Chapter XI: General Trouble in Eastern Europe (1)

“_4th Jan._, 1912.—Chapel Street. Rothstein called and told me much about affairs in Europe. He says the true reason the German Government would not fight this year was not any doubt of the superiority of its army, which is infinitely more powerful than the French, but because it had not the mass of the people with it. These did not think Morocco worth a war. He says, however, that Germany is of one mind to fight England on the first occasion, as they were very angry with us, far more so than with the French. All now are for war, except the Socialists, and even these are not all of them against it. He is sure the German Government was not privy to the Italian raid on Tripoli. On the contrary they are very angry with the Italians on account of it, so much so that they would join England in putting a stop to it. As to Persia, Rothstein assured me the Russian army was not formidable, the officers being just as corrupt and ineffective as before the Japanese war. If there was a quarrel with England about Persia the Japanese would advance on Siberia. They would also very likely intervene in China to replace the Manchus in power. Rothstein’s opinion on all these things is the best in London.” [N.B. Rothstein, whose opinions are constantly quoted in my diary, owed his wonderful knowledge of the European situation to the fact that he was London correspondent to nearly all the Socialist newspapers on the Continent. He was by birth a Russian subject, born at Kief, who had made his studies at the Odessa University, and having become involved there with the authorities about twenty years ago had made his escape to Western Europe, and had taken up his residence in London. He was on the Staff of more than one of our newspapers, but often complained to me that the Editors would not listen to him on subjects of European importance. To me he always spoke frankly, and I never found him mistaken in the information he gave me, as will be shown in the sequel.]

“_5th Jan._—Irene Noel dined with me. I had not seen her for nearly two years, during which she has been flirting with the Crown Prince of Greece, and trying to get up with him what she calls a Balkan Federation which is to include the Greeks, and even perhaps the Turks. She is a clever girl, and has a talent for political intrigue.

“_10th Jan._—The Russian Government has declared its intention of taking possession of Mongolia. Grey seems to have committed us to an approval of this as well as of the Persian robbery.

“_17th Jan._—Labouchere is dead at the age of eighty, universally esteemed after a life which began in disrepute. I remember old Paddy Green, of Evans’ music hall, with whose son I had been at school at Stonyhurst, talking of him in pitying tones as ‘Loboucheer, Loboucheer, poor young man! He was always his own worst enemy.’ This was somewhere in 1861, when Labby was still looked upon as something of a greenhorn. My first acquaintance with him was of this date, when he was living at Homburg entirely in the society of whores and croupiers. He had belonged to the Frankfort Legation, where I had succeeded him, and was nominally attached to the Embassy at St. Petersburgh, but had not proceeded there (pretending he was too poor to pay his railway fare). At Frankfort he was considered too disreputable for admission into society, and I have a caricature I drew of him walking with Madame d’Usedom, the Olympia of Bismarck’s memoirs, who on one occasion had given him her countenance. It is labelled ‘The Deformed transformed,’ and was a very good likeness of him as he then was (a chubby young man with little slant eyes and pink cheeks). Later, I remember him at St. James’ Club, the house in James Street that had once been Crockford’s, boasting to all who would listen how he had bribed his way into parliament as member for Windsor. It was a short lived glory as he was at once unseated. In after years I saw much of him at his house in Queen Anne’s Gate, where I often lunched with him and his wife in the eighties and nineties, and liked him greatly. He had become one of the very few quite honest M.P.’s, who always told the truth, and was always amusing.

“_21st Jan. (Sunday)._—Newbuildings. Belloc dined with us, and gave us some good talk. The Italians have seized two French ships as carrying contraband of war, which is making a commotion in France, and may possibly lead to a stopping of the war in Tripoli. Grey has been apologizing to his constituents in the North for his Foreign policy so piteously that Belloc thinks he will resign. If so I imagine the Foreign Office would be given to Haldane as the only member of the Cabinet who knows French and German. In Ireland Carson is campaigning on the Orange platform, threatening fire and flame if Winston is allowed to speak at Belfast: ‘Ulster will fight, and Ulster will be right.’

“_30th Jan._—Chapel Street. Lunched with Winston and Clementine. He was in excellent form, and I had an interesting conversation with him about Eastern politics, his private secretary, Masterman Smith, being also there. About the Turco-Italian war I asked him which way his sympathies lay. He said, ‘I have my official sympathies, and those are strictly neutral.’ His private sympathies are clearly not Italian. ‘The Italians,’ he said, remind me of the story of the giant who went to cleave an oak in two with his sword, and who caught his hand in the cleft and was held by it, till he was eaten alive by the wild beasts in the forest. They cannot get further, and they cannot get away. They are spending a quarter of a million daily, and will be ruined before they have done. As to the Turks, it is their own fault if they come to grief. They ought to have made friends with us instead of running after Germany, which will not help them. I said, ‘They could not afford to quarrel with Germany which could have destroyed them in Roumelia, also you wanted too much.’ _He._ ‘They ought to have let us reorganize the police with English officers over them, all we wanted of them was our commercial share in the Bagdad railway.’ _I._ ‘Yes, and to stay on in Egypt.’ _He._ ‘We shall never clear out of that till the Empire breaks up.’ As he seemed inclined to listen, I propounded my alternative scheme of policy, to make alliance with Turkey against Italy and Russia. Italy could easily be dealt with by the Fleet, while Turkey would willingly help to turn the Russians out of Persia. ‘I thought,’ he said, ‘The Turks had made friends with Russia about it.’ Returning to Egypt I gave him my solution there, the English garrison to be replaced by a regiment of Turks at Cairo, and another at Alexandria, to keep order, things otherwise to go on just the same. On this basis an alliance with Turkey could be arranged. It is clear, however, from his talk that he is bitten with Grey’s anti-German policy. He said of the Germans, ‘I never could learn their beastly language, nor will I till the Emperor William comes over here with his army.’ Nevertheless Winston strikes me as being open to conversion on all these matters. Clementine talked about an act of rudeness shown to her and Winston the other day by Cambon, the French Ambassador, a trifle of no importance, except as showing that Winston also, like Grey, does not know French. We talked also about the Belfast meeting as to which I advised Clementine not to go with her husband, though the chief danger is over now as the meeting is no longer to be held in the Ulster Hall, but under a marquee in a meadow, which it would be difficult to blow up. Talking about Italy, Winston said chuckling, ‘The Italians tell us now that if Turkey won’t make peace, they will have to declare war again.’

“Browne came and gave me an account of the dinner given to Schuster yesterday, in which he had explained his doings in Persia. He has the highest opinion of Schuster, who made an admirable speech. Poor Browne is in terrible despair at it all.

“_1st Feb._—Meynell dined with me, and I have read him Margaret Sackville’s ‘Wooing of Dionysos,’ which he agreed with me in pronouncing a very first-rate poem. We also had a great discussion about Ward’s ‘Life of Newman,’ which is just out. Meynell has taken up the cudgels for Manning in the ‘Tablet,’ which has moved the Duke of Norfolk to anger.

“_6th Feb._—Sat with Rivers Wilson at his house in Berkeley Square. He has been reading my Gordon book and also ‘Egypt’s Ruin.’ He says both are very accurate, and that I have converted him on many points regarding Egypt. He told me some interesting things. First as to the origin of the famous Joint Note of 1881. [The Joint Note signed by the English and French Governments promising help to the Khedive Tewfik against Arabi and the Parliament. It was that that caused the war of 1882 and the English Occupation.] Wilson told me that it was he who suggested the idea of it to Gambetta, assuring him that the English Government would go with him. Though he did not take part in drafting the note, Gambetta sat down to draft it before he left the room, where they had been discussing it. It was to be a dead secret between the two, but Wilson told Nubar of it, who highly approved, and Nubar let it out to Blowitz, and it thus got talked of in the ‘Times.’ Gambetta was very angry with Wilson on account of it. Also he told me a number of tales about Omar Lutfi, Shahin Pasha, and others, and what scoundrels they had been, with other stories nearer home.

“_9th Feb._—Haldane has been sent on a secret mission to Berlin, well advertised in all the papers. There seems to be a real attempt at a rapprochement with Germany. If it comes to anything they will probably shift Haldane to the Foreign Office in Grey’s place. Anything will be better than Grey, though I don’t trust the other.

“_11th Feb. (Sunday)._—A young man, Borthwick, appeared with a letter of introduction from Stead. He has been in the 10th Hussars for three years in India, and since in Algeria and Morocco. He wished to consult me about a wild cat scheme he has of going to Ghadamès raising the Senussia against Italy, and driving the Italian army into the sea. I had him up to talk to me, but did not much encourage him, as I think the thing impossible of success, though of course desirable. The right strategy for the Arabs is to harass the Italians and prevent their moving inland, and not to attempt to retake the sea coast towns where the Italian army is protected by the Fleet. Belloc dined with me. He says he hears that Kitchener is considered at the F.O. to be overdoing his part at Cairo.

“_12th Feb._—I am reading Ward’s ‘Life of Newman,’ a rather dreary work, though it interests me from the many mentions it makes of persons I used to know, nor do I think the book does any good service either to Newman or the Catholic cause. The truth is, a religious life is at least as unsatisfactory as any other, and seen near at hand there is much in Newman’s which would have been better forgotten. Great men and holy men are very like other men, and there are just as many petty interests served in the Government of the Church as in other Governments. One had imagined Newman leading a life of prayer and self-sacrifice. He is shown by Ward dissatisfied with obscurity and running from one journalistic scheme to another, neither successfully nor with dignity. Human nature is human nature, whether in a convent or a palace. Newman was a great man notwithstanding, a great controversialist, and a master of English prose.

“_18th Feb. (Sunday)._—I have been a whole week in bed with influenza, and in great desolation of soul, the subject of my delirium being Grey and the Garter he had just been given, and this worried me for two days and nights. I am better to-day, and begin to see things sanely.

“_23rd Feb._—Parliament has met in London, and Grey’s Garter has provoked speculation as to coming changes in the Cabinet. They say Loreburn is to retire and let Asquith be Lord Chancellor in his place, which would secure him £10,000 a year for life; Grey to be his successor as Prime Minister, giving up the Foreign Office, for which he is incompetent, in favour of Haldane. What they want now is to pacify Germany, and Haldane is Germanophil.

“_1st March._—Things have gone badly. The coal strike has monopolized attention, and Grey has been allowed to carry on his detestable policy in Persia and Tripoli, almost unrebuked. The latest diplomatic development is an attempted combination of the European Powers to coerce Turkey into ceding Tripoli to Italy, and so making peace. So far the Turks are standing firm.

“Monsignor Stonor is dead at Rome, where he has lived all his life. I remember assisting at his first mass at Oscott how many years ago. May he rest in peace, good man: they ought to have made him a Cardinal.

“I have been nearly three weeks in bed.

“_8th March._—Chapel Street. Bendor came to see me. He has been in Egypt this winter, and brought to show me an _antika_ he had picked up there of the hawk-headed God or Goddess, which by some odd accident had been fashioned into the exact image in caricature of our good Queen Victoria. It amused him much. He is a kindly, good-humoured fellow, like a great Newfoundland puppy, much given to riotous amusements and sports, with horses, motors, and ladies. The fast life clearly suits him, for he looks a model of health and strength. He was at Sheykh Obeyd, and saw the Stud there, which he appreciates.

“_10th March (Sunday)._—Syud Mahmud called. He is going back to India in May, very much in earnest about getting his fellow-Mussulmans to oppose the Government if it refuses to take up the defence of Islam, but I fear that like all the rest his courage will ooze out of him under the influence of his native air.

“Dillon came to lunch, and stayed on talking for two hours. Home Rule he hopes to see carried through both Houses of Parliament in two years’ time (it cannot well take less), and there are many accidents that may still further delay it. If the coal strike should go on over Easter it will hang up the Home Rule Bill over the present session, and there are the suffragettes who have threatened to wreck it, or there might be a war or a revolution; otherwise all would be plain sailing now. There was no difference at all between them and the Government as to the details of the Bill.

“Then he went back to past events, and gave me a full history of Parnell’s connection with Mrs. O’Shea. Parnell, he said, as a young man, was no paragon of virtue, but his loves had not before been with married women, nor had they been serious. He met Mrs. O’Shea first at Thomas’s Hotel in Berkeley Square at a party given by the O’Gorman Mahon to some of his political friends. Justin McCarthy, who knew the O’Sheas, had introduced Parnell to her there. She was a sister of Sir Evelyn Wood. She, like her sisters, was attractive, and O’Shea took advantage of it. There is no doubt that he got money from Parnell, and that Parnell kept the establishment at Eltham going. The lady, however, was really in love with Parnell, who was a very good-looking fellow, and she gradually acquired complete dominion over him. I was quite right, Dillon told me, in supposing that she not only made him neglect his parliamentary work, but was a force hostile to his patriotism, especially to that part of it which concerned the land movement. She also encouraged him in his pride, and made mischief between him and his colleagues in the House of Commons. Hers was a disastrous influence. It ended in ruining his career, and it was she who prevented him from accepting any compromise about the Chairmanship of the party after the great scandal when he (Dillon) and O’Brien had met Parnell to talk matters over with him at Boulogne. Every day they thought they had persuaded him to agree to a temporary retirement of six months, and every evening Parnell crossed the Channel back to spend the night at Eltham and return in the morning more obstinate than ever. ‘I repeatedly promised Parnell,’ Dillon said, ‘that I would resign the Chairmanship back to him at the end of six months, indeed, I would only act as Vice-Chairman for him during his retirement, and it was he that each time he came back from Mrs. O’Shea refused all compromise.’ [_Note._—I am informed by Mrs. O’Shea’s niece, Mrs. Steele, that I was misinformed as to Parnell’s ownership of the house they lived in. Eltham Lodge was an old family residence of the Woods.]

“_15th March._—George Wyndham came to lunch with me. He complained of being tired of politics, but says that he cannot break loose from them. His ambition now is to be some day Father of the House of Commons, one he is not unlikely to achieve, for he has been twenty-three years member for Dover, and there are only four or five men with a better record, and he is still young. About his private plans he says he does not mean to have a London House, and would live entirely at Clouds. In these days all will have to live well within their incomes. Rich men are shutting up their large houses, amongst others, Plymouth, who is shutting up Hewell, and means to live all the year through at St. Fagans.

“_16th March._—This morning Margot brought her daughter Elizabeth to see me. The child is sixteen, attractive and clever, with a soft, sympathetic hand, which will help her to be loved. I had not seen Elizabeth since the day when she recited ‘Maître Corbeau’ to Coquelin ainé. She is just the nicest age now, and I am glad to have seen her before she begins going out in society.

“Later came Nellie Hozier and her mother for our midday meal, and Nellie took me to see the Futurist pictures. These, as art, are mere nonsense, the sort of things a child might make by pasting strips of coloured paper together as patchwork. They have neither design nor drawing, nor other colouring than a haphazard one, chiefly reds and yellows. One cannot assign a meaning to any of them, or even the suggestion of a meaning. Degeneracy cannot go further than this, and it is mere stupidity to talk of it as art. But we found the little rooms in Sackville Street crowded with visitors, who each had paid his shilling, while critics have been found sufficiently uncritical to treat the exhibition seriously.

“_18th March._—Abd el Ghaffar came to see me, back from Egypt ten days ago. He gives a bad report of things; the National party without a capable leader and split into factions, each with its separate newspaper. Farid has lost his political credit. The Hesb el Ahali, or Party of the People, is now beginning to take the National Party’s place. Its principle is to trust to England to give some sort of a Constitution and make Egypt entirely independent of the Porte. If England could be trusted to do this, and Egypt could become strong enough to defend herself against other European aggression, the policy might be a good one, but such trust and such hope are mere delusions. The connection between Egypt and the Ottoman Empire is the only possible chance Egypt has of escaping permanent subjection to Europe, and, slender though that chance is, I will not abandon it for the other, which is no chance at all. Abd el Ghaffar tells me that he has learned on the authority of Rushdi Pasha, Minister for Foreign Affairs at Cairo, that there have been negotiations between the English Government and the Porte for a cession of the Cyrenaica to the Khedivial possessions.

“_21st March._—There is talk of further troubles in Europe, possible war between France and Spain about Morocco, and a reported secret treaty between Italy and Russia against Turkey. [Compare Dr. Dillon’s ‘Eclipse of Russia.’]

“The coal strike is in a worse state than ever, as Asquith’s proposed legislation has been repudiated by the Labour Party, and Arthur Balfour is to lead the Tory Party against it. There is a probability of a prolonged crisis.

“Two young Indian Mohammedans lunched with me, Syud Mahmud (as before) and Syud Hussein, the latter the grandson of my old friend Nawab Abdul Latif, of Calcutta. There has come about a split among the Mohammedans of India owing to recent events. The Agha Khan has resigned the presidency of the All India Moslem League, a body of timid folk loyal to the British connection, and has declared himself for common action with the Hindoo Progressives. The principal cause of this is the connivance of our Government with the Italians and Russians in Tripoli and Persia, and Syud Mahmud tells me our little paper ‘Egypt’ has helped in effecting this. They are beginning to see that it is only the pressure that can be put on the Government by India that can change Grey’s treacherous policy. The Indian Mohammedans in London, numbering 250, intend to make a demonstration in this sense, and they will do well. Ameer Ali has lost what little influence among them remained to him.

“_23rd March._—Browne and his wife lunched with me, and Desmond MacCarthy. Browne very despondent about the East, as he is right in being.

“_24th March (Sunday)._—Dillon came to lunch. He says that during the last few days the Asquith Cabinet has been on the verge of a break up over the coal strike, and that the country is menaced with revolution. There is to be a new conference between miners and mine owners to- morrow. If it fails there will be a general industrial collapse. The miners demand a minimum wage, but if the Government embody this in their Bill it will open the door to a system of minimum wages for every class of labour, and to this Dillon is strongly opposed as an extreme form of Socialism, while a continuance of the strike will so delay things in Parliament that it will be impossible to get the Home Rule Bill through this session. He thinks all the same that a settlement will be reached to-morrow. Should it be otherwise and should Ireland by this accident lose her opportunity, I must say that it will in some measure serve Redmond and the Irish Parliamentary Party right. Ever since they made their compact with Asquith two years ago the Irish in Parliament have identified their fortunes with the English Whigs, abetting them in all their Imperial misdeeds, and treating Grey’s alliances with the French in Morocco, the Russians in Persia, and the Italians in Tripoli, as pleasing to Irish ideas. It has been a disgraceful betrayal of the cause of liberty, and it will be no more than justice if in aiding our diplomatic jugglery abroad they lose their own chance of freedom at home. Dillon alone of all the Irish members has so far preserved his integrity, but even he has come to regard the retention of Egypt as a necessary part of British interests, and I have been unable to get him to ask questions involving an attack on Kitchener, who he thinks will be recalled some day, when the revolution at home has been followed by a reaction, to play the part here of military dictator.

“_26th March._—The Conference with the miners has failed, and anything now may happen, from a general breakdown of trade to a revolution. The trains are ceasing many of them to run and I am going back to Newbuildings, where we can better stand a siege than here.

“_27th March._—Lunched at the Duchess of St. Albans’, where I found a large party, her son-in-law Lord Richard Cavendish, Lord Grey, young Baird, M.P., who is Bonar Law’s private secretary, Garvin, and others—an extreme Tory assemblage, discussing their plans, of which Garvin is just now the inventor and chief prophet. Garvin began as an Irish Fenian writer on the ‘United Ireland,’ but has gravitated to the position he now occupies of ultra anti-Home Rule Editor of the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ and the ‘Observer.’ He asked me what my view was of the situation. I said, ‘I take my views every afternoon from the “Pall Mall Gazette,” and every Sunday morning from the “Observer.”’

“They have rushed a Miners’ Wages Bill in twenty-four hours through both Houses.

“_29th March._—Kaiser Wilhelm seems to have stopped the nonsense of Russia’s joint action with Italy against Turkey. He met the King of Italy at Venice two days ago and probably told him not to be such an ass.

“_31st March._—Belloc and Chesterton dined with me, Belloc complaining terribly of the fast from liquor he has been maintaining during Lent and to-day is Palm Sunday. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘if you want to see a really happy man you should come to me on Easter Monday afternoon.’ He consoled himself at dinner with a sad lemonade, but talked all the more brilliantly for it. He admits now that he made a mistake about the coal strike in predicting the miners would win. Asquith, he says, has been too astute for them. He amused them by his Miners’ Minimum Wage Act, over which they lost their time and spent their money, and now he has them in his hands.

“_6th April._—Newbuildings. Belloc tells me the miners are very angry with their leaders, especially in the north of England, and thinks there will be riots. Fortunately these things do not affect us here in Sussex (where we have not a single mine or factory).

“I have been reading Eversley’s ‘Gladstone in Ireland’—a good and useful book which gives the public facts fairly. But history written as this is under the House of Commons restrictions of suppressing private conversations and refraining from assigning private motives for public action cannot be satisfactory. How futile to go on representing Parnell’s neglect of his public duties to ill-health instead of to its true cause, Mrs. O’Shea, or Hartington’s implacable opposition to Home Rule to anything but his brother’s assassination. Yet there is no hint of either of these veracities in Eversley’s book. All the same the book is a good one, and its writer was a good friend to me at the time of my trial at Portumna, the only man in Parliament with a front bench position who had the courage to support me there.

“_13th April._—Farid writes from Constantinople, whither he has fled from Cairo to avoid arrest and perhaps four years imprisonment for a speech made at a general meeting of the National Party. I think he is quite right to have made this _hegira_, as he can be of more use at Constantinople, and the present régime at Cairo against which it is useless to struggle until the Ottoman Empire is in a position to insist. It appears that Saad Zaghloul has resigned at Cairo, having refused to prosecute Farid.

“_14th April (Sunday)._—Young Borthwick came again to talk about his scheme of joining the Turks in Tripoli. It has developed now into the idea of fitting up an old man-of-war with which to land artillery somewhere on the coast. Of this the Turkish Embassy in London approves. He has an old connection with Turkey through his father, who was in the Ottoman service, and went through the campaign of Plevna, and he himself was born at Constantinople. He is also nephew to the Borthwick of the ‘Morning Post,’ a good looking, active young fellow, who knows Arabic, having lived, he tells me, for a year in a village in Oran, and having accompanied the French expedition to Fez. He gave me a detailed account of the rogueries that go on officially in Algeria from the Governor- General downwards. Borthwick’s business in Algeria was to buy land for an English company, and thus he became acquainted with the way in which things are done there. The French officials in charge of large districts get only 200 francs a month pay, and are allowed to make what money they can out of the Arabs; the taxes are farmed out, and the officials make a profit by lending money on usury to the Arab landowners to enable them to pay the rates imposed (£4 a year is the rate for each plough), and then to foreclose, and get possession of the land. It is a settled policy of the French Government to get rid of the native population, and replace it with Europeans. The officials all go away more or less rich, and the Governors-General amass fortunes. Borthwick is of opinion that if the Turks can get artillery enough to do it, they may drive the Italians into the sea at Tripoli, and that then the whole of native North Africa will rise in Tunis and Algeria as well as in Morocco. The plan is an adventurous one, and he is aware that he is running a great risk. He has been three years in India serving in a cavalry regiment and left it four years ago. I advised him as a first step to go to Constantinople, and see what help he could get there. He came to me from Stead, who had suggested to him that I might help him to get the money necessary.

“_16th April._—There has been an astonishing disaster at sea, the _Titanic_, the largest vessel ever built, wrecked in mid Atlantic by collision with an iceberg. It was her first voyage, and she was carrying over 1,000 passengers to New York, many of them millionaires. Most of the women and children seem to have been put in boats and picked up by a passing steamer, but the rest have perished, over 1,000 souls, including the ship’s company. Among them is Stead, about whom I was talking to Borthwick last Sunday, the very day of the wreck. He was on his way on some newspaper business, and was to have written a sensational account of the voyage. I cannot say I ever liked or respected Stead, he was too much of a _charlatan_. It is impossible that a man who has made himself the agent of the Russian autocracy, who has intrigued for the restoration of the ex-Khedive Ismaïl, and who has been named by Cecil Rhodes executor of his will, all the while calling himself a friend of liberty, can have been quite honest. The Irish always refused to trust him, and they were right. Still one cannot help feeling a pang at so appalling an end. One thing is consoling in these great disasters, the proof given that Nature is not quite yet the slave of Man, but is able to rise even now in her wrath and destroy him. Also if any large number of human beings could be better spared than another it would be just these American millionaires with their wealth and insolence.

“_20th April._—Newbuildings. There has been a demonstration of bombarding the Dardanelles by the Italians, a childish and cowardly proceeding, the ships opening fire at 8,000 yards, and firing 342 shots without any result whatever.

“_21st April (Sunday)._—I have been reading Davitt’s book, the ‘Fall of Feudalism,’ an interesting bit of Irish history, though a stupid title, also Barry O’Brien’s ‘Life of Parnell.’ The Turco-Italian war drags on, but is beginning to get on the English commercial nerves, the passage of mercantile ships having been blocked through the Dardanelles by the Italian attack. Nearly all our newspapers now lay the blame of the war on Italy, even those which have hitherto been most in Italy’s favour.

“_30th April._—Miss Frances Jennings appeared here this morning with her donkey and van in which she has been travelling since the beginning of the month, and I have established her and them in the goat field. Hers is a forlorn and uncomfortable existence, though being entirely out of doors she is happy, and though she is still partly paralyzed, and unable to walk or stand up except on crutches, she manages to harness her donkey, and lift herself into the cart, and she travels absolutely alone. She is naturally of a very fair complexion, and she is much sunburnt, going bare-headed and wearing her hair in long plaits. Her dress is of coarse green woollen stuff, her legs cased in huge pilot boots. She has no mattress to lie on, or other bed than some sheep skins, and a bit of eider-down quilt, but she says she can sleep all night and more, twelve hours at a stretch. It is difficult to say whether she is in her right mind or not. One would say not, except that her talk, though strange, is quite reasonable; it ripples perpetually on in a very sweet voice, broken with little waves of laughter, describing things she has seen and the small adventures of her life. We had our tea with her in the meadow, and have lent her books, for she has none with her. She lies all day on the ground, or sits in her van, which is very small and low, with an oil cloth hood. For her meals she crawls about gathering sticks to make a fire and hang a little pot for cocoa, but she cooks nothing in the way of meat, eating bread and herbs, docks, and nettles, which she finds close by. Hers is an entirely defenceless life, except for her power of talk and her appearance of utter guilelessness, but she is only twenty-six, and sufficiently attractive I should say to run some risk at the hands of drunken roughs. Her chief fear, however, she tells us is of slugs, and possible snakes crawling over her at night. I have advised her, since she intends to travel all through the summer, to go north to Holywell, and bathe at St. Winifred’s shrine, but she says she has too little faith, though she became a Catholic some few years ago, but I have told her that faith is not necessary there for a cure, witness my own.[9]

“_2nd May._—Drove with Miss Lawrence to Reigate Priory, where we lunched with the Somersets. Lady Katherine is pleasant and very like her brother Osborne Beauclerk, with just his way of talking and asking questions. (I had not seen them since they came to see us at Sheykh Obeyd on their honeymoon tour.) I like both of them, and found the house most interesting, with gardens, and grounds, the prettiest in Surrey.

“_3rd May._—The ‘Times’ announces that our paper ‘Egypt,’ has been forbidden entrance circulation and sale at Cairo, its articles ‘disturbing public order.’ This is doubtless Kitchener’s doing. I have protested in a letter to the ‘Times,’ and am also writing to Grey. Dillon is unfortunately away in Dublin, and the other Irish members are too closely pinned to the Government to help us much in Parliament. The Italians have seized Rhodes.

“Miss Jennings, who is still here, tells me she spent two years in a room entirely occupied in watching the fire, and that she kept a diary of what she saw there. Then another year watching the sea, now her diary is about the people she meets on her country wanderings. Those she likes best on the roads are the blacksmiths. She tells me they are always kind. We had her in to a dinner of roast beef, which she enjoyed, having been carried indoors by one of the stable helps, and is now sitting by the fire. She is to go on to-morrow in the direction of St. Winifred’s well.

“_7th May._—Syud Mahmud came down to wish me good-bye before going back to India, a most excellent young man, the very best Moslem in London—what will become of him?

“_9th May._—Chapel Street. Dillon is back for the second reading of the Home Rule Bill to-night. He expects no difficulty about its becoming law in two years, barring accidents. There are three rocks ahead of the Government—Welsh Disestablishment, the Insurance Act, and I forget the third (War?). Else all is plain sailing. He thinks Grey contemplates a great coup in Egypt, certainly the abolition of the Capitulations.

“_12th May (Sunday)._—Newbuildings. Baron Marschall von Bieberstein has arrived as German Ambassador in London.

“_14th May._—Old May Day. Caffin calls it St. May, a name for it I never heard before.

“_19th May (Sunday)._—Dillon has put a whole sheaf of questions about the prohibition of ‘Egypt,’ and has got from Grey that he accepts the responsibility of it. He has ‘personally satisfied himself as to the contents of the paper, and that though it may not contain any direct incitement to disturbance, he is of opinion that it might cause disturbance, that Kitchener has written to him on the subject, in fine, that he will not give us his protection, and declines to lay papers.’

“The Turkish garrison in Rhodes has had to surrender. Two thousand three hundred regulars, through lack apparently of food, for there has been no fighting. There is prospect now of a European Congress which is certain to be hostile to the Ottoman Empire and Mohammedan interests.

“_20th May._—I have been reading Crispi’s Memoirs, dull stuff, most of it, but there is a chapter at the end giving important documents which show that as long ago as 1890 Lord Salisbury made a secret engagement with the Italian Government, allowing its seizure of Tripoli as a counterpoise to French naval power in the Mediterranean, also that at that date the Italians had begun to intrigue with Hassuna Karamanli, and that he had assured them he could command the hill tribes of Jebel Gharian, who were tired of their connection with Turkey, and would welcome an Italian Occupation. This explains much that has been doubtful, though of course I long ago suspected it.

“_26th May (Whit-Sunday)._—Newbuildings. Abdul Ghaffar is here, a very excellent young fellow, serious, and without any nonsense or exaggeration, accurate, and well-informed. He has been three years at St. John’s College, Oxford, and talked about Oxford affairs well with Belloc. His father is a large fellah proprietor at Tola, in the Delta, and he is an excellent specimen of his race, quite unspoiled by his English education.

“Kitchener is clamouring for reinforcements at Cairo, and for the stationing of a British man-of-war at Alexandria. He is to meet Asquith and Winston at Malta to discuss Mediterranean matters. It looks very much as if they were meditating a _coup_ of some kind in Egypt, and I remember Winston’s words to me last year, ‘You must not quarrel with me if I annex Egypt.’

“_31st May._—The newspapers are full of the meeting at Malta to which Winston and Clementine have gone with Nellie Hozier in the Admiralty yacht to meet Kitchener, Asquith too.”

[It was on this occasion that our people came to the decision of getting the French Navy to police the Mediterranean, while the English Navy should keep the North Sea and English Channel for the French in the event of a war with Germany, thus enabling them to make a definite promise to the French Government of help by land in a war with Germany. It was on this occasion, too, that Winston, abandoning his long feud with Kitchener, made friends with him to Egypt’s detriment.]

“The war in the Mediterranean drags on, the Italian Fleet making a round of the Ægean and seizing the islands. The Arabs of Southern Morocco have at last risen against the French. They are stalwart men, but quite unorganized as soldiers. They have proclaimed a new Sultan in place of Mulai Hafiz, abdicated, and may give the French trouble.

“_2nd June (Sunday)._—I hear from Paris that there are several Orientals recently arrived there from India with a plot to assassinate Grey, as also Kitchener, but it is not likely to come to anything. Things in the Mediterranean are more mixed than ever. The Italian Fleet has occupied most of the Turkish islands, the idea being to get Europe to force the Turks to make peace.

“Kitchener’s meeting with Asquith and Churchill at Malta is really an important one, as they will have to settle between them what is to be our Mediterranean policy. Some want an alliance offensive and defensive with France, others peace with Germany. It will end in the Mediterranean being left to the Mediterranean Powers. Then we shall leave Egypt, holding on only to the Soudan, but this will not take place yet for some years.

“McCullagh has written a quite admirable book, ‘Italy’s War for a Desert.’ I am reviewing it in ‘Egypt.’

“_23rd June (Sunday)._—Dillon is here for the week-end, and we have been talking over past Irish history.’ [All very interesting, but I have given most of it in my ‘Land War in Ireland.’] I drove him this afternoon to the top of Chanclebury with my Arab team. We came back from the Ring by Dial Post in an hour and thirty-five minutes, having driven there by Broomer’s Corner in a little over two hours, good going.

“_24th June._—The Bellocs came to dinner last night. Belloc and Dillon had much talk, but they proved not very sympathetic, the one being essentially serious, the other as essentially unserious.

“With Dillon I had a talk before he went away, he giving me an account of the Kilmainham treaty, and Parnell’s dealings with Gladstone in connection with the Phœnix Park assassinations [matters which I need not repeat here, as they have been fully dealt with elsewhere].

“_4th July._—Reuter announces the discovery of a plot to assassinate Kitchener, the Khedive, and the Prime Minister, Mohammed Saïd. Four Nationalists arrested.

“_5th July._—A young Egyptian, Abdul Halim Alaili (brother to the other Alaili), professed partisan of the Khedive, was here to-day, whose apologist he made himself, defending him from the charge of unpatriotic action in the war of which Egypt had accused him. ‘Instead,’ he said, ‘of joining Kitchener against the Ottoman Government, Abbas has secretly helped to facilitate the passage of Turkish officers through Egypt on their way to the Tripolitan frontier, as well as the introduction of arms into the Cyrenaica, nobody in reality was so patriotic or hated Kitchener more. Abbas would willingly abdicate, but who was there to take his place? In four years his son would be of age, then Abbas would retire. The Khedive was quite ready, he said, to grant a Constitution, but Kitchener would not allow it. Abdul Halim gave us an account of the Khedive’s visit to Windsor. According to this the Khedive represented to King George the danger to Egypt involved in the seizure of the Ægean Islands, and that the English Government ought to intervene in favour of Turkey, but the King said that ever since the revolution at Constantinople, the Turks had refused to follow English advice. They could not intervene now without a quarrel with Italy. This is just what Churchill told me, so doubtless it is true. The Khedive, Abdul Halim says, was received with honour this year in Constantinople, and had had some sort of mission, when he came to England, to bring about a _rapprochement_ between the two Governments. Belloc, who is very anti- Turk, declares that he knows it to be true, that the German, Austrian, and Russian Governments have come to an agreement for partitioning the Ottoman Empire.

“There has always been a danger of this sort, but I doubt its being nearer now than a year ago, anyhow England could not prevent it, and her friendship for Turkey would not amount to much more than preventing Arabia from being meddled with by the European Powers, and making herself protector of the Caliphate.

“I asked the young Egyptians about the reported plot at Cairo. They consider it probable as against Kitchener. Indeed, how could it be otherwise. He has played the despot there and governed by despotic methods, but they knew no details.

“_10th July._—Two Spanish Americans were here to-day to see the horses, the one Pereira from Buenos Aires, the other from Uruguay. I was interested to find them both very pious Catholics, who had been quite lately at Rome, and had had private audience of the Pope, of whom they gave exactly the same description as I have heard from others, declaring him to be a Saint who works miracles. His Holiness had been seen by one of his suite in a state of ecstasy, floating some feet above the ground, and they told the tale of a North American, a Protestant, who coming with his Catholic wife and daughter to Rome, had been converted. The daughter (she was still a child) had been afflicted with an eruption on her face, which disfigured her to the extent that her eyes were hardly visible, and when she went out of doors she had constantly to wear a veil. She had insisted with her parents upon being taken to Rome, where she said the Pope would cure her. They had obtained an audience, a public one, with many others, the child attending it veiled, and the father had besought the Pope to bless her, and the Pope had put his hand upon her head, promising she should be cured. When the audience was over the father had pulled off the veil, and behold, the child’s face was whole. Whereupon the father, as was the way with North Americans, had purchased the largest photographic portrait he could find of the Pope, and had had it framed in silver. When they left Rome he had taken four places in the train, the fourth seat being occupied by the portrait, which he declared he would travel with through the world, proclaiming the miracle.

“_11th July._—Anniversary of the Bombardment of Alexandria, thirty years ago to-day, and there is no sign of repentance in this country. I am the only person left who remembers that abominable event and still protests. Margot had chosen to-day for her garden party in Downing Street, and a card of invitation had been sent to me, but, of course, I did not go. Precautions have to be taken against the Suffragettes, who come on these occasions to knock Asquith about.

“_12th July._—Bad news from Constantinople. Shefket Pasha has resigned the Grand Viziership, and there is talk of Kiamil succeeding him as Grand Vizier and making a disgraceful peace with Italy.

“_19th July._—There is a general change of Ministry at Constantinople. Kiamil is to be made Minister of Foreign Affairs under Tewfik Pasha as Grand Vizier. If true it will mean a triumph for English intrigue and a disaster for Turkey. Kiamil would betray Egypt to England, and probably agree to base terms of peace with Italy. There has been a new Italian attack on the Dardanelles, this time by torpedo boats, two of which are said to have been sunk.

“_21st July (Sunday)._—Drove Belloc to Steyning, where we had tea with Mackarness. We found Gokhale there, who exhorted me to use my influence with Indian Mohammedans to get them to join the Hindoos in working for self-government. I have, of course, been doing this for a long time. I reminded Gokhale of my advice to him four years ago to put a couple of bombs in his pocket when he went to see Morley at the India Office. The reminiscence shocked him, for he is a timid man, and terribly afraid of being thought an extremist, especially in presence of Mackarness and his fellow judge, Lord Coleridge, and his language in answer was very demure. He is in favour of a Trans-Persian railway, he told us, because it would put the Indian Moslems in close touch with their co- religionists in Afghanistan and Persia, and give them more progressive ideas perhaps; but it will be a danger for India some day, and I exhorted him to waste no time in bringing Indian self-government forward in view of the coming collapse of the British Empire. He did not seem to realize this as a thing to be provided against, though it is the real chief factor of the situation. My last word to Gokhale on going away was: ‘Above all don’t be too moderate.’

“_23rd July._—Winston has made his expected speech, a regular Imperialist manifesto, which will delight the Tories and accentuate the quarrel with Germany.

“_24th July._—Newbuildings. An important _communiqué_ by Grey has been published in the ‘Westminster Gazette,’ taking for its text some words of mine. It denies categorically that Grey either consented to or approved of the Italian raid on Tripoli.”

[Nevertheless it is quite certain that our Foreign Office did approve of the raid, though probably not in any written form. Its complicity after the fact, at any rate, is proveable in two ways. (1) by the fact that Rennell Rodd, our Ambassador at Rome, though according to official accounts he knew nothing of the raid until it had taken place, an ignorance and neglect of duty which must have brought on him official blame, so far from being punished was rewarded and confirmed in his post at Rome, where he is still Ambassador; and (2) Kitchener, who at Cairo had helped the Italian Government in Egypt, with the complicity of the Foreign Office, by preventing the passage of Ottoman troops through the Nile Valley, was entertained on his return home through Italy at a complimentary dinner, where he was hailed as Italy’s best friend and ally. The truth is that Italy was allowed to invade Tripoli without our disapproval at the Foreign Office as part of Grey’s policy of detaching Italy from the German alliance in favour of the Ententes, which were gradually becoming a coalition. In this he succeeded four years later.]

“_27th July._—George Wyndham writes that in consequence of Winston’s Mediterranean speech, which he ‘admires and respects,’ he is quite willing to meet him at my house (a meeting he has hitherto refused), and proposes October 18th for a shooting visit.

“_28th July (Sunday)._—My letter headed ‘Grey and Tripoli’ is in yesterday’s ‘Westminster.’

“To Meynell’s at Greatham, where I met young Padraic Colum honeymooning with his bride, Molly Maguire, a red-haired Celtic girl, whom he married last week. Colum is an intelligent, eager little man, with much simplicity of character, mixed with practical good sense. I like them both.

“_30th July._—I have given up my house in Chapel Street.

“_1st Aug._—Newbuildings. Padraic Colum and his bride spent the day here. They intend to live at Dublin, where he has journalistic work.

“_7th Aug._—Called on Lady C., who told me curious details about Kitchener’s private life. She tells me that the plot against him at Cairo was a very serious one. A great deal, she says, is talked of his popularity in Egypt. He is really disliked, and seems to think that his position there is insecure.

“Cockerell dined with me. He is very busy just now looking after a bequest made to his Fitzwilliam Museum by an old millionaire, Marlay, who died the other day. This will be our last dinner in Chapel Street.” [I had sold my house, or what they call selling it, paying £100 to resign the remainder of the lease, as part of my resolve to retire altogether from the world for my hermitage in Sussex. I have never since been in London, even for the day.]

“_9th Aug._—Philip Napier came to luncheon, just back from Egypt. He is not enthusiastic about Kitchener. Thinks him more feared than loved. Also Goumah writes pessimistically from Cairo.