1909] New Law of Deportation in Egypt 269 



a part like Enver Bey's. He is a big strong young fellow, rather silent, 

 but with flashes of enthusiasm and anger. I much applauded his reso- 

 lution; also I told them I considered it waste time to try and convert 

 England to the idea of evacuation. Englishmen were not open to per- 

 suasion on that head, but might be convinced if it could be shown that 

 their hold on Egypt was a trouble and a danger. I read them my 

 manifesto, not yet finished, for the Congress, and they will have it 

 read out at the opening of the proceedings. It is in French, and they 

 will have it translated into Arabic as well as English. We sat up talk- 

 ing till midnight. These are the sort of young men to make a revolution. 

 The older Egyptians are useless ; they have not the courage. 



" 1st September. — The young men are gone. Winston Churchill 

 came down to-day to Carpenters to see his wife, who is staying there 

 with her mother, and I had tea with them and discussed the Indian 

 question with him. I found him sufficiently open-minded to admit that 

 if it could be proved that India was poorer to-day than a hundred years 

 ago we ought to leave it. 



" 2nd Sept. — There is a report in the papers to-day that the Grand 

 Vizier at Constantinople, Hilmi Pasha, has declared his entire ap- 

 proval of the Khedive and of English policy in Egypt ; but it is also 

 rumoured that Hilmi is about to resign. I have read Gorst's new 

 White Paper with the text of a new law permitting the deportation of 

 persons in Egypt without trial. 



"5^/2. Sept. (Sunday). — Winston and Clementine came to lunch 

 with me. Winston is a charming young man, as unconventional as 

 his father was, and as light in hand. We lunched in the garden, and 

 sat there after it till four o'clock, discussing nearly all the great ques- 

 tions of the day, the Budget, the fight with the Lords, South Africa, 

 Egypt, India, all the tricks of the political game. He believes the Budget 

 to be very popular, and that the Government will win on it if it comes 

 to a General Election ; but it will not come to that. The Lords will 

 not fight. Some day there will be a great Constitutional fight, which 

 he thinks the Commons will win, though, at present, the Lords would 

 have all the physical force in their hands : army, territorials and Boy 

 Scouts. The Lords could be coerced if they refused, after the Gen- 

 eral Election, a second time to vote the Budget, and the King, if he 

 refused to swamp them with new peers. 



" Talking about public schools he said they were a bad training for 

 a clever boy. ' I never learned anything at school,' he said, ' and to 

 be high up at Eton is enough to ruin any boy, and give him a narrow 

 view of life.' He likes the universities and military training for a 

 few years, though the army is a poor profession. ' I got all the fun 

 of it,' he said, ' for I was on active service nearly all the time in the 

 Soudan, and afterwards in South Africa, as a newspaper corre- 



