3 2 & Germany and Turkey [ l 9 1 ^ 



was not till after the Congress of Berlin, ten years later, that he began 

 to take himself an grand serieux. The wonder is that anyone should 

 have been found to take him seriously after such beginnings as his 

 had been. Rivers is indignant with the present Government, and es- 

 pecially with Lloyd George, ' that mountebank of finance.' To his 

 Treasury traditions of economy the present expenditure of ii6o,ooo,- 

 ooo yearly is lunacy ; and so it is, only if people will have an overgrown 

 Empire they must pay for their fun. 



" Then on to Horace Rumbold, another relic of the past generation. 

 He, too, is indignant with the Government for having taken up the 

 Young Turks in 1908, and now mismanaged things, so that their joining 

 the Triple Alliance is a certainty. He is hardly consistent, however, I 

 think, as he is strongly in favour of an Anglo-Russian Alliance and 

 against that with Japan. Winston writes that the European situation 

 could not be worse for us. This reassures me about the attitude of 

 Germany, as to which I sometimes fear lest it should be won over from 

 an alliance with Turkey. There is always the danger of the whole of 

 the Great Powers settling their differences by a partition of the Otto- 

 man Empire. It is a risk we have to run, but I am sure the best 

 chance is for Turkey to join the Triplice. We are playing for very 

 high stakes, and this is our weakest card. If William were to die and 

 be succeeded by an unambitious Emperor everything would be lost. 

 All the more reason for hastening on the Alliance now. 



" 4th Nov. — Newbuildings. The Persian meeting turned out to be 

 a poor affair, my young friends having failed to bring forward their 

 amendment, and the original milk and water one is all that the papers 

 publish about it. Mark Napier and Beauclerk came to dine and sleep. 

 Mark, who takes a purely City view of these questions, declares it to be 

 impossible Egypt should ever be evacuated, seeing how many millions 

 of British capital are invested there. ' The British Empire,' he says, 

 ' will muddle through somehow, as it did a hundred years ago in the 

 time of Napoleon.' 



" Miss Petre has sent me a copy of a letter she has written to the 

 ' Times.' She has been called upon to sign a declaration that she 

 accepts the Papal Rescript Pascendi and the rest, and she has asked in 

 return that she should be informed whether the rescripts are de fide. 

 Her position is sound in logic, but the Church can hardly afford to be 

 logical any longer. She proposes to come to luncheon here on Monday 

 and talk it over with me. 



" 6th Nov. (Sunday). — Last night being Guy Fawkes' day we drank 

 confusion to the British Empire, though, in truth, all present but my- 

 self were rank Imperialists. Warburton Pike, Beauclerk's friend, was 

 of the party, and the talk turned mostly on gold mining, in which all 

 of them are interested. Mark told us the history of the Mysore gold 



