CHAPTER X 



THE FRENCH INVADE MOROCCO 



" 2nd Jan., 191 1. — The birthday honours list gives Jameson a bar- 

 onetcy who ought to have had a rope. 



" yd Jan. — There has been a battle between the police, helped by 

 sixty men of the Scots Guards on the one hand, and two men on the 

 other, described as anarchists and assassins, who defended themselves 

 in a house in the East End of London for a whole day. Winston in his 

 character of Home Secretary put himself in command of the forces of 

 the Crown, and advanced under fire. 



" 12th Jan. — Farid Bey has returned to Cairo and is to be pros- 

 ecuted for an introduction he wrote some time ago to one Ghyati's 

 poems. Also Ismail Abaza, the only independent member, has been 

 turned out of his place in the General Assembly. All this is dishearten- 

 ing. There is much discussion at Paris, Berlin and Petersburg as to 

 the meaning of the Potsdam arrangement made between Germany and 

 Russia about Persia. It would seem directed against the Anglo-French 

 Entente, but does it not also mean a further division of the spoils in 

 Asia and Egypt? The danger we have to face is a possible Anglo- 

 German Entente. This would be fatal and final — may God forbid it. 

 [Compare Dr. Dillon's ' Eclipse of Russia.'] 



" 26th Jan. — Farid has been sentenced at Cairo to six months' im- 

 prisonment, a really outrageous sentence, for having written a few 

 words of introduction in a volume of poems, one of which contained 

 praise of Wardani. His defence is that he never read the poems, and 

 being a very busy man it is more than likely that that is the fact. The 

 sentence was, no doubt, dictated by Gorst to the Assize Judge whom 

 he appointed to deal with the case. It is just the same old way of 

 manipulating the law in political cases we used to know in Ireland. 



" Dilke is dead. I hardly know what to say of him except that he 

 was in politics, what I most distrust, a Radical Imperialist. The ex- 

 treme Radicals here had come to look upon him as one of their stal- 

 warts, and only a few days ago Mackarness wrote to me proposing him 

 as Chairman of a new Egyptian Committee, knowing nothing of his 

 past history at the Foreign Office in 1882. Dilke remained very 

 secretive about Egypt, speaking constantly in the House on every other 

 subject but not on this. I advised Mackarness to ask Dilke whether he 



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