having a loyal reception carefully prepared for them, though the Dublin Corporation has refused to vote a penny or authorize an address.

“Belloc dined with us. His view that the occupation of Agadir was arranged beforehand between the French and German Governments seems the correct one. They seem to be on excellent terms with each other, and it is we that are to be left out in the cold. There is sufficient danger of war to have made me write to my bankers about it.

“11th July.—Newbuildings. The anniversary of the Bombardment of Alexandria. Miss Howsin came from King’s Mead, where she is staying with Mrs. Mackarness, to talk over the affairs of ‘Egypt.’ I hear from Osman Ghaleb that the Khedive is making overtures of reconciliation to the Nationalist Party, being angry at the idea of Kitchener being re-imposed on him to succeed Gorst. When one remembers their quarrel in 1893, and how Kitchener, being in the Khedive’s service as Commander-in-Chief of his army, left Egypt for South Africa without having so much as the politeness to take leave at the Palace, one wonders at his having been sent back to Cairo by the Foreign Office. I have drawn up a resolution to be issued by the Egyptian Committee protesting against Kitchener’s appointment.

“12th July.—Caffin (my land agent, who is also a miller,) tells me that war is an absolute impossibility for this country at the present moment as we have no supply of food whatever in store, and even a belief in war would be ruin. ‘We are all,’ he says, ‘living literally from hand to mouth. I have large contracts to supply flour at given dates, and last week was within twenty-four hours of shutting down my mill because it was impossible to buy wheat anywhere. I could not get a hundred sacks at Chichester for love or money, Chichester being the centre of our Sussex wheat supply, where in my grandfather’s time a thousand sacks were always to be had. England would starve in a fortnight; war is impossible.’

“13th July.—Everybody believes Kitchener’s appointment to Egypt certain. If it is so, it can only mean that Grey has taken the bit between his teeth and means some form of Protectorate there. The Khedive is furious at the idea.

“14th July.—Chapel Street. The ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ announces Kitchener’s appointment, not only as Consul General in Egypt, but also to command the army of Occupation and all the forces on the Nile, with a great flourish about some form of Protectorate. I cannot get the Egyptian Committee to make any vigorous protest.

“To Hugh Lane’s house in Chelsea where Lady Gregory is staying, for a tea party in connection with the Abbey Theatre. It is a nice house in Cheyne Walk, which is being redecorated for him by John, and contains two or three good pictures with others less good. Lane is Lady Gregory’s nephew, a young Irishman who began with nothing but his wits. She apprenticed him to Colnaghi at a hundred a year, where he learnt his business of picture dealing. He began his fortune, she tells me, by an accident. He happened to hear of a picture which was for sale in some remote country place, and travelled down to look at it, but, having no money to buy, although there was almost no bidding, was obliged to let it go for a very small price. When the sale was over, the bidders, who were all professional dealers, went to a public house, and he with them, and then it turned out that they had been standing in together not to bid, and they held a private sale of the picture amongst themselves, dividing the price realized between them, and as Lane was known to belong to Colnaghi’s he was included in it, and got £160 as his share. This started him, and he has now made a fortune and been knighted for presenting a collection of pictures to the Dublin Gallery. Also being a good-looking youth with much pleasant audacity, he has become a man of fashion in London. Among other fine ladies at his tea party to-day I found the Duchess of Sutherland, Lane playing his part of host nobly.

“Meynell dined with me, and we went on together to Stafford House, an amusing evening, as evenings there always are, and where I met a number of ancient friends, ex-beauties, and others who seemed pleased to see me. Among them Lady Desborough, who reminded me of the Sunday we spent together, hard on thirty years ago when she was Etty Fane, at Brocket. She was a beautiful girl then, not yet out, and is now probably forty-seven, and has seen much racket in the world, and there was Lady Randolph and Mrs. Jack Leslie and Lady Horner and a number more of that generation. The girls of the present generation have the disadvantage of the grotesque fashion now prevailing in dress in which no woman can look otherwise than a bundle, but there was no lack of amusement. At a certain stage in the evening, after much loud comic singing, the guests sat down in a circle on the ground, and certain performers from Paris danced the Danse des Apaches, which is the same which used to be called the Can-can, with other gymnastic eccentricities formerly confined to the Jardin Mabille, for our amusement; an astonishing display, which would have shocked us, I think, even at Mabille, in the days of the Second Empire and would certainly have been impossible in London in my young days at a public dancing hall, let alone in a drawing-room, but which now delighted us all without a suspicion of indecorum, young men and maidens applauding unrestrainedly, for such is our new kingdom of Heaven. It is not for me to find fault, and I suppose we enjoy our lives more.

“16th July (Sunday).—Newbuildings. Belloc dined with us. He says that Cromer is very angry at Kitchener’s appointment, declaring him to be a thief, which was, I believe, Mohammed Abdu’s opinion too. Cromer and Kitchener were never fond of each other, and it is certainly a preposterous choice to have been made if they have no design of annexation up their sleeves. According to Belloc there was a great effort made to obtain the place for Sir Charles Eliot, but it failed through the refusal of Lord Lansdowne to agree to it, Lansdowne had recalled Eliot from Uganda, and would not consent to his being employed again by the Foreign Office, for these things are arranged now by the two front benches in private agreement.

“17th July.—A telegram from Gros Bois to tell me of the death of my dear old friend Wagram. It was signed by Alexandre and the two girls.

“18th July.—Grey has declared, in answer to a question in Parliament, suggested by me, that Kitchener’s instructions, which he declines to produce, ‘will involve no change in the general policy of his Majesty’s Government.’ He said the same thing when Gorst succeeded Cromer. What he probably means is that, with the same pretence of preparing Egypt for self-government, the military occupation, which is all they really care about, will be maintained. There will, however, most certainly be a change of tactics, the entente with the Khedive will give place to an entente with the Khedive’s enemies, and there is already sign of it in a telegram from Cairo saying that the Nationalists are pleased with Kitchener personally. Osman Ghaleb writes from Paris sending me a message dictated to him by the Khedive. In this letter Abbas declares himself quite ready to grant a Constitution, and says that it was in reality he who caused the Suez Convention to be rejected by the General Assembly last year. Osman Ghaleb adds a private P.S. saying that Abbas talks of abdicating; but that would only mean the substitution of his son with a Regency giving complete power to Kitchener.

“20th July.—Worth Forest. Things are happening fast in Europe, and it seems pretty certain now that Germany has made terms not only with France but with Russia, in order to break up their entente with us. The ‘Conversations’ which have been held at Berlin between Von Kiderlin Waechter and Cambon (Jules) are announced to have resulted in a claim made by Germany of the French Congo as a set off for Morocco, and at the same time the Spaniards are pressing things on at Alcazar and a French Consul has been insulted there. This means that the Germans are determined on having their naval station on the Atlantic whether we choose or not. The ‘Times’ has a warlike article to-day reminding Asquith of his bold words of a fortnight ago, and pressing him to make them good. I don’t suppose he will, for he is entirely occupied with his quarrel with the House of Lords, which has reached its crisis, while the Dock Strike continues, making the shortage of wheat in the country so great that Caffin tells me even a well-founded rumour of war would bring about a collapse. People don’t believe in war as a possible thing concerning England.

“The ex-Shah of Persia has landed at a Caspian port, and is raising an army obviously with the consent of the Russian Government. The Turkish quarrel with Albania has developed too, and almost anything may happen in that direction. It is impossible things can settle down without great changes and shiftings to the detriment of Mohammedan lands, and this makes me unhappy.

“Osman Ghaleb has written again, and I have sent a letter in reply, which I intend him to forward to the Khedive as my advice. It is that His Highness should write a formal letter to our King George, protesting against Kitchener, and asking for an homme d’état to be sent to Egypt in Gorst’s place, one who shall work with him to set the Government of Egypt on a Constitutional basis. Such a letter, if published, will at least serve to reconcile the Khedive with the Nationalists.

“Dillon writes: ‘I have read your poem, the “Coronation Ode”; it is a fine powerful denunciation, rather too hard on your own country and your own people. If I were an Englishman I do not think I could so utterly have condemned England, much as I detest Grey’s policy. The Rosebery gang and the Tories have undoubtedly led England through the mire, as far as foreign policy is concerned, but in spite of all England remains the freest country in the world, and that is something.’ This may be true, but it is precisely the position taken by the Primrose League with its motto ‘Imperium et Libertas, Empire Abroad, Liberty at Home.’

“The Bearwood Estate, belonging to the Walter family, was put up for sale a few days ago, with a reserve of £150,000, but no bidding. Meynell tells me that the Walters have come to complete ruin, a wonderful event when one thinks of their career of glory as proprietors of the ‘Times’ and the power they wielded in the world, wielded and abused to the ruin of how many weak nations. The ‘Times’ was the source of their wealth, and it no longer pays its expenses and has passed into other hands.

“23rd July (Sunday).—Ryan came and also El Abd, president of the Egyptian Society of London, which has written to the Khedive demanding of him a Constitution for Egypt, but he declares the Khedive is not to be trusted.

“To dinner came Belloc and with him a French Jesuit, Father Courvois, who is the director of a kind of Catholic Socialism—an intelligent and agreeable man, who speaks excellent English.

“24th July.—Osman Ghaleb writes from Paris, saying he has sent on my message to the Khedive, but he is unlikely to take my advice. On leaving for Italy the Khedive had told him that he had had a letter from Kitchener announcing his appointment, and saying that he hoped they would work together for the regeneration of Egypt.

“25th July.—To London for a great luncheon given by the Eastern Association to the two delegates of the Ottoman Parliament, Bostani Effendi, senator, and Riza Tewfik, Deputy, a heavy affair with long-winded speeches by Admiral Fremantle and other ancient bores, and by the delegates, who spoke in very creditable English, but were afraid of saying anything precise about the actual situation. I had, however, a private talk with Riza Tewfik, who takes a gloomy view of the situation in Albania, and thinks that the war will extend to the other Balkan States, and perhaps to intervention by Austria. I asked him whether Germany would not prevent this, and he said: ‘Germany will give us advice and her moral support, but nothing more than that, as she has always done.’ He condemns the present Government at Constantinople in the strongest terms, he being the leader of the Opposition in the Chamber. He told me that the letter I sent him last October warning them of the folly of campaigning in Arabia, had been shown by him to Talaat Pasha and others, but they had paid no attention to it, though my advice had since been entirely justified. ‘For instance,’ he said, ‘what you said about paying the Arabs rather than fighting them. The whole quarrel with the Druses could have been settled for £200, and it cost us £600,000, beside the bloodshed.’ Riza’s fellow delegate, Bostani, is a learned Arabic scholar, member for Beyrout, who was made Senator last year. His speech was lengthy and terribly dull, but I found him pleasant to talk to.

“In the evening, just before dinner, I looked in at 44 Belgrave Square and found George Wyndham there with F. E. Smith and Bendor, all three much excited. ‘Here you see the conspirators,’ said George. For some time past George has been organizing a revolt against Lansdowne and Arthur Balfour’s management of the Tory party in the matter of the Veto Bill, and yesterday they brought matters to a head by making a violent scene in the House of Commons, and refusing to let Asquith speak. Hugh Cecil and F. E. Smith are the leaders of the revolt with George. Bendor has turned Grosvenor House into an office, where they hold their meetings, and they are to give a banquet to old Halsbury to-morrow as the saviour of the Constitution. They are all in the highest possible spirits at the commotion they have caused and consider that they have forced Balfour’s hand. ‘You ought to have done it,’ I said, ‘two years ago, and you would have had the whole country with you, Army, Navy, Territorials, and all down to the Boy Scouts.’ The two others did not stay many minutes, and when they were gone George talked it over with me, promising an absolutely full account of it when the crisis should be over, but he had given his word of honour not to reveal certain things at present. Nevertheless, I gather from him that they suspect Arthur Balfour of having been all through in secret collusion with Asquith, and that perhaps now Arthur is in secret collusion against Asquith with them. It appears that just before the last election in January Asquith got the King to promise to create a sufficient number of peers to pass the Veto Bill, which the King promised, thinking the elections would go more against Asquith than they did. The King does not at all want to create the peers, neither does Asquith, though the King is in favour of Home Rule for Ireland. They hope that the peers will give in without that necessity, and have been looking all along for a compromise, but the extremists on both sides will have none of it, and now George says the country is in revolt, meaning the Tories in the constituencies. ‘If we had given in without a fight there would have been an end of the Tory Party.’ George thinks they have saved that at least. They are ready for actual armed resistance, or rather, they would like that. They have chosen old Halsbury for their nominal leader because of his great age (eighty-eight), otherwise there would have been jealousies. All the best men of their party are with them, including Austen Chamberlain, whom they did not expect. The only one who has disappointed them has been George Curzon. ‘He is a fool,’ said George, ‘for he might have been next Prime Minister.’ However, I am to hear all as soon as the crisis is over. George thinks war with Germany quite possible, and he wants it.

“26th July.—To Shaw’s new play, ‘Fanny’s First Play,’ last night, at The Little Theatre, with Meynell and Miss Montgomerie, an American beauty. The play was screamingly amusing, and I laughed till the tears ran down my cheeks. Mrs. Granville Barker, who was acting the principal character, sent me a message when it was over, and I went into her room and congratulated her, which I was glad to do, as she had heard that I did not like her in ‘The Witch.’

“To Lady C., who tells me Kitchener called on her yesterday, and quite contrary to his custom, spoke in high terms of me. This seems to show that he is trying to play the diplomat, and wants to conciliate his enemies, for he knows that I am a friend of hers and that she will repeat it. I asked her what he had told her about his mission to Egypt, and she said, ‘Oh, he did not want to go there, he wanted to stay at the War Office, and says he is getting old and Egypt will be his last post, but he is to organize everything, the army and all, and make a big thing of it.’ She tells me that she knew Kitchener when he was quite a young man. ‘I knew Horatio,’ she said, ‘forty years ago, when he had just left the French Army. He was in a very poor way then, so low that he had accepted an offer from Toole to go on the stage at £2 a week. Talking about his never having married, she said, ‘he had no time to trouble himself with ladies.’ He wouldn’t marry because he was determined to succeed in his profession, and he could not drag a wife about after him, and he had to be careful not to make scandals because of his men. I told her that I was afraid I should have to bring up the Mahdi’s Head against him, and, in fact, I had just been writing as strong an article as I could find words for about it, this very morning, for our next number of ‘Egypt.’

“I forgot to say that talking to George yesterday, he told me that once in talking to the late King about Ireland when he was Chief Secretary, the King had said: ‘We must either govern Ireland like an English county, or give them complete Home Rule; there is no middle course.’ This, I know, is George’s own view, yet in public he is always saying Home Rule is impossible and so is the other.

“27th July.—George’s revolt is not likely to succeed. They held their public dinner to Halsbury last night, and were only able to muster some forty peers at it, while Balfour and Lansdowne have produced a list of 250, and these have threatened to vote for the Bill rather than have peers created to swamp them. The fact is the revolt is all too late.

“Dillon lunched with me and described the scene in the House of Commons on Monday, and Hugh Cecil’s behaviour. The mot d’ordre for the Irish party had been that they were to sit absolutely silent during the row, which they knew was intended, but at the height of it, some of the Irish grew excited and began to shout, while Redmond turned on them and said in the hearing of the Tories, who sit with them on the Opposition benches, ‘If these damned Englishmen choose to make bloody fools of themselves, it is no reason for us not to behave.’ The sentiment was approved by some of the Tories, and one of them said to Redmond, ‘Though you did call us damned Englishmen I agree with every word.’

“Down to Worth Forest in the afternoon. Quite late a messenger from Glyn’s Bank made his appearance, having wandered all over the woods at Newbuildings, and on here, carrying £500 in gold for me, my provision for war. He, poor man, was nearly dead with his exertions in the heat, and I made him stay and dine with me and found him good company, with his reminiscences of the Bank and City affairs. He has been twenty years at Glyn’s. I gave him a full meal and plenty of wine, and sent him away happy somewhere about midnight!”

[This adventure, unique in the good man’s experience, has become a legend now in Lombard Street.]

“28th July.—Asquith has given in about Agadir, pretending that he did not mean that the Germans were not to have a naval station on the North Atlantic coast. Rothstein, whom I saw three days ago in London, tells me that before Lloyd George’s war speech at the Banker’s dinner was made, a Cabinet was held, at which it was decided, with only one dissentient, Loreburn, the Lord Chancellor, that Germany should be defied about Agadir at the risk of war. Loreburn, however, went to the London Editor of the ‘Manchester Guardian,’ and told him about it, and got him to write in a pacific sense. The ‘Daily News’ had been notified by the Government in a contrary sense, and orders had been issued to the Northern Squadron. Their swagger, however, did not frighten the Germans, only made them angry, and as the French have not the least notion of going to war about Agadir to please us, Asquith has thought better of it, and now makes this explanation. War for this country is an economical impossibility, the Germans will have their naval station at Agadir or wherever else they choose.

“29th July.—In the early morning we buried our box of gold in the middle of a fir wood under a sycamore tree, the only one there.

“Dillon has sent me the Hansard account of the debate on Thursday on Egypt, in which he took part. Grey made in it some valuable admissions, declaring that anything like a reactionary policy in Egypt was unthinkable. It will make it very difficult for Kitchener to play the tyrant. He will try to play the lapdog first.

“30th July (Sunday).—Having been away for two nights, on our return to-day to the Forest, we went to look whether our hiding-place had been disturbed, and to our astonishment found a toad seated on the box that contained the gold, a curious circumstance, like what one reads of in the middle ages.” [The box had been buried only a few inches below the surface, and the toad had made his way down to it. It will save future treasure hunters trouble to be told that the box and its contents have long left the forest precincts and been returned to Glyn.]

“1st Aug.—Our annual Arab Sale, a smaller attendance than at any previous one.

“3rd Aug.—Newbuildings. Ismaïl Pasha Abaza came with Surur Bey to consult me about what line should be taken at Cairo towards Kitchener, whether to oppose him or make the best of him. I advised opposing him. He gave me a long account of the Khedive’s troubles, being in his confidence. He explained that His Highness was as much opposed as anybody to the Occupation, but had not means of resisting. He had tried it many years ago, but had found himself without support, and had been obliged to yield. At present he was without a friend in Europe, and was on bad terms with the Government at Constantinople, and if he brought things to a quarrel with the Cairo Agency, he could not count on support anywhere. If he refused to sign the decrees forced on him they would govern the country without him; they would declare a Regency. I do not believe this, or that if he chose his occasion of quarrel wisely they would dare any such violent measures against him, but it would be no good to quarrel about trifles. I asked him about the Khedive’s relations with Gorst. He said that except at the beginning, when they had been really friends, Gorst had obliged him to do this and that just the same as Lord Cromer did, only politely instead of brutally. I recited to Abaza the old fable of the Wind and the Sun, which was new to him and amused him much. He declares the Khedive had been ready to grant a constitution two years ago, but Gorst would not hear of it, the Khedive had said as much to the Editor of the ‘Temps.’ I said that was not the right way of doing things. The Khedive ought to issue a proclamation to his people and show himself their leader. It is clear, however, that Abbas has no stomach for strong measures. In Egypt they are all dreadfully afraid of personal loss. If they are patriotic, the Nile water would be cut off from their estates, and other material injuries be inflicted on them. Abaza had had a personal quarrel with Gorst, and it was Gorst who had intrigued against his election for the Legislative Council. Abaza is pessimistic, but he reassured me on two points:

“(1) There is no party anywhere in Egypt favourable to the Occupation, unless it be with the foreigners and some of the Copts.

“(2) The Porte will never consent to make over Egypt to England in any legal way, nor in his opinion will Europe. It is against the Khedive personally that the anger is, and the danger of the Porte’s playing into English hands. Gorst was never in earnest about reforms, and was never really friendly to Egypt. I asked him whether the Khedive had not sufficient patriotism to disregard his material advantage, but all he could say was that if the Khedive could be sure that it would profit the country he would make the sacrifice, but at present he was convinced that nothing he could do would change the situation. It is this lack of real patriotism that stands in their way. These rich men hate the English Occupation, but will run no risks to get rid of it.

“7th Aug. (Sunday).—To Storrington to call on Miss Gordon, General Gordon’s niece, who is the acknowledged authority on all Gordon matters. She had read my account of the digging up of the Mahdi’s body in 1899, as published at the time, and said it was quite correct, except that the Mahdi’s head was really buried again in the desert. Two officers, she said, took it out with them when the trouble about it had been made in Parliament and buried it by night in the open desert, some miles away; they themselves did not know exactly where, so they could not have found it again if they had tried. She said this in so positive a manner that I feel sure her brother (Bill Gordon) must have been one of the two. All the rest of the story she confirmed in every particular. Bill had been specially employed by Kitchener to do the work of destroying the dome by blowing it up after it had been shelled, but he had had nothing to do with the digging up of the body, which was a piece of rowdyism done at night by some of the young officers. These kept the head, and gave it to Kitchener, who entrusted it to Bill to take down with him to Cairo when he returned there, where it was deposited, she believes, at a bank, Kitchener’s intention being to present it to a Museum, at least so it was supposed. Bill was immensely disgusted at the whole business. She talked with great enthusiasm about her brother, almost with tears, and anger at the way he had been treated and made use of by them, and in the end worked to death. She lives at Hove, but is staying with her sister (Mrs. Jones), who has a house called the Manor House, at Storrington.

“To-morrow the great debate begins in the House of Lords, which is to seal its fate, old Halsbury leading the Opposition to Lansdowne, who has gone over to the Government, and is supporting the Bill which is to abolish the power of the Lords. It is a great occasion inadequately dealt with.

“11th Aug.—Newbuildings. The Lords have voted their own death by a majority of seventeen, great numbers abstaining, a pitiful ending for an institution of such antiquity. They have played their game with inconceivable stupidity, making miscalculation after miscalculation. When the quarrel began they had the game in their hands. They might have declared for Irish Home Rule and defied the House of Commons, which was at that time quite discredited. They might have rejected or amended the budget as they chose, asserting their own necessary position in the Constitution, and effecting a coup d’état which would have restored the Tories to power for another generation. But they idiotically referred the decision to a General Election. Then they counted on the King to help them, and they went in for a second election, having first abandoned the hereditary position of the House, which was the essence of its being. The revolt from all this absurd blundering came too late, and now they are laid out dead as door nails. Belloc maintains that the whole thing has been arranged from the beginning between Balfour and Asquith, and it looks like it. Irish Home Rule has now also, he says, been agreed upon between them.

“22nd Aug.—Spent the day with George Wyndham in Worth Forest. George gave me a gloomy account of his campaign in the Lords, which, however, he says, he was very near winning. They did not count on so many traitors being found to vote their own destruction as the thirty-one who voted with the Government. They are especially angry against Curzon. It was all snobbishness, George said, on Curzon’s part. He could not bear to have his Order contaminated with the new creations. They are going to boycott him. I asked if he had really quarrelled with Arthur, and he said, ‘Yes, politically, but not privately.’ The peer he thinks most of is Willoughby de Broke, who when reproached with deserting his leader, Lansdowne, said: ‘As master of hounds, I don’t like killing a fox without my huntsmen, but it is better than losing my hounds.’

“23rd Aug.—The Russo-German agreement about Persia is published in full text. It is clearly directed against England, but does not make the situation worse for Persia than it already was. [Compare Dr. Dillon’s ‘Eclipse of Russia.’]

“1st Sept.—The world is much disturbed just now here in England with our strikes, in France with bread riots, and in Germany with warlike talk about Morocco. If there is no war between England and Germany it will be because we cannot fight economically, and because Germany is not ready for a naval war with us. I still think the Germans will remain at Agadir, and a full settlement of the Morocco disputes will be adjourned.

“8th Sept.—The ex-Shah’s army has been defeated at Teheran and its leader executed. The complicity of the Russian Government in the attempt at counter-revolution is proved. The Morocco quarrel still goes on.

“17th Sept. (Sunday).—Stolypin, the Russian Prime Minister, has been assassinated at Kief in presence of the Emperor while at the opera. This may lead to serious consequences. Stolypin had been the head and front of the reaction in Russia, a tyrant of the worst kind, affecting liberal ideas, and at the same time ruling by spies and secret police and arrests and hangings and deportations to Siberia. His example has been followed by Morley in India, by Grey in Egypt. These modern Liberals are worse than any of the old-fashioned reactionaries. Stolypin’s assassin turns out to be a Jew, one of his own secret police, and the man specially entrusted with his personal safeguard. The outlook for liberty in the East is a bad one. If Germany agrees to a French protectorate in Morocco it will lead to England claiming a protectorate in Egypt, and to Italy claiming a protectorate in Tripoli. The situation seems to be that the German Government is not quite ready yet for war with France and England, while France, though unwilling to fight, is aware of this. Neither is likely to give in in any formal way, and the quarrel will be left open to be taken up again in two or three years’ time. An accident, however, might precipitate matters. The outlook for Egypt is bad any way things go, for I imagine that at the outbreak of war England would annex Egypt, or declare a protectorate as an excuse for governing by martial law and treating all patriotism as rebellion. [N.B. Compare this with what actually happened in December 1914.]

“22nd Sept.—News has come of Arabi’s death, and the morning papers give obituary notices founded on Cromer’s ‘Modern Egypt’ and Milner’s ‘England and Egypt,’ official and untrue. I have written to Ali Bey Kamel, urging that some public recognition of the old National leader should be made by the new Nationalists on the occasion of the fortieth day, seeing that it is already too late to give him a public funeral, but most of them are too dull-witted to see how great an opportunity it is. At Cairo the death seems to have been kept unknown until the funeral was over.

“24th Sept. (Sunday).—There is ominous news to-day of a threatened invasion of Tripoli by the Italians. This taken together with a settlement of the Morocco quarrel between France and Germany which seems now to be pretty certain, has a very ugly look.

“25th Sept.—My kinsman, Gordon Blunt, was here yesterday to say good-bye on his starting for Malta, where he is to be in command of the mechanical transport.

“26th Sept.—Things look uglier than ever in regard to Tripoli. I feel certain it is part of a general agreement, come to very likely as long ago as last year, for the dismemberment of what remains of the Islamic States of North Africa, and probably brought to a head by the disclosure of the fact that Germany is not prepared for a war with France. The Italian Fleet has already put to sea, and Tripoli or Benghazi, or both, will be bombarded and a landing attempted. Turkey must fight, though at the immense disadvantage of the Italians holding the sea, and so cutting her communications with Constantinople. Germany is said to be persuading the Turkish Government to yield half the Sultan’s sovereign rights to Italy, but this they cannot do. It is a still more lawless affair than the French raid on Tunis of thirty years ago, and with less pretence of right. Indeed, no pretence is being made except that Italy needs compensation for France’s raid on Morocco. It can hardly not lead to a general dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. It is a thoroughly black outlook.

“28th Sept.—Chapel Street. Halil Hálid was here in the afternoon. He tells me the Turks will certainly fight, but they have only 10,000 men in Tripoli, and no commander of ability. They have been betrayed there by the Freemasons belonging to the Committee of Union and Progress, who playing into the Italian hands, have neglected sending reinforcements. If this is so, and he says the Freemasons have it all their own way in Salonika, Turkey’s case has become hopeless. He says also that the Turkish Ambassador here has applied to Grey to intervene, but Grey has refused categorically.

“30th Sept.—War is declared, and the Italians have landed troops at Tripoli, Benghazi, and in Albania. Also, and this is the worst feature of the case, there is a change of Government at Constantinople. Hakki Pasha has resigned, and is succeeded by Said and Kiamil, a combination sure to be in English interests as to Egypt, while Shefket, the fighting head of the Army, is no longer Minister of War. This means, I fear, a tame surrender, though the Tripoli Arabs will not accept Christian rule without fierce fighting.

“To ‘Man and Superman’ with Dorothy in the afternoon. A good play, like all of Shaw’s, but less amusing than ‘Fanny’s First Play,’ or ‘Arms and the Man,’ or ‘John Bull’s Other Island.’ These three are the most amusing plays ever written in any language.

“1st Oct. (Sunday).—With Meynell to call on old William Rossetti beyond Regent’s Park. He lives with his two daughters in a villa well filled with family mementos. Among the many drawings by Gabriel Rossetti I noticed two water colours by William Rossetti’s wife, who was a daughter of Madox Brown, which seemed to me gems, worth all the rest. It pleased him much when I told the old man so. He is hale and hearty, though eighty years old, with a clear, healthy complexion, somewhat bronzed and showing his Italian origin. His manner precise, with considerable dignity. He spoke of the Italian raid on Tripoli, and I was glad to find his sympathies were with the Turks. He had read my ‘Secret History,’ and approved all my ideas. We talked, however, most of the past, his brother Gabriel, Burne-Jones, Morris, and Watts, and he was interested to find my recollection of Watts going back four years further even than his own.

“3rd Oct.—I am sick of Eastern politics and intend to take no more part in them when this Tripoli business is over. It cannot end otherwise than in the partition of the Ottoman Empire, a little sooner or a little later. There are too many hungry wolves in Europe to be satisfied with less, and it is thirty years since I began the battle. I feel inclined to say with Pitt: ‘Roll up the map of Islam.’

“4th Oct.—To London for a Mohammedan meeting to protest against the attack on Tripoli. Lamington, in the Chair, made an unmeaning speech, excusing the Italians and excusing Grey, and exhorting all men to moderation, till the meeting rose against him. Two M.P.’s, Cox and Mason, made strong speeches, but Browne had been engaged beforehand for moderation. Then I was called for and rose, Lamington trying to stop me, but I persisted, and pointed out the uselessness of relying upon mediation and the German Emperor, and that if the war was to be stopped it must be by England alone. The English Mediterranean Fleet should be sent to Tripoli. Finally Farid Bey, just arrived from Paris, spoke amid much applause. They all came back to supper with me in Chapel Street, and we sat on talking till midnight. Meetings of this sort, unless they are indignation meetings, do less than no good. It was absurd to hold this one under a man like Lamington, a mere wet blanket.

“5th Oct.—Tripoli was bombarded on Tuesday, 3rd, but it is still doubtful whether the Italians have landed troops. At Constantinople Saïd Pasha has formed a Ministry, but without Kiamil. Mahmud Shefket continues Minister of War. These absolutely refuse to give up Tripoli on any terms, and the war is to continue. It will be a fight between a whale and an elephant, and may go on interminably.

“Meynell brought Padraic Colum to dine with me. He is a modest and at the same time intelligent young man with no little good Irish wit and much feeling about poetry and knowledge of the poets. He recites well, and is what is called a genius, that is to say, one out of the common, altogether sympathetic, but with hands which crush one’s fingers with a grip of iron, all the more unexpected because he is a diminutive personality. Irish hand-shakings are a terrible experience.

“9th Oct.—The newspaper news from Constantinople is very contradictory, as also from Rome. Halil Hálid told me last Thursday that the withdrawal of the Turkish garrison from Tripoli and the undefended state of the town was due to treachery on the part of the Freemasons at Constantinople, who were in secret agreement with Italian Freemasonry. All the Ottoman troops but 10,000 regulars were withdrawn a year ago and sent to Yemen. They hold Hakki Pasha responsible for this.

“13th Oct.—Newbuildings. I have been pleased by an affectionate letter written me by George Curzon, a letter in which he recalled the ‘immortal wassail’ of the Crabbet Club. It was to thank me for a small donation I had made toward the rebuilding of the Royal Geographical Society’s rooms. It had given him all the more pleasure ‘because I know it to spring from personal affection which I most heartily and eternally reciprocate. In this respect we remain for ever young.’ Mark Napier and George Wyndham came to shoot, and Belloc dined with us, keeping it up till one o’clock in brilliant talk.

“George told us all the secrets of the intrigue of the ‘Die Hards.’ What started the rebellion against Balfour was a letter, or the draft of a letter, he wrote agreeing to the creation of 160 peers to pass the Parliament Bill. This George Curzon, when he read it, dramatically tore up, exclaiming ‘That won’t do’; and this made the support he later gave Balfour all the more unaccountable, and hence the anger of the secessionists against him. Now George declares that, with the exception of Curzon and Long, they have all the Tory party with them of those that count and nine-tenths of the rest, still ‘Arthur will not resign.’ Mark and I think it is rather a dispute about nothing, as there is no chance of the Tory party getting back into office at any nameable date, though Belloc says they have a chance if they will attack the Insurance Bill boldly. This George says they intend to do.

“We had a grand discussion later about Morocco and Tripoli, and the chances of a European war. George’s view of the situation is this. He says that it is absolutely known to him through his former connection with the War Office that it was part of the Entente with France that, in case of war with Germany, an English contingent of 160,000 men should be placed on the Continent in support of the French Army. It was intended that this should operate at Antwerp, but later the plan was changed, and now the extreme north-west of the French line from Calais would be the scene of the English operations. The German plan of campaign, which he has also been shown, is to have a very extended line of attack, which should include southwards Western Switzerland, the main attack on France being intended from the southern end of the line. This the addition of the English contingent would enable the French army to meet. George declares he has seen the plans of military railroads already made in Switzerland in accordance with an arrangement concluded some years ago with the Swiss Government. We asked him what inducement had been offered to Switzerland for this, and he said that the Swiss Government was to be rewarded on the Italian frontier with those portions of the Italian Kingdom which ran up into the Swiss Cantons, and parts of Savoy. Italy had for some time past been dropping out of the Triple Alliance, and Germany no longer counts on her.