412 Winston Will Be Prime Minister t I 9 I 3 



have got on very well together, talking Socialism and Continental 

 politics. Belloc came to dinner, and we had a most pleasant evening. 



" A woodcock's nest, the first for many years at Newbuildings, was 

 found to-day in Marlpost Wood, the young just flown. 



" 30^/1 April. — George Wyndham was here to-day. Talking of 

 Winston's .recent outburst on the Marconi business, he thinks he 

 (Winston) will be Prime Minister one of these days. Grey, however, 

 will have a first claim before him, being by birth a traditional Whig, 

 though very inferior to Winston in ability. We had much talk, too, on 

 family affairs. 



" 12th May. — Winston writes from the train while on his way to 

 join the Admiralty yacht, the Enchantress, with his wife and Margot 

 and Asquith and Eddy Marsh at Venice. They are all to cruise to- 

 gether in the Mediterranean during the Whitsuntide holidays. 



" iSth May (Sunday). — Farid Bey has written from Geneva asking 

 me to join his society, Le Pr ogres de VI slam, and I have taken ad- 

 vantage of it to write a final letter to be read at the Egyptian Congress 

 about to be held there. I think we, with our paper ' Egypt,' may claim 

 to have converted Grey, or at any rate Asquith's Cabinet, from its 

 active hostility to Islam by encouraging the Islam Moslems to show 

 their teeth on the subject. Certain it is that the Foreign Office policy 

 has undergone a change in the last two months. Grey is now working 

 with the German Government for the re-establishment of the Sultan's 

 Asiatic Empire — the project of annexing or proclaiming a Protectorate 

 over Egypt is abandoned, and every attempt is being made to pacify 

 Mohammedan feeling. As a clear sign of this new policy, Sir Gerald 

 Lowther has been recalled from Constantinople, where he had in- 

 trigued for the past three years against the Young Turks. I have 

 embodied this in writing to the Society. 



" I have been reading Lady Gregory's new Irish comedies. They 

 are altogether excellent. The dialogue has qualities which remind me 

 of ' The Assemblies of Hariri.' 



" 2yd May. — The news from European Turkey is all of quarrels 

 between Bulgarians and Greeks and Servians over a division of the 

 spoils, but in this I take small interest, or in the fate of Albania, where 

 the Moslems have earned their misfortunes. Theirs is a lost cause. 

 At Constantinople an understanding has been come to between Ger- 

 many and our Government to keep Russia out of the Bosphorus and 

 the Sultan in authority there under a kind of joint control. Anything 

 is better than Grey's policy of the Entente with Russia. It means an- 

 other twenty or thirty years' life for the Ottoman Empire. In con- 

 sideration of this Grey has been allowed a Protectorate of the Persian 

 Gulf, and the last news is that Ibn Saoud has occupied El Katif, and 

 that the Turkish garrison there has been shipped back to Busrah." 



