Chapter XI: General Trouble in Eastern Europe (2)

“_13th Aug._—Newbuildings. Old Evershed, my former tenant here, is dying, and I went to see him at his cottage on Dragon’s Green. He is eighty-six years old, as fine a type as could be found of the old- fashioned West Sussex farmer, one more distinguished than one sees in East Sussex. He held this farm of me forty years ago (and moved afterwards to Baker’s over the way); an excellent farmer and a hard worker, but hampered with the misfortune of a mad wife, whom he was too kind to send to a hospital, and kept for many years at home, and thus was unable to save money, and now in old age finds himself too poor to carry on his business. He would not borrow money, and for the last half dozen years has retired into a little cottage of mine, his wife being at last dead, and is looked after by a girl. I found him very tidy there in a clean shirt lying in bed, complaining of nothing, but perplexed at small money troubles. A curious episode in his life is that as a young man he was tempted away to Australia to dig gold at the time of the gold fever there, but he made nothing of it, and came back to his Sussex farming quite unchanged by his experience, a good and honourable man, of a finer breed than can easily be found.

“_17th Aug._—I entered my seventy-third year to-day.

“_23rd Aug._—Patrick Butler, who is here, tells me that everybody in India among the military men is aghast at the plan of a Trans-Persian railway from the Caspian; also that the transfer of the new capital to Delhi is disapproved. They have no great opinion of Hardinge as Governor-General. Butler has been quite unexpectedly ordered home from India to the depôt in Ireland. They are in want of Catholic officers there in view of the threatened rebellion in Ulster. Most of the officers of the garrison at the Curragh would sympathize too much with the rebel Ulstermen.

“_2nd Sept._—We have just finished reading Balzac’s great series of romances, ‘Illusions Perdus,’ ‘Splendeurs et Misères,’ and ‘Vautrin.’ They are the most wonderful of all his work, and show him the Shakespeare of novelists without any real competitor worthy of even a second place. In it he runs through the whole gamut of civilized human nature from the highest to the lowest note, and his women are equal to his men. That is what distinguishes him from our own novel writers with whom we compare him, from Scott and Thackeray, who was his special imitator, down to Meredith.

“_14th Sept._—My ‘Land War in Ireland’ is published. The moment is very opportune as the anti-Home Rule campaign is once more in full swing. The Government has lost the Midlothian seat, and people are beginning to talk after all of the Bill not going through. Belloc declares it will be abandoned, and Churchill has made a speech at Dundee forecasting a multiplicity of Parliaments in the United Kingdom. I have been reading a most amusing book, ‘The Red Hand of Ulster,’ which has done more than anything yet written to popularize Protestant Ireland. It has made the Orangemen interesting—even to me. I must say it will serve Redmond right if the Bill collapses, seeing the cowardice he and his party have shown, Dillon only excepted, in abandoning the cause of India, Persia, and Egypt, and backing up Grey and the Whigs in all their iniquitous doings abroad in payment for Irish Home Rule. It will serve them right if they are choused out of their thirty pieces of silver after all. As far as the larger world of Asia is concerned it will be no great misfortune, seeing that the Irish Parliamentary Party has gone over soul and body to our execrable Whig Government and richly deserves its discomfiture. It is time I should cease to worry myself with the world’s ways and the ways of the British Empire and the ways of Ireland.

“_15th Sept._—George Wyndham writes a long letter from Clouds, describing a visit he has just paid to Cockermouth Castle. It reminds me of by-gone times when Francis and I stayed there some fifty years ago with Percy and Madeline, George’s parents, when they first married. My recollection of it is of an ancient stone fortress, rough and unfurnished, without covering to the stone walls, and with curious mediæval conveniences still in use, amongst others one projecting from the castle wall, which had a clear drop of perhaps a hundred feet down into the Derwent river below. I remember, too, how one day being out shooting in a covert below the castle, a cock pheasant which had been winged and had fallen beyond the river, which is there very wide and swift, deliberately took to the water and swam across the river back to its own side. We went once or twice to shoot grouse on Skiddaw, but there was more walking than sport. George, in his letters, talks of himself as being now a country squire, with the prospect of ‘conceivably being Minister of War, when his side comes into power again.’

“_20th Sept._—The papers announce a visit to be paid to the King at Balmoral by the Russian Minister of Foreign affairs, Sazonoff, Grey, and Kitchener, a black combination. Belloc declares positively that the Home Rule Bill is to be abandoned and it really looks like it. My ‘Land War’ has so far been very well received, and yesterday there was a laudatory review of it in the ‘Nation.’ It is probably the last prose work I shall publish, though there may be more than one posthumous volume of my diaries.

“_22nd Sept. (Sunday)._—Dr. Renner, a quite black West African from Sierra Leone, is here for the week-end, having been brought by Miss Howsin, an M.D. who is interested in the future of his race, and looks to Islam as the best means to its salvation in Africa, though not himself a Mohammedan. He talks no native language, and his mastery of English is very imperfect, though he is a well-educated man. His name, he tells us, in the Fanti tongue is Aouna. He gets £550 a year as chief of the Native Medical Staff at Sierra Leone, but complains that Englishmen are now being appointed to supersede the native doctors.

“_25th Sept._—General Marschall von Bieberstein is dead, a great misfortune for Turkey, whose sincere friend he was. The shadows are darkening over the East.

“_29th Sept. (Sunday)._—The Bellocs to dinner and Somers Cocks, the latter just back from Berlin, where he says the Emperor William directs all his own diplomacy himself.

“_3rd Oct._—Another very lovely day. In the afternoon we made a round, gathering crab apples and choke pears, of which there is an immense abundance this year such as never before seen. The pears are excellent, stewed with blackberries and clotted cream, better than garden pears, and the crabs do well for the goats. The hips and haws this year are astonishing, and every kind of berry. We filled the American cart with our spoils—a real pleasure.

“_4th Oct._—It is all over I fear with Turkey and the Mohammedan world. The long intrigue against it seems to have prevailed, and the papers to- day announce that peace is made with Italy on the Italian terms. The way in which the end has been obtained has been through stirring up the Balkan States to the point of war. Until yesterday I still hoped that the Turkish Government would elect to fight against these rather than yield to threats, but the Ottoman citadel has already been betrayed, and the Jew, Kiamil Pasha, has played into the joint hands of the English and Russian Foreign Offices, and the disgraceful terms have been agreed to. Nothing can now save Islam from its doom of subjection to the will of Christendom and its ultimate destruction. Egypt’s cause too is lost, with that of the Ottoman Empire. I shall trouble myself with Oriental futures no further, being impotent either to advise or control, I ‘roll up the map of Islam.’

“_8th Oct._—Montenegro has declared war on Turkey. [This was the first act of the Balkan War.]

“_10th Oct._—The war news is confirmed and fighting has begun in Albania. There seems no doubt now that Bulgaria and Servia will join in the fray, though the Austrian Government is trying to stop it. I am somewhat consoled by it, for though it may be the beginning of the end for Turkey in Europe, it will be better for Islam that the Empire should die sword in hand than that it should be cheated out of existence by our diplomacy. War gives at least a chance. Not that I have much hope of a victorious ending, for the concert of Europe will prevent that; still a chance there is. Abdul Ghaffar agrees with me in this. He also announces an intention by our Government to give a Constitutional Government to Egypt, a sham one, of course, but it is to be called a _Mejliss el Nawab_. Abdul Ghaffar is an excellent fellow, with a closer understanding of English ideas than I have found in any Egyptian, yet without loss to his patriotism.

“_13th Oct. (Sunday)._—Newbuildings. Terence arrived here from Pekes with his friend Percy Fielding. He tells me it is quite certain that the German Government intended to buy Tobruk, on the Tripolitan coast, from the Sultan, and that that had been the cause of the sudden decision of the Italian Government to seize Tripoli. It has been said often, and often denied, but he tells me it is quite true. As to present affairs in the Cyrenaica, he says that if the Turks conclude a peace with Italy, Enver Bey will proclaim himself Sultan, and will be acknowledged as such by the Senussia, but the Ottoman Sultan Caliphate will lose all prestige in Africa. The Italians are hated in Tunis both by Arabs and French, and the war has made France almost popular. The Italians might have conciliated the Tripolitans but for the massacres. Now they are hated and despised, hated because they are known to have intended to dispossess the Arabs of their lands, despised because they are cowards, and also because they are willing to work for less wages than the Arabs will take. They are of the dregs of Europe.

“_16th Oct._—Peace has been signed at Ouchy between Italy and Turkey on disgraceful terms to Turkey. What will now happen I imagine is that, the Italian end being gained, England and Russia will put pressure on the Sultan to agree also to the loss of Macedonia. Without some extraordinary manifestation by the Turks of military power, of which so far there is no sign, the Ottoman Empire is ruined. This preys upon my mind. Egypt will now be permanently enslaved to Europe.

“_17th Oct._—Worth Forest. We drove here in the afternoon to get ready for our _ouverture de la chasse_ on Saturday, when George Wyndham, Mark Napier, Winston Churchill, and perhaps Beauclerk are up to celebrate with me the completion of the new Manor House, with a deer drive in the Upper Forest. The bucks are beginning to bell, and we heard them in the night, which was clear with a half moon. When we were here last week young Henry Blunt, who had been here to see me, and was bicycling back, was confronted with a buck in one of the forest paths, which disputed the way with him. This frightened him so that he did not get back till half-past nine. He will have to do better than that with the lions and rhinoceroses of Uganda, whither he is about to emigrate.

“_18th Oct._—George arrived in the afternoon, and we spent a pleasant evening together talking about Ireland and my book, the ‘Land War.’ He told me that it was certainly true that if things had gone a little differently at the 1885 elections, Lord Salisbury would have given some form of Home Rule, also that there was no choice now but either to treat Ireland exactly as so many English counties, or give Home Rule on the model of Canada.

“_19th Oct._—This has been a great day. Mark arrived at ten in glorious sunshine, and we made a long beat for deer in the upper Forest without result, however, as far as getting a buck was concerned, though we flushed several woodcocks. Clementine joined us at one, and walked with us in the afternoon’s shooting, but Winston not till tea-time. Then he at once began a political discussion with George which was both amusing and enlightening, and went on with occasional breaks through dinner and till midnight. It was a fine night, and we dined in the bungalow, dressed in gorgeous Oriental garments. Clementine in a suit of embroidered silk, purchased last year in Smyrna, Winston in one of my Bagdad robes, George in a blue dressing gown, and I in my Bedouin clothes, Mark adorned only with his wit, but that was of the best. It recalled the most glorious night’s entertainments of the Crabbet Club, a true feast of reason and flow of bowl. The secrets of the Cabinet were gloriously divulged, and those of the Opposition front benches no less, from Home Rule to a reconstruction of the House of Lords by common accord after George Curzon and Asquith had been got rid of, while George Wyndham declared with great oaths that he would rather go to hell than see the British Constitution made ridiculous by single Chamber Government, at which point I left them for my bed. Winston was very brilliant in all this, as though he kept on at the Madeira he also kept his head, and played with George’s wild rushes like a skilled fencer with a greatly superior fence. He is certainly an astonishing young man, and has gained immensely within the last two years in character and intellectual grip; also he is in more vigorous health now that he has left the Home Office for the Admiralty, where he is able to spend most of his time on board the _Enchantress_, the Admiralty 3,000 ton yacht, which he makes his home.

“Among the many things discussed was that of the coming European war and the chances of a German invasion. This, Winston declared, could be easily effected on the east coast where it would certainly be the German game to land 20,000 men so as to make a diversion and prevent our helping the French with an English contingent. He said the idea of the Fleet being a sufficient safeguard was entirely out of date, and without a strong army there was no safety. He also believed in the coming of a war in which we shall be involved in order to prevent France being overpowered by Germany, and forced into an alliance against us. He has a great belief in submarine warfare as the weapon of the future and is pushing that branch of the service on all he can. He is to go on Monday to Sheerness to witness trials of artillery and he described the prodigious effect of the new explosives. He is enthusiastic about his naval work, but I know too little about military affairs, either by sea or land, to appreciate the whole of his talk, and I was tired with the shooting and so cannot do justice to the wonderful evening it has been.

“_20th Oct. (Sunday)._—Another day of excellent talk. Cockerell came for luncheon and to spend the afternoon, and Winston told us admirable stories of his experience as Home Secretary and of how it had become a nightmare to him the having to exercise his power of life and death in the case of condemned criminals, on an average of one case a fortnight. Nearly all of the cases of murder are a combination of love and drink, young fellows who on a sudden impulse kill their sweethearts, sometimes in the most barbarous fashion yet with the excuse of temporary rage amounting to madness. He described the power of the Home Secretary as absolute, either to quash the sentence or to confirm it. The Home Secretary can go into any prison and on his sole authority can order a release, which if once notified to a prisoner cannot be changed afterwards by any power in England. He had several times done this, and just before leaving the Office he had ordered a number of remissions of sentences, notwithstanding the protests of the judges in the cases. He spoke of these cases with emotion, and giving us all particulars.

“About the war in Turkey I told him that it was his fault, or rather Grey’s, that it had broken out, that the outbreak could have been stopped a year ago by ordering the British fleet to the Mediterranean and notifying the Italian Government that their raid on Tripoli would not be tolerated. He said, ‘Yes, it was so, but we could not afford to make for ourselves yet another enemy in Italy.’ Talking of the Italians I remarked that they were contemptible as fighting men, they have been beaten always by every other people by sea and land since Lepanto. He said, ‘That is interesting, if true, but how about Garibaldi?’ ‘Garibaldi,’ I said, ‘was an Italian fighting against Italians. He and his men never beat a foreign enemy.’ Winston, however, will not hear of Grey as being other than a splendid specimen of an Englishman, the best of the type, and they are evidently close friends, indeed Grey is Winston’s son’s godfather.

“Winston is also a strong eugenist. He told us he had himself drafted the Bill which is to give power of shutting up people of weak intellect and so prevent their breeding. He thought it might be arranged to sterilize them. It was possible by the use of Röntgen rays, both for men and women, though for women some operation might also be necessary. He thought that if shut up with no prospect of release without it many would ask to be sterilized as a condition of having their liberty restored. He went on to say that the mentally deficient were as much more prolific than those normally constituted as eight to five. Without something of the sort the race must decay. It was rapidly decaying, but would be stopped by some such means.

“After lunch I drove Clementine with my team round by Turner’s Hill and Caxtons, and we overtook my grandchildren coming up to tea.

“Another long evening’s talk followed.

“_21st Oct._—The party is over and all are gone their several ways, Winston to Sheerness with Clementine, George to London, and Mark to Puttenden, and I am left in a state almost of collapse alone. We had a last try for a buck to-day, but again without success, though three were seen, and we got a score of pheasants.

“I am the more depressed because of the evil news from Turkey, where the five armies of the Balkan States and Greece have invaded Ottoman territory, and so far successfully. The only chance for the Turks seemed to lie in a vigorous offensive, and it is clear they lack initiative now that Shefket has left their War Office. They are being betrayed by Kiamil and English advice and will end in their dismemberment. I judge of things being at their worst in regard to any hope of help here from Winston’s talk. He has become most truculent about international affairs, being engrossed in preparations for war with Germany and ready with Grey for any betrayal of weak nations needed for the game of alliances. Talking of Somaliland, where there has been fighting between the Mullah and the ‘friendly’ tribes, he said he would like to make a present of it to Germany and of other places as coaling stations which would be so many hostages to fortune. They (meaning our Government) would be obliged to take some action against the Mullah, not an expedition, which was too expensive an affair, but they would send aeroplanes to drop bombs into the Arab camps. He gave us a graphic description of his experiences at Omdurman in the charge of the 21st Lancers, and of how he had seen these spearing the wounded and leaning with their whole weight on their lances after the charge to get the points through the thick clothes the wounded Dervishes wore as they lay on the ground. As the points went in the Derwishes would kick up their feet and hands. One trooper had boasted of his kind-heartedness because he had only put four inches of steel into his man. ‘He ought to be thankful,’ he had said, ‘to find himself in the hands of a good-natured chap like me.’ Winston is quite changed on these matters from what he was two years ago when I had hopes of encouraging him to better things. How like his father! He and George had been talking these two days in absolute accord on army and navy affairs and the coming war with Germany. Hearing them talk, one might be excused for thinking what is commonly said by the Tories, that Winston will one day return to the Tory fold. His old connection with the army and now with the navy has turned his mind back into an ultra Imperialist groove. This, I think, will be a stronger temptation for him than any mere intrigue of ambition. Talking yesterday about his career, he said, ‘I have never joined in any intrigue, everything I have got I have worked for and have been more hated than anybody.’ He speaks highly of both Lloyd George and Edward Grey, both of whom stand probably in the way of his becoming Liberal Prime Minister, while he would certainly lead the Tory party were he one of them again. He avows a great contempt for Bonar Law. Arthur Balfour, George declares, really means to be out of politics, and George himself, clever though he is, is a mere child in argument compared with Winston.

“_23rd Oct._—Cockerell has written, thanking me enthusiastically for his share in Sunday’s party. It was certainly very brilliant, though it has left me with the remorseful feeling an orgy always leaves, and I think, I will not indulge in another.

“_25th Oct._—A great battle is going on around Adrianople, and the Turks are evidently getting the worst of it. The papers try to make out that it is part of a strategical plan on the Turkish side, but I do not believe it. The only chance the Sultan had was to overwhelm his enemies at once by marching on Sofia, and here they are being invaded and retreating. I fear there is little hope. Abdul Ghaffar, who is a good young man and a good Moslem, writes quaintly and pathetically from Oxford, ‘After all God is there, and we may in the last resort rely on him. . . . Do not give up hope yet, you will live to see Turkey strong. God grant you the fulfilment of your wishes. . . . Keep up heart and rely on God. Those who take refuge in God he helps; anyhow this is all we can do now.’ I wish I could have his trust, but I feel ashamed of having had that uproarious time with Winston and George, two outrageous political gamblers just now at this tragic time when we ought to be in sackcloth and ashes.

“_26th Oct._—The St. Martin’s summer is over and heavy rain has set in. I feel like Napoleon at Moscow, and that we have outstayed the season here in the Forest. Clementine has written her ‘Collins’ from the ‘Enchantress,’ and Winston keeps on telegraphing about an overcoat left behind, I believe his chauffeur’s, and taken by George’s man.

“_27th Oct. (Sunday)._—The Ottoman cause seems lost in Europe, and with it all I have been fighting for for so many years, and the collapse is a personal collapse for me, which I feel at every turn, day and night. Egypt now will never get out of the grip of Europe—I do not say of England, because the British Empire will not long survive in the Mediterranean, but of whatever other Empire takes its place. I shall not live to see this ultimate change, but others will, and Islam’s chance is gone.”

From this point onwards, the autumn of 1912, the close of my practical activities in Eastern affairs may be dated. I had given up my house in London, and at the end of the year I took my name off my Clubs, cutting myself off from all temptations to continue these activities, such as I could not have avoided had I continued to frequent my many London friends; nor have I from that date so much as visited Piccadilly, even for the day. All my subsequent life has been spent in Sussex, either at Newbuildings, or from time to time in Worth Forest, leading the life there of a country squire to which I was born, and which is naturally mine. Nevertheless I continued to take an onlooker’s interest in the great drama of European politics, which was shaping itself into the supreme tragedy of 1914. A few friends came from time to time to see me in my hermitage, and these for a while gave me news of the diplomatic doings which were leading on to war, and I had at my hand a neighbour and constant ally in Hilaire Belloc, than whom no one was better acquainted with the intrigues and rivalries of our political leaders in Parliament, besides being always an instructive and amusing companion. Thus I did not wholly lose touch for another year with public affairs, and my diary, though less important in its entries, continues to be a record of the chief events which preluded Armageddon. They will show how little truth there is in the current story that in the quarrel our Foreign Office was wholly innocent, more especially in that with the Ottoman Empire.

“_31st Oct._—The news from Constantinople is rather less hopeless to-day in regard to the battle being fought east of Adrianople, but I feel no revival of confidence in the ultimate result. Even if Nazim Pasha, should manage to beat off the Bulgarian army, and save the Eastern Province, it would not restore the Ottoman prestige as a military power, or safeguard the Empire from dismemberment. It is an ugly feature of the case that Mukhtar Ghazi has resigned the Vizierate and Kiamil Pasha remains on now in supreme authority. That means that a disgraceful peace will be made through European, in other words, Anglo-Russian intervention, and the Sultan will be reduced to the position of England’s servant and the Czar’s. The dream of a regenerated Caliphate, strong, and reformed, is at an end. Egypt will be England’s bakshish for the service rendered, and Russia’s will be the opening of the Dardanelles. This is what has all along been aimed at by our Foreign Office.

“I have written to resign my chairmanship of the Egyptian Committee, and to say that I cannot carry on our paper ‘Egypt,’ beyond the end of the year. In the afternoon I shot with Victor Lytton, who has been here to consult me about the Life of his grandfather, the novelist, which he has been writing, and after dinner we had a long talk on religion and philosophy as well as my remembrances of the grandfather and of Victor’s father. I like Victor much. Though far less brilliant than Neville, he has good solid qualities, and a much wider range of interests. He has a good heart and a logical mind. What he told me of his boyish devotion to his father in the year after his father’s death was very interesting as a spiritual experience. He is himself devoted now to his own children.

“_1st Nov._—A great Turkish defeat is admitted, and it is only a question whether the Bulgarians will march on to Constantinople or forestall European intervention by making a separate peace with the Sultan, which shall include the cession of the whole of European Turkey west of the fortified line between the Black Sea and the sea of Marmora. This is the more likely result of the two.

“Victor has gone back to Knebworth, and his place here is taken by Beauclerk just returned from his gold-mining adventure in Alaska, and bringing with him fresh ideas as well as a huge nugget of copper for me.

“_13th Nov._—My recent sadness has been deepened by reading Miss Petre’s ‘Life of Father Tyrrell,’ which at last is out. It is a record of failure, though intensely interesting—indeed the autobiographical part is comparable in its ways to Rousseau’s, a real self-dissection. His failure at Rome is very like mine with Cairo or Constantinople, attempts both of them to make silk purses out of sow’s ears, and reading it has filled me with a double gloom. Up to the present moment it had been possible for me to feel that I had played a useful and successful part in the regeneration of Islam. Now I can no longer feel this. It is too patent to me that Islam will never be regenerated, and that my work of thirty years has been absolutely thrown away. The Mohammedan religion will of course survive the present shock for many years, perhaps for many generations. But Islam, as a political institution and power in the world, has had its death blow, from which it will not recover. The Ottoman Caliphate will drag out a crippled existence in Asia, but it will be under European, probably Russian tutelage, and will be used as an instrument for enslaving what were once the Ottoman provinces, and will have fallen into Christian hands. Islam’s sole chance now as an independent social existence will be in the deserts whence it originally sprang, Arabia and North Africa, and the chance is a poor one at best. At any rate it must be on lines other than those I have pursued, or of which I can hope even to see the beginnings.

“_14th Nov._—I have written to Miss Petre congratulating her upon her book, an admirable piece of work. Tyrrell’s case and my own, as I said yesterday, have a certain analogy. Not that in either case the ideals we pursued are false, but rather that the men in whose hands the issues lay were unworthy and unwise. Thus I have read the book with a fuller sympathy to-day than would have been the case two years ago. Apart from this, Tyrrell’s account of the Jesuit system is certainly the most convincing that has been published, and this was the chief theme of my letter to Miss Petre.

“_17th Nov. (Sunday)._—I have talked over ‘Egypt’ with Ryan, and persist in my intention to resign my chairmanship of the Committee and future connection with the paper. Not that the paper has not been a success on its own lines. On the contrary, it has exercised a wide influence in Mohammedan lands, if little here. But it is clear that under the new conditions brought about by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Egyptian patriotism must take a new direction, and I am too old to begin with a fresh policy. Others may do so without inconsistency; I cannot.

“Belloc dined with us. The Turkish army is still fighting in defence of the Chatalja lines. But the result of the war will be the same—the loss of all the European provinces.

“_20th Nov._—My resignation of the Chairmanship has been notified to the Egyptian Committee in London, and Rutherford will, I hope, succeed me. In some ways they will get on better without me, as my anti-Imperialism is so notorious that it frightens moderate English Nationalists, and prevents all help being given us in the House of Commons, even among the Irish. Indeed the Irish parliamentarians have become more Imperialistic than our own. It is the Fenians and Sinn Feiners that are pleased with me now, not the men with whom I worked in 1887; all these have been converted to English Liberalism. Thus I find myself left a solitary figure, pleading an absolutely lost cause among Englishmen, that of Conservative Nationalism. All the rest have gone their ways as Whig Unionists, or Socialistic Internationalists. I console myself as I can by repeating the line, _Causa deis placuit victrix sed victa Catoni_, but it does not help me far.

“_22nd Nov._—I have been reading George Meredith’s letters, just published. They give one the impression of a tender-hearted man and playful companion, rather than the profound thinker his extreme admirers would have him to be. His style, jerky and obscure though it is, is I think the best feature of his prose. His knowledge of human nature as shown by his novels is quite superficial, a theory of what life ought to be, not of what life is. His only one great work is in verse, his ‘Modern Love,’ and this he drew as a young man from his own personal experience. The fine ladies in his novels, with their odd characters, are entirely fanciful. They do not exist in English, or any other feminine life, yet they have had a considerable influence on our modern ladies—who like to think themselves as he represents them. He has certainly had a great deal to do with their present sex emancipation. Such women, however, as he describes in his novels are not those who will ever really rule the world, rather the weak ones. They will never attract the men, and in the marriage competition will be edged out, pussies who run about continually, but fail to find corners. To me they are wearisome to read of, because unreal. These letters show well the narrow limits of Meredith’s personal experience. His knowledge of life was three parts of it acquired at second hand. I am sorry all the same not to have known him better than I did, for he was clearly one of the best of companions and of friends.

“_23rd Nov._—Rothstein and Ryan are here winding up the affairs of ‘Egypt.’ The Bulgarian advance on Constantinople seems at a standstill, and it looks very much as if the war had been arranged beforehand with the Powers. . . . I suspect Kiamil Pasha of having purposely left the army in Macedonia unprepared for fighting, so as to serve English and Russian plans of dismemberment, on a promise of retaining Constantinople. He is just the man to entertain the idea of putting the Sultan in the same position of English dependence that the Khedive had been reduced to at Cairo. It would not suit either English or Russian plans to have so strong a fighting State as Bulgaria in possession of the Dardanelles. What Russia principally wants is to get free passage to the Mediterranean, and what Grey wants is to please Russia. With a Sultan Caliph in leading strings on the Bosphorus, they would both be able to work their will, Cairo would be held on a perpetual lease by us, and our Protectorate of the Persian Gulf be acknowledged.”

This, I believe, is exactly what the position was at Constantinople between our diplomacy there and Kiamil. It was certainly due to him that the Ottoman army in Macedonia was left only half mobilized until too late to escape defeat.

“_24th Nov. (Sunday)._—Belloc dined in the evening alone with me and Ryan, and was most agreeable. I like him better thus than when he is showing off before a number of people, with noise and fireworks, which is his usual form in a mixed company. He has just brought out a new book called ‘A Servile State,’ whose principles he expounded to us as the latest counterblast to State Socialism. Rothstein had just given us the socialist side of the democratic case, but I have given up trying to solve the domestic conundrum of the European future. Things as they are will last my time, and beyond that who can tell?

“_3rd Dec._—Our armistice has been agreed to before Constantinople, and the war with Bulgaria is probably over. It is said that the Sultan is to keep Adrianople, as well as the Marmora coast and the Dardanelles. If so, things will have been put back exactly to where they were placed by the treaty of San Stefano in 1878, and it is just conceivable that the Ottoman Empire may some day recover strength. The best thing about the terms of peace is that there is a prospect now of a Bulgaro-Turkish Alliance, a solution which long ago seemed to me the right one, and which I have more than once discussed with Irene Noel as ‘a general Balkan alliance, which should include Turkey.’” [Miss Noel’s interest in Balkan politics rested on her intimacy with the King and Queen of Greece, whose views she was well acquainted with. King George of Greece at that time was anxious to form an alliance of all the Balkan States against Austria and Russia, and it was thought might include Turkey.]

“_18th Dec._—Our final number of ‘Egypt’ is out. It appears at an opportune moment, for the Peace Conference met in London two days ago, by a strange irony, under Grey’s Presidency, the principal causer of the war.

“_24th Dec._—There is talk to-day of a renewal of the war, and of Shefket Pasha being the Generalissimo (a word which shows that ‘Egypt’ has been read at Constantinople), also Poincaré at Paris has talked publicly of asserting French rights of intervention in Syria. The chief news, however, is that Hardinge has been wounded by a bomb, dropped into the howdah of his state elephant while he was riding in Viceregal procession to proclaim the new Indian capital at Delhi. This is an event of supreme significance, and ought to be a warning to our people against their alliance with despotic Russia in Asia, but they will not take it so.

“_31st Dec._—The last day of 1912, a sad year for me, as it has seen the downfall of my larger hopes in the East without bringing any new absorbing interest, also I am growing older and more infirm.

“_10th Jan.,_ 1913.—The peace negotiations between the Turks and the Bulgarians are hung up, as they will not agree to a frontier line, and there is some chance of the Roumanians intervening. This of course means indirect pressure put on King Ferdinand from Vienna, counteracting the pressure put on the Turks by Grey and the rogues he is allied with at Petersburg and Paris. It is really an all-important point, because if the Bulgarians are to have access to the Sea of Marmora, the Sultan’s position at Constantinople will have been turned. The Bulgarians could build a fleet on it and have it at their mercy, so the Turks are right in standing out. It will probably end in their keeping Adrianople and the whole Marmora Coast, in spite of our Foreign Office’s bluster. We hope now that ‘Egypt’ may be continued, if only for the Indian Moslem’s sake. Syud Mahmud has written me a most encouraging letter about the influence the paper is having with them.

“_16th Jan._—The deadlock continues at Constantinople, the Turks refusing to abandon Adrianople, and the Bulgarians being backed up by our Foreign Office and the French and Russian. McCullagh has returned from the war, and gives a bad report of the Turkish military position. It is a case for them, he says, of the devil or the deep sea, of being driven finally out of Europe, or of remaining at Constantinople on terms of slavery to Christendom. They may well prefer to fight, even with every chance against them, but I dare not advise.

“_21st Jan._—There is a violent attack in last night’s ‘Pall Mall’ on the Gaekwar of Baroda, insisting on his ‘disloyalty to his Sovereign’ at the great Durbar last year—quite true I dare say, as why should it be otherwise? From India I continue to receive messages from Moslems in admiration of ‘Egypt’ and praise of my services to Islam in telling them the truth. I wish the paper could be continued for their sake.

“_22nd Jan._—Lord Ashburnham is dead, a good Sussex nobleman, and long my friend. A year ago his little daughter, whom he had brought up a Catholic, and who was all he had to love, went into a Convent, and with that his life ended. He is succeeded by a childless brother, settled somewhere in the colonies, and, though another branch of the Ashburnhams exists in Sussex, the peerage and the connection of the family with the Stuart fortunes is closed. Ashburnham became a Catholic some thirty years ago through political sentiment, as connecting him more closely with the Stuarts. Through this cause, too, he affected an allegiance to Queen Mary, the Stuart representative, and maintained close relations with Don Carlos and other exiled dynasties, also on that account he was an Irish Nationalist.

“_23rd Jan._—It is announced from Constantinople that the Grand Council of the Empire has agreed to the cession of Adrianople, as the price of peace and being allowed to live. If this includes a cession of the Marmora coast the Ottoman Caliphate is at an end. Europe will hold it in vassalage to do its Christian bidding, that is to say, the bidding of cosmopolitan finance. I have a letter to-day from John Dillon, lamenting this.

“_24th Jan._—Great news! There has been another revolution at Constantinople. The traitor Kiamil has resigned, and Mahmud Shefket is named Grand Vizier, with the avowed determination to refuse submission about Adrianople, and, if necessary, renew the war. This is better than I could have hoped, and I have telegraphed to Ryan to come, and we will bring out a special number of ‘Egypt.’ Our London papers are furious, and, no doubt, Grey will be very angry. It is a rude slap in the face to his diplomacy, and there is talk of all sorts of coercive measures to be taken by the Powers. I rejoice, if only that the Turks have once again recovered their dignity. It will be better for them to lose Constantinople, if that should happen, than to yield to Grey. Yesterday the posters were, ‘Turks yield. Place themselves in the hands of Europe.’ To-day it is, ‘No surrender, Young Turks in power.’ This is the cheerfulest announcement we have had for six months.

“_25th Jan._—Yet more from Constantinople. Nazim Pasha has been shot while resisting the Revolutionists. He deserved his fate, as he was one of those who brought about the military revolt of last year, which placed Kiamil in power while his conduct of the campaign has been inept. I have telegraphed to Shefket ‘Félicitations. Votre heureux retour au pouvoir. Allah Yénsurak!’

“_26th Jan. (Sunday)._—It turns out that Enver Bey took the lead in bringing about the fall of Kiamil, going himself to the Porte, where one of his aides-de-camp shot Nazim dead in the scuffle, and afterwards to the Palace where he insisted on Shefket’s appointment as Vizier. Enver is just the man for the situation, with his experience of the war in Tripoli, and jointly with Shefket may yet renew the campaign at Chatalja. My belief, however, is that pressure will now be put on Bulgaria to yield the point of Adrianople and that things will be settled without more fighting between Turks and Bulgarians. Grey will be angry, but that does not matter. Just now English attention is engrossed with Woman Suffrage and can spare very little for the male affairs of Islam. I have written to Loulou Harcourt, who has been making fun in the House of Grey and Lloyd George on this question, congratulating him and saying, ‘I rejoice to see that the principles of the Crabbet Club still live.’ [This probably marks the date of the Agreement between Germany and Turkey and the eventual alliance.]

“_1st Feb._—George Wyndham, writes from London, envying me my happy life away from politics, but why does he grind on? He wants me to come up and stay with him at Belgrave Square. It is stated in the ‘National Zeitung’ that an agreement had been come to between England and Turkey that Egypt should be given autonomy under English protection. The fall of Kiamil must have put an end to this plan.

“_7th Feb._—The war has been renewed by the Balkan States and is being well responded to by Mahmud Shefket and Enver Bey who are giving it a frankly religious character. The Mullahs are preaching in the Mosques at Constantinople.

“_9th Feb. (Sunday)._—A violent attack by the Bulgarians is reported at Gallipoli, and a bombardment of Adrianople. If Gallipoli were taken by the Allies it would end the war, for Constantinople would then be at the mercy of any fleet that might choose to threaten a bombardment, but the thing is not done yet.

“_14th Feb._—A letter from Beauclerk dated 31st January. In it he says ‘Bouchier has been this morning with Sir Edward Grey and Benckendorf and he thinks that war will begin on Monday evening. . . . The Great Powers want the Allies to exhaust themselves before stepping in. Germany is sincere in her desire to avert a war and has her eye on Asia Minor. We will remain on in Egypt and attempt to annex it. . . . The Turks have been getting in guns and money recently from Germany.’

“_18th Feb._—A letter from George Wyndham, four sheets long, telling of his son Percy’s engagement to Ribblesdale’s daughter, Diana Lister. He is much excited about it.

“_21st Feb._—A black melancholy is on me caused by a sense of my failure every where in life. My poetry, my Eastern politics, my Arab horse breeding, were strings to my bow and they have one after another snapped, and to-day looking through my memoirs I perceive how slackly they are written and how unworthy they are of survival. Yet the diaries are full of things too important for me to destroy and they overwhelm me with despair.

“_22nd Feb._—Syud Mahmud writes from Benares telling me that the whole Moslem community in India has now adopted my views in connection with the Turco-Bulgarian War and the complicity of our Government in the intrigue with Russia against Islam, and I see in the Reuter’s telegrams of to-day that the ferment is beginning to alarm the Government of India. Syud Mahmud ends thus, ‘Your most kind and pathetic letter has touched me very much and I actually wept. Your sentence “my long advocacy of Islam has been a complete failure,” is most touching as coming from one who has spent the best years of his life in fighting for Moslems and then this is the conclusion he arrives at. . . . You say your advocacy has ceased to exercise any influence even on Mohammedans. I say it has just begun. They now realize the true meaning of what you told them years ago, because they are shaking off a bit of their slavishness, developed since the mutiny of 1857. Your articles in ‘Egypt’ are widely read here. They are translated and reproduced in the vernacular papers. If possible, please write a long article, a sort of appeal to the Mussulmans, telling them what they should do in the future. It will greatly influence them.’ This is an unexpected encouragement.

“_23rd Feb._—Belloc’s friend, Cecil Chesterton, is to be prosecuted for criminal libel in the ‘Eye Witness’ by the Samuel family, and Belloc is a bit uneasy for himself too. He declares that there will be war this year between France and Germany, in consequence of Germany’s increasing armaments which force the French to call out one man in three as compared to the German one man in four, and the French will not stand being conscripted to that amount, they prefer fighting.

“_1st March._—Gertrude, Lady Kenmare, is dead, once a considerable figure in my life, being one of the coterie of ladies, friends of my sister Alice who were my friends for her sake. I can remember her being married fifty-two years ago, a beautiful girl, daughter of Lord Charles Thynne, in 1858. She must have been exactly my own age and had been at the Roehampton Convent School with Alice. Then, as Lady Castlerosse, she became one of the beauties of the day, the very first Englishwoman to dress herself well, indeed extravagantly, at Paris, and there is much about her in my diaries, then and later, as Lady Kenmare, but it is many years since I last saw her.

“_13th Mar._—Peace seems likely now to be made between Turkey and her enemies, leaving her Constantinople with a fairly defensible position for the future, a frontier drawn from the Black Sea to the Ægean, the whole Marmora coast remaining to Turkey. This is what I have been contending for. Adrianople itself is of less consequence and will probably be dismantled as a fortress while ceded to Bulgaria. If these comparatively good terms have been obtained it has been due to German intervention, and the restoration of German influence with Shefket Pasha’s return to power at Constantinople. Grey is now on his knees to Berlin and there are signs that the triple Entente is breaking up. Our Government has probably made up its mind that it will not, because it cannot, help France in a war with Germany. This will put off, for a while at least, the Anglo-Russian plan of partitioning the Ottoman Empire in Asia and annexing Egypt, which may God forbid!

“_19th March._—King George of Greece has been assassinated at Salonika, fortunately not by a Turk but by one of his own subjects.

“_26th March._—Lady Dorothy Neville is dead, a worthy old dame, at the age of eighty-six, also Lady Cowper and Lord Wolseley. Lady Dorothy I knew pretty well thirty years ago, a sprightly little lady with much pleasant Primrose League talk and knowledge of our local Sussex things; Lady Cowper, less well, though she was one of the early ‘Soul’ group and a friend of all my friends. Lady Dorothy kept her social flag flying to the last.

“_27th March._—Adrianople has at last surrendered to the Bulgarians, after a five months’ siege. The city could not have been kept, but its resistance has probably saved Constantinople to the Sultan. The Turks have little to boast of in this campaign.

“_2nd April._—Ryan has come down to make up a final number of ‘Egypt’ to end the series, after which if we get sufficient support we may continue it as ‘The Voice of Islam.’ After tea we drove to Belloc’s and found him in high spirits over the cross-examination of Rufus Isaacs and Lloyd George before the Marconi Committee which has disclosed the irregularities and equivocations of these two members of the Government, laid bare mainly by Belloc and Chesterton. They had gone in for a Stock Exchange gamble a year ago and denied it flatly last summer in the House of Commons and now it turns out to be true.”

“_3rd April._—The terms of peace are at last come to between Turks and Bulgarians with the Enos Midia line of frontier, this saves the situation for the Sultan as it keeps the enemy out of the Sea of Marmora, an essential condition.

“Poor Ryan was taken ill last night, and we had to send for a Horsham doctor, who pronounced it a case of appendicitis and talks of an operation.”

I omit my diary of the next days which were wholly occupied for us in the tragedy of poor Ryan’s illness, operation, and death, which took place the morning of 7th April, at 8 o’clock. I was with him to the last and he was buried in the Crawley Monastery churchyard on the 9th. On that day I write:

“_9th April._—All is over. The funeral left our door at half-past one. . . . One thing is certain, it is useless continuing our paper in any form without Ryan, so I have written to Syud Mahmud begging him to stop all subscriptions for the paper, we cannot attempt it.

“The following is a sonnet acrostic I have written to one of the purest of Irish patriotic souls:

‘TO FREDERICK RYAN

‘Fabric of clay, poor, impotent child’s face,

Ransomed from thought, its load of life laid down!

Earth of all earth, disrobed and passionless,

Dead mask of a man’s brow, which once could frown,

Eyes which could smile, lips which could hold their own

Relentless against wrong in eloquent stress

Indignant at our English ill crop sown,

Curse of the World, its tares of bitterness!

—Kind Irish soul, free labourer in a field

Rich with rebellion’s mint from age to age,

Young ever in revolt, and child-like still!

Are these thy wages then of sword and shield,

Naked to lie and never take thy fill

Of human pleasure, to the end thus sage?’

“_20th April (Sunday)._—Rothstein is here for the week end and a Frenchman, Maurice Bourgeois, who holds a travelling fellowship at the Sorbonne, and is getting up as a subject the Irish literary movement, an intelligent young man of the serious University kind, very academical, somewhat priggish, but a good fellow. He and Rothstein have got on very well together, talking Socialism and Continental politics. Belloc came to dinner, and we had a most pleasant evening.

“A woodcock’s nest, the first for many years at Newbuildings, was found to-day in Marlpost Wood, the young just flown.