1904] Anglo-French Agreement on Morocco 95 



but it will be a bad day for Morocco. Here there will be a rush 

 of speculators, and Abdu has given me the detail of the 100,000 

 feddans conceded to Cassel. 



* 15th April. — We landed at Genoa on the 14th, and came on 

 the following day to Turin, where we are staying at the Palazzo 

 della Cisterna with the Duke and Duchess of Aosta. On landing, 

 I found a copy of the ' Times ' containing Cromer's annual report 

 with a long despatch from Lansdowne explaining the Anglo-French 

 Convention. Cromer's report is in the usual First Chapter of Genesis 

 style, and nobody would guess from it what wars and rumours of 

 wars there have been at Cairo. Cromer publicly laments Gorst's 

 departure, and no hint is given of the Khedive's misdoings, or of 

 any of the tragi-comic events of the winter. Yet Cromer would 

 doubtless be indignant if it were said of him that he was not a 

 scrupulously truthful official narrator. 



" Lansdowne's despatch is a very important document, as it puts 

 all the dots upon the i's of the Convention. It is clear now that 

 the two Governments understand it as a division of spoils, not 

 quite yet complete, but to be so in the near future. The French 

 are to have the same footing in Morocco that we have taken in 

 Egypt, and as certain clauses in the arrangement are to last for 

 thirty years, the final partition of Turkey is evidently foreseen in 

 it, and so the permanent incorporation of Egypt into the British 

 Empire ; at least this is how I read the despatch and Convention 

 taken together. One thing is clear, viz., that the Anglo-Egyptian 

 Government will now have a free financial hand for both spending 

 and borrowing, and that the old economy will be abandoned in 

 favour of a forward financial policy on the Indian model. Egypt 

 will be run for the Soudan. The best one can say is that Egypt 

 might have been annexed, or formally protected, and that the 

 chapter of accidents still remains open to prevent this last misfortune. 

 For Morocco it hardly could be worse, seeing what French methods 

 are. 



" Poor old Queen Ysabel of Spain is dead at the age of seventy- 

 three, and is to be buried at the Escurial. It is just forty years 

 since I first saw her at Madrid, but the recollection of her and 

 her Court remains a vivid picture in my mind, while so much else 

 is forgotten. It gives me the image of a great, fat, colourless, blue- 

 eyed, good-humoured woman, with arms like rounds of raw beef. 

 Beside her, her husband Don Francisco de Assiz, a little stiff man 

 in a much embroidered coat, and the two royal children, the Ynfanta, 

 a thin anaemic girl of thirteen, and her brother, the little Prince of 

 Asturias, a child of six (he afterwards was King), all four personages 

 sitting on great gilt chairs in a row, having their hands kissed by a 



