1910] Will the King Create 400 Peers? 287 



Mohammedan police officer in the High Court at Calcutta who has been 

 getting up prosecutions for the Government, and Minto announces new 

 measures of coercion. It is the Irish history over again, with Morley 

 playing the part of Buckshot Forster at the Indian Office. 



" 1st Feb. — To London and called on Lady C. We talked about 

 the elections, and she declares that the King will very certainly refuse 

 to create the 400 peers needed to deal with the House of Lords. ' You 

 may take my word for that,' she said. I told her I thought the King 

 would do very wisely to refuse, as there was no really strong feeling 

 against the Lords, and she said : ' I will let him know what you say ; 

 he would pay attention to your opinion.' She tells me the King has 

 no ill-will towards me, but my books give offence with the Court people, 

 who cannot understand how I, with my position of an English gentle- 

 man and landowner, can go in for revolution in Egypt and India. 



" yd Feb. — Spent the afternoon with Rivers Wilson, who told me 

 much that was interesting of his official days in Egypt, and his recol- 

 lections of General Gordon. [I have embodied most of what he told 

 me in my ' Gordon at Khartoum,' and need not transcribe it here.] 



" 4th Feb. — Called on Clementine Churchill and arranged that I am 

 to lunch with her and Winston on the 10th, just before he attends the 

 Cabinet which will decide the momentous question of the procedure 

 against the House of Lords. So far neither Winston nor any of them 

 knows what Asquith intends about the changes in the Cabinet. We 

 hope Winston may get the Home Office. 



" 5th Feb. — George Wyndham lunched with me. He assures me the 

 Conservative peers have not the least idea of throwing up the sponge 

 about their hereditary right to veto, nor does he at all fear that the 

 King will swamp their House with new creations. He thinks there 

 will be a kind of deadlock in politics, which will prevent legislation of 

 any kind for the next five years. The strength of the Tory position 

 is that they and the King together command the whole material force 

 of the country, besides half its voting strength. They have the money, 

 and the armly and the navy and the territorials, all down to the Boy 

 Scouts. Why, then, should they consent to a change in the constitution 

 without fighting? 



"6th Feb. — Lady Gregory (who is in London trying to raise funds 

 for her Dublin theatre), as well as George Wyndham and Hudson, the 

 naturalist, came to dinner. There is a story about that Lord Percy, 

 who died of pneumonia in a small hotel at Paris six weeks ago, was 

 really shot in a duel there, and, what is quite absurd, that it was by 

 Winston Churchill. 



" 10th Feb. — Lunched, as arranged, with Winston and Clementine. 

 He had just been at the Cabinet in Downing Street, and arrived late, 

 looking rather grave ; but he soon cheered up, and began talking about 



