Chapter XII: The War with Germany Declared

From this point my diary contains little that is of historical importance till the breaking out, a year later, of the Great War of 1914. With George Wyndham’s death my most intimate connection with the parliamentary world ceased, and my mind busied itself more and more with its local surroundings and with that refuge from sadness, verse, which has always been its consolation. I therefore end my transcriptions in their integrity here, and add only to the present volume such few extracts as may suffice to carry my record of public events to the verge of the final catastrophe, reserving a full account of the war itself to yet a third part, still perhaps to come.

To complete my record of the crisis which decided Turkish patriotism to take definite part with Germany rather than with the Entente Powers in the coming struggle I will continue to tell it in as few words as possible.

My latest entries of 1913 show that about the time of George Wyndham’s death I had satisfied myself that Grey was beginning to see the danger of his coalition policy against the Central Powers, and was beginning to look round him for a means of conciliating its War Lord, Kaiser Wilhelm, in whom the maintenance of peace chiefly lay. These were the days of Lichnowsky’s Embassy in London a mission which undoubtedly was intended at Berlin to smooth the diplomatic wheels with us. Lichnowsky was a quite honourable man and personally friendly to England, but I notice that in all our English appreciations of him as such he is invariably claimed as an exception among _Germans_ for this or that good quality, an enemy witness giving testimony in our favour. This is to exaggerate and mistake the case. Prince Lichnowsky, a Polish nobleman of ancient family, though in the German diplomatic service, was no German either by birth or sentiment, and his friendly feeling for England was that common to all the Polish aristocracy, and it was for that reason, as also to conciliate his fellow Poles, that the Kaiser Wilhelm sent him to London on a friendly mission which he undertook _con amore_. I see no reason for doubting that Wilhelm, at that moment, was sincere in wishing to keep on terms with England. In 1913 he had made up his mind to bring matters to an issue with France on the very next opportunity rather than submit to any new rebuff, such as he had sustained at Agadir, but it was certainly no part of his plan to have England on his hands again as well as France and Russia. It is altogether improbable that he was seeking a quarrel just then with us, whatever he might dream as to an eventual trial of strength with us at sea.

It is, I believe, quite a mistake to suppose Kaiser Wilhelm otherwise than personally well inclined to England. He liked English society, and his summer visits to Cowes more than anything he could find on the Continent, and he enjoyed being adulated by our aristocracy. He had far rather have had England with him than against him; but he resented our Foreign Office having allied itself with his two most dangerous enemies, Russia on his eastern, France on his western, frontier. Nor, in my opinion, was the resentment unjustified. Our policy of helping the Russian Czar financially after his defeat by the Japanese, and so enabling the Czar to renew his military strength, seemed to Wilhelm a gratuitous menace as obliging him to increase his own army on that side, while our Entente about Persia seemed a menace to the development of his commercial plans connected with the Bagdad railway. Nor, doubtless, was it unknown to him that part of our plan was that Russia should be put in possession of Constantinople, and thus permanently block for Germany her trade route eastwards. All this added to our support of France in Morocco, was resented at Berlin, and as I have said, not without reasonable cause.

This, however, is not the same thing as saying that a war between England and Germany was inevitable sooner or later through the Kaiser Wilhelm’s designs against us. I am convinced that even so late as June 1913 not only our own peace, but the peace of Europe might have been saved for an undefined period had we then found a statesman at the Foreign Office possessed as Grey was of the ear of the House of Commons, but with better knowledge of Europe and of the true needs of our Eastern Empire, and with the courage of acting on his knowledge. Such a one might have insisted on a withdrawal from the false position we had taken in Egypt and at Constantinople through our ill-omened Ententes with France and Russia, chief enemies, both of them, of Germany, and also of that Mohammedan world with which we were so closely connected in India, and so have averted all that happened to ourselves and others. The gain, if it had only been of a few years longer peace between France and Germany, would have given time for the socialistic forces in either country to gather strength, and if it had been openly known, that England would take no part in it, France certainly would not have invited war for Alsace-Lorraine or given that excuse to Germany by making Russia’s quarrel with Austria her own over so small a wrong as Servia’s.

For, be it understood, the Great War which has destroyed all Europe and half destroyed ourselves, was essentially in its origin an Eastern, not a Western War, and the inclusion in it of Turkey to its immense prolongation was due to our blundering diplomacy at Constantinople. Had England been reasonably ambassadored there and free in her dealings with the Porte from the evil counsels of her sad confederate the Czar, it is impossible she should have failed to retain the Ottoman goodwill, once so strong for her and even as lately as the days of the revolution of 1908. But Egypt always had forbidden. The obstinacy of remaining on in occupation there in spite of right and law and promises, and now the Russian partnership, which regarded the dispute in the Balkans with Russian eyes and the dismemberment of Turkey as a crusade—these were the true obstacles to peace. That Grey was beginning in the early summer of 1913, as I have said, to suspect the danger of general war to which his policy of Entente was leading in the East there are several indications, and I give here a single entry from my diary, the last of importance of that year:

“_11th June._—H. arrived, bringing the ill news of Shefket Pasha’s assassination at Constantinople. This is, doubtless, the result of the Russian intrigue there, Shefket being head of the Young Turk Party, and the most capable military leader of the Independent Ottoman policy allied with Germany. How far our diplomacy is responsible for the deed I cannot say. Grey seems of late to have withdrawn from his Russian Alliance, but Fitzmaurice’s influence is probably still supreme at our Embassy, and one cannot help remembering that the intrigue of a year ago which caused Shefket’s resignation of the Ministry of War and replaced Kiamil in power, was an Anglo-Russian intrigue, also that it closely preluded the Balkan war. I connect the present assassination with Kiamil’s return the other day to Constantinople. Kiamil arrived there suddenly, and though allowed to land, was kept by Shefket, a prisoner in his own house, till he could be shipped back to Smyrna, whence he had come. This new _coup d’état_ would seem to synchronize with the re- opening of the war in the Balkans, Russia’s object being, as always, to prevent any settlement of the Turkish question which should keep her fleet permanently out of the Mediterranean. This may be the first move in it. H——, who has just come from Paris, declares that people there all believe in the imminence for them of an European War.”

The assassination of Shefket Pasha here recorded proved a great misfortune for the chances of that peaceful period which I was hoping for for the Caliphate, in order to give the Young Turk’s régime at Constantinople time to consolidate its administration and effect its reforms on a basis of Liberal pan-Islamism, which I had come to see was the only possible one for an Empire so divided in race and speech as was the Ottoman, and where the bond of nationality had for so many centuries been replaced by those of religion, the largest section of the population being Mohammedan. Religion was the only strong sentiment, at any rate, which could re-establish Turkey as a virile community able to defend itself against its many enemies, and everything else was secondary to that. It was the true reason why, when it came to a choice between alliance with Kaiser Wilhelm and trust in English goodwill, Young Turkey necessarily chose the first. Grey, with Russia prompting him, had nothing better to propose than disarmament and economy in an emasculated State sterilized of all religious ardour. This the Young Turks saw could only prove slow death to them, while alliance with Germany, a military Power which offered to reconstruct their army for them and restock their arsenals, gave them at least a chance of new national life. All the patriotic Turks whom I came in contact with gave me this account of it. The German Government, they said, does not seek our dismemberment, it wishes us to be strong. What it wants of us is not political but commercial advantage, whereas Russia wants political possession of our provinces, while you at the English Embassy, so far as you wish us good, wish it for the Christian section of our people only. And this was true. Our Embassy at Constantinople in Lowther’s day had been, and still was in 1913, under the influence of Fitzmaurice, the Embassy chief dragoman who saw things through the spectacles of the Christian Missionary Societies, as did such of our Radicals in Parliament as took an interest in Turkey. Grey’s Eastern policy, the Young Turks perfectly understood, was before all else an anti-Islamic policy, and this struck at their one surviving element of strength. They preferred to trust Kaiser Wilhelm’s pagan attitude, and his promise of protecting Islam, made on his Syrian tour, and more than once renewed. What was a special misfortune in Shefket’s death was that he, unlike Talaat Pasha, who succeeded him as Vizier, was a sincere Moslem of the Liberal school which understood the necessity of uniting all the Ottoman forces in a common pan-Islamic patriotism. He was their most capable soldier, too, and his loss universally ascribed to the Anglo-Russian party acting under Kiamil, England’s _protégé_, though it did not result in Kiamil’s recapture of the Vizierate, placed sole power with those who by their racial arrogance had driven Arabia into rebellion against the Sultan. I do not, of course, suppose that our Embassy was cognizant of the design to assassinate Shefket. Crimes of this sort are outside the range of English diplomatic activities. But the plot to restore Kiamil was probably known, while a much larger responsibility may have lain with the Russian Embassy. The curse of Grey’s policy of Entente with the Czar in Asiatic affairs is, that it involved us in practices of violence foreign to our English traditions.

Moreover Grey, as recorded in my Diary, was at that time becoming aware of the danger, and was seeking to relax his solidarity with Russia’s action in the East, and to get on less hostile terms with Berlin in the West. These were the days when an attempt was being made to settle the Bagdad railway quarrel with Germany. It failed through this very cause, the objection of Russia to our recognizing any extension of German rights in that direction as likely to prejudice extensions of her own ‘sphere of influence’ in Persia—this and, in our dealings with the Porte, our insistence on remaining in Egypt.

My Diary contains nothing more of importance during that year. I continued to receive letters from India, telling me of Moslem gratitude for my work in placing the true nature of Grey’s anti-Islamic policy before them, and assuring me of its success in counteracting the officially inspired utterances of the Agha-Khan on the subject, and asking me for advice as to the attitude they should assume, and this led me to write a long letter to one of them, the concluding paragraphs of which, as it had a wide circulation in the Mussulman community, I may print here. My concluding words were as follows, dated 28th July, 1913:

“The duty of the Mohammedan community of India, therefore, under the circumstances, seems to me to be pretty clearly marked out. As regards Persia, Afghanistan, and the still independent provinces of the Ottoman Caliphate menaced by Christendom, a courageous public attitude should be adopted, which should let our Government clearly understand that Indian sympathy with these is so strong that it will not permit any further participation by England in attacks made on them, and that none such can be indulged in without the certainty of incurring the dangerous resentment of every Moslem subject of the King. Let there, when complicity in these attacks is suspected, be no hesitation in denouncing it. Let there be no such milk-and-water appeals to the Government’s better feeling as allowed Sir Edward Grey two years ago to treat the All India Moslem League with contempt when he made himself the accomplice of France and Italy in their invasions of Morocco and Tripoli, but plain language of the most indignant kind, worthy of the force of 80,000,000 Moslems behind it, and which it represents. In this way only can their duty to their co-religionists outside India be performed effectively.

“Besides this, they have another duty to themselves within the borders of the Indian Empire, taking an active part in that of preparing for the great changes which are most surely coming there, as throughout all Asia. You know that from the very beginning of the Congress movement in 1884, I urged on the Indian Moslems that they should take part in it with the Hindoos, and I am therefore rejoiced to-day to learn that it has at last been decided that the policy of abstention recommended in opposition to my advice by the late Seyd Ahmed of Aligarh, and so long followed, should cease. Much ground has been lost, I fear, by this long period of inaction, but it is ground that can be recovered, and I trust now to see the Mohammedan body taking its full share in the movement for self-government. What it is necessary to insist on is the danger of delay. Time needs to be taken by the forelock, lest while you are waiting the British Empire should collapse prematurely, and find the machinery of a native administration which is to replace it not yet ready for its work. This would be a great misfortune. Indeed, I will go so far as to say that in Mohammedan interests the imperial connection between England and India should be prolonged rather than shortened, and in this sense the Moslem subjects of King George may well continue to display their loyalty. It is another thing, however, to be what is called loyal to the existing régime of the Anglo-Indian Civil Service. The servile attitude of helping this alien body to maintain itself in place and power against all native effort at self-government is neither dignified nor profitable, and will not in reality serve the interests even of the Empire, for nothing is more certain than that the only way in which the English connection with India can be placed on a basis of any permanence is, by obtaining the consent of the Indian peoples, and their active zeal in administering their country under its imperial shield. As self-governing Colonies the provinces of British India might survive many a shock under which the Indian Empire, as now administered, must certainly succumb.

“My present motto, therefore, for Indian patriotism, Mohammedan and Hindoo alike, would be ‘Loyalty to the Imperial Crown but insistence on self-government under it.’ And these are, in all probability, the last words of advice on Eastern matters I shall presume to utter in any public form. If you should think them worthy of a wider consideration than that of just yourself or your personal friends, you are at liberty to publish them, but that point I leave to yourselves to judge. And so may God prosper you and hasten the day of Islamic and Asiatic independence.”

This letter, part of which was published in India, was instrumental, to a large measure, in causing the resignation which took place in November, of the Agha Khan, my principal opponent, of his position in the All Moslem League of India, an event which synchronized with an apology made at home by Grey on the shortcomings of his Eastern diplomacy. A short entry of that date, says: “The truth is, no foreign policy ever more completely failed. My work has been to put all the dots upon the i’s in a way that has convinced Mohammedan India that the Agha Khan and Ameer Ali, who have been preaching loyalty to the British Empire, are blind guides leading to an impotent result.”

Again, two months later, I find myself writing to the “Westminster Gazette,” warning our English peace lovers of the futility of their trust in the so-called “Concert of Europe,” armed to the teeth, under Grey’s un-armed leadership, in preventing the coming European war. It was my last appearance in print, and I have remained silent since, notwithstanding solicitations to speak not a few times during these astonishing five years of fighting folly, and white man’s suicide, knowing I should be powerless while the war fever lasted, to obtain a hearing for a word of truth in a world of illusion befooled, but happy in its patriotic blindness.

The year 1913 closes with this personal lament: “I am alone just now here and in this dark world I am overwhelmed with woe. I see myself as one sees the dead, a thing finished which has lost all its importance, whatever it once had in the world. I realize how little I have accomplished, how little I have affected the thought of my generation in spite, as I am still convinced, of the soundness of my view of things, and of some skill and courage in expounding it. I have made almost no converts in Europe, and am without a single disciple at home to continue my teaching after I am dead. Even in the East, though my ideas are bearing fruit and will one day be justified in act, I have founded no personal school where my name has authority. The consciousness that it is so wounds me with a sense of failure and I despise myself the more for feeling it as strongly as I do. Why should I mind? I ask myself, and I find no answer. Perhaps the immediate cause of my gloom has been a life of Gobineau which has been sent me by a Dr. Schemann. Gobineau was in some ways like myself, a man of ideas opposed to those of his own people and his own generation, and who, though his talent was recognized as a writer, failed to find disciples in France. He was an aristocrat in a democratic age, an orientalist, out of harmony with received orientalist ideas, a poet who was never popular, and an artist who was never more than an amateur. It has been reserved for this little group of Germans to discover his value twenty and more years after his death, a discovery due mainly to the devotion of a single disciple, this good Schemann who has sent his book to me. Gobineau, like me, had his romantic side. There are many pieces of poetry inserted in their original French in it, of one of which I made a translation this morning. It is called “Don Juan’s Good Night,” a pleasant piece of cynical French wit which deserves to live, perhaps, when the rest is forgotten.

The Spring of the year 1914 found me, like the rest of our English world, thinking more of Ireland than of the coming Armageddon. Some of the vicissitudes of the Irish case are noted in my diary:

“_28th March,_ 1914.—There has been an astonishing crisis in Parliament over the Ulster business. What has happened is this. Winston and Seely, at the Admiralty and War Office respectively, seem to have made up their minds to deal drastically with the Ulster Volunteers, and arranged a combined movement of sea and land forces to put them down. Of course, it ought to have been done a year ago, but Redmond persuaded Birrell that the Ulster movement was all bounce and it was allowed to go on. Now it has got beyond them and has been taken up on a large scale by English Unionists, and worked up by the London press and in the army by old Lord Roberts, and at last they got King George to approve, so it came to pass that the garrison at the Curragh refused to move when ordered to Belfast without a guarantee that they should not be used against the Orange volunteers. This frightened the two Ministers. Seely patched up things by giving the assurance wanted, and Winston counter-ordered the warships he was sending to Belfast, whereupon a hullabaloo in the House of Commons and a Cabinet crisis with the usual lying and denying, which ended in Seely’s offering to resign as scape-goat for the rest, and Asquith refusing to accept his resignation, a little comedy played on much the same lines as that used in the Marconi crisis, Seely admitting an error of judgment and Winston using swear words to cover their retreat.

“_31st March._—Asquith appoints himself War Minister in Seely’s place.

“_5th April._—Belloc was here to dinner. Baker, one of Asquith’s private secretaries, has just explained to him the recent Ulster crisis. The resolution to send troops in force to Belfast was agreed to by the whole Cabinet, who also agreed to the letter which was to be written to General Gough, and they had just dispersed, leaving Seely behind them with Morley, when Gough’s letter arrived. Seely saw at once that it meant that something more than the draft agreed to would be needed to get Gough’s assent, and he added some words, pledging the Government not to employ the troops actively against Ulster, and Morley only half understanding what it was all about, agreed to the addition. All then would have gone well but for Gough’s boasting of having coerced the Government. Belloc’s view is that Asquith allowed the arming in Ulster to go on as a way of putting pressure on Redmond to give in politically and allow a separate Ulster while for the same reason he won’t allow Catholic Ireland to be armed.

“_7th April._—The Irish Home Rule Bill has passed its second and final reading by a majority of eighty. This is due to Redmond’s insistence, for Asquith, Grey, Haldane and the rest of the Whigs in the Cabinet have been quite ready to throw the Bill over in favour of some scheme of all- round Devolution, any time since they came into office.

“_26th April (Sunday)._—I am writing a letter in answer to one sent me from Dublin by Mrs. Colum, asking me to say a word in favour of a plan of arming Catholic Ireland as a counter demonstration against the arming of Protestant Ulster, and as a precaution against a possible betrayal of Home Rule by Asquith.

“It is announced that the United States Fleet has landed troops at Vera Cruz in Mexico, President Wilson at the same time declaring, in imitation of Gladstone when he sent troops to Egypt, that he is not making war with the Mexican Republic, but with a person named Huerta, who calls himself President of Mexico. Rothstein, whom I saw yesterday, attributes this to Wilson’s _naïveté_, which believes it possible to reconcile moral principles of Government with the rascalities of financial politics.

“_30th April._—My answer to Mrs. Colum is this:

“‘Thank you for the Volunteer Manifesto. You know I have always been a Fenian in my sympathies, and, though it is twenty-five years since I was in Ireland and I am living now quite away from politics, I confess it rouses me to hear talk again of physical force. I never believed much in the Union of Hearts without a reserve of the other, and a long experience of British Imperial ways has taught me (if I may be allowed the bull) that in dealing with British Governments, the best sort of moral force is always material force. Our people cannot be trusted to go straight without two strong incentives, money in front of them (like the carrot in front of an ass) and a big stick behind. The Irish National Volunteers must be the big stick.

“‘I am not sure whether it will not prove a useful reminder to your own parliamentary people. Some of them have been talking a deal of Imperial nonsense lately, and it is time they should remember that until the Irish Parliament is actually open in College Green, the British Empire is still _the enemy_. I send you £10 for your Defence of Ireland Fund, as a small token of my sympathy and a proof that I remain true to the old motto, “Ireland a nation and as much and well armed a nation as you can make it.’”

“_14th May._—Sir Roger Casement came to lunch and to talk over the Volunteer movement in Ireland, of which he is one of the chief organizers. He had seen my letter to Mrs. Colum, which it appears was published in a Dublin newspaper, and wished to consult me. He is an interesting man of the same Irish type as was Michael Davitt, only much bigger and better looking, still very like him; an Ulsterman, he tells me, and a Protestant, but his mother was a Catholic, and he now is of no religious complexion, only a strong Nationalist. He is not in favour with Redmond, who considers him a dangerous revolutionist, being anti- imperialist, and opposed to the Parliamentary alliance with the English Radicals. He holds Dillon greatly responsible for this, and that it is demoralizing Irish patriotism. Hence his zeal for the Volunteer movement. He considers that unless the rest of Ireland arms itself as the north-west of Ulster is arming it will be cheated out of Home Rule. There are two difficulties in their way, the first is a lack of money; they have no rich men to help, and secondly, a lack of officers. Of men there are plenty, ex-soldiers of the British Army, but they are unarmed, and the question is how to get the arms. He believes if they could obtain only 5,000 rifles they would be in a position to coerce the Government. He is working in conjunction with Professor McNeill and has to be back in Dublin on Saturday. He told us also a good deal about his Congo experiences and in South America, and described a talk he had had with King Leopold of Belgium, who had tried to get hold of him when he was first appointed Consul on the Congo, and of how old Leopold had managed even to shock Rhodes by the crudity of his ideas of native exploitation. In describing his interview with Leopold he told how the old king in tempting him had watched him the whole time through his fingers, shading his face with his hand. On the whole, Casement’s statement of the Irish case does not sound to me very encouraging. The want of funds will prevent any great effect being given to the Volunteer movement in the South, where they have nobody like Lord Londonderry in the north to subscribe the thousands needed, nor will the American-Irish help. These take their view of Irish affairs entirely from Redmond and the Parliamentary party, and until these last declare themselves in favour of it, money will not be subscribed. Also, and this seems to me the most serious side of it, the movement is more one of the towns than of the country. All the same I wish it well, and if anyone can manage it, Casement seems to be the man. He is well bred, well educated, altogether vigorous, and a good talker.”

It is worth noting that in this entry of my conversation with Casement there is no mention of anything connected with Berlin or European politics, nor I am sure, was there anything suggesting that his mind was in that direction. During the following few weeks I received three letters from him (see Appendix VI) which treat entirely of Irish affairs. The only thing omitted in the diary that I can recollect was that we discussed Mrs. O’Shea’s revelations just then being printed in one of the London papers. Casement’s remark about it was that if the revelations had been made two years ago there would have been no statue of Parnell to-day in the streets of Dublin.

“_16th May._—Patrick Butler came for the day, being on leave from Clonmel. We talked about the National Volunteer movement, with which he is entirely in sympathy. Butler, however, is alone in his opinion at the Curragh among the officers there, and says that the army will not act against the Ulstermen, while it will certainly act against the National Volunteers. He also says that the three Protestant counties of Ulster would accept the Emperor William as their king rather than obey the Dublin Parliament. He is for giving them a separate status, with a Parliament and an executive of their own, ‘like the Isle of Man,’ I suggested. That perhaps would be best. In the meanwhile he was emphatic on the evil being done to the Catholic Irish by the English garrison. He says that it is no longer the case that the women refuse to have to do with the English soldiers. On the contrary, it is becoming as bad in Ireland and worse than in English garrison towns, _corruptio optimi pessima_, the whole country is being demoralized, especially by the cheap English papers, with their indecent illustrations. These the country girls get hold of, for they are sold at every railway station, and read in secret, sitting under hedges, in spite of the prohibition of the priests, and so go the way of prostitution. He says it is worse in Dublin far than in London, girls beginning there at fifteen and sixteen in the streets. Drink and gambling are destroying the country side. We talked about the O’Shea revelations. Everybody is reading them all over Ireland.

“_17th May (Sunday)._—Belloc to dinner. He tells me it is now certain that Asquith connived all through at the arming of the Ulster Protestants in order to get out of his agreement with Redmond for National Home Rule. Asquith has always been in favour of Federal Devolution for Scotland and Wales as well as Ireland. Now he will deprive the Home Rule Bill of what little autonomy it gives by an amending Bill voted in conjunction with the Tories.

“_22nd May._—Dillon writes asking my opinion of Mrs. O’Shea’s book. He says about the situation in Ireland: ‘I am strongly in favour of the Volunteer movement, but it is playing with fire, and unless it is kept under reliable control it might at any moment utterly ruin the national movement and repeat the disasters of 1798. We are getting a very exciting, strenuous time here (the House of Commons), but I think we shall pull through successfully. The forces against us are terrible, and a Radical Government is always weak and timorous.’

“_26th May._—The Irish Home Rule Bill has passed its final reading in the House of Commons by a majority of seventy-seven, but without enthusiasm, as it is threatened with an amending Bill depriving it of its entire efficacy by giving a full status to the Protestant counties of Ulster, and so nobody is pleased.

“_28th May._—Mrs. Padriac Colum writes me a long letter about the Volunteer movement in Ireland and upon the great effect my letter has had on it. Casement also writes at great length, and the movement, according to both, is assuming large dimensions.

“_11th June._—About the Volunteer business, which has taken a prodigious start since I first heard of it a month ago, Dillon says: ‘The Volunteer business is a VERY serious one. Sir Roger Casement is, I have no doubt, an excellent and able man, but he knows no more of Irish politics than I do of the Congo, and Irish politics are no more safe for amateur idealists to play about in than a powder magazine for children.’

“_20th June._—Dillon arrived for the week end, and we sat up till past midnight talking. He told me many interesting things. He and Redmond were in great alarm at the Curragh fiasco, which he says was grossly mismanaged through the fault principally of General Paget. Dillon believes that if the men at the Curragh had been simply ordered to Belfast to preserve order without any explanation or inquiry whether they were willing they would have obeyed, but the thing was terribly bungled. He was surprised at what I told him of Butler being the only officer at the Curragh who was not disaffected to the Government. It was the Curragh incident that convinced him that the National Volunteers should be openly supported, for it was beginning to be thought that nobody in Ireland cared any longer for Home Rule. Indeed, the vehemence of the feeling in connection with the volunteering had surprised him. Now the Parliamentary party have regained all their authority both in Ireland and America. All the same it was a dangerous game they were playing—arming the whole country.

“_21st June (Sunday)._—Drove with Dillon to Judge Mackarness’s at Steyning, where we found Sir Henry Cotton, Lajpat Rai and Gupta, all these being friendly to Home Rule. Dillon gave us his views at length. I had a long talk with him later about Ireland. He does not think the Volunteer movement will lead to civil war, though there is always danger of local riots. On the contrary, he thinks that both sides being armed will inspire mutual respect. We talked, too, about religion, _à propos_ of his son’s education. His eldest boy, who is eighteen, has just left Downside, and he is sending him to the new Catholic University at Dublin. The boy had learned nothing at Downside except to write good English, and he was unhappy there, being an ardent Home Ruler with all the other boys opposed to him. Politics was all he cared about. Dillon has always been against clerical interference with politics, especially Vatican interference, and succeeded in getting the new University put under lay management. This has made the Jesuits very hostile to him, and they spare no occasion of doing him an ill-turn. He is convinced they are the ruin of every political cause they favour, and have always been blunderers in public affairs.

“_25th June._—A new expedition is projected in Somaliland. A force is to be raised at Nairobi to start at the end of the summer. It is to pass from Nairobi through Abyssinia, or Italian territory, and another expedition at the same time from Berbera, a punitive affair to avenge the death of one Corfield, killed last winter by a band of Somalis in Abyssinia.”

At last we come to the first premonitory thunderclap of the European storm.

“_30th June._—There has been another assassination, this time of the heir of the Austrian Emperor. I do not quite know how it affects the political situation.

“_20th July._—The ‘Times’ to-day announces that the King has invited eight leading politicians to a conference on Ireland—Asquith, Lloyd George, Lansdowne, Bonar Law, Redmond, Dillon, Carson, and Craig. This is a quite new departure, a move probably of the King in conjunction with the Whig section of the Cabinet—Grey, Haldane, and Winston—and agreed to by Asquith. I do not expect any great result from it one way or other, as neither the Nationalists nor the Ulster people are prepared to give in.

“_22nd July._—Margaret Sackville came down unexpectedly, bringing with her Ramsay Macdonald, leader of the Labour Party in Parliament, who had expressed a wish to make my acquaintance. I found him intelligent and reasonable, with many ideas in common with mine, especially on India, which he has just been perambulating as member of the Commission of Inquiry into the Civil Service, and sufficiently anti-Imperialist. He is a man of forty-five or fifty, and talks with a slight Scotch accent. He told us some amusing stories of his Indian tour. I had a thorough talk with him about the situation in Ireland, and gave him as my advice to have nothing to do with the attempt to compromise on the Ulster question—‘Let the Ulstermen do their damnedest and get the Government to arm the National Volunteers.’ He said he believed that if the Conference at the Palace broke down, which it probably will, the Government would enrol the Volunteers as a Government force, and arm them and use them to keep order if the Ulstermen broke it. He told me he had been approached about having an invitation as Leader of the Labour Party to the Conference, but had not encouraged the idea. He does not think the King will refuse his consent to the Home Rule Bill if the Amendment Bill is thrown out. If there is a dissolution in October the Liberals will fail to get a majority. He has no high opinion of Grey’s intelligence, but considers him sure of Asquith’s succession, as he has a great hold over Liberals in the House of Commons. If Grey were to leave the Government on the Ulster question, the Liberal party would be split in two, while it would not matter if Winston resigned; Grey was indispensable. Of Lloyd George he has a mean opinion, a very high one of Dillon. I asked him whether if the democracy really got into power in England the Labour party and the Socialists would continue to be anti-Imperialist. He said: ‘I think they would, but I understand your doubt.’

“_24th July._—The Conference at Buckingham Palace has failed. A much more important matter is an ultimatum addressed by the Austrian Government to Servia, which may very likely lead to real war between Austria and Russia.

“_26th July (Sunday)._—The quarrel between Austria and Servia seems certain now to result in war, and war with Russia. Belloc dined with us. He says Germany is afraid of war, but I am inclined to think it is pushing it on, the occasion being a convenient one, especially in view of our Irish difficulties.

“_27th July._—To-day’s papers are sensational. War seems to have begun on the Danube, and there has been rioting in Dublin, with firing on the mob and a bayonet charge, with two or three people killed and many wounded. This will bring things to a head and oblige Asquith to allow the arming of the National Volunteers if he does not throw up his cards and resign. This is an astonishing show of weakness and mismanagement. I see the Labour members are threatening a revolt from Asquith and a hundred Liberals as well if he does not withdraw the Amendment Bill and keep the Army in order.

“_28th July._—The riot in Dublin has, I think, improved Home Rule prospects, showing that there is at least as much danger of trouble in disappointing the National hopes as in displeasing the Ulstermen.

“As to the larger matter of war abroad Grey has come forward amid a flourish of trumpets in the press to offer his little remedy of a conference of Ambassadors in London. But it is not likely to be more effective than his interventions of a year and two years ago. It will only make our diplomacy still more ridiculous. Belloc, however, thinks Germany is afraid of fighting, being unprepared for war. My view is that it is Russia that is unprepared, and that the fatal year 1913 having passed by, Kaiser Wilhelm thinks he may try his luck at last, and means to stand his ground with Austria against the Franco-Russian Entente, England being practically negligible just now.”

[This allusion to the fatal year 1913 refers to the prediction made in 1871 to Kaiser Wilhelm’s grandfather, Wilhelm, the first Emperor, that in 1913 would see the downfall of the Hohenzollerns. It was made to him by a gipsy, but, unlike such gipsy predictions, was based upon the mathematical calculation in which the letters of the Emperor’s name were represented by figures which worked out very exactly at 1913. I remember hearing several years before the war that Kaiser Wilhelm was so deeply impressed by it that he would not dare fight with France till the date was over.]

“_29th July._—It is announced that Austria has declared formal war on Servia; the question is now whether Russia will join in. There is every probability she will, as it is a question of predominance in the Balkans between the two Empires and the two religions, Catholic and Orthodox, and this will bring in Germany, and Germany will bring in France. There is wild excitement in London, and people are beginning to talk of England’s fulfilling her promises to France, but I do not believe in this, or in there being any definite promises. It would be too stupid even for Grey.

“_30th July._—The crisis is worse than ever, with panic on all the Stock Exchanges of Europe and our own. Advantage is being taken of it to defer any settlement of the Irish question on the ground that all parties are of one patriotic mind, Irish as well as English, towards events abroad. This is of course absurd, but so long as the King puts his signature to the Home Rule Bill, the rest will not matter. The first shots have been fired in Servia.

“_31st July._—The ‘Times’ to-day has a special article in largest print recommending England to go to war in aid of France against Germany, but I do not believe in any such folly. Belgrade has been bombarded, and it is all but certain now there will be general European war, but not for us. Belloc and I differ in this. He is convinced that France is stronger than Germany. I am not. He talks of Germany as calling out to our Foreign Office to mediate. I believe Germany means war, and is rejecting Grey’s foolish intervention.

“_1st Aug._—There is a general panic, the London Stock Exchange closed, and the Bank rate raised to 8 per cent. Germany has sent ultimatums both to Russia and to France; general war is certain, but the ‘Times’ has a letter from Norman Angell in large print to-day contradictory of its yesterday’s article. The ‘Nation’ and all the Liberal papers denounce the idea of war, and I cannot believe we shall be such fools as to take part in it if we are not attacked. Italy is proclaiming neutrality; we shall do the same.

“_2nd Aug. (Sunday)._—Belloc dined with us again to-night, and we had another great argument, whether to join in the war or not. Belloc is for it, I against. He looks upon Prussia as a ‘nation of atheists,’ who, if they beat the French, will destroy Christianity, whereas if the French beat them, ‘Prussia would be hamstrung.’ Russia, he thinks, will never be a danger to Western Europe. If we do not side with France now we shall be left without a friend. England will cease to be a great Power. My view is a very simple one. It seems to me that having no army of any value it would be ridiculous to fight, and would only hasten our discomfiture. Between France and Germany one seems to me as atheistical as the other, and Russia worse than either. England is in no condition to fight any but a naval war, and France does not need us at sea. Grey might have stopped all the trouble three years ago by forbidding Italy its raid on Tripoli. It would have been a cheap display of strength. He will hardly be fool enough now to send a twopenny-halfpenny Army Corps to the Continent where he can effect nothing. No. Asquith will announce neutrality to-morrow, not perhaps a very _beau rôle_, but less absurd than the other.

“_3rd Aug._—Things are marching fast. The Germans have begun their campaign against France by seizing Luxembourg, and seem to be already in Belgium. The news of this they say reached the Cabinet while it was sitting last evening (the second in the day, and that Sunday), and united all the Ministers to resolve, it is not said what. The naval reserves are being called out.

“_4th Aug._—Grey’s declaration turns out to be not quite what the evening papers said. It is evidently a compromise between the two opinions in the Cabinet. It denies the obligation to assist France against Germany, except to the extent of preventing bombardment by sea of the French seaboard in the Channel, but it affirms the duty of defending Belgian neutrality, and will lead us farther than the peace division think, for it must be remembered that all the action will be left in Grey’s hands at the Foreign Office, and in Winston’s at the Admiralty, and it will be easy for them to manipulate accidents into a case of necessity for despatching a land force to Antwerp. So we are not out of the wood yet. On the contrary, the British Army has been formally mobilised, and the reservists called to the colours. Our local policeman called to-day to inquire how many horses I could put up in my barns. Both Burrell and Leconfield have had a number of horses ear-marked for service, Leconfield as many as forty. I said I could put up twenty under cover, but everything connected with soldiering is hateful to me. There is talk of a British ultimatum to Germany, demanding an answer about the neutrality of Belgium being respected.

“_5th Aug._—The thing has been decided faster than we imagined. Yesterday Asquith announced in the Commons that Grey had sent his ultimatum to Berlin about Belgian neutrality, and had received an unsatisfactory answer, and to-day the morning papers publish ‘British Declaration of War against Germany.’”

With this last entry I close the present volume, reserving my Diary of the War itself for a posthumous occasion, if it should seem worth transcribing to those I may name literary executors of my last Will and Testament, for I am entering on my eightieth year this month, August, 1919, and shall make no further venturings in my lifetime with publicity. Suffice it here to say that my attitude during the four years the war lasted was from the first day one of severest abstention. I called it “unarmed neutrality.” I knew enough of our Foreign Office ways and past doings to be quite certain that the reasons put forward by Grey and Asquith for their declaration of war were not and could not be the real reasons, and I refused to follow the pacific herd in its shameless _volte-face_ from Opposition to support of the war, or find excuses for its weaknesses in the absurd false doctrine of “My country, right or wrong.” I knew, especially, that the plea put forward by Asquith of “a necessity of honour” obliging us to fight for Belgium, was a false plea, good at most as a forensic argument, but quite untrue in fact, for there was not a word in any of the Neutrality treaties affecting Belgium which entailed an obligation on England, or any other Power, collectively or individually, to go to war for a breach of it.

The neutrality of Belgium was indeed already a by-word in the European Chancelleries for obsolete ineffectiveness as long ago as when I was myself in diplomacy (and I left it in 1870)—nor would any one then have been much shocked at the treaties concerning it being spoken of as “scraps of paper,” which in fact they were as far as entailing any _obligation_ of war on any of the signatories to maintain it went. To suppose the contrary would be to have entailed the impossible condition of a single Power being called upon in honour to fight the other four Powers had these combined to partition Belgium between them, an extremity of logic amounting on the principle of _qui nimium probat nihil probat_ to initial disproof. The plea might be good enough for the occasion as a lawyer’s argument addressed to an ignorant Parliament, but could not be the real one. The real cause of the quarrel with Germany, I well knew was no more honourable a one than that of our dread of a too powerful commercial rival and the fear of Kaiser Wilhelm’s forcing France, if we stood aside, into commercial alliance with him against us in the markets of the world—that and a gambler’s venture almost desperate, seeing that we were without an army fit to take the field abroad, and were dependent on the thousand and one chances of the sea for our daily bread at home. In this madness I would take no part. That these were the true causes of the war, and not the pretended altruistic ones I have since acquired a certain knowledge from one of its chief promoters.

The obligation of fighting in alliance with France in case of a war with Germany concerned the honour of three members only of Asquith’s Cabinet, who alone were aware of the exact promises that had been made. These, though given verbally and with reservations as to the consent of Parliament, bound the three as a matter of personal honour and were understood at the Quai d’Orsay as binding the British Nation. Neither Asquith nor his two companions in this inner Cabinet could have retained office had they gone back from their word in spirit or in letter. It would also doubtless have entailed a serious quarrel with the French Government had they failed to make it good. So clearly was the promise understood at Paris to be binding that President Poincaré, when the crisis came, had written to King George reminding him of it as an engagement made between the two Nations which he counted on His Majesty to keep. Thus faced, the case was laid before the Cabinet, but was found to fail as a convincing argument for war. It was then that Asquith, with his lawyer’s instinct, at a second Cabinet brought forward the neutrality of Belgium as a better plea than the other to lay before a British jury, and by representing the neutrality treaties of 1831 and 1839 as entailing an obligation on England to fight (of which the text of the treaties contained no word) obtained the Cabinet’s consent and war was declared. This, I have full reason to know, was the true history of this astonishing venture entered on by Asquith through a miscalculation of the military value of Russia, and saved only from supreme disaster by the fighting tenacity of our ignorant boy soldiers, who believed what they were told, and throughout the war pretended, that it was one for liberty waged in the defence of weak nations, and to set the whole world free.

I write out here, as my last word to-day, George Wyndham’s pathetic verses, repeated to me more than once by him, and which have rung ever since in my ears. I read them as prophetic of the world’s doom, a doom, alas, which he, by a strange contradiction of his better nature, was nevertheless among the most active to bring about:

The waves climb to the cliff and the cliff repels them,

So the waves sing their long desire of the land.

The winds ask their way of the night, but she never tells them,

Complaining still of a sorrow she cannot understand.

The conquered Nations of Earth have lost their birthright,

They sing of the long ago when their rulers were kings,

All their value that rose once proud to set the Earth right

Sinks in a sob of sorrow and sobbing sings.

Woe for the kings who conquer, their pride, their glory!

The wage of victory see, new battles to be fought—

Those who adventuring lose, sing their souls in story

In the voice of wind and waves whose endeavour is nought.

The music heard afar in the void’s unanswering blindness

Is only of love poured out and lost in space.

All songs are children of love and the loved’s unkindness

Sad with rain that implores the beloved’s face.

These are the voices of God to the lost souls’ anguish,

Wounded souls that complain when they cannot climb,

Souls that aspire to heaven yet only languish,

Captives of life in pain and the bonds of Time.

APPENDICES

I. THE GRAND MUFTI OF EGYPT TO COUNT LEO TOLSTOI

II. THE AKABAH QUARREL

III. DHINGRA’S DYING SPEECH

IV. MR. BLUNT’S MEMORANDUM ON PRISON REFORM

V. THE ITALIAN MASSACRE IN TRIPOLI

VI. SIR ROGER CASEMENT’S LETTERS

VII. MISS FRANCES JENNINGS TO MISS ELIZABETH LAWRENCE

VIII. CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS