1908] Grey on Egypt 221 



Mohammedan India, and then they may join us. I asked them if I 

 could do any good by writing my views, especially on this point, but 

 Gokhale said it would be useless, though if I went to India it might be 

 of use to them. It was clear that I was much too revolutionary for 

 either of them. Lajpat in leaving pressed a little book into my hand. 

 It was a printed account of his arrest and deportation, a naive, and in 

 places quite childish narrative, which I hope may not get into the 

 hands of our Anglo-Indians here to make sport of. It is really pre- 

 posterous that its author should have been made a national hero. I 

 augur ill for the success of their mission to England. They would 



have done better to send a firebrand like my friend X with curses 



on his lips to show our Radicals that India has men to be afraid of. 

 These fair-spoken pleaders for justice and the rights of humanity will 

 get no profitable hearing, and I told them so. 



" 2yd Oct. — Grey has made a declaration about Egypt, which shows 

 that the leopard has not changed his spots. In answer to a question put 

 to him by Robertson, he has declared ( 1 ) that he knows nothing of any 

 demand made in Egypt of being represented in the Ottoman Parlia- 

 ment; (2) that a scheme of Representative Provincial Councils is being 

 worked out in Egypt; and (3) that there is no reason to think that 

 the new developments in Turkey will create new difficulties in Egypt 

 against English control. I have written to Farid Bey to warn him 

 against expecting a Constitution in Egypt, even of the most limited 

 kind. 



" 24th Oct. — There is a Reuter's telegram in all the papers, giving 

 what purports to be a declaration by Gorst at Cairo of the Govern- 

 ment intentions. It begins by contradicting the rumour of a Pro- 

 tectorate or Annexation. Great Britain, it says, had given solemn 

 pledges to Turkey and to the European Powers to respect the Sultan's 

 rights here, and did not desire to go back on that engagement. This 

 declaration, if official, is of the greatest importance, but its form, that 

 of an interview with a correspondent of the Mokattam, is unsatis- 

 factory, and I shall try to get a question asked about it in the House 

 of Commons. The telegram goes on to say that it is also an unfounded 

 rumour that Sir Eldon Gorst has been instructed to introduce a consti- 

 tutional regime in Egypt, Egypt already having a constitution. 



" The papers also announce Frank Lascelles' retirement from the 

 Diplomatic Service. There was a paragraph in the ' Westminster 

 Gazette ' headed, ' A Great Diplomat ' — how oddly it all reads to me, 

 whose recollection of him is of an unpaid attache at Madrid, with whom 

 I played battledore and shuttlecock in the Chancery, and shared many 

 other pleasures ; official greatness is made up of very small things, as a 

 mountain is made up of a tumble of small stones. 



" 29th Oct. — The ' Daily Telegraph ' has published a new manifesto 



