362 Stolypin Assassinated \_ l 9 11 



* 1st Sept. — The world is much disturbed just now here in England 

 with our strikes, in France with bread riots, and in Germany with 

 warlike talk about Morocco. If there is no war between England and 

 Germany it will be because we cannot fight economically, and because 

 Germany is not ready for a naval war with us. I still think the Ger- 

 mans will remain at Agadir, and a full settlement of the Morocco dis- 

 putes will be adjourned. 



" 8th Sept. — The ex-Shah's army has been defeated at Teheran and 

 its leader executed. The complicity of the Russian Government in the 

 attempt at counter-revolution is proved. The Morocco quarrel still 

 goes on. 



" lyth Sept. (Sunday). — Stolypin, the Russian Prime Minister, has 

 been assassinated at Kief in presence of the Emperor while at the opera. 

 This may lead to serious consequences. Stolypin had been the head 

 and front of the reaction in Russia, a tyrant of the worst kind, affect- 

 ing liberal ideas, and at the same time ruling by spies and secret police 

 and arrests and hangings and deportations to Siberia. His example has 

 been followed by Morley in India, by Grey in Egypt. These modern 

 Liberals are worse than any of the old-fashioned reactionaries. Stoly- 

 pin's assassin turns out to be a Jew, one of his own secret police, and 

 the man specially entrusted with his personal safeguard. The outlook 

 for liberty in the East is a bad one If Germany agrees to a French 

 protectorate in Morocco it will lead to England claiming a protectorate 

 in Egypt, and to Italy claiming a protectorate in Tripoli. The situation 

 seems to be that the German Government is not quite ready yet for 

 war with France and England, while France, though unwilling to fight, 

 is aware of this. Neither is likely to give in in any formal way, 

 and the quarrel will be left open to be taken up again in two or three 

 years' time. An accident, however, might precipitate matters. The 

 outlook for Egypt is bad any way things go, for I imagine that at the 

 outbreak of war England would annex Egypt, or declare a protectorate 

 as an excuse for governing by martial law and treating all patriotism 

 as rebellion. [N.B. Compare this with what actually happened in 

 December 1914.] 



" 2.2nd Sept. — News has come of Arabi's death, and the morning 

 papers give obituary notices founded on Cromer's ' Modern Egypt ' 

 and Milner's ' England and Egypt,' official and untrue. I have written 

 to Ali Bey Kamel, urging that some public recognition of the old 

 National leader should be made by the new Nationalists on the occasion 

 of the fortieth day, seeing that it is already too late to give him a public 

 funeral, but most of them are too dull-witted to see how great an op- 

 portunity it is. At Cairo the death seems to have been kept unknown 

 until the funeral was over. 



" 24th Sept. (Sunday) . — There is ominous news to-day of a threat- 



