Chapter VII: Asquith at Downing Street (2)

“_18th Oct. (Sunday)._—Malony, the Irish editor of the ‘Egyptian Standard,’ has arrived from Egypt. He is a sensible and good young man. His account of the situation in Egypt is not encouraging. They suspect the Khedive of having been won over by Gorst to English interests and money interests. Mustapha Kamel’s death has disorganized the National party. Malony gives a high character to Farid as an honest patriot and sensible man, but says he lacks initiative and that rapidity of decision so necessary in a leader and so remarkable in Mustapha. Ali Kamel, Mustapha’s brother, puts himself forward in rivalry with Farid. There is no one person who commands the obedience of the party.

“Margaret Sackville and Mary Wentworth are here, and we spent a literary evening. Malony went to mass this morning with Mary, while I went out riding with Margaret. In the evening I read them out Margaret’s fine lines about Ireland, ‘I am the eternal dreamer.’ (These are on the highest level of all she has written.)

“Malony goes to Constantinople on Tuesday as correspondent to the ‘Manchester Guardian,’ as well as to his own Cairo paper.

“_19th Oct._—Back to London. The news to-day is better. There is some prospect of the Bulgarians and Turks settling their differences between themselves without waiting for the European conference.

“Meynell, who dined with me, is anxious to get a monument put up to Francis Thompson in St. Paul’s, if not in Westminster Abbey.

“_20th Oct._—Nevinson came to see me just back from India, where he has been in the thick of the revolutionary movement. His book had given me the idea that he was rather hopeless of its continuance, but he assured me that it was not so; the danger was that it would go too fast, there would be riots which would be suppressed with great barbarity, and that would make reform impossible, the hatred of England has become so great. Only if we left India what profit would it be to the Indians, they would fall a prey to some other Empire, German, Russian, who knows what? Nevinson is a remarkable man in appearance, tall, and with a severe manner. He did not smile on entering, and from his expression one might have thought him come with hostile intent, but he warmed to our conversation, and talked pleasantly and freely, and has offered to send some of the Indian Mission which has just arrived in London, Gokhale and Lajpat Rai, to see me. Gokhale he says is now the real leader of the revolutionary movement. We talked about Morley and his projected reforms. He thinks he means to do something of value in the direction of increasing the number and power of the native members of council, even perhaps that he will reverse the partition of Bengal. He agreed with me all the same in my estimate of Morley as a weak-backed politician, quite ignorant of India and the East, swayed by the permanent officials, and principally anxious for general praise and his social position. We were wrong he said in expecting so much of him. On the whole Nevinson pleases me greatly. He has strength, and is as regardless of the conventional attitude as a journalist can well afford to be.

“Next Rothstein came in a pessimistic mood about Egyptian and Turkish things. He wants some action taken at Cairo, but I don’t see what can be done there till the Legislative Council meets in December, when a demand for a constitution might be made to the Khedive backed up by popular demonstrations. This seems to me the best programme, with a repetition of it by the General Assembly which is to be convoked in February or March.

“_21st Oct._—George Wyndham came to lunch, and we discussed the whole Eastern situation. He agrees with me that the trouble in Bulgaria and Bosnia was originally of German-Austrian raising. He also considers Grey to have made a mess of things. His support of the new régime in Turkey was quite right, but he ought to have gone further, and when Austria announced the annexation of Bosnia he ought with France to have declared that England would allow no infringement of the Treaty of Berlin, and stuck to it. He, George, had always been in favour of the alliance with France, and if they had made a firm stand Austria would have had to give in, but the Government is in too great a mess at home to have any courage abroad, and now they will miss their opportunity of permanent influence at Constantinople.

“Rumbold, whom I called on in the afternoon, thinks with George and me that the Conference will be dropped, but he is very positive that the annexation of Bosnia had nothing to do with the Ottoman revolution. It had been decided on to his knowledge as much as three years ago, and the only thing that had delayed it was the difficulty of settling whether Bosnia should belong to Austria or to Hungary. As to Bulgaria, he could not explain how it had come about, that Prince Ferdinand had been so well received by the Emperor of Austria, for the Emperor had often talked to him, Rumbold, of Ferdinand as an intriguer and a scoundrel, who had connived at the murder of Stambouloff.

“Later I met George again, and dined with him and Sibell, and Pamela Tennant in Park Lane. We had a merry dinner and discussed once again the Eastern situation. I told him Rumbold’s opinion about Bosnia, but he would not hear of its being a correct one. He declared it to be certain that the whole trouble was concocted in Berlin, and in corroboration told how a week before the annexation was announced, he was staying at Wynyard with the Londonderrys, whose party included Metternich, the German Ambassador. Metternich, however, had hardly arrived before a despatch reached him while at dinner of such urgency as to oblige him to go at once, in Londonderry’s motor, to meet a messenger at a distant railway station, the result of his journey being that he left for London by the first train in the morning. It must, George says, have been an affair of the most absolute importance to require this of him, for he was less than twelve hours at Wynyard, nor was there any other question in public view at the time. George declares categorically that the crux of the whole situation is that Kaiser Wilhelm means war with England on the first favourable opportunity, and in the meanwhile to stir up trouble wherever he can for us. I think this very likely, and also that there would be no great difficulty in an invasion of England whenever he is so minded.

“_22nd Oct._—Gokhale and Lajpat Rai came to see me, sent by Nevinson, and stayed an hour, and we discussed the situation in India very thoroughly. I am disappointed with both of them. Gokhale is a well bred, highly educated and intelligent man, a Maharata Brahmin, I believe, and according to Nevinson the Leader of the National movement. He expresses himself well in English, and I have no doubt is an able speaker. But he is clearly no leader of a revolution, and they will effect nothing without one. He lacks the enthusiasm which a belief in ultimate success would give, or even the bitterness which is also the force of hatred and despair. He told me that he did not like being called a moderate, but if he represents anything that can be called extreme, there is small chance for India. I asked him what in his view was the end to be aimed at. He said, ‘Of course we hope some day for complete independence, but that is far away. Perhaps in ten years’ time we may get Provincial self- Government, but for that we must educate ourselves, and the educated class is very small.’ I asked him what means he proposed to use in order to obtain it. He disclaimed an appeal to force in any shape. ‘What could we do,’ he said, ‘against Kitchener and the army?’ He would not hear even of obstruction. ‘It is no use,’ he said, ‘trying to overthrow the present administration until we have something to put in its place.’ Language of this sort may be true, as it certainly is prudent, but it is not the language of revolution. I asked him whether he expected to convert English people, or the English Government by appeals to reason and justice? He said he believed that Morley had a scheme of extending the representative character of the councils, and they would have to be content with that at present. He had been a great believer in Morley, and had read all his writings on liberty, but he feared that Morley was more for _personal_ than _national_ liberty. I told him Morley was a broken reed. ‘In that,’ he said, ‘my friend here,’ pointing to Lajpat Rai, ‘will agree with you.’ On this I turned to Lajpat and asked him to give me his opinion. Lajpat is a different sort of man altogether, much more purely Oriental, but inferior in breeding, and very much in intelligence to Gokhale. He has a poor command of English, and it seemed to me a confused mind, timid too, and deprecatory in manner. It was difficult to see in him anything that the Indian Government could possibly have been afraid of, or that Morley can have thought it necessary to arrest by a _lettre de cachet_ and deport him without trial as a danger to India. His views were less pacific than Gokhale’s, but all without precision. ‘I know nothing,’ he said, more than once, ‘about India in general, only about my own province, Punjaub.’ Perhaps if he had been alone with me he would have had the courage to speak out, but he was afraid of his companion, and I frightened him when I asked him what chance there was of the native army taking the National side. We had a long discussion about the attitude of the Indian Moslems, and I told them how I had tried to influence the last in 1884, to join the Hindoos in the Congress movement, but they assured me the Moslems were all against them now, and Gokhale seemed to think that they would be a danger in any reconstruction of India on a national basis, because, though they were much less numerous, and less rich, they were more united. ‘All we hope for is,’ he said, ‘that the movement for self- government in Turkey and Egypt may spread to Mohammedan India, and then they may join us. I asked them if I could do any good by writing my views, especially on this point, but Gokhale said it would be useless, though if I went to India it might be of use to them. It was clear that I was much too revolutionary for either of them. Lajpat in leaving pressed a little book into my hand. It was a printed account of his arrest and deportation, a naïve, and in places quite childish narrative, which I hope may not get into the hands of our Anglo-Indians here to make sport of. It is really preposterous that its author should have been made a national hero. I augur ill for the success of their mission to England. They would have done better to send a firebrand like my friend X—— with curses on his lips to show our Radicals that India has men to be afraid of. These fair-spoken pleaders for justice and the rights of humanity will get no profitable hearing, and I told them so.

“_23rd Oct._—Grey has made a declaration about Egypt, which shows that the leopard has not changed his spots. In answer to a question put to him by Robertson, he has declared (1) that he knows nothing of any demand made in Egypt of being represented in the Ottoman Parliament; (2) that a scheme of Representative Provincial Councils is being worked out in Egypt; and (3) that there is no reason to think that the new developments in Turkey will create new difficulties in Egypt against English control. I have written to Farid Bey to warn him against expecting a Constitution in Egypt, even of the most limited kind.

“_24th Oct._—There is a Reuter’s telegram in all the papers, giving what purports to be a declaration by Gorst at Cairo of the Government intentions. It begins by contradicting the rumour of a Protectorate or Annexation. Great Britain, it says, had given solemn pledges to Turkey and to the European Powers to respect the Sultan’s rights here, and did not desire to go back on that engagement. This declaration, if official, is of the greatest importance, but its form, that of an interview with a correspondent of the Mokattam, is unsatisfactory, and I shall try to get a question asked about it in the House of Commons. The telegram goes on to say that it is also an unfounded rumour that Sir Eldon Gorst has been instructed to introduce a constitutional _régime_ in Egypt, Egypt already having a constitution.

“The papers also announce Frank Lascelles’ retirement from the Diplomatic Service. There was a paragraph in the ‘Westminster Gazette’ headed, ‘A Great Diplomat’—how oddly it all reads to me, whose recollection of him is of an unpaid _attaché_ at Madrid, with whom I played battledore and shuttlecock in the Chancery, and shared many other pleasures; official greatness is made up of very small things, as a mountain is made up of a tumble of small stones.

“_29th Oct._—The ‘Daily Telegraph’ has published a new manifesto by Kaiser Wilhelm, in the form of an interview with a retired diplomatist. It is most compromising with regard to past history, the most remarkable thing in it is where he declares that the French and Russian Governments proposed to him in the winter 1899-1900 to intervene against England in favour of the Transvaal, which he refused to join in doing, and that he then supplied the English Government with a plan of campaign against the Boers, which was the one adopted successfully. As to the first part of the statement, what I heard at the time was that it was Wilhelm himself who proposed the intervention, promising to get England out of Egypt if France would waive all claim to Alsace-Lorraine, and that the French government refused. If authentic, which it has every appearance of being, it is a wonderful document.

“_30th Oct._—Went picknicking at Storrington on the heath below the Windmill. Father Tyrrell joined us, and he gave us his interesting views about monastic life _à propos_ of the Premonstratention convent close by. They are a branch of the Augustinians, and came to England originally on the invitation of the Emperor Napoleon when in exile, but they had a quarrel with the Empress, and some twenty years ago migrated to Storrington, and being very rich, built the huge monastery outside the village. All went well till the Father in charge of their finances ran away with the money and disappeared, since when they have settled down to an indigent and sleepy life. Tyrrell thinks the monastic orders of that kind are doomed to extinction in the modern world. As for himself, he is clearly becoming more and more emancipated, and cannot, I think, hold on much longer to his connection, slight as it is, with the church. I should not be greatly surprised to see him throw off his cassock altogether, though I should regret it. If he had a less happy life than he leads at Storrington, I feel sure that this would happen, for he does not believe enough in ecclesiastical authority to worry himself about his excommunication. He is an interesting and charming man, and whatever line he may take I shall approve. He read us out a part of Thompson’s ‘Ode to the Setting Sun,’ which was very appropriate to the time and place. He also told us that some lines he had written in Gwendolen Ryan’s autograph book, and which I was so much taken with, are a translation from the German, the fourth verse only being an addition to his own. They are these:

‘Two chambers hath the heart

Wherein do dwell

Sorrow and joy apart,

‘When in the one joy wakes

Then in the other

Sorrow her slumber takes.

‘Hush joy! oh hush! refrain,

Laugh not too loud

Lest sorrow wake again.

‘Let sorrow when she weepeth

Weep low and know

Joy is not dead but sleepeth.’

“The whole of Europe is up in arms against the Emperor Wilhelm for his pronouncement, especially his own people in Germany. This will, I hope, simplify matters at Constantinople, but there never was a moment when the complications of European diplomacy were more difficult for an outsider to unravel.

“_31st Oct._—Belloc dined with us last night, and looked in again to- day, amusing as always, and full of literary projects; amongst others, of publishing a volume of verse, but I think he will not do anything of real value in the way of serious work, looking always for immediate applause in what he does. It is the snare of all brilliant talkers and facile writers, and is Belloc’s; witness, as an extreme example, Oscar Wilde. He tells me that he knows, from friends at the Foreign Office, that Grey has made up his mind to allow Constitutional Government in Egypt as a necessary effect of the Constitution in Turkey, the Foreign Office having been converted to that view, and even old Giglamps (Sir Thomas Sanderson) now holds it to be necessary. It is very possible, but there are Constitutions and Constitutions, and it will be a sham one that will be put forward at Cairo. I have intrusted Belloc with the questions I want asked of Grey in Parliament, and he promised to get it done.

“_3rd Nov._—The chief public event besides the Emperor Wilhelm’s interview, has been our Emperor Edward’s Proclamation to the Indian people, a bit of verbiage which the Indians are not taking seriously.

“_6th Nov._—There is a quarrel started between the German and French Governments over the Casa Blanca incident with rumours of possible war. Father Fawkes came to luncheon. He is a Modernist and a pleasant man, a friend of Tyrrell and of Miss Petre.

“_10th Nov._—Grey, or rather his substitute, has answered my questions put to him by Belloc, about Egypt, notably that relating to Gorst’s interview with the ‘Mokattam.’ The answer is given thus. ‘The language used by Sir Eldon Gorst is correctly quoted, and is approved by His Majesty’s Government.’ It is a declaration of Government policy, and is most important as putting annexation out of the question or a Protectorate, though it leaves things otherwise much as they are.

“_12th Nov._—In India they seem getting to work. Our King’s self- complacent manifesto has been met with ridicule, and in Bengal they have answered its omission of all mention of the Partition by an attempt to assassinate the Lieutenant-Governor, with hootings in the streets, and vengeance taken on ‘approvers’ of their own race, a repetition of the old Fenian days in Ireland. They have burned the body of the man who slew the informer, Gossain, in prison, and whom our people have just hanged at Calcutta, according him all the honours given to a saint, and have sent fragments of his bones as relics through India.

“_13th Nov._—Osborne Beauclerk arrived fresh from Persia, where he has been shooting wild sheep east of the Caspian. He has been staying with Sykes, the British Consul at Meshhed, whose business there is to watch the Russian Consul. All that part of Persia is in great confusion, and Sykes has fortified his house on scientific principles, intending to hold it against all comers with the thirty soldiers he has at his orders. Beauclerk described this in detail, and how the defences included a mine projected under the Vizier’s residence, which is close by, ‘carrying things rather too far,’ Beauclerk thinks. The whole of Persia, he says, might be ridden over by a squadron of European cavalry without hindrance as it lies open and there is no force to oppose it. Tabriz and the North he did not see. In the rest of Persia there is nothing that can be called a nation, only a number of tribes and races, mixed up without any bond of cohesion. Beauclerk’s ideas, however, are rather vague, and I had difficulty in persuading him that the Meshhed of Eastern Persia was not the same as Meshhed Ali. The hill country where he was shooting he describes as the extreme limit eastwards of the great Forest of elm and sycamore, which stretches 120 miles from the Caspian, ending in juniper scrub, where the wild sheep are. I asked him whether these ever drank, and he said he thought not, having seen no trace of them near water. This bears out what Suliman Howeyti used to tell me about the _kebsch moyych_ between the Nile and the Red Sea, which never drinks. I am immensely taken with Beauclerk, who is quite the most sympathetic young man I have met for many years. Without being quite intellectual he is extremely intelligent, has seen much and thought much, has every good impulse and desire, and is feeling his way how to live up to them. He is hardly at all educated, but has a large experience of men and cities, or rather of wild places which are not cities. He has been at Eton and understands its snobbery; he has been in the Army and understands its futility; he is a landlord and understands its duties; he is without pretention and has a kindly heart.

“_22nd Nov. (Sunday)._—There is a new interview with Kaiser Wilhelm published, more astonishing than the last. We are promised it in a few days, though £10,000 were paid by the German Ambassador at Washington for its suppression, so says the ‘Observer.’

“_2nd Dec._—Father Tyrrell writes from Storrington: ‘I am occupied with much serving; when things are cleared away and washed up I will come and sit at your feet and hear your words.’ This is giving me a high position as heresiarch, almost that of Antichrist.

“There is an agreement of importance come to between the American and Japanese Governments for the maintenance of the _status quo_ on the Pacific Coast. It is practically a guarantee of the independence of China. This is to the good.

“_11th Dec._—Newbuildings. Mark Napier is here. He has told me an interesting story about his life with Asquith twenty and more years ago. Mark lived for eight years with the present Prime Minister when they were twenty-two and twenty-three and onwards in chambers at the Temple. Asquith did not make more than £500 in the whole of those eight years at the Bar. He was the son of a Nonconformist in business in the north of England, his mother being also from the north, and a very clever woman. From the age of eight Asquith had kept himself and provided his own education at school and at the University. Then he came up to London and read law. He was a very industrious fellow and made £200 a year by writing for the Press, principally in the ‘Economist.’ When he was twenty-three he married a nice little woman. She had £500 a year, and they lived in a small house at Hampstead, with a garden behind the house where they kept chickens. He went in and out to his chambers daily on the top of an omnibus, and lunched at an eating-house kept by women at 4_d._ He was a very ready writer, and could write out his articles without erasures, articles of a serious kind. One way and another he and his wife made up £1000 a year.

“_15th Dec._—Father Tyrrell came to dine and sleep, bringing with him a Modernist friend, Bell, who is lame. We had some good talk about Stonyhurst, the Jesuit system of education, Gifford Palgrave’s career, Eastern politics, and poetry. Both he and Bell are good talkers. Bell is an Oxford convert, now a Modernist, but still resident at Hertford College. He gives a poor account of the intelligence of the undergraduates, especially in the matter of poetry. Very few of them, he said, read any verse.

“_17th Dec._—Cromer has made a speech at the Eighty Club about Egypt. He is certainly the most shameless dealer with facts in our public life. He has the face now to pretend that he has always been an ‘Oriental Liberal,’ that he has never been a partisan of the Occupation, that he has never been an opponent of Nationalist views, and that if he was ‘once shown the prospect of a Constitution’ which should really represent the views and interests of all the inhabitants of the Nile Valley which would inspire the confidence of Europe and maintain the reasonable rights of the Khedive, he would become ‘an ardent Egyptian Constitutionalist.’ This is indeed a jest.

“Sabunji writes from Constantinople saying he has received my ‘Secret History,’ which ‘records faithfully all our joint doings in the land of the Pharaohs.’ I am glad to have his testimony to my accuracy.

“_18th Dec._—Morley’s much expected Indian Reform speech has at last been made in the House of Lords, amid much Tory applause, great care having been taken that there should be no hostile criticism here or in India. Here the speech was put off till the last working day of the session, and in India the leaders of the opposition, including the chief newspaper editors, had been clapped into prison. These reforms, if they had been produced three years ago when Morley first came into office, or if they had been announced now as an avowed first step towards Home Rule, or again, if they had been accompanied by an abandonment of the Division of Bengal and a release of the political prisoners, might have effected a reconciliation with the extremists, but now I feel it is too late. In themselves the reforms are poor things. There are to be unofficial majorities in the Provincial Councils, and a single native is to be allowed on the Executive Council of Calcutta. A great parade is made about this last, but it amounts to very little, as the native member is to be nominated by the Viceroy, and he will always be able to choose a tame man, Hindoo, or Mohammedan, or Parsee (Gokhale perhaps), just as they name tame Copts to be Ministers in Egypt, while in the Provincial Councils the Governor or Lieut.-Governor is to retain the power of veto. If native India is satisfied with this, well and good, we shall see. What is certain is that under cover of the reforms announced the reign of political terror will be allowed its full way, arrests, deportations, imprisonments, and the impounding of printing presses. The same would be done in Egypt if our officials there could get rid of the Capitulations.

“_23rd Dec._—Tyrrell has written me an interesting letter on my ‘Future of Islam,’ which he has been reading. He says:

“‘It makes one think furiously. You would have been God the Father had you foreseen all that has happened since you wrote it; and I wonder how this attempt at constitutionalism will affect the hegemony of the Turk in Islam. Should Turkey become politically strong, she might perhaps become a cynosure for the eyes of renascent Islam everywhere, a sort of mother and mistress of churches, but she must then keep her Caliph or Pope, and that would bode ill for a liberal state, giving equal treatment to all religions. Without the Caliph, or with a mere figure- head Caliph, Turkey would be denounced by the reactionary majority of Islam as Liberal and Apostate, and the spiritual headship would pass to some other land. Of course a Constitutional Persia and a Constitutional Turkey, and perhaps the Mussulmans in India might sympathize and stand together. I think Islam as less committed to a complex dogmatic system could “modernise” more easily than the Papacy. But they have their infallible _corpus juris_ tied round their necks. You would set an infallible Pope above this Bible to whittle it away. That is a double- edged sword. The Isidorian decretals were forged in the interests of episcopal liberty; they issued in episcopal slavery. The Popes freed the people from secular tyranny only to subject them to their own. It would be safer to let theological ingenuity find a way out of the letter of the law. It can do anything under pressure. The “Catholic Times” to-day explains that, in the Bishops’ oath, _hereticos persequar et impugnabo_ means I will follow up the writings of heretics and refute them. Better still, the inevitable spread of history and criticism will destroy the mechanical conceptions of inspiration and infallibility for Islam as for Christendom.’

“_31st Dec._—The last day of the year. Politically things have gone better this year in Persia, in Turkey, in India, and in Egypt, the cause of liberty has been making progress and Cromer himself. This time last year Cromerism, if not Cromer, seemed to be having it all his own way, now the self-Government of Asia seems an admitted principle, even at our Foreign Office. Grey and even Morley are being dragged at the heels of Eastern progress. Thus ends the year 1908.

“_1st Jan._ 1909.—An earthquake in Sicily. Messina destroyed.

“_5th Jan._—The Government has certainly managed things cleverly in India. A few days before Morley made his speech announcing his reforms they arrested all the leaders of the Opposition, and impounded the chief organs of the extremists at Calcutta and elsewhere, and in this way silenced hostile criticism. Then they got hold of Gokhale to give them a good word, and also, it would seem, telegraphed the headings of Morley’s speech in a more favourable sense than the reality (a common Government trick), just as the Moderate Congress began its sittings, thus getting declarations from it of a ‘loyal’ character, which, as the Extremist Congress had been forbidden to meet, has been accepted as the unanimous voice of educated India. I suspect that a good deal of the more recent bomb throwing, which has hurt nobody, has been managed by the police, so as to give the Government an excuse for violent measures. In the meanwhile, here in England, Morley had delayed his speech till the last day of the session, so as to prevent his measures being discussed in Parliament. Now the subject of India is dropped, and we shall hear no more of it till the next crisis comes.

“_6th Jan._—I have been reading the ‘Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun,’ the most beautiful ever written; I wish I could be sure of their authenticity, but it seems to me very doubtful. They are too perfect as literature for any Portuguese nun to have written, and nobody has ever seen the original Portuguese. They were first printed in French in 1769, and their authenticity seems to rest solely on what St. Simon says about them, namely, that they were addressed to the Comte de Chamilly. I should like to believe in them. (_Traduttore tradittore_.)

“_8th Jan._—There is an article in to-day’s ‘Daily Graphic’ which amuses me. It is a protest against Russian designs in Persia which have reached the stage of threatening intervention there to put down anarchy and re- establish the deposed Shah, with a Constitutional régime at Teheran. What amuses me is the moral indignation of the ‘Daily Graphic,’ an extreme jingo journal, at Russian insincerity, entirely forgetful of the history of our own intervention in Egypt which was undertaken on exactly the same excuse. The ‘Daily Graphic’ says: ‘That Great Britain should abet so scandalous a conspiracy against the liberties of the Persian people is incredible. The condition of Persia is not one of aimless anarchy but of revolution, and in such a state of things no foreign Government has a right to interfere. That the movement against the Shah is a national one is proved by the revolt of Ispahan. The pretence that the people are not ripe for a Constitution will be most convincingly answered by the Persians themselves, possession is the best title to popular liberties . . . in any case Great Britain cannot be a party to an intervention aimed at a people struggling for freedom, more especially as this freedom is already theirs by Constitutional right.’ Every word of this might have been written against our intervention in Egypt in the Spring of 1882, but our Tories are incredible in their self-blindness.

“_10th Jan. (Sunday)._—Malony writes an interesting account of affairs at Constantinople and the probability of there being a line of cleavage between the Turkish-speaking and the Arabic-speaking elements in the Ottoman parliament. This was sure to be, but the immediate danger is of a Balkan war pressed on by Austria which will break out in the Spring. Haymerlé, I remember, used as long ago as 1860, when we were attachés together at Athens, to explain to me that it was a settled part of Austrian policy to shift the centre of the Empire eastwards, and make good the imperial title of Emperor of the Oesterreich. They will never allow the Turks to reform themselves in earnest, and all the more now that Russia, beaten by Japan, is no longer so great a military rival. I am writing to Malony to warn him of this and not to trust too much to English help. If given at all it will be restricted to the defence of Constantinople.

“_12th Jan._—There is a telegram to-day confirming my fear of Austrian intervention in the Spring and of a secret understanding between Austria and Bulgaria for intervention in Macedonia, it can hardly be otherwise. [Compare Dr. Dillon’s ‘Eclipse of Russia.’]

“_14th Jan._—An arrangement is said to have been come to between Austria and Turkey which I hope may prove an end to the danger of war, at least for the present, and so Turkey may get breathing time for its internal affairs. In my letter to Malony I advised that no attempt should be made at coercing the tribes in Arabia, and that the Turks should restrict themselves to holding the seaports so as to prevent European aggression. I am sure this is their wisest policy. Eventually there will have to be some form of administrative autonomy in the Arabic-speaking provinces.

“_16th Jan._—To-day is the centenary of the battle of Corunna, where my father was wounded. He had made the campaign with Sir John Moore as junior ensign of the 1st Grenadier Guards, and was carrying the colours at the final battle when he got his wound. He was carried on board the ‘Victory,’ and came home in her and was landed at Plymouth where he arrived with little hope of recovery, his wound having been neglected from the multiplicity of cases, the calf of one leg had been shot away and he remained lame through life and was obliged to leave the army on account of it, though able afterwards to ride and even walk, shooting with the best. On landing at Plymouth he was taken charge of by his uncle Glanville at Catchfrench and nursed by his cousins there. The miniature of him in scarlet uniform shows him a pale young man just convalescent. He was only sixteen when he joined the Guards, and was sent out straight from Harrow where he had been a younger contemporary of Byron. The campaign, according to my father’s account of it repeated to me as a child, must have been carried on in a curiously amateur way. My father, like the rest of the officers, was allowed to take with him his fowling-piece and a brace of pointers for sport on the campaign, and I have now the heavy mahogany desk and still heavier box for papers which were among his baggage. The officers were mounted, but on the retreat, in order to encourage their men, they walked on foot. The pointers were left behind while fording a river which they could not swim, and thus put an end to the sport. ‘The Burial of Sir John Moore’ was amongst the first pieces of poetry I learned, my mother explaining to me that the line originally printed ‘The foe was suddenly firing’ ought to have been printed ‘sullenly’ as it always now is. My father retained a great devotion to Moore. There is probably not another person in England to-day whose father was in the battle.

“_19th Jan._—The ‘Egyptian Standard’ is dead. It has been moribund for six months.

“I have been reading Haeckel’s Berlin lectures on evolution. They interest me immensely, first because they are quite clear and easy to understand, and secondly, because I see in them my own reading of the Universe and the ‘Matter God,’ a philosophy I jumped to in 1861, exactly reproduced in the lectures and laid down and proved. I have a paper of that date which I wrote for Usedom who had given me an article in a Berlin scientific journal of the day, on ‘Design in Creation,’ of which he thought a great deal, and in this paper I give boldly, but with sufficient clearness, my doctrine of pure materialism which Haeckel claims to have been the first to propound in 1863.”

I find among my records of that year, 1861, a short paper showing how rapidly my mind had worked, which is worth mentioning here, for it contains as I think the germ of the Monist philosophy elaborated some years later by Haeckel, and which is still the soundest line of materialistic argument. The paper was written not for publication, but in private answer to an article which Usedom had given me to read, taken from the “Zeit” newspaper, in reviewing Ulrici’s work, _Gott und die Natur_. The ground taken by the article had been Paley’s old one with the precisely same formula our Jesuit censors had condemned at Stonyhurst, “Through the contemplation of created things, by steps we may ascend to God.” The writer in attacking evolution, had referred his readers to the evidence of the _Natur-Forscher_, the Naturalist, who in an infinite variety of living things had found the evidence of a creative Mind. For every effect, he had argued, there must be a cause, and that cause is God. Taking up this point in my reply to the writer, I begin by asking, “What is the God he, the _Natur-Forscher_, finds in Nature, an impersonal or a personal God? If impersonal, why dignify the recognized forces, whose existence none doubts, with so high a name? If personal, including the idea of first causer and planner, why _assume_ that Nature is an _effect_ when that was the very point to be proved?” Why speak of a Creation unless to postulate a Creator? If we find an order in Nature, is it necessary to assume an Orderer? Why should blind forces be necessarily a chaos? Is not every “Law of Nature” the statement only of a continuous fact? Might we not as well assume a Disorderer, were no order there? Order is but the way of material being.

I went on from this to examine what the _Natur-Forscher_ showed us;—with his telescope, a Universe apparently unbounded and so infinitely great; with his microscope, a world infinitely divisible, infinitely small;—a Universe without bound in Time, therefore apparently Eternal, eternal in the past as it shows no sign of beginning, eternal in the future as it shows no sign of decay; nothing is added to the material, nothing taken from it; it remains unchanged in substance, varying in form only. What must we reflect, I ask, upon such news as this? Here are the old attributes we assigned to God, “He who is,” the Eternal, the Infinite. Why then not the Self-Existent? Neither in Time nor Space has any fact revealed an external power, Creation is but a metaphysical idea untested by fact. Again, our _Natur-Forscher_ will tell us that Mind is a mere phenomenon of yesterday as compared with Matter, that it sprang therefrom by a gradual and sufficiently marked development, but so gradually that it is impossible to note where it began. Is the actinia a fish or a plant? Where does Mind preponderate over Matter in the brute creation?—in the lower forms of Man himself, _der Gipfel der Natur? Der Mensch ist was er isst_.

The second half of my syllogism was this: “It is a law of human reason (that is to say its universal experience) that the simplest cause is the best. We are bound, as philosophers call it, to aim at unity; two reasons may not be admitted where one suffices; it is useless to search for the law of the law. Arrived at the Universe we have the law, then why go farther? Here is no knot. Then do not bring in a God to solve it. . . . Thus we see that Nature does not lead us necessarily to believe in God, that its order is rather a proof of its self-existence than of its dependence. The _Zusammenhang_ shows that it hangs only on itself. Disorder must suppose a Disorderer quite as much as an Arranger, etc.”

Such was the argument of my paper, which is headed _Nec Deus intersit nisi vindex judice nodus_. I was but twenty when I framed it, a doctrine of pure Materialism with its Monist formula “Mind an accident of Matter”; and when I wrote the doggerel verse called “Body and Soul.” It is an argument I still hold unanswerable in logic, and which, in spite of more than one desperate effort in after life, has ever since dominated my reason. Yet though it satisfied my reason it did not all at once content me. On the contrary, its cruel logic oppressed me with a sense of irreparable loss and I still clung, notwithstanding reason, to an unreasoning belief in God as an inherited instinct of my soul. My last words in this very paper, were “For God’s sake and His recognition among men, let us avoid the _Natur-Forscher_ and hold fast by our eternal unreasonable consciousness of a Father who is in Heaven.” The Matter God I had imagined in place of the personal God was a thought that made me giddy when it presented itself first to me, as a demon by my incantations out of the forbidden books that I was reading; and in the middle of my intellectual debauch I found life unutterably sad. But once evoked I could not evade it or the destruction it involved of that other consoling doctrine of Man’s supernatural destiny, his life beyond the grave. I found myself as it were deprived of my soul’s birthright, proved to be no lawful heir; no child of God with Heaven for my inheritance and eternal bliss for my reward, but just a common “by-blow” of Nature, undistinguishable from her humblest offspring the thousand and one forms of the brute beasts that perish—a humiliating and demoralizing thought.

“_1st Feb._—Terence Bourke has been with me for the last two days. He is now quite with me about the reform movement in the East and the Future Independence of Egypt. There is better news from Persia, where it is reported that the Shah’s army has been defeated by the Constitutionalists, and the three Russian officers in his service are flying for their lives. Browne is issuing a useful pamphlet about the revolution there.

“_5th Feb._—I have moved to London for some weeks, to Chapel Street. Cockerell dined with me, very happy, he tells me, at Cambridge, enjoying the life there and acquiring influence with the undergraduates.

“_9th Feb._—In the afternoon came Brailsford, with whom I discussed Turkey, Persia, Egypt, India, and Somaliland. He thinks Grey is practically selling both Turkey and Bulgaria to Russia, as he sold Persia. Brailsford is making a good fight for them in the ‘Daily News.’

“_13th Feb._—There is another crisis in Constantinople, an attempt by Kiamil Pasha, the Grand Vizier, to bring about a reactionary _coup d’état_. He has dismissed the Ministers of War and Marine, and appointed new ones. If the Parliament does not insist on his dismissal the Constitution will go to ruin, as it went thirty years ago, at least so I read the telegrams.

“_17th Feb._—The crisis at Constantinople has passed off well, the Committee of Union and Progress, with its great majority in Parliament, having forced Kiamil to give in his resignation. This will be an excellent example, and was absolutely necessary if they are not to lose what had been gained by the revolution. The ‘Times,’ however, and ‘Pall Mall’ and other financial papers are very angry, just as they were angry when Sherif Pasha had to resign at Cairo in 1882. There are finance schemes at the bottom of it all now as then, and precisely the same arguments are used about military pressure having been put upon the Chamber, the _pronunciamento_ it is called.

“_25th Feb._—Morley has produced his Indian Bill in the Lords, a great flourish of trumpets about a very small matter. Morley will not be at the India Office long enough to set the reforms really going, and his successors and the Anglo-Indian officials will take care that these are neutralized in detail, as they easily can be. If Morley had been serious he would have brought in his Bill three years ago when he had an all- powerful Radical House of Commons behind him, but he did absolutely nothing, nor would he have done anything but for the boycottings and assassinations. Then he tried the first sham reform, a council of tame landlords, suggested to him by the Anglo-Indian officials, and now he puts forward this other sham suggested by Gokhale. They will lead to nothing. Still the East is awake and moving.

“Conny Lytton has been arrested with other suffragettes, and is to-night in Holloway gaol. She has led a hermit’s life at home for the last fifteen years, seldom going away from her fireside, nor from her mother’s wing, now she suddenly takes up this suffrage question in its most violent form.

“I hear from Lady C. that the poor King is really very ill, though they do all they can to hide it. The present attack they say dates from his visit to the Kaiser Wilhelm at Berlin, caused by wearing a Prussian uniform too tight at the throat.

“_1st March._—I have been reading Newman’s ‘Loss and Gain,’ which I read years ago, but had forgotten. In style I think it quite perfect, having the same sort of quiet humour one finds in Jane Austen’s novels, but even more subdued. The characters are admirably drawn, and justify themselves in speech and action in a way so many novelists miss, including Meredith; thus it continues to interest one in spite of its strangely out-of-date controversial Theology. Newman’s mind, at any rate in his Oxford days, seems never to have faced the real issues of belief and unbelief, those which have to be fought out with materialism, yet the book was published less than a dozen years before Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species.’ What a gulf separates us from that time, the epoch of undoubting belief in the literal inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. It seems difficult to realize the time when the best and sanest minds in England were arguing about the Apostolical Succession and the Councils of the early Church, unconscious of the wider issues about to be opened, just as they were at Constantinople about the Procession of the Holy Ghost, while Sultan Mahmud was hammering at the gates.

“_5th March._—Chapel Street. Frank Lascelles lunched with me, and we had a pleasant talk about old times. He has seen much lately of the King, having been at Sandringham and Windsor, and constantly asked to meet his Majesty at dinner and play bridge with him. He gives the same account of the King’s short temper that Lady C. did, and of the language he uses to his partners when the cards go wrong. I asked him whether the King was a good player, and he said, ‘Oh no, when he has a good hand with his dummy he knows how to make the best of it, but he has no knowledge of where the unseen cards should be.’ The King is off to-day to Biarritz, and I gather that there is something seriously the matter with his throat. Frank talked highly of the King’s knowledge of Foreign politics, and of his tact and skill in dealing with them. Cromer was Frank’s subordinate in Egypt in 1879, and he told me that meeting Cromer the other day, he had remarked, ‘I suppose we shall be having the Emperor William talking again in a few days, it seems impossible to make him hold his tongue.’ Frank’s reply hit Cromer hard: ‘Yes, as impossible as it is to make you hold yours.’ Cromer deserved it, for he has been talking a deal of nonsense since he returned from Egypt about things he does not understand. Lady Cromer has become a suffragette in opposition to her lord.

“Next we talked about the Sackville case, which is just now much in the papers. I asked him what his recollection was about Lionel West’s having ever acknowledged his marriage with Pepita, and he said that he had never heard him acknowledge it, though, of course, they were together at the Paris Embassy. If he had acknowledged it Frank would have taken his own wife to call on her. But there was never question of it. Lionel was the most secretive of men. Some years ago he had written to Frank to ask him what his memory was on the point of such acknowledgment, and Frank had answered him in the sense just given. On the other hand, there were one or two curious facts within Frank’s recollection. Pepita died at Arcachon during the Commune, while Lionel was in charge of the Embassy at Paris, and Frank was with him when he received the telegram announcing her death from Lord Lyons, who was at Bordeaux, which was as follows: ‘_Votre pauvre femme vient de mourir. Vos enfants vous appelent_.’ Lionel asked him what he ought to do. Could he leave Paris? It was agreed that certainly he ought to go. Lionel was terribly overcome, for he was devoted to her, and Frank saw him off to the Orleans station in a private brougham they found in the street, for there were no cabs on hire—as an affair ‘_de vie et mort_.’ This would seem to show that Lord Lyons recognized the marriage, but nobody actually knew. John Bidwell once put the question plainly to Lionel, and his answer was ‘the person most interested in knowing knows the whole facts.’ Another curious incident, taken in connection with the present case, which is being tried at Madrid, of a page in the entries of the marriage register having been torn out, is this: It happened also while Lionel was in charge at Paris. Sir Richard Wallace had been married at the Embassy, and Lionel one day looking through the Register, found the entry recording it and tore out the page, saying, ‘the marriage is an irregular one, and ought not to be here.’ Atlee, who was Librarian in charge of the Archives, was shocked at this, and insisted that Lionel should restore the page and write an acknowledgment of its having been torn out. My own impression from all this is that Lionel wished to make a legal marriage with Pepita, but knew of her previous marriage, and perhaps went through some form of marriage with her secretly, wishing to legitimize the children one day, at least in France—that in order to secure this he got the page of the Madrid register torn out which would have been evidence against them, indeed of his own first marriage. It is certain that he entered his later children as legitimate. Afterwards, however, when he had become Lord Sackville, the succession to the title and estates became a matter of importance, and as his chief love was for his daughter Victoria, whom his marriage could not legitimize in England, for she was born before the secret marriage, and whom he had married to his nephew, he changed his mind and wished to destroy all trace of it and, to make matters surer for his nephew, Victoria’s husband, got him to restore the torn out page recording Pepita’s first marriage to its place in the Madrid register. This, I think, is the only possible solution of the puzzle consistent with Lionel’s honourable character, the love he bore to Pepita, and the love he bore to Victoria. It would account, too, for his nephew’s part in the affair, for there would be nothing dishonourable in _restoring_ a missing page to its proper place. The truth about the double marriage was probably told by Lionel to his brother Edward and Edward’s son, the present peer, and it was agreed between them to say nothing about it, and trust to chance, as the case could not legally arise during Lionel’s lifetime. I expect all this will come out when it is tried in the House of Lords. Meynell, however, whom I saw later in the day, declares that the burden of proof will lie with those who deny Lionel’s marriage. I am of opinion that the nephew and Victoria will be able to retain their possession of Knole and the title. But it is a most interesting problem.