290 The King's Promise, What? t^iO 



to be named for India, she declared Kitchener to be quite out of the 

 question. His appointment would set all India on fire. It had been 

 found out that he had enrolled spies in Sepoy Regiments to report 

 disaffection, and the Sepoys had been furious. Kitchener was brutal, 

 and had shown himself to be so at Omdurman. I was surprised to 

 hear this from her. 



' lyth Feb. — Victor Lytton came to lunch to talk over the question 

 of prison reform with me. He talked intelligently on the subject, in 

 which he is much interested. 



" 18th Feb. — Redmond seems to be following out the policy we 

 agreed on together, and there is good prospect of the Irish Labour men 

 voting an amendment to the Address, and Asquith having to resign. 

 If Asquith has to resign it will be a fine consummation, and put a final 

 end to what Whig Government we shall see in our time. It has at last 

 been discovered that Asquith had not the King behind him or any 

 promise except that if there was a majority of 500 the King would 

 create peers. As there will be no clear majority at all the King, of 

 course, will do nothing. 



" igth Feb. — Newbuildings. The political crisis has come to a head, 

 and there is every prospect now of Asquith coming to grief either on 

 the Address or on the Budget. I called on Belloc to-day at Shipley and 

 found him in a great state of excitement, claiming to have caused the 

 revolt of the extreme Radicals by a letter he wrote a week ago to the 

 ' Times.' He showed me an amendment to the Address he intended to 

 move. ' I drafted it,' he said with pride, ' in a pothouse with Maurice 

 Baring, quite in the traditional manner, and I sent it to the " Times," 

 threatening if they did not insert it I would have it in every paper in 

 the North of England. But for me the party would have let Asquith 

 break all his pledges.' Belloc counts now upon breaking up the Whigs 

 and getting office with Lloyd George, Churchill, Loulou Harcourt, and 

 the extreme Radicals, but he will have to wait for that. Asquith may 

 remain in office at present, he thinks, through the support of the 

 Tories. 



" 21st Feb. — Back to London, and was lucky enough to find George 

 Wyndham in Belgrave Square, where we compared notes about the 

 political situation. Everybody, he tells me, has got hold of the idea 

 that a truce has been patched up between Asquith and Redmond, and 

 he was anxious to prove to me that Redmond was a fool to be taken in 

 by Asquith's soft sawder. He has seen the King's speech which is to be 

 read this afternoon ; and though he said he had no right to reveal any- 

 thing, told me it was an absurd document, as I would admit when pub- 

 lished. It might mean almost anything. I did not tell him I had seen 

 Redmond, but consoled him in a general way about the Irish vote, 

 which I was sure would not be given to the Government without As- 



