Chapter IX: George V King (2)

“Mark gave me to-day also an interesting account of the battle of Majuba Hill, which he got from Sir Ian Hamilton, an old friend of his, and which is as follows: ‘General Colley finding himself about to be superseded in the command by a superior officer, was anxious to achieve some notable success before his successor arrived, and with this object he occupied the hill with a few hundred men. The hill dominated the Boer position, and if they could have brought guns with them and entrenched themselves the plan would have succeeded. It was, in fact, near succeeding, for the Boers, finding the hill in possession of the English, were beginning to retire when they thought they might as well first see how strongly it was held. The British army was at that time in a quite undisciplined state, and the men not only refused to drag up the guns but even to entrench themselves when at the top, saying they were too tired for work and lay down to sleep; and Colley, who was a theoretical rather than a practical soldier, had not sufficient personal authority with them to insist, so that the Boer attack found them quite unprepared. The Boers, advancing from below, had the advantage that their heads were comparatively invisible as seen against the rocks, while the English were clear on the skyline, so that the Boers stalked them like deer and got close to the top before they were perceived. Hamilton, as I understand the story, was sent with a detachment to oppose the Boer advance, but being driven in found Colley lying on his back smoking a cigarette, having given up all attempt to cope with the situation. He was alone with only a few men of his staff, but the rank and file had already run in panic down the hill on the side opposite the attack. Hamilton had then returned to the advanced post where he got wounded on the wrist, and once more was driven back by the advancing Boers to the crest of the hill. This time he found all the living and unwounded gone, and Colley lying dead, shot through the head with a pistol in his hand. He had committed suicide. The Boers then rushed over the crest, driving what remained of the advanced guard before them, and Hamilton took to his heels. “I would have jumped over any precipice just then,” he said to Mark; as it was he jumped over one twenty feet deep and stunned himself, remaining unconscious till the next morning, when he found a young Boer standing over him with his rifle pointed and about to finish him, but an older Boer stopped the young one, and having stripped him of everything he possessed, they gave him a kick on the backside and let him go.’

“All this account is in strict keeping with what Mark’s brother Jack told me many years ago. According to both accounts it would have been impossible at that time for the British army to continue the campaign aggressively, as the Orange State would have joined the Transvaalers, and the army was quite disorganized.

“_7th Nov._—There has been a shifting of places in the Cabinet this last week. Morley leaves the India Office to become President of the Council; Crewe takes Morley’s place, and Loulou Harcourt takes Crewe’s place as Colonial Secretary; Beauchamp gets the Board of Works. That gives us two of our Crabbet Club men as Secretaries of State, their chief qualification.

“Beauclerk brings me an important piece of news about Persia. He has lately seen Major Sykes, our Consul at Meshed, who is at present in London, and is chief adviser on South Persian affairs at the Foreign Office. Sykes told him that the occupation of Southern Persia on the same lines as the occupation of Egypt has been decided on, and that he himself, Sykes, is to be British Agent and Consul General at Kirman, and direct the administration on Cromerian lines. It has long been intended but was not expected to take place for five years. Now, however, he says, two years will see it accomplished.” [This is an entry of extreme importance, showing how fully it was intended by Sir Edward Grey and the British Government to occupy and administer Southern Persia, notwithstanding all denials.]

“Miss Petre and her sister came to luncheon, and we discussed the whole question of her quarrel with Rome. She means to fight it out, but I doubt if they will give her any answer about the binding character of the encyclicals. Her bishop will simply say that if she does not choose to sign she shall have no sacraments. To console her I gave her an account of my own religious experiences of fifty years ago. I like her much.

“_9th Nov._—There has been a meeting at Berlin of the two Emperors, German and Russian, solemnized with an immense slaughter of Imperial deer, five hundred in the single day’s shooting, beasts which had been penned for the purpose beforehand and let out one by one, as cockney sportsmen do with their purchased pheasants. According to the ‘Times’ these Emperors and their Ministers have come to an amicable understanding about Persia. If so, Persia’s fate is sealed. [Compare Dr. Dillon’s book, ‘The Eclipse of Russia.’] In the meanwhile, we here in England are entirely engrossed in our local quarrels. The Conference about the House of Lords has broken down, and there is a strike of miners with fierce riots in Wales.

“_11th Nov._—The ex-Shah of Persia has suddenly appeared at Vienna, after having disappeared from Odessa, where he was a month ago. This means more than meets the eye, for an Oriental ex-King is a card in the hand of any European Government which wants a footing in an Eastern State. I should not be surprised if this one was taken up by our and the Russian Governments to be restored at Teheran or Kirman, as Tewfik was restored in 1882 at Cairo, with a joint Anglo-Russian occupation indefinitely continued.

“_12th Nov._—There is an article in the ‘Pall Mall,’ which is usually well-informed about Foreign Office affairs, lamenting the failure of British policy in the East and announcing as certain that Turkey has joined the Triple Alliance, or rather the Dual Alliance of Germany and Austria, and that an arrangement has been come to between these and Russia for the construction of a railway through Bagdad and Persia to the Indian frontier, which will put India at the mercy of Germany, a death-blow to the British Empire. Redmond has returned from America with £40,000 for the coming electoral campaign.

“_14th Nov._—To London for the meeting of Parliament, which is to- morrow, and to the Reform Club to concert with Mackarness an opposition to Grey’s Eastern policy and the formation of a new Egyptian Committee.

“_15th Nov._—To the Grafton Gallery to look at what are called the Post- Impressionist pictures sent over from Paris. The exhibition is either an extremely bad joke or a swindle. I am inclined to think the latter, for there is no trace of humour in it. Still less is there a trace of sense or skill or taste, good or bad, or art or cleverness. Nothing but that gross puerility which scrawls indecencies on the walls of a privy. The drawing is on the level of that of an untaught child of seven or eight years old, the sense of colour that of a tea-tray painter, the method that of a schoolboy who wipes his fingers on a slate after spitting on them. There is nothing at all more humorous than that, at all more clever. In all the 300 or 400 pictures there was not one worthy of attention even by its singularity, or appealing to any feeling but of disgust. I am wrong. There was one picture signed Gauguin which at a distance had a pleasing effect of colour. Examined closer I found it to represent three figures of brown people, probably South Sea Islanders, one of them a woman suckling a child, all repulsively ugly, but of a good general dark colouring, such as one sees in old pictures blackened by candle smoke. One of the figures wore a scarlet wrapper, and there was a patch of green sky in the corner of the picture. Seen from across the room the effect of colour was good. Apart from the frames, the whole collection should not be worth £5, and then only for the pleasure of making a bonfire of them. Yet two or three of our art critics have pronounced in their favour. Roger Fry, a critic of taste, has written an introduction to the catalogue, and Desmond MacCarthy acts as secretary to the show. I am old enough to remember the pre-Raphaelite pictures in the Royal Academy exhibitions of 1857 and 1858, and it is pretended now that the present Post-Impression case is a parallel to it, but I find no parallel. The pre-Raphaelite pictures were many of them extremely bad in colour, but all were carefully, laboriously drawn, and followed certain rules of art; but these are not works of art at all, unless throwing a handful of mud against a wall may be called one. They are the works of idleness and impotent stupidity, a pornographic show.

“_16th Nov._—Two things of immense importance have happened, though they excite little attention here. At a banquet given to Von der Goltz at Constantinople, Bieberstein has publicly declared the Kaiser Wilhelm’s warm interest in Young Turkey and the strengthening of the Ottoman Empire as a military power. Also in Persia the native Press has declared for an alliance with Turkey and Germany.

“Frank Lascelles looked in on me. He admits that Grey has made a terrible hash of his policy abroad, especially at Constantinople. He disapproves of the partition of Persia, where he once was British Minister, and says that the Russians will never leave it. The agreement about the railways will leave everything in the hands of Germany. Even about Egypt he agrees that the position is very bad for us.

“John Dillon came to lunch and stayed till four talking. He says there has never been so complicated a political position as just now. Asquith is absolutely bound to the Irish party by his promise to resign if the King will not give the pledge required, and the Irish party will hold him to his promise. The future rests with the King, and nobody knows which way he will decide. All that he (Dillon) knows is that Knollys, who is acting as go-between for the King with Asquith, is strong for Irish Home Rule and for the Veto; but the King is subjected to other influences, and it is a toss up which side he will take, and on his decision will depend in large measure the fate of the elections. The Irish position has never since Parnell’s time been so strong as now. Redmond has got the whole of the American, Canadian, and Australian Irish, with insignificant exceptions, at his back. Their coffers are full, and there is no chance of O’Brien winning more than his half dozen seats at home against them. We also discussed Persia, Constantinople, and Egypt, on which subject Dillon and I are at one. He will help our Egyptian campaign in Parliament, though he will not join the Committee. Dillon gave me a curious instance of the kind of temptations put in the way of the Irish party by the capitalists. In the Spring of the present year he had been approached by representatives of the brewing interest offering him £25,000 for the Irish Parliamentary party fund if they would vote against the Budget. He declined to have anything to do with it, and had told only Redmond and two or three of the party about it. The Irish party had always refused contributions coupled with secret conditions. The only instance to the contrary was Cecil Rhodes’ gift of £10,000, but that was publicly acknowledged, and the letters that passed between Rhodes and Parnell were published. The party accepted contributions from anybody, but not on conditions. I asked him about Redmond’s sale under the Land Act, and this is what he says: Redmond inherited the family estate from his uncle, so burdened with incumbrances as to be, in Redmond’s own words, a _damnosa hereditas_. When the Land Act was passed his tenants had come forward spontaneously offering to buy at terms of from eighteen to twenty-four years’ purchase. Redmond never got a penny out of the property, as the charges on it covered the whole of the income. Speaking of the Catholic priesthood’s attitude towards Home Rule, he said they never had the hierarchy more solidly with them. All the bishops supported them now, except Archbishop Walsh, Cardinal Logue, and the Bishop of Limerick and one other. He also says that the national University has turned out a complete success.

“_17th Nov._—Tolstoy is dead. A few days ago he ran away from home, tired to death of his wife and children, and announcing his intention of ending his days in a monastery or as a hermit, or anywhere out of reach of them. They had made his life a misery to him by their stupidities, and at the age of eighty-two he at last broke loose. In Russia, however, it is impossible for anyone to conceal himself, least of all an old bearded patriarch like Tolstoy, whose photograph was in every shop window, and his family tracked him down. First a daughter caught him and then the rest. He took to his bed to shut them out, and as a last resource died at a railway hotel, refusing admittance to his wife to the end. For Tolstoy as a writer I have the most profound admiration. His two great novels, ‘Anna Karenina’ and ‘Peace and War,’ are probably the greatest ever written. As a philosopher I admire him less; as a prophet I do not believe in him at all. Nevertheless he was distinctly the most interesting personality of our generation, the man who commanded the widest following, the man of the most indisputable genius. Some of his political manifestos are splendid. He had courage to a supreme degree. As a moral teacher his ideas were sublime, but quite unsound; his religion was absurd. Such is my brief estimate of him. The world is poorer for his death.

“I have a letter from Miss Petre asking what my religious position now is. Her own position, Meynell tells me, is considered to be logical and correct by all the English bishops, except Amigo, her own diocesan. The Pope’s encyclical letters are _not_ binding _de fide_, and they all say it was foolish of Amigo to ask her to sign her approval of them. The demand was quite unprecedented.

“_19th Nov._—Asquith has declared that Parliament will be dissolved on the 28th. This can hardly not mean that the King has given the guarantees, and if so and Asquith does not cheat, Home Rule is certain. I am not sure of Asquith, but Dillon says he can be relied on.

“_20th Nov. (Sunday)._—More Russian troops are being marched into Persia, and it is telegraphed from Teheran that at a great public meeting there appeal has been made to the Sultan for an alliance and also to the Kaiser. It is the Persians’ only chance. Riza Bey writes to me that he has shown my letter to Talaat Bey, the Minister of the Interior, and others, and that my work for them is fully appreciated. He also says that when Churchill was at Constantinople he created an excellent impression.

“_21st Nov._—A loan of £20,000,000 is announced and put forward with much pomp in ‘The Times’ for an Anglo-Russian railway to be run through Persia to Baloochistan. It is to pass through Kirman, the intended capital of the British sphere of influence. Belloc is of opinion that Asquith will trick the Irish after all.

“_23rd Nov._—Chapel Street. Asquith, Birrell, and other Ministers have been mauled by the Suffragettes and their windows broken. They are enraged because Winston will not prosecute them. I entertained my political allies to-day at luncheon, Dillon, Browne, Mackarness. O’Malley and Cunninghame Graham were also to have been of the party, but they did not appear. We got the question, however, of our Egyptian Committee settled on a basis of evacuation, though no action can be taken by it till the new Parliament has met. Keir Hardie is an honest old fellow, with a Scotch terrier’s face, rugged and plain spoken. I took much to him. Besides the Committee here in London, we are to get up a proper English paper for Egypt.

“I have been reading a very interesting new book, called ‘The Conflict of Colour,’ by one Puttenham Weir, but Beauclerk tells me his real name is Robinson, son of an English resident in China, and nephew of Hart, the Director of Customs. His book is an excellent one, and I agree with most of what is said in it.

“_5th Dec._—Parliament was dissolved on the 28th, and the General Election is in full swing. I have five votes, at Horsham, East Grinstead, Reigate, the New Forest of Hampshire, and Westminster.

“_15th Dec._—Lunched with Eversley. We talked about Egypt, as to which he is sympathetic. He says there is talk of a reconstruction of the Cabinet, of Loreburn’s retirement, and Haldane’s appointment as Lord Chancellor, with Birrell at the War Office and Churchill in Ireland. Eversley has the highest opinion of Churchill as a much abler man than his father.

“_19th Dec._—There are evil rumours in the papers of an entente between England and Germany, which should have for its basis the settlement of their rival commercial ambitions in the near East. This can only be at the expense of the near Eastern populations. [Compare Dr. Dillon’s ‘Eclipse of Russia.’]

“_22nd Dec._—The Elections are now over, the result being an exact repetition of those of a year ago. The Government claims it as a decisive victory. Though with a majority of 126, Asquith is really in an English minority of fourteen. All once more depends upon the King. If he finds pluck enough to refuse to create 500 peers required to pass the Veto Bill, he will carry general opinion with him. The country cares too little about abolishing the House of Lords to make a revolution for it. Apart from Ireland’s chance of Home Rule, which depends upon it, I am personally with the Lords as against the Commons.

“_26th Dec._—On the 23rd there was an account in the papers of the capture of Kerak (_Crac les Chevaliers_), and this morning a letter has come from Riza Tewfik relating the misdeeds of the party now in power at Constantinople. I am inclined to think he exaggerates these, as he is the leader of the Parliamentary opposition there, but what seems certain is that the Turks have got into a mess in Arabia by trying to coerce the Bedouin tribes. This is a folly I warned them against long ago.

“_31st Dec._—‘The year 1910 has been for me on the whole a happy one.’ Politically I still fight on and have accomplished much, but it has been in what looks more and more a losing battle. I doubt if I shall see the accomplishment of any of my dreams. The cause of Eastern liberty is dark at present. In Persia it seems lost and in Turkey to be in no little danger. Without the resuscitation of the Ottoman Empire Egypt will remain in English hands till a stronger robber comes. Still we must fight on, and I have done my best. What will the New Year bring? I dare not prophesy.”