402 / Roll Up the Map of Islam \1g12 



From this point onwards, the autumn of 1912, the close of my 

 practical activities in Eastern affairs may be dated. I had given up 

 my house in London, and at the end of the year I took my name off 

 my Clubs, cutting myself off from all temptations to continue these 

 activities, such as I could not have avoided had I continued to fre- 

 quent my many London friends ; nor have I from that date so much 

 as visited Piccadilly, even for the day. All my subsequent life has been 

 spent in Sussex, either at Newbuildings, or from time to time in Worth 

 Forest, leading the life there of a country squire to which I was born, 

 and which is naturally mine. Nevertheless I continued to take an 

 onlooker's interest in the great drama of European politics, which 

 was shaping itself into the supreme tragedy of 1914. A few friends 

 came from time to time to see me in my hermitage, and these for 

 a while gave me news of the diplomatic doings which were leading 

 on to war, and I had at my hand a neighbour and constant ally in Hilaire 

 Belloc, than whom no one was better acquainted with the intrigues 

 and rivalries of our political leaders in Parliament, besides being al- 

 ways an instructive and amusing companion. Thus I did not wholly 

 lose touch for another year with public affairs, and my diary, though 

 less important in its entries, continues to be a record of the chief 

 events which preluded Armageddon. They will show now little truth 

 there is in the current story that in the quarrel our Foreign Office 

 was wholly innocent, more especially in that with the Ottoman Empire. 



"31st Oct. — The news from Constantinople is rather less hopeless 

 to-day in regard to the battle being fought east of Adrianople, but 

 I feel no revival of confidence in the ultimate result. Even if Nazim 

 Pasha, should manage to beat off the Bulgarian army, and save the 

 Eastern Province, it would not restore the Ottoman prestige as a 

 military power, or safeguard the Empire from dismemberment. It 

 is an ugly feature of the case that Mukhtar Ghazi has resigned the 

 Vizierate and Kiamil Pasha remains on now in supreme authority. 

 That means that a disgraceful peace will be made through European, 

 in other words, Anglo-Russian intervention, and the Sultan will be re- 

 duced to the position of England's servant and the Czar's. The dream 

 of a regenerated Caliphate, strong, and reformed, is at an end. Egypt 

 will be England's bakshish for the service rendered, and Russia's will 

 be the opening of the Dardanelles. This is what has all along been 

 aimed at by our Foreign Office. 



" I have written to resign my chairmanship of the Egyptian Com- 

 mittee, and to say that I cannot carry on our paper ' Egypt,' beyond the 

 end of the year. In the afternoon I shot with Victor Lytton, who has 

 been here to consult me about the Life of his grandfather, the novel- 

 ist, which he has been writing, and after dinner we had a long talk 

 on religion and philosophy as well as my remembrances of the grand- 



