1899]' The Mahdi's Head Again 323 



Morley said, ' If you do, for God's sake don't tell him you have seen 

 me,' which shows how little confidence in each other there is among the 

 chiefs, even of the Anti-Jingo section. He ended, however, by say- 

 ing I might as well go to Harcourt without mentioning him. I found 

 Sir William at the Avondale Hotel in capital spirits, but when, after 

 some talk about the New Forest, I mentioned the Mahdi's head, I saw 

 his countenance fall, and he changed the subject to the Transvaal, where 

 he thinks trouble is coming, and then while we were talking about it 

 he was suddenly called out, and I did not see him again. I asked Lady 

 Harcourt when we were alone to try and get him to support 

 Morley, but she said, ' I have given up trying to get him to do any- 

 thing but what he chooses,' which I take to mean he will do nothing. 



" $th Jane. — Again to London where I found a note from Lady Har- 

 court, telling me that what had interrupted my talk with Sir William 

 yesterday was the news brought him of Loulou having been taken ser- 

 iously ill, so that his wedding, which was fixed for to-morrow, has had 

 to be put off. 



" My letter about Kitchener is in the ' Daily News ' neutralized ac- 

 cording to an editorial dodge by printing next to it what is headed as 

 ' The true story ' in contradiction to mine. At first I was alarmed lest 

 young Gordon might have confessed, in spite of his denial, that he was 

 the real culprit, so I went down to Chelsea and lunched with my kins- 

 man, Gerald Blunt, at the Rectory (whose son's wife was a sister of 

 Gordon's), and he reassured me on this point. He says that Gordon's 

 family are furious at the slur cast on him. Then at four to the House 

 of Commons. George had got me a good seat in the special gallery, 

 and I found myself among friends, Rennel Rodd, George Peel, Canon 

 Wilberforce, and others. Kitchener, who returned to England last 

 night, was sitting with Roberts in the Peers' gallery. After the usual 

 irrelevancies, Arthur Balfour opened the debate in a brief speech 

 recounting Kitchener's services, for the Opposition was quite unequal 

 to the occasion. Kitchener's name had not been very warmly received, 

 and it would have been easy to appeal to the better feeling of the 

 House, though the result of the vote could not have been altered, but 

 Campbell Bannerman's rising to second the vote, though he expressed 

 himself pretty strongly on the ' vulgarity ' of the desecration of the 

 tomb, put things at once into a false position, and Morley who followed 

 to oppose it, with the strongest of possible cases, proved feeble beyond 

 all recorded feebleness. His arguments were weak to fatuity, and he 

 gave himself away over and over again till the House laughed at him. 

 So much was this the case that Balfour already found himself in 

 sympathy with the House before he rose to reply. He did this in a 

 speech of great skill and eloquence, which, as mere oratory, it was a 

 relief to listen to, and he succeeded even to taking a high moral line 



