39 2 Grey's Connection with the Raid on Tripoli [ l 9 12 



course, I did not go. Precautions have to be taken against the Suffra- 

 gettes, who come on these occasions to knock Asquith about. 



' 12th July. — Bad news from Constantinople. Shefket Pasha has 

 resigned the Grand Viziership, and there is talk of Kiamil succeeding 

 him as Grand Vizier and making a disgraceful peace with Italy. 



' igth July. — There is a general change of Ministry at Constanti- 

 nople. Kiamil is to be made Minister of Foreign Affairs under Tewfik 

 Pasha as Grand Vizier. If true it will mean a triumph for English 

 intrigue and a disaster for Turkey. Kiamil would betray Egypt to 

 England, and probably agree to base terms of peace with Italy. There 

 has been a new Italian attack on the Dardanelles, this time by torpedo 

 boats, two of which are said to have been sunk. 



"21st July (Sunday).—- Drove Belloc to Steyning, where we had 

 tea with Mackarness. We found Gokhale there, who exhorted me to 

 use my influence with Indian Mohammedans to get them to join the 

 Hindoos in working for self-government. I have, of course, been 

 doing this for a long time. I reminded Gokhale of my advice to him 

 four years ago to put a couple of bombs in his pocket when he went 

 to see Morley at the India Office. The reminiscence shocked him, 

 for he is a timid man, and terribly afraid of being thought an extrem- 

 ist, especially in presence of Mackarness and his fellow judge, Lord 

 Coleridge, and his language in answer was very demure. He is in 

 favour of a Trans-Persian railway, he told us, because it would put 

 the Indian Moslems in close touch with their co-religionists in Afghan- 

 istan and Persia, and give them more progressive ideas perhaps ; but 

 it will be a danger for India some day, and I exhorted him to waste 

 no time in bringing Indian self-government forward in view of the 

 coming collapse of the British Empire. He did not seem to realize 

 this as a thing to be provided against, though it is the real chief factor 

 of the situation. My last word to Gokhale on going away was: 

 ' Above all don't be too moderate.' 



" 2yd July. — Winston has made his expected speech, a regular 

 Imperialist manifesto, which will delight the Tories and accentuate the 

 quarrel with Germany. 



" 24th July. — Newbuildings. An important communique by Grey 

 has been published in the ' Westminster Gazette,' taking for its text 

 some words of mine. It denies categorically that Grey either consented 

 to or approved of the Italian raid on Tripoli." 



[Nevertheless it is quite certain that our Foreign Office did approve 

 of the raid, though probably not in any written form. Its complicity 

 after the fact, at any rate, is proveable in two ways. (1) by the fact 

 that Rennell Rodd, our Ambassador at Rome, though according to 

 official accounts he knew nothing of the raid until it had taken place, 

 an ignorance and neglect of duty which must have brought on him 



