98 By Athens to Constantinople [!893 



that without constant action there was no chance of success. ' Yes,' he 

 said, ' we drift down the stream like a log to the sea.' On the whole 

 I am pleased with Tigrane. 



" 13th April. — Lady H. writes that she has seen Gorst who seemed 

 immensely struck with my article, ' Lord Cromer and the Khedive,' 

 never apparently before having realized what a good case can be made 

 out for the other side. 



"15^/4 April. — Called again on Mukhtar Pasha, who talked with 

 considerable unreserve. Speaking of the necessity there would be of 

 England's holding Egypt in force, if she were at war with any Great 

 Power, I had remarked we should require 20,000 men — '50,000,' he 

 exclaimed, ' only to deal with the internal disturbance, and when I come 

 with an army from out there from Damascus you will see how many 

 more you will want.' " 



This is the account given by my diary of Abbas' first pitched battle 

 with Cromer, which the latter always claimed as a notable victory, 

 though in reality it was hardly that in any moral sense, Cromer having 

 got his way only by the violent physical measure of calling for British 

 reinforcements and by the unreadiness of the French Government to 

 make it a casus belli. Relying on this he succeeded in intimidating the 

 young Khedive to the extent of obtaining from him a compromise in 

 regard to his right of appointing Ministers which he was able to repre- 

 sent in his reports as dictated by himself, but it left him with the 

 Khedive for a persistent enemy, who though many times forced to 

 submit was never reconciled, and who in the end defeated his old 

 enemy, and drove him out of Egypt. I have recorded it here at some 

 length, for it marks the beginning of an obstinate determination on the 

 part of our Foreign Office under the Liberal, no less than under the 

 Conservative administrations in Downing Street, to cling to Egypt right 

 or wrong, wisely or foolishly, to its own hurt twenty years later. 



On the 18th April we left Sheykh Obeyd for Athens and Constan- 

 tinople. At Athens I found my friend Egerton newly appointed Min- 

 ister, and we lunched at the Legation with him and Arthur Ellis, who 

 was there in attendance on the Princess of Wales on a yachting cruise, 

 and they both talked with a certain sympathy of my Egyptian views, 

 Eirerton beine still for evacuation as when we had talked of it to- 

 gether in Paris; but we made no stay at Athens more than the few 

 hours allowed by our steamer, and on 23rd April we landed at Galata, 

 and took up our quarters at Myssiris Hotel, where all is unchanged 

 since I was first there thirty-three years before, and where we stayed 

 for a fortnight, an interesting visit, though I failed after all in the 

 chief object of it, that of getting speech of the Sultan. 



Our first visitor on arrival was my old ally Ibrahim Moelhi, Moham- 



