1^4 Lynching in America [1906 



has brought me congratulations from many quarters and I feel like 

 an Espada in the Spanish bull-ring who has planted a blow he knows 

 to be mortal, and who walks away wiping his sword and leaving 

 the dying bull to rage an instant by itself before it falls. Moberly 

 Bell will leave me alone for the future. Also I have written a formal 

 letter to Grey, sending the pamphlet and begging him to make a per- 

 sonal inquiry into the Denshawai case instead of leaving it to be 

 dealt with by the permanent officials. So all is going well. Mustapha 

 Kamel has entrusted me with the task of finding him an editor for 

 his new Anglo-French paper at Cairo, ' The Egyptian Standard.' 



" There have been terrible doings in America, lynchings and mas- 

 sacres of negroes, acts of reprisal against the black community for 

 isolated assaults, understandable but just as brutal and iniquitous as 

 the massacres of Jews in Russia, or of Armenians in Turkey. There 

 is no pretence that any of the negroes murdered by the mob had any 

 connection with the particular assaults, therein lies the abomination 

 of injustice. I am not one who condemns the severest punishment of 

 men found guilty of violent sexual crimes, I am for hanging, flogging, 

 what you will ; in such cases it is even right that a man taken 

 flagrante delicto should be killed on the spot, but to slay the innocent 

 for the guilty, as was done at Atlanta and by us at Denshawai, moves 

 my indignation. 



" On the 24th we had an amateur performance of my Irish play, 

 ' Fand,' at Newbuildings. 



" 2C)th Sept. — My article in the ' Independent Review ' advocating 

 a change of policy at Cairo has an excellent leading article in support 

 of it in the ' Tribune,' and I look upon our game as won. Cromer 

 will, of course, return to Egypt in November but it will be his last 

 winter there, and he will be found to have something the matter 

 with his liver or his eyes, and he will take his pension and retire. 

 The onlly question is who will succeed him. Perhaps by that time 

 Abdul Hamid, too, will have disappeared from the scene and the 

 further question may have been put, who will succeed the Sultan? 



" 1st Oct. — Out shooting in my wheeled chair and managed to 

 kill six or seven pheasants. 



" 6th Oct. — Brailsford, the * Tribune ' leader writer, having written 

 to me privately to ask my advice about his line regarding Egypt 

 three days ago, came down to luncheon and gave me a curious ac- 

 count of the way Cromer has taken with the newspaper editors in 

 London. ' He showed,' he said, ' great emotion and is quite upset 

 about the Denshawai business.' He may well be so. Also of Grey: 

 Brailsford says that he knows absolutely nothing of foreign affairs. 

 Grey has only once been abroad and then only to Paris, and he speaks 

 not a word of French or any foreign language. Haldane manages 



