672 



OBITUARIES, FOREIGN. (&RANVILLE.) 



was one of the first German military officers to go to 

 Africa, entering the service of the German East 

 Africa Company in 1885. He was one of Major Wiss- 

 inann's most trusted lieutenants, and was sent to Ber- 

 lin to act as his representative, returning to Africa in 

 1890 to take a prominent part in the military opera- 

 tions for the suppression of the revolt of the coast 

 tribes until he was forced by failing health to go 

 back to Germany. There he was promoted to the 

 rank of captain in September, 1890, and was em- 

 ployed in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs until in 

 the beginning of the summer of 1891 he went out to 

 Cameroons to explore the interior and lead a puni- 

 tive expedition against the Abo tribe in the south. 

 In storming their chief village, on the Saunaga river, 

 he fell at the head of his black soldiers. 



Granville, Granville George Leveson-Gower, Earl, an 

 English statesman, born in 1815 ; died in London, 

 March 31, 1891. After getting his education at Eton 

 and Oxford he served a short apprenticeship in 183G 

 with his father, then minister at Paris, who was a 



younger son of the 

 Marquis of Staf- 

 ford and who had 

 been raised to the 

 peerage for distin- 

 guished diplomat- 

 ic services m 1815. 

 Elected member 

 of Parliament for 

 Morpeth in 1837, 

 he was made Un- 

 der Secretary for 

 Foreign Affairs in 

 1840, but was oust- 

 ed before he be- 

 came familiar with 

 the duties of the 

 office through the 

 breaking up of the 

 Melbourne minis- 

 try. Losing his 

 Reat,in 1841 he was 

 returned for Lieh- 

 field, and made 

 himself conspicu- 

 ous by his vigorous 



championship of free trade. In 1846 the death of his 

 father transferred him to the more confined arena of 

 the Upper House. lie was made Master of the Royal 

 Buckhounds and was more thought of as a courtier 

 and dandy than as a serious politician. John Bright 

 and other active Liberals raised a vigorous protest 

 when Lord John Russell appointed the young aris- 

 tocrat President of the Board of Trade in 1848. Lord 

 Granville soon convinced them of his business ca- 

 pacity and energy. As Vice-President of the Com- 

 mission for the International Exhibition a couple of 

 years later he won golden opinions of all men, and 

 especially charmed the French visitors by his grace- 

 ful courtesy, thus helping to cement the entente cor- 

 diale. In 1851 he had a fleeting experience in the 

 field of his true vocation as Minister of Foreign Af- 

 fairs for a few months in the place of Lord Palmer- 

 ston. whose independent course in recognizing Napo- 

 leon's coup cVetat had given offense to Lord John 

 Russell. In 1859, on account of the jealousy between 

 the same two statesman, Lord Granville was sent for 

 by the Queen, but was saved the awkward task of 

 forming a stop-gap ministry by Lord John Russell's 

 consenting to serve under Lord Palmerston. lie was 

 chairman of the Royal Commission of the Exhibition 

 of 1862, and was appointed Lord Warden of the Cinq 

 Ports in 1865. When Mr. Gladstone formed a min- 

 istry in 1868 he was made Minister of the Colonies, 

 and it fell to him to sanction the transfer to Canada 

 of the Hudson B^y territory. It was his part also to 

 defend the Irish \Church bill and Mr. Gladstone's 

 first land bill in th^ House of Lords, and in the de- 

 bates he developed an unexpected power of lucid ex- 

 position and practical reasoning. The death of Lord 



Clarendon brought him at last into the Foreign Office 

 at the difficult juncture when the outbreak of the 

 Franco-German War upset the European balance of 

 power. His determination to maintain the neutrality 

 of Belgium led to the confirmation of the agreement 

 of 1839 by a new one between England, France, and 

 Prussia. Refusing at first to consent to Russia's re- 

 pudiating her engagement not to maintain a naval 

 force on the Black Sea, he was constrained to agree 

 to the abrogation of the treaty by a conference of 'the 

 powers. In defending England against charges of 

 violating the neutrality laws brought by both bellig- 

 erents, he showed skill in the subtleties of diplomatic 

 reasoning. When the vanquished French appealed 

 for active intervention, he used his good offices to 

 arrange an armistice, protested against the bombard- 

 ment of Paris, and exerted himself to bring about a 

 conference between M. Thiers and Count Bismarck. 

 In 1872 he had to arrange the terms of a new com- 

 mercial treaty with France. He firmly refused to 

 allow the indirect claims to go before the Geneva 

 arbitrators of the Alabama question ; but the outcome 

 of the arbitration was nevertheless regarded as a 

 humiliating defeat to English diplomacy. His op- 

 ponents charged him with weakness, too. when Rus- 

 sia disregarded hie protests concerning Khiva and 

 Afghanistan. The Conservatives returned to power 

 on Feb. 21, 1874, and for the next six years it was 

 Lord Granville's part to criticise the Earl of Beac- 

 onsfield's imperial policy and to defend his own 

 more cautious and pliant methods. When the Lib- 

 erals won the elections of 1880 the first consulted 

 with him because Mr. Gladstone had ostensibly re- 

 signed the leadership after the defeat of 1874; but it 

 was Mr. Gladstone that the country wanted, and Lord 

 Granville returned to the Foreign Office. The Lib- 

 erals laid scored oratorical triumphs while in oppo^i- 

 tion by deriding and denouncing Lord Beaconsficld's 

 imperial foreign and colonial policy and exposing its 

 folly and danger, yet as soon as they attempted to re- 

 verse it and pursue a purely domestic policy, on the 

 old Liberal principles of peace, retrenchment, and re- 

 form, they found themselves at war with the tendency 

 of the time and the dominant forces of English opin- 

 ion; for the public mind, dazed an^l disturbed at first 

 by Beaconsfield's startling performances, became 

 more convinced of the glory and success of his bold 

 assertion of England's strength, and demanded that 

 his successor should not sacrifice the position that he 

 had achieved. The Cabinet was caught in the eddies 

 of conflicting currents, and its members were divided 

 in opinion on foreign questions. Its external policy 

 was therefore confused, inconstant, and vacillating, 

 and Lord Granville, whose diplomatic suppleness 

 and dexterity were devoted to harmonizing discord- 

 ant elements at home, brought English diplomacy into 

 contempt abroad, and involved the country in more 

 estrangements, difficulties, rebuff's, diplomatic fail- 

 ures, and losses of blood and treasure than the spir- 

 ited policy of his predecessor had done. The Boer 

 War was not of his seeking, and in making peace he 

 followed the settled lines of Liberal policy in South 

 Africa that had already received the approval of the 

 country, only to find that the fickle public, dazzled 

 by the dreams of imperialism, deemed it a disgrace 

 to scuttle after the Majuba Hill disaster to British 

 arms. The effect of this verdict was seen in the con- 

 fused record and inexplicable vacillations of the di- 

 vided Cabinet during the course of the Egyptian 

 difficulty. First acting with France in the joint note, 

 then bombarding Alexandria in order to leave France 

 in the lurch, then winning the cheap glory of the 

 Tel-el-Kebir campaign, suppressing the de facto gov- 

 ernment and seizing the country under specious pre- 

 tenses, the broken pledges of evacuation, and the 

 whole history of hypocrisy and deceit, are only ex- 

 plained by the exigencies of party politics and the 

 discords of the Cabinet. The shameful record of the 

 Soudan difficulty, ending with the sacrifice of Gen. 

 Gordon and the retreat of the British, and then the 

 perplexities of the Suez Canal question and the open 



