ASQUITH AT DOWNING STREET
“_9th April_, 1908.
Anne writes from Egypt telling how the Court _hakim_, the Khedive’s
chief physician, stopped her the other day to express his gratitude to
me for all I had done for the National cause. This I am glad to get, as
I have been much in doubt how my ‘Secret History’ had been taken at the
Palace.
“_13th April._—The full composition of the new Ministry is announced.
Elgin and Portsmouth retire, having both of them somewhat compromised
themselves, Elgin by mismanaging South Africa, Portsmouth by a foolish
quarrel with one of his country tenants for shooting hares. Winston
enters the Cabinet, and Morley becomes Lord Shillyshally.
“_15th April._—A good letter from Brailsford, just back from Egypt. He
is rather disappointed with the political organization of the
Nationalists and their little hold over the country districts. He calls
them terribly urbanized and this is doubtless true, but I believe the
same may be said of all movements of the kind, and that to wait till the
peasantry of any country is politically educated is to wait till
Domesday. He is not yet converted to the English official view, and
wants to talk things over with me.
“_16th April._—Asquith’s new Ministry is fully formed, and one is able
to judge more or less what the change means. It is certainly retrograde
as far as humanitarian views are concerned, and is now as purely Whig
Imperialist as it could well be made. The Colonial Office will be run on
lines of pure Imperial Federation. We shall see the colonists in South
Africa allowed their way with the native blacks. The Zulus will be
harried in Natal, and Dinizulu hanged or deported. I do not trust Crewe,
who always had a Colonial twist, and we shall see a hack Under-Secretary
answering inconvenient questions in the House of Commons. It will be the
same at the India Office with Morley removed to the Lords. The
Government was bad before, it will be worse now. The bright spot in the
situation is Redmond’s declaration against Asquith. It can hardly mean
anything else than war with the Whigs, and a strong opposition on
imperial questions. Bannerman being a thorough Home Ruler has hitherto
been a stumbling block to the Irish, but about Asquith they have no
illusions.
“_20th April._—Passing through Horsham to-day I saw on a poster, ‘The
Sultan of Turkey defies Italy. Mobilization of the Italian Fleet.’ This
looks like a beginning of a new partition of the Ottoman Empire, to the
extent of allowing Italy to occupy Tripoli. The reason given in the
papers is that the Sultan has refused to allow the Italian Government to
have a separate post office in Ottoman territory, an absurd pretext for
a war, but Asquith’s is a Rosebery Cabinet and we may expect any
violence in the East with its connivance. I suppose the Emperor William
has been squared.”
This was the first premonitory thunderclap of what was presently to
prove the great storm which, beginning with the aggression by Italy on
Turkey, was to involve Eastern Europe in a series of wars, and
eventually the whole Western world in the overwhelming catastrophe of
1914. For the moment the storm was averted, as I understand, by the
Emperor William _not_ having been squared, and his unwillingness at that
time to have the peace of Europe broken. The French Government, however,
and our own, can hardly not have been acquiescent in Italy’s ambition
of an African Empire. They had already the thought that in this way
Italy might be won over and detached from the German-Austrian Alliance.
It is significant that the incident here recorded should have
synchronized with Campbell Bannerman’s retirement, giving as it did a
position of sole authority on foreign affairs to Grey in Downing Street.
“_22nd April._—The Italian Invasion of Tripoli has been staved off by
the Emperor William, who has persuaded the Sultan to yield the point
about the post office, so the sailing of the fleet is countermanded.
“_23rd April._—I have had staying here Cecil Sharp, the collector of
folk songs. I find him an interesting man, with great knowledge of his
own particular subject and enlightened views on others. I took him to-
day, after lunch, to see old Jupp at Carpenters, and we made him sing
his Bristol song and ‘The Fisherman,’ of which last I took down the
words.
THE FISHERMAN
As I was a-walking one morning in May
All down by the river side,
There came in a boat a bold Fisherman
A-rowing down on the tide.
“Who are you, you bold fisherman?
And what are you doing here?”
“I am a-fishing for your sweet sake
All on the river so clear.”
He has tied his boat fast to a stump
And to the fair maid he went,
“I have come to kiss your lily white hand
For so it was my intent.”
He has unbuttoned his morning gown
And laid it gay on the ground,
And she has seen a chain of gold
On his body three times round.
She has fallen down on her bended knees
And loud on his mercy called,
“I thought you was a bold fisherman
And I see you are a lord.”
“I will take you home to my father’s house,
And married straight will we be,
And you shall have a bold fisherman
To row you on the sea.”
“Campbell Bannerman is dead, good old man, the last of the Gladstone
Liberals of 1880, except Ripon, who is still in the Cabinet under
Asquith, but who has given up his leadership of the House of Lords to
Crewe. I don’t know that there is much to say about Bannerman except
that he was a worthy soul and did his best to carry on the better
tradition.
“_26th April._—Winston Churchill has lost his seat at Manchester. It is
a bad blow for Asquith, as Winston had just pledged him and the Cabinet
to a full Home Rule programme for the next general election, and Redmond
had accepted a declaration and had pronounced in Churchill’s favour.
“_30th April._—Chapel Street. Meynell came to dine with me. He is
bringing out a new edition of Thompson’s poetry, of which he expects
much. I think Thompson is secure of a high position now, not only from
the excellence of his workmanship, but because he is unique as a
religious poet. I know of no good religious poet since George Herbert,
or one who can anyway compare with Thompson, for Newman, with the
exception of ‘Lead, kindly light,’ wrote nothing really first rate. His
‘Gerontius’ has been made much of because of its doctrinal character,
but as poetry it is poor stuff. Later George Wyndham came to see me and
sat talking for a couple of hours, his discourse more of poetry than
politics. He recited two love songs he had made, one of them really
beautiful, with triple endings, which he called, ‘From the Persian.’
“He was full of his son Percy’s adventures abroad with Bendor, how they
had steered a motor boat race at Palermo, and other golden deeds,
worthy, he said, of one of Ouida’s heroes. He talks with disgust of
politics; it is a glue he will never get free of. He has had George
Curzon to dine with him lately, and has persuaded him not to commit
himself against Tariff Reform, as his doing so would prevent him taking
any leading part in the Tory party should occasion offer.
“Then came Brailsford with more about his experience in Egypt. He rates
the Nationalists very low intellectually; Saad Zaghloul and the few
disciples of Mohammed Abdu he considers the best, but they have no
influence, while Mustapha Kamel’s successors, who have influence, are
without force of character or sufficient intelligence to direct the
movement. He heard bad accounts of the Khedive, who was gaining
influence, but using it for his own purposes. Of the present Cabinet at
home he says it is much worse than the last. When Bannerman’s Cabinet
was being constructed in November, 1905, Grey at first refused to join
it unless Bannerman would go to the House of Lords. This little secret
was oddly enough betrayed to the ‘Times’ by Morley and published, but
the very same night Grey was persuaded to withdraw his objection on
condition he should be allowed his own way absolutely in foreign
affairs, and he had ever since been extremely jealous of Bannerman, a
jealousy which had accentuated his obstinacy in pursuing imperialist
lines. This would now be at an end, and Grey might be by so much the
more amenable to the views of his colleagues. It is a thousand pities
Bannerman missed his opportunity of getting rid of Grey altogether when
it was offered.
“_5th May._—There has been a considerable incident in India, a bomb has
been thrown which has killed two Englishwomen out driving in their
carriage. There is also a rising on the Afghan frontier. There is talk
of sending British reinforcements.
“_11th May._—Newbuildings. Brailsford and his wife have been here for
the week end. Mrs. Brailsford is a charming woman, very clever and
sympathetic. He is a Fabian. She takes my larger view of things. There
is news of a great conspiracy in India, and a great manufacture of bombs
with the help of European anarchists. It is being made use of by the
reactionaries to get a repeal of the liberty of the native press.
“Churchill, beaten at Manchester, has got back into parliament at
Dundee.
“_27th May._—Farid Bey, who arrived in England a few days ago, came to
see me. He is, I think, a pretty good man, not first rate, but sensible
and honest. He is anxious to see Grey, and I advised him to get at him
through Redmond and to refuse seeing any of the understrappers at the
Foreign Office in his place. Then if Grey consented to receive him to
put to him one question only, ‘Are the English Government honest in
their profession of eventual evacuation?’ Unless Grey can give some new
public assurance on this head, it is useless discussing details. The
latest pronouncement has been Cromer’s, that ‘Egypt cannot be made self-
governing under three or four generations,’ let us say never. As long as
there is a doubt about this, all Egyptians will be banded together
against England. Farid gives much the same account of the Khedive
Abbas’s attitude toward the National movement as Mustapha Kamel did. His
Highness talks one thing to one man, another to another. He is friends
with Gorst and Cassel, who help him to make money.
“_30th May._—Grey has refused to see Farid on the ground that he also
refused to see Kamel. Redmond writes to me about it. In it he says: ‘I
had an interview with Sir Edward Grey this morning (about his seeing
Farid) and he states that when Mustapha Kamel Pasha was over here as the
leader of the Nationalist Party he declined to see him, and that under
these circumstances he cannot see his way to see his successor.’ This is
marked private.
“Cockerell has got the place of Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum at
Cambridge.
“_6th June._—I have been extremely ill for the last three weeks,
threatened with I know not what, needing an operation in my throat,
which I have refused, preferring to die a natural death. In the
afternoon Meynell arrived, having been all the morning with Archbishop
Bourne. Bourne, he tells me, was at one time curate to Monsignor Denis
at West Grinstead, and knew Newbuildings well in John Pollen’s time, and
he remembers having met me at one of the Capuchin festivals at Crawley.
His (Bourne’s) position, in regard to Modernism is, contrary to what I
imagined, one of disapproving the Papal Encyclical as unnecessary in
England and ill-timed, and this, Meynell says, is the general opinion
regarding it, so much so that Wilfrid Ward has been able to persuade the
Duke of Norfolk to write in that sense to the Pope. The Pope, curiously
enough, is believed to be himself not so violent against Modernists as
might be supposed from the public pronouncements. Who then is the _causa
causans_?
“Meynell has just been to see Francis Thompson’s sister, the nun at
Manchester. He describes her as an enthusiastic, impulsive creature, who
kissed his hands when she saw him and sat for hours talking about her
brother’s early life.
“_7th June._—The crisis of my illness is over. My doctor, when he
arrived, remarked cheerfully, ‘Well, we have saved you this time from
the surgeon’s hands!’ Nature has operated its own cure, but doctors will
be doctors. E. V. Lucas and his wife came for the afternoon, very nice
people, he the author of ‘Wisdom while you wait.’ I have spent the
afternoon talking pleasantly with Meynell about Thompson’s fame as a
poet. Meynell thinks that I too shall be given a permanent place as a
poet twenty years hence, but I am doubtful. Certainly I have no such
place of any kind now. It will depend very much, I think, upon how
things go with the Eastern Nations. If, as I hope, they achieve their
independence of Europe, I shall be acknowledged as a forerunner of their
cause; if they fail, I shall fail. Anyhow my work in the world is pretty
near over. I shall fight and write no more.
“_14th June (Sunday)._—That ‘wretched fellow’ Morley has had a new Press
Law passed in India giving power to local authorities to seize printing
presses and confiscate without trial where sedition has been published.
It was this same John Morley of whom Lytton used so bitterly to complain
to me as his most violent attacker while in India, notwithstanding their
personal friendship, and on these very points, if I remember rightly, of
his Afghan campaign and his Press Law, which is identical with this of
Morley’s to-day. Morley is adopting all the methods used by Russia in
its imperial dealings.
“_21st June._—An odd visit this afternoon from a stranger (sent to me by
Cockerell), Lord Osborne Beauclerk, who had bicycled from London. He is
a pleasant young man who has travelled much in Asia, and has ideas about
horses, poetry and ethnology. He professed himself in a great hurry as
it was late and he wanted to get on to Wakehurst for dinner, so he put
me at once through a number of questions on all these subjects. It was
like being interviewed for the Press. I showed him the stallions and
gave him a copy of the ‘Golden Odes.’ He says he will come again.” [This
was the beginning of a pleasant and very constant friendship.]
“_27th June._—Brailsford and his wife are here. A good book has been
sent me from America called ‘Egypt and its Betrayal,’ by one Farman, who
was Consul General for America in Egypt in Ismaïl’s time and till after
the bombardment. It quite corroborates my account of the doings of the
time. Things are going badly in Egypt. They have been playing the fool
and quarrelling with the Copts. The Khedive has been in London the last
few days, come over, Mark Napier tells me, to raise money on mortgage.
“Things in Persia also look badly. The Shah with the help of some
Russian officers lent him by the Russian Government, who have drilled
him a few hundred Cossacks, has effected a reactionary _coup d’état_ at
Teheran, breaking up the Mejliss, slaughtering the people and hanging
newspaper editors. This is the first fruits of Grey’s treaty with Russia
and the King’s visit to the Czar. Brailsford’s opinion of Grey is that
it is more stupidity and ignorance with him than ill will. He thinks he
really believes in Russian promises. All the diplomacy is done by
Hardinge and the King, while Grey is their mouthpiece in the House of
Commons, having a fine presence and an impressive manner with a
wonderfully fine speaking voice. In Russia, in Persia, in Egypt, and in
India, the reaction is in full swing. No one will listen to anything but
force in dealing with the National movements. Something of the same kind
about Hardinge and the King was told me by Beauclerk who again paid me a
flying visit. He arrived from Wakehurst where Frank Lascelles is
staying, and brought me messages from him. Lascelles is out of favour
now with the King, as being too German in his sentiments. He wanted to
have the Paris Embassy, but the King refused on the ground that he was
not married, so he is to retire. They hold him responsible for the
Kaiser Wilhelm’s unfriendly attitude. Wilhelm told him lately that he
was sick of England and everything to do with it.
“My dear old friend Evelyn is dead at the age of eighty-six. I had been
intending to drive over to Wotton to see him as soon as ever I was well
enough, as he had asked for me to come some three months ago. He has
been my political ally now for twenty-five years, latterly my only ally,
we two being the last of the Tory Home Rulers and anti-Imperialists.
With certain defects of temper which led him into quarrels with his
neighbours, he was the most generous of men, and to me always staunch
and true. I remember him first fifty years ago, a shy young man, already
M.P. for Surrey, but submitting to be patronized in his bullying way, by
my guardian old Henry Currie, at West Horsley. Our friendship came on
later in connection with Egypt and Ireland. His domestic life was not
altogether happy, his Irish wife, a Chichester, having strong Orange
proclivities, which worried him much, while a certain obstinacy of
character caused him trouble in his parish, and a long feud with the
parson, against whom he waged persistent war through a local newspaper
carried on for twenty years. To me his death is a great loss. At one
time he had named me guardian of his son John in his will, but John is
now of age and succeeds him at Wotton, we all hope worthily.
“_29th June._—Brailsford tells me of a dinner given lately by Maurice
Baring to his uncle, Cromer, at which were also Bernard Shaw, J. M.
Robertson, Belloc, and other one or two Radicals, this doubtless to
conciliate Shaw in connection with Denshawai. I shall be curious to hear
the result. Cromer has always been a past master in dealing with the
press.
“_1st July._—Edward Malet is dead, at the age of seventy, having been
long ailing. The papers give him a fair meed of praise. He and Colvin
are now both dead within a few months of each other, and all the chief
actors in the Egyptian tragedy of 1882 are gone.
“_11th July._—Rothstein writes about the difficulty of getting
assistance from the Radicals in Parliament on Egyptian affairs. I have
answered that I consider it does not matter. It is hopeless to attempt
the conversion of Radicals more than Tory opinion. Nobody in England
wishes for Egypt’s independence, and the issue does not depend upon
English, but on other influences in East and West. What we have to do is
to go on agitating and opposing as they do in Ireland.
“_13th July._—Percy Wyndham, who has been staying here, went away. At
breakfast he gave me some interesting particulars about his family
history which I had asked him for. He tells me as to his grandfather,
Lord Egremont, and his marriage, that his (Percy’s) grandmother was the
daughter of a certain Reverend Iliffe, a beneficed clergyman of Surrey,
Vicar of Bramley, I think, who made her over to him when quite young.
She was very beautiful and very innocent. Lord Egremont practically
bought her of her father, and for some years they lived together very
happily. There were three sons of the union, George, Hugh, and Charles,
and two daughters, Lady Burrell, a very pretty woman, and Mrs. King.
Lady Munster was by another woman, a celebrated _demi-mondaine_, Mrs.
Fox. George, the eldest son by Miss Iliffe, was born in 1787. Later Lord
Egremont married her and had a daughter, Lady Elizabeth Wyndham, but no
son. Then they quarrelled, as she found out he was unfaithful to her,
and there was a legal separation, and she lived alone for many years at
Fulham in the house now the Bishop of London’s Palace. She was a well
educated woman and affected science as her hobby to the extent that Lord
Egremont got the Royal Society to give her a medal for some pamphlet she
had written. Her house at Fulham was much frequented by scientific
people. She was quite respectable in every way except her connection
with Lord Egremont which at the time she began it she probably did not
understand the meaning of. ‘Her subsequent marriage with him,’ Percy
said, ‘would, if it had been made in Scotland, have legalized us all.’
When Lord Egremont died nobody knew how he would leave his property and
a great number were disappointed. His nephew, who succeeded him as Lord
Egremont, he did not like and used to laugh at. He, the nephew, got the
Orchard Wyndham property and the property at Dinton, and he began to
build an enormous house intended to rival Petworth, but he never
finished it, and it is now a ruin. Hugh got Cockermouth and the
Cumberland property which he never knew how to manage, getting no more
than £5,000 a year from it when it was worth £30,000, and afterwards,
when it reverted to Petworth, became worth perhaps £100,000. Charles got
Rogate, and George Petworth and the rest. Lord Egremont had more
confidence in George than in the others, and rightly. The persons most
disappointed by his will were the Herberts, his sister having married
one of the Carnarvon Herberts. When the will had been read they ordered
their carriages and went off. This at the outset embittered Percy’s
father towards these relations. When the quarrel between Lord Egremont
and his lady occurred, Percy’s father (he was then thirteen) had been
told to leave off writing to her, and having disobeyed was flogged by
his father—all this is interesting and most of it new to me. Some of the
Iliffe family spell their name Ayliffe. Percy is of opinion that his
grandfather’s political wisdom and ability have been somewhat overrated.
He, through life, avoided taking part in public affairs or joining a
party, and so his talents were never put to the proof. He was a very
generous dealer with his wealth, maintaining a number of needy hangers-
on at Petworth who had almost permanent lodging and board in the house,
and painters and other artists innumerable.
“_14th July._—Terence Bourke came for the day, he has bought a farm
called Pekes, in East Sussex, and intends to settle there, though
without selling his property at Bizerta. Things in Tunis, he tells me,
are no longer so interesting as they were for him, the Anglo-French
Entente having smoothed down disputes between French and English, and
the project of making Bizerta a naval seaport and arsenal has been
abandoned. The country is making material progress, the agricultural
part, though in the towns the position of the Moslems has not improved.
There is a small philo-Arab section of French opinion, but the Moslems
are still without anything like a free press, or other means of
protesting against injustice.
“_25th July._—For a week past there has been talk in the papers of a
military revolt in Macedonia, and to-day the great news is published of
the Sultan’s having dismissed his Grand Vizier, Farid Pasha, recalling
Kiamil Pasha and Said Pasha Kutshuk, and summoned a Parliament under
Midhat’s constitution. This is, indeed, good news, only I hope the
revolution will not leave Abdul Hamid on the throne, or he will play
them false again, as he did in 1879.
“I have been asked to a dinner given by Ismaïl Pasha Abaza and other
members of the Egyptian Legislative Council who are in London. Tilak,
the head of the Indian revolutionary party in India has just been
sentenced to six months’ deportation to the Andaman Islands for a
‘seditious’ article in his newspaper, the ‘Kesari’ of Bombay. Morley is
playing the high old Russian game there, and there is not a man in the
House of Commons to ask a question about it. It is sickening.
“Belloc has just published a new book, ‘Clutterbuck’s Election,’ very
amusing.
“_27th July._—Things are going splendidly at Constantinople. There has
been universal rejoicing all over Turkey, Moslem and Christian and Jew
embracing one another, just as I remember it at Cairo in 1881 when the
Constitution was proclaimed there. The revolution has occurred in the
very nick of time, for it is pretty clear that the Anglo-Russian
agreement about Macedonia come to by the King at Reval was intended as a
first step towards the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. This will
now be prevented indefinitely; it would also immensely strengthen the
demand for a restoration of the Constitution in Egypt.
“_30th July._—Hyndman writes asking me to help financially in a campaign
he proposed to make in favour of Tilak and other imprisoned Indian
patriots. This in answer to a letter of mine. Ismaïl Abaza’s deputation
of Egyptian Legislative Councillors is, I think, a good move, though
repudiated by Farid Bey. Abaza succeeded in getting an interview with
Grey, though what passed at it has not been published. The revolution at
Constantinople will have greatly strengthened his hands.
“_1st Aug._—The young swallows in the bathroom have flown, but they
still come back to their nest at night. It has been a great pleasure
watching them, the old swallows having come in and out of the room by
the window while I was in the bath quite undisturbed though the nest was
just above it, built on a curtain rod. There were four young ones
hatched and all have flown.
“_4th Aug._—Belloc who was here to-day tells me that it has been
communicated to him in confidence that Grey has said that Egypt shall
have a Constitution granted to her in two years’ time. If true, and I
think it likely in view of events in Turkey, it is most important.
“_5th Aug._—A girl of seventeen, a daughter of Merrick Burrell’s wood-
reeve, was run over and killed by a motor at Buck Barn cross roads, and
to-day I went to the inquest, the first one I have ever attended. It
took place on the spot where the thing happened, a dangerous place, but
not for a careful driver. At the cross roads I found a score of local
people, neighbouring farmers and the like, collected, with the parish
policeman, who was showing the exact spot where the collision took place
with the marks of the girl’s blood still visible on the road. The traces
showed that the girl had been dragged thirty-two feet by the motor,
which had only been brought to a stand after eighty-two feet. While we
were examining the coroner drove up, and then in a smart motor the three
young men who had caused the death, and we all went into the barn close
by, where the inquest was held.
“The scene inside when the court assembled was a curious one. It was a
good old threshing floor with oak timbers, and on each side of the wide
floor sat the twelve jurymen on forms, the coroner and one or two others
at the far end of the table. The jurors were all local people, farmers
and labourers, with the Shipley parson, Sir Merrick’s coachman, and
Captain Turner, a close neighbour. There was something mediæval about
the thing, a fine survival from the days of the Heptarchy, which seemed
very real when the coroner explained that we were assembled under
authority of the King to inquire into the cause of the death of one of
his Majesty’s lieges, to wit, Mabel Mary Denman of this parish. Then the
jury having been sworn, they were instructed to cross the road and view
the corpse on which they were sitting, and I went to the cottage with
them where the girl’s body lay. Our proceedings were all the more
impressive from the intermittent roar of holiday motors passing in quick
succession outside along the Worthing road, joy-riders, without
slackening of speed or knowledge of or care for what had happened, or
was happening, light-hearted Londoner folk concerned with nothing but
their own pleasure and the thought of in how few minutes they could make
the run from one point to another of their outing to Worthing.
“Inside the cottage the dead girl, a great, strong, healthy country
girl, lay there in her coffin, looking hardly dead, for the brown of the
summer sun in the hayfields was on her face, only there were two great
wounds on the forehead, and others on cheek and chin, where the motor
had dragged her, face downwards, on the road.
“On our return to the barn the proceedings were resumed, the first
witness, the girl’s brother, a young fellow of eighteen, not unlike her,
a tall, well-shaped, ruddy country boy, with a straightforward, honest
face. He told very simply how he and his brother had been on their
bicycles to West Grinstead station; how, coming back, he had met his
sister, who had been sent to her father in the field to carry him his
dinner, how she had asked for a ride back to their home half a mile
away, how he had taken her on the step behind him, her little sister
riding with the brother. It was only a few hundred yards to the cross
roads. Arrived there, he had looked up the Horsham road and had seen a
motor coming, but as it was thirty yards away and he was already on his
own road, he held on his course, but the motor neither slackened speed
nor turned aside and before he could get clear across it caught them.
All was over in an instant. Another rustic witness corroborated the
account, and the police gave details of measurements and distances, and
the doctor who had found the girl lying by the roadside bleeding from
head and mouth, with other injuries. She never recovered consciousness.
I was allowed by the coroner to put several questions, for the motorist
had pretended that the girl had fallen off, but both eye-witnesses were
clear against this. Such was the main evidence. The defendant, a young
bank clerk from Balham, who had been driving the motor, was a
respectable youth in every way, but short-sighted, and wearing
spectacles. What came out was that if he had kept to the near side
instead of along the crown of the road there would have been no
accident, for the road was wide and there was ample room, but he had
gone on without thought, it being a good piece of the road for speed,
slightly downhill, keeping along the crown, and chancing what might be
in front. The jury, I am thankful to say, returned a verdict of
manslaughter. The thing made me angry, and I intended, if there was no
sufficient verdict, to call an indignation meeting in the parish. It
will now, however, come before the Horsham magistrates, and at the
Assizes.
[N.B.—The motorist eventually got two months. I interested myself for a
while in these motor cases, and I think was instrumental in checking the
joy-riding. It seemed to me an invasion of the enemy in our peaceful
Sussex weald.]
“_7th Aug._—Chapel Street. To London to see Hudson, who had written to
me that he was hopelessly ill. It was a pathetic letter, complaining
that he was a man without a creed, unlike me, he said, who had the
advantage of being a Catholic. It had been written in answer to one I
had sent him about his new book on Cornwall, which is a very good one.
But when I arrived at his house in the extreme west of London I found he
had gone out. [This was the well-known writer of many admirable books,
mostly on birds and on his early life in South America.]
Meynell, who dined with me to-night, professes to know what the King
thinks about the danger of a war with Germany, and what the Kaiser
Wilhelm’s plan is. Wilhelm, as soon as he is ready for it, will throw a
_corps d’armée_ or two into England, making proclamation that he has
come, not as an enemy to the King, but as grandson of Queen Victoria, to
deliver him from the socialistic gang which is ruining the country. He
will then in conjunction with the King dissolve parliament, and re-
establish the King’s autocratic rule as feudatory of the German Empire.
Such is the programme, and the King believes in it as true.
“_10th Aug._—Professor Browne has asked my advice about Persia, he being
in despair at the counter-revolution there. I have written advising that
he should go to Constantinople, and get the new Turkish Government to
take the Persian Constitutionalists by the hand, and bring about an end
of the Sunni-Shia feud. I am advising Farid to make common cause with
the revolution at Constantinople. Belloc repeats that Grey has privately
promised Egypt shall have a Constitution in two years’ time.
“_14th Aug._—Blanche Hozier writes from Blenheim that her daughter
Clementine is to marry Winston Churchill. She says of him, ‘yesterday,
he came to London to ask my consent, and we all three came on here.
Winston and I spoke of you and of your great friendship with his father.
He is so like Lord Randolph, he has some of his faults, and all his
qualities. He is gentle and tender, and affectionate to those he loves,
much hated by those who have not come under his personal charm.’ It is a
good marriage for both of them, for Clementine is pretty, clever, and
altogether charming, while Winston is what the world knows him, and a
good fellow to boot.”
I spent my birthday of sixty-eight as usual at Clouds, where I met,
amongst others, the Duchess of Wellington with her delightful daughter
Lady Eileen Wellesley, who is clever in the way young ladies are clever
nowadays, with a great knowledge of poetry and literature, besides being
extremely pretty. She read aloud Swinburne to us in a peculiarly sweet
voice, and I followed with Mrs. Browning’s “Gods of Hellas,” a very
favourite piece with me.
“_20th Aug._—At Clouds. George arrived in the afternoon from Elbarrow.
With him Shelah, Duchess of Westminster. They had been at the manœuvres
all the morning, had then motored over here, some thirty miles, stopped
an hour for tea, and were to motor back, and go out to dinner. This is a
good example of the life at high pressure of our ladies of fashion. She
has with her in camp, a lady’s maid, a footman, a chauffeur, and a cook.
The Duke in the meanwhile is away motoring in Ireland with another
chauffeur, another cook, and more servants, besides a motor boat, the
one he races with. The life of both of them is a perpetual gallop. This
sort of society cannot last, it will end in Bedlam.
“_22nd Aug._—To-day old Kipling, Rudyard’s father, came to dinner, and I
had a long talk with him about India. I wanted to find out from him, who
is a typical Anglo-Indian, what remedy he would apply to the present
condition of things. Like all the rest, however, he has no remedy to
propose beyond ‘severe repression’ for the time being, though he does
not pretend that this will cure the disease. He puts down as its causes:
(1) The Japanese victories, (2) Education, and (3) Official lack of time
to be polite; these are the common explanations, but for none of them
has he a remedy. The Japanese victories are a fact not to be denied, the
education given cannot be withdrawn, the lack of race sympathy cannot be
mended. He admits the necessity of a new policy, but can suggest none.
“Looking over old letters from Burne-Jones to Madeline I was glad to
find one from Rottingdean, dated 27 December 1882. ‘Thank Mr. Wyndham
for sending me a poem, by Wilfrid Blunt, about the Egyptian crime. Of
course I heartily agree with it, but admired it, too, and felt it in
parts a real poem.’ This was the ‘Wind and the Whirlwind.’
“To-day Percy read out to us an act of one of Bernard Shaw’s plays. He
reads very well, having an excellent voice, and some skill in dealing
with dialects.
“_30th Aug. (Sunday)._—I have been reading Father Tyrrell’s new book,
‘Mediævalism.’ The reasoning of it is forcible, but the tone petulant
and undignified; it takes that most difficult of all forms, an open
letter addressed to Cardinal Mercier in answer to a Pastoral issued by
him to his Belgian Diocese against Modernism. Mercier’s Pastoral, though
severe, is not uncharitable, and speaks of Tyrrell politely, even in a
friendly tone, and should have been replied to if at all in the same
polite spirit, but Tyrrell is needlessly aggressive. Thus, while scoring
in argument, he loses in effect, but the truth is both he and the
Cardinal are fighting a battle which neither side can possibly win, and
where the plain unbeliever will remain the _tertium gaudens_. It is
inconceivable that the uncompromising attitude of what Tyrrell calls
Mediævalism, can maintain itself for ever against the logic of science,
and it is equally inconceivable that scientific people will go on trying
to believe in a divine revelation on Church lines. In his heart Father
Tyrrell has already lost faith in it, and must be driven into open
rejection of _Roman_ Catholicism just as Dollinger was, indeed much
farther than Dollinger, for Tyrrell is logically a materialist, no less
than I am; however, the book interests me extremely.
“_31st Aug._—Princess Hélène writes telling of her travels in
Somaliland, where she has shot a rhinoceros. She says: ‘Mon voyage m’a
fait un bien énorme, je n’ai qu’un rêve, retourner dans ces pays là.
Plus je vis, plus j’ai en horreur ce qu’on appelle la civilisation qui
n’est que corruption et méchanceté humaine. Si je n’avais pas un mari et
des enfants j’irai m’établir là-bas.’
“_1st Sept._—Mohammed Bedr, Egyptian President of the Islamic Society of
Edinburgh, came here (Newbuildings) on his way to Egypt. He is a very
superior young man, a disciple of Mohammed Abdu, and a strong
Nationalist. I asked him the truth about the Mohammedan attitude in
India, and he assured me that though certain leaders like Husseyn
Bilgrami and the Agha Khan supported the British régime, the great mass
of Indian Mohammedans were in sympathy with the Hindoo Nationalists. He
believes now in the revival of Asia, and the maintenance of its
independence against Europe. He asked my opinion about the prospects of
Constitutionalism in Egypt. I told him the thing to aim at was not so
much _legislative_ power as the right of the Chamber to control the
_executive_, that is to say that the choice of a Ministry should rest
with them and not with the Khedive. Unless they obtained this right, the
other would be useless, and the Khedive will at any moment be able to
revoke the Constitution, with the aid of an army officered by
foreigners. He asked what should be their plan of action? I said, ‘You
must get together a society of young men of sufficient means to be
independent of Government employment, and send them round to the country
towns and large villages to give lectures, and instruct the fellahin in
the duty of patriotism. When you have accomplished this you will be
ready at any time to take advantage of circumstances to demonstrate
effectively against the British Occupation. This had been done in
Ireland, where the strength of Nationalism had been found in the
peasantry through a propaganda of this kind. He is himself, he said,
member of a wealthy landowning family in the Sherkieh Province, and
would try what could be done.
“_4th Sept._—Eddy Hamilton is dead. This would have meant a great deal
to me twenty-five years ago, but he has long been practically defunct,
paralysed, and mentally decrepit. Sackville also has dropped out at the
ripe age of eighty-one, a thoroughly good fellow, with whom I was never
intimate, but always friends. He had a hale old age, a quiet, good man,
whom I should regret more were I not myself among the dead.
“_7th Sept._—E. V. Lucas and his wife were here to-day with Dr. Philpot,
and Belloc in the afternoon. Lucas tells me that Harmsworth now controls
the whole policy and writing of the ‘Times.’ A copy of the ‘Times’ is
annotated by him, with remarks, every morning. His sole object now is to
restore its character for respectability. This was just what I
recommended six months and more ago, when Eddy Tennant was interested in
it.
“_11th Sept._—The Poet Laureate (Alfred Austin) arrived from Swinford
to-day, and we have had much talk about politics and religion. He is
sensible enough when one gets him alone. We discussed Modernism and the
Eucharistic Congress, his position towards the Church being much the
same as mine. He has never renounced Catholicism, he says, though he
does not believe in any religion, but he has leanings once more towards
it now he is getting old. For me, as I get older I care less. Austin is
seventy-five. We first met about the year ’58, or it may be a little
later, when he was reading law in London. A little cock sparrow of a
man, he was already with an ambition of becoming Poet Laureate; it is
astonishing he should have won to it. His uncle left him some money,
enough to live upon, and he abandoned the Law after making once the
Northern Circuit. Then he travelled in Italy, became interested in
Garibaldi, and married in 1865. In 1870, being at Berlin during the war,
the ‘Standard’ took him on as its correspondent, and he followed the
German army to Versailles as such. He had a chance interview with
Bismarck which made his journalistic fortune, and from that time was
kept on as leader writer on the paper for its foreign affairs. This
brought him into connection with Lord Salisbury who eventually made him
Laureate. So are poets made, _fit non nascitur_, but he takes himself
very seriously now, attributes Bismarck’s confidences to a poem of his
the great man had read in praise of Prussia, and Salisbury’s choice of
him to his acknowledged position at the head of English literature.
“_12th Sept._—To London for the Winston-Clementine wedding. It was quite
a popular demonstration. Lord Hugh Cecil Winston’s best man, and the
great crowd of relations, not only the Church [St. Margaret’s] full, but
all Victoria Street, though that may have partly been for the
Eucharistic Congress which began to-day. I went up in the train with
Belloc who was to speak at the Congress. At St. Margaret’s I arrived
late when all the seats were taken, but Blanche Hozier found me one in
the family pew, where I sat between her sister, Maud White, and Hugo
Wemyss, others in the pew being Lady Airlie, old Maud Stanley and Lady
Grove. Little Nellie bridesmaid. The bride was pale, as was the
bridegroom. He has gained in appearance since I saw him last, and has a
powerful if ugly face. Winston’s responses were clearly made in a
pleasant voice, Clementine’s inaudible.
“_15th Sept._—The King has sent a telegram to the Sultan congratulating
him on having appointed Kiamil Pasha his Grand Vizier, and predicting
that he will obtain ‘the veneration of future ages.’ This is meant
evidently for Indian consumption, an astute move. [Less astute, however,
in the sequel, as will be seen, for it bound English diplomacy to the
fortunes of Kiamil for the eventual ruin of our influence at
Constantinople.]
“_24th Sept._—The first two of my articles on ‘The New Situation in
Egypt’ are printed in the ‘Manchester Guardian,’ and the third is
promised for to-morrow. The moment is a propitious one, for the King is
holding a kind of Council about Egypt at Balmoral, having with him
Gorst, Wingate, and Slatin, with Asquith; Cromer being conspicuously
absent. This really looks a new policy of some kind, and a policy
favourable to Egyptian hopes.
“_25th Sept._—The Poet Laureate has been here again, very pompous. He is
good enough to approve my Egyptian articles, ‘every line of them,’ and
offers to forward them to Grey with a letter to that effect. I said it
was very good of him, but I hoped he would not say I had asked him to do
so. His patronage is not likely to be much good to me at the Foreign
Office.
“_27th Sept._—Meynell has arrived, and our talk has turned on Francis
Thompson on whom the Poet Laureate has been absurd in his pronouncement.
Austin’s great object now, Meynell tells me, is to get Wilfrid Ward to
write an article about him in the ‘Dublin Review.’ He has confided to
Meynell that he has been sounded as to his willingness to be given a
title (we suppose a knighthood), but that he has answered that the only
title he aspires to is ‘one that would give him the right to address his
peers in parliament.’ He may whistle for that.
“There is a complication in Turkey, the Bulgarian Government having
seized the Orient railroad. This may lead to war, but all depends on
whether Bulgaria is backed by Austria or by Russia. It is curious how
the situation of 1876 is being reproduced, and also the situation which
was so near occurring in 1885. The Bellocs dined with us, to the
discomfiture of the Poet Laureate, to whom Belloc paid scant deference,
and whom he quite extinguished in talk.
“_28th Sept._—They are all gone at last, I am glad to say, and ‘silence
like a poultice came to heal the wounds of sound,’ for we have had a
terribly noisy time.
“Oliver Howard has died, of fever, in Nigeria. What a gratuitous
mischance. There was no call whatever for him to go to these malignant
countries, no necessity of money or his profession, only a perverse
desire for that worst madness which possesses young Englishmen, the
sport of arbitrary power in wild countries, with the occasional chance
of shooting black men—this is what attracted him.
“_10th Oct._—I have been laid up all the week by a feverish attack while
great events have been taking place in the world.
“On Tuesday Bulgaria declared itself an independent kingdom; on
Wednesday Austria annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina; on Thursday Crete
annexed itself to Greece; and on Friday came news of Albania having
declared its independence. The fat is, therefore, very much in the fire.
The European situation, which was very difficult to understand, has
gradually become clearer. There has most undoubtedly been a plot,
instigated I imagine by Kaiser Wilhelm, between Austria, Germany, and
Italy, having for its object to bring about the overthrow of the
Constitutional party at Constantinople, perhaps a partition of Turkey.
What puzzles me is the attitude of Russia in the affair. As things now
appear, she is standing with England and France as the upholders of
Constitutional Turkey. It is probably in consequence of some agreement
of alliance between the three Powers, England, France, and Russia,
against Germany, initiated by our King at Reval last summer, suggested
by the powerlessness of Russia to advance on Constantinople at present.
What probably will happen is that a conference will be proposed which
will come to nothing. Then either there will be an acceptance of the
_fait accompli_, public opinion in England having got tired of the
thing, or there will be a war of coercion. It is clear in all this that
if our Government is to take up the high moral line of respect for
treaties and declarations, and for the letter of international law, it
cannot refuse any longer to keep public faith about Egypt. It will be
too absurd, if having strained at the Bosnian gnat it declines to
disgorge the Egyptian camel.”
This diagnosis of the situation, though not quite accurate, is near the
truth. The Balkan conspiracy against Turkey at that moment in which
Bulgaria took the lead was undoubtedly encouraged by Austria, which
viewed with disfavour the prospect of regeneration for the Ottoman
Empire opened by the revolution at Constantinople, which saw in it,
should it succeed, a permanent obstacle to its _Drang nach Osten_, while
Kaiser Wilhelm still regarded the Sultan Abdul Hamid as his friend and
the Constitutionalists as unfriendly to Germany. At the outset of the
Turkish revolution public opinion in England had expressed itself
strongly in favour of the Constitutionalists, and to the extent that
Grey and our Foreign Office had been carried off their legs and obliged
unwillingly to a display of sympathy which found its expression in the
King’s telegram to the Sultan congratulating him on the event, and
having appointed Kiamil Pasha his Grand Vizier. Kiamil had long been
considered a friend to England and England’s Egyptian policy. He had
been the Khedive Tewfik’s tutor at one time, and had approved of the
English intervention in Tewfik’s favour at the time of Arabi. For the
moment, therefore, the new régime at Constantinople was regarded as a
triumph over Austrian and German influence. The friendly feeling,
however, did not last long, as England was already bound in the chains
of the Franco-Russian Entente, and Russia was at least as opposed to the
regeneration of Turkey as was Austria. The situation resulted in an
attitude of vacillation and insincerity on the part of our diplomacy,
which led to a series of betrayals of the Turkish Government by Grey, as
will be seen later. What is a quite correct appreciation of the
situation here is that which is said of the agreement come to between
England, France, and Russia at Reval, which developed into a coalition
between these Powers against the Central Empires, and which was
interpreted in Germany as a design of “hemming in,” which in fact it
was, proved the cause of the Great European War, six years later.
“_11th Oct._—Father Tyrrell has sent me a wild letter in which, after
speaking about Thompson’s poetry, he says _à propos_ of the doings in
Bosnia and Bulgaria, ‘Will you join me in a friendly visit to the
Emperor Francis Joseph, taking in the Czar and the Kaiser on our way
home? I feel it is time to _do_ something instead of fizzling like a
spent crab. The political rascalities of the last few days has upset my
liver.’
“_12th Oct._—I have finished Nevinson’s book about India. It is very
well written and interests me greatly, his experiences having a close
resemblance to my own of twenty-five years ago. It is disheartening that
the Indian reformers should have made so little way since then, for they
are hardly any further advanced. Nevinson does not go far enough for me,
perhaps he dares not.
“It being a lovely morning I drove over to Storrington and found Father
Tyrrell in the annex to Mulberry House, busy, he told me, with a
philosopho-theological work of some encyclopædic kind for a publisher.
His study is a dark little ground-floor room, and we went out into the
sunshine of the garden to talk. I asked him about his relations with
Rome, and he told me he feared there was little chance of their
improving. He is almost hopeless about the Church ever now putting
itself upon progressive lines. They have committed themselves too far at
the Vatican. He will not, I think, long retain even what remains of his
connection with it. I exhorted him, however, to stay on as long as he
can, for though I had myself passed beyond all possibility of belief, I
thought it a pity there should be no half-way house anywhere. As regards
his personal circumstances he has no need to seek a change, for his life
at Storrington is an ideal one for a thinker, retirement in a lovely
village with pleasant, intellectual society, male and female, and ample
time to write and read. Presently Father Fawkes joined us, a fellow
Modernist priest, and then Miss Petre and we sat an hour under the
trees. He is to come to Newbuildings for a couple of nights when he can
find time.
“_13th Oct._—Farid Bey has telegraphed about a rumour current in Egypt
that England has declared a protectorate. Though possible it is very
unlikely. I have telegraphed back to tell him so.
“_16th Oct._—The situation in Bulgaria grows more and more warlike. In
my opinion Grey is being taken in by the European diplomatists, who are
one and all, except perhaps the French, opposed to reform in Turkey,
having their own axes to grind there. These are encouraging Bulgaria to
pick a quarrel with Constantinople and bring about a counter-revolution
and will probably succeed. It is just the old game of 1876-77. The
Turkish army is disorganized (only half mobilized) while the Bulgarian
army is on a war footing. Our English support of the Young Turk is
clearly platonic, though we may intervene if Constantinople itself is
threatened.
“_18th Oct. (Sunday)._—Malony, the Irish editor of the ‘Egyptian
Standard,’ has arrived from Egypt. He is a sensible and good young man.
His account of the situation in Egypt is not encouraging. They suspect
the Khedive of having been won over by Gorst to English interests and
money interests. Mustapha Kamel’s death has disorganized the National
party. Malony gives a high character to Farid as an honest patriot and
sensible man, but says he lacks initiative and that rapidity of decision
so necessary in a leader and so remarkable in Mustapha. Ali Kamel,
Mustapha’s brother, puts himself forward in rivalry with Farid. There is
no one person who commands the obedience of the party.
“Margaret Sackville and Mary Wentworth are here, and we spent a literary
evening. Malony went to mass this morning with Mary, while I went out
riding with Margaret. In the evening I read them out Margaret’s fine
lines about Ireland, ‘I am the eternal dreamer.’ (These are on the
highest level of all she has written.)
“Malony goes to Constantinople on Tuesday as correspondent to the
‘Manchester Guardian,’ as well as to his own Cairo paper.
“_19th Oct._—Back to London. The news to-day is better. There is some
prospect of the Bulgarians and Turks settling their differences between
themselves without waiting for the European conference.
“Meynell, who dined with me, is anxious to get a monument put up to
Francis Thompson in St. Paul’s, if not in Westminster Abbey.
“_20th Oct._—Nevinson came to see me just back from India, where he has
been in the thick of the revolutionary movement. His book had given me
the idea that he was rather hopeless of its continuance, but he assured
me that it was not so; the danger was that it would go too fast, there
would be riots which would be suppressed with great barbarity, and that
would make reform impossible, the hatred of England has become so great.
Only if we left India what profit would it be to the Indians, they would
fall a prey to some other Empire, German, Russian, who knows what?
Nevinson is a remarkable man in appearance, tall, and with a severe
manner. He did not smile on entering, and from his expression one might
have thought him come with hostile intent, but he warmed to our
conversation, and talked pleasantly and freely, and has offered to send
some of the Indian Mission which has just arrived in London, Gokhale and
Lajpat Rai, to see me. Gokhale he says is now the real leader of the
revolutionary movement. We talked about Morley and his projected
reforms. He thinks he means to do something of value in the direction of
increasing the number and power of the native members of council, even
perhaps that he will reverse the partition of Bengal. He agreed with me
all the same in my estimate of Morley as a weak-backed politician, quite
ignorant of India and the East, swayed by the permanent officials, and
principally anxious for general praise and his social position. We were
wrong he said in expecting so much of him. On the whole Nevinson pleases
me greatly. He has strength, and is as regardless of the conventional
attitude as a journalist can well afford to be.
“Next Rothstein came in a pessimistic mood about Egyptian and Turkish
things. He wants some action taken at Cairo, but I don’t see what can be
done there till the Legislative Council meets in December, when a demand
for a constitution might be made to the Khedive backed up by popular
demonstrations. This seems to me the best programme, with a repetition
of it by the General Assembly which is to be convoked in February or
March.
“_21st Oct._—George Wyndham came to lunch, and we discussed the whole
Eastern situation. He agrees with me that the trouble in Bulgaria and
Bosnia was originally of German-Austrian raising. He also considers Grey
to have made a mess of things. His support of the new régime in Turkey
was quite right, but he ought to have gone further, and when Austria
announced the annexation of Bosnia he ought with France to have declared
that England would allow no infringement of the Treaty of Berlin, and
stuck to it. He, George, had always been in favour of the alliance with
France, and if they had made a firm stand Austria would have had to give
in, but the Government is in too great a mess at home to have any
courage abroad, and now they will miss their opportunity of permanent
influence at Constantinople.
“Rumbold, whom I called on in the afternoon, thinks with George and me
that the Conference will be dropped, but he is very positive that the
annexation of Bosnia had nothing to do with the Ottoman revolution. It
had been decided on to his knowledge as much as three years ago, and the
only thing that had delayed it was the difficulty of settling whether
Bosnia should belong to Austria or to Hungary. As to Bulgaria, he could
not explain how it had come about, that Prince Ferdinand had been so
well received by the Emperor of Austria, for the Emperor had often
talked to him, Rumbold, of Ferdinand as an intriguer and a scoundrel,
who had connived at the murder of Stambouloff.
“Later I met George again, and dined with him and Sibell, and Pamela
Tennant in Park Lane. We had a merry dinner and discussed once again the
Eastern situation. I told him Rumbold’s opinion about Bosnia, but he
would not hear of its being a correct one. He declared it to be certain
that the whole trouble was concocted in Berlin, and in corroboration
told how a week before the annexation was announced, he was staying at
Wynyard with the Londonderrys, whose party included Metternich, the
German Ambassador. Metternich, however, had hardly arrived before a
despatch reached him while at dinner of such urgency as to oblige him to
go at once, in Londonderry’s motor, to meet a messenger at a distant
railway station, the result of his journey being that he left for London
by the first train in the morning. It must, George says, have been an
affair of the most absolute importance to require this of him, for he
was less than twelve hours at Wynyard, nor was there any other question
in public view at the time. George declares categorically that the crux
of the whole situation is that Kaiser Wilhelm means war with England on
the first favourable opportunity, and in the meanwhile to stir up
trouble wherever he can for us. I think this very likely, and also that
there would be no great difficulty in an invasion of England whenever he
is so minded.
“_22nd Oct._—Gokhale and Lajpat Rai came to see me, sent by Nevinson,
and stayed an hour, and we discussed the situation in India very
thoroughly. I am disappointed with both of them. Gokhale is a well bred,
highly educated and intelligent man, a Maharata Brahmin, I believe, and
according to Nevinson the Leader of the National movement. He expresses
himself well in English, and I have no doubt is an able speaker. But he
is clearly no leader of a revolution, and they will effect nothing
without one. He lacks the enthusiasm which a belief in ultimate success
would give, or even the bitterness which is also the force of hatred and
despair. He told me that he did not like being called a moderate, but if
he represents anything that can be called extreme, there is small chance
for India. I asked him what in his view was the end to be aimed at. He
said, ‘Of course we hope some day for complete independence, but that is
far away. Perhaps in ten years’ time we may get Provincial self-
Government, but for that we must educate ourselves, and the educated
class is very small.’ I asked him what means he proposed to use in order
to obtain it. He disclaimed an appeal to force in any shape. ‘What could
we do,’ he said, ‘against Kitchener and the army?’ He would not hear
even of obstruction. ‘It is no use,’ he said, ‘trying to overthrow the
present administration until we have something to put in its place.’
Language of this sort may be true, as it certainly is prudent, but it is
not the language of revolution. I asked him whether he expected to
convert English people, or the English Government by appeals to reason
and justice? He said he believed that Morley had a scheme of extending
the representative character of the councils, and they would have to be
content with that at present. He had been a great believer in Morley,
and had read all his writings on liberty, but he feared that Morley was
more for _personal_ than _national_ liberty. I told him Morley was a
broken reed. ‘In that,’ he said, ‘my friend here,’ pointing to Lajpat
Rai, ‘will agree with you.’ On this I turned to Lajpat and asked him to
give me his opinion. Lajpat is a different sort of man altogether, much
more purely Oriental, but inferior in breeding, and very much in
intelligence to Gokhale. He has a poor command of English, and it seemed
to me a confused mind, timid too, and deprecatory in manner. It was
difficult to see in him anything that the Indian Government could
possibly have been afraid of, or that Morley can have thought it
necessary to arrest by a _lettre de cachet_ and deport him without trial
as a danger to India. His views were less pacific than Gokhale’s, but
all without precision. ‘I know nothing,’ he said, more than once, ‘about
India in general, only about my own province, Punjaub.’ Perhaps if he
had been alone with me he would have had the courage to speak out, but
he was afraid of his companion, and I frightened him when I asked him
what chance there was of the native army taking the National side. We
had a long discussion about the attitude of the Indian Moslems, and I
told them how I had tried to influence the last in 1884, to join the
Hindoos in the Congress movement, but they assured me the Moslems were
all against them now, and Gokhale seemed to think that they would be a
danger in any reconstruction of India on a national basis, because,
though they were much less numerous, and less rich, they were more
united. ‘All we hope for is,’ he said, ‘that the movement for self-
government in Turkey and Egypt may spread to Mohammedan India, and then
they may join us. I asked them if I could do any good by writing my
views, especially on this point, but Gokhale said it would be useless,
though if I went to India it might be of use to them. It was clear that
I was much too revolutionary for either of them. Lajpat in leaving
pressed a little book into my hand. It was a printed account of his
arrest and deportation, a naïve, and in places quite childish narrative,
which I hope may not get into the hands of our Anglo-Indians here to
make sport of. It is really preposterous that its author should have
been made a national hero. I augur ill for the success of their mission
to England. They would have done better to send a firebrand like my
friend X—— with curses on his lips to show our Radicals that India has
men to be afraid of. These fair-spoken pleaders for justice and the
rights of humanity will get no profitable hearing, and I told them so.
“_23rd Oct._—Grey has made a declaration about Egypt, which shows that
the leopard has not changed his spots. In answer to a question put to
him by Robertson, he has declared (1) that he knows nothing of any
demand made in Egypt of being represented in the Ottoman Parliament; (2)
that a scheme of Representative Provincial Councils is being worked out
in Egypt; and (3) that there is no reason to think that the new
developments in Turkey will create new difficulties in Egypt against
English control. I have written to Farid Bey to warn him against
expecting a Constitution in Egypt, even of the most limited kind.
“_24th Oct._—There is a Reuter’s telegram in all the papers, giving what
purports to be a declaration by Gorst at Cairo of the Government
intentions. It begins by contradicting the rumour of a Protectorate or
Annexation. Great Britain, it says, had given solemn pledges to Turkey
and to the European Powers to respect the Sultan’s rights here, and did
not desire to go back on that engagement. This declaration, if official,
is of the greatest importance, but its form, that of an interview with a
correspondent of the Mokattam, is unsatisfactory, and I shall try to get
a question asked about it in the House of Commons. The telegram goes on
to say that it is also an unfounded rumour that Sir Eldon Gorst has been
instructed to introduce a constitutional _régime_ in Egypt, Egypt
already having a constitution.
“The papers also announce Frank Lascelles’ retirement from the
Diplomatic Service. There was a paragraph in the ‘Westminster Gazette’
headed, ‘A Great Diplomat’—how oddly it all reads to me, whose
recollection of him is of an unpaid _attaché_ at Madrid, with whom I
played battledore and shuttlecock in the Chancery, and shared many other
pleasures; official greatness is made up of very small things, as a
mountain is made up of a tumble of small stones.
“_29th Oct._—The ‘Daily Telegraph’ has published a new manifesto by
Kaiser Wilhelm, in the form of an interview with a retired diplomatist.
It is most compromising with regard to past history, the most remarkable
thing in it is where he declares that the French and Russian Governments
proposed to him in the winter 1899-1900 to intervene against England in
favour of the Transvaal, which he refused to join in doing, and that he
then supplied the English Government with a plan of campaign against the
Boers, which was the one adopted successfully. As to the first part of
the statement, what I heard at the time was that it was Wilhelm himself
who proposed the intervention, promising to get England out of Egypt if
France would waive all claim to Alsace-Lorraine, and that the French
government refused. If authentic, which it has every appearance of
being, it is a wonderful document.
“_30th Oct._—Went picknicking at Storrington on the heath below the
Windmill. Father Tyrrell joined us, and he gave us his interesting views
about monastic life _à propos_ of the Premonstratention convent close
by. They are a branch of the Augustinians, and came to England
originally on the invitation of the Emperor Napoleon when in exile, but
they had a quarrel with the Empress, and some twenty years ago migrated
to Storrington, and being very rich, built the huge monastery outside
the village. All went well till the Father in charge of their finances
ran away with the money and disappeared, since when they have settled
down to an indigent and sleepy life. Tyrrell thinks the monastic orders
of that kind are doomed to extinction in the modern world. As for
himself, he is clearly becoming more and more emancipated, and cannot, I
think, hold on much longer to his connection, slight as it is, with the
church. I should not be greatly surprised to see him throw off his
cassock altogether, though I should regret it. If he had a less happy
life than he leads at Storrington, I feel sure that this would happen,
for he does not believe enough in ecclesiastical authority to worry
himself about his excommunication. He is an interesting and charming
man, and whatever line he may take I shall approve. He read us out a
part of Thompson’s ‘Ode to the Setting Sun,’ which was very appropriate
to the time and place. He also told us that some lines he had written in
Gwendolen Ryan’s autograph book, and which I was so much taken with, are
a translation from the German, the fourth verse only being an addition
to his own. They are these:
‘Two chambers hath the heart
Wherein do dwell
Sorrow and joy apart,
‘When in the one joy wakes
Then in the other
Sorrow her slumber takes.
‘Hush joy! oh hush! refrain,
Laugh not too loud
Lest sorrow wake again.
‘Let sorrow when she weepeth
Weep low and know
Joy is not dead but sleepeth.’
“The whole of Europe is up in arms against the Emperor Wilhelm for his
pronouncement, especially his own people in Germany. This will, I hope,
simplify matters at Constantinople, but there never was a moment when
the complications of European diplomacy were more difficult for an
outsider to unravel.
“_31st Oct._—Belloc dined with us last night, and looked in again to-
day, amusing as always, and full of literary projects; amongst others,
of publishing a volume of verse, but I think he will not do anything of
real value in the way of serious work, looking always for immediate
applause in what he does. It is the snare of all brilliant talkers and
facile writers, and is Belloc’s; witness, as an extreme example, Oscar
Wilde. He tells me that he knows, from friends at the Foreign Office,
that Grey has made up his mind to allow Constitutional Government in
Egypt as a necessary effect of the Constitution in Turkey, the Foreign
Office having been converted to that view, and even old Giglamps (Sir
Thomas Sanderson) now holds it to be necessary. It is very possible, but
there are Constitutions and Constitutions, and it will be a sham one
that will be put forward at Cairo. I have intrusted Belloc with the
questions I want asked of Grey in Parliament, and he promised to get it
done.
“_3rd Nov._—The chief public event besides the Emperor Wilhelm’s
interview, has been our Emperor Edward’s Proclamation to the Indian
people, a bit of verbiage which the Indians are not taking seriously.
“_6th Nov._—There is a quarrel started between the German and French
Governments over the Casa Blanca incident with rumours of possible war.
Father Fawkes came to luncheon. He is a Modernist and a pleasant man, a
friend of Tyrrell and of Miss Petre.
“_10th Nov._—Grey, or rather his substitute, has answered my questions
put to him by Belloc, about Egypt, notably that relating to Gorst’s
interview with the ‘Mokattam.’ The answer is given thus. ‘The language
used by Sir Eldon Gorst is correctly quoted, and is approved by His
Majesty’s Government.’ It is a declaration of Government policy, and is
most important as putting annexation out of the question or a
Protectorate, though it leaves things otherwise much as they are.
“_12th Nov._—In India they seem getting to work. Our King’s self-
complacent manifesto has been met with ridicule, and in Bengal they have
answered its omission of all mention of the Partition by an attempt to
assassinate the Lieutenant-Governor, with hootings in the streets, and
vengeance taken on ‘approvers’ of their own race, a repetition of the
old Fenian days in Ireland. They have burned the body of the man who
slew the informer, Gossain, in prison, and whom our people have just
hanged at Calcutta, according him all the honours given to a saint, and
have sent fragments of his bones as relics through India.
“_13th Nov._—Osborne Beauclerk arrived fresh from Persia, where he has
been shooting wild sheep east of the Caspian. He has been staying with
Sykes, the British Consul at Meshhed, whose business there is to watch
the Russian Consul. All that part of Persia is in great confusion, and
Sykes has fortified his house on scientific principles, intending to
hold it against all comers with the thirty soldiers he has at his
orders. Beauclerk described this in detail, and how the defences
included a mine projected under the Vizier’s residence, which is close
by, ‘carrying things rather too far,’ Beauclerk thinks. The whole of
Persia, he says, might be ridden over by a squadron of European cavalry
without hindrance as it lies open and there is no force to oppose it.
Tabriz and the North he did not see. In the rest of Persia there is
nothing that can be called a nation, only a number of tribes and races,
mixed up without any bond of cohesion. Beauclerk’s ideas, however, are
rather vague, and I had difficulty in persuading him that the Meshhed of
Eastern Persia was not the same as Meshhed Ali. The hill country where
he was shooting he describes as the extreme limit eastwards of the great
Forest of elm and sycamore, which stretches 120 miles from the Caspian,
ending in juniper scrub, where the wild sheep are. I asked him whether
these ever drank, and he said he thought not, having seen no trace of
them near water. This bears out what Suliman Howeyti used to tell me
about the _kebsch moyych_ between the Nile and the Red Sea, which never
drinks. I am immensely taken with Beauclerk, who is quite the most
sympathetic young man I have met for many years. Without being quite
intellectual he is extremely intelligent, has seen much and thought
much, has every good impulse and desire, and is feeling his way how to
live up to them. He is hardly at all educated, but has a large
experience of men and cities, or rather of wild places which are not
cities. He has been at Eton and understands its snobbery; he has been in
the Army and understands its futility; he is a landlord and understands
its duties; he is without pretention and has a kindly heart.
“_22nd Nov. (Sunday)._—There is a new interview with Kaiser Wilhelm
published, more astonishing than the last. We are promised it in a few
days, though £10,000 were paid by the German Ambassador at Washington
for its suppression, so says the ‘Observer.’
“_2nd Dec._—Father Tyrrell writes from Storrington: ‘I am occupied with
much serving; when things are cleared away and washed up I will come and
sit at your feet and hear your words.’ This is giving me a high position
as heresiarch, almost that of Antichrist.
“There is an agreement of importance come to between the American and
Japanese Governments for the maintenance of the _status quo_ on the
Pacific Coast. It is practically a guarantee of the independence of
China. This is to the good.
“_11th Dec._—Newbuildings. Mark Napier is here. He has told me an
interesting story about his life with Asquith twenty and more years ago.
Mark lived for eight years with the present Prime Minister when they
were twenty-two and twenty-three and onwards in chambers at the Temple.
Asquith did not make more than £500 in the whole of those eight years at
the Bar. He was the son of a Nonconformist in business in the north of
England, his mother being also from the north, and a very clever woman.
From the age of eight Asquith had kept himself and provided his own
education at school and at the University. Then he came up to London and
read law. He was a very industrious fellow and made £200 a year by
writing for the Press, principally in the ‘Economist.’ When he was
twenty-three he married a nice little woman. She had £500 a year, and
they lived in a small house at Hampstead, with a garden behind the house
where they kept chickens. He went in and out to his chambers daily on
the top of an omnibus, and lunched at an eating-house kept by women at
4_d._ He was a very ready writer, and could write out his articles
without erasures, articles of a serious kind. One way and another he and
his wife made up £1000 a year.
“_15th Dec._—Father Tyrrell came to dine and sleep, bringing with him a
Modernist friend, Bell, who is lame. We had some good talk about
Stonyhurst, the Jesuit system of education, Gifford Palgrave’s career,
Eastern politics, and poetry. Both he and Bell are good talkers. Bell is
an Oxford convert, now a Modernist, but still resident at Hertford
College. He gives a poor account of the intelligence of the
undergraduates, especially in the matter of poetry. Very few of them, he
said, read any verse.
“_17th Dec._—Cromer has made a speech at the Eighty Club about Egypt. He
is certainly the most shameless dealer with facts in our public life. He
has the face now to pretend that he has always been an ‘Oriental
Liberal,’ that he has never been a partisan of the Occupation, that he
has never been an opponent of Nationalist views, and that if he was
‘once shown the prospect of a Constitution’ which should really
represent the views and interests of all the inhabitants of the Nile
Valley which would inspire the confidence of Europe and maintain the
reasonable rights of the Khedive, he would become ‘an ardent Egyptian
Constitutionalist.’ This is indeed a jest.
“Sabunji writes from Constantinople saying he has received my ‘Secret
History,’ which ‘records faithfully all our joint doings in the land of
the Pharaohs.’ I am glad to have his testimony to my accuracy.
“_18th Dec._—Morley’s much expected Indian Reform speech has at last
been made in the House of Lords, amid much Tory applause, great care
having been taken that there should be no hostile criticism here or in
India. Here the speech was put off till the last working day of the
session, and in India the leaders of the opposition, including the chief
newspaper editors, had been clapped into prison. These reforms, if they
had been produced three years ago when Morley first came into office, or
if they had been announced now as an avowed first step towards Home
Rule, or again, if they had been accompanied by an abandonment of the
Division of Bengal and a release of the political prisoners, might have
effected a reconciliation with the extremists, but now I feel it is too
late. In themselves the reforms are poor things. There are to be
unofficial majorities in the Provincial Councils, and a single native is
to be allowed on the Executive Council of Calcutta. A great parade is
made about this last, but it amounts to very little, as the native
member is to be nominated by the Viceroy, and he will always be able to
choose a tame man, Hindoo, or Mohammedan, or Parsee (Gokhale perhaps),
just as they name tame Copts to be Ministers in Egypt, while in the
Provincial Councils the Governor or Lieut.-Governor is to retain the
power of veto. If native India is satisfied with this, well and good, we
shall see. What is certain is that under cover of the reforms announced
the reign of political terror will be allowed its full way, arrests,
deportations, imprisonments, and the impounding of printing presses. The
same would be done in Egypt if our officials there could get rid of the
Capitulations.
“_23rd Dec._—Tyrrell has written me an interesting letter on my ‘Future
of Islam,’ which he has been reading. He says:
“‘It makes one think furiously. You would have been God the Father had
you foreseen all that has happened since you wrote it; and I wonder how
this attempt at constitutionalism will affect the hegemony of the Turk
in Islam. Should Turkey become politically strong, she might perhaps
become a cynosure for the eyes of renascent Islam everywhere, a sort of
mother and mistress of churches, but she must then keep her Caliph or
Pope, and that would bode ill for a liberal state, giving equal
treatment to all religions. Without the Caliph, or with a mere figure-
head Caliph, Turkey would be denounced by the reactionary majority of
Islam as Liberal and Apostate, and the spiritual headship would pass to
some other land. Of course a Constitutional Persia and a Constitutional
Turkey, and perhaps the Mussulmans in India might sympathize and stand
together. I think Islam as less committed to a complex dogmatic system
could “modernise” more easily than the Papacy. But they have their
infallible _corpus juris_ tied round their necks. You would set an
infallible Pope above this Bible to whittle it away. That is a double-
edged sword. The Isidorian decretals were forged in the interests of
episcopal liberty; they issued in episcopal slavery. The Popes freed the
people from secular tyranny only to subject them to their own. It would
be safer to let theological ingenuity find a way out of the letter of
the law. It can do anything under pressure. The “Catholic Times” to-day
explains that, in the Bishops’ oath, _hereticos persequar et impugnabo_
means I will follow up the writings of heretics and refute them. Better
still, the inevitable spread of history and criticism will destroy the
mechanical conceptions of inspiration and infallibility for Islam as for
Christendom.’