Chapter V: The Beginning of Grey’s Blunders—akabah (2)

“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.”

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.”

Notwithstanding all this fine talk, on his return from Egypt Robertson did next to nothing when Parliament met, and soon allowed himself to be secured by Grey. He took the official shilling, a subordinate post in the Government.

“Sir William Wedderburn came to luncheon. He is an excellent man, and if he were only ten years younger would make a good successor to Cromer; as it is he thinks Lord Reay would do for it. He talked a good deal about India, and gave a history of the partition of Bengal, which he describes as a very serious matter. It was all Curzon’s doings, devised with a special purpose of weakening the power of the High Court at Calcutta. He would not hear of the Bengal Mohammedans as being otherwise than at one with the Hindoos in the affair. He spoke highly of the Amir of Afghanistan in spite of his Europeanized dress and ways, a hardworking, honest ruler, he said, in every way estimable.

“_20th Feb._—George Wyndham and his brother Guy dined with me. Guy is appointed military _attaché_ at St. Petersburg. George, when his brother was gone home, told me of his disgust with politics, and how he considered the Tory Party had ruined its prospects by forcing on the General Election after the Boer War, the Khaki election. It had been all Chamberlain’s doing, he, George, having strongly opposed it in the Cabinet. It was unfair according to the rules of Party politics, and they were suffering from it now.

“_2nd March._—To London to vote against the Progressives at the London County Council elections. I do this as a protest against the running into debt by public bodies, especially for municipal trading; the Moderates very likely are as bad, but they are not in office and these are.

“_5th March._—Sheykh Ali Yusuf has demanded a Parliament in the general assembly at Cairo. There is an article about it in the ‘Times,’ but the Radical press says nothing. What reptiles these party journalists are. They have been preaching the virtues of popular Government for months past in Russia, in Persia, in the Transvaal, and God knows where not else, but the moment it comes to our duty in Egypt they have not a word to say, all dumb dogs.

“_6th March._—Sir Henry Cotton lunched with me. I had been reading his ‘New India,’ an excellent book. He spoke of my ‘Ideas about India,’ published twenty-two years ago, and said it applied very exactly to present conditions. He was surprised I should have been able to foresee these and understand India so well with such short experience as mine had been.

“_7th March._—To see George Wyndham in Park Lane. He is strategically opposed to a continued occupation of Egypt, but I am not to repeat this. I understand such is Arthur Balfour’s opinion, too. George would therefore be in favour of establishing a National Government if one could be secured friendly to English interests. As to Cromer’s successor he thinks Gorst inevitable. I walked with him as far as Rotten Row and home by myself, the first time for two years I have ventured alone in the streets. At twelve John Dillon came and arranged questions with me to be asked in Parliament. He is doing all he can, pestering Grey constantly about Egypt.

“_9th March._—The first number of the ‘Egyptian Standard’ is out at last. It mentions me as among its collaborators, in company with Madame Juliette Adam and Pierre Lôti.

“_12th March._—Staal, our late Russian Ambassador here, died a fortnight ago, one of the very best men I have known in the world, and extremely kind to me, with good advice, when I was a boy at Athens. He has died at the age of eighty-four.

“I have been reading the life of Lafcadio Hearn, an interesting man, whom the accident of his life in Japan has made one of importance in literature. But for this piece of good fortune, he would never have been more than a very superior journalist. Accident, however, drove him into a region of romance which he had the wit to recognize as his proper home, and so has achieved a great work and enduring fame.

“_14th March._—Lady Gregory dined with me in Chapel Street. She gave me a long account of the row that took place at her Abbey Theatre, over the production of Synge’s piece, ‘The Playboy of the Western World.’ The first night, she said, passed fairly well, with only a few hisses, but on the second night there was an organized opposition, and, fearing mischief, she sent for the police, and afterwards there was a tumult every night of the week till the last performance, when the opponents of the play got tired of their noise. She considers, therefore, that she has won a victory, but fears the incident will have harmed her in the provinces, where the play is resented more than in Dublin. At Gort, her county town, the local council has boycotted her, forbidding the school children to attend her teas and entertainments, lest their morals should be corrupted. She is going abroad for awhile with her son.

“_15th March._—Fisher Unwin has agreed to publish the first volume of my Egyptian memoirs.

“Rothstein came to see me, the new London correspondent of the ‘Egyptian Standard.’ That paper seems likely now to make its way. Brailsford who was also here this afternoon has suggested to Mustapha the issue of a weekly edition, as no one can spare time for a foreign daily paper. M., who came to luncheon, told an amusing story about the late Queen Victoria, who when there was talk about the meeting of dead people in another world was huffed at the idea of allowing King David to be presented to her on account of his ‘inexcusable conduct to Uriah.’

“_23rd March._—Mark Napier has returned from Egypt where he has been on business for me. All is quiet there, he says, politically. The Khedive has been frightened into submission by Cromer, and has withdrawn his support from the Nationalists, King Edward having written His Highness an autograph letter enjoining him to have nothing to do with Mustapha Kamel. He had this last from Carton de Wiart, and it was confirmed to him by Reuters’ agent, so it was probably true.

“_24th March._—The ‘Pall Mall’ reports from Cairo that the press laws are to be put in force against the ‘Egyptian Standard.’

“_28th March._—Mark Napier was here again to-day. He went to see Cromer before leaving Cairo, who spoke to him about my ‘Atrocity’ pamphlet, regretting that I should have published it, but pretending that he had not read it. Cromer, he says, appeared much broken in health, and he thinks will not stay on long at Cairo, though he intends to stay. He was touchy on the subject of the pamphlet.

“_1st April (Easter Monday)._—Ujda has been occupied by French troops, the first military act of the ‘pacific penetration’ of Morocco.

“_11th April._—I have been writing an article for the ‘Daily News’ in answer to Cromer’s annual report, and had gone to bed as I usually do before dinner, and was fast asleep when a telegram was brought me signed by Meynell containing the joyous announcement of Cromer’s resignation. I was at once full awake and laughing so that the bed shook under me, nor could I stop for several minutes. I sent back in return the single word, Whoo-whoop! I am off to Chapel Street, and Clouds to-morrow, feeling like a huntsman at the end of his day’s sport with Cromer’s brush in my pocket, and the mask of that ancient red fox dangling from my saddle.

“Whoo-whoop!”