FOREWORD 



In issuing this, the fifth volume of my " Secret History " series, at 

 the present moment, I feel that, with much that is only too trivial in the 

 diary (a thing not written for publication) here are certain passages 

 in it for which apology is due from me for their too plain speaking in 

 what will be thought by some an unpatriotic sense. The fault is per- 

 haps not wholly mine, rather the change which has been wrought in the 

 public mind and heart of England by the heroic efforts made by her 

 sons unselfishly in the war. 



The period the volume travels over in English public life — 1888 to 

 1900 — was in truth anything but a noble one, and judged by the high 

 standards now professed in Downing Street and echoed by the universal 

 popular voice, proclaiming international right and a respect for the 

 weak nations of the world, may deserve the worst that I have said of 

 it, and yet my telling be resented as an untimely reminder of lapses 

 the country would wish to forget. It includes the Matabele and Boer 

 wars, and the wars on the Nile, where England led the way in the white 

 scramble for Africa. There is a special danger for me of displeasure 

 in regard to Egypt, which forms so large a topic in the text, as it be- 

 comes more clear that among the many contributory causes leading to 

 the final catastrophe of the great World War of 1914, our obstinacy in 

 retaining Egypt, notwithstanding all our promises, must be counted as 

 one of the foremost. It will be reproached to me that I have sought 

 to excuse Germany by showing that there were others primarily guilty 

 and not only the Central Empires. I regret this the more because I 

 know how many of the noblest there are amongst us who are consoling 

 their sore hearts, wounded in the war, with the thought that at least 

 the quarrel was thrust on England by no fault of hers, and who cannot 

 but be disturbed by my reminder of the broader truth which teaches 

 that our own Imperial ambitions were also a reason of the quarrel. 

 Yet the truth of history needs to be told, and not only in Blue Books, 

 where the essential facts are travestied, but by individual testimony 

 such as mine, recording the words of statesmen in out of office hours, 

 when they have spoken their naked thought to me in very different 

 language. I cannot believe but that it is a service rendered to my 

 fellow countrymen to do this at a moment when we are endeavouring 

 to reconstruct our ruined world on a basis sounder than before, to 

 disabuse them of an illusion, even a happy one, obscuring their clear 

 vision. 



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