1892] Gerald Baljour 69 



but with much of her father's assertive manner, Eustace Balfour, 

 Alfred Lyall, and Margot Tennant, the conversation all the evening 

 very brilliant, but it is useless trying to reproduce it. I sat on a sofa 

 with Margot, she with a fan made of an eagle's wing. I have sent a 

 letter to Sir William Harcourt about Egypt, the moment seeming to 

 have arrived." 



There are many other interesting entries of about this date, but 

 they are none of them quite germane to the subject of this volume, 

 unless it is the following, which illustrates the growth among ourselves 

 in England of those doctrines of supermanity and imperial selfishness 

 which we have since ascribed to a German origin, and denounce among 

 the prime causes of our war with Germany in 1914. It was at the 

 time a surprise to me as an avowal by a man of personal amiability of 

 ruthless principles which I found later to be common enough among 

 my ultra imperialist friends. 



" 5th Aug. — To Cromer with Anne and Judith, Betty Balfour also 

 travelling with us with her children. We are staying with Frederick 

 Locker in his wife's villa. Gerald Balfour joined us in the evening. 



" 6th Aug. — Sat in the garden with Betty looking over her father's 

 papers (some of which she has a design to print) and talking about 

 him. Gerald is a very pretty tennis player, and has been at hard 

 exercise all day at it and golf. I like him better now that I know him 

 better. 



" yth Aug. (Sunday) — Drove with the Balfours and Conny Lytton 

 to Blickling, where we lunched. On the way we had a grand discussion 

 about patriotism, Gerald maintaining that patriotism was the imperial 

 instinct in Englishmen, who should support their country's quarrels 

 even when in the wrong. This of course is not my view. Gerald has 

 all his brother's scientific inhumanity in politics, and it is a school of 

 thought distinctly on the increase, for it flatters the selfish instincts of 

 the strong by proving to them that their selfishness is right. Blickling 

 is a perfect place with a very lovely garden, Lady Lothian doing the 

 honours of it, and showing us all round. There is a small herd still of 

 the wild white cattle, ten cows and a bull, with some calves. They 

 were brought originally, Lady Lothian told us, from a park near Man- 

 chester, which became engulfed in the town smoke, a herd then of forty 

 cows (the cowkeeper said twenty), but they were almost all destroyed 

 at the time of the cattle plague, some years since, three cows being at 

 one time all the stock left. Then they got a bull from a herd that had 

 been drafted, and so gradually have restored the breed. Its charac- 

 teristics are well marked, white with black muzzles, and the ears inside 

 black; the bull was very fine. The herd is tame enough now, being 

 driven in every afternoon to be milked, and the calves are brought up 

 by hand in sheds. 



