3&2 Elisabeth Asquith [1912 



plained of being tired of politics, but says that he cannot break loose 

 from them. His ambition now is to be some day Father of the House 

 of Commons, one he is not unlikely to achieve, for he has been twenty- 

 three years member for Dover, and there are only four or five men 

 with a better record, and he is still young. About his private plans 

 he says he does not mean to have a London House, and would live 

 entirely at Clouds. In these days all will have to live well within their 

 incomes. Rich men are shutting up their large houses, amongst others, 

 Plymouth, who is shutting up Hewell, and means to live all the year 

 through at St. Fagans. 



; ' 16th March. — This morning Margot brought her daughter Eliza- 

 beth to see me. The child is sixteen, attractive and clever, with a soft, 

 sympathetic hand, which will help her to be loved. I had not seen 

 Elizabeth since the day when she recited ' Maitre Corbeau ' to Coquelin 

 aine. She is just the nicest age now, and I am glad to have seen her 

 before she begins going out in society. 



' Later came Nellie Hozier and her mother for our midday meal, and 

 Nellie took me to see the Futurist pictures. These, as art, are mere 

 nonsense, the sort of things a child might make by pasting strips of col- 

 oured paper together as patchwork. They have neither design nor 

 drawing, nor other colouring than a haphazard one, chiefly reds and 

 yellows. One cannot assign a meaning to any of them, or even the 

 suggestion of a meaning. Degeneracy cannot go further than this, and 

 it is mere stupidity to talk of it as art. But we found the little rooms 

 in Sackville Street crowded with visitors, who each had paid his shil- 

 ling, while critics have been found sufficiently uncritical to treat the 

 exhibition seriously. 



' 18th March. — Abd el Ghaffar came to see me, back from Egypt 

 ten days ago. He gives a bad report of things ; the National party 

 without a capable leader and split into factions, each with its separate 

 newspaper. Farid has lost his political credit. The Hesb el Ahali, 

 or Party of the People, is now beginning to take the National Party's 

 place. Its principle is to trust to England to give some sort of a Con- 

 stitution and make Egypt entirely independent of the Porte. If Eng- 

 land could be trusted to do this, and Egypt could become strong enough 

 to defend herself against other European aggression, the policy might 

 be a good one, but such trust and such hope are mere delusions. The 

 connection between Egypt and the Ottoman Empire is the only pos- 

 sible chance Egypt has of escaping permanent subjection to Europe, and, 

 slender though that chance is, I will not abandon it for the other, which 

 is no chance at all. Abd el Ghaffar tells me that he has learned on the 

 authority of Rushdi Pasha, Minister for Foreign Affairs at Cairo, that 

 there have been negotiations between the English Government and the 

 Porte for a cession of the Cyrenaica to the Khedivial possessions. 



