GENERAL TROUBLE IN EASTERN EUROPE
“_4th Jan._, 1912.—Chapel Street. Rothstein called and told me much
about affairs in Europe. He says the true reason the German Government
would not fight this year was not any doubt of the superiority of its
army, which is infinitely more powerful than the French, but because it
had not the mass of the people with it. These did not think Morocco
worth a war. He says, however, that Germany is of one mind to fight
England on the first occasion, as they were very angry with us, far
more so than with the French. All now are for war, except the
Socialists, and even these are not all of them against it. He is sure
the German Government was not privy to the Italian raid on Tripoli. On
the contrary they are very angry with the Italians on account of it, so
much so that they would join England in putting a stop to it. As to
Persia, Rothstein assured me the Russian army was not formidable, the
officers being just as corrupt and ineffective as before the Japanese
war. If there was a quarrel with England about Persia the Japanese
would advance on Siberia. They would also very likely intervene in
China to replace the Manchus in power. Rothstein’s opinion on all these
things is the best in London.” [N.B. Rothstein, whose opinions are
constantly quoted in my diary, owed his wonderful knowledge of the
European situation to the fact that he was London correspondent to
nearly all the Socialist newspapers on the Continent. He was by birth
a Russian subject, born at Kief, who had made his studies at the Odessa
University, and having become involved there with the authorities about
twenty years ago had made his escape to Western Europe, and had taken
up his residence in London. He was on the Staff of more than one of our
newspapers, but often complained to me that the Editors would not listen
to him on subjects of European importance. To me he always spoke
frankly, and I never found him mistaken in the information he gave me,
as will be shown in the sequel.]
“_5th Jan._—Irene Noel dined with me. I had not seen her for nearly two
years, during which she has been flirting with the Crown Prince of
Greece, and trying to get up with him what she calls a Balkan Federation
which is to include the Greeks, and even perhaps the Turks. She is a
clever girl, and has a talent for political intrigue.
“_10th Jan._—The Russian Government has declared its intention of taking
possession of Mongolia. Grey seems to have committed us to an approval
of this as well as of the Persian robbery.
“_17th Jan._—Labouchere is dead at the age of eighty, universally
esteemed after a life which began in disrepute. I remember old Paddy
Green, of Evans’ music hall, with whose son I had been at school at
Stonyhurst, talking of him in pitying tones as ‘Loboucheer, Loboucheer,
poor young man! He was always his own worst enemy.’ This was somewhere
in 1861, when Labby was still looked upon as something of a greenhorn.
My first acquaintance with him was of this date, when he was living at
Homburg entirely in the society of whores and croupiers. He had belonged
to the Frankfort Legation, where I had succeeded him, and was nominally
attached to the Embassy at St. Petersburgh, but had not proceeded there
(pretending he was too poor to pay his railway fare). At Frankfort he
was considered too disreputable for admission into society, and I have a
caricature I drew of him walking with Madame d’Usedom, the Olympia of
Bismarck’s memoirs, who on one occasion had given him her countenance.
It is labelled ‘The Deformed transformed,’ and was a very good likeness
of him as he then was (a chubby young man with little slant eyes and
pink cheeks). Later, I remember him at St. James’ Club, the house in
James Street that had once been Crockford’s, boasting to all who would
listen how he had bribed his way into parliament as member for Windsor.
It was a short lived glory as he was at once unseated. In after years I
saw much of him at his house in Queen Anne’s Gate, where I often lunched
with him and his wife in the eighties and nineties, and liked him
greatly. He had become one of the very few quite honest M.P.’s, who
always told the truth, and was always amusing.
“_21st Jan. (Sunday)._—Newbuildings. Belloc dined with us, and gave us
some good talk. The Italians have seized two French ships as carrying
contraband of war, which is making a commotion in France, and may
possibly lead to a stopping of the war in Tripoli. Grey has been
apologizing to his constituents in the North for his Foreign policy so
piteously that Belloc thinks he will resign. If so I imagine the Foreign
Office would be given to Haldane as the only member of the Cabinet who
knows French and German. In Ireland Carson is campaigning on the Orange
platform, threatening fire and flame if Winston is allowed to speak at
Belfast: ‘Ulster will fight, and Ulster will be right.’
“_30th Jan._—Chapel Street. Lunched with Winston and Clementine. He was
in excellent form, and I had an interesting conversation with him about
Eastern politics, his private secretary, Masterman Smith, being also
there. About the Turco-Italian war I asked him which way his sympathies
lay. He said, ‘I have my official sympathies, and those are strictly
neutral.’ His private sympathies are clearly not Italian. ‘The
Italians,’ he said, remind me of the story of the giant who went to
cleave an oak in two with his sword, and who caught his hand in the
cleft and was held by it, till he was eaten alive by the wild beasts in
the forest. They cannot get further, and they cannot get away. They are
spending a quarter of a million daily, and will be ruined before they
have done. As to the Turks, it is their own fault if they come to grief.
They ought to have made friends with us instead of running after
Germany, which will not help them. I said, ‘They could not afford to
quarrel with Germany which could have destroyed them in Roumelia, also
you wanted too much.’ _He._ ‘They ought to have let us reorganize the
police with English officers over them, all we wanted of them was our
commercial share in the Bagdad railway.’ _I._ ‘Yes, and to stay on in
Egypt.’ _He._ ‘We shall never clear out of that till the Empire breaks
up.’ As he seemed inclined to listen, I propounded my alternative scheme
of policy, to make alliance with Turkey against Italy and Russia. Italy
could easily be dealt with by the Fleet, while Turkey would willingly
help to turn the Russians out of Persia. ‘I thought,’ he said, ‘The
Turks had made friends with Russia about it.’ Returning to Egypt I gave
him my solution there, the English garrison to be replaced by a regiment
of Turks at Cairo, and another at Alexandria, to keep order, things
otherwise to go on just the same. On this basis an alliance with Turkey
could be arranged. It is clear, however, from his talk that he is bitten
with Grey’s anti-German policy. He said of the Germans, ‘I never could
learn their beastly language, nor will I till the Emperor William comes
over here with his army.’ Nevertheless Winston strikes me as being open
to conversion on all these matters. Clementine talked about an act of
rudeness shown to her and Winston the other day by Cambon, the French
Ambassador, a trifle of no importance, except as showing that Winston
also, like Grey, does not know French. We talked also about the Belfast
meeting as to which I advised Clementine not to go with her husband,
though the chief danger is over now as the meeting is no longer to be
held in the Ulster Hall, but under a marquee in a meadow, which it would
be difficult to blow up. Talking about Italy, Winston said chuckling,
‘The Italians tell us now that if Turkey won’t make peace, they will
have to declare war again.’
“Browne came and gave me an account of the dinner given to Schuster
yesterday, in which he had explained his doings in Persia. He has the
highest opinion of Schuster, who made an admirable speech. Poor Browne
is in terrible despair at it all.
“_1st Feb._—Meynell dined with me, and I have read him Margaret
Sackville’s ‘Wooing of Dionysos,’ which he agreed with me in pronouncing
a very first-rate poem. We also had a great discussion about Ward’s
‘Life of Newman,’ which is just out. Meynell has taken up the cudgels
for Manning in the ‘Tablet,’ which has moved the Duke of Norfolk to
anger.
“_6th Feb._—Sat with Rivers Wilson at his house in Berkeley Square. He
has been reading my Gordon book and also ‘Egypt’s Ruin.’ He says both
are very accurate, and that I have converted him on many points
regarding Egypt. He told me some interesting things. First as to the
origin of the famous Joint Note of 1881. [The Joint Note signed by the
English and French Governments promising help to the Khedive Tewfik
against Arabi and the Parliament. It was that that caused the war of
1882 and the English Occupation.] Wilson told me that it was he who
suggested the idea of it to Gambetta, assuring him that the English
Government would go with him. Though he did not take part in drafting
the note, Gambetta sat down to draft it before he left the room, where
they had been discussing it. It was to be a dead secret between the two,
but Wilson told Nubar of it, who highly approved, and Nubar let it out
to Blowitz, and it thus got talked of in the ‘Times.’ Gambetta was very
angry with Wilson on account of it. Also he told me a number of tales
about Omar Lutfi, Shahin Pasha, and others, and what scoundrels they had
been, with other stories nearer home.
“_9th Feb._—Haldane has been sent on a secret mission to Berlin, well
advertised in all the papers. There seems to be a real attempt at a
rapprochement with Germany. If it comes to anything they will probably
shift Haldane to the Foreign Office in Grey’s place. Anything will be
better than Grey, though I don’t trust the other.
“_11th Feb. (Sunday)._—A young man, Borthwick, appeared with a letter of
introduction from Stead. He has been in the 10th Hussars for three years
in India, and since in Algeria and Morocco. He wished to consult me
about a wild cat scheme he has of going to Ghadamès raising the Senussia
against Italy, and driving the Italian army into the sea. I had him up
to talk to me, but did not much encourage him, as I think the thing
impossible of success, though of course desirable. The right strategy
for the Arabs is to harass the Italians and prevent their moving inland,
and not to attempt to retake the sea coast towns where the Italian army
is protected by the Fleet. Belloc dined with me. He says he hears that
Kitchener is considered at the F.O. to be overdoing his part at Cairo.
“_12th Feb._—I am reading Ward’s ‘Life of Newman,’ a rather dreary work,
though it interests me from the many mentions it makes of persons I used
to know, nor do I think the book does any good service either to Newman
or the Catholic cause. The truth is, a religious life is at least as
unsatisfactory as any other, and seen near at hand there is much in
Newman’s which would have been better forgotten. Great men and holy men
are very like other men, and there are just as many petty interests
served in the Government of the Church as in other Governments. One had
imagined Newman leading a life of prayer and self-sacrifice. He is shown
by Ward dissatisfied with obscurity and running from one journalistic
scheme to another, neither successfully nor with dignity. Human nature
is human nature, whether in a convent or a palace. Newman was a great
man notwithstanding, a great controversialist, and a master of English
prose.
“_18th Feb. (Sunday)._—I have been a whole week in bed with influenza,
and in great desolation of soul, the subject of my delirium being Grey
and the Garter he had just been given, and this worried me for two days
and nights. I am better to-day, and begin to see things sanely.
“_23rd Feb._—Parliament has met in London, and Grey’s Garter has
provoked speculation as to coming changes in the Cabinet. They say
Loreburn is to retire and let Asquith be Lord Chancellor in his place,
which would secure him £10,000 a year for life; Grey to be his successor
as Prime Minister, giving up the Foreign Office, for which he is
incompetent, in favour of Haldane. What they want now is to pacify
Germany, and Haldane is Germanophil.
“_1st March._—Things have gone badly. The coal strike has monopolized
attention, and Grey has been allowed to carry on his detestable policy
in Persia and Tripoli, almost unrebuked. The latest diplomatic
development is an attempted combination of the European Powers to coerce
Turkey into ceding Tripoli to Italy, and so making peace. So far the
Turks are standing firm.
“Monsignor Stonor is dead at Rome, where he has lived all his life. I
remember assisting at his first mass at Oscott how many years ago. May
he rest in peace, good man: they ought to have made him a Cardinal.
“I have been nearly three weeks in bed.
“_8th March._—Chapel Street. Bendor came to see me. He has been in Egypt
this winter, and brought to show me an _antika_ he had picked up there
of the hawk-headed God or Goddess, which by some odd accident had been
fashioned into the exact image in caricature of our good Queen Victoria.
It amused him much. He is a kindly, good-humoured fellow, like a great
Newfoundland puppy, much given to riotous amusements and sports, with
horses, motors, and ladies. The fast life clearly suits him, for he
looks a model of health and strength. He was at Sheykh Obeyd, and saw
the Stud there, which he appreciates.
“_10th March (Sunday)._—Syud Mahmud called. He is going back to India in
May, very much in earnest about getting his fellow-Mussulmans to oppose
the Government if it refuses to take up the defence of Islam, but I fear
that like all the rest his courage will ooze out of him under the
influence of his native air.
“Dillon came to lunch, and stayed on talking for two hours. Home Rule he
hopes to see carried through both Houses of Parliament in two years’
time (it cannot well take less), and there are many accidents that may
still further delay it. If the coal strike should go on over Easter it
will hang up the Home Rule Bill over the present session, and there are
the suffragettes who have threatened to wreck it, or there might be a
war or a revolution; otherwise all would be plain sailing now. There was
no difference at all between them and the Government as to the details
of the Bill.
“Then he went back to past events, and gave me a full history of
Parnell’s connection with Mrs. O’Shea. Parnell, he said, as a young man,
was no paragon of virtue, but his loves had not before been with married
women, nor had they been serious. He met Mrs. O’Shea first at Thomas’s
Hotel in Berkeley Square at a party given by the O’Gorman Mahon to some
of his political friends. Justin McCarthy, who knew the O’Sheas, had
introduced Parnell to her there. She was a sister of Sir Evelyn Wood.
She, like her sisters, was attractive, and O’Shea took advantage of it.
There is no doubt that he got money from Parnell, and that Parnell kept
the establishment at Eltham going. The lady, however, was really in love
with Parnell, who was a very good-looking fellow, and she gradually
acquired complete dominion over him. I was quite right, Dillon told me,
in supposing that she not only made him neglect his parliamentary work,
but was a force hostile to his patriotism, especially to that part of it
which concerned the land movement. She also encouraged him in his pride,
and made mischief between him and his colleagues in the House of
Commons. Hers was a disastrous influence. It ended in ruining his
career, and it was she who prevented him from accepting any compromise
about the Chairmanship of the party after the great scandal when he
(Dillon) and O’Brien had met Parnell to talk matters over with him at
Boulogne. Every day they thought they had persuaded him to agree to a
temporary retirement of six months, and every evening Parnell crossed
the Channel back to spend the night at Eltham and return in the morning
more obstinate than ever. ‘I repeatedly promised Parnell,’ Dillon said,
‘that I would resign the Chairmanship back to him at the end of six
months, indeed, I would only act as Vice-Chairman for him during his
retirement, and it was he that each time he came back from Mrs. O’Shea
refused all compromise.’ [_Note._—I am informed by Mrs. O’Shea’s niece,
Mrs. Steele, that I was misinformed as to Parnell’s ownership of the
house they lived in. Eltham Lodge was an old family residence of the
Woods.]
“_15th March._—George Wyndham came to lunch with me. He complained of
being tired of politics, but says that he cannot break loose from them.
His ambition now is to be some day Father of the House of Commons, one
he is not unlikely to achieve, for he has been twenty-three years member
for Dover, and there are only four or five men with a better record, and
he is still young. About his private plans he says he does not mean to
have a London House, and would live entirely at Clouds. In these days
all will have to live well within their incomes. Rich men are shutting
up their large houses, amongst others, Plymouth, who is shutting up
Hewell, and means to live all the year through at St. Fagans.
“_16th March._—This morning Margot brought her daughter Elizabeth to see
me. The child is sixteen, attractive and clever, with a soft,
sympathetic hand, which will help her to be loved. I had not seen
Elizabeth since the day when she recited ‘Maître Corbeau’ to Coquelin
ainé. She is just the nicest age now, and I am glad to have seen her
before she begins going out in society.
“Later came Nellie Hozier and her mother for our midday meal, and Nellie
took me to see the Futurist pictures. These, as art, are mere nonsense,
the sort of things a child might make by pasting strips of coloured
paper together as patchwork. They have neither design nor drawing, nor
other colouring than a haphazard one, chiefly reds and yellows. One
cannot assign a meaning to any of them, or even the suggestion of a
meaning. Degeneracy cannot go further than this, and it is mere
stupidity to talk of it as art. But we found the little rooms in
Sackville Street crowded with visitors, who each had paid his shilling,
while critics have been found sufficiently uncritical to treat the
exhibition seriously.
“_18th March._—Abd el Ghaffar came to see me, back from Egypt ten days
ago. He gives a bad report of things; the National party without a
capable leader and split into factions, each with its separate
newspaper. Farid has lost his political credit. The Hesb el Ahali, or
Party of the People, is now beginning to take the National Party’s
place. Its principle is to trust to England to give some sort of a
Constitution and make Egypt entirely independent of the Porte. If
England could be trusted to do this, and Egypt could become strong
enough to defend herself against other European aggression, the policy
might be a good one, but such trust and such hope are mere delusions.
The connection between Egypt and the Ottoman Empire is the only possible
chance Egypt has of escaping permanent subjection to Europe, and,
slender though that chance is, I will not abandon it for the other,
which is no chance at all. Abd el Ghaffar tells me that he has learned
on the authority of Rushdi Pasha, Minister for Foreign Affairs at Cairo,
that there have been negotiations between the English Government and the
Porte for a cession of the Cyrenaica to the Khedivial possessions.
“_21st March._—There is talk of further troubles in Europe, possible war
between France and Spain about Morocco, and a reported secret treaty
between Italy and Russia against Turkey. [Compare Dr. Dillon’s ‘Eclipse
of Russia.’]
“The coal strike is in a worse state than ever, as Asquith’s proposed
legislation has been repudiated by the Labour Party, and Arthur Balfour
is to lead the Tory Party against it. There is a probability of a
prolonged crisis.
“Two young Indian Mohammedans lunched with me, Syud Mahmud (as before)
and Syud Hussein, the latter the grandson of my old friend Nawab Abdul
Latif, of Calcutta. There has come about a split among the Mohammedans
of India owing to recent events. The Agha Khan has resigned the
presidency of the All India Moslem League, a body of timid folk loyal to
the British connection, and has declared himself for common action with
the Hindoo Progressives. The principal cause of this is the connivance
of our Government with the Italians and Russians in Tripoli and Persia,
and Syud Mahmud tells me our little paper ‘Egypt’ has helped in
effecting this. They are beginning to see that it is only the pressure
that can be put on the Government by India that can change Grey’s
treacherous policy. The Indian Mohammedans in London, numbering 250,
intend to make a demonstration in this sense, and they will do well.
Ameer Ali has lost what little influence among them remained to him.
“_23rd March._—Browne and his wife lunched with me, and Desmond
MacCarthy. Browne very despondent about the East, as he is right in
being.
“_24th March (Sunday)._—Dillon came to lunch. He says that during the
last few days the Asquith Cabinet has been on the verge of a break up
over the coal strike, and that the country is menaced with revolution.
There is to be a new conference between miners and mine owners to-
morrow. If it fails there will be a general industrial collapse. The
miners demand a minimum wage, but if the Government embody this in their
Bill it will open the door to a system of minimum wages for every class
of labour, and to this Dillon is strongly opposed as an extreme form of
Socialism, while a continuance of the strike will so delay things in
Parliament that it will be impossible to get the Home Rule Bill through
this session. He thinks all the same that a settlement will be reached
to-morrow. Should it be otherwise and should Ireland by this accident
lose her opportunity, I must say that it will in some measure serve
Redmond and the Irish Parliamentary Party right. Ever since they made
their compact with Asquith two years ago the Irish in Parliament have
identified their fortunes with the English Whigs, abetting them in all
their Imperial misdeeds, and treating Grey’s alliances with the French
in Morocco, the Russians in Persia, and the Italians in Tripoli, as
pleasing to Irish ideas. It has been a disgraceful betrayal of the cause
of liberty, and it will be no more than justice if in aiding our
diplomatic jugglery abroad they lose their own chance of freedom at
home. Dillon alone of all the Irish members has so far preserved his
integrity, but even he has come to regard the retention of Egypt as a
necessary part of British interests, and I have been unable to get him
to ask questions involving an attack on Kitchener, who he thinks will be
recalled some day, when the revolution at home has been followed by a
reaction, to play the part here of military dictator.
“_26th March._—The Conference with the miners has failed, and anything
now may happen, from a general breakdown of trade to a revolution. The
trains are ceasing many of them to run and I am going back to
Newbuildings, where we can better stand a siege than here.
“_27th March._—Lunched at the Duchess of St. Albans’, where I found a
large party, her son-in-law Lord Richard Cavendish, Lord Grey, young
Baird, M.P., who is Bonar Law’s private secretary, Garvin, and others—an
extreme Tory assemblage, discussing their plans, of which Garvin is just
now the inventor and chief prophet. Garvin began as an Irish Fenian
writer on the ‘United Ireland,’ but has gravitated to the position he
now occupies of ultra anti-Home Rule Editor of the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’
and the ‘Observer.’ He asked me what my view was of the situation. I
said, ‘I take my views every afternoon from the “Pall Mall Gazette,” and
every Sunday morning from the “Observer.”’
“They have rushed a Miners’ Wages Bill in twenty-four hours through both
Houses.
“_29th March._—Kaiser Wilhelm seems to have stopped the nonsense of
Russia’s joint action with Italy against Turkey. He met the King of
Italy at Venice two days ago and probably told him not to be such an
ass.
“_31st March._—Belloc and Chesterton dined with me, Belloc complaining
terribly of the fast from liquor he has been maintaining during Lent and
to-day is Palm Sunday. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘if you want to see a really happy
man you should come to me on Easter Monday afternoon.’ He consoled
himself at dinner with a sad lemonade, but talked all the more
brilliantly for it. He admits now that he made a mistake about the coal
strike in predicting the miners would win. Asquith, he says, has been
too astute for them. He amused them by his Miners’ Minimum Wage Act,
over which they lost their time and spent their money, and now he has
them in his hands.
“_6th April._—Newbuildings. Belloc tells me the miners are very angry
with their leaders, especially in the north of England, and thinks there
will be riots. Fortunately these things do not affect us here in Sussex
(where we have not a single mine or factory).
“I have been reading Eversley’s ‘Gladstone in Ireland’—a good and useful
book which gives the public facts fairly. But history written as this is
under the House of Commons restrictions of suppressing private
conversations and refraining from assigning private motives for public
action cannot be satisfactory. How futile to go on representing
Parnell’s neglect of his public duties to ill-health instead of to its
true cause, Mrs. O’Shea, or Hartington’s implacable opposition to Home
Rule to anything but his brother’s assassination. Yet there is no hint
of either of these veracities in Eversley’s book. All the same the book
is a good one, and its writer was a good friend to me at the time of my
trial at Portumna, the only man in Parliament with a front bench
position who had the courage to support me there.
“_13th April._—Farid writes from Constantinople, whither he has fled
from Cairo to avoid arrest and perhaps four years imprisonment for a
speech made at a general meeting of the National Party. I think he is
quite right to have made this _hegira_, as he can be of more use at
Constantinople, and the present régime at Cairo against which it is
useless to struggle until the Ottoman Empire is in a position to insist.
It appears that Saad Zaghloul has resigned at Cairo, having refused to
prosecute Farid.
“_14th April (Sunday)._—Young Borthwick came again to talk about his
scheme of joining the Turks in Tripoli. It has developed now into the
idea of fitting up an old man-of-war with which to land artillery
somewhere on the coast. Of this the Turkish Embassy in London approves.
He has an old connection with Turkey through his father, who was in the
Ottoman service, and went through the campaign of Plevna, and he himself
was born at Constantinople. He is also nephew to the Borthwick of the
‘Morning Post,’ a good looking, active young fellow, who knows Arabic,
having lived, he tells me, for a year in a village in Oran, and having
accompanied the French expedition to Fez. He gave me a detailed account
of the rogueries that go on officially in Algeria from the Governor-
General downwards. Borthwick’s business in Algeria was to buy land for
an English company, and thus he became acquainted with the way in which
things are done there. The French officials in charge of large districts
get only 200 francs a month pay, and are allowed to make what money they
can out of the Arabs; the taxes are farmed out, and the officials make a
profit by lending money on usury to the Arab landowners to enable them
to pay the rates imposed (£4 a year is the rate for each plough), and
then to foreclose, and get possession of the land. It is a settled
policy of the French Government to get rid of the native population, and
replace it with Europeans. The officials all go away more or less rich,
and the Governors-General amass fortunes. Borthwick is of opinion that
if the Turks can get artillery enough to do it, they may drive the
Italians into the sea at Tripoli, and that then the whole of native
North Africa will rise in Tunis and Algeria as well as in Morocco. The
plan is an adventurous one, and he is aware that he is running a great
risk. He has been three years in India serving in a cavalry regiment and
left it four years ago. I advised him as a first step to go to
Constantinople, and see what help he could get there. He came to me from
Stead, who had suggested to him that I might help him to get the money
necessary.
“_16th April._—There has been an astonishing disaster at sea, the
_Titanic_, the largest vessel ever built, wrecked in mid Atlantic by
collision with an iceberg. It was her first voyage, and she was carrying
over 1,000 passengers to New York, many of them millionaires. Most of
the women and children seem to have been put in boats and picked up by a
passing steamer, but the rest have perished, over 1,000 souls, including
the ship’s company. Among them is Stead, about whom I was talking to
Borthwick last Sunday, the very day of the wreck. He was on his way on
some newspaper business, and was to have written a sensational account
of the voyage. I cannot say I ever liked or respected Stead, he was too
much of a _charlatan_. It is impossible that a man who has made himself
the agent of the Russian autocracy, who has intrigued for the
restoration of the ex-Khedive Ismaïl, and who has been named by Cecil
Rhodes executor of his will, all the while calling himself a friend of
liberty, can have been quite honest. The Irish always refused to trust
him, and they were right. Still one cannot help feeling a pang at so
appalling an end. One thing is consoling in these great disasters, the
proof given that Nature is not quite yet the slave of Man, but is able
to rise even now in her wrath and destroy him. Also if any large number
of human beings could be better spared than another it would be just
these American millionaires with their wealth and insolence.
“_20th April._—Newbuildings. There has been a demonstration of
bombarding the Dardanelles by the Italians, a childish and cowardly
proceeding, the ships opening fire at 8,000 yards, and firing 342 shots
without any result whatever.
“_21st April (Sunday)._—I have been reading Davitt’s book, the ‘Fall of
Feudalism,’ an interesting bit of Irish history, though a stupid title,
also Barry O’Brien’s ‘Life of Parnell.’ The Turco-Italian war drags on,
but is beginning to get on the English commercial nerves, the passage of
mercantile ships having been blocked through the Dardanelles by the
Italian attack. Nearly all our newspapers now lay the blame of the war
on Italy, even those which have hitherto been most in Italy’s favour.
“_30th April._—Miss Frances Jennings appeared here this morning with her
donkey and van in which she has been travelling since the beginning of
the month, and I have established her and them in the goat field. Hers
is a forlorn and uncomfortable existence, though being entirely out of
doors she is happy, and though she is still partly paralyzed, and unable
to walk or stand up except on crutches, she manages to harness her
donkey, and lift herself into the cart, and she travels absolutely
alone. She is naturally of a very fair complexion, and she is much
sunburnt, going bare-headed and wearing her hair in long plaits. Her
dress is of coarse green woollen stuff, her legs cased in huge pilot
boots. She has no mattress to lie on, or other bed than some sheep
skins, and a bit of eider-down quilt, but she says she can sleep all
night and more, twelve hours at a stretch. It is difficult to say
whether she is in her right mind or not. One would say not, except that
her talk, though strange, is quite reasonable; it ripples perpetually on
in a very sweet voice, broken with little waves of laughter, describing
things she has seen and the small adventures of her life. We had our tea
with her in the meadow, and have lent her books, for she has none with
her. She lies all day on the ground, or sits in her van, which is very
small and low, with an oil cloth hood. For her meals she crawls about
gathering sticks to make a fire and hang a little pot for cocoa, but she
cooks nothing in the way of meat, eating bread and herbs, docks, and
nettles, which she finds close by. Hers is an entirely defenceless life,
except for her power of talk and her appearance of utter guilelessness,
but she is only twenty-six, and sufficiently attractive I should say to
run some risk at the hands of drunken roughs. Her chief fear, however,
she tells us is of slugs, and possible snakes crawling over her at
night. I have advised her, since she intends to travel all through the
summer, to go north to Holywell, and bathe at St. Winifred’s shrine, but
she says she has too little faith, though she became a Catholic some few
years ago, but I have told her that faith is not necessary there for a
cure, witness my own.[9]
“_2nd May._—Drove with Miss Lawrence to Reigate Priory, where we lunched
with the Somersets. Lady Katherine is pleasant and very like her brother
Osborne Beauclerk, with just his way of talking and asking questions. (I
had not seen them since they came to see us at Sheykh Obeyd on their
honeymoon tour.) I like both of them, and found the house most
interesting, with gardens, and grounds, the prettiest in Surrey.
“_3rd May._—The ‘Times’ announces that our paper ‘Egypt,’ has been
forbidden entrance circulation and sale at Cairo, its articles
‘disturbing public order.’ This is doubtless Kitchener’s doing. I have
protested in a letter to the ‘Times,’ and am also writing to Grey.
Dillon is unfortunately away in Dublin, and the other Irish members are
too closely pinned to the Government to help us much in Parliament. The
Italians have seized Rhodes.
“Miss Jennings, who is still here, tells me she spent two years in a
room entirely occupied in watching the fire, and that she kept a diary
of what she saw there. Then another year watching the sea, now her diary
is about the people she meets on her country wanderings. Those she likes
best on the roads are the blacksmiths. She tells me they are always
kind. We had her in to a dinner of roast beef, which she enjoyed, having
been carried indoors by one of the stable helps, and is now sitting by
the fire. She is to go on to-morrow in the direction of St. Winifred’s
well.
“_7th May._—Syud Mahmud came down to wish me good-bye before going back
to India, a most excellent young man, the very best Moslem in
London—what will become of him?
“_9th May._—Chapel Street. Dillon is back for the second reading of the
Home Rule Bill to-night. He expects no difficulty about its becoming law
in two years, barring accidents. There are three rocks ahead of the
Government—Welsh Disestablishment, the Insurance Act, and I forget the
third (War?). Else all is plain sailing. He thinks Grey contemplates a
great coup in Egypt, certainly the abolition of the Capitulations.
“_12th May (Sunday)._—Newbuildings. Baron Marschall von Bieberstein has
arrived as German Ambassador in London.
“_14th May._—Old May Day. Caffin calls it St. May, a name for it I never
heard before.
“_19th May (Sunday)._—Dillon has put a whole sheaf of questions about
the prohibition of ‘Egypt,’ and has got from Grey that he accepts the
responsibility of it. He has ‘personally satisfied himself as to the
contents of the paper, and that though it may not contain any direct
incitement to disturbance, he is of opinion that it might cause
disturbance, that Kitchener has written to him on the subject, in fine,
that he will not give us his protection, and declines to lay papers.’
“The Turkish garrison in Rhodes has had to surrender. Two thousand three
hundred regulars, through lack apparently of food, for there has been no
fighting. There is prospect now of a European Congress which is certain
to be hostile to the Ottoman Empire and Mohammedan interests.
“_20th May._—I have been reading Crispi’s Memoirs, dull stuff, most of
it, but there is a chapter at the end giving important documents which
show that as long ago as 1890 Lord Salisbury made a secret engagement
with the Italian Government, allowing its seizure of Tripoli as a
counterpoise to French naval power in the Mediterranean, also that at
that date the Italians had begun to intrigue with Hassuna Karamanli, and
that he had assured them he could command the hill tribes of Jebel
Gharian, who were tired of their connection with Turkey, and would
welcome an Italian Occupation. This explains much that has been
doubtful, though of course I long ago suspected it.
“_26th May (Whit-Sunday)._—Newbuildings. Abdul Ghaffar is here, a very
excellent young fellow, serious, and without any nonsense or
exaggeration, accurate, and well-informed. He has been three years at
St. John’s College, Oxford, and talked about Oxford affairs well with
Belloc. His father is a large fellah proprietor at Tola, in the Delta,
and he is an excellent specimen of his race, quite unspoiled by his
English education.
“Kitchener is clamouring for reinforcements at Cairo, and for the
stationing of a British man-of-war at Alexandria. He is to meet
Asquith and Winston at Malta to discuss Mediterranean matters. It looks
very much as if they were meditating a _coup_ of some kind in Egypt,
and I remember Winston’s words to me last year, ‘You must not quarrel
with me if I annex Egypt.’
“_31st May._—The newspapers are full of the meeting at Malta to which
Winston and Clementine have gone with Nellie Hozier in the Admiralty
yacht to meet Kitchener, Asquith too.”
[It was on this occasion that our people came to the decision of getting
the French Navy to police the Mediterranean, while the English Navy
should keep the North Sea and English Channel for the French in the
event of a war with Germany, thus enabling them to make a definite
promise to the French Government of help by land in a war with Germany.
It was on this occasion, too, that Winston, abandoning his long feud
with Kitchener, made friends with him to Egypt’s detriment.]
“The war in the Mediterranean drags on, the Italian Fleet making a round
of the Ægean and seizing the islands. The Arabs of Southern Morocco have
at last risen against the French. They are stalwart men, but quite
unorganized as soldiers. They have proclaimed a new Sultan in place of
Mulai Hafiz, abdicated, and may give the French trouble.
“_2nd June (Sunday)._—I hear from Paris that there are several Orientals
recently arrived there from India with a plot to assassinate Grey, as
also Kitchener, but it is not likely to come to anything. Things in the
Mediterranean are more mixed than ever. The Italian Fleet has occupied
most of the Turkish islands, the idea being to get Europe to force the
Turks to make peace.
“Kitchener’s meeting with Asquith and Churchill at Malta is really an
important one, as they will have to settle between them what is to be
our Mediterranean policy. Some want an alliance offensive and defensive
with France, others peace with Germany. It will end in the Mediterranean
being left to the Mediterranean Powers. Then we shall leave Egypt,
holding on only to the Soudan, but this will not take place yet for some
years.
“McCullagh has written a quite admirable book, ‘Italy’s War for a
Desert.’ I am reviewing it in ‘Egypt.’
“_23rd June (Sunday)._—Dillon is here for the week-end, and we have been
talking over past Irish history.’ [All very interesting, but I have
given most of it in my ‘Land War in Ireland.’] I drove him this
afternoon to the top of Chanclebury with my Arab team. We came back from
the Ring by Dial Post in an hour and thirty-five minutes, having driven
there by Broomer’s Corner in a little over two hours, good going.
“_24th June._—The Bellocs came to dinner last night. Belloc and Dillon
had much talk, but they proved not very sympathetic, the one being
essentially serious, the other as essentially unserious.
“With Dillon I had a talk before he went away, he giving me an account
of the Kilmainham treaty, and Parnell’s dealings with Gladstone in
connection with the Phœnix Park assassinations [matters which I need not
repeat here, as they have been fully dealt with elsewhere].
“_4th July._—Reuter announces the discovery of a plot to assassinate
Kitchener, the Khedive, and the Prime Minister, Mohammed Saïd. Four
Nationalists arrested.
“_5th July._—A young Egyptian, Abdul Halim Alaili (brother to the other
Alaili), professed partisan of the Khedive, was here to-day, whose
apologist he made himself, defending him from the charge of unpatriotic
action in the war of which Egypt had accused him. ‘Instead,’ he said,
‘of joining Kitchener against the Ottoman Government, Abbas has secretly
helped to facilitate the passage of Turkish officers through Egypt on
their way to the Tripolitan frontier, as well as the introduction of
arms into the Cyrenaica, nobody in reality was so patriotic or hated
Kitchener more. Abbas would willingly abdicate, but who was there to
take his place? In four years his son would be of age, then Abbas would
retire. The Khedive was quite ready, he said, to grant a Constitution,
but Kitchener would not allow it. Abdul Halim gave us an account of the
Khedive’s visit to Windsor. According to this the Khedive represented to
King George the danger to Egypt involved in the seizure of the Ægean
Islands, and that the English Government ought to intervene in favour of
Turkey, but the King said that ever since the revolution at
Constantinople, the Turks had refused to follow English advice. They
could not intervene now without a quarrel with Italy. This is just what
Churchill told me, so doubtless it is true. The Khedive, Abdul Halim
says, was received with honour this year in Constantinople, and had had
some sort of mission, when he came to England, to bring about a
_rapprochement_ between the two Governments. Belloc, who is very anti-
Turk, declares that he knows it to be true, that the German, Austrian,
and Russian Governments have come to an agreement for partitioning the
Ottoman Empire.
“There has always been a danger of this sort, but I doubt its being
nearer now than a year ago, anyhow England could not prevent it, and her
friendship for Turkey would not amount to much more than preventing
Arabia from being meddled with by the European Powers, and making
herself protector of the Caliphate.
“I asked the young Egyptians about the reported plot at Cairo. They
consider it probable as against Kitchener. Indeed, how could it be
otherwise. He has played the despot there and governed by despotic
methods, but they knew no details.
“_10th July._—Two Spanish Americans were here to-day to see the horses,
the one Pereira from Buenos Aires, the other from Uruguay. I was
interested to find them both very pious Catholics, who had been quite
lately at Rome, and had had private audience of the Pope, of whom they
gave exactly the same description as I have heard from others, declaring
him to be a Saint who works miracles. His Holiness had been seen by one
of his suite in a state of ecstasy, floating some feet above the ground,
and they told the tale of a North American, a Protestant, who coming
with his Catholic wife and daughter to Rome, had been converted. The
daughter (she was still a child) had been afflicted with an eruption on
her face, which disfigured her to the extent that her eyes were hardly
visible, and when she went out of doors she had constantly to wear a
veil. She had insisted with her parents upon being taken to Rome, where
she said the Pope would cure her. They had obtained an audience, a
public one, with many others, the child attending it veiled, and the
father had besought the Pope to bless her, and the Pope had put his hand
upon her head, promising she should be cured. When the audience was over
the father had pulled off the veil, and behold, the child’s face was
whole. Whereupon the father, as was the way with North Americans, had
purchased the largest photographic portrait he could find of the Pope,
and had had it framed in silver. When they left Rome he had taken four
places in the train, the fourth seat being occupied by the portrait,
which he declared he would travel with through the world, proclaiming
the miracle.
“_11th July._—Anniversary of the Bombardment of Alexandria, thirty years
ago to-day, and there is no sign of repentance in this country. I am the
only person left who remembers that abominable event and still protests.
Margot had chosen to-day for her garden party in Downing Street, and a
card of invitation had been sent to me, but, of course, I did not go.
Precautions have to be taken against the Suffragettes, who come on these
occasions to knock Asquith about.
“_12th July._—Bad news from Constantinople. Shefket Pasha has resigned
the Grand Viziership, and there is talk of Kiamil succeeding him as
Grand Vizier and making a disgraceful peace with Italy.
“_19th July._—There is a general change of Ministry at Constantinople.
Kiamil is to be made Minister of Foreign Affairs under Tewfik Pasha as
Grand Vizier. If true it will mean a triumph for English intrigue and a
disaster for Turkey. Kiamil would betray Egypt to England, and probably
agree to base terms of peace with Italy. There has been a new Italian
attack on the Dardanelles, this time by torpedo boats, two of which are
said to have been sunk.
“_21st July (Sunday)._—Drove Belloc to Steyning, where we had tea with
Mackarness. We found Gokhale there, who exhorted me to use my influence
with Indian Mohammedans to get them to join the Hindoos in working for
self-government. I have, of course, been doing this for a long time. I
reminded Gokhale of my advice to him four years ago to put a couple of
bombs in his pocket when he went to see Morley at the India Office. The
reminiscence shocked him, for he is a timid man, and terribly afraid of
being thought an extremist, especially in presence of Mackarness and his
fellow judge, Lord Coleridge, and his language in answer was very
demure. He is in favour of a Trans-Persian railway, he told us, because
it would put the Indian Moslems in close touch with their co-
religionists in Afghanistan and Persia, and give them more progressive
ideas perhaps; but it will be a danger for India some day, and I
exhorted him to waste no time in bringing Indian self-government forward
in view of the coming collapse of the British Empire. He did not seem to
realize this as a thing to be provided against, though it is the real
chief factor of the situation. My last word to Gokhale on going away
was: ‘Above all don’t be too moderate.’
“_23rd July._—Winston has made his expected speech, a regular
Imperialist manifesto, which will delight the Tories and accentuate the
quarrel with Germany.
“_24th July._—Newbuildings. An important _communiqué_ by Grey has been
published in the ‘Westminster Gazette,’ taking for its text some words
of mine. It denies categorically that Grey either consented to or
approved of the Italian raid on Tripoli.”
[Nevertheless it is quite certain that our Foreign Office did approve of
the raid, though probably not in any written form. Its complicity after
the fact, at any rate, is proveable in two ways. (1) by the fact that
Rennell Rodd, our Ambassador at Rome, though according to official
accounts he knew nothing of the raid until it had taken place, an
ignorance and neglect of duty which must have brought on him official
blame, so far from being punished was rewarded and confirmed in his post
at Rome, where he is still Ambassador; and (2) Kitchener, who at Cairo
had helped the Italian Government in Egypt, with the complicity of the
Foreign Office, by preventing the passage of Ottoman troops through the
Nile Valley, was entertained on his return home through Italy at a
complimentary dinner, where he was hailed as Italy’s best friend and
ally. The truth is that Italy was allowed to invade Tripoli without our
disapproval at the Foreign Office as part of Grey’s policy of detaching
Italy from the German alliance in favour of the Ententes, which were
gradually becoming a coalition. In this he succeeded four years later.]
“_27th July._—George Wyndham writes that in consequence of Winston’s
Mediterranean speech, which he ‘admires and respects,’ he is quite
willing to meet him at my house (a meeting he has hitherto refused), and
proposes October 18th for a shooting visit.
“_28th July (Sunday)._—My letter headed ‘Grey and Tripoli’ is in
yesterday’s ‘Westminster.’
“To Meynell’s at Greatham, where I met young Padraic Colum honeymooning
with his bride, Molly Maguire, a red-haired Celtic girl, whom he married
last week. Colum is an intelligent, eager little man, with much
simplicity of character, mixed with practical good sense. I like them
both.
“_30th July._—I have given up my house in Chapel Street.
“_1st Aug._—Newbuildings. Padraic Colum and his bride spent the day
here. They intend to live at Dublin, where he has journalistic work.
“_7th Aug._—Called on Lady C., who told me curious details about
Kitchener’s private life. She tells me that the plot against him at
Cairo was a very serious one. A great deal, she says, is talked of his
popularity in Egypt. He is really disliked, and seems to think that his
position there is insecure.
“Cockerell dined with me. He is very busy just now looking after a
bequest made to his Fitzwilliam Museum by an old millionaire, Marlay,
who died the other day. This will be our last dinner in Chapel Street.”
[I had sold my house, or what they call selling it, paying £100 to
resign the remainder of the lease, as part of my resolve to retire
altogether from the world for my hermitage in Sussex. I have never since
been in London, even for the day.]
“_9th Aug._—Philip Napier came to luncheon, just back from Egypt. He is
not enthusiastic about Kitchener. Thinks him more feared than loved.
Also Goumah writes pessimistically from Cairo.
“_13th Aug._—Newbuildings. Old Evershed, my former tenant here, is
dying, and I went to see him at his cottage on Dragon’s Green. He is
eighty-six years old, as fine a type as could be found of the old-
fashioned West Sussex farmer, one more distinguished than one sees in
East Sussex. He held this farm of me forty years ago (and moved
afterwards to Baker’s over the way); an excellent farmer and a hard
worker, but hampered with the misfortune of a mad wife, whom he was too
kind to send to a hospital, and kept for many years at home, and thus
was unable to save money, and now in old age finds himself too poor to
carry on his business. He would not borrow money, and for the last half
dozen years has retired into a little cottage of mine, his wife being at
last dead, and is looked after by a girl. I found him very tidy there in
a clean shirt lying in bed, complaining of nothing, but perplexed at
small money troubles. A curious episode in his life is that as a young
man he was tempted away to Australia to dig gold at the time of the gold
fever there, but he made nothing of it, and came back to his Sussex
farming quite unchanged by his experience, a good and honourable man, of
a finer breed than can easily be found.
“_17th Aug._—I entered my seventy-third year to-day.
“_23rd Aug._—Patrick Butler, who is here, tells me that everybody in
India among the military men is aghast at the plan of a Trans-Persian
railway from the Caspian; also that the transfer of the new capital to
Delhi is disapproved. They have no great opinion of Hardinge as
Governor-General. Butler has been quite unexpectedly ordered home from
India to the depôt in Ireland. They are in want of Catholic officers
there in view of the threatened rebellion in Ulster. Most of the
officers of the garrison at the Curragh would sympathize too much with
the rebel Ulstermen.
“_2nd Sept._—We have just finished reading Balzac’s great series of
romances, ‘Illusions Perdus,’ ‘Splendeurs et Misères,’ and ‘Vautrin.’
They are the most wonderful of all his work, and show him the
Shakespeare of novelists without any real competitor worthy of even a
second place. In it he runs through the whole gamut of civilized human
nature from the highest to the lowest note, and his women are equal to
his men. That is what distinguishes him from our own novel writers with
whom we compare him, from Scott and Thackeray, who was his special
imitator, down to Meredith.
“_14th Sept._—My ‘Land War in Ireland’ is published. The moment is very
opportune as the anti-Home Rule campaign is once more in full swing. The
Government has lost the Midlothian seat, and people are beginning to
talk after all of the Bill not going through. Belloc declares it will be
abandoned, and Churchill has made a speech at Dundee forecasting a
multiplicity of Parliaments in the United Kingdom. I have been reading a
most amusing book, ‘The Red Hand of Ulster,’ which has done more than
anything yet written to popularize Protestant Ireland. It has made the
Orangemen interesting—even to me. I must say it will serve Redmond right
if the Bill collapses, seeing the cowardice he and his party have shown,
Dillon only excepted, in abandoning the cause of India, Persia, and
Egypt, and backing up Grey and the Whigs in all their iniquitous doings
abroad in payment for Irish Home Rule. It will serve them right if they
are choused out of their thirty pieces of silver after all. As far as
the larger world of Asia is concerned it will be no great misfortune,
seeing that the Irish Parliamentary Party has gone over soul and body to
our execrable Whig Government and richly deserves its discomfiture. It
is time I should cease to worry myself with the world’s ways and the
ways of the British Empire and the ways of Ireland.
“_15th Sept._—George Wyndham writes a long letter from Clouds,
describing a visit he has just paid to Cockermouth Castle. It reminds me
of by-gone times when Francis and I stayed there some fifty years ago
with Percy and Madeline, George’s parents, when they first married. My
recollection of it is of an ancient stone fortress, rough and
unfurnished, without covering to the stone walls, and with curious
mediæval conveniences still in use, amongst others one projecting from
the castle wall, which had a clear drop of perhaps a hundred feet down
into the Derwent river below. I remember, too, how one day being out
shooting in a covert below the castle, a cock pheasant which had been
winged and had fallen beyond the river, which is there very wide and
swift, deliberately took to the water and swam across the river back to
its own side. We went once or twice to shoot grouse on Skiddaw, but
there was more walking than sport. George, in his letters, talks of
himself as being now a country squire, with the prospect of ‘conceivably
being Minister of War, when his side comes into power again.’
“_20th Sept._—The papers announce a visit to be paid to the King at
Balmoral by the Russian Minister of Foreign affairs, Sazonoff, Grey, and
Kitchener, a black combination. Belloc declares positively that the Home
Rule Bill is to be abandoned and it really looks like it. My ‘Land War’
has so far been very well received, and yesterday there was a laudatory
review of it in the ‘Nation.’ It is probably the last prose work I shall
publish, though there may be more than one posthumous volume of my
diaries.
“_22nd Sept. (Sunday)._—Dr. Renner, a quite black West African from
Sierra Leone, is here for the week-end, having been brought by Miss
Howsin, an M.D. who is interested in the future of his race, and looks
to Islam as the best means to its salvation in Africa, though not
himself a Mohammedan. He talks no native language, and his mastery of
English is very imperfect, though he is a well-educated man. His name,
he tells us, in the Fanti tongue is Aouna. He gets £550 a year as chief
of the Native Medical Staff at Sierra Leone, but complains that
Englishmen are now being appointed to supersede the native doctors.
“_25th Sept._—General Marschall von Bieberstein is dead, a great
misfortune for Turkey, whose sincere friend he was. The shadows are
darkening over the East.
“_29th Sept. (Sunday)._—The Bellocs to dinner and Somers Cocks, the
latter just back from Berlin, where he says the Emperor William directs
all his own diplomacy himself.
“_3rd Oct._—Another very lovely day. In the afternoon we made a round,
gathering crab apples and choke pears, of which there is an immense
abundance this year such as never before seen. The pears are excellent,
stewed with blackberries and clotted cream, better than garden pears,
and the crabs do well for the goats. The hips and haws this year are
astonishing, and every kind of berry. We filled the American cart with
our spoils—a real pleasure.
“_4th Oct._—It is all over I fear with Turkey and the Mohammedan world.
The long intrigue against it seems to have prevailed, and the papers to-
day announce that peace is made with Italy on the Italian terms. The way
in which the end has been obtained has been through stirring up the
Balkan States to the point of war. Until yesterday I still hoped that
the Turkish Government would elect to fight against these rather than
yield to threats, but the Ottoman citadel has already been betrayed, and
the Jew, Kiamil Pasha, has played into the joint hands of the English
and Russian Foreign Offices, and the disgraceful terms have been agreed
to. Nothing can now save Islam from its doom of subjection to the will
of Christendom and its ultimate destruction. Egypt’s cause too is lost,
with that of the Ottoman Empire. I shall trouble myself with Oriental
futures no further, being impotent either to advise or control, I ‘roll
up the map of Islam.’
“_8th Oct._—Montenegro has declared war on Turkey. [This was the first
act of the Balkan War.]
“_10th Oct._—The war news is confirmed and fighting has begun in
Albania. There seems no doubt now that Bulgaria and Servia will join in
the fray, though the Austrian Government is trying to stop it. I am
somewhat consoled by it, for though it may be the beginning of the end
for Turkey in Europe, it will be better for Islam that the Empire should
die sword in hand than that it should be cheated out of existence by our
diplomacy. War gives at least a chance. Not that I have much hope of a
victorious ending, for the concert of Europe will prevent that; still a
chance there is. Abdul Ghaffar agrees with me in this. He also announces
an intention by our Government to give a Constitutional Government to
Egypt, a sham one, of course, but it is to be called a _Mejliss el
Nawab_. Abdul Ghaffar is an excellent fellow, with a closer
understanding of English ideas than I have found in any Egyptian, yet
without loss to his patriotism.
“_13th Oct. (Sunday)._—Newbuildings. Terence arrived here from Pekes
with his friend Percy Fielding. He tells me it is quite certain that the
German Government intended to buy Tobruk, on the Tripolitan coast, from
the Sultan, and that that had been the cause of the sudden decision of
the Italian Government to seize Tripoli. It has been said often, and
often denied, but he tells me it is quite true. As to present affairs in
the Cyrenaica, he says that if the Turks conclude a peace with Italy,
Enver Bey will proclaim himself Sultan, and will be acknowledged as such
by the Senussia, but the Ottoman Sultan Caliphate will lose all prestige
in Africa. The Italians are hated in Tunis both by Arabs and French, and
the war has made France almost popular. The Italians might have
conciliated the Tripolitans but for the massacres. Now they are hated
and despised, hated because they are known to have intended to
dispossess the Arabs of their lands, despised because they are cowards,
and also because they are willing to work for less wages than the Arabs
will take. They are of the dregs of Europe.
“_16th Oct._—Peace has been signed at Ouchy between Italy and Turkey on
disgraceful terms to Turkey. What will now happen I imagine is that, the
Italian end being gained, England and Russia will put pressure on the
Sultan to agree also to the loss of Macedonia. Without some
extraordinary manifestation by the Turks of military power, of which so
far there is no sign, the Ottoman Empire is ruined. This preys upon my
mind. Egypt will now be permanently enslaved to Europe.
“_17th Oct._—Worth Forest. We drove here in the afternoon to get ready
for our _ouverture de la chasse_ on Saturday, when George Wyndham, Mark
Napier, Winston Churchill, and perhaps Beauclerk are up to celebrate
with me the completion of the new Manor House, with a deer drive in the
Upper Forest. The bucks are beginning to bell, and we heard them in the
night, which was clear with a half moon. When we were here last week
young Henry Blunt, who had been here to see me, and was bicycling back,
was confronted with a buck in one of the forest paths, which disputed
the way with him. This frightened him so that he did not get back till
half-past nine. He will have to do better than that with the lions and
rhinoceroses of Uganda, whither he is about to emigrate.
“_18th Oct._—George arrived in the afternoon, and we spent a pleasant
evening together talking about Ireland and my book, the ‘Land War.’ He
told me that it was certainly true that if things had gone a little
differently at the 1885 elections, Lord Salisbury would have given some
form of Home Rule, also that there was no choice now but either to treat
Ireland exactly as so many English counties, or give Home Rule on the
model of Canada.
“_19th Oct._—This has been a great day. Mark arrived at ten in glorious
sunshine, and we made a long beat for deer in the upper Forest without
result, however, as far as getting a buck was concerned, though we
flushed several woodcocks. Clementine joined us at one, and walked with
us in the afternoon’s shooting, but Winston not till tea-time. Then he
at once began a political discussion with George which was both amusing
and enlightening, and went on with occasional breaks through dinner and
till midnight. It was a fine night, and we dined in the bungalow,
dressed in gorgeous Oriental garments. Clementine in a suit of
embroidered silk, purchased last year in Smyrna, Winston in one of my
Bagdad robes, George in a blue dressing gown, and I in my Bedouin
clothes, Mark adorned only with his wit, but that was of the best. It
recalled the most glorious night’s entertainments of the Crabbet Club, a
true feast of reason and flow of bowl. The secrets of the Cabinet were
gloriously divulged, and those of the Opposition front benches no less,
from Home Rule to a reconstruction of the House of Lords by common
accord after George Curzon and Asquith had been got rid of, while George
Wyndham declared with great oaths that he would rather go to hell than
see the British Constitution made ridiculous by single Chamber
Government, at which point I left them for my bed. Winston was very
brilliant in all this, as though he kept on at the Madeira he also kept
his head, and played with George’s wild rushes like a skilled fencer
with a greatly superior fence. He is certainly an astonishing young man,
and has gained immensely within the last two years in character and
intellectual grip; also he is in more vigorous health now that he has
left the Home Office for the Admiralty, where he is able to spend most
of his time on board the _Enchantress_, the Admiralty 3,000 ton yacht,
which he makes his home.
“Among the many things discussed was that of the coming European war and
the chances of a German invasion. This, Winston declared, could be
easily effected on the east coast where it would certainly be the German
game to land 20,000 men so as to make a diversion and prevent our
helping the French with an English contingent. He said the idea of the
Fleet being a sufficient safeguard was entirely out of date, and without
a strong army there was no safety. He also believed in the coming of a
war in which we shall be involved in order to prevent France being
overpowered by Germany, and forced into an alliance against us. He has a
great belief in submarine warfare as the weapon of the future and is
pushing that branch of the service on all he can. He is to go on Monday
to Sheerness to witness trials of artillery and he described the
prodigious effect of the new explosives. He is enthusiastic about his
naval work, but I know too little about military affairs, either by sea
or land, to appreciate the whole of his talk, and I was tired with the
shooting and so cannot do justice to the wonderful evening it has been.
“_20th Oct. (Sunday)._—Another day of excellent talk. Cockerell came for
luncheon and to spend the afternoon, and Winston told us admirable
stories of his experience as Home Secretary and of how it had become a
nightmare to him the having to exercise his power of life and death in
the case of condemned criminals, on an average of one case a fortnight.
Nearly all of the cases of murder are a combination of love and drink,
young fellows who on a sudden impulse kill their sweethearts, sometimes
in the most barbarous fashion yet with the excuse of temporary rage
amounting to madness. He described the power of the Home Secretary as
absolute, either to quash the sentence or to confirm it. The Home
Secretary can go into any prison and on his sole authority can order a
release, which if once notified to a prisoner cannot be changed
afterwards by any power in England. He had several times done this, and
just before leaving the Office he had ordered a number of remissions of
sentences, notwithstanding the protests of the judges in the cases. He
spoke of these cases with emotion, and giving us all particulars.
“About the war in Turkey I told him that it was his fault, or rather
Grey’s, that it had broken out, that the outbreak could have been
stopped a year ago by ordering the British fleet to the Mediterranean
and notifying the Italian Government that their raid on Tripoli would
not be tolerated. He said, ‘Yes, it was so, but we could not afford to
make for ourselves yet another enemy in Italy.’ Talking of the Italians
I remarked that they were contemptible as fighting men, they have been
beaten always by every other people by sea and land since Lepanto. He
said, ‘That is interesting, if true, but how about Garibaldi?’
‘Garibaldi,’ I said, ‘was an Italian fighting against Italians. He and
his men never beat a foreign enemy.’ Winston, however, will not hear of
Grey as being other than a splendid specimen of an Englishman, the best
of the type, and they are evidently close friends, indeed Grey is
Winston’s son’s godfather.
“Winston is also a strong eugenist. He told us he had himself drafted
the Bill which is to give power of shutting up people of weak intellect
and so prevent their breeding. He thought it might be arranged to
sterilize them. It was possible by the use of Röntgen rays, both for men
and women, though for women some operation might also be necessary. He
thought that if shut up with no prospect of release without it many
would ask to be sterilized as a condition of having their liberty
restored. He went on to say that the mentally deficient were as much
more prolific than those normally constituted as eight to five. Without
something of the sort the race must decay. It was rapidly decaying, but
would be stopped by some such means.
“After lunch I drove Clementine with my team round by Turner’s Hill and
Caxtons, and we overtook my grandchildren coming up to tea.
“Another long evening’s talk followed.
“_21st Oct._—The party is over and all are gone their several ways,
Winston to Sheerness with Clementine, George to London, and Mark to
Puttenden, and I am left in a state almost of collapse alone. We had a
last try for a buck to-day, but again without success, though three were
seen, and we got a score of pheasants.
“I am the more depressed because of the evil news from Turkey, where the
five armies of the Balkan States and Greece have invaded Ottoman
territory, and so far successfully. The only chance for the Turks seemed
to lie in a vigorous offensive, and it is clear they lack initiative now
that Shefket has left their War Office. They are being betrayed by
Kiamil and English advice and will end in their dismemberment. I judge
of things being at their worst in regard to any hope of help here from
Winston’s talk. He has become most truculent about international
affairs, being engrossed in preparations for war with Germany and ready
with Grey for any betrayal of weak nations needed for the game of
alliances. Talking of Somaliland, where there has been fighting between
the Mullah and the ‘friendly’ tribes, he said he would like to make a
present of it to Germany and of other places as coaling stations which
would be so many hostages to fortune. They (meaning our Government)
would be obliged to take some action against the Mullah, not an
expedition, which was too expensive an affair, but they would send
aeroplanes to drop bombs into the Arab camps. He gave us a graphic
description of his experiences at Omdurman in the charge of the 21st
Lancers, and of how he had seen these spearing the wounded and leaning
with their whole weight on their lances after the charge to get the
points through the thick clothes the wounded Dervishes wore as they lay
on the ground. As the points went in the Derwishes would kick up their
feet and hands. One trooper had boasted of his kind-heartedness because
he had only put four inches of steel into his man. ‘He ought to be
thankful,’ he had said, ‘to find himself in the hands of a good-natured
chap like me.’ Winston is quite changed on these matters from what he
was two years ago when I had hopes of encouraging him to better things.
How like his father! He and George had been talking these two days in
absolute accord on army and navy affairs and the coming war with
Germany. Hearing them talk, one might be excused for thinking what is
commonly said by the Tories, that Winston will one day return to the
Tory fold. His old connection with the army and now with the navy has
turned his mind back into an ultra Imperialist groove. This, I think,
will be a stronger temptation for him than any mere intrigue of
ambition. Talking yesterday about his career, he said, ‘I have never
joined in any intrigue, everything I have got I have worked for and have
been more hated than anybody.’ He speaks highly of both Lloyd George and
Edward Grey, both of whom stand probably in the way of his becoming
Liberal Prime Minister, while he would certainly lead the Tory party
were he one of them again. He avows a great contempt for Bonar Law.
Arthur Balfour, George declares, really means to be out of politics, and
George himself, clever though he is, is a mere child in argument
compared with Winston.
“_23rd Oct._—Cockerell has written, thanking me enthusiastically for his
share in Sunday’s party. It was certainly very brilliant, though it has
left me with the remorseful feeling an orgy always leaves, and I think,
I will not indulge in another.
“_25th Oct._—A great battle is going on around Adrianople, and the Turks
are evidently getting the worst of it. The papers try to make out that
it is part of a strategical plan on the Turkish side, but I do not
believe it. The only chance the Sultan had was to overwhelm his enemies
at once by marching on Sofia, and here they are being invaded and
retreating. I fear there is little hope. Abdul Ghaffar, who is a good
young man and a good Moslem, writes quaintly and pathetically from
Oxford, ‘After all God is there, and we may in the last resort rely on
him. . . . Do not give up hope yet, you will live to see Turkey strong.
God grant you the fulfilment of your wishes. . . . Keep up heart and
rely on God. Those who take refuge in God he helps; anyhow this is all
we can do now.’ I wish I could have his trust, but I feel ashamed of
having had that uproarious time with Winston and George, two outrageous
political gamblers just now at this tragic time when we ought to be in
sackcloth and ashes.
“_26th Oct._—The St. Martin’s summer is over and heavy rain has set in.
I feel like Napoleon at Moscow, and that we have outstayed the season
here in the Forest. Clementine has written her ‘Collins’ from the
‘Enchantress,’ and Winston keeps on telegraphing about an overcoat left
behind, I believe his chauffeur’s, and taken by George’s man.
“_27th Oct. (Sunday)._—The Ottoman cause seems lost in Europe, and with
it all I have been fighting for for so many years, and the collapse is a
personal collapse for me, which I feel at every turn, day and night.
Egypt now will never get out of the grip of Europe—I do not say of
England, because the British Empire will not long survive in the
Mediterranean, but of whatever other Empire takes its place. I shall not
live to see this ultimate change, but others will, and Islam’s chance is
gone.”
From this point onwards, the autumn of 1912, the close of my practical
activities in Eastern affairs may be dated. I had given up my house in
London, and at the end of the year I took my name off my Clubs, cutting
myself off from all temptations to continue these activities, such as I
could not have avoided had I continued to frequent my many London
friends; nor have I from that date so much as visited Piccadilly, even
for the day. All my subsequent life has been spent in Sussex, either at
Newbuildings, or from time to time in Worth Forest, leading the life
there of a country squire to which I was born, and which is naturally
mine. Nevertheless I continued to take an onlooker’s interest in the
great drama of European politics, which was shaping itself into the
supreme tragedy of 1914. A few friends came from time to time to see me
in my hermitage, and these for a while gave me news of the diplomatic
doings which were leading on to war, and I had at my hand a neighbour
and constant ally in Hilaire Belloc, than whom no one was better
acquainted with the intrigues and rivalries of our political leaders in
Parliament, besides being always an instructive and amusing companion.
Thus I did not wholly lose touch for another year with public affairs,
and my diary, though less important in its entries, continues to be a
record of the chief events which preluded Armageddon. They will show how
little truth there is in the current story that in the quarrel our
Foreign Office was wholly innocent, more especially in that with the
Ottoman Empire.
“_31st Oct._—The news from Constantinople is rather less hopeless to-day
in regard to the battle being fought east of Adrianople, but I feel no
revival of confidence in the ultimate result. Even if Nazim Pasha,
should manage to beat off the Bulgarian army, and save the Eastern
Province, it would not restore the Ottoman prestige as a military power,
or safeguard the Empire from dismemberment. It is an ugly feature of the
case that Mukhtar Ghazi has resigned the Vizierate and Kiamil Pasha
remains on now in supreme authority. That means that a disgraceful peace
will be made through European, in other words, Anglo-Russian
intervention, and the Sultan will be reduced to the position of
England’s servant and the Czar’s. The dream of a regenerated Caliphate,
strong, and reformed, is at an end. Egypt will be England’s bakshish for
the service rendered, and Russia’s will be the opening of the
Dardanelles. This is what has all along been aimed at by our Foreign
Office.
“I have written to resign my chairmanship of the Egyptian Committee, and
to say that I cannot carry on our paper ‘Egypt,’ beyond the end of the
year. In the afternoon I shot with Victor Lytton, who has been here to
consult me about the Life of his grandfather, the novelist, which he has
been writing, and after dinner we had a long talk on religion and
philosophy as well as my remembrances of the grandfather and of Victor’s
father. I like Victor much. Though far less brilliant than Neville, he
has good solid qualities, and a much wider range of interests. He has a
good heart and a logical mind. What he told me of his boyish devotion to
his father in the year after his father’s death was very interesting as
a spiritual experience. He is himself devoted now to his own children.
“_1st Nov._—A great Turkish defeat is admitted, and it is only a
question whether the Bulgarians will march on to Constantinople or
forestall European intervention by making a separate peace with the
Sultan, which shall include the cession of the whole of European Turkey
west of the fortified line between the Black Sea and the sea of Marmora.
This is the more likely result of the two.
“Victor has gone back to Knebworth, and his place here is taken by
Beauclerk just returned from his gold-mining adventure in Alaska, and
bringing with him fresh ideas as well as a huge nugget of copper for me.
“_13th Nov._—My recent sadness has been deepened by reading Miss Petre’s
‘Life of Father Tyrrell,’ which at last is out. It is a record of
failure, though intensely interesting—indeed the autobiographical part
is comparable in its ways to Rousseau’s, a real self-dissection. His
failure at Rome is very like mine with Cairo or Constantinople, attempts
both of them to make silk purses out of sow’s ears, and reading it has
filled me with a double gloom. Up to the present moment it had been
possible for me to feel that I had played a useful and successful part
in the regeneration of Islam. Now I can no longer feel this. It is too
patent to me that Islam will never be regenerated, and that my work of
thirty years has been absolutely thrown away. The Mohammedan religion
will of course survive the present shock for many years, perhaps for
many generations. But Islam, as a political institution and power in the
world, has had its death blow, from which it will not recover. The
Ottoman Caliphate will drag out a crippled existence in Asia, but it
will be under European, probably Russian tutelage, and will be used as
an instrument for enslaving what were once the Ottoman provinces, and
will have fallen into Christian hands. Islam’s sole chance now as an
independent social existence will be in the deserts whence it originally
sprang, Arabia and North Africa, and the chance is a poor one at best.
At any rate it must be on lines other than those I have pursued, or of
which I can hope even to see the beginnings.
“_14th Nov._—I have written to Miss Petre congratulating her upon her
book, an admirable piece of work. Tyrrell’s case and my own, as I said
yesterday, have a certain analogy. Not that in either case the ideals we
pursued are false, but rather that the men in whose hands the issues lay
were unworthy and unwise. Thus I have read the book with a fuller
sympathy to-day than would have been the case two years ago. Apart from
this, Tyrrell’s account of the Jesuit system is certainly the most
convincing that has been published, and this was the chief theme of my
letter to Miss Petre.
“_17th Nov. (Sunday)._—I have talked over ‘Egypt’ with Ryan, and persist
in my intention to resign my chairmanship of the Committee and future
connection with the paper. Not that the paper has not been a success on
its own lines. On the contrary, it has exercised a wide influence in
Mohammedan lands, if little here. But it is clear that under the new
conditions brought about by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Egyptian
patriotism must take a new direction, and I am too old to begin with a
fresh policy. Others may do so without inconsistency; I cannot.
“Belloc dined with us. The Turkish army is still fighting in defence of
the Chatalja lines. But the result of the war will be the same—the loss
of all the European provinces.
“_20th Nov._—My resignation of the Chairmanship has been notified to the
Egyptian Committee in London, and Rutherford will, I hope, succeed me.
In some ways they will get on better without me, as my anti-Imperialism
is so notorious that it frightens moderate English Nationalists, and
prevents all help being given us in the House of Commons, even among the
Irish. Indeed the Irish parliamentarians have become more Imperialistic
than our own. It is the Fenians and Sinn Feiners that are pleased with
me now, not the men with whom I worked in 1887; all these have been
converted to English Liberalism. Thus I find myself left a solitary
figure, pleading an absolutely lost cause among Englishmen, that of
Conservative Nationalism. All the rest have gone their ways as Whig
Unionists, or Socialistic Internationalists. I console myself as I can
by repeating the line, _Causa deis placuit victrix sed victa Catoni_,
but it does not help me far.
“_22nd Nov._—I have been reading George Meredith’s letters, just
published. They give one the impression of a tender-hearted man and
playful companion, rather than the profound thinker his extreme admirers
would have him to be. His style, jerky and obscure though it is, is I
think the best feature of his prose. His knowledge of human nature as
shown by his novels is quite superficial, a theory of what life ought to
be, not of what life is. His only one great work is in verse, his
‘Modern Love,’ and this he drew as a young man from his own personal
experience. The fine ladies in his novels, with their odd characters,
are entirely fanciful. They do not exist in English, or any other
feminine life, yet they have had a considerable influence on our modern
ladies—who like to think themselves as he represents them. He has
certainly had a great deal to do with their present sex emancipation.
Such women, however, as he describes in his novels are not those who
will ever really rule the world, rather the weak ones. They will never
attract the men, and in the marriage competition will be edged out,
pussies who run about continually, but fail to find corners. To me they
are wearisome to read of, because unreal. These letters show well the
narrow limits of Meredith’s personal experience. His knowledge of life
was three parts of it acquired at second hand. I am sorry all the same
not to have known him better than I did, for he was clearly one of the
best of companions and of friends.
“_23rd Nov._—Rothstein and Ryan are here winding up the affairs of
‘Egypt.’ The Bulgarian advance on Constantinople seems at a standstill,
and it looks very much as if the war had been arranged beforehand with
the Powers. . . . I suspect Kiamil Pasha of having purposely left the
army in Macedonia unprepared for fighting, so as to serve English and
Russian plans of dismemberment, on a promise of retaining
Constantinople. He is just the man to entertain the idea of putting the
Sultan in the same position of English dependence that the Khedive had
been reduced to at Cairo. It would not suit either English or Russian
plans to have so strong a fighting State as Bulgaria in possession of
the Dardanelles. What Russia principally wants is to get free passage to
the Mediterranean, and what Grey wants is to please Russia. With a
Sultan Caliph in leading strings on the Bosphorus, they would both be
able to work their will, Cairo would be held on a perpetual lease by us,
and our Protectorate of the Persian Gulf be acknowledged.”
This, I believe, is exactly what the position was at Constantinople
between our diplomacy there and Kiamil. It was certainly due to him that
the Ottoman army in Macedonia was left only half mobilized until too
late to escape defeat.
“_24th Nov. (Sunday)._—Belloc dined in the evening alone with me and
Ryan, and was most agreeable. I like him better thus than when he is
showing off before a number of people, with noise and fireworks, which
is his usual form in a mixed company. He has just brought out a new book
called ‘A Servile State,’ whose principles he expounded to us as the
latest counterblast to State Socialism. Rothstein had just given us the
socialist side of the democratic case, but I have given up trying to
solve the domestic conundrum of the European future. Things as they are
will last my time, and beyond that who can tell?
“_3rd Dec._—Our armistice has been agreed to before Constantinople, and
the war with Bulgaria is probably over. It is said that the Sultan is to
keep Adrianople, as well as the Marmora coast and the Dardanelles. If
so, things will have been put back exactly to where they were placed by
the treaty of San Stefano in 1878, and it is just conceivable that the
Ottoman Empire may some day recover strength. The best thing about the
terms of peace is that there is a prospect now of a Bulgaro-Turkish
Alliance, a solution which long ago seemed to me the right one, and
which I have more than once discussed with Irene Noel as ‘a general
Balkan alliance, which should include Turkey.’” [Miss Noel’s interest in
Balkan politics rested on her intimacy with the King and Queen of
Greece, whose views she was well acquainted with. King George of Greece
at that time was anxious to form an alliance of all the Balkan States
against Austria and Russia, and it was thought might include Turkey.]
“_18th Dec._—Our final number of ‘Egypt’ is out. It appears at an
opportune moment, for the Peace Conference met in London two days ago,
by a strange irony, under Grey’s Presidency, the principal causer of the
war.
“_24th Dec._—There is talk to-day of a renewal of the war, and of
Shefket Pasha being the Generalissimo (a word which shows that ‘Egypt’
has been read at Constantinople), also Poincaré at Paris has talked
publicly of asserting French rights of intervention in Syria. The chief
news, however, is that Hardinge has been wounded by a bomb, dropped into
the howdah of his state elephant while he was riding in Viceregal
procession to proclaim the new Indian capital at Delhi. This is an event
of supreme significance, and ought to be a warning to our people against
their alliance with despotic Russia in Asia, but they will not take it
so.
“_31st Dec._—The last day of 1912, a sad year for me, as it has seen the
downfall of my larger hopes in the East without bringing any new
absorbing interest, also I am growing older and more infirm.
“_10th Jan.,_ 1913.—The peace negotiations between the Turks and the
Bulgarians are hung up, as they will not agree to a frontier line, and
there is some chance of the Roumanians intervening. This of course means
indirect pressure put on King Ferdinand from Vienna, counteracting the
pressure put on the Turks by Grey and the rogues he is allied with at
Petersburg and Paris. It is really an all-important point, because if
the Bulgarians are to have access to the Sea of Marmora, the Sultan’s
position at Constantinople will have been turned. The Bulgarians could
build a fleet on it and have it at their mercy, so the Turks are right
in standing out. It will probably end in their keeping Adrianople and
the whole Marmora Coast, in spite of our Foreign Office’s bluster. We
hope now that ‘Egypt’ may be continued, if only for the Indian Moslem’s
sake. Syud Mahmud has written me a most encouraging letter about the
influence the paper is having with them.
“_16th Jan._—The deadlock continues at Constantinople, the Turks
refusing to abandon Adrianople, and the Bulgarians being backed up by
our Foreign Office and the French and Russian. McCullagh has returned
from the war, and gives a bad report of the Turkish military position.
It is a case for them, he says, of the devil or the deep sea, of being
driven finally out of Europe, or of remaining at Constantinople on terms
of slavery to Christendom. They may well prefer to fight, even with
every chance against them, but I dare not advise.
“_21st Jan._—There is a violent attack in last night’s ‘Pall Mall’ on
the Gaekwar of Baroda, insisting on his ‘disloyalty to his Sovereign’ at
the great Durbar last year—quite true I dare say, as why should it be
otherwise? From India I continue to receive messages from Moslems in
admiration of ‘Egypt’ and praise of my services to Islam in telling them
the truth. I wish the paper could be continued for their sake.
“_22nd Jan._—Lord Ashburnham is dead, a good Sussex nobleman, and long
my friend. A year ago his little daughter, whom he had brought up a
Catholic, and who was all he had to love, went into a Convent, and with
that his life ended. He is succeeded by a childless brother, settled
somewhere in the colonies, and, though another branch of the Ashburnhams
exists in Sussex, the peerage and the connection of the family with the
Stuart fortunes is closed. Ashburnham became a Catholic some thirty
years ago through political sentiment, as connecting him more closely
with the Stuarts. Through this cause, too, he affected an allegiance to
Queen Mary, the Stuart representative, and maintained close relations
with Don Carlos and other exiled dynasties, also on that account he was
an Irish Nationalist.
“_23rd Jan._—It is announced from Constantinople that the Grand Council
of the Empire has agreed to the cession of Adrianople, as the price of
peace and being allowed to live. If this includes a cession of the
Marmora coast the Ottoman Caliphate is at an end. Europe will hold it in
vassalage to do its Christian bidding, that is to say, the bidding of
cosmopolitan finance. I have a letter to-day from John Dillon, lamenting
this.
“_24th Jan._—Great news! There has been another revolution at
Constantinople. The traitor Kiamil has resigned, and Mahmud Shefket is
named Grand Vizier, with the avowed determination to refuse submission
about Adrianople, and, if necessary, renew the war. This is better than
I could have hoped, and I have telegraphed to Ryan to come, and we will
bring out a special number of ‘Egypt.’ Our London papers are furious,
and, no doubt, Grey will be very angry. It is a rude slap in the face to
his diplomacy, and there is talk of all sorts of coercive measures to be
taken by the Powers. I rejoice, if only that the Turks have once again
recovered their dignity. It will be better for them to lose
Constantinople, if that should happen, than to yield to Grey. Yesterday
the posters were, ‘Turks yield. Place themselves in the hands of
Europe.’ To-day it is, ‘No surrender, Young Turks in power.’ This is
the cheerfulest announcement we have had for six months.
“_25th Jan._—Yet more from Constantinople. Nazim Pasha has been shot
while resisting the Revolutionists. He deserved his fate, as he was one
of those who brought about the military revolt of last year, which
placed Kiamil in power while his conduct of the campaign has been inept.
I have telegraphed to Shefket ‘Félicitations. Votre heureux retour au
pouvoir. Allah Yénsurak!’
“_26th Jan. (Sunday)._—It turns out that Enver Bey took the lead in
bringing about the fall of Kiamil, going himself to the Porte, where one
of his aides-de-camp shot Nazim dead in the scuffle, and afterwards to
the Palace where he insisted on Shefket’s appointment as Vizier. Enver
is just the man for the situation, with his experience of the war in
Tripoli, and jointly with Shefket may yet renew the campaign at
Chatalja. My belief, however, is that pressure will now be put on
Bulgaria to yield the point of Adrianople and that things will be
settled without more fighting between Turks and Bulgarians. Grey will be
angry, but that does not matter. Just now English attention is engrossed
with Woman Suffrage and can spare very little for the male affairs of
Islam. I have written to Loulou Harcourt, who has been making fun in the
House of Grey and Lloyd George on this question, congratulating him and
saying, ‘I rejoice to see that the principles of the Crabbet Club still
live.’ [This probably marks the date of the Agreement between Germany
and Turkey and the eventual alliance.]
“_1st Feb._—George Wyndham, writes from London, envying me my happy life
away from politics, but why does he grind on? He wants me to come up and
stay with him at Belgrave Square. It is stated in the ‘National Zeitung’
that an agreement had been come to between England and Turkey that Egypt
should be given autonomy under English protection. The fall of Kiamil
must have put an end to this plan.
“_7th Feb._—The war has been renewed by the Balkan States and is being
well responded to by Mahmud Shefket and Enver Bey who are giving it a
frankly religious character. The Mullahs are preaching in the Mosques at
Constantinople.
“_9th Feb. (Sunday)._—A violent attack by the Bulgarians is reported at
Gallipoli, and a bombardment of Adrianople. If Gallipoli were taken by
the Allies it would end the war, for Constantinople would then be at the
mercy of any fleet that might choose to threaten a bombardment, but the
thing is not done yet.
“_14th Feb._—A letter from Beauclerk dated 31st January. In it he says
‘Bouchier has been this morning with Sir Edward Grey and Benckendorf and
he thinks that war will begin on Monday evening. . . . The Great Powers
want the Allies to exhaust themselves before stepping in. Germany is
sincere in her desire to avert a war and has her eye on Asia Minor. We
will remain on in Egypt and attempt to annex it. . . . The Turks have
been getting in guns and money recently from Germany.’
“_18th Feb._—A letter from George Wyndham, four sheets long, telling of
his son Percy’s engagement to Ribblesdale’s daughter, Diana Lister. He
is much excited about it.
“_21st Feb._—A black melancholy is on me caused by a sense of my failure
every where in life. My poetry, my Eastern politics, my Arab horse
breeding, were strings to my bow and they have one after another
snapped, and to-day looking through my memoirs I perceive how slackly
they are written and how unworthy they are of survival. Yet the diaries
are full of things too important for me to destroy and they overwhelm me
with despair.
“_22nd Feb._—Syud Mahmud writes from Benares telling me that the whole
Moslem community in India has now adopted my views in connection with
the Turco-Bulgarian War and the complicity of our Government in the
intrigue with Russia against Islam, and I see in the Reuter’s telegrams
of to-day that the ferment is beginning to alarm the Government of
India. Syud Mahmud ends thus, ‘Your most kind and pathetic letter has
touched me very much and I actually wept. Your sentence “my long
advocacy of Islam has been a complete failure,” is most touching as
coming from one who has spent the best years of his life in fighting for
Moslems and then this is the conclusion he arrives at. . . . You say
your advocacy has ceased to exercise any influence even on Mohammedans.
I say it has just begun. They now realize the true meaning of what you
told them years ago, because they are shaking off a bit of their
slavishness, developed since the mutiny of 1857. Your articles in
‘Egypt’ are widely read here. They are translated and reproduced in the
vernacular papers. If possible, please write a long article, a sort of
appeal to the Mussulmans, telling them what they should do in the
future. It will greatly influence them.’ This is an unexpected
encouragement.
“_23rd Feb._—Belloc’s friend, Cecil Chesterton, is to be prosecuted for
criminal libel in the ‘Eye Witness’ by the Samuel family, and Belloc is
a bit uneasy for himself too. He declares that there will be war this
year between France and Germany, in consequence of Germany’s increasing
armaments which force the French to call out one man in three as
compared to the German one man in four, and the French will not stand
being conscripted to that amount, they prefer fighting.
“_1st March._—Gertrude, Lady Kenmare, is dead, once a considerable
figure in my life, being one of the coterie of ladies, friends of my
sister Alice who were my friends for her sake. I can remember her being
married fifty-two years ago, a beautiful girl, daughter of Lord Charles
Thynne, in 1858. She must have been exactly my own age and had been at
the Roehampton Convent School with Alice. Then, as Lady Castlerosse, she
became one of the beauties of the day, the very first Englishwoman to
dress herself well, indeed extravagantly, at Paris, and there is much
about her in my diaries, then and later, as Lady Kenmare, but it is many
years since I last saw her.
“_13th Mar._—Peace seems likely now to be made between Turkey and her
enemies, leaving her Constantinople with a fairly defensible position
for the future, a frontier drawn from the Black Sea to the Ægean, the
whole Marmora coast remaining to Turkey. This is what I have been
contending for. Adrianople itself is of less consequence and will
probably be dismantled as a fortress while ceded to Bulgaria. If these
comparatively good terms have been obtained it has been due to German
intervention, and the restoration of German influence with Shefket
Pasha’s return to power at Constantinople. Grey is now on his knees to
Berlin and there are signs that the triple Entente is breaking up. Our
Government has probably made up its mind that it will not, because it
cannot, help France in a war with Germany. This will put off, for a
while at least, the Anglo-Russian plan of partitioning the Ottoman
Empire in Asia and annexing Egypt, which may God forbid!
“_19th March._—King George of Greece has been assassinated at Salonika,
fortunately not by a Turk but by one of his own subjects.
“_26th March._—Lady Dorothy Neville is dead, a worthy old dame, at the
age of eighty-six, also Lady Cowper and Lord Wolseley. Lady Dorothy I
knew pretty well thirty years ago, a sprightly little lady with much
pleasant Primrose League talk and knowledge of our local Sussex things;
Lady Cowper, less well, though she was one of the early ‘Soul’ group and
a friend of all my friends. Lady Dorothy kept her social flag flying to
the last.
“_27th March._—Adrianople has at last surrendered to the Bulgarians,
after a five months’ siege. The city could not have been kept, but its
resistance has probably saved Constantinople to the Sultan. The Turks
have little to boast of in this campaign.
“_2nd April._—Ryan has come down to make up a final number of ‘Egypt’ to
end the series, after which if we get sufficient support we may continue
it as ‘The Voice of Islam.’ After tea we drove to Belloc’s and found him
in high spirits over the cross-examination of Rufus Isaacs and Lloyd
George before the Marconi Committee which has disclosed the
irregularities and equivocations of these two members of the Government,
laid bare mainly by Belloc and Chesterton. They had gone in for a Stock
Exchange gamble a year ago and denied it flatly last summer in the House
of Commons and now it turns out to be true.”
“_3rd April._—The terms of peace are at last come to between Turks and
Bulgarians with the Enos Midia line of frontier, this saves the
situation for the Sultan as it keeps the enemy out of the Sea of
Marmora, an essential condition.
“Poor Ryan was taken ill last night, and we had to send for a Horsham
doctor, who pronounced it a case of appendicitis and talks of an
operation.”
I omit my diary of the next days which were wholly occupied for us in
the tragedy of poor Ryan’s illness, operation, and death, which took
place the morning of 7th April, at 8 o’clock. I was with him to the last
and he was buried in the Crawley Monastery churchyard on the 9th. On
that day I write:
“_9th April._—All is over. The funeral left our door at half-past one. .
. . One thing is certain, it is useless continuing our paper in any form
without Ryan, so I have written to Syud Mahmud begging him to stop all
subscriptions for the paper, we cannot attempt it.
“The following is a sonnet acrostic I have written to one of the purest
of Irish patriotic souls:
‘TO FREDERICK RYAN
‘Fabric of clay, poor, impotent child’s face,
Ransomed from thought, its load of life laid down!
Earth of all earth, disrobed and passionless,
Dead mask of a man’s brow, which once could frown,
Eyes which could smile, lips which could hold their own
Relentless against wrong in eloquent stress
Indignant at our English ill crop sown,
Curse of the World, its tares of bitterness!
—Kind Irish soul, free labourer in a field
Rich with rebellion’s mint from age to age,
Young ever in revolt, and child-like still!
Are these thy wages then of sword and shield,
Naked to lie and never take thy fill
Of human pleasure, to the end thus sage?’
“_20th April (Sunday)._—Rothstein is here for the week end and a
Frenchman, Maurice Bourgeois, who holds a travelling fellowship at the
Sorbonne, and is getting up as a subject the Irish literary movement, an
intelligent young man of the serious University kind, very academical,
somewhat priggish, but a good fellow. He and Rothstein have got on very
well together, talking Socialism and Continental politics. Belloc came
to dinner, and we had a most pleasant evening.
“A woodcock’s nest, the first for many years at Newbuildings, was found
to-day in Marlpost Wood, the young just flown.
“_30th April._—George Wyndham was here to-day. Talking of Winston’s
recent outburst on the Marconi business, he thinks he (Winston) will be
Prime Minister one of these days. Grey, however, will have a first claim
before him, being by birth a traditional Whig, though very inferior to
Winston in ability. We had much talk, too, on family affairs.
“_12th May._—Winston writes from the train while on his way to join the
Admiralty yacht, the _Enchantress_, with his wife and Margot and Asquith
and Eddy Marsh at Venice. They are all to cruise together in the
Mediterranean during the Whitsuntide holidays.
“_18th May (Sunday)._—Farid Bey has written from Geneva asking me to
join his society, _Le Progrès de l’Islam_, and I have taken advantage of
it to write a final letter to be read at the Egyptian Congress about to
be held there. I think we, with our paper ‘Egypt,’ may claim to have
converted Grey, or at any rate Asquith’s Cabinet, from its active
hostility to Islam by encouraging the Islam Moslems to show their teeth
on the subject. Certain it is that the Foreign Office policy has
undergone a change in the last two months. Grey is now working with the
German Government for the re-establishment of the Sultan’s Asiatic
Empire—the project of annexing or proclaiming a Protectorate over Egypt
is abandoned, and every attempt is being made to pacify Mohammedan
feeling. As a clear sign of this new policy, Sir Gerald Lowther has been
recalled from Constantinople, where he had intrigued for the past three
years against the Young Turks. I have embodied this in writing to the
Society.
“I have been reading Lady Gregory’s new Irish comedies. They are
altogether excellent. The dialogue has qualities which remind me of ‘The
Assemblies of Hariri.’
“_23rd May._—The news from European Turkey is all of quarrels between
Bulgarians and Greeks and Servians over a division of the spoils, but in
this I take small interest, or in the fate of Albania, where the Moslems
have earned their misfortunes. Theirs is a lost cause. At Constantinople
an understanding has been come to between Germany and our Government to
keep Russia out of the Bosphorus and the Sultan in authority there under
a kind of joint control. Anything is better than Grey’s policy of the
Entente with Russia. It means another twenty or thirty years’ life for
the Ottoman Empire. In consideration of this Grey has been allowed a
Protectorate of the Persian Gulf, and the last news is that Ibn Saoud
has occupied El Katíf, and that the Turkish garrison there has been
shipped back to Busrah.”
This last piece of my Constantinople news, though it unfortunately
proved to be less than true, indicates, I believe, ideas then current at
the Foreign Office connected with an undoubted attempt being made at
that time to smooth down things with the Berlin Government. It seems to
have failed through the opposition of the Russian Government to the
recognition by England of the full German claim of extending their
interest in the Bagdad railway to the Persian Gulf.
“_31st May._—Both Farid Bey and Abdul Ghaffar write from Cairo in
gratitude for my services to Egypt.
“_2nd June._—A good letter from Syud Mahmud at Benares. I have been
drafting a letter of advice according to his request to the Indian
Moslems, which will also be a farewell message to my Mohammedan friends
everywhere. I am glad to see that Kiamil Pasha has been refused
permission to remain at Constantinople. It is a great slap in the face
for Grey, whose special _protégé_ he was, and for Cromer and Kitchener,
and all the Cairo gang.
“_4th June._—There is news from Constantinople that a treaty has been
concluded between England and the Porte guaranteeing the integrity of
the Sultan’s remaining dominions for forty years. That is till 1953. It
sounds improbable, but there is certainly a great effort being made just
now at the Foreign Office to regain the friendship of the Moslem world.”
All this, alas! proved untrue news, though it doubtless represents a
phase in Grey’s diplomacy when a better thought for a while prevailed
with him, as here suggested, of regaining the friendship of the Moslem
world, and at the same time of Germany. But his unfortunate Ententes
with France and Russia always prevented an honest understanding. Egypt
especially stood in the path of a settlement, and Russia’s unwillingness
that her partner in Persia should agree to any extension of German
influence in Mesopotamia. The peace of the world was practically
sacrificed by Grey at this time through his obstinate weakness about
Egypt and his bondage at Bagdad to the Czar.
A more terrible tragedy than poor Ryan’s death and one which, even more
absolutely than that determined me on my retirement from all active work
in the great world, was the sudden and entirely unlooked-for death of my
dear cousin, George Wyndham, so long the link which bound me closest to
it. It was a blow which struck me to the inmost fibres of my heart,
bewildering in its unexpectedness, and touching me on every side of my
existence.
His last letter, written a few weeks before, had given no hint of any
failure of health or of anything but his usual delight in life and his
especial joy in his son Percy’s marriage. It had been written in
acknowledgment of a trifling wedding present I had sent, chosen
expressly because I knew that it would be appreciated by George rather
than for any other reason. It was a fine old edition of “Ronsard,” a
folio of 1609, a thing of all others I knew that George would delight
in. It is thus he had written: “Your wedding present to Percy is, in
fact, a most priceless gift to me. I know and love that ‘Ronsard.’ Percy
has been soldiering with his General all over the south-west of England,
so we only met to-day on the eve of his marriage. He had, as I had not,
opened the parcel, and will thank you. He proposes to put the ‘Ronsard’
in my library. . . . These days have been tense. Rosebery, I don’t know
why, asked me to dinner yesterday week, the 8th April. He felt then that
unless the Emperor of Russia could squash the King of Montenegro there
might be a mobilization here before Percy’s wedding. But those clouds
are dispersed, so we have enjoyed the preliminaries of Percy’s nuptials.
We had a display of gifts at Ribblesdale’s house this afternoon, and a
dinner of both families at Grosvenor House this evening. We all feel
that politics are a bore, and should be quitted by honest men, and that
soldiers are menaced. So, as you won’t come to Clouds, _we_ (by which I
mean Percy, Diana, and myself) hope in the interval of peace to invade
you at Newbuildings in the course of the summer. I would like you to see
Percy and Diana in the prime of their mating. It is just possible that
they have hit off an alliance of heroic love, combined with matrimony.
If this should prove to be so they are lucky. In any case they are happy
to exorbitance for the moment. For the moment they are lovers, and they
ought to visit your shrine and lay a wreath at the feet of Proteus. As a
rule, people do not know how to love; as an exception, they love now
here, now there; as a rarity, almighty lovers find each other after both
are married. It is extravagant to suppose that Percy and Diana are going
to be lovers and also husband and wife, but it is pleasant to
contemplate the hypothesis. In any case I ought to take them in their
youth and delight to see you. Your affectionate, G. W.”
It is impossible for me to tell here all that George was to me and what
I lost by his death. He was my nearest male relation, and very much my
nearest friend. I had looked upon him as the inheritor after me of our
family traditions, and in some measure of my family possessions as
trustee and knowing all. No thought had ever crossed my mind that I
could have the misfortune to survive him. Although on politics we were a
whole world apart, on all things else we were in perfect unison of
thought and taste and literary sympathy. I find this in my diary:
“_10th June._—I have thought of nothing else to-day but George. Only
yesterday, before I knew of his death, I had taken down from its shelf
his little book on Ronsard, and had begun reading it again. The preface
is one of the most brilliant pieces of writing I know and the
translations in verse are admirable. His poetry belonged to his hidden
life, of which I knew more than the rest of his friends. In nearly his
last letter to me, when writing to announce his son Percy’s marriage, he
says: ‘I write at once to you because you and one other are near to me
in all that really touches my life. I am determined to be your guest
with luck when the birds are in chorus, and in any case when the wild
roses bloom. You are fortunate. To select and print poetry seems to
me—after influenza in a dark drizzle damned to the hell of politics—an
inconceivable extravagance of joy. Now if this world was made for joy
(if it was not made our revolt should be for joy), you are accomplishing
the design of the great artificer; or else (if he never was) helping to
fill the gap of his non-existence; but I, good lack! am a member of
Parliament! I mean, however, to escape and to get you to London to see
pictures and plays, or to go to you to hear the birds and see the
blossoms.’ And here is June and he is dead!”