GEORGE V KING
The death of Edward VII was a misfortune for English diplomacy and the
peace of Europe. Although in some ways he had launched the Foreign
Office on an adventurous course by the two ententes for which he was
primarily responsible, that with France about Morocco and that with
Russia about Persia, his influence with the Government had been a
steadying one, and it is probable that if he had lived another ten years
the supreme catastrophe of a European war would have been avoided. He
knew what was going on in the various Courts of Europe far better than
did our professional diplomatists, and his disappearance from their
counsels left the supreme direction of our foreign policy uncontrolled
in the hands of Grey, whose ignorance of foreign affairs was really
astonishing, knowing as he did no foreign language, and having made
hardly so much as a holiday tour in Europe. King Edward’s successor,
whose life had been that of a sailor, knowing the world only as a sailor
sees it at the seaport towns where his ship stops to coal—and seaport
towns all the world over are alike—and being without any experience of
politics, even those of his own country, was quite unable to supply the
directing power his father had exerted at times so successfully.
Consequently from this point onward, the year 1910, our English policy
on the Continent exhibited a series of blunders of the most dangerous
kind, leading by a logical sequence in four years’ time to England’s
entanglement in a war, the result of which was not foreseen, and for
which no preparation whatever had been made. How all this came about
will, I think, be made clear in the following pages.
“_21st May._—Newbuildings. Prince Mohammed Ali, the Khedive’s brother,
who has been representing the Khedive at the King’s funeral, arrived
here this afternoon with two of his Egyptian friends to see the horses,
having an Arab stud of his own at Cairo. While at tea, when he had seen
everything, I asked him about the state of affairs in Egypt. He said
they had been going very well until about a year ago, but owing to the
weakness of the Radical Government here had since gone badly. Too much
licence, he said, had been allowed to the Press, so that the Government
and everybody connected with it had been attacked, and the Prime
Minister, Boutros Pasha, had been murdered, the University students,
boys of twelve and thirteen, cheering the murderer. This was
intolerable. I asked him whether he did not wish to see the British
occupation ended, and he said: ‘Of course we all wish to be independent
and a great nation, but we are not ready for it yet. We have not the men
to govern.’ I asked him why he did not himself take office. ‘What would
be the use,’ he said, ‘without the power? If you took an agent to manage
your estate and forbade him to climb over a fence how could he succeed?’
His idea seems to be the old one of despotic rule, and doubtless this is
the Khedivial intention if he can get his way. I asked whether he liked
Gorst. ‘We like him,’ he said, ‘and you must not believe what the
English newspapers in Egypt write against him. They are angry because in
Cromer’s time the English officials did just as they pleased, but now
they have to take a second place.’ Mohammed Ali doubtless represents the
feeling of the Court party. Gorst has been putting back the Egyptian
Government clock to where it stood in Tewfik’s time, who was allowed to
arrest and deport as he pleased so long as he supported the Occupation.
As the Prince was driving away in his motor, he said, putting his head
out of the window: ‘We like Gorst anyhow better than Cromer.’
“_25th May._—The seven kings assembled for King Edward’s funeral have
broken up camp and gone their ways, I fear in peace. I would rather they
had quarrelled, for a peace to which Kaiser Wilhelm is chief party bodes
little good to Asiatics.
“_2nd June._—That swine, Roosevelt, has made another speech, this time
at the Mansion House, about Egypt, worse than before. I have written a
short answer to it for the ‘Westminster Gazette,’ but I doubt if they
will publish it. All the Tory papers are in delight at the speech, and
the ‘Daily Telegraph’ demands the recall of Gorst and the dragooning of
Egypt after the severest Cromerian manner. ‘The Times’ is curiously
moderate, though Egyptian Unified has fallen to 99.
“_5th June (Sunday)._—Lady Gregory and Yeats came down to dine and
sleep, Yeats in good form, telling a number of excellent stories at
dinner. He said that the three persons he had known who had most
impressed him with their power were William Morris, Henley, and Madame
Blavatsky. He had gone on one occasion with Oscar Wilde to call on
Henley. Oscar did not before know Henley, and put out all his most
brilliant talk to captivate him and succeeded in doing so, while Henley
said nothing. Both professed themselves afterwards much pleased with the
other’s wit.
“Lady Gregory is bringing out her new three-act play, ‘The Image,’ at
the Court Theatre. They have also Synge’s ‘Deirdre’ on their list, but
they say it is not successful. Yeats tells me he makes only about £30 a
year by the sale of his poetry. He is an extremely pleasant fellow, and
has a more prosperous look, and is fatter and rosier than formerly. Lady
Gregory has been the making of him.
“_7th June._—One Homer Davenport, a Yankee friend of Roosevelt’s, and a
breeder of Arab horses, was here to-day. He is an amusing fellow, come
over with Roosevelt as newspaper correspondent for the ‘New York World.’
He tells me he has no very high opinion of Roosevelt’s intellect, and
treats his pronouncement about Egypt and other things as an overflow of
nonsense and high spirits rather than as anything more serious.
Roosevelt, he says, is sure to be named President again, as he amuses
the American public. I took him the round of our horses here and found
him intelligent about them, he having visited the Anazeh tribes once.
After going through a number of our small fields surrounded with thick
hedgerows he remarked: ‘You have the cunningest little paddocks here for
breeding that ever I saw.’ I sent him back to London with Kháparde, who
was also here, an oddly assorted pair.
“_8th June._—I have written to Dillon and Dr. Rutherford, M.P., advising
them that when the question of Egypt comes on in Parliament, the point
to urge should be a resumption of the Drummond Wolff negotiations for
evacuation. It is no use trying to bolster up Gorst, he is too manifest
a failure.
“Belloc has gone to Berlin, news having come that the Emperor William
having been stung by an insect in his hand is ill with blood poisoning,
and Belloc wanted to be in at the death. Little as I love Wilhelm I
should miss him at the present juncture. It would leave the game in the
East too entirely in English hands.
“_14th June._—Chapel Street. Meynell and Everard Meynell dined with me,
and we talked much about Egypt. There was a field-day yesterday about it
in the House of Commons, Grey solemnly recanting, amid rapturous Tory
applause, the whole of his policy of conciliation there, begun three and
a half years ago. There is now to be an era of coercion. Nationalism is
no longer to be killed with kindness. There will be arrests and
deportations, which will go on till one fine day the Khedive is
assassinated. Turkey is now Egypt’s only chance. Grey’s speech shows
quite clearly that it was a matter arranged beforehand between him and
Roosevelt that Roosevelt should make the speech he did at the Guildhall.
It was one of those little perfidies by which Cabinet Ministers
sometimes force the hands of their colleagues, and it has been most
successful. Without it Grey might have had a difficulty in getting up
the agitation about Egypt which was necessary to excuse the change of
policy. Cromer will now once more be the Foreign Office adviser, vice
Hardinge, promoted as Viceroy to India.
“Hardinge’s appointment is probably as good a one as the Government
could have made. He is friends with Russia and knows something of the
East, and will have the recommendation of having been the late King’s
right-hand man. Nothing, however, in the shape of new men will much
affect the march of Asiatic and Egyptian things. Egypt’s future depends
on the success of Turkey; India’s on the success of China and Japan. One
thing Grey’s speech will certainly have effected: all Egypt will now
become Nationalist and anti-English.
“_15th June._—Dr. Rutherford came to lunch with me. In the afternoon I
went to Belgrave Square, and on with Madeline and Dorothy to the Court
Theatre to see Lady Gregory’s play ‘The Image,’ which disappointed me,
being in three acts without much action, and the dialogue being
difficult for any but an Irishman to follow. The little farce, ‘Hyacinth
Halvey,’ which followed it, was quite delightful.
“_16th June._—I have written to reproach Dillon with his absence and the
Irish silence at the Egyptian debate. Dillon, if he had been there,
could have led a serious attack on Grey, who once more was able to
hypnotize the Radicals below the gangway and obtained a complete success
for coercion in Egypt. The Irish were probably afraid of offending
Roosevelt. The Irish entertainment of Roosevelt the day after his
Guildhall speech was a betrayal of liberty which may cost the Eastern
world dear. [The incident of Roosevelt’s intervention marks an evil turn
in Grey’s diplomacy. The American’s influence with him was a personal
one, due to their common interest in natural history and out of door
sports, which with Grey was paramount. I attribute his marked preference
for American rather than any other foreign suggestions to the fact that
with Americans only he could converse in their own language, being
ignorant of French or German.]
“Lady C., on whom I called, told me she had just met M. de Soveral, who
had told her the King was certainly killed by his doctors. Soveral was
quite broken down by the King’s death. As to the new Court, she tells me
Knollys was the only one about the old King who was really faithful to
him. He was left heir to all the King’s papers and correspondence, and
knew absolutely everything of the King’s secrets, having been entrusted
with the keys, while he lived, of every box. Most of these secrets, she
said, will die with Knollys. Queen Alexandra has been well provided for,
the King having left her £30,000 a year, which will be made up to
£100,000 by Parliament. She will go with her sister, the Empress of
Russia and her daughter to Copenhagen at the end of July and stay there
till Christmas, then to Sandringham, where she will live when in
England, her son reserving the shooting. King George is entirely devoted
to his mother and will do everything possible for her.
“Kitchener has been recently to see Lady C. She had talked to him about
me and he had said I had done a deal of mischief in Egypt; I am glad he
thinks so.
“_20th June._—I have written, at Dillon’s suggestion, to Redmond about
Grey’s speech on Egypt, urging him to take the matter up strongly on the
first occasion. Asquith has fooled them after all about the House of
Lords, and has gone into conference with Arthur Balfour about the
compromise of the quarrel. Unless the Irish get rid of Asquith, Grey and
Haldane, they will never gain what they want. They have certainly had
bad luck with the King’s death, but it was a mistake their allowing the
Budget to pass.
“_26th June._—Newbuildings. D—— G—— was here to-day, just back from the
Congo with some friends interested in the rubber trade. It is a sordid
and abominable occupation, and D—— has made a fortune out of it, as
there has been what is called a rubber boom. He has for some time past
had a rubber speculation in the Malay Peninsula and took service under
that scoundrel King Leopold to learn the art of the thing, and now, old
Leopold being dead, he has returned to Europe. I asked him whether the
tales of the atrocities on the Congo were true, and he admitted that
they had been so, but said it was all changed now. All the same it is a
sorry business for one like D——.
“_28th June._—Chapel Street. With Beauclerk to the White City to see the
Japanese pictures, which are worth looking at, and in the evening with
Farid Bey to a Conference at Caxton Hall, where he made a speech about
Egypt in French which nobody understood. These meetings are entirely
useless, the audience made up mostly of young Indians and enthusiastic
middle-aged ladies.
“_29th June._—Dillon and Farid to lunch. We decided that Dillon is to
bring on the Egyptian question, if possible, as an Irish party question
in connection with the Foreign Office Estimates; otherwise no real
debate is possible. The points he is to attack are (1) The financial
mismanagement with the spending of twenty-six millions of the Reserve
Fund, (2) The new Press and Deportation Laws; (3) The Suez Canal
Convention. Dillon recommends that the Legislative Council should sign a
public protest against the new coercion laws passed over their heads. I
am to write a pamphlet. Farid has his facts well in hand, but, as usual,
his inability to speak English stood in his way with Dillon, who speaks
no French.
“_10th July (Sunday)._—Newbuildings. Dillon and Kháparde are here for
the week-end. Dillon is hopeful about Irish prospects. He says the Sinn
Fein movement as far as it was hostile to the Parliamentary party has
all but died down. He expects a General Election in January, with a
result of even forces between Tories and Radicals; and so the
possibility of an arrangement between the two parties favourable to Home
Rule. He has seen much of Churchill lately, who is much depressed at the
failure of their plans. Dillon will do what he can about Egypt, but it
is difficult to keep the Irish members in London, except when it is a
case of Irish questions. He understands the Egyptian case thoroughly;
the Radical members, however, will give no support; they are too
ignorant of foreign affairs, and too much afraid of Grey. Dillon is the
pleasantest of companions, and an excellent talker, and we have had a
profitable time.
“_11th July._—The twenty-seventh anniversary of the bombardment of
Alexandria. I am writing my final letter for the ‘Westminster Gazette,’
disclosing the financial scandals in Egypt, so as to give Dillon a lead
on the Foreign Office vote.
“_15th July._—Dillon writes that Grey, after saying that the Suez Canal
Correspondence would be laid on the table for members to read, has
withdrawn these, and there can be no debate about Egypt. Thus the whole
attempt to get publicity for the rascalities in Egypt breaks down. My
letter was sent in on the 13th, but the Editor says it may be some time
before he can print it. Such is the way these things are managed.
“_16th July._—Savarkar, the Indian who was recently extradited and sent
to London, has managed to squeeze through his cabin window at Marseilles
and swim ashore, but was arrested by a French gendarme and returned to
the ship. He had had friends ready with a motor to get him away.
Kháparde tells me that Savarkar is the author of ‘The Indian Revolution
of 1857,’ and that is the real reason why they want to get him back to
India and punish him.
“_18th July._—The Editor of the ‘Westminster Gazette’ after keeping it
for a week refuses to publish my final letter about Egypt, and as both
Dillon and Keir Hardie say there is no chance of Egypt being discussed,
I am obliged to leave it there. I cannot fight this battle absolutely
alone, the odds against me are too great.” [This letter I had printed as
a pamphlet under the heading “The Fiasco in Egypt.” I am quite sure that
it was shown to Grey by the editor, and that in consequence Grey
resolved to burk the debate by withdrawing the correspondence.]
“_22nd July._—After all, Dillon was able to say a word on the Foreign
Office vote, but unsupported by a single member on the Liberal side. It
brought Grey out with another still stronger pronouncement about the
Government determination to stay on in Egypt. The absolute and entire
defection of the Labour members as well as the Liberals is depressing.
They have all now adopted Grey’s imperialistic doctrine of ‘might is
right’ in dealing with Orientals. I hold Morley more responsible for
this conversion of England to Jingoism than anyone else in the Cabinet.
He has surrendered the Indian citadel to the enemy. It does not surprise
me, nor do I suppose it will make any difference in the end. Egypt’s
fate depends on the success of the Ottoman reformers and on the Kaiser
Wilhelm, though I suspect that terms were come to by our Government with
Wilhelm about Egypt when he was over here for the King’s funeral,
otherwise Grey would hardly have been so emphatic. The only thing now
for Egypt is to make the closest possible alliance with Turkey and share
the fortunes for good and evil of the general Mohammedan world. Gorst is
over here.
“Churchill has made a long exposition of his new prison regulations,
following very closely the lines of my memorandum. He and Clementine are
to spend Sunday week with me here at Newbuildings. Dillon has sent me
his speech about Egypt, which is eloquent and well-reasoned, and, he
tells me, provoked Grey to great anger, though he did not get into the
financial scandals. He met with no sympathy in any quarter of the House,
and he is so distressed at this that he would advise the Egyptians to
cease their agitation against the Occupation and get what they can from
England of self-government. I cannot agree with him in this. The sort of
self-government Gorst and Grey would give, a Council without power and
without a free Press, would only serve as a disguise for English rule. I
have written to him in this sense. France is once more pushing forward
in Morocco, and is counting on English help. It would not surprise me if
the partition of the Ottoman Empire were in our Foreign Office plan. It
is a race between these harpies and the Ottoman army. If this can be
reorganized and strengthened in time Islam will be saved and Egypt with
it, not otherwise.
“_24th July (Sunday)._—The Bellocs to dinner. He tells me Dillon’s
speech about Egypt was really most eloquent but equally ill-received by
Radicals as by Tories. It shows that there is no longer the smallest
hope of converting England from her imperial ways.
“Goumah writes from Lyons that there is a reign of terror at Cairo,
spies everywhere and police arrests. It is a return to the state of
things in 1883, a fine comment on the civilizing effect of English
Liberal rule after twenty-seven years. I have answered him that I advise
closer relations with Constantinople. It is their rightful and legal
way, seeing that the Sultan is their Sovereign Lord, and England cannot
with any face quarrel with them for their loyalty to him and at the same
time pretend to be the friend and protector of Islam. It must now be war
between Islam and England, and as the Egyptians have no armed force of
their own they must rely on the hope that the Sultan will some day be
strong enough to reclaim Egypt as a Province of the Ottoman Empire; it
may not be a very good chance but it is the only one they have.
“_28th July._—There is a new and very ugly development in the world’s
great affairs. The United States has declared its intention of
undertaking the management of Liberia, the black Republic in West
Africa, and there is a movement afoot for Christianizing Central Africa
in opposition to the spread of Islam, our Jingo papers applauding. I
put much of this down to the combination of Roosevelt and Grey.
“_31st July (Sunday)._—Winston and Clementine came to dine and sleep. He
expects now to remain in office, he says, for five years, the General
Election to take place in March. I gave him my ‘Fiasco in Egypt’ to
read, and he tells me that he had precisely the same idea as that I give
in it of the Suez Canal Convention. Grey had said that Egypt would be
delighted with it, but he, Churchill, had foreseen that it would be
quite the contrary. He had written a memorandum for Grey on the subject.
He and Clementine start on a yachting tour this week to the Eastern
Mediterranean and Constantinople. Their party will be De Forrest and his
wife, F. E. Smith and Walter Harris.
“_2nd Aug._—Newbuildings. The Churchills left yesterday. Ismaïl Pasha
Abaza, the most important member of the Egyptian Legislative Council,
came to consult me about affairs in Egypt. He had been three days in
London, but had found no single person among the M.P.’s and journalists
who had the least idea of the state of Egyptian things, nor had Grey
received him. He was sore about this and in very low spirits. I have
encouraged him to fight on as he has been doing in the Legislative
Council, bringing forward especially the iniquities of our financial
management, and he has promised me to do so. He is a man of the old-
fashioned school with considerable dignity and political intelligence, a
sincere patriot of the moderate party, that which has hitherto relied on
English promises of self-government and eventual evacuation. His
position, he explained to me, is this: he, in common with every other
Egyptian patriot, is opposed to the British Occupation, but while he
approves the extreme attitude of Farid he thinks it politic to work for
reforms in a Constitutional direction, and has clung to the idea that
our Liberals in England could be persuaded into granting a Constitution.
The demand for evacuation was rightly made by the extremists, but it was
right too that there should be certain persons in the party who would
try to work with England and attain the end of independence by another
and more conciliatory road. I was willing enough to admit this, but have
persuaded him that there is not the remotest chance of our ever granting
a real Constitution willingly, and made him promise me that he would
never in any public way admit England’s right to be in Egypt. I asked
him about the Khedive, and he assured me that His Highness was at heart
a sound patriot, but dared not oppose the British Agency openly. He
denied that the Khedive’s money speculations were other than honourable
ones, or inconsistent with his patriotism. I find this last difficult to
believe. On all other points I consider him a trustworthy informant and
certainly a far more dignified leader of opinion than Farid or any other
of the Nationalist leaders. He is timid, however, as all men in Egypt of
his generation are (he must be sixty) and knows little of Europe and
nothing of England; nevertheless he has taken the lead, and a bold one,
against Gorst in the Council and in the General Assembly, especially on
the Suez Canal question. He left with me two copies of the report of the
Commission of the Assembly we have been so long trying to get out of
Grey. It amply justifies the Assembly for rejecting the Convention, and
it contains an important article on our finance, which shows why Grey
refused to present it to the House of Commons.
“_14th Aug._—Osman Ghaleb writes from Paris that they are to hold the
Egyptian Congress there this year, and that there is thought of asking
me to be its President.
“_15th Aug._—In London and called on Lady C. She talked of Lord Spencer,
who has just died. Spencer was a fine fellow, and nobody in England was
more respected. He ought to have been Gladstone’s successor instead of
Rosebery as Prime Minister. I had but slight acquaintance with him,
though he was friends with my brother and sister, having gone up the
Nile with them in 1863.
“_17th Aug._—My birthday of seventy, which I am spending at Clouds, a
long and delightful day; also, and on this I pride myself, I was able
with my cup and ball to catch it on the point nine times out of twelve,
which shows that my eyesight is not failing. In the evening we had the
traditional birthday cake with the children, lighting it up with seventy
wax matches. Guy’s boys amuse me. George, a boy of sixteen, still at
Wellington School, but has grown a slight mustache and affects the ways
of a young man. He is very good-looking, and spends most of his time
with the servants in the pantry and the housekeeper’s room, where he
talks nonsense to the maids and helps the footmen to clean the knives,
smoking a briar pipe with twist tobacco, the most horrible stuff.
Upstairs he has a fine assurance with pronounced opinions, as a man of
the world. He is to go into the Foreign Office, and seems to have an
amusing career before him. Dick, the younger, is of a strict scaramouch
type, cleverer but less good-looking. Olivia is an audaciously pretty
girl of thirteen, also with a career of pleasure before her, ready for
all possible wickedness in a wicked world. They spent the day making a
grand picnic with the servants and governesses to Pertwood on the Downs,
where they had sack and three legged races and all sorts of boisterous
fun, of which Dick, who dined at table, gave us a naïve account.
“_20th Aug._—Chapel Street. Meynell and his son Francis dined with me.
The young man is clever and agreeable and should make his mark. He is
now at Trinity College, Dublin, and is much mixed up with the Sinn Fein
movement, being friends especially with the Healy faction.
“_24th Aug._—Farid has written inviting me to be Honorary President of
the Egyptian National Congress to be held at Paris on the 22nd of
September, and I have written accepting, though I cannot be there,
sending an address to be read at the first meeting.
“_30th Aug._—The Kaiser Wilhelm has made a speech at Königsberg in which
he allowed himself a new outburst about his ‘divine right.’ I remember
just the same thing nearly fifty years ago, when his grandfather came to
the throne. His ‘Gottes-Gnaden’ was a phrase of comic opera mocking in
Germany at that time.
“_6th Sept._—Chapel Street. A Mr. Atkin came to lunch to consult me on
Turkish affairs in Arabia. He has been lately at Constantinople and
tells me there is a pretty complete _brouille_ between the Young Turks
and the English Embassy; our ambassador, Lowther, does nothing and knows
nothing, and the Germans have it all their own way. There is talk of the
Sultan bringing on the Egyptian Question with the support of Germany and
Austria. I doubt, however, whether Atkin is a reliable informant.
“_15th Sept._—Newbuildings. Father John Pollen, S.J., came to lunch from
Burton Park and spent the afternoon, he not having been here since 1876,
when he went into his Jesuit novitiate. He is a pleasant, good fellow,
and we had much talk about old days when the Pollens lived here. Philip
Napier and his wife also came, and we had much Egyptian talk. He is
living at Sheykh Obeyd now, and has developed good National sympathies,
a most unusual thing for an Englishman in Egypt.
“_16th Sept._—The French Government has forbidden the Congress being
held at Paris, and it has had to be transferred to Brussels. According
to an account sent me by Goumah, he and Farid had an interview yesterday
with the Chef de Cabinet du Premier Ministre, in which he excused the
French Government by saying that ‘France was so surrounded by enemies
that she could not afford to quarrel with her one friend, England.’ The
forbidding of the Congress is in accordance with an agreement come to
with England, that if the French Government will forbid the Congress the
English Government will consent to liberate Savarkar. I hope it is so,
for the first will be a small misfortune compared with France’s
surrender of a captured refugee and her violation of the right of
asylum.
“_20th Sept._—There is a quarrel between the French Government and the
Turkish Government over a loan of £6,000,000 arranged by the latter with
the Crédit Mobilier, but which the French Government refuses permission
to be quoted on the Bourse because it is to be applied to the purchase
of war ships in Germany. [The ‘Goeben’ was one of these.] The French
made a condition that certain protected French subjects in Syria should
be given up by the Ottoman Government, and also a certain oasis on the
Tripolitan frontier evacuated, which, of course, could not be conceded.
The answer to this is a rumoured military convention between Turkey and
Roumania, and the all but certainty that Turkey will now join the Triple
Alliance. This is the best thing that could happen to Egypt, so I
rejoice.
“_24th Sept._—My letter in French to the Egyptian Congress has been
clearly a great success, the London Liberal papers giving extracts from
it, and describing it as a ‘sensation,’ and the ‘Daily News’ giving it
three-quarters of a column under the heading ‘Mr. Blunt’s Remarkable
Prophecy.’ I am sure this has been the right way to attack Grey’s
position. It is announced now that Cassel has come forward with an offer
of financing the Turkish loan if the French Government refuses to allow
the Crédit Mobilier’s offer, and that he has support at Berlin.
“_26th Sept._—Worth Forest. The news from Brussels is excellent. Keir
Hardie has declared himself at the Congress in unmistakable terms for
evacuation. He has even told the Egyptians they must have a revolution.
The following are the resolutions agreed to:
‘(1) The occupation of Egypt by Great Britain being illegal, evacuation
must take place immediately.
‘(2) The Constitution of 1882 must be restored.
‘(3) The Press law must be abolished.
‘(4) The deportation law must be repealed.
‘(5) Control over the debt must be maintained as long as Egypt is the
debtor of Europe.
‘(6) The treaty of 1898 between the Khedive and Great Britain affecting
the Soudan is void.’
“These are exactly the resolutions I should myself have drafted. I mean
now to take a holiday from the whole thing. Clementine Churchill writes
that Winston thinks my advice to the Egyptians very good advice, but he
will never consent to the evacuation. I have answered that I remembered
his saying so last year, and I also remembered how Jules Favre said in
1871 that he would never consent to the surrender of a stone of France’s
fortresses.
“_3rd Oct._—Newbuildings. Riza Bey Tewfik unexpectedly arrived from
London, having found his way on foot from Southwater through the woods.
We had a most interesting talk about Ottoman politics, and he gave me an
exact account of how England had lost her popularity at Constantinople
through the stupidity of our Embassy and the mistake made in giving
support to the counter-revolution. At the time of the first revolution
in July, 1908, the English were so popular at Constantinople that Riza,
who was one of the two Young Turks whose duty it was to keep order in
the capital, had difficulty in preventing the crowds of demonstrators
from besieging the British Embassy with their enthusiastic attentions,
while there was equal difficulty in preventing Bieberstein, the German
Ambassador, from being insulted. Now it is precisely the reverse.
Lowther, our ambassador, is a worthy man, Riza says, but quite ignorant
of the East, and dependent for his information on his chief dragoman,
Fitzmaurice, who has an anti-Islamic twist, and who went in for the so-
called Liberal party opposed to the Young Turks. England in consequence
has become entirely distrusted, and to such a point that he (Riza), who
has all his life been Anglomane, is now for an alliance with the
Triplice, England having become anti-Islamic. I told him I held just
that view of the position, and that it would be better for Turkey to
join the German powers by signing a definite treaty which would
guarantee her from danger either from Russia or from France. He promised
to repeat my opinion to the Grand Vizier and to Ahmed Riza and the rest
of those responsible for Ottoman policy. There is in truth no other
course, for England and France and Russia are all now hostile to Islam.
They only supported the Young Turks at the outset because they imagined
these to be opposed to pan-Islamism. He will also show my memorandum,
about the Arabian policy which should be adopted, to those whom it
concerns, and we are to correspond. Riza is a very remarkable man.
“I asked him about Abdul Hamid, and he told me the old Sultan was very
unhappy, for he is a man of restless energy, and chafes at his position
of powerlessness. His temper has become so bad that nearly all his women
folk have left him. He lives in a handsome house, almost a palace, at
Salonika, where he is kept close prisoner, but he cannot accept his
position. After the deposition of Abdul Hamid, Riza saw him twice,
though not to speak with personally. He confirms all the stories of the
Sultan’s dread of assassination, and says that in the room at Yildiz
where the Sultan usually slept there were six beds in a row, and no one
knew in which he was sleeping, so that if an assassin got into the room
in the dark he would not know where to strike. Also there was a secret
way of escape under the bed. Sometimes he would eat nothing for days,
fearing poison, or he would get some old woman to boil an egg for him in
his presence.
“_4th Oct._—George Wyndham and Beauclerk came to dine and sleep and
shoot to-morrow. George is busy with his rectorial address to be
delivered at Edinburgh on the ‘Springs of Romance.’ He and Beauclerk get
on well together.
“_8th Oct._—The last days’ newspapers have been full of a revolution in
Portugal, the flight of King Manuel, and the proclaiming of a Republic.
The movement will probably spread to Spain, and possibly to other
countries. Last week there was something like a Socialist rising in
Berlin, put down, however, at once with great military violence, in the
course of which several English newspaper correspondents got knocked
about, the Government offering them no apology. The Savarkar affair with
France has been referred to arbitration, thus confirming what Goumah
told me three weeks ago.
“_9th Oct._—Rothstein’s book, ‘Egypt’s Ruin,’ is now in print, and ought
to be out at the end of next week. I have made myself responsible to
Fifield for a first sale of 800 copies, besides advancing him £50. I
think, however, the book will be worth it politically. It has given me a
deal of trouble, besides writing the introduction.
“_11th Oct._—To Storrington to call on Miss Petre. She is certainly an
attractive woman, attractive by reason of her great simplicity of manner
and ready intelligence. She has finished the first volume of her ‘Life
of Tyrrell,’ including his autobiography down to 1885. ‘A precious
document,’ she calls it. She has nobody now living with her at Mulberry
House, though one of her sisters lives near her, just outside the
village, and they take their meals together. She gave a sprig of myrtle
to Dorothy as we went away, and one to Miss Lawrence, and we mean to
plant them here in memory of Father Tyrrell.
“_13th Oct._—France seems to be following Portugal’s suit. There is a
general railway strike all the country over, and Paris is threatened
with starvation. Winston was to have been here this afternoon to shoot,
but has telegraphed after attending a Cabinet Council, that
circumstances make it quite impossible he should reach us to-night. That
sounds serious. The Portuguese revolution has completely succeeded, and
young King Manuel, after taking refuge at Gibraltar, is to come to live
in England at Wood Norton.
“_14th Oct._—Winston arrived in a motor from London. He was dressed in a
little close-fitting fur-collared jacket, tight leggings and gaiters,
and a little round hat, which, with his half-mischievous face, made him
look, as Miss Lawrence said, ‘the exact figure of Puck.’ We had already
began shooting when he joined us, and talk began at once. It was very
brilliant, and, except for the exigencies of the afternoon shooting and
dressing for dinner, was kept up on the same high level till near
midnight. I had asked Philip Napier to meet him, so as to give him some
ideas about Egypt, and Gordon Blunt is also here. We discussed most of
the burning questions. Winston is going on energetically about prison
reform, and will push it much beyond what he has already announced
publicly. He means to arrange matters so that next year there will be
50,000 fewer people sent to prison than this year. He was eloquent about
a girl who had had a child and had put it in the workhouse, and who had
been given two months’ hard labour for deserting it, and about abuses he
had discovered in a reformatory. He talked also about public executions.
He is in favour of capital punishment, but, while thinking executions
cannot be made a spectacle for hooligans, will see to it that relations
and friends shall be allowed to be present. This in connection with what
I wrote the other day in the ‘Observer.’
“He then got on his travels in the Greek Islands and the Sea of Marmora,
where he has been yachting for the last two months. He was immensely
pleased with the Island of Rhodes and its defensive works. At
Constantinople he had stayed four days, and had been taken to see the
new Sultan, but had found him uninteresting; indeed _gaga_. Djavid Pasha
had shown him about, and he had talked with several very intelligent
Young Turks; also with Bieberstein, the German Ambassador, of whose
ability he had formed a high opinion. The Germans had got the better of
our diplomacy there. He had brought away a great sympathy with the Young
Turks, and was all for them being encouraged and supported. I told him
that I had been asked to advise the Ottoman Government as to its policy,
and inquired what his advice to them would be. Would he advise them to
join the Triple Alliance? He said: ‘I should advise them, while working
up their army and making it efficient, to keep out of all wars for five
years and get their finances in order. As to alliances, I should advise
them to remain in the position of the courted party rather than of one
actually engaged.’ I asked: ‘Would it not give them a stronger position
to join the Triple Alliance openly? If it is only a secret understanding
they might find themselves betrayed.’ He said: ‘Perhaps.’ I gathered
from him that he was well aware of the mistakes made by our diplomacy at
Constantinople, but he excused these by saying that we were hampered by
our position in Egypt.
“We then argued the whole Egyptian question, and with Philip’s help, I
think we produced considerable effect on him, though still he declared
the impossibility of evacuation. Public opinion in England would never
consent to it. We should hold on to Egypt as we hold on to India. It was
not that it brought us any advantage but it was impossible to go back on
what we had undertaken, a necessity of Empire. The fate of Egypt would
be decided by the issue of the coming war with Germany. He used, in
fact, all the old arguments; nevertheless, I think, he is shaken about
it. Philip staggered him by asserting that the land of the Delta was
being ruined by over watering and that the rural administration was bad.
‘One thing,’ he said to me privately, ‘I can tell you. There will be no
more talk of the Suez Canal Convention.’ He asked me what I thought of
Gorst, and said they were going to support him. ‘As to the Suez
Convention,’ he said, ‘there are three people who have always
disapproved of it, you and I and Cassel, each arriving at his view on
different grounds.’
“The only subject we avoided was the conference about the Lords, but I
feel sure that they have come to terms with the Irish. Redmond has just
made a speech in Canada announcing Home Rule all round. What exactly
this may mean is uncertain, but it would hardly have been made unless
some agreement had been come to with the Tories that the Irish demand
was to be conceded. About the railway strike in France, he expressed
much confidence in Briand. Besides all this, a metaphysical argument was
started on the old doubt about the existence of matter, and we even got
for a moment into theology. With Gordon Blunt he discussed military
manœuvres, declaring our own on Salisbury Plain this year to have been
absurd. On every topic he was good, making from time to time most
amusing little House of Commons speeches and telling anecdotes in
illustration. Nobody could have been livelier or more witty. We all
agreed, as we went to bed, that we had had an excellent show. His last
word to me was, ‘You must not quarrel with me if I annex Egypt.’ While
at Constantinople he saw the Khedive whom he described as ‘between the
devil and the deep sea,’ England and the National Party.
“_16th Oct. (Sunday)._—Worth Forest. I am over in the Forest for a few
days. On our walk up from Cinder Banks we came upon four deer, one a
white doe, close to the great beech tree. This was Percy and Madeline’s
golden wedding day.
“_19th Oct._—It is announced from Teheran that Grey has threatened to
occupy Southern Persia, a last perfidy which has decided me to write to
Riza Bey and advise the Turkish Government to join the Triple Alliance
openly, if they get the offer. It is the only thing left for any Moslem
state to do. The Anglo-Franco-Russian Entente intends their destruction.
“_20th Oct._—Chapel Street. I have despatched my letter to Riza Bey, of
which I have kept a copy as it is important. I see there is excitement
at Constantinople about the British threat to Persia, which will
certainly make for the proposed alliance. Riza Bey will show my letter
to the Grand Vizier and it ought to settle the matter. Our Foreign
Office has been very foolish with its Russian Alliance. Osman Ghaleb
writes with a full account of the Egyptian Congress at Brussels and the
reception my address to it met with. He describes this as having been
‘profound,’ so much so that Baron Max de Wendland, Chamberlain of the
King of Bavaria, who was sitting next him, exclaimed, ‘There are still
honest politicians left in England.’ Copies of my address were sent by
him to the Grand Vizier, Hakki Pasha, and to Saad Zaghloul. It has been
reproduced in full at Cairo and Constantinople, and it is evident that
it came at a most critical moment and has had its full effect. The
Constantinople Press is now violently anti-English, as well as anti-
French, and the announcement of intervention in Persia has caused an
explosion. It is certain now that Turkey will join the Triple Alliance.
There is talk already of sending a Turkish Army Corps to the Persian
frontier, and I should not be surprised if war should result. Our
Foreign Office game now clearly is to involve Turkey financially, just
as Persia has been involved. It all now depends on Germany. When
Churchill was here I discussed with him the possibility of an invasion
of Egypt, from Syria, by a Turkish army, helped by a German contingent.
He seemed to think it impossible, but stranger things have happened.
“_23rd Oct. (Sunday)._—The crisis at Constantinople will have been
heightened by a foolish speech made by Hardinge as prospective Viceroy
of India, in which he praises the late King’s astuteness and his own in
making the alliance with Russia. He quotes the saying that Asia is large
enough for the two Empires to live at peace in, and applauds the
Convention about Persia. This will help to put the dots upon the i’s.
One must be a fool not to see that a partition of Persia is intended,
though official denials are being given in our papers. It is all
intensely interesting and can hardly not result in a war, which I may
yet live to see, a war for the leadership of the Old World.
“_24th Oct._—Big headlines announce a demonstration at Constantinople
against Russia, England and France, and an appeal to the Kaiser Wilhelm
as Defender of Islam. Whether my letter to Riza Tewfik had anything to
do with it I do not know. It must have reached Constantinople on the
22nd and the demonstration took place on the 23rd. In any case it
follows very closely the lines of my advice.—Rothstein’s book, ‘Egypt’s
Ruin,’ is out.
“_25th Oct._—Chapel Street. Mackarness called to talk over the plan of
of a new Egyptian Committee, but I foresee it will come to nothing, as
he can find nobody in the House of Commons willing to go in for
evacuation, and with anything short of that I will have nothing whatever
to do. It is ridiculous to go on demanding a Constitution which will
never be given, or a resumption of Gorst’s futile régime.
“_26th Oct._—Back to Newbuildings. As I was shooting on Sheppard’s Farm
an airship passed over us, the first I have yet seen, a sausage-shaped
dirigible balloon, drifting along at about 8 miles an hour. The
propeller was not working only two little vans which seemed to steer it,
keeping its course northward, the wind being south-east. In the
brilliant evening sunlight it was rather a pleasing object than
otherwise, as it drifted almost directly over Newbuildings at about 500
or 600 feet above us.
“_27th Oct._—The airship turns out to have been the largest yet launched
and to have come from Paris and to have descended at Aldershot. It must
have been travelling faster than I thought and at a greater height. On
arrival at the garage at Aldershot it got torn and exploded, but the
passengers, they say, were unhurt. It seems to have been the first
regular passenger ship to cross the Channel.
“_28th Oct._—I have sent a copy of ‘Egypt’s Ruin’ to Asquith, with a
letter requesting him to read it, and another to Morley. In my letter to
Asquith I say, ‘Our position in Egypt, taken in conjunction with the
general attitude of the Mohammedan world, is a very critical one and may
any day need your personal decision in the Cabinet to prevent greater
mistakes than those already made at the Foreign Office. It is for this
reason that I beg you not to allow things to drift on there as Mr.
Gladstone allowed them to drift in 1882, till no issue could be found
for them short of a violent one.’ In my letter to Morley I have added an
allusion to his conscience. I don’t suppose either of them will read or
answer, but it will at least be on record that I placed the truth before
them.
“_2nd Nov.—Jour des Morts_, but whether it will be Persia or Turkey that
will die, or the British Empire, depends upon Providence and the Kaiser
Wilhelm. I went up to London early, in connection with a Mohammedan
meeting to be held about Persia, in the afternoon, and found Syud Mahmud
and another young Indian Moslem in Chapel Street, and helped them to
draw up a resolution, or rather an amendment to the resolution, which
will be proposed there. It is to this effect, ‘that in view of the
actual presence in Northern Persia of Russian troops and of the recent
threat to occupy Southern Persia with British troops, and in view,
moreover, of aggressions in the past under closely similar circumstances
of ill faith by both Russia and England, this meeting of Mohammedans
resident in London, is of opinion that no reliance can be placed on Sir
Edward Grey’s declarations that Persia’s ancient independence will be
respected by either of the two occupying Powers and it calls upon His
Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, and the Government of Turkey to concert
measures with the Persian Government for the speedy ending of a
situation which is a menace to both Persia and Turkey, and an
intolerable insult to the whole of Islam.’ The young men assure me that
such a resolution would obtain a large majority of votes. It has been
occasioned by the news that British bluejackets have been landed at
Lingah on the Persian Gulf ‘to protect life and property.’
“Called later on Rivers Wilson, who talked about old times, and
especially about the year he spent as private secretary to Disraeli,
1867-1868. Dizzy, he says, was in those days still the _farceur_ he had
been in his youth, having his tongue in his cheek and not pretending to
be serious when behind the scenes. He would sit with him, Rivers,
telling stories hour after hour, always amusingly and never pompously.
It was not till after the Congress of Berlin, ten years later, that he
began to take himself _au grand serieux_. The wonder is that anyone
should have been found to take him seriously after such beginnings as
his had been. Rivers is indignant with the present Government, and
especially with Lloyd George, ‘that mountebank of finance.’ To his
Treasury traditions of economy the present expenditure of £160,000,000
yearly is lunacy; and so it is, only if people will have an overgrown
Empire they must pay for their fun.
“Then on to Horace Rumbold, another relic of the past generation. He,
too, is indignant with the Government for having taken up the Young
Turks in 1908, and now mismanaged things, so that their joining the
Triple Alliance is a certainty. He is hardly consistent, however, I
think, as he is strongly in favour of an Anglo-Russian Alliance and
against that with Japan. Winston writes that the European situation
could not be worse for us. This reassures me about the attitude of
Germany, as to which I sometimes fear lest it should be won over from an
alliance with Turkey. There is always the danger of the whole of the
Great Powers settling their differences by a partition of the Ottoman
Empire. It is a risk we have to run, but I am sure the best chance is
for Turkey to join the Triplice. We are playing for very high stakes,
and this is our weakest card. If William were to die and be succeeded by
an unambitious Emperor everything would be lost. All the more reason for
hastening on the Alliance now.
“_4th Nov._—Newbuildings. The Persian meeting turned out to be a poor
affair, my young friends having failed to bring forward their amendment,
and the original milk and water one is all that the papers publish about
it. Mark Napier and Beauclerk came to dine and sleep. Mark, who takes a
purely City view of these questions, declares it to be impossible Egypt
should ever be evacuated, seeing how many millions of British capital
are invested there. ‘The British Empire,’ he says, ‘will muddle through
somehow, as it did a hundred years ago in the time of Napoleon.’
“Miss Petre has sent me a copy of a letter she has written to the
‘Times.’ She has been called upon to sign a declaration that she accepts
the Papal Rescript _Pascendi_ and the rest, and she has asked in return
that she should be informed whether the rescripts are _de fide_. Her
position is sound in logic, but the Church can hardly afford to be
logical any longer. She proposes to come to luncheon here on Monday and
talk it over with me.
“_6th Nov. (Sunday)._—Last night being Guy Fawkes’ day we drank
confusion to the British Empire, though, in truth, all present but
myself were rank Imperialists. Warburton Pike, Beauclerk’s friend, was
of the party, and the talk turned mostly on gold mining, in which all of
them are interested. Mark told us the history of the Mysore gold mine,
of which he is the Director. The mine was discovered some thirty years
ago accidentally by two English sportsmen when Mark’s father was
Governor of Madras, and a company was formed, but it yielded no great
result till old Sir Charles Tennant, Margot’s father, put £20,000 into
it, and became almost sole owner. The thing was treated as a mere
gamble, and having nothing reliable to go upon in the way of engineering
reports and, nobody knowing where to dig, it was decided that Sir
Charles should put his finger at haphazard on the map and that the
digging should be begun there, and there exactly the gold was found,
several millions’ worth of it.’
“Mark gave me to-day also an interesting account of the battle of Majuba
Hill, which he got from Sir Ian Hamilton, an old friend of his, and
which is as follows: ‘General Colley finding himself about to be
superseded in the command by a superior officer, was anxious to achieve
some notable success before his successor arrived, and with this object
he occupied the hill with a few hundred men. The hill dominated the Boer
position, and if they could have brought guns with them and entrenched
themselves the plan would have succeeded. It was, in fact, near
succeeding, for the Boers, finding the hill in possession of the
English, were beginning to retire when they thought they might as well
first see how strongly it was held. The British army was at that time in
a quite undisciplined state, and the men not only refused to drag up the
guns but even to entrench themselves when at the top, saying they were
too tired for work and lay down to sleep; and Colley, who was a
theoretical rather than a practical soldier, had not sufficient personal
authority with them to insist, so that the Boer attack found them quite
unprepared. The Boers, advancing from below, had the advantage that
their heads were comparatively invisible as seen against the rocks,
while the English were clear on the skyline, so that the Boers stalked
them like deer and got close to the top before they were perceived.
Hamilton, as I understand the story, was sent with a detachment to
oppose the Boer advance, but being driven in found Colley lying on his
back smoking a cigarette, having given up all attempt to cope with the
situation. He was alone with only a few men of his staff, but the rank
and file had already run in panic down the hill on the side opposite the
attack. Hamilton had then returned to the advanced post where he got
wounded on the wrist, and once more was driven back by the advancing
Boers to the crest of the hill. This time he found all the living and
unwounded gone, and Colley lying dead, shot through the head with a
pistol in his hand. He had committed suicide. The Boers then rushed over
the crest, driving what remained of the advanced guard before them, and
Hamilton took to his heels. “I would have jumped over any precipice just
then,” he said to Mark; as it was he jumped over one twenty feet deep
and stunned himself, remaining unconscious till the next morning, when
he found a young Boer standing over him with his rifle pointed and about
to finish him, but an older Boer stopped the young one, and having
stripped him of everything he possessed, they gave him a kick on the
backside and let him go.’
“All this account is in strict keeping with what Mark’s brother Jack
told me many years ago. According to both accounts it would have been
impossible at that time for the British army to continue the campaign
aggressively, as the Orange State would have joined the Transvaalers,
and the army was quite disorganized.
“_7th Nov._—There has been a shifting of places in the Cabinet this last
week. Morley leaves the India Office to become President of the Council;
Crewe takes Morley’s place, and Loulou Harcourt takes Crewe’s place as
Colonial Secretary; Beauchamp gets the Board of Works. That gives us two
of our Crabbet Club men as Secretaries of State, their chief
qualification.
“Beauclerk brings me an important piece of news about Persia. He has
lately seen Major Sykes, our Consul at Meshed, who is at present in
London, and is chief adviser on South Persian affairs at the Foreign
Office. Sykes told him that the occupation of Southern Persia on the
same lines as the occupation of Egypt has been decided on, and that he
himself, Sykes, is to be British Agent and Consul General at Kirman, and
direct the administration on Cromerian lines. It has long been intended
but was not expected to take place for five years. Now, however, he
says, two years will see it accomplished.” [This is an entry of extreme
importance, showing how fully it was intended by Sir Edward Grey and the
British Government to occupy and administer Southern Persia,
notwithstanding all denials.]
“Miss Petre and her sister came to luncheon, and we discussed the whole
question of her quarrel with Rome. She means to fight it out, but I
doubt if they will give her any answer about the binding character of
the encyclicals. Her bishop will simply say that if she does not choose
to sign she shall have no sacraments. To console her I gave her an
account of my own religious experiences of fifty years ago. I like her
much.
“_9th Nov._—There has been a meeting at Berlin of the two Emperors,
German and Russian, solemnized with an immense slaughter of Imperial
deer, five hundred in the single day’s shooting, beasts which had been
penned for the purpose beforehand and let out one by one, as cockney
sportsmen do with their purchased pheasants. According to the ‘Times’
these Emperors and their Ministers have come to an amicable
understanding about Persia. If so, Persia’s fate is sealed. [Compare Dr.
Dillon’s book, ‘The Eclipse of Russia.’] In the meanwhile, we here in
England are entirely engrossed in our local quarrels. The Conference
about the House of Lords has broken down, and there is a strike of
miners with fierce riots in Wales.
“_11th Nov._—The ex-Shah of Persia has suddenly appeared at Vienna,
after having disappeared from Odessa, where he was a month ago. This
means more than meets the eye, for an Oriental ex-King is a card in the
hand of any European Government which wants a footing in an Eastern
State. I should not be surprised if this one was taken up by our and the
Russian Governments to be restored at Teheran or Kirman, as Tewfik was
restored in 1882 at Cairo, with a joint Anglo-Russian occupation
indefinitely continued.
“_12th Nov._—There is an article in the ‘Pall Mall,’ which is usually
well-informed about Foreign Office affairs, lamenting the failure of
British policy in the East and announcing as certain that Turkey has
joined the Triple Alliance, or rather the Dual Alliance of Germany and
Austria, and that an arrangement has been come to between these and
Russia for the construction of a railway through Bagdad and Persia to
the Indian frontier, which will put India at the mercy of Germany, a
death-blow to the British Empire. Redmond has returned from America with
£40,000 for the coming electoral campaign.
“_14th Nov._—To London for the meeting of Parliament, which is to-
morrow, and to the Reform Club to concert with Mackarness an opposition
to Grey’s Eastern policy and the formation of a new Egyptian Committee.
“_15th Nov._—To the Grafton Gallery to look at what are called the Post-
Impressionist pictures sent over from Paris. The exhibition is either an
extremely bad joke or a swindle. I am inclined to think the latter, for
there is no trace of humour in it. Still less is there a trace of sense
or skill or taste, good or bad, or art or cleverness. Nothing but that
gross puerility which scrawls indecencies on the walls of a privy. The
drawing is on the level of that of an untaught child of seven or eight
years old, the sense of colour that of a tea-tray painter, the method
that of a schoolboy who wipes his fingers on a slate after spitting on
them. There is nothing at all more humorous than that, at all more
clever. In all the 300 or 400 pictures there was not one worthy of
attention even by its singularity, or appealing to any feeling but of
disgust. I am wrong. There was one picture signed Gauguin which at a
distance had a pleasing effect of colour. Examined closer I found it to
represent three figures of brown people, probably South Sea Islanders,
one of them a woman suckling a child, all repulsively ugly, but of a
good general dark colouring, such as one sees in old pictures blackened
by candle smoke. One of the figures wore a scarlet wrapper, and there
was a patch of green sky in the corner of the picture. Seen from across
the room the effect of colour was good. Apart from the frames, the whole
collection should not be worth £5, and then only for the pleasure of
making a bonfire of them. Yet two or three of our art critics have
pronounced in their favour. Roger Fry, a critic of taste, has written an
introduction to the catalogue, and Desmond MacCarthy acts as secretary
to the show. I am old enough to remember the pre-Raphaelite pictures in
the Royal Academy exhibitions of 1857 and 1858, and it is pretended now
that the present Post-Impression case is a parallel to it, but I find no
parallel. The pre-Raphaelite pictures were many of them extremely bad in
colour, but all were carefully, laboriously drawn, and followed certain
rules of art; but these are not works of art at all, unless throwing a
handful of mud against a wall may be called one. They are the works of
idleness and impotent stupidity, a pornographic show.
“_16th Nov._—Two things of immense importance have happened, though they
excite little attention here. At a banquet given to Von der Goltz at
Constantinople, Bieberstein has publicly declared the Kaiser Wilhelm’s
warm interest in Young Turkey and the strengthening of the Ottoman
Empire as a military power. Also in Persia the native Press has declared
for an alliance with Turkey and Germany.
“Frank Lascelles looked in on me. He admits that Grey has made a
terrible hash of his policy abroad, especially at Constantinople. He
disapproves of the partition of Persia, where he once was British
Minister, and says that the Russians will never leave it. The agreement
about the railways will leave everything in the hands of Germany. Even
about Egypt he agrees that the position is very bad for us.
“John Dillon came to lunch and stayed till four talking. He says there
has never been so complicated a political position as just now. Asquith
is absolutely bound to the Irish party by his promise to resign if the
King will not give the pledge required, and the Irish party will hold
him to his promise. The future rests with the King, and nobody knows
which way he will decide. All that he (Dillon) knows is that Knollys,
who is acting as go-between for the King with Asquith, is strong for
Irish Home Rule and for the Veto; but the King is subjected to other
influences, and it is a toss up which side he will take, and on his
decision will depend in large measure the fate of the elections. The
Irish position has never since Parnell’s time been so strong as now.
Redmond has got the whole of the American, Canadian, and Australian
Irish, with insignificant exceptions, at his back. Their coffers are
full, and there is no chance of O’Brien winning more than his half dozen
seats at home against them. We also discussed Persia, Constantinople,
and Egypt, on which subject Dillon and I are at one. He will help our
Egyptian campaign in Parliament, though he will not join the Committee.
Dillon gave me a curious instance of the kind of temptations put in the
way of the Irish party by the capitalists. In the Spring of the present
year he had been approached by representatives of the brewing interest
offering him £25,000 for the Irish Parliamentary party fund if they
would vote against the Budget. He declined to have anything to do with
it, and had told only Redmond and two or three of the party about it.
The Irish party had always refused contributions coupled with secret
conditions. The only instance to the contrary was Cecil Rhodes’ gift of
£10,000, but that was publicly acknowledged, and the letters that passed
between Rhodes and Parnell were published. The party accepted
contributions from anybody, but not on conditions. I asked him about
Redmond’s sale under the Land Act, and this is what he says: Redmond
inherited the family estate from his uncle, so burdened with
incumbrances as to be, in Redmond’s own words, a _damnosa hereditas_.
When the Land Act was passed his tenants had come forward spontaneously
offering to buy at terms of from eighteen to twenty-four years’
purchase. Redmond never got a penny out of the property, as the charges
on it covered the whole of the income. Speaking of the Catholic
priesthood’s attitude towards Home Rule, he said they never had the
hierarchy more solidly with them. All the bishops supported them now,
except Archbishop Walsh, Cardinal Logue, and the Bishop of Limerick and
one other. He also says that the national University has turned out a
complete success.
“_17th Nov._—Tolstoy is dead. A few days ago he ran away from home,
tired to death of his wife and children, and announcing his intention of
ending his days in a monastery or as a hermit, or anywhere out of reach
of them. They had made his life a misery to him by their stupidities,
and at the age of eighty-two he at last broke loose. In Russia, however,
it is impossible for anyone to conceal himself, least of all an old
bearded patriarch like Tolstoy, whose photograph was in every shop
window, and his family tracked him down. First a daughter caught him and
then the rest. He took to his bed to shut them out, and as a last
resource died at a railway hotel, refusing admittance to his wife to the
end. For Tolstoy as a writer I have the most profound admiration. His
two great novels, ‘Anna Karenina’ and ‘Peace and War,’ are probably the
greatest ever written. As a philosopher I admire him less; as a prophet
I do not believe in him at all. Nevertheless he was distinctly the most
interesting personality of our generation, the man who commanded the
widest following, the man of the most indisputable genius. Some of his
political manifestos are splendid. He had courage to a supreme degree.
As a moral teacher his ideas were sublime, but quite unsound; his
religion was absurd. Such is my brief estimate of him. The world is
poorer for his death.
“I have a letter from Miss Petre asking what my religious position now
is. Her own position, Meynell tells me, is considered to be logical and
correct by all the English bishops, except Amigo, her own diocesan. The
Pope’s encyclical letters are _not_ binding _de fide_, and they all say
it was foolish of Amigo to ask her to sign her approval of them. The
demand was quite unprecedented.
“_19th Nov._—Asquith has declared that Parliament will be dissolved on
the 28th. This can hardly not mean that the King has given the
guarantees, and if so and Asquith does not cheat, Home Rule is certain.
I am not sure of Asquith, but Dillon says he can be relied on.
“_20th Nov. (Sunday)._—More Russian troops are being marched into
Persia, and it is telegraphed from Teheran that at a great public
meeting there appeal has been made to the Sultan for an alliance and
also to the Kaiser. It is the Persians’ only chance. Riza Bey writes to
me that he has shown my letter to Talaat Bey, the Minister of the
Interior, and others, and that my work for them is fully appreciated. He
also says that when Churchill was at Constantinople he created an
excellent impression.
“_21st Nov._—A loan of £20,000,000 is announced and put forward with
much pomp in ‘The Times’ for an Anglo-Russian railway to be run through
Persia to Baloochistan. It is to pass through Kirman, the intended
capital of the British sphere of influence. Belloc is of opinion that
Asquith will trick the Irish after all.
“_23rd Nov._—Chapel Street. Asquith, Birrell, and other Ministers have
been mauled by the Suffragettes and their windows broken. They are
enraged because Winston will not prosecute them. I entertained my
political allies to-day at luncheon, Dillon, Browne, Mackarness.
O’Malley and Cunninghame Graham were also to have been of the party, but
they did not appear. We got the question, however, of our Egyptian
Committee settled on a basis of evacuation, though no action can be
taken by it till the new Parliament has met. Keir Hardie is an honest
old fellow, with a Scotch terrier’s face, rugged and plain spoken. I
took much to him. Besides the Committee here in London, we are to get up
a proper English paper for Egypt.
“I have been reading a very interesting new book, called ‘The Conflict
of Colour,’ by one Puttenham Weir, but Beauclerk tells me his real name
is Robinson, son of an English resident in China, and nephew of Hart,
the Director of Customs. His book is an excellent one, and I agree with
most of what is said in it.
“_5th Dec._—Parliament was dissolved on the 28th, and the General
Election is in full swing. I have five votes, at Horsham, East
Grinstead, Reigate, the New Forest of Hampshire, and Westminster.
“_15th Dec._—Lunched with Eversley. We talked about Egypt, as to which
he is sympathetic. He says there is talk of a reconstruction of the
Cabinet, of Loreburn’s retirement, and Haldane’s appointment as Lord
Chancellor, with Birrell at the War Office and Churchill in Ireland.
Eversley has the highest opinion of Churchill as a much abler man than
his father.
“_19th Dec._—There are evil rumours in the papers of an entente between
England and Germany, which should have for its basis the settlement of
their rival commercial ambitions in the near East. This can only be at
the expense of the near Eastern populations. [Compare Dr. Dillon’s
‘Eclipse of Russia.’]
“_22nd Dec._—The Elections are now over, the result being an exact
repetition of those of a year ago. The Government claims it as a
decisive victory. Though with a majority of 126, Asquith is really in an
English minority of fourteen. All once more depends upon the King. If he
finds pluck enough to refuse to create 500 peers required to pass the
Veto Bill, he will carry general opinion with him. The country cares too
little about abolishing the House of Lords to make a revolution for it.
Apart from Ireland’s chance of Home Rule, which depends upon it, I am
personally with the Lords as against the Commons.
“_26th Dec._—On the 23rd there was an account in the papers of the
capture of Kerak (_Crac les Chevaliers_), and this morning a letter has
come from Riza Tewfik relating the misdeeds of the party now in power at
Constantinople. I am inclined to think he exaggerates these, as he is
the leader of the Parliamentary opposition there, but what seems certain
is that the Turks have got into a mess in Arabia by trying to coerce the
Bedouin tribes. This is a folly I warned them against long ago.
“_31st Dec._—‘The year 1910 has been for me on the whole a happy one.’
Politically I still fight on and have accomplished much, but it has been
in what looks more and more a losing battle. I doubt if I shall see the
accomplishment of any of my dreams. The cause of Eastern liberty is dark
at present. In Persia it seems lost and in Turkey to be in no little
danger. Without the resuscitation of the Ottoman Empire Egypt will
remain in English hands till a stronger robber comes. Still we must
fight on, and I have done my best. What will the New Year bring? I dare
not prophesy.”