191 1 ] Sir E. Grey's House of Commons Manner 343 



" 14th March. — My cousin, Percy Wyndham, George's father, is 

 dead. Here is a good photograph of him. It gives all his best qualities 

 of honour and benignity. I know of no one who in these had his 

 equal. His death leaves me without anyone now with a right to lec- 

 ture or reprove me, for he was my elder by over five years, and had the 

 position with me through life of an elder brother. George was with 

 him when he died. 



" 15//? March. — The papers have been full of the Bagdad Railway 

 all the week, while Grey's climb-down seems to have satisfied the Ger- 

 man Government, and now he has made another speech about disarma- 

 ment. Both speeches are very able, and Dillon tells me that the first 

 about the railway was admirable in style. Grey has a fine House of 

 Commons manner, which imposes on his hearers. Indeed, he seems to 

 fulfil the ideal of British statesmanship as it is described by Wells in 

 his ' New Macchiavelli,' a dignified attitude which is always ready un- 

 der pressure ' proudly and quite firmly to take the second place.' The 

 ' Temps,' however, calls his disarmament speech childish, which is also 

 true, inasmuch as it does not deal with the reality, that in order to 

 economize in war preparations you must have a peace policy abroad. It 

 is impossible to run high Imperialism on the cheap. 



" As to Bagdad, I see Curzon has given notice of a motion in the 

 House of Lords to move for papers. This ought to clear the atmos- 

 phere and bring to light at last the text of his secret treaty with 

 Mubarak at Koweit in 1899. I have been looking through my diaries 

 of 1898, and find that at the time of Curzon's going to India the young 

 Tories, of whom he was the leader on foreign affairs, looked to a 

 partition of the Ottoman Empire between England, Russia, and Ger- 

 many, England to have the Arabic speaking provinces. Curzon's in- 

 trigue with Mubarak was one of his first moves in preparation for it. 

 My chief fear now is least the German Government may after all 

 weaken in its Bagdad policy and come to terms with England for an 

 immediate division of the Ottoman spoils. There was a little para- 

 graph the other day in the papers saying that Frank Lascelles, who has 

 been passing through Berlin on his way back from Sweden, dined with 

 the Emperor. May he not have been used by the Foreign Office to 

 negotiate this? 



" igth March (Sunday). — Newbuildings. Belloc came to dinner. 

 He says of Grey's arbitration alliance with America that such an al- 

 liance will certainly bring about a rapprochement between France 

 and Germany, and the uniting of all Europe against us. He also says, 

 speaking of the threatened quarrel between America and Mexico, 

 that the United States have not a strong enough army to coerce the 

 Mexicans. 



" 20th March. — Beauclerk went up to London with me, and we 



