THE BEGINNING OF GREY’S BLUNDERS—AKABAH
About this date an incident occurred which was to prove the beginning of
a series of violent mistakes made by Cromer in Egypt, and endorsed by
Sir Edward Grey at the Foreign Office, and which, as will be seen, led
to the long quarrel between our Government and the Mohammedan world, as
represented by the Sultan at Constantinople. This was what was known as
the Akabah incident, which was briefly as follows:
It arose more or less accidentally. A young Englishman, Bramley, had for
some time past been making camel journeys in the Libyan Desert, and with
such success as to attract Cromer’s attention, and, though not in the
Government service, had been given a kind of commission by him to make a
tour of the desert East of the Suez Canal, and report to him about the
Bedouin tribes inhabiting it, a district known generally as the Sinai
Peninsula. An ostensible object was to inquire into disputes that had
occurred among them, but in reality to find out what truth there might
be in reports which had reached Cairo of an intention on the Sultan’s
part of making a branch line from Maan on the Hedjaz railway to Akabah.
During the course of his perambulation Bramley had come across a small
detachment of Ottoman troops camped around a well at an uninhabited spot
called Tabah, a few miles outside Akabah on the Suez road. With them
Bramley had come to loggerheads, and had reported the incident in a
serious light, and Cromer had taken it up as seriously, seeing in it a
first step on the Ottoman part in the pretended railway scheme, not only
to Akabah, but beyond it, towards Egypt, and as such a danger to the
British Occupation. On this very slender suspicion, for it was nothing
more, a claim had been raised by him in the name of the Khedive to the
whole of the Sinai Peninsula as forming part of Khedivial Egypt, which
geographically it had never been, for it had always been reckoned part
of Arabia, and so of Asia, not yet politically, except in connection
with the land pilgrimage between Cairo and Medina, and a very doubtful
grant to Mohammed Ali of the fortresses on the pilgrim road. The claim
had been pressed with quite unnecessary violence by Cromer, and the
evacuation of Tabah demanded of the Sultan in peremptory terms (as to
which see later and in the Appendix and my letter to Sir Edward Grey).
It was a trifling quarrel pushed to extreme lengths, and most foolishly
engaged in by our Government, who ought to have known that its
connection with the pilgrim route was sure to rouse Mohammedan feeling
against us and place it on the Sultan’s side. And so it proved, as will
be seen.
“_31st March._—To-day John Redmond came to see me, and stayed an hour
and a half talking. I asked him how they were getting on with the new
Parliament, and he said they were doing capitally. All on the Government
side except a very few were with him. Bannerman was sound about Home
Rule and Reid, and he thought he could count on Bryce and Morley and on
the rank and file. The Whig section of the Cabinet, Grey, Haldane,
Asquith and Fowler were opposed, but had hardly a handful with them. If
he, Redmond, were to propose a resolution in favour of Home Rule of
however complete a kind, he should have a large majority for it in the
House; he only did not propose one, because he was waiting to see what
the Government would bring forward as a measure next session, and he did
not wish to embarrass them. Talking about Morley I noticed a kind of
hesitation in what he said of him, and I put in ‘Yes, Morley is a
wretched fellow,’ to which he answered, ‘You may well say so, he is
exactly that. Last year when I was bringing forward my resolution in
favour of Home Rule, which I got the whole Liberal party to vote for, I
wrote to Morley and asked him to look through the terms of it, and
suggest amendments. This he did, and struck out the words “National
self-government,” and other expressions of the kind. But after the vote,
Bannerman told me, “You might just as well have left in the words you
struck out, we should have voted for it all the same.” Morley has no
courage, you can’t depend upon him. Yes, he is a wretched fellow.’ I
then asked about the quarrels there had been in the Irish party, and he
said, ‘It is entirely a personal matter between O’Brien, and Dillon, and
Sexton.’ O’Brien and Dillon had been at two ever since the Parnell
split, and now they were quite at loggerheads, did not even speak when
they met. O’Brien insisted there should be a round table conference
about Home Rule as there had been about the Land Bill, but the
conditions of the two cases were not the same. About the Land Bill, both
sides wanted to come to an agreement. On Home Rule, the Ulster members
and the Home Rulers were hopelessly at odds. All they could hope for
this Parliament was to get a half-way house as an _instalment_. No half-
way house could last, and it must end in Home Rule. About the influence
of the priests in Ireland, he said it was quite untrue that it had
increased in the last twenty years. On the contrary it had never
recovered from the shock it had sustained from the time of the Parnell
split. The best proof of their little influence to-day was that the
priests could not carry a single constituency against the Parliamentary
Party at an election. Archbishop Walsh was a man of little influence, he
was too constantly changing his mind. Even on the University question it
was impossible to say what his present opinion was.
“From this we went on to South Africa, which is the question of the
moment, the Government having first intervened to reprieve twelve
Kaffirs sentenced to death in Natal by a court martial, and then having
climbed down for fear of Colonial white opinion. He said the Radicals
were very angry at Lord Elgin’s pusillanimity, and the case was to be
debated on Monday. The Radicals were angry, too, at the Whig section of
the Cabinet not having voted for the Trades Union Bill. Altogether they
had lost much ground already this session. If the opposition had any men
of ability they might make an effective attack; as it was, George
Wyndham was their only good man. Of George Wyndham he spoke nicely, said
he had been sorry for him at the time of his breakdown last year when he
resigned, but he had quite recovered his position now. I told him I
should not be surprised if George helped them to get Home Rule, and I
also repeated to him how Arthur Balfour had told me long ago that if
they were to have Home Rule at all he hoped it would be _separation_. On
the whole Redmond was most satisfied with the position. The Labour
members went solid with the Irish, so that they made a compact party of
120 or 130 members. Redmond is a good-hearted fellow, getting up several
times to arrange my invalid pillows for me while we were talking.
“_7th April._—The interest of the week has been about the Zulu rising in
Natal. Our wretched Whig Government, after intervening to reprieve the
twelve men sentenced to be shot, gave in to the Natal colonists, whose
Ministry had resigned, and on Monday the unfortunate Zulus were
executed. This is a dastardly business, and has disgusted the Radicals
with Lord Elgin, and there has since been a serious Kaffir rising. How
it will end no one knows, but the Government has now committed itself to
the general principle of protecting the natives.
“_8th April._—Sir Wilfrid Lawson called, much broken with age, I am
sorry to see, but still full of interest in the things that interested
us both twenty-five years ago. I think that with his help we have put a
spoke in Cromer’s wheel, and prevented a bombardment at Akabah.”
This was the last time I saw Sir Wilfrid, whose death, a few weeks
later, was an immense misfortune to the cause of liberty, and the rights
of backward races and small nationalities oppressed by British
Imperialism. He was fearless, unselfish, and absolutely honest, with an
inexhaustible fund of wit and rough eloquence, an old-fashioned
Cumberland squire of the best possible type.
“_10th April._—Neville sent me word this morning that Bernard Shaw was
sitting to him for his portrait, and I looked in (his house is next to
mine), and spent an hour with him. Shaw was in the papal robes in which
Neville is painting him, seated in an ancient cinquecento chair, a
grotesque figure, with his trousered legs showing through the lace cotta
transparent to his knees. He is an ugly fellow, too, his face a pasty
white, with a red nose and a rusty red beard, and little slatey-blue
eyes. Neville’s portrait is wonderfully like. Shaw’s appearance,
however, matters little when he begins to talk, if he can ever be said
to begin, for he talks always in his fine Irish brogue. His talk is like
his plays, a string of paradoxes, and he is ready to be switched on to
any subject one pleases, and to talk brilliantly on all. He was talking
about his marriage when I entered. ‘I should never have married at all,’
he said, ‘if I had not been dead at the time. I tumbled off my bicycle,
and the surgeons made a hole in my foot which they kept open for a year,
and me in bed. I thought I was dead, for it would not heal, and
Charlotte had me at her mercy. I should never have married if I had
thought I should get well. Then I tumbled again, this time downstairs
from top to bottom. When I found myself on the floor in the hall with
every bone broken I felt satisfied. I could not do more and I took to my
bed again.’ These particulars were _à propos_ of my having said that
there were two quite happy moments in one’s life, the first when one
took to one’s deathbed, and the other when one got up from it. He told
us next his experiences in public speaking, and how shy he had been, and
described his first open-air speech in Hyde Park when he had practised
on three loafers lying on their backs on the grass, and how one of them
without getting up had called out ‘’ear! ’ear!’ He said the great art of
speaking was to get somebody to interrupt you with a question, and for
you to misunderstand it, and he gave us some funny instances. I then got
him to give his views on land reform, which he said was a very simple
matter. You had only to get all the agricultural labourers to migrate
into the towns, where they would make themselves useful by loafing in
the streets and attending music halls, the only thing they understood,
and by sending the townspeople down into the country to cultivate it by
electricity and explosives. If he had a farm he thought he would plough
it by firing cannon up and down it—amusing rubbish, which I fancy
concealed a complete ignorance of the agricultural branch of the
socialistic case. Shaw is a capital fellow all the same, and one I
should like if I knew him better. He showed himself personally kind and
of much practical dexterity when I got him to help me to my feet from
the sofa on which I was, when the sitting was over.
“_15th April (Easter Sunday)._—It being a beautiful day I was taken out
for the first time in a kind of invalid chair, where I am able to lie
flat, to Rotten Row, and lay there in the sun looking at the hyacinths
and tulips by the Serpentine pond head. No smart people to be seen, only
shopkeepers and working men of the London variety.
“_21st April._—To Clouds at last. I thought I should never get there, my
journey having been so often put off by my illnesses, but all has gone
successfully, and I have travelled up in my wheeled chair from Semley
station. There is the usual Easter family party in the house, with
Arthur Balfour, Sir Oliver Lodge, and Butcher, M.P.
“_22nd April._—I was able to get downstairs this afternoon and to lie in
the smoking room, where they all came to talk to me, Arthur Balfour with
much kindly unction giving me a two-handed greeting. We had not met here
since September, 1887. This time we did not talk any politics, but art,
poetry, and science, the last especially with Lodge. Lodge, though
somewhat pompous, is a good fellow, and talks well on his own subjects,
and, as I had just been reading Haeckel’s ‘Life,’ and being engaged on
my ‘Religion of Happiness,’ I was able to discuss materialism with him
to some effect. He is really much more of a materialist than his books
suggest, and except that he believes in a future life and some kind of
God, there is not much difference between us. He admits the probability
of a material origin of life through spontaneous generation, and his God
is not God the Creator but a very shadowy being devoid of personality.
“_23rd April._—Lodge has gone back to Birmingham but he came up to my
room for a final talk before he left. He is grateful to me for having
cured a toothache he had with a small dose of morphia. He has left his
book against Haeckel with me to read and invites me to answer it in
print.
“Percy tells me he was present at the celebrated conference at Oxford in
1860 when Huxley defended Darwin’s theory, and the Bishop of Oxford,
Wilberforce, denounced it. He remembers Haeckel being there in support
of Huxley, which is curious, seeing that Haeckel’s biographer says that
Haeckel did not till two years later accept Darwinism.
“Arthur Balfour has been doing a rest cure for some time in London,
recovering from his political defeat, and is still an invalid. I find
him singularly unaware of current events, as he still refuses to read
newspapers, expecting others to supply him with news of what goes on. An
odd instance of this took place to-day. He received a telegram by
mistake addressed ‘Balfour, London,’ from San Francisco, telling him
that some property had been saved from the earthquake, and he could not
make it out. ‘What earthquake?’ he asked; ‘what earthquake?’ having
heard nothing of what all the newspaper world has been talking about for
the last five days, and he was put out at not having been told. ‘I told
you, at any rate,’ one of them said, ‘of the eruption of Vesuvius,’ an
event three weeks old, but he did not seem to know much about that
either.
“_24th April._—Maurice Hewlett was here to-day, a literary man of some
standing, and his wife, who talked to me about the Arabs on the strength
of a visit to Algiers. Butcher has left us, a man of no importance, and
absurdly deferential to Balfour as his party chief, yet member for
Cambridge University.
“_28th April._—Arthur Balfour went away to-day. The last two evenings I
have dined with the rest of the company downstairs, and have had a good
deal of conversation with him, very little on politics, but much on
unimportant things. In conversation he is a pleasant trifler, avoiding
serious discussions, and showing, as I have remarked already, a curious
ignorance of things of general information. He had no idea, for
instance, last night, on what the Duke of Orleans and Don Carlos founded
their respective claims to the French and Spanish thrones, and he
jumbled up the Soudan with Somaliland. He told us a story which
specially amused us. During the North Sea crisis, when there seemed a
probability of war with Russia every hour, he happened to be at
Panshanger for Sunday, and they wanted a fourth to play bridge. Lady
Cowper, knowing the Russian _chargé-d’affaires_ was the best bridge
player in London, a telegram was sent asking him to come. The Russian,
of course, thought that the Prime Minister had some grave news to tell
him, and hurried down to Panshanger, and there had been great difficulty
in persuading him that he had nothing really to tell. To me Balfour
shows a great deference (if I may use the term) and when he wished us
all good-bye after luncheon, he came round especially to me where I lay
on my couch and addressed me in a little speech which was almost
affectionate. I am touched at this and return it, and it is a feeling he
very generally inspires. Ego is here, a very charming fellow, a tall
intelligent Oxford undergraduate. They talk of putting him into the
army, though he does not really fancy it.
“_29th April (Sunday)._—Matters with the Sultan have come to a violent
crisis. The Sultan has refused point-blank to evacuate Tabah (just
opposite Akabah), and it is universally believed that Kaiser Wilhelm
stands behind him. All the papers in London have become truculent,
including the ‘Tribune,’ and I have written a long letter to Redmond
suggesting that he and the Labour members and the extreme Radical
section should adjourn the House, and debate the situation as one of
urgency. This is how I explain the case to him:
“_29th April_, 1906.
“Dear Redmond.—Would it not be possible to adjourn the House so as to
get explanations from the Government about this quarrel with the Sultan?
Up to the present Grey has refused papers, and everybody is in the dark
about it. Then the next step will be to send an ultimatum—and then they
will say it is too late and that the honour of England is engaged.
“As far as I can make the matter out, the Egyptian frontier as granted
in 1841 to Mohammed Ali was drawn in a straight line from Suez to El
Arish on the Mediterranean, El Arish being a village situated near the
mouth of a small river or rather stream which was the ancient boundary
between Egypt and Palestine, and is mentioned as such under the name of
the ‘River of Egypt’ in the Bible. I find that in 1840 the boundary of
the Pashalik of Acre contiguous to that of Egypt was officially drawn at
that time from Suez to El Arish. In the firman granted to Mohammed Ali
in the following year the passage occurs: ‘I have reintegrated you in
the Government of Egypt comprised within the limits drawn on the map
which has been sent you.’ I think this map should be asked for, as I am
convinced that it would show the boundary to be the Suez to El Arish
line.
“All the subsequent ‘firmans of investiture’ granted to the Viceroys of
Egypt have followed much the same lines, the exact frontier not being
specified. This was the case with Ismaïl Pasha’s firman in 1866, and
Tewfik’s firman in 1879, and, I believe, Abbas’ in 1892, though I have
not got a copy of it.
“The origin of the claim in the Sinai Peninsula raised now for Egypt is
to be found in a permission given to Mohammed Ali, who, it will be
remembered, reconquered for the Sultan the province of Hejaz in Arabia,
with the holy cities Medina and Mecca, that he should garrison certain
stations on the pilgrim road from Egypt. These were Nakhl [a fort half
way between Suez and Akabah], Akabah, Moelhe, and Wej, the last two
being small ports on the eastern shore of the Red Sea. All these were
considered to be in Arabia, and are marked as such on European maps of
as late date as after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, though the
forts remained in the occupation of the Egyptian Government till 1892.
Akabah, Moelhe, and Wej were then, if I remember rightly, abandoned by
Egypt, the pilgrimage no longer being made by land, the only post on the
pilgrim road still occupied with a small garrison of perhaps a dozen men
being Nakhl. In 1892, though nothing definite was said about the
boundary in the firman, a letter was written by the then Grand Vizier (I
believe it has been published but I have not a copy of it) saying that
the boundary of Egyptian administration would be a line drawn from El
Arish to Akabah, the Egyptian Government holding the former, the Ottoman
Government holding the latter. No exact demarcation, however, of the
village district of either El Arish or of Akabah was made, and I believe
that in fact the Egyptian Government has exercised jurisdiction for a
number of miles east of El Arish. The boundary stone spoken of as having
been recently removed by the Turks is, I suspect, considerably east of
the village and of the Wady of El Arish (the River of Egypt). So that if
the Sultan now claims some miles of land west of the Akabah fort and
village he is probably doing no more than the Egyptian Government has
long been doing at the other end of the frontier line. It is obvious
that a frontier line cannot be drawn exactly to the walls of either
village.
“As to the exercise of administration in the disputed district, that is
to say, the desert between the southern inhabited limit of Palestine and
the Suez Canal, there has been practically none by either Government. In
1876, and again in 1881, I travelled through the whole of it, and can
affirm that with the exception of the fort of Nakhl there was then no
permanently inhabited place, and that the very few Bedouins camped in it
owned allegiance to neither Government.
“The Bedouins of the Sinai district, which lies south of Nakhl, are very
poor and few in number. Before the Suez Canal was made, they lived by
trading their dates and such small curiosities as their district
produced, including rough turquoises, at Cairo, and by conducting
Russian and Greek pilgrims to the Sinai monastery. The cutting of the
canal, however, has made a barrier between them and Egypt, which has
practically ruined them, through the imposition at first of tolls for
crossing the canal and later by quarantine regulations either for
themselves or their animals. I know well their sufferings on this head,
as for the last twenty-five years they have made me the confidant of
their complaints. Moreover, a concession was given of their turquoise
mines to a European company, now I believe abandoned as unworkable,
whereby they were much harassed, and the whole peninsula has been
treated as an infected district through the establishment of a
quarantine station at Tor for the Mecca pilgrimage. Thus they have
shared in no way in the material prosperity of Egypt and have been
persistently ignored by its government, until apparently for a political
reason we find Lord Cromer, in his this year’s Report, detailing the
benefits he proposes to bestow on them. The scheme he mentions of
irrigation for the Peninsula is mere nonsense, as the whole district is
dry desert without streams, for the most part an elevated plateau with a
very rare rainfall, and no alluvial soil. I mention these matters
because it is sure to be put forward that in opposing the Turkish
occupation of Tabah we are defending the inhabitants from Ottoman
oppression. No such inhabited place as Tabah existed when I was in the
country, and there probably exists none now, the whole district being
many miles away from any Arab camping ground.
“As to the excitement in Egypt, it is the natural consequence of the
system of a ‘Veiled Protectorate’ which we have been pursuing there for
the last twenty years, and of the repression of all political liberty or
exercise of self-government. Before we came with an army of occupation
to Egypt we were popular with the natives of all classes, and the Sultan
was either ignored or despised. Now it is we who, in spite of the
material prosperity fostered by Cromer, are hated and despised; and it
is the Sultan who is looked upon as the only possible protector against
perpetual foreign domination. Cromer, though a very able administrator,
is no statesman in any constructive sense. He has allowed nothing in the
way of self-government to make even the beginning of a reappearance in
Egypt from the day when it was put down at Tel-el-Kebir. He has governed
through the weakness not through the strength of the native population,
and more and more every year through Englishmen. Whatever patriotism
there is left in Egypt is strongly anti-English, and it is just as well
that our credulous people here should learn how things stand politically
and morally, and should discount Cromer’s self-glorifying annual Reports
on any point but that of Egypt’s material progress. These Reports always
remind me (to compare small things with great), of the first chapter of
Genesis, where ‘the Lord saw all the things that he had made and found
that they were very good.’ This calling for reinforcements by Cromer,
who less than two years ago boasted that he could govern Egypt without
any army of occupation at all, would be amusing if it was not likely to
lead to a collision. I suspect the Khedive is playing partners with the
Sultan in the Akabah affair. Certainly a quarrel on such a question,
involving as it does the protection of the pilgrim road, will make a
great ferment in the Mohammedan world from China to Senegal and may cost
us dear.
“I should be glad if you would show this letter to some of the Labour
members and those Radicals who care more about peace and retrenchment
than Imperial glory—and get them to try and put a little sense into the
Government—or they will go exactly the same way to ruin as Gladstone
went after the elections of 1880. I see all the Radical papers are
beating the war-drum just as they did in 1882, but perhaps something may
be done in the House of Commons.
“It is worth noting that on the 23rd of March, 1886, just twenty years
ago, the excellent Campbell Bannerman, as representing the War Office,
announced to the House that the evacuation of Egypt would be effected
with as little delay as possible.
“You will of course consult Dillon, to whom I wrote about the matter on
Friday, if he is back in London. You will not forget that Balfour, in
one of his speeches in the House three years ago, defined Egypt as ‘a
province of the Ottoman Empire in the military occupation of England.’
We have of course no legal right there by any rule of international law,
nor by any European instrument except the private agreement lately made
with France. We are sure to be called to account internationally for our
presence there one of these days, as the position on the Suez Canal is
too important in the world for the other Mediterranean Powers to
acknowledge it permanently.
“Yours very truly.
“W. S. B.”
“A Cabinet Council sat yesterday, and the King is returning in haste
from the Mediterranean; a pretty kettle of fish it is. Cromer has called
for reinforcements in Egypt, not, I imagine, to attack the Turks with,
but to overawe the Nationalists, and because he cannot depend upon the
Egyptian army in a case where the Sultan is concerned. The great doubt
is about the Khedive’s attitude; that he hates the English _régime_ is
certain, and also that he has of late years been hand in glove with the
Sultan, but the London papers announce that he has just been
entertaining the Prince of Wales at Cairo, and that he has promised to
pay him a return visit in England this summer. Abbas, however, has
become such a double dealer that he is probably on the Sultan’s side
secretly, and towards Cromer is playing precisely the same old game
played by his father and grandfather of running with the Nationalist
hare and hunting with the European hounds. Cromer has just published a
grandiloquent Report of his year’s achievements, and he has shoved into
it a plan of reforms and improvements for the Sinai Peninsula, doubtless
in view of the Tabah dispute which began as long ago as January. If the
Sultan stands to his guns I don’t see precisely what our people can do
in Egypt. They have not the force there to turn the Turks out of the
disputed territory, and they cannot bombard Constantinople without a
gross breach of the European peace. A naval demonstration is their only
remedy. They will probably blockade Hodeida and so endeavour to apply
pressure, but I doubt if the Emperor William will allow action at Smyrna
of the kind taken by France a few years ago. In Natal, too, they are in
difficulties through a Zulu revolt, so that it may well happen that our
splendid Radical government, pledged up to the eyes to peace and
retrenchment, may find themselves with two wars on their hands within
six weeks of their coming into office.
“_2nd May._—As to my letter to Redmond I see that Grey and Fitzmaurice
have explained themselves. Also Cromer’s Report has come, and I have
written a long article on it of 2,000 words for the ‘Manchester
Guardian,’ criticizing Cromer’s political as contrasted with his
administrative policy in Egypt, explaining his relations with the
Khedive and blaming his quarrel with the Sultan.
“_6th May (Sunday)._—The ‘Manchester Guardian’ has published my article
on Cromer in a prominent way with a leading article adopting my view
that the present troubles are largely caused by Cromer’s having failed
to re-establish the Liberal National Party in 1883, and later by his
injudicious brow-beating of Abbas. It says that self-government ought to
be begun now in Egypt. On the other hand the ‘Tribune’ has gone right
round, and is extravagantly jingo, denouncing the Sultan, and printing
an aggressive picture of John Bull threatening to demolish him. The
‘Daily News’ is preaching a crusade. It says, ‘it is a maxim of Liberal
policy that no foot of land abandoned by the Turk can ever belong to him
again,’ all this in consequence of the announcement that an ultimatum
has been addressed to Constantinople.
“_7th May._—I have decided to write a public letter to Grey
expostulating with him on the ultimatum, and have spent the whole day
over it, from half-past two in the earliest morning, but I feel it to be
necessary. As far as I can understand the case, our Government is
technically in the wrong in asserting a claim for Tabah as _territory_
of the Khediviate, or at any time within the ancient boundaries of
Egypt, or that it has ever been administered from Cairo, except in
connection with the Pilgrim Road.
“_9th May._—I left Clouds and came up to London. I have sent in my
letter to Grey, and Eddy Tennant (who is an intimate friend of Grey’s)
has promised to speak to him about it. He is to give him a message, too,
from me, that my letter is written in no hostile sense to the
Government, but that if I receive no answer I shall consider myself at
liberty to publish. I have also sent a copy of it through Arthur Ellis
to the King. I fear, however, that it is too late to stop warlike
operations. [_Note._ For the text of my letter to Grey see Appendix.]
“Meynell dined with me. He talked a good deal about the Education Bill,
which is now much discussed. Birrell, he says, repudiates it as his own,
saying that it is really Lloyd George’s drafting forced on Birrell by a
Cabinet majority.
“_11th May._—Percy Wyndham came to lunch with me, and immediately after
John Redmond. They had not met before, but Percy made a polite speech
about their having sat together twenty years ago in Parliament, and then
left us to our talk. This was principally about Akabah. The Radical
members, Redmond says, are so furious against the Sultan that they will
none of them join in any protest against the ultimatum, though not one
of them understands in the least what the quarrel is about. I explained
the matter to him, and he said there would be papers published on the
case on Monday, and opportunities of discussion Tuesday and Thursday on
the Estimates. He would send Dillon to me.
“There is a report to-day of the quarrel with the Sultan having been
arranged, but the British fleet is assembled at the Piræus, and almost
anything may happen. The Emperor William has backed out of any
encouragement he may have given at Constantinople, and clearly cannot
help the Sultan in a material way. I am inclined to think that if it
comes to a naval demonstration it would be one of forcing the
Dardanelles and threatening the Sultan at Yildiz.
“_12th May._—The ‘Daily News’ and ‘Tribune’ publish epitomes of my
letter to Grey, and the ‘Manchester Guardian’ gives it in full, with a
good leading article in support. John Dillon lunched with me, and we
discussed Akabah, of course. He knows more about Egyptian politics than
anybody now in the House of Commons, but, like Redmond, he says, the
Radicals will do nothing to stop the war.
“_13th May (Sunday)._—The ‘Observer’ announces that the Sultan has
yielded to the British demands, these being (1) That all the positions
occupied by the Turks should be abandoned; (2) That the Sinaitic
frontier should be delimited by a mixed commission. This is hailed as a
complete triumph for Sir Edward Grey.”
The triumph proved an unfortunate one for our Foreign Office, as it was
the beginning of the long quarrel between Sir Edward Grey and
Constantinople, which resulted eight years later in the alliance of
Turkey with the central European Powers in the Great War, a combination
which gave to Germany its victory over Russia. Not a soul in England
understood its importance, or cared to understand. For this reason I
print the details here at full length.
“Philip Currie is dead after a long illness and a week of
unconsciousness, the papers say. In his youth Philip was a merry fellow,
one of the smart young men of the Foreign Office, where he had rooms for
many years as resident clerk, with his retriever ‘Pam,’ so named after
Palmerston, his first chief. He had wit and a pleasant tongue. He
figures as second hero of Violet Fane’s poems, ‘From Dawn to Noon,’ whom
he afterwards married. Clare Vyner being her first hero. Philip rose in
the Foreign Office to the rank of permanent Under Secretary of State,
and then got himself made Ambassador at Constantinople, and later at
Rome, retiring on a pension some three years ago, his time being out. We
were cousins and good friends always, without being quite bosom friends.
He was a good official friend to me while I was in diplomacy, though my
incursions into foreign politics in later years estranged us at times.
The last time I saw him was two years ago in the Park, being wheeled
there in a bath chair in broken health, and I went home to lunch with
him in Prince’s Gate. Now both he and Violet Fane have disappeared into
the eternal nothing.
“_22nd May._—The Sultan has yielded everything about Akabah. Though
Redmond and Dillon promised me to press for papers, they have not done
so, and our Foreign Office has explained nothing. I am disgusted with
the Irish for playing thus into Grey’s hands, politic though they may
find it to be for their own purpose of getting a Home Rule Bill out of
the Government. Not that I expected much other result, for I have always
felt that the Irish, if they once got their own freedom, would join
England and the other robber nations of the world in the work of
Imperial spoliation. Parnell’s declaration in favor of Imperial
Federation twenty years ago was an indication of this to me. It was my
main reason for retiring from Irish politics, and for the future I shall
economize my subscription to their Parliamentary Fund.
“_28th May._—I have been all last week in Chapel Street, seeing my
various friends. To-day Betty Balfour came to lunch with me, having
first sent me a new batch of her father’s letters to read and advise as
to publishing. They deal mostly with his Indian Government, and I have
advised her to abridge and cut freely, as the volume is to be one of
private, not political letters. We discussed the respective intellectual
powers of her husband Gerald, and of Arthur.
“Curiously enough, precisely the same question turned up later in the
afternoon, when I had a visit from Margot. She has, of course, known
Arthur intimately for the last twenty years before she married. She
insisted that Arthur’s real mind was metaphysical and religious, that he
had a vivid sense of the present life being of very little importance,
an ante-chamber to another life. On one occasion he had told her that,
in his view death, apart from the physical pain of it—‘and I am a coward
in regard to pain,’ he had said, ‘being altogether without that kind of
courage’—was an incident no more alarming than the passage ‘from this
room into that,’ the world to come being infinitely more interesting and
important. ‘It is for that reason,’ Margot said, ‘that he has no
profound convictions about politics, they attract him only as a game
which he thinks he plays well, and which amuses him much as a game of
chess might do, but he does not really care for the things at stake, or
believe that the happiness of mankind depends on events going this way
or that.’
“Dillon was to have come to me to-day, but has had to go suddenly to
Ireland to see Davitt, who is in a dying state. Betty Balfour, talking
of Dillon, was very severe about his ‘lying and insincerity,’ but I
could not get her to give an instance of either. I told her that for my
part I had the highest respect for Dillon, and had always found him
perfectly honest and straightforward, a far better patriot than others
whom she was praising.
“_31st May._—To Newbuildings for the Whitsuntide holiday, Anne being
expected home from Egypt on the 4th.
“_11th June._—This is the anniversary of the Alexandria riots, a date
always memorable to me. On Saturday we made an expedition to Chanclebury
Ring, I in my wheeled chair with a donkey, the others in the American
trap, and we took luncheon with us. While we were there, a horseman rode
up who turned out to be Goring from Wiston, who is owner of the Down,
and we renewed acquaintance. He told us, among other things, that his
father’s and his grandfather’s lives together covered 180 years, their
tenure between them of the Wiston estate 150 years. The Gorings got
Wiston by a marriage with the Fagges, who had bought it of the Shirleys,
when these became involved in the civil war troubles. It is the history
of more than one Sussex estate, of the Burrels at West Grinstead, and of
ourselves at Newbuildings.
“_20th June._—Anne arrived last night from Egypt. She confirms my view
of the political situation there, saying that while nobody wants the
Sultan’s rule at Cairo, they nevertheless take his side about Akabah.
This is the case with even the most advanced of Mohammed Abdu’s
disciples. As to the Khedive’s attitude, it is not known precisely what
line he took, as he seems to have held one language to Cromer and
another to Mukhtar Pasha. There can, however, be little doubt that he
was with the Sultan in the affair, as he has just gone to
Constantinople, which certainly would not be the case if he had taken
the English side. It has been a year of terrible drought for the
Bedouins.
“_21st June._—To-day the ‘Manchester Guardian’ has published a protest I
have drawn up against the intended execution of certain fellahin, near
Tantah, for the so-called ‘murder’ of a British officer, and the hurting
of several more, which took place on the 13th. [This was the notorious
Denshawai affair, which led to world-wide results.] It is an abominable
case. As far as one could learn from the telegrams and some slight
admissions made by Grey in Parliament, the officers were part of an
English military force, making a promenade through the Delta, with the
object of demonstrating for political purposes the military power of
Great Britain. Finding themselves encamped near Tantah, they could think
of nothing better to do than to shoot the tame pigeons in a village hard
by, and went out, seven of them, in uniform for the purpose. They say
they were invited there by an Omdeh of the village, but when they got
there the villagers objected, and as none of them knew Arabic they got
frightened; a gun then went off in the hands of one of them; a woman and
some men were killed or wounded, and the officers were belaboured with
_nabuts_. Two of these ran away, it is said to bring help from their
camp, seven miles off, and one of them was found dead four miles from
the village. This is exactly like all these cases, except that it is the
first time an officer has been killed, and Reuter’s telegrams are
violent for punishment of the natives. I got Dillon to ask some
questions in Parliament on Monday, and yesterday there was a special
telegram in the ‘Daily Chronicle’ saying that Cromer had decided to have
the villagers shot. This, be it remarked, before any trial had taken
place, and all treat it as a case of murder with prearrangement, not on
the part of the officers, but of the fellahin. It is the usual course
these affairs take in Egypt, but a more than usually plain demonstration
of the kind of justice dealt out between Englishman and native.
Fortunately the ‘Manchester Guardian’ has taken up the matter strongly,
and may perhaps save some lives, but I doubt it. English feeling on
these matters has become absolutely callous, and I believe if Cromer
ordered a dozen of the villagers to be crucified or impaled, no serious
objection would be made to it here, still I have done what I could, and
there is a chance. The ‘trial’ is to be on Sunday.
“_23rd June._—I see a telegram in the ‘Pall Mall’ which seems to show
that Cromer has received a hint to be moderate in his zeal. It is
reported that he has ordered Captain Bull’s body to be exhumed and
examined medically, with the result that it has been discovered that he
died not of wounds but of sunstroke.
“_27th June._—Still writing to Dillon, the ‘Manchester Guardian,’ and
the ‘Tribune,’ about the abominable Denshawai affair which is to be
judged to-day, or rather to be sentenced, for the whole thing has been
judged by Cromer already and the so-called ‘trial’ will simply record
his decision.
“_28th June._—They have condemned four of the Denshawai villagers to
death, four to penal servitude for life, three to fifteen years’
imprisonment, six to seven years, three to one year with fifty lashes,
and five to fifty lashes, thirty-one acquitted. This is a monstrous
sentence and ought, I think, to do more to break up the legend of
Cromer’s paternal rule in Egypt than anything we have seen since its
commencement. Dillon is bringing forward the case in parliament, but
nothing is likely to stop the executions.
“_29th June._—I have worried myself all day about the Egyptian
villagers, and I see now that they were hanged yesterday under
circumstances of revolting barbarity. All day I have been writing, and
the thing is weighing on me like a nightmare still.
“_30th June._—Terence Bourke came down from London for the day and gave
me news of Tunis. The French, he said, have turned over a new leaf there
and are trying to reconcile the Arabs to their rule. He thinks they are
succeeding. He is now for an Arabian Caliphate under English protection.
The Germans, however, are making a vigorous propaganda in their own
interests in North Africa. Anne has left for London, and I am alone
here.
“_1st July (Sunday)._—George Wyndham came down by the early train, and
Cunninghame Graham a little later, and we spent a pleasant day in talk.
The executions in Egypt were our chief topic. I had fortunately finished
my letter to the ‘Manchester Guardian’ before they came, and I read it
out to them. Graham is to get the Labour members to support Dillon, when
he proposes a reduction of Grey’s salary on the Foreign Office vote on
Thursday. George, though he will not help, will look on with ‘benevolent
interest.’ We sat all day under the trees of the Jubilee garden. After
lunch Graham went away, and George and I stayed talking poetry. He read
me his essay on Ronsard, and some of his translations, which are
admirable, and we had much intimate personal as well as literary talk,
and I told him the history of my religious opinions. It is odd his
championing the cause of High Church Christianity, he who really
believes in nothing of these things, altogether a day of extreme beauty
and intellectual pleasure.
“_3rd July._—Chapel Street. Cromer has been given the Order of Merit!
Dillon came to luncheon and stayed for an hour and a half talking over
the Denshawai case. He is hopeless of getting a good hearing for it in
Parliament, though the Radical feeling is strong of indignation, but
every kind of pressure is being put upon members of the Government to
get them to be silent, and the press also is being appealed to. What a
state of things! Here we have a judicial crime of the largest dimensions
committed by our Representative in Egypt, the thing hardly denied, quite
undeniable and defaming the fair face of English justice throughout the
world, yet on the very day the hangings take place our Representative is
honoured with the supreme reward of the Order of Merit! Sir Edward Grey,
for the Government, when questioned as to the trial and executions,
alleges that he cannot give any information, _because he does not know_,
and he must wait till a detailed report arrives from Egypt, and this
although Cromer is in England and was actually in the Gallery of the
House of Commons while the questions were being put, Cromer who knows
every detail of the affair and is the sole person responsible. The
truth, however, of the situation, Dillon tells me, is this. The Radicals
had designed to have a full dress debate in condemnation of the Congo
atrocities committed by the King of the Belgians, and are enraged to
find that atrocities quite as startling have been committed by our own
officials in Egypt. With what face can they now denounce the mote in the
Belgian eye, yet we are hypocrites enough to do this even with this
Denshawai beam, astounding as it is, in our own eye, but the Radicals
are fools and deserve their fate of jackaling their Whig leaders, and I
am a fool to fash myself with the abomination of our rule in the world.
“Sir Wilfrid Lawson is dead, the only quite true man on the Radical side
in Parliament. Dear good man, we shall not see another like him.
“_4th July._—To Clifford’s Inn, to see Neville’s exhibition of pictures,
his Bernard Shaw portrait among them.
“_6th July._—I have had a letter from Keir Hardie, the Labour leader,
asking my opinion about Grey’s statement, and have answered him. [The
peculiarity in Hardie’s letter was that it showed him to be entirely
ignorant even as to where the atrocities had taken place, imagining it
to be somewhere in the Soudan.]
“_8th July (Sunday)._—The new Egyptian Nationalist leader, Mustapha
Kamel, writes to me from Paris saying he wishes to see me, and I have
telegraphed back proposing that he should come over to England, and
offering to lodge him at Chapel Street. There was a sickening account on
Friday in the ‘Pall Mall’ of the Denshawai executions. I think it _must_
smash Cromer. There are a number of French and English papers, too, come
from Cairo which make a damning case of abuse of justice in the trial. I
intend to write a pamphlet to be called ‘Atrocities of Justice under
English Rule in Egypt.’[6]
“_11th July._—Anne and I spent yesterday writing in connection with
this, and translating the Egyptian newspapers. I have written as well as
telegraphed to Mustapha Kamel urging him to come to England without
delay. The moment is most propitious for a National Egyptian
demonstration. To-day being the anniversary of the bombardment of
Alexandria, I headed my letter ‘Anniversaire du bombardement
d’Alexandrie. Que Dieu le venge.’ He has telegraphed in return that he
will come to London on Saturday, and sends in the meantime a manifesto
addressed to the English nation and the world at large, which he is
having published in the ‘Figaro.’ Robertson, too, the Radical member for
Newcastle, in whose hands Dillon left the case while he is away in
Ireland, writes saying he wants to see me. So I went up to London.
Robertson tells me that he has seen Grey, and he ‘has hopes that Grey
will propose reforms in the way of a new edict, which will make the
sentences of the special tribunal subject to appeal, and stop _public_
executions and _perhaps_ all floggings.’ This is all rubbish; the Appeal
Court is too entirely under Cromer’s thumb to be of the least use,
except, perhaps, to delay future executions. As to stopping _public_
executions, it would only make matters worse for the Egyptians, who
would then be hanged and flogged in private, to them a greater
punishment, and more beyond the control of English and native opinion.
Of course this privacy is exactly what Cromer would like, and I hope
Robertson would refuse to accept it as any mitigation.
“_12th July._—There is a splendid article in the ‘Tribune,’ thanks to
Meynell, who got them to put it in, the best we have yet had in any
paper. Robertson came to breakfast, and I had a good two hours with him.
He has put down a number of questions for this afternoon in the House,
and altogether things seem warming up. At least we have gained it that
Parliamentary papers have been promised for this day fortnight, and an
opportunity of discussion before the session closes.
“_14th July._—Back to Newbuildings yesterday, much knocked up by my
work, leaving it to Neville to take my place at the luncheon I was to
give to Mustapha Kamel and Robertson on Monday.
“_15th July (Sunday)._—Mustapha Kamel arrived by the early train and we
spent the whole day together in the Jubilee garden. He is certainly a
very wonderful young man, more like a very clever young Frenchman than
an Egyptian, though it is physically quite evident that he is really
one, without any taint of northern blood, Circassian or other. He tells
me his family have lived for the last three generations at Cairo, though
originally from the provinces, and he has the good sense to pride
himself on his pure Egyptian birth. He is enthusiastic and eloquent, and
has an extraordinary gift of speech, but he is no mere babbler, but a
man with perfectly clear ideas—a thing so rare in the East—and a
knowledge of men and things really astonishing. I take him, too, to be
quite sincere in his patriotism, and I could not detect throughout the
whole of his talk to-day a single false note. He also has great courage
and decision of judgement, not scrupling to disagree with any opinion
expressed in conversation where his own differs. He has given me the
information I wanted about himself. First as to his relations with the
Sultan, he, like all educated Egyptians, hates and distrusts Abdul Hamid
as a tyrant and a dangerous man who at any moment, for some personal
interest or through fear, might barter away Egyptian independence to
England, and make some _entente_ with her, such as the French have made,
a thing which would be death to all their hopes. For this reason Egypt
cannot afford to quarrel with Abdul Hamid, and the connection of Egypt
with the Ottoman Empire is a guarantee to her, while it lasts, against
annexation by an European Power. His hope lies in Abdul Hamid’s death,
and in getting a liberal and reforming successor to the Caliphate.
“Of the Khedive Abbas he tells me precisely what Abdu always said about
him of late years, that he had become corrupted. ‘I knew him well,’
Mustapha said, ‘before he came to his present position, as we are
exactly the same age within three months, and I saw much of him while we
were both being educated in Europe. He was then charming, and full of
patriotic ideas, and I was his devoted adherent, absurdly so, but now he
has fallen entirely into the hands of rogues, and thinks of nothing but
making money, and he is also in the hands of his Hungarian mistress. He
has in this way lost all his friends and has ended by having no
influence whatever in Egypt. If he had had any courage he might over and
over again have held his own against Cromer and done incalculable good
to his country, but he cares nothing now for his country, only for
money. He puts up with endless indignities from Cromer, who has a hold
over him through a knowledge of his rascalities; and he clings to his
£100,000 a year, his civil list allowance, and makes himself Cromer’s
servant. In the Tabah Akabah affair Abbas was at first altogether with
the Sultan and Mukhtar Pasha, but when it came to the pinch Cromer took
him by the ear, and said, “Look here, my boy, you must leave off this
and come over to us,” and he went over. He had promised Mukhtar to
support him throughout, but he betrayed him. This has cost him what
little influence was left him, and we may consider him now _une quantité
négligeable_ [it was in French we were talking]; he could not do
anything to interfere with us if we got a Constitution, and we could run
the thing quite well now as we have plenty of good men. We are quite
ready to leave all the finance to the English.’
“Cromer, of course, is the great obstacle. I asked him who could replace
Cromer if he resigned? ‘There is only one Englishman,’ he said, ‘who
could inspire us with any confidence, and that is Chitty, the Director
of Customs at Alexandria. He was born in Egypt, knows Arabic, and
understands us, he is also a good financier, with him we could easily
work a Constitutional Government.’ Of Mohammed Abdu, Mustapha talked
with modified admiration, sympathizing with his views but blaming him
for having clung to his position as Mufti instead of resigning when the
Khedive publicly insulted him. ‘He cared too much for having official
influence. He would have had more real influence if he had resigned, we
should have all worshipped him as the champion of our liberties.’
Mustapha assures me that Abdu’s death was really due to cancer. He knows
his doctor, who announced the nature of his disease three months before
he died. He spoke highly of Mukhtar, and on the Tabah question said that
every word of my letter to Grey was correct. He went back to London in
the afternoon. I am glad to have made his acquaintance and to know that
there is so intelligent a man to lead the Party.
“_18th July._—As we were lunching to-day under a tree at Gosbrook,
Belloc and his wife with a boy presented themselves. Belloc, with a
bottle of wine in his pocket, and we had an amusing talk. He had with
him also a friend, Professor Phillimore from Edinburgh. Egypt was our
principal subject of conversation, and the slaughter of the Zulus, an
infamous deed. The two atrocities together ought to shut English mouths
for ever about Russia and the Congo and Abdul Hamid.
“_20th July._—The Blue Book on Akabah has appeared and it fully confirms
what I said of it in my letter to Grey. Cromer’s pretensions on historic
grounds rest on an original misunderstanding of a passage in Abulfeda.
It also shows that the Sultan’s action in occupying Tabah was prompted
by a belief that Bramley’s mission had for its object to seize and
fortify positions commanding Akabah. As to a design, by the Sultan,
against Egypt there is not a trace of it in the correspondence, though
Cromer’s insistence about Tabah made people in Egypt believe that some
design must exist. It can hardly be claimed as a diplomatic victory for
Cromer, seeing that it was only gained at the cost of mobilizing the
British fleet and rousing the anger of the whole Moslem world. Cromer
has got the Order of Merit but he has destroyed his own reputation; he
will not survive Denshawai.
“_22nd July (Sunday)._—Mustapha Kamel came down again for the day and
with him Button. Kamel tells me that Robertson has had it in so many
words from Grey that he does not now believe in the agitation in Egypt
being fanatical in any religious sense, only in a political sense. This
can only be that the Foreign Office repudiates Cromer’s reading of the
situation and Button declares he will retire. The great thing will now
be to make it patent to the world that it is the Egyptian National
movement that has driven him to this and to get a new policy adopted
favourable to Nationalism by whoever shall be Cromer’s successor. We
talked the matter fully over and have decided that in default of better,
Gorst would be our best man. We are, therefore, to open a campaign in
the autumn against Cromer, and in favour of re-establishing
Constitutional Government in Egypt. In the evening Mustapha returned to
London.”
Though I do not put it in my diary, poor Kamel was very unwell that
afternoon, suffering pain and, I think, taking morphia to ease it. He
went up late to London in Button’s company and was seriously ill on
their journey. Button was of great assistance to us in our plans at this
time, encouraging us to attack Cromer. He declared that no case of
hanging where the victim was innocent ever failed in England to ruin the
man who did it. “You may commit any injustice you like,” he said, “in
English public life so long as you don’t hang your enemy, but to do that
is fatal.”
“_27th July._—The last week has gone by quietly. I have not been up in
London but have left Mustapha Kamel to the care of Button and Neville
and Meynell. On Tuesday the Panislamic Society in London gave him a
banquet, and on Wednesday he delivered himself of a speech at a luncheon
party, which has been reported in the ‘Tribune’ and other London papers,
the ‘Manchester Guardian’ having become strangely silent.
“_28th July._—The Denshawai Blue Book is out. Though all the arts of
evasion are tried in it, even to the complete suppression of the
evidence, it remains a document altogether damning for Cromer. He gives
himself away in it completely. It is announced in the ‘Westminster
Gazette’ that the matter of Denshawai will now be allowed to rest in
Parliament and that Liberals would support Lord Cromer.
“_9th August._—Fernycroft. I have been here since the 2nd having gone up
to London to see Robertson. He managed at the very last minute in the
debate on the adjournment to bring on the Denshawai case and got certain
admissions out of Grey, indeed Grey gave Cromer’s case away by
withdrawing what had been said about _fanatical_ unrest in Egypt. This
has now become _political_ unrest, a very different thing. Grey used
wild words, too, about a Crown Colony in connection with Egypt which
cannot but add fuel to the fire.
“_18th August._—At Clouds. George and Guy Wyndham have come from Guy’s
camp at Bulford where he is commanding the 16th Lancers. Last week there
was a party at Tedworth for a sham fight to amuse the King of Spain, the
entertainer being Sir Ian Hamilton and one of the party being John
Burns. Burns, according to these, has developed and holds advanced Jingo
views, his whole mind being wrapped up in army matters. His one idea now
is to send a fleet into the Baltic and fight the German Emperor. He
knows the history of every regiment and is ‘quite a good fellow.’ Such
is their report. George was very brilliant at dinner with all kinds of
theories. ‘The true way to be happy,’ he said, ‘is to be able to say, “I
want” and “I won’t,”’ and after dinner he wrote some blank verse lines
on the subject which were good.
“At Fernycroft and Clouds I was much occupied with my ‘Atrocity’
pamphlet, and on the 29th my brother-in-law, Lord Lovelace, died, an
event which caused many family changes.
“_13th Sept._—My ‘Atrocity’ pamphlet is out and there is a capital
leading article on it in yesterday’s ‘Manchester Guardian,’ and to-day
the ‘Times’ prints a letter about it from Suez by a correspondent who
denounces its title as reprehensible and even abominable. Frederic
Harrison writes congratulations, he says it is ‘a tremendous work.’
“_27th Sept._—Great events have happened in the last fortnight. First,
as to Egypt, my pamphlet has had more effect than I expected, and still
more my ‘Times’ letters. My old adversary, Moberly Bell, was tempted
into the field against me and he published in the ‘Times,’ of which he
is now manager, a violent attack on me in relation to the events of
twenty-five years ago, backed up by as ferocious a leading article. This
gave me a splendid opening, as Bell had mentioned my poem, ‘The Wind and
the Whirlwind’ as one of my crimes and I was able to quote ten stanzas
from it in very effective reply, which will now spread the fame of it,
all the world over. It has brought me congratulations from many quarters
and I feel like an _Espada_ in the Spanish bull-ring who has planted a
blow he knows to be mortal, and who walks away wiping his sword and
leaving the dying bull to rage an instant by itself before it falls.
Moberly Bell will leave me alone for the future. Also I have written a
formal letter to Grey, sending the pamphlet and begging him to make a
personal inquiry into the Denshawai case instead of leaving it to be
dealt with by the permanent officials. So all is going well. Mustapha
Kamel has entrusted me with the task of finding him an editor for his
new Anglo-French paper at Cairo, ‘The Egyptian Standard.’
“There have been terrible doings in America, lynchings and massacres of
negroes, acts of reprisal against the black community for isolated
assaults, understandable but just as brutal and iniquitous as the
massacres of Jews in Russia, or of Armenians in Turkey. There is no
pretence that any of the negroes murdered by the mob had any connection
with the particular assaults, therein lies the abomination of injustice.
I am not one who condemns the severest punishment of men found guilty of
violent sexual crimes, I am for hanging, flogging, what you will; in
such cases it is even right that a man taken _flagrante delicto_ should
be killed on the spot, but to slay the innocent for the guilty, as was
done at Atlanta and by us at Denshawai, moves my indignation.
“On the 24th we had an amateur performance of my Irish play, ‘Fand,’ at
Newbuildings.
“_29th Sept._—My article in the ‘Independent Review’ advocating a change
of policy at Cairo has an excellent leading article in support of it in
the ‘Tribune,’ and I look upon our game as won. Cromer will, of course,
return to Egypt in November but it will be his last winter there, and he
will be found to have something the matter with his liver or his eyes,
and he will take his pension and retire. The only question is who will
succeed him. Perhaps by that time Abdul Hamid, too, will have
disappeared from the scene and the further question may have been put,
who will succeed the Sultan?
“_1st Oct._—Out shooting in my wheeled chair and managed to kill six or
seven pheasants.
“_6th Oct._—Brailsford, the ‘Tribune’ leader writer, having written to
me privately to ask my advice about his line regarding Egypt three days
ago, came down to luncheon and gave me a curious account of the way
Cromer has taken with the newspaper editors in London. ‘He showed,’ he
said, ‘great emotion and is quite upset about the Denshawai business.’
He may well be so. Also of Grey: Brailsford says that he knows
absolutely nothing of foreign affairs. Grey has only once been abroad
and then only to Paris, and he speaks not a word of French or any
foreign language. Haldane manages all that for him. His strength is that
he is good-looking, with an imposing manner and an appearance of common
sense and honesty which the House of Commons likes. Brailsford knows
much of the ins and outs of Eastern affairs, having been in Crete as
newspaper correspondent, and is a very clever fellow.
“_15th Oct._—The article on Egypt which I wrote for the ‘Figaro’ has
been a great success. I wrote it in French, and intrusted it to Mustapha
Kamel to get it published, and to-day I get a letter from Mme. Juliette
Adam and Pierre Lôti jointly signed.
JULIETTE ADAM AND PIERRE LÔTI TO WILFRID BLUNT
‘En séjour à Hendaye chez Pierre Lôti et Abbaye de Gif. Seine et Oise,
9. 10. 06.
‘MONSIEUR,
‘Votre article au Figaro est un acte de courage et de loyauté dont il
faut que tout ami de l’Egypte vous félicite. Pierre Lôti et moi nous
venons de le lire tout haut. Je tiens la plume pour tous deux et pour
vous dire que nous ne confondrons plus la politique de Lord Cromer avec
la politique _des Anglais_. Une exception, de la haute valeur de la
vôtre, oblige à en tenir largement compte.
‘Pierre Lôti, à qui le repos est ordonné pour quelques jours, signe avec
moi en vous assurant comme moi de sa haute sympathie.
‘JULIETTE ADAM.
‘PIERRE LÔTI.’
“The substance of the article has been telegraphed to Egypt, and it is
sure to be printed there in all the newspapers. I feel that I have done
now all I possibly could for the National cause, and must leave the rest
of the work to others. I have had several threatening letters from
English jingos menacing me with death if there should be a native rising
at Cairo. Such letters are I fancy written by idle fellows over their
whiskey and water at pot-houses. One fool says to the other, ‘Here is
that damned fellow Blunt at it again, let’s give him one,’ and they
scribble, but don’t sign. One of them, however, signs his missive.
“_18th Oct._—Betty Balfour’s book of her father’s letters is out, and
very good it is. She has condensed the political part of it, and made it
as readable as a book should be. It has been very favourably received,
and I look forward now to Lytton’s being recognized at last for the man
of genius he undoubtedly was.
“_8th Nov._—Cromer has been obliged already to make changes in his
administration. Chitty Bey, the only English official who sympathizes
with Nationalism, has been given a high post in the Ministry of Finance,
which will give him control of the budget, and Saad Zaghloul, one of
Mohammed Abdu’s disciples whom I remember in prison as an Arabist in
1883, has been named Minister of Public Instruction.”
This mention of Saad Zaghloul has become of especial interest since the
first part of this book was published through the leadership he has
taken of the Egyptian Nationalist Party. He is an honest and very
capable man, the worthiest of all those who have been acknowledged
National Leaders during the British Occupation. I am glad to remember
that it was due to my intervention with Cromer, and beyond Cromer with
Gladstone, that I obtained his release from prison in 1883.
“The Denshawai Case is to be brought forward by Dillon next week in
Parliament. I feel that I have gained a notable success, and am master
now of native opinion in Egypt, and to a large extent of Mohammedan
opinion outside Egypt.
“Auberon Herbert is dead, a man of original thought and high integrity,
slightly touched in his later years with eccentricity. I need not
describe his character here as I have said so much of it already in
these diaries. There was much in common between us in the view we took
of public things, but he was more of a doctrinaire than ever I was, and
he has had greater belief in the effective power of appealing to
principles of right and honour with Englishmen. In appearance he was the
most refined of men, an ideal countenance, such as Shelley might have
had if he had lived to the age of seventy. His place in politics will
not be filled, for he was the last of the uncompromising individualists
of the Victorian age, the most consistent and the ablest.
“_9th Nov._—George Wyndham came down in the evening and Neville, to
shoot with me, and we talked far into the night on literature, politics,
and art. He is pleased with the success of his Ronsard which is
certainly good, though I am of opinion that it ought to have been still
better. With his talent of verse translation he might very well have
given us a hundred of Ronsard’s Sonnets and Odes, instead of only
thirty.
“_10th Nov._—Belloc joined us at dinner, and once more George’s tongue
was loosed. Both he and Belloc are admirable talkers. Belloc’s best
story was of an Italian brigand, who had regularly confessed his sins
every Saturday from his youth up in his own village, but who was refused
absolution at last at the age of eighty, as profaning the sacrament of
penance, by going on with his confessions about women. ‘E cosa
impossible,’ said the priest.
“_11th Nov. (Sunday)._—I have got George to read my ‘Atrocity’ pamphlet,
and it has formed the text of a discussion which lasted till midnight on
the whole Egyptian question. George was very communicative, and he gave
us an account of how the Anglo-French Entente had been managed by Arthur
Balfour, Lansdowne, and himself, and how they had expressly disclaimed
all ulterior intention of making the Occupation of Egypt, a stepping
stone to annexation, or a protectorate. This it is most important for me
to know. George assures me that the permanent retention of Egypt is not
part of English policy, at least of English Tory policy, and that they
fully admit that neither Egypt nor the Mediterranean could be held by us
in time of serious war. The new naval strategy is based on evacuating
the Mediterranean in war time, and holding the Cape route to India. The
Occupation of Egypt was prolonged because a withdrawal of troops would
be interpreted as a provocation to Germany to send in German troops. He
had had, however, a talk with the German Ambassador in London last
December, which had convinced him that Germany would abstain from
intermeddling in Egypt if given a free hand in the Euphrates Valley and
the Persian Gulf-head. This he thought would be the solution. As to
Denshawai he admitted that it was without precedent as an act of folly,
and was only explicable on the supposition that Cromer was failing in
mind. George laid down, as a general rule, that it was always folly to
hang a man, unless you intended to do a very violent deed, and to have
that deed remembered. He hears it commonly said now that Cromer’s régime
has been a failure. I pressed him to help us in the House to get a day
for discussion of the case from Grey. He did not quite refuse, and will
leave a copy of my pamphlet in Arthur’s way, and take half-a-dozen more
copies for others of his late colleagues. Dillon is to be back in the
House by Monday, and promises to do his best to bring it on. I go up,
therefore, on Tuesday, to help arrange the attack.
“_14th Nov._—Chapel Street. John Dillon came to luncheon, and we had a
long talk about Egypt. He will bring forward the Denshawai case at once,
and with Robertson will ask for a day to discuss it. If that is refused
he will ply the Government every week with questions till the end of the
session, and bring it on again on the Address in February. He talked
well about several of our leading politicians. He considers the
Independent Labour Party to be of no importance, Keir Hardie, though
honest, to have little weight. He admires John Burns, speaks very highly
of Churchill, who is ‘cleverer than his father, a better speaker, and
with a sounder political instinct.’ Of Loulou Harcourt he has the
highest opinion, a poor one of Herbert Gladstone. He spoke more kindly
of Chamberlain than he deserves, said that there were only two men in
the house who could hold their own with him in debate, Asquith and
Churchill, but Asquith had less weight from having a lawyer’s mind. He
considers Haldane’s position at the War Office absurd, ‘a Chancery
barrister,’ he said, ‘of twenty years’ standing.’ He has a great respect
for Hugh Cecil, none for Arthur Balfour.
“_15th Nov._—Mme. Arcos (the Empress Eugénie’s lectrice and lady-in-
waiting) came to tea with me. Talking about the memoirs of Dr. Evans,
the Paris dentist, she assured me they were in no way due to co-
operation with the Empress. There was much exaggeration in Evans’
account of his intimacy with Her Majesty. She recommended, as more
exact, a book by Miss Stothard, which is just out and very accurate. She
took away with her a copy of my pamphlet for the Empress, who, she said,
would be delighted with it, as she dislikes Cromer. He was rude to her
in Egypt two years ago.
“_21st Nov._—A splendid letter has come from Madame Juliette Adam in
praise of ‘The Wind and the Whirlwind,’ worth many rude articles in the
‘Times.’
“_23rd Nov._—My dear friend, Hampden, is dead, one of my few quite old
friends. Politically we found ourselves always in opposite camps. During
the Egyptian revolution, he being an under secretary in Gladstone’s
Government, ranked himself with the financiers for intervention, then
when Home Rule came four years later, he and I changed sides, he
following Hartington into the Unionist camp, and this went on till the
other day when he rejoined the Liberals. He was away for four years in
Australia as Colonial Governor, and on his return he shared my rooms
with me in Mount Street and Chapel Street. During my illness he was very
good to me. Then suddenly, fifteen months ago, old age seemed to take
him, and he went away to a house of his own, and last summer to a place
he had hired in Westmorland for his health. His death is a great loss to
me.
“To see Shaw’s play ‘The Doctor’s Dilemma,’ the wittiest ever put upon
the stage, and admirably acted, its medical absurdities appealing to me
personally, remembering as I did how old Sir Douglas Powell urged me,
‘as he would _urge_ his own son or _order_ a man in a hospital ward, to
submit to a slight operation, the merest touch with an instrument,’ to
relieve an imaginary something on my right lung, an operation which I
afterwards learnt would have been almost certainly, in my weak state,
fatal, while the lung was sound. When I met Shaw at Neville’s last
Spring, I told him my experience, and I daresay it has been among the
contributory causes of his play. I have written to tell him how much I
admired it.
“_24th Nov._—To call on Margot at her house in Cavendish Square, who
came out to talk to me, bareheaded, where I lay in my wheeled chair at
her door. Though she has lost some of her old prettiness, her wit and
all her charm have survived it. We stayed on in the street talking for
quite twenty minutes, and she is to come to lunch with me on Monday. On
Thursday Horace Rumbold dined with me and told me a number of
interesting political things. Among others that he had quite recently
been shown a confidential report drawn up by Cromer, detailing a new
plan of reforms for Egypt in a Liberal sense, intended no doubt to do a
duty of reparation for past mistakes. I strongly suspect that Grey has
shown it privately to Robertson and the other Radical members of the
Egyptian Committee, and so has bought their silence for the future about
Denshawai. George Wyndham, whom I saw to-day, does not doubt that such
is the case. ‘It is of a piece,’ he says, ‘with their management lately
of other difficult and disgraceful cases.’ Horace, at our dinner,
discussed the Egyptian question with me _à fond_, assuring me that the
Government had come to an understanding about Egypt with the Emperor
William, and that our occupation of it would certainly be permanent.
Horace’s view is no doubt the Foreign Office view, and he has means,
besides his position as ex-ambassador, of knowing, as he has a son at
the Cairo Embassy and has just had Findlay with him, Cromer’s chief
subordinate there. He says Cromer means to stay on at Cairo.
“_25th Nov. (Sunday)._—George came to lunch with me and then Dillon,
with whom I had two hours’ good conversation. He tells me that it is
perfectly true that Robertson and the rest of the so-called Egyptian
Committee have been got at by Grey, who has had them into his private
room and has been most amiable to them, and has persuaded them to hold
their tongues about Denshawai. He affected, when with them, not to know
that the husband of the woman shot by the officers had been condemned to
penal servitude for life, and promised to write to Cromer about it, and
got them to be satisfied with this. They have behaved like children in
the business, and have even allowed themselves to be made use of by Grey
to the extent of supporting Cromer’s proposal for the abolition of the
Capitulations in Egypt, the Capitulations being the only remaining
protection there against Cromer’s absolute power, and the only safeguard
for the freedom of the native press. Idiots! The London Press, too,
Dillon assures me, has been captured, even the ‘Tribune,’ which in spite
of Brailsford’s promise of assistance has refused to answer the
questions asked in the House of Commons about Denshawai. The ‘Manchester
Guardian’ is equally silent.
“We talked about the announced changes in the Government. Dillon says
that Bannerman is much broken since his wife’s death, and will probably
go to the Lords with Fowler, while Ripon will retire. Of Bryce he talked
as of a man learned and excellent, and historically sympathetic with
Ireland, but strangely ignorant of modern conditions, incapable of
taking in a new idea and quite unfit to drive a satisfactory Irish Bill
through the House of Commons. Personally he liked him much, and has
taken great pains to instruct him on Irish affairs, but without much
effect. I asked him about Anthony Macdonnell. He told me he had never
himself believed in him as a Nationalist, and now nobody believed in
him. Macdonnell’s idea of Nationalism was that he, Macdonnell, should be
able, with the help of an Irish Council, a consultative body, to manage
Irish affairs without interference from Downing Street, the sort of
independence that the Government of Madras has, or of Bombay. ‘He would
like to treat us like Indians,’ he said. ‘I have told him frankly that
we won’t put up with that.’ Dillon thinks the present Government will
break up in two years’ time. Every Liberal member is hunting his own
hare, there is no cohesion among them. Then we went on to Fenianism and
Devoy, who was a personal friend of Dillon, though they differed on many
points, for Devoy is quite opposed to the Parliamentary party. Dillon
himself, of course, began by being a Fenian.
“_12th Dec._—Dillon has put his question to Grey about Denshawai, and
has got from him only negative answers. He will not give a day for
discussion, he will not give Cromer instructions, he will not say
whether any reform in the criminal law in Egypt will be recommended.
Robertson and the rest of the Radicals have been mute as fishes. I have
no doubt in my mind that Robertson has been secured by some promise of a
place in the Government, a junior lordship or even less.” [This is
precisely what happened some months later.] “The ‘Times’ correspondent
telegraphed a fortnight ago that the Khedive had supplied the money for
Mohammed Kamel’s new English paper, ‘The Egyptian Standard,’ and when
this was telegraphed back to Cairo Cromer would not let Reuter publish
the telegram. Then Cromer went, so it is said, to the Khedive, and
threatened him with deposition; and the Khedive denied, and Kamel
denied; now Kamel is on his way back to England and has telegraphed his
arrival to me at Brindisi.
“Meanwhile we have the French Government sending a fleet to Tangier for
the ‘protection of French subjects, a state of anarchy having been shown
to exist there,’ and a bogus communication has been published by Reuter
from Raisuli to the Governor of Tangier announcing ‘a Jehad and massacre
of Christians.’ Just the old story of Tunis in 1881 and Alexandria in
1882, supported once more by the ‘Times.’”
This was the first step taken by the French Government in their
aggression on Morocco in accordance with the Anglo-French entente of
1904, an act which, as will be seen, entailed on them a renewal of their
quarrel with Germany, and for a while with Spain.
“War seems to have been declared at last between the Pope and the French
Republic. It will be interesting to watch the result. On the whole I
think the Pope is well advised. He will probably lose a large proportion
of his nominal spiritual subjects in France, but he will retain a firmer
hold over the remainder, and the cause of the Church there will gain by
being disendowed. All the same it is incredible that Christianity, as a
dogmatic faith, should much longer survive the assaults of science among
a people so logical as the French and so little serious. Among our
northern peoples it will continue through its connection with morality
for a long while yet, till gradually the dogma will disappear and the
name alone will be clung to. In France the connection between dogma and
morality is less felt.
“_13th Dec._—Robertson has written to the ‘Times’ repudiating what has
been said about his change of opinions, so I hope it is all right, at
least as far as his political honesty goes, though he has probably
fallen into line with the Government about Denshawai. We shall see as
time goes on, and when Cromer’s report is published next session. It is
clear that Cromer has had orders to nationalize to a certain extent the
Egyptian administration, though still of course on despotic lines. Saad
Zaghloul has begun well at any rate in his department, but I have no
confidence in Cromer.
“Joseph Potocki was here on Saturday to see our horses. He gave me an
interesting account of things in Russia. He was a member of the first
Duma, and describes it as having been entirely revolutionary. He found
himself alone among the members as a Conservative. And when he opposed
their motion for the abolition of property in land, it was singly, while
they watched ‘with eyes as of hyenas.’ He is, however, like them all, a
Constitutionalist, though not in favour of representative Government. He
says that could not be in Russia. He would like Home Rule in Poland
under the Crown, that is to say, an independent administration for local
affairs. I asked him if the Duma would be allowed to continue, and he
said, ‘Not if the new Duma is revolutionary like the old; if it is
moderate, yes.’ I asked also whether the Court Party, if it came to a
conflict with the Duma, could count upon the army and he said, ‘Yes, at
any rate for a few years, though as the young generation grows up with
revolutionary ideas these will perhaps affect the army.’ Potocki’s
testimony has this value, that being a Pole, he sees things with more
detachment than most members of the Duma can claim to show in their
judgements.
“_19th Dec._—Went up to London to meet Mustapha Kamel and arrange
matters for him connected with his paper ‘The Egyptian Standard.’ He has
come to London with two of his principal supporters, Farid Bey
[afterwards leader of the Egyptian National Party in succession to
Mustapha Kamel], the lawyer who protested against French Rule at the
Conference in Algeria, and Osman Bey Ghaleb, Professor of Medicine at
the Medical School, an old friend of Mohammed Abdu. With these I
discussed all the important questions connected with Egyptian
Nationalism.
“Kamel gave me a detailed account of the Khedive’s attitude in the Tabah
affair. ‘The Khedive,’ he said, ‘was reduced some years ago by Cromer’s
having excluded him from all political power, to an attitude of despair.
This turned his ambition to money-making—he has always had a love of
money. Then he got under the influence of King Edward and was persuaded
that, if he would be good and give Cromer no trouble, life would be made
easy for him and he would be allowed to enrich himself. So he let Cromer
do what he pleased. This went on till the present year when Cromer began
the Tabah quarrel with the Sultan, and in the first stage of it the
Khedive was docile. But when it came to the ultimatum sent in by the
British Government, and when he found that all Egypt supported the
Sultan and that even the fellahin in the villages were declaring they
would sooner be badly ruled by the Sultan than any longer endure the
English tyranny, then he began to reflect and think, “I cannot betray my
religion and my country altogether.” Cromer was at that moment pressing
him to write a letter authorizing the English Government to represent
him in the boundary dispute, but he finally refused to do this, much to
Cromer’s discomfiture. He even went so far as to have a schedule drawn
up of his property so as to know how much money he was privately worth
in case it came to his deposition or resignation of viceroyalty. Since
then he has been completely _brouillé_ with Cromer. Great efforts were
made to induce him to go to England before going to Constantinople last
summer, but he said to himself, “The Sultan is a greater danger to me
than the King of England, as he can at any moment depose me while the
other could not.” So he went to Constantinople first. The Sultan by this
time had been thoroughly frightened by the English Government, and by
the failure of the Emperor William to support him and he intended to
give Abbas a bad reception. But, when he heard it reported that in Egypt
all public opinion was against Cromer, the Grand Vizier sent a message
to Mukhtar Pasha biding him inquire how this was, and ask the opinions
of all prominent men. On this ground Mukhtar sent for me for my advice,
and said that on the report sent by him would depend how Abbas would be
received at Yildiz. Now, I had had a quarrel with the Khedive and had
not been near the Palace for three years, but I saw that the Khedive
ought to be supported and I said that the independence of Egypt depended
on the Sultan’s receiving him well; and Mukhtar telegraphed this to
Constantinople. The Sultan was in two minds on the subject when the
Khedive arrived, and at first received him coldly, but in the course of
the audience Abbas burst out laughing and the ice was broken between
them, and the Sultan sent him away with presents. Then, while the
Khedive was still at Constantinople, the Denshawai executions took place
and the Khedive was so angry at his name having been used for the
hangings and floggings, and pardon having been refused in his name
without his being consulted, that for two hours he was like a man out of
his mind walking up and down in absolute silence while his entourage
stood bent like this (making a gesture) round him. Since then he would
have nothing to do with the English in Egypt. He stayed at Alexandria so
as not to be present at the review on the King’s birthday. Then Cromer
got up the story of his having subscribed £20,000 for the new Egyptian
“Standard,” or rather Faris Nìmr got up the story and foisted it on
Cromer, who was very angry and went to the Palace and charged the
Khedive with it. On this the Khedive said, “I will answer you in three
ways: first, things have not yet come to such a pass in Egypt that you
have a right to ask me what I do with my own private money; secondly,
Mustapha Kamel has not set his foot in my house for three years, and,
thirdly, he has had no money at all from me for any purpose.” So Cromer
got no satisfaction from him, and we have taken Abbas back into favour.
You must not write any more against him, as he may be useful to the
Nationalist Party. All the same he and the whole of his branch of the
family of Mohammed Ali are worthless. They ought to be eliminated from
the succession. The sons of Halim are respectable and liberal.
“Of the Sultan he, Mustapha Kamel, said he had behaved miserably in the
Tabah business. But he spoke highly of the Grand Vizier, Jawdat Pasha;
Mukhtar was a ‘_brave homme dont on respecte le passé militaire, mais
naïf, trop naïf_.’ I asked about Idris Bey Ragheb, the proprietor of the
‘Egyptian Morning News’ and ‘l’Egypte,’ and the Doctor (Osman Ghaleb)
said, ‘He tried to go against us but has been obliged to give it up.’
“About Saad Zaghloul, Kamel said he was the antipodes of his brother,
the traitor of the Denshawai case, a perfectly honest, good man. He has
begun well at the Ministry of Public Instruction, insisting that all
papers should be brought to him, not to Dunlop, the English Adviser,
that the examiners in Arabic should know Arabic, and that Dunlop should
come to him on business, not he to Dunlop. We shall see how long he is
able to maintain his command of the situation.
“Of Cromer they all talk as of a lost force in Egypt. He no longer has
any native following. The Denshawai case did for him entirely, for every
one knows he was solely responsible for the hangings. ‘We wish Lord
Cromer to remain on now,’ Kamel said, ‘he does us more good by staying
than he could possibly do by going.’ He would like, when the change is
made, that it should be Gorst rather than an outsider. Gorst at least
would endeavour to conciliate Mohammedan feeling, he hates the Syrians
who now have Cromer’s ear.
“Back to Newbuildings for Christmas. Belloc dined with me. He will do
all he can to help Kamel, but just now is full to the eyes of work.
“_31st Dec._—Newbuildings. This is the last day of the year, and I make
up my account with it. It began with a dark prospect. I was lying more
than half paralyzed in bed, unable to use my hands, unable to sit up,
unable to walk more than across the room. I did not myself think I could
recover, I hardly wished it. I had suffered too much pain to desire to
pass through the same experience again. Yet, even so I was light-
hearted. My head was clear, quite unaffected by my illness, and I was
mentally busy with the Memoirs I was dictating. Also I was lapped in the
affection of my friends. Thus the first months of the year passed for
me, in Chapel Street in bed. Over a hundred of my acquaintance came to
see me there, everybody I think that I had ever loved, a huge
consolation. Then I gradually recovered, and my literary work went on. I
have finished my two volumes. My play of ‘Fand’ has been written, and
announced for acting in Dublin. It gives me the consciousness of renewed
intellectual power, moreover, and what has been the least expected
marvel of my year, my half-dead hopes connected with Egypt have come
into political blossom. We have smitten Cromer hip and thigh from Tabah
to Denshawai, and from a lost force at Cairo I have become a power
again; never since Tel-el-Kebir have the fortunes of Egyptian
Nationalism seemed so smiling. Such have been my consolations. The last
days of the old year have been spent merrily here at Newbuildings with
Cockerell, Mark Napier and Belloc, and his friend Kershaw.”
There is little worth copying out of my diary of the first months of
1907. They were mostly spent at Newbuildings, with occasional changes to
Chapel Street. I give a few extracts:
“_24th Jan._—Mustapha Kamel has gone back to Cairo, and I hear of
Robertson as touring in the Delta. Bernard Shaw sends me the proof
sheets of his preface to ‘John Bull’s other Island.’ It contains a
rattling attack on Cromer and the Denshawai business.
“_13th Feb._—Parliament has met, a great flourish about a quarrel with
the House of Lords. I shall believe it when I see it.
“_19th Feb._—Robertson to breakfast with me in Chapel Street. He gave a
full account of his adventures in Egypt. He describes Cromer as very
nervous and sensitive about public opinion in England, and Machell, who
organized the executions at Denshawai, a blundering fool, quite unfit
for his position. Cromer, he says, is in perfect ignorance of native
opinion, and imagines he still has adherents, whereas the very people he
most confides in talk most strongly against his _régime_ in private. Of
Mustapha Kamel he had heard none but good reports from native sources,
though the English officials talk against him. Robertson will bring
forward the Denshawai and other questions whenever possible in
Parliament. He has come back a thorough Nationalist.”
Notwithstanding all this fine talk, on his return from Egypt Robertson
did next to nothing when Parliament met, and soon allowed himself to be
secured by Grey. He took the official shilling, a subordinate post in
the Government.
“Sir William Wedderburn came to luncheon. He is an excellent man, and if
he were only ten years younger would make a good successor to Cromer; as
it is he thinks Lord Reay would do for it. He talked a good deal about
India, and gave a history of the partition of Bengal, which he describes
as a very serious matter. It was all Curzon’s doings, devised with a
special purpose of weakening the power of the High Court at Calcutta. He
would not hear of the Bengal Mohammedans as being otherwise than at one
with the Hindoos in the affair. He spoke highly of the Amir of
Afghanistan in spite of his Europeanized dress and ways, a hardworking,
honest ruler, he said, in every way estimable.
“_20th Feb._—George Wyndham and his brother Guy dined with me. Guy is
appointed military _attaché_ at St. Petersburg. George, when his brother
was gone home, told me of his disgust with politics, and how he
considered the Tory Party had ruined its prospects by forcing on the
General Election after the Boer War, the Khaki election. It had been all
Chamberlain’s doing, he, George, having strongly opposed it in the
Cabinet. It was unfair according to the rules of Party politics, and
they were suffering from it now.
“_2nd March._—To London to vote against the Progressives at the London
County Council elections. I do this as a protest against the running
into debt by public bodies, especially for municipal trading; the
Moderates very likely are as bad, but they are not in office and these
are.
“_5th March._—Sheykh Ali Yusuf has demanded a Parliament in the general
assembly at Cairo. There is an article about it in the ‘Times,’ but the
Radical press says nothing. What reptiles these party journalists are.
They have been preaching the virtues of popular Government for months
past in Russia, in Persia, in the Transvaal, and God knows where not
else, but the moment it comes to our duty in Egypt they have not a word
to say, all dumb dogs.
“_6th March._—Sir Henry Cotton lunched with me. I had been reading his
‘New India,’ an excellent book. He spoke of my ‘Ideas about India,’
published twenty-two years ago, and said it applied very exactly to
present conditions. He was surprised I should have been able to foresee
these and understand India so well with such short experience as mine
had been.
“_7th March._—To see George Wyndham in Park Lane. He is strategically
opposed to a continued occupation of Egypt, but I am not to repeat this.
I understand such is Arthur Balfour’s opinion, too. George would
therefore be in favour of establishing a National Government if one
could be secured friendly to English interests. As to Cromer’s successor
he thinks Gorst inevitable. I walked with him as far as Rotten Row and
home by myself, the first time for two years I have ventured alone in
the streets. At twelve John Dillon came and arranged questions with me
to be asked in Parliament. He is doing all he can, pestering Grey
constantly about Egypt.
“_9th March._—The first number of the ‘Egyptian Standard’ is out at
last. It mentions me as among its collaborators, in company with Madame
Juliette Adam and Pierre Lôti.
“_12th March._—Staal, our late Russian Ambassador here, died a fortnight
ago, one of the very best men I have known in the world, and extremely
kind to me, with good advice, when I was a boy at Athens. He has died at
the age of eighty-four.
“I have been reading the life of Lafcadio Hearn, an interesting man,
whom the accident of his life in Japan has made one of importance in
literature. But for this piece of good fortune, he would never have been
more than a very superior journalist. Accident, however, drove him into
a region of romance which he had the wit to recognize as his proper
home, and so has achieved a great work and enduring fame.
“_14th March._—Lady Gregory dined with me in Chapel Street. She gave me
a long account of the row that took place at her Abbey Theatre, over the
production of Synge’s piece, ‘The Playboy of the Western World.’ The
first night, she said, passed fairly well, with only a few hisses, but
on the second night there was an organized opposition, and, fearing
mischief, she sent for the police, and afterwards there was a tumult
every night of the week till the last performance, when the opponents of
the play got tired of their noise. She considers, therefore, that she
has won a victory, but fears the incident will have harmed her in the
provinces, where the play is resented more than in Dublin. At Gort, her
county town, the local council has boycotted her, forbidding the school
children to attend her teas and entertainments, lest their morals should
be corrupted. She is going abroad for awhile with her son.
“_15th March._—Fisher Unwin has agreed to publish the first volume of my
Egyptian memoirs.
“Rothstein came to see me, the new London correspondent of the ‘Egyptian
Standard.’ That paper seems likely now to make its way. Brailsford who
was also here this afternoon has suggested to Mustapha the issue of a
weekly edition, as no one can spare time for a foreign daily paper. M.,
who came to luncheon, told an amusing story about the late Queen
Victoria, who when there was talk about the meeting of dead people in
another world was huffed at the idea of allowing King David to be
presented to her on account of his ‘inexcusable conduct to Uriah.’
“_23rd March._—Mark Napier has returned from Egypt where he has been on
business for me. All is quiet there, he says, politically. The Khedive
has been frightened into submission by Cromer, and has withdrawn his
support from the Nationalists, King Edward having written His Highness
an autograph letter enjoining him to have nothing to do with Mustapha
Kamel. He had this last from Carton de Wiart, and it was confirmed to
him by Reuters’ agent, so it was probably true.
“_24th March._—The ‘Pall Mall’ reports from Cairo that the press laws
are to be put in force against the ‘Egyptian Standard.’
“_28th March._—Mark Napier was here again to-day. He went to see Cromer
before leaving Cairo, who spoke to him about my ‘Atrocity’ pamphlet,
regretting that I should have published it, but pretending that he had
not read it. Cromer, he says, appeared much broken in health, and he
thinks will not stay on long at Cairo, though he intends to stay. He was
touchy on the subject of the pamphlet.
“_1st April (Easter Monday)._—Ujda has been occupied by French troops,
the first military act of the ‘pacific penetration’ of Morocco.
“_11th April._—I have been writing an article for the ‘Daily News’ in
answer to Cromer’s annual report, and had gone to bed as I usually do
before dinner, and was fast asleep when a telegram was brought me signed
by Meynell containing the joyous announcement of Cromer’s resignation. I
was at once full awake and laughing so that the bed shook under me, nor
could I stop for several minutes. I sent back in return the single word,
Whoo-whoop! I am off to Chapel Street, and Clouds to-morrow, feeling
like a huntsman at the end of his day’s sport with Cromer’s brush in my
pocket, and the mask of that ancient red fox dangling from my saddle.
“Whoo-whoop!”