388 Rhodes Surrenders [19 12 



Dillon is unfortunately away in Dublin, and the other Irish members 

 are too closely pinned to the Government to help us much in Parlia- 

 ment. The Italians have seized Rhodes. 



" Miss Jennings, who is still here, tells me she spent two years in a 

 room entirely occupied in watching the fire, and that she kept a diary of 

 what she saw there. Then another year watching the sea, now her 

 diary is about the people she meets on her country wanderings. Those 

 she likes best on the roads are the blacksmiths. She tells me they are 

 always kind. We had her in to a dinner of roast beef, which she en- 

 joyed, having been carried indoors by one of the stable helps, and is now 

 sitting by the fire. She is to go on to-morrow in the direction of St. 

 Winifred's well. 



" yth May. — Syud Mahmud came down to wish me good-bye before 

 going back to India, a most excellent young man, the very best Moslem 

 in London — what will become of him? 



" gth May. — Chapel Street. Dillon is back for the second reading 

 of the Home Rule Bill to-night. He expects no difficulty about its be- 

 coming law in two years, barring accidents. There are three rocks 

 ahead of the Government — Welsh Disestablishment, the Insurance Act, 

 and I forget the third (War?). Else all is plain sailing. He thinks 

 Grey contemplates a great coup in Egypt, certainly the abolition of the 

 Capitulations. 



" 1 2th May (Sunday).— Newbuildings. Baron Marschall von 

 Bieberstein has arrived as German Ambassador in London. 



" 14th May. — Old May Day. Caffin calls it St. May, a name for it 

 I never heard before. 



" igth May (Sunday). — Dillon has put a whole sheaf of questions 

 about the prohibition of ' Egypt,' and has got from Grey that he ac- 

 cepts the responsibility of it. He has ' personally satisfied himself as 

 to the contents of the paper, and that though it may not contain any 

 direct incitement to disturbance, he is of opinion that it might cause 

 disturbance, that Kitchener has written to him on the subject, in fine, 

 that he will not give us his protection, and declines to lay papers.' 



" The Turkish garrison in Rhodes has had to surrender. Two thou- 

 sand three hundred regulars, through lack apparently of food, for there 

 has been no fighting. There is prospect now of a European Congress 

 which is certain to be hostile to the Ottoman Empire and Mohammedan 

 interests. 



" 20th May. — I have been reading Crispi's Memoirs, dull stuff, most 

 of it, but there is a chapter at the end giving important documents which 

 show that as long ago as 1890 Lord Salisbury made a secret engagement 

 with the Italian Government, allowing its seizure of Tripoli as a counter- 

 poise to French naval power in the Mediterranean, also that at that 

 date the Italians had begun to intrigue with Hassuna Karamanli, and 



