232 Crisis at Constantinople [j^KX) 



" 1st Feb. — Terence Bourke has been with me for the last two days. 

 He is now quite with me about the reform movement in the East and 

 the Future Independence of Egypt. There is better news from Persia, 

 where it is reported that the Shah's army has been defeated by the 

 Constitutionalists, and the three Russian officers in his service are fly- 

 ing for their lives. Browne is issuing a useful pamphlet about the 

 revolution there. 



" $th Feb. — I have moved to London for some weeks, to Chapel 

 Street. Cockerell dined with me, very happy, he tells me, at Cam- 

 bridge, enjoying the life there and acquiring influence with the under- 

 graduates. 



" gth Feb. — In the afternoon came Brailsford, with whom I dis- 

 cussed Turkey, Persia, Egypt, India, and Somaliland. He thinks Grey 

 is practically selling both Turkey and Bulgaria to Russia, as he sold 

 Persia. Brailsford is making a good fight for them in the ' Daily 

 News.' 



" 13th Feb. — There is another crisis in Constantinople, an attempt 

 by Kiamil Pasha, the Grand Vizier, to bring about a reactionary coup 

 d'etat. He has dismissed the Ministers of War and Marine, and ap- 

 pointed new ones. If the Parliament does not insist on his dismissal 

 the Constitution will go to ruin, as it went thirty years ago, at least 

 so I read the telegrams. 



" lyth Feb. — The crisis at Constantinople has passed off well, the 

 Committee of Union and Progress, with its great majority in Parlia- 

 ment, having forced Kiamil to give in his resignation. This will be an 

 excellent example, and was absolutely necessary if they are not to lose 

 what had been gained by the revolution. The ' Times,' however, and 

 'Pall Mall' and other financial papers are very angry, just as they 

 were angry when Sherif Pasha had to resign at Cairo in 1882. There 

 are finance schemes at the bottom of it all now as then, and precisely 

 the same arguments are used about military pressure having been put 

 upon the Chamber, the pronunciamento it is called. 



" 25th Feb. — Morley has produced his Indian Bill in the Lords, a 

 great flourish of trumpets about a very small matter. Morley will not 

 be at the India Office long enough to set the reforms really going, 

 and his successors and the Anglo-Indian officials will take care that 

 these are neutralized in detail, as they easily can be. If Morley had 

 been serious he would have brought in his Bill three years ago when 

 he had an all-powerful Radical House of Commons behind him, but 

 he did absolutely nothing, nor would he have done anything but for 

 the boycottings and assassinations. Then he tried the first sham reform, 

 a council of tame landlords, suggested to him by the Anglo-Indian 

 officials, and now he puts forward this other sham suggested by Gokhale. 

 They will lead to nothing. Still the East is awake and moving. 



