1901] Emperor William in England 3 



overrun the British colonies and cut the railway lines and Kitchener 

 and the army are at a deadlock, unable to move, the soldiers tired 

 of it and pinched for supplies. There is a report, however, that 

 the arrangement entered into with Portugal is to come into effect 

 and that English troops are to be landed in Delagoa Bay. It is 

 very doubtful, however, whether this will affect the issue much. 



" The new hero in England just now is the Emperor William, 

 whom all abused and laughed at four years ago and whose boots 

 our people are now licking. There is nothing so mean in the world 

 as the British mob, unless it be the British aristocracy, but now our 

 fine lords and ladies, though they adulate royalty, do so with their 

 tongues in their cheeks, and this saves to some extent their self- 

 respect. Wilhelm, however, has been made a Field Marshal of the 

 British army! and I verily believe our people would offer him the 

 crown of England if he expressed a wish for it. I suppose all this 

 means that Edward VII has joined the Triple Alliance. 



" The Duke of Aosta is attending the old Queen's funeral as a 

 persona grata on account of Princess Helene and her sister the 

 Queen of Portugal, to whose good will very likely the Delagoa Bay 

 job is due. These things are managed nowadays between Kings and 

 Princes far more than between Ministers and Ambassadors, and royalty 

 was never in such high feather as now. The Queen has left an 

 unknown number of millions, it is said, to her family, but the heir 

 to the Crown is to have his debts paid by the nation at a time when 

 not a single million has been spared for the famine in India — truly 

 we deserve to follow Spain and Rome and the other Empires into 

 the gulf. There is an article in the ' Fortnightly ' signed ' Calchas ' 

 closely on the lines of George's conversation with me eighteen months 

 ago about the coming struggle of the Empires to eat each other up. 

 I wonder what George thinks now of his precious policy of forcing 

 on the war and getting a leader for his government who would allow 

 him and the other young bloods of the Tory party their ' occasional 

 amusements,' I think that was his phrase the day we went up 

 Chanclebury Ring together and he foreshadowed to me the policy of 

 world-grabbing Chamberlain was to inaugurate. 



" 13th Feb. — Charlie Adeane spent yesterday with us and we 

 took him for a gallop round the Birkeh. Hampden writes that the 

 war must go on until every Boer has been killed or wounded or 

 made prisoner, but he says nothing now about deporting the Boer 

 women, perhaps because that part of the work has been already done. 

 His saugrenu opinions are of value because he gets them direct from 

 Chamberlain. 



" 14th Feb. — To-day, while we were waiting for luncheon, we heard 

 screams from the kitchen, and running to the window, I saw an 



