Part 2 — CHAPTER V

THE BEGINNING OF GREY’S BLUNDERS—AKABAH

About this date an incident occurred which was to prove the beginning of a series of violent mistakes made by Cromer in Egypt, and endorsed by Sir Edward Grey at the Foreign Office, and which, as will be seen, led to the long quarrel between our Government and the Mohammedan world, as represented by the Sultan at Constantinople. This was what was known as the Akabah incident, which was briefly as follows:

It arose more or less accidentally. A young Englishman, Bramley, had for some time past been making camel journeys in the Libyan Desert, and with such success as to attract Cromer’s attention, and, though not in the Government service, had been given a kind of commission by him to make a tour of the desert East of the Suez Canal, and report to him about the Bedouin tribes inhabiting it, a district known generally as the Sinai Peninsula. An ostensible object was to inquire into disputes that had occurred among them, but in reality to find out what truth there might be in reports which had reached Cairo of an intention on the Sultan’s part of making a branch line from Maan on the Hedjaz railway to Akabah. During the course of his perambulation Bramley had come across a small detachment of Ottoman troops camped around a well at an uninhabited spot called Tabah, a few miles outside Akabah on the Suez road. With them Bramley had come to loggerheads, and had reported the incident in a serious light, and Cromer had taken it up as seriously, seeing in it a first step on the Ottoman part in the pretended railway scheme, not only to Akabah, but beyond it, towards Egypt, and as such a danger to the British Occupation. On this very slender suspicion, for it was nothing more, a claim had been raised by him in the name of the Khedive to the whole of the Sinai Peninsula as forming part of Khedivial Egypt, which geographically it had never been, for it had always been reckoned part of Arabia, and so of Asia, not yet politically, except in connection with the land pilgrimage between Cairo and Medina, and a very doubtful grant to Mohammed Ali of the fortresses on the pilgrim road. The claim had been pressed with quite unnecessary violence by Cromer, and the evacuation of Tabah demanded of the Sultan in peremptory terms (as to which see later and in the Appendix and my letter to Sir Edward Grey).

It was a trifling quarrel pushed to extreme lengths, and most foolishly engaged in by our Government, who ought to have known that its connection with the pilgrim route was sure to rouse Mohammedan feeling against us and place it on the Sultan’s side. And so it proved, as will be seen.

“31st March.—To-day John Redmond came to see me, and stayed an hour and a half talking. I asked him how they were getting on with the new Parliament, and he said they were doing capitally. All on the Government side except a very few were with him. Bannerman was sound about Home Rule and Reid, and he thought he could count on Bryce and Morley and on the rank and file. The Whig section of the Cabinet, Grey, Haldane, Asquith and Fowler were opposed, but had hardly a handful with them. If he, Redmond, were to propose a resolution in favour of Home Rule of however complete a kind, he should have a large majority for it in the House; he only did not propose one, because he was waiting to see what the Government would bring forward as a measure next session, and he did not wish to embarrass them. Talking about Morley I noticed a kind of hesitation in what he said of him, and I put in ‘Yes, Morley is a wretched fellow,’ to which he answered, ‘You may well say so, he is exactly that. Last year when I was bringing forward my resolution in favour of Home Rule, which I got the whole Liberal party to vote for, I wrote to Morley and asked him to look through the terms of it, and suggest amendments. This he did, and struck out the words “National self-government,” and other expressions of the kind. But after the vote, Bannerman told me, “You might just as well have left in the words you struck out, we should have voted for it all the same.” Morley has no courage, you can’t depend upon him. Yes, he is a wretched fellow.’ I then asked about the quarrels there had been in the Irish party, and he said, ‘It is entirely a personal matter between O’Brien, and Dillon, and Sexton.’ O’Brien and Dillon had been at two ever since the Parnell split, and now they were quite at loggerheads, did not even speak when they met. O’Brien insisted there should be a round table conference about Home Rule as there had been about the Land Bill, but the conditions of the two cases were not the same. About the Land Bill, both sides wanted to come to an agreement. On Home Rule, the Ulster members and the Home Rulers were hopelessly at odds. All they could hope for this Parliament was to get a half-way house as an instalment. No half-way house could last, and it must end in Home Rule. About the influence of the priests in Ireland, he said it was quite untrue that it had increased in the last twenty years. On the contrary it had never recovered from the shock it had sustained from the time of the Parnell split. The best proof of their little influence to-day was that the priests could not carry a single constituency against the Parliamentary Party at an election. Archbishop Walsh was a man of little influence, he was too constantly changing his mind. Even on the University question it was impossible to say what his present opinion was.

“From this we went on to South Africa, which is the question of the moment, the Government having first intervened to reprieve twelve Kaffirs sentenced to death in Natal by a court martial, and then having climbed down for fear of Colonial white opinion. He said the Radicals were very angry at Lord Elgin’s pusillanimity, and the case was to be debated on Monday. The Radicals were angry, too, at the Whig section of the Cabinet not having voted for the Trades Union Bill. Altogether they had lost much ground already this session. If the opposition had any men of ability they might make an effective attack; as it was, George Wyndham was their only good man. Of George Wyndham he spoke nicely, said he had been sorry for him at the time of his breakdown last year when he resigned, but he had quite recovered his position now. I told him I should not be surprised if George helped them to get Home Rule, and I also repeated to him how Arthur Balfour had told me long ago that if they were to have Home Rule at all he hoped it would be separation. On the whole Redmond was most satisfied with the position. The Labour members went solid with the Irish, so that they made a compact party of 120 or 130 members. Redmond is a good-hearted fellow, getting up several times to arrange my invalid pillows for me while we were talking.

“7th April.—The interest of the week has been about the Zulu rising in Natal. Our wretched Whig Government, after intervening to reprieve the twelve men sentenced to be shot, gave in to the Natal colonists, whose Ministry had resigned, and on Monday the unfortunate Zulus were executed. This is a dastardly business, and has disgusted the Radicals with Lord Elgin, and there has since been a serious Kaffir rising. How it will end no one knows, but the Government has now committed itself to the general principle of protecting the natives.

“8th April.—Sir Wilfrid Lawson called, much broken with age, I am sorry to see, but still full of interest in the things that interested us both twenty-five years ago. I think that with his help we have put a spoke in Cromer’s wheel, and prevented a bombardment at Akabah.”

This was the last time I saw Sir Wilfrid, whose death, a few weeks later, was an immense misfortune to the cause of liberty, and the rights of backward races and small nationalities oppressed by British Imperialism. He was fearless, unselfish, and absolutely honest, with an inexhaustible fund of wit and rough eloquence, an old-fashioned Cumberland squire of the best possible type.

“10th April.—Neville sent me word this morning that Bernard Shaw was sitting to him for his portrait, and I looked in (his house is next to mine), and spent an hour with him. Shaw was in the papal robes in which Neville is painting him, seated in an ancient cinquecento chair, a grotesque figure, with his trousered legs showing through the lace cotta transparent to his knees. He is an ugly fellow, too, his face a pasty white, with a red nose and a rusty red beard, and little slatey-blue eyes. Neville’s portrait is wonderfully like. Shaw’s appearance, however, matters little when he begins to talk, if he can ever be said to begin, for he talks always in his fine Irish brogue. His talk is like his plays, a string of paradoxes, and he is ready to be switched on to any subject one pleases, and to talk brilliantly on all. He was talking about his marriage when I entered. ‘I should never have married at all,’ he said, ‘if I had not been dead at the time. I tumbled off my bicycle, and the surgeons made a hole in my foot which they kept open for a year, and me in bed. I thought I was dead, for it would not heal, and Charlotte had me at her mercy. I should never have married if I had thought I should get well. Then I tumbled again, this time downstairs from top to bottom. When I found myself on the floor in the hall with every bone broken I felt satisfied. I could not do more and I took to my bed again.’ These particulars were à propos of my having said that there were two quite happy moments in one’s life, the first when one took to one’s deathbed, and the other when one got up from it. He told us next his experiences in public speaking, and how shy he had been, and described his first open-air speech in Hyde Park when he had practised on three loafers lying on their backs on the grass, and how one of them without getting up had called out ‘’ear! ’ear!’ He said the great art of speaking was to get somebody to interrupt you with a question, and for you to misunderstand it, and he gave us some funny instances. I then got him to give his views on land reform, which he said was a very simple matter. You had only to get all the agricultural labourers to migrate into the towns, where they would make themselves useful by loafing in the streets and attending music halls, the only thing they understood, and by sending the townspeople down into the country to cultivate it by electricity and explosives. If he had a farm he thought he would plough it by firing cannon up and down it—amusing rubbish, which I fancy concealed a complete ignorance of the agricultural branch of the socialistic case. Shaw is a capital fellow all the same, and one I should like if I knew him better. He showed himself personally kind and of much practical dexterity when I got him to help me to my feet from the sofa on which I was, when the sitting was over.

“15th April (Easter Sunday).—It being a beautiful day I was taken out for the first time in a kind of invalid chair, where I am able to lie flat, to Rotten Row, and lay there in the sun looking at the hyacinths and tulips by the Serpentine pond head. No smart people to be seen, only shopkeepers and working men of the London variety.

“21st April.—To Clouds at last. I thought I should never get there, my journey having been so often put off by my illnesses, but all has gone successfully, and I have travelled up in my wheeled chair from Semley station. There is the usual Easter family party in the house, with Arthur Balfour, Sir Oliver Lodge, and Butcher, M.P.

“22nd April.—I was able to get downstairs this afternoon and to lie in the smoking room, where they all came to talk to me, Arthur Balfour with much kindly unction giving me a two-handed greeting. We had not met here since September, 1887. This time we did not talk any politics, but art, poetry, and science, the last especially with Lodge. Lodge, though somewhat pompous, is a good fellow, and talks well on his own subjects, and, as I had just been reading Haeckel’s ‘Life,’ and being engaged on my ‘Religion of Happiness,’ I was able to discuss materialism with him to some effect. He is really much more of a materialist than his books suggest, and except that he believes in a future life and some kind of God, there is not much difference between us. He admits the probability of a material origin of life through spontaneous generation, and his God is not God the Creator but a very shadowy being devoid of personality.

“23rd April.—Lodge has gone back to Birmingham but he came up to my room for a final talk before he left. He is grateful to me for having cured a toothache he had with a small dose of morphia. He has left his book against Haeckel with me to read and invites me to answer it in print.

“Percy tells me he was present at the celebrated conference at Oxford in 1860 when Huxley defended Darwin’s theory, and the Bishop of Oxford, Wilberforce, denounced it. He remembers Haeckel being there in support of Huxley, which is curious, seeing that Haeckel’s biographer says that Haeckel did not till two years later accept Darwinism.

“Arthur Balfour has been doing a rest cure for some time in London, recovering from his political defeat, and is still an invalid. I find him singularly unaware of current events, as he still refuses to read newspapers, expecting others to supply him with news of what goes on. An odd instance of this took place to-day. He received a telegram by mistake addressed ‘Balfour, London,’ from San Francisco, telling him that some property had been saved from the earthquake, and he could not make it out. ‘What earthquake?’ he asked; ‘what earthquake?’ having heard nothing of what all the newspaper world has been talking about for the last five days, and he was put out at not having been told. ‘I told you, at any rate,’ one of them said, ‘of the eruption of Vesuvius,’ an event three weeks old, but he did not seem to know much about that either.

“24th April.—Maurice Hewlett was here to-day, a literary man of some standing, and his wife, who talked to me about the Arabs on the strength of a visit to Algiers. Butcher has left us, a man of no importance, and absurdly deferential to Balfour as his party chief, yet member for Cambridge University.

“28th April.—Arthur Balfour went away to-day. The last two evenings I have dined with the rest of the company downstairs, and have had a good deal of conversation with him, very little on politics, but much on unimportant things. In conversation he is a pleasant trifler, avoiding serious discussions, and showing, as I have remarked already, a curious ignorance of things of general information. He had no idea, for instance, last night, on what the Duke of Orleans and Don Carlos founded their respective claims to the French and Spanish thrones, and he jumbled up the Soudan with Somaliland. He told us a story which specially amused us. During the North Sea crisis, when there seemed a probability of war with Russia every hour, he happened to be at Panshanger for Sunday, and they wanted a fourth to play bridge. Lady Cowper, knowing the Russian chargé-d’affaires was the best bridge player in London, a telegram was sent asking him to come. The Russian, of course, thought that the Prime Minister had some grave news to tell him, and hurried down to Panshanger, and there had been great difficulty in persuading him that he had nothing really to tell. To me Balfour shows a great deference (if I may use the term) and when he wished us all good-bye after luncheon, he came round especially to me where I lay on my couch and addressed me in a little speech which was almost affectionate. I am touched at this and return it, and it is a feeling he very generally inspires. Ego is here, a very charming fellow, a tall intelligent Oxford undergraduate. They talk of putting him into the army, though he does not really fancy it.

“29th April (Sunday).—Matters with the Sultan have come to a violent crisis. The Sultan has refused point-blank to evacuate Tabah (just opposite Akabah), and it is universally believed that Kaiser Wilhelm stands behind him. All the papers in London have become truculent, including the ‘Tribune,’ and I have written a long letter to Redmond suggesting that he and the Labour members and the extreme Radical section should adjourn the House, and debate the situation as one of urgency. This is how I explain the case to him:

“29th April, 1906.

“Dear Redmond.—Would it not be possible to adjourn the House so as to get explanations from the Government about this quarrel with the Sultan? Up to the present Grey has refused papers, and everybody is in the dark about it. Then the next step will be to send an ultimatum—and then they will say it is too late and that the honour of England is engaged.

“As far as I can make the matter out, the Egyptian frontier as granted in 1841 to Mohammed Ali was drawn in a straight line from Suez to El Arish on the Mediterranean, El Arish being a village situated near the mouth of a small river or rather stream which was the ancient boundary between Egypt and Palestine, and is mentioned as such under the name of the ‘River of Egypt’ in the Bible. I find that in 1840 the boundary of the Pashalik of Acre contiguous to that of Egypt was officially drawn at that time from Suez to El Arish. In the firman granted to Mohammed Ali in the following year the passage occurs: ‘I have reintegrated you in the Government of Egypt comprised within the limits drawn on the map which has been sent you.’ I think this map should be asked for, as I am convinced that it would show the boundary to be the Suez to El Arish line.

“All the subsequent ‘firmans of investiture’ granted to the Viceroys of Egypt have followed much the same lines, the exact frontier not being specified. This was the case with Ismaïl Pasha’s firman in 1866, and Tewfik’s firman in 1879, and, I believe, Abbas’ in 1892, though I have not got a copy of it.

“The origin of the claim in the Sinai Peninsula raised now for Egypt is to be found in a permission given to Mohammed Ali, who, it will be remembered, reconquered for the Sultan the province of Hejaz in Arabia, with the holy cities Medina and Mecca, that he should garrison certain stations on the pilgrim road from Egypt. These were Nakhl [a fort half way between Suez and Akabah], Akabah, Moelhe, and Wej, the last two being small ports on the eastern shore of the Red Sea. All these were considered to be in Arabia, and are marked as such on European maps of as late date as after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, though the forts remained in the occupation of the Egyptian Government till 1892. Akabah, Moelhe, and Wej were then, if I remember rightly, abandoned by Egypt, the pilgrimage no longer being made by land, the only post on the pilgrim road still occupied with a small garrison of perhaps a dozen men being Nakhl. In 1892, though nothing definite was said about the boundary in the firman, a letter was written by the then Grand Vizier (I believe it has been published but I have not a copy of it) saying that the boundary of Egyptian administration would be a line drawn from El Arish to Akabah, the Egyptian Government holding the former, the Ottoman Government holding the latter. No exact demarcation, however, of the village district of either El Arish or of Akabah was made, and I believe that in fact the Egyptian Government has exercised jurisdiction for a number of miles east of El Arish. The boundary stone spoken of as having been recently removed by the Turks is, I suspect, considerably east of the village and of the Wady of El Arish (the River of Egypt). So that if the Sultan now claims some miles of land west of the Akabah fort and village he is probably doing no more than the Egyptian Government has long been doing at the other end of the frontier line. It is obvious that a frontier line cannot be drawn exactly to the walls of either village.

“As to the exercise of administration in the disputed district, that is to say, the desert between the southern inhabited limit of Palestine and the Suez Canal, there has been practically none by either Government. In 1876, and again in 1881, I travelled through the whole of it, and can affirm that with the exception of the fort of Nakhl there was then no permanently inhabited place, and that the very few Bedouins camped in it owned allegiance to neither Government.

“The Bedouins of the Sinai district, which lies south of Nakhl, are very poor and few in number. Before the Suez Canal was made, they lived by trading their dates and such small curiosities as their district produced, including rough turquoises, at Cairo, and by conducting Russian and Greek pilgrims to the Sinai monastery. The cutting of the canal, however, has made a barrier between them and Egypt, which has practically ruined them, through the imposition at first of tolls for crossing the canal and later by quarantine regulations either for themselves or their animals. I know well their sufferings on this head, as for the last twenty-five years they have made me the confidant of their complaints. Moreover, a concession was given of their turquoise mines to a European company, now I believe abandoned as unworkable, whereby they were much harassed, and the whole peninsula has been treated as an infected district through the establishment of a quarantine station at Tor for the Mecca pilgrimage. Thus they have shared in no way in the material prosperity of Egypt and have been persistently ignored by its government, until apparently for a political reason we find Lord Cromer, in his this year’s Report, detailing the benefits he proposes to bestow on them. The scheme he mentions of irrigation for the Peninsula is mere nonsense, as the whole district is dry desert without streams, for the most part an elevated plateau with a very rare rainfall, and no alluvial soil. I mention these matters because it is sure to be put forward that in opposing the Turkish occupation of Tabah we are defending the inhabitants from Ottoman oppression. No such inhabited place as Tabah existed when I was in the country, and there probably exists none now, the whole district being many miles away from any Arab camping ground.

“As to the excitement in Egypt, it is the natural consequence of the system of a ‘Veiled Protectorate’ which we have been pursuing there for the last twenty years, and of the repression of all political liberty or exercise of self-government. Before we came with an army of occupation to Egypt we were popular with the natives of all classes, and the Sultan was either ignored or despised. Now it is we who, in spite of the material prosperity fostered by Cromer, are hated and despised; and it is the Sultan who is looked upon as the only possible protector against perpetual foreign domination. Cromer, though a very able administrator, is no statesman in any constructive sense. He has allowed nothing in the way of self-government to make even the beginning of a reappearance in Egypt from the day when it was put down at Tel-el-Kebir. He has governed through the weakness not through the strength of the native population, and more and more every year through Englishmen. Whatever patriotism there is left in Egypt is strongly anti-English, and it is just as well that our credulous people here should learn how things stand politically and morally, and should discount Cromer’s self-glorifying annual Reports on any point but that of Egypt’s material progress. These Reports always remind me (to compare small things with great), of the first chapter of Genesis, where ‘the Lord saw all the things that he had made and found that they were very good.’ This calling for reinforcements by Cromer, who less than two years ago boasted that he could govern Egypt without any army of occupation at all, would be amusing if it was not likely to lead to a collision. I suspect the Khedive is playing partners with the Sultan in the Akabah affair. Certainly a quarrel on such a question, involving as it does the protection of the pilgrim road, will make a great ferment in the Mohammedan world from China to Senegal and may cost us dear.

“I should be glad if you would show this letter to some of the Labour members and those Radicals who care more about peace and retrenchment than Imperial glory—and get them to try and put a little sense into the Government—or they will go exactly the same way to ruin as Gladstone went after the elections of 1880. I see all the Radical papers are beating the war-drum just as they did in 1882, but perhaps something may be done in the House of Commons.

“It is worth noting that on the 23rd of March, 1886, just twenty years ago, the excellent Campbell Bannerman, as representing the War Office, announced to the House that the evacuation of Egypt would be effected with as little delay as possible.

“You will of course consult Dillon, to whom I wrote about the matter on Friday, if he is back in London. You will not forget that Balfour, in one of his speeches in the House three years ago, defined Egypt as ‘a province of the Ottoman Empire in the military occupation of England.’ We have of course no legal right there by any rule of international law, nor by any European instrument except the private agreement lately made with France. We are sure to be called to account internationally for our presence there one of these days, as the position on the Suez Canal is too important in the world for the other Mediterranean Powers to acknowledge it permanently.

“Yours very truly.

“W. S. B.”

“A Cabinet Council sat yesterday, and the King is returning in haste from the Mediterranean; a pretty kettle of fish it is. Cromer has called for reinforcements in Egypt, not, I imagine, to attack the Turks with, but to overawe the Nationalists, and because he cannot depend upon the Egyptian army in a case where the Sultan is concerned. The great doubt is about the Khedive’s attitude; that he hates the English régime is certain, and also that he has of late years been hand in glove with the Sultan, but the London papers announce that he has just been entertaining the Prince of Wales at Cairo, and that he has promised to pay him a return visit in England this summer. Abbas, however, has become such a double dealer that he is probably on the Sultan’s side secretly, and towards Cromer is playing precisely the same old game played by his father and grandfather of running with the Nationalist hare and hunting with the European hounds. Cromer has just published a grandiloquent Report of his year’s achievements, and he has shoved into it a plan of reforms and improvements for the Sinai Peninsula, doubtless in view of the Tabah dispute which began as long ago as January. If the Sultan stands to his guns I don’t see precisely what our people can do in Egypt. They have not the force there to turn the Turks out of the disputed territory, and they cannot bombard Constantinople without a gross breach of the European peace. A naval demonstration is their only remedy. They will probably blockade Hodeida and so endeavour to apply pressure, but I doubt if the Emperor William will allow action at Smyrna of the kind taken by France a few years ago. In Natal, too, they are in difficulties through a Zulu revolt, so that it may well happen that our splendid Radical government, pledged up to the eyes to peace and retrenchment, may find themselves with two wars on their hands within six weeks of their coming into office.

“2nd May.—As to my letter to Redmond I see that Grey and Fitzmaurice have explained themselves. Also Cromer’s Report has come, and I have written a long article on it of 2,000 words for the ‘Manchester Guardian,’ criticizing Cromer’s political as contrasted with his administrative policy in Egypt, explaining his relations with the Khedive and blaming his quarrel with the Sultan.

“6th May (Sunday).—The ‘Manchester Guardian’ has published my article on Cromer in a prominent way with a leading article adopting my view that the present troubles are largely caused by Cromer’s having failed to re-establish the Liberal National Party in 1883, and later by his injudicious brow-beating of Abbas. It says that self-government ought to be begun now in Egypt. On the other hand the ‘Tribune’ has gone right round, and is extravagantly jingo, denouncing the Sultan, and printing an aggressive picture of John Bull threatening to demolish him. The ‘Daily News’ is preaching a crusade. It says, ‘it is a maxim of Liberal policy that no foot of land abandoned by the Turk can ever belong to him again,’ all this in consequence of the announcement that an ultimatum has been addressed to Constantinople.

“7th May.—I have decided to write a public letter to Grey expostulating with him on the ultimatum, and have spent the whole day over it, from half-past two in the earliest morning, but I feel it to be necessary. As far as I can understand the case, our Government is technically in the wrong in asserting a claim for Tabah as territory of the Khediviate, or at any time within the ancient boundaries of Egypt, or that it has ever been administered from Cairo, except in connection with the Pilgrim Road.

“9th May.—I left Clouds and came up to London. I have sent in my letter to Grey, and Eddy Tennant (who is an intimate friend of Grey’s) has promised to speak to him about it. He is to give him a message, too, from me, that my letter is written in no hostile sense to the Government, but that if I receive no answer I shall consider myself at liberty to publish. I have also sent a copy of it through Arthur Ellis to the King. I fear, however, that it is too late to stop warlike operations. [Note. For the text of my letter to Grey see Appendix.]

“Meynell dined with me. He talked a good deal about the Education Bill, which is now much discussed. Birrell, he says, repudiates it as his own, saying that it is really Lloyd George’s drafting forced on Birrell by a Cabinet majority.

“11th May.—Percy Wyndham came to lunch with me, and immediately after John Redmond. They had not met before, but Percy made a polite speech about their having sat together twenty years ago in Parliament, and then left us to our talk. This was principally about Akabah. The Radical members, Redmond says, are so furious against the Sultan that they will none of them join in any protest against the ultimatum, though not one of them understands in the least what the quarrel is about. I explained the matter to him, and he said there would be papers published on the case on Monday, and opportunities of discussion Tuesday and Thursday on the Estimates. He would send Dillon to me.

“There is a report to-day of the quarrel with the Sultan having been arranged, but the British fleet is assembled at the Piræus, and almost anything may happen. The Emperor William has backed out of any encouragement he may have given at Constantinople, and clearly cannot help the Sultan in a material way. I am inclined to think that if it comes to a naval demonstration it would be one of forcing the Dardanelles and threatening the Sultan at Yildiz.

“12th May.—The ‘Daily News’ and ‘Tribune’ publish epitomes of my letter to Grey, and the ‘Manchester Guardian’ gives it in full, with a good leading article in support. John Dillon lunched with me, and we discussed Akabah, of course. He knows more about Egyptian politics than anybody now in the House of Commons, but, like Redmond, he says, the Radicals will do nothing to stop the war.

“13th May (Sunday).—The ‘Observer’ announces that the Sultan has yielded to the British demands, these being (1) That all the positions occupied by the Turks should be abandoned; (2) That the Sinaitic frontier should be delimited by a mixed commission. This is hailed as a complete triumph for Sir Edward Grey.”

The triumph proved an unfortunate one for our Foreign Office, as it was the beginning of the long quarrel between Sir Edward Grey and Constantinople, which resulted eight years later in the alliance of Turkey with the central European Powers in the Great War, a combination which gave to Germany its victory over Russia. Not a soul in England understood its importance, or cared to understand. For this reason I print the details here at full length.

“Philip Currie is dead after a long illness and a week of unconsciousness, the papers say. In his youth Philip was a merry fellow, one of the smart young men of the Foreign Office, where he had rooms for many years as resident clerk, with his retriever ‘Pam,’ so named after Palmerston, his first chief. He had wit and a pleasant tongue. He figures as second hero of Violet Fane’s poems, ‘From Dawn to Noon,’ whom he afterwards married. Clare Vyner being her first hero. Philip rose in the Foreign Office to the rank of permanent Under Secretary of State, and then got himself made Ambassador at Constantinople, and later at Rome, retiring on a pension some three years ago, his time being out. We were cousins and good friends always, without being quite bosom friends. He was a good official friend to me while I was in diplomacy, though my incursions into foreign politics in later years estranged us at times. The last time I saw him was two years ago in the Park, being wheeled there in a bath chair in broken health, and I went home to lunch with him in Prince’s Gate. Now both he and Violet Fane have disappeared into the eternal nothing.

“22nd May.—The Sultan has yielded everything about Akabah. Though Redmond and Dillon promised me to press for papers, they have not done so, and our Foreign Office has explained nothing. I am disgusted with the Irish for playing thus into Grey’s hands, politic though they may find it to be for their own purpose of getting a Home Rule Bill out of the Government. Not that I expected much other result, for I have always felt that the Irish, if they once got their own freedom, would join England and the other robber nations of the world in the work of Imperial spoliation. Parnell’s declaration in favor of Imperial Federation twenty years ago was an indication of this to me. It was my main reason for retiring from Irish politics, and for the future I shall economize my subscription to their Parliamentary Fund.

“28th May.—I have been all last week in Chapel Street, seeing my various friends. To-day Betty Balfour came to lunch with me, having first sent me a new batch of her father’s letters to read and advise as to publishing. They deal mostly with his Indian Government, and I have advised her to abridge and cut freely, as the volume is to be one of private, not political letters. We discussed the respective intellectual powers of her husband Gerald, and of Arthur.

“Curiously enough, precisely the same question turned up later in the afternoon, when I had a visit from Margot. She has, of course, known Arthur intimately for the last twenty years before she married. She insisted that Arthur’s real mind was metaphysical and religious, that he had a vivid sense of the present life being of very little importance, an ante-chamber to another life. On one occasion he had told her that, in his view death, apart from the physical pain of it—‘and I am a coward in regard to pain,’ he had said, ‘being altogether without that kind of courage’—was an incident no more alarming than the passage ‘from this room into that,’ the world to come being infinitely more interesting and important. ‘It is for that reason,’ Margot said, ‘that he has no profound convictions about politics, they attract him only as a game which he thinks he plays well, and which amuses him much as a game of chess might do, but he does not really care for the things at stake, or believe that the happiness of mankind depends on events going this way or that.’

“Dillon was to have come to me to-day, but has had to go suddenly to Ireland to see Davitt, who is in a dying state. Betty Balfour, talking of Dillon, was very severe about his ‘lying and insincerity,’ but I could not get her to give an instance of either. I told her that for my part I had the highest respect for Dillon, and had always found him perfectly honest and straightforward, a far better patriot than others whom she was praising.

“31st May.—To Newbuildings for the Whitsuntide holiday, Anne being expected home from Egypt on the 4th.

“11th June.—This is the anniversary of the Alexandria riots, a date always memorable to me. On Saturday we made an expedition to Chanclebury Ring, I in my wheeled chair with a donkey, the others in the American trap, and we took luncheon with us. While we were there, a horseman rode up who turned out to be Goring from Wiston, who is owner of the Down, and we renewed acquaintance. He told us, among other things, that his father’s and his grandfather’s lives together covered 180 years, their tenure between them of the Wiston estate 150 years. The Gorings got Wiston by a marriage with the Fagges, who had bought it of the Shirleys, when these became involved in the civil war troubles. It is the history of more than one Sussex estate, of the Burrels at West Grinstead, and of ourselves at Newbuildings.

“20th June.—Anne arrived last night from Egypt. She confirms my view of the political situation there, saying that while nobody wants the Sultan’s rule at Cairo, they nevertheless take his side about Akabah. This is the case with even the most advanced of Mohammed Abdu’s disciples. As to the Khedive’s attitude, it is not known precisely what line he took, as he seems to have held one language to Cromer and another to Mukhtar Pasha. There can, however, be little doubt that he was with the Sultan in the affair, as he has just gone to Constantinople, which certainly would not be the case if he had taken the English side. It has been a year of terrible drought for the Bedouins.

“21st June.—To-day the ‘Manchester Guardian’ has published a protest I have drawn up against the intended execution of certain fellahin, near Tantah, for the so-called ‘murder’ of a British officer, and the hurting of several more, which took place on the 13th. [This was the notorious Denshawai affair, which led to world-wide results.] It is an abominable case. As far as one could learn from the telegrams and some slight admissions made by Grey in Parliament, the officers were part of an English military force, making a promenade through the Delta, with the object of demonstrating for political purposes the military power of Great Britain. Finding themselves encamped near Tantah, they could think of nothing better to do than to shoot the tame pigeons in a village hard by, and went out, seven of them, in uniform for the purpose. They say they were invited there by an Omdeh of the village, but when they got there the villagers objected, and as none of them knew Arabic they got frightened; a gun then went off in the hands of one of them; a woman and some men were killed or wounded, and the officers were belaboured with nabuts. Two of these ran away, it is said to bring help from their camp, seven miles off, and one of them was found dead four miles from the village. This is exactly like all these cases, except that it is the first time an officer has been killed, and Reuter’s telegrams are violent for punishment of the natives. I got Dillon to ask some questions in Parliament on Monday, and yesterday there was a special telegram in the ‘Daily Chronicle’ saying that Cromer had decided to have the villagers shot. This, be it remarked, before any trial had taken place, and all treat it as a case of murder with prearrangement, not on the part of the officers, but of the fellahin. It is the usual course these affairs take in Egypt, but a more than usually plain demonstration of the kind of justice dealt out between Englishman and native. Fortunately the ‘Manchester Guardian’ has taken up the matter strongly, and may perhaps save some lives, but I doubt it. English feeling on these matters has become absolutely callous, and I believe if Cromer ordered a dozen of the villagers to be crucified or impaled, no serious objection would be made to it here, still I have done what I could, and there is a chance. The ‘trial’ is to be on Sunday.

“23rd June.—I see a telegram in the ‘Pall Mall’ which seems to show that Cromer has received a hint to be moderate in his zeal. It is reported that he has ordered Captain Bull’s body to be exhumed and examined medically, with the result that it has been discovered that he died not of wounds but of sunstroke.

“27th June.—Still writing to Dillon, the ‘Manchester Guardian,’ and the ‘Tribune,’ about the abominable Denshawai affair which is to be judged to-day, or rather to be sentenced, for the whole thing has been judged by Cromer already and the so-called ‘trial’ will simply record his decision.

“28th June.—They have condemned four of the Denshawai villagers to death, four to penal servitude for life, three to fifteen years’ imprisonment, six to seven years, three to one year with fifty lashes, and five to fifty lashes, thirty-one acquitted. This is a monstrous sentence and ought, I think, to do more to break up the legend of Cromer’s paternal rule in Egypt than anything we have seen since its commencement. Dillon is bringing forward the case in parliament, but nothing is likely to stop the executions.

“29th June.—I have worried myself all day about the Egyptian villagers, and I see now that they were hanged yesterday under circumstances of revolting barbarity. All day I have been writing, and the thing is weighing on me like a nightmare still.

“30th June.—Terence Bourke came down from London for the day and gave me news of Tunis. The French, he said, have turned over a new leaf there and are trying to reconcile the Arabs to their rule. He thinks they are succeeding. He is now for an Arabian Caliphate under English protection. The Germans, however, are making a vigorous propaganda in their own interests in North Africa. Anne has left for London, and I am alone here.

“1st July (Sunday).—George Wyndham came down by the early train, and Cunninghame Graham a little later, and we spent a pleasant day in talk. The executions in Egypt were our chief topic. I had fortunately finished my letter to the ‘Manchester Guardian’ before they came, and I read it out to them. Graham is to get the Labour members to support Dillon, when he proposes a reduction of Grey’s salary on the Foreign Office vote on Thursday. George, though he will not help, will look on with ‘benevolent interest.’ We sat all day under the trees of the Jubilee garden. After lunch Graham went away, and George and I stayed talking poetry. He read me his essay on Ronsard, and some of his translations, which are admirable, and we had much intimate personal as well as literary talk, and I told him the history of my religious opinions. It is odd his championing the cause of High Church Christianity, he who really believes in nothing of these things, altogether a day of extreme beauty and intellectual pleasure.

“3rd July.—Chapel Street. Cromer has been given the Order of Merit! Dillon came to luncheon and stayed for an hour and a half talking over the Denshawai case. He is hopeless of getting a good hearing for it in Parliament, though the Radical feeling is strong of indignation, but every kind of pressure is being put upon members of the Government to get them to be silent, and the press also is being appealed to. What a state of things! Here we have a judicial crime of the largest dimensions committed by our Representative in Egypt, the thing hardly denied, quite undeniable and defaming the fair face of English justice throughout the world, yet on the very day the hangings take place our Representative is honoured with the supreme reward of the Order of Merit! Sir Edward Grey, for the Government, when questioned as to the trial and executions, alleges that he cannot give any information, because he does not know, and he must wait till a detailed report arrives from Egypt, and this although Cromer is in England and was actually in the Gallery of the House of Commons while the questions were being put, Cromer who knows every detail of the affair and is the sole person responsible. The truth, however, of the situation, Dillon tells me, is this. The Radicals had designed to have a full dress debate in condemnation of the Congo atrocities committed by the King of the Belgians, and are enraged to find that atrocities quite as startling have been committed by our own officials in Egypt. With what face can they now denounce the mote in the Belgian eye, yet we are hypocrites enough to do this even with this Denshawai beam, astounding as it is, in our own eye, but the Radicals are fools and deserve their fate of jackaling their Whig leaders, and I am a fool to fash myself with the abomination of our rule in the world.

“Sir Wilfrid Lawson is dead, the only quite true man on the Radical side in Parliament. Dear good man, we shall not see another like him.

“4th July.—To Clifford’s Inn, to see Neville’s exhibition of pictures, his Bernard Shaw portrait among them.

“6th July.—I have had a letter from Keir Hardie, the Labour leader, asking my opinion about Grey’s statement, and have answered him. [The peculiarity in Hardie’s letter was that it showed him to be entirely ignorant even as to where the atrocities had taken place, imagining it to be somewhere in the Soudan.]

“8th July (Sunday).—The new Egyptian Nationalist leader, Mustapha Kamel, writes to me from Paris saying he wishes to see me, and I have telegraphed back proposing that he should come over to England, and offering to lodge him at Chapel Street. There was a sickening account on Friday in the ‘Pall Mall’ of the Denshawai executions. I think it must smash Cromer. There are a number of French and English papers, too, come from Cairo which make a damning case of abuse of justice in the trial. I intend to write a pamphlet to be called ‘Atrocities of Justice under English Rule in Egypt.’[6]

“11th July.—Anne and I spent yesterday writing in connection with this, and translating the Egyptian newspapers. I have written as well as telegraphed to Mustapha Kamel urging him to come to England without delay. The moment is most propitious for a National Egyptian demonstration. To-day being the anniversary of the bombardment of Alexandria, I headed my letter ‘Anniversaire du bombardement d’Alexandrie. Que Dieu le venge.’ He has telegraphed in return that he will come to London on Saturday, and sends in the meantime a manifesto addressed to the English nation and the world at large, which he is having published in the ‘Figaro.’ Robertson, too, the Radical member for Newcastle, in whose hands Dillon left the case while he is away in Ireland, writes saying he wants to see me. So I went up to London. Robertson tells me that he has seen Grey, and he ‘has hopes that Grey will propose reforms in the way of a new edict, which will make the sentences of the special tribunal subject to appeal, and stop public executions and perhaps all floggings.’ This is all rubbish; the Appeal Court is too entirely under Cromer’s thumb to be of the least use, except, perhaps, to delay future executions. As to stopping public executions, it would only make matters worse for the Egyptians, who would then be hanged and flogged in private, to them a greater punishment, and more beyond the control of English and native opinion. Of course this privacy is exactly what Cromer would like, and I hope Robertson would refuse to accept it as any mitigation.

“12th July.—There is a splendid article in the ‘Tribune,’ thanks to Meynell, who got them to put it in, the best we have yet had in any paper. Robertson came to breakfast, and I had a good two hours with him. He has put down a number of questions for this afternoon in the House, and altogether things seem warming up. At least we have gained it that Parliamentary papers have been promised for this day fortnight, and an opportunity of discussion before the session closes.

“14th July.—Back to Newbuildings yesterday, much knocked up by my work, leaving it to Neville to take my place at the luncheon I was to give to Mustapha Kamel and Robertson on Monday.

“15th July (Sunday).—Mustapha Kamel arrived by the early train and we spent the whole day together in the Jubilee garden. He is certainly a very wonderful young man, more like a very clever young Frenchman than an Egyptian, though it is physically quite evident that he is really one, without any taint of northern blood, Circassian or other. He tells me his family have lived for the last three generations at Cairo, though originally from the provinces, and he has the good sense to pride himself on his pure Egyptian birth. He is enthusiastic and eloquent, and has an extraordinary gift of speech, but he is no mere babbler, but a man with perfectly clear ideas—a thing so rare in the East—and a knowledge of men and things really astonishing. I take him, too, to be quite sincere in his patriotism, and I could not detect throughout the whole of his talk to-day a single false note. He also has great courage and decision of judgement, not scrupling to disagree with any opinion expressed in conversation where his own differs. He has given me the information I wanted about himself. First as to his relations with the Sultan, he, like all educated Egyptians, hates and distrusts Abdul Hamid as a tyrant and a dangerous man who at any moment, for some personal interest or through fear, might barter away Egyptian independence to England, and make some entente with her, such as the French have made, a thing which would be death to all their hopes. For this reason Egypt cannot afford to quarrel with Abdul Hamid, and the connection of Egypt with the Ottoman Empire is a guarantee to her, while it lasts, against annexation by an European Power. His hope lies in Abdul Hamid’s death, and in getting a liberal and reforming successor to the Caliphate.

“Of the Khedive Abbas he tells me precisely what Abdu always said about him of late years, that he had become corrupted. ‘I knew him well,’ Mustapha said, ‘before he came to his present position, as we are exactly the same age within three months, and I saw much of him while we were both being educated in Europe. He was then charming, and full of patriotic ideas, and I was his devoted adherent, absurdly so, but now he has fallen entirely into the hands of rogues, and thinks of nothing but making money, and he is also in the hands of his Hungarian mistress. He has in this way lost all his friends and has ended by having no influence whatever in Egypt. If he had had any courage he might over and over again have held his own against Cromer and done incalculable good to his country, but he cares nothing now for his country, only for money. He puts up with endless indignities from Cromer, who has a hold over him through a knowledge of his rascalities; and he clings to his £100,000 a year, his civil list allowance, and makes himself Cromer’s servant. In the Tabah Akabah affair Abbas was at first altogether with the Sultan and Mukhtar Pasha, but when it came to the pinch Cromer took him by the ear, and said, “Look here, my boy, you must leave off this and come over to us,” and he went over. He had promised Mukhtar to support him throughout, but he betrayed him. This has cost him what little influence was left him, and we may consider him now une quantité négligeable [it was in French we were talking]; he could not do anything to interfere with us if we got a Constitution, and we could run the thing quite well now as we have plenty of good men. We are quite ready to leave all the finance to the English.’

“Cromer, of course, is the great obstacle. I asked him who could replace Cromer if he resigned? ‘There is only one Englishman,’ he said, ‘who could inspire us with any confidence, and that is Chitty, the Director of Customs at Alexandria. He was born in Egypt, knows Arabic, and understands us, he is also a good financier, with him we could easily work a Constitutional Government.’ Of Mohammed Abdu, Mustapha talked with modified admiration, sympathizing with his views but blaming him for having clung to his position as Mufti instead of resigning when the Khedive publicly insulted him. ‘He cared too much for having official influence. He would have had more real influence if he had resigned, we should have all worshipped him as the champion of our liberties.’ Mustapha assures me that Abdu’s death was really due to cancer. He knows his doctor, who announced the nature of his disease three months before he died. He spoke highly of Mukhtar, and on the Tabah question said that every word of my letter to Grey was correct. He went back to London in the afternoon. I am glad to have made his acquaintance and to know that there is so intelligent a man to lead the Party.

“18th July.—As we were lunching to-day under a tree at Gosbrook, Belloc and his wife with a boy presented themselves. Belloc, with a bottle of wine in his pocket, and we had an amusing talk. He had with him also a friend, Professor Phillimore from Edinburgh. Egypt was our principal subject of conversation, and the slaughter of the Zulus, an infamous deed. The two atrocities together ought to shut English mouths for ever about Russia and the Congo and Abdul Hamid.

“20th July.—The Blue Book on Akabah has appeared and it fully confirms what I said of it in my letter to Grey. Cromer’s pretensions on historic grounds rest on an original misunderstanding of a passage in Abulfeda. It also shows that the Sultan’s action in occupying Tabah was prompted by a belief that Bramley’s mission had for its object to seize and fortify positions commanding Akabah. As to a design, by the Sultan, against Egypt there is not a trace of it in the correspondence, though Cromer’s insistence about Tabah made people in Egypt believe that some design must exist. It can hardly be claimed as a diplomatic victory for Cromer, seeing that it was only gained at the cost of mobilizing the British fleet and rousing the anger of the whole Moslem world. Cromer has got the Order of Merit but he has destroyed his own reputation; he will not survive Denshawai.

“22nd July (Sunday).—Mustapha Kamel came down again for the day and with him Button. Kamel tells me that Robertson has had it in so many words from Grey that he does not now believe in the agitation in Egypt being fanatical in any religious sense, only in a political sense. This can only be that the Foreign Office repudiates Cromer’s reading of the situation and Button declares he will retire. The great thing will now be to make it patent to the world that it is the Egyptian National movement that has driven him to this and to get a new policy adopted favourable to Nationalism by whoever shall be Cromer’s successor. We talked the matter fully over and have decided that in default of better, Gorst would be our best man. We are, therefore, to open a campaign in the autumn against Cromer, and in favour of re-establishing Constitutional Government in Egypt. In the evening Mustapha returned to London.”

Though I do not put it in my diary, poor Kamel was very unwell that afternoon, suffering pain and, I think, taking morphia to ease it. He went up late to London in Button’s company and was seriously ill on their journey. Button was of great assistance to us in our plans at this time, encouraging us to attack Cromer. He declared that no case of hanging where the victim was innocent ever failed in England to ruin the man who did it. “You may commit any injustice you like,” he said, “in English public life so long as you don’t hang your enemy, but to do that is fatal.”

“27th July.—The last week has gone by quietly. I have not been up in London but have left Mustapha Kamel to the care of Button and Neville and Meynell. On Tuesday the Panislamic Society in London gave him a banquet, and on Wednesday he delivered himself of a speech at a luncheon party, which has been reported in the ‘Tribune’ and other London papers, the ‘Manchester Guardian’ having become strangely silent.

“28th July.—The Denshawai Blue Book is out. Though all the arts of evasion are tried in it, even to the complete suppression of the evidence, it remains a document altogether damning for Cromer. He gives himself away in it completely. It is announced in the ‘Westminster Gazette’ that the matter of Denshawai will now be allowed to rest in Parliament and that Liberals would support Lord Cromer.

“9th August.—Fernycroft. I have been here since the 2nd having gone up to London to see Robertson. He managed at the very last minute in the debate on the adjournment to bring on the Denshawai case and got certain admissions out of Grey, indeed Grey gave Cromer’s case away by withdrawing what had been said about fanatical unrest in Egypt. This has now become political unrest, a very different thing. Grey used wild words, too, about a Crown Colony in connection with Egypt which cannot but add fuel to the fire.

“18th August.—At Clouds. George and Guy Wyndham have come from Guy’s camp at Bulford where he is commanding the 16th Lancers. Last week there was a party at Tedworth for a sham fight to amuse the King of Spain, the entertainer being Sir Ian Hamilton and one of the party being John Burns. Burns, according to these, has developed and holds advanced Jingo views, his whole mind being wrapped up in army matters. His one idea now is to send a fleet into the Baltic and fight the German Emperor. He knows the history of every regiment and is ‘quite a good fellow.’ Such is their report. George was very brilliant at dinner with all kinds of theories. ‘The true way to be happy,’ he said, ‘is to be able to say, “I want” and “I won’t,”’ and after dinner he wrote some blank verse lines on the subject which were good.

“At Fernycroft and Clouds I was much occupied with my ‘Atrocity’ pamphlet, and on the 29th my brother-in-law, Lord Lovelace, died, an event which caused many family changes.

“13th Sept.—My ‘Atrocity’ pamphlet is out and there is a capital leading article on it in yesterday’s ‘Manchester Guardian,’ and to-day the ‘Times’ prints a letter about it from Suez by a correspondent who denounces its title as reprehensible and even abominable. Frederic Harrison writes congratulations, he says it is ‘a tremendous work.’

“27th Sept.—Great events have happened in the last fortnight. First, as to Egypt, my pamphlet has had more effect than I expected, and still more my ‘Times’ letters. My old adversary, Moberly Bell, was tempted into the field against me and he published in the ‘Times,’ of which he is now manager, a violent attack on me in relation to the events of twenty-five years ago, backed up by as ferocious a leading article. This gave me a splendid opening, as Bell had mentioned my poem, ‘The Wind and the Whirlwind’ as one of my crimes and I was able to quote ten stanzas from it in very effective reply, which will now spread the fame of it, all the world over. It has brought me congratulations from many quarters and I feel like an Espada in the Spanish bull-ring who has planted a blow he knows to be mortal, and who walks away wiping his sword and leaving the dying bull to rage an instant by itself before it falls. Moberly Bell will leave me alone for the future. Also I have written a formal letter to Grey, sending the pamphlet and begging him to make a personal inquiry into the Denshawai case instead of leaving it to be dealt with by the permanent officials. So all is going well. Mustapha Kamel has entrusted me with the task of finding him an editor for his new Anglo-French paper at Cairo, ‘The Egyptian Standard.’

“There have been terrible doings in America, lynchings and massacres of negroes, acts of reprisal against the black community for isolated assaults, understandable but just as brutal and iniquitous as the massacres of Jews in Russia, or of Armenians in Turkey. There is no pretence that any of the negroes murdered by the mob had any connection with the particular assaults, therein lies the abomination of injustice. I am not one who condemns the severest punishment of men found guilty of violent sexual crimes, I am for hanging, flogging, what you will; in such cases it is even right that a man taken flagrante delicto should be killed on the spot, but to slay the innocent for the guilty, as was done at Atlanta and by us at Denshawai, moves my indignation.

“On the 24th we had an amateur performance of my Irish play, ‘Fand,’ at Newbuildings.

“29th Sept.—My article in the ‘Independent Review’ advocating a change of policy at Cairo has an excellent leading article in support of it in the ‘Tribune,’ and I look upon our game as won. Cromer will, of course, return to Egypt in November but it will be his last winter there, and he will be found to have something the matter with his liver or his eyes, and he will take his pension and retire. The only question is who will succeed him. Perhaps by that time Abdul Hamid, too, will have disappeared from the scene and the further question may have been put, who will succeed the Sultan?

“1st Oct.—Out shooting in my wheeled chair and managed to kill six or seven pheasants.

“6th Oct.—Brailsford, the ‘Tribune’ leader writer, having written to me privately to ask my advice about his line regarding Egypt three days ago, came down to luncheon and gave me a curious account of the way Cromer has taken with the newspaper editors in London. ‘He showed,’ he said, ‘great emotion and is quite upset about the Denshawai business.’ He may well be so. Also of Grey: Brailsford says that he knows absolutely nothing of foreign affairs. Grey has only once been abroad and then only to Paris, and he speaks not a word of French or any foreign language. Haldane manages all that for him. His strength is that he is good-looking, with an imposing manner and an appearance of common sense and honesty which the House of Commons likes. Brailsford knows much of the ins and outs of Eastern affairs, having been in Crete as newspaper correspondent, and is a very clever fellow.

“15th Oct.—The article on Egypt which I wrote for the ‘Figaro’ has been a great success. I wrote it in French, and intrusted it to Mustapha Kamel to get it published, and to-day I get a letter from Mme. Juliette Adam and Pierre Lôti jointly signed.

Juliette Adam and Pierre Lôti to Wilfrid Blunt

‘En séjour à Hendaye chez Pierre Lôti et Abbaye de Gif. Seine et Oise, 9. 10. 06.

‘Monsieur,

‘Votre article au Figaro est un acte de courage et de loyauté dont il faut que tout ami de l’Egypte vous félicite. Pierre Lôti et moi nous venons de le lire tout haut. Je tiens la plume pour tous deux et pour vous dire que nous ne confondrons plus la politique de Lord Cromer avec la politique des Anglais. Une exception, de la haute valeur de la vôtre, oblige à en tenir largement compte.

‘Pierre Lôti, à qui le repos est ordonné pour quelques jours, signe avec moi en vous assurant comme moi de sa haute sympathie.

‘Juliette Adam.

‘Pierre Lôti.’

“The substance of the article has been telegraphed to Egypt, and it is sure to be printed there in all the newspapers. I feel that I have done now all I possibly could for the National cause, and must leave the rest of the work to others. I have had several threatening letters from English jingos menacing me with death if there should be a native rising at Cairo. Such letters are I fancy written by idle fellows over their whiskey and water at pot-houses. One fool says to the other, ‘Here is that damned fellow Blunt at it again, let’s give him one,’ and they scribble, but don’t sign. One of them, however, signs his missive.

“18th Oct.—Betty Balfour’s book of her father’s letters is out, and very good it is. She has condensed the political part of it, and made it as readable as a book should be. It has been very favourably received, and I look forward now to Lytton’s being recognized at last for the man of genius he undoubtedly was.

“8th Nov.—Cromer has been obliged already to make changes in his administration. Chitty Bey, the only English official who sympathizes with Nationalism, has been given a high post in the Ministry of Finance, which will give him control of the budget, and Saad Zaghloul, one of Mohammed Abdu’s disciples whom I remember in prison as an Arabist in 1883, has been named Minister of Public Instruction.”

This mention of Saad Zaghloul has become of especial interest since the first part of this book was published through the leadership he has taken of the Egyptian Nationalist Party. He is an honest and very capable man, the worthiest of all those who have been acknowledged National Leaders during the British Occupation. I am glad to remember that it was due to my intervention with Cromer, and beyond Cromer with Gladstone, that I obtained his release from prison in 1883.

“The Denshawai Case is to be brought forward by Dillon next week in Parliament. I feel that I have gained a notable success, and am master now of native opinion in Egypt, and to a large extent of Mohammedan opinion outside Egypt.

“Auberon Herbert is dead, a man of original thought and high integrity, slightly touched in his later years with eccentricity. I need not describe his character here as I have said so much of it already in these diaries. There was much in common between us in the view we took of public things, but he was more of a doctrinaire than ever I was, and he has had greater belief in the effective power of appealing to principles of right and honour with Englishmen. In appearance he was the most refined of men, an ideal countenance, such as Shelley might have had if he had lived to the age of seventy. His place in politics will not be filled, for he was the last of the uncompromising individualists of the Victorian age, the most consistent and the ablest.

“9th Nov.—George Wyndham came down in the evening and Neville, to shoot with me, and we talked far into the night on literature, politics, and art. He is pleased with the success of his Ronsard which is certainly good, though I am of opinion that it ought to have been still better. With his talent of verse translation he might very well have given us a hundred of Ronsard’s Sonnets and Odes, instead of only thirty.

“10th Nov.—Belloc joined us at dinner, and once more George’s tongue was loosed. Both he and Belloc are admirable talkers. Belloc’s best story was of an Italian brigand, who had regularly confessed his sins every Saturday from his youth up in his own village, but who was refused absolution at last at the age of eighty, as profaning the sacrament of penance, by going on with his confessions about women. ‘E cosa impossible,’ said the priest.

“11th Nov. (Sunday).—I have got George to read my ‘Atrocity’ pamphlet, and it has formed the text of a discussion which lasted till midnight on the whole Egyptian question. George was very communicative, and he gave us an account of how the Anglo-French Entente had been managed by Arthur Balfour, Lansdowne, and himself, and how they had expressly disclaimed all ulterior intention of making the Occupation of Egypt, a stepping stone to annexation, or a protectorate. This it is most important for me to know. George assures me that the permanent retention of Egypt is not part of English policy, at least of English Tory policy, and that they fully admit that neither Egypt nor the Mediterranean could be held by us in time of serious war. The new naval strategy is based on evacuating the Mediterranean in war time, and holding the Cape route to India. The Occupation of Egypt was prolonged because a withdrawal of troops would be interpreted as a provocation to Germany to send in German troops. He had had, however, a talk with the German Ambassador in London last December, which had convinced him that Germany would abstain from intermeddling in Egypt if given a free hand in the Euphrates Valley and the Persian Gulf-head. This he thought would be the solution. As to Denshawai he admitted that it was without precedent as an act of folly, and was only explicable on the supposition that Cromer was failing in mind. George laid down, as a general rule, that it was always folly to hang a man, unless you intended to do a very violent deed, and to have that deed remembered. He hears it commonly said now that Cromer’s régime has been a failure. I pressed him to help us in the House to get a day for discussion of the case from Grey. He did not quite refuse, and will leave a copy of my pamphlet in Arthur’s way, and take half-a-dozen more copies for others of his late colleagues. Dillon is to be back in the House by Monday, and promises to do his best to bring it on. I go up, therefore, on Tuesday, to help arrange the attack.

“14th Nov.—Chapel Street. John Dillon came to luncheon, and we had a long talk about Egypt. He will bring forward the Denshawai case at once, and with Robertson will ask for a day to discuss it. If that is refused he will ply the Government every week with questions till the end of the session, and bring it on again on the Address in February. He talked well about several of our leading politicians. He considers the Independent Labour Party to be of no importance, Keir Hardie, though honest, to have little weight. He admires John Burns, speaks very highly of Churchill, who is ‘cleverer than his father, a better speaker, and with a sounder political instinct.’ Of Loulou Harcourt he has the highest opinion, a poor one of Herbert Gladstone. He spoke more kindly of Chamberlain than he deserves, said that there were only two men in the house who could hold their own with him in debate, Asquith and Churchill, but Asquith had less weight from having a lawyer’s mind. He considers Haldane’s position at the War Office absurd, ‘a Chancery barrister,’ he said, ‘of twenty years’ standing.’ He has a great respect for Hugh Cecil, none for Arthur Balfour.

“15th Nov.—Mme. Arcos (the Empress Eugénie’s lectrice and lady-in-waiting) came to tea with me. Talking about the memoirs of Dr. Evans, the Paris dentist, she assured me they were in no way due to co-operation with the Empress. There was much exaggeration in Evans’ account of his intimacy with Her Majesty. She recommended, as more exact, a book by Miss Stothard, which is just out and very accurate. She took away with her a copy of my pamphlet for the Empress, who, she said, would be delighted with it, as she dislikes Cromer. He was rude to her in Egypt two years ago.

“21st Nov.—A splendid letter has come from Madame Juliette Adam in praise of ‘The Wind and the Whirlwind,’ worth many rude articles in the ‘Times.’

“23rd Nov.—My dear friend, Hampden, is dead, one of my few quite old friends. Politically we found ourselves always in opposite camps. During the Egyptian revolution, he being an under secretary in Gladstone’s Government, ranked himself with the financiers for intervention, then when Home Rule came four years later, he and I changed sides, he following Hartington into the Unionist camp, and this went on till the other day when he rejoined the Liberals. He was away for four years in Australia as Colonial Governor, and on his return he shared my rooms with me in Mount Street and Chapel Street. During my illness he was very good to me. Then suddenly, fifteen months ago, old age seemed to take him, and he went away to a house of his own, and last summer to a place he had hired in Westmorland for his health. His death is a great loss to me.

“To see Shaw’s play ‘The Doctor’s Dilemma,’ the wittiest ever put upon the stage, and admirably acted, its medical absurdities appealing to me personally, remembering as I did how old Sir Douglas Powell urged me, ‘as he would urge his own son or order a man in a hospital ward, to submit to a slight operation, the merest touch with an instrument,’ to relieve an imaginary something on my right lung, an operation which I afterwards learnt would have been almost certainly, in my weak state, fatal, while the lung was sound. When I met Shaw at Neville’s last Spring, I told him my experience, and I daresay it has been among the contributory causes of his play. I have written to tell him how much I admired it.

“24th Nov.—To call on Margot at her house in Cavendish Square, who came out to talk to me, bareheaded, where I lay in my wheeled chair at her door. Though she has lost some of her old prettiness, her wit and all her charm have survived it. We stayed on in the street talking for quite twenty minutes, and she is to come to lunch with me on Monday. On Thursday Horace Rumbold dined with me and told me a number of interesting political things. Among others that he had quite recently been shown a confidential report drawn up by Cromer, detailing a new plan of reforms for Egypt in a Liberal sense, intended no doubt to do a duty of reparation for past mistakes. I strongly suspect that Grey has shown it privately to Robertson and the other Radical members of the Egyptian Committee, and so has bought their silence for the future about Denshawai. George Wyndham, whom I saw to-day, does not doubt that such is the case. ‘It is of a piece,’ he says, ‘with their management lately of other difficult and disgraceful cases.’ Horace, at our dinner, discussed the Egyptian question with me à fond, assuring me that the Government had come to an understanding about Egypt with the Emperor William, and that our occupation of it would certainly be permanent. Horace’s view is no doubt the Foreign Office view, and he has means, besides his position as ex-ambassador, of knowing, as he has a son at the Cairo Embassy and has just had Findlay with him, Cromer’s chief subordinate there. He says Cromer means to stay on at Cairo.

“25th Nov. (Sunday).—George came to lunch with me and then Dillon, with whom I had two hours’ good conversation. He tells me that it is perfectly true that Robertson and the rest of the so-called Egyptian Committee have been got at by Grey, who has had them into his private room and has been most amiable to them, and has persuaded them to hold their tongues about Denshawai. He affected, when with them, not to know that the husband of the woman shot by the officers had been condemned to penal servitude for life, and promised to write to Cromer about it, and got them to be satisfied with this. They have behaved like children in the business, and have even allowed themselves to be made use of by Grey to the extent of supporting Cromer’s proposal for the abolition of the Capitulations in Egypt, the Capitulations being the only remaining protection there against Cromer’s absolute power, and the only safeguard for the freedom of the native press. Idiots! The London Press, too, Dillon assures me, has been captured, even the ‘Tribune,’ which in spite of Brailsford’s promise of assistance has refused to answer the questions asked in the House of Commons about Denshawai. The ‘Manchester Guardian’ is equally silent.

“We talked about the announced changes in the Government. Dillon says that Bannerman is much broken since his wife’s death, and will probably go to the Lords with Fowler, while Ripon will retire. Of Bryce he talked as of a man learned and excellent, and historically sympathetic with Ireland, but strangely ignorant of modern conditions, incapable of taking in a new idea and quite unfit to drive a satisfactory Irish Bill through the House of Commons. Personally he liked him much, and has taken great pains to instruct him on Irish affairs, but without much effect. I asked him about Anthony Macdonnell. He told me he had never himself believed in him as a Nationalist, and now nobody believed in him. Macdonnell’s idea of Nationalism was that he, Macdonnell, should be able, with the help of an Irish Council, a consultative body, to manage Irish affairs without interference from Downing Street, the sort of independence that the Government of Madras has, or of Bombay. ‘He would like to treat us like Indians,’ he said. ‘I have told him frankly that we won’t put up with that.’ Dillon thinks the present Government will break up in two years’ time. Every Liberal member is hunting his own hare, there is no cohesion among them. Then we went on to Fenianism and Devoy, who was a personal friend of Dillon, though they differed on many points, for Devoy is quite opposed to the Parliamentary party. Dillon himself, of course, began by being a Fenian.

“12th Dec.—Dillon has put his question to Grey about Denshawai, and has got from him only negative answers. He will not give a day for discussion, he will not give Cromer instructions, he will not say whether any reform in the criminal law in Egypt will be recommended. Robertson and the rest of the Radicals have been mute as fishes. I have no doubt in my mind that Robertson has been secured by some promise of a place in the Government, a junior lordship or even less.” [This is precisely what happened some months later.] “The ‘Times’ correspondent telegraphed a fortnight ago that the Khedive had supplied the money for Mohammed Kamel’s new English paper, ‘The Egyptian Standard,’ and when this was telegraphed back to Cairo Cromer would not let Reuter publish the telegram. Then Cromer went, so it is said, to the Khedive, and threatened him with deposition; and the Khedive denied, and Kamel denied; now Kamel is on his way back to England and has telegraphed his arrival to me at Brindisi.

“Meanwhile we have the French Government sending a fleet to Tangier for the ‘protection of French subjects, a state of anarchy having been shown to exist there,’ and a bogus communication has been published by Reuter from Raisuli to the Governor of Tangier announcing ‘a Jehad and massacre of Christians.’ Just the old story of Tunis in 1881 and Alexandria in 1882, supported once more by the ‘Times.’”

This was the first step taken by the French Government in their aggression on Morocco in accordance with the Anglo-French entente of 1904, an act which, as will be seen, entailed on them a renewal of their quarrel with Germany, and for a while with Spain.

“War seems to have been declared at last between the Pope and the French Republic. It will be interesting to watch the result. On the whole I think the Pope is well advised. He will probably lose a large proportion of his nominal spiritual subjects in France, but he will retain a firmer hold over the remainder, and the cause of the Church there will gain by being disendowed. All the same it is incredible that Christianity, as a dogmatic faith, should much longer survive the assaults of science among a people so logical as the French and so little serious. Among our northern peoples it will continue through its connection with morality for a long while yet, till gradually the dogma will disappear and the name alone will be clung to. In France the connection between dogma and morality is less felt.

“13th Dec.—Robertson has written to the ‘Times’ repudiating what has been said about his change of opinions, so I hope it is all right, at least as far as his political honesty goes, though he has probably fallen into line with the Government about Denshawai. We shall see as time goes on, and when Cromer’s report is published next session. It is clear that Cromer has had orders to nationalize to a certain extent the Egyptian administration, though still of course on despotic lines. Saad Zaghloul has begun well at any rate in his department, but I have no confidence in Cromer.

“Joseph Potocki was here on Saturday to see our horses. He gave me an interesting account of things in Russia. He was a member of the first Duma, and describes it as having been entirely revolutionary. He found himself alone among the members as a Conservative. And when he opposed their motion for the abolition of property in land, it was singly, while they watched ‘with eyes as of hyenas.’ He is, however, like them all, a Constitutionalist, though not in favour of representative Government. He says that could not be in Russia. He would like Home Rule in Poland under the Crown, that is to say, an independent administration for local affairs. I asked him if the Duma would be allowed to continue, and he said, ‘Not if the new Duma is revolutionary like the old; if it is moderate, yes.’ I asked also whether the Court Party, if it came to a conflict with the Duma, could count upon the army and he said, ‘Yes, at any rate for a few years, though as the young generation grows up with revolutionary ideas these will perhaps affect the army.’ Potocki’s testimony has this value, that being a Pole, he sees things with more detachment than most members of the Duma can claim to show in their judgements.

“19th Dec.—Went up to London to meet Mustapha Kamel and arrange matters for him connected with his paper ‘The Egyptian Standard.’ He has come to London with two of his principal supporters, Farid Bey [afterwards leader of the Egyptian National Party in succession to Mustapha Kamel], the lawyer who protested against French Rule at the Conference in Algeria, and Osman Bey Ghaleb, Professor of Medicine at the Medical School, an old friend of Mohammed Abdu. With these I discussed all the important questions connected with Egyptian Nationalism.

“Kamel gave me a detailed account of the Khedive’s attitude in the Tabah affair. ‘The Khedive,’ he said, ‘was reduced some years ago by Cromer’s having excluded him from all political power, to an attitude of despair. This turned his ambition to money-making—he has always had a love of money. Then he got under the influence of King Edward and was persuaded that, if he would be good and give Cromer no trouble, life would be made easy for him and he would be allowed to enrich himself. So he let Cromer do what he pleased. This went on till the present year when Cromer began the Tabah quarrel with the Sultan, and in the first stage of it the Khedive was docile. But when it came to the ultimatum sent in by the British Government, and when he found that all Egypt supported the Sultan and that even the fellahin in the villages were declaring they would sooner be badly ruled by the Sultan than any longer endure the English tyranny, then he began to reflect and think, “I cannot betray my religion and my country altogether.” Cromer was at that moment pressing him to write a letter authorizing the English Government to represent him in the boundary dispute, but he finally refused to do this, much to Cromer’s discomfiture. He even went so far as to have a schedule drawn up of his property so as to know how much money he was privately worth in case it came to his deposition or resignation of viceroyalty. Since then he has been completely brouillé with Cromer. Great efforts were made to induce him to go to England before going to Constantinople last summer, but he said to himself, “The Sultan is a greater danger to me than the King of England, as he can at any moment depose me while the other could not.” So he went to Constantinople first. The Sultan by this time had been thoroughly frightened by the English Government, and by the failure of the Emperor William to support him and he intended to give Abbas a bad reception. But, when he heard it reported that in Egypt all public opinion was against Cromer, the Grand Vizier sent a message to Mukhtar Pasha biding him inquire how this was, and ask the opinions of all prominent men. On this ground Mukhtar sent for me for my advice, and said that on the report sent by him would depend how Abbas would be received at Yildiz. Now, I had had a quarrel with the Khedive and had not been near the Palace for three years, but I saw that the Khedive ought to be supported and I said that the independence of Egypt depended on the Sultan’s receiving him well; and Mukhtar telegraphed this to Constantinople. The Sultan was in two minds on the subject when the Khedive arrived, and at first received him coldly, but in the course of the audience Abbas burst out laughing and the ice was broken between them, and the Sultan sent him away with presents. Then, while the Khedive was still at Constantinople, the Denshawai executions took place and the Khedive was so angry at his name having been used for the hangings and floggings, and pardon having been refused in his name without his being consulted, that for two hours he was like a man out of his mind walking up and down in absolute silence while his entourage stood bent like this (making a gesture) round him. Since then he would have nothing to do with the English in Egypt. He stayed at Alexandria so as not to be present at the review on the King’s birthday. Then Cromer got up the story of his having subscribed £20,000 for the new Egyptian “Standard,” or rather Faris Nìmr got up the story and foisted it on Cromer, who was very angry and went to the Palace and charged the Khedive with it. On this the Khedive said, “I will answer you in three ways: first, things have not yet come to such a pass in Egypt that you have a right to ask me what I do with my own private money; secondly, Mustapha Kamel has not set his foot in my house for three years, and, thirdly, he has had no money at all from me for any purpose.” So Cromer got no satisfaction from him, and we have taken Abbas back into favour. You must not write any more against him, as he may be useful to the Nationalist Party. All the same he and the whole of his branch of the family of Mohammed Ali are worthless. They ought to be eliminated from the succession. The sons of Halim are respectable and liberal.

“Of the Sultan he, Mustapha Kamel, said he had behaved miserably in the Tabah business. But he spoke highly of the Grand Vizier, Jawdat Pasha; Mukhtar was a ‘brave homme dont on respecte le passé militaire, mais naïf, trop naïf.’ I asked about Idris Bey Ragheb, the proprietor of the ‘Egyptian Morning News’ and ‘l’Egypte,’ and the Doctor (Osman Ghaleb) said, ‘He tried to go against us but has been obliged to give it up.’

“About Saad Zaghloul, Kamel said he was the antipodes of his brother, the traitor of the Denshawai case, a perfectly honest, good man. He has begun well at the Ministry of Public Instruction, insisting that all papers should be brought to him, not to Dunlop, the English Adviser, that the examiners in Arabic should know Arabic, and that Dunlop should come to him on business, not he to Dunlop. We shall see how long he is able to maintain his command of the situation.

“Of Cromer they all talk as of a lost force in Egypt. He no longer has any native following. The Denshawai case did for him entirely, for every one knows he was solely responsible for the hangings. ‘We wish Lord Cromer to remain on now,’ Kamel said, ‘he does us more good by staying than he could possibly do by going.’ He would like, when the change is made, that it should be Gorst rather than an outsider. Gorst at least would endeavour to conciliate Mohammedan feeling, he hates the Syrians who now have Cromer’s ear.

“Back to Newbuildings for Christmas. Belloc dined with me. He will do all he can to help Kamel, but just now is full to the eyes of work.

“31st Dec.—Newbuildings. This is the last day of the year, and I make up my account with it. It began with a dark prospect. I was lying more than half paralyzed in bed, unable to use my hands, unable to sit up, unable to walk more than across the room. I did not myself think I could recover, I hardly wished it. I had suffered too much pain to desire to pass through the same experience again. Yet, even so I was light-hearted. My head was clear, quite unaffected by my illness, and I was mentally busy with the Memoirs I was dictating. Also I was lapped in the affection of my friends. Thus the first months of the year passed for me, in Chapel Street in bed. Over a hundred of my acquaintance came to see me there, everybody I think that I had ever loved, a huge consolation. Then I gradually recovered, and my literary work went on. I have finished my two volumes. My play of ‘Fand’ has been written, and announced for acting in Dublin. It gives me the consciousness of renewed intellectual power, moreover, and what has been the least expected marvel of my year, my half-dead hopes connected with Egypt have come into political blossom. We have smitten Cromer hip and thigh from Tabah to Denshawai, and from a lost force at Cairo I have become a power again; never since Tel-el-Kebir have the fortunes of Egyptian Nationalism seemed so smiling. Such have been my consolations. The last days of the old year have been spent merrily here at Newbuildings with Cockerell, Mark Napier and Belloc, and his friend Kershaw.”

[1907]There is little worth copying out of my diary of the first months of 1907. They were mostly spent at Newbuildings, with occasional changes to Chapel Street. I give a few extracts:

“24th Jan.—Mustapha Kamel has gone back to Cairo, and I hear of Robertson as touring in the Delta. Bernard Shaw sends me the proof sheets of his preface to ‘John Bull’s other Island.’ It contains a rattling attack on Cromer and the Denshawai business.

“13th Feb.—Parliament has met, a great flourish about a quarrel with the House of Lords. I shall believe it when I see it.

“19th Feb.—Robertson to breakfast with me in Chapel Street. He gave a full account of his adventures in Egypt. He describes Cromer as very nervous and sensitive about public opinion in England, and Machell, who organized the executions at Denshawai, a blundering fool, quite unfit for his position. Cromer, he says, is in perfect ignorance of native opinion, and imagines he still has adherents, whereas the very people he most confides in talk most strongly against his régime in private. Of Mustapha Kamel he had heard none but good reports from native sources, though the English officials talk against him. Robertson will bring forward the Denshawai and other questions whenever possible in Parliament. He has come back a thorough Nationalist.”