240 Debate on the Danger from Germany [ IO /09 



military danger from Germany, and Frederic Harrison has a long 

 letter about it in the ' Times.' I agree with him that the danger is 

 a very real one of invasion and ruin within no great number of years, 

 only he does not draw the inference I draw, namely, that we should 

 hasten to divest ourselves of our overgrown overseas Empire and 

 devote our naval and military resources to the defence of our own 

 shores. We shall not do this, and we shall perish, as the Roman 

 Empire perished, by trying to hold too much. I am myself the ex- 

 tremest of all possible Little Englanders and would cheerfully return 

 to the ' spacious ' days of Queen Elizabeth when we held not a foot 

 of land outside the kingdom.' 



[This is the point at which Harrison and I diverged from what had 

 for twenty-seven years been a common political sympathy about foreign 

 affairs into antagonism, his path being towards war with Germany, 

 mine towards a gradual shedding of our " white man's burden " in 

 Egypt and India.] 



" I saw George Wyndham in Park Lane. He is pessimistic about 

 the prospects of a German invasion, and thinks it is certain to happen 

 in a few years. The only thing we can do is to go on building ships. 

 Speaking of the plan revealed to me by Usedom in 1866 of bringing 

 Holland into union with Germany and claiming the Dutch Colonies, 

 he told me he had heard the same a good many years ago from 

 Vitelleschi. 



" igth March. — Professor Browne came to luncheon. He has made 

 a wonderful fight of it about Persia, but is beginning to be hopeless, 

 as Russian armed intervention seems imminent. He is losing his in- 

 fluence, too, with the Foreign Office. Grey at first listened to him, 

 but is now less willing. ' Grey,' he said, ' is so ignorant, that he hardiy 

 knows the Persian Gulf from the Red Sea.' 



" 26th March. — Things are going badly both in Persia and the 

 Balkans. As soon as the snow melts, both countries will be occu- 

 pied, the one by Russia, the other by Austria. Grey has thrown over 

 the Persian Constitutionalists, and has declared that the Russians may 

 do what they like at Teheran. 



" 2C)th March. — I have been reading Stead's book about himself 

 and Madame Novikoff, poor stuff as literature, a paste and scissors 

 collection of articles of the last thirty-five years ; nevertheless I have 

 managed to extract from it certain historical facts of importance, 

 as also to fix the date of Madame Novikoff' s visit to Crabbet. It 

 must have been September or October 1876. She was not at that 

 time a really pretty woman, but was lively and anxious to please, 

 singing Russian songs and making the most of herself. I paid her some 

 attention at first, and wrote a song for her to sing to one of her 

 Russian airs, but she ended by boring us before her week's visit was 



