1897] Chamberlain Whiteivashcd 281 



carefully avoids what undoubtedly happened, namely that Chamber- 

 lain's attitude to Rhodes and Beit was practically this : ' Manage the 

 matter your own way, but remember I am to know nothing about it.' 

 Rhodes is condemned publicly in the report, but will be let off all 

 punishment. He will not even be struck off the list of the Queen's 

 Privy Councillors. I hear that the Queen personally assured the Em- 

 peror William when the raid happened that none of her Ministers 

 were cognisant of the affair, and this assurance given by the Queen 

 accounts for the strange attitude of Sir William Harcourt and other 

 Radicals on the Committee who have signed the report. The whole of 

 our public life is rotten, and will remain so till we have received a 

 serious defeat in war. The Queen is at the bottom of half the Imper- 

 ialistic mischief we do abroad. She is pleased at the title of Empress, 

 and likes to enlarge her borders. I should not be at all surprised if 

 she was really in the Jameson affair with her Ministers, indeed this 

 is the best explanation of the extraordinary manoeuvres of the Gov- 

 ernment, and the connivance of the official opposition. 



" 24th July. — Our annual Arab stud sale at Crabbet. Brilliant 

 weather ; an immense gathering ; 320 persons sat down to lunch ; a 

 good many of these, foreigners and colonials ; a successful but tiring 

 day. 



" 27th July. — To London and lunched with George, whom I found 

 triumphant over the issue of the debate on South Africa last night. 

 He considers the triumph of the Rhodes group, which is his own 

 triumph, due to superior ability in the Parliamentary management, the 

 skill with which they split the Liberal opposition, the capture of old 

 Harcourt, the forcing of Chamberlain's hand into open support of 

 Rhodes and the bamboozling of the stupid M.P.'s. With regard to 

 Chamberlain, George admires him as the grandest specimen of the 

 courageous, unscrupulous schemer our politics have ever seen. He 

 says that Chamberlain was not an accomplice of the actual armed 

 raid made by Jameson — though he certainly was in the political in- 

 trigue — and he (Chamberlain) would not deny it — against the in- 

 dependence of the Transvaal. He described Chamberlain's speech and 

 the menace he (Chamberlain) threw out to Dilke if any one should 

 dare propose the cancelling of Rhodes' position in the Privy Council. 

 Chamberlain did not name Dilke, but his eye, while speaking, travelled 

 along the benches of the Opposition, so that it was clear to all what 

 his meaning was. It was a base threat, and he would certainly have 

 followed it up if the Radicals had dared accept his challenge. George 

 triumphs in all this, but to me it is pitiful to see a young man like him, 

 the heir of all the ages, connecting himself with such a scoundrel crew. 

 The whole Cabinet is now the duumvirate of Balfour and Chamber- 

 lain, but I told George he would find one day that Arthur would be 



