1909] Churchill's Ideas 271 



" He went on to Egypt. He said : ' We shall continue to hold it 

 whatever happens ; nobody will ever give it up — I won't — except we 

 are driven out of it at the end of a war. It will all depend upon 

 whether we can hold command of the sea ; the fate of the war will 

 decide it.' It is something to know from him that this is, in fact, 

 the present Government's policy. It is exactly what I have just written 

 in my Congress Manifesto. 



" I talked to him about my prison time in Ireland, and this inter- 

 ested him. ' I am dead against the present system,' he said, ' and if 

 I am ever at the Home Office I will make a clean sweep of it. I 

 promised to send him in a paper on the subject if ever the time should 

 come. He thinks Home Rule will come now very soon. About the 

 suffragettes, he expects them to take to dynamite, he told a story of a 

 man who, talking about their chaining themselves to the railings till 

 they got the vote, said: ' I might as well chain myself to St. Thomas's 

 Hospital and say I would not move till I had had a baby.' Coming 

 indoors he saw the butterflies in cases on the chimney-piece, and told 

 us about those he had found in Uganda. I like him much. He is 

 aux plus petits soins with his wife, taking all possible care of her. They 

 are a very happy married pair. Clementine was afraid of wasps, and 

 one settled on her sleeve, and Winston gallantly took the wasp by the 

 win^s and thrust it into the ashes of the fire. We had out the stallions 

 for him to look at ; Ibn Yashmak being the one he liked best. He is 

 to come again and shoot pheasants here in October. Now he is off 

 to the Prussian Manoeuvres and to visit Kaiser Wilhelm. 



" Talking about the decay of the House of Commons as a power 

 in the country, he said that if he had his way he would revive the 

 right of adjourning the House once a week to debate any urgent affair 

 of the moment. He is all for the discussion of everything, and is 

 inclined even to adopt my doctrine of no secret diplomacy. He thinks 

 with me that it is monstrous the Government should be able to bind 

 the country by secret treaties for years, while the country knows nothing 

 whatever about them. 



" 12th Sept. — On Tuesday Keir Hardie sent me an urgent message 

 wanting to see me about Egypt at any hour next day that I would name, 

 and I telegraphed that I would give him luncheon in Chapel Street at 

 one; but though I went up to London on purpose he failed to keep 

 his appointment, and it was not till two days later that he wrote to 

 apologize. These M. P.'s have no manners. His reason for wanting 

 to see me was that he was going to the Congress of Geneva with Kettle 

 and two or three other members. I have been hard at work all the 

 week past writing my manifesto for the Egyptian Congress in French, 

 and I have posted it to Geneva. 



" 16th Sept. — De Bary, ex-Father Angelo, came for a couple of 



