1901] Return to England 15 



to lunch with me when Arabi came to Sheykh Obeyd, and how wrong 

 it was of Abdu. But I told him I was the only person to blame in 

 the matter as I had entrapped Abdu who had been most unwilling, 

 and he laughed and said he would make it all right with Abdu when 

 he saw him. Then we talked about the Fox-hunting case and he told 

 me of the penr bleue he had been in for years past lest the English 

 soldiers should break in on him at Koubbah where his garden was so 

 little protected; also of the Omdeh of Waila having been stopped on 

 the road by a party of Lancers on his way home as he was riding 

 with two servants, and how they had struck him on the head and 

 how he had died a fortnight after it. He is off to Khartoum next 

 week and he went with me to the door shaking hands and assuring 

 me of his great affection and that I was the only true friend they 

 had in Egypt. 



" 28^/1 Nov. — Our yearly mowled of Sheykh Obeyd, a festival 

 attended by about a thousand people and all the Arabs and Sheykhs 

 of the villages round, and we had horse races and jerid play the 

 whole day long in the bit of desert outside, and not a European 

 showed his nose from dawn to dusk. 



" igth Dec. — Rosebery has made a speech which is causing much 

 excitement at home, offering himself as alternative Prime Minister 

 to Salisbury on equally jingo lines. Salisbury is bad enough, but 

 Rosebery would mean merely Government by the Stock Exchange. 



" 30th Dec. — Left Sheykh Obeyd for England, having hurried my 

 departure principally on account of the fox-hunting case which was 

 being brought forward in Parliament. We went by way of Port 

 Said and Brindisi. Rhodes, Jameson and other of the South African 

 gang were to have taken the same steamer but I believe missed it. 

 They had come to Egypt with the intention of going up the Nile to 

 Khartoum, but Cromer, who hates Rhodes, put a veto on that and 

 stopped the party at Assouan. 



" 16th Jan. 1902. — London. Hampden dined last night with Rose- 

 bery, where he was more or less solicited to join Rosebery's party, 

 and we talked over the prospects of Liberalism. My advice to him 

 was that if he wanted office or further employment of any kind, 

 Rosebery was as likely to give it him as any other, though he would 

 never come into office as head of the Radical party. Apart from this, 

 however, there were only two policies on which party lines could 

 run, the first of Imperialism, which meant a bid for the Empire of 

 the world, a gambling venture which would entail the sacrifice of 

 everything we have of value at home, personal liberty, freedom from 

 conscription and financial prosperity ; the other Anti-imperialism, which 

 meant letting the world alone and leaving the colonies to work out 



