148 Cromer Gets the Order of Merit [1906 



" 1st July {Sunday). — George Wyndham came down by the early 

 train, and Cunninghame Graham a little later, and we spent a pleasant 

 day in talk. The executions in Egypt were our chief topic. I had 

 fortunately finished my letter to the ' Manchester Guardian ' before they 

 came, and I read it out to them. Graham is to get the Labour mem- 

 bers to support Dillon, when he proposes a reduction of Grey's salary 

 on the Foreign Office vote on Thursday. George, though he will not 

 help, will look on with ' benevolent interest.' We sat all day under 

 the trees of the Jubilee garden. After lunch Graham went away, and 

 George and I stayed talking poetry. He read me his essay on Ronsard, 

 and some of his translations, which are admirable, and we had much 

 intimate personal as well as literary talk, and I told him the history of 

 my religious opinions. It is odd his championing the cause of High 

 Church Christianity, he who really believes in nothing of these things, 

 altogether a day of extreme beauty and intellectual pleasure. 



" yd July. — Chapel Street. Cromer has been given the Order of 

 Merit ! Dillon came to luncheon and stayed for an hour and a half 

 talking over the Denshawai case. He is hopeless of getting a good 

 hearing for it in Parliament, though the Radical feeling is strong of 

 indignation, but every kind of pressure is being put upon members of 

 the Government to get them to be silent, and the press also is being 

 appealed to. What a state of things! Here we have a judicial crime 

 of the largest dimensions committed by our Representative in Egypt, 

 the thing hardly denied, quite undeniable and defaming the fair face 

 of English justice throughout the world, yet on the very day the hang- 

 ings take place our Representative is honoured with the supreme reward 

 of the Order of Merit! Sir Edward Grey, for the Government, when 

 questioned as to the trial and executions, alleges that he cannot give 

 any information, because he does not knozv, and he must wait till a 

 detailed report arrives from Egypt, and this although Cromer is in 

 England and was actually in the Gallery of the House of Commons 

 while the questions were being put, Cromer who knows every detail 

 of the affair and is the sole person responsible. The truth, however, 

 of the situation, Dillon tells me, is this. The Radicals had designed to 

 have a full dress debate in condemnation of the Congo atrocities com- 

 mitted by the King of the Belgians, and are enraged to find that atroci- 

 ties quite as startling have been committed by our own officials in 

 Egypt. With what face can they now denounce the mote in the Bel- 

 gian eye, yet we are hypocrites enough to do this even with this 

 Denshawai beam, astounding as it is, in our own eye, but the Radicals 

 are fools and deserve their fate of jackaling their Whig leaders, and I 

 am a fool to fash myself with the abomination of our rule in the world. 



" Sir Wilfrid Lawson is dead, the only quite true man on the Radical 

 side in Parliament. Dear good man, we shall not see another like him. 



