1912] A Brilliant " Ouverture de la Chasse " 397 



" 13//? Oct. (Sunday). — Newbuildings. Terence arrived here from 

 Pekes with his friend Percy Fielding. He tells me it is quite certain 

 that the German Government intended to buy Tobruk, on the Tripoli- 

 tan coast, from the Sultan, and that that had been the cause of the 

 sudden decision of the Italian Government to seize Tripoli. It has 

 been said often, and often denied, but he tells me it is quite true. As 

 to present affairs in the Cyrenaica, he says that if the Turks conclude 

 a peace with Italy, Enver Bey will proclaim himself Sultan, and will 

 be acknowledged as such by the Senussia, but the Ottoman Sultan 

 Caliphate will lose all prestige in Africa. The Italians are hated in 

 Tunis both by Arabs and French, and the war has made France almost 

 popular. The Italians might have conciliated the Tripolitans but for 

 the massacres. Now they are hated and despised, hated because they 

 are known to have intended to dispossess the Arabs of their lands, 

 despised because they are cowards, and also because they are willing 

 to work for less wages than the Arabs will take. They are of the 

 dregs of Europe. 



" 16th Oct. — Peace has been signed at Ouchy between Italy and 

 Turkey on disgraceful terms to Turkey. What will now happen I 

 imagine is that, the Italian end being gained, England and Russia will 

 put pressure on the Sultan to agree also to the loss of Macedonia. 

 Without some extraordinary manifestation by the Turks of military 

 power, of which so far there is no sign, the Ottoman Empire is ruined. 

 This preys upon my mind. Egypt will now be permanently enslaved 

 to Europe. 



" 17^/1 Oct. — Worth Forest. We drove here in the afternoon to 

 get ready for our ouverture de la chasse on Saturday, when George 

 Wyndham, Mark Napier, Winston Churchill, and perhaps Beauclerk are 

 up to celebrate with me the completion of the new Manor House, with 

 a deer drive in the Upper Forest. The bucks are beginning to bell, and 

 we heard them in the night, which was clear with a half moon. When 

 we were here last week young Henry Blunt, who had been here to see 

 me, and was bicycling back, was confronted with a buck in one of the 

 forest paths, which disputed the way with him. This frightened 

 him so that he did not get back till half-past nine. He will have to 

 do better than that with the lions and rhinoceroses of Uganda, whither 

 he is about to emigrate. 



" 18th Oct. — George arrived in the afternoon, and we spent a 

 pleasant evening together talking about Ireland and my book, the 

 ' Land War.' He told me that it was certainly true that if things 

 had gone a little differently at the 1885 elections, Lord Salisbury would 

 have given some form of Home Rule, also that there was no choice 



