316 Suliman Pasha Abaza [ l 9 1Q 



of undertaking the management of Liberia, the black Republic in West 

 Africa, and there is a movement afoot for Christianizing Central 

 Africa in opposition to the spread of Islam, our Jingo paper applauding. 

 I put much of this down to the combination of Roosevelt and Grey. 



" $ist July (Sunday). — Winston and Clementine came to dine and 

 sleep. He expects now to remain in office, he says, for five years, 

 the General Election to take place in March. I gave him my ' Fiasco 

 in Egypt ' to read, and he tells me that he had precisely the same idea 

 as that I give in it of the Suez Canal Convention. Grey had said that 

 Egypt would be delighted with it, but he, Churchill, had foreseen that 

 it would be quite the contrary. He had written a memorandum for 

 Grey on the subject. He and Clementine start on a yachting tour this 

 week to the Eastern Mediterranean and Constantinople. Their party 

 will be De Forrest and his wife, F. E. Smith and Walter Harris. 



" 2nd Aug. — Newbuildings. The Churchills left yesterday. Ismail 

 Pasha Abaza, the most important member of the Egyptian Legisla- 

 tive Council, came to consult me about affairs in Egypt. He had been 

 three days in London, but had found no single person among the M.P.'s 

 and journalists who had the least idea of the state of Egyptian things, 

 nor had Grey received him. He was sore about this and in very 

 low spirits. I have encouraged him to fight on as he has been doing 

 in the Legislative Council, bringing forward especially the iniquities 

 of our financial management, and he has promised me to do so. He is 

 a man of the old-fashioned school with considerable dignity and political 

 intelligence, a sincere patriot of the moderate party, that which has 

 hitherto relied on English promises of self-government and eventual 

 evacuation. His position, he explained to me, is this : he, in common 

 with every other Egyptian patriot, is opposed to the British Occupa- 

 tion, but while he approves the extreme attitude of Farid he thinks 

 it politic to work for reforms in a Constitutional direction, and has 

 clung to the idea that our Liberals in England could be persuaded 

 into granting a Constitution. The demand for evacuation was rightly 

 made by the extremists, but it was right too that there should be 

 certain persons in the party who would try to work with England 

 and attain the end of independence by another and more conciliatory 

 road. I was willing enough to admit this, but have persuaded him 

 that there is not the remotest chance of our ever granting a real Con- 

 stitution willingly, and made him promise me that he would never in 

 any public way admit England's right to be in Egypt. I asked him 

 about the Khedive, and he assured me that His Highness was at heart 

 a sound patriot, but dared not oppose the British Agency openly. He 

 denied that the Khedive's money speculations were other than honour- 

 able ones, or inconsistent with his patriotism. I find this last difficult 

 to believe. On all other points I consider him a trustworthy inform- 



