Chapter IX: George V King (1)

The death of Edward VII was a misfortune for English diplomacy and the peace of Europe. Although in some ways he had launched the Foreign Office on an adventurous course by the two ententes for which he was primarily responsible, that with France about Morocco and that with Russia about Persia, his influence with the Government had been a steadying one, and it is probable that if he had lived another ten years the supreme catastrophe of a European war would have been avoided. He knew what was going on in the various Courts of Europe far better than did our professional diplomatists, and his disappearance from their counsels left the supreme direction of our foreign policy uncontrolled in the hands of Grey, whose ignorance of foreign affairs was really astonishing, knowing as he did no foreign language, and having made hardly so much as a holiday tour in Europe. King Edward’s successor, whose life had been that of a sailor, knowing the world only as a sailor sees it at the seaport towns where his ship stops to coal—and seaport towns all the world over are alike—and being without any experience of politics, even those of his own country, was quite unable to supply the directing power his father had exerted at times so successfully. Consequently from this point onward, the year 1910, our English policy on the Continent exhibited a series of blunders of the most dangerous kind, leading by a logical sequence in four years’ time to England’s entanglement in a war, the result of which was not foreseen, and for which no preparation whatever had been made. How all this came about will, I think, be made clear in the following pages.

“_21st May._—Newbuildings. Prince Mohammed Ali, the Khedive’s brother, who has been representing the Khedive at the King’s funeral, arrived here this afternoon with two of his Egyptian friends to see the horses, having an Arab stud of his own at Cairo. While at tea, when he had seen everything, I asked him about the state of affairs in Egypt. He said they had been going very well until about a year ago, but owing to the weakness of the Radical Government here had since gone badly. Too much licence, he said, had been allowed to the Press, so that the Government and everybody connected with it had been attacked, and the Prime Minister, Boutros Pasha, had been murdered, the University students, boys of twelve and thirteen, cheering the murderer. This was intolerable. I asked him whether he did not wish to see the British occupation ended, and he said: ‘Of course we all wish to be independent and a great nation, but we are not ready for it yet. We have not the men to govern.’ I asked him why he did not himself take office. ‘What would be the use,’ he said, ‘without the power? If you took an agent to manage your estate and forbade him to climb over a fence how could he succeed?’ His idea seems to be the old one of despotic rule, and doubtless this is the Khedivial intention if he can get his way. I asked whether he liked Gorst. ‘We like him,’ he said, ‘and you must not believe what the English newspapers in Egypt write against him. They are angry because in Cromer’s time the English officials did just as they pleased, but now they have to take a second place.’ Mohammed Ali doubtless represents the feeling of the Court party. Gorst has been putting back the Egyptian Government clock to where it stood in Tewfik’s time, who was allowed to arrest and deport as he pleased so long as he supported the Occupation. As the Prince was driving away in his motor, he said, putting his head out of the window: ‘We like Gorst anyhow better than Cromer.’

“_25th May._—The seven kings assembled for King Edward’s funeral have broken up camp and gone their ways, I fear in peace. I would rather they had quarrelled, for a peace to which Kaiser Wilhelm is chief party bodes little good to Asiatics.

“_2nd June._—That swine, Roosevelt, has made another speech, this time at the Mansion House, about Egypt, worse than before. I have written a short answer to it for the ‘Westminster Gazette,’ but I doubt if they will publish it. All the Tory papers are in delight at the speech, and the ‘Daily Telegraph’ demands the recall of Gorst and the dragooning of Egypt after the severest Cromerian manner. ‘The Times’ is curiously moderate, though Egyptian Unified has fallen to 99.

“_5th June (Sunday)._—Lady Gregory and Yeats came down to dine and sleep, Yeats in good form, telling a number of excellent stories at dinner. He said that the three persons he had known who had most impressed him with their power were William Morris, Henley, and Madame Blavatsky. He had gone on one occasion with Oscar Wilde to call on Henley. Oscar did not before know Henley, and put out all his most brilliant talk to captivate him and succeeded in doing so, while Henley said nothing. Both professed themselves afterwards much pleased with the other’s wit.

“Lady Gregory is bringing out her new three-act play, ‘The Image,’ at the Court Theatre. They have also Synge’s ‘Deirdre’ on their list, but they say it is not successful. Yeats tells me he makes only about £30 a year by the sale of his poetry. He is an extremely pleasant fellow, and has a more prosperous look, and is fatter and rosier than formerly. Lady Gregory has been the making of him.

“_7th June._—One Homer Davenport, a Yankee friend of Roosevelt’s, and a breeder of Arab horses, was here to-day. He is an amusing fellow, come over with Roosevelt as newspaper correspondent for the ‘New York World.’ He tells me he has no very high opinion of Roosevelt’s intellect, and treats his pronouncement about Egypt and other things as an overflow of nonsense and high spirits rather than as anything more serious. Roosevelt, he says, is sure to be named President again, as he amuses the American public. I took him the round of our horses here and found him intelligent about them, he having visited the Anazeh tribes once. After going through a number of our small fields surrounded with thick hedgerows he remarked: ‘You have the cunningest little paddocks here for breeding that ever I saw.’ I sent him back to London with Kháparde, who was also here, an oddly assorted pair.

“_8th June._—I have written to Dillon and Dr. Rutherford, M.P., advising them that when the question of Egypt comes on in Parliament, the point to urge should be a resumption of the Drummond Wolff negotiations for evacuation. It is no use trying to bolster up Gorst, he is too manifest a failure.

“Belloc has gone to Berlin, news having come that the Emperor William having been stung by an insect in his hand is ill with blood poisoning, and Belloc wanted to be in at the death. Little as I love Wilhelm I should miss him at the present juncture. It would leave the game in the East too entirely in English hands.

“_14th June._—Chapel Street. Meynell and Everard Meynell dined with me, and we talked much about Egypt. There was a field-day yesterday about it in the House of Commons, Grey solemnly recanting, amid rapturous Tory applause, the whole of his policy of conciliation there, begun three and a half years ago. There is now to be an era of coercion. Nationalism is no longer to be killed with kindness. There will be arrests and deportations, which will go on till one fine day the Khedive is assassinated. Turkey is now Egypt’s only chance. Grey’s speech shows quite clearly that it was a matter arranged beforehand between him and Roosevelt that Roosevelt should make the speech he did at the Guildhall. It was one of those little perfidies by which Cabinet Ministers sometimes force the hands of their colleagues, and it has been most successful. Without it Grey might have had a difficulty in getting up the agitation about Egypt which was necessary to excuse the change of policy. Cromer will now once more be the Foreign Office adviser, vice Hardinge, promoted as Viceroy to India.

“Hardinge’s appointment is probably as good a one as the Government could have made. He is friends with Russia and knows something of the East, and will have the recommendation of having been the late King’s right-hand man. Nothing, however, in the shape of new men will much affect the march of Asiatic and Egyptian things. Egypt’s future depends on the success of Turkey; India’s on the success of China and Japan. One thing Grey’s speech will certainly have effected: all Egypt will now become Nationalist and anti-English.

“_15th June._—Dr. Rutherford came to lunch with me. In the afternoon I went to Belgrave Square, and on with Madeline and Dorothy to the Court Theatre to see Lady Gregory’s play ‘The Image,’ which disappointed me, being in three acts without much action, and the dialogue being difficult for any but an Irishman to follow. The little farce, ‘Hyacinth Halvey,’ which followed it, was quite delightful.

“_16th June._—I have written to reproach Dillon with his absence and the Irish silence at the Egyptian debate. Dillon, if he had been there, could have led a serious attack on Grey, who once more was able to hypnotize the Radicals below the gangway and obtained a complete success for coercion in Egypt. The Irish were probably afraid of offending Roosevelt. The Irish entertainment of Roosevelt the day after his Guildhall speech was a betrayal of liberty which may cost the Eastern world dear. [The incident of Roosevelt’s intervention marks an evil turn in Grey’s diplomacy. The American’s influence with him was a personal one, due to their common interest in natural history and out of door sports, which with Grey was paramount. I attribute his marked preference for American rather than any other foreign suggestions to the fact that with Americans only he could converse in their own language, being ignorant of French or German.]

“Lady C., on whom I called, told me she had just met M. de Soveral, who had told her the King was certainly killed by his doctors. Soveral was quite broken down by the King’s death. As to the new Court, she tells me Knollys was the only one about the old King who was really faithful to him. He was left heir to all the King’s papers and correspondence, and knew absolutely everything of the King’s secrets, having been entrusted with the keys, while he lived, of every box. Most of these secrets, she said, will die with Knollys. Queen Alexandra has been well provided for, the King having left her £30,000 a year, which will be made up to £100,000 by Parliament. She will go with her sister, the Empress of Russia and her daughter to Copenhagen at the end of July and stay there till Christmas, then to Sandringham, where she will live when in England, her son reserving the shooting. King George is entirely devoted to his mother and will do everything possible for her.

“Kitchener has been recently to see Lady C. She had talked to him about me and he had said I had done a deal of mischief in Egypt; I am glad he thinks so.

“_20th June._—I have written, at Dillon’s suggestion, to Redmond about Grey’s speech on Egypt, urging him to take the matter up strongly on the first occasion. Asquith has fooled them after all about the House of Lords, and has gone into conference with Arthur Balfour about the compromise of the quarrel. Unless the Irish get rid of Asquith, Grey and Haldane, they will never gain what they want. They have certainly had bad luck with the King’s death, but it was a mistake their allowing the Budget to pass.

“_26th June._—Newbuildings. D—— G—— was here to-day, just back from the Congo with some friends interested in the rubber trade. It is a sordid and abominable occupation, and D—— has made a fortune out of it, as there has been what is called a rubber boom. He has for some time past had a rubber speculation in the Malay Peninsula and took service under that scoundrel King Leopold to learn the art of the thing, and now, old Leopold being dead, he has returned to Europe. I asked him whether the tales of the atrocities on the Congo were true, and he admitted that they had been so, but said it was all changed now. All the same it is a sorry business for one like D——.

“_28th June._—Chapel Street. With Beauclerk to the White City to see the Japanese pictures, which are worth looking at, and in the evening with Farid Bey to a Conference at Caxton Hall, where he made a speech about Egypt in French which nobody understood. These meetings are entirely useless, the audience made up mostly of young Indians and enthusiastic middle-aged ladies.

“_29th June._—Dillon and Farid to lunch. We decided that Dillon is to bring on the Egyptian question, if possible, as an Irish party question in connection with the Foreign Office Estimates; otherwise no real debate is possible. The points he is to attack are (1) The financial mismanagement with the spending of twenty-six millions of the Reserve Fund, (2) The new Press and Deportation Laws; (3) The Suez Canal Convention. Dillon recommends that the Legislative Council should sign a public protest against the new coercion laws passed over their heads. I am to write a pamphlet. Farid has his facts well in hand, but, as usual, his inability to speak English stood in his way with Dillon, who speaks no French.

“_10th July (Sunday)._—Newbuildings. Dillon and Kháparde are here for the week-end. Dillon is hopeful about Irish prospects. He says the Sinn Fein movement as far as it was hostile to the Parliamentary party has all but died down. He expects a General Election in January, with a result of even forces between Tories and Radicals; and so the possibility of an arrangement between the two parties favourable to Home Rule. He has seen much of Churchill lately, who is much depressed at the failure of their plans. Dillon will do what he can about Egypt, but it is difficult to keep the Irish members in London, except when it is a case of Irish questions. He understands the Egyptian case thoroughly; the Radical members, however, will give no support; they are too ignorant of foreign affairs, and too much afraid of Grey. Dillon is the pleasantest of companions, and an excellent talker, and we have had a profitable time.

“_11th July._—The twenty-seventh anniversary of the bombardment of Alexandria. I am writing my final letter for the ‘Westminster Gazette,’ disclosing the financial scandals in Egypt, so as to give Dillon a lead on the Foreign Office vote.

“_15th July._—Dillon writes that Grey, after saying that the Suez Canal Correspondence would be laid on the table for members to read, has withdrawn these, and there can be no debate about Egypt. Thus the whole attempt to get publicity for the rascalities in Egypt breaks down. My letter was sent in on the 13th, but the Editor says it may be some time before he can print it. Such is the way these things are managed.

“_16th July._—Savarkar, the Indian who was recently extradited and sent to London, has managed to squeeze through his cabin window at Marseilles and swim ashore, but was arrested by a French gendarme and returned to the ship. He had had friends ready with a motor to get him away. Kháparde tells me that Savarkar is the author of ‘The Indian Revolution of 1857,’ and that is the real reason why they want to get him back to India and punish him.

“_18th July._—The Editor of the ‘Westminster Gazette’ after keeping it for a week refuses to publish my final letter about Egypt, and as both Dillon and Keir Hardie say there is no chance of Egypt being discussed, I am obliged to leave it there. I cannot fight this battle absolutely alone, the odds against me are too great.” [This letter I had printed as a pamphlet under the heading “The Fiasco in Egypt.” I am quite sure that it was shown to Grey by the editor, and that in consequence Grey resolved to burk the debate by withdrawing the correspondence.]

“_22nd July._—After all, Dillon was able to say a word on the Foreign Office vote, but unsupported by a single member on the Liberal side. It brought Grey out with another still stronger pronouncement about the Government determination to stay on in Egypt. The absolute and entire defection of the Labour members as well as the Liberals is depressing. They have all now adopted Grey’s imperialistic doctrine of ‘might is right’ in dealing with Orientals. I hold Morley more responsible for this conversion of England to Jingoism than anyone else in the Cabinet. He has surrendered the Indian citadel to the enemy. It does not surprise me, nor do I suppose it will make any difference in the end. Egypt’s fate depends on the success of the Ottoman reformers and on the Kaiser Wilhelm, though I suspect that terms were come to by our Government with Wilhelm about Egypt when he was over here for the King’s funeral, otherwise Grey would hardly have been so emphatic. The only thing now for Egypt is to make the closest possible alliance with Turkey and share the fortunes for good and evil of the general Mohammedan world. Gorst is over here.

“Churchill has made a long exposition of his new prison regulations, following very closely the lines of my memorandum. He and Clementine are to spend Sunday week with me here at Newbuildings. Dillon has sent me his speech about Egypt, which is eloquent and well-reasoned, and, he tells me, provoked Grey to great anger, though he did not get into the financial scandals. He met with no sympathy in any quarter of the House, and he is so distressed at this that he would advise the Egyptians to cease their agitation against the Occupation and get what they can from England of self-government. I cannot agree with him in this. The sort of self-government Gorst and Grey would give, a Council without power and without a free Press, would only serve as a disguise for English rule. I have written to him in this sense. France is once more pushing forward in Morocco, and is counting on English help. It would not surprise me if the partition of the Ottoman Empire were in our Foreign Office plan. It is a race between these harpies and the Ottoman army. If this can be reorganized and strengthened in time Islam will be saved and Egypt with it, not otherwise.

“_24th July (Sunday)._—The Bellocs to dinner. He tells me Dillon’s speech about Egypt was really most eloquent but equally ill-received by Radicals as by Tories. It shows that there is no longer the smallest hope of converting England from her imperial ways.

“Goumah writes from Lyons that there is a reign of terror at Cairo, spies everywhere and police arrests. It is a return to the state of things in 1883, a fine comment on the civilizing effect of English Liberal rule after twenty-seven years. I have answered him that I advise closer relations with Constantinople. It is their rightful and legal way, seeing that the Sultan is their Sovereign Lord, and England cannot with any face quarrel with them for their loyalty to him and at the same time pretend to be the friend and protector of Islam. It must now be war between Islam and England, and as the Egyptians have no armed force of their own they must rely on the hope that the Sultan will some day be strong enough to reclaim Egypt as a Province of the Ottoman Empire; it may not be a very good chance but it is the only one they have.

“_28th July._—There is a new and very ugly development in the world’s great affairs. The United States has declared its intention of undertaking the management of Liberia, the black Republic in West Africa, and there is a movement afoot for Christianizing Central Africa in opposition to the spread of Islam, our Jingo papers applauding. I put much of this down to the combination of Roosevelt and Grey.

“_31st July (Sunday)._—Winston and Clementine came to dine and sleep. He expects now to remain in office, he says, for five years, the General Election to take place in March. I gave him my ‘Fiasco in Egypt’ to read, and he tells me that he had precisely the same idea as that I give in it of the Suez Canal Convention. Grey had said that Egypt would be delighted with it, but he, Churchill, had foreseen that it would be quite the contrary. He had written a memorandum for Grey on the subject. He and Clementine start on a yachting tour this week to the Eastern Mediterranean and Constantinople. Their party will be De Forrest and his wife, F. E. Smith and Walter Harris.

“_2nd Aug._—Newbuildings. The Churchills left yesterday. Ismaïl Pasha Abaza, the most important member of the Egyptian Legislative Council, came to consult me about affairs in Egypt. He had been three days in London, but had found no single person among the M.P.’s and journalists who had the least idea of the state of Egyptian things, nor had Grey received him. He was sore about this and in very low spirits. I have encouraged him to fight on as he has been doing in the Legislative Council, bringing forward especially the iniquities of our financial management, and he has promised me to do so. He is a man of the old- fashioned school with considerable dignity and political intelligence, a sincere patriot of the moderate party, that which has hitherto relied on English promises of self-government and eventual evacuation. His position, he explained to me, is this: he, in common with every other Egyptian patriot, is opposed to the British Occupation, but while he approves the extreme attitude of Farid he thinks it politic to work for reforms in a Constitutional direction, and has clung to the idea that our Liberals in England could be persuaded into granting a Constitution. The demand for evacuation was rightly made by the extremists, but it was right too that there should be certain persons in the party who would try to work with England and attain the end of independence by another and more conciliatory road. I was willing enough to admit this, but have persuaded him that there is not the remotest chance of our ever granting a real Constitution willingly, and made him promise me that he would never in any public way admit England’s right to be in Egypt. I asked him about the Khedive, and he assured me that His Highness was at heart a sound patriot, but dared not oppose the British Agency openly. He denied that the Khedive’s money speculations were other than honourable ones, or inconsistent with his patriotism. I find this last difficult to believe. On all other points I consider him a trustworthy informant and certainly a far more dignified leader of opinion than Farid or any other of the Nationalist leaders. He is timid, however, as all men in Egypt of his generation are (he must be sixty) and knows little of Europe and nothing of England; nevertheless he has taken the lead, and a bold one, against Gorst in the Council and in the General Assembly, especially on the Suez Canal question. He left with me two copies of the report of the Commission of the Assembly we have been so long trying to get out of Grey. It amply justifies the Assembly for rejecting the Convention, and it contains an important article on our finance, which shows why Grey refused to present it to the House of Commons.

“_14th Aug._—Osman Ghaleb writes from Paris that they are to hold the Egyptian Congress there this year, and that there is thought of asking me to be its President.

“_15th Aug._—In London and called on Lady C. She talked of Lord Spencer, who has just died. Spencer was a fine fellow, and nobody in England was more respected. He ought to have been Gladstone’s successor instead of Rosebery as Prime Minister. I had but slight acquaintance with him, though he was friends with my brother and sister, having gone up the Nile with them in 1863.

“_17th Aug._—My birthday of seventy, which I am spending at Clouds, a long and delightful day; also, and on this I pride myself, I was able with my cup and ball to catch it on the point nine times out of twelve, which shows that my eyesight is not failing. In the evening we had the traditional birthday cake with the children, lighting it up with seventy wax matches. Guy’s boys amuse me. George, a boy of sixteen, still at Wellington School, but has grown a slight mustache and affects the ways of a young man. He is very good-looking, and spends most of his time with the servants in the pantry and the housekeeper’s room, where he talks nonsense to the maids and helps the footmen to clean the knives, smoking a briar pipe with twist tobacco, the most horrible stuff. Upstairs he has a fine assurance with pronounced opinions, as a man of the world. He is to go into the Foreign Office, and seems to have an amusing career before him. Dick, the younger, is of a strict scaramouch type, cleverer but less good-looking. Olivia is an audaciously pretty girl of thirteen, also with a career of pleasure before her, ready for all possible wickedness in a wicked world. They spent the day making a grand picnic with the servants and governesses to Pertwood on the Downs, where they had sack and three legged races and all sorts of boisterous fun, of which Dick, who dined at table, gave us a naïve account.

“_20th Aug._—Chapel Street. Meynell and his son Francis dined with me. The young man is clever and agreeable and should make his mark. He is now at Trinity College, Dublin, and is much mixed up with the Sinn Fein movement, being friends especially with the Healy faction.

“_24th Aug._—Farid has written inviting me to be Honorary President of the Egyptian National Congress to be held at Paris on the 22nd of September, and I have written accepting, though I cannot be there, sending an address to be read at the first meeting.

“_30th Aug._—The Kaiser Wilhelm has made a speech at Königsberg in which he allowed himself a new outburst about his ‘divine right.’ I remember just the same thing nearly fifty years ago, when his grandfather came to the throne. His ‘Gottes-Gnaden’ was a phrase of comic opera mocking in Germany at that time.

“_6th Sept._—Chapel Street. A Mr. Atkin came to lunch to consult me on Turkish affairs in Arabia. He has been lately at Constantinople and tells me there is a pretty complete _brouille_ between the Young Turks and the English Embassy; our ambassador, Lowther, does nothing and knows nothing, and the Germans have it all their own way. There is talk of the Sultan bringing on the Egyptian Question with the support of Germany and Austria. I doubt, however, whether Atkin is a reliable informant.

“_15th Sept._—Newbuildings. Father John Pollen, S.J., came to lunch from Burton Park and spent the afternoon, he not having been here since 1876, when he went into his Jesuit novitiate. He is a pleasant, good fellow, and we had much talk about old days when the Pollens lived here. Philip Napier and his wife also came, and we had much Egyptian talk. He is living at Sheykh Obeyd now, and has developed good National sympathies, a most unusual thing for an Englishman in Egypt.

“_16th Sept._—The French Government has forbidden the Congress being held at Paris, and it has had to be transferred to Brussels. According to an account sent me by Goumah, he and Farid had an interview yesterday with the Chef de Cabinet du Premier Ministre, in which he excused the French Government by saying that ‘France was so surrounded by enemies that she could not afford to quarrel with her one friend, England.’ The forbidding of the Congress is in accordance with an agreement come to with England, that if the French Government will forbid the Congress the English Government will consent to liberate Savarkar. I hope it is so, for the first will be a small misfortune compared with France’s surrender of a captured refugee and her violation of the right of asylum.

“_20th Sept._—There is a quarrel between the French Government and the Turkish Government over a loan of £6,000,000 arranged by the latter with the Crédit Mobilier, but which the French Government refuses permission to be quoted on the Bourse because it is to be applied to the purchase of war ships in Germany. [The ‘Goeben’ was one of these.] The French made a condition that certain protected French subjects in Syria should be given up by the Ottoman Government, and also a certain oasis on the Tripolitan frontier evacuated, which, of course, could not be conceded. The answer to this is a rumoured military convention between Turkey and Roumania, and the all but certainty that Turkey will now join the Triple Alliance. This is the best thing that could happen to Egypt, so I rejoice.

“_24th Sept._—My letter in French to the Egyptian Congress has been clearly a great success, the London Liberal papers giving extracts from it, and describing it as a ‘sensation,’ and the ‘Daily News’ giving it three-quarters of a column under the heading ‘Mr. Blunt’s Remarkable Prophecy.’ I am sure this has been the right way to attack Grey’s position. It is announced now that Cassel has come forward with an offer of financing the Turkish loan if the French Government refuses to allow the Crédit Mobilier’s offer, and that he has support at Berlin.

“_26th Sept._—Worth Forest. The news from Brussels is excellent. Keir Hardie has declared himself at the Congress in unmistakable terms for evacuation. He has even told the Egyptians they must have a revolution. The following are the resolutions agreed to:

‘(1) The occupation of Egypt by Great Britain being illegal, evacuation must take place immediately.

‘(2) The Constitution of 1882 must be restored.

‘(3) The Press law must be abolished.

‘(4) The deportation law must be repealed.

‘(5) Control over the debt must be maintained as long as Egypt is the debtor of Europe.

‘(6) The treaty of 1898 between the Khedive and Great Britain affecting the Soudan is void.’

“These are exactly the resolutions I should myself have drafted. I mean now to take a holiday from the whole thing. Clementine Churchill writes that Winston thinks my advice to the Egyptians very good advice, but he will never consent to the evacuation. I have answered that I remembered his saying so last year, and I also remembered how Jules Favre said in 1871 that he would never consent to the surrender of a stone of France’s fortresses.

“_3rd Oct._—Newbuildings. Riza Bey Tewfik unexpectedly arrived from London, having found his way on foot from Southwater through the woods. We had a most interesting talk about Ottoman politics, and he gave me an exact account of how England had lost her popularity at Constantinople through the stupidity of our Embassy and the mistake made in giving support to the counter-revolution. At the time of the first revolution in July, 1908, the English were so popular at Constantinople that Riza, who was one of the two Young Turks whose duty it was to keep order in the capital, had difficulty in preventing the crowds of demonstrators from besieging the British Embassy with their enthusiastic attentions, while there was equal difficulty in preventing Bieberstein, the German Ambassador, from being insulted. Now it is precisely the reverse. Lowther, our ambassador, is a worthy man, Riza says, but quite ignorant of the East, and dependent for his information on his chief dragoman, Fitzmaurice, who has an anti-Islamic twist, and who went in for the so- called Liberal party opposed to the Young Turks. England in consequence has become entirely distrusted, and to such a point that he (Riza), who has all his life been Anglomane, is now for an alliance with the Triplice, England having become anti-Islamic. I told him I held just that view of the position, and that it would be better for Turkey to join the German powers by signing a definite treaty which would guarantee her from danger either from Russia or from France. He promised to repeat my opinion to the Grand Vizier and to Ahmed Riza and the rest of those responsible for Ottoman policy. There is in truth no other course, for England and France and Russia are all now hostile to Islam. They only supported the Young Turks at the outset because they imagined these to be opposed to pan-Islamism. He will also show my memorandum, about the Arabian policy which should be adopted, to those whom it concerns, and we are to correspond. Riza is a very remarkable man.

“I asked him about Abdul Hamid, and he told me the old Sultan was very unhappy, for he is a man of restless energy, and chafes at his position of powerlessness. His temper has become so bad that nearly all his women folk have left him. He lives in a handsome house, almost a palace, at Salonika, where he is kept close prisoner, but he cannot accept his position. After the deposition of Abdul Hamid, Riza saw him twice, though not to speak with personally. He confirms all the stories of the Sultan’s dread of assassination, and says that in the room at Yildiz where the Sultan usually slept there were six beds in a row, and no one knew in which he was sleeping, so that if an assassin got into the room in the dark he would not know where to strike. Also there was a secret way of escape under the bed. Sometimes he would eat nothing for days, fearing poison, or he would get some old woman to boil an egg for him in his presence.

“_4th Oct._—George Wyndham and Beauclerk came to dine and sleep and shoot to-morrow. George is busy with his rectorial address to be delivered at Edinburgh on the ‘Springs of Romance.’ He and Beauclerk get on well together.

“_8th Oct._—The last days’ newspapers have been full of a revolution in Portugal, the flight of King Manuel, and the proclaiming of a Republic. The movement will probably spread to Spain, and possibly to other countries. Last week there was something like a Socialist rising in Berlin, put down, however, at once with great military violence, in the course of which several English newspaper correspondents got knocked about, the Government offering them no apology. The Savarkar affair with France has been referred to arbitration, thus confirming what Goumah told me three weeks ago.

“_9th Oct._—Rothstein’s book, ‘Egypt’s Ruin,’ is now in print, and ought to be out at the end of next week. I have made myself responsible to Fifield for a first sale of 800 copies, besides advancing him £50. I think, however, the book will be worth it politically. It has given me a deal of trouble, besides writing the introduction.

“_11th Oct._—To Storrington to call on Miss Petre. She is certainly an attractive woman, attractive by reason of her great simplicity of manner and ready intelligence. She has finished the first volume of her ‘Life of Tyrrell,’ including his autobiography down to 1885. ‘A precious document,’ she calls it. She has nobody now living with her at Mulberry House, though one of her sisters lives near her, just outside the village, and they take their meals together. She gave a sprig of myrtle to Dorothy as we went away, and one to Miss Lawrence, and we mean to plant them here in memory of Father Tyrrell.

“_13th Oct._—France seems to be following Portugal’s suit. There is a general railway strike all the country over, and Paris is threatened with starvation. Winston was to have been here this afternoon to shoot, but has telegraphed after attending a Cabinet Council, that circumstances make it quite impossible he should reach us to-night. That sounds serious. The Portuguese revolution has completely succeeded, and young King Manuel, after taking refuge at Gibraltar, is to come to live in England at Wood Norton.

“_14th Oct._—Winston arrived in a motor from London. He was dressed in a little close-fitting fur-collared jacket, tight leggings and gaiters, and a little round hat, which, with his half-mischievous face, made him look, as Miss Lawrence said, ‘the exact figure of Puck.’ We had already began shooting when he joined us, and talk began at once. It was very brilliant, and, except for the exigencies of the afternoon shooting and dressing for dinner, was kept up on the same high level till near midnight. I had asked Philip Napier to meet him, so as to give him some ideas about Egypt, and Gordon Blunt is also here. We discussed most of the burning questions. Winston is going on energetically about prison reform, and will push it much beyond what he has already announced publicly. He means to arrange matters so that next year there will be 50,000 fewer people sent to prison than this year. He was eloquent about a girl who had had a child and had put it in the workhouse, and who had been given two months’ hard labour for deserting it, and about abuses he had discovered in a reformatory. He talked also about public executions. He is in favour of capital punishment, but, while thinking executions cannot be made a spectacle for hooligans, will see to it that relations and friends shall be allowed to be present. This in connection with what I wrote the other day in the ‘Observer.’

“He then got on his travels in the Greek Islands and the Sea of Marmora, where he has been yachting for the last two months. He was immensely pleased with the Island of Rhodes and its defensive works. At Constantinople he had stayed four days, and had been taken to see the new Sultan, but had found him uninteresting; indeed _gaga_. Djavid Pasha had shown him about, and he had talked with several very intelligent Young Turks; also with Bieberstein, the German Ambassador, of whose ability he had formed a high opinion. The Germans had got the better of our diplomacy there. He had brought away a great sympathy with the Young Turks, and was all for them being encouraged and supported. I told him that I had been asked to advise the Ottoman Government as to its policy, and inquired what his advice to them would be. Would he advise them to join the Triple Alliance? He said: ‘I should advise them, while working up their army and making it efficient, to keep out of all wars for five years and get their finances in order. As to alliances, I should advise them to remain in the position of the courted party rather than of one actually engaged.’ I asked: ‘Would it not give them a stronger position to join the Triple Alliance openly? If it is only a secret understanding they might find themselves betrayed.’ He said: ‘Perhaps.’ I gathered from him that he was well aware of the mistakes made by our diplomacy at Constantinople, but he excused these by saying that we were hampered by our position in Egypt.

“We then argued the whole Egyptian question, and with Philip’s help, I think we produced considerable effect on him, though still he declared the impossibility of evacuation. Public opinion in England would never consent to it. We should hold on to Egypt as we hold on to India. It was not that it brought us any advantage but it was impossible to go back on what we had undertaken, a necessity of Empire. The fate of Egypt would be decided by the issue of the coming war with Germany. He used, in fact, all the old arguments; nevertheless, I think, he is shaken about it. Philip staggered him by asserting that the land of the Delta was being ruined by over watering and that the rural administration was bad. ‘One thing,’ he said to me privately, ‘I can tell you. There will be no more talk of the Suez Canal Convention.’ He asked me what I thought of Gorst, and said they were going to support him. ‘As to the Suez Convention,’ he said, ‘there are three people who have always disapproved of it, you and I and Cassel, each arriving at his view on different grounds.’

“The only subject we avoided was the conference about the Lords, but I feel sure that they have come to terms with the Irish. Redmond has just made a speech in Canada announcing Home Rule all round. What exactly this may mean is uncertain, but it would hardly have been made unless some agreement had been come to with the Tories that the Irish demand was to be conceded. About the railway strike in France, he expressed much confidence in Briand. Besides all this, a metaphysical argument was started on the old doubt about the existence of matter, and we even got for a moment into theology. With Gordon Blunt he discussed military manœuvres, declaring our own on Salisbury Plain this year to have been absurd. On every topic he was good, making from time to time most amusing little House of Commons speeches and telling anecdotes in illustration. Nobody could have been livelier or more witty. We all agreed, as we went to bed, that we had had an excellent show. His last word to me was, ‘You must not quarrel with me if I annex Egypt.’ While at Constantinople he saw the Khedive whom he described as ‘between the devil and the deep sea,’ England and the National Party.

“_16th Oct. (Sunday)._—Worth Forest. I am over in the Forest for a few days. On our walk up from Cinder Banks we came upon four deer, one a white doe, close to the great beech tree. This was Percy and Madeline’s golden wedding day.

“_19th Oct._—It is announced from Teheran that Grey has threatened to occupy Southern Persia, a last perfidy which has decided me to write to Riza Bey and advise the Turkish Government to join the Triple Alliance openly, if they get the offer. It is the only thing left for any Moslem state to do. The Anglo-Franco-Russian Entente intends their destruction.

“_20th Oct._—Chapel Street. I have despatched my letter to Riza Bey, of which I have kept a copy as it is important. I see there is excitement at Constantinople about the British threat to Persia, which will certainly make for the proposed alliance. Riza Bey will show my letter to the Grand Vizier and it ought to settle the matter. Our Foreign Office has been very foolish with its Russian Alliance. Osman Ghaleb writes with a full account of the Egyptian Congress at Brussels and the reception my address to it met with. He describes this as having been ‘profound,’ so much so that Baron Max de Wendland, Chamberlain of the King of Bavaria, who was sitting next him, exclaimed, ‘There are still honest politicians left in England.’ Copies of my address were sent by him to the Grand Vizier, Hakki Pasha, and to Saad Zaghloul. It has been reproduced in full at Cairo and Constantinople, and it is evident that it came at a most critical moment and has had its full effect. The Constantinople Press is now violently anti-English, as well as anti- French, and the announcement of intervention in Persia has caused an explosion. It is certain now that Turkey will join the Triple Alliance. There is talk already of sending a Turkish Army Corps to the Persian frontier, and I should not be surprised if war should result. Our Foreign Office game now clearly is to involve Turkey financially, just as Persia has been involved. It all now depends on Germany. When Churchill was here I discussed with him the possibility of an invasion of Egypt, from Syria, by a Turkish army, helped by a German contingent. He seemed to think it impossible, but stranger things have happened.

“_23rd Oct. (Sunday)._—The crisis at Constantinople will have been heightened by a foolish speech made by Hardinge as prospective Viceroy of India, in which he praises the late King’s astuteness and his own in making the alliance with Russia. He quotes the saying that Asia is large enough for the two Empires to live at peace in, and applauds the Convention about Persia. This will help to put the dots upon the i’s. One must be a fool not to see that a partition of Persia is intended, though official denials are being given in our papers. It is all intensely interesting and can hardly not result in a war, which I may yet live to see, a war for the leadership of the Old World.

“_24th Oct._—Big headlines announce a demonstration at Constantinople against Russia, England and France, and an appeal to the Kaiser Wilhelm as Defender of Islam. Whether my letter to Riza Tewfik had anything to do with it I do not know. It must have reached Constantinople on the 22nd and the demonstration took place on the 23rd. In any case it follows very closely the lines of my advice.—Rothstein’s book, ‘Egypt’s Ruin,’ is out.

“_25th Oct._—Chapel Street. Mackarness called to talk over the plan of of a new Egyptian Committee, but I foresee it will come to nothing, as he can find nobody in the House of Commons willing to go in for evacuation, and with anything short of that I will have nothing whatever to do. It is ridiculous to go on demanding a Constitution which will never be given, or a resumption of Gorst’s futile régime.

“_26th Oct._—Back to Newbuildings. As I was shooting on Sheppard’s Farm an airship passed over us, the first I have yet seen, a sausage-shaped dirigible balloon, drifting along at about 8 miles an hour. The propeller was not working only two little vans which seemed to steer it, keeping its course northward, the wind being south-east. In the brilliant evening sunlight it was rather a pleasing object than otherwise, as it drifted almost directly over Newbuildings at about 500 or 600 feet above us.

“_27th Oct._—The airship turns out to have been the largest yet launched and to have come from Paris and to have descended at Aldershot. It must have been travelling faster than I thought and at a greater height. On arrival at the garage at Aldershot it got torn and exploded, but the passengers, they say, were unhurt. It seems to have been the first regular passenger ship to cross the Channel.

“_28th Oct._—I have sent a copy of ‘Egypt’s Ruin’ to Asquith, with a letter requesting him to read it, and another to Morley. In my letter to Asquith I say, ‘Our position in Egypt, taken in conjunction with the general attitude of the Mohammedan world, is a very critical one and may any day need your personal decision in the Cabinet to prevent greater mistakes than those already made at the Foreign Office. It is for this reason that I beg you not to allow things to drift on there as Mr. Gladstone allowed them to drift in 1882, till no issue could be found for them short of a violent one.’ In my letter to Morley I have added an allusion to his conscience. I don’t suppose either of them will read or answer, but it will at least be on record that I placed the truth before them.

“_2nd Nov.—Jour des Morts_, but whether it will be Persia or Turkey that will die, or the British Empire, depends upon Providence and the Kaiser Wilhelm. I went up to London early, in connection with a Mohammedan meeting to be held about Persia, in the afternoon, and found Syud Mahmud and another young Indian Moslem in Chapel Street, and helped them to draw up a resolution, or rather an amendment to the resolution, which will be proposed there. It is to this effect, ‘that in view of the actual presence in Northern Persia of Russian troops and of the recent threat to occupy Southern Persia with British troops, and in view, moreover, of aggressions in the past under closely similar circumstances of ill faith by both Russia and England, this meeting of Mohammedans resident in London, is of opinion that no reliance can be placed on Sir Edward Grey’s declarations that Persia’s ancient independence will be respected by either of the two occupying Powers and it calls upon His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, and the Government of Turkey to concert measures with the Persian Government for the speedy ending of a situation which is a menace to both Persia and Turkey, and an intolerable insult to the whole of Islam.’ The young men assure me that such a resolution would obtain a large majority of votes. It has been occasioned by the news that British bluejackets have been landed at Lingah on the Persian Gulf ‘to protect life and property.’

“Called later on Rivers Wilson, who talked about old times, and especially about the year he spent as private secretary to Disraeli, 1867-1868. Dizzy, he says, was in those days still the _farceur_ he had been in his youth, having his tongue in his cheek and not pretending to be serious when behind the scenes. He would sit with him, Rivers, telling stories hour after hour, always amusingly and never pompously. It was not till after the Congress of Berlin, ten years later, that he began to take himself _au grand serieux_. The wonder is that anyone should have been found to take him seriously after such beginnings as his had been. Rivers is indignant with the present Government, and especially with Lloyd George, ‘that mountebank of finance.’ To his Treasury traditions of economy the present expenditure of £160,000,000 yearly is lunacy; and so it is, only if people will have an overgrown Empire they must pay for their fun.

“Then on to Horace Rumbold, another relic of the past generation. He, too, is indignant with the Government for having taken up the Young Turks in 1908, and now mismanaged things, so that their joining the Triple Alliance is a certainty. He is hardly consistent, however, I think, as he is strongly in favour of an Anglo-Russian Alliance and against that with Japan. Winston writes that the European situation could not be worse for us. This reassures me about the attitude of Germany, as to which I sometimes fear lest it should be won over from an alliance with Turkey. There is always the danger of the whole of the Great Powers settling their differences by a partition of the Ottoman Empire. It is a risk we have to run, but I am sure the best chance is for Turkey to join the Triplice. We are playing for very high stakes, and this is our weakest card. If William were to die and be succeeded by an unambitious Emperor everything would be lost. All the more reason for hastening on the Alliance now.

“_4th Nov._—Newbuildings. The Persian meeting turned out to be a poor affair, my young friends having failed to bring forward their amendment, and the original milk and water one is all that the papers publish about it. Mark Napier and Beauclerk came to dine and sleep. Mark, who takes a purely City view of these questions, declares it to be impossible Egypt should ever be evacuated, seeing how many millions of British capital are invested there. ‘The British Empire,’ he says, ‘will muddle through somehow, as it did a hundred years ago in the time of Napoleon.’

“Miss Petre has sent me a copy of a letter she has written to the ‘Times.’ She has been called upon to sign a declaration that she accepts the Papal Rescript _Pascendi_ and the rest, and she has asked in return that she should be informed whether the rescripts are _de fide_. Her position is sound in logic, but the Church can hardly afford to be logical any longer. She proposes to come to luncheon here on Monday and talk it over with me.

“_6th Nov. (Sunday)._—Last night being Guy Fawkes’ day we drank confusion to the British Empire, though, in truth, all present but myself were rank Imperialists. Warburton Pike, Beauclerk’s friend, was of the party, and the talk turned mostly on gold mining, in which all of them are interested. Mark told us the history of the Mysore gold mine, of which he is the Director. The mine was discovered some thirty years ago accidentally by two English sportsmen when Mark’s father was Governor of Madras, and a company was formed, but it yielded no great result till old Sir Charles Tennant, Margot’s father, put £20,000 into it, and became almost sole owner. The thing was treated as a mere gamble, and having nothing reliable to go upon in the way of engineering reports and, nobody knowing where to dig, it was decided that Sir Charles should put his finger at haphazard on the map and that the digging should be begun there, and there exactly the gold was found, several millions’ worth of it.’