1 891] Lord Lytton's Death at Paris 59 



companied with a leading article. Lord Salisbury, however, had al- 

 ready made up his mind, and in a new speech reiterated his intention 

 to remain in Egypt. " Lytton," I write, nth November, " is delighted 

 with Lord Salisbury's boldness in refusing to evacuate. Egerton says 

 it is foolhardy." 1 



It is worth noting that, if Egerton's view had prevailed, and our 

 quarrel with France had then been solved on the basis of our evacuat- 

 ing Egypt, it would in all probability have forestalled the mistake made 

 twelve years later of effecting the reconciliation, through the fatal error 

 of basing it on " compensating " France by encouraging her seizure of 

 Morocco. The Entente with France, begun in 1904 by an act of ag- 

 gression on a harmless neighbour, involved France necessarily in a 

 quarrel with Germany, who had earmarked Morocco as her share of 

 the plunder of North Africa ; it revived at Paris the half-forgotten 

 dream of a guerre de revanche for Alsace-Lorraine, and strengthened 

 the war party on both sides the Rhine. England it involved in the 

 Entente with Russia, cemented with the betrayal of a second weak 

 Mohammedan state, Persia, and drove progressive Turkey, in fear of 

 a third betrayal, into an alliance with Kaiser Wilhelm. 



I left Paris a few days later for Rome and Cairo. During the fort- 

 night that I had been at the Embassy, Lytton's condition had rapidly 

 grown worse, and when, on the 13th of November, I was taken in to 

 where he lay in bed to say good-bye, I felt that our farewell might be 

 the last. " Give my love to Dufferin," were his last words, " when 

 you are at Rome — that he always has — and tell him I am a wreck, 

 but do not mean to make a vacancy yet." And so we said, God bless 

 you and good-bye. It was less than a fortnight later (25th November, 

 at Fogliano) that a telegram reached me, forwarded through Lord 

 Dufferin at Rome, from Paris, telling me that my friend had died. 

 His death was a loss I can hardly estimate, and to many more than 

 me, for by the public in Paris it was looked on as a State calamity. 

 He had managed to make himself beloved there as no English ambas- 

 sador had been since Waterloo, and as Dufferin, who, as had been ex- 

 pected, succeeded him, with all his great social gifts was never able to 

 achieve. It was not merely that Lytton was popular, but he was 

 beloved. His death was a loss to the cause of our good understanding 

 with France, and I think to Egypt too, for though too pronounced an 

 Imperialist to wish to see England's hand over the Nile relaxed, no 

 one could so well have settled the conditions of an evacuation as Lytton 

 could have done had it been so decided. And he placed value on my 

 opinion in the matter. 



During the few days I spent at Rome that November I attended a 



1 For my memorandum, see Appendix II. 



