CHAPTER XI 



THE JAMESON RAID 



" $th Jan. — There is excellent news. Those blackguards of the 

 Chartered Company in South Africa, under Doctor Jameson, have made 

 a filibustering raid on the Transvaal and have been annihilated by the 

 Boers, Jameson a prisoner. I devoutly hope he may be hanged. I 

 have seen this business coming on for some weeks past in articles from 

 the ' Times.' That other high-placed filibuster, Chamberlain, is, I 

 am sure, responsible, or the ' Times ' would never have taken up the 

 matter in the way it has. They seem to have been encouraged in the 

 sort of way these things are encouraged unofficially, by Chamberlain, 

 who would have scored a victory for himself if they had succeeded. As 

 it is he will disavow them. I am much mistaken if Chamberlain, with 

 his three Colonial wars on hand in Ashanti, Venezuela, and now in 

 the Transvaal, involving quarrels with France, America, and Ger- 

 many, will not upset Lord Salisbury's government, if he does not upset 

 the British Empire. 



" Lord and Lady Cromer came here to tea. I had a good deal of 

 talk with him. He says the Jameson episode will do a ' deal of harm ' 

 here, as people will consider it a British defeat (which it is). He 

 added : ' These filibustering enterprises are only justifiable by suc- 

 cess. I don't say that they are justifiable at all, but if they don't suc- 

 ceed the actors in them should pay the penalty.' I think he is rather 

 uneasy in his mind. We talked also about Egyptian affairs. He 'told 

 me the Khedive was spending money very foolishly and would soon, 

 at the present rate, be bankrupt, also that complaints had been made 

 to him by fellahin in the neighbourhood of Koubbah, whose land he had 

 been attempting to take, reviving obsolete claims against squatters on 

 abandoned land, but he was not sure the complaints were true, the 

 complainants refusing to come forward openly. They stated that they 

 had been bullied by the palace people and beaten with kitrbajs. He 

 asked me if I had received complaints on the subject, but it is new to 

 me. He told me that Ibrahim Bey Ibn Saoud had been to him twice, the 

 first time to evoke his protection against the Sultan, to which he had 

 replied that, as long as he, Ibrahim Bey, remained unamenable to Egyp- 

 tian law he had nothing to fear. The second time he had brought him 

 a ' ridiculous paper/ the copy of one he had submitted to the Khedive, 



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