Part 2 — CHAPTER XI

GENERAL TROUBLE IN EASTERN EUROPE

[1912]“4th Jan., 1912.—Chapel Street. Rothstein called and told me much about affairs in Europe. He says the true reason the German Government would not fight this year was not any doubt of the superiority of its army, which is infinitely more powerful than the French, but because it had not the mass of the people with it. These did not think Morocco worth a war. He says, however, that Germany is of one mind to fight England on the first occasion, as they were very angry with us, far more so than with the French. All now are for war, except the Socialists, and even these are not all of them against it. He is sure the German Government was not privy to the Italian raid on Tripoli. On the contrary they are very angry with the Italians on account of it, so much so that they would join England in putting a stop to it. As to Persia, Rothstein assured me the Russian army was not formidable, the officers being just as corrupt and ineffective as before the Japanese war. If there was a quarrel with England about Persia the Japanese would advance on Siberia. They would also very likely intervene in China to replace the Manchus in power. Rothstein’s opinion on all these things is the best in London.” [N.B. Rothstein, whose opinions are constantly quoted in my diary, owed his wonderful knowledge of the European situation to the fact that he was London correspondent to nearly all the Socialist newspapers on the Continent. He was by birth a Russian subject, born at Kief, who had made his studies at the Odessa University, and having become involved there with the authorities about twenty years ago had made his escape to Western Europe, and had taken up his residence in London. He was on the Staff of more than one of our newspapers, but often complained to me that the Editors would not listen to him on subjects of European importance. To me he always spoke frankly, and I never found him mistaken in the information he gave me, as will be shown in the sequel.]

“5th Jan.—Irene Noel dined with me. I had not seen her for nearly two years, during which she has been flirting with the Crown Prince of Greece, and trying to get up with him what she calls a Balkan Federation which is to include the Greeks, and even perhaps the Turks. She is a clever girl, and has a talent for political intrigue.

“10th Jan.—The Russian Government has declared its intention of taking possession of Mongolia. Grey seems to have committed us to an approval of this as well as of the Persian robbery.

“17th Jan.—Labouchere is dead at the age of eighty, universally esteemed after a life which began in disrepute. I remember old Paddy Green, of Evans’ music hall, with whose son I had been at school at Stonyhurst, talking of him in pitying tones as ‘Loboucheer, Loboucheer, poor young man! He was always his own worst enemy.’ This was somewhere in 1861, when Labby was still looked upon as something of a greenhorn. My first acquaintance with him was of this date, when he was living at Homburg entirely in the society of whores and croupiers. He had belonged to the Frankfort Legation, where I had succeeded him, and was nominally attached to the Embassy at St. Petersburgh, but had not proceeded there (pretending he was too poor to pay his railway fare). At Frankfort he was considered too disreputable for admission into society, and I have a caricature I drew of him walking with Madame d’Usedom, the Olympia of Bismarck’s memoirs, who on one occasion had given him her countenance. It is labelled ‘The Deformed transformed,’ and was a very good likeness of him as he then was (a chubby young man with little slant eyes and pink cheeks). Later, I remember him at St. James’ Club, the house in James Street that had once been Crockford’s, boasting to all who would listen how he had bribed his way into parliament as member for Windsor. It was a short lived glory as he was at once unseated. In after years I saw much of him at his house in Queen Anne’s Gate, where I often lunched with him and his wife in the eighties and nineties, and liked him greatly. He had become one of the very few quite honest M.P.’s, who always told the truth, and was always amusing.

“21st Jan. (Sunday).—Newbuildings. Belloc dined with us, and gave us some good talk. The Italians have seized two French ships as carrying contraband of war, which is making a commotion in France, and may possibly lead to a stopping of the war in Tripoli. Grey has been apologizing to his constituents in the North for his Foreign policy so piteously that Belloc thinks he will resign. If so I imagine the Foreign Office would be given to Haldane as the only member of the Cabinet who knows French and German. In Ireland Carson is campaigning on the Orange platform, threatening fire and flame if Winston is allowed to speak at Belfast: ‘Ulster will fight, and Ulster will be right.’

“30th Jan.—Chapel Street. Lunched with Winston and Clementine. He was in excellent form, and I had an interesting conversation with him about Eastern politics, his private secretary, Masterman Smith, being also there. About the Turco-Italian war I asked him which way his sympathies lay. He said, ‘I have my official sympathies, and those are strictly neutral.’ His private sympathies are clearly not Italian. ‘The Italians,’ he said, remind me of the story of the giant who went to cleave an oak in two with his sword, and who caught his hand in the cleft and was held by it, till he was eaten alive by the wild beasts in the forest. They cannot get further, and they cannot get away. They are spending a quarter of a million daily, and will be ruined before they have done. As to the Turks, it is their own fault if they come to grief. They ought to have made friends with us instead of running after Germany, which will not help them. I said, ‘They could not afford to quarrel with Germany which could have destroyed them in Roumelia, also you wanted too much.’ He. ‘They ought to have let us reorganize the police with English officers over them, all we wanted of them was our commercial share in the Bagdad railway.’ I. ‘Yes, and to stay on in Egypt.’ He. ‘We shall never clear out of that till the Empire breaks up.’ As he seemed inclined to listen, I propounded my alternative scheme of policy, to make alliance with Turkey against Italy and Russia. Italy could easily be dealt with by the Fleet, while Turkey would willingly help to turn the Russians out of Persia. ‘I thought,’ he said, ‘The Turks had made friends with Russia about it.’ Returning to Egypt I gave him my solution there, the English garrison to be replaced by a regiment of Turks at Cairo, and another at Alexandria, to keep order, things otherwise to go on just the same. On this basis an alliance with Turkey could be arranged. It is clear, however, from his talk that he is bitten with Grey’s anti-German policy. He said of the Germans, ‘I never could learn their beastly language, nor will I till the Emperor William comes over here with his army.’ Nevertheless Winston strikes me as being open to conversion on all these matters. Clementine talked about an act of rudeness shown to her and Winston the other day by Cambon, the French Ambassador, a trifle of no importance, except as showing that Winston also, like Grey, does not know French. We talked also about the Belfast meeting as to which I advised Clementine not to go with her husband, though the chief danger is over now as the meeting is no longer to be held in the Ulster Hall, but under a marquee in a meadow, which it would be difficult to blow up. Talking about Italy, Winston said chuckling, ‘The Italians tell us now that if Turkey won’t make peace, they will have to declare war again.’

“Browne came and gave me an account of the dinner given to Schuster yesterday, in which he had explained his doings in Persia. He has the highest opinion of Schuster, who made an admirable speech. Poor Browne is in terrible despair at it all.

“1st Feb.—Meynell dined with me, and I have read him Margaret Sackville’s ‘Wooing of Dionysos,’ which he agreed with me in pronouncing a very first-rate poem. We also had a great discussion about Ward’s ‘Life of Newman,’ which is just out. Meynell has taken up the cudgels for Manning in the ‘Tablet,’ which has moved the Duke of Norfolk to anger.

“6th Feb.—Sat with Rivers Wilson at his house in Berkeley Square. He has been reading my Gordon book and also ‘Egypt’s Ruin.’ He says both are very accurate, and that I have converted him on many points regarding Egypt. He told me some interesting things. First as to the origin of the famous Joint Note of 1881. [The Joint Note signed by the English and French Governments promising help to the Khedive Tewfik against Arabi and the Parliament. It was that that caused the war of 1882 and the English Occupation.] Wilson told me that it was he who suggested the idea of it to Gambetta, assuring him that the English Government would go with him. Though he did not take part in drafting the note, Gambetta sat down to draft it before he left the room, where they had been discussing it. It was to be a dead secret between the two, but Wilson told Nubar of it, who highly approved, and Nubar let it out to Blowitz, and it thus got talked of in the ‘Times.’ Gambetta was very angry with Wilson on account of it. Also he told me a number of tales about Omar Lutfi, Shahin Pasha, and others, and what scoundrels they had been, with other stories nearer home.

“9th Feb.—Haldane has been sent on a secret mission to Berlin, well advertised in all the papers. There seems to be a real attempt at a rapprochement with Germany. If it comes to anything they will probably shift Haldane to the Foreign Office in Grey’s place. Anything will be better than Grey, though I don’t trust the other.

“11th Feb. (Sunday).—A young man, Borthwick, appeared with a letter of introduction from Stead. He has been in the 10th Hussars for three years in India, and since in Algeria and Morocco. He wished to consult me about a wild cat scheme he has of going to Ghadamès raising the Senussia against Italy, and driving the Italian army into the sea. I had him up to talk to me, but did not much encourage him, as I think the thing impossible of success, though of course desirable. The right strategy for the Arabs is to harass the Italians and prevent their moving inland, and not to attempt to retake the sea coast towns where the Italian army is protected by the Fleet. Belloc dined with me. He says he hears that Kitchener is considered at the F.O. to be overdoing his part at Cairo.

“12th Feb.—I am reading Ward’s ‘Life of Newman,’ a rather dreary work, though it interests me from the many mentions it makes of persons I used to know, nor do I think the book does any good service either to Newman or the Catholic cause. The truth is, a religious life is at least as unsatisfactory as any other, and seen near at hand there is much in Newman’s which would have been better forgotten. Great men and holy men are very like other men, and there are just as many petty interests served in the Government of the Church as in other Governments. One had imagined Newman leading a life of prayer and self-sacrifice. He is shown by Ward dissatisfied with obscurity and running from one journalistic scheme to another, neither successfully nor with dignity. Human nature is human nature, whether in a convent or a palace. Newman was a great man notwithstanding, a great controversialist, and a master of English prose.

“18th Feb. (Sunday).—I have been a whole week in bed with influenza, and in great desolation of soul, the subject of my delirium being Grey and the Garter he had just been given, and this worried me for two days and nights. I am better to-day, and begin to see things sanely.

“23rd Feb.—Parliament has met in London, and Grey’s Garter has provoked speculation as to coming changes in the Cabinet. They say Loreburn is to retire and let Asquith be Lord Chancellor in his place, which would secure him £10,000 a year for life; Grey to be his successor as Prime Minister, giving up the Foreign Office, for which he is incompetent, in favour of Haldane. What they want now is to pacify Germany, and Haldane is Germanophil.

“1st March.—Things have gone badly. The coal strike has monopolized attention, and Grey has been allowed to carry on his detestable policy in Persia and Tripoli, almost unrebuked. The latest diplomatic development is an attempted combination of the European Powers to coerce Turkey into ceding Tripoli to Italy, and so making peace. So far the Turks are standing firm.

“Monsignor Stonor is dead at Rome, where he has lived all his life. I remember assisting at his first mass at Oscott how many years ago. May he rest in peace, good man: they ought to have made him a Cardinal.

“I have been nearly three weeks in bed.

“8th March.—Chapel Street. Bendor came to see me. He has been in Egypt this winter, and brought to show me an antika he had picked up there of the hawk-headed God or Goddess, which by some odd accident had been fashioned into the exact image in caricature of our good Queen Victoria. It amused him much. He is a kindly, good-humoured fellow, like a great Newfoundland puppy, much given to riotous amusements and sports, with horses, motors, and ladies. The fast life clearly suits him, for he looks a model of health and strength. He was at Sheykh Obeyd, and saw the Stud there, which he appreciates.

“10th March (Sunday).—Syud Mahmud called. He is going back to India in May, very much in earnest about getting his fellow-Mussulmans to oppose the Government if it refuses to take up the defence of Islam, but I fear that like all the rest his courage will ooze out of him under the influence of his native air.

“Dillon came to lunch, and stayed on talking for two hours. Home Rule he hopes to see carried through both Houses of Parliament in two years’ time (it cannot well take less), and there are many accidents that may still further delay it. If the coal strike should go on over Easter it will hang up the Home Rule Bill over the present session, and there are the suffragettes who have threatened to wreck it, or there might be a war or a revolution; otherwise all would be plain sailing now. There was no difference at all between them and the Government as to the details of the Bill.

“Then he went back to past events, and gave me a full history of Parnell’s connection with Mrs. O’Shea. Parnell, he said, as a young man, was no paragon of virtue, but his loves had not before been with married women, nor had they been serious. He met Mrs. O’Shea first at Thomas’s Hotel in Berkeley Square at a party given by the O’Gorman Mahon to some of his political friends. Justin McCarthy, who knew the O’Sheas, had introduced Parnell to her there. She was a sister of Sir Evelyn Wood. She, like her sisters, was attractive, and O’Shea took advantage of it. There is no doubt that he got money from Parnell, and that Parnell kept the establishment at Eltham going. The lady, however, was really in love with Parnell, who was a very good-looking fellow, and she gradually acquired complete dominion over him. I was quite right, Dillon told me, in supposing that she not only made him neglect his parliamentary work, but was a force hostile to his patriotism, especially to that part of it which concerned the land movement. She also encouraged him in his pride, and made mischief between him and his colleagues in the House of Commons. Hers was a disastrous influence. It ended in ruining his career, and it was she who prevented him from accepting any compromise about the Chairmanship of the party after the great scandal when he (Dillon) and O’Brien had met Parnell to talk matters over with him at Boulogne. Every day they thought they had persuaded him to agree to a temporary retirement of six months, and every evening Parnell crossed the Channel back to spend the night at Eltham and return in the morning more obstinate than ever. ‘I repeatedly promised Parnell,’ Dillon said, ‘that I would resign the Chairmanship back to him at the end of six months, indeed, I would only act as Vice-Chairman for him during his retirement, and it was he that each time he came back from Mrs. O’Shea refused all compromise.’ [Note.—I am informed by Mrs. O’Shea’s niece, Mrs. Steele, that I was misinformed as to Parnell’s ownership of the house they lived in. Eltham Lodge was an old family residence of the Woods.]

“15th March.—George Wyndham came to lunch with me. He complained of being tired of politics, but says that he cannot break loose from them. His ambition now is to be some day Father of the House of Commons, one he is not unlikely to achieve, for he has been twenty-three years member for Dover, and there are only four or five men with a better record, and he is still young. About his private plans he says he does not mean to have a London House, and would live entirely at Clouds. In these days all will have to live well within their incomes. Rich men are shutting up their large houses, amongst others, Plymouth, who is shutting up Hewell, and means to live all the year through at St. Fagans.

“16th March.—This morning Margot brought her daughter Elizabeth to see me. The child is sixteen, attractive and clever, with a soft, sympathetic hand, which will help her to be loved. I had not seen Elizabeth since the day when she recited ‘Maître Corbeau’ to Coquelin ainé. She is just the nicest age now, and I am glad to have seen her before she begins going out in society.

“Later came Nellie Hozier and her mother for our midday meal, and Nellie took me to see the Futurist pictures. These, as art, are mere nonsense, the sort of things a child might make by pasting strips of coloured paper together as patchwork. They have neither design nor drawing, nor other colouring than a haphazard one, chiefly reds and yellows. One cannot assign a meaning to any of them, or even the suggestion of a meaning. Degeneracy cannot go further than this, and it is mere stupidity to talk of it as art. But we found the little rooms in Sackville Street crowded with visitors, who each had paid his shilling, while critics have been found sufficiently uncritical to treat the exhibition seriously.

“18th March.—Abd el Ghaffar came to see me, back from Egypt ten days ago. He gives a bad report of things; the National party without a capable leader and split into factions, each with its separate newspaper. Farid has lost his political credit. The Hesb el Ahali, or Party of the People, is now beginning to take the National Party’s place. Its principle is to trust to England to give some sort of a Constitution and make Egypt entirely independent of the Porte. If England could be trusted to do this, and Egypt could become strong enough to defend herself against other European aggression, the policy might be a good one, but such trust and such hope are mere delusions. The connection between Egypt and the Ottoman Empire is the only possible chance Egypt has of escaping permanent subjection to Europe, and, slender though that chance is, I will not abandon it for the other, which is no chance at all. Abd el Ghaffar tells me that he has learned on the authority of Rushdi Pasha, Minister for Foreign Affairs at Cairo, that there have been negotiations between the English Government and the Porte for a cession of the Cyrenaica to the Khedivial possessions.

“21st March.—There is talk of further troubles in Europe, possible war between France and Spain about Morocco, and a reported secret treaty between Italy and Russia against Turkey. [Compare Dr. Dillon’s ‘Eclipse of Russia.’]

“The coal strike is in a worse state than ever, as Asquith’s proposed legislation has been repudiated by the Labour Party, and Arthur Balfour is to lead the Tory Party against it. There is a probability of a prolonged crisis.

“Two young Indian Mohammedans lunched with me, Syud Mahmud (as before) and Syud Hussein, the latter the grandson of my old friend Nawab Abdul Latif, of Calcutta. There has come about a split among the Mohammedans of India owing to recent events. The Agha Khan has resigned the presidency of the All India Moslem League, a body of timid folk loyal to the British connection, and has declared himself for common action with the Hindoo Progressives. The principal cause of this is the connivance of our Government with the Italians and Russians in Tripoli and Persia, and Syud Mahmud tells me our little paper ‘Egypt’ has helped in effecting this. They are beginning to see that it is only the pressure that can be put on the Government by India that can change Grey’s treacherous policy. The Indian Mohammedans in London, numbering 250, intend to make a demonstration in this sense, and they will do well. Ameer Ali has lost what little influence among them remained to him.

“23rd March.—Browne and his wife lunched with me, and Desmond MacCarthy. Browne very despondent about the East, as he is right in being.

“24th March (Sunday).—Dillon came to lunch. He says that during the last few days the Asquith Cabinet has been on the verge of a break up over the coal strike, and that the country is menaced with revolution. There is to be a new conference between miners and mine owners to-morrow. If it fails there will be a general industrial collapse. The miners demand a minimum wage, but if the Government embody this in their Bill it will open the door to a system of minimum wages for every class of labour, and to this Dillon is strongly opposed as an extreme form of Socialism, while a continuance of the strike will so delay things in Parliament that it will be impossible to get the Home Rule Bill through this session. He thinks all the same that a settlement will be reached to-morrow. Should it be otherwise and should Ireland by this accident lose her opportunity, I must say that it will in some measure serve Redmond and the Irish Parliamentary Party right. Ever since they made their compact with Asquith two years ago the Irish in Parliament have identified their fortunes with the English Whigs, abetting them in all their Imperial misdeeds, and treating Grey’s alliances with the French in Morocco, the Russians in Persia, and the Italians in Tripoli, as pleasing to Irish ideas. It has been a disgraceful betrayal of the cause of liberty, and it will be no more than justice if in aiding our diplomatic jugglery abroad they lose their own chance of freedom at home. Dillon alone of all the Irish members has so far preserved his integrity, but even he has come to regard the retention of Egypt as a necessary part of British interests, and I have been unable to get him to ask questions involving an attack on Kitchener, who he thinks will be recalled some day, when the revolution at home has been followed by a reaction, to play the part here of military dictator.

“26th March.—The Conference with the miners has failed, and anything now may happen, from a general breakdown of trade to a revolution. The trains are ceasing many of them to run and I am going back to Newbuildings, where we can better stand a siege than here.

“27th March.—Lunched at the Duchess of St. Albans’, where I found a large party, her son-in-law Lord Richard Cavendish, Lord Grey, young Baird, M.P., who is Bonar Law’s private secretary, Garvin, and others—an extreme Tory assemblage, discussing their plans, of which Garvin is just now the inventor and chief prophet. Garvin began as an Irish Fenian writer on the ‘United Ireland,’ but has gravitated to the position he now occupies of ultra anti-Home Rule Editor of the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ and the ‘Observer.’ He asked me what my view was of the situation. I said, ‘I take my views every afternoon from the “Pall Mall Gazette,” and every Sunday morning from the “Observer.”’

“They have rushed a Miners’ Wages Bill in twenty-four hours through both Houses.

“29th March.—Kaiser Wilhelm seems to have stopped the nonsense of Russia’s joint action with Italy against Turkey. He met the King of Italy at Venice two days ago and probably told him not to be such an ass.

“31st March.—Belloc and Chesterton dined with me, Belloc complaining terribly of the fast from liquor he has been maintaining during Lent and to-day is Palm Sunday. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘if you want to see a really happy man you should come to me on Easter Monday afternoon.’ He consoled himself at dinner with a sad lemonade, but talked all the more brilliantly for it. He admits now that he made a mistake about the coal strike in predicting the miners would win. Asquith, he says, has been too astute for them. He amused them by his Miners’ Minimum Wage Act, over which they lost their time and spent their money, and now he has them in his hands.

“6th April.—Newbuildings. Belloc tells me the miners are very angry with their leaders, especially in the north of England, and thinks there will be riots. Fortunately these things do not affect us here in Sussex (where we have not a single mine or factory).

“I have been reading Eversley’s ‘Gladstone in Ireland’—a good and useful book which gives the public facts fairly. But history written as this is under the House of Commons restrictions of suppressing private conversations and refraining from assigning private motives for public action cannot be satisfactory. How futile to go on representing Parnell’s neglect of his public duties to ill-health instead of to its true cause, Mrs. O’Shea, or Hartington’s implacable opposition to Home Rule to anything but his brother’s assassination. Yet there is no hint of either of these veracities in Eversley’s book. All the same the book is a good one, and its writer was a good friend to me at the time of my trial at Portumna, the only man in Parliament with a front bench position who had the courage to support me there.

“13th April.—Farid writes from Constantinople, whither he has fled from Cairo to avoid arrest and perhaps four years imprisonment for a speech made at a general meeting of the National Party. I think he is quite right to have made this hegira, as he can be of more use at Constantinople, and the present régime at Cairo against which it is useless to struggle until the Ottoman Empire is in a position to insist. It appears that Saad Zaghloul has resigned at Cairo, having refused to prosecute Farid.

“14th April (Sunday).—Young Borthwick came again to talk about his scheme of joining the Turks in Tripoli. It has developed now into the idea of fitting up an old man-of-war with which to land artillery somewhere on the coast. Of this the Turkish Embassy in London approves. He has an old connection with Turkey through his father, who was in the Ottoman service, and went through the campaign of Plevna, and he himself was born at Constantinople. He is also nephew to the Borthwick of the ‘Morning Post,’ a good looking, active young fellow, who knows Arabic, having lived, he tells me, for a year in a village in Oran, and having accompanied the French expedition to Fez. He gave me a detailed account of the rogueries that go on officially in Algeria from the Governor-General downwards. Borthwick’s business in Algeria was to buy land for an English company, and thus he became acquainted with the way in which things are done there. The French officials in charge of large districts get only 200 francs a month pay, and are allowed to make what money they can out of the Arabs; the taxes are farmed out, and the officials make a profit by lending money on usury to the Arab landowners to enable them to pay the rates imposed (£4 a year is the rate for each plough), and then to foreclose, and get possession of the land. It is a settled policy of the French Government to get rid of the native population, and replace it with Europeans. The officials all go away more or less rich, and the Governors-General amass fortunes. Borthwick is of opinion that if the Turks can get artillery enough to do it, they may drive the Italians into the sea at Tripoli, and that then the whole of native North Africa will rise in Tunis and Algeria as well as in Morocco. The plan is an adventurous one, and he is aware that he is running a great risk. He has been three years in India serving in a cavalry regiment and left it four years ago. I advised him as a first step to go to Constantinople, and see what help he could get there. He came to me from Stead, who had suggested to him that I might help him to get the money necessary.

“16th April.—There has been an astonishing disaster at sea, the Titanic, the largest vessel ever built, wrecked in mid Atlantic by collision with an iceberg. It was her first voyage, and she was carrying over 1,000 passengers to New York, many of them millionaires. Most of the women and children seem to have been put in boats and picked up by a passing steamer, but the rest have perished, over 1,000 souls, including the ship’s company. Among them is Stead, about whom I was talking to Borthwick last Sunday, the very day of the wreck. He was on his way on some newspaper business, and was to have written a sensational account of the voyage. I cannot say I ever liked or respected Stead, he was too much of a charlatan. It is impossible that a man who has made himself the agent of the Russian autocracy, who has intrigued for the restoration of the ex-Khedive Ismaïl, and who has been named by Cecil Rhodes executor of his will, all the while calling himself a friend of liberty, can have been quite honest. The Irish always refused to trust him, and they were right. Still one cannot help feeling a pang at so appalling an end. One thing is consoling in these great disasters, the proof given that Nature is not quite yet the slave of Man, but is able to rise even now in her wrath and destroy him. Also if any large number of human beings could be better spared than another it would be just these American millionaires with their wealth and insolence.

“20th April.—Newbuildings. There has been a demonstration of bombarding the Dardanelles by the Italians, a childish and cowardly proceeding, the ships opening fire at 8,000 yards, and firing 342 shots without any result whatever.

“21st April (Sunday).—I have been reading Davitt’s book, the ‘Fall of Feudalism,’ an interesting bit of Irish history, though a stupid title, also Barry O’Brien’s ‘Life of Parnell.’ The Turco-Italian war drags on, but is beginning to get on the English commercial nerves, the passage of mercantile ships having been blocked through the Dardanelles by the Italian attack. Nearly all our newspapers now lay the blame of the war on Italy, even those which have hitherto been most in Italy’s favour.

“30th April.—Miss Frances Jennings appeared here this morning with her donkey and van in which she has been travelling since the beginning of the month, and I have established her and them in the goat field. Hers is a forlorn and uncomfortable existence, though being entirely out of doors she is happy, and though she is still partly paralyzed, and unable to walk or stand up except on crutches, she manages to harness her donkey, and lift herself into the cart, and she travels absolutely alone. She is naturally of a very fair complexion, and she is much sunburnt, going bare-headed and wearing her hair in long plaits. Her dress is of coarse green woollen stuff, her legs cased in huge pilot boots. She has no mattress to lie on, or other bed than some sheep skins, and a bit of eider-down quilt, but she says she can sleep all night and more, twelve hours at a stretch. It is difficult to say whether she is in her right mind or not. One would say not, except that her talk, though strange, is quite reasonable; it ripples perpetually on in a very sweet voice, broken with little waves of laughter, describing things she has seen and the small adventures of her life. We had our tea with her in the meadow, and have lent her books, for she has none with her. She lies all day on the ground, or sits in her van, which is very small and low, with an oil cloth hood. For her meals she crawls about gathering sticks to make a fire and hang a little pot for cocoa, but she cooks nothing in the way of meat, eating bread and herbs, docks, and nettles, which she finds close by. Hers is an entirely defenceless life, except for her power of talk and her appearance of utter guilelessness, but she is only twenty-six, and sufficiently attractive I should say to run some risk at the hands of drunken roughs. Her chief fear, however, she tells us is of slugs, and possible snakes crawling over her at night. I have advised her, since she intends to travel all through the summer, to go north to Holywell, and bathe at St. Winifred’s shrine, but she says she has too little faith, though she became a Catholic some few years ago, but I have told her that faith is not necessary there for a cure, witness my own.[9]

“2nd May.—Drove with Miss Lawrence to Reigate Priory, where we lunched with the Somersets. Lady Katherine is pleasant and very like her brother Osborne Beauclerk, with just his way of talking and asking questions. (I had not seen them since they came to see us at Sheykh Obeyd on their honeymoon tour.) I like both of them, and found the house most interesting, with gardens, and grounds, the prettiest in Surrey.

“3rd May.—The ‘Times’ announces that our paper ‘Egypt,’ has been forbidden entrance circulation and sale at Cairo, its articles ‘disturbing public order.’ This is doubtless Kitchener’s doing. I have protested in a letter to the ‘Times,’ and am also writing to Grey. Dillon is unfortunately away in Dublin, and the other Irish members are too closely pinned to the Government to help us much in Parliament. The Italians have seized Rhodes.

“Miss Jennings, who is still here, tells me she spent two years in a room entirely occupied in watching the fire, and that she kept a diary of what she saw there. Then another year watching the sea, now her diary is about the people she meets on her country wanderings. Those she likes best on the roads are the blacksmiths. She tells me they are always kind. We had her in to a dinner of roast beef, which she enjoyed, having been carried indoors by one of the stable helps, and is now sitting by the fire. She is to go on to-morrow in the direction of St. Winifred’s well.

“7th May.—Syud Mahmud came down to wish me good-bye before going back to India, a most excellent young man, the very best Moslem in London—what will become of him?

“9th May.—Chapel Street. Dillon is back for the second reading of the Home Rule Bill to-night. He expects no difficulty about its becoming law in two years, barring accidents. There are three rocks ahead of the Government—Welsh Disestablishment, the Insurance Act, and I forget the third (War?). Else all is plain sailing. He thinks Grey contemplates a great coup in Egypt, certainly the abolition of the Capitulations.

“12th May (Sunday).—Newbuildings. Baron Marschall von Bieberstein has arrived as German Ambassador in London.

“14th May.—Old May Day. Caffin calls it St. May, a name for it I never heard before.

“19th May (Sunday).—Dillon has put a whole sheaf of questions about the prohibition of ‘Egypt,’ and has got from Grey that he accepts the responsibility of it. He has ‘personally satisfied himself as to the contents of the paper, and that though it may not contain any direct incitement to disturbance, he is of opinion that it might cause disturbance, that Kitchener has written to him on the subject, in fine, that he will not give us his protection, and declines to lay papers.’

“The Turkish garrison in Rhodes has had to surrender. Two thousand three hundred regulars, through lack apparently of food, for there has been no fighting. There is prospect now of a European Congress which is certain to be hostile to the Ottoman Empire and Mohammedan interests.

“20th May.—I have been reading Crispi’s Memoirs, dull stuff, most of it, but there is a chapter at the end giving important documents which show that as long ago as 1890 Lord Salisbury made a secret engagement with the Italian Government, allowing its seizure of Tripoli as a counterpoise to French naval power in the Mediterranean, also that at that date the Italians had begun to intrigue with Hassuna Karamanli, and that he had assured them he could command the hill tribes of Jebel Gharian, who were tired of their connection with Turkey, and would welcome an Italian Occupation. This explains much that has been doubtful, though of course I long ago suspected it.

“26th May (Whit-Sunday).—Newbuildings. Abdul Ghaffar is here, a very excellent young fellow, serious, and without any nonsense or exaggeration, accurate, and well-informed. He has been three years at St. John’s College, Oxford, and talked about Oxford affairs well with Belloc. His father is a large fellah proprietor at Tola, in the Delta, and he is an excellent specimen of his race, quite unspoiled by his English education.

“Kitchener is clamouring for reinforcements at Cairo, and for the stationing of a British man-of-war at Alexandria. He is to meet Asquith and Winston at Malta to discuss Mediterranean matters. It looks very much as if they were meditating a coup of some kind in Egypt, and I remember Winston’s words to me last year, ‘You must not quarrel with me if I annex Egypt.’

“31st May.—The newspapers are full of the meeting at Malta to which Winston and Clementine have gone with Nellie Hozier in the Admiralty yacht to meet Kitchener, Asquith too.”

[It was on this occasion that our people came to the decision of getting the French Navy to police the Mediterranean, while the English Navy should keep the North Sea and English Channel for the French in the event of a war with Germany, thus enabling them to make a definite promise to the French Government of help by land in a war with Germany. It was on this occasion, too, that Winston, abandoning his long feud with Kitchener, made friends with him to Egypt’s detriment.]

“The war in the Mediterranean drags on, the Italian Fleet making a round of the Ægean and seizing the islands. The Arabs of Southern Morocco have at last risen against the French. They are stalwart men, but quite unorganized as soldiers. They have proclaimed a new Sultan in place of Mulai Hafiz, abdicated, and may give the French trouble.

“2nd June (Sunday).—I hear from Paris that there are several Orientals recently arrived there from India with a plot to assassinate Grey, as also Kitchener, but it is not likely to come to anything. Things in the Mediterranean are more mixed than ever. The Italian Fleet has occupied most of the Turkish islands, the idea being to get Europe to force the Turks to make peace.

“Kitchener’s meeting with Asquith and Churchill at Malta is really an important one, as they will have to settle between them what is to be our Mediterranean policy. Some want an alliance offensive and defensive with France, others peace with Germany. It will end in the Mediterranean being left to the Mediterranean Powers. Then we shall leave Egypt, holding on only to the Soudan, but this will not take place yet for some years.

“McCullagh has written a quite admirable book, ‘Italy’s War for a Desert.’ I am reviewing it in ‘Egypt.’

“23rd June (Sunday).—Dillon is here for the week-end, and we have been talking over past Irish history.’ [All very interesting, but I have given most of it in my ‘Land War in Ireland.’] I drove him this afternoon to the top of Chanclebury with my Arab team. We came back from the Ring by Dial Post in an hour and thirty-five minutes, having driven there by Broomer’s Corner in a little over two hours, good going.

“24th June.—The Bellocs came to dinner last night. Belloc and Dillon had much talk, but they proved not very sympathetic, the one being essentially serious, the other as essentially unserious.

“With Dillon I had a talk before he went away, he giving me an account of the Kilmainham treaty, and Parnell’s dealings with Gladstone in connection with the Phœnix Park assassinations [matters which I need not repeat here, as they have been fully dealt with elsewhere].

“4th July.—Reuter announces the discovery of a plot to assassinate Kitchener, the Khedive, and the Prime Minister, Mohammed Saïd. Four Nationalists arrested.

“5th July.—A young Egyptian, Abdul Halim Alaili (brother to the other Alaili), professed partisan of the Khedive, was here to-day, whose apologist he made himself, defending him from the charge of unpatriotic action in the war of which Egypt had accused him. ‘Instead,’ he said, ‘of joining Kitchener against the Ottoman Government, Abbas has secretly helped to facilitate the passage of Turkish officers through Egypt on their way to the Tripolitan frontier, as well as the introduction of arms into the Cyrenaica, nobody in reality was so patriotic or hated Kitchener more. Abbas would willingly abdicate, but who was there to take his place? In four years his son would be of age, then Abbas would retire. The Khedive was quite ready, he said, to grant a Constitution, but Kitchener would not allow it. Abdul Halim gave us an account of the Khedive’s visit to Windsor. According to this the Khedive represented to King George the danger to Egypt involved in the seizure of the Ægean Islands, and that the English Government ought to intervene in favour of Turkey, but the King said that ever since the revolution at Constantinople, the Turks had refused to follow English advice. They could not intervene now without a quarrel with Italy. This is just what Churchill told me, so doubtless it is true. The Khedive, Abdul Halim says, was received with honour this year in Constantinople, and had had some sort of mission, when he came to England, to bring about a rapprochement between the two Governments. Belloc, who is very anti-Turk, declares that he knows it to be true, that the German, Austrian, and Russian Governments have come to an agreement for partitioning the Ottoman Empire.

“There has always been a danger of this sort, but I doubt its being nearer now than a year ago, anyhow England could not prevent it, and her friendship for Turkey would not amount to much more than preventing Arabia from being meddled with by the European Powers, and making herself protector of the Caliphate.

“I asked the young Egyptians about the reported plot at Cairo. They consider it probable as against Kitchener. Indeed, how could it be otherwise. He has played the despot there and governed by despotic methods, but they knew no details.

“10th July.—Two Spanish Americans were here to-day to see the horses, the one Pereira from Buenos Aires, the other from Uruguay. I was interested to find them both very pious Catholics, who had been quite lately at Rome, and had had private audience of the Pope, of whom they gave exactly the same description as I have heard from others, declaring him to be a Saint who works miracles. His Holiness had been seen by one of his suite in a state of ecstasy, floating some feet above the ground, and they told the tale of a North American, a Protestant, who coming with his Catholic wife and daughter to Rome, had been converted. The daughter (she was still a child) had been afflicted with an eruption on her face, which disfigured her to the extent that her eyes were hardly visible, and when she went out of doors she had constantly to wear a veil. She had insisted with her parents upon being taken to Rome, where she said the Pope would cure her. They had obtained an audience, a public one, with many others, the child attending it veiled, and the father had besought the Pope to bless her, and the Pope had put his hand upon her head, promising she should be cured. When the audience was over the father had pulled off the veil, and behold, the child’s face was whole. Whereupon the father, as was the way with North Americans, had purchased the largest photographic portrait he could find of the Pope, and had had it framed in silver. When they left Rome he had taken four places in the train, the fourth seat being occupied by the portrait, which he declared he would travel with through the world, proclaiming the miracle.

“11th July.—Anniversary of the Bombardment of Alexandria, thirty years ago to-day, and there is no sign of repentance in this country. I am the only person left who remembers that abominable event and still protests. Margot had chosen to-day for her garden party in Downing Street, and a card of invitation had been sent to me, but, of course, I did not go. Precautions have to be taken against the Suffragettes, who come on these occasions to knock Asquith about.

“12th July.—Bad news from Constantinople. Shefket Pasha has resigned the Grand Viziership, and there is talk of Kiamil succeeding him as Grand Vizier and making a disgraceful peace with Italy.

“19th July.—There is a general change of Ministry at Constantinople. Kiamil is to be made Minister of Foreign Affairs under Tewfik Pasha as Grand Vizier. If true it will mean a triumph for English intrigue and a disaster for Turkey. Kiamil would betray Egypt to England, and probably agree to base terms of peace with Italy. There has been a new Italian attack on the Dardanelles, this time by torpedo boats, two of which are said to have been sunk.

“21st July (Sunday).—Drove Belloc to Steyning, where we had tea with Mackarness. We found Gokhale there, who exhorted me to use my influence with Indian Mohammedans to get them to join the Hindoos in working for self-government. I have, of course, been doing this for a long time. I reminded Gokhale of my advice to him four years ago to put a couple of bombs in his pocket when he went to see Morley at the India Office. The reminiscence shocked him, for he is a timid man, and terribly afraid of being thought an extremist, especially in presence of Mackarness and his fellow judge, Lord Coleridge, and his language in answer was very demure. He is in favour of a Trans-Persian railway, he told us, because it would put the Indian Moslems in close touch with their co-religionists in Afghanistan and Persia, and give them more progressive ideas perhaps; but it will be a danger for India some day, and I exhorted him to waste no time in bringing Indian self-government forward in view of the coming collapse of the British Empire. He did not seem to realize this as a thing to be provided against, though it is the real chief factor of the situation. My last word to Gokhale on going away was: ‘Above all don’t be too moderate.’

“23rd July.—Winston has made his expected speech, a regular Imperialist manifesto, which will delight the Tories and accentuate the quarrel with Germany.

“24th July.—Newbuildings. An important communiqué by Grey has been published in the ‘Westminster Gazette,’ taking for its text some words of mine. It denies categorically that Grey either consented to or approved of the Italian raid on Tripoli.”

[Nevertheless it is quite certain that our Foreign Office did approve of the raid, though probably not in any written form. Its complicity after the fact, at any rate, is proveable in two ways. (1) by the fact that Rennell Rodd, our Ambassador at Rome, though according to official accounts he knew nothing of the raid until it had taken place, an ignorance and neglect of duty which must have brought on him official blame, so far from being punished was rewarded and confirmed in his post at Rome, where he is still Ambassador; and (2) Kitchener, who at Cairo had helped the Italian Government in Egypt, with the complicity of the Foreign Office, by preventing the passage of Ottoman troops through the Nile Valley, was entertained on his return home through Italy at a complimentary dinner, where he was hailed as Italy’s best friend and ally. The truth is that Italy was allowed to invade Tripoli without our disapproval at the Foreign Office as part of Grey’s policy of detaching Italy from the German alliance in favour of the Ententes, which were gradually becoming a coalition. In this he succeeded four years later.]

“27th July.—George Wyndham writes that in consequence of Winston’s Mediterranean speech, which he ‘admires and respects,’ he is quite willing to meet him at my house (a meeting he has hitherto refused), and proposes October 18th for a shooting visit.

“28th July (Sunday).—My letter headed ‘Grey and Tripoli’ is in yesterday’s ‘Westminster.’

“To Meynell’s at Greatham, where I met young Padraic Colum honeymooning with his bride, Molly Maguire, a red-haired Celtic girl, whom he married last week. Colum is an intelligent, eager little man, with much simplicity of character, mixed with practical good sense. I like them both.

“30th July.—I have given up my house in Chapel Street.

“1st Aug.—Newbuildings. Padraic Colum and his bride spent the day here. They intend to live at Dublin, where he has journalistic work.

“7th Aug.—Called on Lady C., who told me curious details about Kitchener’s private life. She tells me that the plot against him at Cairo was a very serious one. A great deal, she says, is talked of his popularity in Egypt. He is really disliked, and seems to think that his position there is insecure.

“Cockerell dined with me. He is very busy just now looking after a bequest made to his Fitzwilliam Museum by an old millionaire, Marlay, who died the other day. This will be our last dinner in Chapel Street.” [I had sold my house, or what they call selling it, paying £100 to resign the remainder of the lease, as part of my resolve to retire altogether from the world for my hermitage in Sussex. I have never since been in London, even for the day.]

“9th Aug.—Philip Napier came to luncheon, just back from Egypt. He is not enthusiastic about Kitchener. Thinks him more feared than loved. Also Goumah writes pessimistically from Cairo.

“13th Aug.—Newbuildings. Old Evershed, my former tenant here, is dying, and I went to see him at his cottage on Dragon’s Green. He is eighty-six years old, as fine a type as could be found of the old-fashioned West Sussex farmer, one more distinguished than one sees in East Sussex. He held this farm of me forty years ago (and moved afterwards to Baker’s over the way); an excellent farmer and a hard worker, but hampered with the misfortune of a mad wife, whom he was too kind to send to a hospital, and kept for many years at home, and thus was unable to save money, and now in old age finds himself too poor to carry on his business. He would not borrow money, and for the last half dozen years has retired into a little cottage of mine, his wife being at last dead, and is looked after by a girl. I found him very tidy there in a clean shirt lying in bed, complaining of nothing, but perplexed at small money troubles. A curious episode in his life is that as a young man he was tempted away to Australia to dig gold at the time of the gold fever there, but he made nothing of it, and came back to his Sussex farming quite unchanged by his experience, a good and honourable man, of a finer breed than can easily be found.

“17th Aug.—I entered my seventy-third year to-day.

“23rd Aug.—Patrick Butler, who is here, tells me that everybody in India among the military men is aghast at the plan of a Trans-Persian railway from the Caspian; also that the transfer of the new capital to Delhi is disapproved. They have no great opinion of Hardinge as Governor-General. Butler has been quite unexpectedly ordered home from India to the depôt in Ireland. They are in want of Catholic officers there in view of the threatened rebellion in Ulster. Most of the officers of the garrison at the Curragh would sympathize too much with the rebel Ulstermen.

“2nd Sept.—We have just finished reading Balzac’s great series of romances, ‘Illusions Perdus,’ ‘Splendeurs et Misères,’ and ‘Vautrin.’ They are the most wonderful of all his work, and show him the Shakespeare of novelists without any real competitor worthy of even a second place. In it he runs through the whole gamut of civilized human nature from the highest to the lowest note, and his women are equal to his men. That is what distinguishes him from our own novel writers with whom we compare him, from Scott and Thackeray, who was his special imitator, down to Meredith.

“14th Sept.—My ‘Land War in Ireland’ is published. The moment is very opportune as the anti-Home Rule campaign is once more in full swing. The Government has lost the Midlothian seat, and people are beginning to talk after all of the Bill not going through. Belloc declares it will be abandoned, and Churchill has made a speech at Dundee forecasting a multiplicity of Parliaments in the United Kingdom. I have been reading a most amusing book, ‘The Red Hand of Ulster,’ which has done more than anything yet written to popularize Protestant Ireland. It has made the Orangemen interesting—even to me. I must say it will serve Redmond right if the Bill collapses, seeing the cowardice he and his party have shown, Dillon only excepted, in abandoning the cause of India, Persia, and Egypt, and backing up Grey and the Whigs in all their iniquitous doings abroad in payment for Irish Home Rule. It will serve them right if they are choused out of their thirty pieces of silver after all. As far as the larger world of Asia is concerned it will be no great misfortune, seeing that the Irish Parliamentary Party has gone over soul and body to our execrable Whig Government and richly deserves its discomfiture. It is time I should cease to worry myself with the world’s ways and the ways of the British Empire and the ways of Ireland.

“15th Sept.—George Wyndham writes a long letter from Clouds, describing a visit he has just paid to Cockermouth Castle. It reminds me of by-gone times when Francis and I stayed there some fifty years ago with Percy and Madeline, George’s parents, when they first married. My recollection of it is of an ancient stone fortress, rough and unfurnished, without covering to the stone walls, and with curious mediæval conveniences still in use, amongst others one projecting from the castle wall, which had a clear drop of perhaps a hundred feet down into the Derwent river below. I remember, too, how one day being out shooting in a covert below the castle, a cock pheasant which had been winged and had fallen beyond the river, which is there very wide and swift, deliberately took to the water and swam across the river back to its own side. We went once or twice to shoot grouse on Skiddaw, but there was more walking than sport. George, in his letters, talks of himself as being now a country squire, with the prospect of ‘conceivably being Minister of War, when his side comes into power again.’

“20th Sept.—The papers announce a visit to be paid to the King at Balmoral by the Russian Minister of Foreign affairs, Sazonoff, Grey, and Kitchener, a black combination. Belloc declares positively that the Home Rule Bill is to be abandoned and it really looks like it. My ‘Land War’ has so far been very well received, and yesterday there was a laudatory review of it in the ‘Nation.’ It is probably the last prose work I shall publish, though there may be more than one posthumous volume of my diaries.

“22nd Sept. (Sunday).—Dr. Renner, a quite black West African from Sierra Leone, is here for the week-end, having been brought by Miss Howsin, an M.D. who is interested in the future of his race, and looks to Islam as the best means to its salvation in Africa, though not himself a Mohammedan. He talks no native language, and his mastery of English is very imperfect, though he is a well-educated man. His name, he tells us, in the Fanti tongue is Aouna. He gets £550 a year as chief of the Native Medical Staff at Sierra Leone, but complains that Englishmen are now being appointed to supersede the native doctors.

“25th Sept.—General Marschall von Bieberstein is dead, a great misfortune for Turkey, whose sincere friend he was. The shadows are darkening over the East.

“29th Sept. (Sunday).—The Bellocs to dinner and Somers Cocks, the latter just back from Berlin, where he says the Emperor William directs all his own diplomacy himself.

“3rd Oct.—Another very lovely day. In the afternoon we made a round, gathering crab apples and choke pears, of which there is an immense abundance this year such as never before seen. The pears are excellent, stewed with blackberries and clotted cream, better than garden pears, and the crabs do well for the goats. The hips and haws this year are astonishing, and every kind of berry. We filled the American cart with our spoils—a real pleasure.

“4th Oct.—It is all over I fear with Turkey and the Mohammedan world. The long intrigue against it seems to have prevailed, and the papers to-day announce that peace is made with Italy on the Italian terms. The way in which the end has been obtained has been through stirring up the Balkan States to the point of war. Until yesterday I still hoped that the Turkish Government would elect to fight against these rather than yield to threats, but the Ottoman citadel has already been betrayed, and the Jew, Kiamil Pasha, has played into the joint hands of the English and Russian Foreign Offices, and the disgraceful terms have been agreed to. Nothing can now save Islam from its doom of subjection to the will of Christendom and its ultimate destruction. Egypt’s cause too is lost, with that of the Ottoman Empire. I shall trouble myself with Oriental futures no further, being impotent either to advise or control, I ‘roll up the map of Islam.’

“8th Oct.—Montenegro has declared war on Turkey. [This was the first act of the Balkan War.]

“10th Oct.—The war news is confirmed and fighting has begun in Albania. There seems no doubt now that Bulgaria and Servia will join in the fray, though the Austrian Government is trying to stop it. I am somewhat consoled by it, for though it may be the beginning of the end for Turkey in Europe, it will be better for Islam that the Empire should die sword in hand than that it should be cheated out of existence by our diplomacy. War gives at least a chance. Not that I have much hope of a victorious ending, for the concert of Europe will prevent that; still a chance there is. Abdul Ghaffar agrees with me in this. He also announces an intention by our Government to give a Constitutional Government to Egypt, a sham one, of course, but it is to be called a Mejliss el Nawab. Abdul Ghaffar is an excellent fellow, with a closer understanding of English ideas than I have found in any Egyptian, yet without loss to his patriotism.

“13th Oct. (Sunday).—Newbuildings. Terence arrived here from Pekes with his friend Percy Fielding. He tells me it is quite certain that the German Government intended to buy Tobruk, on the Tripolitan coast, from the Sultan, and that that had been the cause of the sudden decision of the Italian Government to seize Tripoli. It has been said often, and often denied, but he tells me it is quite true. As to present affairs in the Cyrenaica, he says that if the Turks conclude a peace with Italy, Enver Bey will proclaim himself Sultan, and will be acknowledged as such by the Senussia, but the Ottoman Sultan Caliphate will lose all prestige in Africa. The Italians are hated in Tunis both by Arabs and French, and the war has made France almost popular. The Italians might have conciliated the Tripolitans but for the massacres. Now they are hated and despised, hated because they are known to have intended to dispossess the Arabs of their lands, despised because they are cowards, and also because they are willing to work for less wages than the Arabs will take. They are of the dregs of Europe.

“16th Oct.—Peace has been signed at Ouchy between Italy and Turkey on disgraceful terms to Turkey. What will now happen I imagine is that, the Italian end being gained, England and Russia will put pressure on the Sultan to agree also to the loss of Macedonia. Without some extraordinary manifestation by the Turks of military power, of which so far there is no sign, the Ottoman Empire is ruined. This preys upon my mind. Egypt will now be permanently enslaved to Europe.

“17th Oct.—Worth Forest. We drove here in the afternoon to get ready for our ouverture de la chasse on Saturday, when George Wyndham, Mark Napier, Winston Churchill, and perhaps Beauclerk are up to celebrate with me the completion of the new Manor House, with a deer drive in the Upper Forest. The bucks are beginning to bell, and we heard them in the night, which was clear with a half moon. When we were here last week young Henry Blunt, who had been here to see me, and was bicycling back, was confronted with a buck in one of the forest paths, which disputed the way with him. This frightened him so that he did not get back till half-past nine. He will have to do better than that with the lions and rhinoceroses of Uganda, whither he is about to emigrate.

“18th Oct.—George arrived in the afternoon, and we spent a pleasant evening together talking about Ireland and my book, the ‘Land War.’ He told me that it was certainly true that if things had gone a little differently at the 1885 elections, Lord Salisbury would have given some form of Home Rule, also that there was no choice now but either to treat Ireland exactly as so many English counties, or give Home Rule on the model of Canada.

“19th Oct.—This has been a great day. Mark arrived at ten in glorious sunshine, and we made a long beat for deer in the upper Forest without result, however, as far as getting a buck was concerned, though we flushed several woodcocks. Clementine joined us at one, and walked with us in the afternoon’s shooting, but Winston not till tea-time. Then he at once began a political discussion with George which was both amusing and enlightening, and went on with occasional breaks through dinner and till midnight. It was a fine night, and we dined in the bungalow, dressed in gorgeous Oriental garments. Clementine in a suit of embroidered silk, purchased last year in Smyrna, Winston in one of my Bagdad robes, George in a blue dressing gown, and I in my Bedouin clothes, Mark adorned only with his wit, but that was of the best. It recalled the most glorious night’s entertainments of the Crabbet Club, a true feast of reason and flow of bowl. The secrets of the Cabinet were gloriously divulged, and those of the Opposition front benches no less, from Home Rule to a reconstruction of the House of Lords by common accord after George Curzon and Asquith had been got rid of, while George Wyndham declared with great oaths that he would rather go to hell than see the British Constitution made ridiculous by single Chamber Government, at which point I left them for my bed. Winston was very brilliant in all this, as though he kept on at the Madeira he also kept his head, and played with George’s wild rushes like a skilled fencer with a greatly superior fence. He is certainly an astonishing young man, and has gained immensely within the last two years in character and intellectual grip; also he is in more vigorous health now that he has left the Home Office for the Admiralty, where he is able to spend most of his time on board the Enchantress, the Admiralty 3,000 ton yacht, which he makes his home.

“Among the many things discussed was that of the coming European war and the chances of a German invasion. This, Winston declared, could be easily effected on the east coast where it would certainly be the German game to land 20,000 men so as to make a diversion and prevent our helping the French with an English contingent. He said the idea of the Fleet being a sufficient safeguard was entirely out of date, and without a strong army there was no safety. He also believed in the coming of a war in which we shall be involved in order to prevent France being overpowered by Germany, and forced into an alliance against us. He has a great belief in submarine warfare as the weapon of the future and is pushing that branch of the service on all he can. He is to go on Monday to Sheerness to witness trials of artillery and he described the prodigious effect of the new explosives. He is enthusiastic about his naval work, but I know too little about military affairs, either by sea or land, to appreciate the whole of his talk, and I was tired with the shooting and so cannot do justice to the wonderful evening it has been.

“20th Oct. (Sunday).—Another day of excellent talk. Cockerell came for luncheon and to spend the afternoon, and Winston told us admirable stories of his experience as Home Secretary and of how it had become a nightmare to him the having to exercise his power of life and death in the case of condemned criminals, on an average of one case a fortnight. Nearly all of the cases of murder are a combination of love and drink, young fellows who on a sudden impulse kill their sweethearts, sometimes in the most barbarous fashion yet with the excuse of temporary rage amounting to madness. He described the power of the Home Secretary as absolute, either to quash the sentence or to confirm it. The Home Secretary can go into any prison and on his sole authority can order a release, which if once notified to a prisoner cannot be changed afterwards by any power in England. He had several times done this, and just before leaving the Office he had ordered a number of remissions of sentences, notwithstanding the protests of the judges in the cases. He spoke of these cases with emotion, and giving us all particulars.

“About the war in Turkey I told him that it was his fault, or rather Grey’s, that it had broken out, that the outbreak could have been stopped a year ago by ordering the British fleet to the Mediterranean and notifying the Italian Government that their raid on Tripoli would not be tolerated. He said, ‘Yes, it was so, but we could not afford to make for ourselves yet another enemy in Italy.’ Talking of the Italians I remarked that they were contemptible as fighting men, they have been beaten always by every other people by sea and land since Lepanto. He said, ‘That is interesting, if true, but how about Garibaldi?’ ‘Garibaldi,’ I said, ‘was an Italian fighting against Italians. He and his men never beat a foreign enemy.’ Winston, however, will not hear of Grey as being other than a splendid specimen of an Englishman, the best of the type, and they are evidently close friends, indeed Grey is Winston’s son’s godfather.

“Winston is also a strong eugenist. He told us he had himself drafted the Bill which is to give power of shutting up people of weak intellect and so prevent their breeding. He thought it might be arranged to sterilize them. It was possible by the use of Röntgen rays, both for men and women, though for women some operation might also be necessary. He thought that if shut up with no prospect of release without it many would ask to be sterilized as a condition of having their liberty restored. He went on to say that the mentally deficient were as much more prolific than those normally constituted as eight to five. Without something of the sort the race must decay. It was rapidly decaying, but would be stopped by some such means.

“After lunch I drove Clementine with my team round by Turner’s Hill and Caxtons, and we overtook my grandchildren coming up to tea.

“Another long evening’s talk followed.

“21st Oct.—The party is over and all are gone their several ways, Winston to Sheerness with Clementine, George to London, and Mark to Puttenden, and I am left in a state almost of collapse alone. We had a last try for a buck to-day, but again without success, though three were seen, and we got a score of pheasants.

“I am the more depressed because of the evil news from Turkey, where the five armies of the Balkan States and Greece have invaded Ottoman territory, and so far successfully. The only chance for the Turks seemed to lie in a vigorous offensive, and it is clear they lack initiative now that Shefket has left their War Office. They are being betrayed by Kiamil and English advice and will end in their dismemberment. I judge of things being at their worst in regard to any hope of help here from Winston’s talk. He has become most truculent about international affairs, being engrossed in preparations for war with Germany and ready with Grey for any betrayal of weak nations needed for the game of alliances. Talking of Somaliland, where there has been fighting between the Mullah and the ‘friendly’ tribes, he said he would like to make a present of it to Germany and of other places as coaling stations which would be so many hostages to fortune. They (meaning our Government) would be obliged to take some action against the Mullah, not an expedition, which was too expensive an affair, but they would send aeroplanes to drop bombs into the Arab camps. He gave us a graphic description of his experiences at Omdurman in the charge of the 21st Lancers, and of how he had seen these spearing the wounded and leaning with their whole weight on their lances after the charge to get the points through the thick clothes the wounded Dervishes wore as they lay on the ground. As the points went in the Derwishes would kick up their feet and hands. One trooper had boasted of his kind-heartedness because he had only put four inches of steel into his man. ‘He ought to be thankful,’ he had said, ‘to find himself in the hands of a good-natured chap like me.’ Winston is quite changed on these matters from what he was two years ago when I had hopes of encouraging him to better things. How like his father! He and George had been talking these two days in absolute accord on army and navy affairs and the coming war with Germany. Hearing them talk, one might be excused for thinking what is commonly said by the Tories, that Winston will one day return to the Tory fold. His old connection with the army and now with the navy has turned his mind back into an ultra Imperialist groove. This, I think, will be a stronger temptation for him than any mere intrigue of ambition. Talking yesterday about his career, he said, ‘I have never joined in any intrigue, everything I have got I have worked for and have been more hated than anybody.’ He speaks highly of both Lloyd George and Edward Grey, both of whom stand probably in the way of his becoming Liberal Prime Minister, while he would certainly lead the Tory party were he one of them again. He avows a great contempt for Bonar Law. Arthur Balfour, George declares, really means to be out of politics, and George himself, clever though he is, is a mere child in argument compared with Winston.

“23rd Oct.—Cockerell has written, thanking me enthusiastically for his share in Sunday’s party. It was certainly very brilliant, though it has left me with the remorseful feeling an orgy always leaves, and I think, I will not indulge in another.

“25th Oct.—A great battle is going on around Adrianople, and the Turks are evidently getting the worst of it. The papers try to make out that it is part of a strategical plan on the Turkish side, but I do not believe it. The only chance the Sultan had was to overwhelm his enemies at once by marching on Sofia, and here they are being invaded and retreating. I fear there is little hope. Abdul Ghaffar, who is a good young man and a good Moslem, writes quaintly and pathetically from Oxford, ‘After all God is there, and we may in the last resort rely on him. . . . Do not give up hope yet, you will live to see Turkey strong. God grant you the fulfilment of your wishes. . . . Keep up heart and rely on God. Those who take refuge in God he helps; anyhow this is all we can do now.’ I wish I could have his trust, but I feel ashamed of having had that uproarious time with Winston and George, two outrageous political gamblers just now at this tragic time when we ought to be in sackcloth and ashes.

“26th Oct.—The St. Martin’s summer is over and heavy rain has set in. I feel like Napoleon at Moscow, and that we have outstayed the season here in the Forest. Clementine has written her ‘Collins’ from the ‘Enchantress,’ and Winston keeps on telegraphing about an overcoat left behind, I believe his chauffeur’s, and taken by George’s man.

“27th Oct. (Sunday).—The Ottoman cause seems lost in Europe, and with it all I have been fighting for for so many years, and the collapse is a personal collapse for me, which I feel at every turn, day and night. Egypt now will never get out of the grip of Europe—I do not say of England, because the British Empire will not long survive in the Mediterranean, but of whatever other Empire takes its place. I shall not live to see this ultimate change, but others will, and Islam’s chance is gone.”

From this point onwards, the autumn of 1912, the close of my practical activities in Eastern affairs may be dated. I had given up my house in London, and at the end of the year I took my name off my Clubs, cutting myself off from all temptations to continue these activities, such as I could not have avoided had I continued to frequent my many London friends; nor have I from that date so much as visited Piccadilly, even for the day. All my subsequent life has been spent in Sussex, either at Newbuildings, or from time to time in Worth Forest, leading the life there of a country squire to which I was born, and which is naturally mine. Nevertheless I continued to take an onlooker’s interest in the great drama of European politics, which was shaping itself into the supreme tragedy of 1914. A few friends came from time to time to see me in my hermitage, and these for a while gave me news of the diplomatic doings which were leading on to war, and I had at my hand a neighbour and constant ally in Hilaire Belloc, than whom no one was better acquainted with the intrigues and rivalries of our political leaders in Parliament, besides being always an instructive and amusing companion. Thus I did not wholly lose touch for another year with public affairs, and my diary, though less important in its entries, continues to be a record of the chief events which preluded Armageddon. They will show how little truth there is in the current story that in the quarrel our Foreign Office was wholly innocent, more especially in that with the Ottoman Empire.

“31st Oct.—The news from Constantinople is rather less hopeless to-day in regard to the battle being fought east of Adrianople, but I feel no revival of confidence in the ultimate result. Even if Nazim Pasha, should manage to beat off the Bulgarian army, and save the Eastern Province, it would not restore the Ottoman prestige as a military power, or safeguard the Empire from dismemberment. It is an ugly feature of the case that Mukhtar Ghazi has resigned the Vizierate and Kiamil Pasha remains on now in supreme authority. That means that a disgraceful peace will be made through European, in other words, Anglo-Russian intervention, and the Sultan will be reduced to the position of England’s servant and the Czar’s. The dream of a regenerated Caliphate, strong, and reformed, is at an end. Egypt will be England’s bakshish for the service rendered, and Russia’s will be the opening of the Dardanelles. This is what has all along been aimed at by our Foreign Office.

“I have written to resign my chairmanship of the Egyptian Committee, and to say that I cannot carry on our paper ‘Egypt,’ beyond the end of the year. In the afternoon I shot with Victor Lytton, who has been here to consult me about the Life of his grandfather, the novelist, which he has been writing, and after dinner we had a long talk on religion and philosophy as well as my remembrances of the grandfather and of Victor’s father. I like Victor much. Though far less brilliant than Neville, he has good solid qualities, and a much wider range of interests. He has a good heart and a logical mind. What he told me of his boyish devotion to his father in the year after his father’s death was very interesting as a spiritual experience. He is himself devoted now to his own children.

“1st Nov.—A great Turkish defeat is admitted, and it is only a question whether the Bulgarians will march on to Constantinople or forestall European intervention by making a separate peace with the Sultan, which shall include the cession of the whole of European Turkey west of the fortified line between the Black Sea and the sea of Marmora. This is the more likely result of the two.

“Victor has gone back to Knebworth, and his place here is taken by Beauclerk just returned from his gold-mining adventure in Alaska, and bringing with him fresh ideas as well as a huge nugget of copper for me.

“13th Nov.—My recent sadness has been deepened by reading Miss Petre’s ‘Life of Father Tyrrell,’ which at last is out. It is a record of failure, though intensely interesting—indeed the autobiographical part is comparable in its ways to Rousseau’s, a real self-dissection. His failure at Rome is very like mine with Cairo or Constantinople, attempts both of them to make silk purses out of sow’s ears, and reading it has filled me with a double gloom. Up to the present moment it had been possible for me to feel that I had played a useful and successful part in the regeneration of Islam. Now I can no longer feel this. It is too patent to me that Islam will never be regenerated, and that my work of thirty years has been absolutely thrown away. The Mohammedan religion will of course survive the present shock for many years, perhaps for many generations. But Islam, as a political institution and power in the world, has had its death blow, from which it will not recover. The Ottoman Caliphate will drag out a crippled existence in Asia, but it will be under European, probably Russian tutelage, and will be used as an instrument for enslaving what were once the Ottoman provinces, and will have fallen into Christian hands. Islam’s sole chance now as an independent social existence will be in the deserts whence it originally sprang, Arabia and North Africa, and the chance is a poor one at best. At any rate it must be on lines other than those I have pursued, or of which I can hope even to see the beginnings.

“14th Nov.—I have written to Miss Petre congratulating her upon her book, an admirable piece of work. Tyrrell’s case and my own, as I said yesterday, have a certain analogy. Not that in either case the ideals we pursued are false, but rather that the men in whose hands the issues lay were unworthy and unwise. Thus I have read the book with a fuller sympathy to-day than would have been the case two years ago. Apart from this, Tyrrell’s account of the Jesuit system is certainly the most convincing that has been published, and this was the chief theme of my letter to Miss Petre.

“17th Nov. (Sunday).—I have talked over ‘Egypt’ with Ryan, and persist in my intention to resign my chairmanship of the Committee and future connection with the paper. Not that the paper has not been a success on its own lines. On the contrary, it has exercised a wide influence in Mohammedan lands, if little here. But it is clear that under the new conditions brought about by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Egyptian patriotism must take a new direction, and I am too old to begin with a fresh policy. Others may do so without inconsistency; I cannot.

“Belloc dined with us. The Turkish army is still fighting in defence of the Chatalja lines. But the result of the war will be the same—the loss of all the European provinces.

“20th Nov.—My resignation of the Chairmanship has been notified to the Egyptian Committee in London, and Rutherford will, I hope, succeed me. In some ways they will get on better without me, as my anti-Imperialism is so notorious that it frightens moderate English Nationalists, and prevents all help being given us in the House of Commons, even among the Irish. Indeed the Irish parliamentarians have become more Imperialistic than our own. It is the Fenians and Sinn Feiners that are pleased with me now, not the men with whom I worked in 1887; all these have been converted to English Liberalism. Thus I find myself left a solitary figure, pleading an absolutely lost cause among Englishmen, that of Conservative Nationalism. All the rest have gone their ways as Whig Unionists, or Socialistic Internationalists. I console myself as I can by repeating the line, Causa deis placuit victrix sed victa Catoni, but it does not help me far.

“22nd Nov.—I have been reading George Meredith’s letters, just published. They give one the impression of a tender-hearted man and playful companion, rather than the profound thinker his extreme admirers would have him to be. His style, jerky and obscure though it is, is I think the best feature of his prose. His knowledge of human nature as shown by his novels is quite superficial, a theory of what life ought to be, not of what life is. His only one great work is in verse, his ‘Modern Love,’ and this he drew as a young man from his own personal experience. The fine ladies in his novels, with their odd characters, are entirely fanciful. They do not exist in English, or any other feminine life, yet they have had a considerable influence on our modern ladies—who like to think themselves as he represents them. He has certainly had a great deal to do with their present sex emancipation. Such women, however, as he describes in his novels are not those who will ever really rule the world, rather the weak ones. They will never attract the men, and in the marriage competition will be edged out, pussies who run about continually, but fail to find corners. To me they are wearisome to read of, because unreal. These letters show well the narrow limits of Meredith’s personal experience. His knowledge of life was three parts of it acquired at second hand. I am sorry all the same not to have known him better than I did, for he was clearly one of the best of companions and of friends.

“23rd Nov.—Rothstein and Ryan are here winding up the affairs of ‘Egypt.’ The Bulgarian advance on Constantinople seems at a standstill, and it looks very much as if the war had been arranged beforehand with the Powers. . . . I suspect Kiamil Pasha of having purposely left the army in Macedonia unprepared for fighting, so as to serve English and Russian plans of dismemberment, on a promise of retaining Constantinople. He is just the man to entertain the idea of putting the Sultan in the same position of English dependence that the Khedive had been reduced to at Cairo. It would not suit either English or Russian plans to have so strong a fighting State as Bulgaria in possession of the Dardanelles. What Russia principally wants is to get free passage to the Mediterranean, and what Grey wants is to please Russia. With a Sultan Caliph in leading strings on the Bosphorus, they would both be able to work their will, Cairo would be held on a perpetual lease by us, and our Protectorate of the Persian Gulf be acknowledged.”

This, I believe, is exactly what the position was at Constantinople between our diplomacy there and Kiamil. It was certainly due to him that the Ottoman army in Macedonia was left only half mobilized until too late to escape defeat.

“24th Nov. (Sunday).—Belloc dined in the evening alone with me and Ryan, and was most agreeable. I like him better thus than when he is showing off before a number of people, with noise and fireworks, which is his usual form in a mixed company. He has just brought out a new book called ‘A Servile State,’ whose principles he expounded to us as the latest counterblast to State Socialism. Rothstein had just given us the socialist side of the democratic case, but I have given up trying to solve the domestic conundrum of the European future. Things as they are will last my time, and beyond that who can tell?

“3rd Dec.—Our armistice has been agreed to before Constantinople, and the war with Bulgaria is probably over. It is said that the Sultan is to keep Adrianople, as well as the Marmora coast and the Dardanelles. If so, things will have been put back exactly to where they were placed by the treaty of San Stefano in 1878, and it is just conceivable that the Ottoman Empire may some day recover strength. The best thing about the terms of peace is that there is a prospect now of a Bulgaro-Turkish Alliance, a solution which long ago seemed to me the right one, and which I have more than once discussed with Irene Noel as ‘a general Balkan alliance, which should include Turkey.’” [Miss Noel’s interest in Balkan politics rested on her intimacy with the King and Queen of Greece, whose views she was well acquainted with. King George of Greece at that time was anxious to form an alliance of all the Balkan States against Austria and Russia, and it was thought might include Turkey.]

“18th Dec.—Our final number of ‘Egypt’ is out. It appears at an opportune moment, for the Peace Conference met in London two days ago, by a strange irony, under Grey’s Presidency, the principal causer of the war.

“24th Dec.—There is talk to-day of a renewal of the war, and of Shefket Pasha being the Generalissimo (a word which shows that ‘Egypt’ has been read at Constantinople), also Poincaré at Paris has talked publicly of asserting French rights of intervention in Syria. The chief news, however, is that Hardinge has been wounded by a bomb, dropped into the howdah of his state elephant while he was riding in Viceregal procession to proclaim the new Indian capital at Delhi. This is an event of supreme significance, and ought to be a warning to our people against their alliance with despotic Russia in Asia, but they will not take it so.

“31st Dec.—The last day of 1912, a sad year for me, as it has seen the downfall of my larger hopes in the East without bringing any new absorbing interest, also I am growing older and more infirm.

[1913]“10th Jan., 1913.—The peace negotiations between the Turks and the Bulgarians are hung up, as they will not agree to a frontier line, and there is some chance of the Roumanians intervening. This of course means indirect pressure put on King Ferdinand from Vienna, counteracting the pressure put on the Turks by Grey and the rogues he is allied with at Petersburg and Paris. It is really an all-important point, because if the Bulgarians are to have access to the Sea of Marmora, the Sultan’s position at Constantinople will have been turned. The Bulgarians could build a fleet on it and have it at their mercy, so the Turks are right in standing out. It will probably end in their keeping Adrianople and the whole Marmora Coast, in spite of our Foreign Office’s bluster. We hope now that ‘Egypt’ may be continued, if only for the Indian Moslem’s sake. Syud Mahmud has written me a most encouraging letter about the influence the paper is having with them.

“16th Jan.—The deadlock continues at Constantinople, the Turks refusing to abandon Adrianople, and the Bulgarians being backed up by our Foreign Office and the French and Russian. McCullagh has returned from the war, and gives a bad report of the Turkish military position. It is a case for them, he says, of the devil or the deep sea, of being driven finally out of Europe, or of remaining at Constantinople on terms of slavery to Christendom. They may well prefer to fight, even with every chance against them, but I dare not advise.

“21st Jan.—There is a violent attack in last night’s ‘Pall Mall’ on the Gaekwar of Baroda, insisting on his ‘disloyalty to his Sovereign’ at the great Durbar last year—quite true I dare say, as why should it be otherwise? From India I continue to receive messages from Moslems in admiration of ‘Egypt’ and praise of my services to Islam in telling them the truth. I wish the paper could be continued for their sake.

“22nd Jan.—Lord Ashburnham is dead, a good Sussex nobleman, and long my friend. A year ago his little daughter, whom he had brought up a Catholic, and who was all he had to love, went into a Convent, and with that his life ended. He is succeeded by a childless brother, settled somewhere in the colonies, and, though another branch of the Ashburnhams exists in Sussex, the peerage and the connection of the family with the Stuart fortunes is closed. Ashburnham became a Catholic some thirty years ago through political sentiment, as connecting him more closely with the Stuarts. Through this cause, too, he affected an allegiance to Queen Mary, the Stuart representative, and maintained close relations with Don Carlos and other exiled dynasties, also on that account he was an Irish Nationalist.

“23rd Jan.—It is announced from Constantinople that the Grand Council of the Empire has agreed to the cession of Adrianople, as the price of peace and being allowed to live. If this includes a cession of the Marmora coast the Ottoman Caliphate is at an end. Europe will hold it in vassalage to do its Christian bidding, that is to say, the bidding of cosmopolitan finance. I have a letter to-day from John Dillon, lamenting this.

“24th Jan.—Great news! There has been another revolution at Constantinople. The traitor Kiamil has resigned, and Mahmud Shefket is named Grand Vizier, with the avowed determination to refuse submission about Adrianople, and, if necessary, renew the war. This is better than I could have hoped, and I have telegraphed to Ryan to come, and we will bring out a special number of ‘Egypt.’ Our London papers are furious, and, no doubt, Grey will be very angry. It is a rude slap in the face to his diplomacy, and there is talk of all sorts of coercive measures to be taken by the Powers. I rejoice, if only that the Turks have once again recovered their dignity. It will be better for them to lose Constantinople, if that should happen, than to yield to Grey. Yesterday the posters were, ‘Turks yield. Place themselves in the hands of Europe.’ To-day it is, ‘No surrender, Young Turks in power.’ This is the cheerfulest announcement we have had for six months.

“25th Jan.—Yet more from Constantinople. Nazim Pasha has been shot while resisting the Revolutionists. He deserved his fate, as he was one of those who brought about the military revolt of last year, which placed Kiamil in power while his conduct of the campaign has been inept. I have telegraphed to Shefket ‘Félicitations. Votre heureux retour au pouvoir. Allah Yénsurak!’

“26th Jan. (Sunday).—It turns out that Enver Bey took the lead in bringing about the fall of Kiamil, going himself to the Porte, where one of his aides-de-camp shot Nazim dead in the scuffle, and afterwards to the Palace where he insisted on Shefket’s appointment as Vizier. Enver is just the man for the situation, with his experience of the war in Tripoli, and jointly with Shefket may yet renew the campaign at Chatalja. My belief, however, is that pressure will now be put on Bulgaria to yield the point of Adrianople and that things will be settled without more fighting between Turks and Bulgarians. Grey will be angry, but that does not matter. Just now English attention is engrossed with Woman Suffrage and can spare very little for the male affairs of Islam. I have written to Loulou Harcourt, who has been making fun in the House of Grey and Lloyd George on this question, congratulating him and saying, ‘I rejoice to see that the principles of the Crabbet Club still live.’ [This probably marks the date of the Agreement between Germany and Turkey and the eventual alliance.]