4 IQ The Great Marconi Scandal [ I 9 I 3 



figure in my life, being one of the coterie of ladies, friends of my sister 

 Alice who were my friends for her sake. I can remember her being 

 married fifty-two years ago, a beautiful girl, daughter of Lord Charles 

 Thynne, in 1858. She must have been exactly my own age and had 

 been at the Roehampton Convent School with Alice. Then, as Lady 

 Castlerosse, she became one of the beauties of the day, the very first 

 Englishwoman to dress herself well, indeed extravagantly, at Paris, 

 and there is much about her in my diaries, then and later, as Lady 

 Kenmare, but it is many years since I last saw her. 



' 13th Mar. — Peace seems likely now to be made between Turkey 

 and her enemies, leaving her Constantinople with a fairly defensible 

 position for the future, a frontier drawn from the Black Sea to the 

 ^Egean, the whole Marmora coast remaining to Turkey. This is what 

 I have been contending for. Adrianople itself is of less consequence 

 and will probably be dismantled as a fortress while ceded to Bulgaria. 

 If these comparatively good terms have been obtained it has been due 

 to German intervention, and the restoration of German influence with 

 Shefket Pasha's return to power at Constantinople. Grey is now on 

 his knees to Berlin and there are signs that the triple Entente is break- 

 ing up. Our Government has probably made up its mind that it will 

 not, because it cannot, help France in a war with Germany. This 

 will put off, for a while at least, the Anglo-Russian plan of partitioning 

 the Ottoman Empire in Asia and annexing Egypt, which may God 

 forbid ! 



" igth March. — King George of Greece has been assassinated at 

 Salonika, fortunately not by a Turk but by one of his own subjects. 



" 26th March. — Lady Dorothy Neville is dead, a worthy old dame, 

 at the age of eighty-six, also Lady Cowper and Lord Wolseley. Lady 

 Dorothy I knew pretty well thirty years ago, a sprightly little lady with 

 much pleasant Primrose League talk and knowledge of our local Sussex 

 things ; Lady Cowper, less well, though she was one of the early ' Soul ' 

 group and a friend of all my friends. Lady Dorothy kept her social 

 flag flying to the last. 



" 2jth March. — Adrianople has at last surrendered to the Bulgarians, 

 after a five months' siege. The city could not have been kept, but its 

 resistance has probably saved Constantinople to the Sultan. The Turks 

 have little to boast of in this campaign. 



"2nd April. — Ryan has come down to make up a final number ot 

 ' Egypt ' to end the series, after which if we get sufficient support we 

 may continue it as ' The Voice of Islam.' After tea we drove to 

 Belloc's and found him in high spirits over the cross-examination of 

 Rufus Isaacs and Lloyd George before the Marconi Committee which 

 has disclosed the irregularities and equivocations of these two members 

 of the Government, laid bare mainly by Belloc and Chesterton. They 



