1910] Roosevelt and Grey 31 1 



pleasant fellow, and has a more prosperous look, and is fatter and rosier 

 than formerly. Lady Gregory has been the making of him. 



" yth June. — One Homer Davenport, a Yankee friend of Roose- 

 velt's, and a breeder of Arab horses, was here to-day. He is an amus- 

 ing fellow, come over with Roosevelt as newspaper correspondent for 

 the ' New York World.' He tells me he has no very high opinion of 

 Roosevelt's intellect, and treats his pronouncement about Egypt and 

 other things as an overflow of nonsense and high spirits rather than 

 as anything more serious. Roosevelt, he says, is sure to be named 

 President again, as he amuses the American public. I took him the 

 round of our horses here and found him intelligent about them, he 

 having visited the Anazeh tribes once. After going through a number 

 of our small fields surrounded with thick hedgerows he remarked: 

 ' You have the cunningest little paddocks here for breeding that ever 

 I saw.' I sent him back to London with Khaparde, who was also here, 

 an oddly assorted pair. 



" 8th June. — I have written to Dillon and Dr. Rutherford, M.P., 

 advising them that when the question of Egypt comes on in Parlia- 

 ment, the point to urge should be a resumption of the Drummond 

 Wolff negotiations for evacuation. It is no use trying to bolster up 

 Gorst, he is too manifest a failure. 



" Belloc has gone to Berlin, news having come that the Emperor 

 William having been stung by an insect in his hand is ill with blood 

 poisoning, and Belloc wanted to be in at the death. Little as I love 

 Wilhelm I should miss him at the present juncture. It would leave 

 the game in the East too entirely in English hands. 



" 14th June. — Chapel Street. Meynell and Everard Meynell dined 

 with me, and we talked much about Egypt. There was a field-day 

 yesterday about it in the House of Commons, Grey solemnly recanting, 

 amid rapturous Tory applause, the whole of his policy of conciliation 

 there, begun three and a half years ago. There is now to be an era 

 of coercion. Nationalism is no longer to be killed with kindness. 

 There will be arrests and deportations, which will go on till one fine 

 day the Khedive is assassinated. Turkey is now Egypt's only chance. 

 Grey's speech shows quite clearly that it was a matter arranged be- 

 forehand between him and Roosevelt that Roosevelt should make the 

 speech he did at the Guildhall. It was one of those little perfidies by 

 which Cabinet Ministers sometimes force the hands of their colleagues, 

 and it has been most successful. Without it Grey might have had a 

 difficulty in getting up the agitation about Egypt which was necessary 

 to excuse the change of policy. Cromer will now once more be the 

 Foreign Office adviser, vice Hardinge, promoted as Viceroy to India. 



" Hardinge's appointment is probably as good a one as the Govern- 

 ment could have made. He is friends with Russia and knows some- 



