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Title: The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Volume 2

Author: Stephen Lucius Gwynn

Editor: Gertrude M. Tuckwell

Release date: July 1, 2005 [eBook #8540]
                Most recently updated: December 26, 2020

Language: English



*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF THE RT. HON. SIR CHARLES W. DILKE, VOLUME 2 ***




Produced by Charles Franks, David King
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team




THE LIFE OF THE RT. HON.

SIR CHARLES W. DILKE

BART., M.P.

BEGUN BY STEPHEN GWYNN, M.P.

COMPLETED AND EDITED BY

GERTRUDE M. TUCKWELL

LITERARY EXECUTRIX OF SIR CHARLES DILKE

WITH PORTRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOL. II.



CONTENTS OF VOL. II.

CHAPTER

XXXIV. HOME AFFAIRS (OCTOBER, 1883, TO DECEMBER, 1884)

XXXV. EGYPT (1884)

XXXVI. FRANCHISE AND REDISTRIBUTION (JULY TO DECEMBER, 1884)

XXXVII. FOREIGN AFFAIRS IN 1884

XXXVIII. DIVIDED COUNSELS (JANUARY AND FEBRUARY, 1885)

XXXIX. THE FALL OF KHARTOUM AND THE PENJDEH INCIDENT

XL. REDISTRIBUTION: COERCION AND DEVOLUTION (1885)

XLI. FALL OF ADMINISTRATION (JUNE TO JULY, 1885)

XLII. OUT OF OFFICE (JULY, 1885)

XLIII. THE TURNING-POINT (JULY, 1885, TO JULY, 1886)

XLIV. THE RADICAL PROGRAMME _VERSUS_ HOME RULE (JULY TO DECEMBER, 1885)

XLV. BEGINNING OF THE HOME RULE SPLIT (DECEMBER, 1885, TO FEBRUARY,
     1886)

XLVI. THE FIRST HOME RULE BILL (FEBRUARY TO JULY, 1886)

XLVII. LADY DILKE--76, SLOANE STREET

XLVIII. FOREIGN POLICY

XLIX. PUBLIC LIFE AND RETURN TO PARLIAMENT (1886-1894)

L. INDIA AND FRANCE--RHODES AND BISMARCK (1886-1892)

LI. PERSONAL LIFE--IN OPPOSITION (1895-1904)

LII. LABOUR (1870-1911)

LIII. WORK FOR NATIVE RACES (1870-1911)

LIV. THE BRITISH ARMY

LV. IMPERIAL DEFENCE

LVI. ARMY AND NAVY IN PARLIAMENT

LVII. DEATH OF LADY DILKE--PARLIAMENT OF 1905

LVIII. FOREIGN AFFAIRS (1890-1910)

LIX. THE LAST YEARS

LX. LITERARY WORK AND INTERESTS

LXI. TABLE TALK

INDEX

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOL. II

SIR CHARLES W. DILKE IN THE YEAR 1908
From a drawing by W. Strang.

MRS. MARK PATTISON
From a photograph taken about 1878.

SIR THOMAS WENTWORTH, 1ST BARON WENTWORTH (DIED
MARCH 3RD, 1550-51)
From a painting ascribed to Theodore Bernardi.

BISMARCK
From a photograph given by him to Sir Charles W. Dilke.

SIR CHARLES W. DILKE ROWING
From a photograph reproduced by permission of the _Daily Mirror_.

DOCKETT EDDY
From photographs.

PYRFORD ROUGH
From photographs.

LADY DILKE IN THE YEAR 1903
From a photograph by Thomson.



THE LIFE OF SIR CHARLES DILKE

CHAPTER XXXIV

HOME AFFAIRS

OCTOBER, 1883-DECEMBER, 1884


I.

The interval between the Sessions of 1883 and 1884 was critical for the
question of electoral reform which interested Liberals beyond all other
questions, but involved the risk of bringing dissensions in the Cabinet
to the point of open rupture. As the months went by, Mr. Chamberlain and
Lord Hartington used less and less concealment of their differences,
while it was well known to all the Cabinet that the alliance between
Chamberlain and Dilke was complete and unconditional. Whoever broke with
Chamberlain broke with Dilke. Fortunately a certain bond of personal
sympathy, in spite of divergent views, existed between Lord Hartington
and Sir Charles Dilke, and this bond largely helped to hold Mr.
Gladstone's Government together.

In the negotiations which followed between the leaders of the two great
Parties, Sir Charles Dilke was able to show the full measure of his
value to the State. It was of first-rate importance that the Liberal
Party should possess at that moment a representative with whom Lord
Salisbury found it congenial to treat, and whom the most advanced
Liberals trusted unreservedly to treat with Lord Salisbury.

The same confidence could hardly have been given by them to Lord
Hartington, who held that "equalization of the franchise was pressing
mainly on account of the pledges that had been given, and not much for
any other reason." [Footnote: Letter to Mr. Gladstone of October 24th,
1883, quoted by Mr. Bernard Holland in his _Life of the Duke of
Devonshire_, vol. i., p. 395.] Most Liberals took a very different view
of the need for this reform. Further, Lord Hartington held that
franchise and redistribution should be treated simultaneously, and he
was unwilling to extend the franchise in Ireland.

At a Cabinet on October 25th, 1883, the question of simultaneous or
separate treatment of the problems had been settled. Mr. Gladstone, says
Sir Charles, 'made a speech which meant franchise first and the rest
nowhere.' On the Irish question, Sir Charles was instructed to get
accurate statistics as to the effects of equalizing the franchise
between boroughs and counties, and 'on Friday, November 16th,' he notes,
'I wrote to Chamberlain: "I have some awful figures for poor Hartington
to swallow--700,000 county householders in the Irish counties."' Lord
Hartington still stuck to his point of linking redistribution and
franchise.

But on November 22nd,

    'Mr. Gladstone read a long and admirable memorandum in favour of the
    views held by him, by Chamberlain, and by me, as to franchise and
    redistribution--that is, franchise first, with a promise of
    redistribution but no Bill; and Hartington received no support after
    this from any members of the Cabinet.'

There were, however, matters in which Lord Hartington's Conservative
tendencies found an ally in the Prime Minister. On November 28th, 1883,
at the Committee of the Cabinet on Local Government,

    'Chamberlain noted: "Mr. Gladstone hesitates to disfranchise the
    freeholders in boroughs--persons voting as householders in boroughs
    and as freeholders in the counties in which the boroughs are
    constituted. I am in favour of one man one vote, and told him so."
    Our not getting one man one vote was entirely Mr. Gladstone's fault,
    for the Cabinet expected and would have taken it, Hartington alone
    opposing, as he opposed everything all through.'

The question of widening the franchise in Ireland was still unsettled,
and Mr. Chamberlain and Lord Hartington both made allusion to it in
public speeches at this moment. The speeches, apart from their marked
difference in general tone, were on this point in flat contradiction to
each other, and on December 2nd Lord Hartington wrote to Mr. Gladstone
with a threat of resignation. On that day he delivered at Accrington a
long eulogy of the Whigs, who had 'formed a connecting link between the
advanced party and those classes which, possessing property, powers, and
influence, are naturally averse to change.' The Whigs it was, he
contended, who had by their guidance and their action reduced changes in
the direction of popular reform to the 'calm and peaceful process of
constitutional acts.'

    'At this moment there was a conflict raging between Chamberlain and
    Hartington, and in their autumn speeches each of them pretty plainly
    attacked the other's policy. Chamberlain wrote to me: "Why does
    Hartington think _aloud_ when he thinks one thing and is going to do
    the other? And why does he snub the Caucus when he has made up his
    mind to do exactly what they want? If he cannot learn to be a little
    more diplomatic, he will make a devil of a rum leader!" A little
    later Chamberlain gave me "passages from a speech which _ought_ to
    be delivered: 'Yes, gentlemen, I entirely agree with Lord
    Hartington. It is the business and duty of Radicals to lead great
    popular movements, and if they are fortunate enough to kindle the
    fire of national enthusiasm and to stir the hearts of the people,
    then it will be the high prerogative of the great Whig noble who has
    been waiting round the corner to direct and guide and moderate the
    movement which he has done all in his power to prevent and
    discourage.'"

    'The storm between Hartington and Chamberlain having broken out
    again, Chamberlain wrote to me on December 5th, enclosing a letter
    of reproof from Mr. Gladstone, and saying: "I replied casuistically
    that I would endeavour to exclude from my speeches the slightest
    reference to Hartington, but that he was really too trying. I
    reminded Mr. G. that I had asked if I were free to argue the
    question, and that he had said: Yes--no one taking exception." In
    the following week Chamberlain came to town and dined with me,
    and we discussed the matter. Although Mr. Gladstone had blown
    Chamberlain up, he was really much more angry with Hartington.'

It appears from the _Life of the Duke of Devonshire_ that Mr. Gladstone
continued through December his attempts to mediate. [Footnote: See _Life
of the Duke of Devonshire_, by Mr. Bernard Holland, vol. i, p. 398 _et
seq_.] The matter is thus related by Sir Charles, though not from first-
hand knowledge, since he went to Toulon in the middle of December, and
stayed there till January 8th, 1884:

    'During my absence I had missed one Cabinet, the first that I ever
    missed, and perhaps the only one. It was held suddenly on January
    3rd, and I could not arrive in time. Mr. Gladstone had come up from
    Hawarden under the impression that Hartington was going to resign,
    because we would not produce a redistribution scheme along with
    franchise. On the morning of the 3rd, however, he received a letter
    in which Hartington gave way on the understanding that Mr. Gladstone
    would state the general heads of his redistribution scheme. The
    subject was not named at the Cabinet of the 3rd, which dealt with
    Egypt only. But the Cabinet adjourned to the 4th, and on January 4th
    discussed South Africa, and also ... received a statement from Mr.
    Gladstone as to his intention to state the heads of our
    redistribution scheme in "very general terms." On the 10th I noted:
    "The Cabinets have resulted in peace between Lord Hartington and Mr.
    Gladstone, but the Reform Bill will be less complete than I had
    hoped." "Mr. Gladstone calmed Hartington by promising not to run
    away from us after franchise and before redistribution, which was
    what Hartington feared he meant to do."'

Discussion upon the detail of the Bill was resumed, and on January 23rd,
1884,

    'the Chancellor (Lord Selborne), Hartington, Kimberley, and Dodson,
    supported by Mr. Gladstone, forced, against Harcourt, Chamberlain,
    and myself, a decision not to attach any condition of residence to
    the property vote.'

    'On January 28th there was a meeting of the Committee of the Cabinet
    on the Franchise Bill in Mr. Gladstone's room. Chamberlain was
    anxious to "make Hartington go out on franchise." I asked him how he
    thought it was to be done, and he replied: "If he is restive now,
    raise the question of Mr. Gladstone's statement on redistribution,
    and oppose all limitations in that statement"; and he added that Mr.
    Gladstone had only agreed to make the statement unwillingly to quiet
    Hartington, and that if Hartington were not quieted Mr. Gladstone
    would go back about it. Chamberlain and I on this occasion tried to
    make the Franchise Bill more Radical, but failed, Mr. Gladstone
    opposing us on old-fashioned grounds.'

    'Chamberlain came to me' (on April 26th) 'about a plan which Mr.
    Gladstone was to broach at the next Cabinet, for putting off the
    operation of the Franchise Act until January 1st, '86, in order to
    give time for redistribution to be dealt with. We decided to oppose
    it, on the ground that it would not improbably lead to our being
    forced into holding an election on the old franchise.'

At the beginning of the Session Sir Charles helped on the general policy
of Radicalism by one of his many minor electoral reforms. This was a
Bill to extend over the United Kingdom the right of keeping the poll
open till eight o'clock at night, which he had secured as a privilege
for Londoners in 1878. He notes that on February 11th he 'fought with
Tory obstructives as to hours of polling, and won'; but the violent
resistance which was offered at first did not continue, and the Bill
passed quietly in July, after time had been given to discuss it in the
constituencies.

    'On this day (July 22nd) I had a long and curious conversation with
    Healy as to Irish redistribution and as to the hours of poll in
    counties, with regard to which he was against extension, but said
    that he was forced to support it in public. He told me that his
    private opinion was that the Land Act had quieted Ireland.'

The 'Representation of the People' Bill, as the franchise measure was
called, was introduced on February 28th, 1884, and made steady progress,
Liberals finding their task facilitated by the difficulties of their
opponents.

    'On May 7th I wrote to Chamberlain to say that I had to speak at a
    house dinner of the Devonshire Club that night, and to ask him if
    there was anything he wanted said, to which he replied: "Note
    Randolph Churchill's letter to Salisbury with reference to the
    Conservative Caucus, and the vindication of the Birmingham one." It
    was impossible not to notice this important letter, which
    revolutionized politics for some time.'

    '_May 14th_.--After the Cabinet I was informed by Chamberlain that a
    week earlier, on Wednesday, May 7th, Randolph Churchill had sent to
    him to know whether, if he broke with the Conservatives, the
    Birmingham Liberals would support him as an independent candidate.'

Sir Charles's letter to his agent at this time sums up the political
position:

    'The Tory game is to delay the franchise until they have upset us
    upon Egypt, before the Franchise Bill has reached the Lords.... Our
    side will be in a humour to treat as traitors any who do not insist
    that the one Bill and nothing else shall be had in view--in face of
    the tremendous struggle impending in the Lords.'

    'On _May 13th_ I had received a letter from Mr. Gladstone in answer
    to one from me in a matter which afterwards became important, and
    but for Chamberlain's strong stand would have forced me to leave the
    Government. I had so strong an opinion in favour of woman's suffrage
    that I could not undertake to vote against it, even when proposed as
    an amendment to a great Government Bill.'

Sir Charles had written as follows:

    'ANTIBES,
    '_Easter Eve_, '84.

    'I had thought till lately that the Woman's Suffrage division in
    Committee on the Franchise Bill would have been so hollow that my
    absence from it would not have mattered; but as I find that
    Grosvenor thinks that it will not be hollow, it becomes my duty to
    write to you about it. I myself think Grosvenor wrong; the woman's
    suffrage people claim some 250 "friends," but this they do by
    counting all who, having voted with them once, have abstained from
    voting for many years, and who are really foes. The division can
    only be a close one if the Tory party as a body support the view
    which is Northcote's, I believe, and was Disraeli's, but many of the
    leaders would be bitterly opposed to such a course. Mr. Disraeli
    left the woman's suffrage amendment an open question on his own
    Reform Bill, and forbade the Government Whips to tell against the
    amendment, but the mass of the Tory party voted in the majority. On
    this next occasion there will be a larger Liberal vote against the
    change than there was last year, and I do not believe that there
    will be a larger Tory vote in its favour. But, supposing that I am
    wrong and Grosvenor right, I should feel no difficulty in voting
    against the amendment on the grounds of tactics which would be
    stated, provided that Fawcett and Courtney, who are the only other
    thick-and-thin supporters of woman's suffrage in the Government,
    voted also, but I cannot vote if they abstain. Under these
    circumstances what had I better do?'

Mr. Gladstone wrote back on May 11th:

    'The question as to the votes of members of the Government on
    woman's suffrage is beyond me, and I have always intended to ask the
    Cabinet, and (like the Gordon rescue) at the proper time. The
    distinction appears to me as clear as possible between supporting a
    thing in its right place and forcing it into its wrong place. To
    nail on to the extension of the franchise, founded upon principles
    already known and in use, a vast social question, which is surely
    entitled to be considered as such, appears to me in principle very
    doubtful. When to this is added the admirable pretext--nay, the fair
    argument--it would give to the House of Lords for "putting off" the
    Bill, I cannot see the ground for hesitation. But I quite understand
    what (I believe) is your view, that there should be one rule for all
    the members of the Government.'

    'This was an important letter. The words "(like the Gordon rescue)
    at the proper time" seem to show that Mr. Gladstone had already made
    up his mind to send an expedition to Khartoum, although he would not
    say so. The body of the letter proved that Mr. Gladstone had a very
    strong opinion against me on the main point, and the consultation of
    the Cabinet (which was dead against woman suffrage), and the one
    rule for all members of the Government, meant that he intended to
    force my vote by a Cabinet resolution, and, killing two birds with
    one stone, to attack at the same time Fawcett, who had walked out on
    several questions, and announced his intention of walking out on
    others.

    'By May 22nd I had finally made up my mind that I could not vote
    against the woman franchise amendment--even as a mere matter of
    tactics and deference to others--if Courtney and Fawcett went out on
    the matter. I could not speak to them about it because of the
    "Cabinet secret" doctrine. Childers had been directed by the Cabinet
    to sound Courtney, because he was Courtney's official superior in
    the Treasury. Childers was to offer Courtney that if he would vote
    against the amendment he should be allowed to speak for woman
    franchise on the merits, and that none of its opponents in the
    Cabinet (that is, all except myself) should speak against it on the
    merits. I noted: "On the whole I think that we shall walk out, and
    not be turned out for so doing." I again explained my position to
    Mr. Gladstone.... I felt that the majority of those voting for woman
    franchise on this occasion would be Tories, voting for party
    reasons, and in order to upset the Bill. I was therefore unwilling
    to go out on this occasion, but thought I could not do otherwise
    than make common cause with Courtney. On the merits of woman
    franchise I had and have a strong opinion. I always thought the
    refusal of it contrary to the public interest. The refusal of the
    franchise also affects the whole position of women most
    unfavourably.' [Footnote: Mrs. Fawcett wrote thanking him 'in the
    name of the friends of Women's Suffrage. Your being a member of the
    Cabinet made your position in the matter one of special difficulty;
    but I do assure you that our gratitude is real and unfeigned.']

On May 24th Sir Charles told the Cabinet what 'I had told Mr. Gladstone
in a letter which I had written to him on Easter Eve, and renewed on the
occasion when he made the reply which has been quoted above.'

When the amendment was reached, Dilke, with Fawcett and Courtney,
abstained. This led to serious trouble. Sir Charles wrote on June 12th
in his Diary:

    'Hartington is very angry with me for not voting, and wants me
    turned out for it. He has to vote every day for things which he
    strongly disapproves, and this makes the position difficult. He says
    that my position was wholly different from that of Fawcett and
    Courtney, because I was a party to the decision of the Cabinet, and
    that custom binds the minority in the collective decision of Her
    Majesty's servants. This is undoubtedly the accepted theory. Poor
    Hibbert was made to vote. [Footnote: Sir John Tomlinson Hibbert (d.
    1908), at this time Financial Secretary to the Treasury, was an able
    administrator, and held office in Mr. Gladstone's four
    administrations. He assisted materially in the passing of the
    Execution within Gaols Act, Married Women's Property Act, and Clergy
    Disabilities Act, and was keenly interested in the reform of the
    Poor Law.] I fear the Cabinet put the yoke, not of political
    necessity, but of their personal prejudice against woman suffrage,
    on the necks of their followers.'

The matter came up at a Cabinet on June 14th, and was made worse because
a letter from Lord Hartington, 'offensive in tone,' had been circulated
by accident. However, Mr. Gladstone issued a minute about my walking out
on woman's suffrage, which concluded by a proposal, if his colleagues
concurred, to request me to remain in the Government. Thus ended a
personal crisis which, to use the French phrase, had been 'open' since
my letter to Mr. Gladstone dated 'Antibes, Easter Eve.'

    'Chamberlain wrote to me: "It is settled"; and I wrote back: "It is
    settled. I would not have asked you to stand by me, as I have no
    constitutional case, and your conduct in so doing could not be
    defended. I always count on your friendship, but this would have
    been too much." He replied: "We are both right. You could not ask
    me, but if you had been requested to resign I should have gone too."
    Chamberlain had previously informed the Cabinet that, though he
    differed from me about woman's suffrage, and regretted the course
    that I had felt myself obliged to take, he intended to stand by me
    "to the fullest extent."' [Footnote: The further negotiations with
    regard to Franchise and Redistribution in 1884, and the 'compact'
    which ended them, are dealt with in Chapter XXXVI., infra, pp.
    63-79.]


II.

While the great measure of the Session went steadily through its stages,
various other questions were also occupying the Cabinet. The search for
a new Speaker in succession to Sir Henry Brand, who had declared at the
beginning of 1883 his unwillingness to retain office beyond that
Session, was one, and not the least important, of these questions. Sir
Henry James was first mentioned, and he refused.

    'November, 1883. Some had thought of putting up Dodson, but the
    Tories had announced that they should run Ridley in opposition to
    him. There was also a difficulty about filling Dodson's place.
    Trevelyan was the only man who could be put into the Cabinet without
    causing the resignation of Courtney and Fawcett, and Mr. Gladstone
    was still in the humour which he had developed at the time of the
    offer of the Chief Secretaryship to me, and declared that he would
    not have the Chief Secretary in the Cabinet, the Viceroy being in
    it, for this would be to have two Kings of Brentford.'

On November 10th 'Childers seemed the favourite for Speakership,' but on
the 12th it was decided that Herschell, Goschen, Arthur Peel, and
Campbell-Bannerman, were to be offered the Speakership--in that order.
It was known that Herschell would refuse, it was thought that Goschen
would refuse on the ground of sight, and Peel on the ground of health,
and it was intended that Campbell-Bannerman should have it. Herschell
did refuse, but Goschen accepted, and had to be shown by his doctor that
he could not see members across the House, that he would be capable of
confusing Healy with Parnell.... Peel accepted, and in spite of his bad
health took it, and has kept it till this day (1891).'

There was also continuous discussion behind the scenes as to the two
important measures of local government reform--for London and for the
country.

    'By November 8th, 1883, I had succeeded in bringing Harcourt round
    on the London police matter ... to let the City keep their police,
    and then went to Mr. Gladstone.... After twelve o'clock at night
    Harcourt joined us, and it was agreed to put both London and local
    government in the Queen's Speech for 1884.'

Dilke spent much work upon the London Government Bill with Harcourt in
January of that year; but the Bill, having passed its second reading,
was not further proceeded with, owing to House of Commons difficulties.
Sir Charles gives the true reason in a letter to his agent:

    'One unfortunate thing about the London Bill is that no one in the
    House cares about it except Dilke, Firth, and the Prime Minister,
    and no one outside the House except the Liberal electors of Chelsea.
    This is the private hidden opinion of Harcourt and of the
    Metropolitan Liberal members except Firth. I am personally so strong
    for the Bill that I have not at any time admitted this to Harcourt,
    and I have only hinted it to Firth....'

When Sir William Harcourt's Bill collapsed, Dilke attempted a minor
improvement for the Metropolis by framing a City Guilds Bill, which he
described to Mr. Gladstone as following the scheme of the Bills by which
the Universities had been reformed. But the Chancellor, Lord Selborne,
fought strongly against this proposal: and nothing came of it.

The great scheme for reforming Local Government in England and Wales was
meanwhile being considered by the Committee to which it had been
referred. Besides Sir Charles Dilke, who naturally acted as Chairman,
the Committee consisted of Mr. Chamberlain, Lord Kimberley, Mr.
Childers, Lord Carlingford, and Mr. Dodson (who were members of the
Cabinet), and Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice. With them were Sir Henry Thring,
the celebrated Parliamentary draughtsman, and Mr. Hugh Owen, the
Permanent Secretary of the Local Government Board. The task of obtaining
agreement, and even sometimes of maintaining order, in a Committee
composed of persons representing such a variety of opinion, was no easy
one, and it tested to the full the tact and ingenuity of the Chairman.
Mr. Dodson, Sir Charles Dilke's immediate predecessor at the Local
Government Board, and Lord Carlingford represented the views which had
hitherto prevailed in favour of piecemeal and gradual reform. Mr.
Chamberlain, Lord Kimberley, and Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice were, on the
contrary, supporters of the large Bill which the Chairman had prepared;
while Mr. Childers, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, was there mainly to
keep a vigilant watch on the local authorities, who were suspected, and
not without reason, of desiring to treat the Treasury as a sort of
"milch cow," a description which Mr. Gladstone had recently made current
in a debate in the House of Commons, Sir Henry Thring was no mere
draughtsman. He had had an immense experience of official life, had
known every man of public importance over a long period of years, and
had very determined views on most subjects, which he never hesitated to
express in clear-cut language and without respect of persons. Mr. Lowe,
it was asserted, had once observed at a Cabinet just before Thring
entered the room: 'I think before he arrives we had better carry a
preliminary resolution that we are all d----d fools.' As it also
happened, Local Government was a subject on which Sir Henry Thring, and
not without reason, prided himself as an expert, and the Committee over
which Sir Charles Dilke presided consequently had Sir Henry Thring's
views conveyed to them in unmistakable terms. One of his special objects
of hostility was the Poor Law Union area, which he hoped ultimately to
destroy. On the other hand, Mr. Hugh Owen, like nearly all the Local
Government Board officials of that time, regarded the Poor Law and
everything connected with it as sacred. The controversies were
frequently fierce, and on one occasion a serious crisis almost arose
owing to Lord Kimberley asking to be informed if Sir Henry Thring was
preparing a Bill of his own or was acting on his instructions.

The Bill of 1884 contained almost everything now to be found within the
corners of the two great measures of 1888 and 1894, which, the one
passed by a Conservative, the other by a Liberal Government, entirely
revolutionized the Local Government of England. It was, however, decided
to have no Aldermen, but a few ex-officio seats were created on the
County Council. Otherwise direct election was the method chosen for all
the new Councils. The administration of the Poor Law was kept within the
purview of the Bill, after a long controversy as to the method of
electing the representatives of urban parishes on the local Poor Law
authority, when such an authority included both a borough and a rural
district; and the limit of population that was to entitle a borough to a
complete independence from the county authority was raised from the
figure originally proposed of 20,000 to 100,000 and upwards.

It had been part of Sir Charles Dilke's plan to include education within
the framework of the Bill, making the Borough and District Councils the
local education authority, with a limited superior jurisdiction in the
County Council. But it was found that almost insurmountable difficulties
would arise in adding so immense a proposal to an already large measure,
and it had to be abandoned.

Mr. Gladstone expressed a decided view on one portion of the Bill only.
He gave his strongest support to the proposal that the price of any
increased contributions in the shape of Treasury grants should be the
complete reform of the conflict of areas and jurisdictions, which added
so much to the difficulties and the cost of local administration.
[Footnote: In a speech made at Halifax on October 13th, 1885, which
occupies nearly the whole of a page of the _Times_, Sir Charles Dilke,
after the fall of the Government, gave a full account of the proposed
measure.]

The question of female councillors inevitably found its way into the
discussions, and it was decided in their favour, notwithstanding much
divergence of opinion.

    '"I am sorry," Childers wrote, "about female councillors, but I
    suppose I am in a minority, and that we shall soon have women M.P.'s
    and Cabinet Ministers." This shows that we had decided to clear up
    the doubt as to the possibility of women serving as councillors, and
    distinctly to give them the opportunity of so doing. When Ritchie
    afterwards introduced portions of my Bill, he left this doubtful,
    and the Lady Sandhurst decision was the result.' [Footnote: See for
    "Lady Sandhurst decision," infra, p. 17.]

Sir Charles differed from other members of the Committee in the desire
to make the county and not the Local Government Board the sole appellate
authority from the district. 'I would, indeed,' he says, 'have gone
farther, had I been able to convince my colleagues, and have set up an
elective Local Government Board for England.'

Owing to the Parliamentary position, progress with any large measures of
reform was, however, difficult even in the preliminary stages; and the
road seemed to get more encumbered every day, for the period now under
review indicates the high-water mark of Parliamentary obstruction in the
skilled hands of the Irish Party and Lord Randolph Churchill, who
successfully defied the feeble reforms of procedure of 1882. So it came
about that early in 1884 Sir Charles was found rather mournfully writing
to Mr. Gladstone:

    'We produced to-day our last draft of the Local Government Bill, and
    had our funeral meeting over it, I fear. I wish to tell you with
    what spirit and skill Edmond Fitzmaurice has gone into the matter.
    He is the only man I know who is fit to be President of this Board.'

In the autumn of 1883 Sir Charles made what was rare with him, a kind of
oratorical progress. He spoke at Glasgow, at Greenock, and lastly at
Paisley, where he received the freedom of the burgh for his services
connected with the commercial negotiations. His speech at Paisley
naturally dealt with commercial policy, and drew an admiring letter from
Sir Robert Morier, who was then just bringing to a head the offer of a
commercial treaty with Spain. The Cabinet, however, had been much
inclined to issue a general declaration on the subject,

    'Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville being against all commercial
    treaties, I for good ones and against bad ones, and Chamberlain for
    punishing Italy for her conduct to us.' [Footnote: 'March 5th,
    1883.--We turned to Tariff Treaties: Lord Granville and Mr.
    Gladstone wishing for a general and abstract declaration against
    them, and I, with support of Childers, urging most strongly the
    other view. The proposed declaration was a gratuitous piece of
    folly, for we were not called on to say anything at all.']

When the proposed treaty with Spain, and the changes in duties which it
would involve, were before the Cabinet on November 10th,

    'I am afraid I played upon Mr. Gladstone's favourite weakness (next
    to praise of Montenegro)--namely, abuse of the Customs, a department
    for the routine of which he always had a perfect loathing.'


III.

Queen Victoria's demand for investigation into the housing of the poor
[Footnote: See Vol. I., p. 509.] had led to prompt administrative
action, planned by Sir Charles before he left for his Christmas holiday.

    'While I was at Toulon there were issued from the Local Government
    Board the circulars on the Housing of the Working Class, which I had
    prepared before leaving London.... One circular, December 29th, 1883
    ... called on the Vestries to make use of the powers which they
    possessed for regulating the condition of houses let in lodgings.
    Another, December 30th ... called attention to their powers under
    the Sanitary Acts, and under the Artisans and Labourers' Dwellings
    Acts; and one of the same date to a similar effect went to all urban
    sanitary districts throughout the country, while a further circular
    with digests of the laws was sent out on January 7th, 1884. This
    action was afterwards repeated by Chamberlain and others, and taken
    for new, and again by Walter Long.'

But, naturally, the first man to do it stirred up a hornets' nest.
_Punch_ of the first week in January, 1884, derides the 'Bitter Cry of
Bumbledom' against Dilke and Mr. Hugh Owen, [Footnote: Years after Sir
Hugh Owen, G.C.B., wrote to Dilke: 'I shall always remember that I owed
my first step in the Order of the Bath to you.'] Secretary to the Local
Government Board:

  '_Us_ to blame? That's a capital notion! Drat them and their
      "statutes" and "digests"!
  "Convenience of reference." Ah! that is one of their imperent sly
      jests.
  Removal of Noosances? Yah! If we started on _that_ lay perniskers
  There is more than a few in the Westries 'ud feel suthin' singein'
      their wiskers,
  Or BUMBLE'S a Dutchman. Their Circ'lar--it's mighty obliging--defines
      'em,
  The Noosances namely; I wonder if parties _read_ Circ'lars as signs
      'em,
  If so, Local Government Boarders must be most oncommonly knowin',
  And I'd like to 'eave bricks at that DILKE and his long-winded
      myrmidon OWEN.
  The public's got Slums on the brain, and with sanitry bunkum's have
      busted.
  _We_ make a more wigorous use of the powers with which we're
      entrusted!
  Wy, if we are at it all day with their drains, ashpits, roofs, walls,
      and windies,
  Wot time shall we 'ave for our feeds and our little porochial
      shindies!
  And all for the 'labouring classes'--the greediest, ongratefullest
      beggars.
  I tell you these Radical lot and their rubbishy littery eggers,
  Who talk of neglected old brooms, and would 'ave _us_ turn to at their
      handles,
  Are Noosances wus than bad smells and the rest o' their sanitry
      "scandals."'

Sir Charles's main object in local government was to decentralize, and
he sought to move in this direction by stimulating the exercise of
existing powers and the habit of responsibility in local popularly
elected bodies. But inquiry was also necessary.

    'On February 8th, 1884, it had been decided to appoint a Royal
    Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes, and Mr. Gladstone
    had expressed his wish that I should be chairman of the Commission,
    on which the Prince of Wales desired to serve.'

    'On the 9th it was settled that Bodley, my secretary, should be
    secretary to the Royal Commission. I immediately wrote to Manning to
    ask him to serve, and he consented on February 12th.'

Lord Salisbury's name lent another distinction to the list, which was
completed by February 16th. [Footnote: In addition to the Prince, the
Cardinal, and Lord Salisbury, Dilke's Commission consisted of Lord
Brownlow, Lord Carrington, Mr. Goschen, Sir Richard Cross, the Bishop of
Bedford (Dr. Walsham How), Mr. E. Lyulph Stanley, Mr. McCullagh Torrens,
Mr. Broadhurst, Mr. Jesse Collings, Mr. George Godwin, and Mr. Samuel
Morley. To these were added later Mr. Dwyer Gray and Sir George
Harrison, for Ireland and Scotland respectively.]

    'A very difficult question arose about his precedence. I referred it
    to the Prince of Wales, who said that he thought Manning ought to
    take precedence, as a Prince, after Princes of the Blood, and before
    Lord Salisbury.'

The nice question was referred to Lord Salisbury and to many other
authorities, and finally to Lord Sydney, who wrote, from the Board of
Green Cloth, 'that in 1849, at the Queen's Levee at Dublin Castle, the
Roman Catholic Primate followed the Protestant Archbishop, but he was
not a Cardinal. _A fortiori_ I presume a Cardinal as a Prince of the
Holy Roman Empire would have precedence next to the Prince of Wales. It
showed, however, extraordinary ignorance on the part of the Lord Steward
to suppose that the Holy Roman Empire and the Papal Court were the same
thing.' [Footnote: The story of how the question of precedence was
settled in Manning's favour is given in detail in Mr. Bodley's _Cardinal
Manning, and Other Essays_ (1912).]

    'It was on February 12th that I received Sir Henry Ponsonby's letter
    announcing the approval of the Queen to the Prince serving on the
    Commission as an ordinary member under my chairmanship, and the
    Prince of Wales expressed his pleasure at the Queen's approval.'

    'On February 22nd the members of the Cabinet present (at a meeting
    at the Foreign Office) discussed my proposal to put Miss Octavia
    Hill on my Royal Commission, no woman having ever sat on one; and
    Harcourt having refused to sign the Commission if it contained a
    woman's name, Mr. Gladstone, Kimberley, and Northbrook sided with
    me, and Hartington with Harcourt. Lord Granville said that he was
    with me on the principle, but against me on the person. After this
    Mr. Gladstone went round, and said that the decision of the Cabinet
    was against me. Asquith put several women on a Royal Commission a
    few years later, but refused them the precedence to which they were
    entitled, and gave every male member precedence before them.'

Mr. Lyulph Stanley was included to represent his sister, Miss Maude
Stanley, whom Sir Charles Dilke had wished to appoint.

Later in the year Sir Charles successfully asserted the principle for
which he was contending, by putting women on the Metropolitan Asylums
Board. Lady Ducie had the honour of the first invitation to serve, and
Sir Charles afterwards added Miss Maude Stanley and others. The question
of qualification was discussed, only to be set aside. The law officers

    'knew the women would be knocked off if anyone raised the question,
    and in Lady Sandhurst's case this was afterwards made clear; but no
    one did raise it against my nominees, and they stayed on for life.'

    'March 7th.--I had now had several interviews with Lord Salisbury
    and the Prince of Wales about the Royal Commission, and the first
    meeting of the Commission itself was held on March 5th.... We really
    began our work on March 14th. My work was heavy at this time, with
    sittings of the Commission twice a week, for which I had to prepare,
    as I did all the examination in chief of the witnesses, and, indeed,
    found them all and corresponded with them in advance.'

    'The Commission was dull, although it produced a certain amount of
    valuable evidence, and almost the only amusing incident which
    occurred in the course of many months was Lord Salisbury making a
    rather wild suggestion, when Broadhurst put down his pen, and,
    looking up in a pause, said with an astonished air, "Why, that is
    Socialism!" at which there was a loud laugh all round.'

    'I wrote to Lord Salisbury on May 7th to ask him for his suggestions
    as to what I called "remedies" to be proposed by our Commission, as
    I had already made my own list, and wished from this time forward to
    examine each witness on the same heads, with a view to collecting a
    body of evidence for the Report, intended to lead to recommendation
    and legislation upon these particular points....'

Some of Lord Salisbury's suggestions were 'valuable, and still throw
much light on his temporary Radicalism, which unfortunately soon wore
off.'

    'It is clear that on May 9th, 1884, he was contemplating throwing
    the rates upon the land, and making a long step towards leasehold
    enfranchisement. Lord Salisbury's proposal on this last head was
    virtually one for "judicial rents," as far as principle went, and
    destructive of the old view of the rights of holders of landed
    property--although, perhaps, not one carrying much advantage to
    anybody!'

The Report of the Commission proposed the rating of vacant land, but
before it was drafted Lord Salisbury condemned the proposal in a
memorandum attached to the Report, which Mr. Goschen supported by
another independent minute.

Sir Charles sent also a request for the suggestion of 'remedies' to
Cardinal Manning, who, says a scribbled note, 'is our only
revolutionary!'

    'On Friday, May 16th, at the Commission the Cardinal handed me his
    list of suggestions, which were not only revolutionary, but ill-
    considered, and I have to note how curiously impracticable a
    schemer, given to the wildest plans, this great ecclesiastic showed
    himself. He suggested the removal out of London, not only of prisons
    and infirmaries (which no doubt are under the control of public
    authorities), but also of breweries, ironworks, and all factories
    not needed for daily or home work, as a means of giving us areas for
    housing the working class, suggestions the value or practicability
    of which I need hardly discuss.'

    'On May 18th, I having proposed to add to the Royal Commission a
    member for Ireland and a member for Scotland before we began to take
    the Scotch and Irish evidence, and having proposed Gray, the
    Nationalist member and proprietor of the _Freeman's Journal_, who
    was the highest Irish authority upon the subject, Ponsonby replied:
    "Although the Queen cannot say she has a high opinion of Mr. Gray,
    Her Majesty will approve of his appointment, and that of the Lord
    Provost of Edinburgh, on the Royal Commission." Sir Henry Ponsonby
    was a worthy successor of General Grey--a wise counsellor of much
    prudence, invaluable to the Queen.'

    'Early in June Chamberlain came a good deal to the Local Government
    Board to consider the evidence which he was to give before my
    Commission. His view was mine--that in the Metropolis the housing of
    the working classes could only be dealt with by imposing the most
    stringent obligations on the owners of property on which artisans'
    dwellings already existed; and Chamberlain was willing to go so far
    as to reserve such property permanently for the object, with State
    interference to secure fair rents. I argued with him that a strong
    case could be made against him on such points as extension of trade
    from the City into Whitechapel, extension of fashionable dwellings
    from Mayfair into Chelsea, and so forth. He then fell back upon a
    proposal for exchange, and said that at all events there was no
    practical alternative to his view, an opinion in which I agreed. On
    a later day in June the Cardinal wrote to me expressing his regret
    for absence from the Commission, "at which I should like to have
    seen Lord Salisbury examine Mr. Chamberlain." But the Commission
    kept up its character for dulness, and nothing noteworthy occurred.'

The Commission on Housing, to which so much of Sir Charles's time was
devoted, had an importance, now forgotten, in the modern development of
Social Reform.

    'Up to five-and-twenty years ago,' said a writer in a daily
    newspaper on Social Reform in 1910, 'when the living Sir Charles
    Dilke was the President of the Local Government Board, no one cared
    how the poor lived or fared. They could reside in the most
    ramshackle tenements in insanitary slums, for which, by the way,
    they were charged exorbitant rents, far higher than what they would
    now pay for the well-ventilated and well-equipped self-contained
    houses of the London County Council and building companies which
    provide accommodation for the industrial classes. Sir Charles saw
    the abject and helpless condition of the people of London, and
    resolved, when he succeeded to office, to try and remedy the evils
    under which they laboured. His enthusiasm in the cause of the poor
    caught on, and in a short time "slumming" became a fashionable
    craze. Committees were formed--the premier one being that which had
    its headquarters at the Mansion House--to improve the dwellings of
    the poor. In a short time the movement became a great success, and,
    that there should be no falling back, medical officers of health,
    whose sole time was to be devoted to their duties, and battalions of
    sanitary inspectors, were appointed in every district in the
    Metropolis.'

It cannot be said that 'no one cared,' for outside the great official
movement which Sir Charles Dilke directed were the devoted social
workers on whom he called for evidence at the Commission, and to whose
labours he always paid tribute; nor must be forgotten the Queen's fine
letter calling on her Ministers to act. But, as Miss Octavia Hill wrote
to him on March 22nd, 1884, 'you among all men realize most clearly that
action is more needed than words.'

The question of Housing is so inextricably bound up with all the
conditions of the poor, with hours of work and with those questions of
wages which Sir Charles had first studied with John Stuart Mill, that it
is natural to find him presiding over another inquiry which, though
prepared for in 1884, was carried out in the first weeks of 1885.

    'At the beginning of the new year of 1885 there were completed the
    final arrangements for my presidency of the Industrial Remuneration
    Conference, which was held at the end of January at Prince's Hall,
    Piccadilly, on three mornings and three afternoons. A large sum of
    money had been given for the purpose of promoting the consideration
    of the best means for bringing about a more equal division of the
    products of industry between capital and labour, so that it might
    become possible for all to enjoy a fair share of material comfort
    and intellectual culture--possible for all to lead a dignified life,
    and less difficult to lead a good life. The trustees who were
    appointed decided to promote a conference on the present system
    whereby the products of industry are distributed between the various
    classes of the community, and the means whereby that system should
    be improved. They then divided the subject into subheads, and asked
    certain persons to read papers, and an extraordinarily interesting
    series of discussions was the result. In my own speech in opening
    the proceedings I called attention to the nature of the German
    Governmental Socialism, and quoted Prince Bismarck's speeches,
    showing what was the object which the Prussian Government had in
    view--namely, to try experiments as to the labour of man with the
    view "to reach a state of things in which no man could say: 'I bear
    the burden of society, but no one cares for me.'" This Conference
    first introduced to London audiences all the leaders of the new
    Unionism, and future chiefs of the Dockers' Strike. Among the
    speakers were Arthur Balfour and John Burns, who told us of his
    dismissal from his employment as an engineer at Brotherhoods
    [Footnote: A great engineering firm at Chippenham in Wiltshire.] for
    attending as delegate of the "S.D.F."'

    'I am convinced,' wrote Mr. Burns in 1914 from the Office of the
    Local Government Board, over which he then presided, 'that few, if
    any, conferences held in London in recent years have done more good
    for the cause of social progress than the Industrial Remuneration
    Conference of 1885. The Conference focussed public opinion and
    sympathy upon a large number of important questions, which have
    since made greater headway than they would have done if the
    Conference had not taken place. I have the highest opinion of the
    value of its work, and of the good influence it exercised in
    stimulating inquiry and action in many directions.'

Six years later, when Sir Charles was before the electors of the Forest
of Dean as their chosen candidate, he discussed the whole question of
limiting by law the hours of work; and he told them how his experience
of those days spent in the chair of the Conference in 1885 had converted
him 'from a position of absolute impartiality to one strongly favourable
to legislative limitation.'

A speech delivered by him in January, 1884, to the Liberals of Bedford
Park, brings together the two sides of his work. For him political
reform lay at the very base of social reform; in his opinion the
government of London and extension of the franchise ought not to be
party questions at all; his desire was to call the whole people of the
country into citizenship of the State, and he would make exercise of the
voting power compulsory and universal. People said there was no 'magic
in the vote.' He wanted as many citizens as possible to have the right
to consider 'the sort of magic by which many persons contrived to live
at all under the existing social conditions.'

A proof of his friendship for the cause of labour, and of his desire to
associate manual workers with the administration, was given by him in a
use of patronage, in which he departed from his principle of confining
it to the men in his office, tendering the chance of official employment
to two leading representatives of labour in August, 1884.

    'I had a "good" appointment under the Local Government Board to
    make, and I offered it not only to Broadhurst, but afterwards to
    Burt. I expected both of them to decline, which both did, but I
    should have been glad if either of them would have taken it, for
    both were competent.'


IV.

As to his departmental work, Sir Charles notes in July, 1884:

    'I have said but little of my work at the Local Government Board,
    because, though heavy, it was of an uninteresting nature.'
    [Footnote: There are, however, many entries, of which this for 1884
    is typical:

    'September 8th.--With the Local Government Board Inspectors Fleming
    and Courtenay to the worst villages in England. I made my way from
    Bridport to Yeovil, Nettlecombe, Powerstock, Maiden Newton, Taunton
    and its neighbourhood, Wiveliscombe, Bridgwater, and North
    Petherton.'

    'Between September 21st and 27th I was visiting workhouses and
    infirmaries every day, and on the 27th I completed my visits to
    every workhouse, infirmary, and poor-law school in or belonging to
    Metropolitan Unions.]

    'My chief new departure was in connection with the emigration of
    pauper children, which had been long virtually prohibited, and which
    I once more authorized.'

Mr. Preston Thomas has fortunately preserved a note of another
innovation. The Guardians of a certain union in Cambridgeshire had
committed the offence of spending three shillings and threepence of
public money on toys for sick pauper children in the workhouse
infirmary. The case had occurred before, and the Board's legal advisers
had held the expenditure to be unwarrantable, and had surcharged the
offending Guardians. Dilke was questioned in the House about the matter,
and admitted the previous decisions, but said that the Board had changed
its mind. So the children at Wisbech kept their toys; and not only that,
but a circular went out from Whitehall suggesting that workhouse girls
should be supplied with a reasonable number of skipping-ropes and
battledores and shuttlecocks.

The appearance of cholera in French and Spanish ports disquieted the
public, and as early as July 25th, 1883,

    'I circulated a draft of a Bill to meet the cholera scare, which I
    carried into law as the Diseases Prevention Act. I did not much
    believe in cholera, but I took advantage of the scare to carry some
    useful clauses to deal with smallpox epidemics, the most important
    clause being one giving compulsory powers for acquiring wharves, by
    which we could clear the London smallpox hospitals, removing the
    patients to the Atlas and Castalia floating hospitals on the Thames.
    I was a strong partisan of the floating hospitals for smallpox. I
    used to pay frequent visits to them, and in the early summer of 1885
    stayed there from Saturday to Monday; and I used also to go to the
    camp at Darenth to which we removed convalescents from the ships.'

He notes that he was revaccinated before one of these visits:

    'September, 1884.--My arm was in a frightful condition from the
    vaccine disease, though I was still a teetotaller, now of about ten
    years' standing.'

During the autumn recess:

    'In the course of this week I was every day inspecting schools and
    asylums, the imbecile asylums at Caterham, Leavesden, and many
    others; and my smallpox wharves were also giving me much trouble, as
    Rotherhithe and the other places showed strong objections to them,
    which I was, however, able to remove.'

But the veteran official who has been already quoted attaches a very
different importance to this whole matter. In France and Spain, says Mr.
Preston Thomas, the Governments were chiefly concerned to deny the
existence of any danger. In England the medical staff demanded such an
increase in the number of inspectors as would enable them to take proper
precautions at the ports.

    'Fortunately, Sir Charles Dilke had become President of the Board,
    and carried with him a political weight which his two worthy, but
    not particularly influential, predecessors, Sclater-Booth and
    Dodson, had not enjoyed. He had one or two passages of arms with
    Childers, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, when it was attempted to
    interfere with the estimates which he had put forward, and which he
    declined to defend in Parliament if they were curtailed. There was
    an appeal to the Premier, and Sir Charles Dilke had come off
    victorious. So when he proposed largely to increase the medical
    staff in order to make a sanitary survey of the entire coast, the
    Treasury's sanction was given, and the work was carried out with
    far-reaching results. The authorities of the ports ... were
    impressed with a sense of their responsibilities; not only did they
    organize special arrangements for the inspection of ships from
    infected countries, but they also recognized the necessity of
    setting their own houses in order in a literal sense, and many of
    them for the first time displayed activity in providing pure water,
    efficient sewerage, and a prompt removal of nuisances.... The
    communications of the Board's expert with the local authorities and
    their officers ... did something more than lay the foundations of
    that Public Health System ... which has saved us from any outbreak
    of cholera for the last quarter of a century, [Footnote: Written in
    1909.] and has reduced the mortality from preventable diseases to a
    rate which such countries as France and Germany may well envy.'
    (_Work and Play of a Government Inspector_, p. 148.)

It should be noted, too, that the first definite action of the Housing
Commission concerned the Local Government Board:

    'It was decided to ask Parliament to alter its standing orders with
    regard to persons of the labouring class displaced under
    Parliamentary Powers, and to insist on local inquiry in such cases,
    and the approval of the Local Government Board after it has been
    shown that suitable accommodation had been found for the people
    displaced. This was done by resolution of both Houses of
    Parliament.'


V.

The friendliness which had grown up between Sir Charles and Lord
Salisbury, and was later in this year to be of public service, is
illustrated by an amusing note in the Memoir. Sir Charles Dilke was
never a clubman, and had incurred the remonstrances of Sir M. Grant Duff
by refusing to take up membership of the Athenaeum, as he was entitled
to do on entering the Cabinet. But there is a club more august than the
Athenaeum, and here also Dilke showed indisposition to enter. He notes
in May:

    'Before this I had been much pressed to accept my election at
    Grillion's Club on Lord Salisbury's nomination. The Club considers
    itself such an illustrious body that it elects candidates without
    telling them they are proposed, and I received notice of my election
    accompanied by some congratulations. I at first refused to join, but
    afterwards wrote to the secretary: "Carlingford has been to see me
    about Grillion's, and tells me that I should have the terrible
    distinction of being the first man who ever declined to belong to
    it, an oddity which I cannot face, so ... I will ask your leave to
    withdraw my refusal." On May 3rd I breakfasted at the Club for the
    first time, Mr. Gladstone and a good many other Front Bench people,
    chiefly Conservatives, being present.'

The meetings of the Housing Commission had also increased the frequency
of intercourse between Sir Charles Dilke and the Prince of Wales, who
was in this May

    'showing a devotion to the work of my Commission which was quite
    unusual with him, and he cut short his holiday and returned from
    Royat to London on purpose for our meeting.'

On January 11th, 1884, the Duke of Albany wrote to Sir Charles that he
had hoped to call, but was not sure whether he had returned to England.
'I write to express a hope that your opinions will coincide with the
request which I have made to Lord Derby ... namely, to succeed Lord
Normanby as Governor of Victoria.' He referred to their talk at
Claremont of his 'hopes, which were not realized, of going to Canada.'
'The Prince went on to say that, as I had been in Australia, I was "a
more competent judge than some others of the Ministers as to the
advisability of my appointment."' He spoke of the matter as one in which
he was 'vitally interested,' and his 'sincere trust' in Sir Charles's
support. The Cabinet agreed to the appointment,

    'unless the Queen persisted in her opposition. The matter had been
    discussed at Eastwell (where I stayed with the Duchess of Edinburgh
    from the 19th to the 21st) by me with the Duchess as well as with
    Princess Louise and Lorne, who were also there. The Duke of
    Edinburgh was not there, but at Majorca in his ship. The party
    consisted of Nigra, the Italian Ambassador, the Wolseleys, Lord
    Baring and his sister Lady Emma, and Count Adlerberg of the Russian
    Embassy, in addition to the Princess Louise and Lome already named.'

    'On January 24th there was a regular Cabinet. The Queen had written
    that she would not allow Prince Leopold to go to Victoria.'

On March 28th 'we heard of the death of Prince Leopold,' codicils to
whose will Sir Charles had witnessed in the preceding year. 'All
newspapers wrote of the pleasant boy as though he had been a man of
literary genius.'

But anxious as Sir Charles had been to further Prince Leopold's wishes,
and in spite of his 'respect for his memory,' he could not allow a
principle, for which he always fought, to be waived.

    'The Queen wrote to Mr. Gladstone at this time (April 5th) with
    regard to provision for the child and possible posthumous child of
    the Duke of Albany, and I wrote to Mr. Gladstone that I could not
    possibly agree to any provision for them, for which there was no
    exact precedent, without the Select Committee which I had previously
    been promised as regarded any new application.'

On April 22nd Mr. Gladstone alluded 'to a letter to the Queen, but he
did not read it to us,' and Sir Charles again insisted 'upon inquiry
before the proposal of any provision for which there was no direct
precedent.'

    'At the Cabinet of Monday, April 28th, we found that the Queen was
    indignant with us for our refusal to make further provision for the
    Duchess of Albany.... None of the precedents of the century
    warranted provision for children in infancy. It was agreed that Mr.
    Gladstone was to write to the Queen again, but "our negative answer
    is only applicable to the case where the children are in infancy."
    In other words, we did not wish to bind those who might come after
    us, but the phrase was not to commit us as to what we would do in
    five years' time.'




CHAPTER XXXV

EGYPT

1884


I.

At the close of 1883 the destruction of Hicks's army had made clear to
all that the Soudan was, for the time at least, lost to Egypt; and close
upon this disaster in the central region had followed defeats on the Red
Sea coast. But Egyptian garrisons were holding out at Sinkat, some fifty
miles from the port of Suakim, and at Tokar, only twenty miles from the
coast. In October, 1883, a small force sent to relieve Sinkat was cut up
by the Dervishes under Osman Digna; in November, a larger column of 500,
accompanied by the British Consul, was utterly routed in an attempt to
reach Tokar. General Baker, with his newly formed gendarmerie, was then
ordered to Suakim. He desired to enlist the services of Zebehr Pasha, a
famous leader of men, but a former dealer in slaves. To this the British
authorities objected, and Zebehr was not sent. Baker went, attempted
with 3,500 troops to reach Tokar, and on February 2nd, 1884, lost 2,000
of them near the wells of El Teb. Both Tokar and Sinkat soon after fell
into the hands of the Dervishes.

Long before this event, the evacuation of the Soudan had been decreed. A
peremptory mandate from the British Government was sent to Cherif Pasha,
the Egyptian Prime Minister, who, as he had intimated that he would do,
resigned rather than be responsible for giving up so vast a possession.
On January 8th, Nubar took office to carry out the prescribed policy.
But the problem was how to get away the garrisons, and, since England
had ordered evacuation, the Egyptian Government looked to England for
assistance.

    'On January 16th I noted: "Baring wants to make us send a British
    officer to conduct the retreat from Khartoum. I have written to Lord
    Granville to protest." Baring had been pressing for an answer to his
    suggestion named above. I had all along fought against the "Hicks
    Expedition," and this seemed a consequence. The Egyptian Government
    had resigned, and the sole supporter of the abandonment policy among
    the Egyptians in Egypt was the Khedive himself; but Nubar was sent
    for, and accepted office (with a number of cyphers) to carry it into
    effect. On January 10th Lord Granville had telegraphed to Baring,
    without my knowledge, "Would Gordon or Wilson be of use?" [Footnote:
    Colonel Sir Charles Wilson. See his _Life_, by Sir Charles Watson,
    p. 244.] On the 11th Baring replied, "I do not think that the
    services of Gordon or Wilson can be utilized at present"; and after
    a reply had been received I saw the telegrams. The earlier Gordon
    suggestions by Granville, now revealed by E. Fitzmaurice from the
    Granville Papers, and expounded in Cromer's (1908) book, were never
    before the Cabinet. [Footnote: Life of Lord Granville, vol. ii., pp.
    381, 382.]

    'On the 14th Lord Granville telegraphed to Baring: "Can you give
    further information as to prospects of retreat from (? for) army and
    residents at Khartoum, and measures taken? Can anything more be
    done?" Power, our Consular Agent at Khartoum, had also been told
    that he might leave. On January 16th Baring telegraphed: "The
    Egyptian Government would feel obliged if Her Majesty's Government
    would send out at once a qualified British officer to go to Khartoum
    with full powers, civil and military, to conduct the retreat." Lord
    Granville then telegraphed for Gordon, and on the 18th I was
    summoned suddenly to a meeting at the War Office in Hartington's
    room, at which were present, before I arrived, Hartington, Lord
    Granville and Lord Northbrook, and Colonel Gordon. Gordon said that
    he believed that the danger at Khartoum had been "grossly
    exaggerated," and that the two Englishmen there had "lost their
    heads"; he would be able to bring away the garrisons without
    difficulty. We decided that he should go to Suakim to collect
    information and report on the situation in the Soudan. This was the
    sole decision taken, but it was understood that if he found he could
    get across he should go on to Berber. Gordon started at night on the
    same day.

    'On January 22nd the first subject mentioned was that of Egyptian
    finance, a Rothschild loan for six months being suggested, but
    nothing settled. The Cabinet approved our action in sending Gordon.
    But they had before them a great deal more than what we had
    done--namely, what he had done himself. On his road between London
    and Brindisi he had prepared a series of decrees which he
    telegraphed to us and which we telegraphed to Baring. In these he
    announced the restoration to the various Sultans of the Soudan of
    their independence, and he made the Khedive say: "I have
    commissioned General Gordon, late Governor-General of the Soudan, to
    proceed there as my representative, and to arrange with you" (the
    peoples of the Soudan) "for the evacuation of the country and the
    withdrawal of my troops." He then made the Khedive appoint him
    "Governor-General for the time necessary to accomplish the
    evacuation." He also telegraphed to the Hadendowa and Bishareen
    Arabs of the desert between Suakim and Berber, directing them to
    meet him at Suakim, and saying that he should be there in fourteen
    days. In sending these we told Baring: "Suggestions made by Gordon.
    We have no local knowledge sufficient to judge. You may settle
    terms, and act upon them at once, as time presses, or after
    consultation with him." Mr. Gladstone did not object, although
    strongly opposed to our undertaking responsibility in the Soudan,
    because Gordon still spoke in every sentence of conducting the
    evacuation; but reading his proclamations in the light of his
    subsequent change of mind, and desire to stay in Khartoum and be
    supported by force, it seems clear that he had deceived us and did
    not really mean evacuation. This, however, could not yet be seen
    from the words he used. I wrote to Lord Granville on January 22nd,
    to point out that in addition to the danger in the Soudan, which had
    been foreseen, there was a risk that Gordon might get himself
    carried off alive into the desert by some of the Arab chiefs that he
    was to meet, and that in that case we should have to send an
    expedition after him.

    'On January 31st there was a meeting at the War Office about Egypt
    between Hartington, Lord Granville, Edmond Fitzmaurice and myself.
    As the facts about Gordon were beginning to be misrepresented in the
    Press, Lord Granville set them down in writing. [Footnote: See _Life
    of Gladstone_, vol. iii., pp. 152-155; Life of Granville, vol. ii.,
    pp. 381-385 and 512, where a letter from Lord Cromer on General
    Gordon's instructions is printed; and chap. xvi. ('Gordon, and the
    Soudan') in _The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1900_, by
    Dr. J. Holland Rose.] It had been stated, and was afterwards
    repeated by Justin McCarthy in his history, that the mission on
    which we sent Gordon "was in direct opposition to his own ideas. He
    was not in favour of the abandonment of the Soudan or the evacuation
    of Khartoum." It had also been said that the whole mission had been
    forced upon us by the Press--i.e., by Stead, in the _Pall Mall
    Gazette_. Lord Granville gave me a memorandum saying that Gordon had
    acknowledged that the statements in the _Pall Mall_ were "not
    accurate." Lord Granville went on to say that he did not think that
    Gordon could be said to have "changed his mind. It appeared in his
    conversation with Wolseley on the Tuesday that he (Gordon) was not
    decided in his opinion, and that he was as likely to recommend one
    course as another.... I told him that we would not send him out to
    re-open the whole question, and he then declared himself ready to go
    out merely to help in the evacuation of the interior of the Soudan.
    He is not remarkably precise in conversation, though I found him
    much more so than Wolseley had led me to expect."

    'Lord Granville had previously written to me on this point: "The
    papers seem to think that Gordon is a new discovery by the
    Government under pressure of the Press. It happens that I consulted
    Malet on the subject months ago. But after communicating with Cherif
    he sent me an unfavourable reply. I subsequently consulted Baring,
    who agreed with Cherif that it was best not to do so. I consulted
    him again after the change of Ministry, with the same result. On the
    other hand Gordon was in Syria, having declared before leaving
    England that he would not enter the Egyptian service. It was only on
    his return to England that I heard indirectly that, although he had
    no wish to go, he would willingly obey the orders of Her Majesty's
    Government and act under the instructions of Sir Evelyn Baring and
    the orders of General Stephenson. Having got the full concurrence of
    Sir E. Baring by telegraph, the matter was arranged."

    'The fact was that it was Wolseley, Gordon's friend, who suggested
    that he should be sent and who induced him to go; but Wolseley's
    account of the matter could not, I fear, be trusted, as he is more
    inclined to attack Gladstone than to let out anything which in the
    light of subsequent events might be unpleasant to himself.

    'Edmond Fitzmaurice had drawn up an elaborate memorandum for our
    meeting at the War Office, which I have, with my own corrections. He
    thought that the public was hostile to us on four grounds: our
    non-interference to stop Hicks; [Footnote: General Hicks advanced
    west of the Nile, contrary to the views of Lord Dufferin, who wished
    him to limit his advance to the province lying between the
    bifurcation of the Blue and White Nile. See the _Life of Dufferin_,
    by Alfred Lyall, vol. ii., pp. 56, 57.] our failure to withdraw the
    garrisons of Khartoum and of the Equatorial Provinces in time to
    avoid disaster; our failure to relieve Sinkat; and, on the other
    hand, our decision to force the Egyptians to evacuate the Soudan in
    the face of defeat, a decision which had overturned Cherif Pasha.
    With regard to Hicks, we could only tell the truth, which was that
    our policy was to limit, not extend, the sphere of our
    responsibilities in Egypt; that we followed the advice we got, which
    was either for doing exactly what we did, or for a moderate support
    of Hicks, which latter we declined. Our opponents were prophesying
    after the event. We should have taken a great responsibility had we
    absolutely forbidden the Egyptian Government to make use of their
    own troops (not including any portion of the army officered by
    English officers under Sir Evelyn Wood for the defence of Lower
    Egypt) to crush the Mahdi. Hicks had at first defeated the Mahdi in
    every encounter and cleared him out of the whole country east of the
    Nile. [Footnote: Hicks Pasha complained that directly Lord Dufferin
    had left Cairo for Constantinople, he ceased to received adequate
    support from the Egyptian Government (_Life of Dufferin_. vol. ii.,
    p. 55).] The main point, however, and that of present importance,
    was our forcing upon the Egyptians the policy of evacuating the
    Soudan after Hicks's defeat. Fitzmaurice wrote: "The Soudan could
    not be held without the assistance of England, and it is not a
    British interest to hold the Soudan.... The cost of the Soudan is
    one of the causes which ruin the Egyptian Treasury." Edmond
    Fitzmaurice then went on to explain in his memorandum the reasons
    which had forced us to wait until January 4th before we had told the
    Egyptian Government as to withdrawal from the interior of the
    Soudan, including Khartoum--"that the Ministers must carry out the
    advice offered them, or forfeit their places."

    'On January 9th we had been told from Khartoum that, if a retreat
    was ordered at once, it could be safely effected; and it was on the
    next day, the 10th, that we offered the services of Colonels Gordon
    and Sir Charles Wilson, which were declined. It was not till January
    16th that we were able to induce the Egyptians, even under their new
    withdrawal Government, to ask for a British officer, and on the 18th
    Gordon was sent. Gordon, however--who had left us to go to Suakim,
    and for whom we had drawn up a route from Suakim to Berber, in case
    he should go forward, and negotiated with the tribes for his free
    passage, and of whom we had telegraphed to Baring, "He does not wish
    to go to Cairo"--went to Cairo, "at Baring's" suggestion. He did not
    even land at Alexandria, but he was stopped by Baring at Port Said
    when on his way to Suakim, Baring sending Sir Evelyn Wood to meet
    him. Baring had already given orders, through Nubar, to commence the
    evacuation. Gordon had telegraphed to us requesting us to send
    Zebehr Pasha to Cyprus--that is, arbitrarily to arrest him and
    deport him. Yet, when he reached Cairo, at his own wish he had had
    an interview with this very man, and shortly afterwards he
    telegraphed to us, asking leave to take him to Khartoum and to make
    him virtually Governor of the Soudan, which, indeed, would have been
    entirely outside our power; for Forster, supported by the Anti-
    Slavery Society and the Conservatives, would at once have upset us
    in the House of Commons and reversed the policy. Wolseley had
    already begun to press as early as the 23rd for the sending of an
    expedition via Suakim and Berber.

    'On January 26th Gordon had left for Khartoum without any
    communication with us upon the question whether he should go, and
    the last thing we had from him before he started was a memorandum in
    which, among other things, he said of the Soudan: "Few men can stand
    its fearful monotony and deadly climate." He insisted on absolute
    authority, and Stewart, who was with him, did the same for him, and,
    backing up his chief's arguments at this moment against Zebehr, said
    that Zebehr's return would undoubtedly be a misfortune to the
    Soudanese, and also a direct encouragement to the slave trade.

    'On February 1st we received a telegram from Baring, telling us that
    Gordon had taken with him proclamations of evacuation, and other
    proclamations less direct, with authority to issue those which he
    thought best; but "he fully understands that he is to carry out the
    policy of evacuation, in which he expressed to me his entire
    agreement. I have sent home by last mail my instructions to him,
    which leave no doubt on this point, and which were drafted at his
    request and with his full approval.... There is no sort of
    difference between his views and those entertained by Nubar Pasha
    and myself." Here ended our responsibility, because it must be
    remembered that Gordon at Khartoum was entirely outside our reach,
    and openly told us that he should not obey our orders when he did
    not choose to do so. From this moment we had only to please
    ourselves as to whether we should disavow him and say that he was
    acting in defiance of instructions, and must be left to his fate, or
    whether we should send an expedition to get him out.

    'Doubtless "we" wavered between these two opinions. Mr. Gladstone
    from the first moment that Gordon broke his orders was for the
    former view. Lord Hartington from the first moment was for the
    latter. Chamberlain and I supported Hartington, although we fully
    recognized Gordon's violations of his orders in much of his action
    at Khartoum, where he changed the policy agreed upon with Baring and
    with us to that expressed by him in the words, "Smash the Mahdi."
    Many members of the Cabinet went backwards and forwards in their
    opinion, but the circumstances were of incredible difficulty, and it
    must be remembered that we were not sure of being allowed to carry
    out either policy; and not only was it difficult to decide which of
    the two was right, but it was also difficult to decide whether
    either policy was possible--that is to say, whether the one adopted
    would not be immediately upset by a Parliamentary vote. The Liberal
    party in the House of Commons was divided on the matter, the Whigs
    generally wishing for an expedition, and the Radicals being hot for
    immediate abandonment of the Soudan, which meant abandonment of
    Gordon. The Conservatives were divided; most of them probably wished
    for an expedition, but they were afraid to say so; and Randolph
    Churchill, whose strength at this time was immense, was in full
    agreement with Labouchere and Wilfrid Lawson, and was denouncing the
    retention of the Soudan as a violation of the principles of freedom.

    'Gordon on his way up and on his arrival at Khartoum issued
    extraordinary proclamations. Arriving there alone, but with
    incredible prestige, he was hailed as father of the people; he
    burned the taxation books and the whips upon the public place; he
    released the prisoners from the gaol; he sent away the commander of
    the garrison with the words, "Rest assured you leave this place as
    safe as Kensington Park." He declared the Mahdi "Sultan of
    Kordofan." Gordon, of all men in the world, sanctioned slavery by
    another written document; and he then asked us to send the arch
    slave-driver Zebehr to his help, which we thought on Baring's
    truthful opinion of the moment that we ought not to do, and which we
    certainly could not have done. I thought and still think that Gordon
    had lost his senses, as he had done on former critical occasions in
    his life; but the romantic element in his nature appealed to me,
    and, while I could not but admit that he had defied every
    instruction which had been given to him, I should have sent an
    expedition to bring him out, although thinking it probable that when
    Wolseley reached him he would have refused to come.'

While Gordon was on his way to Khartoum, which he reached on February
18th, the defeat at El Teb had occurred, and the question arose as to
what should be done in the Eastern Soudan.

    'On February 6th the Cabinet met twice, and at our second meeting it
    was decided to send marines to Suakim.

    'On Thursday, February 7th, I visited the Admiralty with Pauncefote
    in order to take in hand the defence of the Red Sea coast against
    the Arabs, and then I went to the War Office, where I met
    Hartington, Northbrook, Wolseley, and Cooper Key, in order to
    concert steps. When I passed through the Secretary's room after the
    meeting, and stayed for a moment to talk with Hobart and Fleetwood
    Wilson, the Duke of Cambridge (whose room opened into theirs, and
    who had evidently been lying in wait for me) rushed out and carried
    me off into his room, and made much of me, with an enthusiastic
    desire to help an expedition. At night, Hartington, Chamberlain, and
    I met in Hartington's room and decided to press for relief of
    Gordon.

    'On February 8th Chamberlain wrote to me, "I should like to
    telegraph to Baring, 'If you think that employment of British troops
    could relieve beleaguered garrisons in Soudan without danger, you
    are authorized to concert measures with Evelyn Wood.'" A Cabinet was
    called at the wish of Hartington, Chamberlain, and myself, for this
    day upon this point. Hartington, Harcourt, Northbrook, Carlingford,
    Chamberlain, and I, were for asking Gordon if a demonstration at
    Suakim would help him. Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville, very strong
    the other way, broke up the meeting sooner than agree.'

    'Gordon had acted as Governor-General of the Soudan without having
    told us that he had accepted this appointment, and we had had to ask
    on February 4th a question which had been answered by Baring on the
    5th, to the effect that Gordon had "at his own request" been
    appointed Governor-General. On February 6th Baring had telegraphed
    stating that Gordon had said that it was possible he might go to the
    Mahdi and not be heard of for two months, as the Mahdi might keep
    him as a hostage for Zebehr. On the same day we telegraphed to
    Baring approving his having told Gordon that there would be the
    strongest objections to his placing himself in the Mahdi's power. On
    February 7th we received a despatch by post from Baring in which he
    informed us that, while Gordon would probably ask for Zebehr, "it
    would certainly not be desirable to send him ... for he is
    manifestly animated by a feeling of deep resentment against General
    Gordon." At the same time Baring forwarded a shorthand report of the
    meeting between Gordon, Zebehr, Baring, Stewart, Colonel Watson, Sir
    Evelyn Wood, and Nubar, at which Zebehr had told Gordon that he had
    entrusted his son to him, "and told you he was thenceforth your son.
    He was only sixteen years of age.... I entrusted my son to you....
    But you killed my son whom I entrusted to you. He was as your own
    son." _Gordon_: "Well, well, I killed my own son. There is an end of
    it." _Zebehr_: "And then you brought my wives and women and children
    in chains to Khartoum, a thing which for my name in the Soudan was
    most degrading."

    'By the same mail we received a despatch from Baring in which he
    made it clear that Gordon's instructions had Gordon's full approval.
    "He expressed to me his entire concurrence in the instructions. The
    only suggestion he made was in connection with the passage in which,
    speaking of the policy of abandoning the Soudan, I had said, 'I
    understand also that you entirely concur in the desirability of
    adopting this policy.' General Gordon wished that I should add the
    words 'and that you think it should on no account be changed.' These
    words were accordingly added."

    'Between this Cabinet and the next we received, on February 9th, a
    telegram from Baring to the effect that he was sending home a letter
    from Gordon to the King of the Belgians in which he urged the king
    to appoint him Governor of the Equatorial Provinces, Gordon's idea
    being to go there from Khartoum; and Baring stated his own view that
    we should forbid Gordon to go south of Khartoum. In his letter,
    which was dated February 1st, Gordon said that the King of the
    Belgians had told him that he would take over the Provinces with the
    troops in them, when Gordon had been at Brussels immediately before
    we sent him out; but not one word had Gordon ever breathed of this;
    and when we first heard of it he was virtually beyond our reach,
    seated, when our answer arrived, at Khartoum, and little disposed to
    listen to us, although on some points, for a few days, he pretended
    to listen.

    'On February 12th Baring telegraphed that he hoped that "H.M.G. will
    not change any of the main points of their policy"; but, as will be
    seen a little later, Baring soon changed his own, adopting the new
    policy of Gordon, and pressing it upon us.

    'On February 12th it was decided, against Mr. Gladstone, to send an
    expedition to the Red Sea Coast.

    'On February 13th we had before us a statement which had been made
    the previous day by Randolph Churchill, to the effect that in the
    summer of 1883 General Gordon had offered to go to the Soudan, and
    that the Government had telegraphed to him accepting his offer, and
    then written to him declining it. Lord Granville instructed me to
    say that the whole story was one gigantic concoction. I then asked
    Hartington if he knew anything about it; and Lord Wolseley
    ultimately discovered that Randolph Churchill had confused the Congo
    with the Nile, an amusing example of his harum-scarum recklessness.
    Gordon had telegraphed from Syria in October for leave to accept
    service under the King of the Belgians on the Congo, and the
    Commander-in-Chief had replied by telegraph that the Secretary of
    State declined to sanction his employment. In transmission the word
    "declines" was changed into "decides," which exactly reversed its
    sense, so that Gordon had received a confirming letter consistent
    with the telegram as sent, but exactly reversing the sense of the
    telegram as received. He had told the story which Churchill had
    heard, but altered from one side of Africa to the other.'

On February 14th Sir Charles made effective use of this blunder in the
debate upon the vote of censure concerning Egypt. It was a debating
speech which, he himself notes, 'had extraordinary success.' Lord
Randolph Churchill had been more than usually aggressive, and Sir
Charles hammered him with detailed facts. [Footnote: He comments on the
20th on the opinions expressed to him as to his powers of debate: 'This
is a curious position for a man who has no natural gift of speech. I can
remember when I was the worst speaker that ever spoke at all.'] The
debate on this vote of censure, occasioned by the fall of Sinkat,
occupied the House for five days. The motion was defeated by forty-nine.

    'On February 14th I found that Lord Granville had not answered an
    important question from Baring about Wood's Egyptians which had been
    received by us on the 13th, and that because he had not seen it. We
    had started a red label as a danger-signal for pressing notes; but
    Lord Granville's room was full of red-labelled notes not touched.'

He records his remonstrances with Lord Granville as to the non-
employment of Sir Evelyn Wood's Egyptians. On February 18th there was a
Cabinet 'partly upon this subject. It was decided to send reinforcements
to Egypt.'

    'On February 21st there was another Cabinet which again discussed
    the Egyptian question and decided to send Wood's Egyptians to
    Assouan. On the 15th Gordon had reassured us by telling us that all
    communication between Cairo and the Soudan would be finally at an
    end within three months' (that is, that evacuation would be easily
    carried out). 'On February 18th we had heard that on the 17th Gordon
    had issued a proclamation saying that the Government would not
    interfere with the buying and selling of slaves; and this telegram,
    having got out from Cairo, produced a storm in England. On the 19th
    there occurred another matter which was considered by the Cabinet at
    the same time--the absolute refusal of Admiral Hewett, and very
    proper refusal, to issue a proclamation calling on the chiefs from
    Suakim to go peacefully to meet Gordon at Khartoum, inasmuch as the
    Admiral knew "that English troops are about to be sent against the
    people in question." The issue of this proclamation had been
    recommended by Wolseley, who thinks that Governments exist for the
    purpose of deceiving enemies in war for the benefit of generals.

    'On the same day, February 19th, we had received a telegram which
    had been sent off from Khartoum by Gordon on the 18th, asking that
    Zebehr should be sent to the Soudan, "be made K.C.M.G., and given
    presents." This was backed by Stewart, so far as that he said that
    someone should be sent, adding that he was not sure whether Zebehr
    was the best man. It was clear from Gordon's proposed conditions
    that Zebehr was to be free to prosecute the slave trade. In another
    memorandum on the same day Gordon said that we must "give a
    commission to some man and promise him the moral support of
    H.M.G.... It may be argued that H.M.G. would thus be giving ...
    moral support to a man who will rule over a slave state.... This
    nomination of my successor must ... be direct from Her Majesty's
    Government.... As for the man, H.M.G. should select one above all
    others, namely Zebehr." Baring now backed this opinion up, so that
    we were face to face with an absolute change of front on the part of
    Gordon and Baring, and a partial change of front on the part of
    Stewart. On the other hand, Baring, at the same time when he told us
    to appoint Zebehr, added: "I am quite certain that Zebehr hates
    Gordon bitterly, and that he is very vindictive. I would not on any
    account risk putting Gordon in his power.... He is, to my personal
    knowledge, exceedingly untruthful.... I cannot recommend his being
    promised the moral support of Her Majesty's Government. He would
    scarcely understand the phrase, and, moreover, I do not think he
    would attach importance to any support which was not material.... I
    doubt the utility of making conditions. Zebehr would probably not
    observe them long." Baring further proposed that Zebehr should be
    given money, and he left us to judge of the effect of the whole
    scheme on public opinion in England. Colonel Watson, who had been
    present at the meeting between Zebehr and Gordon, informed us that
    to let Gordon and Zebehr be together in the Soudan "would entail the
    death of either one or other of them." On the 21st Gordon
    telegraphed to the newspapers explaining away his slave trade
    proclamation, but its terms were even worse than could have been
    gathered from the first summary, which was all that we had received.

    'On February 21st we received the text of Gordon's proclamation,
    which contained the words, "I confer upon you these rights, that
    henceforth none shall interfere with your property," and spoke with
    apparent regret of "severe measures taken by Government for the
    suppression of slave traffic, and seizure and punishment of all
    concerned."

    'On February 26th there was a meeting of Mr. Gladstone, Hartington,
    Childers, Chamberlain, Dodson, and myself, to approve a telegram
    from Hartington to General Graham; [Footnote: General Graham was in
    command of the expedition to Suakim.] and on the next day again, the
    27th, a meeting of Lord Granville, Hartington, Northbrook, and
    myself, which decided to invite the Turk to show himself at the Red
    Sea ports. On the 29th there was a Cabinet at which it was decided
    that the Turk must approve our future ruler of the Soudan, and that
    British troops were to go as far as Assouan if Baring thought it
    necessary.

    'On February 27th Gordon had frightened us out of our senses by
    telegraphing that, having put out his programme of peace, and
    allowed time to elapse, he was now sending out his troops to show
    his force; and another telegram from him said: "Expedition starts at
    once to attack rebels." On the same day he telegraphed that he had
    issued a proclamation "that British troops are now on their way, and
    in a few days will reach Khartoum." It was very difficult to know
    what to do with this amazing lie: solemnly to point out to him by
    telegraph that it was a lie was hardly of much use with a man of
    Gordon's stamp; and what was done was to send a strong private
    telegram to Baring to communicate with him about it, but the result
    was not encouraging, for it was the first ground for the desperate
    quarrel which Gordon afterwards picked with Baring, and for his
    charge against Baring of inciting the Government to drive him to his
    death.

    'On the next day, February 28th, Gordon, having heard that Zebehr
    was refused, telegraphed his policy of smashing up the Mahdi, which,
    however, he seemed inclined to attempt with a most inadequate force.
    "Mahdi must be smashed up. Mahdi is most unpopular, and with care
    and time could be smashed.... If you decide on smashing Mahdi, then
    send another hundred thousand pounds, and send 200 Indian troops to
    Wady Haifa, and an officer to Dongola under pretence to look out
    quarters for troops.... At present it would be comparatively easy to
    destroy Mahdi." Gordon had also telegraphed to Baring to recommend
    that 3,000 black Egyptian troops should be kept in the Soudan, and
    completely throwing over the evacuation policy. Baring added for
    himself: "There are obviously many contradictions in General
    Gordon's different proposals"; but he went on to express his
    agreement in Gordon's new policy, strongly supported the selection
    of Zebehr, and sneered at us for having regard to uninstructed
    opinion in England. On the same day Gordon telegraphed: "If a
    hundred British troops were sent to Assouan or Wady Halfa, they
    would run no more risk than Nile tourists, and would have the best
    effect." At the same time Baring said: "I certainly would not risk
    sending so small a body as 100 men." It will be seen in how great a
    difficulty the Government were placed; but Baring's position was, in
    fact, as difficult as our own. We were evidently dealing with a wild
    man under the influence of that climate of Central Africa which acts
    even upon the sanest men like strong drink.

    'On the same day Gordon telegraphed to us completely changing his
    ground about Suakim. He had previously prevented our doing anything
    except trying to relieve the towns blockaded, but on March 1st told
    us to do something to draw the Hadendowa down to Suakim. On the 2nd,
    General Graham having beaten the Arabs at Teb, the Admiral asked us
    to send more troops and to threaten Osman Digna's main force, a
    suggestion which concurred with Gordon's. And on March 5th the
    Cabinet met and decided that, while it was impossible to send Zebehr
    to the Soudan, General Graham was to be allowed to attack Osman
    Digna's main force.... Chamberlain then suggested that I should go
    to Egypt: Hartington evidently thought that somebody should go, and
    thought he had better go himself. Lord Granville would not have
    either, as might have been expected.... I suggested a way out of the
    Zebehr difficulty, and wrote to Chamberlain: "If I were sent out to
    do this, I believe I should get away the forces from the interior
    and have Zebehr elected, entirely without our action, by the
    Notables at Khartoum. On the whole, this would do if we did not do
    it. This would, in my opinion, be improved by Turkish approval under
    Turkish suzerainty, but that you do not like." Chamberlain answered:
    "Perhaps we cannot help having Zebehr, but surely we ought not to
    promote him, directly or indirectly; not only because he is a slave-
    hunter, but also because he will probably attack Egypt sooner or
    later, and very likely with the help of our subsidy." I replied: "I
    am quite clear that we must not set up Zebehr, but if we retire we
    cannot prevent his election by the Notables; and they would elect
    him." In the meantime Gordon had completely thrown over Baring's
    suggestion that Zebehr should be sent (but so sent that he and
    Gordon should not be in the Soudan together) by telegraphing that
    the combination at Khartoum of Zebehr and himself was "an absolute
    necessity," and that it would be "absolutely necessary" for him to
    stay at Khartoum with Zebehr for four months; and Stewart had now
    completely come over to Gordon's policy about Zebehr personally. On
    the other hand, Baring and the military authorities in Egypt were
    unanimously opposed to the idea of sending a small British force to
    Wady Halfa.

    'On March 7th it was decided to give an inland district to the
    Abyssinians, but not to offer them a port (which was what they
    wanted), on account of its not being ours to give away from the
    Turks. The Cabinet would not hear of receiving a Turkish
    Commissioner at Cairo.

    'On March 11th we further considered pressing demands from Gordon
    and Baring for Zebehr. Mr. Gladstone had taken to his bed, but was
    known to be strongly in favour of sending Zebehr. The Cabinet were
    unanimous the other way, and Hartington was sent to see Mr.
    Gladstone, we waiting till he returned. When he came back, he
    laconically stated what had passed as follows: "He thinks it very
    likely that we cannot make the House swallow Zebehr, but he thinks
    he could." Morley has told this, but the words which he took
    verbally from me are less good. [Footnote: _Life of Gladstone_, vol.
    iii., p. 159.] Baring on the 6th had recommended a further attack on
    Osman Digna, which he thought might open the Berber route. On the
    9th we received Gordon's replies to our telegrams of the 5th,
    showing that he had done nothing towards the evacuation of Khartoum
    except by sending away the sick. He admitted that it was possible
    that "Zebehr, who hates the tribes, did stir up the fires of revolt,
    in hopes that he would be sent to quell it. It is the irony of fate
    that he will get his wish if sent up." On the same day Baring
    informed us that it was clear that Gordon now had no influence
    outside Khartoum, and that he contemplated the despatch of British
    troops. The Anti-Slavery Society had strongly protested against the
    employment of Zebehr, and they pointed out to us the records of
    murders "in which this man has stood the foremost and the principal
    actor.... Countenance ... of such an individual by the British
    Government would be a degradation for England and a scandal to
    Europe." W. E. Forster, amid loud cheers from the Conservatives,
    protested in advance in the House of Commons against the policy of
    sending Zebehr. On March 11th we had received in the morning from
    Baring twelve telegrams from Gordon, of the most extraordinary
    nature, which Baring had answered: "I am most anxious to help and
    support you in every way, but I find it very difficult to understand
    exactly what it is you want." Besides deciding that Zebehr could not
    be sent, the Cabinet changed its mind about the employment of Turks
    in the Red Sea, and decided that they could not be allowed to go
    there at present.

    'On March 13th the matter was again considered by a Cabinet, which
    was not called a Cabinet as Mr. Gladstone was in bed and Chamberlain
    was at Birmingham, and on the 14th we met again, still retaining our
    opinion; and on Sunday, the 16th, Mr. Gladstone at last unwillingly
    gave up Zebehr as impossible. [Footnote: _Life of Granville_, vol.
    ii., p. 388.]

    'I had been at this time working out the facts connected with the
    two routes to Khartoum in case an expedition should be sent, and had
    made up my own mind in favour of the Nile route; Wolseley still
    being the other way.

    'On March 17th, I wrote to Lord Northbrook to protest against a
    proclamation which had been issued by the Admiral and General at
    Suakim offering a reward for Osman Digna, and I wrote also to
    Hartington upon the same subject, stating that I would not defend
    it, and that if it were "not disapproved, and the disapproval made
    public, I cannot remain a member of the Government." Northbrook
    would not admit that he had disapproved it, but Hartington did, and
    also informed me that Northbrook had telegraphed. Lord Granville
    agreed with me that the proclamation was not defensible, and it was
    as a fact withdrawn, although the Admiral was very angry.

    'Mr. Gladstone had gone down to Coombe, near Wimbledon. On March
    22nd we held a Cabinet without him.... Harcourt was now writing to
    me in favour of the view "that we must get out of Egypt as soon as
    possible at any price. The idea of our administering it or of the
    Egyptian army defending it is equally out of the question." On the
    25th we had another Cabinet without Mr. Gladstone. Turning to
    Gordon, we decided that a force was not to be sent to Berber; but I
    noted in my diary: "It will _have_ to be sent next autumn, I
    believe"; but when I said to Berber, it must be remembered, of
    course, that there were two ways of reaching Berber, and Lord
    Hartington, Brett, and I, now turned steadily to the consideration
    of which of those two ways should be taken. It will be remembered
    that we already had a report in print as to the Suakim-Berber route.
    [Footnote: See p. 33; 'We had drawn up a route from Suakim to
    Berber.'] We now obtained from Wolseley a general report, which was
    afterwards printed and circulated to the Cabinet on April 8th. Lord
    Wolseley, preparing for the sending of a military force to Khartoum
    this autumn, stated that his force must be exclusively British, for
    he doubted whether the very best of our Indian regiments could stand
    the charges of the Arabs, besides which our natives took the field
    encumbered with followers. Lord Roberts, who was not given to
    boasting, told me, long afterwards, that he, on the other hand, was
    sure that he could have marched from Suakim to the Nile and Khartoum
    with an exclusively Indian force. It is the case that our best
    Gurkha troops have sometimes stood when white troops have run.
    Wolseley had now come round to a boat expedition, which I had been
    for a long time urging, upon information which I had obtained for
    myself from the Admiralty, and which was afterwards printed by the
    Foreign Intelligence Committee at the Admiralty, and circulated to
    the Cabinet in April, a further document upon the subject being
    circulated to the Cabinet in May. It must be remembered that the
    date of passing the cataracts was settled for us by the high Nile,
    and that there was only one time of year at which the expedition
    could be safely sent.

    'The Cabinet of March 25th further decided that Graham must soon be
    brought away from Suakim.

    'On the next evening, March 26th, when the Ministers were dining
    with the Speaker, we received a very unpleasant telegram from
    Baring, pointing, we thought, to a possible resignation unless it
    was promised to send an expedition to Khartoum. I suggested the
    following answer: "We adhere to our instructions of the 25th, 160
    Secret. We cannot send an expedition now, and entertain the gravest
    objection to contemplating an expedition in the autumn." This answer
    was rejected in favour of one suggested by Mr. Gladstone and Lord
    Granville. Our telegram 160 Secret had been an absolute refusal, and
    my additional words had been intended by me slightly to open the
    door, which was as much as I could hope that the Cabinet would do.
    But the telegram actually sent on March 28th (165 Secret, extended
    in 191) was to the effect that we were unable to alter the
    instructions, and it was accompanied by two long despatches,
    virtually written by Harcourt, and afterwards laid before
    Parliament, explaining our reasons for not sending Zebehr and for
    not sending an expedition. Gordon had been communicating with us
    with difficulty, as the telegraph was broken from time to time, but
    he had told us that if he was to evacuate Khartoum he wished to
    resign his commission and to take all his steam vessels and stores
    to the equatorial provinces, "which he would consider under the King
    of the Belgians." This Baring had told him he must not do. Baring
    had rejected every possible alternative except the sending of
    Zebehr, and Zebehr we could not have sent. In discussing the
    question of an expedition to Khartoum, Baring had told us that
    Gordon was "not in any immediate danger. He has provisions for six
    months." Gordon himself had telegraphed: "As I have been
    inconsistent about Zebehr, it is my fault, and I should bear the
    blame if Zebehr is sent, and should put up with the inconvenience if
    he is not." He had himself told us that he had provisions for six
    months, but had after this informed us that provisions were still
    coming in freely to Khartoum--as late as after March 15th, a week
    later than the date at which he had told us that he had six months'
    provisions in the town. I had made up my mind that we must send an
    expedition, but I did not agree with Baring that it was physically
    possible to send an expedition at this moment, and thought that if
    sent at high Nile it would be in time. On the 23rd, after Gordon's
    defeat, by treachery and shooting, of the two black Pashas, Gordon
    telegraphed: "I think we are now safe, and that as the Nile rises we
    shall account for the rebels." This we received on March 31st.

    'On March 27th there was a Cabinet without Chamberlain, who was
    listening to George Russell's speech which I had got him leave to
    make, and without Mr. Gladstone, who was still ill. The Cabinet
    decided against an expedition to Khartoum, but the Chancellor' (Lord
    Selborne) 'gave us to understand that he should resign if one were
    not sent in the autumn, and Harcourt intimated that he should resign
    if one were sent. Lord Granville observed that no Cabinet could last
    a day if it was to be exposed to going to pieces on differences as
    regards the future. Harcourt proposed to "clear out" of Egypt
    immediately. Lord Granville won an easy victory over him by proving
    that only three weeks ago he had wanted to take Egypt under our
    protection. Harcourt then said that as long ago as November, 1883,
    he had spoken in favour of clearing out. "Yes," said Lord Granville,
    "so you did; but I said three weeks ago."

    'On March 29th there was a Cabinet at Coombe Warren. Mr. Gladstone
    seemed pretty well, and had at least one good laugh. He still
    regretted Zebehr. The Cabinet considered Gordon, what we should do
    with slavery at Suakim, and House of Commons business.'

About this date the main body of the British troops was withdrawn from
Suakim in accordance with the decision of March 25th. They had inflicted
defeats on Osman Digna at El Teb, and again at Tamanieb; many Dervishes
and not a few English had been killed, but no effect of moment had been
produced, and the road to Berber was not opened.

A new complication now arose. Egypt was presented with Europe's total
claims for the losses to Europeans in the burnings at Alexandria. They
amounted to four millions and a half. How was this demand to be met?
Under the Law of Liquidation established in 1880, Egypt could not borrow
without the consent of the five Powers who had constituted the
Commission of Liquidation. The demand presented to Egypt had to be
considered by the one Power which was now _de facto_ supreme in Egypt.

    'On April 2nd there was an important Cabinet called on Egyptian
    finance. It began, of course, on something else. We discussed the
    future of Suakim; the replies to be given in the House on the next
    day as to Gordon; and then Childers' views upon Egyptian finance;
    while we were considering these, there came a letter from Northcote
    with the questions that he intended to put on the next day'
    (questions which could only be answered by a full statement of
    policy on all the points of the Egyptian problem). 'After going back
    to this, we went on again to finance, and decided to call a
    conference of the Great Powers to alter the Law of Liquidation. Mr.
    Gladstone had unwillingly consented to meet the Powers by proposing
    to reduce the charge for the British army; and he was anxious to get
    the money for the British taxpayer out of a borrowing operation on
    the future value of the Canal Shares. Chamberlain and I decided that
    if he did this the Tories would declare that Mr. Gladstone had
    become a pensioner on the bounty of Lord Beaconsfield. There was
    some talk at this Cabinet as to whether we should guarantee the
    Egyptian debt, to which I was opposed. Chamberlain had at one time
    been friendly to such an operation, but had now "gone round" on the
    ground that we could not "carry it against the Tories and the
    Radicals." "Is there anything else?" said Chamberlain to Mr.
    Gladstone as the Cabinet was breaking up. "No," said Mr. Gladstone,
    "we have done our Egyptian business and we are an Egyptian
    Government."'


II.

From this time forward the 'Egyptian Government' at Westminster had two
main subjects of concern--the question of extricating Gordon with the
garrisons, and the question of dealing with the international situation,
partly diplomatic and partly financial. France, increasingly unfriendly
to Great Britain, was above all unfriendly in regard to Egypt: while
Bismarck, doing his best to foment this quarrel, was at the same time
weakening Great Britain by menaces in Africa and Australasia, and the
danger of a Russian advance in Central Asia hung like a thundercloud
over the whole situation. [Footnote: Sir Charles wrote to Mr. Brett on
November 15th, 1884: 'I told Herbert Bismarck when he was here that it
was very silly of his father to get in the way of our Egypt plans, for
France would not go to war about them, and therefore, after threatening,
he would have to look on and see the things he had threatened against
done quietly.']

There were three groups of opinion in the Government in regard to the
Soudan. The first was for an expedition which should carry with it the
consequence of occupation more or less prolonged. Another was against
any expedition and in favour of immediate evacuation. A third section--
including Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. Chamberlain--accepted the need of an
expedition, but was determined that occupation should not follow. It was
incumbent on this last-named group to suggest a positive policy, and
Dilke, as will be seen, had his plan ready. There was a further decision
to be taken. When once an expedition was in contemplation, the route and
the character of the expedition had to be fixed. On this matter also Sir
Charles had early formed a resolve, but neither he nor anyone else could
pin the Cabinet to a clear course of action.

    'At this time' (April 2nd) 'Chamberlain wrote to me of Egypt: "Once
    more Hartington, and you and I, are at opposite poles. For one, I do
    not mean to be forced any further in the direction of protectorate."

    'Although they would not admit it, the Cabinet were rapidly coming
    round at this time to an autumn Gordon expedition, and Chamberlain
    wrote to me: "I believe it will come to this in the end"; while
    Northbrook was in favour of an expedition. I then made up a list
    from private information showing that six of us were favourable to
    an expedition, as against five the other way--several members having
    made no statement either way. Those for an expedition were
    Hartington, Northbrook, the Chancellor (Lord Selborne), Derby,
    Chamberlain, and myself; and those against it, Mr. Gladstone, Lord
    Granville, Harcourt, Kimberley, and Dodson. On April 21st, Egypt was
    discussed without decision, though with the note by me: "The
    majority now begin to see that an October expedition is certain."

    'On the 23rd a Cabinet ... considered the possibility of reaching
    Berber.... After the Cabinet of April 23rd, I advocated a naval
    expedition by the Nile on the ground that the Admiralty were likely
    to do the thing better than the War Office. [Footnote: A review by
    Sir Charles in the _Athenæum_ of October 24th, 1908, deals with the
    _Life of Lord Northbrook_, by Sir Bernard Mallet, and his allusions
    to Lord Northbrook's consideration, as early as April, of a 'rescue
    and retire' expedition by the Nile route for the autumn, 'it being
    assumed that the boats then ordered could not pass the various
    cataracts before High Nile.' See _Life of Lord Northbrook_, pp.
    185-186. A review by Sir Charles of March 28th, 1908, in the same
    paper, of _Modern Egypt_, by the Earl of Cromer, also deals with
    Lord Northbrook's pressure for a Nile Expedition in March, 1884.] On
    April 28th, Berber, Khartoum, and Gordon, on which there was nothing
    new, but Hartington insisted on a large and important military
    expedition.'

    'On April 29th Baring had now come over about Egypt, and attended a
    Cabinet to state his views. I saw him privately, and settled with
    him the details for a possible Nile expedition "small and early."
    The difficulty was at the sixth cataract. He also broached to me his
    scheme for a new control by the four Powers already represented on
    the Caisse de la Dette--namely, England, France, Austria, and Italy,
    with an English president.'

    'At the next Cabinet there was a proposal by Hartington that there
    should be a vote of thanks to Sir Gerald Graham and Admiral Hewett
    for the Suakim expedition--a proposal which the Cabinet rejected,
    having had quite enough of votes of thanks on the former occasion
    when Wolseley and Beauchamp Seymour were in question. The next
    matter was what we should say about our Law of Liquidation
    Conference, on which there arose an awkward question as to what
    should happen in the probable case of the representatives of the
    Powers not being unanimous. There was every reason to suppose that
    the French would not agree to anything, and precedents went to show
    that unanimity was necessary to render valid the decisions of a
    conference. Indeed, there was no precedent as regards questions of
    principle which told the other way; and at the Congress of Berlin
    Prince Bismarck had stated, as recorded in the first protocol, that
    as regarded substantive proposals it was an incontestable principle
    that the minority should not be bound to acquiesce in a vote of a
    majority.

    'Then came the consideration of the action to be taken by the
    Egyptian Government towards Mr. O'Kelly, M.P., [Footnote: Mr. James
    O'Kelly, then M.P. for Koscommon, a very adventurous war
    correspondent. He died in 1916.] Parnell's friend, who had been
    trying to join the Mahdi. We next considered Lord Salisbury's
    relations towards Tewfik as Khedive, as affected by the violent
    attacks of many Conservative members, put up by Broadley, upon
    Tewfik's character. Randolph Churchill had made a most ferocious
    series of attacks upon the Khedive, without one atom of truth in
    them. It is a curious example of his forgetful flightiness, that
    when, a few years later, he went to Egypt, he was struck with wonder
    at the Khedive's refusal to receive him. The terms of the French
    acceptance of our invitation to the Conference were discussed, as
    were the House of Commons questions as to Gordon, and the offer of
    Mr. Guy Dawnay, M.P., to go as a messenger to Gordon at his own
    cost. Then followed the internal condition of Egypt, as to which
    Baring's views were stated by me; then Harrar; then the employment
    of negroes or Turks for the Egyptian army; then the Turks at Suakim;
    then the Somali coast.

    'On the same day I had an interview with the ex-Khedive Ismail, who
    had gone downhill. He always had a certain difficulty in collecting
    his ideas and putting them into words, but on this occasion it went
    farther than I had previously known. He wished to impress on me the
    necessity for defending Egypt against the Mahdi at some given point
    upon the Nile, when occurred that incident of his continually
    working up to the name of the place and forgetting it. [Footnote:
    See Chapter XXX., Vol. I., p. 487.]

    'On May 5th there was a Cabinet. We considered the vote of censure
    as to Gordon, and decided that time must be given for it; and I then
    had some correspondence with Northbrook across the table as to an
    expedition. I said: "Northbrook, I should be glad to know all you
    know against the Nile route. Ismail, who knows all about it, thinks
    it quite possible." Northbrook replied: "My objections are
    uncertainty of getting steamers up at all (we know nothing of the
    140 miles beyond Wady Halfa), and necessity of assistance from
    natives, which may not be given. Key" (Sir Cooper Key) "is in rather
    a delicate position, as he does not like to go against Wolseley,
    whose opinion is for the Nile, and the responsibility is with the
    W.O."

    'On May 7th there was another Cabinet. It was decided that Nubar
    need not be brought to London for the Conference, that a fresh place
    in some other unhappy portion of the world must be found for
    Clifford Lloyd; [Footnote: A Resident Magistrate who had come
    violently into collision with the Nationalists in Ireland, and who
    had also proved himself a storm centre in Egypt, as he afterwards
    did in Mauritius.] and one was found, and he again fought with the
    local authorities as he had fought in Ireland and in Egypt. With
    regard to the attitude of France, it was decided that we could not,
    so long as we remained in Egypt, put up with a new international
    control. It was decided to bring the Turks to Suakim, although this
    decision was afterwards reversed. We then wasted much of our time on
    the consideration of what should be our attitude on the vote of
    censure which was pending in the House. Harcourt had drawn an
    amendment for Mr. Gladstone on which they had agreed. Chamberlain
    and I had agreed to support a mere negative, and we talked the
    others over....

    'On May 11th Fitzmaurice wrote to me complaining that no definite
    instructions had been given him with regard to the conduct of the
    Gordon debate' (on the vote of censure), [Footnote: See _Hansard_,
    vol. cclxxxviii., 3rd series, debate of May 13th, 1884] 'as was
    usual in such important cases, but stating that he expected me to
    speak. On the next day, May 12th, I learnt that Hartington had
    refused to speak, although he was finally made to do so by Mr.
    Gladstone. On Tuesday, May 13th, I made a good speech from 12.10 to
    1.10 a.m.--too late for the reporters. "The debate has (I noted in
    my diary) been the best I ever heard. Mr. Gladstone was not so good
    as usual, while Hartington and I were neither better nor worse than
    usual. But Churchill, Forster, Cowen, John Morley, and Beach, all
    spoke far above their usual level; and the rest were good. A
    memorable debate, which I do not expect to see excelled for interest
    and fire, and I am glad to have had the honour to wind it up for the
    Liberal party." Afterwards I noted that it "does not read well."

    'On May 14th Cabinet again decided that Nubar must not come over for
    the Conference; discussed internal affairs of Egypt, then the
    Conference again; and then called in Sir Evelyn Baring and discussed
    with him the same matters of Clifford Lloyd, Nubar, Conference, the
    Turks and the Red Sea ports, what was to be said to Waddington about
    the Conference, and the detail of a scheme of Childers upon Egyptian
    finance, which was extraordinarily unpopular with the Cabinet.

    'On May 17th at noon there was a full Cabinet (Spencer being
    present), and a long one. The first matter discussed was the Queen
    and Conference, [Footnote: Proposed Conference of the Powers on the
    Law of Liquidation.] and a strong objection on the part of Mr.
    Gladstone to tell Parliament anything about the Conference.
    Chamberlain wrote to me on this: "What a queer twist this objection
    of Mr. G. is!" To which I replied: "I really wish he would have gone
    to Coombe for this lovely day and let us go on without him. He has
    wasted an hour and a half. Mr. G. will fight a whole day in Cabinet
    to avoid telling Parliament something, and then after all will tell
    them twice as much in reply to Ashmead Bartlett." On this
    Chamberlain wrote:

    "Here lies Mr. G., who has left us repining,
    While he is, no doubt, still engaged in refining;
    And explaining distinctions to Peter and Paul,
    Who faintly protest that distinctions so small
    Were never submitted to saints to perplex them,
    Until the Prime Minister came up to vex them."

[Footnote: These were notes passed during the sitting of the Cabinet. On
Mr. Gladstone's inconvenient habit of giving information at question
time, see Vol. I., pp. 307, 384, 459, 535; and _infra_, p. 118.]

    'The Cabinet decided to send a telegram to Gordon through Zebehr, in
    order to obtain safe conveyance for it, offering free use of money
    among the tribes.

    'To Grant Duff I wrote on May 17th: "The Queen is much against our
    arrangements with France. If we 'let them out' we spoil them, and if
    we don't we shall be condemned for a 'secret negotiation with France
    by a moribund Cabinet.' Yet, though we look very wrong, we _are_
    right."'

    'On the 19th it was decided that the Nile was to be patrolled by the
    Navy as far as Wady Halfa.'

This was in the direction of the military policy which Sir Charles
favoured, but in which he was not to succeed. His diplomatic proposals
now have to be considered.

    'At this time I sent a box round the Cabinet as to the
    neutralization of Egypt, Northbrook assenting. In a minute dated May
    22nd, Lord Northbrook wrote: "I am disposed to think it would be
    wise to propose at once an international guarantee of the neutrality
    of Egypt, (1) It would give a substance and solidity to the French
    assurances." (To Grant Duff I wrote on the 22nd: "We have got from
    France an engagement not to go to Egypt when we come away, and never
    at any future time, except by the authority of Europe.") "(2)
    Without it I hardly see a chance of escaping from annexation.... All
    the circumstances of Egypt ... point to this solution, and ... the
    release of Egypt from the Soudan makes the solution possible."
    Chamberlain wrote: "I agree entirely with Dilke and Northbrook. (1)
    As to the intrinsic importance of such a proposal. If adopted it
    secures every essential British interest, and promises relief from
    the intolerable burden of a continued occupation. I am strongly in
    favour of making the proposal at once. It will give a real guarantee
    to the Powers of our good faith and intention to clear out of the
    country. (2) I attach great importance to it as forming a definite
    policy.... To make Egypt the 'Belgium of the East' is an object
    easily popularized. The phrase will carry the proposal." Kimberley
    wrote: "I agree with Northbrook and Dilke. The neutralization of
    Egypt will be a gain in itself, irrespective altogether of the
    question of its internal administration. It would also ... render it
    easy to establish a firm domestic Government in so far as it would
    put an end to the rivalries ... which exercise a very disturbing
    influence on all Egyptian affairs.--K." This minute received the
    support of the signatures of the Chancellor, Harcourt, and Childers.
    Lord Derby wrote: "I agree so entirely with the views of Lord
    Northbrook and Sir Charles Dilke that I need add nothing to what
    they have written. There is only one alternative in the long-run;
    guaranteed neutrality or annexation.--D., May 23." Carlingford also
    agreed, but Hartington strongly dissented; and although Lord
    Granville agreed with us, Hartington's dissent was so fierce that he
    succeeded in preventing Mr. Gladstone from expressing an opinion,
    and the view taken by ten members of the Cabinet remained without
    effect.

    '... On May 24th, the next matter discussed was the neutralization
    of Egypt, which Mr. Gladstone decided, in face of Hartington's
    minute, was "not to be immediately proposed."' [Footnote: The offer
    of neutralization was, however, made. See _infra_, Chapter XXXVIII.,
    pp. 94, 97.]

    'We then returned to our old business of Waddington and the
    Conference. Mr. Gladstone next complained that he had been
    catechized in the House of Commons on Monday, May 19th, as to
    whether he "told most lies on Monday or on Thursday." We then
    discussed the desirability of making a statement in the House as to
    the number of years that our troops would remain in Egypt;
    Northbrook and Hartington suggesting either five years or three
    years from January, 1885, and Carlingford suggesting one year, in
    which he was supported by the Prime Minister and myself; but three
    years prevailed. Next came Morocco; and then a Gordon
    expedition--Mr. Gladstone speaking strongly against it.

    'On May 27th there was a Cabinet before the Whitsuntide recess. It
    was decided what statement was to be made to Parliament about the
    Conference. Lord Granville had told Waddington that we should not
    stay more than five years in Egypt at the outside, and Hartington,
    who himself had been willing to limit our stay to three years, now
    fought violently against a limitation even to five. Chamberlain
    wrote to me: "As usual--the question having been twice settled,
    Hartington, in a minority of one, raises the whole question again.
    It is direct, unmitigated, and unconcealed obstruction." We then
    discussed the expedition to Khartoum and the making of a Suakim-
    Berber railway, but it was decided that orders were not yet to be
    given. On the next day Mr. Gladstone, who had gone to Hawarden,
    wrote:

    '"My Dear Northbrook,

    '"I have received and read this morning Sir Cooper Key's very
    interesting paper on an expedition to Khartoum. I write, however, to
    suggest that it would be a great advantage if two suggestions it
    contains were to be fully examined and developed. (1) The _small_
    river expedition which he thinks practicable. (2) The small desert
    expedition from Korosko to which he also adverts as an auxiliary
    method.... Clear as is the case for the railway from Suakim, as
    against the large expedition by the Nile, in every other view it is
    attended with the most formidable difficulties of a moral and
    political kind ... whether the 'turning of the first sod' of a
    Soudan railway will not be the substitution for an Egyptian
    domination there, of an English domination ... more unnatural, more
    costly, more destructive, and altogether without foundation in
    public right. It would be an immense advantage that the expedition
    (should one be needed) should be one occupying little time, and
    _leaving no trace behind it_.

             '"Yours sincerely,
                   '"W. E. Gladstone."

    'Of this letter a copy was made by Edward Hamilton, and enclosed to
    me with an autograph letter from Mr. Gladstone.

    'On May 31st I had received a further letter from Mr. Gladstone
    about the Soudan expedition, in which he said: "Suakim and Berber
    route has utterly beaten Nile route for a large expedition.... But
    the question of a small expedition has hardly yet been touched,
    while some believe Gordon is or will be free, and there need be no
    expedition at all." I sent this letter to Lord Northbrook, and to
    Lord Hartington, pointing out that Colonel Sartorius had written a
    letter to the papers in favour of an expedition of a thousand picked
    men armed with repeating rifles; and after receiving replies, I
    wrote to Mr. Gladstone on June 4th that I had not had much
    encouragement from Hartington and Northbrook, the fact being that
    Hartington was determined on giving Wolseley his big job. [Footnote:
    See _Life of Granville_, vol. ii., p. 395.]

    'On June 6th Lord Granville called a meeting to ask us whether,
    Waddington having now agreed to all our demands, we could devise
    some plan of getting out of them. He said that for his own part he
    should not have asked the question, but that Hartington had
    suggested it.... He said: "I must rather complain of Hartington's
    conduct--from so intimate a friend. If it had been Dodson I should
    have been very angry." After such an introduction, the meeting could
    hardly come to a conclusion favourable to Hartington's views.

    'On June 9th Sir Henry Ponsonby came to see me before the Cabinet,
    wishing to talk to me before he spoke to any other member, as the
    Queen thought that I was the most in agreement with her views, which
    was not the case, as regarded evacuation. He discussed with me two
    points: First the term of years, as to which I explained that, under
    the agreement, if at the end of three and a half years any one Power
    thought we had better stay, and we ourselves wished to stay, then we
    could stay. It was not my wish that we should. Secondly, as to the
    union of Bulgaria and East Roumelia, about which I did not care, and
    as to which I suggested that the Queen should propose to Lord
    Granville to take counsel with Austria. [Footnote: The union took
    place in 1885.] At the Cabinet which followed we discussed the words
    of our promise to lay our French agreements before Parliament, and
    also our answer as to the Turks and Suakim. The French having
    written us a disagreeable despatch, we agreed that they must be made
    to take it back.

    'On the next day, June 10th, there was a Cabinet to begin the
    railway from Suakim. and to consider the draft despatch to
    Waddington, and as the Government at this time was not very strong,
    it was decided to leave for our successors a Cabinet minute upon the
    subject of our relations at this time with France. After the Cabinet
    I had to see Mr. Gladstone from Lord Granville upon the question
    whether we should insist on a casting vote on the Caisse. Mr.
    Gladstone, against the unanimous opinion of the Cabinet, replied:
    "No, not to the point of breaking off."'

On June 12th Sir Charles made two notes in his Diary of that date:

    'I think that if Mr. Gladstone was to stay in, and live on, we
    should come as regards Egypt to evacuation and neutralization. Under
    the Tories, or under Hartington, the _status quo_ may be tried for a
    long time.'

    'When Bismarck offered Egypt to Dizzy, it was in order to embroil
    England with France.'


III.

From this point onwards in the Memoir the focus of the Egyptian question
changes; attention is centred on the diplomatic questions arising out of
the financial problem.

As between England and France the issue concerned itself with the
proposal to pay less than the promised interest on previously existing
loans. The French view, expressed through M. Barrère, the French agent
in Egypt, was that interest need not be reduced; the alternative view
was that the bondholders must make a sacrifice of part of their
interest, at any rate for some period of years, in return for the better
security they were obtaining.

    'On July 3rd Barrère called and explained to me a scheme of his on
    Egyptian finance, in which he was now highly skilled, having been
    French Agent in Egypt for some time. I put the matter before Lord
    Granville, who sent it to Mr. Gladstone and Childers. Barrère argued
    that it was not necessary to reduce interest, or, to use the slang
    of the moment, to "cut the coupon." We called a meeting of the
    Commons Ministers, and Chamberlain announced that he should resign
    if the coupon were not cut.

    'July 18th, 1884.--We had virtually decided on declaring Egypt
    bankrupt in order to force the hands of the French, but Waddington,
    at a meeting with Childers, had broached a plan, which had
    originally been suggested by the Germans, for a temporary reduction
    of interest, to be reconsidered at the end of a certain number of
    years.' (These proposals were discussed at the Conference, which met
    in the latter half of July, held seven sittings, and then broke down
    without arriving at a conclusion on August 1st.) 'The question now
    raised was--at the end of what number of years? The French said
    three, and we decided to propose ten; but with a willingness to take
    six or even five; we advancing 4 1/2 millions instead of 8, or, in
    other words, leaving out the indemnities due by Egypt. If this
    arrangement failed, then we were to fall back on bankruptcy.
    Harcourt was much against declaring bankruptcy, and in favour of the
    policy of "scuttle." Hartington was against bankruptcy, and for
    paying the differences ourselves; so as to force us into annexation.
    Spencer, Childers, Chamberlain, and I, were for bankruptcy or for a
    strong threat of bankruptcy.

    'On July 21st there was a meeting of members of the Cabinet after
    questions, at which Mr. Gladstone, Lord Granville, Hartington,
    Harcourt, Childers, and I, were present. The French had backed out
    of their proposals, and we considered a new scheme of Childers's to
    put all administrative charges in Egypt before interest of debt, a
    scheme which it was certain that the French would refuse. Harcourt
    was again violent against bankruptcy, which he announced he thought
    grossly "illegal," as if there were such a thing as illegality in
    such affairs.

    'On August 2nd there was a full Cabinet, every member being present,
    and we had to consider whether, the Conference having broken down,
    Baring should go back to Egypt or remain at the Foreign Office and
    continue to advise us. Lord Granville proposed that he should
    remain, and that Malet should go to Egypt. Chamberlain proposed that
    Goschen should go. Childers proposed J. K. Cross. [Footnote:
    Under-Secretary for India.] Dufferin was mentioned; then Lord
    Granville proposed Northbrook. All other names were immediately
    withdrawn, and Northbrook took time to consider, but evidently meant
    to go, and decided, I think, in the course of the same evening.
    Baring was then called in, and we once more began to chop straw by
    considering the "ulterior consequences" of the collapse of the
    Conference--i.e., bankruptcy. Lastly, Gordon was dealt with, and
    it was decided that a supplementary estimate should be proposed,
    with the understanding that we should spend more if it was wanted. I
    wrote to Chamberlain: "We always have two subjects--(a) Conference,
    (b) Gordon." And he wrote back: "The first always taking up two or
    three hours; and the second five minutes at the fag end of
    business."

    'On August 3rd I noted "we are going to send Northbrook to Egypt to
    put down Barrère."

    'On August 5th we considered the instructions to Northbrook, or
    rather whether he should have any at all, and if so, what they
    should be. Northbrook read us a scheme which he had written, which
    attempted to conciliate Turkey and Italy, so as to have great naval
    strength in the Mediterranean and to prevent all chance of a sudden
    occupation of Egypt by France. We were to express our continued
    determination not to annex. We were to stay five years at the
    request of the Sultan. We were again to propose to the Powers those
    arrangements with regard to the Canal which we had proposed already.
    We were to pay the indemnities in stock; and the next coupon in
    full; and we were to promise for the future not less than 4 per
    cent, on privileged stocks, and not less than 3 per cent, on the
    Unified debt, while we were in Egypt. Indian troops were to hold
    Massowah. Harcourt, in reply, read a written counter-statement,
    again proposing to "scuttle," and again threatening us that we
    should have war with France. Hartington again spoke for a guarantee
    by us of the whole Egyptian debt. After Hartington's observations
    the discussion was, as usual, adjourned. Chamberlain and I decided
    that we would ask for our old term of three and a half years'
    occupation, as against Northbrook's five. Next came Gordon, and
    Hartington proposed that we should embody some militia.

    'On August 6th there was another Cabinet, and the first question was
    that of Northbrook's scheme. Lord Granville agreed to a temporary
    use of Turkish troops provided that they were to leave Egypt when we
    left. Chamberlain would not agree, and wished to stick to
    Northbrook's phrase only inviting "co-operation." This view
    prevailed, and it was decided that if the Turks proposed to send a
    commissioner, we were to refuse. But the question of troops was
    really left open for more discussion. Next came the question of an
    advance of nearly a million which had been made by Rothschild to
    Egypt, and we asked him, as a favour to ourselves, to let it run,
    which was all he wanted us to do. Northbrook, who is not strong, had
    been a good deal fatigued with the discussion on his scheme, and
    instead of sleeping (his usual practice at a Cabinet) on this
    occasion fainted, and we had to get up and look after him at this
    point.

    'On August 26th I received a letter from Hartington, saying that
    Northbrook was going to Osborne at the end of the week, and starting
    for Egypt from there. Hartington told me he was coming up to meet
    him, and he afterwards wrote to me to fix an appointment at the War
    Office on the 29th. This I kept. Northbrook was deplorably weak. He
    had returned from Rosebery's completely under the influence of Mr.
    Gladstone's pro-French views. [Footnote: At Dalmeny Lord Northbrook
    "met Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone." See Life of Lord Northbrook, p. 190.]
    He had settled to spend a day at Walmer, and had telegraphed to Lord
    Lyons to meet him there. His plan now was to ask the French
    Government to send a man to Egypt in order that he and the Frenchman
    might settle matters together. Hartington and I pointed out to him
    that the Frenchman's instructions from his Government must either be
    to refuse all reduction of interest, or to consent to it upon
    obtaining from us a better political position than that given to
    France by the Anglo-French agreement. We explained to him that it
    would be impossible for us to tolerate such proposals. I wrote to
    Chamberlain a full account of the interview.

    'September 22nd_.--We decided with reference to Egyptian finance
    that Chamberlain should write a strong letter to Lord Granville
    protesting against any British advance to Egypt, unless accompanied
    by a cutting of the coupon. He did so, and on September 25th sent me
    a copy, and I sent the copy to Childers, and wrote myself to Lord
    Granville. On the 27th I received a memorandum from Chamberlain as
    to Lord Granville, Lord Derby, and Bismarck.

    'Chamberlain's memorandum was a fierce denunciation of the
    principles laid down in Northbrook's despatch No. 4, dated September
    13th, and received September 22nd.' [Footnote: Lord Northbrook had
    arrived in Egypt.]

Controversy now raged over Lord Northbrook's scheme, and added to the
difficulties of the Cabinet, which was divided on the question of
lowering or not lowering the rate of interest.

    'On 19th November the second matter mentioned was Northbrook's
    scheme, against which I fought hard.... I pointed out that early in
    April, when Mr. Gladstone had wished to borrow on the future value
    of the Canal shares, that proposal had not been accepted, and we
    laid down the principle that it was for the bondholders to make
    sacrifices. On July 3rd we had decided that the coupon must be
    "cut." On July 18th the whole Cabinet had taken the same view except
    Harcourt and the Chancellor, and four members--Childers, Spencer,
    Chamberlain, and I--had advocated distinct bankruptcy. On August 2nd
    we had seen Baring to lay our plans for bankruptcy. On August 5th
    Northbrook himself had proposed a reduction of the interest. On
    August 29th there had been a general agreement to the same effect.
    Northbrook's policy had enormously sent up Egyptian stocks. After my
    strong observations the opinions stood: Mr. Gladstone, Childers,
    Chamberlain, Harcourt, Trevelyan, and Dilke against Northbrook's
    scheme; for it, Lord Granville, the Chancellor, Hartington, Spencer,
    Kimberley, Derby, Carlingford, and Northbrook himself. All the Lords
    on one side, curiously enough, and all the Sirs and Mr.'s on the
    other; eight to six against us. But I noted: "Mr. Gladstone is so
    strong that we shall win." "As we did."' [Footnote: Letter from Sir
    Charles to Mr. Brett (afterwards Lord Esher):

    Local Government Board,
    Whitehall,
    _November_ 19_th_, 1884.

    '_My_ policy has always been bankruptcy and stand the shot, and if
    we had stuck to that we should have had no trouble with the Powers;
    but indiscretions have made that difficult. It is not pleasant to be
    called in too late. I quite agree in your general view, but how can
    the bondholder be got to make sacrifices without his consent?']

    'At the meeting of the Cabinet of December 2nd, Egyptian finance
    again came up. We were informed that Prince Bismarck suggested oral
    communications among ambassadors. For this Malet proposed Paris, and
    we replied Berlin.'

IV.

During this time the Government continued to waver as to the Soudan
expedition.

On June 21st

    'with regard to Gordon it was decided to wait ten days before
    settling anything, and to see whether we heard from him in reply to
    the silly questions which had been asked.'

On June 27th came the definitive news that Berber had fallen on May
26th. On July 5th

    'We discussed the Egyptian army of the future, and then the question
    of whether we should send an expedition to Khartoum, as to which we
    again could come to no decision; Mr. Gladstone still opposing.'

Dilke, backed by Chamberlain, was still pressing the military solution
which he favoured. On July 16th

    'Hartington on this occasion gave up the Berber-Suakim route, and
    pressed for a decision as to an immediate expedition by the Nile. He
    was supported by the Chancellor, Northbrook, Carlingford, and
    Dodson. Mr. Gladstone, Harcourt, and Childers opposed.

    'Chamberlain and I opposed a large expedition by the Nile, and
    supported a small expedition, under the control of the navy, with a
    body of picked men. Baring was called in about the police in Egypt,
    and his views in support of Nubar were approved. Nubar was to have
    his own way in the appointment of Inspectors of Police in Egypt.'

    'On July 22nd we found that Mr. Gladstone had again taken up Zebehr,
    and was anxious to send him to Khartoum in order to avoid a British
    expedition.

    'On July 25th there was a full Cabinet, Spencer being present, which
    first discussed the Conference and then the Gordon expedition, for
    which for the first time a large majority of the Cabinet pronounced.
    The issue was narrowed down to that of sending some sort of British
    force to or towards Dongola; and this was supported by Hartington,
    the Chancellor, Derby, Northbrook, Spencer, Carlingford, Dodson,
    Chamberlain, and me, while on the other side were only Mr.
    Gladstone, Harcourt, and Kimberley. Lord Granville said nothing. By
    the stoutness of their resistance the three for the moment prevailed
    over the nine.

    'On July 31st a storm was brewing about Gordon, and Harcourt went
    about declaring that the Government would break up upon the
    question. On the next day, August 1st, a way out of the difficulty
    was found in an agreement that we should ask for a small vote of
    credit, which we were to use or not as should be thought right
    later.'

It must be remembered that communications with Gordon were now
interrupted, though occasionally renewed, and this added to the
confusion.

    'On September 17th we received a telegram from Gordon which looked
    as though he were perfectly mad, although some of the other
    telegrams from him sent at the same time were sane enough.'

Since Parliament had risen and the Cabinet scattered, preparations had
been going on apace.

    'When Hartington came to me on September 15th he told me that he had
    already spent "£750,000 out of the £300,000" for the Gordon
    expedition.' [Footnote: 'On August 9th Lord Hartington again asked
    us for permission to embody militia or call out a portion of the
    First-Class Army Reserve.']

    'On October 4th Chamberlain had written strongly against Wolseley's
    great expedition, Harcourt was still opposing the whole thing. After
    this meeting of the Cabinet Northbrook wrote to Gordon a long letter
    based on the Cabinet decision. He stated that the expedition under
    Wolseley was not sent for the purpose of defeating the Mahdi, but
    only of enabling the Egyptian garrison of Khartoum, the civil
    employees and their families, with Gordon, to return to Egypt. He
    offered the Grand Cross of the Bath' (to Gordon) 'as from the Queen
    personally. He explained our refusal of Zebehr, and he suggested the
    placing at Khartoum of the Mudir of Dongola. It was easy, however,
    to write to Gordon, but it was not easy to get the letters to him;
    and we had to attempt even to send them by Tripoli and the desert.'
    [Footnote: As to the last communications with Gordon, see _Life of
    Granville_, vol. ii., pp. 397-399. Besides the authorities already
    quoted, the Parliamentary Papers Nos. 2, 6, 12, 13, and 25, for
    1884, may be referred to.]

That is the last detailed reference to Gordon in the Memoir until
February 5th, 1885, when the news of the fall of Khartoum reached
London. The matter had passed out of the hands of the Cabinet into those
of the soldiers.

This comment in the Diary may fitly end this chapter:

    'On February 20th I noted (conversation, I think, not printed), Lord
    Acton says of Gladstone: "Cannot make up my mind whether he is not
    wholly unconscious when working himself up to a change of position.
    After watching him do it, I think that he is so. He lives completely
    in what for the moment he chooses to believe."'



CHAPTER XXXVI

FRANCHISE AND REDISTRIBUTION

JULY TO DECEMBER, 1884.


In the summer of 1884 the Government Bill for extension of the franchise
had strong and even passionate support throughout the country; but that
policy threatened a breach with Lord Hartington, who in the opinion of
many was by prescriptive right Mr. Gladstone's successor. Still more
entangling were the difficulties in respect of Egypt, over which the
Government was so hopelessly divided that no coherent policy could be
pursued. Sir Charles notes that on July 18th Mr. Gladstone,

    'who had the greatest abhorrence for City dinners, proposed the
    extinction of the Lord Mayor's ministerial banquet; the fact being
    that the Government of London Bill and the failure to send an
    expedition to Khartoum had made the Ministry so unpopular in the
    City that he did not think it wise to subject himself to the torture
    which such banquets are to him.'

    'The Tory game,' Sir Charles wrote on May 24th, 1884, to his agent,
    'is to delay the franchise until they have upset us upon Egypt,
    before the Franchise Bill has reached the Lords.' [Footnote: This
    letter is also quoted in Chapter XXXIV.]

When the Franchise Bill went up to the Lords in the first week of July,
it was rejected for a reasoned amendment which declined to alter the
franchise except as part of a scheme dealing with redistribution of
seats.

    'On July 5th there was a Cabinet to consider what was called the
    crisis--our relations with the House of Lords over the franchise,
    and Spencer was present.... The question to be considered was that
    of dissolution or an autumn Session. Lord Granville, Hartington, and
    Lord Derby were for an immediate dissolution on the old franchise,
    which was at once negatived.'

    'On June 21st there was mentioned the attitude of the House of
    Lords. Lord Granville said something in favour of life peerages. I
    asked Chamberlain whether he thought that it was seriously meant,
    and writing passed between us in which he replied: "Serious, I
    think"; to which I answered: "You won't have it, will you?" Answer:
    "No."'

    'On July 7th Mr. Gladstone explained to me his plan for dealing with
    the House of Lords, which was not so objectionable to me as the
    schemes known as "Reform of the House of Lords." It was to imitate
    the French constitution, and in cases of difference to make the two
    Houses sit in Congress and vote together. From the practical point
    of view it would be as difficult to carry as the abolition of the
    House of Lords, and if carried would not be of much use to the
    Liberal party except on occasions when their majority was absolutely
    overwhelming.

    'On July 8th offers of compromise came to us from the Lords, but
    they would not offer terms which we could accept. We decided to
    propose to them a solemn resolution by both Houses pledging us to
    redistribution. This they refused.'

The extent of real agreement which existed between the two sides had not
yet been divined; and it was Sir Charles who set on foot the work which
finally averted conflict.

    'Early in July I began to take time by the forelock by preparing,
    without instructions from the Cabinet, a Redistribution scheme; and
    the first memoranda drawn up by Sir John Lambert for my use were
    written in that month, although it was not till after Parliament had
    separated for the recess that we got seriously to work. In the
    evening of July 14th Mr. Gladstone broached to me his views on
    Redistribution, and we practically hatched the Bill.'

Party feeling ran high, and the Queen intervened.

    'On July 9th in the morning Sir Henry Ponsonby came up to see the
    Duke of Richmond and some of us, and tried to settle the deadlock,
    but failed.... The Cabinet decided that Chamberlain must not take
    the chair at a meeting at the Agricultural Hall to denounce the
    House of Lords.'

Liberals in general were, however, speaking out, and at a Cabinet a week
later they had 'some fun with Hartington concerning his Lancashire
meetings, with strong resolutions directed against the House of Lords
for doing that which he privately approved.' Also, there was a
tremendous demonstration in the Metropolis.

    'On July 21st I saw the Franchise Demonstration on this day from the
    Speaker's window, the procession passing from three till six.'

    'After the Cabinet on August 5th we congratulated Chamberlain upon
    his Birmingham franchise meeting, and he told us that Birmingham was
    "thirsting for the blood of the Lords"--saying to Bright: "You are
    too lenient with them. We won't stand them any longer." I told him
    that as the _Times_ had said that he was too violent, I had no doubt
    the Queen would say so also, to which he replied: "Probably, and if
    she does I shall most likely ... deny her right to criticise my
    speeches, although she may, if she likes, dismiss me, in which case
    I will lead an agitation against the Lords in the country." I
    answered: "Yes, but you cannot go alone in such a case, and
    therefore should not appear to contemplate doing so." He replied: "I
    am not going, but perhaps she can dismiss me. What then? I am not
    going to tie my tongue." I retorted: "In that case it would surely
    be even more essential than usual that I should go too." He closed
    the matter by saying: "If it really arose out of the agitation
    against the Lords and the interference of the Crown with the liberty
    of speech of ministers, I do not see how a Radical could stay in.
    Remember, I have observed Mr. Gladstone's limits. I have said
    nothing about the future; only denounced past action."'

Mr. Chamberlain's outside agitation coincided with Sir Charles's work
towards a peaceful solution. On August 9th

    'A Committee of the Cabinet was appointed to deal with
    Redistribution--to consist of Hartington, Kimberley, Childers,
    Chamberlain, and me, with the addition of Lefevre. They forgot
    James, who was anxious to be on it, [Footnote: Sir Charles wrote to
    Sir Henry James on the matter, and received a reply admitting that
    he had been "slightly touched" by the omission of his name, but
    saying that he would still give his services.] but I soon got rid of
    the Committee and went on by myself with Lambert.'

Parliament was prorogued on August 14th, but very soon compromise was in
the air.

    'On August 21st and 22nd I had interviews with Hartington at his
    wish, nominally to talk over the sending of Wolseley to Egypt, but
    really to see what I thought of a compromise with the Lords on the
    basis of Lord Cowper's letter in the _Times_--introduction of the
    Redistribution Bill in October.'

The situation was profoundly modified by speeches from Lord Salisbury,
which made it clear that the plan "hatched" between Mr. Gladstone and
Sir Charles was not likely to have any terrors for him. Lord Kimberley
wrote in September:

    'Now that Salisbury is going in for electoral districts, it will
    become a sort of open competition which party can go furthest. I
    should not be surprised if he were to trump us by proposing to
    abolish the House of Lords.'

    'I had now decided to agree with Lord Salisbury in advance, and
    divide the counties into single-member districts if Mr. Gladstone
    would let me; and Trevelyan, to whom I had broached my scheme,
    wrote: "I very much approve of the scheme of dividing counties. I
    hope to goodness you will be able to carry it out."'

The original draft, completed on September 18th, followed the lines laid
down in consultation with Mr. Gladstone. The object of obtaining fair
representation, and doing away with over-representation of vested
interests, was thus attacked and began with two great industrial
centres.

The scheme for England treated Lancashire and Yorkshire as urban
throughout, and divided them into single-member districts; but the
remaining 'rural' counties of England were divided into two-member
districts. Thus, 'the net increase of county members was 53.' Boroughs
which had less than 10,000 inhabitants (53 in all) were merged into the
counties; those with a population of between 10,000 and under 40,000,
which had two members, lost one. Thus, having added to the under-
represented, Sir Charles took from the over-represented, and adds: 'this
gave us 33 more seats.' Sir Charles in a secret memorandum added that he
thought the fixing of so low a limit as 10,000 showed 'an altogether
indefensible tenderness to vested interests.' 'I should carry the loss
of one member far higher than the 40,000 line adopted, and should take
away one member up to the point at which I began to give two' to a new
constituency. Dilke was in favour of carrying merger of small boroughs
to a greater extent than was adopted in the Act.

    'Summing up, on our English borough scheme,' he said, 'I am struck
    by its _extreme_ timidity. I do not see how it is to stand the
    revolutionary criticism of Lord Salisbury.' 'My plan for the
    Metropolis gave to it its legitimate proportion of members: 55 in
    all.... These figures should be compared with 22--the previous
    number.'

As to Ireland, he admitted that 'if you take its population as a whole
it was over-represented in our plan; yet the difference in favour of
Ireland is very small; moreover, Wales is vastly better treated than
Ireland.' Lord Spencer 'thought there would be a howl from Belfast,' and
wished for the representation of minorities. 'But the Irish Government
made no practical proposal,' and the whole of this intricate business
was left almost entirely to Sir Charles.

    'On September 29th Mr. Gladstone wrote at length conveying his
    general approval of my plan, and stating that he did not intend to
    "handle" the Bill in the House of Commons; and so wished to defer to
    the opinions of his colleagues. He gave me leave to add 12 members
    to the House for Scotland, instead of taking the 12 from England;
    and he congratulated me upon the "wonderful progress" which I had
    made.... On the same day on which I had received Mr. Gladstone's
    letter I saw one from Sir Henry Ponsonby to Mr. Gladstone with Mr.
    Gladstone's reply. Sir Henry Ponsonby made proposals.... Mr.
    Gladstone had refused both for the present; the former with scorn
    and the latter with argument. [Footnote: The first was "that the
    Lords should read the Franchise Bill a second time, and then pass a
    resolution declaring that they would go into Committee as soon as
    the Redistribution Bill reached them."]

    'On September 30th further letters were circulated, one from Sir
    Henry Ponsonby on the 27th, in which he said that the reform of the
    House of Lords must in any case come, but must come later, and that
    he would see the leaders of the Opposition about the second
    suggestion of his previous letter as it had not been absolutely
    refused (the suggestion being that the Lords should provide in the
    Franchise Bill that it should come into force on January 1st, 1886,
    unless the Redistribution Bill were sooner passed).

    'On October 4th Hartington made a speech which produced a storm upon
    this subject of Compromise as to Reform.' (He proposed that the
    Lords should pass the Franchise Bill 'after seeing the conditions of
    the Redistribution Bill and satisfying themselves that they were
    fair.') 'But Mr. Gladstone went with Chamberlain and myself against
    any compromise.'

Mr. Chamberlain put the point that no bargain could be considered unless
the Franchise Bill were first passed without conditions very plainly in
a speech on October 7th, and next day at the Cabinet

    'Mr. Gladstone expressed his approval of Chamberlain's speech of the
    previous night, and attacked Hartington for his earlier one. It
    seemed to me that at this moment Lord Salisbury might have caught
    Hartington by offering the compromise which Hartington had
    suggested.... I refused to discuss Redistribution with the Cabinet,
    telling Chamberlain that they would "drive me wild with little
    peddling points."'

The appreciation of Sir Charles's competence was general. It was not
limited to Parliament, and he met the expression of it when he appeared
on the platform in three great centres of the Lancashire industrial
democracy.

    'On Tuesday, October 14th, I spoke at Oldham, and on October 15th at
    the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, and on the 16th at Stockport. I had
    a wonderful reception at all these meetings, but especially at the
    Manchester meeting.'

Sir Charles's personal record served the party well, for the Tory cry
was that the Liberals wished to preserve the inequalities of the
existing divisions. To this he answered by appealing to the projects
which he had introduced year after year, and recalling their reception
from the Tory Government:

    'I have preached for redistribution in the desert, I have advocated
    it unceasingly for years, I have been a bore upon it in Parliament
    and out; even the franchise is no less important in my eyes as being
    that which I have a dozen times called "the necessary first step to
    a complete redistribution" than in and for itself. Redistribution
    is, however, if possible, of even more tremendous difficulty than
    importance. It offers a greater hold than any other subject to the
    arts of blocking and delay.' [Footnote: October 14th, at Oldham.]

    'On October 17th Spencer reported from Balmoral that the Queen was
    much pleased with her "Speech"; but not so with other people's
    speeches, being angry at the violence of the language used.'

Lord Salisbury had declared that if Birmingham was going to march on
London, he hoped Mr. Chamberlain would head the procession and get his
head broken for his pains. Mr. Chamberlain retorted that he would gladly
head the procession if Lord Salisbury would promise to come and meet it,
and then, if his own head were broken, 'it should be broken in very good
company.' On October 21st

    'I was sent for by Mr. Gladstone about Chamberlain's speech, and
    wrote to Chamberlain to ask him if he could tone it down a
    little.... On October 22nd at the Cabinet Chamberlain told me that
    he was willing to adopt the words of my letter in explanation of his
    speech.'

He agreed to write for publication a letter to one of his Quaker
constituents; but it was judged insufficient.

    'On October 28th Mr. Gladstone wrote to me: "I thought you and I
    were perfectly agreed about the unfortunate expressions in
    Chamberlain's speech ... and in the expectation that his letter ...
    would fully meet the case. I own that in my opinion it did not come
    up to the mark. All I had really wished was a note conceived in the
    same spirit as that in which he withdrew the 'jackal' because it
    gave offence. Can nothing more be done? You saw a recent letter of
    mine in defence, written when I thought the objections taken not to
    be just. I am precluded from writing any such letter with the facts
    as they now stand, but I hope that you may be able to bring them to
    the standard of our reasonable expectations." I sent this letter to
    Chamberlain, as was intended, with a note from me to say that it was
    clear that the Queen had written Mr. Gladstone a second letter about
    the matter, and asked whether I should say that I thought
    Chamberlain's letter met the case; and Chamberlain replied: "Yes. I
    cannot and _will not_ do more." This I communicated to Mr.
    Gladstone. Randolph Churchill had taken the matter up. He accused
    Chamberlain of having advocated violence, and was loudly
    threatening, even to me, that there should be "somebody killed at
    Birmingham next time." Chamberlain told me that Randolph had tried
    to get up a march against Highbury on the part of the Birmingham
    Tory roughs; but they were still on speaking terms, and often
    chatting together at the smoking-room at the House. On the same day,
    the 28th, late in the evening Mr. Gladstone sent for me about the
    Chamberlain matter, and said of the Queen: "She not only attacks him
    but me through him, and says I pay a great deal too much attention
    to him." When Chamberlain and I went home, as we almost always did,
    together in one cab, he broke out, evidently much worried and
    excited, against Mr. Gladstone.

    'Next day I warned Mr. Gladstone that it would not take much to make
    a serious row.'

On October 15th Sir Charles wrote to Sir M. Grant Duff that he expected
'they would sit till February, and send the Bill up a third time.' On
October 24th Mr. Gladstone was inclined to resign at the second
rejection, which was taken for a certainty. But as to the final issue,
it was becoming daily clearer that the Commons were going to win against
the Lords. Even in the home counties Liberalism had become aggressive.

    'October 24th.--Franchise and Redistribution seemed well in view
    when I discovered on this day that Nathaniel Rothschild, who had
    lately looked on Buckinghamshire as his own, was now down on his
    knees to Carrington about it.' Work now began on the details of the
    draft Bill.

    'On October 25th there was a full meeting of my Committee of the
    Cabinet on Redistribution. I took the chair, and Hartington,
    Kimberley, Childers, Chamberlain, James, and Lefevre, sat round the
    table. I got my own way in everything, and succeeded in raising the
    10,000 limit of merger to 15,000. Mr. Gladstone, who disliked the
    change, and who was the strongest Conservative living upon the
    subject, yielded to it on the same night by letter.'

Sir Charles now threw himself into getting as big a measure as possible
by a 'truce of God' between the parties.

    'On October 29th Mr. Gladstone told me that Lord Carnarvon had
    proposed to him that they should meet in order to come to some
    conclusion about Redistribution. He had declined, but had tried,
    through Sir Erskine May, to induce the Tories to appoint a Committee
    of their own to draw up a scheme. I saw Sir Erskine May and told him
    to tell Northcote that I would accept, and press the acceptance of,
    any scheme not obviously unfair, and not containing minority
    representation, which I should be unable to carry.'

    'On October 31st there was a Cabinet which was Trevelyan's first,
    and very glad he and his wife were to escape from Ireland,
    [Footnote: The Chief Secretaryship was offered to Mr. Shaw Lefevre,
    who refused on the same ground as had previously been taken by Sir
    Charles. Without Cabinet rank he was not prepared to accept it. Sir
    Henry Campbell-Bannerman was then appointed. Mr. Lefevre entered the
    Cabinet as Postmaster-General after the death of Mr. Fawcett, which
    occurred on November 6th, 1884.] which had aged him dreadfully....
    On the question of Reform Hartington told us that he had had several
    interviews with Sir Michael Beach, who had expressly stated that he
    was not authorized by his party to make suggestions, but had
    proposed total merger up to 25,000, and loss of the second seat up
    to 80,000. I, to clinch the matter, at once volunteered to draw up a
    scheme on this basis.'

    'James called my attention to some communications in the
    Conservative newspapers, stating that he had it on very high
    authority (which with James always meant Randolph Churchill) that
    the extremely large schemes hinted at were Lord Salisbury's, and
    would be supported by the whole Conservative party; but these
    schemes suggested minority-representation in urban districts, with
    single-member constituencies in counties; or, as Chamberlain said,
    "Tory minority represented in towns, and Liberal minority
    extinguished in county." Lord Salisbury, however, was only keeping
    his friends in good humour with minority-representation. In the
    evening Randolph Churchill sent me a message that he wished to have
    a conference with me about Redistribution, and by an arrangement
    made through Sir Erskine May, we met in the Office of the Serjeant-
    at-Arms. He then told me that Beach's scheme was his, and that he
    was convinced that an agreement might be come to on those lines. I
    assured him of my warm support for a large scheme. I think this was
    the occasion (about this time) when Randolph, who was thinking of
    going to India, vented his anger as to Salisbury. Winston Churchill
    told me in March, 1901, that his father had come to terms with
    Salisbury as to the future Tory Government before he started for
    India. I told him this could not be, as the possibility of forming
    one depended on the Irish, and that Lord Salisbury could not at this
    early date have agreed to buy them by the promises of (1) Enquiry
    into Spencer's police, (2) no Coercion, (3) a Viceroy personally
    favourable to Home Rule.

    'In the evening I dined with the Duchess of Manchester to meet the
    Dufferins, on which occasion Dufferin shone, but his health and
    spirits were now beginning to decline. Hartington was at the dinner,
    and told me that he had had a fresh interview with Beach, this time
    at his (Hartington's) request.

    'On Saturday, November 1st, I had some correspondence with
    Hartington about these interviews, of which I warmly approved; and
    on the 3rd Hartington wrote to me that he was going to see Beach
    again that day, and I placed all my scheme before him for
    communication to the Conservative front bench.'

Publicly there was war.

    'On November 4th was the laying of the foundation-stone of the
    National Liberal Club, at which Harcourt, after saying that he was a
    moderate politician, compared the House of Lords to Sodom and
    Gomorrah.'

But privately

    'on this day Hartington again saw Beach, and afterwards
    Churchill.... Beach said that Lord Salisbury unreservedly accepted
    the Queen's suggestion for a meeting of the leaders.... Conferences
    went on, but all through the month Beach declined to take a
    "representative character, or negotiate in such a way as would
    commit his party"--to use Hartington's words. Hartington now thought
    "Mr. Gladstone would be able either to come to terms with Lord
    Salisbury or to put him completely in the wrong." Hartington added:
    "Beach very much regrets the Lowther and John Manners speeches,"'

and probably Lord Hartington expressed regret for Sir William Harcourt's
references to Sodom and Gomorrah.

    'On the 6th there was a meeting of my Committee on Redistribution to
    consider Beach's proposals, at which I took the chair, but did
    little else, and left all the talking to the others, and their view
    came to this--that they were quite willing to agree to the Tory
    revolutionary scheme, provided the Tories would take the odium with
    the House of Commons of proposing it.'

    'On November 7th the Cabinet decided that I should be joined to
    Hartington as recognized plenipotentiary.'

On the 10th

    'I proposed and Mr. Gladstone agreed to write to Lord Salisbury
    "distinctly accepting the Queen's offers." On November 11th we
    confirmed our decisions at the last Cabinet as to completely taking
    away from Lord Salisbury the power of saying that he had accepted
    and we declined the Queen's proposals, by unreservedly supporting
    Mr. Gladstone's letter to the Queen.'

On November 15th Mr. Gladstone informed the Cabinet that the Lords were
unyielding.

    'Northcote had taken tea with him on the previous evening. The Lords
    would not part with the Franchise Bill till the Redistribution Bill
    was in their House. As regarded Lord Salisbury and Sir Stafford
    Northcote, Mr. Gladstone considered the door absolutely closed, but
    he was informed that the Duke of Richmond and Lord Cairns did not
    agree with the leaders. We then drew up a statement to be made on
    Monday, November 17th, in both Houses of Parliament as to the steps
    we had taken to produce conciliation, Harcourt saying: "This is the
    apple-woman spitting on her old apples and shining 'em up!"--the
    fact being that it was only done to put the Lords in the wrong.'

    'On Monday, November 17th, when I returned from Sandringham, I had
    to see Lord Rowton, who had been sent to me by the Prince of Wales
    to try and produce a settlement of the Redistribution difficulty,
    but we only sat and smiled at one another; he saying that he had
    come because he had been told to come, and I saying that I had
    nothing new to tell him, for Lord Salisbury knew all we had to say.'

    'On November 19th there was a Cabinet. The first matter mentioned
    was the arrangement with the Conservatives for an interview, and at
    four o'clock on this day, November 19th, occurred the first meeting
    of the parties: an interview between Lord Salisbury and Sir Stafford
    Northcote on the one side, and Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville on
    the other. Lord Salisbury had written to me about it already, and
    had privately seen my papers the previous day at the Commission, and
    had asked me a great number of questions, and I had given him my
    division of the Metropolis and of Lancashire at his wish, and
    received from him the following note: "I do not know whether it will
    be possible to discuss the application of the one-member principle
    to the Counties and the Metropolitan Constituencies and the suburbs
    of the larger towns." The hesitating way in which he asked shows
    that we might have avoided the single-members had we fought upon the
    point. But, as I liked them myself, I fought the other way, against
    Mr. Gladstone. At the interview between the leaders of the two
    parties and the two Houses it was merely decided that the real
    interview should take place on Saturday, November 22nd, at noon
    between the two Conservative chiefs and Mr. Gladstone, Lord
    Hartington, and me, Lord Granville being left out as knowing nothing
    of the subject. On November 21st I continued my private conference
    with Lord Salisbury at the Royal Commission, and we settled who the
    Boundary Commissioners should be. On Saturday, November 22nd, I had
    a conference with Chamberlain before going to the meeting with Lord
    Salisbury. Chamberlain was in favour of two-member seats as against
    single members, especially for boroughs. He was as clear as was Lord
    Salisbury that the single-member system would damage the Liberal
    party in the Metropolis.

    'In the afternoon the Conference took place, and there never was so
    friendly and pleasant a meeting. I fully described it in three
    letters to Chamberlain, in which I said, among other things: "It
    looks as though Lord Salisbury is really anxious that we should pass
    our Bill." No memorandum on this day passed in writing, and the
    written compact was concluded between Lord Salisbury and me only on
    November 28th. The meeting of the 22nd was known at the time as the
    Downing Street meeting; and the other as "the Arlington Street
    compact."

    'On Sunday, November 23rd, Lord Salisbury wrote to me a letter which
    I sent on to Mr. Gladstone and which he kept. Mr. Gladstone replied
    on the same day undertaking to move the adjournment of the House for
    a week, and showing that he was not at all sure that Lord Salisbury,
    having got from us the whole of our scheme and given us nothing in
    writing which was worth anything, did not mean to sell us.
    Chamberlain wrote on the same day in reply to my letters, "I cannot
    make head or tail of Salisbury. He appears to be swallowing every
    word that he has ever written or spoken about Redistribution.... I
    wonder if he will carry his party with him.... On the whole, you
    seem to be doing very well."'

Discussion now went on by correspondence between Sir Charles and Lord
Salisbury, and it touched subjects which might easily have led to
friction. Lord Salisbury proposed to create a number of urban
constituencies by grouping; his plan being to get the small towns taken
out of rural districts which he looked upon as otherwise Conservative,
and to group them with small manufacturing boroughs:

    'I was aghast at this suggestion, because it was a very difficult
    thing, in a Parliamentary sense, to create a few such groups in
    England; and if the thing was to be carried far and not confined to
    a few cases only it would entirely have destroyed the whole of the
    work that we had done, because all the counties would have had their
    numbers altered. I therefore fought stoutly for my own scheme, which
    I succeeded in carrying almost untouched. Lord Salisbury's letter
    crossed one from me to him in which, after Mr. Gladstone's leave
    (conveyed in the words "I see no objection to sending him this
    excellent and succinct paper marked Secret"), I had communicated to
    Lord Salisbury my views and the grounds on which they were based.'

    'On the 26th, at four o'clock, we met at Downing Street, all five
    being present.... Lord Salisbury, yielding to my reasoning, gave up
    grouping,' on the understanding that the Boundary Commissioners were
    'to keep the urban patches as far as possible by themselves....
    Ultimately it was settled that single-member districts should be
    universal in counties, and that we should leave open for the present
    the question of how far it should be applied to boroughs.'

Lord Salisbury wished to retain the minority clause in places where he
thought it had worked well, but he did not ask for it in Birmingham and
Glasgow. 'All this showed great indecision,' says Sir Charles, and he
observes that 'Lord Salisbury did not seem to me thoroughly to
understand his subject.' It is probable, at all events, that he was no
match on the details either for Sir Charles or for Mr. Gladstone, who,
after the Conference, thus summed up his impressions in a letter dated
November 26th:

    'My Dear Dilke,

    'I send you herewith for your consideration a first sketch which I
    have made of a possible communication to-morrow after the Cabinet
    from us to the Legates of the opposite party. I think that if the
    Cabinet make it an _ultimatum_ we should be safe with it. There was
    a careful abstention to-day on their side from anything beyond
    praising this or that, and at the outset they spoke of the
    one-member system for boroughs "with exceptions" as what they
    desired.

    'Yours sincerely,

    'W. E. Gladstone.'

    'Mr. Gladstone's memorandum was on my lines. On the next morning,
    November 27th, Mr. Gladstone, Lord Granville, Hartington, I, and
    Chamberlain met before the Cabinet at 11 o'clock, and kept the
    Cabinet waiting, the Cabinet having been called for twelve, and
    Redistribution alone being considered at it. I announced at the
    Cabinet that the Tories proposed and we accepted single-member
    districts universally in counties, boundaries to be drawn by a
    commission who were to separate urban from rural as far as possible,
    without grouping and without creating constituencies of utterly
    eccentric shape. The names of the commissioners had been settled,
    and both sides were pledged to accept their proposals, unless the
    two sides agreed to differ from them. [Footnote: At the meeting of
    the 26th 'it was agreed that the Boundary Commissioners should
    consist of those gentlemen who had been advising me.']

    'The Tories proposed single-member districts almost everywhere in
    boroughs, and only positively named one exception--the City of
    London--but were evidently prepared to make some exceptions. They
    made our agreement on this point the condition of passing the
    Franchise Bill, of giving up the decrease of the Irish members from
    103 to 100 which they urged, of giving up all forms of minority
    vote, and of giving up grouping. My own opinion and that of the
    Prime Minister were in favour of agreement. Hartington, who much
    disliked what he thought would be the extinction of the Whigs by an
    omnipresent caucus for candidates' selection, was hostile to the
    single-member system. I pointed out that we already proposed in our
    amended scheme 120 single-member borough seats out of 284 borough
    seats. We had thrown out to the Tories a question as to whether they
    would accept, say, 184 single-borough seats, and give us, say, not
    more than 100 for double-member seats; or, if they liked, two-thirds
    and one-third; and they did not positively decline this suggestion.
    Mr. Gladstone proposed to "save from compulsory division those urban
    constituencies, not Metropolitan, which, now possessing dual
    representation, are to have their representation neither increased
    nor diminished." (This was the ultimate agreement.) Also, that
    "cities and towns which are to receive four members and upwards, ten
    in number, should have one central or principal area set apart with
    two members." (This was purely personal on Mr. Gladstone's part and
    was universally rejected.)

    'I argued warmly in favour of supporting Lord Salisbury's scheme
    (upon which he and I were absolutely agreed), I being delighted at
    having got seven more members for the Metropolis than were given by
    my scheme in its last form after the Cabinet had cut it down. In
    order to secure Chamberlain's support I told him "I might be able to
    save a seat for you and give the extended Birmingham seven if you
    liked to make that a condition, but in that case I must get one
    somewhere for Glasgow also out of the rest of Scotland, which is
    skinning flints."

    'The reception of our proposals by the Cabinet, to which Grosvenor'
    (the Chief Whip) 'had been called in, was not altogether favourable.
    Childers talked about resigning, and Grosvenor was most hostile. We
    had the enormous advantage, however, that Chamberlain and I and Mr.
    Gladstone were the only three people who understood the subject, so
    that the others were unable to fight except in the form known as
    swearing at large. I was sent off from the Cabinet to Lord Salisbury
    to tell him that we could agree. At three o'clock we had a further
    conference with the Conservative leaders, and came to an agreement
    on my base, Chamberlain, who was somewhat hostile, yielding to me, I
    going in and out to him, for he was at Downing Street in another
    room.'

Next day memoranda were exchanged between the parties to the Conference,
and Mr. Gladstone was pledged to stand by the heads set down in his
memoranda, and accept no provision outside of these without Sir Stafford
Northcote's agreement. One detail is of interest as illustrating Mr.
Gladstone's inherited Conservatism, which comes out all through these
negotiations.

    'Mr. Gladstone in sending this (memorandum) to me said: "You will
    see that Salisbury stands upon our printed statement as to
    Universities." Mr. Gladstone, knowing that I was strongly opposed to
    University representation, took this matter upon himself. He
    proposed a more general form of words in place of Lord Salisbury's
    pledge against new matters, and, as for Universities, wrote: "Assure
    Salisbury that I personally will _bind_ myself out and out to this
    proposition."'

    'In the afternoon I went to Lord Salisbury to settle the terms of
    agreement, and had to go four times from him to Mr. Gladstone, and
    four times back again, before we finished....

    'The next day I lunched with Mr. Gladstone to meet Miss Mary
    Anderson, the actress, and Princess Louise. I received at lunch a
    letter from Lord Salisbury making a few reservations ... none of
    them difficult of acceptance.

    'On December 2nd I got a note from Harcourt--to ask what I had been
    doing with the British Constitution in his absence. On December 8th
    I had a serious grumble from Spencer from Dublin as to my having
    settled with Salisbury who were to be the Irish Commissioners, and
    only asked the Irish Government after the thing was done. I had
    undoubtedly been wrong, and can only say that Spencer let me off
    cheaply....'

Sir Charles's holiday in the South of France, whither he went on
December 17th, was broken by copies of a correspondence between Lord
Spencer and Lord Salisbury, the latter writing 'with much sound and
fury' on the question of another Conservative Boundary Commissioner for
Ireland. 'Lord Salisbury had always been so extremely soft and sweet to
me that it was a revelation to find him writing to Spencer in the style
of Harcourt or of Chamberlain when in a passion.'

    'Sir Stafford Northcote also wrote to me upon the subject, and
    passing on to Scotland in his letter, added, "It is, I think,
    understood that we may have a free fight over the grouping of Scotch
    boroughs." This question of the Scotch boroughs was afterwards
    referred to me and Charles Dalrymple (M.P. for Buteshire), and I
    gave Dalrymple one or two changes that he wanted, which, I think,
    did not matter.'

Such difficulties were few and subordinate. The scheme was settled in
principle, for after the Arlington Street compact

    'I wrote the letter to the Boundary Commissioners the same night,
    and after I had signed their instructions on December 5th I had a
    pause in my Redistribution work for some time.'

But at the end of December Lord Hartington wrote:

    'I think it will take two of us all our time to work the Bill
    through; and you know so much more about it than anybody else that
    you must necessarily take the greatest share of the details';

and ended with an invitation to Sir Charles to stay at Hardwick to do
some preliminary work on the measure.




CHAPTER XXXVII

FOREIGN AFFAIRS IN 1884

Mrs. Mark Patterson


I.

During 1884 'I warned Lord Granville, Mr. Gladstone, Fitzmaurice, and
Childers, that I should not in future be able to speak on foreign
affairs on account of the terrible work of the Redistribution Bill, and
of the Royal Commission,' for 'I was now so busy with the preparation
for working the Redistribution Bill through the House, and with the
Report of the Royal Commission, that I objected to receiving Foreign
Office papers not sent to other members of the Cabinet ... but Lord
Granville insisted that I should still see them, and circulated a letter
to that effect.'

During 1884 and 1885 Foreign Office work was not only exacting, but was
connected with acute disagreements in the Ministry itself. It has been
seen how closely Sir Charles was occupied with the Egyptian question,
and how constantly he found himself opposed to Lord Hartington in his
views of policy. Moreover, out of the Egyptian difficulty there sprang a
general divergence from France, and this led to action by France in
various quarters of the globe calculated to offend British
susceptibilities and to injure British prestige. Sir Charles, friend of
France as he was, had been strong for resenting and resisting such
action, and this attitude had brought him into conflict with those who
on the whole had supported him in Egyptian matters. A new factor was now
introduced. Bismarck had previously been content to urge on the French
in their colonization policy, but in 1884 the German Chancellor, who in
1883 had been working out his schemes of national insurance, found his
hand forced by the Colonial party, and, in view of the coming German
elections, could no longer afford to ignore them. Bismarck, 'contrary to
his conviction and his will,' said Lord Ampthill, accepted a policy of
colonization, which had the secondary effect of harassing and
humiliating the British Liberal Administration. [Footnote: _Life of
Granville_, vol. ii., p. 355.] Sir Charles, who realized that every such
annexation meant the exclusion of British trade from an actual or
potential market, fought for strong British action, but he fought
against the older Liberals of the Cabinet. Again and again the Radical
leaders were overborne by Mr. Gladstone.

The German Government had demanded protection for a German firm of
traders who had established themselves in the territory of Angra
Pequena, on the west coast of Africa, 280 miles south of Walfisch Bay.
Lord Granville, after considerable delays, caused chiefly by the
necessity of consulting the Colonial Office, which in its turn had to
consult the Cape Government, where a change of Ministry was impending,
objected to the declaration of a German protectorate.

    'June 14th, 1884.--At a Cabinet at Lord Granville's house on
    Conference.... Waddington waiting in another room.

    'H. Bismarck was also in the house, and had been very rude to Lord
    Granville about Angra Pequena, which was mentioned to the Cabinet,
    which would do nothing.

    'June 2lth--... Angra Pequena was mentioned, and it was decided that
    Bismarck, who was greatly irritated with the Government, was to have
    all he wanted.

    'On September 22nd Chamberlain came to me on his return from abroad.
    He told me that H. Bismarck had told him that the German Chancellor
    was very angry at having had no answer to a full statement of German
    views as to Angra Pequena and other colonial matters, which had been
    sent to Lord Granville on August 30th, and he was astonished to
    learn that the Cabinet had not seen his letter....

    'On the 27th Lord Granville had in the meantime written: "I will
    send you my letter and Bismarck's answer, but I do not wish the
    correspondence to be mentioned.... My only excuse, but a good one,
    for acting merely as a medium between the German Government and the
    Colonial Office, was that I had continually the most positive
    assurances in London, and still more in Berlin, that Bismarck was
    dead against German colonization--as he _was_."' [Footnote: On this
    chapter of African history, see _Life of Granville_, vol. ii., chap.
    x., _passim_.]

This was the first of a series of instances in which, to Sir Charles's
great disgust, the British Foreign and Colonial Offices 'lay down to
Germany.'

Since the annexation of part of New Guinea by Queensland had been
disavowed in April, 1883, all Australia was vehemently concerned over
the ultimate fate of this territory, and pressed the home Government to
forestall other Powers by occupying it.

    'June 27th we discussed New Guinea, as to which Lord Derby was
    getting into serious trouble.

    'On July 5th there was a Cabinet called to consider what was called
    the "crisis"--our relation with the House of Lords over the
    Franchise. But so peculiar is the British Empire that, although the
    Cabinet was called upon this question, we immediately proceeded to
    consider for the greater portion of the day matters in Sumatra, in
    the Malay Archipelago, and the Pacific, and ... the affairs of New
    Guinea and so forth. Harcourt, Lord Selborne, and Mr. Gladstone
    violently opposed the occupation of New Guinea--Harcourt and Mr.
    Gladstone on anti-imperialistic grounds, and Lord Selborne on
    grounds connected with the protection of the aborigines against the
    rapacity and violence of the Queensland settlers. Hartington, Lord
    Granville, Derby, Kimberley, Chamberlain, and I, took the Australian
    view. The matter was adjourned, as matters always are adjourned when
    the Prime Minister is against the Cabinet.'

    'August 6th.--We then attacked New Guinea, most of us wanting
    annexation, some protectorate, and decided on the latter to please
    the Chancellor and Mr. Gladstone.'

    'August 9th.--We first discussed German colonies in the South Seas.
    Bismarck had seized North New Guinea, and we decided to stick to the
    long peninsula which faces both north and south.'

Bismarck's immediate answer was to annex, not only the north coast, but
what is now called the Bismarck Archipelago.

    'October 4th.--Next came New Guinea. Were we to insist, as we had
    done previously, on keeping the Germans off the north coast of the
    long eastern peninsula? The previous decision was reversed. The
    Cabinet, however, vetoed a suggestion for the joint commission with
    Germany as to land claims in the Pacific Islands being allowed to
    meddle in New Guinea. We then decided to annex one quarter, and
    several members of the Cabinet expressed a hope that _this time_ the
    thing would "really be done."' [Footnote: A useful sketch of these
    events has recently appeared in the paper read before the Royal
    Geographical Society by Sir Everard Im Thurn, K.C.M.G. See
    _Journal_, vol. xlv., No. 5, April, 1915.]

These instances did not stand alone. Two native chiefs in the Cameroons
had so far back as 1882 proposed to be taken under British protection,
and Sir Charles had pressed acceptance of their offer. The matter had
been discussed in the Cabinet, and Lord Derby and Lord Granville were
still debating what should be done, when a German expedition seized the
territory.

    'On September 18th I received from Chamberlain a letter from
    Leipsic, in which he said: "The Cameroons! It is enough to make one
    sick. As you say, we decided to assume the protectorate eighteen
    months ago, and I thought it was all settled. If the Board of Trade
    or Local Government Board managed their business after the fashion
    of the Foreign Office and Colonial Office, you and I would deserve
    to be hung."'

Those who thought with Sir Charles felt considerable anxiety about
possibilities on the East Coast of Africa. The Cameroons were lost, but
a protectorate over Zanzibar had been offered, and Zanzibar was the
outlet for an important trading district, which the forward party
thought of securing. The Prime Minister was opposed to all such schemes.
'On December 14th Mr. Gladstone broke out against the proposed
annexations in what is now called the Kilimanjaro district.'

He wrote to Sir Charles: 'Terribly have I been puzzled and perplexed on
finding a group of the soberest men among us to have concocted a scheme
such as that touching the mountain country behind Zanzibar with an
unrememberable name. There _must_ somewhere or other be reasons for it
which have not come before me. I have asked Granville whether it may not
stand over for a while.' [Footnote: The allusion is to the treaties with
native chiefs which were negotiated by Mr. (afterwards Sir) Harry
Johnston in 1883-84. These treaties were the foundation of what is now
known as British East Africa, and related mainly to the Kilimanjaro and
Taveita districts. It would appear that Mr. Gladstone himself had at
first expressed an interest in the development of British influence
'over this hinterland of snow mountains and elevated plateaux,' to which
his attention had been drawn by the report of Mr. Joseph Thomson.
Speaking subsequently at the Colonial Institute, Sir Harry Johnston said
that 'about twenty years ago he was making preparations for his first
expedition to British Africa. He had a very distinguished predecessor,
whom he regarded as the real originator of British East Africa: Mr.
Joseph Thomson, who died all too young in 1895. His great journey from
Mombasa was commenced in 1882 and finished in 1884.... His reports sent
home to the Royal Geographical Society had attracted the attention of
Mr. Gladstone; and there was another British statesman, Lord Edmond
Fitzmaurice, who perhaps more than most of his colleagues saw the
possibility of a white man's settlement in Equatorial Africa, and who
chose to select him (Sir H. Johnston) as one agency by which this work
should be commenced.' (_Journal_ of the Royal Colonial Institute,
1903-04, No. 5, p. 317.) The territory covered by the Kilimanjaro
Treaties was ceded to Germany under the arrangement made at the end of
1885, but the remainder has continued to be British (see Sir Harry
Johnston, _A History of the Colonization of Africa by Alien Races_, pp.
376-409.]

Mr. Gladstone could not bring himself to understand that the great
States of Europe had, almost without premeditation, moved into a field
of policy which involved the apportionment of regions scarcely yet known
in any detail to the geographers; nor did he realize the far-reaching
consequences of the acquisition or refusal of some of these districts.
The question of the Congo, for example, involved, as Sir Robert Morier
had foreseen, the settlement of the whole West African coast. In April
Sir Charles had recorded how he

    'had to read up African papers, and found reason to fear that the
    King of the Belgians was contemplating the sale of his Congo
    dominions to France. We had a meeting at the Foreign Office in the
    afternoon, [Footnote: April 26th, 1884.] at which were present Lord
    Granville, Kimberley, Chamberlain, myself, and Fitzmaurice, and,
    finding that we could not possibly carry our Congo Treaty with
    Portugal, we determined to find a way out by referring it to the
    Powers.' [Footnote: The following extract from an article in the
    _Quarterly Review_ explains the importance attached by Sir Charles
    to this Congo treaty, and the far-reaching results which it would
    have had:

    'In 1875 the results of Lieutenant Cameron's great journey across
    Africa became known.... They revealed ... the material for a Central
    African Empire awaiting the enterprise of a European or an Asiatic
    power. There is now little doubt that, had the famous treaty
    negotiated by Sir Charles Dilke, Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, and Sir
    Robert Morier in 1884, been ratified and carried out ... the Congo
    Basin would have been added to the British Empire, together with
    Delagoa Bay and Nyasaland, before its time; with Dahomey also, and
    an all-British West African Coast between Sierra Leone and the
    Gaboon.' (_Quarterly Review_, January, 1906.)

It would perhaps have been more accurate had the author spoken of the
'treaty proposed to be negotiated.' The original plan of Sir Robert
Morier--part of a large scheme for the settlement of all outstanding
questions with Portugal--contemplated _inter alia_ some territorial
acquisition on the Congo by Great Britain. But the Cabinet put a veto on
this. The Foreign Office had therefore to fall back on the alternative
but less ambitious plan contained in the Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of
1884, which was never ratified, owing to the opposition of Germany.
(_Life of Granville_, vol. ii., chap. x.; and supra, I. 418. See also
on this subject the observations of Sir Harry Johnston in his _History_,
quoted above, pp. 277, 278, 343, 405.)]

In October he goes on to relate how

    'Lord Granville had been frightened by Plessen, the Prussian, coming
    to invite him to a Conference at Berlin, but explained that he had
    been much relieved on finding, as he put it, that it was only about
    the Congo. It was, however, the famous Africa Conference which
    virtually settled the whole future of the Dark Continent.'

Sir Charles notes the result in January, 1885:

    'The sittings of the West African Conference, as it was called, were
    at this time taking place at Berlin, and the General Act was signed
    in the following month--that of February, 1885. [Footnote: He notes
    in this month, February 4th, at "a meeting at the Admiralty of all
    the Ministers in town, Childers and I stand alone in support of
    Portugal as regards the Congo. I stated very freely what I still
    believe, that we had behaved shamefully to the Portuguese; but this
    neither convinced Lord Granville at the time, nor excused the
    subsequent behaviour of the Portuguese." On February 11th Sir
    Charles wrote to a diplomatic friend: "I cannot quite follow the
    present phase of Congo, but I hope that nothing will be done to back
    up the rascally association against Portugal. I believe that
    Portugal will seize the disputed territory, and I certainly should
    if I were the Portuguese Ministry."] I was very busy with this work,
    in which I had long taken a deep interest, and was much relieved
    when I found that what I thought the folly of the House of Commons
    in upsetting our Congo Treaty, and preventing a general arrangement
    with the Portuguese as regarded both West Africa and South-East
    Africa, had turned out better than could have been anticipated,
    owing to the interposition of the Germans. My joy was short-lived,
    for King Leopold has not kept his promises.'

The interests thus claimed or created beyond the seas had to be defended
upon the seas. Either Great Britain must be prepared to abate her
pretensions, or she must strengthen her power to enforce them. Dilke and
Chamberlain were strongly against giving way to anything which could be
regarded as usurpation. Mr. Gladstone, on the other hand, pointed out
that to maintain a control, or veto, over the allocation of
unappropriated portions of the globe meant large increase of naval
expenditure, and he set his face against both. On December 2nd

    'Naval expenditure was mentioned. The Cabinet had been about to
    agree both to Northbrook's proposals (for Egypt) and to the sums
    suggested for the defence of coaling-stations, when Mr. Gladstone
    suddenly broke out, told us that he did not much care for himself,
    as he now intended to retire, but that had he been twenty-five years
    younger nothing could have induced him to consent. A loan he would
    not tolerate. Then there was a general veer round, and all went
    against the fortifications. Mr. Gladstone, however, said that he
    should retire as soon as the Redistribution Bill was carried.'

The affairs of South Africa, where Great Britain was consolidating her
position, are also touched on in 1884.

    'On March 22nd we had another Cabinet without Mr. Gladstone. The
    first matter discussed was Zululand, Chamberlain opposing Kimberley
    and Derby, who wished to increase the British Protectorate. At last
    Kimberley said: "I see the Cabinet do not want more niggers," and
    dropped the scheme.

    'On May 17th ... we decided to defend the Zululand reserve against
    all comers.'

Later in the year there are entries as to the annexation of
Bechuanaland:

October 4th, 'Bechuanaland was discussed, as to which Chamberlain wanted
to go to war with the Boers, and had written to me.'

And on November 11th 'there was a Cabinet called on the Bechuanaland
trouble, and we discussed votes of money for the Gordon and Bechuanaland
expeditions.'


II.

During this year the Central Asian question, always of first-rate
interest to Sir Charles, constantly claimed his attention.

    'On February 22nd there was a meeting at the Foreign Office which
    was intended to be a meeting about my Central Asian scheme, but
    which developed into a virtual Cabinet. There were present Mr.
    Gladstone, Hartington, Kimberley, Northbrook, myself, Fitzmaurice,
    and J. K. Cross, Undersecretary of State for India. The delimitation
    of the Afghan frontier was further considered and pretty much
    decided.

    'Pleasures of Office. I dined with the Dean of Westminster, and was
    called away in the middle of dinner to make a speech about Central
    Asia, and got back again for coffee.'

    'On March 5th Hartington suggested that we should recommence the
    Quetta railroad, and it was decided to give a hint to Lord Ripon to
    ask for it.'

    'August 5th.--Lord Granville informed us that the Shah was alarmed
    at the Russian advance upon the Persian frontier, and asked us for
    promises.

    'August 7th.--There was a meeting of the Central Asian Committee....
    Lord Granville, Hartington, Kimberley, I, and Fitzmaurice were
    present, with Philip Currie. As to the amount of support to be given
    to Persia Lord Granville wrote an excellent despatch, while we were
    talking. It was settled that we were to repeat our statements at St.
    Petersburg at a convenient opportunity, but to ask the Shah that, as
    an earnest of his good intentions towards us, the Persian rivers
    should be thrown open to our trade--not a bad touchstone. We
    discussed the Afghan boundary, and decided that, if the Russians
    would not agree to our proposed starting-point for the delimitation,
    we would send an Afghan British Commission without them to make our
    own, delimitation.'

    'November 18th.--Edmond Fitzmaurice consulted me as to Central Asia.
    The Russians had agreed in principle to the delimitation, but ...
    had made much delay in questions of detail.'

On the Committee Sir Charles and Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice were unequally
yoked with the lethargic Secretary of State for War. Lord Fitzmaurice
has vivid recollection of Lord Hartington's entry at one sitting half an
hour late, after his fashion. The question turned on the probable action
of some Afghan chiefs, whereupon Lord Hartington broke silence by
observing reflectively: "I wonder what an Afghan chief is like." Sir
Charles, with a glance at the high-nosed, bearded, deliberate face of
his colleague, pushed a scribbled note to Lord Edmond: "I expect an
Afghan chief is very like the Right Honourable the Marquis of
Hartington."'

Sir Charles's interest in this Central Asian question, where political
and military interests lay so close together, led to a correspondence,
and the correspondence to a friendship, with Lord Roberts.

    'In March I received a letter from Sir Frederick Roberts, not yet
    personally known to me, in which he enclosed a memorandum by him
    called "Is an Invasion of India by Russia Possible?" In his letter
    he said that he had given up the idea of returning to Kandahar, and
    only desired that we should make ourselves secure upon our new
    frontier, improve our relations with the Afghans, and clearly show
    that we could not allow the Russians to establish themselves in
    Northern Afghanistan. In his printed paper he showed that Persia
    might be looked upon as virtually Russian, and that what we had to
    do was to prevent Afghanistan falling into the same position. He
    incidentally admitted the strength of the view of those of us who
    had advocated the evacuation of Kandahar by saying that the Afghans
    "must be assured that we have no designs upon their country, and
    that even should circumstances require a British occupation of
    Kandahar, the direction of all internal affairs would be left in
    their hands; we must guarantee them the integrity of their kingdom."
    He strongly supported my view that no time should be lost in
    defining the northern boundary of Afghanistan.

    'Roberts went on to lay down the principle that the main body of a
    Russian army destined for the invasion of India must advance by
    Herat and Girishk on Kandahar, whence, if not defeated, the Russians
    must move by Ghazni, Kabul, and the Khyber. Sir Frederick Roberts
    pointed out that India could not place in the field, under the then
    conditions, more than 40,000 men, with from 130 to 140 guns. Part of
    the native army could be relied on, but, writing as Commander-in-
    Chief in Madras, he pointed out that the Southern Indian Sepoys had
    not the courage and physique to fight against Russian troops, or
    even against natives from the north. On the other hand, many of our
    northern native troops would be of doubtful loyalty in the event of
    Russia becoming predominant in Afghanistan. "Sir Fred" laid down
    the principle of completing railway communication to a point near
    Kandahar, with a bridge across the Indus near Sukkur, and generally
    described the plan of a vigorous offensive on the Kandahar side and
    a defensive on the Khyber line, which has since been adopted.'

    'At the end of May I received from Sir Frederick Roberts a letter in
    reply to mine, acknowledging the receipt of the Defence of India
    papers which I have named. I had told him that the real danger was
    that Russia would detach Herat by local intrigue without appearing,
    and that I did not see how we could prevent this alarming danger.
    Sir Frederick admitted the truth of my view, and again pointed out
    the importance of trying to win the friendship of the Afghans. He
    favoured my proposals for the delimitation of the northern frontier
    of Afghanistan. "But I much doubt Russia's now agreeing to any
    proposal of the sort." He ended by expressing his gratification at
    our issue of the order for the completion of the railway to Quetta
    and Pishin.'

Discussions preliminary to the Budget occupied the Cabinet in January,
1884, and Mr. Childers announced that the Army and Navy Estimates would
leave him with a deficit, chiefly because the newly introduced parcel
post had been 'a disastrous failure.'

    'In the course of this Cabinet of January 24th, I for the first time
    stated my views on the subject of army reform. I have a slip of
    paper which passed backwards and forwards between Chamberlain and
    myself, headed "The condition of the army." I wrote: "Do you
    remember my saying one night in our cab to you that I could not go
    to the W.O. because of my views upon this very point?" Chamberlain
    wrote back: "But that really is the reason why you should go. I have
    the lowest opinion of army administration wherever I can test it--
    contracts, for instance. It is most ludicrously inefficient." To
    which I replied: "The Duke of Cambridge and the old soldiers and the
    Queen would make it very nearly hopeless."'

The War Office never tempted Sir Charles as did the Admiralty, where, he
wrote to Lord Granville in 1885, 'I fear I should be extravagant.'


III.

A holiday home in the South of France had ceased to be easily accessible
to the 'most hard-worked member of the Government.' Though for many
years he retained his little villa of 'La Sainte Campagne' near Toulon,
nestling in its olive groves with, from windows and cliff, the view of
the red porphyry rocks across the deep blue of the bay, he had for some
time been negotiating for the purchase of strips of land by the
riverside near Shepperton, and among the pines at Pyrford.

In 1883 the building of the cottage at Dockett Eddy was begun, over the
door of which he set this inscription:

"Parva sed apta mihi, sed nulli obnoxia, sed non Sordida, parta meo sed
tamen aere, domus."

[Footnote: Thus rendered in English by the Rev. W. Tuckwell:

  ''Tis tiny, but it suits me quite,
  Invades no jealous neighbour's right;
  'Tis neat and clean, and--pleasant thought--
  I earned the cash with which 'twas bought.'

(It was bought out of his official salary.)]

This was to be always his riverside home, and in it he always slept,
even after the larger house had been built near by. There he was one of
the river's most jealous guardians, and in this year notes that he

    'gave evidence before the Select Committee on the River Thames, and
    was instrumental in securing the insertion of a clause in the Bill,
    afterwards produced by the Committee, which put an end to shooting
    on the Thames, and did a great deal to protect the quiet of the
    river.'

The Dockett cottage was not finished till 1885, and:

    'On Saturday, March 21st, I took a holiday on the river, starting
    down with my punt from Taplow Court, and bringing her down to
    Dockett Eddy, of which I now took possession, the little house being
    now finished.'

On May 22nd, 1884,

    'I settled to go on Whitsun Tuesday to look at Lord Onslow's land at
    Pyrford, for a winter house. I had forgotten that my ancestor Sir R.
    Parkhurst had been Lord of the Manor of Pyrford, and that my
    ancestor Sir Edward Zouche had lived even nearer to my new purchase,
    at old Woking St. Peter, whence I hear his bells.'

Late in the year

    'I settled on my motto for my cottage at Pyrford--a line of Ruskin,
    "This is the true nature of Home,--it is the place of Peace."

    'The selection meant in my mind that home was about to exist once
    more for me.'

    'In July, 1884, Mrs. Mark Pattison had been left a widow by the
    death of the Rector of Lincoln College. She went to live at The
    Lodge, Headington, near Oxford.

    'Later in the year we became privately engaged, and told Mr. and
    Mrs. Frank Pattison, Mrs. Westlake, Mrs. Earle, and Mrs. Grant Duff,
    as well as Chamberlain, but no one else. It was decided that others
    should not be told until much later, and to Lord Granville, who
    (without mentioning a name) congratulated me, I had to feign
    ignorance of what he meant. Mrs. Pattison settled to go to India in
    February, March, or April, 1885, to stay with the Governor of Madras
    and Mrs. Grant Duff in the hills, and to return in September or
    October for our wedding, which before her departure was fixed for
    October. Before the return there happened Emilia's typhoid fever at
    Ootacamund, and our terrible misfortunes; but the date of October,
    1885, was fated to remain the date, and Chamberlain, who had, before
    Emilia left, consented to be best man, was best man still. The place
    of the wedding alone was changed--from Christ Church Cathedral,
    Oxford, to the parish church of Chelsea. Mrs. Grant Duff wrote to us
    on being told a most pleasant letter.

    'Chamberlain wrote the best letter of his life to her.'

This was the letter:

    '40, Prince's Gardens, S.W.,

    'November 5th, 1884.

    'My Dear Mrs. Pattison,

    'Dilke has told me his great secret, and I sympathize with him so
    warmly in the new prospects of happiness which are opening for him
    that I have asked leave to write to you and to offer my hearty
    congratulations.

    'I venture to think that we are already friends, and this adds
    greatly to the pleasure which this intelligence has given me.

    'For many years I have been on the most intimate terms with your
    future husband; and while I share the general opinion of the world
    as to his talents and force of character, I have better reason than
    any other man to appreciate his generosity and goodness, and the
    chivalrous delicacy which a natural reserve conceals from casual
    acquaintance.

    'I prize his friendship as the best gift of my public life, and I
    rejoice unfeignedly that he will have a companion so well able to
    share his noblest ambitions and to brighten his life.

    'I know that you will forgive me this intrusion, which is justified
    by the fact that next to yourself I am more interested than anyone
    in the change which will bring so much happiness to my dear friend.

    'Believe me always,

    'Yours most sincerely,

    'J. Chamberlain.'




CHAPTER XXXVIII

DIVIDED COUNSELS

JANUARY AND FEBRUARY, 1885


At the close of 1884 Mr. Gladstone's colleagues expected that he would
resign, and it appears that he had really thought of doing so, provided
that a ministry could be formed under Lord Hartington's leadership.
Franchise and Redistribution were virtually settled, and there was no
legislative proposal before either the Cabinet or the country on which
Lord Hartington was in marked disagreement with his colleagues. But they
were still 'an Egyptian Government,' and here differences seemed to be
irreconcilable.

    'The Egyptian policy of the Government had now become thoroughly
    unpopular, and those of us who, although we had favoured
    intervention as necessary at the time, had deplored alike the
    engagements of our predecessors which had made it necessary, and the
    occupation which, unnecessarily in my opinion, followed it, were as
    unpopular as were those like Hartington, and the majority of the
    peers in the Cabinet, who had insisted not only on going, but on
    staying--at least in Cairo. It is curious to reflect how
    intervention in the East is judged by subsequent complications which
    do not affect the principle. The intervention of 1860-61 in Syria
    gave considerable popularity to the Government who agreed to it, and
    to Lord Dufferin who conducted it on the spot; and it was as popular
    in France which found the troops, as in England which found the man.
    By that intervention Syria was pacified and war in the East
    prevented, and ultimately it was followed by evacuation and
    reversion to what diplomatists style in their jargon "an improved
    _status quo_."

    'It is too often now (1891) forgotten that we actually proposed in
    1884 to France (in connection with a Conference which took place,
    obtaining therefore to some extent, it might be contended, valuable
    consideration for our proposal) that we would, at or before the
    expiration of our occupation, propose to the Powers and to the Porte
    a scheme for the neutralization of Egypt on the basis of the
    principles applied to Belgium. A document which we printed at the
    beginning of 1885 gave our suggested wording for the neutralization
    treaty, declaring that Egypt should be an independent and
    perpetually neutral State under the guarantee of the contracting
    parties; limiting the strength of the Egyptian army, the claim of
    Turkey to military aid from Egypt, and so forth.'

The suggestion was not welcomed by the Powers.

    'On New Year's Day I left Antibes for Paris, which I reached on
    Friday, the 2nd January, and quitted for London on Saturday, the
    3rd.

    'Chamberlain wrote to me that Mr. Gladstone was threatened with a
    return of his illness, that he required rest, that Egypt had been
    for the moment tided over, though it might at any moment break up
    the Government. It had been decided to send a firm but courteous
    despatch to France demanding immediate consideration of our
    proposals, failing which we should "take our own course."
    Chamberlain, however, added, "What that course is to be is the
    question on which agreement appears impossible. It is 'scuttle and
    bankruptcy' against 'protectorate and guarantee.' Sufficient unto
    the day is the evil thereof."'

Mr. Gladstone was with Dilke and Chamberlain in opposing protectorate or
guarantee in any shape. But there were other questions of Imperial
policy upon which the Imperialism of these two Ministers divided them
from Mr. Gladstone.

    'New Guinea had also been discussed, and Chamberlain was for
    demanding explanations from the Germans. Zululand had been
    mentioned. Chamberlain supported the annexation of the coast of
    Pondoland: Mr. Gladstone, with the support of Trevelyan, "opposing
    any attempt to anticipate Germany."

    'On Sunday, January 4th, Chamberlain wrote again from Birmingham.
    His letter shows that I was anxious for resignation on the Egyptian
    question, and Chamberlain replied that he could not find a
    satisfactory boat to leave the ship in, and that he thought that the
    Government had more lives than a cat. Chamberlain added that he had
    to speak on January 5th, and should find it difficult to steer
    between Jingoism and peace-at-any-price.'

    'He also was engaged in preparing a programme for the future to be
    set forth at Ipswich. This last was the memorable "Unauthorized
    Programme."'

A first instalment of this programme was given by Mr. Chamberlain in a
speech at Birmingham, which advocated restriction of game-preserving,
provision of land for agricultural labourers, and better housing. The
accusations of Communism brought against Mr. Chamberlain began at this
point; and they, of course, redoubled after he had proposed on January
10th at Ipswich to give local bodies power for compulsory acquisition of
land.

At this juncture Mr. Chamberlain was absent from London, and
communicating only by letter with Sir Charles, whom he had not seen
since the middle of December, when Sir Charles crossed to Paris, on his
way to Toulon; and before the unauthorized programme was launched Lord
Hartington contemplated forming a Government which would have given the
foremost positions to Dilke and Chamberlain.

    'On the morning of January 5th Harcourt had told me that Mr.
    Gladstone intended to resign, and that Lord Granville would follow
    Mr. Gladstone, in which case Hartington intended to make him,
    Harcourt, Chancellor, to move Lord Derby and Childers, to put in
    Rosebery, [Footnote: As Secretary for the Colonies.] to offer
    Chamberlain the Chancellorship of the Exchequer, and me the
    Secretaryship of State for Foreign Affairs. But, great as were the
    offices proposed, Chamberlain and I could not have consented to
    remain in if Mr. Gladstone had gone out notoriously dissatisfied. If
    he had gone out on grounds of health alone, it would, of course,
    have been another matter.'

In a letter,

    'probably of Monday morning, January 5th, Chamberlain said that Mr.
    Gladstone's retirement was possible, and might be necessary; that
    Hartington and Harcourt could bring it about; but that we must be
    most careful not to allow them to say that we had been engaged in an
    intrigue with them against Mr. Gladstone. He thought that we ought
    to tell them frankly that we could enter into no negotiations with
    them, and to put this in a Memorandum to which we could afterwards
    appeal. On the other hand, he was willing to state his views as to
    policy, provided all reference to personal questions was avoided. As
    his Egyptian policy, he stated "immediate bankruptcy, communication
    to the Powers of our fixed intention to leave, declaration that we
    would not allow intervention by other Powers in our place, and
    Conference to settle details of neutralization." As to domestic
    policy, he agreed in my suggestion that we should insist upon an
    immediate Civil List Committee, and proposed an inquiry into labour.
    He gave me leave to discuss his letter with Harcourt ("the latter
    has always been a most loyal friend, though he can not be expected
    to agree with us in everything"), and I did so before the Cabinet of
    January 7th.'

By this time Mr. Chamberlain had come to London, and there is no
indication that his speech at Birmingham had created friction. But the
party which wished to offer resistance to Germany's high-handed policy
had been strengthened by a new instance of usurpation.

    'Mr. Gladstone was absent from this Cabinet. The first matter
    discussed was that of Samoa raised by me. There had been received on
    the night of the 6th from the Governor of New Zealand a telegram
    saying that the Germans had made a treaty giving the whole authority
    of Government to the German Consul. While Münster had been telling
    Lord Granville that Germany would take no step hostile to Samoan
    independence, the Germans had sent warships there with secret
    orders, and had hoisted their flag in various parts of the islands.
    The next subject mentioned was that of Zanzibar, and it was decided
    that we should warn Germany that we would not brook interference
    there. At the same time I had much doubt whether Lord Granville
    would act upon the instructions of the Cabinet in this matter, and
    my doubts were justified. The third matter was that of the Pondo
    coast, and also the coast of Zululand. Mr. Gladstone alone objecting
    to a protectorate and being absent, it was decided to have one.'

    'Then came the old question of sending troops to Suakim; [Footnote:
    Colonial troops were offered about this time, and the Diary contains
    the entry, February 20th: "The sending of a Colonial force to
    Suakim. Hartington and Derby had snubbed the Colonists, and were
    snubbed by the Cabinet in consequence."] then that of Egyptian
    Finance, on which Harcourt broached his scheme by which the United
    Kingdom was to pay the difference caused by a reduction of the rate
    of interest, to which scheme Chamberlain and I were opposed. We were
    informed that the Queen "most strongly protested against our binding
    ourselves to leave Egypt."'

Meanwhile the Radicals in the Cabinet considered their concerted action
in view of a change of leadership.

    'We settled during the Cabinet that Trevelyan, Chamberlain, and I
    should meet at my room at the Local Government Board, directly the
    Cabinet was over, to discuss the terms on which we would join a
    Hartington administration; and we did so, finding Egypt and my
    proposed inquiry into the Civil List the only real difficulties. The
    Civil List could be got over, as it was certain that the Whigs would
    give in to pressure from us upon this point. But Harcourt had
    informed us that our Egyptian policy made the formation of a
    Government impossible, as Hartington would not consent to accept
    office on our Egyptian policy.'

It was very difficult to come to an agreement about Egypt. Lord Derby
had declared that the only alternatives were guaranteed neutrality or
annexation. Dilke and Chamberlain stood for the former, considering
their duty done if they prevented occupation by any other European
Power, and took steps to establish internal order--which meant
completing the organization of an Egyptian army. There was a third
policy; for Lord Hartington, who repeatedly in public repudiated the
idea of annexation, insisted upon the retention of a single control
during a prolonged occupation. In this he had the strongest backing from
the Queen.

    'Chamberlain at our meeting added a fresh proviso--namely, that
    Parnell or some other Irishman should be Chief Secretary. I
    afterwards informed Harcourt of Chamberlain's views, adding that
    Chamberlain was willing to avoid all personal questions, although he
    much wished that John Morley should be in the Cabinet, [Footnote:
    Sir Charles had noted his own strong wish to this effect in the
    previous year.] that he wholly rejected Harcourt's plan for Egypt as
    being a bribe to buy off the Powers, forced on us by unworthy fears.
    Chamberlain wished, if his own Egyptian policy was not adopted, to
    simply evacuate the country.

    'Chamberlain, I was empowered to say, had also mentioned the English
    land question, and was opposed to allowing Lord Salisbury to come
    in,' as this, he said to Sir Charles, 'would surely be a hopeless
    confession of weakness, and give him a chance with the new electors.

    'I argued against Chamberlain's Egyptian policy, not on the merits,
    but on the chances of our getting our own way.

    '"I doubt our getting our way as to bankruptcy, and am not sure that
    we ought to put that forward as sole or chief cause for not joining
    Hartington." To this Chamberlain replied: "True. But how can we join
    another Government without any settled policy about Egypt?
    Harcourt's alternative is impossible; then what is there? I should
    refuse to join Hartington unless we can agree as to Egypt policy,
    and if we do agree, there can in that case be no reason for letting
    Salisbury in."'

Egypt was in Sir Charles's view the main, but not the only, difficulty.
The Government policy of 'lying down to Germany' was another. At the
same date:

    'January 7th, Chamberlain and I had a conference with regard to
    Samoa, in which I pointed out that if we quarrelled with France
    about Egypt she would have all Europe behind her, whereas in our
    dealings with Germany about Samoa, Zanzibar, and other matters,
    Germany would stand alone.' [Footnote: A letter to Lord Hartington
    from his secretary, Mr. Brett, which is quoted by Mr. Bernard
    Holland (_Life of Duke of Devonshire_, vol. ii, pp. 38, 39),
    suggests that the Hartington section had difficulty in reconciling
    Sir Charles's attitude on other Imperial matters with his Egyptian
    policy: "It would indeed be a farce, after all the fuss about the
    Cameroons and Angra Pequena, to allow Suakim, which is the port of
    Khartoum, and the Nile to pass into the hands of foreigners." The
    answer is, first, that Sir Charles would certainly never have
    consented to let any port in Egypt or the Soudan pass into the hands
    of any European Power: his proposal was neutralization of Egypt
    under international guarantee; and, secondly, that the questions
    were governed by different conditions, which he set out in
    conference with Mr. Chamberlain about Samoa.]

January 9th, 'I had decided that if I resigned, or if I refused to join
a Hartington administration, I should mention four subjects--Egypt,
Samoa, Zanzibar, and (probably) the Civil List inquiry (if I were not
completely satisfied). On the same day I was at work on our draft
despatch to Sir Edward Malet as to Zanzibar, which had been settled on
the 8th after the Cabinet of the 7th, but which did not go off until the
14th. On January 14th I noted in my Diary, "The Zanzibar despatch went.
Seven days' delay. I know that two days' delay was caused by the
necessity of sending to Osborne and to the Prime Minister, but why seven
days?"

    'On January 21st the first matter discussed was that of New Guinea,
    in which we found ourselves in difficulties caused by absence of
    jurisdiction over foreigners, and we agreed in consequence to
    annexation.'

The situation with Germany was undoubtedly grave, but ought not, Sir
Charles maintained, to entail the sacrifice of Zanzibar. On February
24th Count Münster, the German Ambassador, told Mr. Alfred de Rothschild
that he expected to be withdrawn, but that New Guinea was the only
serious matter in dispute.

    'On Tuesday, February 24th, I breakfasted at Alfred de Rothschild's
    house, to meet the German Ambassador, Count Münster, at the latter's
    wish. Alfred de Rothschild did not sit down with us, and we were
    _tête-à-tête_. Münster was very free in his remarks about Bismarck.
    "No one ever contradicts him." "He sees none but flatterers." "His
    life is a period to be got through."'

Two March entries are apposite here:

    'On Wednesday, March 4th, Rosebery wrote to me to ask me to dine
    with him to meet "Herbert Bismarck," who had suddenly arrived, but I
    was engaged to the Speaker's dinner, and had to put off seeing young
    Bismarck till Thursday, the 5th. He had come over to try to force us
    to dismiss Lord Granville and Lord Derby. I noted in my Diary:
    [Footnote: Sir Charles's Diaries, to portions of which certain
    biographers had access, are at this point quoted by Lord Edmond
    Fitzmaurice in his _Life of Lord Granville_, vol. ii., p. 430. The
    passage runs: "Negotiations with Germany on the vexed colonial
    questions were meanwhile proceeding, more particularly with regard
    to New Guinea. Sir Julian Pauncefote proposed a plan which it was
    hoped might satisfy the German Chancellor, and Count Herbert
    Bismarck reappeared as co-negotiator with Count Münster in London.
    Lord Rosebery, who had just joined the Cabinet as Lord Privy Seal,
    also took part in the negotiations. 'Herbert Bismarck came over
    again,' Sir Charles Dilke noted; 'if at his former visit he had only
    tried to get us to dismiss Lord Derby, on this occasion he wanted us
    to dismiss Lord Granville and Lord Derby.'"] "He puts us in a
    difficult position as individuals, for how can we say to this
    personally friendly fellow that we do not think Lord Granville's
    speech in the Lords on Friday foolish, or how say that we think that
    the allusion to old Bismarck's dislike of Münster in a recent
    despatch from Malet ought to have been published."

    'On Friday, March 6th, I saw Herbert Bismarck again twice.... I
    having expressed anxiety about Zanzibar, he told me that his father
    had directed him to say that he "considered Zanzibar as independent
    as Turkey or Russia." It is to my mind shameful that, after this,
    Lord Granville should have begun and Lord Salisbury have rapidly
    completed arrangements by which the Zanzibar mainland, the whole
    trade of which was in our hands, was handed over to Germany.'

    'On March 7th we discussed Herbert Bismarck's views on the
    Cameroons, on German claims in New Guinea (on this head we settled
    with him), and on Pondoland.'

While the difficulties with Germany were being discussed, differences as
to Egyptian policy and our relations with France continued.

On January 20th, Egypt once more threatened to break up the Government.
France had proposed an international Commission of Inquiry into the
financial situation.

    'We discussed a French proposal which, as I wrote to the Chancellor,
    had at least one advantage--namely, "that it re-forms the majority
    in the Cabinet by uniting two of the three parties--yours and mine."
    Mr. Gladstone, Lord Granville, Kimberley, Derby, Harcourt, the
    Chancellor, Trevelyan, and Dilke, eight in all, supported taking the
    new French proposals as a basis. Chamberlain was absent ill.
    Northbrook, Hartington, Childers, to my astonishment, and
    Carlingford were against us. After the Cabinet Hartington wrote to
    Mr. Gladstone to say that he "could not accept the decision," and
    Northbrook supported him.' Next day, however, 'when we turned to
    Egyptian finance, Trevelyan went over from our side to the other.
    Mr. Gladstone announced that what we had decided on the previous day
    was not to prevent our arguing against the French proposed inquiry,
    and thus Hartington was kept in.'

    'On January 23rd I forwarded to Chamberlain a letter from
    Sandringham, which showed that the Queen had been alarmed at the
    possibility that my proposed Civil List inquiry might affect not
    only new grants, but also the Civil List arrangements made at the
    beginning of the reign. Chamberlain made a Delphic reply that, on
    the one hand, inquiry would be a farce if it did not include the
    existing Civil List, but that on the other hand there could be no
    intention to make any change in the arrangements with the Queen.'

    'On January 28th, I heard from Sandringham that the Prince of Wales
    was going to Osborne the next day, and would broach to the Queen his
    friendliness to the idea of a new settlement of the Civil List.
    Chamberlain was anxious that no difficulty should be made by us on
    the occasion of the marriage of Princess Beatrice. He wrote: "_If
    alone_, I should wait for something or somebody to turn up. Before
    Prince Edward wants an allowance who knows what may happen? But I am
    perfectly ready to follow your lead or to lead to your prompting."'

All arrangements were being made on the assumption that Lord Hartington
would become Prime Minister.

    'I had been left by Mr. Gladstone in a certain doubt as to whether I
    was to be completely responsible for the Redistribution Bill, or
    whether Hartington was to share the responsibility. I wrote to
    Hartington: "Mr. Gladstone sends me everything on Redistribution,
    and expresses no opinion of his own. Northcote and Salisbury write
    to me only, and the whole thing is more and more in my hands. If I
    let things drift, it is clear that I shall practically have sole
    charge of the Bill, for no one else will know anything about it. I
    do not shrink from this at all. It is work I like. But, as you will
    probably be called on to form an Administration immediately after
    the passing of the Bill, don't you think it would look well, and
    that our people and the Press and the country would like it, if you
    were to take charge of the Bill? If so, I had better have two or
    three days' work at it with you."

    'Hartington had asked me to stay with him at Hardwick to talk it
    over, but it was only a Saturday to Monday visit from January 10th
    to 12th, and there were many people in the house, and our whole
    conversation was but very short; and Hartington continued to show
    but little desire to work at the detail, and the Bill could only be
    handled by those who knew its detail.'

Although the Opposition leaders had accepted the compact, it was at this
time quite uncertain whether the House of Commons would consent to the
Redistribution scheme--affecting as it did the interests of every
member. The Fourth Party had not been consulted in the arrangement, and
inevitable friction followed.

    'On January 27th I had a correspondence with Northcote in reference
    to some mischief which had been made by Randolph Churchill.
    Northcote had been told by the Conservative Chief Whip, "Dilke told
    Randolph that the Government would have given more grouping if we
    had pressed for it." The Conservative party being angry at the
    absence of grouping of the boroughs, Northcote had taken up the
    point, but he now wrote: "Whatever Churchill said must have been in
    the nature of an inference of his own from what had previously
    passed, from which he had probably gathered that the Government were
    ready to concede grouping." But there was a lady in the case who had
    gossiped about what Northcote had said to her, and he promised to
    write to the offender.'

    'On January 13th Mr. Gladstone wrote as to the Redistribution Bill:
    "The difficulty as I see it about communication with Northcote is
    that he seems to have little weight of influence, and to be afraid
    or unwilling to assume any responsibility. I have usually found him
    reasonable in his own views, but obliged to reserve his judgment
    until after consulting his friends, which consultations I have found
    always to end badly. On the other hand, it is, of course, necessary
    to pay him due respect. What may prove to be best under these
    circumstances is--(1) not to be bound always to consult HIM, (2) to
    consult him freely on the easier and smaller matters, but (3) in a
    stiff question, such as the numbers of the House may prove to be, to
    get at Salisbury if possible, under whose wing Northcote will, I
    think, mostly be content to walk, (4) Or, if Salisbury cannot be got
    alone, then Northcote and Salisbury would be far preferable to
    Northcote alone."'

All these difficulties had to be met by Sir Charles. When the Bill
actually came before the House, 'Mr. Gladstone instructed James to
assist me in the conduct of it. But practically I had it to myself.'
Lord Hartington had rendered invaluable service in the preliminary
negotiations. But for such laborious work of detail as was needed to
carry through this Bill, neither temperament nor surroundings had fitted
him. His Hardwick home is thus described by Sir Charles in a letter
which he wrote to Mrs. Pattison:

    'I am writing in my bedroom, which is--bed and all--that of Mary
    Queen of Scots, who was the prisoner of Bess of Hardwick. It is a
    wonderful house, indeed--enormous, and yet completely covered with
    the tapestry and the pictures of the time.... The casement windows
    have never been touched since Queen Elizabeth was here, and are
    enormous. (There is a local proverb which speaks of the hall as "all
    window and no wall.") The result is that, in spite of heavy hanging
    curtains, the candles are blown out if you go near the windows....
    The portrait of the first Cavendish--who was usher of Cardinal
    Wolsey, and who married Bess of Hardwick, the richest lady of the
    day--is exactly like Hartington, but a vulgar Hartington--fat and
    greasy--a Hartington who might have kept a public-house.'

Mr. Chamberlain wrote to Sir Charles at Hardwick concerning his host:

    'The true Whig tradition is to keep abreast of the movement which
    they would willingly restrain, and do nothing to quicken, but it is
    difficult for a man of Hartington's temperament to make the
    sacrifice of pride which these tactics require.'

Mr. Chamberlain's Ipswich speech had made its mark, and Sir Charles
notes 'the beginning of the terror caused by the unauthorized programme'
in 'a letter which I received from Lord Salisbury, who was at Florence,
as to my draft Report of the Housing Commission.'

    'Lord Salisbury had greatly changed his views since he had sketched
    out socialistic proposals for me in his own hand. He now complained
    of that which I had said on "the burning questions of expropriation,
    betterment, and land tenure," and thought that Chamberlain's
    evidence had affected the report, and that such views "must now be
    considered in the light of the doctrines as to land he has recently
    laid down."'

That letter, received on January 30th, must have been written two days
earlier, and evidently at that moment there were plans of forming an
administration which should exclude the Radicals.

    'On January 28th Harcourt told me that he had stopped the Queen
    deciding to send for Goschen to form a Whig Ministry if we were
    beaten or if Mr. Gladstone resigned by telling her that Goschen
    would refuse, or that, if he consented, no one would join him.'

On January 29th, at Birmingham, Mr. Chamberlain made reply to his
critics in a speech which added to the Ipswich programme manhood
suffrage and payment of members, and which further declared that the
sanctity of public property far exceeded that of private property. If
land, for instance, had been 'lost or wasted or stolen,' some equivalent
for it must be found, and some compensation exacted from the wrongdoers.
[Footnote: 'The ransom theory,' afterwards alluded to (see Chapter
XLIV., p. 182).]

These utterances from a member of the Cabinet were not likely to pass
unchallenged.

    'On Monday, February 2nd, Chamberlain telegraphed to me that he was
    coming up on the next day, Tuesday, the 3rd, on purpose to see me on
    an important matter; and on the morning of the 3rd I received in a
    secret box the letters about which he was coming. There was one from
    Mr. Gladstone complaining of the unauthorized programme, and a draft
    proposed reply, and Chamberlain added: "Take them (Mr. Gladstone's
    letters and enclosures from the Whigs) in connection with the
    _Times_ articles. There is to be a dead set evidently.... There are
    three possibilities. (1) Mr. Gladstone may wish me to resign. (2) A
    vote of censure may be proposed in the House of Commons and carried.
    (3) Mr. Gladstone may defend me, and in so doing may to all intents
    and purposes censure me in such a way as to entail my resignation.
    The first would not, I think, do me any harm. The second would do me
    good. The third would not be pleasant. My object in proposed reply
    is to make Mr. G. speak more plainly, and to let me know where I
    stand. I have spoken in the first person because (until I see you) I
    have no right to assume that you will accept a joint responsibility.
    But I think you will, and then if we go out or are forced out there
    will be a devil of a row. I have been speaking to Schnadhorst to-day
    on the possibility. He says (you must take the opinion for what it
    is worth) that it would strengthen us in the country.... I assume
    Trevelyan would go with Mr. G.... I shall want to know what you
    think of it all, and whether you have any alterations to propose in
    the reply."

    'I noted: "I, of course, make common cause. The Whigs want to force
    him into a row with Mr. G., who, they think, will break him in place
    of his breaking Hartington after Mr. G. is gone." I admitted to
    Chamberlain when we met on February 3rd that there was, as he said,
    a dead set at him, and that the _Pall Mall_ for a wonder was backing
    it up. On his first point I was sure that Mr. Gladstone did not wish
    for his resignation, and knew that I should go too. On the second, I
    doubted any member being ready to bell the cat; and on the third
    point I was sure that Mr. Gladstone's defence of Chamberlain would
    not be such as to entail his resignation.'

Sir Charles thought, and told Chamberlain, that the object of the Whigs
was to force them 'to war with Mr. G. who is strong, and not with
Hartington,' against whom the Radicals would hold winning cards. 'We
therefore play into their hands by going NOW.' Meanwhile, he took up a
fighting attitude towards the rest of the world.

    'I had written to Mr. Gladstone very strongly backing up
    Chamberlain's right to express his individual opinion upon the
    questions of the future, and pointing out his patience in not
    repudiating some of Hartington's remarks, and saying that I could
    not let him go out alone.'

    'On February 4th I heard from Chamberlain ... thanking me for
    getting Carrington, who represented my Department in the Lords, to
    make a pro-Chamberlain speech.'

This was the more valuable because the whole Press was against the
"unauthorized programme." At the same time, Sir Charles did not fail to
point out that their position was an unsound one, writing first:

    'Our words as to the future are too wide. They would cover my
    preaching a Republic for two years hence, or your preaching the
    nationalization of land without compensation for the next
    Parliament.'

He urged also that the precedent which Mr. Chamberlain sought to
establish was two-edged.

February 5th, 'At night I gave Chamberlain a hint that some day others
might turn against him that freedom of speech which he claimed as
against Hartington; and he prepared a document which, under the form of
standing out for full right of free speech, really yielded the whole
point. He covered his retreat with great skill, and the document as
corrected by me would be valuable if it could be found. I have no copy,
but have memoranda which passed between us, in one of which I begged him
to keep the draft with my corrections as representing our joint view,
inasmuch as it might be important in the future. Chamberlain notes, in a
minute which I have, his acceptance of the general doctrine, with a
declaration that the present was an exceptional period; that there was a
new departure under the franchise reform, that it was essential to give
a general direction to the discussion, that his actual proposals were
moderate, and such as only to point to, firstly, a revision of taxation
which Mr. Gladstone himself had advocated, details being open, but the
principle being to secure equality of sacrifice; secondly, the extension
of power of local authorities on lines already conceded in Ireland.'

The two allies were fighting a hard fight at a critical moment. At such
times even the closest friends naturally seek to reassure each other,
and to a letter from Sir Charles Mr. Chamberlain made this reply,
January 11th:

    'The malice and ingenuity of men is so great that I should be afraid
    they would some day break our friendship if it had not victoriously
    stood the strain of public life for so many years. I will swear that
    I will never do anything knowingly to imperil it, and I hope that we
    are both agreed that if by any chance either of us should think that
    he has the slightest cause of complaint he will not keep it to
    himself for a day, but will have a frank explanation. In this case I
    shall feel safe, for I am certain that any mistake would be
    immediately repaired by whoever might be in fault.'




CHAPTER XXXIX

THE FALL OF KHARTOUM AND THE PENJDEH INCIDENT


    'On the morning of Thursday, February 5th, 1885, at 3 a.m., Brett
    went to Lord Granville with the news of the fall of Khartoum. He
    used to tell how he had been wholly unable to find the old
    gentleman, and how the servants had ultimately asserted that their
    master was at Walmer--which he was not. At the same hour the news
    was sold by a War Office messenger to one of the News Agencies. The
    resident clerk at the War Office had written to Thompson, of the War
    Office, in an unsealed envelope, instead of putting the despatch
    into a box. It did not matter much on this occasion, but it might
    matter in a great European war. A Cabinet was immediately summoned
    for the next day. [Footnote: The following correspondence between
    Mr. Brett (now Viscount Eslier) and Sir Charles throws light on the
    summoning of the Cabinet:

    War Office,

    Thursday morning, 3 a.m.

    Here is some bad news.

    No Ministers in town, except you and Chamberlain!

    Have tried Lord G. and Lord Northbrook. No results!

    So things must take their chance. There ought to have been a Cabinet
    to-morrow; but suppose it is not possible.

    R.B.

    Please return enclosed. Will send you a copy later. Have you any
    suggestion to make?

    You will see that W. proposes to keep this secret. Not possible for
    long in this Office.

    _Sir Charles Dilke to Mr. Brett._

    Telegraph to _Mr. G. and Hartington to come up to-day_, and call a
    Cabinet for to-morrow at 11 a.m. Make Hamilton telegraph to all
    Ministers at once. I'm prepared to take it on myself if you like,
    but you can send this to Chamberlain if he agrees.

    I agree certainly.--J. C.

    Local Government Board,

    February 5th, 1885.

    It is absurd not to make them come up _to-day_ in face of Wolseley's
    "_It is most essential that I shall have the earliest possible
    decision._"] Only three subjects were discussed: Khartoum, secrecy,
    and the question of the Italians as against the Turks in the Red
    Sea.'

On February 7th, 'The next matter was Wolseley, who had confused us by
greatly varying his statements.... Next came a proposal that Gordon
should be bought from the Mahdi.'

    'On February 9th Mr. Gladstone mentioned his intention to bring in
    Rosebery and Lefevre as members of the Cabinet. It was decided that
    the Italians should be allowed to go to Kassala--a decision which
    was afterwards reversed. The French views on Egyptian finance were
    named, the despatch of Indian troops to Suakim again discussed.
    Wolseley having asked that General Greaves should be sent to Suakim,
    Childers said that the Queen and Duke of Cambridge had stopped that
    officer's promotion because he "belonged to the Ashantee gang"
    (Wolseley's friends), and that the Duke had now complained that he
    did not know him. Chamberlain proposed that we should invite the
    Canadian Government to send a force to Suakim; and, finally,
    Childers was allowed to mention finance, which had been the object
    for which the Cabinet was called.

    'On February 10th I wrote to Chamberlain that Rosebery and Lefevre
    would help the Cabinet with the public, but would weaken us in the
    Cabinet.

    'On February 11th there was another Cabinet, five members being
    absent--namely, the Chancellor, Carlingford, Spencer, Chamberlain,
    and Trevelyan--owing to the suddenness of the call. It was on the
    Suakim command, Mr. Gladstone being very obstinate for Greaves, as
    against Graham with Greaves for Chief of Staff--a compromise. I
    supported Hartington--I do not know why--and we beat Mr. Gladstone
    by 5 to 4. Both officers were inferior men, and Graham did but
    badly. Probably Greaves would have done no better....

    'Mr. Gladstone complained that he and Hartington had received at
    Carnforth on the 5th a disagreeable telegram _en clair_ from the
    Queen, and Mr. Gladstone was very anxious to know whether the Tories
    had found it out, asking anxiously, "What are the station-master's
    politics?"

    'February 13th ... I was with Harcourt when Rosebery came to be
    sworn in, so I took the opportunity of making Rosebery help us to
    make Lord Derby uncomfortable for proposing to refuse the troops
    offered by the colony of New South Wales.

    'We began to discuss our Soudan policy with some anxiety.

    'Courtney and Morley had insisted in private letters that we should
    only rescue, and not attack the rebels, and the _Times_ agreed with
    them--unless we intended to stay in the country and establish a
    Government. Wolseley's policy would be represented as one of "smash
    and retire," and it was for this reason that Chamberlain pressed
    negotiations with the Mahdi, as he thought we should be stronger if
    we could show that the Mahdi had rejected a fair offer. It was on
    February 13th that Hartington most strongly pressed his proposal for
    the Suakim railroad, and invited me to be a member of a Cabinet
    Committee to consider the proposal.'

    'On Monday, February 16th, the first matter discussed was the
    Russian answer as regards Egyptian finance. The Soudan was put off
    till the next day, Chamberlain making a strong speech first upon our
    policy. Hartington asked for five million, to include the cost of
    his Suakim-Berber railway, and for leave to call out reserves.

    'On February 19th I had an interview with Mr. Gladstone, and found
    him anxious to be turned out on the vote of censure. Indeed, he was
    longing for it, in the firm belief that, if turned out, he would
    come back after the dissolution in November, while, if not turned
    out, he would be more likely to be beaten.

    'On February 20th the subjects discussed were Egypt (Finance and
    Suez Canal) and the sending a colonial force to Suakim. Chamberlain
    had developed to Childers at the same meeting a proposal that
    Hartington should form a Ministry to carry on the Soudan War, with
    the loyal support of those of us who went out with Mr. Gladstone.

    'On February 25th, Goschen having asked for assurances as to the
    Berber railway, Chamberlain wrote to me saying that if Hartington
    gave them, it might be a sufficient cause for our resignation, as we
    were not prepared to commit the country to establishing settled
    government in any part of the Soudan. Chamberlain proposed that we
    should resign before the division, and that the Government being
    beaten, there should then be brought about the establishment of what
    he called the combination or patriotic Government, which meant a
    Hartington administration. I, on the whole, preferred to go on as we
    were, so I stopped a box of Hartington's which was going round the
    Cabinet, and proposed an alteration of form which prevented
    Chamberlain going out on these assurances.

    'During the debate I went away to dine, and, not having heard the
    middle of Harcourt's speech, asked Chamberlain whether Harcourt had
    tried to answer any of Goschen's questions, to which Chamberlain
    answered, "Not one. He asked questions in turn," which is a good
    description of Harcourt's style. I then wrote on a slip of paper,
    "Forster is taking notes"; and Chamberlain replied, "Forster--
    against slavery, against Zebehr, [Footnote: Zebehr was arrested in
    Cairo on the ground of treasonable correspondence with the Mahdi,
    and interned at Gibraltar, but later was allowed to return to Cairo.
    He died in January, 1903.] and of course generally in favour of a
    crusade," a note which is also characteristic--of both these men.

    'At four o'clock in the morning of February 28th, when we got our
    majority of 14, after the first division, Mr. Gladstone, who wanted
    to go out, said to Childers and myself, "That will do." This was
    indeed a Delphic utterance.'

Sir Charles himself spoke, at Mr. Gladstone's request, at great length
in the third day's debate on February 26th, but it was 'only a debating
speech.'

    'After we had had a sleep, we met in Cabinet on Saturday, February
    28th. Lord Granville and Childers now anxious to go. Harcourt, who
    had at night been against going, was now anxious to go. This was a
    curious and interesting Cabinet. Lord Granville and Lord Derby, who
    were at loggerheads both with Bismarck and with their colleagues,
    were strong that we should resign, and they got some support from
    Chamberlain, Northbrook, Childers, and Hartington. Lefevre,
    [Footnote: Lord Eversley, then Mr. Shaw Lefevre, had joined the
    Cabinet after the news from Khartoum. Lord Rosebery had accepted the
    Privy Seal. Lord Eversley says that on February 28th opinions were
    evenly divided, but that one member refused to express an opinion on
    the ground of his recent admission. See, too, _Life of Granville_,
    vol. ii., pp. 421-422.] who had only just come in, and Trevelyan
    were strong for staying in, as was Carlingford; but the other
    members of the Cabinet either wobbled backwards and forwards, or did
    not care. At last it was decided by the casting vote of Mr.
    Gladstone, if one may use the phrase when there was no actual
    voting, that we should try to go on at present so as to carry the
    Seats Bill ourselves.

    'We then turned to the Berber railway, and decided that it should be
    a temporary or contractor's line made only so far as might be
    necessary for purely military reasons. We then decided that Wolseley
    should not be allowed to make himself Governor-General of the
    Soudan.

    'After the Cabinet Chamberlain and I continued our discussion as to
    his strong wish to resign. I told him that I wanted to finish the
    Seats Bill, that I thought Lord Salisbury might refuse or make
    conditions with regard to coming in, that Mr. Gladstone would not
    lead in opposition, and that we should seem to be driving him into
    complete retirement, and I asked whether we were justified in
    running away.'

Meantime the financial business of the year had to go on, and part of it
was a demand for increased naval expenditure, to which, as has been seen
already, Mr. Gladstone was opposed.

    'The Navy Estimates were first discussed, and then the Army, and a
    sum asked for for the fortification of coaling-stations was refused,
    and also a sum asked for for defending the home merchant ports. We
    all of us were guilty of unwise haste on this occasion, for the
    demand was right; but the chief blame must fall rather on Childers,
    Hartington, and the others who had been at the War Office than upon
    those who sinned in ignorance.'

This decision against naval expenditure was a cause of embarrassment to
the Government in the country, for a strong 'big navy' campaign
followed. The real question at issue in the Cabinet became that of
taxation. On March 2nd, and again in April, Sir Charles 'warned Mr.
Gladstone against Childers's proposed Budget'--the rock on which they
finally made shipwreck. 'Mr. Gladstone replied: "The subject of your
note has weighed heavily on my mind, and I shall endeavour to be
prepared for our meeting." I now sent him a memorandum after
consultation with Chamberlain.'

What Sir Charles wrote in 1885 is nowadays matter of common argument; it
was novel then in the mouth of a practical politician:

    'I stated at length that, as head of the Poor Law department, I
    ought to have knowledge of the pressure of taxation upon the incomes
    of the poor. As Chairman of the Royal Commission on the Housing of
    the Working Classes, I had had to hear a great deal of evidence upon
    the subject of the income of the working classes, and as Chairman of
    the recent Conference on Industrial Remuneration had had special
    opportunities of further examining the question. It was my opinion
    that the position of the agricultural labourers had declined, and
    that the Whig or Conservative minority on my Commission, represented
    by Mr. Goschen and Lord Brownlow, admitted this contention of mine
    as regarded the south of England. The labourers of the south were
    unable to procure milk, and relied largely on beer as an article of
    food. Their wages had but slightly increased in the twenty years
    since 1865, and had decreased considerably since 1879. Food had
    slightly risen in price, clothes were nominally cheaper, but the
    same amount of wear for the money was not obtainable, and house rent
    (where house rent was paid by the labourers) had greatly risen. An
    enormous proportion of the income of the rich escaped taxation:
    fifty millions a year of their foreign income at the least. The
    uncertainty of employment placed the labourer even lower as a
    partaker in the income of the country than the statisticians placed
    him. The calculations of employers, upon which the estimates of
    statisticians were based, were founded upon the higher earnings of
    the best workers; and when the matter was examined, it was found
    that variation of wages, loss of time, and failure of work, much
    lowered the average earnings. The taxation of the working classes
    rose to a higher percentage than that of the upper and middle
    classes. Mr. Dudley Baxter, who was a Conservative, had admitted
    this, and had advocated a reduction in the tobacco duty and the malt
    tax. Since that time the tobacco duty had been raised, and the
    duties pressing upon beer had been rather raised than lowered.'

Sir Charles's insistence upon this matter is all the more notable
because foreign complications were rapidly accumulating, and they were
of a gravity which might well have seemed to dwarf all questions of the
incidence of taxation.

There were not only the difficulties with Germany. There was also the
Soudan, where a large body of British troops was engaged, in a country
the perils of which England had now to realize.

    'On March 7th there was a Cabinet as to the Suakim-Berber railway.
    Northbrook and I, soon joined by Harcourt and Chamberlain, were in
    favour of stopping our impossible campaign. I argued that when we
    decided to destroy the power of the Mahdi, it was on Wolseley's
    telling us that he hoped possibly to take Khartoum at once. For some
    weeks after that he had intended to take Berber. Then he had told us
    that he at least could occupy Abu Hamed. Now he was in full retreat,
    and both his lines of supply--namely, that up the Nile and that from
    Suakim--seemed equally difficult. The Chancellor wrote on a slip of
    paper for me: "We seem to be fighting three enemies at once. (1) The
    Mahdi; (2) certain of our people here; (3) Wolseley." Nothing was
    settled, and we passed on to Egyptian finance.'

March 11th, 'In the evening a despatch was circulated in which Wolseley
said: "Please tell Lord Granville that I cannot wait any longer, and I
must issue proclamation, and will do so on my own authority if I do not
receive answer to this by the 14th. I hope I may be allowed to issue it
as Governor-General."

    'I at once wrote, "I understood that we had _decided_ that he was
    not to be Governor-General, and that the proclamation should not be
    issued in the terms proposed"; on which Lord Granville wrote, "Yes.
    Cabinet to-morrow.--G."

    'On Thursday, March 12th, the first matter discussed was that of the
    arrest of Zebehr. Then came Wolseley's proclamation, which was
    vetoed. We decided that he should not be allowed to make himself
    Governor-General of the Soudan.'

It now seemed more than likely that the British Government would have
work on its hands which would render the employment of an army in the
Soudan very undesirable; for more serious than the Mahdi's movements on
the Nile, more serious than the operations of German Admirals in the
Pacific, was the menace of a Russian advance upon Afghanistan.

Arrangements had been made for the demarcation of the Afghan frontier
which Sir Charles had persistently urged. A British Commissioner had
been appointed in July, 1884, but at the end of the following November
Russia was still parleying on questions of detail. These, however,
seemed to have been at length resolved; and in January, 1885, the
British Commissioner was waiting in the neighbourhood of Herat for the
Russian Commissioners to join in the work of fixing the boundaries. But
the Russians did not appear; they were, says Sir Charles, 'intriguing at
Penjdeh, and preparing for the blow which later on they struck against
the Afghans.' The Amir evidently felt this, for he renewed the proposal
that he should pay a state visit to the Viceroy, and on January 23rd
Dilke wrote to Grant Duff that this had been accepted.

February 4th, 'On this day I received a letter from Sir Robert Sandeman
at Quetta, in which he thanked me for the assistance that I had given
him in the retention of Sibi, Pishin, and the Khojak. "It was greatly
due to your support of my representations on the subject that our
influence on this frontier is at present all-powerful."'

On February 5th, a few hours after the fall of Khartoum was published,

    'there was a meeting of Ministers as to Central Asia. We decided on
    a reply to Russia drawn up by myself and Kimberley, Lord Granville
    and Northbrook somewhat dissenting, and Fitzmaurice and Philip
    Currie taking no part.

    'On February 18th we had a meeting of the Central Asia Committee at
    the Foreign Office with regard to the Russian advance in the
    direction of Penjdeh, Lord Granville, Hartington, Northbrook,
    Kimberley, myself, Fitzmaurice, and Currie. We ordered Sir Peter
    Lumsden' (Chief of the Boundary Commission), 'in the event of a
    Russian advance on Herat, to throw himself and escort into that
    city, and to aid the Afghan defence.'

On March 12th, after deciding to limit Lord Wolseley's schemes in the
Soudan, 'we took a decision that war preparations against Russia should
be made in India.'

    'On the 20th we decided that if the Russians continued to advance,
    20,000 troops should be concentrated at Quetta. We next gave
    instructions to Lord Dufferin with regard to what he was to say to
    the Amir of Afghanistan at the interview which was about to take
    place between them, and authorized him to renew our guarantee. There
    was either a regular or irregular Cabinet on March 24th. We decided
    that if the Russians advanced upon Herat, the advance should be
    treated as a _casus belli_, and orders to this effect were sent to
    Dufferin. At the meeting on April 2nd the Viceroy, Lord Dufferin,
    assured the Amir in the presence of his Prime Minister, of Mr.
    Durand, and of Captain Talbot, "that a Russian advance on Herat
    should be met by war all over the world."'

    'On April 8th, in public durbar, the Amir, without contradiction
    from Lord Dufferin, said: "The British Government has declared it
    will assist me in repelling any foreign enemy."'

Sir Charles was now discussing by letter with Sir Frederick Roberts the
proposals which were preferred by the Defence Committee in India for the
defence of the North-West Frontier, with special emphasis on the further
question whether there was any point at which England could strike at
Russia. [Footnote: See Appendix following on this chapter, pp. 122,
123.]

Early in April sittings of the Housing Commission in Scotland occasioned
Dilke's absence from a Cabinet at which important phases of the Central
Asian question were discussed.

April 4th, 'Chamberlain wrote to me an account of all that passed,
pointing out that the Russian answer bade us "give up everything, and
they offer us absolutely nothing by way of concession in return. This
attitude really leaves us no alternative. I am very uncomfortable about
it, because the more I study the matter the more I think that the
Russians are right both in form and in substance--i.e., they have the
pretexts on their side, and they also have a strong argument in favour
of their line, both on the matter of territorial right, and also on the
ground that this line is the only one which insures any chance of
permanent peace. But we cannot have the pill forced down our throats by
Russia without inquiry, or discussion on equal terms.... Harcourt
declares that we have 'closed the door of Peace and opened the door of
War.' The only difference between us is that he is inclined to accept
the alternative of the Russian zone which has been already refused, and
as to which the present Note says in effect that, though they are ready
to go back to this zone, yet it will be of no use, as they are
determined in the end to stick to their line."'

    'On Thursday, April 9th, there was a Cabinet, which I also missed,
    and which considered the conflict at Penjdeh.' [Footnote: On March
    20th, General Komarof with a Russian force had attacked and routed
    an Afghan army in the valley of Penjdeh.]

Every day now had its Cabinet. On April 11th, 13th, and 14th evacuation
of the Soudan was discussed, but Lord Hartington, by a threat of
resignation, secured repeated postponements.

    'This question was mixed up by some members of the Cabinet with that
    of Afghanistan, inasmuch as they said that we could not fight Russia
    in Afghanistan, and go on in the Soudan as well; upon which Mr.
    Gladstone said of the Soudan, "I am not prepared to go on upon any
    terms, Russia or no Russia."

A new trouble was added when the Egyptian Government suppressed the
_Bosphore Égyptien_, a local paper published in French, and closed the
printing office. Against this the French protested, and in the course of
the quarrel actually broke off diplomatic relations with the Egyptian
Government, which, considering the relations between that Ministry and
the protecting force of Great Britain, pushed unfriendliness very far.
Ultimately the _Bosphore_ was allowed to appear and to print what it
chose, until it died a natural death.

    'On Monday, April 13th, came a proposal from the Russian Ambassador,
    made through Lefevre and Brett, but which was really from Stead;
    Brett meaning Stead. Curiously enough, it was a proposal of
    Chamberlain's, of which he had previously told us, which had come
    back to him in this way. Chamberlain consulted me as to whether he
    should tell Mr. Gladstone that it was his, and I told him that I
    thought he had better not, as I thought it was more likely to be
    successful as coming from the Russian Ambassador and Stead than as
    coming from him. It virtually amounted to the plan of Arbitration
    which was ultimately adopted, although as a fact the Arbitration
    never took place.'

    'On Wednesday, 15th, there was an informal Cabinet, at which I was
    not present, because the Seats Bill was in Committee in the House at
    the same time. A form of words with regard to the Soudan was agreed
    upon which united Hartington with the others.'

    'On Thursday, the 16th, Mr. Gladstone misinformed the House of
    Commons--the inevitable result from time to time of his habit of
    answering without notice questions upon dangerous subjects. A
    meeting had taken place between Lord Granville, Kimberley, and
    Philip Currie on our side, and Staal, the Russian Ambassador, and
    Lessar, the Russian expert, at which Lord Granville showed that we
    meant to let Penjdeh go. Lessar paid a newspaper for its support by
    telling them. Mr. Gladstone was asked, and replied that he knew
    nothing about the matter, while he suggested that Penjdeh was not to
    be given up.'

    'On the 18th the Queen agreed to retirement from the Soudan, with
    reservation of future liberty of action.' Whatever happened about
    Penjdeh, it was certain that resistance would be offered to Russia.
    'On this day, Monday, April 20th, there was a Cabinet, at which it
    was decided to ask for eleven millions in the vote of credit. We
    then discussed Lumsden's despatch of explanation as to the Penjdeh
    incident, which we decided should be published. The vote of credit
    was really partly for Russia and partly for the Soudan, and a
    question arose whether it should be proposed as one or as two, and
    we decided for one. After which we went back again to the Budget,
    and the minority proposed a penny increase on the income tax as
    against the increase on beer, after which the Budget was adjourned
    to April 30th, it being decided then that the vote of credit should
    be taken first.'

    'On April 20th I received from the Communalist General Cluseret a
    long letter in which he offered, on the ground of his profound
    sympathy, his services to England against Russia in the event of
    war--a document which would have done him little good had it seen
    the light when he afterwards stood successfully for my electoral
    division in the Var, at a time when French sympathy for Russia was
    predominant.

    'On Tuesday, April 21st, after the Cabinet, I had told Mr. Gladstone
    that I could not agree to the increase of the taxation on beer, and
    Mr. Gladstone wrote to me twice on that day about the matter. I was
    not very sure of Harcourt standing by us, and knew that the pressure
    was great, inasmuch as, in addition to the two letters from Mr.
    Gladstone, I received one from Edward Hamilton, also dated the 21st,
    in which he made the strongest appeal to me on personal grounds not
    to worry Mr. Gladstone by resignations. He said that Mr. Gladstone
    was overburdened, and that it would take very little to break him
    down. Edward Hamilton wrote: "It is a peculiarity of his ... that,
    while he can stand the strain of a grave political crisis such as a
    question involving peace or war, he succumbs to the strain of a
    personal question.... Mr. Gladstone, I know, feels that any
    secession, especially of one who has a reputation not confined to
    this country, would necessarily weaken greatly the Government, and
    from a national point of view this is of all times a moment when
    there ought to be a strong Government which can confront Europe and
    face the varied difficulties. No one would more gladly escape from
    office than Mr. G. himself; but the more attractive is the prospect
    of freedom, the less does he dare allow himself to contemplate it."'

Mr. Gladstone wrote saying that such a secession at such a time would be
serious for the Government, but also, he thought, serious for the
seceder, and Sir Charles replied:

  Local Government Board,
    Whitehall,
      April 21st, 1885.

    'I should always let the consideration of what was due to my friends
    weigh with me as much as any man, I feel sure, and I am also certain
    that considerations of personal loyalty to yourself are as strong
    with me now as they are with any member of the Cabinet. I should
    never let the other class of considerations--i.e., those personal
    to myself--weigh with me at all. Because I am fond of work I am
    supposed to be ambitious; but I fancy few politicians are less so,
    and I do not mind unpopularity, which, after all, generally rights
    itself in the course of years. I knew that this matter would be a
    very serious one before I went into it, and I should not have said
    what I did had I not felt forced to do so.

    'If others go with me, the extent of our unpopularity and consequent
    loss of future usefulness will depend on our own conduct, and if we
    do our duty by firmly supporting the Government through its foreign
    and general difficulties, I do not think that even the party will be
    ungenerous to us.'

But Sir Charles finally yielded, and drove a bargain.

    'On April 24th I had decided at Chamberlain's strong wish to yield
    to Childers as to the beer duty; Childers promising in return to
    take the Princess Beatrice Committee of Inquiry demand upon himself.

    'May 9th, the Queen now wished for immediate inquiry--that is, in
    other words, preferred the Parliament she knew to the new
    Parliament. The Government proposed "next year." It was agreed that
    the Government were to guide the Committee whenever it might sit,
    and that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should be in the Chair.

    'Mr. Gladstone wrote me a letter to ease off my surrender on beer
    duties, by pointing out the importance of the proposals which were
    being made to put realty in the same position as personalty as to
    Death Duties. "This must in all likelihood lead to a very serious
    struggle with the Tories, for it strikes at the very heart of
    class-preference, which is the central point of what I call the
    lower and what is now the prevalent Toryism."'

In the great debate of April 27th, in which Mr. Gladstone proposed a
vote of credit for eleven millions, of which six and a half were for war
preparation in view of the collision between the Afghans and Russians at
Penjdeh,

    'Mr. Gladstone made perhaps the most remarkable speech that even he
    ever delivered, and I have his notes for it with a map I drew for
    him before he spoke, to show him the position of the various places.
    [Footnote: On this speech see the _Life of Gladstone_, vol. iii., p.
    184; _Life of Granville_, vol. ii., p. 440.] At this time I wrote to
    Hartington to suggest that if we were forced into war with Russia we
    should attack the Russians at Vladivostock, and the Intelligence
    Department wrote a memorandum upon the subject. I also sent round a
    paper pointing out that we should fight at the greatest advantage
    from a Pacific base, that the help of China would be of moment, and
    that Chinese troops drilled and officered by Englishmen would be
    irresistible; and Northbrook strongly backed me up. Lumsden was
    sending us most violent telegrams, and while I was preparing for war
    I was also asking for the recall of Lumsden in favour of Colonel
    Stewart. Lord Granville wrote: "Lumsden was a bad appointment, and I
    for a moment wished to recall him. But it would be condemned here as
    an immense knock-under." [Footnote: See the _Life of Granville_,
    vol. ii., pp. 441, 442.] I also suggested that the engineers for
    whom the Amir had asked should be carefully picked, and should have
    a private Indian allowance for keeping us informed of what passed at
    Kabul, and Lord Granville conveyed the suggestion by telegraph to
    Lord Dufferin. (This was afterwards done.)'

Russia unexpectedly withdrew.

    'On May 2nd there was a sudden Cabinet on the Russian acceptance of
    arbitration, Harcourt, Chamberlain, and Carlingford being absent.
    Kimberley, the Chancellor, Northbrook, Derby, and I were for
    immediate acceptance of the offer; Hartington against; Lord
    Granville for amiably getting out of it; Trevelyan and Lefevre
    silent; Rosebery late. Mr. Gladstone at first sided with Lord
    Granville, then came half way to us, and then proposed that we
    should wait a bit till Condie Stephen reached us. I replied by
    showing that Condie Stephen was a Jingo, the friend of Drummond
    Wolff and of Bowles of _Vanity Fair_, and would make things worse.
    Then Mr. Gladstone came completely to our side. Childers drew up in
    Cabinet the form for the declaration as to the Select Committee on
    the Civil List, and I agreed to it. I wrote what had passed to
    Chamberlain, who was at Birmingham, and he replied on the next day
    that he trusted that the information about Russia would be
    immediately communicated to the House, and went on: "But, then, what
    becomes of the vote of credit and the Budget? It seems cheeky to ask
    for 6 1/2 millions of Preparations when the matter is practically
    settled."

    'On May 7th the Herat boundary was discussed and a line settled, and
    it was decided that either the German Emperor or the King of Denmark
    should be named as the Arbitrator about Penjdeh.' Later, 'There was
    a meeting of the Commons Ministers to discuss the situation created
    by the refusal by Russia of the German Emperor as Arbitrator, the
    Queen having previously refused the King of Denmark. The Queen had
    ultimately to yield. But, as I have said, the arbitration, although
    agreed on, never took place at all.'

The demarcation of frontier for which Sir Charles had so long contended
was carried through without any marked incident, largely owing to the
skill of Sir J. West Ridgeway, who had succeeded Sir Peter Lumsden.



APPENDIX


The Memoir gives the following account of the proposals made for defence
of the North-West Frontier in India in the spring of 1885, and some
observations arising from them:

    'The general idea was to hold the northern route by an entrenched
    position, and, as regards the southern or flank road, to fortify the
    mountains before Quetta. Roads and railways were to be made for
    concentration in the direction of Kandahar, and Sir Frederick
    Roberts afterwards very wisely noted, "It is impossible to threaten
    Russia's base, but we should do all in our power to keep it as far
    away as possible." Unfortunately, Sir Frederick Roberts afterwards
    forgot this, and suggested the possibility of advance upon Herat
    with the view to attack Russia at her Sarakhs base. The suggestions
    made in 1885 with regard to Kashmir and the Gromul Pass were acted
    upon in 1890. Sir Donald Stewart, however, went on to recommend a
    railway extension from Peshawur towards Kabul, and Sir Frederick
    Roberts, with greater judgment, on succeeding him, vetoed this
    scheme. Lord Kitchener revived it, but was not allowed to complete
    his work. Sir Donald Stewart's committee recommended the tunnel at
    the Khojak, which was carried out. Roberts reported against it, and
    he was right.

    'On the whole, when Sir Frederick Roberts sent me his view on the
    defence proposals, I was struck with the contrast between the
    completeness of the manner in which a defence scheme for India has
    been considered, and the incompleteness, to say the least of it, of
    all strategic plans at home. Sir Charles Macgregor put on record at
    the same time his view that a mere offensive on the North-West
    Frontier of India would be folly, if not madness, and that it would
    be necessary also to undertake offensive operations against Russia.
    Quite so, according to all rules of war, and if ultimate defeat is
    to be avoided. Unfortunately, however, it is not easy to attack
    Russia, and the proposals made by Sir Charles Macgregor would not
    bear investigation. Sir Frederick Roberts himself afterwards tried
    his hand at proposals of his own in a Memorandum entitled, "What are
    Russia's vulnerable points?" But I do not know that he was more
    successful, and I fear that his first question, "Has Russia any
    vulnerable points?" must, if we are looking to permanency, and not
    to merely temporary measures, be answered in the negative, except as
    regards Vladivostock--a case I put. After much correspondence with
    me on this last memorandum, Sir Frederick Roberts quoted me, without
    naming me, as having, to his regret, informed him that English
    public opinion would oppose a Turkish alliance, that a Turkish
    alliance would not be of much use if we could obtain it, and that
    apart even from these considerations we could not obtain it if we
    wished.'

The importance which Sir Charles attached to Vladivostock, as the
vulnerable point at which Russia could be attacked in time of war,
explains his regret when Port Hamilton, which threatened Vladivostock,
was abandoned. [Footnote: See _Life of Lord Granville_, vol. ii., p.
440; and _Europe and the Far East_, by Sir Robert K. Douglas, pp. 190,
248, 249.]

    'May, 1885.--The Port Hamilton matter began about this time. We had
    seized it, and, as Northbrook and I agreed, "for naval reasons we
    ought to keep it." Northbrook also wrote that he was laying a cable
    from Shanghai to Port Hamilton, which he thought a most important
    precaution in time of war; but Port Hamilton was afterwards given up
    because the sailors found it dull--an insufficient reason.'




CHAPTER XL

REDISTRIBUTION: COERCION AND DEVOLUTION

1885


I.

The year 1885 saw the Seats Bill, with its numerous compromises in
detail, passed into law, but not without attendant difficulties.

    'On Ash Wednesday, February 18th, I saw Sir Stafford Northcote, and
    settled with him, in view of the meeting of the House on the next
    day, the whole course of affairs for the 19th and 20th, under guise
    of discussing details of the Seats Bill. After we had parted,
    Northcote wrote to me that on consideration he had come to the
    conclusion that he must give notice of a vote of censure, but our
    amicable communication continued on the next day. "On
    consideration," with Northcote, always meant "After bullying by
    Randolph."'

In the process of settlement there were constant meetings with Lord
Salisbury and Sir Stafford Northcote together, with Lord John Manners,
with Sir Michael Hicks Beach; while on the Conservative scheme for Irish
grouping

    'I saw Healy for them, to discover if the thing could be done by
    general consent; and, although Healy did not oppose right out, the
    prospect of an agreement on details was far from promising. Healy
    and I took the opportunity to discuss the Parnell-Chamberlain Irish
    National Board scheme, of which I had written to Grant Duff on
    January 23rd, "Chamberlain has a grand scheme for an Irish Board."'

March 6th.--'Healy having told me that he was sure Lord Salisbury had
"rigged" the Irish Boundary Commission, and I having written this to
Spencer, I received an indignant denial. "If indignation were justified
at anything that Healy says, I should indignantly deny his accusation."'

    'Between March 11th and 13th the Conservatives had given me a good
    deal of trouble by trying, under pressure from their friends, to
    vary the Seats Agreement upon several points.... They then attacked
    the two-member towns in England, which, it may be remembered, had
    been insisted on by Mr. Gladstone against my wish; and Northcote
    wrote: "Lord Salisbury and I never liked that _privilegium_, and
    wished to have single-member constituencies everywhere"; he tried
    hard to get me to reopen the question, knowing doubtless that I was
    with him on the merits. He continued to press the question as late
    as March 15th, when he wrote: "Our men are getting hard to hold,
    and, having twice walked through the lobby almost alone, I have no
    taste for repeating the operation." Conference with Lord Salisbury
    followed, and the final stages were reached: from Monday, March
    23rd, I had the Seats Bill in Committee four days a week.'

The essential fact in these dealings is that emphasized by Mr. Howel
Thomas, Secretary to the Boundary Commission:

    'No political or other pressure would induce Sir Charles--and the
    strongest pressure was used again and again--even to contemplate a
    departure from the spirit of the compact. When once an agreement
    became possible, he would spare no trouble to modify details. But
    without agreement, however strong the argument for a change, nothing
    was listened to.'

    'On May 6th I received from Sir John Lambert, the retired Permanent
    Secretary of the Local Government Board, a most grateful letter
    about the Privy Councillorship, which had been announced to him by
    Mr. Gladstone, and which no man ever more greatly deserved as an
    honour, or by his character more greatly honoured.' [Footnote: John
    Lambert's letter to Sir Charles contained these words: 'I have had
    the opportunity of assisting you in a work which has placed you in
    the very foremost rank of statesmen, and I have formed a friendship
    which is one of the most gratifying incidents of my declining
    years.']

    'On the morning of May 9th I received a letter from Northcote,
    congratulating me on the manner in which I had conducted the
    Redistribution Bill "through its difficult stages.... Let me thank
    you once more for the great consideration, as well as the perfect
    loyalty, with which you have dealt with the numerous questions, and
    congratulate you on having brought your ship so well into port."'
    [Footnote: Upon a table in the larger drawing-room at 76, Sloane
    Street there stood always a bronze 'Victory' sent by Sir George
    Trevelyan to Sir Charles to celebrate the passing of the
    Redistribution Bill, with these words:

    'Dear Dilke,--The bronze is a Victory on a globe. The Victory is
    obvious. The globe below signifies the manner in which your conduct
    of the Redistribution Bill got the Tory Press under your feet. I am
    pleased to think that, as a work of art, it may pass muster even
    before such an artist as the future Lady Dilke.... It is a copy of a
    Herculaneum bronze.... I cannot help hoping that you will think it
    not unworthy of the event which it is meant to commemorate.']

But 'port' was not finally reached till after the fall of the Ministry
in June.

Work on the Housing Commission was also practically completed.
Throughout the year the Report had been under discussion.

On February 16th 'I told Chamberlain that the Labourers' Ireland
Committee had "advised taking of land under compulsory powers in order
to attach it to cottages"--a proposal which was afterwards carried; to
which Chamberlain replied: "And your Commission?" and I answered: "We
_shall_, I hope, but Lord Salisbury is jibbing since your speeches" (on
the unauthorized programme).

    'On March 11th, at the meeting of my Housing Commission, Lord
    Salisbury proposed what Goschen at once described as "Revolution,"
    and Broadhurst "Socialism." He wanted to give public money out of
    taxes to London. It may have been silly, but it was not either
    revolutionary or socialistic.'

When it came to the point of acting on the Report, the Tory leader was
very far from revolutionary; on June 4th,

    'I was also seeing Lord Salisbury as to the Housing Commission
    Bills, which he was to introduce into the House of Lords, [Footnote:
    Sir Charles was to take charge of the measures in the Commons.] He
    was strongly opposed to putting it into the power of Boards of
    Guardians "to build out of the rates as many cottages, with half-
    acres attached, as they like, taking for the purpose any land
    they please." In another letter he wrote: "I should provide that--
    (1) The Local Authority must pass a petition to the Local Government
    Board to apply the Acts. (2) The Local Government Board must send
    down and inquire with a long notice. (3) If the Local Government
    Board inspector reports (i.) that the poorer classes of the parish
    are not, and are not likely to be, sufficiently housed without the
    application of the Acts; (ii.) that the Acts can be applied without
    ultimate loss to the ratepayers, then a vote of the local
    authorities should be sufficient to apply the Acts. It would be
    better that a sufficient interval should be passed in these
    processes to insure that the second vote should be given by a newly
    elected local authority."'

On April 4th to 9th the Housing Commission visited Scotland.

    'On the evening of April 4th I dined with the Lord Provost of
    Edinburgh. On Easter Day I attended the Kirk with the Lord Provost,
    hearing a magnificent sermon by Principal Caird, and in the evening
    dined with the Lord Advocate. On Easter Tuesday I dined with the
    Convention of Royal Burghs. On Thursday, April 9th, we left
    Edinburgh for London.'

There remained only the question of inquiring and reporting with regard
to Ireland, and here perplexities abounded.

As far back as February 7th at the Cabinet, 'the third matter discussed
was that of the proposed visit of the Prince of Wales to Dublin as a
member of my Commission, or, by himself, in advance of the visit of the
Commission. It was decided that Parliament could not be asked for his
expenses without trouble with the Irish.'

April 9th.--'I now began discussing with Spencer the conditions on which
the Commission was to appear at Dublin, with regard to which there were
great difficulties. Gray was on the Commission, but could not be
Spencer's guest in any way, although, on the other hand, he and his
friends were willing to receive me in spite of my being a member of the
Government. [Footnote: Mr. Dwyer Gray, Nationalist member for Carlow in
1885. In 1886 he represented St. Stephen's Green, Dublin.] Spencer, in
inviting me to stay with him, wrote: "I do not think you will fear the
denunciation of _United Ireland_."

    'On April 17th I entered in my diary, after the meeting of the Royal
    Commission at which we signed our report: "Pleasures of Ireland. If
    we stay with Spencer, the Irish witnesses say that they will not
    appear before the Commission; and if we do not, I am told that the
    'loyalists' will not appear." On this day I wrote to Grant Duff: "I
    may go" (out) "with Chamberlain over Budget [Footnote:
    Correspondence with Mr. Gladstone on the Budget and the Beer Tax has
    been given in the previous chapter, pp. 118-120.] or over Irish
    Coercion." He replied, and my rejoinder will be found below.'
    [Footnote: Sir Charles's summary of this letter will be found in
    this chapter (p. 143).]

Trouble had arisen also over Mr. Childers's wish to increase the duty on
sparkling wines. This Sir Charles strongly opposed

    'on the ground that it would upset the French and make them withdraw
    the most favoured nation treatment which I had won, and the matter
    was adjourned.'

    'On Saturday, May 16th, there was another Cabinet. Childers proposed
    to raise the wine duties, to reduce by one-half his proposed
    increase on spirits, and to limit to one year his increase on beer.
    We all agreed, against Childers, to postpone any announcement of
    changes for three weeks, and Childers, thinking that this meant that
    we had agreed not to take his proposals, said that he would resign.'

April 24th.--'I had now received Spencer's consent to my quitting the
Viceregal Lodge, when at Dublin at Whitsuntide, for one evening, to
attend a party at Gray's, which was the virtual condition of our not
being boycotted by the Nationalists.'

Negotiations between the Irish party and both English parties were at
this time in the air, and it will be seen that this visit to Ireland
became connected with political issues quite different from its
ostensible and non-controversial object.


II.

Early in 1885 anti-Irish feeling, which to some extent had been allayed,
was again roused by dynamite outrages. One bomb was exploded in the
Tower of London, and two in the precincts of Parliament. The general
temper may be judged by an entry of February 7th:

    'I remonstrated with Harcourt as to the restrictions at the House,
    which he and the Speaker had agreed on, so far as they affected the
    Press. I said that it was ridiculous to shut out little Lucy, the
    "Toby" of _Punch_, and Harcourt gravely assured me that Lucy was a
    man who would willingly bring dynamite into the House himself; after
    which I had no more to say.'

It was in face of this feeling that Mr. Chamberlain had drafted a scheme
giving very large powers of self-government to an Irish popularly
elected body.

When Sir Charles was declaring for resignation, he received a
communication which made the Irish matter pressing.

    'On April 22nd Cardinal Manning wrote to me that he had some
    information of importance which he wished for an opportunity of
    making known to me, and he begged me to come to him on my way to
    Whitehall on the morrow. I had to see Lord Salisbury and Sir
    Stafford Northcote as to the Seats Bill, and it was not until the
    afternoon that I was able to see the Cardinal. He spoke in the name
    of Croke and another Roman Catholic Irish Archbishop, and of five
    Irish Roman Catholic Bishops who had been staying with him, the
    latter being a deputation of five to Rome who represented "the 14
    Bishops." He said that Croke had become frightened of the extreme
    Nationalists. The Cardinal declared that the Roman Catholic clergy
    were ready to pacify Ireland if we would pass Chamberlain's Local
    Government Ireland Scheme, with a Central Board such as Chamberlain
    proposed. The Bishops and clergy would be prepared to denounce, not
    only separation, but also an Irish Parliament. I had reason to know
    that Lord Spencer was unfavourable to any negotiation with Cardinal
    Manning, but on the 24th, having that day again seen Manning, who
    put the dots on the "i's" and volunteered that if the Irish Bishops
    got the elective board for Ireland they would denounce as
    revolutionary an Irish Parliament, I wrote to Mr. Gladstone stating
    Manning's views, and suggesting that Chamberlain should see the
    Cardinal on the morrow. [Footnote: See the next two pages, where
    accounts of these interviews and correspondence occur.]

    'I said in my letter to Mr. Gladstone: "I knew that the Pope, in
    sending for the Bishops to Rome, had acted on Manning's advice. I
    also knew that Manning bitterly resented Errington's visits to Rome.
    This was all I knew on the subject until to-day, when Manning
    suddenly proposed to me to bring about peace and good-will in
    Ireland on the basis of Chamberlain's Local Government and Central
    Board Scheme.... Manning has got a pledge from the Roman Catholic
    Bishops, including even Archbishop Croke ... and from Davitt, to
    denounce separation. He has got from the Bishops, including Croke, a
    declaration against an Irish Parliament, provided they obtain the
    Local Government Central Board. I suggested that he should see
    Chamberlain at once, and learn secretly the details of his
    proposals. He said nothing of coercion, and I, of course, avoided
    the subject, as I did not know whether a coercion Bill is to be
    proposed. I should suggest that Manning be encouraged to let the
    Pope have Chamberlain's scheme."

    'I sent this memorandum to Chamberlain and to Lord Spencer, as well
    as to Mr. Gladstone, and Chamberlain wrote: "I am quite willing to
    call on the Cardinal if Mr. Gladstone approves." Lord Spencer wrote:
    "The question of Mr. Chamberlain's seeing the Cardinal with a view
    of his scheme being made known to the Pope is for Mr. Gladstone's
    decision, but I would venture to say that he should not disclose his
    plan to the Cardinal unless the Cabinet agree to it." This last
    memorandum from Lord Spencer is dated the 25th, but on the 24th
    Chamberlain, Mr. Gladstone having consented, had seen the Cardinal.
    I also saw the Cardinal again on the 25th, and he told me that in
    his opinion it was essential that Dr. Walsh should be made
    Archbishop of Dublin. He also told me that he was going to see
    Parnell on the Chamberlain scheme. On April 30th the Cardinal saw
    Parnell, and told him that the Bishops would support Chamberlain in
    the Local Government of Ireland scheme. Parnell promised that he
    would support it, and would not obstruct the Crimes Bill. So O'Shea
    told me, and showed me a paper unsigned, which purported to be, and
    which, knowing the hand, I believe was, Parnell's writing, somewhat
    to this effect. On the 28th a Committee of the Cabinet had been
    appointed on Chamberlain's Irish Local Government and Central
    Council scheme. On May 1st the Cardinal told me of his interview
    with Parnell, and of a more completely satisfactory interview
    between himself and Sexton.

    'The scheme was one which proposed the establishment in Ireland of a
    national elective Council, to which were to be referred matters at
    present in the hands of some four Boards at Dublin Castle. Mr.
    Gladstone's consent to Chamberlain's interview with the Cardinal had
    been given in conversation at the House of Commons on the 23rd, and
    I have a letter from Mr. Gladstone stating this. I had probably, for
    some reason which I forget, both written and spoken to him after my
    first interview with Manning on the 22nd, and put the matter again
    in a letter (possibly to go to Spencer) on the 24th. I have also a
    letter from Chamberlain on the 24th, saying that his interview with
    Manning "quite confirms your minute, and the position is hopeful."
    With regard to the Cardinal's insisting upon Walsh, and his anger at
    Errington's interference, I had a letter which I sent to Lord
    Spencer, and which he kept, but returned my minute referring to the
    Cardinal's letter, endorsed only "S. 25-4-85." Chamberlain also
    wrote on the same day, again stating that his interview with the
    Cardinal had been highly satisfactory, and adding: "Do not let Mr.
    Errington meddle with the Archbishopric of Dublin." On April 26th
    the Cardinal had again written to me about the Errington business
    and the See of Dublin, and this second letter on the subject I kept.
    The only new point in it was that contained in the following phrase:
    "I have an impression that efforts have been made to represent Dr.
    Walsh as a Nationalist. He is not more so than I am; and whether
    that is excessive or obstructive you will judge."

    'On Tuesday, April 28th, the Cardinal again spoke to me as to the
    archbishopric, expressing his great vexation as to Spencer's action
    through Errington. I sent a minute to Spencer which he returned,
    writing, with regard to Manning's moderate opinions: "I wish it may
    be so. Responsibility does wonders. Maynooth is so bad that the Pope
    is now discussing it with the Bishops." Dr. Walsh, Manning's
    candidate, was President of Maynooth. I sent Spencer's minute to
    Chamberlain, who returned it with a strong minute of his own for
    Spencer, who again wrote: "H.E. the Cardinal is wrong in his
    estimate of Dr. Walsh." On April 30th Manning wrote mentioning a
    further conversation with Parnell, and adding: "The result is that I
    strongly advise the prompt introduction of the scheme I have in
    writing. It cannot be known too soon. But both on general and on
    particular reasons I hope that neither you nor your friend will
    dream of the act you spoke of. Government are pledged in their first
    Queen's Speech to county government in Ireland. Let them redeem
    their pledge. All the rest will follow." The "act," of course, was
    resignation.'

    'At the Cabinet Committee of May 1st on Ireland, Carlingford and
    Harcourt, in Spencer's interest, violently attacked Chamberlain's
    scheme; Hartington less violently; Childers, Lefevre, and Trevelyan
    supported. Spencer seeming to waver, Harcourt rather turned round,
    and Mr. Gladstone afterwards told Chamberlain that Carlingford's
    opposition did not matter.

    'On May 1st I again saw Manning, who told me of further interviews
    with Parnell and Sexton. I noted in my diary: "2nd to 6th. The Irish
    row--Mr. Gladstone between Chamberlain and Spencer: the deep sea and
    the devil, or the devil and the deep sea--continues."

    'On May 7th the Cardinal wrote: "How can the _Standard_ have got the
    Irish scheme? Nothing is secret and nobody is safe. My copy of it is
    both safe and secret." On May 8th I wrote to Grant Duff:
    "Chamberlain and I have a big Irish Local Government scheme on hand,
    which is backed by the R. C. Bishops--which may either pacify
    Ireland or break up the Government." On the 9th, Harcourt having
    come over, Chamberlain's scheme received the support of all the
    Commoners except Hartington, and was opposed by all the peers except
    Lord Granville. Mr. Gladstone said to me in leaving the room:
    "Within six years, if it pleases God to spare their lives, they will
    be repenting in ashes." At night he wrote to Lord Spencer and to
    Hartington that he intended to go out upon this question.

    'During Sunday, May 10th, Harcourt tried hard to patch matters up on
    the basis of "No Home Rule, no coercion, no remedial legislation, no
    Ireland at all."'

On May 13th 'Cardinal Manning dined with me, and we further discussed
the position of Chamberlain's scheme.'

Then suddenly a new and complicating factor was introduced:

    'On Friday, May 15th, there was another Cabinet, from which
    Trevelyan was absent through illness. A Land Purchase Ireland Bill
    was suddenly presented to us, to which I expressed strong
    opposition, unless it were to be accompanied by "Chamberlain's Local
    Government scheme"; and a Coercion Bill was also presented to us,
    against which Chamberlain, Lefevre, and I, protested. We, however,
    declared that we would yield as regards some points in the Coercion
    Bill provided the Land Purchase Bill were dropped or the "Local
    Government measure" introduced.' [Footnote: A Land Purchase Bill had
    been proposed in the end of April, 1884, by Lord Spencer, which
    after preliminary consideration by a Committee was discussed in
    Cabinet.

    'I opposed the whole thing. Lord Derby gave five reasons against it,
    all five unanswerable, and then supported it. Northbrook agreed with
    me. Childers, supported by a unanimous Cabinet committee, proposed a
    scheme of Chamberlain's suggestion for advancing the whole purchase
    money. Spencer proposed three-fourths. Mr. Gladstone had a scheme of
    his own which nobody could understand. Spencer insisted on counting
    heads. Lord Granville, who would, of course, have supported Mr.
    Gladstone, had gone away. Trevelyan, who had been called in, was not
    allowed to vote, and the result was that the majority pronounced
    against Chamberlain's scheme; Spencer who was for three-fourths, and
    I against the whole thing, voting together with Carlingford,
    Northbrook, the Chancellor, Hartington, and Dodson--a scratch
    lot--against Mr. Gladstone, Childers, Harcourt, Kimberley, Derby,
    and Chamberlain.']

    'On Sunday, May 17th, I dined with Edward Levy Lawson, [Footnote:
    Afterwards the first Lord Burnham.] and met the Prince of Wales and
    Randolph Churchill; and Randolph told the Prince and myself that
    which he had previously told the Irish members--namely, that
    Salisbury had promised to have no coercion; but I noted in my diary
    that I did not believe this. I was wrong, for Salisbury afterwards
    said at Newport that his mind had been made up against coercion long
    before the change of Government. I knew that Randolph had seen
    Parnell, as I had twice seen them together in Gosset's room, which
    only Randolph and I ever used before 5 p m.'

There were now two separate subjects of division leading to resignations
in the Cabinet. There were those who would resign unless coercion was
renewed, and there was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who was
resigning because he could not get his way as to the Budget. His
resignation was 'suspended'; but Mr. Gladstone was evidently anxious to
be out of it all.

    'On the Sunday Childers informed us that he would go on for three
    weeks. On Wednesday afternoon, May 20th, Mr. Gladstone spoke to me
    at the House, and told me that he would go on until the end of the
    Session, and would then resign, and that Hartington would try to
    form a Government, although he might fail in getting one that could
    agree on Irish proposals. Mr. Gladstone said nothing about land
    purchase, but in the course of the afternoon he suddenly announced
    publicly the introduction of a Land Purchase Bill, thinking, I
    believe, that he had Chamberlain's consent to a Bill limited to one
    year. I at once wrote him a letter of resignation, and then sent off
    for Chamberlain, Lefevre, and Trevelyan.

    'Chamberlain's interview with Mr. Gladstone that had misled the
    latter had taken place after the Cabinet of Saturday--I think on the
    morning of Monday, the 18th--and their meeting was on the subject of
    Childers's Budget proposals. Chamberlain, writing to me about it,
    said: "We are likely to want four millions less money. Therefore,
    says Childers, let us have a new Budget and clap an additional tax
    of £300,000 on wine." Chamberlain also wrote to me, after his
    interview with Mr. Gladstone, on the Monday afternoon, telling me
    that Randolph Churchill was going to give notice of a Committee to
    inquire into the state of Ireland, that Churchill thought that we
    should be out by that time and supporting him, and that he
    contemplated a separation from his own leaders, and a union, on a
    Radical Irish policy for "Local Government," and against coercion,
    of the two sides from below the gangway. Chamberlain added that, if
    the Russian matter "were out of the way, Mr. Gladstone would let us
    go, and I think _we must go_." This correspondence had left me
    unaware of any change in Chamberlain's view, if there was any, about
    the Land Purchase Bill. As soon as Chamberlain reached the House on
    the 20th, and heard from me what I had done, he also wrote a letter
    of resignation; but he was not pleased, and perhaps rightly, at my
    having taken so strong a step without consulting him on the precise
    point.

    'In Chamberlain's letter, which was sent at 6 p.m. on the 20th, he
    said: "Dear Mr. Gladstone,--I have heard with great surprise that
    you have this afternoon given notice of the introduction of a Land
    Purchase Bill for Ireland, unaccompanied by any reference to the
    large scheme of Local Government, the promise of which for next year
    was the condition of the assent given by Sir Charles Dilke and
    myself to the proposal for dealing with Land Purchase during the
    present Session. I am convinced that a measure of the kind suggested
    by Lord Spencer will have a distinct tendency to increase the
    agitation for a separation between the two countries, and at the
    same time will seriously prejudice the success of any such scheme of
    Local Government as I have submitted to the Cabinet.... In the
    circumstances I feel that I have no alternative but to place my
    resignation in your hands."

    'On the morning of May 21st Lefevre informed us that he should go
    with us, and also wrote a letter of resignation, in which he said
    that he did not agree with us as to Land Purchase, but that as we
    went he must go, too, on coercion.

    'Mr. Gladstone sent for me on the 21st, and I suggested a way out,
    in our acceptance of the Land Purchase Bill, with a promise of "the
    Local Government Scheme" for 1886. Mr. Gladstone fell in with this
    view, and proposed that at Dublin, for which I was starting on
    Friday morning, May 22nd, I should try to get Spencer's consent to
    the limitation of the new Coercion Bill to a single year, and the
    promise of the "Local Government Bill" for 1886. On the 21st Mr.
    Gladstone wrote to me several times, as did also Chamberlain. Mr.
    Gladstone had written to Chamberlain on the night of the 20th: "I
    have never been in greater surprise than at the fresh trouble
    developed this afternoon. I believed myself to be acting entirely
    within the lines of your and Dilke's concurrence, and surely I am
    right in thinking that you could not have supposed that the notice
    of an intention to bring in a Bill offered the occasion on which to
    refer to the distinct though allied subject of Local Government.
    What I understood to be your and Dilke's procedure was to agree to a
    Land Purchase Bill with a provision of funds for one year, which
    would leave the whole measure ... dependent on a fresh judgment
    which might be associated with Local Government as its condition. It
    seems to me to be a matter which we may perfectly well consider, and
    hope to arrange, in what terms reference shall be made to Local
    Government when the Bill is brought in. Will not that be the time to
    part, if part we must, which I do not believe? I send a copy of this
    to Dilke, and will only add, to the expression of my surprise, my
    deep concern."

    'When I received a letter from Mr. Gladstone, enclosing a copy of
    his to Chamberlain, I replied (first showing my answer to Lefevre
    and sending it to Chamberlain) to the effect that the proposal to
    introduce a Land Purchase Bill had been discussed by and rejected by
    the Cabinet, that I could not concur in the reversal of its
    judgment, and that, thinking as I did that a deliberate opinion of
    the Cabinet had been disregarded without warrant, and having, so
    thinking, resigned, I should be unable to attend any meeting of the
    Cabinet if one were summoned. I have a letter from Chamberlain to Mr
    Gladstone dated 21st, and two later ones from Mr. Gladstone to
    myself. Chamberlain said:

    '"My Dear Mr. Gladstone,

    '"I fear there has been a serious misapprehension on both sides with
    respect to a Land Purchase Bill, and I take blame to myself if I did
    not express myself with sufficient clearness. I certainly never
    imagined that the promise of introduction would be made without
    further reference to the Cabinet, or without some definite decision
    as to Local Government. I doubt very much if it is wise or even
    right to attempt to cover over the serious differences of principle
    that have lately disclosed themselves in the Cabinet. I think it is
    now certain that they will cause a split in the new Parliament, and
    it seems hardly fair to the constituencies that this should only be
    admitted after they have discharged their functions, and when they
    are unable to influence the result.

    '"I am,

    '"Yours sincerely,

    '"J. CHAMBERLAIN."

    'They _did_ "cause" a split in the new Parliament, but Spencer the
    Coercionist and Chamberlain the Nationalist had changed places!'

    'I do not know which of Mr. Gladstone's two letters dated the 21st
    is the earlier. In the one Mr. Gladstone wrote: "I hope that my note
    may have shown you that the time for considering your difficulty (if
    there be one) has not arrived. Please to tell me if this is so, as
    if it were not I should have to summon the Cabinet this afternoon to
    report what has happened. The messenger will wait for an answer.--
    Yours sincerely, W. E. Gladstone.--This is also for Chamberlain." I
    replied somewhat curtly that if there were a Cabinet I could not
    attend. The other letter referred to a conversation which had taken
    place between Hamilton and Chamberlain, and said that the latter was
    "willing that his letter should stand as _non avenu_ until after the
    recess--i.e. (so I understand it), we should, before the Bill is
    introduced, consider in what terms the subject of Local Government
    should be referred to when the Bill is introduced. I am not trying
    to bind you to this understanding, but if you and he will come here
    at 3.0 we will try to get at the bottom of the matter." My reply
    was:

    '"21st May.

    '"I certainly cannot withdraw my resignation unless the incident is
    explained to the whole of the members of the Cabinet. If you could
    see your way to circulate a box explaining that we were not
    consenting parties to the reversal of the opinion of the Cabinet,
    then I would try to help find some way out. I am, however, hopeless
    as to the wisdom of doing so. We differ so completely on the
    questions which will occupy the time of Parliament for the remainder
    of the Session that I feel that the Cabinet cannot hold together
    with advantage to the country. Lefevre strongly agrees with this
    view Northbrook and Hartington, who, with Lefevre, were against
    Chamberlain and myself on the merits, evidently felt as amazed as we
    were at the reversal of the decision."'

    'At this moment Chamberlain wrote to Mrs. Pattison' (in India) 'to
    say that the times were "most anxious. Mr. Gladstone is certainly
    going to retire soon, and the influence which has held together
    discordant elements will be removed with him. Fortunately, we know
    our own minds, and are not deficient in resolution, but it is not
    always easy to see clearly the right times and way of giving effect
    to our decisions. I do not myself believe that the struggle between
    us and the Whigs can be long postponed. It has nearly come over the
    question of Ireland, and even now we may be compelled to break off
    on this vital point. In any case we shall not join another
    Government nor meet another Parliament without a decision; and if it
    is against our views, the split will be final and complete, and we
    shall be out of office until we can lead a purely Radical
    Administration. We must win in the end, but the contest will be a
    bitter one, and may lead us farther than we contemplate at
    present.... I was dining last Saturday with Lord Ripon, who
    professed to be well pleased ... and declared his full adhesion to
    the new gospel; but the majority of his class and school are getting
    thoroughly frightened, and will probably quicken and intensify the
    movement by setting themselves against it, instead of trying to
    guide and direct it. A good deal depends on Lord Hartington. He is
    constitutionally contemptuous of, and unsympathetic with, the
    democratic sentiment of the times."

    'By our telegrams of May 21st, I saw that on the 20th Sir John Kirk,
    our man at Zanzibar, had been snubbed by Lord Granville, and I felt
    that if I went out upon the Irish Question I should be able at least
    to speak my mind as to the manner in which we had pandered to the
    Germans on the Zanzibar coast.

    'On May 21st I wrote to Grant Duff: "Mr. G. will resign at the end
    of the session. I rather doubt Hartington being able to form a
    Government."

    'On the morning of Friday, May 22nd, I left for Dublin, and by
    teatime was at the Viceregal Lodge.'

On the previous day Sir Charles had written:

    'Local Government Board,
     'May 21st, 1885.

    'My Dear Grant Duff,

    'Off to Ireland, where I expect to be Boycotted by both sides
    [Footnote: It turned out the other way.]--by the Nationalists
    because I stay with Spencer, and by the Orangemen because we sit at
    the Mansion House.

        'Yours,
        'Chs. W. D.'

    'As Mr. Gladstone at our last interview had bid me convert Spencer
    if I could, and virtually promised that he would support our views
    if Spencer would, I had asked Trevelyan and Harcourt to back me up
    in letters. Harcourt made delay. Trevelyan wrote on the 23rd: "I am
    sorry the whole thing is in the newspapers, and see in it another
    reason for getting it settled. If you and Chamberlain make it a
    point to have the Bill for a year, I should be glad to see the
    concession made. The concession on the part of those who take
    another view would not be greater than was made by those of us who
    objected to have a Land Bill that was not based upon a new system of
    Local Government."

    'Early in the morning of Saturday, the 23rd, before the meeting of
    my Commission at the City Hall, I had had a long talk with Spencer,
    and I felt, more strongly than I ever had before, that his position
    in Dublin was untenable, and that he ought to be allowed to go. On
    Whit Sunday I attended church with Spencer, and in the afternoon
    took him for the only walk which he had enjoyed for a long time. We
    passed the spot where Lord Frederick Cavendish was killed, and
    accompanied by a single aide-de-camp, but watched at a distance by
    two policemen in plain clothes, and met at every street corner by
    two others, walked to the strawberry gardens, and on our return, it
    being a lovely Sunday when the Wicklow Mountains were at their best
    and the hawthorn in bloom, met thousands of Dublin people driving
    out to the strawberry gardens on cars. In the course of the whole
    long walk but one man lifted his hat to Spencer, who was universally
    recognized, but assailed by the majority of those we met with shouts
    of, "Who killed Myles Joyce?" [Footnote: One of several men hanged
    for the Maamtrasna murders. All the other men sentenced protested
    that Myles Joyce was innocent, and died protesting it. Strong
    efforts were made to gain a reprieve for this lad.] while some
    varied the proceedings by calling "Murderer!" after him. A few days
    later, when I was driving with Lady Spencer in an open carriage, a
    well-dressed bicyclist came riding through the cavalry escort, and
    in a quiet, conversational tone observed to us, "Who killed Myles
    Joyce?" At his dinner-party on the Sunday evening Spencer told us
    that a Roman Catholic priest [Footnote: Father Healy, parish priest
    of Bray, and most famous of modern Irish talkers.] who was present
    (the Vicar of Bray, I think, but not _the_ Bray) was the only priest
    in Ireland who would enter his walls, while the Castle was boycotted
    by every Archbishop and Bishop. On Monday morning, the 25th, Whit
    Monday, I paid a visit to the Mansion House at the request of the
    Lord Mayor of Dublin, taking by Spencer's leave the Viceregal
    carriages there, where they had in his second viceroyalty not been
    before, and was received by the Lord Mayor in state, which consisted
    in much exhibition of the most gorgeous porter (in green and gold)
    that my eyes had ever beheld. I afterwards went on to see Hamilton,
    [Footnote: Sir Robert Hamilton, who had succeeded Mr. Bourke as the
    permanent head of Dublin Castle.] the Under-Secretary. He offered us
    as a maximum County Boards plus a Central Education Board for
    Ireland, to administer all the grants with rating powers, and to be
    called a great experiment to be extended if it answered. In the
    evening I discussed this with Spencer, who went a little farther,
    and offered, in addition to County Boards, four elective Central
    Boards for Ireland, to discharge much the same duties which
    Chamberlain's scheme gave to the Central Board; but Spencer
    obstinately refused to take the plunge of making the four Boards
    into one Board. It was on this point that we broke off; and he never
    got farther forward until after the Government had gone out. He has
    since declared that his conversion to a more advanced Home Rule
    scheme than that of Chamberlain, which he had refused, was caused by
    the return of a certain majority of Nationalist members; but he was
    perfectly aware at this time what that majority would be, and I
    confess that I have never been able to understand why Hamilton and
    Spencer should have held out as they did in May against the moderate
    scheme, and have supported the extreme one as early as July, which I
    believe to have been the case. Had Spencer yielded at this moment,
    it is at least possible that the Irish question would have been
    settled. At all events, there has never been in our time so fair a
    chance of settlement.

    'On Tuesday, the 26th, I heard from Lefevre, who wrote strongly
    against the Coercion Bill for Spencer's benefit, but added in a
    separate letter that he regarded the notice in the _Birmingham Post_
    as indicating that Chamberlain had been talking freely about the
    dissensions in the Cabinet, and that if this was so he considered it
    unfortunate, as tending to increase the difficulty of getting any
    further concessions from Spencer or other members of the Cabinet who
    favoured coercion.

    'On Tuesday evening the Commission dined with Gray, and met Dr.
    Walsh, the new Archbishop; but at Dr. Walsh's wish I had gone to
    Gray's house half an hour before dinner to see the Archbishop
    privately, and to be thanked by him for the part that I had taken in
    trying to prevent opposition to the choice. In the evening Gray had
    a party at which both sides were represented, Chief Justice Morris
    being among those present. Gray's house, although the Spencers
    disliked him, was one at which the parties always met as much as is
    possible at all in Ireland. When Gray came out of gaol after his
    imprisonment he gave a small dinner, at which were present the Judge
    who had sentenced him, the gaoler who had had him in custody, and
    the prosecuting counsel. The most interesting man at Gray's was
    Fottrell, the man whose memoirs ought to be interesting, for he had
    acted as intermediary between the Castle (that is, Hamilton) and
    Parnell at the time when secret communications were passing between
    them, although openly they were at war.

    'Dickson, the Ulster Liberal member, [Footnote: M.P. For Dungannon,
    Tyrone, 1880-1885. He afterwards became a leading Unionist.] was at
    Gray's, and he announced that he had at last come over to
    Chamberlain's scheme. Now, Hartington was crossing the next day to
    stay at the Viceregal Lodge, and was to speak at Belfast under
    Dickson's auspices, and the announcement of Dickson's change of
    front was a startling blow to him and Spencer.

    'On the morning of Wednesday, the 27th, I wrote to Grant Duff: "A
    pretty pass you Whigs have brought this country to! I really think
    we Radicals ought to be allowed to try. We certainly could not do it
    _worse_. 'Poland' has been a byword, yet Poland is far less of a
    weakness to Russia than Ireland to us, and the Russians have now the
    Polish peasantry with them, if they have the towns and nobles
    against them. _We_ have _no_ friends in Ireland. All our policy has
    aimed at conciliating at least Ulster, and now Ulster is fast
    becoming as Nationalist as Cork. The Liberals carried Belfast
    freeholders in the late Antrim election to the cry of 'Down with
    coercion!' and 'No special legislation!' Hartington comes to-night,
    and I shall try to arrange some compromise with him and Spencer as
    to the future--probably an Irish elective education Council."

    'On the evening of the 27th I had a long conference with Hartington
    and Spencer, in which I "worked" Dickson much. Before this I had had
    the third meeting of my Commission, and then a public meeting in
    connection with the Dublin Ladies' Central Association, a body
    dealing with the Housing of the Working Classes. On the morning of
    May 28th Spencer came into my bedroom before eight o'clock, and told
    me that Hartington was very ill, suffering from sleeplessness and
    fever, and that it would be quite impossible for him to make his
    Belfast speech.... Dickson soon came to the Viceregal Lodge, and
    earnestly begged me to go to Belfast in Hartington's place, but
    under the circumstances I felt that it was impossible that I should
    do so, although he promised me that a special train should be
    waiting at the last moment if I would change my mind.

    'I received this day a letter from Cardinal Manning strongly urging
    that Chamberlain, Lefevre, and I, should stay in. "If you and the
    like of you leave the Whigs, they will fall back and unite in
    resisting you. So long as you are in contact with them, they will
    yield to reason. These are the thoughts of an Old Testament
    Radical." But the Old Testament Radical went on to make proposals to
    me with regard to the Roman Catholic vote in Chelsea which would
    have astonished the Old Testament prophets.

    'Another letter which I received this day was from O'Shea about
    Parnell's opinions on the Coercion Bill, but it is so obscure that I
    can make nothing of it. It was on a suggestion of Lefevre's with
    regard to bringing the Coercion Bill into force only by
    "proclamation." It shows, however, if O'Shea is to be believed, that
    Parnell was willing to accept a coercion measure of some kind, or,
    at all events, to haggle about its terms, if publicly resisting it
    as a whole.

    'By the same post I received a letter from Heneage [Footnote: Mr.
    Edward Heneage, for many years M.P. for Grimsby, and for a short
    time Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in 1886. He was afterwards
    a leading Unionist.] professing to state the general view of the
    House of Commons, and pronouncing in favour of a liberal policy
    towards Ireland. "(1) Non-renewal of the Crimes Act. (2) Amendment
    of the jury laws. (3) Amendment of the purchase clauses. (4)
    Abolition of the Lord Lieutenancy. (5) Improvement of Local
    Government." This I showed to Spencer, with a memorandum of my own
    in which I said that it was "a curious letter from a Whig." Spencer
    wrote on my memorandum in returning the letter: "It is an odd
    letter.... He wrote to me the other day about the abolition of the
    Lord Lieutenancy, rather apologizing for bringing it on. I replied
    deprecating any movement which might not go with action. To denounce
    an office without at once abolishing it would weaken the hands of
    him who filled it."

    'I wrote to Lefevre and Chamberlain that Hartington had come very
    well, and was very well at dinner, but bored at having to speak.
    "Walker told him what I told him as to the unwisdom of speaking in
    favour of coercion in Belfast immediately after the anti-coercion
    speeches of the Liberals at the Antrim election; and to-day he is
    ill. I do not know how far the two things are connected; but the
    papers will _say_ they are."

    'I lunched with Sir Edward Guinness and sat in the Speaker's chair
    of the Irish Parliament; dined with Sir Robert Hamilton at the Yacht
    Club at Kingstown; slept on board the boat and crossed next day;
    spent Saturday to Tuesday at Dockett Eddy; and on Tuesday was at the
    State Concert, where several of us tried to patch up some means of
    being able to meet in Cabinet on June 5th. On Thursday, June 4th, I
    had a long talk with Mr. Gladstone, and, on his agreeing to support
    the Heneage-Lefevre-O'Shea proposal, now supported by Chamberlain,
    for only bringing the Coercion Bill into force by a proclamation,
    agreed to attend the Cabinet the next day, but without withdrawing
    my resignation, which remained "suspended."

    'I began on the 3rd and ended on the 5th June a letter to Grant Duff
    in reply to one from him bidding me not break off from the
    Government on any but a clear and obvious issue. I told him that (1)
    Radicals in a minority would only ever get their way by often
    threatening to go, even on secondary points, and that they must not
    threaten unless they "meant it." (2) Mr. G. insisted he was "going."
    "Therefore we have to count with Hartington. We doubt if we can form
    part of a Hartington Government, and we can't do so if we do not ...
    impose our terms by threats.... This is why I have been forcing the
    pace of late.... Chamberlain is a little timid just now, in view of
    the elections and the fury of the _Pall Mall_. I could not drive
    Chamberlain out without his free consent, so I am rather tied.
    Still, we shall (June 5th) get our own way, I fancy, at to-day's
    Cabinet."

    'On the morning of June 5th my position in attending the Cabinet was
    weakened, if not made ridiculous, by a letter from Spencer in which
    he refused the Heneage-Lefevre-O'Shea compromise. But I went all the
    same, for I was not supposed to know what he had written to Mr.
    Gladstone. The first matter discussed was the Budget. I opposed the
    proposed increase of the wine duties from 1s. to 1s. 3d., and from
    2s. 6d. to 3s. (all bottled wine to be at the 3s. rate). I carried
    with me at first all except Mr. Gladstone against Childers, and at
    last Mr. Gladstone also. Childers then left the room; Mr. Gladstone,
    Lord Granville, Harcourt, and the Chancellor, one by one, went after
    him, but he would not come back. The Guards at Alexandria were
    mentioned, and then Spencer's letter to Mr. Gladstone against the
    proclamation clause read, whereon Chamberlain and I protested
    against coercion as a whole, and no decision upon any point was come
    to.

    'On June 6th I dined at Harcourt's Queen's Birthday dinner, and
    afterwards attended Lady Granville's Foreign Office party, but these
    were expiring festivities.

    'On Monday, June 8th, there was a Cabinet, at which the first matter
    was Irish Coercion and the proclamation clause. Spencer now offered
    proclamation by the Viceroy (i.e., not by the Government in
    London, which was our proposal) for all the Bill except the
    intimidation part, but refused to have it for the boycotting clause.
    Trevelyan now joined Chamberlain, Lefevre, and myself, in opposing
    Spencer; the others supported him, but tried to make him yield. We
    decided that if he yielded we should ask that a statement to the
    Cabinet should be promised to precede proclamation.'

On June 8th Mr. Childers moved the second reading of his Budget Bill,
which was met by an amendment moved by Sir Michael Hicks Beach,
condemning the proposed increase upon beer and spirits without any
corresponding increase on wine, and declining to increase the duty on
real property until promised changes were made in regard to local
taxation.

    'I made a good debating Budget speech, of which Sir John Lambert
    wrote "In Tea, Domine, spero," and I replied: "Since the time of Sir
    Thomas More all these profane 'good things' have come from devout
    Catholics."'

Other leading men followed, and Mr. Gladstone summed up by saying that
you must tax either alcohol or tea and sugar. But the division went
against him: 6 Liberals voted with the Tories, and 76 were absent. The
majority against the Government was 12. The end had at length come.




CHAPTER XLI

FALL OF ADMINISTRATION

JUNE TO JULY, 1885


On June 8th, as has been seen, the Government were defeated by a
majority of 12.

    'On June 9th there was a further Cabinet. We had been beaten on the
    Budget, but in the meantime Spencer had yielded, and Mr. Gladstone
    was very anxious to be able to say that we were all agreed.
    Therefore we discussed a Coercion Bill in the first place, but the
    four of us at once refused to agree to Spencer's concession as
    sufficient.' [Footnote: Namely, that the Coercion Bill should only
    have effect after a special proclamation had been issued. Sir
    Charles Dilke notes, September 20th, 1891, the receipt of a letter
    from Mr. Chamberlain, thanking him for extracts from his Memoir of
    1884-85 on Irish affairs, and saying that where it dealt with the
    same points it tallied exactly with his recollections.] 'It passes
    my understanding, therefore, how Mr. Gladstone is able to pronounce,
    as he has done, "unfounded" the statement that the Cabinet was at
    odds upon the Irish question at the moment of its defeat. Three of
    us had resigned on it, and our letters were in his pocket. The next
    matter discussed was resignation, which did not take a minute; and
    then the question of what Customs dues should be levied....

    'After the Cabinet there was a levee, at which I had some
    conversation with Lord Salisbury as to the Redistribution Bill in
    the Lords, and his reply showed that he meant to form a Government.'

    'On June 10th my discussions with Lord Salisbury as to the
    Redistribution Bill were continued, and it was decided that the Bill
    was to go forward in spite of the Ministerial crisis, although this
    was resisted by the Fourth Party in the House of Commons.'

On the previous evening Sir Charles Dilke addressed an audience at the
City Liberal Club in a speech of unwonted passion. Confidently
anticipating that the Redistribution Bill would go through in spite of
any change of Ministry and the resistance of the Fourth Party, he dwelt
on the magnitude of the change for which he had so long wrought. But the
central point of the speech was a eulogy of Mr Gladstone, which
reflected the temper of a scene that had passed in the House of Commons
the same day, and he demanded in the name of Liberalism that the battle
should be won, 'not only with his great name, but under his actual
leadership.'

This was the declaration of the Radicals against all thought of a
Hartington Administration. Referring to the speech, he writes:

    'I was greatly congratulated on this day on a speech which I had
    made at a house dinner of the City Liberal Club on the 9th.
    Chamberlain wrote: "Your speech was admirable, and I have heard from
    one who was present that the effect was electrical. You never did
    better in your life." He went on to agree with me in my wish that
    Herbert Gladstone should be appointed Chief Whip for the Opposition,
    and then to say that we must be very careful what we did, or "we
    shall destroy the Tory Government before it has done our work." I
    had asked him to sit to Holl for a portrait for me, and he said that
    he would do so, but that he was going to speak all over the country
    in support of the unauthorized programme. He did sit, and a very
    fine picture was the result.' [Footnote: Now at the National
    Portrait Gallery, to which Sir Charles bequeathed it.]

    'On Saturday, June 13th, I presided at the Cobden Club dinner, at
    which Chamberlain was also present, and our speeches attracted some
    attention.' [Footnote: Sir Charles from the chair advocated
    'destroying the monopoly in land,' and 'establishing an Irish
    control of Irish affairs.' Chamberlain advocated 'some great measure
    of devolution by which the Imperial Parliament shall retain its
    supremacy, but shall nevertheless relegate to subordinate
    authorities the control and administration of their local business,'
    and added: 'I think it is a consolation to my right hon. friend as
    well as to myself that our hands are free, and that our voices may
    now be lifted up in the cause of freedom and justice.']

    'On Tuesday, the 16th, we had a meeting of the leaders, at which
    were present Lords Selborne, Northbrook, Carlingford, Derby,
    Kimberley, Mr. Gladstone, Harcourt, Childers, Chamberlain, Lefevre,
    and myself. Salisbury, through Arthur Balfour, had verbally asked
    for (1) priority for Supply; (2) if we would, supposing that we
    opposed their Budget, support them in borrowing by Exchequer Bills.
    We decided to make as little reply as possible. In Winston
    Churchill's Life of his father he says we promised "facilities," but
    we refused.'

    'Randolph Churchill sounded me to know if in the event of his taking
    office he could sit for Birmingham, and Chamberlain answered: "If R.
    C. takes office _without_ coercion, we should not oppose him. If
    _with_, I should certainly fight to accentuate the betrayal."

    'On the afternoon of June 16th I had a serious talk with Chamberlain
    about manhood suffrage, which he had advocated in a speech, pointing
    out to him that this question of manhood as against adult suffrage
    (i.e., including women) was the only one on which we differed, and
    the only question which seemed likely to divide us. The outcome of
    our talk was that we should postpone as long as possible the
    inevitable difference, and make it last as short a time as possible
    by postponing it till the very moment when the thing was likely to
    be carried. When the time came that our people should be raving for
    manhood suffrage, and that I should have to join the Tories in
    carrying adult suffrage as against it, I might, if in office, have
    to go out by myself, but this could not be avoided.' [Footnote: A
    memorandum on this subject by Sir Charles, published by the Society
    for Promoting Adult Suffrage, in the last years of his life, is
    quoted on p. 409 of this volume.]

    'On the 16th, also, I wrote to Grant Duff that there was "no liking
    for Ireland or the Irish," but "an almost universal feeling now in
    both parties that some form of Home Rule must be tried. My own
    belief is that it will be tried too late, as all our remedies have
    been."

    'I told him how I had written to solicit a peerage for him, and that
    the Liberals would be in office again in "January," and when his
    term of office was to expire--a true prophecy.'

    'On June 18th there was another Cabinet of the outgoing Ministers,
    although Hartington and Lord Granville were not present. There were
    present Mr. Gladstone, Lord Selborne, Carlingford, Northbrook,
    Kimberley, Derby, Rosebery, Harcourt, Childers, Trevelyan, Lefevre,
    Chamberlain, and myself. Mr. Gladstone had heard on the previous
    night from the Queen, enclosing a letter from Lord Salisbury to her,
    asking for an undertaking that we would support him on his Budget
    and in Supply, as he could not now dissolve. We again refused to
    give any but very general assurances.

    'On June 19th, Randolph Churchill having blown up Northcote' (who
    had been removed to the Upper House), 'and shown his power by making
    himself Dictator, now wished for freedom and some excuse for
    preventing the formation of a Government, and a curious letter from
    him was forwarded to me by Chamberlain. In Chamberlain's covering
    letter there is the first allusion to our proposed tour in Ireland.

    'On Saturday, June 20th, there was a last Cabinet or "full meeting"
    of outgoing Ministers, all being present except Spencer and our two
    racing men--Hartington and Rosebery. We further considered the
    question of "assurances," at the renewed suggestion of the Queen,
    and finally declined to give them. Though this was called as a
    Cabinet, Mrs. Gladstone was in the room. Saturday to Monday I spent
    in a last visit to the smallpox camp at Darenth. On Monday, the
    22nd, I made a fighting speech at a meeting at the Welsh chapel in
    Radnor Street at Chelsea; [Footnote: The speech advocated not merely
    Home Rule, but Home Rule all round. Sir Charles expressed a wish to
    "study in Ireland a plan for the devolution to Welsh, Scottish, and
    Irish bodies of much business which Parliament is incompetent to
    discharge, and which at the present time is badly done or not done
    at all."

    "The principles of decentralization which ought to be applied are
    clear to those who know the two kingdoms and the Principality, but
    the details must be studied on the spot. As regards Wales and
    Scotland, no great controversial questions are likely to arise. But
    as regards the Irish details, it is the intention of Mr. Chamberlain
    and myself to inquire in Ireland of those who know Ireland best.
    Officials in Ireland, contrary to public belief, are many of them in
    favour of decentralization, but still more are the Bishops and
    clergy of various denominations, legal authorities, and the like.
    Some writers who have recently attacked a proposal which has been
    made to abolish in Ireland what is known as 'Dublin Castle' are
    unaware, apparently, of the fact that not only officials of the
    highest experience, and many statesmen on both sides who know
    Ireland well, are agreed on the necessity for the abolition, but
    that those who have had the most recent experience in the office of
    Viceroy are themselves sharers in the decentralization view which
    now prevails."] and on Wednesday, June 24th, I left my office.

    'My successor was Arthur Balfour, and I initiated him into the
    business of the Local Government Board at his request, after a first
    interview at Sloane Street. As late as June 21st Harcourt had made
    up his mind that the Tories would be unable to form a Government,
    and that it was his painful duty to come back; and he wrote to me
    that he had informed Mr. Gladstone that "I would stand by him if he
    agreed to come back _whatever might happen_." Chamberlain wrote on
    this that it was impossible if Spencer remained. "It will be bad for
    us and for the settlement of the Irish question."

    'Chamberlain and I were now intending to visit Ireland, but Manning
    declined to give us letters, and wrote on June 25th: "What am I to
    do? I am afraid of your Midlothian in Ireland. How can I be
    godfather to Hengist and Horsa?" I replied:

    '"Dear Cardinal Manning,

    '"I fear I have made myself far from clear. You speak of a
    Midlothian. I should not for a moment have dreamt of asking you for
    letters had not that been most carefully guarded against. We are not
    going to make a single speech or to attend any dinner, meeting, or
    reception, in any part of Ireland. Our journey is private, and our
    wish is to visit the Catholic Archbishops and Bishops and to find
    out what they want. It has sprung from your own suggestion, and from
    my conversation, held also at your suggestion, with Dr. Walsh. It
    would not conduce to any possibility of settlement and of future
    peace if, after proposing, at your suggestion, to go to men like the
    Archbishops Croke and Walsh, we should have to state that we
    renounce our visit because they refuse to receive us. You know what
    passed as to Dr. Walsh, and you know that if Mr. Gladstone had
    reformed his Government we had made that matter one of our
    conditions. Surely that was pretty clear evidence of our desire to
    act with you in a matter which is certainly above all party. But it
    is 'now or never.'"

    'On the same day Chamberlain wrote proposing that we should meet
    Trevelyan and Lefevre at fixed and short intervals to produce
    concerted action, and consulting me as to whether we should include
    Morley. The first consultation took place at my Royal Commission
    office at noon on July 4th, and Morley was present as well as
    Trevelyan, and I think Lefevre.'

    'On June 27th I had a last fight with Mr. Gladstone. The outgoing
    Government had given a baronetcy to Errington, personally my friend,
    but a baronetcy given under circumstances which I thought
    politically discreditable, and I protested strongly. I told Mr.
    Gladstone that it had long been my opinion that there is
    insufficient consultation of the opinion of the party, as well as of
    Cabinets and ex-Cabinets, on questions of the deepest moment. "For
    example, since I have been a member of the 'Inner Circle,' many
    decisions of the gravest moment as to Irish affairs have been taken
    without reference to the general opinion of the leaders or of the
    party. When Mr. Forster first induced Lord Granville to give letters
    to Mr. Errington, I stated my own view in favour of the appointment
    of an official representative of this country to the Roman Church,
    if there was work which must be done between the Government and that
    Church. I always protested against the secret arrangement, and the
    last straw has been the resistance to Walsh." Such was my private
    note.'

    'Chamberlain wrote: "Mr. G. has yielded to Lord G., and has done an
    act unfair to us and without notice. I have seen O'Shea. I think the
    'visit' may yet be all right." I wrote to Mr. Gladstone:

    '"I feel bound to express my dismay at seeing this day that honours
    have been conferred on that excellent fellow Errington at a moment
    when it will be felt by the great majority of people who do not see
    round corners that he is rewarded for the fight made by him on
    behalf of the defeated policy of resistance to the selection as
    Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin of the accomplished gentleman on
    whom the whole Irish Roman Catholic clergy and people had set their
    hearts. I have already described to Lord Granville in your presence
    what I thought the fatal results of this policy of interference
    against a unanimous Irish sentiment in the choice of the great Roman
    Catholic dignitaries in Ireland--a policy which has, in the belief
    of the thoughtful men of all parties, among whom I may name
    privately the new Lord Chancellor of Ireland, [Footnote: Mr. Gibson,
    afterwards created Lord Ashbourne.] undone the effects of your Land
    Acts of 1871 and 1881, and made the resistance to the Union stronger
    and more unanimous than it ever was before. Surely such an intention
    as that to specially honour Mr. Errington at such a moment might
    have been named to me when I so strongly expressed before you and
    Lord Granville my opinion of the policy. Mr. Forster, the initiator
    of the Errington policy, has returned to the Liberal front bench,
    and sat next to me there. I fear I must take the opportunity of
    leaving it, as I do not see how I can fail to express the opinion I
    hold of the conferring of special honour at such a moment on Mr.
    Errington." [Footnote: A letter from Mr. Gladstone to Mr, Errington,
    dated June 30th, 1885, is given in the _Life of Granville_, vol.
    ii., p. 292.]

    'Mr. Gladstone replied:

    '"1, Richmond Terrace,

    '"_June 27th_, 1885.

    '"My Dear Dilke,

    '"I feel that the coincidence of the Walsh appointment with the
    Errington baronetcy is unfortunate, but I think that the grant of
    the baronetcy or of something in that sense is unavoidable. I regard
    Gibson's confidential disclosure to you as an absurd exaggeration
    indulged in for party purposes. The policy, and any ingratitude to
    an agent of it, are wholly different matters; and your disapproval
    of the first never conveyed to my mind the idea of speaking to you
    about the second. You are aware of the immense stress laid by
    Spencer on the Errington mission, which Granville more traditionally
    (as I think) supported. For my part, I never did more than acquiesce
    in it, and I think it highly probable that no such thing will be
    renewed. As to 'diplomatic relations' with the Pope, I am entirely
    opposed to them.

    '"Sincerely yours,

    '"W. E. Gladstone."

    'I was not opposed to diplomatic relations with the Pope, but to the
    extraordinary anomalies involved in the Mission that was no Mission.
    My conversation with Gibson had been at a party at Lady Ridley's,
    where I congratulated him upon his high office. He began with a
    laugh: "I am popular with all parties. Whose congratulations do you
    think were the first that I received?" A happy inspiration struck
    me, and I at once answered "Walsh"--a lucky guess which completely
    puzzled him, for he said, "Who told you?"

    'Chamberlain wrote the next day: "Reflection confirms me in the
    opinion that Mr. Gladstone has not treated us well. I cannot resist
    the conclusion that on both occasions he concealed his intentions,
    knowing that we disapproved of them, and in order to force our
    hands. I would cordially join in a protest against this, although,
    as I have already told you, I do not think the last proceeding--in
    the matter of Errington--will justify a formal secession. People
    generally, especially in the country, cannot understand the
    importance of the matter, and would not back up our quarrel."

    'Chamberlain, writing on June 27th or 28th, [Footnote: It was on
    June 17th that Mr. Chamberlain had delivered his famous denunciation
    of Dublin Castle, and had declared that "the pacification of Ireland
    depends, I believe, on the concession to Ireland of the right to
    govern itself in the matter of its purely domestic government." He
    went on to speak of an Irishman being at every step controlled by
    "an English official, appointed by a foreign Government."] said: "On
    the greatest issue between us and the Whigs Mr. G. is on our side,
    and has told Harcourt that if he stands at the General Election he
    will make this a prominent feature in his platform, and will adopt
    in principle our scheme--Local Government and devolution. This will
    immensely strengthen our position if we finally decide to press the
    matter. I say 'if' because I wait to have more positive assurances
    as to Parnell's present attitude. If he throws us over, I do not
    believe that we can go farther at present, but O'Shea remains
    confident that matters will come right."'

On June 29th, Sir Charles replied to Mr. Gladstone:

    'My Dear Sir,

    'Harcourt, Chamberlain, and Lefevre, have all lectured me, and the
    former tells me that you have accepted a proposal to stand again for
    Midlothian. This is so great a thing that smaller ones must not be
    allowed to make even small discords, so please put my letter of
    Saturday in the fire, and forgive me for having put you to the
    trouble of reading and replying to it. I fancy that overwork and
    long-continued loss of all holidays except Sundays have told upon
    me, and that I must be inclined to take too serious a view of
    things.

    'Sincerely yours,

    'Charles W. Dilke.'

    'On June 30th Chamberlain wrote: "Ireland. I heard some days ago
    from the Duchess of St. Albans, and replied that we would certainly
    call if anywhere in her neighbourhood" (near Clonmel). "Next time I
    see you we may make some progress with our plans. I have a most
    satisfactory letter from Davitt--voluntary on his part, and assuring
    us that _United Ireland_ [Footnote: _United Ireland_, then edited by
    Mr. William O'Brien and Mr. T. M. Healy, discouraged the visit.]
    does not represent the views of the Nationalist party. See also an
    article in the _Nation_, and Davitt's own speech at Hyde Park.
    [Footnote: Davitt's leanings were always much stronger towards
    English Radicalism than those of most among his colleagues. But the
    decisive attitude was that of Mr. Parnell, whose power was then
    paramount, not only in Cork, but throughout all Ireland. He
    discussed the project with one of his colleagues, Mr. John O'Connor,
    to whom he expressed the view that Mr. Chamberlain was aspiring to
    replace Mr. Gladstone in the leadership, and that he would do
    nothing which could assist him in this purpose, because he thought
    that he "could squeeze more out of Gladstone than he could out of
    Chamberlain."] I shall reply rather effusively. I cannot altogether
    acquit Parnell of duplicity. I think he fears our visit, and that we
    may cut him out. I am sure that neither he nor anyone else will
    succeed in boycotting us. Parnell does not admit this feeling, but I
    am losing confidence in his honesty. We can go to Ashley's and
    decline Cork."' [Footnote: Mr. Evelyn Ashley, who had been Under-
    Secretary of the Colonies in the Gladstone Government, had a house
    and property at Classiebawn in Sligo, which had once belonged to
    Lord Palmerston.]

    'I hear very encouraging accounts of the feeling in the country. I
    am assured that we (the Radicals) never held so strong a position--
    that the counties will be swept for the Liberals, and that the whole
    atmosphere of the House of Commons will be changed after November. I
    firmly believe that this is true. A little patience, and we shall
    secure all we have fought for.'

    'On June 30th I wrote fully to Mrs. Pattison, who was ill of typhoid
    in the Madras hills, but without my yet knowing it. "I've been
    thinking over grave words I would say to you about politics." I went
    on to say that politics were not to me amusement. "I could not have
    heart to live such a life at all if the religion of life did not
    surround my politics. I chat the chatter about persons and ambitions
    that others chat, and, in my perpetual brain fatigue, shirk the
    trouble of trying to put into words thoughts which I fancy you must
    exactly share. How can you share them if you are never shown they're
    there? Dear Lady, please to try and feel, however unable I am to
    express it, that my life is now one, and that there are not things
    to pick among, and things to be cast aside, but duties only, which
    are pleasures in the doing of them well, and which you must help me
    do. It is in old age that power comes. An old man in English
    politics may exert enormous power without effort, and with no drain
    at all upon his health and vital force. The work of thirty or forty
    years of political life goes in England to the building-up of
    political reputation and position. During that long period no power
    is exercised except by irregular means, such as the use of threats
    of resignation. It is in old age only that power comes that can be
    used legitimately and peacefully by the once-strong man. I'm still
    young enough, and have of illusions yearly crops sufficient to
    believe that it can be used for good, and that it is a plain duty so
    to use it, and I would not remain in political life did I not think
    so."'




CHAPTER XLII

OUT OF OFFICE

JULY, 1885


After Lord Salisbury had formed, in June, 1885, what was called the
'stop-gap Government,' charged with carrying on business till the
General Election fixed for the following winter, the heads of the
Liberal party began to mature their plans. It soon became evident that
the cardinal fact to be decided was whether Mr. Gladstone should
continue to lead. This, again, was found to depend upon the policy
adopted in relation to Ireland.

The Irish Question was at the moment in an extraordinary position. Lord
Salisbury had appointed Lord Carnarvon, a known sympathizer with Home
Rule, as Viceroy. Further, the Tory leaders in the House of Commons were
refusing to take any responsibility for the actions of Lord Spencer,
which were challenged especially in regard to the verdict upon one of
the men sentenced for the Maamtrasna murders. This put Sir Charles and
Mr. Chamberlain, who had always disapproved the policy of coercion, in a
very difficult position, the more difficult because Mr. Trevelyan, a
member of their inner Radical group, was jointly concerned with Lord
Spencer to defend these actions.

    'On July 4th I received from Maynooth a letter of thanks from Dr.
    Walsh for my congratulations on his appointment to the Archbishopric
    of Dublin, and he expressed the hope that we should meet in Dublin
    when I came over with Chamberlain. On the same day, Saturday, July
    4th, there took place at noon at my office a meeting of Chamberlain,
    Trevelyan, Lefevre, John Morley, and myself, in which we discussed
    the proposed mission of Wolff to Egypt, resolving that we would
    oppose it unless the Conservative Government should drop it. We were
    wrong, for it afterwards turned out that they meant evacuation. Next
    the proposed movement on Dongola, which we did not believe to be
    seriously intended; then the proposal to increase the wine duty,
    which I was able to announce (on Foreign Office information) that I
    knew that Lord Salisbury would drop; then the succession duties,
    with regard to which we decided to support a motion to be brought
    forward by Dillwyn; then police enfranchisement, we deciding that I
    was to move an instruction on going into Committee to extend the
    Bill, so as to shorten the period of residence for all electors.'

    'Before we separated we discussed the inquiry proposed by the Irish
    members into the Maamtrasna business. Trevelyan thought that he was
    obliged in honour to speak against inquiry, but we decided that he
    must not press for a division in resistance to the Irish demand.'

    'On Monday, July 6th, I presided over my Royal Commission in the
    morning, and in the evening dined at Grillion's Club. In the
    afternoon Mr. Gladstone sent for me, and told me that whether he
    would lead that party or would not, at the dissolution, or in the
    new Parliament, would depend on whether the main plank in the
    programme was what I called Home Rule or what Chamberlain called the
    National Council scheme, or only the ordinary scheme of Local
    Government for all parts of the United Kingdom. If the latter alone
    was to be contemplated, he said that others would suffice for the
    task. Parnell's acquiescence in the Home Rule scheme he thought
    essential. If Parnell, having got more from the Tories, was going to
    oppose, he, Mr. Gladstone, could not go on: and he evidently thought
    that I should have the means of discovering what would be Parnell's
    attitude. Parnell had, of course, been for what I believe was really
    his own scheme, suggested to Chamberlain by O'Shea. But he was now
    in league with R. Churchill and Lord Carnarvon. I advised Mr.
    Gladstone to deal directly with Parnell, but he said that he would
    not, and I noted in my diary that he and Parnell were equally
    tortuous in their methods. Mr. Gladstone, failing me, as he said,
    would deal with Grosvenor and Mrs. O'Shea. But it was clear to me
    that he had already tried this channel.'

    'On the next day I received interesting letters from Dr. Walsh and
    Sir Frederick Roberts. The latter completely destroyed the foolish
    War Office plan of preparing for a campaign in the Black Sea, and
    once more laid down the principle that England must go to war with
    Russia rather than permit her to occupy any portion of Afghanistan
    in face of our interest and of our pledge to the contrary.

    'Dr. Walsh wrote that in going to Rome he was by no means determined
    to accept the archbishopric. "I am not Archbishop; acceptance is an
    essential point, and I have a view of certain matters to set before
    His Holiness before that stage is reached. I have sent on to Rome a
    written statement of my views, that the matter may be considered
    before I arrive there. I am thoroughly convinced that there is
    another position in which I could be far more useful both for Church
    and country. The Archbishopric of Dublin, now that it can be dealt
    with as a purely ecclesiastical matter, can be very easily provided
    for."

    'I suppose that Dr. Walsh wished to be Papal Legate. He went on to
    say:

    '"As to the Bishops you should see, I would say, in the South, as
    you begin there, Cashel and Limerick (Cloyne, unfortunately, is very
    deaf; otherwise I should like you to meet him). In the West,
    _Galway_, Elphin, Achonry. In the North, Raphoe (of whom Mr.
    Childers can tell you something), Clogher, Ardagh, Meath, and Down
    and Connor. In this province of Dublin our Bishops are either very
    old or very young in the episcopacy: they could not give you much
    information. All I have mentioned are generally on the popular side.
    Of those on the less popular or nonpopular side, we have Cork,
    Kerry, and _Coadjutor of Clonfert_. Clonfert himself is on the most
    advanced National lines. But his views are rather general. It might
    be well to see him. He is a great admirer of Davitt's.

    '"I remain, my dear Sir Charles,
    '"Sincerely yours,
    '"William J. Walsh."

    'I sent this letter to Chamberlain, who replied that it was very
    satisfactory.

    'On Saturday, July 11th, we had another meeting of our "party," I
    again being in the chair, Chamberlain, Lefevre, and John Morley,
    being present, and Trevelyan absent. We decided that Chamberlain,
    Lefevre, and Dilke should see Mr. Gladstone as to the Maamtrasna
    inquiry, in which we were strongly opposed to Spencer. With regard
    to the organization of the Liberal party, which meant the adoption
    of Schnadhorst by the party, Chamberlain, Lefevre, and Dilke, were
    also to see Mr. Gladstone.

    'On Saturday evening I went down to Dockett, where I stayed till
    Monday, Cyril Flower spending with me the day of Sunday, July 12th.
    On Monday, July 13th, I again presided at my Royal Commission, and
    again dined at Grillion's.

    'On the same day Chamberlain, Lefevre, and I, saw Mr. Gladstone.
    After talking over Maamtrasna, I repeated a statement which O'Shea
    had made to me, namely, that Fottrell [Footnote: Sir Charles, during
    his visit to Dublin, had been much impressed by Mr. Fottrell, who
    had acted as intermediary between the Castle and the Nationalists
    (see p. 140). He wrote to Mrs. Pattison that Mr. Fottrell and Sir
    Robert Hamilton were the only two men who counted in that city.] had
    had a two-hours interview with Randolph Churchill on Home Rule. I
    also informed Mr. Gladstone that O'Shea had shown me a letter from
    Alfred Austin,' (afterwards Poet Laureate) 'a hot Tory leader-writer
    on the _Standard_, asking to be introduced to Parnell for the
    benefit of the country. Lefevre having gone away, Chamberlain and I
    talked with Mr. Gladstone as to organization. It was decided that we
    should have an interview with him on the subject (Grosvenor to be
    present) the next day.

    'I was going out a good deal this week, and on the Wednesday was at
    parties at Lady Salisbury's, at the Austrian Embassy, and at the
    Duchess of Westminster's, and at one of them met Harcourt and
    arranged for a meeting on Thursday, July 16th, at my Commission
    office in Parliament Street, with Chamberlain and Harcourt, to
    discuss Schnadhorst; Harcourt favouring our view that he should be
    adopted by the party, which was done, and the National Liberal
    Federation installed at Parliament Street. But the Whips "captured"
    it! On Friday, July 17th, Chamberlain and his son dined with me to
    meet Harcourt and Gray of the Irish party and _Freeman's Journal_.

    'On Saturday, July 18th, we had our usual cabal, Trevelyan being
    again absent, and the same four present as on the previous Saturday.
    We discussed the proposed Royal Commission on the depression of
    trade; land purchase, Ireland; party organization; and the land
    question.

    'On July 22nd I heard from Mr. Gladstone:

    '"1, Richmond Terrace,

    '"_July 21st,_ 1885.

    '"My Dear Dilke,

    '"I cannot forbear writing to express the hope that you and
    Chamberlain may be able to say or do something to remove the
    appearance now presented to the world of a disposition on your parts
    to sever yourselves from the executive, and especially from the
    judicial administration of Ireland as it was carried on by Spencer
    under the late Government. You may question my title to attempt
    interference with your free action by the expression of such a hope,
    and I am not careful to assure you in this matter or certain that I
    can make good such a title in argument. But we have been for five
    years in the same boat, on most troubled waters, without having
    during the worst three years of the five a single man of the company
    thrown overboard. I have _never_ in my life known the bonds of union
    so strained by the pure stress of circumstances; a good intent on
    all sides has enabled them to hold. Is there any reason why at this
    moment they should part? A rupture may come on questions of future
    policy; I am not sure that it will. But if it is to arrive, let it
    come in the course of nature as events develop themselves. At the
    present moment there appears to be set up an idea of difference
    about matters which lie in the past, and for which we are all
    plenarily responsible. The position is settled in all its elements,
    and cannot be altered. The frightful discredit with which the new
    Government has covered itself by its treatment of Spencer has drawn
    attention away from the signs of at least passive discord among us,
    signs which might otherwise have drawn upon us pretty sharp
    criticism. It appears to me that hesitation on the part of any of us
    as to our own responsibility for Spencer's acts can only be
    mischievous to the party and the late Cabinet, but will and must be
    far more mischievous to any who may betray such disinclination. Even
    with the Irish party it can, I imagine, do nothing to atone for past
    offences, inasmuch as it is but a negative proceeding; while from
    Randolph, Hicks Beach, and Gorst, positive support is to be had in
    what I cannot but consider a foolish as well as guilty crusade
    against the administration of criminal justice in Ireland; which may
    possibly be defective, but, with all its defects, whatever they may
    be, is, I apprehend, the only defence of the life and property of
    the poor. It will be the legislation of the future, and not this
    most unjust attack upon Spencer, which will have to determine
    hereafter your relations with Ireland, and the 'National' party. I
    may be wrong, but it seems to me easy, and in some ways
    advantageous, to say: 'My mind is open to consider at large any
    proposals acceptable to Ireland for the development and security of
    her liberties, but I will not sap the foundations of order and of
    public right by unsettling rules, common to all parties, under which
    criminal justice has been continuously administered, and dragging
    for the first time the prerogative of mercy within the vortex of
    party conflict.' I dare say I may have said too much in the way of
    argument on a matter which seems to me hardly to call for argument,
    but a naked suggestion would have appeared even less considerate
    than the letter which I have written, prompted by strong feeling and
    clear conviction.

    '"Yours sincerely,
    '"W. E. Gladstone."

    'I sent the letter to Chamberlain, asking whether he thought he
    could say at Hackney, where he was about to speak, anything
    flattering to Spencer, and he replied: "I am not certain that I
    shall say anything about Spencer; at most it would be only a
    personal tribute."'

With these words ends the story of Sir Charles Dilke's official
relations with his party.

      *       *       *       *       *

Looking back on that story, Sir George Trevelyan writes: 'I never knew a
man of his age--hardly ever a man of any age--more powerful and admired
than was Dilke during his management of the Redistribution Bill in
1885.' This influence had been built up by the long years of sustained
work, of which the story has been told in his own words.

He combined two unusual characteristics: he was one of the Radical
leaders at home, and he also carried extraordinary authority on the
subject of foreign affairs both here and on the Continent.

The depth of his convictions as a Radical is attested by a note to Mr.
Frank Hill, [Footnote: Undated, but evidently written about this time.]
editor of the _Daily News_: 'As a _man_ I feel going out on this
occasion very much indeed, but Chamberlain and I are trustees for
others, and from the point of view of English Radicalism I have no
doubt.' Yet Radicalism never fettered his capacity for working with all
men for the great questions which are beyond party, and uniting their
efforts on big issues of foreign policy.

It was this gift which frequently made him more the spokesman of the
House of Commons than of party in Government counsels. The approval of
the House of Commons was, in his opinion, essential to the development
of foreign policy, and his views as to the undesirability of unnecessary
concealment were strong. While recognizing that everything could not be
disclosed, he thought that the House of Commons should be in the
Government's confidence as far as possible in diplomatic relations, and
he looked on the tendency to surround all official proceedings with
secrecy as more worthy of a bureaucrat than a statesman. Bismarck, Dilke
said in 1876, was the diplomatist of foreign Europe who was never
believed because he told the truth. He had no sympathy with the
isolation of Great Britain, which had been a feature of our policy
during his early career. But when Lord Beaconsfield would have plunged
into a war with Russia in 1878, without an ally or a friend, he opposed
that policy as suicidal. Of that policy he said at that time: 'English
Radicals of the present day do not bound their sympathies by the Channel
... a Europe without England is as incomplete, and as badly balanced,
and as heavily weighted against freedom, as that which I, two years ago,
denounced to you--a Europe without France. The time may come when
England will have to fight for her existence, but for Heaven's sake let
us not commit the folly of plunging into war at a moment when all Europe
would be hostile to our armies--not one Power allied to the English
cause.' [Footnote: Vol. I., Chapter XVI., p. 239.] The keynote of his
policy was friendship with France. His experience in the Franco-German
War had for ever changed the friendly impression which led him first to
follow the German forces into the field.

Germany at war and Germany in a conquered country taught him in 1870-71
a lesson never to be forgotten, and affected his whole attitude to that
Great Power. It has been seen how in the eighties he opposed, to the
point of contemplated resignation of office, the Governmental tendency
to accept German aggression--'to lie down' under it, as he said; and he
fought for the retention of the New Guinea Coast and Zanzibar in
1884-85, as later he fought against Lord Salisbury as to the surrender
of Heligoland. [Footnote: _Present Position of European Politics_, p.
242.]

It was this courage as well as consistency of policy that bound Gambetta
to him, and made Bismarck wish that he should be sent to Berlin at a
critical moment in 1885 'to have a talk.' [Footnote: _Life of Lord
Granville_, vol. ii., p. 439.] Strong men recognize one another.




CHAPTER XLIII

THE TURNING-POINT

JULY, 1885, TO JULY, 1886


[Greek: ou thruon, ou malachaen avemos pote, tus de megistas ae druas ae
platanous oide chamai katagein.]

[Footnote: It is not the rush or mallow that the wind can lay low, but
the largest oaks and plane-trees.]

Lucian in "Anthologia."

I.

When Mr. Gladstone's Ministry left office in the summer of 1885, there
seemed to be in all England no man for whom the future held out more
assured and brilliant promise than Sir Charles Dilke. He was still
young, not having completed his forty-second year; in the Cabinet only
Lord Rosebery was his junior; he had seventeen years of unremitting
Parliamentary service to his credit, and in the House of Commons his
prestige was extraordinary. His own judgment and that of all skilled
observers regarded his party's abandonment of office as temporary: the
General Election would inevitably bring them back with a new lease of
power, and with an Administration reorganized in such fashion that the
Radicals would no longer find themselves overbalanced in the shaping of
policy. The Dilke-Chamberlain alliance, which had during the past five
years been increasingly influential, would in the next Parliament become
openly authoritative; and, as matters looked at the moment, it was Sir
Charles, and not Mr. Chamberlain, who seemed likely to take the foremost
place.

Chamberlain's dazzling popular success had been of the kind to which a
certain unpopularity attaches. Moderate men of both parties were prone
to impute it to demagogism, and Dilke was in the fortunate position of
seeing those Radical principles for which he stood advocated by his ally
with a force of combined invective and argument which has had few
parallels in political history, while to him fell the task, suited to
his temperament, of reasoned discussion. Those who denounced
Chamberlain's vehemence could hardly fail to point a comparison with
Dilke's unfailing courtesy, his steady adherence to argument, his
avoidance of the appeal to passion. Some strong natures have the quality
of making enemies, some the gift for making friends, outside their own
immediate circle, and Sir Charles Dilke possessed the more genial
endowment.

This capacity for engendering good-will in those whom he encountered
certainly did not spring from any undue respect of persons. Members of
the Royal Family, whose privileges he had assailed, were constant in
their friendliness; high Tories such as Lord Salisbury, whose principles
he combated on every platform, liked him, and were not slow to show it.
On the other hand, the friendship which Sir Charles inspired did not
proceed, as is sometimes the case, from a mere casual bounty of nature.
In Parliament his colleagues liked him, but this, assuredly, was not
without cause. No member of the Ministry had given so much service
outside his own department. Lord Granville wrote at this time: 'I have
not seen you alone since the smash, or I should have told you how much I
feel the support you have given me both when we were together at the
F.O. and quite as much since. I shall not soon forget it.' Sir William
Harcourt at the Home Office, Sir Henry James in the conduct of the
Corrupt Practices Bill, had been beholden to him for no ordinary
assistance. Moreover, as he was good to work with, so he was good to
work under. Those who served him at the Local Government Board remember
him as in no way prompt to praise; but if a suggestion was made to him,
he never failed to identify it with the suggester, recognizing its
source in adopting it. If he made a mistake and was set right, he
admitted his error--a trait very rare in Ministers, who feel that they
have constantly as amateurs to direct the decision of experts, and are
therefore chary of such admissions. Sir Charles always gave his men
their due, and he took care that they should not be treated as machines.
When colleagues called on him at his office, and found him with one of
his staff, he never allowed the subordinate to be ignored in greetings.
The Minister in a hurry would be stopped with, 'I think you know
So-and-so.' These are small matters to set down, but by such small
things men indicate their nature; and one of the oldest servants in that
office summed up the matter in a sentence which is not the less
interesting because it brings in another name. 'When Sir Charles Dilke
was at the Local Government Board,' he said, 'the feeling towards the
President, from the heads of departments down to the messengers in the
hall, was the same as it was in the time of Mr. Walter Long, and I can
say no more than that.'

Nobody, perhaps, has a better right to be counted fortunate than a man
who can feel that he is strong, that he is liked, and that he is
successfully promoting principles of government for his fellow-
countrymen in which he sincerely believes. In July, 1885, Sir Charles
Dilke had all these grounds for satisfaction, and in no common measure.
Of course there were anxieties, politically speaking; Mr. Gladstone's
future course of action was uncertain, and Mr. Gladstone was so great a
force that he might at any time derange all calculations--as, in point
of fact, he did. Still, time was on the side of the Radicals, and from
day to day they held what they called 'cabals' of the group formed by
Chamberlain, Shaw-Lefevre, Trevelyan, Morley, and Dilke himself. At
these meetings Sir Charles regularly presided.

The work of the Commission on Housing was in its last stages; its
chairman was able to announce on July 1st, when laying the foundation-
stone of some artisans' dwellings in Hoxton, that the Commission's Bill
would be introduced in the Lords by Lord Salisbury, and that he himself
would have charge of it in the Commons. For a man who had so laboured
during the past five years such duties as these were child's play, and
Sir Charles was able for the first time for many months to take his
share in social enjoyments. He dined repeatedly at Grillion's; he went
to parties at famous houses both of his political allies and political
opponents; above all, he found time for restful days upon his beloved
river. He went to Henley in that July with his old rowing comrade
Steavenson 'to see Bristowe's fine Trinity Hall eight'; he spent Sunday,
July 12th, at Dockett in company with Mr. Cyril Flower; and for the next
Sunday, the 19th, he was engaged to be at Taplow Court with Mr. W. H.
Grenfell, famous among oarsmen. But of that day more has to be written.

Throughout the month one dark cloud had hung over him: Mrs. Pattison was
grievously ill in the Madras hills, and not until the fourth week in
July did he know even the nature of her illness. It was typhoid, and it
left her weak to face what had to come, like a 'bolt from the blue,'
upon her and her future husband. Her first marriage had brought her
discipline rather than happiness; now in the middle years of life her
vivid nature was blossoming out again in the promise of union with a man
before whom there lay open an illustrious career. Illness struck her
down, and while she lay convalescent there came to her as black a
message as ever tried the heart of any woman.

      *       *       *       *       *

II.

On the evening of Saturday, July 18th, Sir Charles Dilke was entertained
at a dinner given by the Reform Club--a very rare distinction--to
celebrate the passing of the Redistribution Bill into law. From this
ceremony, which crowned and recognized his greatest personal
achievement, he returned late, and found at his house a letter from an
old family friend who asked him to call on the following Sunday morning
on grave business. He then learnt that the wife of a Liberal member of
Parliament had volunteered a 'confession' to her husband, in which she
stated that she had been unfaithful to him with Sir Charles immediately
after her marriage.

His note in his private diary on Sunday is: '19th.--Early heard of the
charge against me. Put myself in hands of J. B. Balfour, and afterwards
of Chamberlain and James.'

Later Sir Charles Dilke went down to Taplow, and spent the day there.
This accusation found him separated from his future wife by many
thousand miles; worse than that, she had been dangerously ill; the risk
to her of a telegraphed message must be great; yet there was the chance
from day to day that newspaper rumour might anticipate direct tidings
from him to her. He was 'in as great misery as perhaps ever fell upon a
man.'

He returned next morning to preside at the last meeting of the
Commission on Housing, when, he says, 'the Prince of Wales proposed a
vote of thanks to me in an extremely cordial speech.' From that attitude
of friendliness the future King Edward never departed.

    'I had a dinner-party in the evening, which was one of several in
    preparation for our Ward meetings in Chelsea, which I had to
    continue to hold in spite of my private miseries.

    'I was engaged on the one night for which none of these dinners had
    been fixed to dine with Lord and Lady Salisbury, and to attend the
    Princess of Wales's Ball at Marlborough House, and I wrote to put
    off my engagements, for which I was much blamed; but I think that I
    was right.'

For three or four days Sir Henry James, Mr. Chamberlain, and Mr. J. B.
Balfour, the Lord Advocate of Mr. Gladstone's Ministry, moved to secure
a court of inquiry which would act without prejudice to the right of
legal action. But within the week it was certain that public proceedings
would be taken.

The blow had come suddenly; it came with dramatic incidence at the
moment when Sir Charles's prestige was most effectively recognized; and
from the moment that it fell he knew that the whole tenor of his life
was altered. On Thursday, July 23rd, four days afterwards, he wrote in
his Diary of the time this judgment:

    'Left for the last time the House of Commons, where I have attained
    some distinction. It is curious that only a week ago Chamberlain and
    I had agreed, at his wish and suggestion, that I should be the
    future leader, as being more popular in the House, though less in
    the country, than he was, and that only three days ago Mr. Gladstone
    had expressed the same wish. Such a charge, even if disproved, which
    is not easy against perjured evidence picked up with care, is fatal
    to supreme usefulness in politics. In the case of a public man a
    charge is always believed by many, even though disproved, and I
    should be weighted by it through life. I prefer, therefore, at once
    to contemplate leaving public life.'

Upon the first sentence of this he added in a marginal note, written
after his marriage with Mrs. Mark Pattison, and after he had, in spite
of that first decision, returned to the House of Commons: 'Chamberlain
overpersuaded Emilia, and, through her, me, but he was wrong.'

Of honourable ambition Sir Charles Dilke had as much as any man. Yet in
the innermost record of these days--in those letters which, not yet
daring to despatch them, he wrote to his future wife--there is not a
hint of his personal loss, not a word of the career that he saw broken.
These things had no place in the rush of feeling which overwhelmed him,
and left him for the moment unable to trust his own judgment or assert
his own will.

Through the months of Mrs. Pattison's absence in India one note had been
constant in his letters--the reiterated anticipation of what he hoped to
bring her. Up to the middle of July his letters, apart from the news of
his daily life, are filled with joyful forecast, not of his own
happiness, but of his and hers together--of his happiness in seeing her
happy. When the stroke fell, the note, even though it changed, was the
same in essence: 'I feel this may kill you--and it will kill me either
if it kills you or if you don't believe me.'

That was written down within an hour after he had the news. Never
afterwards did he consider the possibility of her failing him.

The next day he wrote:

          'Taplow Court, Taplow,
          _July 20th._

    'The only thing I can do in future is to devote myself entirely to
    _you_ and helping in your work. To that the remainder of my life
    must be dedicated. I fancy you will have the courage to believe me
    whatever is by madness and malevolence brought against me....'

He wrote again:

    'The less you turn from me, and the more you are true--and of course
    you will be all true ... --the more misery and not the less is it to
    me to bring these horrors on you. This thing is not true, but none
    the less do I bring these horrors on you.'

So desperate was the tumult in Sir Charles Dilke's mind that Mr.
Chamberlain strove to tranquillize him by a change of scene. Some spot,
such as is to be found in Sir Charles's own holiday land of Provence, at
first occurred to his friend, though this would have meant the
cancelling of all Mr. Chamberlain's public engagements at that most
critical moment in politics. But Sir Charles instead went down to
Highbury, where he passed his days much in the open air, playing lawn
tennis and riding with his host's son, Mr Austen Chamberlain.

Here he rapidly came back to something of his normal self. As news had
been telegraphed of Mrs. Pattison's gradual recovery, it was decided to
inform her of what had happened. Mr. Chamberlain undertook the delicate
task of wording the communications. She telegraphed back at once that
full assurance of her trust and of her loyalty on which Sir Charles had
counted. But it was characteristic of her not to stop there. A telegram
from Mrs. Pattison to the _Times_ announcing her engagement to Sir
Charles Dilke immediately followed on public intimation of the
proceedings for divorce. Lord Granville wrote to Sir Charles: 'I wish
you joy most sincerely. The announcement says much for the woman whom
you have chosen.'

Yet days were to come when the storm was so fierce about Sir Charles
Dilke and 'the woman whom he had chosen' that few cared to face it in
support of the accused man and the wife who had claimed her share in his
destiny.

When those days came, they found no broken spirit to meet them. Through
his affections, and only through his affections, this man could be
driven out of his strongholds of will and judgment; when that inner life
was assured, he faced the rest with equanimity. He writes:

    '_August 28th._--I continue to be much better in health and spirit.
    I was five and a half weeks more or less knocked over; I am strong
    and well, and really happy in you and for you, and confident and all
    that you could wish me to be these last few days.'

Mrs. Pattison, before she left Ceylon on her way to England, sent him a
telegram, the reply to which was written to meet her at Port Said:
'Nothing ever made me so happy.... Though it has been a frightful blow,
I am well now; and the blow was only a blow to me because of you.'

At first sympathy and support were proffered in ample measure. On being
formally notified of proceedings in the divorce case, he wrote at once a
letter to the Liberal Association of Chelsea, in which he declared that
the charge against him was untrue and that he looked forward with
confidence to the result of a judicial inquiry; but at the same time he
offered to withdraw his candidature for the seat at the forthcoming
election, if the Council thought him in the circumstances an undesirable
candidate. To this offer the Council replied by reiterating their
confidence in him. About the same time, yielding to Chamberlain's
advice, he returned to the House of Commons while the Housing Bill was
in Committee, and took part in the proceedings as usual.

The Prince of Wales, to whom he communicated news of his engagement
before the public announcement, wrote warm congratulations and wishes
for dispersal of the overhanging trouble. Mr. Gladstone, who had
frequent occasion to write to him on public business, in one of these
political letters added congratulations on the engagement, though he had
made no allusion to the Divorce Court proceedings. But Mr. Gladstone's
chief private secretary, Sir Edward Hamilton, had written at the first
publication of them this assurance:

    'You may depend upon it that your friends (among whom I hope I may
    be counted) are feeling for you and will stand by you; and, if I am
    not mistaken, I believe your constituents will equally befriend you;
    indeed, I am convinced that the masses are much more fair and just
    than the upper classes. Anything that interfered with your political
    career would not only be a political calamity, but a national one;
    and I do not for a moment think that any such interference need be
    apprehended.'

This letter represented the attitude that was generally observed towards
Sir Charles Dilke by political associates till after the first trial.

Mr. Chamberlain's support was unwavering, though there were some who
anticipated that the misfortunes of the one man might disastrously
affect the political career of the other.

It is true that by the amazing irony of fate which interpenetrated this
whole situation the Tories gained in Mr. Chamberlain their most powerful
ally, and that Sir Charles had to encounter all the accumulated
prejudice which the 'unauthorized programme' had gathered in Tory
bosoms. But none of these things could be foreseen when Chamberlain,
then in the full flood of his Radical propaganda, invited Sir Charles to
make his temporary home at Highbury. Here, accordingly, he stayed on
through August and the early part of September, breaking his stay only
by two short absences. There still lived on at Chichester old Mr.
Dilke's brother, a survivor of the close-knit family group, preserving
the same intense affectionate interest in Charles Dilke's career. To him
this blow was mortal. Sir Charles paid him in the close of August his
yearly visit: ten days later he was recalled to attend the old man's
funeral in the Cathedral cloisters.

In the middle of September he crossed to France, and waited at Saint
Germain for Mrs. Pattison, who reached Paris in the last days of the
month. On October 1st Sir Charles crossed to London; she followed the
next day, and on the 3rd they were married at Chelsea Parish Church. Mr.
Chamberlain acted as best man.


III.

Return to England meant a return to work. The General Election was fixed
for November; and from August onwards Dilke had been drawn back by
correspondents and by consultations with Chamberlain into the stream of
politics, which then ran broken and turbulent with eddies and cross-
currents innumerable. Chamberlain, sustaining alone the advanced
campaign, wrote even before the marriage to solicit help at the earliest
moment; and from October onwards the two Radicals were as closely
associated as ever--but with a difference. Circumstances had begun the
work of Sir Charles's effacement.

When the election came, his success was personal; London went against
the Liberals, his old colleague Mr. Firth failed, so did Mr. George
Russell in another part of the borough, which was now split into several
constituencies; but Chelsea itself stood to its own man. The elections
were over on December 19th. Before that date it was apparent that the
Irish party held the balance of power, and Mr. Gladstone had already
indicated his acceptance of Home Rule. [Footnote: Chapter XLV., p. 196.]

Parliament met early, and by January 28th, 1886, the Tory Government had
resigned. Mr. Gladstone, in framing his new Administration, thought it
impossible to include a man suffering under a charge yet untried, and
wrote:

    '_February 2nd_, 1886

    'My Dear Dilke,

    'I write you, on this first day of my going regularly to my arduous
    work, to express my profound regret that any circumstances of the
    moment should deprive me of the opportunity and the hope of
    enlisting on behalf of a new Government the great capacity which you
    have proved in a variety of spheres and forms for rendering good and
    great service to Crown and country.

    'You will understand how absolutely recognition on my part of an
    external barrier is separate from any want of inward confidence, the
    last idea I should wish to convey.

    'Nor can I close without fervently expressing to you my desire that
    there may be reserved you a long and honourable career of public
    distinction.

    'Believe me always,

    'Yours sincerely,

    'W. E. Gladstone.'

Less than a fortnight later the divorce case was heard: the charge
against Sir Charles was dismissed with costs, the Judge saying expressly
that there was no case for him to answer.

The Prime Minister's attitude made it inevitable that while the case was
untried Sir Charles should be excluded from the new Ministry; but not
less inevitably his position before the world was prejudiced by that
exclusion. Had Parliament met, as it usually meets, in February; had the
whole thing so happened that the judgment had been given before the
Ministry came to be formed, exclusion would have been all but
impossible. We may take it that Mr. Chamberlain would have insisted on
Sir Charles's inclusion as a condition of his own adherence; it would
have been to the interest of every Gladstonian and of every follower of
Chamberlain to maintain the judgment. As it was, the effect of Sir
Charles's exclusion had been to prepare the way for a vehement campaign
directed against him by a section of the Press.

By the law a wife's confession of misconduct is evidence against
herself, entitling the husband to a divorce; but if unsupported by other
witnesses it is no evidence against the co-respondent. But a question
arose which afterwards became of capital importance. Should Sir Charles
go into the witness-box, deny on oath the unsworn charges made against
him, and submit himself to cross-examination? His counsel decided that
there was no evidence to answer; they did not put their client into the
box, and the course was held by the Judge to be the correct one.

In reply to the Attorney-General's representation that there was no case
whatever which Sir Charles Dilke was called to answer, Mr. Justice Butt
said that he could not see the shadow of a case. In his judgment he
said: 'A statement such as has been made by the respondent in this case
is not one of those things which in common fairness ought for one moment
to be weighed in the balance against a person in the position of Sir
Charles Dilke. Under these circumstances, I have no hesitation whatever
in saying that counsel have been well advised in suggesting the course
which they have induced Sir Charles Dilke to take, and the petition, as
against him, must be dismissed with costs.'

Dilke himself notes: 'On Friday, February 12th, the trial took place,
and lasted but a short time, Sir Henry James and Sir Charles Russell not
putting me into the box, and Sir Charles Butt almost inviting them to
take that course. Lord Granville had written to me: "Will you forgive my
intruding two words of advice? Put yourself unreservedly into the hands
of someone who, like our two law officers, unites sense with knowledge
of the law." I had done this, and had throughout acted entirely through
James, Russell, and Chamberlain. In court and during the remainder of
the day, Chamberlain, James, and Russell, were triumphant....'

For the moment it seemed as if misfortune had ended in triumph.
Congratulations poured in upon both Sir Charles and his wife; the
official leaders welcomed the judgment. Mr. Chamberlain sent an express
message to Downing Street: 'Case against Dilke dismissed with costs, but
the petitioner has got his divorce against his wife.' Mr. Gladstone
answered: 'My dear Chamberlain, I have received your prompt report with
the utmost pleasure.' Sir William Harcourt wrote direct:

    'Dear Dilke,--So glad to hear of the result and of your relief from
    your great trouble.--Yours ever, W. V. H.'

Lady Dilke's friends wrote to her, congratulating her on the reward that
her courage and her loyalty had reaped.

But in Sir Charles's Diary of that date, where notes of any personal
character are few indeed, this is written on the day after the case was
heard, in comment on the action of a certain section of the Press:

    'Renewed attempt to drive me out of public life. But I won't go now.
    In July I said to Emilia and to Chamberlain: "Here is the whole
    truth--and I am an innocent man; but let me go out quietly, and some
    day people will be sorry and I shall recover a different sort of
    usefulness." They would not let me go. Now I won't go.'

A man other than innocent would have rested on the strong judgment in
his favour and let agitation die down, but the attacks continued and
Dilke would not wait their passing. Chamberlain was included in these
attacks, 'for having kept me out of the box,' and wrote in reply to Sir
Charles: 'I was only too glad to be able in any way to share your
burdens, and if I can act as a lightning conductor, so much the
better.... Of course, if _you_ were quite clear that you ought to go
into the box, it is still possible to do so, either by action for libel
or probably by intervention of the Queen's Proctor.'

'This was the first suggestion made to me of any possibility of a
rehearing of the case ... and though Hartington, James, and Russell,
were all under the impression that I should find no further difficulty,
it was the course which I ultimately took,' and which he pressed on with
characteristic tenacity. And here laymen may be permitted to marvel at
the fallibility of eminent lawyers. 'No one, of all these great
lawyers,' foresaw the position in which he would be placed as a result
of his application. Yet from the moment that this procedure was adopted
it was possible that he might be judged without those resources of
defence which are open to the meanest subject charged with an offence.

In March Sir Charles Dilke applied to the Queen's Proctor for his
intervention in order that the case might be reheard. The application
failed. In April he moved again, this time by a public letter, and this
time the Queen's Proctor yielded. Application was made in the Court of
Probate and Divorce to the President, Sir James Hannen, that Sir Charles
Dilke should be made a party to the intervention or reinstated in the
suit.

The President laid down that Sir Charles was no party to the suit, and
had now no right to appear except as a witness, and might not be
represented by counsel. The question was then taken to the Court of
Appeal, but, on strictly technical grounds, the Court held that Sir
Charles was no longer a party, and that he could not be allowed to
intervene. Thus the first judgment, by declaring him innocent and
awarding him costs as one unjustly accused, led straight to his undoing.
He had been struck out of the case; he was now a mere member of the
general public. There never were, probably, legal proceedings in which
from first to last law and justice were more widely asunder.

Sir Charles Dilke was, in fact, in the position from which Sir Henry
James had sought to protect him--the position described in the course of
his pleading for reinstatement:

    'I have no desire to put forward any claim for my client other than
    one founded on justice, but I cannot imagine a more cruel position
    than that in which Sir Charles Dilke would be placed in having a
    grave charge against him tried while the duty of defending his
    interest was committed to hands other than those of his own
    advisers.'

The consequences which flowed from the technical construction put upon
the situation were these: In reality Sir Charles Dilke was the defendant
on trial for his political life and his personal honour. Yet although
Sir Henry James and Sir Charles Russell were there in court ready
briefed, neither was allowed to speak. Dilke's case against his accuser
had to be dealt with by the counsel for the Queen's Proctor, Sir Walter
Phillimore, who, though a skilled ecclesiastical lawyer, was
comparatively inexperienced in the cross-examination of witnesses and in
Nisi Prius procedure, and was opposed by Mr. Henry Matthews, the most
skilled cross-examiner at the bar. Sir Walter Phillimore also stated
publicly, and properly, that it was not his 'duty to represent and
defend Sir Charles Dilke.' So strictly was this view acted upon that Sir
Charles did not once meet Sir Walter Phillimore in consultation; and
witnesses whom he believed to be essential to his case were never
called. But that was not all. According to the practice of that court,
all the information given by Dilke was at once communicated to the other
side; but as Sir Charles was not a party to the suit, the Queen's
Proctor did not communicate to him what he learned from that other side.

In an ordinary trial the witnesses of the accusers are heard first. And
this order is recognized as giving the greatest prospect of justice,
since if the defence is first disclosed the accuser may adjust details
in the charge so as, at the last moment, to deprive the defence of that
fair-play which the first order of hearing is designed to secure. The
only possible disproof which Sir Charles could offer was an alibi. It
was of vital importance to him that the accusation should be fixed to
dates, places, days, hours, even minutes, with the utmost possible
precision. Then he might, even after the lapse of years, establish the
falsity of a charge by proof that he was elsewhere at the time
specified. But in this case, owing to the form that the proceedings
took, the opportunity which of right belongs to the defence was given to
the accuser. The accusation being technically brought by the Queen's
Proctor, who alleged that the divorce had been obtained by false
evidence, Sir Charles Dilke was produced as his witness, and had at the
beginning of the proceedings to disclose his defence.

Further, and even more important, the issue put to the jury was limited
in the most prejudicial way.

    'On the former occasion,' said Sir James Hannen, 'it was for the
    petitioner to prove that his wife had committed adultery with Sir
    Charles Dilke.' (This, as has been seen, the petitioner failed to
    prove against Sir Charles Dilke; the petitioner had to pay Sir
    Charles's costs.) 'On this occasion it is for the Queen's Proctor to
    prove that the respondent did not commit adultery with Sir Charles
    Dilke.'

How this negative was to be proved in any circumstances it is difficult
to see, and under the conditions Sir Charles had no chance to attack the
accusation brought against him.

Sir Charles's own comment in his Diary of the time was:

    '_July 16th_--My case tried again. I not a party, and--though really
    tried by a kind of Star Chamber--not represented, not allowed to
    cross-examine, not allowed to call witnesses; and under such
    circumstances the trial could have but one result, which was that
    the jury, directed to decide if they were in doubt that the Queen's
    Proctor had not established his case, would take that negative
    course. The trial lasted from Friday, 16th, to Friday, 23rd,
    inclusive, and the jury decided, as they could not have helped
    deciding, and as I should have decided had I been one of them.'

The situation may be thus summed up:

In the first trial the petitioner failed to produce any legal evidence
whatever of the guilt of Sir Charles Dilke; in the second the Queen's
Proctor failed to prove his innocence. [Footnote: Technically the
verdict, by dismissing the Queen's Proctor's intervention, confirmed the
original judgment, which dismissed Sir Charles from the case.]

The verdict of the jury at the second trial was not a verdict of Guilty
against Sir Charles; it was a declaration that his innocence was not
proven, the question put to the Jury by the clerk after their return
into Court following the words of the Act of Parliament, and being
whether the decree nisi for the dissolution of the marriage of the
petitioner and the respondent was obtained contrary to the justice of
the case by reason of material facts not being brought to the knowledge
of the Court. The Jury's answer followed the same words. [Footnote: See
report in _Daily News_, Saturday, July 24th, 1886.] When we add to that
the conditions under which the question was tried, we see that they were
such as to make the proof of innocence impossible.

Those about Sir Charles at this time remember how even at that bitter
moment he began to look round for any method by which his case might be
reheard. He wrote to Sir Henry James that it would be a proper course
for himself to invite a trial for perjury; and though Lady Dilke was so
ill 'from sick and sleepless nights' that she had been ordered at once
to Royat, he waited for three weeks before accompanying her abroad, to
give time for action to be taken, and wrote to Sir Richard Webster (then
Attorney-General) practically inviting a prosecution.

He did not abandon hope of a rehearing, and worked for many years in the
trust that the evidence accumulated by himself and his friends might be
so used, nor did he cease his efforts till counsel in consultation
finally assured him 'that no means were open to Sir Charles Dilke to
retry his case.'

Sir Eyre Crowe, a friend valued for his own as well as for his father's
sake (Sir Joseph Crowe, to whom Sir Charles was much attached), wrote at
the time of Sir Charles's death: 'How he bore for long years the sorrow
and misfortunes of his lot had something heroic about it. I only once
talked to him about these things, and was intensely struck by his Roman
attitude.' It was the only attitude possible to such a man. Placed by
his country's laws in the situation of one officially acquitted by a
decision which was interpreted into a charge of guilt; forced then, in
defence of his honour, into the position of a defendant who is debarred
from means of defence; assured after long effort that no legal means
were open to him to attempt again that defence, he solemnly declared his
innocence, and was thereafter silent.

'By-and-by it will be remembered that as a fact the issue was never
fairly represented and never fairly met,' was the estimate of Sir
Francis Jeune, afterwards President of the Divorce Court. And from the
first there were many lawyers and thinking men and women who would have
endorsed it. From the first also there were those who believed Sir
Charles's word. Among such faithful friends, Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice,
Sir Robert Collins, Mr. Cyril Flower, Mrs. Westlake and Mr. Westlake,
Q.C., Mr. Thursfield of the _Times_, Mr. Chamberlain, Sir Francis and
Lady Jeune, Sir Charles's old college friend Judge Steavenson, stand out
in memory. He himself says: 'I received after the trial ... a vast
number of letters from people who wrote to express their belief in me.
Some, as, for example, from Dr. Hatch' (the eminent Oxford theologian)
'and his wife, and from Dr. Percival, Head-master of Rugby, [Footnote:
Dr. Percival was President of Trinity College, Oxford, till 1887, when
he went to Rugby. He became Bishop of Hereford.] and his wife, were from
firm friends of Emilia, brought to me by their belief in her; some from
friends, some from political foes, of all sorts--all breathing
confidence and devotion.'

Mr. Chamberlain wrote: 'I feel bitterly my powerlessness to do or say
anything useful at the present time.' In such a case the testimony of
intimates is weighty, and Sir John Gorst sent in June, 1913, his
recollection of words used by Mr. Chamberlain in the autumn of 1886: 'I
assure you that, as a man of honour, I don't believe the charges made
against him. If you had been in and out of his house at all times as I
have been, you would see they were impossible.'

Then as now there existed a certain body of opinion which would have
discriminated between a man's private honour and his public usefulness,
holding that the nation which throws aside a great public servant
because of charges of personal immorality is confusing issues, and
sacrificing the country's welfare to private questions. Whatever is to
be said for this view, it was one to which Sir Charles Dilke wished to
owe nothing. He did not share it, and those whose adherence he
acknowledged were those who believed his word. From different sources,
then, Sir Charles had found confidence and support, but they were small
stay in that gradually accumulating torrent of misfortune.

As the Press campaign had developed in the spring, he found himself
avoided in Parliament and in society. In the House, where a few months
before he had again and again been the Government spokesman and
representative, he was retired into the ranks of private members. This
short Parliament of 1886 came to an end in June, and, in the General
Election which followed, London went solidly against Home Rule; and Sir
Charles, though as compared with other Gladstonian Liberals he did well,
found himself rejected by the constituency which had stood by him in
four contests. Such a reverse occurs in the life of almost every
prominent politician, and, though harassing, is of no determining
import. For Sir Charles Dilke at this moment it was a cruel blow. The
personal discredit against which he had to fight coincided with the
discredit of his party; and when the jury came to their decision in
July, after a week in which the newspapers had been filled daily with
columns of scandalous detail, public feeling assumed a character of
bitter personal hostility.

'Sir Charles's fall,' says the chronicler of that period, Mr. Justin
McCarthy, 'is like that of a tower. He stood high above every rising
English statesman, and but for what has happened he must have been Prime
Minister after Gladstone.' [Footnote: This article appeared in a
Canadian journal after the second trial.]




CHAPTER XLIV

THE RADICAL PROGRAMME _VERSUS_ HOME RULE

JULY TO DECEMBER, 1885.


[Footnote: This chapter and the next cover the same dates as the
preceding chapter, which contains the record of other than political
events, while these deal with the political history of the time.]

The period between July, 1885, and July, 1886, determined the course of
English history for a generation. At the beginning of this period, Sir
Charles Dilke was one of the three men on the Liberal side who, after
Mr. Gladstone, counted most, and he commanded more general approval than
either Chamberlain or Hartington. But from the first rumour of his
personal misfortune his influence rapidly dwindled; when the period
closed, many of those who had been his political associates had left
him, and from Mr. Chamberlain, in political life, he was irretrievably
sundered.

In July, 1885, the much-talked-of visit of the Radical leaders to
Ireland was abandoned, owing, it appears, to the change in Sir Charles's
personal fortunes. Meanwhile the first-fruits of the Tory alliance with
Parnellism had begun to appear, and on July 21st Mr. Gladstone had made,
as has been seen, [Footnote: See p.158] a powerful appeal to his Radical
colleagues for support of Lord Spencer--addressing it, after his
invariable custom, to Dilke. It was the last time that he did so, and he
wrote then without knowledge of the blow which had already fallen on Sir
Charles.

In the end Mr. Gladstone's appeal was disregarded, and, when Lord
Spencer's policy was assailed in the House, the Press noted the
significant absence of Dilke and Chamberlain from the front bench. It
would have been more significant had not Sir Charles been then engrossed
with his personal concerns. Not until the last days of August was he
'sufficiently recovered from the blow to be able to take some interest
in politics'; and then it was merely to take an interest, not to take a
part. Yet already the crucial question for Liberal policy had begun to
define itself.

On August 24th, Parnell, speaking in Ireland, declared that the one
plank in Ireland's platform was National independence. In reply, Lord
Hartington, speaking at Waterfoot in Lancashire, declared his confidence
that no British party would concede Parnell's demand. But Lord
Hartington did not confine his speech to this

    'A speech by Hartington in Lancashire read to Chamberlain and myself
    like a declaration of war against the unauthorized programme and its
    author; and when Rosebery wrote to me to congratulate me on my
    coming marriage, I replied in this sense. I had a good deal of
    correspondence with James as to what should be the nature of
    Chamberlain's reply at Warrington on Tuesday, September 8th, James
    trying to patch up things: "The ransom theory [Footnote: Mr.
    Chamberlain on January 29th, 1885, at Birmingham: "I hold that the
    sanctity of public property is greater than even that of private
    property, and that, if it has been lost or wasted or stolen, some
    equivalent must be found for it, and some compensation may fairly be
    exacted from the wrongdoer." See Chapter XXXVIII., p. 105.] startled
    a good many people, and dissent from it was to be expected. But
    surely such dissent does not cause a man to be unfit to be in the
    Liberal ranks...." James also sent me a memorandum from which I
    extracted the following sentence: "If it be once introduced as an
    admitted principle that no man can take office without stipulating
    for the success of every question to which he may have given a
    support, and if every man in Government is to be bound to reject all
    concessions to those with whom he has on any point ever differed,
    the practical constitution of this country would be overthrown...."
    On September 5th Chamberlain had received a letter from Harcourt
    which I afterwards considered with him "I set store by your
    declaration that you will try to be as moderate as you can. You have
    no idea how moderate you can be till you try. I am not the least
    despondent about the state of affairs. The Liberal party has a
    Pentecostian gift of tongues, and the Parthians, Medes, Elamites,
    and others, require to have the gospel preached to them in very
    different languages.... I suppose that Bosebery reported to you his
    phrase that 'he had expressed himself on the land question more
    clumsily even than usual!' It is impossible to be angry with such
    frankness...."'

Lord Rosebery had written at the same time to Sir Charles that the real
trouble arose from 'clumsiness of arrangement,' and quoted Lord
Hartington's words as accepting this view.

    'John Morley wrote also on September 4th to Chamberlain that Goschen
    was rather wrathful that Hartington should be so slow and infrequent
    in speaking while he, Chamberlain, was so active, but that he did
    not believe Hartington meant war.'

None adverted to the difficulty, which was nevertheless the central one,
of reaching an agreement concerning an Irish policy. Mr. Morley was
right when he said that there was not going to be 'war' in the Liberal
party over questions of English reform. The question which was to split
the party was Ireland, and Chamberlain in his Warrington speech joined
Hartington in repudiating Parnell's demand. But Mr. Chamberlain saw what
Lord Hartington did not, that a Liberal party must have a positive
policy, and his conception of a Liberal policy during these months was
to force the pace on social questions and leave Ireland alone.

At these critical moments of August and September, 1885, Sir Charles was
a guest in Mr. Chamberlain's house, and was in consultation with him;
but it was a consultation to which one of the two brought a mind
preoccupied with his own most vital concerns. Scarcely a month had gone
by since the petition had been filed, in July, 1885; much less than a
month since he had been on the very edge of a complete breakdown. He had
been dragged back, almost against his will and against his judgment,
into political life by that imperious personality with which he had been
so long associated in equal comradeship. Under the old conditions Sir
Charles and Mr. Chamberlain would have inevitably influenced each
other's action, and it is at least possible that Sir Charles's gift for
bringing men together and concentrating on essentials might have altered
the whole course of events. But it is clear, from what followed later,
that under the conditions which existed there was no thorough discussion
between them, since the line which Sir Charles took on Ireland when the
dividing of the ways came was a surprise to his friend.

    'On September 10th, 1885, there came a letter from Mr. Gladstone,
    addressed to Chamberlain and myself. Chamberlain replied, after
    consultation, in our joint names.'

They developed their views as to their programme of English as distinct
from Irish reforms.

    'Mr. Gladstone wished to issue an address (to his constituents with
    a view to the General Election), and had got Hartington to ask him
    to do so, and he now wanted us also to ask him. We stipulated that
    we must have (1) power to local authorities to take land for
    housing, allotments, and so forth, and (2) free schools: otherwise,
    while we could not object to his issuing his own address, we could
    not offer to support or join a future Government.'

    'On the 15th Chamberlain wrote to me to Paris that he gathered Mr.
    G. intended to issue immediately, without waiting his reply.'

He would write, however, asking for further allusions to compulsory
powers for taking land, and asked Sir Charles to write direct about
registration.

On September 20th Mr. Chamberlain wrote again, enclosing a copy of his
letter to Mr. Gladstone, and stating his opinion that the manifesto was
bad, and that he regarded it, especially the part referring to free
schools and education, [Footnote: Mr. Gladstone was never at any time in
harmony with the views of the more advanced section of his own party on
education. See the account of the curious controversy between him and
Lord Russell during the last days of the latter's leadership of the
Liberal party (_Life of Granville_, vol. i., pp. 516, 517).] as a slap
in the face to himself and Sir Charles. He added that he had written
frankly to Mr. Gladstone, telling him that he was dissatisfied, and
expressed his opinion that Mr. Gladstone would give way, and that his
reign could not last long. Through the somewhat involved phraseology of
Mr. Gladstone's letter, it seemed possible to extract some hope in
regard to extra powers for local authorities, and a revision of taxation
in favour of the working classes. He concluded by saying that if his
party could get a majority, he would make their terms on joining the
Government, and regretting that Sir Charles was not still staying with
him.

The letter to Mr. Gladstone spoke of the manifesto as a blow to the
Radical party, and went on to say that, in the event of the Liberal
party returning in full power to office, he would offer loyal support,
as far as possible, to any Government that might be formed, but that the
joining any Administration formed on the narrow basis of the programme
now presented would be impossible. It ended with the words: 'Dilke has
left me, but, from a letter I have received from him, I am justified in
saying that he shares my views.'

    'I told Chamberlain that in my first speech (and I had two to make
    shortly after my proposed marriage in October) I intended to attack
    Reform of the House of Lords from the Single Chamber point of view.'

He replied urging Sir Charles to give this question prominence and
importance, and to do so in the name of the Radical Party, as expressing
their policy, for fear that even Radical candidates should be under some
misapprehension. He also authorized him to use his (Mr. Chamberlain's)
name, as concurring in the views expressed.

    'On the 25th I received a letter from Chamberlain containing Mr.
    Gladstone's reply:

    '"My Dear Chamberlain,

    '"Were I engaged (which Heaven forfend) in the formation of a new
    Liberal Government, and were your letter of yesterday an answer to
    some invitation to join it, then _I_ should have read the letter
    with great regret; but I pointed out to you (as I think), in a
    previous letter, that it would (as far as I could judge) be an
    entire mistake to lay down a _credo_ of Liberal policy for a new
    Government at the present juncture. You and Hartington were both
    demurring in opposite senses, and I made to each the same reply. My
    aim was for the election only, in giving form to my address. As to
    what lies beyond, I suppose the party will, so far as it has a
    choice, set first about the matters on which it is agreed. But no
    one is bound to this proposition.

    '"Bright once said, with much force and sense, that the average
    opinion of the party ought to be the rule of immediate action.

    '"It is likely that there may be a split in the party in the far or
    middle distance, but I shall have nothing to do with it, and you, I
    am sure, do not wish to anticipate it or force it on. What I have
    said may, I hope, mitigate any regret such as you seem to intimate.

    '"I am at present busy on private affairs and papers, to which for
    six years past I have hardly given one continuous hour. Later on I
    should like much to explain to you my personal views and intentions
    in conversation. It would be difficult to do so in writing. They
    turn very much upon Ireland--the one imperial question that seems at
    present possible to be brought into immediate view. But, for
    Liberals generally, I should have thought that there was work enough
    for three or four years on which they might all agree. So far as my
    observation and correspondence go, I have not found that non-Whig
    opinion is offended.

    '"Sincerely yours,
    '"W. E. Gladstone.

    '"P.S.--A letter received from Dilke speaks pleasingly about the
    address.

    '"I may say that I was quite unconscious of interfering with your
    present view, which I understood to be that none of your advanced
    proposals were to be excluded, but all left open for discussion.--W.
    E. G."

    'On the passage with regard to Ireland I noted: "He means that he
    would go on as Prime Minister if he could see his way to carry the
    larger Local Government (Ireland) scheme, and not otherwise." But he
    meant more.'

Sir Charles also wrote suggesting that Mr. Chamberlain should, in his
correspondence with Mr. Gladstone, go into the question of the Whig
composition of Liberal Cabinets, and the latter promised 'to say just
what you suggest.'

Those who occupied the centre position in the Liberal party were
bewildered by divided counsels.

    'On September 28th I received from Chamberlain a letter enclosing
    one from Harcourt.... He (Harcourt) dwelt upon the delicacy of Mr.
    Gladstone's position. "He (Mr. Gladstone) says, if he is not wanted,
    he will 'cut out,' and he doubts, I think, if either you or
    Hartington want him. But I hope in this he is mistaken; for he is
    wanted, and neither section can do without him.... When I spoke at
    Plymouth I knew nothing of the contents of his address, nor indeed,
    that it was about to appear so soon, though, oddly enough, it came
    out the next day. I therefore spoke like a cat in walnut shells, and
    had, like a man who makes a miss at billiards, to 'play for safety.'
    I am quite with you on the subject of the acquisition of land by
    local authorities, and also on free education, which seem to be your
    two _sine qua nons_. As to what you say about remaining outside a
    new Liberal Government, forgive me for saying that is all nonsense.
    If a Liberal Government cannot be formed with you and Dilke, it
    certainly cannot be formed without you. You have acquired the right
    and the power to make your own conditions, and I am sure they will
    be reasonable ones."'

Sir William Harcourt omitted to consider the possibility of a Government
being formed--as actually happened--while the charges against Sir
Charles were still untried. Politically, he made an omission which was
less natural; once more there is no reference to the Irish problem and
its effect. Yet in Mr. Gladstone's mind it was daily becoming more
insistent.

    'On September 28th Chamberlain wrote enclosing a letter from Mr.
    Gladstone, and his reply:

    '"My Dear Chamberlain,

    '"I felt well pleased and easy after receiving your note of the
    21st, but there is a point I should like to put to you with
    reference to your self-denying ordinance making the three points
    conditions of office.

    '"Suppose Parnell to come back eighty to ninety strong, to keep them
    together, to bring forward a plan which shall contain in your
    opinion adequate securities for the union of the Empire, and to
    press this plan, under whatever name, as having claims to precedence
    (claims which could hardly be denied even by opponents), do you
    think no Government should be formed to promote such a plan, unless
    the three points were glued on to it at the same time? Do you not
    think you would do well to reserve elbow-room for a case like this?
    I hope you will not think my suggestion--it is not a question--
    captious and a man-trap. It is meant in a very different sense. A
    Liberal majority is assumed in it.

    '"Yours sincerely,
    '"W. E. Gladstone."'

When that letter reached Highbury, Sir Charles was in France, awaiting
Mrs. Pattison's arrival from India. Mr. Chamberlain's reply was written
without consultation on September 28th. In it he said that he had
assumed that Local Government would be the first work of a Liberal
Government, and that Bills for the three countries would be brought in
together. Mr. Parnell's change of front would, he thought, have limited
the proposals to the establishment of County Councils, with certain
powers for the acquisition of land by Local Authorities. He thought it
unlikely that Parnell would bring forward a scheme that any Liberal
Government could support; but if he did, he would do all he could to
assist the Government in dealing with it, whether from inside or outside
the Cabinet.

Chamberlain further urged Dilke to lay stress on the determination of
his party not to be 'mere lay figures in a Cabinet of Goschens.' He
regarded his party as indispensable, and if the Government tried to do
without them, they were determined to make trouble. He expressed an
earnest wish that Sir Charles Dilke could be working with them; but he
did not press this at the moment, if Sir Charles was taking a holiday
after his marriage.

Dilke took the briefest of holidays; on October 6th, three days after
his wedding, he spoke at Chelsea. After dwelling at length on
Chamberlain's proposal to give powers of compulsory land purchase to
local authorities, he asked for the widest form of elective self-
government for Ireland consistent with the integrity of the Empire,
[Footnote: 'In my individual opinion, the natural crowning stone of any
large edifice of local government must sooner or later be some such
elective Local Government Board for each of the three principal parts of
the United Kingdom and for the Principality of Wales, as I have often
sketched out to you. As regards Ireland, we all of us here, I think,
agree that the widest form of elective self-government should be
conferred which is consistent with the integrity of the Empire. No one
can justify the existence of the nominated official Boards which at
present attempt to govern Ireland. I care not whether the Irish people
are or are not at the moment willing to accept the changes we have to
propose. If the present system is as indefensible as I think it, we
should propose them all the same. If they are not at first accepted, our
scheme will at least be seen and weighed, and we shall be freed from the
necessity of appearing to defend a system which is obnoxious to every
Liberal principle. I would ask you to remember some words in Mr.
Ruskin's chapter on "The Future of England," in his _Crown of Wild
Olive_, which are very applicable to the situation:--"In Ireland,
especially, a vicious system has been so long maintained that it has
become impossible to give due support to the cause of order without
seeming to countenance injury." The bodies which would deal with
education, with private Bills, with provisional order Bills, and with
appeals from local authorities in matters too large for county
treatment, in Wales and Scotland and England itself, if I had my way, as
well as in Ireland, would, I believe, make the future government of the
United Kingdom, as a United Kingdom, more easy than it is at present.']
and went on to assume that the first session of the new Parliament would
be 'a Local Government session.' In the following week 'I made an
important speech at Halifax on Local Government which attracted much
attention.' 'Halifax will be all Local Government,' he wrote to Mr.
Frank Hill, 'which is necessary, as it is clear that Balfour and
Salisbury have cribbed my last year's Bill.'

    'I may note here that on October 6th, at my Chelsea meeting, George
    Russell told me that he had on the previous day induced Mr.
    Gladstone to send for Chamberlain to Hawarden. On October 7th
    Chamberlain wrote:

    '"Hawarden Castle.

    '"My Dear Dilke,

    '"I was sent for here, but up to now I do not know why.... My
    present object is to say that you made a capital speech, and that I
    approve every word of it except the part about London Government.
    But as to this I suppose that Londoners must have their way and
    their own form of municipal government though I doubt if it will not
    prove a fatal gift. Why will the papers invent differences between
    you and me? I verily believe that if I spoke your speech, and you
    spoke mine, they would still find the distinguishing characteristics
    of each speaker unchanged. I thought your last part admirable and
    just what I should have said. Yet the _Standard_ thinks it quite a
    different note to the South London and Bradford speeches. Mr. G.
    thinks Mr. Parnell's last speech more satisfactory I confess I had
    not perceived the improvement. He (Mr. G.) is still very sweet on
    National Councils."

    'On October 9th Chamberlain wrote:

    '"I am not quite certain what was Mr. G.'s object in sending for me.
    I suppose he desired to minimize our conditions as far as possible.
    He was very pleasant and very well, with no apparent trace of his
    hoarseness. He spoke at considerable length on the Irish Question;
    said he was more than ever impressed with the advantages of the
    Central Council scheme, and had written strongly to that effect to
    Hartington. But I do not gather that he has any definite plan under
    present circumstances. He thought Parnell's last speech was more
    moderate (I confess I do not agree with him), and I suppose that if
    we get a majority his first effort will be to find a _modus
    vivendi_, and to enter into direct communications with this object.

    '"As regards Radical programme I stuck to the terms of your speech,
    namely, first, compulsory powers for acquiring land to be inserted
    in the Local Government Bill. Second, freedom to speak and vote as
    we liked on questions of free schools. He boggled a good deal over
    this, and said it was very weakening to a Government; but I told him
    we could not honestly do less, and that I expected a large majority
    of Liberals were in favour of the proposal. We did not come to any
    positive conclusion, nor do I think that he has absolutely made up
    his mind, but the tone of the conversation implied that he was
    seeking to work with us, and had no idea of doing without us. At the
    close he spoke of his intention to give up the leadership soon after
    the new Parliament met. I protested, and said that if he did this
    our whole attitude would be changed, and we must and should ask from
    Hartington much larger concessions than we were prepared to accept
    from him. I expect the force of circumstances will keep him in his
    place till the end, though I believe he is sincerely anxious to be
    free."' [Footnote: Mr. Gladstone's account of this interview is to
    be found in Morley's _Life of Gladstone_, vol. iii., p. 224.]

On October 17th Chamberlain wrote 'on another letter of Mr. Gladstone's,
which I do not possess:

    '"I do not think it is wise to do anything about Mr G.'s letter on
    Ireland. I agree with your recollection of the matter. But Mr. G. is
    not far wrong, and we have our hands full of other things. The Irish
    business is not the first just now."

    'About this time I was taken as arbitrator in a considerable number
    of disputed candidatures, in most of which I acted by myself, and in
    one, the Walworth case, with Chamberlain and John Morley.'

    'I had been to see Manning, at his wish, with my wife, and he had
    spoken kindly about Chamberlain, on which I wrote to Chamberlain
    about him; and Chamberlain replied:

    '"Our experience in the Irish Question has not been encouraging. We
    understood the Cardinal cordially to approve of my scheme of
    National Councils and to be ready to use his influence in any way to
    promote its acceptance. On our part we were prepared to press the
    question at any sacrifice, and to make the adoption of our scheme a
    condition of our membership of any future Government. And yet, when
    the time came to ask the Cardinal for his help, he refused
    categorically so small a matter as an introduction to the Irish
    Bishops, and, as I understood, on the ground that the Conservatives
    were in office. Would not the same influence prevail in the matter
    of education? Besides, I do not see what Cardinal Manning has to
    offer. The majority of English Catholics are Conservative, and no
    concession that it is in our power to make would secure their
    support for the Liberal party. I am therefore of opinion that the
    differences between us can only be decided by the constituencies."

    'The Cardinal wrote concerning Chamberlain:

    '"Mr. Chamberlain was good enough to send me his scheme for Local
    Government in Ireland, in which in the main I agree, and did all in
    my power to promote its acceptance. The Government went out, and you
    asked of me to promote what I called a 'Midlothian in Ireland,'
    under the eyes of the new Lord Lieutenant. (I wrote on this to
    Chamberlain: 'I answered this at the time and have done so again
    now.') Did Mr. Chamberlain understand my agreement with his scheme
    as carrying any consequences beyond that scheme or any solidarity in
    such an aggressive action against any party whatsoever in power?...
    In the matter in which he was courteous enough to make known his
    scheme to me, I have promoted it where and in ways he does not
    know."

    'In a day or two there came another letter from Manning:

    '"It is true you did disclaim a Midlothian; but I told you that I
    know my Irishmen too well, and believe that even Paul and Barnabas
    would have been carried away. Moreover, if you had been silent as
    fishes, the moral effect would have been a counter-move. Your
    humility does not admit this. So you must absolve me for my one
    word."'

Mr. Chamberlain commented in strong terms on the diplomatic methods of
the great ecclesiastic. The 'countermove' implied that there had been a
Tory move in the direction of Home Rule with a view to securing Irish
support. Manning believed, as Mr. Gladstone also believed, that the
Tories meant business; later it became clear that they had no
constructive Irish policy at all. Yet the question grew daily more
pressing.

    'At the end of October Chamberlain wrote:

    '"I had a note from Mr. G. this morning urging unity, and saying he
    had an instinct that Irish questions 'might elbow out all others.'
    This makes me uneasy. I hear from another source that he is trying
    to get Parnell's ideas in detail. It is no use."'

To Mr. Gladstone, Chamberlain wrote, on October 26th, that he could not
see his way at all about Ireland. He emphasized his view that Ireland
had better go altogether than the responsibilities of a nominal union be
accepted, and that probably the majority of Liberals would not give more
than English Local Government; and that, if possible, Irish and English
Local Government should be dealt with together. Unless the principle of
the acquisition of land by local authorities was accepted, neither he
nor Dilke nor Morley, nor probably Lefevre, could join the Government.

The strife between Chamberlain and Hartington was maintained, and Mr.
Gladstone interposed by a letter to the Chief Whip, in which he advised
the intervention of Lord Granville in view of 'his great tact, prudence,
and experience.' On November 5th Mr. Chamberlain wrote to Sir Charles,
enclosing Mr. Gladstone's letter, and adding:

    'Mr. G.'s is the most definite proof I have had yet that he does not
    mean to quarrel with us. Lord Granville has just been here. He told
    me nothing about Ireland, but _I am convinced_ that Mr. Gladstone
    has been trying to make a treaty all to himself. It must fail.'

No such treaty was made, and on the eve of the General Election of
November, 1885, Parnell issued an instruction that the Irish in England
should vote Tory.

    'On Tuesday, November 24th, our poll took place in Chelsea, and on
    Wednesday, November 25th, the count, which showed that I was
    returned, although only by a small majority.... The Irish had voted
    for Whitmore, the Conservative candidate, my opponent, in
    consequence of the issue at the last moment of the bill, "Mr.
    Parnell's order--Vote for the Conservative, Mr. Whitmore. Irishmen,
    do your duty and obey your leader."'

    'I had been summoned by Chamberlain, who desired a meeting of our
    party within the party, in a letter in which he said:

    '"It does not look as if the Tories would have the chance of doing
    much mischief; but I should much like them to be in for a couple of
    years before we try again, and then I should 'go for the Church.'"'

Dilke notes that Chamberlain was persuaded to drop this line of attack,
on which he had already embarked. Disestablishment of the Church of
England had proved to be anything but a good election cry; the ransom
doctrine had not brought in more votes than it lost; and the 366 certain
Liberal seats with twenty-six doubtful ones which Mr. Schnadhorst
counted up at the end of October were now an illusion of the past. The
election was generally taken as a set-back to the extreme Radicals.

    'On Saturday, December 5th, we met at Highbury, and remained in
    council until Monday, December 7th. Mr. Gladstone, we were informed
    (that is Morley, Lefevre, and myself), had presented a Home Rule
    scheme to the Queen, who had shown it to Lord Salisbury, and
    Randolph Churchill had told Lady Dorothy Nevill, who had told
    Chamberlain, but no statement had been made by Mr. Gladstone to his
    former colleagues.'




CHAPTER XLV

BEGINNING OF THE HOME RULE SPLIT

DECEMBER, 1885, TO FEBRUARY, 1886


After the meeting of Radicals, December 5th to 7th, at Highbury, Sir
Charles went back to London.

    'On Wednesday, December 9th, I spoke at the Central Poor Law
    Conference.... I carried the assembly, which was one of Poor Law
    Guardians, and therefore Conservative, along with me in the opinion
    that it was desirable to elect directly the whole of the new bodies
    in local government, instead of having either a special
    representation of Magistrates or any system of indirect election or
    choice of Aldermen.'

He argued in the belief that the next session might still see a Tory
Government in power. 'If the Conservatives propose a Local Government
Bill,' he said at Chelsea, 'it will be our Local Government Bill which
they will propose.' He notes: 'They proposed two-thirds of it, and
carried one-third, in 1888.'

    'At this moment, not knowing how far Mr. Gladstone was willing to go
    in the Home Rule direction, and that there was, therefore, any
    chance of his securing the real support of the Irish party, I was
    opposed to the attempt to turn out the Government and form a Liberal
    Administration resting on the support of a minority, and I spoke in
    that sense to my constituents. My view was that it would be
    disastrous to advanced Liberalism to form a Government resting on a
    minority, as it would be impossible to carry any legislation not of
    a Conservative type.'

    'Chamberlain wrote to me on December 15th, with regard to one of my
    speeches, that I was too polite to the Tories. "This," he added, "is
    where I never err."

    'On December 18th I received some copies of important letters. Mr.
    Gladstone's scheme had got out on the 16th, [Footnote: Lord Morley's
    _Life of Gladstone_, vol. iii., pp. 264,265, shows that the "scheme
    got out" owing to Sir Charles Dilke's speech to his constituents.
    Mr. Herbert Gladstone came to town on the 14th partly in consequence
    of a speech "made a few days before by Sir Charles Dilke," and the
    talk it caused. The speech was "taken to mean" that the two Radical
    leaders preferred keeping the Tories in power "in the expectation
    that some moderate measures of reform might be got from them, and
    that meanwhile they would become committed with the Irishmen.
    Tactics of this kind were equivalent to the exclusion of Mr.
    Gladstone, for in every letter that he wrote he pronounced the Irish
    Question urgent." Accordingly, on December 16th there came the
    unauthorized version of Mr. Gladstone's scheme, given to the Press
    through his son.] and on the 17th he wrote to Lord Hartington a
    letter of which the latter sent me a long extract. [Footnote: The
    letter, which has been printed both by Lord Morley and by Mr.
    Bernard Holland, is that in which Mr. Gladstone detailed the
    "conditions of an admissible plan" of Home Rule, and expressed a
    determination "on no account to do or say anything which would
    enable the Nationalists to establish rival biddings between us." It
    is so germane to this discussion that part of it is again printed in
    the appendix following this chapter (p. 208).]

    'At the same time I received a letter from Chamberlain in which he
    said:

    '"Have I turned round? Perhaps I have, but it is unconsciously.
    Honestly I thought you went beyond us in your speeches, but I feel
    that your judgment is very likely better and certainly as good as
    mine, and I should have said nothing but for the flood of letters I
    received.

    '"The situation changes every minute. The announcement of Mr. G.'s
    plan makes it much more serious; and I altered my speech somewhat
    to-night to meet it, but unless I have failed in my endeavour I have
    not said anything which will embarrass you, and I had you constantly
    in mind throughout. Please read it carefully and let me know exactly
    what you think and how far I have succeeded. I would not put you in
    a hole for a King's ransom if I could avoid it.

    '"I agree entirely with you as to dissolution. The Tory game is to
    exaggerate Mr. Gladstone's performance and to go to the country on
    the 'integrity of the Empire.' I have endeavoured to reserve our
    position, and, as to taking office, to make it clear that we are
    opposed to it, unless we can get a big majority, which is
    impossible. Unless I am mistaken, the Gladstone business will
    exclusively occupy attention the next few days, and my speech will
    pass without much notice. But again I say that I have tried (and I
    hope and believe I have succeeded) to avoid anything which may
    appear like contradiction or opposition to your line.

    '"Finally, my view is that Mr. G.'s Irish scheme is death and
    damnation; that we must try and stop it; that we must not openly
    commit ourselves against it yet; that we must let the situation
    shape itself before we finally decide; that the Whigs are our
    greatest enemies, and that we must not join them if we can help it;
    that we cannot take office, but must not offer assistance to the
    Tories publicly; that we must say all we can as to their shameful
    bargain and surrender of principle; that even if they bring in good
    measures they will also bring in bad, which we shall be forced to
    oppose; and that the less we speak in public for the present, the
    better."

    'I had told Chamberlain that his speech had given the impression
    that he had turned round.'

Sir Charles, in a further speech to his constituents at Chelsea,
reaffirmed the principles which he had already publicly laid down.

    'In speaking on the night of Friday, December 18th, at Chelsea, I
    declared that we ought not to allow ourselves to be driven either
    forward or backward from the principles that we had put forward with
    regard to Ireland, and that our course should be to continue to
    propose the measures which we had previously proposed without
    reference to the Parnellite support of Conservative candidates. The
    scheme which I had put forward at the General Election was the one
    to which I adhered. If it had been generally adopted when first
    suggested, it would have received very large support in Ireland.'

He then quotes from the report of his speech this sentence: 'We are told
that now it is too late, but for my part I should not be inclined to
recede from it because it does not meet with general support.'

On this Chamberlain wrote:

    '_December 19th_, 1885.

    'My Dear Dilke,

    'The papers this morning seem to show that I have succeeded in
    avoiding any kind of conflict with you. Your own speech was most
    judicious. What a mess Mr. G. has made of it! What will be the end
    of it all? Why the d---- could he not wait till Parnell had
    quarrelled with the Tories? I fancy that a large number, perhaps the
    majority, of Liberals will support _any_ scheme of Mr. G.'s, but I
    doubt if the country will endorse it. The Tories, if they are wise,
    will throw everything else aside and go for the "Empire in danger,"
    dissolving at the earliest possible opportunity. The Liberals would
    be divided and distracted, and I think we shall be beaten into a
    cocked hat. Our game--yours and mine--is to avoid definite committal
    for the moment. Circumstances change every hour. Harcourt is coming
    to me on Saturday and Sunday.'

    'On the next day Chamberlain sent me a copy of a letter to him from
    Mr. Gladstone:

    '"_December 18th_, 1885.

    '"My Dear Chamberlain,

    '"I thank you very much for your references to me in your speech
    last night.

    '"In this really serious crisis we must all make efforts to work
    together; and I gladly recognize your effort.

    '"Moreover, reading as well as writing hastily, I think we are very
    much in accord.

    '"Both reflection and information lead me to think that time is very
    precious, and that the hour-glass has begun to run for a definitive
    issue.

    '"But I am certainly and strongly of opinion that only a Government
    can act, that especially this Government should act, and that we
    should now be helping and encouraging them to act as far as we
    legitimately can.

    '"In reply to a proposal of the Central News to send me an
    interviewer, I have this morning telegraphed to London: 'From my
    public declarations at Edinburgh _with respect to the Government_,
    you will easily see that I have no communication to make.'

    '"Be _very incredulous_ as to any statements about my views and
    opinions. Rest assured that I have done and said _nothing_ which in
    any way points to negotiation or separate action. The time may come,
    but I hope it will not. At present I think most men, but I do not
    include you, are in too great a hurry to make up their minds. Much
    may happen before (say) January 12th. The first thing of all is to
    know _what will the Government do?_ I know they have been in
    communication with Parnellites, and I hope with Parnell.

    '"I remain always,

    '"Sincerely yours,

    '"W. E. Gladstone."

    'I fancy that I was the cause of Chamberlain receiving this letter,
    as I had told Brett (who at once wrote to Hawarden) that Chamberlain
    was angry at not having been consulted.'

    'On December 21st we went down to Pyrford, which was now just
    finished, to stay there for the first time, and remained until
    Christmas Eve. On December 22nd I received a letter from Chamberlain
    from Highbury.'

In this letter Mr. Chamberlain chronicled Sir William Harcourt's
visit--who, after 'raving against the old man and the old cause,' had
left in better spirits. Mr. Chamberlain was in much doubt whether Mr.
Gladstone would go on or would retire after Lord Hartington's letter to
the Press, [Footnote: This is a reference to Lord Hartington's letter in
the Press of December 21st, 1885, which he alludes to, in writing to Mr.
Gladstone, as "published this morning" (_Life of Duke of Devonshire_,
vol. ii., p. 103).] and had written to Mr. Gladstone to say that he did
not think the country would stand an independent Parliament. He saw
nothing between National Councils and Separation, and wondered whether
Mr. Gladstone thought that--in the event of a separate Irish
Legislature--Ireland could be governed by a single Chamber, and England
and Scotland by two.

    'On December 26th Chamberlain wrote:

    '"I do not envy you the opportunity of speaking on the 31st. It is a
    dangerous time, and I am inclined myself to 'lie low.' Is it
    desirable to say anything? If it is right to speak at all, I think
    something like a full expose of motifs is necessary, and I put the
    following before you as the heads of a discourse.

    '"At present there are two different ideas, for settlement of
    Ireland, before the public imagination, viz.: (A) National Councils;
    (B) Separation.

    '"As to A, the fundamental principles are supremacy of Imperial
    Parliament and extension of local liberties on municipal lines. It
    is a feasible, practical plan. But it has the fatal objection that
    the Nationalists will not accept it. It is worse than useless to
    impose on them benefits which they repudiate. As to B, everyone
    professes to reject the idea of separation. If it were adopted, I
    have no doubt it would lead to the adoption of the conscription in
    Ireland; then to the conscription in England, and increase of the
    navy; fresh fortifications on the west coast, and finally a war in
    which Ireland would have the support of some other Power, perhaps
    America or France. Between these alternatives there is the hazy idea
    of Home Rule visible in Morley's speech and Gladstone's assumed
    intention. It is dangerous and mischievous to use vague language on
    such a subject. Those who speak ought to say exactly what they mean.
    It will be found that Home Rule includes an independent separate
    Irish Parliament, and that all guarantees and securities, whether
    for the protection of minorities or for the security of the Empire,
    are absolutely illusory.

    '"At the same time we are to continue to receive Irish
    representatives at Westminster in the Imperial Parliament, and we
    shall not even get rid of their obstruction and interference here by
    the concession of their independence in Ireland. To any arrangement
    of this kind, unworkable as I believe it to be, I prefer
    separation--to which, indeed, it is only a step.

    '"Is there any other possible arrangement which would secure the
    real integrity of the Empire for Imperial purposes, while allowing
    Irishmen to play the devil as they like in Ireland?

    '"Yes, there is. But it involves the entire recasting of the British
    Constitution and the full and complete adoption of the American
    system. According to this view you might have five Parliaments, for
    England, Scotland, Wales, Ulster, [Footnote: This is the first
    suggestion of a scheme under which part of Ireland would be
    separated from the rest.] and the three other provinces combined.
    Each Parliament to have its own Ministry, responsible to it and
    dependent on its vote. In addition an Imperial Parliament or
    Reichsrath with another Ministry dealing with foreign and colonial
    affairs, army, navy, post-office, and customs.

    '"To carry out this arrangement a Supreme Court or similar tribunal
    must be established, to decide on the respective attributes of the
    several local legislatures and the limits of their authority.

    '"The House of Lords must go, or you must establish a separate
    Second Chamber for each legislature.

    '"It is impossible to suppose that the authority of the Crown could
    survive these changes for long. One or other of the local
    legislatures would refuse to pay the expense, and, as it would have
    some kind of local militia at its back, it is not likely that the
    other legislatures would engage in civil war for the sake of
    reimposing the nominal authority of the Sovereign.

    '"As a Radical all these changes have no terrors for me, but is it
    conceivable that such a clean sweep of existing institutions could
    be made in order to justify the Irish demand for Home Rule? Yet this
    is the only form of federal government which offers any prospect of
    permanence or union for Imperial purposes.

    '"If English Liberals once see clearly that indefinite talk about
    Home Rule means either separation or the entire recasting of the
    whole system of English as well as Irish government, they will then
    be in a position to decide their policy. At present they are being
    led by the _Daily News_ and Morley and Co. to commit themselves in
    the dark."

    'Next day, December 27th, Chamberlain wrote:

    '"The situation (Irish) is now as follows:

    '"(1) The Government have been informed that Mr. Gladstone thinks
    this great question should not be prejudiced by party feeling, and
    that he will support them in any attempt they may make to give Home
    Rule to Ireland.

    '"(2) Mr. Gladstone has been informed that the Government will see
    him damned first.

    '"(3) The Irishmen have been informed that Mr. Gladstone will not
    move a step till the Government have spoken or until the Irish have
    put them in a minority.

    '"(4) In either of these events he will do his best to effect a
    thorough settlement. 'He will go forward or fall.'

    '"(5) I gather that he will not, as he ought, challenge Parnell to
    say publicly exactly what he wants, but that he will propose his own
    scheme, which is an Irish legislature with a veto reserved to the
    Crown--to be exercised on most questions on the advice of the Irish
    Ministry, but on questions of religion, commerce, and taxation, on
    the advice of the Imperial Ministry.

    '"(6) The Irish are suspicious, and have not made up their minds.
    Parnell says nothing, but the rank and file are inclined to give Mr.
    Gladstone his chance and turn him out again if they are not
    satisfied with his proposals.

    '"The Tories hope to get out Mr. Gladstone's intentions in debate on
    Address, and threaten another immediate dissolution if they are
    placed in a minority; I think, however, their true policy is and
    will be to let Mr. Gladstone come in and make his proposals. This
    will divide the Liberal party, and in all probability alarm and
    disgust the country.

    '"Was there ever such a situation? Test Mr. Gladstone's scheme in
    practice. The Irish Ministry insist on necessity of restoring Irish
    manufactures by protection. The Imperial Parliament veto their
    proposals. Thereupon the Irish representatives join the Tories and
    turn out the Government on a foreign and colonial debate, the same
    Government being in a great majority on all English and Scotch
    questions. How long can such a state of things last? Mr. Gladstone
    will have the support of a portion of the Liberal party--Morley, for
    instance, Storey, the Crofters' representatives, and probably some
    of the Labour representatives. How many more will he get? Will he
    have the majority of the Radicals? Will he have the majority of the
    Liberals, following the party leader like sheep? It is curious to
    see the _Scotsman_ and the _Leeds Mercury_ leading in this
    direction. What are we to do? Certainly I will not join a Government
    pledged to such a mad and dangerous proposal. But this may mean
    isolation for a long time.

    '"The prospect is not an inviting one.

    '"I have told Harcourt the facts as in the numbered paragraphs. Do
    not say a word to anyone else. Harcourt is perplexed and hesitating.
    I think he is impressed with the danger of Fenian outrages,
    dynamite, and assassination.

    '"For myself, I would sooner the Tories were in for the next ten
    years than agree to what I think the ruin of the country."

    'On New Year's Eve, the 31st, we went to Rugby, where I had to make
    the speech alluded to in Chamberlain's letter. I had received an
    invitation, dated December 29th, to a meeting at Devonshire House.
    Hartington wrote:

    '"My Dear Dilke,

    '"You know, no doubt, that Harcourt has had a good deal of
    communication with Chamberlain lately. I hear that Chamberlain will
    be in town on Friday (New Year's Day), and it is proposed that he,
    Harcourt, you, and I, should meet here on Friday at four to talk
    over matters, especially Irish. I have asked Granville to come up if
    he likes. I do not think there would be any advantage in having any
    others, unless Rosebery?

    '"Yours sincerely,

    '"Hartington."

    'I sent this letter to Chamberlain with an inquiry as to what he
    knew about the meeting, and he replied on New Year's Eve:

    '"The meeting to-morrow was arranged by telegraph.... I suspect Mr.
    Gladstone is inclined to hedge. He refuses to satisfy the Irish by
    any definite statements. I hope they may continue suspicious and
    keep the Tories in for some time."'

    'Yet it was Chamberlain who was to turn out the Tories. On New
    Year's Eve, at Rugby, referring to the Irish Question, I praised the
    speech made by Trevelyan on the previous night as being "a
    declaration in favour of that scheme of National Councils which he
    supports for Ireland at least, and which was recommended in an able
    article in the _Fortnightly Review_ for Scotland, Ireland, and
    Wales." I said: "I am one of those who have never limited my views
    upon the subject to Ireland. Mr. Trevelyan last night spoke as
    though it were only in Ireland that it was necessary to institute
    some local body to deal with purely local questions--with those
    questions which now come before nominated boards or branches of the
    Executive Government." I went on to speak in the sense of Mr.
    Gladstone's letter, in favour of the Conservatives being encouraged
    to propose such Irish remedial legislation.

    'On New Year's Day, 1886, an important meeting took place at
    Devonshire House between Hartington, Harcourt, Chamberlain, and
    myself. I did not see my way clearly, and did not say much; the
    other three arguing strongly against Mr. Gladstone's conduct in
    having sent Herbert Gladstone to a news agency to let out his views
    for the benefit of the provincial Press, in such a way as to put
    pressure on his colleagues. It seemed to me that the pressure,
    though no doubt unfair and indefensible, had nevertheless been
    pretty successful, as neither Harcourt nor Chamberlain saw their way
    to opposing Mr. Gladstone, although both of them disliked his
    scheme. Hartington only said that he "thought he could not join a
    Government to promote any such scheme." But, then, he would not, I
    pointed out, be asked to do so. He would be asked to join a
    Government to consider something. The practical conclusion come to
    was to write to Mr. Gladstone to urge him to come to London to
    consult his colleagues. On January 4th I heard from Hartington that
    Mr. Gladstone informed him that he had nothing to add to his
    previous letter dated December 17th. Hartington wrote:

    '"I have heard from Mr. Gladstone. He declines to hasten his arrival
    in London, but will be available on the 11th after 4 p.m. for any
    who may wish to see him. He will be at my sister-in-law's (Lady F.
    Cavendish), 21, Carlton House Terrace.... He has done nothing and
    will do nothing to convert his opinions into intentions, for he has
    not the material before him. There is besides the question of
    Parliamentary procedure (this refers to action on the Address). For
    considering this, he thinks the time available in London will be
    ample."

    'In forwarding the correspondence to Chamberlain with a copy of the
    letter of December 17th, 1885, as I was requested by Hartington to
    do, I added that Mr. Gladstone could hardly be said not to have done
    anything which had enabled the Nationalists to establish rival
    biddings between the two sides (to use his phrase), because we knew
    that he had asked Arthur Balfour to go to Lord Salisbury with a
    message from him promising his support if the Government would bring
    in a Home Rule scheme. This he had let out to the Irish.

    'After this we were in consultation as to whether we ought to see
    Mr. Gladstone separately; and Hartington wrote to me on January
    10th, 1886, from Hardwick, that he did not see how we could decline
    to see Mr. Gladstone separately, but that we might be as reticent as
    we pleased, and could all combine in urging further collective
    consultations; and it was arranged that Hartington himself should
    see Mr. Gladstone on January 12th--the day of the election of the
    Speaker. Mr. Gladstone then informed us all that he would see such
    of us as chose on the afternoon of January 11th, and Chamberlain
    then wrote:

    '"As far as I know, only Harcourt is going on Monday, and I on
    Tuesday morning. If for _any_ reason you think it well to go, there
    is really not the least objection."

    'I went on the 11th, but nothing of the least importance passed, and
    the same was the case with Chamberlain's interview on the 12th.
    Harcourt was present on the 11th, and evidently in full support of
    Gladstone.

    'On the 15th Labouchere gave a dinner to Chamberlain and Randolph
    Churchill, but I do not think that anything very serious was
    discussed. There was a sharp breach at this moment between
    Chamberlain and Morley, Chamberlain telling Morley that his speeches
    were "foolish and mischievous," and that he was talking "literary
    nonsense--the worst of all."

    'On January 21st we had a meeting of all the ex-Cabinet at Lord
    Granville's. Chamberlain breakfasted with me before the meeting, and
    he drew and I corrected the amendment which was afterwards accepted
    at the meeting as that which should be supported by the party on the
    Queen's Speech, and which was that moved by Jesse Collings by which
    the Government were turned out on the 26th. The adoption of our
    amendment was very sudden. The leaders had met apparently without
    any policy, and the moment Chamberlain read our "three acres and a
    cow" amendment, they at once adopted it without discussion as a way
    out of all their difficulties and differences. [Footnote: This
    amendment was carried by seventy-nine votes, and the Government thus
    overthrown.] The Government resigned on the 28th, and on the 29th I
    had an interview with Chamberlain as to what he should do about
    taking office.

    'On January 30th Mr. Gladstone offered Chamberlain the Admiralty,
    after Hartington had refused to join the Government. Chamberlain
    came and saw me, and was to go back to Mr. Gladstone at six. He
    thought he had no alternative but to accept a place in the
    Government, although he did not like the Admiralty. Mr. Gladstone
    showed him a form of words as to Irish Home Rule. It was equivalent
    to a passage in Sexton's [Footnote: Home Rule M.P. for S. Sligo,
    1885-1886; Belfast W., 1886-1892.] speech on the 22nd, at which Mr.
    Gladstone had been seen to nod in a manner which implied that he had
    suggested the words. The proposal was, as we knew it would be, for
    inquiry. Chamberlain did not object to the inquiry, but objected to
    the Home Rule. Chamberlain, before returning to Mr. Gladstone, wrote
    him a very stiff letter against Home Rule, which somewhat angered
    him. On Sunday, January 31st, Chamberlain wrote that for personal
    reasons he had sooner not accept the Admiralty. Mr. Gladstone saw
    Chamberlain again later in the day, on the Sunday, and asked what it
    was then that he wanted; to which Chamberlain replied, "The
    Colonies," and Mr. Gladstone answered, "Oh! A Secretary of State."
    Chamberlain was naturally angry at this slight, and being offered by
    Mr. Gladstone the Board of Trade, then refused to return to it.
    After leaving Mr. Gladstone he went to Harcourt, and told Harcourt
    that he would take the Local Government Board, "but not very
    willingly." On Monday, February 1st, I asked Chamberlain to
    reconsider his decision about the Admiralty, and found that he would
    have been willing to have done so, but that it was now too late. On
    the 2nd Mr. Gladstone wrote me a very nice letter quoted above,
    [Footnote: Chapter XLII., p.172.] about the circumstances relating
    to the trial then coming on which made it impossible for him to
    include me in the Ministry. Morley wrote: "Half my satisfaction and
    confidence are extinguished by your absence. It may and will make
    all the difference."'

Mr. Morley's apprehension was justified by events.

In 1880 the position of the Radical leaders, while only private members,
had been of such strength that Sir Charles had been able to secure, from
a reluctant Prime Minister, the terms agreed on between Mr. Chamberlain
and himself. He had obtained for both positions in the Government, and
procured Cabinet rank for Chamberlain. Now that the power of one of the
allies was demolished, and Mr. Chamberlain stood alone, Mr. Gladstone's
view of the changed situation was apparent. The 'slight' to Chamberlain
was followed by that course of action which resulted in his breach with
the Liberal party. Together the two men could, from a far stronger point
of vantage than in 1880, have made their terms; with Mr. Chamberlain
isolated Mr. Gladstone could impose his own. The alteration in the
course of English political history which the next few months were to
effect was made finally certain by Sir Charles Dilke's fall.

Lord Rosebery wrote on February 3rd to say that he had been appointed
Foreign Secretary, an office which in happier circumstances would, he
said to Sir Charles, 'have been yours by universal consent.' The letter
went on to state in very sympathetic words how 'constantly present to
his mind' was his own inferiority in knowledge and ability to the man
who had been set aside.

    'I had written to Rosebery at the same moment, and our letters had
    crossed. I replied to his:

    '"My Dear Rosebery,

    '"Our letters crossed, but mine was a wretched scrawl by the side of
    yours. I do not know how, with those terrible telegrams beginning to
    fly round you, you find time to write such letters. I could never
    have taken the Foreign Office without the heaviest misgiving, and I
    hope that whenever the Liberals are in, up to the close of my life,
    you may hold it. My 'knowledge' of foreign affairs _is_, I admit to
    you, great, and I can answer questions in the Commons, and I can
    negotiate with foreigners. But these are _not_ the most important
    points. As to the excess of 'ability' with which you kindly and
    modestly credit me, I do not admit it for a moment. I should say
    that you are far more competent to advise and carry through a
    policy--far more competent to send the right replies to those
    telegrams which are the Foreign Office curse. As to questions, these
    are a mere second curse, but form a serious reason why the Secretary
    of State should be in the Lords.

    '"I have always said that, if kept for no other reason, the Lords
    should remain as a place for the Secretary of State for the Foreign
    Department, and _I_ think also for the Prime Minister. Between
    ourselves, you will not have quite a fair chance in being Secretary
    of State for the Foreign Department under Mr. Gladstone, because Mr.
    Gladstone _will_ trust to his skill in the House of Commons, and
    _will_ speak and reply when the prudent Under-Secretary would ask
    for long notice or be silent. Lord Granville was always complaining,
    and Mr. Gladstone always promising never to do it again, and always
    doing it every day. [Footnote: See supra, p. 51 and note.] I am
    going to put down a notice to-day to strengthen your hands against
    France in _re_ Diego Suarez."

    'From Bryce I heard that he had been appointed Under-Secretary of
    State for the Foreign Department, and asking me whom he should take
    as his private secretary; and I told him Austin Lee, and he took him
    at once.'

    'To the Prince of Wales I wrote to say that I should not attend the
    Levee, and had from him a reply marked by that great personal
    courtesy which he always shows.'

Thus came into being Mr. Gladstone's third Administration. In 1885 the
continuance of Mr. Gladstone's leadership had seemed necessary in order
to bridge the gap between Lord Hartington and the Radicals. Now in 1886
Lord Hartington was out, to mark his opposition, not to Chamberlain, but
to Gladstone; and Chamberlain was in, though heavily handicapped. Yet
none of these contradictions which had defied anticipation was so
unforeseen as the exclusion of Sir Charles Dilke.



APPENDIX


See p. 196. Letter of Mr. Gladstone to Lord Hartington, December 17th,
1885:

    'The whole stream of public excitement is now turned upon me, and I
    am pestered with incessant telegrams which I have no defence against
    but either suicide or Parnell's method of self-concealment. The
    truth is I have more or less of opinions and ideas, but no
    intentions or negotiations. In these ideas and opinions there is, I
    think, little that I have not more or less conveyed in public
    declarations: in principle, nothing. I will try to lay them before
    you. I consider that Ireland has now spoken, and that an effort
    ought to be made by the _Government_ without delay to meet her
    demand for the management, by an Irish legislative body, of Irish as
    distinct from Imperial affairs. Only a Government can do it, and a
    Tory Government can do it more easily and safely than any other.

    'There is first a postulate--that the state of Ireland shall be such
    as to warrant it.

    'The conditions of an admissible plan, I think, are--

    '(1) Union of the Empire and due supremacy of Parliament.

    '(2) Protection for the minority. A difficult matter on which I have
    talked much with Spencer, certain points, however, remaining to be
    considered.

    '(3) Fair allocation of Imperial charges.

    '(4) A statutory basis seems to me to be better and safer than the
    revival of Grattan's Parliament, but I wish to hear more upon this,
    as the minds of men are still in so crude a state on the whole
    subject.

    '(5) Neither as opinions nor as intentions have I to anyone alive
    promulgated these ideas as decided on by me.

    '(6) As to intentions, I am determined to have none at present--to
    leave space to the Government--I should wish to encourage them if I
    properly could--above all, on no account to say or do anything which
    would enable the Nationalists to establish rival biddings between
    us.

    'If this storm of rumours continues to rage, it may be necessary for
    me to write some new letter to my constituents, but I am desirous to
    do nothing, simply leaving the field open for the Government, until
    time makes it necessary to decide. Of our late colleagues, I have
    had most communication with Granville, Spencer, and Rosebery. Would
    you kindly send this on to Granville? I think you will find it in
    conformity with my public declarations, though some blanks are
    filled up. I have in truth thought it my duty, without in the least
    committing myself or anyone else, to think through the subject as
    well as I could, being equally convinced of its urgency and its
    bigness.'

The remainder of this letter is not quoted in the Memoir.




CHAPTER XLVI

THE FIRST HOME RULE BILL

FEBRUARY TO JULY, 1886


The acute political crisis now maturing within the Liberal party had a
special menace for Sir Charles Dilke. It threatened to affect a personal
tie cemented by his friend's stanchness through these months of trouble.

On January 31st, 1886, he wrote:

    'My Dear Chamberlain,

    'I feel that our friendship is going to be subjected to the heaviest
    strain it has ever borne, and I wish to minimize any risks to it, in
    which, however, I don't believe. I am determined that it shall not
    dwindle into a form or pretence of friendship of which the substance
    has departed. It will be a great change if I do not feel that I can
    go to your house or to your room as freely as ever. At the same time
    confidence from one in the inner circle of the Cabinet to one wholly
    outside the Government is not easy, and reserve makes all
    conversation untrue. I think the awkwardness will be less if I
    abstain from taking part in home affairs (unless, indeed, in
    supporting my Local Government Bill, should that come up). In
    Foreign Affairs we shall not be brought into conflict, and to
    Foreign and Colonial affairs I propose to return.

    'I intend to sit behind (in Forster's seat), not below the gangway,
    as long as you are in the Government.

    'There is one great favour which I think you will be able to do me
    without any trouble to yourself, and that is to let my wife come to
    your room to see me _between_ her lunch and the meeting of the
    House. The greatest nuisance about being out is that I shall have to
    go down in the mornings to get my place, and to sit in the library
    all day....

    'Yours ever,

    'Chs. W. D'

When the first trial of the divorce case was over (almost before Mr.
Gladstone's Government had fairly assumed office), in the period during
which Sir Charles designedly absented himself from the House of Commons,

    'Chamberlain asked me to act on the Committee to revise my Local
    Government Bill, and to put it into a form for introduction to the
    House; and I attended at the Local Government Board throughout the
    spring at meetings at which Chamberlain, if present, presided.... It
    is a curious fact that I often presided over this Cabinet Committee,
    though not a member of the Government.'

    During the month of February, while the Press campaign against him
    was ripening, Sir Charles had little freedom of mind for politics.
    Yet this was the moment when Mr. Chamberlain's action, decisive for
    the immediate fate of a great question, had to be determined. Sir
    Charles had been a conducting medium between Mr. Gladstone and Mr.
    Chamberlain. He was so no longer. "I wonder," wrote Chamberlain,
    years after, on reading Dilke's Memoir, "what passed in that most
    intricate and Jesuitical mind in the months between June and
    December, 1885." Perhaps the breach that came was unavoidable. But
    at all events the one man who might have prevented it was at the
    critical moment hopelessly involved in the endeavour to combat the
    scandal that assailed him. [Footnote: There is a letter of this date
    to Mr. John Morley:

    '76, Sloane Street, S.W.,

    '_February 2nd_.

    'My Dear Morley,

    'As I must not yet congratulate you on becoming at a bound Privy
    Councillor and member of the Cabinet, let me in the meantime
    congratulate you on your election as a V.P. of the Chelsea Liberal
    Association. But seriously, there can be no doubt that you now have
    sealed the great position which you had already won. My _one_ hope
    is that you will work;--my hope, not for your own sake, but for the
    sake of Radical principles--as completely with Chamberlain as I did.
    It is the only way to stand against the overwhelming numbers of the
    Whig peers. I fear Mr. Gladstone will find his new lot of Whig peers
    just as troublesome as the old.

    'As long as I am out and _my friends_ are in, I shall sit, not in my
    old place below the gangway, but behind, and do anything and
    everything that I can do to help.

    'Yours ever,

    'Chs. W. D.

    'I _hope_ it is true that Stansfeld is back?'

It was not till March 3rd, 1886, that

    'I resumed my attendance at the House of Commons, and Joseph Cowen,
    the member for Newcastle, did what he could to make it pleasant. I
    wrote to him, and he replied: "It is a man's duty to stick to his
    friends when they are 'run at' as you have been."'

    'On March 4th a meeting of the Local Government Committee at
    Chamberlain's was put off by the absence of Thring, who had been
    sent for by Mr. Gladstone with instructions to draw a Home Rule
    Bill. I went to Chamberlain's house, he being too cross to come to
    the House of Commons, and held with him an important conversation as
    to his future. I tried to point out to him that if he went out, as
    he was thinking of doing, he would wreck the party, who would put up
    with the Whigs going out against Mr. Gladstone on Home Rule, but who
    would be rent in twain by a Radical secession. He would do this, I
    told him, without much popular sympathy, and it was a terrible
    position to face. He told me that he had said so much in the autumn
    that he felt he _must_ do it. I said, "Certainly. But do not go out
    and fight. Go out and lie low. If honesty forces you out, well and
    good, but it does not force you to fight." He seemed to agree, at
    all events at the moment.

    'On March 13th there was a Cabinet, an account of which I had from
    Chamberlain, who was consulting me daily as to his position. Mr.
    Gladstone expounded his land proposals, which ran to 120 millions of
    loan, and on which Chamberlain wrote: "As a result of yesterday's
    Council, I think Trevelyan and I will be out on Tuesday. If you are
    at the House, come to my room after questions." I went to
    Chamberlain's room and met Bright with him. But real consultation in
    presence of Bright was impossible, because Bright was merely
    disagreeable. On Monday, the 15th, Chamberlain and Trevelyan wrote
    their letters of resignation, and late at night Chamberlain showed
    me the reply to his. On the same day James told me that the old and
    close friendship between Harcourt and himself was at an end, they
    having taken opposite sides with some warmth. On the 16th
    Chamberlain wrote to Mr. Gladstone that he thought he had better
    leave him, as he could only attend his Cabinets in order to gather
    arguments against his schemes; and Mr. Gladstone replied that he had
    better come all the same.

    'On the 22nd I had an interesting talk with Sexton about the events
    of the period between April and June, 1885. Sexton said that he had
    agreed to the Chamberlain plan in conversation with Manning, but it
    was as a Local Government plan, not to prevent, so far as he was
    concerned, the subsequent adoption of a Parliament. It was on this
    day that Chamberlain's resignation became final. On March 26th I,
    having to attend a meeting on the Irish question under the auspices
    of the Chelsea Liberal Association, showed Chamberlain a draft of
    the resolution which I proposed for it. I had written: "That while
    this meeting is firmly resolved on the maintenance of the Union
    between Great Britain and Ireland, it is of opinion that the wishes
    of the Irish people in favour of self-government, as expressed at
    the last election, should receive satisfaction." Chamberlain wrote
    back that the two things were inconsistent, and that the Irish
    wishes as expressed by Parnell were for separation. But his only
    suggestion was that I should insert "favourable consideration" in
    place of "satisfaction," which did not seem much change. This,
    however, was the form in which the resolution was carried by an open
    Liberal public meeting, and it is an interesting example of the
    fluidity of opinion in the Liberal party generally at the moment. A
    rider to the effect that the meeting had complete confidence in Mr.
    Gladstone was moved, but from want of adequate support was not put
    to the meeting. I violently attacked the land purchase scheme in my
    speech, suspended my judgment upon the Home Rule scheme until I saw
    it, but declared that it was "one which, generally speaking, so far
    as I know it, I fancy I should be able to support." On this same day
    Cyril Flower told me that on the previous day the Irish members had
    informed Mr. Gladstone that it was their wish that he should
    entirely abandon that land purchase scheme which he had adopted for
    the sake of conciliating Lord Spencer. On March 27th Chamberlain
    wrote: "My resignation has been accepted by the Queen, and is now
    therefore public property. We have a devil of a time before us."

    'On April 5th there was a misunderstanding between Hartington and
    Chamberlain which almost shivered to pieces the newborn Liberal
    Unionist party. Hartington had taken to having meetings of James and
    some of the other more Whiggish men who were acting with him, which
    meetings Chamberlain would not attend, and at these meetings
    resolutions were arrived at to which Chamberlain paid no attention.
    Chamberlain consulted me as to the personal question between
    Hartington and himself, and placed in my hands the letters which
    passed.'

Mr. Gladstone was to introduce his Home Rule Bill on April 8th, and on
the 5th Lord Hartington wrote to Chamberlain announcing that he had
'very unwillingly' decided to follow Mr. Gladstone immediately, 'not, of
course, for the purpose of answering his speech, but to state in general
terms why that part of the party which generally approves of my course
in declining to join the Government is unable to accept the measure
which Mr. Gladstone will describe to us.'

Chamberlain replied on April 6th to Lord Hartington that his letter had
surprised him. Having tendered his resignation on March 15th, he had
kept silence as to his motives and intentions. He said he thought that
it was understood that retiring Ministers were expected to take the
first opportunity of explaining their resignations, and Trevelyan and he
were alone in a position to say how far Mr. Gladstone might have
modified his proposals since their resignations, and thus to initiate
the subsequent debate. He objected to what he understood to be Lord
Hartington's proposed course--namely, formally to oppose Mr. Gladstone's
scheme immediately on its announcement; and this he thought not only a
tactical error, but also discourteous to Trevelyan and himself.

    'Chamberlain went on, however, virtually to accept Hartington's
    suggestion, and the real reason was that he had not received the
    Queen's permission to speak upon the land purchase scheme, and that
    he did not want to make his real statement until he was in a
    position to do this. Chamberlain, in sending me this correspondence,
    said that Hartington's proposal was "dictated by Goschen's uneasy
    jealousy."'

Sir Charles at this moment believed it possible that Mr. Chamberlain
might carry his point against Mr. Gladstone as to the continued
representation of Ireland at Westminster, and, although he disliked this
proposal, desired its success because it would retain Mr. Chamberlain in
the party. This is the moment at which Dilke's influence, had he
retained his old position, would probably have proved decisive. What Mr.
Gladstone would not yield to Chamberlain alone he would probably have
yielded to the two Radicals combined; and Mr. Chamberlain, deprived of
the argument to which he gave special prominence, could scarcely have
resisted his friend's wish that he should support the second reading.
Sir Charles wrote, April 7th, 1886:

    'I don't like the idea of the Irish throwing all their ferocity
    against you, and treating you as they treated Forster. Unless you
    are given a very large share in the direction of the business, I
    think you must let it be known that you are not satisfied with the
    Whig line. I hate the prospect of your being driven into coercion as
    a follower of a Goschen-Hartington-James-Brand-Albert Grey clique,
    and yet treated by the Irish as the Forster of the clique. I believe
    from what I see of my caucus, and from the two large _public_
    meetings we have held for discussion, that the great mass of the
    party will go for Repeal, though fiercely against the land. Enough
    will go the other way to risk all the seats, but the party will go
    for Repeal, and sooner or later now Repeal will come, whether or not
    we have a dreary period of coercion first. I should decidedly let it
    be known that you won't stand airs from Goschen.

    'Yours ever,

    'Chs. W. D.'

    'Another meeting on the Irish Question in Chelsea led to no clearer
    expression of opinion than had the previous one, for it was
    concluded by Mr. Westlake, Q.C., M.P., who afterwards voted against
    the Home Rule Bill, moving that the meeting suspend its judgment,
    and Mr. Firth, who was a Gladstonian candidate and afterwards a Home
    Rule member, seconding this resolution, which was carried
    unanimously.'

    'On April 20th Labouchere wrote to me as to an attempt which he was
    making to heal the breach between Mr. Gladstone and Chamberlain.

    'Chamberlain wrote on April 22nd from Highbury: "I got through my
    meeting last night splendidly. Schnadhorst has been doing everything
    to thwart me, but the whole conspiracy broke down completely in face
    of the meeting, which was most cordially enthusiastic. The feeling
    against the Land Bill was overwhelming. As regards Home Rule, there
    is no love for the Bill, but only a willingness to accept the
    principle as a necessity, and to hope for a recasting of the
    provisions. There is great sympathy with the old man personally, and
    at the same time a soreness that he did not consult his colleagues
    and party. Hartington's name was hissed. They cannot forgive him for
    going to the Opera House with Salisbury. I continue to receive many
    letters of sympathy from Radicals and Liberals, and invitations to
    address meetings, but I shall lie low now for some time. The
    Caucuses in the country are generally with the Government, but there
    will be a great number of abstentions at an election.... Parnell is
    apparently telling a good many lies just now. He told W. Kenrick the
    other day, not knowing his relationship at first, that I had made
    overtures to him for Home Rule, which showed my opposition to Mr. G.
    to be purely personal. I have sent him word that he has my leave to
    publish anything ever written or said by me on the Irish Question,
    either to him or to anyone else.... I have a list of 109 men who at
    one time or another have promised to vote against the second
    reading, but they are not all stanch, and I do not think any
    calculation is to be relied on."

    'On April 24th Labouchere wrote that Chamberlain and Morley could
    not be got together, Chamberlain sticking to his phrases, and Morley
    writing that Chamberlain's speech is an attempt to coerce the
    Government, and they won't stand coercion.

    'On April 30th Chamberlain wrote to me from Birmingham to get me to
    vote with him against the second reading. "The Bill is doomed. I
    have a list of 111 Liberals pledged against the second reading. Of
    these I know that fifty-nine have publicly announced their
    intentions to their constituents. I believe that almost all the rest
    are certain; but making every allowance for desertions, the Home
    Rule Bill cannot pass without the changes I have asked for. If these
    were made, I reckon that at least fifty of the malcontents would
    vote for the second reading. Besides my 111 there are many more who
    intend to vote for amendments in Committee. The Land Bill has hardly
    any friends;" and then he strongly pressed me to go down to Highbury
    upon the subject.'

To this Sir Charles replied:

    'Pyrford,

    '_May Day_, 1886.

    'My Dear Chamberlain,

    'Lots of people have written to me, confident statements having been
    made that I was against the Bills, which I see Heneage repeats in
    the _Times_ to-day. I have replied that I was strongly against the
    Bill for land purchase, but that as regards the chief Bill I had
    said nothing, and was free to vote as I thought right when the time
    came. I have called my caucus for Friday. We don't have reporters,
    but I think I ought to tell them what I mean to do, and why.

    'As to our being separated, I am most anxious, as you know, that you
    should not vote against the second reading. I know the Bill is
    doomed, but I fancy the Government know that, too, and that some
    change will be made or promised, and it is a question of how much.
    My difficulty in being one to _ask_ for those changes you want is
    that I am against the chief change, as you know. If it is made--as
    seems likely--I shall keep quiet and not say I am against it, but go
    with you and the rest. But--what if it is not made? You see, I have
    said over and over again that, if forced to have a big scheme, I had
    sooner get rid of the Irish members, and that, if forced to choose
    between Repeal and Federation, I prefer Repeal to any scheme of
    Federation I have ever heard of. Now, all this I can swallow
    quietly--yielding my own judgment--if I go with the party; but I
    can't well fight against the party for a policy which is opposed to
    my view of the national interest. If it is of any use that I should
    remain free up to the last instant, I can manage this. I can explain
    my views in detail to the caucus, and not say which way I intend to
    vote; but I do not well see how, when it comes to the vote, I can
    fail to vote for the second reading.

    'The reason, as you know, why I am so anxious for YOU (which matters
    more than I matter at present or shall for a long time) to find
    yourself able if possible to take the offers made you, and vote for
    the second reading, is that the dissolution will wreck the party,
    but yet leave _a_ party--democratic, because all the moderates will
    go over to the Tories: poor, because all the subscribers will go
    over to the Tories; more Radical than the party has ever been; and
    yet, as things now stand, with you outside of it.'

Chamberlain wrote on May 3rd from Highbury:

    'My Dear Dilke,

    'Your letter has greatly troubled me. My pleasure in politics has
    gone, and I hold very loosely to public life just now.

    'The friends with whom I have worked so long are many of them
    separated from me. The party is going blindly to its ruin, and
    everywhere there seems a want of courage and decision and principle
    which almost causes one to despair. I have hesitated to write to you
    again, but perhaps it is better that I should say what is in my
    mind. During all our years of intimacy I have never had a suspicion,
    until the last few weeks, that we differed on the Irish Question.
    You voted for Butt, and I assumed that, like myself, you were in
    favour of the principle of federation, although probably, like
    myself also, you did not think the time had come to give practical
    effect to it. The retention of the Irish representatives is clearly
    the touchstone. If they go, separation must follow. If they remain,
    federation is possible whenever local assemblies are established in
    England and Scotland. Without the positive and absolute promise of
    the Government that the Irish representation will be maintained, I
    shall vote against the second reading. You must do what your
    conscience tells you to be right, and, having decided, I should
    declare the situation publicly at once.

    'It will do you harm on the whole, but that cannot be helped, if you
    have made up your mind that it is right. But you must be prepared
    for unkind things said by those who know how closely we have been
    united hitherto. The present crisis is, of course, life and death to
    me. I shall win if I can, and if I cannot I will cultivate my
    garden. I do not care for the leadership of a party which should
    prove itself so fickle and so careless of national interests as to
    sacrifice the unity of the Empire to the precipitate impatience of
    an old man--careless of the future in which he can have no part--and
    to an uninstructed instinct which will not take the trouble to
    exercise judgment and criticism.

    'I hope you have got well through your meeting to-night. I send this
    by early post to-morrow before I can see the papers.

    'Yours very truly,

    'J. Chamberlain.'

    'The meeting to which Chamberlain in his letter referred was that at
    Preece's Riding School, in which I announced that I had succeeded in
    inducing the Queen's Proctor to intervene.... The meeting was a very
    fine one, and the next day Chamberlain wrote to congratulate me on
    it and on my speech, and added: "Labouchere writes me that the
    Government are at last alive to the fact that they cannot carry the
    second reading without me, and that Mr. G. is going to give way. I
    hope it is true, but I shall not believe it till he has made a
    public declaration."'

Sir Charles replied:

    '76, Sloane Street, S.W.,

    '_Wednesday, May 5th_, 1886.

    'My Dear Chamberlain,

    '... It is a curious fact that we should without a difference have
    gone through the trials of the years in which we were rivals, and
    that the differences and the break should have come now that I
    have--at least in my own belief, and that of most people--ceased for
    ever to count at all in politics.... The fall was, as you know, in
    my opinion final and irretrievable on the day on which the charge
    was made in July last--as would be that, in these days, of any man
    against whom such a false charge was made by conspiracy and careful
    preparation. I think, as I have always thought, that the day will
    come when all will know, but it will come too late for political
    life to be resumed with power or real use....

    'You say you never had a suspicion that we differed on the Irish
    Question. As to land purchase--yes: we used to differ about it; and
    we do not differ about the present Bill. As to the larger question--
    when Morley and I talked it over with you in the autumn, I said
    that, if I had to take a large scheme, I inclined rather to Repeal,
    or getting rid of the Irish members, than to Home Rule. I don't
    think, however, that I or you had either of us very clear or
    definite views, and I am sure that Morley hadn't. You inclined to
    stick to National Councils only, and I never heard you speak of
    Federation until just before you spoke on the Bill in Parliament. I
    spoke in public against Federation in the autumn in reply to
    Rosebery.

    'I do not pretend to have clear and definite views now, any more
    than I had then. I am so anxious, for you personally, and for the
    Radical cause, that anything shall be done by the Government that
    will allow you to vote for the second reading, and so succeed to the
    head of the party purged of the Whig element; so anxious, that,
    while I don't really see my way about Federation, and on the whole
    am opposed to it, I will pretend to see my way, and try and find
    hope about it; so anxious, that, though I still incline to think (in
    great doubt) that it would be better to get rid of the Irish
    members, I said in my last, I think, I would be silent as to this,
    and joyfully see the Government wholly alter their scheme in your
    sense. I still hope for the Government giving the promise that you
    ask. Labouchere has kept me informed of all that has passed, and I
    have strongly urged your view on Henry Fowler, who agrees with you,
    and on the few who have spoken to me. I care (in great doubt as to
    the future of Ireland and as to that of the Empire) more about the
    future of Radicalism, and about your return to the party and escape
    from the Whigs, than about anything else as to which I am clear and
    free from doubt. I don't think that my circumstances make any
    declaration or any act of mine necessary, and on Friday at the
    private meeting I need not declare myself, and can perhaps best help
    bring about the promise which you want by not doing so. Why don't
    you deal with the Chancellor (Lord Herschell), instead of with
    Labouchere, O'Shea, and so forth?

    'I care so much (not about what you name, and it is a pity you
    should do so, for one word of yourself is worth more with me than
    the opinion of the whole world)--not about what people will say, but
    about what you think, that I am driven distracted by your tone. I
    beg you to think that I do not consider myself in this at all,
    except that I should wish to so act as to act rightly. Personal
    policy I should not consider for myself. My seat here will go,
    either way, for certain, as it is a Tory seat now, and will become a
    more and more Tory seat with each fresh registration. If I should
    make any attempt to remain at all in political life, I do not think
    that my finding another seat would depend on the course I take in
    this present Irish matter. This thing will be forgotten in the
    common resistance of the Radicals to Tory coercion. I think, then,
    that by the nature of things I am not influenced by selfish
    considerations. As to inclination, I feel as strongly as any man can
    as to the _way_ in which Mr. Gladstone has done this thing, and all
    my inclination is therefore to follow you, where affection also
    leads. But if this is to be--what it will be--a fight, not as to the
    way and the man, and the past, but as to the future, the second
    reading will be a choice between acceptance of a vast change which
    has in one form or the other become inevitable, and on the other
    side Hartington-Goschen opposition, with coercion behind it. I am
    only a camp follower now, but my place is not in the camp of the
    Goschens, Hartingtons, Brands, Heneages, Greys. I owe something,
    too, to my constituents. There can be no doubt as to the feeling of
    the rank and file, from whom I have received such hearty support and
    following. If I voted against the second reading, unable as I should
    be honestly to defend my vote as you could and would honestly defend
    yours, by saying that all turned on the promise as to the retention
    of the Irish members, I should be voting without a ground or a
    defence, except that of personal affection for you, which is one
    which it is wholly impossible to put forward. If I voted against the
    second reading, I should vote like a peer, with total disregard to
    the opinion of those who sent me to Parliament. Their overwhelming
    feeling--and they never cared for Mr. Gladstone, and do not care for
    him--is, hatred of the Land Bill, but determination to have done
    with coercion. They look on the second reading as a declaration for
    or against large change. They believe that the Irish members will be
    kept, though they differ as to whether they want it. Both you and I
    regard large change as inevitable, and it is certain that as to the
    form of it you must win. The exclusion of the Irish has no powerful
    friends, save Morley, and he knows he is beaten and must give way. I
    still in my heart think the case for the exclusion better than the
    case against it, but all the talk is the other way. The _Pall Mall_
    is helping you very powerfully, for it _is_ a tremendous power, and
    even Mr. G., I fancy, is really with you about it, and not with
    Morley. It seems to me that they must accept your own terms.

    'The meeting was a most wonderful success.

    'Yours ever,

    'Chs. W. D.

    'Since I nearly finished this, your other has come, and I have now
    read it. I have only to repeat that I should not negotiate through
    Labouchere, but through a member of the Cabinet of high character
    who agrees in your view. L. is very able and very pleasant, but
    still a little too fond of fun, which often, in delicate matters,
    means mischief.

    'I have kept no copy of this letter. When one has a "difference with
    a friend," I believe "prudence dictates" that one should keep a
    record of what one writes. I have not done so. I can't really
    believe that you would, however worried and badgered and
    misrepresented, grow hard or unkind under torture, any more than I
    have; but you are stronger than I am, and perhaps my weakness helps
    me in this way. I don't believe in the difference, and I have merely
    scribbled all I think in the old way.'

Chamberlain wrote:

    '_May 6th_, 1886.

    'My Dear Dilke,

    'The strain of the political situation is very great and the best
    and strongest of us may well find it difficult to keep an even mind.

    'I thank you for writing so fully and freely. It is evident that,
    without meaning it, I must have said more than I supposed, and
    perhaps in the worry of my own mind I did not allow enough for the
    tension of yours.

    'We never have been rivals. Such an idea has not at any time entered
    my mind, and consequently, whether your position is as desperate as
    you suppose or as completely retrievable as I hope and believe, it
    is not from this point of view that I regard any differences, but
    entirely as questions affecting our long friendship and absolute
    mutual confidence. If we differ now at this supreme moment, it is
    just as painful to me to lose your entire sympathy as if you could
    bring to me an influence as great as Gladstone's himself.

    'I feel bitterly the action of some of these men ... who have left
    my side at this time, although many of them owe much to me, and
    certainly cannot pretend to have worked out for themselves the
    policy which for various reasons they have adopted. On the
    whole--and in spite of unfavourable symptoms--I think I shall win
    this fight, and shall have in the long-run an increase of public
    influence; but even if this should be the case I cannot forget what
    has been said and done by those who were among my most intimate
    associates, and I shall never work with them again with the
    slightest real pleasure or real confidence. With you it is
    different. We have been so closely connected that I cannot
    contemplate any severance. I hope, as I have said, that this
    infernal cloud on your public life will be dispersed; and if it is
    not I feel that half my usefulness and more--much more--than half my
    interest in politics are gone.... As to the course to be taken, it
    is clear. You must do what you believe to be right, even though it
    sends us for once into opposite lobbies.

    'I do not really expect the Government to give way, and, indeed, I
    do not wish it. To satisfy others I have talked about conciliation,
    and have consented to make advances, but on the whole I would rather
    vote against the Bill than not, and the retention of the Irish
    members is only, with me, the flag that covers other objections. I
    want to see the whole Bill recast and brought back to the National
    Council proposals, with the changes justified by the altered public
    opinion. I have no objection to call them Parliaments and to give
    them some legislative powers, but I have as strong a dislike as ever
    to anything like a really co-ordinate authority in Ireland, and if
    one is ever set up I should not like to take the responsibility of
    governing England.

    'I heartily wish I could clear out of the whole busine&s for the
    next twelve months at least. I feel that there is no longer any
    security for anything while Mr. Gladstone remains the foremost
    figure in politics. But as between us two let nothing come.

    'Yours ever sincerely,

    'J. Chamberlain.'

    'On May 7th Chamberlain wrote:

    '"I hope it will all come right in the end, and though not so
    optimist as I was, I do believe that 'le jour se fera.'

    '"I got more names yesterday against the Bill. I have ninety-three
    now. Labouchere declares still that Mr. G. means to give way, and
    has now a plan for the retention of Irish members which is to go to
    Cabinet to-day or to-morrow."

    'On May 18th I presided at the special meeting of the London Liberal
    and Radical Council, of which I was President, which discussed the
    Home Rule Bill; but I merely presided without expressing opinions,
    and I discouraged the denunciations of Hartington and Chamberlain,
    which, however, began to be heard, their names being loudly hissed.
    On May 27th we had the meeting of the party on the Bill at the
    Foreign Office, which I attended. But there was no expression of the
    views of the minority.'

Mr. Chamberlain wrote to the Press some phrases of biting comment
concerning the meeting of the 18th, and Sir Charles made protest in a
private letter.

    'It is a great pity,' he wrote to Chamberlain, 'that you should not
    have done justice to the efforts and speeches of your friends at
    that meeting. Many were there (and the seven delegates from almost
    every association attended, which made the meeting by far the most
    complete representation of the party ever held) simply for the
    purpose of preventing and replying to attacks on you. For every
    attack on you there was a reply; the amendments attacking you were
    both defeated, and a colourless resolution carried, and Claydon,
    Osborn, Hardcastle and others, defended you with the utmost warmth
    and vigour.'

    'Chamberlain wrote to me (May 20th, 1886) about the attacks which
    were being made on him:

    '"I was disgusted at the brutality of some of the attacks. I am only
    human, and I cannot stand the persistent malignity of interpretation
    of all my actions and motives without lashing out occasionally. You
    will see that I met your letter with an apology. I might complain of
    its tone, but I don't. This strain and tension is bad for all of us.
    I do not know where it will ultimately lead us, but I fear that the
    mischief already done is irretrievable.

    '"I shall fight this matter out to the bitter end, but I am getting
    more and more doubtful whether, when it is out of the way, I shall
    continue in politics. I am 'wounded in the house of my friends,' and
    I have lost my interest in the business."

    'In another letter (May 21st) Chamberlain said: "Your note makes
    everything right between us. Let us agree to consider everything
    which is said and done for the next few weeks as a dream.

    '"I suppose the party must go to smash and the Tories come in. After
    a few years those of us who remain will be able to pick up the
    pieces. It is a hard saying, but apparently Mr. Gladstone is bent on
    crowning his life by the destruction of the most devoted and loyal
    instrument by which a great Minister was ever served." [Footnote: In
    a letter of January 2nd, 1886, Lord Hartington, writing to Lord
    Granville, said: "Did any leader ever treat a party in such a way as
    he (Mr. Gladstone) has done?" (_Life of Granville_, vol. ii., p.
    478).]

    'On June 2nd Chamberlain wrote: "I suppose we shall have a
    dissolution immediately and an awful smash." On that day I spoke on
    the Irish Registration Bills in the House of Commons--almost the
    only utterance which I made in the course of this short Parliament.

    'On June 4th Sir Robert Sandeman, who had sought an interview with
    me to thank me for what I had done previously about the assigned
    districts on the Quetta frontier, came to see me, to tell me the
    present position and to discuss with me Sir Frederick Roberts's
    plans for defence against the eventuality of a Russian advance.'

The defeat of the Home Rule Bill by a majority of thirty came on June
8th, and the General Election followed. [Footnote: See Morley's _Life of
Gladstone_, vol. iii., p. 337, which gives one o'clock on the morning of
the 8th as the time of decision. Sir Charles's Memoir contains among its
pages an article from _Truth_ of October 14th, 1908, marked by him. The
article, which is called 'The Secret History of the First Home Rule
Bill,' states that Mr. Gladstone's language did not make clear that the
proposal to exclude Irish representatives from the Imperial Parliament
was given up. Mr. Chamberlain, who had made the retention of the Irish
members a condition of giving his vote for the second reading, left the
House, declaring that his decision to vote against the Bill was final.
The _Life of Labouchere_, by Algar Thorold, chap, xii., p. 272 _et
seq_., gives the long correspondence between Mr. Chamberlain and Mr.
Labouchere prior to this event.] Sir Charles voted for the Bill.

    'On July 5th I was beaten at Chelsea, and so left Parliament in
    which I had sat from November, 1868.

    'The turn-over in Chelsea was very small, smaller than anywhere else
    in the neighbourhood, and showed that personal considerations had
    told in my favour, inasmuch as we gained but a small number of
    Irish, it not being an Irish district, and had it not been for
    personal considerations should have lost more Liberal Unionists than
    we did.

    'Some of my warmest private and personal friends were forced to work
    and vote against me (on the Irish Question), as, for example, John
    Westlake, Q.C., and Dr. Robert Cust, the learned Secretary of the
    Royal Asiatic Society, and Sir Henry Gordon--General Charles
    Gordon's brother--who soon afterwards died, remaining my strong
    friend, as did these others.

    'James wrote to Lady Dilke, July 26th:

    '"No one but your husband could have polled so many Gladstonian
    votes. London is dead against the Prime Minister."'

Mr. Chamberlain wrote of his deep regret and sympathy that the one
Ministerialist seat which he had earnestly hoped would be kept should
have gone. He pointed out that the falling off in this case was less
than in other London polls; but the reactionary period would continue
while Mr. Gladstone was in politics. If he retired, Mr. Chamberlain
thought the party would recover in a year or two.

There is a warm letter from Mr. Joseph Cowen of Newcastle, who wrote:

    'Chelsea has been going Tory for some time past, and only you would
    have kept it Liberal at the last election.... If you had not been
    one of the bravest men that ever lived, you would have been driven
    away long ago. I admire your courage and sincerely sympathize with
    your misfortunes.... I always believed you would achieve the highest
    position in English statesmanship, and I don't despair of your doing
    so still.'

For a final word in this chapter of discouragement may be given a letter
from Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, who wrote from a detached position, having
been prevented by illness from standing both in 1885 and 1886:

    'What a delightful leader of a party is the G.O.M.! It is an
    interesting subject of speculation, though, thank God, it is one of
    speculation only, what might happen to this country if, like the old
    Red Indian in Hawthorne's novel, he lived to be 300 years old.... My
    own opinions about setting up a Parliament in Dublin are quite
    unchanged, but I look on the G.O.M. as the great obstacle to any
    satisfactory settlement. I see nothing but pandemonium ahead of us.'

The question was whether the future Assembly in Dublin was to be called
a 'Legislature' or a 'Parliament.'

Sir Charles, as a Gladstonian Liberal politician, was involved in the
misfortune of his party. But in the first weeks of July he hoped that
justice in the court of law might soon relieve his personal misfortunes.
That anticipation was rudely falsified. Within a fortnight after he had
lost the seat which had been won and held by him triumphantly in four
General Elections, the second trial of his case was over, and had
followed the course which has been already described.




CHAPTER XLVII

LADY DILKE--76, SLOANE STREET


Sir Charles Dilke's marriage in 1885 extended rather than modified his
sphere of work. Lady Dilke, the Emilia Strong who was studying drawing
in 1859 at South Kensington, [Footnote: See Chapter 11. (Vol. 1., p.
17).] had submitted herself in these long intervening years to such
scholarly training and discipline as gave her weight and authority on
the subjects which she handled.

The brilliant girl's desire to take all knowledge for her kingdom had
been intensified by her marriage at twenty-one to the scholar more than
twice her age. In the words of Sir Charles's Memoir: 'She widened her
conception of art by the teaching of the philosopher and by the study of
the literatures to which the schooling of Mark Pattison admitted her.
She saw, too, men and things, travelled largely with him, became
mistress of many tongues, and gained above all a breadth of desire for
human knowledge, destined only to grow with the advance of years.'
[Footnote: _The Book of the Spiritual Life_, by the late Lady Dilke,
with a Memoir of the Author by Sir Charles W. Dilke, p. 18.]

At twenty-five years of age she was contributing philosophical articles
to the _Westminster Review_, and for years she wrote the review of
foreign politics for the _Annual Register_. Later she furnished art
criticisms to the _Portfolio_, the _Saturday Review_, and the _Academy_,
of which last she was art editor. It was as an art critic that she had
come to be known, and to this work she brought a remarkable equipment;
for to her technical knowledge and artist's training was added a deep
study of the tendencies of history and of human thought. _Art in the
Modern State_, in which she wrote of the art of the 'Grand Siècle' in
its bearing on modern political and social organizations, has been
quoted as the book most characteristic of the philosophical tendency of
her writing, but this did not appear till 1888. The _Renaissance of Art
in France_, which had been published in 1879, was illustrated by
drawings from her own pencil, and in 1884 had appeared _Claude Lorrain_,
written by herself in the pure and graceful French of which she was
mistress.

She had been a pupil of Mulready, whose portrait still decorates the
mantelpiece of her Pyrford home, and in the early South Kensington days
had come much under the influence of Watts and Ruskin. There were
numbered among her friends many who had achieved distinction in the art,
literature, or politics of Europe. Her letters on art to Eugène Müntz,
preserved in the Manuscript Department of the Bibliothèque Nationale,
commemorate the friendship and assistance given to her by the author of
the _History of the Italian Renaissance_, whose admiration for her work
made him persuade her to undertake her _Claude_. It was Taine who bore
witness to her 'veritable erudition on the fine arts of the
Renaissance,' when in 1871, lecturing in Oxford, he used to visit Mark
Pattison and his young wife at Lincoln College, and described the 'toute
jeune femme, charmante, gracieuse, à visage frais et presque mutin, dans
le plus joli nid de vieille architecture, avec lierre et grands arbres.'
[Footnote: 'The Art Work of Lady Dilke,' _Quarterly Review_, October,
1906.] It was Renan, a friend of later years, whom as yet she did not
know, who 'presented' her _Renaissance_ to the Académie des Inscriptions
et Belles-Lettres.

But there was another side to her activities, as intense. Public service
was to her a duty of citizenship, and her keen sympathy with suffering
had inspired her to such study of economic and industrial questions
that, in her effort for the development of organization among women
workers, she was for years 'the practical director of a considerable
social movement.' Her four volumes on Art in France in the Eighteenth
Century, which occupied her from this time onwards, were not more
absorbing to her than was the growth of the Women's Trade Union League.

She had concentrated her powers on a special period of French art, just
as she concentrated them on a certain phase of industrial development;
but her reverence for and pursuit of all learning persisted, and, in the
words of the Memoir written by Sir Charles, 'she was master enough of
human knowledge in its principal branches to know the relation of almost
every part of it to every other.' [Footnote: _Book of the Spiritual
Life,_ Memoir, p. 70.]

The intense mental training of the years of her first marriage had given
her a grasp of essential facts and a breadth of outlook most unusual in
women, and rare among men. She always correlated her own special work to
that of the larger world. She found in the Women's Protective and
Provident Union a little close corporation, full of sex antagonism and
opposition to legislative protection, but under her sway these
limitations gradually disappeared, and the Women's Trade Union movement
became an integral part of industrial progress. It is difficult to
realize now the breadth of vision which was then required to see that
the industrial interests of the sexes are identical, and that protective
legislation does not hamper, but emancipates. It was this attitude which
brought to her in this field of work the friendship and support of all
that was best in the Labour world of her day henceforth to the end.

'It is delightful to talk to Mrs. Mark Pattison,' said Sir Charles Dilke
years before to Sir Henry James. 'She says such wonderful things.' She
had the rare power of revealing to others by a few words things in their
true values, and those who came within the sphere of her influence try
still to recover the attitude of mind which she inspired, to remember
how she would have looked at the fresh problems which confront them, and
to view them in relation to all work and life.

It was this knowledge and breadth of view which told. A perfect speaker,
with tremendous force of personality, charm of manner, beauty of voice,
and command of emotional oratory, her power was greatest when she
preferred to these methods the force of a reasoned appeal. Conviction
waited on these appeals, and in early days, at a public meeting, a group
of youthful cynics, 'out' for entertainment, dispersed with the comment:
'That was wonderful--you couldn't heckle a woman like that.'

Her serious work never detracted from her social charm, which was
influenced by her love and study of eighteenth century French art. Her
wit, gaiety, and the sensitive fancy which manifested itself in her
stories, [Footnote: _The Shrine of Love, and Other Stories_; and _The
Shrine of Death, and Other Stories_.] made up this charm, which was
reflected in the distinction and finish of her appearance. Some touches
seemed subtly to differentiate her dress from the prevailing fashion,
and to make it the expression of a personality which belonged to a
century more dignified, more leisured, and less superficial, than our
own. [Footnote: _Book of the Spiritual Life,_ p. 120.] Her dress
recalled the canvases of Boucher, Van Loo, and Watteau, which she loved.

She played as she worked, with all her heart, delivering herself
completely to the enjoyment of the moment. 'Vous devez bien vous amuser,
Monsieur, tous les jours chez vous,' said a Frenchwoman to Sir Charles
one night at a dinner in Paris. [Footnote: _Book of the Spiritual Life,_
Memoir, p. 96.] In this power of complete relaxation their natures
coincided. Her gaiety matched Sir Charles's own. This perhaps was the
least of the bonds between them. The same high courage, the same
capacity for tireless work, the same sense of public duty, characterized
both.

Sir Charles's real home was the home of all his life, of his father and
grandfather--No. 76, Sloane Street. Pyrford and Dockett were, like La
Sainte Campagne at Toulon, mainly places for rest and play. This home
was a house of treasures--of many things precious in themselves, and
more that were precious to the owners from memory and association.
Through successive generations one member of the family after another
had added to the collection. Many had been accumulated by the last
owner, who slept always in the room that had been his nursery. He
believed he would die, and desired to die, in the house where he was
born. The desire was accomplished, for he died there, on January 26th,
1911, a few months before the long lease expired.

Partly from its dull rich colouring of deep blues and reds and greens,
its old carpets and tapestries, partly from the pictures that crowded
its walls, the interior had the air rather of a family country-house
than of a London dwelling in a busy street.

Pictures, lining the walls from top to bottom of the staircase,
represented a medley of date and association. Byng's Fleet at Naples on
August 1st, 1718, with Sir Thomas Dilkes second in command, hung next to
a view of the Château de la Garde, near Toulon. This picturesque ruin
rose clear in the view from Sir Charles's house at Cap Brun, 'La Sainte
Campagne,' and figures as an illustration in one of Lady Dilke's
stories; 'Reeds and Umbrella Pines' at Carqueiranne, by Pownoll
Williams, kept another memory of Provence. Next to a painting, by Horace
Vernet, of a scene on the Mediterranean coast, little Anne Fisher, born
1588, exhibited herself in hooped and embroidered petticoat, quaint cap
and costly laces, a person of great dignity at six years old. She was to
be Lady Dilke of Maxstoke Castle and a shrewd termagant, mother of two
sons who sided, one with the Commonwealth, the other with the King. The
Royalist Sir Peter Wentworth was a great friend of Milton, with whom he
came in contact on the Committee of State when Milton was Secretary for
the Council of Foreign Tongues. But Cromwell turned him off the Council,
and he was arrested and brought to London for abetting his Warwickshire
tenantry in refusal to pay the Protector's war-taxes. Her Puritan son,
Fisher Dilke, followed, with a sour-faced Puritan divine, and then came
a group of water-colours by Thomas Hood, the author of 'The Song of the
Shirt,' and an intimate friend of the Dilkes.

One of the ancestors, an earlier Peter Wentworth, son of Sir Nicholas
Wentworth (who was Chief Porter of Calais, and knighted by Henry VIII.
at the siege of Boulogne), bore the distinction of having been three
times sent to the Tower. The first was for a memorable speech on behalf
of the liberties of the House of Commons, in 1575. Imprisonment does not
seem to have taught him caution, for he was last imprisoned in 1593,
because he had 'offended Her Majesty,' and a prisoner he remained till
his death in 1596, occupying the period by writing a _Pithie Exhortation
to Her Majesty for Establishing her Successor to the Crowne_.

Engravings of Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Francis Walsingham, Sir Harry Vane,
Fulk Greville, Lord Burleigh, William Warham (the friend of Erasmus,
Archbishop of Canterbury, and Chancellor), Queen Katharine Parr, Robert
Devereux (Earl of Essex), who all came into the Dilke pedigree, hung on
the walls. But the most interesting portrait might have been that of Sir
Charles himself in fancy dress, the Sir Charles of the early eighties
before trouble had lined his face or silvered his hair. This was the
painting of Sir Thomas, afterwards Lord Wentworth, who died in 1551 and
lies in Westminster Abbey. The reversion to type was so striking that
guests would often ask to see again 'the best portrait of Sir Charles.'
[Footnote: This first Baron Wentworth had been knighted for his bravery
in the taking of Braye and Montdidier in the expedition to France of
1523, and in 1529 was summoned to Parliament under the title of Lord
Wentworth of Nettlestead. He attended Henry VIII. in his interview with
the French King at Calais, and under Edward VI. was Lord Chamberlain of
the Household and a member of the Privy Council.]

Among more recent portraits and drawings were a group of trophies,
illustrating Sir Charles's experiences in the Franco-German War. Of
three passes, the first was carried when he was with the Crown Prince
Frederick and the Knights of St. John; the other two showed the change
in his sympathies from Germany to France--one from the Commune, the
other from the national headquarters at Versailles. Here lay a bullet
which struck the wall beside him at Clamart Railway Station, just
missing him; pens taken from the table of the Procureur Impérial at
Wissembourg when the first French town was entered by the Germans; and a
trophy of his birthday in 1871, a bit of the Napoleonic Eagle from the
Guard-room at the Tuileries, smashed by the crowd on that day, September
4th, when the Third Republic was proclaimed.

Then followed old photographs of members of Parliament and Cabinet
Ministers; pictures of Maxstoke Castle, where the elder branch of the
Dilkes had its home; etchings by Rajon; framed numbers of _Le Vengeur_,
printed after the entry of the Versailles army into Paris during the
'semaine sang-lante'; addresses, including some in Greek, presented to
Sir Charles on various occasions. In the double dining-room a famous
portrait of Gambetta--the only portrait taken from life--hung over one
mantelpiece. A favourite citation might have been upon the lips: 'La
France était à genoux. Je lui ai dit, "Lève-toi".' In 1875 Sir Charles
asked Professor Legros to go to Paris and paint Gambetta, who never sat
to any other artist. This portrait hangs now in the Luxembourg, and will
ultimately be transferred to the Louvre, its destination by Sir
Charles's bequest. The only other portrait of Gambetta is that by
Bonnat, painted after death. It was the property of Dilke's friend M.
Joseph Reinach, and the two had agreed to bequeath these treasured
possessions to the Louvre. But the Legros was the more authentic. M.
Bonnat said to Sir Charles: 'Mine is black and white; I never saw him.
Yours is red as a lobster. Mais il paraît qu'il était rouge comme un
homard.' Sir Charles himself wrote: 'It is Gambetta as he lives and
moves and has his being. What more can I ask for or expect?' He always
predicted that its painter, whose merit had never in his opinion been
adequately recognized, would after death come to his due place.

The rooms had been lined with the grandfather's books, but soon after he
came into possession Sir Charles disposed of them. He had a strong
belief in keeping round him only the necessary tools for his work, and a
large library was an encumbrance to him. But sentiment was strong, and
for some time they remained, till a comment of George Odger's sealed
their fate. Looking round the shelves, he remarked with wonderment on
the number of the books and the wisdom of the friend who had read them
all. Sir Charles, conscious that he had not done so, and that he never
should lead the life of a purely literary man, gave away the more
valuable, and sold the rest of the collection. Lord Carlingford profited
by the Junius papers; Mr. John Murray by the Pope manuscripts; the
British Museum by the Caryll papers; and pictures took the place of
shelves. [Footnote: See Chapter XI. (Vol. I., pp. 161, 162).]

A number of fine old prints after Raphael were there, and also a
photograph of the head of Fortune in Burne-Jones's 'Wheel.' Sir Charles
had commissioned Burne-Jones to paint a head of Fortune, and the
correspondence on the subject was sufficiently complete to suggest that
the commission had been executed, though as a fact it was never carried
out. Sir Charles, who knew something of the difficulty of tracing and
attributing pictures, used to declare laughingly that the correspondence
might go far to mislead some critic of the future into search after a
non-existent original. Anyway, the beautiful head with its closed eyes
hung there always, presiding over the varying fortunes of the last
tenants of the house.

The far dining-room opened with French windows on a paved terrace, which
led by steps to a little garden and to the stables beyond. This terrace
was the scene of the morning fencing, when the clashing of foils and Sir
Charles's shouts of laughter resounded to the neighbouring gardens. Lord
Harcourt recalls the parties in the eighties, as one of the
characteristic features of life at 76, Sloane Street. Lord Desborough,
then Mr. W. Grenfell, a first-rate fencer, came frequently, and he
chronicles the 'deadly riposte' of Sir Julian Pauncefote, a regular
attendant when he was in town. Mr. R. C. Lehmann, best known as oarsman
and boxer, but a fencer as well, came whenever he could. A great St.
Bernard, lying waiting for him in the entrance hall, announced his
master's presence.

Baron d'Estournelles de Constant, of the French Embassy, was one of the
most regular attendants. When M. d'Estournelles left London it was to go
to Tunis; and further reference in one of Sir Charles's letters betrays
the pride with which he learnt that this frequenter of his school had
done it credit by 'pinking his man' in a duel. M. Joseph Reinach came to
fence whenever he was in London; so did Italian masters--for example,
the Marchese Fabrizio Panluoci de' Calboli, 'who wants to set up here.'

The _maitre d'armes_ was senior master at the London Fencing Club, and
many young fencers joined these parties to gain experience. Sir Charles
was one of the first Englishmen to use the épée; he fenced always when
in Paris, as in London, and any famous French fencer who visited this
country received as a matter of course an invitation to the morning
meetings at No. 76. [Footnote: Sir Charles fenced whenever he was
abroad, if he could get an opponent. There is a note of 1881: 'August
29th-September 3rd, fenced with de Clairval at La Bourboule.' As late as
1907 he was fencing at Hyères with a master who came over from Toulon on
certain days in the week. Also at the end of 1881 he 'started a local
fencing club in my own street, and trained some good fencers there, and
used to get away to fence there whenever I could find time in the
evening hours.' He took part in a competition at this club, and 'won the
prize for rapier fencing, being beaten, of course, for foil fencing.']
Sir Theodoré Cook, now editor of the _Field_, an antagonist of a later
date, and captain of the first international fencing team of 1903,
speaks of the considerable reputation of Sir Charles as a fencer,
'taking the same place in a quiet way as that Lord Howard de Walden
takes towards the public now' (1913).

It was the 'unconventional style and the boyish enjoyment of his
pastime'--to use Lord Desborough's words--which were characteristic of
Sir Charles. His mischievous attempts to distract his adversary's
attention, his sudden drops to the ground and bewildering recoveries,
his delight at the success of his feints, and contagious merriment, must
have gained the sympathy of even the most formal fencer. Many stories of
these bouts are told. One is that, having driven an antagonist from the
terrace into the Garden Room, into which he was followed by his
favourite cat, Sir Charles caught up and threw the protesting animal at
his opponent, and dealt his final blow at a foe embarrassed by the
double onslaught. Those, however, who know his respect for the dignity
of cats will always regard the story as apocryphal.

He delighted in having near him the pictures of his friends, and there
were many on the next landing, in the vestibule and the Blue Room to
which it led. Mr. Chamberlain, keen-eyed and alert, looked out from
Frank Holl's canvas. Fawcett, [Footnote: Now in the National Portrait
Gallery, as also Holl's 'Chamberlain,' by Sir Charles's bequest.]
painted by Ford Madox Brown in 1871, recalled an earlier friendship, as
did the portrait of John Stuart Mill, who, never having sat to any
painter, just before his death allowed Watts to paint this for Sir
Charles. The picture came home on the day Mill died, and is the
original. It was left by will to the Westminster Town Hall. The picture
in the National Portrait Gallery is a replica, painted by Sir Charles's
leave. By Watts was also a beautiful portrait of Sir Charles himself,
the pendant to another which has gone. He and his first wife were
painted for each other, but the portrait of her seemed to him so
inadequately to render the 'real charm' of the dead woman that he
destroyed it. The illustrations of this book contain some reproductions
of pictures mentioned here.

Reminiscent of earlier family friendships were the Keats relics here and
in Sir Charles's own study. Many of these had been bought by old Mr.
Dilke from Keats's love, Fanny Brawne, to save them from the indignity
of an auction.

In the Blue Room also hung some extraordinarily fine pictures by Blake,
who was the friend of Sir Charles's grandfather--among them 'The
Crucifixion,' 'The Blasphemer,' and 'The Devil,' [Footnote: 'I gave four
of my Blakes to the South Kensington Museum in 1884.'] The best loved
both by the grandfather and by Sir Charles was the beautiful 'Queen
Catherine's Dream.' A precious copy of _The Songs of Innocence_,
hand-painted by Blake and his wife, completed the collection. There were
several reliefs by Dalou in the house, the finest let in over the
mantelpiece of the Blue Room, a copy of Flaxman's Mercury and Pandora.
They were executed for Sir Charles when the sculptor was in London in
great distress after the Commune, before the amnesty which retrieved his
fortunes.

Here also were reminiscences of Provence. One side of the wall was
largely covered by a picture of Fréjus by Wislin, painted in the days
when St. Raphael and Valescure did not exist, and when the old town rose
clear from the low ground as Rome rises from the Campagna, the beautiful
Roquebrune, a spur of Sir Charles's beloved Mountains of the Moors,
behind it. Sèvres china, vases, bronzes, filled the window ledges,
presents to the first Baronet from the Emperor of Austria, Napoleon
III., the Crown Prince of Prussia (afterwards the Emperor Frederick),
and other royal persons and Governments, with whom his Exhibition work
brought him into touch.

At the time when Horace Walpole's collection at Strawberry Hill was
sold, Sir Charles's grandfather had stayed at Twickenham, and had
brought away many purchases, which peopled the Red and Green
Drawing-rooms on the next landing. There was a little group of
miniatures in which the 'Beautiful Gunnings' and a charming 'Miss
Temple' figured; in another group, miniatures of Addison, of Mme. Le
Brun, of Molière, came from Lady Morgan, whose pen of bog-oak and gold,
a gift to her from the Irish people, hung in Sir Charles's own study.
The best of the miniatures were those by Peter Oliver, and portrayed
Frederick of Bohemia, Elector Palatine, and his wife Elizabeth, Princess
Royal of England, afterwards married to Lord Craven; while the finest of
all was 'a son of Sir Kenelm Digby, 1632.' It was one of 'several
others' which Walpole 'purchased at a great price,' a purchase which was
thus chronicled 'by Mason (Junius) in a letter to Walpole: 'I
congratulate you on the new miniatures, though I know one day they will
become Court property and dangle under the crimson-coloured shop-glasses
of our gracious Queen Charlotte.' The set were all brought together for
the first time since 1842 at the Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition.

In these two drawing-rooms, among the medley of enamelled and inlaid
tables, royal gifts and collectors' purchases, pictures by Cranach,
Mabuse, Van Goyen, Mignard, and many more, some special objects stood
out. These were a beautiful Madonna by Memling, on a circular panel,
from Lord Northwick's collection; the Strawberry Hill marble version of
the famous Bargello relief by Donatello, of the head of the infant St.
John the Baptist; and a portrait ascribed to Cornelius Jansen, which,
owing to the fleurs-de-lis on the chair, passed by the name of 'the
Duchess,' a portly lady of some dignity, with beautiful white hands and
tapering fingers. Lady Dilke's researches, however, placed the lady as
Anne Dujardin, an innkeeper of Lyons. The painter, young Karl Dujardin,
unable to pay his reckoning, had settled it by marrying his hostess and
taking her to Amsterdam, and the fleurs-de-lis on the chair explained
that the lady was of French extraction. A Flemish head of Margaret of
Austria, Regent of the Netherlands, had come from the Gwydyr Collection.
She was much exhibited, but her main interest was due to Sir Charles's
intense admiration for the governing capacity and the overshadowed life
of the woman. He made two pilgrimages to the church at Brou, near
Bourg-en-Bresse, where her sculptured face, closely resembling that of
the portrait, looks out from tomb and windows, as she lies side by side
with Philibert le Beau, the husband of her love and of her youth, in the
magnificent shrine she built for him.

Tapestry hangings divided the rooms from each other, and in many cases
only heavy curtains divided them from the stairs.

Above these rooms, Sir Charles's little study, occupied all day by his
secretary or himself, was lined with books of reference and piles of
despatch-boxes, while every spare foot on the wall held relics of the
past. There was the Herkomer portrait of his second wife, there also a
copy of a favourite picture, Bellini's Doge Leonardo Loredano; the
portrait of Keats, the only one Severn did from the life--now on loan at
the National Portrait Gallery--old political cartoons of Chelsea days,
portraits and prints of John Wilkes, and a head of Mazzini. Felix
Moscheles (the nephew of Mendelssohn and baby of the Cradle Song)
painted Mazzini. Concerning its subject the Memoir notes: 'In the course
of 1872 I lost a good friend in Mazzini, whose enthusiasms, Italian and
religious, I at that time scarcely shared, but whose conversation and
close friendship I deeply valued.... The modernness of the Universal
Cigarette Smoking Craze may be judged by the fact that Mazzini was the
first man I ever knew who was constantly smoking cigarettes.'

The rest was a medley impossible to catalogue: portraits of Charles
Lamb, who had been the grandfather's friend; a scarce proclamation by
the Pretender; medals and other 'Caryll' relics; rapiers, pistols which
had travelled with Sir Charles through America; a section of the Trinity
Hall boat which was head of the river in 1862 and 1864; seven cups,
trophies of rowing, walking, fencing, and shooting matches, with shots
dug up on his Toulon estate which were mementoes of the British
blockades of the town. Apart from works of reference, a special case was
given to autographed books from Hood, Rogers the poet, Gambetta,
Laveleye, Louis Blanc, Castelar, Cardinal Manning, Queen Victoria, and
many more. In this collection figured all Sir Charles's college prizes,
carefully preserved; the family Bible of Lord Leicester, uncle to Sir
Philip Sidney, with Dilke family entries; and a little volume in which
his second wife had written for him some of the most beautiful passages
from 'Queens' Gardens' in _Sesame and Lilies_; it was bound in white
vellum and 'blessed by Ruskin.' Here, too, were many Keats letters and
books afterwards left by will to Hampstead.

A hoard of treasures filled a little book-room above--his mother's
sketches, drawings of his first wife driving her ponies in Sloane
Street, photographs and trinkets of hers, old family caricatures, and
also some original sketches by Leech. In the room next to it, occupied
by his grandmother till her death in 1882, was a John Collier of the
first Lady Dilke.

When the grandmother's sitting-room was used later by Sir Charles's
second wife, its main features were a small reference library of French
art and a collection of books on Labour. Before the fireplace, on the
writing-table as it was in 1885, were bowls of French porcelain filled
once a week with fresh flowers from the Toulon garden--paper white
narcissus and purple anemones or big violets of Provençal growth.

Sir Charles's bedroom above was the old nursery, connected with his
mother's room, in which he was born, and out of which opened a little
room where as a child he slept. His memories of that room were the
terrors of a nervous boy, lying alone in the dark, creeping downstairs
to sit--a tiny white-robed figure--as near as possible to the
drawing-room door, to get comfort from the hum of talk or thunder of the
four-handed piano pieces of the period.

His own room for many years was full of drawings by his second wife--her
studies under Mulready, her drawings for her _Renaissance_, and other
pen-and-ink sketches by her hand, as well as two miniatures of her by
Pollet. Some of Frank Dicey's Thames water-colours, one showing Sir
Charles's river house at Dockett Eddy, and sketches from his own pen or
brush made in his Russian, American, and world-wide wanderings, were
here also. In a tiny glazed bookcase by the fire were some 'favourite
books,' a volume or two of Kipling, two volumes of Anatole France, next
to a cookery book of 1600, Renan's _Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse_,
and a volume of Aubanel. The place of honour was given to a deeply
scored copy of Jeremy Taylor's _Golden Grove_.

Beside his great-uncle's Peninsular medal and clasps hung one of Roty's
medals, a present from the artist. There were several of Roty's
beautiful medallions in the house, the finest one of Sir Charles
himself, explained by the legend on the back as 'done for his wife.' She
had it made, and it was always with her.

There were a good many of W. E. F. Britten's pictures, painted for Sir
Charles; the finest was that of 'St. Francis preaching to the Birds,' a
thing of delicate colour and taste, which fitted with his love of the
Umbrian Holy Land and went later to the country cottage at Pyrford.
There was more force in a large crayon drawing of the Earl of
Southampton in the Tower: 'his cat had just arrived down the chimney,
probably saving his master's reason by relief of the intolerable tension
of lonely confinement.'

The painted cats, or Miss Chaplin's modelled pussies, of which there
were many, were seldom without some magnificent living representative at
76, Sloane Street. Zulu, an enormous dark long-haired cat, was very
popular; but the last of the 'Head Cats,' Calino, was so engaging that,
at his death about 1908, Sir Charles decided that he should never be
replaced. The sway of these cats was despotic, but there were occasions
on which their own territory was too limited for them, and messages
would come from far down the street demanding the removal of the
reigning favourite from some article of furniture where it had ensconced
itself with such majesty that a show of violence was out of the
question. Among his precious books was a cat story--privately printed
and bound--which his second wife had gradually evolved among the
wonderful essays in story-telling with which, when he was jaded, she
diverted him. This held so large a share in his affection that it nearly
displaced his little French copy of the _Contes de Perrault_, containing
the adventures of the Marquis of Carabas and Puss in Boots. At the
winter cottage at Pyrford, among the pines, was a cattery, where Persian
tailless cats, some ginger and some white, were bred. A list of names
was kept ready for them, and Babettes, Papillons, Pierrots and
Pierrettes, Mistigrises and Beelzebubs, were distributed to friends and
acquaintances. Among the treasured pathetic scraps kept in his father's
desk, his executors found a pencil drawing by his wife, the closed
window of a silent house, into which the perfectly sketched figure of a
little kitten was trying to enter.

In the gracious setting of this house the pervading atmosphere was that
of work. The three generations of Dilkes whom it had sheltered had each
found the sphere for which he was best fitted, and pursued it
tirelessly. The grandfather, beloved old scholar and critic; the father,
indefatigable organizer of international exhibitions, horticulturist,
newspaper proprietor, member of Parliament--both passed on the
traditions of strenuous labour to the great Parliamentarian who was now
the occupant of the house. He had absorbed those traditions and far
outvied his predecessors, working day and night, bringing down from his
bedroom almost illegible memoranda to be deciphered by his secretary in
the morning.

From 1880 to 1885 his accession to public office had intensified the
work. Messengers with official boxes waited in the hall; callers on
political or electoral business, to be interviewed by him or his
secretaries, filled the Blue and Red Rooms. After the morning's fencing
he passed rapidly from letters to interviews till the Office or the
House of Commons claimed him, and his faithful coachman, Charles Grant,
who when he died in 1901 had served his master for thirty years, waited
for him at the door. Yet with all this the house continued, as in his
father's day, to be noted for its hospitality, and the lists of guests
in the tattered diaries bear witness to the enormous and varied circle
of Sir Charles's friends. Here met foreign diplomatists and artists,
English statesmen, and men of letters. Even Cardinal Manning broke his
rule against dining out, as 'yours is a Cabinet dinner,' to come to 76,
Sloane Street; but as he met M. de Franqueville, Baron Ferdinand de
Rothschild, and the friend whom the Cardinal designated to be his
biographer, the future author of _France_, J. E. C. Bodley, there must
have been talk of other subjects than 'Housing of the Poor.' Indeed,
absence of 'shop' seems to have been one of the charms of these dinners,
and Mr. G. W. Osborn, the Chairman of the Chelsea Liberal Association,
records that, even when the local leaders met there, some outside
element was always introduced which made the talk general.

On another occasion Sir Charles notes: 'July 9th, 1884. On this day
Cardinal Manning dined with me, and gave me, in return for a Spanish
crucifix with which I had presented him, a miniature of "our patron, St.
Charles,"' which now, he adds, '(1891 and 1903) hangs in my bedroom.
Manning and H. von Bismarck met at my table--I think for the first
time.'

His first invitation to Mr. Gladstone, of October 26th, 1882, was to
meet the Duc de Broglie: 'the leader of the Conservative party in France
is at this moment a sufficiently interesting figure for me to think you
may like to come to meet him, if you are not engaged.'

Such social life, like the morning's rapid turn with the foils or the
Sunday afternoon on the river, helped to save him from breakdown under a
strain of work persistently intense. Another quality which saved him was
his power of turning at once and completely from one occupation to
another.

A friend thus describes him as he appeared in 1885: 'There was in him a
quality of boyishness I have never seen in any other man, coupled with
deep gravity and seriousness, and the transition from one mood to the
other came with lightning rapidity. Appeal to him on some question of
high politics, even at a moment of the most joyous relaxation, and his
face gravened, his bearing changed; he pulled himself together with a
trick of manner habitual to the end, and the 'boy' became the statesman
before it seemed the last echoes of his laughter had died away. We all
prophesied for him accession to the highest offices of the State; for
though so far the offices which he had held had been of but minor rank,
yet he had magnified these offices till they became of the first
importance, and his knowledge and authority were as great as were his
charm and his power of gathering round him supporters and friends. He
spoke with the authority of one who knows his value to the nation which
he serves.'

So with Sir Charles's second marriage the house entered on its last
phase, and the dark days which followed were lightened for its two
occupants by mutual confidence and the support of an abiding love.




CHAPTER XLVIII

FOREIGN POLICY


After a brief stay at Royat, whither doctor's orders had sent Lady
Dilke, Sir Charles returned with her, in September, 1886, to the little
riverside cottage at Dockett. Thence, as autumn drew on, they moved to
the other cottage that had been built among the pines on the sandy ridge
near Woking.

No longer having a seat in the House of Commons, Sir Charles again
resumed the pen, by which he had first gained distinction.

In the English home politics of 1887, the Irish Question predominated as
it had never done before: Home Rule was being thrashed out on every
platform. This was a matter on which Sir Charles, to use his own words,
'never clearly saw his way'; it was one that he naturally avoided, for
it had separated him from his most intimate political associate, and he
turned to the field of foreign affairs which had continuously occupied
him during his tenure of office, and which, save during the episode of
the franchise negotiations, had been his central concern.

For a moment he had the notion of entering into the business of
newspaper management. His object was not to secure literary reputation,
but to direct and influence public opinion. Early in 1887 he wrote to
his friend Mr. Thursfield of the _Times_:

    'What I want is work on foreign affairs, or rather external affairs,
    or foreign and colonial. I would prefer not to write, but to suggest
    and supervise foreign news, and to work up the subjects of the
    leaders which others would write. If I wrote, I think I should write
    less well than other people, because I always write as I speak, and
    not as people are taught to write.'

Nothing came of this idea; but it was a proposal remarkable in its
self-depreciation, because it was made when work from his pen was
already having a conspicuous success. Beginning in January, 1887, a
series of six articles dealing with the existing position of the six
Great Powers appeared in the _Fortnightly Review_, anonymously, but the
author was at once identified. They sent the _Review_ into repeated
editions. They appeared translated into French in the _Nouvelle Revue_,
and were discussed all over Europe. Later in the summer they were
published in book form, and called in English _The Present Position of
European Politics_ and in French _L'Europe en 1887_.

In the author's own words, the articles dealt with 'facts and
tendencies'; and though he would have been the last to hold himself a
prophet, saying that in the nature of things 'two years meant for ever
in politics,' much that he wrote is still of interest, and the
suggestion of Mr. Erskine Childers' hero that we should 'Read Dilke' is
not yet out of date. [Footnote: _Riddle of the Sands_, by Erskine
Childers, popular edition, p. 127. First published March, 1903.]

The keynote of the book is contained in the opening words, 'The present
position of the European world is one in which sheer force holds a
larger place than it has held in modern times since the fall of
Napoleon.' This reign of force the author traced back to 1878, the date
of the Treaty of Berlin, but it was originally due, as he pointed out,
to the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine in 1871, which had left a permanent
source of irritation in the European States system. Nevertheless, he
recognized that for the time the continuance of Prince Bismarck's
policy, based as it was on the maintenance of the Treaty, meant peace,
because Prince Bismarck believed peace to be necessary for the
maintenance in undiminished strength of the German Empire, wedged in
between France and Russia, the former always hostile, the latter an
uncertain quantity. An alliance with Austria-Hungary was necessary to
this policy: an alliance dictated by the fact that no other was likely
to be permanent. Italy, it was true, had recently joined the alliance;
but Italy, like Russia, was an uncertain factor, and Sir Charles Dilke
believed that, if a critical moment were to come, the desire to get the
Trentino would be stronger than the ties of any alliance. The policy of
Prince Bismarck was accordingly to prevent a Russo-French alliance, and
to help Russia to push into the Far East; to help her also in the
Balkans, but not beyond the point at which Austria might remonstrate;
and to prevent Austria from seeking anything calculated to precipitate a
war between herself and Russia, such as an attempt to add to the
position which she had obtained in the Balkan Peninsula under the Treaty
of Berlin. This policy also involved keeping Turkey quiet and preventing
a league of the Balkan States, lest such a league should irritate Russia
and Austria and produce a European conflagration.

General Fadejew, in a celebrated pamphlet [Footnote: General Fadejew,
_Über Russland's Kriegsmacht und Kriegspolitik_, Leipzig, 1870,
translated from the Russian.] which fluttered all the Chancelleries of
Europe in the early seventies, had said that the road from Russia to
Constantinople lay through Vienna; and Vienna, Sir Charles agreed with
the Russian general, was the centre to be watched, for it was there that
the key of European policy was to be found. 'Austria interests me,' he
wrote, when preparing his book, to Sir William White, the Ambassador at
Constantinople. 'I can't leave London, but I'm thinking of sending a man
to Vienna to tell me certain things. If so, to whom should he go?' And
he watched the strange development of events in Bulgaria. Early in
January he notes an interview with 'Dr. Stoiloff, the ablest man except
the brutal Stambuloff, and the leader of the Conservative party' in
Bulgaria, where the perpetual intrigues of Russian agents, official and
unofficial, had recently culminated, in August, 1886, in the kidnapping
of the reigning chief of the State, Prince Alexander of Battenberg, and
had thereby created an Austrian party: events which were to have many
long-drawn-out consequences, as the following century to its own cost
was to find out. Bulgaria from this time began to move in an orbit of
her own, distinct from, and often unfriendly to, the other Balkan
States.

In 1887 it was still a current belief--especially on the part of many of
Sir Charles's own political friends--that Germany was eagerly watching
for an opportunity to seize the German provinces of Austria, and that
Austria was eagerly watching for an opportunity 'to go to Salonica,' as
the current phrase had it. The two propositions were almost mutually
destructive, but, without insisting on this rather obvious
consideration, Sir Charles was well aware that (even apart from reasons
of international policy) Germany could not desire the disruption of
Austria, because the German provinces of Upper and Lower Austria and
Styria did not lie next to North Germany, but were cut off from it by
countries in which the most enterprising of all Slavonic peoples--the
Czechs of Bohemia--'hated the Germans with a deadly hatred,' and
already, even in 1887, had got the upper hand. Count Bismarck himself
had resisted--and successfully--the desire of the military party to
annex Bohemia in 1866 after Sadowa. The permanent exclusion of Austria
and the House of Hapsburg from Germany was also no sudden or ephemeral
policy. In the middle of the seventeenth century, as the author of the
_Holy Roman Empire_ had reminded his readers, it had been proposed by
the famous publicist Philippe Chemnitz, who wrote under the name of
'Hippolytus à Lapide,' as the surest means of securing a permanent unity
of some kind in Germany. [Footnote: See Bryce, _Holy Roman Empire_,
chap. xx., p. 386; Louis Léger, _Histoire de l'Autriche-Hongrie_, chap.
xv., p. 258.] It had been adopted by the leaders in the Frankfurt
Parliament of 1848-49, and Count Bismarck was the inheritor of these
traditions when he finally expelled the House of Hapsburg in 1866, and
thus translated ancient theories into modern facts. It was therefore
highly improbable, to say the least, that only a few years after the
Treaty of Berlin he should be engaged in an attempt to nullify his own
work. [Footnote: On January 14th, 1849, the Frankfurt Parliament voted
the exclusion of Austria from Germany.]

Austria, Sir Charles Dilke pointed out, some day by mere competition
with Russia, if that Power made further advances, might perhaps be
forced forward unwillingly to Salonica; but by thus seizing Macedonia--a
far larger proposition than that of the annexation of Bosnia and the
Herzegovina, and in many respects a different one--it was clear she
would 'increase her military weakness, would deeply offend the Servians,
the Greeks, and the Bulgarians, and by increasing the number of her
Slavonic subjects would only hasten her own break-up.' Here, in fact,
lay the real danger to the 'Eastern Empire.' Prince Bismarck, as a
matter of fact, was of all men in Europe the man who most desired to
keep Austria alive. 'It is a necessity to him that she should continue
to exist. Once destroy Austria, and Germany is left to fight it out with
France and Russia without assistance, for in this case Italy would not
move,' notwithstanding the recently renewed Triple Alliance. That a
military party existed in Austria which might desire to go to Salonica,
and would also rejoice in a war with Italy, Sir Charles was well aware;
but he saw no reason to believe that it would succeed in forcing these
adventures on the Ballplatz, or on the statesmen of Hungary, who above
all things dreaded an increase of the Slavonic elements in the Empire.
The Austria-Hungary of 1887 was the Austria-Hungary of the long rule of
Count Taafe at Vienna, of M. Koloman Tisza at Buda-Pesth, and of Count
Kalnoky at the Ballplatz; and it was not unreasonable at that time to
consider it possible that, 'after the division of the respective spheres
of influence of Bulgaria, Greece, and Serbia, in Macedonia, Austria
might gradually increase her influence in the Balkan States; and if she
would take the bold step of making up an arrangement for evacuating part
of Bosnia and the Herzegovina, so as to show she had no intention of
going southwards to Salonica, she might bring together in a general
understanding with herself the small States and the Turks.' This,
however, Sir Charles admitted, was probably impracticable, 'as Austro-
Hungarian pride would effectually prevent the abandonment of any portion
of Bosnia.' But so late as 1909 Dilke told Lord Fitzmaurice, when, at
the time of her final annexation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina,
Austria-Hungary had retired from the Sandjak of Novi Bazar, that he
thought the British Foreign Office 'had made too great a fuss' over the
annexation, which had been certain to come, sooner or later. [Footnote:
Lord Fitzmaurice was then Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and
represented the Foreign Office in the House of Lords. See further as to
Sir Charles Dilke's' views on the events of 1908, Chapter LVIII.]

Mr. Robert Lowe is credited with having said that a metaphysician
resembled a blind man groping in a dark room for a black hat that was
not there. The comparison might almost have been applied to the Foreign
Minister of the Dual Empire, vainly seeking for a coherent policy among
the mists and cross-currents of rival nationalities. The charge to be
made against the foreign policy of Austria-Hungary was, in fact, not
that she had got a policy--good or bad, ambitious or the reverse--but
that it was almost impossible as a rule to ascertain whether she had any
policy at all: the explanation being that her internal problems
paralyzed her action abroad. 'It was difficult to be a patriot in
Austria, for nobody exactly knew to the representatives of what race,
tongue, or language, his allegiance was due.' 'Austria was indeed of all
countries in the world by far the most difficult to govern, and as a
necessity of her condition she must before all things long for peace....
Under her many difficulties caused by racial divisions she had become
constitutionally timid and naturally slow to move, and the outlook was
far from promising ... nor had Prince Bismarck'--notwithstanding the
terms of the Triple Alliance--'bound Germany to espouse all the quarrels
of Austria, no matter where and with whom.' It had been said, and by
Prince Bismarck himself, that the bones of not a single Pomeranian
grenadier should be allowed to whiten in a Balkan quarrel. [Footnote:
Speech in the Reichstag, December 16th, 1876.] 'The only real question
worth asking was: Will Austria resist Russian pretensions, and will she,
if in danger of conquest, be supported by allies, or will she yield and
take her share of the spoils?' [Footnote: _The Present Position of
European Politics_, pp. 185, 193, 194, 205, 206, 219, 221-224.]

The long-standing jealousies, also, of Austria-Hungary, Italy, and
Greece, in regard to the future of the Adriatic coast, Sir Charles Dilke
felt were not sufficiently appreciated in England, where public opinion
was too much inclined to see the Turk and the Slav only in every
question concerned with the Balkan Peninsula. When Under-Secretary for
Foreign Affairs in 1880-81, he had given a strong support to the
proposals in regard to Albania of Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, which had the
approval of Mr. Goschen, then Special Ambassador to the Porte--proposals
which were framed with a view to the ultimate autonomy of the country,
and were not accepted by the European Commission of Reforms, mainly
owing to the opposition of Austria-Hungary. [Footnote: See _Life of Lord
Goschen_, vol. i, p. 215. These proposals were revived in 1912, and,
which is remarkable, by Count Berchtold, the Foreign Minister of
Austria-Hungary, in a despatch in favour of 'progressive
decentralization.' See an article in the _Edinburgh Review_, April,
1913: 'Austria and Italy have been rivals for influence in Albania, as
Austria and Russia were rivals in Macedonia. It was because of this
rivalry that the Treaty of Berlin, so far as it applied to the European
provinces of Turkey, was never properly carried into effect. For the
same reason the Fitzmaurice proposal of 1880 was defeated by the
opposition of Vienna. The suggestion was that a greater Albania should
be created, which would have been autonomous under a European guarantee.
It is among the ironies of history that this scheme, rejected by Austria
when it came from a friendly and neutral source, should have been put
forward by the Austrian Foreign Office itself thirty-two years later.
Count Berchtold's Circular Note of August 14th, 1912, revived the
Fitzmaurice programme. The proposition came too late.'] But in _The
Present Position of European Politics_ it is seen how the author's
increasing confidence in the future of Greece led to a change of opinion
on this, the most intricate, perhaps, of all diplomatic questions
connected with the Near East. He now advocated as large an extension as
possible of the existing northern boundary of Greece, and held that the
rest of Albania should be joined to Greece by some form of personal
union, which ultimately might grow into a closer tie, bearing in mind
the friendly cooperation of Greeks and Albanians in the War of
Independence against Turkey, and the fact that a strong Albanian element
already existed in the Greek kingdom. [Footnote: _The Present Position
of European Politics_, pp. 146, 148, 193, 206, 214-217, 232, 237, 238.]
A European Congress seemed to him the only method to avoid the ultimate
arbitrament of war in this mass of tangled questions, but experience had
shown that a Congress was useless unless the Great Powers had settled
the main questions beforehand in agreement among themselves. Experience
had unfortunately also shown the extreme difficulty of obtaining any
such agreement.

'Austria ought to have been the heir of Turkey; the protector of a
Greece extended to include Albania, Macedonia, the Islands, and the
coast to Constantinople and down to Asia Minor; the friend of Servia and
Roumania, and what not.' But these things remained in the class of
visions, even if occasionally some Austrian or Hungarian statesman, like
Herr von Kallay, seemed disposed to grasp them, and to renew the
tradition of the forward policy attributed to Prince Eugène of Savoy and
the Archduke Charles. Hungary also had made Roumania her antagonist by
her illiberal policy in regard to the navigation of the Danube. Any
permanent confederation of the Balkan States as distinct from a
temporary alliance for some special and defined object, such as a
possible attack on Turkey, seemed therefore no longer possible,
especially after the recent events in Bulgaria. Meanwhile there was to
be peace, because Prince Bismarck so willed it. [Footnote: See _Der
Krimkrieg und die Österreichische Politik_, von Heinrich Friedjung,
chap, ii., p. 16 (Stuttgart und Berlin, 1907); Louis Léger, _Études
Slaves: L'Autriche-Hongrie et la Question d'Orient_, p. 395.]

The overmastering sense of the importance of whatever happened at Vienna
and Constantinople--of which every page of _The Present Position of
European Politics_ is the evidence--will largely explain Sir Charles
Dilke's views on another question. It has been seen that he was amongst
the strongest advocates of an active policy in Egypt in 1882, agreeing
in this with Mr. Chamberlain and Lord Hartington. But at an early period
after the Battle of Tel-el-Kebir he pronounced himself, when the
question arose, in favour of the earliest possible evacuation of the
country, and contemplated it as a possibility of the immediate future.
[Footnote: Sir Charles wrote in the _Speaker_ of January 23rd, 1892, in
reply to Admiral Maxse: 'Admiral Maxse appears to think that my views in
favour of evacuation have been recently formed....' 'There was a time,
_before_ the intervention of the condominium with France by Lord Derby,
when I held a different view; but it was not only formed under
circumstances very different from those which have now existed for
fourteen years, but also at a time when I had not given special
consideration to our probable naval and military position in the event
of war.'] Egypt to him, considered from the point of view of British
interests, was subsidiary to Constantinople. All that really signified
was the right of passage through the Suez Canal, which could, he
believed, be secured by international arrangement and the neutralization
of the country, a plan for which, as already seen, was being actually
discussed by Mr. Gladstone's Government when it fell. Egypt, in fact, he
regarded as part of Asia rather than of Africa, and he believed that
time would make this more clear than ever, in proportion as railways
were developed in Syria, Arabia, and Asia Minor. In this connection
Constantinople, not Alexandria or Cairo, seemed to him the decisive
factor: an opinion which brought him into opposition with those who held
the view that since the occupation of Egypt by British troops events at
Constantinople had become comparatively unimportant to this country. He
also feared that if some great European crisis were to arise, in which
Great Britain was involved, the occupation of Egypt might be a hindrance
rather than a source of strength, and might hamper our exertions in
other lands.

He had, however, no fear of allowing the Bosporus and the Dardanelles to
be opened under suitable conditions to the passage of Russian ships of
war, but only on the condition laid down by Sir William White, that the
right accorded to Russia must be accorded to the ships of war of other
nations; and this partly out of regard to the dignity of the British
flag, and partly because any exclusive right accorded to Russia would be
resisted by the States bordering on the Black Sea and by those
interested in the trade and navigation of the Danube. But the opening of
the Straits was one thing, the possession of Constantinople by Russia
was another, and in his opinion would cause a European convulsion; for
he saw in Constantinople what has since been termed 'the great strategic
centre of the world': [Footnote: The expression was used by Mr. Winston
Churchill in a speech on November 15th, 1915, in the House of Commons.]
the meeting-place and clearing-house of the trade and politics of three
continents.

'Russia at Constantinople,' he wrote, 'would mean the destruction of
Austria and the Russification of a large portion of her Slavs. When
Austria had disappeared or had been transformed out of all knowledge,
Germany, placed between France and Russia, would be still weaker in her
military position than she is at present. It is no doubt impossible that
Germany can really contemplate that contingency with complete
satisfaction. And if she cannot get other people to help Austria to keep
Russia away from Constantinople, it is probable that she would be forced
to interfere to help to do so, however stoutly her rulers may make the
opposite declaration. One of my most valued correspondents, whose
criticisms have been of the highest use to me, admits that to place
Turkey at the head of a Balkan Confederation would be "adding a badger
to your three unfriendly cats and altogether hostile dog"; but,
nevertheless, he thinks that such a combination would be possible on
account of the overwhelming dread of the danger of absorption by Russia;
and I think it right to state his view, although I am unable to modify
that which I have said as to the difficulties which the dispute for
Macedonia causes.' [Footnote: _The Present Position of European
Politics_, pp. 372, 373.]

In the autumn of 1891 this note occurs in the Memoir: 'John Morley
having made a speech in favour of the cessation of the Egyptian
occupation, I wrote to tell him how pleased I was, and in his reply he
asked why we should go on mechanically applauding Lord Salisbury's
foreign policy, which left this danger standing.'

Mr. Morley's satisfaction was, however, not shared by Mr. Chamberlain,
who wrote in January, 1892, 'to implore me to have regard to the opinion
of society about Egypt.'

'I do not mean fashionable society,' he added, 'but political society,
and the great majority of cultivated politicians. I think you do go out
of your way to offend them when you advocate evacuation of Egypt, and I
ask you to consider if it is worth your while. It is not necessary for
your constituents, and with regard to the others, there is no need to
add to their causes of anger against you. My advice is, "Be as Radical
as you like, be Home Ruler if you must, but be a little Jingo if you
can."'

The correspondence had begun in the autumn of 1891, when Sir Charles
wrote the following letter:

    'Pyrford by Maybury,
    'Near Woking,
    '_October_ 19_th_, 1891.

    'My Dear Chamberlain,

    'I have never said that there are not conceivable circumstances in
    which it would be better for us to be in Egypt. I'm going to try and
    discuss them in the book I am at work on. _Re_ command of the sea
    against France. We have not quite a sufficient force to blockade
    Brest and Toulon. Lefevre and most of our sailors contemplate only
    "masking" Toulon by a fleet at Gibraltar, and using the Cape route.
    In this case we could not reinforce Egypt except from India, and
    not, of course, from India if we were at war with Russia too.

    'I am in favour of a stronger navy, and attempting blockade, though
    it is not _certain_ that it can be made _for certain_ successful.
    Still Colomb is a better authority than Beresford, etc. I mean
    "Admiral Colomb," not Sir John. The difficulty, even if blockades
    are possible, is that France keeps building after us so as always to
    be without the limits which would make it possible. Lefevre will
    support Mr. G. in cutting down the navy on this ground--i.e., will
    prove by figures that every time we lay down nine ships the French
    lay down six or seven.

    'I think that in the long-run France will beat Germany. She will
    fight her some day single-handed on a point in which Austria and
    Italy will not move, nor Russia either. Then, if Germany gets the
    best of it, the others will "mediate."

    'Yours ever,

    'Chs. W. D.'

    'November, 1891, we spent in France.... While I was away I had a
    correspondence with Chamberlain about his speech on Egypt' (in reply
    to Morley), 'and pointed out to him,' says the Memoir,' that he had
    changed his mind so completely about evacuation that it was hardly
    prudent in him not frankly to admit the change of mind, as he had
    done in at least one speech previously.' He replied:

    '"I have looked the matter up, and I think it is quite true that in
    1884 we were all for evacuation as early as possible. But I did not
    then estimate properly the magnitude of the task we had undertaken,
    nor did I know how splendidly it would be performed by Baring and
    his colleagues. Baring himself began as a strong advocate for
    evacuation."

    'In my answer, I said that Baring had only changed his mind in the
    way in which all people are apt to change their minds when they are
    employed as the agents of a policy, and I combated Chamberlain's
    military views, which were, in fact, for defending Egypt by the
    fleet--that fleet which is expected to do everything!'

Sir Charles set out in an article in the _Speaker_ all the pledges to
evacuate which had been given by the Liberal Government and repeated by
Lord Salisbury. Thereupon Mr. Morley, whose general views on foreign
policy were not as a rule at all the same as those of Sir Charles, wrote
from Biarritz, where he was in Mr. Gladstone's company, that he had read
the _Speaker_ with enormous satisfaction. It would have a stimulating
effect in quarters where a little stimulus was much needed, and had
given much satisfaction to other people in Biarritz besides himself.

'"Quarters" of course meant Rosebery,' is Sir Charles's comment, and he
adds:

    'In order to meet the Rosebery objection to evacuation, I wrote an
    article for the January _Fortnightly_, of which the editor changed
    nothing but the title. I had called it "Lords Salisbury and
    Rosebery," and he changed it to "Conservative Foreign Policy."'

At a later date, in a letter [Footnote: This letter was apparently
written on April 14th, 1893:

    'Those of us who bitterly dislike the occupation of Egypt by a
    British force have been both to add to your work before and during a
    session in which, not to speak of the ordinary demand on the time of
    a Prime Minister, your unprecedented relation to the chief measure
    makes it the duty of your supporters to confine themselves to
    helping clear the road. Naught else could have excused us from
    having hitherto refrained from pressing the state of Egypt on the
    consideration of yourself, or of the House of Commons. It is only
    because since the publication of a recent despatch we feel that the
    time has nearly come for making up one's mind to be for ever silent
    upon the question, and because I cannot do so, given the strong
    feeling that I have with regard to it, without one last attempt to
    cause some change in a "temporary" situation now crystallizing into
    permanency, that I venture to address you. I ask for no reply. I
    shall have to bring the question before the House of Commons. I have
    no illusions as to what is likely to be the result of so doing. Sir
    E. Grey will tell us that the occupation is still "temporary," but
    must last, "for the sake of Egypt," till we can "with safety" leave:
    and so it will continue, with all its dangers to ourselves, till the
    next great war. Whoever else may again raise the Egyptian question
    in the future, I shall not. Vote I must, whenever it comes before
    the House, but I need not do more.

    'Not one word of blame of anyone will fall from me when I raise the
    question on first going into Committee on Civil Estimates. It seems
    to me, I confess--but I shall try to keep the opinion to myself--
    that it would have been, on the whole, the safest course to have
    done in 1892 that which Lord Granville, under your guidance, did in
    1880, and to have ourselves proposed, on the very day of the
    accession to office of the new Government, the policy which we
    thought best in the interest of the country and had supported in
    Opposition. Lord Granville congratulated himself, and with justice,
    on the promptitude with which, before the Russians could say a word
    to him as to the complete fulfilment of the Treaty of Berlin, he had
    told the Ambassador, in the first minute of their first interview,
    that the Government would insist on that fulfilment. Had the present
    Secretary of State, at his first interview with the French
    Ambassador, made a similar communication with regard to Egypt (at
    least so far as to propose to resume the negotiations of 1887), we
    should, perhaps, have avoided many evils. I share to the full the
    belief, which you expressed in such admirable terms a couple of
    years ago, that the long-lasting occupation of Egypt by our forces
    is the cause of all the difficulties by which our foreign policy,
    and even our position in Europe, are oppressed. Our hands are not
    free, and never will be free, so long as the occupation continues.
    But ills more direct are likely to fall upon us; and no one can look
    forward without the gravest dread to the prospect of our being
    drawn, step by step, into a situation in which we shall be driven to
    arrest the persons of the young Khedive and those of his advisers
    who possess the confidence of all that is intelligent among the
    Egyptian people; or (as seems hinted in Lord Bosebery's despatch) to
    insist upon a deposition.

    'In the discussions as to the occupation of Egypt which occurred in
    the Cabinet, before I was a member of it, in 1882, even before the
    expedition (for the occupation was foreseen), I took a share, as
    Lord Granville was good enough to consult me on the papers
    circulated by his colleagues. As far as I am concerned, I have never
    budged from the principles of a memorandum which I wrote on July
    4th, 1882; but those principles were far more excellently stated by
    you in a memorandum of the beginning of September, 1882--before
    Tel-el-Kebir--a memorandum which was approved by men now so hostile
    to your views as Sir Auckland Colvin and Sir Edward Malet. Sir E.
    Baring, now, as Lord Cromer, so bitterly opposed to us, in a paper
    of September or October, 1882, and Chamberlain in his paper of about
    October 21st, 1882, both pointed out how essential it was that our
    occupation should be really temporary, and that our condition--that
    we should leave behind us a "stable" state of things--depended on
    and meant what Chamberlain called "the extension of Egyptian
    liberties": the convoking, if not of a truly representative
    Assembly, at least of the Notables. Lord Dufferin, in December 1882,
    wrote to me that he would sooner run any risk than abandon the
    representative institutions proposed for Egypt in his famous scheme.
    Yet now the French are bidding the Khedive call together, against
    Lord Dufferin's virtual successor, this very Assembly of Notables,
    which Lord Cromer, such is his present policy, dare not call. The
    conception of this Assembly was the act of yourself, supported by
    Lord Granville and Sir William Harcourt and supported on paper by
    Lord Dufferin and Sir E. Baring, and opposed by Lord Hartington, by
    the then Chancellor, and by Lord Northbrook. This "extension of
    Egyptian liberties," which was our pride, which was our excuse for
    that "short prolongation" of the occupation, to which I was myself
    opposed--an extension of liberties which has not been carried into
    practical effect by us--is certain to result in a declaration by the
    Notables, when they meet, as within this year, through the French
    Agent's influence, they will, that they are rootedly opposed to our
    presence in their land.

    'It may be said that neither the Turks nor the French have pressed
    us, directly, to come out. The Turks will never really press us. The
    Sultan is forced by Moslem public opinion to ask us to leave Egypt,
    but he is in fact personally anxious that we should stay there to
    keep Mahdism in the desert and representative institutions in the
    shade. The French have also their inner policy--their Rothschilds to
    keep in good humour--and two currents, one political and one
    financial, with which to deal. M. Waddington expressed to you at
    Hawarden a mere desire for exchange of views between the Cabinets.
    He was naturally anxious not to be refused in any direct request.
    But French public opinion is exasperated against us; only one man in
    France believes a word we say, and our diplomatists and admirals
    behave as though they represented German instead of neutral
    interests. We are responsible for tempting Italy to stay in the
    alliance of the Central Powers, to her own hurt.

    'None of these things shall I be able to say when I bring the
    question before the House of Commons. To do so would involve
    statements based on private letters and statements as to Cabinet
    differences of 1882, which I cannot make. We shall be compelled to
    rely chiefly upon the declarations of Lord Salisbury, which were
    summed up in his words of May, 1887, to the effect that the
    occupation entails on us "heavy sacrifices, without adequate return
    either in peace or in war."

    'Having given attention for some years past to our general position
    as a nation, feeling as I do, with you, how adversely it is affected
    by the prolongation of the "temporary" occupation, which, as matters
    stand, seems likely to endure till the next war, even should it be
    postponed till half a century hence, I cannot but feel miserable at
    the situation of this affair, and I once more ask your pardon for in
    this way liberating my mind, or, I fear, rather discharging upon
    you, regardless of your prodigious avocations, this last expression
    of a regret deeper than that which I have previously entertained on
    any public question.

    'Through the mischiefs of the occupation there now seems to come no
    single ray of light. The present year will not pass over without a
    change in the local situation at Cairo, from which a conference is
    likely to result. A passage near the end of Lord Rosebery's despatch
    shows that he is prepared to have a conference forced upon him. Had
    we invited it, such a conference would be to us the blessing that it
    will be to others. Would it not at least be best that we should call
    that conference on the first opportunity rather than have it thrust
    down our throats?

    'This letter has not been shown to anyone, and needs, as I said, no
    reply, but I should be glad if it were not handed to anyone outside
    of your own circle. It has not been mentioned to anyone except Mr.
    Herbert Gladstone.']

to Mr. Gladstone during his last Premiership, Dilke summed up his views
when a debate was about to take place in the House of Commons, and four
days later he notes: 'On April 18th I had a long interview with Mr.
Gladstone, who sent for me, on my letter. The only thing he said worth
remembering was, "Jingoism is stronger than ever. It is no longer war
fever, but earth hunger."'

In 1887 the possibility of a German attempt to violate the neutrality of
Belgian territory, notwithstanding the treaty of guarantee of 1839,
which Prussia herself had signed, was again attracting attention owing
to a sudden renewal of warlike apprehensions on the Continent. The
position of Luxemburg was a kindred question, though the international
guarantee was of a far more uncertain character than in the case of
Belgium. Sir Charles, as already related, had returned from his work in
France during the war of 1870 with a profound conviction that a spirit
of reckless violence was abroad in Germany, which would stop at nothing
if favourable circumstances offered a temptation to action; and in his
opinion the absence of any fortifications at Liége and Namur afforded
such a temptation. The point had been till then little discussed in
England, though General Brialmont had written in the _Revue de Belgique_
on the subject. Sir Charles's view having been questioned, that the
danger to Belgium's neutrality for military and other reasons was from
Germany alone, he drew attention to the enormous accumulation of
supplies of every kind in the entrenched camp of Cologne as of itself
sufficient in military eyes to prove the truth of what he said. He
considered also that the reduction of our horse artillery greatly
impaired the possibility of Great Britain affording really effectual
military assistance to Belgium, and that the recent utterances of the
principal organ of the Conservative party, the _Standard_, and of the
writers in the _National Review_, that intervention in support of
Belgium 'would be not only insane but impossible,' showed that the
public opinion of Great Britain was no longer unanimous as it had been
in 1870-71. [Footnote: The questions connected with the Belgian and
Luxemburg guarantees are very fully discussed in a recent work,
_England's Guarantee to Belgium and Luxemburg_, by C. P. Sanger and H.
T. J. Norton. See also chapter i. of _War: Its Conduct and Legal
Results_, by Dr. Baty and Prof. J. H. Morgan; _The Present Position of
European Politics_, pp. 42-48, 73, 321-323.] This dispassionate
consideration of the chances of England's intervening single-handed and
without allies, in the case of a European war, to protect the neutrality
of an unfortified Belgium, led to statements that he was opposed to such
a step, and he had to point out in reply that for years he had
consistently expressed the contrary view, but that he was now dealing
with facts and tendencies, not with his own wishes. [Footnote: _British
Army_, chap. ii., p. 55.] Shortly after the appearance of this article,
discussion in Belgium led to the introduction of a Government Bill for
the fortification of the towns upon the Meuse, and it was afterwards
decided to fortify Namur and Liége.

Estimating the probabilities of a Continental war, he thought that
Russia came next to England in staying power, because her enormous army
formed a smaller proportion of her working class than in the case of any
other great Continental Power. Notwithstanding his suspicions of her
policy, he spoke of Russia with a deep and discriminating interest born
of numerous visits to all parts of her dominions, and deprecated the
attitude of those Englishmen whose dislike of Russia had done harm to
the cause of sense and truth by exaggeration, and had led them to ignore
'her power and the marvellous patriotism of her people.' 'In the union
of patriotism with religion I know no nation which can approach them.'
There could be no doubt in any reasonable mind of her real and lasting
strength. But her unlimited power of self-deception; the necessary
instability of a policy resting upon the will of a single man; her
misgovernment of Poland and her alienation of Bulgaria, constituted
dangers which it was idle to ignore. He, however, set against these
weaknesses her popularity with all the Slav nations; her influence in
the Baltic provinces of Germany, and even with the Poles, 'who, like
everyone else of Slavonic race, seem born with a hatred of the Teutons.'

    'The only foreigner who is known to the Russian peasantry is the
    German, and the name for German and for foreigner with the peasantry
    is the same, and the hatred of the "dumb men," as they call their
    German neighbours, is intense. The peasantry know little of the
    English, and if you listen to their sentiments you discover that it
    is their belief that one day there will be between _them_ and
    Germany a war compared with which, their soldiers say, that of 1870
    will be child's play, and that if Germany wins this will not be the
    end, but that war after war will follow until Germany is destroyed.'

    'Because Russia is very violent in her language and her acts, we
    often fail to see how a peasantry, which an aristocratic government
    or a government of political economists could never win, is won over
    by her to her rule. The Moscow men failed in Bulgaria, but in Poland
    they succeeded, and in the Baltic provinces, too, their methods and
    their policy have not been wanting, and the problems that have so
    long perplexed this country in her relations with Ireland would have
    been solved in a week by Samarin, or Miliutin, or Prince
    Teherkasky.' [Footnote: _Present Position of European Politics_, pp.
    125, 134.]

The popular phrases which dubbed Sir Charles Dilke as 'anti-German' or
'anti-Russian' were never more curiously misapplied. The flaw to be
found even in the mental constitution of Gambetta's great personality,
as shown by his antagonism to Russia, had no part in his friend's
outlook; nor did Sir Charles's friendship for all things French make him
an enemy to Germany, though the possibility of conjuring 'the German
peril' was ever in his mind. But he doubted the wisdom of the wavering
counsels which began with 'lying down to Germany,' and were to be marked
by the cession of Heligoland. Strong men and strong Governments
recognize and respect one another; and in dealing with Germany he
believed that it was necessary never to forget this trite yet valuable
warning.

If personal friendships and political sympathy made Sir Charles, as the
previous chapters have shown, look constantly to France as the natural
ally of Great Britain, and also her most desirable ally, neither
friendships nor sympathies could blind him to the constant danger
arising from the instability of French Administrations, and the
consequent difficulty of relying on any certainty in arrangements
projected for joint action. Of this the events connected with Egypt had
been a most conspicuous illustration. Nor were these the only dangers:
for the best friends of France were painfully aware of the immense
influence exercised by powerful financial interests both in her domestic
and in her foreign affairs, and by the growth of fierce antagonisms on
home questions which seemed to tear the country asunder and paralyze her
position abroad. Numerous questions, not only in Egypt, but elsewhere in
Africa; the old quarrels about the Newfoundland fisheries, on which Sir
Charles was constantly putting his finger as a possible cause of a
serious quarrel; and increasing jealousies in the Pacific, contributed
to produce a condition of permanent tension for many years in the
relations of the two countries, until the Fashoda incident in 1898
brought a crisis which cleared the air. Two of the ablest men in France,
M. Jules Ferry and M. Hanotaux, were, to say the least, not friendly to
Great Britain, and a plan which Sir Julian Pauncefote [Footnote: Then
Permanent Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and afterwards Lord
Pauncefote and Ambassador at Washington.] had suggested in 1884, of
attempting to bring all outstanding questions with France into one great
settlement, fell still-born, to be vivified, but twenty years later, by
Lord Lansdowne in more favourable circumstances.

In all possible complications Sir Charles relied much on Italy's close
friendship for England--notwithstanding her entry into the Triple
Alliance--a friendship due to permanent gratitude for the support which
she had received from Lord Russell, Mr. Gladstone, and Lord Palmerston,
at the crisis of her fate in 1859; and also to the offer to her of a
joint occupation of Egypt in 1882--an offer rejected indeed, but
fruitful of good feeling.

But more important even than any question of alliances was, he insisted,
the necessity that Great Britain should know her own mind, and have a
definite policy in regard to the future of Constantinople and of Egypt,
and in regard to the Belgian guarantee. Army organization itself
obviously depended on policy, and in this connection there was a danger
at home greater, perhaps, than any originating abroad.

    'It is too much the case with us in England,' he wrote, 'that when
    we are occupied with the consideration of the Irish problem, or
    dealing with the circumstances which most often lead to the rise and
    fall of Ministries, we allow the foreign affairs of the country to
    be transacted in the dark: with an absence of control which, owing
    to the efficiency of our Foreign Office, may produce no ill, but
    also with an absence of knowledge which cannot be advantageous. On
    the other hand, when some awkward circumstance arises, a
    disproportionate weight is attached to it by those who have wilfully
    remained in ignorance of the true position, and the diplomacy of the
    country is suddenly unduly hampered by criticism which rests on no
    foundation of fact.'

Speaking from experience, he uttered a warning as to the danger of
uninstructed debates and foolish questions--then so frequent--on foreign
affairs in the House of Commons, and the harm done by them abroad. He
spoke of the tendency to take advantage of some rebuff in foreign
affairs for party motives, and urged that, as secrecy was not to be
hoped for, members should at least try to inform themselves and the
electorate, and avoid 'periods of ignorant calm' or 'equally ignorant
panic.' In this connection he never ceased to insist on the weakness of
our position abroad, owing to the deficient strength and want of
organization of our army; the small results shown for the immense amount
spent; the insufficient stock of arms and ammunition, and the poor
reserves of rifles; and he urged that, whatever our economies, none
should fall upon equipment or reserves of material. Such economies he
stigmatized as a 'horrible treachery to the interests of the country.'
[Footnote: The military situation as a whole is discussed in chapter vi.
of _The Present Position of European Politics_, 'The United Kingdom.']




CHAPTER XLIX

PUBLIC LIFE AND RETURN TO PARLIAMENT

1886-1894


Pathways of return to political life soon began to open to Sir Charles
Dilke. In November, 1886, Mr. Labouchere wrote:

    'It looks as though Chamberlain will be the scapegoat. At present
    his going over bag and baggage to the Whigs has utterly disgusted
    the Radicals. As long as Gladstone lives things will go on fairly
    with us, but after--the deluge. The Radical M.P.'s are regretting
    your not being in, as they would have accepted you as the leader.'

In the autumn of 1886 the Council of the Chelsea Liberal Association
unanimously asked him to be their candidate (for Parliament), but he
replied that he could not serve the borough to his own satisfaction
while so large a section of the public still attached weight to the
'gross calumnies' with which he had been assailed. He was, however, from
the autumn of 1887, increasingly active in local affairs, both on the
Vestry and the Board of Guardians, [Footnote: In the winter of 1888, Sir
Charles was unanimously elected Chairman of the Board of Guardians, as
also of the Vestry ('as was the case in subsequent years'). He wrote to
Mr. Chamberlain: 'I've taken the chairmanship of the Chelsea Board of
Guardians, so am keeping my hand in on the prevention of obstruction. I
am forced to begin gradually with them, and have only as yet ruled that
I cannot _let two speak at once_.'] and also on the newly formed Library
Committee, on which he served for three years, till both the local
libraries were established and opened.

To M. Joseph Reinach he wrote in April, 1887: 'I have a splendid
position as a writer, and writing projects which will occupy me for
three years at least; and if any great calamity should occur which would
force me back into public life--such as war with Russia, for example--I
do not know that I should like the change.' Nor was the political scene
attractive at this moment. His friends were tearing each other asunder;
and not only his political friends--both parties were rent with faction.

    'On October 1st, 1886, Chamberlain called and gave me an interesting
    picture of the political state. He seemed to think that he could
    keep Mr. Gladstone out for life, and was persuaded that Randolph
    would give him all he wanted and leave Hartington and Salisbury in
    the lurch. Randolph had promised him to have an anti-Jingo foreign
    policy, leaving Turkey to her fate, and to pacify Ireland with the
    National Councils scheme, modified into two Councils, or into
    Provincial Councils, to suit Ulster; and Churchill had also promised
    him procedure reform--that is, a sharper closure--and a three-acres-
    and-a-cow policy for England.

    'There was an article in the _Morning Post_, October 2nd,
    representing Churchill's democratic views, but in the later autumn
    (while Chamberlain was away abroad) Churchill was beaten in the
    Cabinet both on his Irish scheme and also on the amendments which he
    proposed to make in the Local Government (England) Bill in the
    three-acres-and-a-cow direction. On December 17th Chamberlain, who
    had returned from abroad, came to lunch with me, furious at the
    defeat of Randolph Churchill. He found no fault with the Irish
    policy' (which was strongly coercionist), 'or with the foreign
    policy of the Cabinet; but he was anxious to defeat them on their
    Local Government (England) Bill, if it was not altered back again to
    suit his policy. Ultimately a compromise on this matter was
    arranged.'

For a moment it seemed as if Chamberlain's anger with the Tory party was
going to drive him back into his old associations. On December 31st,

    'Chamberlain and John Morley came in together to lunch, Chamberlain
    having been asked and Morley not, and it was somewhat startling.
    "Chamberlain thinks that he can get Mr. Gladstone by the bait of
    'Four times Prime Minister' to accept his terms. On the other hand,
    Mr. Gladstone thinks that he can detach Chamberlain from Hartington.
    Conferences are sitting: Harcourt, Herschell, and Morley, meeting
    Chamberlain and Trevelyan. Hartington is crusty at this. Chamberlain
    has threatened Hartington with the consequences if he, as he wants
    to, supports a reactionary Local Government Bill of Salisbury's.
    Chamberlain has written to Salisbury as to this Local Government
    Bill, and received a dilatory reply." He told me the whole long
    history of Randolph's troubles with the Cabinet which preceded his
    resignation; first on procedure, as to which he finally obtained his
    own way, secondly as to foreign affairs, thirdly as to allotments,
    fourthly as to Local Government, and fifthly as to finance.
    Churchill always stood absolutely alone, and, being in a minority of
    one, could only get his way at all by continually tendering his
    resignation. At last he resigned once too often, as it was of course
    on the wrong subject; Salisbury jumped at it, and accepted it in a
    cool letter when Churchill did not mean it in the least. It was only
    the classical annual resignation of a Chancellor of the Exchequer
    against his colleagues of the army and navy. The Budget always
    involves the resignation either of the Secretary of State for War
    and First Lord of the Admiralty, or else of the Chancellor of the
    Exchequer, but hitherto they have always managed to make it up.'

Within a fortnight Sir Charles 'was hearing from all sides about the
Round Table Conferences which were intended to reunite the Liberal
party.... From Chamberlain I heard that his view was to bring about a
_modus vivendi_ only, under which the Conservative Government was to be
turned out on some side-issue. Mr. Gladstone would become Prime Minister
for the fourth time, if the Irish would consent to take Local Government
and a Land Bill first, and to leave Home Rule over. He thought that Mr.
Gladstone was not unwilling, but that there would be difficulty in
getting the Irish to consent. Morley and Harcourt were, according to
Chamberlain, friendly to his suggestions, and Hartington hostile, not
trusting Mr. Gladstone.'

On January 15th, 1887, Sir Charles wrote to Mr. Chesson [Footnote: See
note, p. 273.] that

    'Chamberlain and Morley were both going to make conciliatory
    speeches, but that nothing had really been done at Harcourt's house,
    every difficulty having been "reserved." There could be no doubt
    that several of the five who were there meeting were anxious to keep
    things open, on the chance of Mr. Gladstone not remaining in
    sufficiently good health to continue to lead the party. The
    independent Liberals were vexed at the Conferences. Willy Bright
    called on me, and said that obviously the great difficulty of the
    moment was "to keep Mr. Gladstone in the Gladstonian party." Morley,
    who also called on me, casually observed, "Harcourt was never a Home
    Ruler. The only Home Rulers in the last Cabinet were Lord Granville
    and Spencer, in addition to myself and Mr. Gladstone." When we
    remember the views of Spencer in May, 1885, his violent Home Rule,
    which dates from July, 1885, is laughable.'

    'On the 15th I had a long and curious conversation with Chamberlain
    about the matter. He said that the articles which had been appearing
    in the _Birmingham Post_ about his own position were inspired by
    him--that he and the other members of the Conference were telling
    the newspapers that everything was going on swimmingly, but that the
    whole thing was in reality a sham on both sides. Parnell was
    frightened at Mr. Gladstone's declining health, and Mr. Gladstone
    did not wish to end his life by having smashed his party, so that
    the Conference was willingly continued, although it was doing
    nothing. It was the wish of all concerned in it to be at the point
    of an apparent reconciliation whenever Mr. Gladstone might become
    incapacitated, but he, Chamberlain, was firmly decided not to take
    office under Mr. Gladstone.

    'Chamberlain said that Randolph Churchill on the previous night had
    asked him, "Shall I come over?" but that he, Chamberlain, had
    replied that he advised him not to, being afraid that Randolph would
    play for the lead of the party, and not liking the notion of having
    him for leader. He had advised Randolph to simulate moderation
    towards Lord Salisbury, in spite of his anger at the Duke of Norfolk
    and the members of the Conservative party who, since his quarrel
    with the Government, had been "attacking his private character."'

    'On February 4th, 1887, Chamberlain again came to see me, and I
    noted in my diary that he was "very sore against Labouchere and
    others."

    'On February 13th, Morley called and said that the Round Table
    Conference was hopeless, although they were to meet at dinner on the
    14th, and once again after that. He said, "Both sides are very
    cross, and each side asks, 'What is to become of the other?'"

    'On the same day Chance, M.P., told me, he being the attorney of the
    Nationalist party, that O'Shea was going forward with his divorce
    case against Parnell, and that Parnell had no defence possible. I
    have never known what was the reason of the immense delays which
    afterwards occurred.'

Parties now began to settle into their new groupings.

    'On March 2nd, 1887, Chamberlain came to lunch, and told me a good
    deal about the failure of the Round Table Conference, but it was not
    till April 3rd that he told me the whole story. On this latter day
    Deakin, the Chief Secretary of Victoria, and most interesting of
    Colonists, was with me; and Chamberlain came in before Deakin had
    gone, and, talking with his customary frankness, discussed the whole
    matter before the astonished Victorian. There had been a sad split
    caused by a letter which he had written, and which he admitted was
    an indiscreet one, to the _Baptist_, as to Welsh Disestablishment. A
    hint was then let fall that the Gladstonians were going to negotiate
    with Hartington direct. On this Chamberlain went off to Hartington
    and got from him a letter to say that Hartington would not negotiate
    himself, but that Chamberlain was in possession of his views.
    Efforts were then made to get Chamberlain to meet Mr. Gladstone.
    Chamberlain agreed to do so, but not to ask for the meeting. At
    length a meeting was fixed at Mr. Gladstone's request for the
    morrow, Monday, April 4th. It was settled that at this Mr. Gladstone
    would ask what Chamberlain had to propose. Chamberlain was going to
    reply that Mr. Gladstone knew his views, and to then ask whether
    they were accepted, and he knew perfectly that nothing would come of
    it. He had on the same day, April 3rd, met Randolph at Mrs. Jeune's
    at lunch. They had walked away together, when Randolph had proposed
    a Chamberlain-Hartington-Randolph league against both parties. This
    had tempted Chamberlain, but was an idle suggestion, as Hartington
    and Randolph could never work together.'

In the autumn of 1887 Sir Charles and Lady Dilke went to Constantinople,
and he writes:

    'I had received at this time a letter from James, in which he said
    that Mr. Gladstone had sent for him to talk to him about me in the
    friendliest way, and, Mr. Gladstone having called, I wrote to him,
    and transmitted some messages from the Sultan, in the following
    letter:

    "Athens,
    "_October 14th_.

    '"I have never thanked you except verbally through James for a kind
    and pleasant message which I had from you by James and Chamberlain
    last session.

    '"At Constantinople last Friday, and again to Lady Dilke last
    Monday, the Sultan said that he wished complimentary messages
    conveyed to you. The Greek Patriarch said the same thing to us on
    Tuesday and Wednesday. My wife told both that she hardly knew you,
    and I replied that I was unlikely to see you for some time, but
    would see that the messages reached you.

    '"The Greeks on the one hand, and the Bulgarians on the other, are
    now very friendly with the Sultan, but I regret to find that the
    dislike between the Greeks and the Bulgarians is as strong as ever.
    The common preference of both for the Sultan over Russia has not
    sufficed to draw them together. The split between the Bulgarian
    Government and the Exarch of Bulgaria will, however, probably draw
    Bulgaria closer to the Phanar."'

Mr. Gladstone replied, on October 24th, that his message to Sir Charles
expressed his real feeling, which he should have been glad to find other
modes of expressing. He added that if the Sultan spoke sincerely in the
message which Sir Charles transmitted,

    'he must be acting as a good Christian: for Hobart Pasha when here,
    as a spy on Fehmi, told me the Sultan believed I was his greatest
    enemy. I have never been so great an enemy to him as he to himself.
    I have never had extreme views about Turkey. Had I the settling of
    the affair, I should be disposed to keep the Turks in
    Constantinople, and not to let Home Rule when freely and honestly
    given mean total severance. But the materials of convulsion are, I
    fear, slowly gathering in that quarter, and Russia, shut out from
    her just claim to the passage of the Straits, means to have the
    mastery of them. I always grieve over the feud of Hellene and Slav,
    out of which much mischief may come. The situation here is
    favourable to those who view the Irish Question as you do. The
    relations with Chamberlain have been rather painful. I think he has
    developed since the schism of March, 1886, even greater speaking and
    debating talents than he had shown before. I think also that the
    organization of dissentient Liberalism, in which he has borne so
    large a part, has been enormously favourable to his general creed as
    an advanced Radical, whereas Hartington with his weak-kneed men has
    been utterly hoodwinked, and hoodwinked by himself. On the other
    hand, I own myself amazed at Chamberlain's proceedings during the
    last month. Everyone took a favourable view of his accepting the
    American mission; [Footnote: Mr. Chamberlain was corresponding with
    Sir Charles in regard to his mission, for which he started on
    October 29th, 1887. It had for its object the negotiation of a
    treaty with America on several outstanding questions.] but a man of
    one-tenth of his talent ought to have seen the folly of widening
    breaches and exasperating all passions as a preliminary to charging
    himself with a business that eminently requires a serene atmosphere.

    'We witnessed at Nottingham an enthusiasm literally the greatest I
    have ever seen.'

    'On my return to England before the middle of November, 1887, I
    received a letter from the Cinderford Liberal Association, in the
    Forest of Dean, in which they referred to an attempt which had been
    made to induce me to stand for the Forest of Dean when Blake retired
    in July, 1887, and went on to press me to go there to speak....
    After the completion of the army articles and of the book, I
    intended to set to work on a new version of my _Greater Britain_.
    This afterwards became the book published under the title of
    _Problems of Greater Britain_.'

On October 28th, 1887, 'Chamberlain wrote ... "Mr. Gladstone's last
speech shows distinct signs of old age. I think matters cannot long
remain in their present state, and the whole policy of England--both
foreign and domestic--may be greatly altered."'

On reaching Washington, Chamberlain wrote: 'I do not find the "civilized
world" so much pro-Irish as Mr. Gladstone would have us believe. On the
contrary, I have as yet only met two Americans who have expressed
themselves favourable to Mr. Gladstone's policy. They are, generally
speaking, inclined to some concession in the direction of State rights,
but they are entirely opposed to anything in the nature of a self-
governing colony, and they have no personal liking for the Irish. Above
all, they are horrified at Mr. Gladstone's recent utterances about law
and order, and say openly that he must have lost his head.'

    'On January 4th, 1888, I made a speech in which I laid down my
    position as regarded Parliamentary candidature. It was made in
    presiding at the first dinner of the Hammersmith Central Liberal
    Club. About the same time I received requests to stand as candidate
    for Merthyr and for the northern division of the borough of West
    Ham, which I declined, pointing to my Hammersmith speech without
    giving further reasons.'

    'About this time, my son being now at Rugby, we went down to see him
    and lunched with the Percivals.'

In the new session of 1888 Mr. Ritchie introduced his Local Government
Bill, which (as Sir Charles had predicted to the Chelsea electors in
1885) was much influenced by the Liberal scheme that lay accessible in
an official pigeonhole. The outline given by the new President of the
Local Government Board in introducing the measure showed, however, that
it fell short of expectation, and Sir Charles immediately criticized the
project in an evening paper without waiting for publication of the text.
When the Bill was published, he issued notes upon it, in concert with
Mr. Cobb, M.P. for the Rugby Division, condemning the absence of any
attempt to 'reform and revivify the parish.'

    'My main objection to Mr. Ritchie's scheme was that, whereas in my
    scheme the District Councils had been more highly organized than the
    County Councils, in his scheme the reverse was the case. [Footnote:
    The allusion is here, apparently, to the Bill which Mr. Chamberlain
    prepared in 1886, but with considerable help from Sir Charles.]
    There was no building up out of the smaller districts, giving the
    work as far as possible to the smallest, where the people were at
    their homes; but Mr. Ritchie's unit was the county, and the smaller
    bodies were neglected.

    'The Liberal leaders took a short-sighted course in recommending
    their friends to allow the Bill to pass almost without discussion.'
    [Footnote: In 1892 he again notes his intervention on this question.
    'On November 9th, 1892, I had a long interview at the Local
    Government Board with Henry Fowler, the President, at his request,
    before I went down to the Chelsea Board of Guardians for the last
    time. He consulted me as to all his Bills, especially as to that on
    Local Government.']

There were, however, friends who considered that the new institutions
established by Mr. Ritchie's Act opened a way back into public life for
Sir Charles. Among these was Mr. Chamberlain. He was, as usual,
corresponding with Sir Charles, during his absence abroad, on all
matters, and an interesting letter is noted here.

    'In, I think, May, 1888, while we were at Royal, I received a letter
    from Chamberlain in which he indicated a change in his views upon
    the South Africa question. Ultimately he completely turned round
    from his old position, which was violently anti-Dutch, and, like
    everyone else, fell into line upon the principle of the fusion of
    race interests in South Africa.'

    'On our return Chamberlain came down to Dockett and spent the
    afternoon, bringing Austen with him, and very strongly urged that
    the time had now come when I should stand for Parliament. I said
    that I thought that the time would come, but that, after India, I
    had _Problems of Greater Britain_ to write before I thought about
    it. He then urged that I should stand for the County Council in my
    absence in India, and as to this point a great difference of opinion
    arose, I being inclined to accept his advice, which was also very
    strongly pressed upon me by my former colleague Firth; my wife and
    G. W. Osborn strongly took the opposite view, to which I yielded. I
    afterwards came to think it had been the right view. Chamberlain
    pressed his opinion very hotly to the last. I received a deputation
    from Fulham which represented the entire Liberal and a portion of
    the Conservative party, and the seat would certainly have been won;
    but I declined, and Chamberlain then wrote: "You must be the judge,
    and are probably the best one. But I yield reluctantly."'

This decision was made public in answer to the Fulham deputation just
before Sir Charles started on a journey to India.

In February, 1889, after his return to England, he was confronted with a
new proposal. The Progressive party now in power on the London County
Council desired to put him forward as one of the first Aldermen. Sir
Charles refused; but a preliminary circular in reference to his
candidature had been issued, and a protest was immediately organized by
the section which desired his permanent ostracism. This opposition was
then formidable in its proportions, and it never wholly disappeared. It
was, however, increasingly clear that a much stronger body of public
opinion desired his return to public and Parliamentary life.

In March, 1889, he was elected Honorary President of the Liberal Four
Hundred in the Forest of Dean. The election did not pass without
challenge, and one of the objectors was the Rector of Newent (Canon
Wood). Sir Charles sent this clergyman the papers in the divorce case,
which had been collected by Mr. Chesson [Footnote: Mr. Chesson had died
earlier in this year; and the token of Sir Charles Dilke's gratitude to
this defender of unpopular causes is commemorated in the High-Altar of
Holy Trinity Church, Upper Chelsea, which he presented in memory of his
friend. Sir Charles wrote: 'He had been for many years a useful man in
politics, and he was to me at this period a very precious friend; one of
the best and truest men I ever knew; he had been the most helpful man in
England to the anti-slavery cause of the Northern Abolitionists, the
working man of the Jamaica Committee, and, many years afterwards, of the
Eastern Question Association, and of the Greek Committee; and since his
death no one has taken his place.'] and his associates, and a study of
them turned the Rector of Newent into a strong supporter of the man whom
he had at first denounced.

Dilke's first visit to the Forest of Dean took place in May, 1889. By
this time it was clear that his absence from Parliament could be
terminated at his own pleasure. Mr. Gladstone had intervened almost
officially in the matter. In June, 1889, he again sent for Sir Henry
James, who transmitted the purport of his talk: which was that, while
Mr. Gladstone was most anxious to see Sir Charles back, his opinion was
that steps should not be too quickly taken. Sir Henry thought that Mr.
Gladstone would willingly give his opinion and advice if Sir Charles
thought that would be of any value to him. A few weeks later Mr.
Gladstone called at 76, Sloane Street, but missed Sir Charles.

    'In August he wrote to me in regard to his correspondence with
    James. The most important passage in the letter was:

    '"I deeply feel the loss we sustain in your absence from public
    life, after you had given such varied and conclusive proof of high
    capacity to serve your country; and I have almost taken it for
    granted that with the end of this Parliament, after anything
    approaching the usual full term, the ostracism could die a kind of
    natural death. And I heartily wish and hope that you may have lying
    before you a happy period of public usefulness."'

Sir Charles was in no hurry. Another invitation had reached him, from
Dundee, and 'on November 4th a unanimous request to contest the borough
of Fulham.'

But his determination was to let nothing interrupt the work on his book;
after that, various promises both of writing and speaking had to be
redeemed.

Meanwhile he remained in touch with the political world. 'I carried on a
controversy with Labouchere about his views in favour of reforming the
House of Lords, to which I was bitterly opposed, preferring, if we could
not get rid of it, to go on as we are.' All Labouchere's letters were
full of references to the position of Chamberlain, and Chamberlain
himself came from time to time to discuss that point.

    'On December 2nd, 1889, I saw Chamberlain. On October 10th he had
    told me that he was clear that ultimately he should join the
    Conservatives, unless Mr. Gladstone were soon to go and a
    Rosebery-Harcourt combination would come to terms with him about
    Ulster. On December 2nd I found a little change back from his
    general attitude, and in face of the probable break-up of the
    Parnellite party over the O'Shea case, which was beginning to be
    talked of in detail, Chamberlain was undecided, he said, and no
    doubt thought, between the two parties. But I noted in my diary:
    "Labouchere sets him against the Liberals, and Balfour attracts him
    to the Tories." It was clear that I thought that the change was but
    a temporary one, and that he was certain to return to his attitude
    of October, as in fact he did.'

_Problems of Greater Britain_ appeared at the end of January, 1890, and
within a month the edition was exhausted. In America, Sir Charles,
expecting censure, had arranged to reply in the _North American Review_
to his censors; but there was so little adverse comment that he chose
another subject.

Discussion of military problems abounded in the book, but the 'Problems'
treated were by no means only those which concerned military experts.
Mr. Deakin wrote:

    'It will not merely be the one book treating authoritatively of the
    Empire, and the one book making it known to Britons in Europe, but
    it will also be the first book enabling the various groups of
    colonies to understand each other, and their individual relation to
    the whole of which they form a part.... Knowing some of the
    difficulties you encountered ... I have been completely amazed at
    the skill or the intuition with which you have caught the right tone
    of local colours and the true tendency of our political and social
    life.'

    'On July 23rd, 1890, I lunched with McArthur [Footnote: Mr. W. A.
    McArthur, Liberal Whip and member of Parliament, who had made Sir
    Charles's acquaintance in 1886, and become a warm personal friend.]
    to meet Schnadhorst, who had returned from South Africa, and who
    warmly pressed my standing at the General Election, and I allowed
    myself to be persuaded so far as to promise that I would consider
    the matter in connection with the offer of any first-rate seat.'

Different constituencies were mentioned; but in the following October,
when it became known that the then member for the Forest of Dean would
not stand again, Mr. Schnadhorst wrote at once to Sir Charles urging him
to let his name be put forward. He added, as an indication of the
general feeling, that the adjacent constituency of South Monmouthshire
had also sent in a request for Sir Charles's services--'which should
assure you that popular support will overwhelm any other influence.'
Accordingly, at the end of this year Sir Charles saw a deputation of
leading men from the Forest, and fixed a date on which he would give a
reply to a formal invitation. Having spent Christmas in his house at
Toulon, he returned thence in February, 1891, met a further deputation,
and agreed to give his public reply in the Forest in March.

In December, 1890, Chamberlain had concurred in the decision that,
before Dilke accepted any candidature, there should be published a
digest of the case with annotation and with the new evidence, 'which had
grown up out of Chesson's notes, and which was largely the work of Howel
Thomas, Clarence Smith, Steavenson, and McArthur. This was published in
February, 1891, on my return.' [Footnote: In 1886 he had written: 'In
the course of this winter a committee of friends of mine, got together
by Chesson, and containing Steavenson (afterwards Judge Steavenson), and
Howel Thomas of the Local Government Board, but also containing W. A.
McArthur, M.P., Clarence Smith, ex-Sheriff of London and Middlesex,
afterwards M.P., and Canon MacColl, who were mere acquaintances, or
less, had begun to investigate my case with a view of getting further
evidence.']

    'The Cinderford meeting (the central town of the Forest) on March
    9th, 1891, was unanimous, and after it we remained chiefly in the
    Forest of Dean for a long time. I had promised to give my final
    reply in June. At the meeting of March I had only stated that if,
    after all the attacks which might be made upon me, they should
    remain in the same mind, I would accept.'

Sir Charles was fortunate in his new constituency. Throughout England
there was no other so suited to him; he desired contact with large
bodies of labouring men, and the Forest made him a representative of
that great and typical British Labour group, the miners. He loved 'each
simple joy the country yields,' and, whereas almost everywhere else a
mining district is scarred, defaced, and blackened, here pit-shafts were
sunk into glades as beautiful as any park could show, forest stretches
of oak and beech enveloped that ugliness in green and gold, and from
many a rising ground you might look over the broad vale where the wide
Severn sweeps round a horseshoe curve and the little, unspoilt town of
Newnham stands set in beauty, winter or summer.

Newnham was dear to Sir Charles, and there he stayed for visits in
winter. But the place of his most frequent and prolonged abode in his
constituency was the Speech House, built in the very heart of the
woodland, remote from any town, yet at a centre of the communal life;
for outside it, on a wide space of sward, the Forest miners held their
yearly meeting, their 'speech-day.' The miners' interest, which he
represented, was not of recent growth, nor arising out of some great
enterprise of capital; it linked itself with those rights of commonage
of which he had always been a chief champion, and appealed not only to
the radical but to the antiquarian in him. The 'free miners' privileges
marked only one of many ancient customs in that Crown domain which he
studied and guarded.

As in 1867 and 1868 he had made it his business to be sure that the
electors whose votes he sought should know his opinions, so far as
possible, not on one subject, but on all, so now in 1891, at his
meetings throughout the constituency, he unfolded the whole of his
political faith.

He developed in speech after speech the views which he had put forward
in _A Radical Programme_, published in 1890, and in a great speech at
Glasgow on March 11th of that year. His views on Housing, as given in
his Glasgow speech and afterwards dealt with in his Forest campaign,
show how far he was in advance of the recommendations made in the Report
of the Royal Commission on Housing of the Poor.

    'As chairman of that Commission, I had to instruct the secretary
    working with myself to draw such a report as would at least obtain a
    majority upon the Commission, and we succeeded in drawing a report
    that obtained a unanimity of votes; but, of course, to do so we had
    to put forward the points in which we felt that many would concur,
    and to keep out our most extreme suggestions. I personally would go
    much farther, and would allow towns to build or hire or buy, and
    would encourage them to solve the problem for themselves, and not
    ask the State to help them, except by setting free their hands and
    allowing them to obtain land cheaply and to tax themselves freely
    for the purpose.... Gladly would I see towns armed with the powers
    to destroy, without compensation, in extreme cases, filthy
    dwellings, where it is proved to the satisfaction of the magistrates
    that the owners are in fault, and the sites of such dwellings might
    be obtained by a cheap process. In all cases we ought to give powers
    to public bodies to take land for public purposes at a fair price
    ... and by the adoption of the principle of betterment ... owners
    would be called upon to make special contribution towards schemes
    which would improve their property at large.'

He dwelt on the sufferings of the working classes owing to improvements
which ejected them from their dwellings, and urged that the Local
Authority should in all cases come to terms as to rehousing before
granting any facilities for improvements.

For land he advocated taxation of unearned increment and fixity of
tenure under fair rents fixed by judicial courts, with power to the
community to buy up land at its real price.

He also advocated, not only the limitation of hours of work, a principle
to which he had been converted by the Industrial Remuneration Conference
of 1885, but that the workers should be qualified for the enjoyment of
their leisure by educational opportunities. He urged the example of
Switzerland in making education compulsory up to sixteen years of age,
and that of Ontario in granting free education up to the age of
twenty-one.

He advocated municipal Socialism, by giving to municipalities the widest
possible power to deal with local needs, and, passing from local
expenditure to that of the State, he dealt with the need for graduation
of Imperial taxation, and urged the equalization of the death duties (as
between real and personal estate) and making these duties progressive.
He would raise them gradually to 25 per cent. By such means we should
attain the double purpose of raising money and discouraging the
possession of large estates, which are the cause of the existence of a
too numerous idle class.

Adult suffrage and one man or woman, one vote, was always a part of his
programme.

In his utterances the change from individualism to collectivism is
marked. 'We were all Tory anarchists once,' he used to say in reviewing
economic theories of the sixties, and the change which had come over the
attitude of economists to social questions. His own conversion was so
thorough that in industrial questions he acted often as a pioneer, and
his constituency adopted his views on the limitation of hours by
legislation as in the demand for a legal eight-hour day. [Footnote:
Speeches in Forest of Dean and elsewhere (1890-1891). _Radical
Programme_, 1890.]

He had laid it down as a condition of acceptance of the candidature for
the Forest that there must be 'full and absolute belief' in him and in
his word. Time was given for the personal attack to develop, and it was
made by pamphlet propaganda with unsparing virulence, but entirely
without result. Not a dozen Liberals in the division declared themselves
affected by it; and 'on June 11th, 1891, I gave my consent to stand for
Parliament at a meeting held at Lydney, which was extraordinarily
successful and unanimous.'

The chair was taken by Mr. Thomas Blake, who had been member for the
division, and who in the darkest hour of Sir Charles's political life
had come forward with a proposal to resign and make way for him. He was
there now to say that, if Sir Charles would stand, he himself would act
as unpaid election agent. On the platform were all the leading Liberals
of the Forest, among them Canon Wood of Newent, whose opposition had
been turned into strenuous advocacy. There also was 'Mabon' to speak for
himself and the Welsh miners, and from the outside world Mr. Reginald
McKenna, an inseparable friend. Sir Charles's speech, which he counted
to have been the best of his life, dealt briefly with the leading
political topics of the day--Home Rule and the Radical programme--but
soon passed to the personal issue. He recalled the change from the murky
dreariness of March to the height of summer loveliness which reigned
about them, and the change no less great in the moral atmosphere. He
reviewed the history of the attacks that had been made, the avowed
determination to prevent his being their member; and at the close he
declared himself satisfied that their trust was fully his. 'My
conditions have been fulfilled. I accept the confidence you have reposed
in me. I trust that strength may be given to me to justify that
confidence, and I reply--not for a day, nor for a year, but from this
day forward, for better for worse; and thereto I plight my troth.
To-morrow we go forth from among you and commit our honour to your
charge.'

He was justified in the confidence which he reposed in them. One attempt
was made to raise the personal issue against him; and its result showed
that any man would be imprudent who sought to oppose Sir Charles Dilke
in the Forest of Dean except on strictly political grounds. First and
last no member of Parliament ever got more loyal support; but no man
ever trusted less to personal popularity. He carefully developed the
whole electoral machinery. The month which he spent every autumn in the
Forest was very largely a month of work on the detail of registration,
and the register as he caused it to be kept might be put forward as an
example of perfection unapproached elsewhere in Great Britain.

    'A day or two afterwards I received at a public meeting at Chelsea
    Town Hall an address signed by 11,000 inhabitants of Chelsea,
    congratulating me on my return to public life. It was signed by
    persons on both sides of politics. In reply, I made another good
    speech; but it was a great occasion.'

Among the letters which reached him from all quarters was one from Sir
Henry Parkes, who wrote:

    'Chief Secretary, New South Wales,
    'Sydney, _March 9th_, 1891.

    'I still hold the belief that few men have before them a broader
    path of honourable usefulness than you. May you succeed in nobly
    serving the dear old country!'

He received now and henceforward many invitations to address labouring
men, especially from the miners of Great Britain.

At Cannock Chase, in August, 1890, he attended his first miners'
meeting. How rapidly the list increased may be judged by the fact that,
speaking in July, 1891, at Ilkeston, he alluded to his conferences with
miners of Yorkshire, of Lancashire, of Cheshire, Somerset,
Gloucestershire, Monmouthshire, Staffordshire, and the Swansea and Neath
districts in England and Wales, and of Fife and Ayrshire in Scotland.
Attempts had not been wanting to stimulate against him the strong
puritanism of these people, especially in South Wales; the answer had
come from men like Tom Ellis, [Footnote: Mr. Thomas E. Ellis was a
Liberal Whip at this time.] who brought him to address the quarrymen of
Blaenau Festiniog, or like Mabon--William Abraham--miner, bard, and
orator, who organized a gigantic torchlight procession of his own
constituents in the Rhondda Valley to welcome Sir Charles and Lady
Dilke, and who, at Lydney, when Sir Charles finally accepted their
invitation, congratulated the Forest of Dean on having secured the
services of 'one who was not only a political leader, but a real Labour
leader.'

Parliamentary action in favour of an Eight Hours Bill formed the burden
of Sir Charles's discourse at all these meetings. Accepting a special
invitation to the annual conference of miners in the beginning of 1892,
he dealt with the proposal, then strongly advocated, of a general
international strike, pointing out that this measure 'should not be even
talked about until they had seen the exhaustion of all other means of
obtaining what they wanted.' It meant civil war; would 'disorganize the
whole economic condition of the country and the trade of the Empire, and
produce also a great feeling of exasperation between classes.' He
pressed them to consider whether, in the event of such an international
conflict, the whole brunt would not fall on Great Britain. In Belgium
and in France there was no such strength of organization as among them;
and a general strike succeeding in Great Britain, but failing on the
Continent, would be a national danger. He proposed, as an alternative,
co-operation with the British representatives of other trades, for whom
also Parliamentary interference was demanded. In the discussion which
followed, the weight of his argument was fully recognized, and a
resolution favouring the international strike was amended into one
calling for Parliamentary action.

In the following June Sir Charles Dilke attended the Miners'
International Congress, and spoke at the banquet given to foreign
delegates. A month later, when the General Election came on, 'thousands
of handbills and posters,' says Mr. Thomas Ashton, 'were sent to the
Forest of Dean by our federation recommending the workers to vote for
the working man's candidate.'

Nor were his public utterances on Labour questions limited to Great
Britain; request came from a society of the Belgian economists for a
lecture on some subject connected with Greater Britain, and he chose the
Australian strike and the position of Labour in the Colonies. This
discourse was delivered by Sir Charles in Brussels on his way back from
France at the beginning of 1891, and he then, he says, 'made the
acquaintance of all the leading people on both sides in that city.'

As early as May, 1891, Dilke had made up his mind (and stated it in a
letter to Count Herbert Bismarck) that the Liberal party would win the
next election. The question of the Leadership was raised at the end of
the session in a letter from Chamberlain:

    'I am told that Mr. Gladstone is much shaken by his late illness,
    and I cannot see how he can ever lead the House again, though his
    name will always be a tower of strength in the constituencies.'

But in December Mr. Chamberlain said that he did not think the prospects
of a General Election were so good for Mr. Gladstone as they had been
six months ago.

    'James, dining at my house, had said a long time before this that
    the prospects of the Liberals might look rosy, but that they had not
    realized the extent to which the Liberal Unionists intended to spend
    their money upon Labour candidates;' and this danger 'began to show
    itself more clearly about this time.' On December 28th 'I had an
    amusing letter from Cyril Flower:

    '"Surely for a real good muddle in political affairs, Welsh, Irish,
    Scotch, and English, there has never been a bigger, and what with
    Pamellites and anti-Parnellites (Christian and anti-Christian)
    Whigs, Labour candidates, Radicals, Tories, Jacobites, and Liberal
    Unionists, the next House will be as rum a kettle of fish as ever
    stewed since George III. The worst of it is, as the House gets more
    and more divided (like the French Chambers) into sets, it also
    becomes more and more incapable of getting through its business, and
    the littleness of the individual members becomes daily more
    apparent."'

The real difficulty for the Liberals was, however, the question of
leadership; and Sir Charles wrote an article in the _Speaker_ [Footnote:
September 5th, 1891.] in support of one of his few paradoxes--that Great
Britain would be better off without a Second Chamber, but that, given a
House of Lords, the Prime Minister should be a member of it. For this
reason he urged that though, 'when the moment has come for Mr. Gladstone
to think that he has earned a change into the position of adviser from
that of military chief, Sir William Harcourt will occupy the place he
pleases to assume--he will be able to make himself Prime Minister if he
chooses'--yet 'the party would be strongest with Mr. Gladstone for
adviser, Sir William Harcourt, as fighting chief, sharing the
responsibility with the leader in the Lords more fully than he would if
he were Prime Minister in the Lower House'; and he named Lord Spencer as
possible Prime Minister, since Lord Rosebery should be Foreign
Secretary, and the Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister should not be
the same man, 'so heavy is the work of each of these two offices.'

With the opening of 1892 Parliament entered on its sixth, and last,
session, and 'on April 1st I received a letter from Chamberlain, in
which he said:

    '"My own firm conviction is that parties will be nearly divided, and
    if Mr. G. has a majority nothing will be done either in regard to
    Ireland or to social questions in Great Britain.

    '"I do not _expect_ the election till late in the autumn, and,
    judging from appearances, the Opposition are much divided and rather
    depressed in spirit. My prediction is that, unless the Gladstonians
    give up the idea of a separate Parliament (I do not say extended
    local government), they will not obtain power--though they may
    obtain office--for this generation.

    '"This is a bold prophecy for you, but it is my sincere opinion."'

Right essentially--for there was a very small Liberal majority--Mr.
Chamberlain was wrong on the point of date: the election came in July,
1892.

In the Forest proper, the local war-chant, 'Yaller for iver, an' Blue in
the river!' was shouted everywhere. But the constituency, 'a microcosm
of England, industrial and agricultural,' as Sir Charles had called it,
had districts where support of the 'working man's candidate' could only
be whispered; where closed hands were furtively opened to show a
marigold clasped in them; where perhaps, as a farmer's trap drove by
carrying voters to the poll, the voters, outwardly blue-ribboned, would
open their coats a little and show where the yellow was pinned. Lady
Dilke on polling-day took charge of these districts. Yellow flowers from
every garden were heaped into her carriage as she passed; and when votes
came to be counted, more than one had been spoilt by too enthusiastic
votaries who wrote across their paper, 'For Lady Dilke.' Her courage and
devotion had touched the loyalty of the Forest people, and she received
from them a tribute of genuine love. One who accompanied her tells of a
later day when, after a terrible mine accident, Lady Dilke came down to
visit the homes on which that blow had fallen. In one a young widow sat
staring dry-eyed at the fire or turning tearless looks on the child that
played near her. But when Lady Dilke entered, the woman rose from her
chair, and, running to her visitor, put her arms about her neck, and as
the two held each other, tears came at last.

Sir Charles Dilke was returned by a majority of two to one, and, he
writes laconically, 'in August was well received in the House of
Commons.'

In 1891 Sir Charles had expressed some surprise at hostile comment in
the _Times_ and other important organs on his selection as candidate for
the Forest of Dean, and Mr. Chamberlain told him candidly that opinion
in society and in the House itself was hostile to his candidature, and
that he must look forward to a 'mauvais quart d'heure.' But it was
otherwise. After his election there appears to have been a general
expectation that he would be silent, and keep out of the range of
hostile criticism. As a fact, he fell directly into his old habit of
raising every subject which interested him. Parliament met again on
January 31st, 1893, and as soon as notice of questions could be given,
Sir Charles was reviving interest in a subject familiar to him of old,
by asking the new Liberal Government to issue papers which had been
omitted from the official publications of France and Great Britain, but
had been published in the Madagascar Red Book.

Amongst congratulations on his election came one from the Prime Minister
at Antananarivo, rejoicing that the threatened freedom of Madagascar
would again have his support, and transmitting the Red Book just named.
Within the first week of the session Sir Charles had questioned
Government about the arbitration as to the Newfoundland fisheries; and
concerning a vacancy in the Bombay command, with inquiry as to whether
amalgamation of the Indian armies would be considered [Footnote: The
amalgamation of the Indian armies was achieved by abolition, in 1894, of
the separate military commands of the Presidencies.]--a change which he
had long advocated. He also reappeared in a different field, but one
familiar to him, by introducing a Bill to amend the system of voting in
local elections. Then, on February 11th, while the Address to the Crown
was still under discussion, he took part in a full-dress debate.

Mr. James Lowther, the leading Protectionist of days when Protection was
not a fashionable creed, proposed an amendment seeking to restrict the
immigration of destitute aliens; and he found a seconder in a trade-
unionist, Mr. Havelock Wilson, who spoke for the seamen. After Mr.
Gladstone had argued strongly against the proposal, but had shown his
perception of the widespread support which it received by expressing
willingness to appoint a committee of inquiry, Sir Charles Dilke rose,
and, claiming to speak for a small minority, opposed legislation and
committee alike.

The force of his appeal to the House lay in the description which he
gave of persecution directed against the Jews in Russia, coupled with
citation of many previous instances in which England had afforded
asylum, and had gained both advantage and respect by so doing. First-
hand knowledge of Russian conditions and detailed mastery of the
historical case were combined in what one of the more important speakers
for the motion (Sir William Marriott) called a 'magnificent speech'; and
Sir Charles himself observes that it turned many votes. Mr. Mundella
wrote to him after the debate: 'I think it was the best I ever heard
from you, and, moreover, was courageous and just.'

Mr. Mundella was no doubt struck by the fact that a man coming in, as
Sir Charles did, specially dependent on the support of organized Labour,
had in his first speech combated the view of Labour interests which was
put forward by trade-unionists. Sir Charles's reply to the trade-
unionists ran thus: If these aliens come to England, they very often
join trade-unions, and so accept the higher standard; if they do not,
the products of their work come in and compete even more disastrously.
From this there lay an argument against Free Trade, and this he
characteristically admitted. Free Trade was only a balance of
advantages, and Labour politicians, he pointed out, considered that the
arguments against it were outweighed by countervailing considerations.
To exclude the immigrants and not to exclude the products of their
labour would be inconsistent, and also it would lower the nation's
standard of humanity.

Early in the session he spoke again on the qualifications for membership
of local elective bodies, and incidentally condemned the proposed
Ministry of Labour as 'a sham remedy.' [Footnote: See "Labour," Chapter
LII., pp. 347, 348.] Not to create new Ministries, but to reorganize and
redistribute their work, was his policy, advocated repeatedly both in
the House of Commons and from the chair of the Statistical Society. He
spoke also on redistribution in this session, and these speeches were
'successful in their business way. Thus I regained influence of a quiet
sort.'

    'For the first time' (1893) 'I dined at the Speaker's third dinner,
    or "dinner of the discontented." The first dinner each year is to
    the Government, the second to the late Government, and the third to
    the Privy Councillors who were not of either of the others, and to a
    few other leading members. Little Northcote was on the Speaker's
    left, parted only by the Speaker from Randolph. I was opposite,
    reflecting, whenever Jim Lowther would leave off slapping me on the
    back.'

On January 29th, 1893, Sir Charles noted in his diary:

    'There is a league between Harcourt and Labouchere against the
    Rosebery-Asquith combination. Labouchere showed me a letter from
    Harcourt: "Hell would be pleasant compared to the present
    situation."'

    'On my return to the House of Commons,' notes Sir Charles, 'I found
    Chamberlain's debating power marvellous, but, while his method has
    improved, it ... no longer carries the conviction of conviction with
    it, which, to me, is everything.

    'Asquith is the only new man who is "any good"--a bold, strong man,
    of great intellectual power. Sir E. Grey is able, but terribly
    Whiggish. Hanbury has improved, and so has Harcourt. The others are
    where they were.'

Mr. Asquith he had met for the first time in 1891, at Mr. Chamberlain's
house, and found him 'much more intelligent than the ordinary run of
politicians.'

Dilke and Chamberlain, once closely united through a long period of
public life, had now been working apart for more than seven years.
Strong minds, that in the collaboration of their earlier policy mutually
influenced each other, had by a turn of personal fortune combining with
a great political change followed divided destinies; and their evolution
carried them far apart. They had met in private, had maintained the
personal bond, [Footnote: 'At this time I was searching for a secretary,
and Chamberlain found me Hudson, who, as he said, "fulfils all your
requirements."' The connection between the secretary and his chief ended
only with Sir Charles's death.] and in so meeting must inevitably have
been prompted by a desire to minimize differences. But now they stood
both again in the public arena--the one returning after the lapse of
years, the other sustained by an unbroken continuance of Parliamentary
activity--and the situation became difficult.

There were not many men who could work with Mr. Chamberlain in equal
alliance. For that a man was needed, confident enough in his own weight
not to fear being overbalanced in the combination; great enough in
nature to be devoid of jealousy; and wise enough to understand that
restless activity was the law of his ally's being. Upon those conditions
only was it possible for a cooler, more temperate, and, on some
subjects, better instructed politician to steer the tremendous motive
power which Mr. Chamberlain's personal force afforded. What was lost to
the world when the crippling of Sir Charles disjointed that alliance can
never be reckoned. Not only the alliance, but the personal intimacy, was
broken when their political ways sundered on the Home Rule division.
Friendship remained; but it was not possible that men of that mark, who
had met incessantly in the closest confederacy, could meet easily when
the very groundwork of their intimacy was gone.

Sir Charles worked hard for a Bill specially interesting now to his
constituents.

On April 18th, 1893, 'I wrote to Chamberlain and to Randolph Churchill
as to the Miners Bill, as its authors had asked me to lay plans for the
debate. From both I had replies favourable to local option, and on my
writing again to Chamberlain he answered: "The sentence about the Labour
leaders escaped me because I am, I confess, impatient of their extremely
unpractical policy, and also because I believe their real influence is
immensely exaggerated. A political leader having genuine sympathy with
the working classes and a practical programme could, in my opinion,
afford to set them aside. Mr. Gladstone has no real sympathy with the
working classes, and a perfect hatred for all forms of Socialism. His
concessions are extorted from him, and are the price paid for votes, and
therefore I do not wonder at the pressure put upon him."'

In the first week in May, 1893, 'I brought forward my Egypt motion,
spoke for the Miners Bill, and carried a resolution, drawn for us by the
Lord Chancellor himself, as to the appointment of the magistrates for
counties. From this time forward I shall not name my speeches and
ordinary action in the House, as I had now regained the position which I
had held in it up to 1878, though not my position of 1878-1880, nor that
of 1884-85.'

No Parliament is exactly like its predecessor, and changed conditions
had also changed the character of Sir Charles Dilke's Parliamentary
personal surroundings; but they were drawn now, as of old, from neither
party exclusively. The group comprised several young supporters of the
Government, like Mr. McKenna, who, having failed in Clapham, wrote to
Sir Charles on July 7th, 1892, of his regret at not being near him in
the House of Commons 'to go on learning from you--I don't mean
information, but patience and judgment and steadfastness.' Mr. McKenna
had now been returned for South Monmouthshire, one of the constituencies
which had been anxious to secure Sir Charles himself. Here Sir Charles
had many devoted friends, who gave introductions to Mr. McKenna, which
led to his adoption as candidate, and he wrote again to Sir Charles on
his election: 'I am glad to owe it to you.' Old friends--as, for
example, Mr. Morley--remained, and from the ranks of the Opposition at
least one rarely interesting figure stands out, that of H. O.
Arnold-Forster, who with Mrs. Arnold-Forster came to rank among the
nearest friends of Sir Charles and Lady Dilke. The political tie was
here due to common advocacy of army reform, and it took shape in a kind
of formal alliance.

    'In November, 1893, in the debates on the Local Government Bill, I
    carried a good deal of weight, and was able greatly to improve the
    measure. I also in December made a speech in a naval debate which
    was as successful as my Zulu speech--with as little reason, except
    its opportuneness.'

In the Home Rule portion of the session of 1893, Sir Charles was mostly
silent, being, in his own words, inclined to 'keep still' on the main
issue. His only contributions to the long debates were made during the
Committee stage, and concerned the electoral arrangements--a matter upon
which Mr. Gladstone was quick to acknowledge his high competence. When
at last, in 1894, the Bill reached the Lords, it was rejected; and then
the foreseen change of leadership came to pass, and Lord Rosebery was
'popped into Mr. Gladstone's place by an intrigue.' Sir Charles
discussed in the _North American Review_ the result, which his Memoir
describes thus. Admitting that the choice, which 'came as a surprise to
the Liberal party in the country,' would strengthen the Government in
Scotland and in London by Lord Rosebery's personal prestige, he none the
less foresaw that the new leader would come into conflict 'with all that
is active in the Liberal party,' unless he could renounce 'his personal
wishes in favour of a reformed but a strong and indeed strengthened
Second Chamber.' His chance of success lay in putting himself as a peer
at the head of a movement against the veto of the House of Lords. 'The
chance is before him, but he is a cautious Scotchman who seldom makes up
his mind too soon, and who may possibly make it up too late.'

Meanwhile 'I was pressed to join Labouchere and Storey in opposing him,
which I declined to do, on the ground that I was concerned with the
measures proposed, but not with the men.'

Speaking in the Potteries on November 22nd, 'to a big audience which
took it well,' he 'attacked Rosebery about the Lords.'

    'He would like to see Lord Rosebery in the popular House in which he
    had never sat, and he would like to see Lord Salisbury back again.
    Their ideas would undergo a change. The reform of the Upper House
    was now not a Liberal but a Conservative nostrum.... It would be
    necessary for the Radicals to fight even against their Liberal
    leaders to prevent lengthening the life of the Parliamentary sick
    man.... The Liberal party was still hampered by men who wanted
    peerages for themselves and their sons, and he should not believe
    that the leaders were in earnest until the Liberal party gave over
    making peers. Moderate men must be warned by the example of what had
    recently happened in Belgium, where the moderate Liberals had been
    promptly suffocated between the two opposing forces of Toryism and
    Socialism, as they were too pretentious to submit to Tory discipline
    and too slavish to become frankly democratic.'




CHAPTER L

INDIA AND FRANCE--RHODES AND BISMARCK

1886-1892


I.

In the period covered by the earlier portion of the previous chapter,
Sir Charles Dilke had used his freedom as an opportunity for travel.

    'During a visit to Paris, in the winter of 1886, paid in order to
    discuss the question of the work which ultimately appeared in France
    as _L'Europe en 1887_, I saw a good deal of Castelar, who was
    visiting Paris at the same time; and it was to us that he made a
    speech, which has become famous, about Boulanger, who was beginning
    to attract great notice, declaring in French, "I know that General
    Boulanger--he is a Spanish General;" meaning that the Spanish habit
    of the military insurrection under the leadership of a showy General
    was extending to France. [Footnote: In 1889 Sir Charles notes: 'My
    wife and I were asked to dinner to meet General Boulanger; and I
    decided that I would not go, neither did she.']

    'Chamberlain, during his journey abroad, had seen a good deal of Sir
    William White, the Ambassador at Constantinople, who wrote to me
    about him: "We became friends, and spoke naturally of you, our
    mutual friend. I could not help seeing Chamberlain's immense
    quickness of observation and talents. In foreign politics he
    appeared to me to be beginning his ABC, but disposed to learn...."
    The Ambassador went on to say that the intimacy between France and
    Russia was coming to the front at Constantinople, and that
    Bismarck's Ambassador did not seem to take umbrage at it.

    'In September, 1887, we went to France, where our journey had
    nothing of great interest, except a visit to Vaux-le-Vicomte,
    Fouquet's house, [Footnote: Near Melun, in the Seine-et-Marne, where
    Fouquet gave the celebrated fête referred to. See _Mémoires de
    Fouquet_, by A. Chéruel, vol. ii., chap. xxxv.] which remains very
    much as Fouquet left it, although the gardens in which he received
    Louis XIV. in the great féte recounted by Dumas have been completed
    by their present proprietor, with whom we stayed. We afterwards
    visited Constantinople, and stayed for ten days at Therapia, and
    then at Athens, where I had a great reception, as indeed throughout
    Greece, on account of my previous services to the Greek cause; in
    some cases payment was refused on this ground. [Footnote: A letter
    from Lady Dilke of October 29th, 1887, written to Cardinal Manning,
    a constant correspondent, deals with one of these episodes:

    "We were received at the Piraeus by an order not to open our boxes,
    an ignorant underling being severely rebuked, and bid to 'look at
    the name on the boxes. Would you ask money from one who has done so
    much for Greece?' In short, we had a royal reception. The Prime
    Minister, the Metropolitan, and the other Ministers and their
    families, and all dignitaries, ecclesiastical, academical,
    political, military, all vied in showing Charles honour. The crowd
    watched outside for a glimpse of him, and M. Ralli, when I said how
    touched he was at their faithful gratitude, said: 'It is not only
    our gratitude we wish to show him. You have no idea of the intense
    sympathy felt for him in Athens.' We had but three days to give, and
    so missed the great public banquet and the torchlight procession
    which the students wished to organize. At Corinth the King and Queen
    were equally kind."]

    'Our journey to Turkey and Greece was full of interest. The Sultan
    showed us immense courtesy. Greece after twenty-five years seemed to
    me as lovely as ever. The Eastern Church were very civil to us, and
    the reception at the Phanar at Constantinople by the Oecumenical
    Patriarch, the Archbishop of Constantinople, Dionysius V., in Synod
    was striking. I wrote from Constantinople to Chesson: "The
    Bulgarians and the Greeks are both now on excellent terms with the
    Turks, although, unfortunately, they still detest one another. The
    Sultan does not care two straws about Bulgaria now, and will do
    nothing in the matter except mark time. The Greek Patriarch gave us
    an official reception, with some Archbishops present, who
    represented the Churches of Asia and of the Islands, and showed us
    their splendid Byzantine treasures. It is extraordinarily
    interesting to see all the effects of St. Chrysostom; but I cannot
    help feeling that the Church sold the Empire to the Turks, and would
    have been more estimable had it _lost_ its jewels. The last
    Constantine tried to reunite the Eastern and Western Churches, and
    the poor man was denounced as a heretic, and surrounded only by
    Latins when he was killed on the breach. The Church, however, went
    through a small martyrdom later on, and was glorified by suffering
    at the beginning of the Greek War of Independence, when the then
    Patriarch was hanged by the Turks and dragged about for three days
    by the Jews. They all seem on very good terms now, and the Patriarch
    sang the praises of the present Sultan loudly. The Sultan has been
    very civil. I did not want to see him, which doubtless made him the
    more anxious to see me. He sent for me twice, and, besides the
    audience at the Selamlik, had us to a state dinner given in our
    honour at the Haremlik. I refused the Grand Cordon of the Médjidieh,
    but Emilia accepted the Grand Cordon of the Chefkat for herself. He
    is very anxious to make a good impression, and is having the _Shrine
    of Death_ done into Turk!"

    'I received a letter of thanks from the Secretary of the Trustees of
    the National Portrait Gallery for having obtained for them from the
    Sultan a copy of the portrait of Nelson which is in the Treasury at
    Constantinople; but what I really tried to obtain was the original,
    inasmuch as no one ever sees it where it is.'

Sir Charles Dilke, writing to Mr. Chamberlain an amused account of the
Sultan's advances, says: 'Lady White told Emilia that she heard I was to
be Grand Vizier.'

    'My riding tour along the Baluch and Afghan frontiers was,' Sir
    Charles notes, 'one of the pleasantest and most interesting
    experiences of my life.' [Footnote: He adds, 'I described so fully
    in the _Fortnightly Review_, in two articles of March 1st and April
    1st, 1889, my riding tour ... that I shall say no more about it.'
    This account of the journey is summarized from those articles, the
    criticism on military questions being dealt with by Mr. Spenser
    Wilkinson in the chapter on Defence (LV.).] Leaving England in
    October, 1888, he landed with Lady Dilke at Karachi in November.
    They were met by the Commander-in-Chief, Sir Frederick Roberts, and
    went on over the broad-gauge line, then not officially open, through
    the Bolan Pass to Quetta. 'When we reached the picturesque portion
    of the pass, we left our carriages for an open truck placed at the
    head of the train, in front of two engines, and there we sat with
    the fore part of the truck occupied by the paws and head of His
    Excellency's dog; next came the one lady of the party and Sir
    Frederick Roberts, and then myself and all the staff. The long-
    haired warriors and tribesmen, who occupied every point of vantage
    on the crags, doubtless thought, and have since told their tribesmen
    on their return, that the whole scene was devised to do honour to a
    dog.'

They were travelling over part of 'the great strategic railroad
constructed after the Penjdeh incident, on orders given by the
Government of which I was a member.'

At Quetta he was among the guests of Sir Robert Sandeman, Agent for
British Baluchistan, ruler in all but name of those nominally
independent frontier principalities and clans. 'Quetta conversations
soon brought back reminiscences of far-off days. When I had last seen
Sir Robert Sandeman it had been in London, during the discussion of the
occupation of the Khojak position, in which I sided with him.... We
brought with us or found gathered here all the men who best understood
the problem of frontier defence--a very grave problem, too.'

The party assembled under the roof of the Residency included the
Commander-in-Chief, of whom Sir Charles says: 'Sir Frederick Roberts
knows India as no one else knows it, and knows the Indian Army as no one
else has ever known it'; the Adjutant-General; the Quartermaster-
General, who was Director of Military Intelligence; the Military Member
of Council, General Chesney; and Sir Charles Elliott, the Member of
Council for Public Works, who had charge of the strategic railways. With
them were the Inspectors-General of Artillery and of Military Works, the
Secretary of the Defence Commission, and the General in Command at
Quetta, as well as his predecessor, who had not yet vacated the post.

He saw manoeuvres outside Quetta in the valleys that lead from the
Afghan side, and he had the experience of riding up and down those stony
hill slopes beside the Commander-in-Chief. He explored the Khojak
tunnel, then under process of construction, running through 'a wall-like
range which reminds one of the solitude of Sainte-Baume in Provence,'
surveyed all the defences of Quetta, and then, while Lady Dilke went on
by rail to Simla, he set out to ride, in company with Sir Frederick
Roberts and Sir Robert Sandeman, from Harnai, through the Bori and Zhob
Valleys, towards the Gomul Pass. On that journey he saw great gatherings
of chiefs and tribesmen come in to meet and salute the representatives
of British rule. He watched Sir Robert Sandeman parleying with the
borderers, and was introduced to them as the statesman who had
sanctioned the new road. These were regions beyond the reach of
telegraph, where outposts maintained communications by a pigeon post, of
which the mountain hawk took heavy toll; and each day's journey was a
hard and heavy ride.

The ride continued for twelve days, through scorching sun by day and
bitter cold at night; and every march brought its full portion of
strange and beautiful sights. All the romance of border rule, outposts
among robber tribes, order maintained through the agency of subsidized
chiefs, were disclosed; and even when the conditions of travel changed,
when a train took them from the Upper Indus to Nowshera and Peshawur, it
brought to Sir Charles the opportunity of seeing what interested him no
less than the wild tribal levies--namely, the pick of British regulars
in India, both native and European.

The splendour and beauty of the pageant pleased the eye, and there was
not lacking a dramatic interest. He had seen by Sir Frederick Roberts's
side the mountain battle-ground where the day of Maiwand was avenged and
British prestige restored; now he was present when Ayub Khan, the victor
of Maiwand, voluntarily came forward to hold speech for the first time
with the conqueror who so swiftly blotted out the Afghan's victory.

    'On our way back (from India) we stayed at Cairo, and saw much of
    Sir Evelyn Baring, Riaz, Mustapha Fehmy, the Khedive, Tigrane,
    Yakoub Artin, and the other leading men. At Rome, as we passed
    through Italy, I made the acquaintance of many of my wife's friends,
    the most interesting of whom was, perhaps, Madame Minghetti, known
    to her friends as Donna Laura, and previously Princess Camporeale;
    and I obtained through Bonghi, whom we saw both at Naples and at
    Rome, an order to see Spezia--an order which was refused by the War
    Office, and granted by the Admiralty. The Admiral commanding the
    Fleet and the Préfet Maritime were both very kind, and I thoroughly
    saw the arsenal, fleet, and forts, with the two Admirals.'

In 1905 Sir Charles writes:

    'On September 7th in the year 1891 I started for the French
    manoeuvres, to which I had been invited by Galliffet. By sending
    over my horses I was able to see the manoeuvres extremely well....

    'The Marquis de Galliffet was an interesting figure, a soldier of
    the time of Louis XV., who, however, had thoroughly learned his
    modern work. There were 125,000 men in the field, but, looking back
    to my adventures, I am now more struck by the strange future of the
    friends I made than by the interest, great as it was, of the
    tactics. We had on the staff almost all those who afterwards became
    leading men in the Dreyfus case, on both sides of that affair.
    Saussier, the Generalissimo, had with him, to look after the foreign
    officers, Colonel (afterwards Sir) Reginald Talbot, Huehne' (German
    Military Attaché), 'and others--Maurice Weil (the Jew friend of
    Esterhazy), who was in the Rennes trial named by the defence as the
    real spy, though, I am convinced, innocent. We now know, of course,
    that Esterhazy should have been the villain of the play.... General
    Billot, afterwards Minister of War, was present, living with
    Saussier, as a spectator. Galliffet had under him nearly 120,000
    men, but the skeleton enemy was commanded by General Boisdeffre,
    afterwards Chief of the Staff, and the leader of the clerical party
    in the Ministry of War, and friend, throughout the "affair," of
    Billot. General Brault, also afterwards Chief of the Staff, was in
    the manoeuvres Chief of the Staff to Galliffet. He, it will be
    remembered, also played his part in the "affair," as did Huehne,
    named above. On Galliffet's staff, besides General Brault, were
    Colonel Bailloud, also concerned in the Dreyfus case; Captain
    Picquart, afterwards the youngest Lieutenant-Colonel in the French
    army, a brilliant and most thoughtful military scholar, the hero of
    the Dreyfus case in its later aspects; the Comte d'Alsace,
    afterwards a deputy, and, although a clerical Conservative, a
    witness for Dreyfus; and Joseph Reinach, the real author of the
    virtual rehabilitation of Dreyfus. It was a singularly brilliant
    staff. Bailloud, it may be remembered, afterwards became
    Commander-in-Chief of the China Expedition.

    'Of those who have not been named, in addition to the remarkable men
    who figured in the Dreyfus case, and among the few on this staff who
    were not concerned in it, were other interesting persons: the Prince
    d'Hénin, M. de la Guiche, and a man who was interesting, and figures
    largely in memoirs, Galliffet's bosom friend, the Marquis du Lau
    d'Allemans. "Old Du Lau," as he is generally called, was a rich _bon
    vivant_, with a big house in Paris, who throughout life has been a
    sort of perpetual "providence" to Galliffet, going with him
    everywhere, even to the Courts where Galliffet was a favourite
    guest. Reinach and Du Lau were not soldiers in the strict sense of
    the term, although members of Galliffet's staff. Maurice Weil,
    though a great military writer, was himself not a soldier, although
    on Saussier's headquarters staff in Paris and in the field. Weil and
    Reinach were both officers of the territorial army: Weil a Colonel
    of artillery, Reinach a Lieutenant of Chasseurs à Cheval. Du Lau was
    a dragoon Lieutenant of stupendous age--possibly an ex-Lieutenant,
    with the right to wear his uniform when out as a volunteer on
    service. I was walking with him one day in a village, when a small
    boy passing said to a companion "What a jolly old chap for a
    Lieutenant!" And it was strange indeed to see the long white hair of
    the old Marquis streaming from beneath his helmet. He was older, I
    think, than Galliffet, who was retiring, and who received during
    these manoeuvres the plain military medal, which is the joy of
    French hall-porters, but the highest distinction which can be
    conferred by the Republic on a General who is a member of the
    Supreme Council of War and at the top of the tree in the Legion of
    Honour. Joseph Reinach was, of course, young enough to be the son of
    old Du Lau, but since leaving the regular regiment of Chasseurs--in
    which he had done his service at Nancy, while Gyp (his future enemy
    and that of his race) was the reigning Nancy beauty--he had expanded
    in figure so that his sky-blue-and-silver and fine horse did not
    save him from comments by the children who had noted Du Lau's age.
    The Duc d'Aumale was also present on horseback as a spectator, but
    his official friends, and their friends, were forced to ignore him,
    as he had not yet made his peace with the Republic.

    'As soon as I had joined Galliffet, I wrote to my wife: "Conduct of
    troops most orderly. It is now, of course, here, as it was already
    in 1870 with the Germans, that, the soldier being Guy Boys
    [Footnote: Guy Boys was Lady Dilke's nephew; Jim Haslett the
    ferryman at Dockett. Sir Charles was illustrating the fact that all
    classes serve together both in the ranks and as officers.] and Jim
    Haslett and all of us, and not a class apart, there is no 'military
    tone.' Discipline, nevertheless, seems perfect, but are the officers
    as good as the non-commissioned officers and the men? I doubt.
    Promotion from the ranks combined with special promotion to the
    highest ranks for birth of all nobles who have any brains at all is
    a combination which gives results inferior to either the Swiss
    democratic plan or the Prussian aristocratic. Perhaps a fifth of the
    officers are noble, but more than half the powerful officers are
    noble; and here we are with the sides commanded by the Prince
    d'Eckmühl and the Prince de Sartigues." (During the first days of
    the manoeuvres the four army corps and the two cavalry divisions
    were combined under Galliffet; half the army was commanded by
    General Davoust, who, of course, is the first of these two Princes;
    and Galliffet had for "second title" the name of his Provençal
    principality near Marseilles.) "You may say, 'The Generalissimo,
    sausage-maker, restores the balance.' But the real Generalissimo is
    Miribel, Aristo of the Aristos--for he is a poor noble of the South.
    Another of the army corps is commanded by a Breton, Kerhuel, and the
    other by a man of army descent for ever and ever, Négrier, son and
    nephew of Napoleonic Generals."'

    'An amusing billet adventure was named in another letter to my wife:

    '"I am in a Legitimist chàteau: one side of the room, Callots; the
    other, Comte de Chambord. Over the bed a large crucifix. The room
    belongs to 'Mathilde.' But as I live with the staff I do not see the
    family. The butler is charming, and the fat coachman turned out two
    of _his_ horses to make room for 'Madame' and 'W'f'd'r.' I had to
    write a letter to a French newspaper, which had charged me with
    turning my back on the standard of a regiment instead of bowing to
    it, and dated from this place: 'Château de Boussencourt.'"'

His observations were summed up in an article for the _Fortnightly_,
which was later translated into French by an officer on the staff of
the Commander-in-Chief, and, after appearing in a review, was published
separately by the military library. His strictures on the handling of
the cavalry led to a controversy in France into which he was obliged
later to enter.

    'As I passed through Paris on my return, Galliffet wrote: "You are
    as a writer full of kindness, but very dangerous as an observer, and
    next time I shall certainly put you on the treatment of the military
    attachés--plenty of dinners, plenty of close carriages, plenty of
    gendarmes, no information, and a total privation of field-glasses.
    This will be a change for you, especially in the matter of dinners.
    Lady Dilke cannot have forgiven me for sending you back in such
    wretched condition."'

M. Joseph Beinach wrote in 1911:

    'Nous recommandions tous deux le rajeunissement des cadres. II s'est
    trouvé enfin un ministre de la guerre, M. le général Brun, pour
    aborder résolument le problème. Comme nos souvenirs revenaient
    fréquemment aux belles journées de ces manoeuvres de l'Est! Je
    revois encore Dilke chevauchant avec nous dans l'état-major de
    Gallififet. II y avait la le général Brault, le général Darras, le
    général Zurlinden, le "commandant" Picquart, Thierry d'Alsace, le
    marquis Du Lau.... Ah! la "bataille" de Margerie-Haucourt, sous le
    grand soleil qui, dissipant les nuages de la matinée, fit scintiller
    tout à coup comme une moisson d'acier les milliers de fusils des
    armées réunies! Comme c'est loin! Que de tombeaux!... Mais nous
    sommes bien encore quelques-uns à avoir gardé intactes nos âmes
    d'alors!' [Footnote: An article in the _Figaro_ written after Sir
    Charles Dilke's death.]


II.

It was in 1889 that Sir Charles Dilke came into touch with Cecil Rhodes
during a visit paid by the latter to England.

    'In July, 1889, I saw a good deal of Cecil Rhodes, who was brought
    to my house by Sir Charles Mills, [Footnote: Then Agent-General for
    the Cape and a great personal friend.] and afterwards came back
    several times. He was at this moment interesting, full of life and
    vigour, but when he returned to England after the British South
    Africa Company had been started he seemed to have become half torpid
    and at the same time dogmatic. The simplicity which had
    distinguished him up to the end of his visit of 1889 seemed to have
    disappeared when he came back in 1891; and his avowed intention of
    ultimately coming to England to take part in English politics seemed
    also a strange mistake, as he was essentially a man fitted for
    colonial life, and had none of the knowledge, or the mode of
    concealing want of knowledge, one or other of which is required for
    English public work.'

    'In August, 1889, I received a note from Rhodes from Lisbon which
    constitutes, I believe, a valuable autograph, for his friends all
    say he "never writes." I had asked him to clear up an extraordinary
    passage in one of Kruger's speeches (on which I afterwards commented
    in _Problems of Greater Britain_), and Rhodes wrote:

    '"The fates were unpropitious to my day on the river, as matters
    required me in South Africa, from which place I propose to send you
    the famous speech you want. I quite see the importance, if true, of
    his utterance, but I can hardly think Kruger would have said it. I
    hope you will still hold to your intention of visiting the Cape, and
    I can only say I will do all I can to assist you in seeing those
    parts with which I am connected. I am afraid Matabeleland will be in
    too chaotic a state to share in your visit, but between the diamonds
    and the gold there is a good extent to travel over. I am doubtful
    about your getting Kruger's speech before you publish, but it will
    be the first thing I will attend to on my arrival at the Cape.
    Kindly remember me to Lady Dilke.

    '"Yours truly,

    '"C. J. Rhodes."

    'At the beginning of November, 1889, I heard again from Rhodes, who
    wrote from Kimberley:

    '"Dear Sir Charles Dilke,

    '"I have come to the conclusion that Kruger never made use of the
    expression attributed to him, as I can find no trace of it in the
    reports of his speech on the Second Chamber. I send you a copy of
    the draft law....

    '"Thanks for your news of Bismarck's map. Their true boundary is the
    20th degree of longitude, and it will take them all their time to
    retain even that, as the Damaras are entirely opposed to them, and
    the German company which nominally holds that territory will soon
    have to liquidate for lack of funds. It is one thing to paint a map,
    and it is quite another to really occupy and govern a new territory.
    I am still waiting for the news of the signature of the charter,
    which I hope will not be much longer delayed. I think Kruger will
    find his hands quite full enough without interfering with me. He is
    still trying to get them to give him Swaziland in return for
    non-interference in Matabeleland. The Matabele King (Lobengula)
    still continues to slaughter his subjects, and makes the minds of
    our representatives at times very uncomfortable. It is undoubtedly a
    difficult problem to solve; but the plain fact remains that a savage
    chief with about 8,000 warriors is not going to keep out the huge
    wave of white men now moving north, and so I feel it will come all
    right.

    '"Yours,
    '"C. J. Rhodes."

    'In March, 1890, I received a letter from Rhodes from the Kimberley
    Club, in which, after giving some facts with regard to the state of
    South Africa, he went on: "I see that Home Rule is gaining ground.
    [Footnote: Rhodes had given Mr. Parnell a subscription of £10,000.]
    It really means the American Constitution. It is rather a big
    change, and the doubt is whether the conservative nature of the
    English people will face it when they understand what Home Rule
    means. Schnadhorst is here, but is still suffering very acutely from
    rheumatism."'

The reference to 'Bismarck's map' in the second of these communications
shows that Sir Charles had reported to Rhodes some of the observations
made by the Chancellor in the course of the visit of which an account
here follows.

    'In September, 1889, having settled to take my son to Germany to a
    gymnasium, and having told Herbert Bismarck my intention when he was
    in London, I was asked by him in his father's name to stay at
    Friedrichsruh with the Prince. I started for Germany with my son at
    the same moment at which my wife started for the Trades Congress at
    Dundee.'

He wrote to M. Joseph Reinach in August, 1889: 'I'm going to
Friedrichsruh the week after next to stay with Prince Bismarck, who
seems very anxious to see me--about colonial matters, I think. I will
tell you what he says, for your private information, if he talks of
anything else, which is not, however, likely, as he knows my views about
that Alsace question which lies at the root of all others. But I had
sooner my going there was not mentioned in advance, and I shall not be
there until September 7th-9th.'

    'Herbert Bismarck wrote: "I hope you will accept my father's
    invitation, because he is anxious to make your personal
    acquaintance. I am greatly disappointed that I shall be deprived of
    the pleasure of introducing you myself to my father, owing to my
    absence, but, then, I am sure that you will find yourself at your
    ease in Friedrichsruh, whether I am there or not. Hoping to see you
    before long in England, believe me,

      '"Very truly yours,
        '"H. Bismarck."

    'The son was still called Count von Bismarck by himself, and
    popularly Herbert Bismarck, but shortly afterwards his father gave
    him the family castle of Schoenhausen, and from that time forward he
    used on his cards the name of Graf Bismarck-Schoenhausen. When I got
    to Ratzeburg, where I left my son, I found a telegram from
    Friedrichsruh: "Prince Bismarck looks forward to your visit
    to-morrow with great pleasure"; and then it went on to tell me about
    trains.

    'I was met at the station by Prince Bismarck's official
    secretary--Rottenburg of the Foreign Office--with an open carriage,
    although the house was formerly the railway hotel (Frascati) and
    adjoins the station. I wrote to my wife on Saturday, September 7th:
    "The great man has been very sweet to me, though he is in pain from
    his sinews. We had an hour's walk before lunch together. Then
    Hatzfeldt, the Ambassador in London, came, and all the afternoon we
    have been driving, and went to the harvest-home, where the Bismarck
    grandchildren danced with the peasants on the grass. The daughter,
    and mother of these children, does the honours, and is the only
    lady; and at dinner we shall be the Prince, Hatzfeldt, self,
    Countess von Rantzau, Count von Rantzau, Rottenburg the secretary, a
    tutor and another secretary, the two last 'dumb persons.' The forest
    is a Pyrford of 25,000 acres, but the house is in the situation of a
    Dockett, and must be damp in winter till the great January frost
    sets in, when the Baltic is hard frozen."'

Sir Charles notes upon this: 'Hatzfeldt was the Chancellor's right-hand
man--of action. But Bismarck did not consult him: he said, "Do," and
Hatzfeldt did.'

The letter continues:

    '"When Bismarck's Reichshund died, a successor was appointed, but
    the Emperor, who had heard of the death and not of the appointment
    to fill the vacancy, gave another, and the Prince says: 'Courtier as
    I am, I sent away my dog to my head-forester's and kept the gift
    one, but as I do not like him I leave him at Berlin.' Here the
    favourite reigns, and her name is Rebekkah, and she answers very
    prettily to the name of Bex. The old gentleman is dear in his polite
    ways.... The daughter is equally pleasant, and the son-in-law as
    well. We were loudly cheered at the harvest festival, of course....
    You can write to our friend J. R. [Reinach] of the R.F. [_République
    Française_] that I found the Chancellor very determined on peace as
    long as he lives, which he fears will not be long, and afraid of
    Prussian action after his death."

    'In another letter the next day, Sunday, September 8th 1889, I
    wrote: "I expected the extreme simplicity of life. The coachman
    alone wears livery, and that only a plain blue with ordinary black
    trousers and ordinary black hat--no cockades and no stripes. There
    are only two indoor men-servants: a groom of the chambers, and one
    other not in livery--the one shown in the photograph of Bismarck
    receiving the Emperor, but there, for this occasion only, dressed in
    a state livery. [Footnote: Photographs which Bismarck gave Sir
    Charles, showing the Chancellor with his hound receiving the young
    Kaiser, and Bismarck alone with his dog, always hung on the wall at
    Dockett.] The family all drink beer at lunch, and offer the thinnest
    of thin Mosel. Bismarck has never put on a swallow-tail coat but
    once, which he says was in 1835, and which is of peculiar shape. A
    tall hat he does not possess, and he proscribes tall hats and
    evening dress among his guests. His view is that a Court and an army
    should be in uniform, but that when people are not on duty at Court
    or in war, or preparation for war, they should wear a comfortable
    dress, and each man that form of dress that he finds most agreeable
    to himself, provided that it be not that which he calls evening
    dress and tall hats--a sort of 'sham uniform.' Countess von Rantzau,
    however, dresses in a high, short evening gown like other people.
    The Prince eats nothing at all except young partridges and
    salt-herring, and the result is that the cookery is feeble, though
    for game-eaters there is no hardship. The table groans with red-deer
    venison, ham, grouse, woodcock, and the inevitable partridges--
    roast, boiled, with white sauce, cold, pickled in vinegar. A French
    cook would hang himself. There is no sweet at dinner except fruit,
    stewed German fashion with the game. Trout, which the family
    themselves replace by raw salt-herring, and game, form the whole
    dinner. Of wines and beer they drink at dinner a most extraordinary
    mixture, but as the wine is all the gift of Emperors and merchant
    princes it is good. The cellar card was handed to the Prince with
    the fish, and, after consultation with me, and with Hatzfeldt, we
    started on sweet champagne, not suggested by me, followed by
    Bordeaux, followed by still Mosel, followed by Johannesberg (which I
    did suggest), followed by black beer, followed by corn brandy. When
    I reached the Johannesberg I stopped, and went on with that only, so
    that I got a second bottle drawn for dessert. When the Chancellor
    got to his row of great pipes, standing against the wall ready
    stuffed for him, we went back to black beer. The railway-station is
    in the garden, and the expresses shake the house."

    'Other points which struck me in the manners and customs of
    Friedrichsruh were that the Chancellor invariably took a barrel of
    beer out driving, and stopped halfway in the afternoon and insisted
    on his guests consuming it out of a two-handled mug which appeared
    from under the coachman's seat. I had some talk with him about the
    wisdom of his going unprotected for great distances through the
    woods, and he answered, "But I am not unprotected," and showed me a
    pistol which he carried, but, of course, a man with a blunderbuss
    behind a tree might easily have killed him. He never takes a servant
    on the box by the side of the coachman, and generally drives
    entirely alone. He rides alone without a groom, and walks alone with
    only his dog, or rather the forester's dog, the daughter of the
    Reichshund, who walks six or seven miles every morning to go out
    with him, and six or seven miles every night to come to dinner.

    'The Prince was evidently discontented with the Emperor, but wholly
    unable to believe that he himself could be done without. He told me
    that he must work each day and could never take a holiday, but that
    even a few minutes' work was sufficient, as all that was necessary
    was that he should keep an eye on what was going on. All was now so
    well arranged that the only thing which gave him trouble was the
    internal condition of Alsace, which as a Reichsland had him alone as
    a Minister. In the evening he chatted much about the past; told me
    of his visit to London in 1842, of how a cabman tried to cheat him,
    and how at last he held out all his money in his hand and said to
    the man, "Pay yourself"; how then the man took less than that which
    he had refused, his right fare, and then with every sign of scorn
    ejaculated, "What I say is, God damn all Frenchmen!" Bismarck speaks
    admirable English, with hardly any trace of accent, but spoken very
    slowly. French he speaks more rapidly but less well; and of Russian
    he has a fair knowledge. He told me how (also in 1842) he had
    visited Barclay and Perkins's, and had been offered an enormous
    tankard of their strongest ale. "Thinking of my country, I drank it
    slowly to the last drop, and then left them, courteously I hope; I
    got as far as London Bridge, and there I sat down in a recess, and
    for hours the bridge went round." He told me how he had striven to
    keep the peace through the time of Napoleon III., but finding it
    useless had prepared for war; and he made no secret of the fact that
    he had brought the war about. He told me himself, in so many words,
    that at the last moment he had made war by cutting down a telegram
    from the King of Prussia, as I have said above; [Footnote: See
    Chapter XL (Vol. I., p. 157).] "the alteration of the telegram from
    one of two hundred words to one of twenty words" had "made it into a
    trumpet blast"--as Moltke and Von Roon, who were with him at dinner
    when it came, had said--"a trumpet blast which" had "roused all
    Germany." As he mellowed with his pipes he told me that, though he
    was a high Tory, he had come to see the ills of absolutism, which,
    to work, required the King to be an angel. "Now," he said, "Kings,
    even when good, have women round them, who, even if Queens, govern
    them to their personal ends." It was very plain that he was on bad
    terms with the Emperor, and equally clear that he did not believe
    that the Emperor would dare dismiss him.'

    A commentary on the last sentence follows at no long interval, when
    _Problems of Greater Britain_ appeared and 'Herbert Bismarck, in
    thanking me for a copy of my book, said: "My father ... sends you
    his kindest regards. He is just going to disentangle himself from
    the Prussian administration altogether, and will resign the post as
    Prime Minister, so that he will only remain Chancellor of the
    Empire." This was on February 10th, 1890, and before long Bismarck
    had been still further "disentangled," not by his own act,' but by a
    blow almost as sudden and dramatic as that which, in 1661, had
    struck down the owner of Vaux. [Footnote: See the _Mémoires de
    Fouquet_, by A. Chéruel, vol.ii., chap, xxxviii.]

    'In a second letter that young Bismarck wrote, he thanked me for
    sending him the famous sketch from _Punch_ (Tenniel's cartoon) of
    the captain of the ship sending away the pilot. He wrote:

    '"My Dear Dilke,

    '"I thank you very much for your kind note, which warmed my heart,
    and for the sketch you have cut out of _Punch_. It is indeed a fine
    one, and my father, to whom I showed it yesterday when your letter
    reached me, was pleased with its acuteness, as well as with the kind
    messages you sent him and which he requites. He has left last night
    for good, and I follow to-night to Friedrichsruh. It was a rather
    melancholy historical event, when my father stepped out of the house
    in which he has lived for the benefit of my country for nearly
    twenty-eight years. When I wrote you last, my father thought only of
    leaving the offices he held in Prussia, but things went on so
    rapidly that he did not see his way to remain as Chancellor in
    Berlin after the Emperor had let him know that His Majesty wished
    him to resign. I had no choice what course to take after he had been
    dismissed. My health is so much shaken that I am not able to take
    upon my shoulders alone the tremendous amount of responsibility for
    the foreign affairs of Germany which hitherto fell upon my father.
    When we drove to the station yesterday, our carriage was almost
    upset by the enthusiastic crowd of many thousand people who thronged
    the streets and cheered him on his passage in a deafening way; but
    it was satisfactory for my father to see that there are people left
    who regret his departure. I shall come back to Berlin after April
    1st to clear my house and to pack my things, and then I shall stay
    with my father till the end of April. In May I hope to come to
    England, and I look forward to the pleasure of seeing you then.

    '"Believe me,

    '"Ever yours sincerely,

    '"H. Bismarck."

    'He dined with me on May 15th, 1890, when Arnold Morley, Borthwick,
    Jeune, Fitzmaurice, Harry Lawson, and others, came to meet him; and
    from this time forward he came frequently to England.'

Sir Charles, while meeting the younger man thus often, never again had
sight or speech of the old Chancellor. 'In Christmas week [1892] I had a
general invitation from Prince Bismarck to stay with him again at
Friedrichsruh. But the chance never came.' Immediately on his return
from Germany Sir Charles wrote to his friend Reinach:

      'Pyrford by Maybury,
        'Near Woking,
          '_September_ l3_th_, 1889.

    'My Dear Reinach,

    'Bismarck c'est la paix. As long as he lives, which he thinks will
    not be long, he expects no movement. He agrees with me that the
    first movement will come from Russia. He expects the Republic to
    last in France. Bleichröder tells him that Ferry is the one man of
    energy and power.

      'Yours,
        'Chs. W. D.'

Three weeks later, in answer to a question by M. Reinach, this is added:

    'Health as good as he says. But he does _not_ say that. He says he
    suffers very much. The fact is that he looks very much older than he
    is, and his hands look like ninety instead of seventy-four.'

What Bismarck thought of his guest may be gathered from a saying quoted
in public by Dr. Stephen Bauer. Baron Rottenburg, Bismarck's first
secretary, had told him that, after Sir Charles's visit to
Friedrichsruh, the Chancellor spoke of him as 'the most interesting of
living English statesmen.' [Footnote: At the banquet given to Sir
Charles Dilke in April, 1910.]

In spite of Bismarck's efforts to bring about another meeting, this
visit was the only occasion on which the two men met. It was at a time
when the great maker of United Germany was nearing his fall. He was
becoming the bitter adversary of the Kaiser and of his policy, a policy
which he foresaw might imperil 'the strength and glory of the German
Empire.' In the often-quoted words of his instructions to diplomatic
representatives abroad--'Do all in your power to keep up good
relationship with the English. You need not even use a secret cipher in
cabling. We have nothing to conceal from the English, for it would be
the greatest possible folly to antagonize England'--is to be found one
main point of Bismarck's diplomacy; and feeling thus, he welcomed a
conference with the English statesman of that generation whom he had
looked upon as certain to be a force in the approaching years. When at
last the meeting took place, Dilke had been overtaken by circumstances
which altered his political position in England. But neither Bismarck
nor any other statesman on the Continent anticipated that they could
possibly have the result of excluding permanently from office one of the
very few English statesmen whose names carried weight with foreign
Powers on military and international politics.




CHAPTER LI

PERSONAL LIFE--IN OPPOSITION

1895 TO 1904


Few members of the House of Commons can have been sorry to see the last
of the Parliament which ended in June, 1895; and Sir Charles had nothing
to regret in its disappearance. In respect of foreign affairs, he saw
little to choose between the Liberal and Tory Ministers except that, of
the two, Lord Salisbury was 'the less wildly Jingo.' On questions of
Imperial Defence many of his old friends in the Liberal Government were
arrayed against him; and with matters standing as they stood between the
two Houses, there was no hope of any important Labour legislation. Lord
Salisbury had again become Prime Minister, and under the new
Conservative Administration everything went more easily. Sir Charles
testified in one of his speeches that Mr. Balfour's leadership, 'by his
unfailing courtesy to all members, made the House of Commons a pleasant
place'; and Mr. Balfour's leadership was well assured of several years'
continuance.

A great Parliamentarian, Sir Charles nevertheless held no brief for
Parliament. As a practical statesman, he realized the advantages in a
strong hand of such a machine as Bismarck controlled; while his
democratic instincts made him favour the Swiss methods, with direct
intervention of the people through the Referendum.

'I trained a whole generation of professional politicians to respect the
House of Commons,' he said, 'but I was never favourable to the
Parliamentary, and I was even hostile to the Party, system.'

Nevertheless, since England was wedded to its traditional system, to
work this efficiently was the first duty of an English politician. A
note from Sir Reginald Palgrave in 1893 acknowledges gratefully some
criticisms of the tenth edition of the classical work which deals with
this subject. No one was ever better qualified than Sir Charles to say
what could or could not be done by the rules of order, and he would
certainly have inculcated upon every politician the necessity of this
knowledge as a practical equipment.

'What Dilke did,' writes Mr. McKenna, 'was to impress upon me the
importance of a thorough understanding of the procedure and business of
the House of Commons, a branch of knowledge in which he was an
accomplished master.'

Sir Charles's whole scheme of existence was arranged with reference to
the work of Parliament. Of it he wrote on December 15th, 1905, in reply
to Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, who had dwelt on the interest of county
government:

    'The development of character in politics and the human side of the
    House of Commons have an extraordinary dramatic interest for me, and
    an attraction so strong that Harcourt told me that, knowing it, he
    did not see how I could live out of the House of Commons. I managed
    to do so, but only by shutting it for a time absolutely out of my
    mind, as though it did not exist. Having the happiness of being able
    to interest myself in everything, I suppose I am born to be
    generally happy. You have known me so long and so closely that few
    men are more aware of the kind of suffering I have gone through, but
    the happiness of interest in life has rarely been wanting for long
    in me, and if it were, I should go out--not of Parliament--but of
    life.' [Footnote: Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice was Chairman of the
    Wiltshire County Council. He had re-entered Parliament as M.P. for
    North Wilts in 1898.]

Sir Charles never left London while the House was sitting, except for
the annual gathering of the Forest miners at the Speech House. On all
other working days of the session he was to be found in the House of
Commons. He held that the House offered the extremest form of interest
or of boredom, according as a man did or did not follow closely all that
was going on. For this reason, the smoking-room, where most
Parliamentary idling is transacted, saw little of him; cigars, of which
he was a great consumer, were for periods of leisure, and he was at the
House for business. He might be seen in the passages, going by with
coat-tails streaming behind him, most often in the members' lobby on his
way to the first corridor, where was his locker--marvellously stuffed
with papers, yet kept in a methodical order that made it a general
centre of reference for himself and his colleagues, who consulted him on
all subjects; or sometimes in the library, with multifarious
correspondence and documents outspread, snipping away with a pair of
scissors, after his habit, all in them that was not vitally important.
[Footnote: Mr. Hudson tells how in February, 1911, after Sir Charles's
death, he went down to clear his locker in the House of Commons, and
found it empty. Mr. Hudson surmised that, foreseeing his need for it was
over, Sir Charles had himself prepared it for his successor in its use.]
Again, since one form of relaxation which he permitted himself was his
afternoon cup--or cups, for they were many--of tea, the tea-room also
offered a chance to those who sought him. But whoever wanted Sir Charles
went first into the Chamber itself, and in five cases out of six would
find him there alert in his corner seat below the gangway, primed and
armed with documented information, and ready at any minute to interpose.
Every day he went through the whole bewildering mass of papers from
which members are presumed to instruct themselves concerning the
business of the sittings and to keep a check upon the general
proceedings of Government. In his case the presumption was realized.
Probably no private member ever equalled him in demands for 'papers to
be laid,' and certainly none was ever better able to justify his
requests for additional information. If these requests were refused, it
was never because he wanted what was superfluous, but that which, in his
hands, might become inconveniently serviceable.

One habit of his may be traced to his hatred of wasting time. The
instant a division was announced he was on his feet, hurrying so as to
avoid long minutes of waiting in a crush; and it came to be regarded as
part of the natural order that Sir Charles should be first through the
lobby.

With all this industry, the record of divisions so carefully chronicled
by the hard-working M.P. was not of moment to him. If the business did
not seem to him important, he had no objection to absent himself and
dine at home. He was weatherwise in the assembly, and knew the
conditions which might lead to unforeseen disturbance.

In questions raised by alteration of rules or standing orders, he was
never averse from innovation, and even generally an advocate of change.
But while the rules were there he insisted rigorously on their
observance, in so far as they affected the larger interests of division
or debate. Also he fulfilled punctiliously the prescribed courtesies,
making it a usage to be down early and to secure his place, although no
one ever thought of appropriating it. He rigidly observed the rule,
transgressed by others, which prescribes the wearing of a tall hat by
members in the House. The hat which was thus endeared to him by
traditional usage is therefore inseparable from Parliamentary memory of
him. He was generally to be seen handling a sheaf of papers more than
Ministerial in dimensions; and he made his hat the receptacle for them;
often it would be crammed to bursting before the speech had concluded.
Yet there remained with him always the trace of his younger days of
grave dandyism; he never abandoned the Parliamentary frock-coat, and
sketches of him in the illustrated papers convey the austere correctness
of its folds; and the hat from which so much service was exacted
appeared each day unsurpassable in gloss.

The intricate mass of historical associations delighted his imagination
at Westminster. He took pleasure in all the quaint survivals, from the
long-transmitted ceremonial of the Speaker's entrance, the formal
knockings of Black Rod, the cry of 'Who goes home?' down to the still
continued search before each session for some possible Guy Fawkes.
Keenly alive to the past and to the present, he saw with special
pleasure any happy grafting of a new usage on to that old stock of
memories. Speaking in his constituency after the lying in state of King
Edward, which he had attended (standing next to the Prime Minister as
the senior Privy Councillor present), he welcomed the precedent which
gave a new association to Westminster Hall--that 'epitome of English
history.' He recalled to his hearers the outstanding incidents and
persons whose record had then come into his mind. His habit of tracing
out links with the past made him at Westminster the best and most
animated of guides.

So it was in Provence, in the Forest of Dean, on the road down from
London to Surrey; so it was always in the neighbourhood of his Chelsea
home.

There could be no such companion for a ramble through its streets. His
memory, astounding in its recollections of his own time, held stories of
older records; in his eager, vivid talk the past lived again. As we
passed along Cheyne Walk, George Eliot held court in her house once
more, while a few doors off Rossetti's servant pushed aside the little
grating to inspect his visitors before admission. Carlyle dwelt again in
the house in Cheyne Row, with Whistler for his neighbour. Sir Charles
would tell how earlier the Kingsley brothers lived with their father in
the old rectory, and one at least of their novels was founded afterwards
on the traditions of the place. Then, as layer after layer of history
was lifted, Smollett wrote his novels or walked the Chelsea streets with
John Wilkes; Sir Richard Steele and 'his dear Prue' reinhabited their
house, and Dr. Johnson worked at the furnaces in the cellars where
Chelsea china was made. [Footnote: 'Sir Charles Dilke, in hunting about
for materials for his lecture on "Old Chelsea" to-morrow, has made some
very interesting discoveries. He has found that part of the building
once occupied by the famous Chelsea china works, which was thought to
have gone for ever, exists as part of a public-house with a modern
frontage looking out on the Embankment. The cellars are in an admirable
state of preservation. Another interesting point has been the
exploration of the old Moravian cemetery, which is now completely
enclosed by houses, the ironwork of the gate worn, and, as it were,
eaten out by age. Here lie the bones of Count von Zinzendorf, one of the
founders of the Moravian sect, and many other famous folk. This, again,
has led to some interesting discoveries about Sir Thomas More, all of
which will find a place in Wednesday's lecture' (Extract from _Leicester
Daily Post_, January 11th, 1888, on lecture to be delivered in Town
Hall, Chelsea).]

He would give, as a curious illustration of the way in which many years
may be covered by a few generations, the fact that he himself had known
intimately the daughter of Woodfall, printer of the _Letters of Junius_;
while Woodfall's acquaintance included Smollett as a resident, and Pope
as a visitor to Chelsea. He would talk long of Sir Thomas More,
[Footnote: He writes: 'On December 18th, 1886, Cardinal Manning wrote to
me: "On Saturday last Sir Thomas More was declared both martyr and
saint, to my great joy. We have bought a house and garden, 28, Beaufort
Street, which is said to be a piece of Sir Thomas More's garden. The
tradition seems probable. If you can give me any light about it, I shall
be very thankful."' Later (January, 1888) Sir Charles writes: 'In the
course of this same month I lectured on Old Chelsea, and made a
considerable attempt to clear up some points in the life of Sir Thomas
More, for whom I have a great admiration. The result was that Cardinal
Manning asked me to visit Father Vaughan at the house which stands on
the site of Old Beaufort House, which the Roman Catholics have purchased
as a house of expiation for the martyrdom of Sir Thomas More.'] 'the
first of Chelsea worthies,' whose memory is loved and commemorated by
every true inhabitant, and to whose voluntary poorhouse for the parish
he pointed, as the direct progenitor of the Chelsea Benevolent Society
and the Board of Guardians. But one episode in More's career specially
fascinated him: it was when two great lives touched, and More,
journeying to Calais, met that famous lady, Margaret of Austria, the
first Governess of the Netherlands, and negotiated the treaty between
the Emperor, England, and France, 1527. Great as was his respect for Sir
Hans Sloane, after whom the street in which he lived was named, and who
gave to Chelsea its beautiful Physic Garden, he never forgave him the
destruction of More's house or the removal of its water gateway.

He would describe the tidal shore, as it lies in the picture which he
bequeathed to the Chelsea Free Library, and which hangs on its
staircase, when below the old church the bank sloped to the water's
edge; or he would pass back to the earlier time when the boats of the
nobles lay there in such numbers that Charles II. described the river as
'Hyde Park upon the Thames.' Once more Bess of Hardwick lived at
Shrewsbury House, Princess Elizabeth sheltered under the Queen's Elm; at
the old Swan in Swan Walk, Doggett founded the coat and badge to be
rowed for by the watermen's apprentices 'when the tide shall be full.'
These things may be found in many a guide-book and in the lectures which
he delivered more than once in Chelsea, but told as he told them they
will never be told again.

This habit of associating the prosaic business of his daily work in
Parliament with picturesque traditions, and of peopling the dingy
streets of London with great figures of the past, gave colour and
character to his town life. He entertained still--at 76, Sloane Street,
or at the House of Commons.

For exercise he relied on fencing, rowing, and his morning ride. Busy
men, he held, needed what 'good exercise as contrasted with mere chamber
gymnastics' could give them: 'a second life, a life in another world--
one which takes them entirely out of themselves, and causes them to
cease to trouble others or to be troubled by the vexations of working
life.' [Footnote: _Athletics for Politicians_, reprinted from _North
American Review_.]

He was nowhere more characteristically English than through his faith in
this regimen, and in the pages of the _North American Review_ he
addressed to American public men in 1900 an advocacy of 'Athletics for
Politicians.' This exists as a pamphlet, and some of the friends who
received it were surprised to find themselves cited in confirmation of
the theory that nearly all English politicians, 'having been athletes as
boys, have found it wise as well as pleasant to keep to some sport in
later life.' But Mr. Chamberlain, 'the most distinguished debater in the
Government of the United Kingdom, who has an excellent seat on a horse,
but is never now seen on one, and who is no mean hand at lawn tennis,
which he scarcely ever plays,' had to be cited as a heretic who thought
himself 'better without such gymnastics.'

Sculling on sliding-seats [Footnote: In 1873 'sliding-seats' had just
taken the place of fixed ones, and Sir Charles, having gone as usual to
see the Boat Race, criticized the crews, in a notice which he wrote, as
not having yet learnt to make the best possible use of the slide.] and
rapier fencing were the exercises which Sir Charles recommended to men
no longer young. He continued his fencing in London and Paris. In Paris
he frequented chiefly the school of Leconte in the Rue Saint Lazare, and
always kept an outfit there. Teachers of this school remember with
wonder Sir Charles's habit of announcing, at the termination of each
stay in Paris, the precise day and hour, perhaps many months ahead, at
which he would appear--and at which, like Monte Cristo, he never failed
to be exactly punctual--to the joy and amusement of the expectant
school.

It was at his riverside home that he found the exercise which beyond all
others pleased him best.

    '1890 I took a good deal of holiday in the summer and early autumn,
    doing much rowing with McKenna and others in a racing pair; we
    challenged any pair of our united ages.'

'On my fifty-third birthday,' he notes, 'I began to learn sculling. My
rowing, to judge by the "clock," still improves. Fencing, stationary or
declining.'

He timed himself regularly in his daily burst up and down the reach with
some first-rate oarsman, very often 'Bill' East, now the King's
Waterman, whose photograph stood with one or two others on the
mantelpiece of his study in Sloane Street. In the same way he kept a
daily record of his weight, which up to 1904 ranged between fourteen
stone and thirteen.

Dockett was essentially a boating-place, a place for sun and air, where
life was lived in the open or in the wide verandah hailed by Cecil
Rhodes and others as the only 'stoep' in England. His son, who was
travelling abroad much at this time, shared Sir Charles Dilke's love for
Dockett, and was frequently there in the intervals of his journeyings.
Other than boating friends came to lunch or to dine and sleep, for the
mere pleasure of talk. Such were the Arnold-Forsters, the H. J.
Tennants, Lady Abinger (the daughter of his old friend Sir William
White) and her husband: and there came also members of Parliament--Mr.
Lloyd George, or in a later day Mr. Masterman; and the knights errant of
politics, Mr. Cunninghame Graham and Mr. Schreiner. Many nationalities
were represented--often, indeed, through official personages such as M.
Cambon, the French Ambassador, or some member of the French Embassy.
Baron Hayashi and his wife came with many other Japanese friends, and
the various representatives of the Balkan States met in pleasant
converse. It was one of these who afterwards wrote: 'I never pass the
house in Sloane Street without raising my hat to the memory of its
former inmates.' That close friend M. Gennadius came also, and his
predecessors in the Greek Legation, M. Metaxas, M. Athos Romanes, and
half a score of other diplomatists, including Tigrane Pasha, and even
Ras Makonnen, who was brought to Dockett by the British representative
in Abyssinia, Sir John Harrington, a friend and correspondent of Dilke.
Thither also for leisure, not for athletics, came Cecil Rhodes,
described in _Problems of Greater Britain_ as a 'modest, strong man';
there came Prince Roland Bonaparte, Coquelin, and Jules Claretie, with a
host of others, politicians, wits, and artists, English and foreign. M.
Claretie thus, after Sir Charles's death, chronicled one visit:

    'Nous avons canoté, mon fils et moi, sur la Tamise avec Sir Charles,
    un de ces "Sundays" de liberté. Quand il avait bien ramé, il
    rentrait au logis, et s'étendant en un petit kiosque au seuil duquel
    il plaçait des sandales, l'homme d'état, ami du sport, accrochait à
    la porte un écriteau où se lisait ces mots: "Prière de faire
    silence. Je dors." Hélas! Il dort à tout jamais maintenant le cher
    Sir Charles. Ce fut une énergie, un cerveau, un coeur, une force.'
    [Footnote: _Le Temps_, February, 1911.]

Then there were men illustrious in another sphere, the famous oars of
their generation. Mr. S. D. Muttlebury, most illustrious of them all,
has compiled a list of Cambridge 'blues,' young and old, who rowed with
Sir Charles at his riverside home. These were--

                         _School_            _College_
Bell, A. S. ..    ..        Eton      ..   ..       Trinity Hall.
Bristowe, C. J.   ..        Repton    ..   ..            "
Escombe, F. J.    ..        Clifton   ..   ..            "
Fernie, W. J.     ..        Malvern   ..   ..            "
Howell, B. H.     ..          --                         "
McKenna, R.       ..        King's College               "
                              London
Maugham, F. H.    ..        Dover College  ..            "
Muttlebury, S. D. ..        Eton      ..   ..       Trinity College.
Rowlatt, J. F.    ..        Fettes    ..   ..       Trinity Hall.
Steavenson, D. F. ..          --                         "
Wauchope, D. A.   ..        Repton    ..   ..            "
Wood, W. W.       ..        Eton      ..   ..       University
                                                    College, Oxford.

In the list here given, Judge Steavenson was Sir Charles's contemporary.
Judge Wood, [Footnote: He was the son of Dilke's friend and constituent,
the Rector of Newent.] his neighbour at Chertsey, known among Etonians
as 'Sheep' Wood, was a University oar of the sixties, and rowed for Eton
at Henley against the Trinity Hall crew which included Steavenson and
Dilke. But most of the others were young. Mr. Charles Boyd [Footnote:
Mr. Charles Boyd, C.M.G., sometime political secretary to Cecil Rhodes.]
sketched the life in an article written just after Sir Charles's death:

    'To know Dilke as he was you had to be with him at Dockett Eddy, on
    the river. Dilke's ability is praised everywhere, but almost, one
    thinks, his manly, ungushing kindness exceeded it. He could never do
    enough for people, or too stealthily, as it were. He had a special
    kindness for young men, for Trinity Hall men perhaps by preference;
    the black and white blazer of his old college carried a certain
    prescriptive right to share in every belonging of the most famous of
    old Hall men. But many, oars or others, at different times in the
    past fifteen to twenty years, as sons of the house, spent between
    Shepperton and Chertsey Locks, or on the tennis lawns among Sir
    Charles's famous willows, or lying on deck-chairs on the long, deep
    verandah, the happiest and healthiest of week-ends or more extended
    summer holidays. There are few pleasanter reaches of our river, and
    none quieter, than this, for the rush and the intolerable crowds are
    above stream or below stream, but not here. And there is no such
    holiday house for young men as Dockett, hidden in its willow walks
    and islanded by the Thames in front and by the expanse of Chertsey
    Mead behind.

    'Less a country-house, indeed, than a camp of exercise. You did as
    you pleased, but under Sir Charles's guidance you were pleased to be
    strenuous. He called everybody to bathe at 7 a.m., and where was
    ever better fresh-water bathing-place than the floating raft below
    the boat-house at Dockett? Etiquette required you to dive in and go
    straight across to the other bank, touch, and return; when, like as
    not, Sir Charles, in shorts and sweater, might be seen very
    precisely preparing tea on the landing-stage for the deserving
    valiant. His little kindnesses had an added and affecting quality
    from his reserve and sternness. A rare figure of an athlete he was,
    and a rare athlete's day his was in that retreat. For hours before
    he called and turned out the morning guard he had been up busy
    gardening, or reading, or writing. At a quarter to nine he
    breakfasted. Very shortly after breakfast an ex-champion sculler the
    admirable Bill East, would arrive from Richmond, and he and Sir
    Charles would row in a racing skiff a measured mile or more of the
    river. One summer at least he changed from rowing kit to boots and
    breeches after his rowing, and rode till luncheon. At four o'clock
    there would be a second bout with East, and thereafter, having
    changed from his rowing kit into flannels and his Hall cap, he would
    take Lady Dilke in her dinghy, which nobody else has ever used or
    will use.

    'After these exercises came dinner, and after dinner talk; and what
    talk! How his intellectual weight and equipment affected those who
    were much with him as young men, and who had a chance to revise
    their impressions after years of close observation of the world and
    its big men, a scrap of dialogue may illustrate. One who in his
    "twenties" was much at Sloane Street and Dockett, and who passed
    later into close working relations with several at least of the most
    conspicuous, so to say, of Front Bench men in the Empire, after an
    interval of thirteen years sat once more for a whole long evening
    with three others at the feet of Gamaliel. A well-known scholar and
    historian put questions which drew Sir Charles out; and all were
    amazed and delighted by the result. After Sir Charles had gone, one
    of the others, a distinguished editor, said to the wanderer: "Come,
    you have known the Mandarins as well as anybody. Where do you put
    Dilke with them?" "Well, I rule Lord Milner out," said ----: "but
    all the others, compared to Sir Charles, strike me in point of
    knowledge, if you must know, as insufficiently informed school-
    boys." That is how his brain struck this contemporary. As for the
    moral qualities observed, you get to know a man well when you see
    him constantly and over years at play. And what intimate's affection
    and respect for Sir Charles, and confidence in him, did not grow
    greater with every year? It seems admitted that he was a great man.
    Well, if there is anything in the intimate, not undiscerning
    impression of nearly eighteen years, he was a good man, or goodness
    is an empty name.'

Another account of his talk and ways comes from Mr. Spenser Wilkinson:

    'I moved to London in 1892, and from that time on found the intimacy
    with Dilke one of the delights of life. We used always to meet,
    either for breakfast or lunch, at Dilke's house in Sloane Street, or
    for lunch at the Prince's Restaurant in Piccadilly, or at 2.30 in
    the lobby of the House of Commons. I was also frequently a guest at
    the dinner-parties either at Sloane Street on Wednesdays, when Lady
    Dilke was alive, or at the House of Commons. Then there were small
    house-parties on Saturday and Sunday at Dockett Eddy, near
    Shepperton on the Thames, where Sir Charles had built two cottages,
    and where a guest was expected to do exactly what he pleased from
    the time when he was punted across the river on arrival until he
    left the punt on departing. In winter I used to bicycle over to the
    cottage at Pyrford, where Dilke and his wife were always to be found
    alone and where I spent many a charming afternoon.

    'Every man takes a certain tinge from the medium in which he is, and
    is therefore different in different company and different
    surroundings. I knew three Dilkes. First there was the statesman,
    the man of infinite information which he was ever working to
    increase. When you went to see him it was on some particular
    subject; he wanted precise information, and knew exactly what he
    wanted. With him my business was always finished in five minutes,
    after which I used to feel that I should be wasting his time if I
    stayed. This Dilke, in this particular form of intercourse, was by
    far the ablest man I ever met.

    'Then came Dilke the host, the Dilke of general conversation. Here
    again he towered above his fellows. The man who had been everywhere
    and knew everybody--for there seemed to be no public man of great
    importance in any country with whom Dilke was not acquainted and
    with whom he had not corresponded--a man who was almost always in
    high spirits and full of fun, had an inexhaustible fund of
    delightful conversation, about which the only drawback was that, in
    order to appreciate it, you had to be uncommonly well informed
    yourself.

    'But the Dilke I liked best was the one I used to have to myself
    when I spent a day with him either in the country or on the river,
    when neither of us had anything to do, when there was no business in
    hand, and when we either talked or were silent according to the
    mood. In these circumstances Dilke was as natural and simple as a
    civilized man can be. If one started an uncongenial subject, he
    would say. "It does not interest me," but the moment one approached
    any of the matters he cared for he mobilized all his resources and
    gave himself with as little reserve as possible.

    'Dilke was a past-master in the art of ordering his time, and this
    was the secret of the vast quantity of work which he was able to do.
    He was a voracious and quick reader, as is proved by the number of
    books which he used to review for the _Athenaeum_, of which he was
    proprietor. Yet he was an early riser and went to bed early, and a
    part of his day was given to exercise.

    'A great deal of time was consumed in interviews with all sorts and
    conditions of men, and his attendance at the House of Commons,
    constant and assiduous, accounted for a large part of half the days
    in the year. But everything was mapped out in advance; he would make
    appointments weeks, or even months, in advance, and keep them to the
    minute. His self-control was complete, his courtesy constant and
    unvarying; he was entirely free from sentimentality and the least
    demonstrative of mankind, yet he was capable of delicate and tender
    feelings, not always detected by those towards whom they were
    directed. He was simple, straightforward, frank, and generous. It
    was delightful to do business with him, for he never hesitated nor
    went back upon himself. Modest and free from self-consciousness, he
    was aware both of his powers and of their limitations. I once tried
    to persuade him to change the manner of his Parliamentary speeches,
    to stop his minute expositions of facts and to make some appeal to
    the emotions of his hearers--at any rate in cases where he had
    strong feelings of his own. He made one experiment in accord with
    this suggestion, and told me that it had been most successful; but
    he said that he would not try it again, because it was not in accord
    with his natural bent, and he was unwilling to be anything but
    himself.'

Dockett was the home of the Birds. Sir Charles's evidence before the
Select Committee on the Thames as to the destruction of kingfishers led
to a prohibition of all shooting on the river, and to an increase of
these lovely birds. In 1897 he had two of their nests at Dockett Eddy.
His acres of willow-grown all-but-island were made a sanctuary for
birds, and therefore from Dockett only, of all his homes, cats were kept
away. Nests were counted and cherished; it was a great year when a
cuckoo's egg was discovered among the linnet's clutch, and its
development was watched in breathless interest. Owls were welcome
visitors; and the swans had no better nesting-place on the Thames than
the lower end of Dockett. They and their annual progeny of cygnets were
the appointed charge of Jim Haslett, Dilke's ferryman and friend.
Pensioners upon the house, they used to appear in stately progress
before the landing raft--the mother perhaps with several little ones
swarming on her back or nestling in her wings, and from time to time
splashing off into the water. Always at their appearance, in answer to
Sir Charles's special call, a cry of 'Swan's bread' would be raised, and
loaf after loaf would disappear down their capacious throats. A place
with such privileges was not likely to be undisputed, and many times
there were battles royal against 'invaders from the north,' as Sir
Charles called the Chertsey swans who came to possess themselves of the
Dockett reach and its amenities. Swan charged swan, with plumage
bristling and wings dilated, but not alone they fought; Jim Haslett and
his employer took part against the invaders, beating them off with
sticks; and even in the night, when sound of that warfare rose, the
master of Dockett was known to scull out in a dinghy, in his night gear,
carrying a bedroom candlestick to guide his blows in the fray.

Evening and morning he would steal along the bank in his dinghy,
counting and observing the water-voles, which he was accustomed to feed
with stewed prunes and other dishes, while they sat nibbling,
squirrel-like, with the dainty clasped in their hands.

A few gay beds of annuals by the house, a purple clematis on the
verandah, and a mass of syringa at the landing-stage, were all the
garden permitted; roughly mown grass paths here and there led through
the wild growth of nature, where the willows met overhead.

Such was his summer home, described in the lines of Tibullus which were
carved on the doorway of the larger house:

  'Jam modo iners possim epntentus vivere parvo
  Nec semper longae deditus esse viae,
  Sed canis aestivos ortus vitare sub umbra
  Arboris, ad rivos praetereuntis aquae.'

[Footnote: Thus translated by the Rev. W. Tuckwell:

  'Here, fancy-free, and scorning needless show,
    Let me from Life's dull round awhile retreat,
  Lulled by the full-charged stream's unceasing flow,
    Screened by tall willows from the dog-star's heat.']

He guarded its quiet, and, champion as he had always been of the public
right of common on land and on the river, he was resentful when its
privilege was carelessly abused. He rebuked those who broke the rules of
the river in his marches--above all, such as disturbed swans or pulled
water-lilies. After every Bank Holiday he would spend a laborious day
gathering up the ugly leavings.

Many associations endeared to him what he thus defended. When he was out
in the skiff, darting here and there, Lady Dilke, in the little dinghy
which he had caused to be built for her--called from its pleasant round
lines the _Bumble Bee_--would paddle about the reach. After her death he
would paddle out in the dinghy which no one else might take out, and lie
for hours watching the light change on that familiar and tranquil beauty
of green mead and shining water, of high-waving poplar and willow, with
drooping boughs awash. When he also was gone, the little boat was not
suffered to pass into the use of strangers, but burnt there on the bank.

In his other home at Pyrford, all the day's relaxations were of this
intimate kind. [Footnote: Here, too, work was disturbed by his natural
history researches. He writes apologetically to Mr. Hudson as to some
mistake in a letter: 'I can plead as a disturbing cause three young
brown owls, quite tame; one barks, and two whistle, squeak--between a
railway guard and a door-hinge. The barker lets me get within four or
five feet before he leaves off yapping. He worries the cuckoo into
shouting very late. I leave the owls unwillingly, late--one night 1 a.m.
They are still going strong.'] Here also was no formal garden; Nature
had her way, but under superintendence of a student of forestry. Sir
Charles was a planter of pines; great notebooks carefully filled tell
how he studied, before the planting, the history of each species, how he
watched over the experiments and extended them. [Footnote: Here is a
detail entered concerning Lawson's cypress--_Erecta vividis_: 'I
remember Andrew Murray, of the Royal Horticultural, first describing
Lawson's cypress, introduced by his brother in 1862, when my father was
chairman of the society of which Murray was secretary. Our two are
gardener's varieties, one greener and the other bluer than the true
Lawson. The American name is Port Orford cedar. It will not do very well
on our bad soil, but I've given it a pretty good place. It is said that
Murray _first_ sent it to Lawson of Edinburgh in 1854. This variety was
made by A. Waterer in 1870.']

In summer, on the dry heathy commons of Surrey, there is always danger
of a chance fire spreading, and it was part of his care to maintain a
cleared belt for fending off this danger. Much of his day went in
gathering débris and undergrowth, so as to keep clear ground about the
trees, and then the heaped-up gatherings rewarded him with a bonfire in
which he had a child's pleasure, mingled with an artist's appreciation
of the shapes and colours of flame. It was for praise of this beauty
that he specially loved Anatole France's _Rôtisserie de la Reine
Pédauque_, with its celebrations of the salamanders and their vivid
element.

The heath blossom in all its kinds was cultivated, and it was his
invariable custom to come up on a Monday from Pyrford with a spray of
his favourite white heather in his buttonhole.

Here, too, were associations, interesting if not exactly historic. The
Battle of Dorking was fought close by, and in this neighbourhood the
Martians descended.

Chief of Pyrford's distinctions was the discovery on Sir Charles's own
land, by Mr. Horace Donisthorpe, of a beetle (Lomechusa) which in Queen
Anne's day Sir Hans Sloane had first identified in Hampstead, parasitic
in a nest of red ants. A second specimen was found in 1710 in the mail-
coach between Gloucester and Cheltenham; but from Queen Anne's day till
1906 it was regarded as extinct, until once more it was discovered, and
discovered in its true place among the ants, on whose gestures and
behaviour towards it, whether as indicating worship or serfdom, Sir
Charles dilated with such rhetoric of description that the beetle
assumed dimensions in the mind disappointing when it was viewed in
reality.

Another rarity of insect life at Pyrford was a spider whose appearances
have been oftenest noted at Hampton Court. These creatures, large,
black, and horrific, were accordingly known as 'Hampton Courters,' but
received no welcome, being slain on sight, their slayer quoting a
characteristic saying which he had heard from Anatole France:

    'We all know of dangers which seem more terrible than they are. The
    spider alone suffers death for his carelessness as to this habit of
    exaggeration. Many an uncle spider walks about by candlelight, and
    is slain by us on account of his monstrous shadow, whereas his body,
    being but small, would have escaped our rage.'

It was here that much of his Memoir was dictated, based on an enormous
mass of letters, papers, and private diaries, kept throughout his
Government career. After 1891 there is only a scattered series of
entries, increasingly sparse as time went on. Mr. Hudson recalls their
walks from the station at Woking to Pyrford across the then open common,
the lunch of eggs and milk, and the hours of work, during the period
between the publication of _Problems of Greater Britain_ and Sir
Charles's return to Parliament for the Forest of Dean.

These two country homes, Pyrford and Dockett, held Sir Charles so fast
with their simple pleasures that the once insatiable traveller ceased to
roam. At the close of 1892, after his return to Parliament, he sold his
house and garden at Toulon. Pyrford to a great extent had come to take
its place. But to the end of his days he was a constant visitor to that
Provençal country which he loved. Apart from them there was another
place where, though he neither owned nor rented house or land, he was no
less at home than among his willows or his pines. No resident in the
Forest of Dean was better known in it than its member, and nowhere had
Sir Charles more real friends. For many years he spent three periods
among them: his Whitsun holiday, which was very much a visit of
pleasure; a visit in autumn, when he attended all meetings of the
Revision Courts; and finally a month in the dead of winter, when he went
round to meetings in each polling district, at night educating his
electors in the political questions of the time, and in the day working
with his local friends at the register till it became the most accurate
record of its kind in all Great Britain--so perfect, indeed, that he was
at last able to discontinue his attendance at the Revision Courts,
though never relaxing his keen personal interest in every change.

His friendships in the Forest were not bounded by class or party. He had
the support, not merely of the Liberal and Labour groups, but of many
strong Conservatives, here as before at Chelsea. Mention has been made
of Mr. Blake, and another friend was Mr. John Probyn, who had stood as a
Liberal candidate for Devizes as far back as 1868, and had not changed
his views. Of his many faithful friends and supporters, one, the
honorary secretary of the Liberal Association for all Sir Charles's
years of membership, had as far back as 1886 proclaimed his faith in
him. [Footnote: Mr. John Cooksey, formerly proprietor of the _Dean
Forest Mercury_.] Another equally active in conveying the original
invitation to Sir Charles was the agent of the Forest miners, a Labour
leader of the wisest type, [Footnote: Mr. G. H. Rowlinson.] who writes:

    'He did not live for himself; it was always others first. I never
    made an appeal to him for any case of need in vain. With regard to
    local matters, he seemed at the beck and call of nearly everyone.
    Nothing was too small or too large for him to undertake to assist
    any constituent, and oftentimes an avowed and lifelong political
    opponent. In a multitude of ways he did us service with his
    knowledge of affairs, his influence, his experience, his ability and
    work.

    'In the matters of commoners' right, the right of "turnout" on the
    Forest, free miners' rights, questions of colliery owners, matters
    relating to the Crown, the development of the lower coal seams--in
    all these (and many of them are local intricate historical questions
    involving a mass of detail) he rendered valuable service.

    'In his electoral battles he was always a keen fighter and a
    courteous opponent. In every campaign he seemed more anxious to beat
    his opponent by sheer weight of reason and argument, and intellect
    and knowledge, than by any appeal to party passion or feeling.

    'I have been at a great many of his meetings, and never saw him
    shirk a question, nor saw one put to him that he did not, nine times
    out of ten, know more about than the questioner, however local the
    point might be.

    'As an example, he was holding a meeting at Newnham. Questions were
    invited; none asked. Sir Charles looked disappointed; so Mr. King,
    of the "Victoria," in a friendly way, thought he would put him a
    poser, and asked his opinion about Sir Cuthbert Quilter's Pure Beer
    Bill.

    'For about twenty minutes Sir Charles talked beer--the origin,
    ingredients, what it should be, what it often is and what it is not,
    what it is in other countries. As Mr. King remarked afterwards, he
    told him more about beer than he ever knew before, though he had
    been in the trade all his life.'

Probably none was more rejoiced at the unexpected display than the
genial Tory host of the Victoria, who lived to deplore his friend and to
quote especially one of his observations: 'If you see a man put on
"side," Sir Charles once said to me, you may be sure he feels the need
of it.' [Footnote: Among those who worked with him and for him best and
longest should be named at least Mr. Charles Ridler and Mr. T. A. H.
Smith of Lydney, Mr. Henry Davis of Newent, Mr. B. H. Taylor, and Mr. S.
J. Elsom.]

Part of the service which he rendered to the constituency was by means
of the honorary presidency of the Liberal Four Hundred, first created,
to be held by himself, in 1889. Under this title the foremost spokesmen
of Liberalism were in successive years brought into the Forest;
[Footnote: The list included Mr. Asquith, Lord Morley, Mr. McKenna, Mr.
Lloyd George, and Lord Loreburn.] and thus member and constituents
worked together alike in political and in personal friendship. He hailed
the little clump of trees on the conical top of Mayhill, the first
landmark which indicated the Forest, almost as if it stood above his
home. All was homelike to him as he drove from the pastoral country by
the Severn, with its apple and pear orchards, to the typical mining town
of Cinderford, and on to the great expanse of Forest in whose midmost
glade was the Speech House Hotel, more ancient than the hollies about
it, which had been planted to mark Charles II.'s Restoration. The
Panelled Room, always reserved for his use during his stay there, had
been for many generations the place in which the free miners met to hold
their courts; it had been built for the purpose, as the gallery for
speakers showed.

He loved the Forest--not only the distant spots of interest, but every
tree, delighting to act as guide to all its pleasant places. So each new
guest was taken to see High Beeches and the great wind-swept row of
Scots firs by Clearwell Court. The aged oak-tree, which at a distance
resembled a barn--for nothing was left but its great trunk above the
roots--was another point of pilgrimage; so were the dwarf thorns on
Wigpool Common, which reminded him of the tiny Japanese trees centuries
old, as, indeed, probably were these.

Then there were the expeditions to the rocking stone called the
Buckstone, a relic of the Druids; to the Scowles, the wonderful Roman
iron workings like the Syracusan quarries; to Symons Yat, where the old
military earthworks ended in a triple dyke, with the Severn and the Wye
on either side; to Newland Church, in which a fifteenth-century brass
shows the free miner of those days equipped for work; or to the lovely
valley by Flaxley Abbey, once in the precincts of the Forest, where the
monks had their fish-ponds, and where on the side of the hills their old
ironworks may still be seen.

He and Lady Dilke rode early in their stay to all these outlying places,
with Miss Monck as their constant companion. She was President of the
Women's Liberal Association, stayed with them during their long visits
to the Forest, and was with him for the election at the end. [Footnote:
Miss Emilia Monck, sister of Mr. Berkeley Monck, of Coley Park, Heading,
of which he was several times Mayor, and which he contested as a Liberal
in 1886.]

These were far rides, but close about the Speech House the place teems
with interest. In the last years he would walk every evening to look at
the great stag-headed ruins of the oaks, which thrust their gnarled and
crooked limbs fantastically into the closing night, or stand watching
the shadows fall on the spruce rides which stretch out near the old inn,
till, in the fading light, it seemed as though figures were moving in
and out on the greensward of the great vistas. In the bright sunshine,
imposing silence on himself and his companions, he would watch for long
together the life in one of the forest glades, the moving creatures in
the grass, the tits playing on the branches of a silver birch
silhouetted against the sky, the little blue butterflies chasing each
other over the pink crab-apple bloom. He would follow the tapping of a
woodpecker, and wait in the evening for the owl's cry to begin; and
here, as elsewhere, to be with him was to see in everything unsuspected
things.

In the winter, Speech House was at first Sir Charles's headquarters for
part of January, but there, 500 feet above the sea, the roads were
sometimes impassable from snow. At last Lady Dilke became too delicate
to face the mid-winter visit, and, except for elections, Whitsuntide and
the autumn were the two occasions for their stay. He went also each year
to the miners' demonstration--in 1908 so ill that it seemed impossible
that even his power of endurance could enable him to bear the strain,
and in 1910 again because he said he 'would not fail Rowlinson and the
miners,' though he fainted after the meeting there.

One of their early headquarters in the Forest was Lindors, the home of
two among their first and warmest friends--Mr. Frederick Martin and his
wife. It is in a lovely little valley with sheltered lawns, the rush of
the water sounding always behind the house, above which the old castle
of St. Briavels stands. The ancient prison is still there, and the
castle dates back to the thirteenth century, and claims an almost
unbroken succession of Constables of the Castle and Wardens of the
Forest of Dean, beginning with John de Monmouth.

After Speech House the Victoria at Newnham saw them oftenest. Its
interior is fascinating, with a low hall and fine old oak stairway,
broad and shallow; a bit of quaint French glass let into the staircase
window bears an illustrated version of La Fourmi et la Cigale. Lady
Dilke found there a remnant of fine tapestry--a battle scene with a bold
picture of horses and their riders. She traced and located this as
belonging to a great panel which is in the Palace at Madrid. At each
election, after the declaration of the poll, Sir Charles made from a
balcony of the Victoria or from a motor-car his speech to the cheering
constituents, who had followed him from the town-hall, first under
happiest circumstance, with his wife waiting for him in the porch, later
alone, till the last occasion, in December, 1910, when he fought and won
the election, dying, but with dogged courage; and as he spoke of the
long term of Liberal government which would ensue before a new electoral
struggle, friends standing near caught the words, 'When I shall not be
here.'

       *       *       *       *       *

Sir Charles had given up the habit of travel except for some special
purpose, as when in 1897 he journeyed with Lady Dilke to see the
Nattiers at Stockholm, or in another year to Bordeaux for her work on
French Art in the Eighteenth Century. But every Christmas they went for
a month to Paris. It was the great holiday of their year, and all the
engagements were made far ahead. There was interest in their Parisian
associations, for their differing attainments made them part of various
separate coteries not familiarly accessible to English people.

Their friends were of all worlds, political, literary, artistic, and
social; and since Sir Charles's intimacy with France dated back to
boyhood, and Lady Dilke's to the days of her first close study of French
art, which, beginning in the sixties with the French Renaissance,
terminated in her big work on French Art in the Eighteenth Century,
their friendships extended over a long period of years, though each
fresh visit enlarged their circle of friends and acquaintances.

In the memoir prefixed to her _Book of the Spiritual Life_ Sir Charles
says of his wife:

'Those who are familiar with several languages learn instinctively to
take the natural manners of the people who are for the moment their
companions. So it was with Lady Dilke.... In Paris she was French with
sufficient difference to give distinction.' As to himself, his great
friend M. Joseph Reinach wrote, 'Dilke connaissait la France mieux que
beaucoup d'entre nous.' But while his command of the French language and
his knowledge of many sides of French life quickened his genial
intercourse with the French, he never failed to impress them as an
English statesman. He paid his French friends the compliment of adopting
many little mannerisms; and however pure the French he spoke, he always
entertained himself by keeping up to date his acquaintance with French
slang, so that the latest developments of fashionable Paris jargon were
familiar to him. Yet that never could be said of him which he himself
noted of his friend M. Richard Waddington, brother to William
Waddington, for many years Ambassador in London, and, in Sir Charles's
opinion, a man of even higher ability than the Ambassador. Of this
friend, half French, half English, he said that he had two mentalities,
and that among Englishmen he was English, among Frenchmen French. Sir
Charles's talk with Frenchmen was unrestrained; as Bismarck felt of
England, so he of France: 'We have nothing to conceal from the French;
they are our natural allies.' But it was always the Englishman who
spoke; no slight veneer of manner in his social intercourse could
conceal that.

There are many scattered entries in his Diary which show how great a
relaxation the Paris holiday yielded.

    'At Christmas at Paris we were always gay, though often among the
    aged. The gayest dinner I remember was at Henri Germain's with
    Gérôme, Gaston Boissier, Laboulaye, and others, all about eighty, I
    being the chicken of the party.'

Gérôme, the painter, is often mentioned. Laboulaye must have been Paul
Laboulaye, born 1833, the diplomatist who had been Ambassador to St.
Petersburg in 1886. It was during his embassy that the _rapprochement_
took place between France and Russia which was announced to Europe by
the welcome of the French fleet to Cronstadt.

Gaston Boissier, Perpetual Secretary of the French Academy, and a great
classical scholar, figures again with another friend, M. Bonnat, in Sir
Charles's memoir of his wife; for he notes that during their last
Christmas in Paris, in 1903, 'the gaiety of their meetings' with these
two friends and others 'had been as unrestrained as ever.' Earlier
memories recall the sculptors Christophe and Gustave Moreau.
Christophe's beautiful 'Mask,' of which Lady Dilke had written, stands
in the Tuileries Garden, and was some time ago horribly disfigured by
inkstain. One of Sir Charles's late letters was written to M. Joseph
Reinach, to ask whether anything had yet been done to cleanse this work
of the sculptor she venerated. Only two small casts were made by
Christophe from the statue, and one of these, given to her by him,
decorated the Pyrford home. So did a picture by François Louis Français,
another artist friend, chief in his day of the water-colour school, a
picture which had inspired one of her stories, and gave the motto,
'Dites-moi un Pater,' to her _Shrine of Death_. In all the later and in
some of the earlier friendships Sir Charles shared, as he did in those
of the great custodians of art treasures. M. de Nolhac, the poet and the
Curator of Versailles, was prominent among them, and Eugène Müntz, head
of the École des Beaux Arts. Lady Dilke's correspondence with the
latter, extending over a period of twenty-three years, is preserved at
the Bibliothèque Nationale.

One great friend among collectors was M. Gustave Dreyfus, a high
authority on Donatello and on the medallists of the Italian Renaissance.
At his house there was another attraction in the shape of the
concierge's cat, on whom Sir Charles would call before paying his
respects upstairs. At another house a cat named Pouf was held in great
honour by him, and his feelings were deeply wounded when, with feline
capriciousness, it turned, on Paul Hervieu's entrance, to bestow all its
blandishments on the writer. His love of cats was as well known to his
French as to his English friends, Émile Ollivier writes in 1891 from La
Moutte: 'Campion lui-même cherche d'un regard affligé son protecteur
disparu'; and M. André Chevrillon, being 'touché par la façon dont je
vous ai entendu parler de ce divin animal,' sent him Taine's sonnets 'A
trois chats, Puss, Ébène, et Mitonne, dédiés par leur ami, maître, et
serviteur.'

Memorials of dinners with the well-known collector Camille Groult were
preserved in the shape of some sketches, one of a cavalier in peruke and
cravat, another an excellent crayon head of the host, by Domingo, the
Spanish artist, drawn on the back of a torn menu and given by him to
Lady Dilke.

The Groults' admiration of the beauty of Dockett Eddy was testified in
the gift of a little reflecting mirror, a 'camera obscura,' which, held
to the light, made exquisite vignettes of river, clematis, and syringa;
and a dinner at 76, Sloane Street was marked by the gift of little
copies of M. Groult's famous lately acquired Fragonard, in which Cupid
levels his arrows at the dainty feet of a well-known dancer of the time.

The sculptor Rodin was an acquaintance of late years, and a Christmas
card sent to 76, Sloane Street, in the form of a framed and signed
pencil sketch of a female head, was that master's tribute to Sir
Charles's heresy that Rodin drew much better than he sculptured.

'For old Français,' says Sir Charles, 'Lady Dilke had the veneration she
felt for Christophe among sculptors,' and for a few women, such as Mme.
Renan. To both the Renans they were bound by ties of familiar
friendship, and some of their pleasantest hours were spent at the
Collège de France. On November 11th, 1880, there is a note of Sir
Charles's of a talk with Gambetta: 'They discussed Renan's "Souvenirs,"
which were appearing in the _Revue_ for November, wonderfully
entertaining, and perfectly beautiful in style.' It was Renan who had
presented Lady Dilke's two volumes on the French Renaissance, in 1880,
to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, with an admiring
report, and Sir Charles's admiration for Renan's writing was great. Of
Mme. Renan he says: 'This homely-looking old dame was not only a good
wife, but a woman of the soundest sense and the most upright judgment.'

The same feeling of attachment and respect bound them to Mme. de
Franqueville, [Footnote: Mlle. Érard.] the first wife of Sir Charles's
old friend M. de Franqueville, whom he saw often both in Paris and
London. They visited them at La Muette, famous for its memories of Marie
Antoinette, where in the early years of her prosperity she would take
her companions to play at dairying with dainty emblazoned milkpails.

One whose friendship dated far back was Émile Ollivier, and with him Sir
Charles often discussed, both in Paris and at St. Tropez, a vanished era
in France's history, that of the 'Liberal Empire.' To these talks the
Prime Minister of Napoleon III. would bring such wealth of oratory and
such fertility of gesticulation that his hearers felt themselves
transported to a crowded chamber, of which he occupied the rostrum, and
woke with bewilderment to find themselves in the tranquil calm of his
sun-flooded Southern home. There were those who said that the point of
view urged with such conviction varied, and Sir Charles retains a _mot_
of M. Jusserand: 'Émile Ollivier change souvent d'idée fixe.' Mme. Émile
Ollivier, his devoted second wife and helper, was also a great friend,
and her photograph was one of those which Lady Dilke kept near her.

'Relations of the pleasantest kind,' says Sir Charles, were formed with
the Due d'Aumale, in Mr. Bodley's phrase 'last of the grands seigneurs
of France.' On September 25th, 1895, the Duke wrote asking them 'to
spend a whole day going through the books at Chantilly.' 'The charm of
these books, however, and of these repeated visits of 1895 and 1896, lay
in the fact that books and drawings alike excited historic memory.'

    'In October, 1895, we were in Paris, and took Went [Footnote: Sir
    Charles Dilke's son, the present Sir C. Wentworth Dilke.] to stay at
    Vaux, that he might see the finest of the châteaux, and also the
    room where, according to Dumas, Aramis and Porthos carried off Louis
    XIV., though d'Artagnan saved him again. We also went ourselves to
    lunch at Chantilly with the Due d'Aumale, who told us how Mme.
    Adélaïde, his aunt, used to slap his brother, the Prince de
    Joinville, already a distinguished naval officer, and stop his
    talking politics with, "Tais-toi, méchant morveux, qui oses
    critiquer la politique de ton père." Comtesse Berthe de Clinchamp
    has looked after the house since the days of the Duchesse d'Aumale,
    though she lives in another house. This distinguished old dame was
    also there. A daughter of the Due de Chartres was once slapped by
    her aunt, the Comtesse de Paris, in public, for asking to be taken
    to stay at Chantilly with "tante de Clinchamp." In 1896 to 1897 we
    were a great deal at Chantilly, finding the Duke interesting with
    his reminiscences of his father's account of the Court of Louis XVI.
    With the ex-King of Westphalia, and Bismarck, the Duc d'Aumale was
    in old age the most interesting companion that I have known. It was
    the projecting of his stories into a newer generation that made them
    good. Sir S. Smith ("Long Acre") was a bore at the Congress of
    Vienna, but would have been delightful to us could we have known
    him.' [Footnote: Sir Sidney Smith must have been prolix over his
    achievements at the siege of Acre and elsewhere. It is certain that
    a reputation for bombast injured his career and caused his
    remarkable achievements to be underrated.]

When in May, 1897, the Duke suddenly died, Lady Dilke wrote a little
article which, in spite of the sadness of the circumstances of his death
and the consequent deep note of pathos, in certain parts of the obituary
recalled very happily the brightness of their talks. Letters of the time
speak of the losses which the Dilkes and their friends had sustained by
the fire at the charity bazaar which had indirectly caused the Duke's
death, through that of the Duchesse d'Alençon, his favourite niece. One
of Lady Dilke's dearest friends in France, the Marquise de Sassenaye,
had escaped, but several of her relations who were with her had died a
dreadful death. The tie with these friends was very close, and the
daughter of the Marquise de Sassenaye, the Baronne de Laumont, and her
granddaughter, the Comtesse Marquiset, were among Sir Charles's last
guests at the House of Commons. But he did not live to know that his
friend the Baron de Laumont and his only son laid down their lives for
France in 1915.

Colonel Picquart Sir Charles had met in 1891 during the 'belles journees
de ces manoeuvres de l'Est,' chronicled by M. Joseph Reinach. He deeply
admired the character of this noble and chivalrous gentleman, who,
convinced that wrong had been done to an innocent man, sacrificed his
fine career to save him, and suffered for his Dreyfusism by imprisonment
and military degradation. Sir Charles met Picquart often at the table of
M. Labori and elsewhere, and at one dinner when Emile Zola was present
in 1899 there were also two English friends, the genial Sir Campbell
Clarke, Paris correspondent of the _Daily Telegraph_, and his kind wife,
at whose house in Paris the Dilkes dined almost every Christmas Day. He
touched in this way the struggle over the Dreyfus affair, and his
attitude is summed up in a letter conveying through M. Reinach to
Colonel Picquart 'that intense sympathy which I do not express publicly
only because all we English say does more harm than good.' [Footnote:
'At Christmas, 1900, in Paris we met Labori and Colonel Picquart two
nights running, and heard fully the reasons of their quarrel with the
Dreyfus family, which will probably all come out. Labori with great
eloquence, and Picquart quietly, developed the view that Dreyfus, by
virtually accepting the amnesty along with his own freedom, has taken up
the position of a guilty man and sacrificed all those who have
sacrificed everything for him. When, during the season of 1901, Labori
came to London, and we saw much of him, he had toned down this view, or
did not think it wise to express it. But it came out in November,
1901.']

His friendship with M. Joseph Reinach, so often mentioned, dates back to
the days when the latter was Gambetta's secretary. 'C'est par Gambetta
que j'ai connu Dilke,' says M. Reinach. 'Gambetta avait pour lui une
vive affection.' In London and in Paris they met and talked and fenced,
and kept in touch by close political correspondence. 'Dilke was a great
friend of mine, and I thought him a true and intrepid patriot and
citizen,' said M. Reinach; and perhaps of all M. Reinach's great
qualities it was his courage which most provoked the admiration of Sir
Charles and of his wife. They knew all the three brothers, and M.
Salomon Reinach, asking Sir Charles to come and discuss manuscripts,
signs himself 'in admiration of your enormous knowledge'--a happy
tribute from one of whom it was said 'il sait tout.' 'Salomon Reinach,
the outgoing President of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles
Lettres,' writes Sir Charles in 1908 to Lord Fitzmaurice, 'is what
Arthur Strong (Librarian of House of Lords) was, and Acton tried to be,
"universal." He asked me to listen to him for two whole evenings, till
we became a nuisance to our hosts--on the way in which, despite our
Historical Manuscripts Commission, we still lock up papers. His
strongest examples were Horace Mann's letters to Horace Walpole, and the
letters received by the Duke of Wellington (the loss of nearly all the
letters written by J. S. Mill moves me more).'

M. Pallain, Regent of the Bank of France, was another friend whose
acquaintance with Sir Charles dated back to the days when he was
Gambetta's secretary. His book on Talleyrand, the 'fameux livre de
Pallain,' as Sir Charles calls it in a letter to M. Jusserand, was
hardly less interesting to him than his mastership of French finance.

The Siegfrieds, representatives of the wealthy and serious Protestant
world, were friends who shared Sir Charles' interest in questions of
social reform, as was that wisest of permanent officials, M. Fontaine,
head of the French Labour Department; and he discussed these matters
also with the great representative of Roman Catholic Socialism, Count
Albert de Mun. The list of his Diary engagements, ranging over a long
period of time, is filled with the names of French writers, from Ludovic
Halevy, the novelist and dramatist (passages from whose _Belle Helene_
he would recite and whistle), to Anatole France; and of politicians of
every school of thought, from Leon Say, 'a statesman of rare
competence,' to M. Delcasse, whom he saw often, Deschanel, Leon
Bourgeois, Millerand, Viviani, and that great friend of Greece--M. Denys
Cochin; Calmette, the editor of the _Figaro_, assassinated by Mme.
Caillaux; and Lepine, the Prefect of Police; while Jaures was a London
as well as a Paris guest.

The excellence of much French acting attracted Sir Charles and his wife
to the theatre in Paris, though in London their visits to a play were
rare. M. Jules Claretie, the Academician, and for nearly thirty years,
till his death in 1913, the distinguished Director of the Theatre
Francais, constantly put his box at their disposal, and rarely failed to
join them for a talk between the acts.

There is a reply from General de Galliffet, the 'beau sabreur'--that
brilliant soldier whom Sir Charles had followed through the French
manoeuvres accepting a theatre invitation in 1892: 'J'ai, en principe,
l'horreur du theatre; j'en benis le ciel puisque je pourrai ainsi mieux
jouir de votre societe et de celle de Lady Dilke.'

In these visits to Paris they went always to the Hotel St. James, in the
Rue St. Honore, attracted by the beauty and interest of their rooms
there. It is the old Hotel de Noailles, and the staircase and landing,
and several of the rooms, are still as they were when three members of
the family--grandmother, mother, and daughter--were guillotined at the
time of the French Revolution. The guardroom at the head of the stairs,
with its great folding doors, and the paved landing with its old
_dalles_, are intact, as are some of the state-rooms. Their sitting-room
and the great bedroom opening from it looked out on to the courtyard,
where in old days, before it became a courtyard and when the garden
stretched away to the Seine, Marie Antoinette walked and talked, the
story goes, with La Fayette, with whom her friend Mme. de Noailles had
arranged an interview. The windows and balconies here, and part of the
garden front, resemble exactly their representations in pictures of the
period.

They saw many of their friends during the year both at the House of
Commons and at Dockett. Describing them in London, dining in the room
decorated by Gambetta's portrait, M. Jules Claretie writes: 'La premiere
fois que j'eus l'honneur d'etre l'hote de Sir Charles la charmante Lady
Dilke me dit, souriante, "Ici vous êtes en France. Savez-vous qui est
notre cuisinier? L'ancien brosseur de Général Chanzy."' And among Sir
Charles's collection of Dockett photographs was one in which the chef,
accompanied by the greater artist, the elder Coquelin, was fishing from
a punt on the Thames.

'Je me rappelle avec tristesse,' says the same friend in February, 1911,
'les beaux soirs où, sur la terrasse du Parlement, en regardant, de
l'autre côté de la Tamise, les silhouettes des hauts monuments, là-bas,
sous les étoiles, dans la nuit, nous causions avec Sir Charles de cet
_Athenæum_, la revue hebdomadaire oú il accumulait tant de science, et
dont j'avais été un moment, après Philarète Chasles et Edmond About, le
correspondant Parisien; puis de Paris, de la France de Pavenir-du passé
aussi.'

When M. Jules Claretie came to London to deliver a lecture in 1899 on
the French and English theatre, Sir Charles was asked to preside, and
also to assist in welcoming him at the Ambassador's table. The charming
and unfailing friendship of that Ambassador, M. Paul Cambon, is worthy
of record, and Sir Charles's admiration for him was very marked. He used
to say that so long as a great Ambassador, either French or English,
represented his nation in Paris or London, the other representative
might be a cipher, and M. Cambon's embassy in London sufficed for both
countries. 'He is a man,' he wrote to Mr. Morley in 1892, 'who (with his
brother Jules) will survive Ribot, and even Freycinet.'

Another close friend was M. Jusserand, whose graceful studies of English
literary history adorned the Pyrford bookshelves. While he was
counsellor to the Embassy in London he was a frequent guest at 76,
Sloane Street, and when he became Ambassador at Washington he still kept
in constant touch with Sir Charles.

'Dès qu'on nous parle d'un homme d'état étranger, ministre ou
diplomate,' says M. Joseph Reinach, writing of Sir Charles, 'c'est notre
première question: Aime-t-il la France? C'est une sottise. Un Italien
n'aime que l'Italie, un Russe n'aime que la Russie, un Anglais n'aime
que l'Angleterre.' It may be so. In 1887 Sir Charles wrote to M. Reinach
concerning the possibility that Bismarck would attack France, which, he
added, 'everybody thinks likely except your humble servant, Lord Lyons,
and Sir E. Malet, our new man at Berlin.' If it did happen, said he,
'whatever use I can be I shall be, either if I can best serve France by
writing here, or by coming to be a private of volunteers and by giving
all I can to the French ambulances.' Some there are who can recall Sir
Charles's face as he turned over the pages of M. Boutet de Monvel's
_Jeanne d'Arc_, and dwelt on that first picture in which the little
'piou-pious' of the modern army advance, under the flag on which are
inscribed the battles of the past; while the Old Guard rises from the
earth to reinforce their ranks, and the ghostly figure of Jeanne d'Arc,
symbolizing the spirit of France, leads on to victory. Listening as he
talked, his hearers became infected with Sir Charles's spirit, and
thinking of the past, looking to the future, he so kindled them that
when he closed the book they all were 'lovers of France.'




CHAPTER LII

LABOUR

1870-1911


I.

'From 1870 to this date one man has stood for all the great causes of
industrial progress, whether for the agricultural labourers, or in the
textile trades, or in the mining industries, or with the shop
assistants. That man is Sir Charles Dilke.' So, in 1910, spoke Dr. Gore,
the present Bishop of Oxford, at that time Bishop of Birmingham.

In Sir Charles's early days, economists were still governed by
individualist doctrines. The school of _laissez faire_ was the
prevailing school of thought, and in its teaching he was trained. "We
were all Tory anarchists once," was his own summary of the views which
characterized that economic theory. But to "let alone" industrial misery
early became for Sir Charles a counsel of despair. _Greater Britain_,
published in 1868, when he was twenty-five, gave indications of a change
of view, and his close friendship with John Stuart Mill directly
furthered this development. Mill's lapses into heresy from the orthodox
economics of the day were notable, and Sir Charles was wont to point to
a passage written by Mill in the forties showing that sweated wages
depressed all wages, and to claim him as the pioneer of the minimum
wage.

It was left for Mill's disciple to become one of the foremost champions
of the legislation which now protects the industrial conditions of the
worker, and also the guardian of its effective administration.

His policy was distinguished by his determination to act with those for
whom the legislation was created, and to induce them to inspire and to
demand measures for their own protection. The education of the
industrial class, the object of "helping the workers to help
themselves," was never absent from his mind. This view went farther than
the interest of a class: he held the stability of the State itself to be
menaced by the existence of an unorganized and depressed body of
workers. An organized and intelligent corporate demand put forward by
trained leaders chosen from the workers' own ranks was essential to the
development and stability of industrial conditions and to appropriate
legislation. Sir Charles was therefore the unwavering advocate of
trade-unionism. It is worth while to emphasize his attitude, since views
now generally accepted were not popular in the sixties. His first speech
to his Chelsea electors in 1867 dealt with his trade-union position, as
it did with the need for strengthening the Factory Acts.

Violent utterances on the part of certain sections of Labour did not
affect his advocacy of its claims, for he would have endorsed the words
of Cardinal Manning written to him on September 13th, 1884: "It is the
cause of the people mismanaged by imprudent and rough words and deeds;
but a people suffering long and stung by want of sympathy cannot speak
like county magistrates." During the later period of his life he tried,
at innumerable meetings all over Great Britain, to help trade-unionists
to make their claims understood. So he came to fill "a unique position
as counsellor, friend, and adviser to the Labour cause." [Footnote:
Letter from the Rt. Hon. George Barnes, Labour M.P. for the Blackfriars
division of Glasgow, and Minister for Pensions in Mr. Lloyd George's
Government of 1916, once general secretary of the Amalgamated Society of
Engineers.]

His belief in trade-unionism was never shaken; for though he did not
pretend that in the distant future trade-unionism would be sufficient to
redress all social ills, holding it, as Lady Dilke did, to be, not "the
gospel of the future, but salvation for the present," he believed that
during his lifetime it was far from having perfected its work. He was a
strong municipal Socialist, but with regard to State Socialism he would
never bind himself to any general theory; he was in favour of large
experiments and of noting those made elsewhere; beyond this he "did not
see his way."

His faith in the maintenance of all safeguards for trade-unions was well
demonstrated by his action on the occasion of the Taff Vale judgment and
its sequel. [Footnote: _Taff Vale Judgment_.--As trade-unions were not
incorporated, it was generally assumed that they could not be sued, but
in 1900 Mr. Justice Farwell decided that a trade-union registered under
the Trade-Union Acts, 1871 and 1876, might be sued in its registered
name; and this decision, after being reversed in the Court of Appeal,
was restored by the House of Lords in 1901. The result of this case (the
Taff Vale Railway Company _v_. the Amalgamated Society of Railway
Servants) was that damages could be obtained against a trade-union for
the acts of their officials in "picketing" during a strike; and by
making the trustees in whom the funds were vested defendants, an order
could be obtained for the payment of damages and costs out of the
accumulated funds of the trade-union.] He wished to keep for them the
inviolability of corporate funds which formed their strength and staying
power. While he admitted that theoretically a good case could be made
out against such inviolability, he was clear that in practice it was
essential to the continued existence of Labour as an organized force,
capable of self-defensive action. The conference on the effect of the
Taff Vale decision held in October, 1901, was arranged by him after
consultation with Mr. Asquith, who suggested Sir Robert Reid and Mr.
Haldane as legal assessors. How grave was the position which the
judgment had created may be gathered from the declaration of Mr. Asquith
in a letter to Sir Charles written on December 5th, 1901: "How to
conduct a strike legally now, I do not know." He advised the
introduction of two Bills, one to deal with the question of trade-union
funds, the other with picketing, etc. In April, 1902, Sir Charles Dilke
introduced the deputation, organized to ask for special facilities for
discussion, to Lord James of Hereford, who received it on behalf of the
Cabinet, and to Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman as Leader of the
Opposition.

In an article contributed by him to the _Independent Review_ of June,
1904, he notes a private offer of the Government for dealing with the
matter by a small Royal Commission of experts, whose recommendations
should be immediately followed by legislation. This was refused by the
Labour leaders, and he thought it a lost opportunity for what might have
been a favourable settlement. [Footnote: Mr. D. J. Shackleton, an
Insurance Commissioner, and appointed Permanent Under-Secretary of the
Ministry of Labour in December, 1916, was in 1906 M.P. for Clitheroe,
and a prominent member of the Labour party. He writes of the passing of
the Trade Disputes Act, which reversed the Taff Vale judgment: "It was
my privilege to be the spokesman for the Labour party and Joint Board on
the Trade Disputes Bill in the House of Commons. On the evening when the
Bill was read a third time in the House of Lords, the three National
Committees gave me a complimentary dinner at the House of Commons. In
the course of my speech in reply to the toast, I expressed, on behalf of
the Labour movement and myself, our sincere and grateful thanks to Sir
Charles for the very valuable help he had given us through all our
Parliamentary fights. My consultations with him whilst the Bill was
before the House were almost daily. On many occasions he crossed the
floor to give me points in answer to speeches that were made in
opposition to the Labour position."] But at the same time 'the Taff Vale
judgment virtually brought the separate Labour party into existence, and
the difficulty of upsetting the judgment and of amending the law of
conspiracy will,' he said, 'nurture, develop, and fortify it in the
future.' To him this was matter for satisfaction. [Footnote: A full
account of the action taken by Sir Charles on the Taff Vale judgment and
the Trade Disputes Act which reversed its decision will be found in
Appendix II. to this chapter, furnished by Miss Mary Macarthur (now Mrs.
W. C. Anderson). Miss Macarthur, secretary of the Women's Trade-Union
League from 1903, worked with Sir Charles on many questions.]

His absence from the House of Commons from 1886 to 1892 gave him leisure
for deep study of industrial questions, and he drew much of illustration
and advice from his knowledge of colonial enterprise in social reform.
Thus, in his advocacy of a general eight-hour day, observation of
colonial politics largely guided his suggestions. In his first speech in
the Forest of Dean in 1889, he said: "Australia has tried experiments
for us, and we have the advantage of being able to note their success or
failure before we imitate or vary them at home." The experiments in
regard to regulation of hours and wages which colonial analogy justified
should, he urged, be carried out by Government and by the municipalities
as employers and in their contracts. His visits to our Colonies were
followed by constant correspondence with Colonial statesmen, especially
with Mr. Deakin, and the introduction here of minimum-wage legislation
may be traced to Sir Charles's close study of Colonial experiment.

But he never narrowed his policy to developments which would confine the
leaders of Labour to the management of the internal affairs of their
trade-unions; he early urged the representation of Labour by Labour in
Parliament, where its influence on legislation affecting its interests
would be direct, and there is a note in his Diary in 1906, when the
"Labour party" in Parliament came into existence, chronicling the
"triumph of the principles" to which during his life that part of his
activities devoted to Labour had been given.

In 1894, when the Independent Labour party was emerging into light, he
had advocated in talks with Labour friends its development into the
Labour party of later days. But he noted the limits which bounded his
own co-operation except as an adviser: "My willingness to sink home
questions and join the Tories in the event of a war, and my wish to
increase the white army in India and the fleet--even as matters
stand--are a bar."

There were those who prophesied that the Labour party's appearance had
no permanent interest; that it owed its existence to political crises,
and would soon fade out of the life of Parliament. Sir Charles, on the
contrary, was clear that it constituted a definite and permanent feature
in Parliamentary life. It might vary in number and in efficiency; it
might, like other parties, have periods of depression; but it was
henceforth a factor to be reckoned with in politics. Its power, however,
must largely depend upon its independence. The point to which an
independent party can carry its support of the Government in power must
not be overstepped, and when, as in 1910, in the case of the "Osborne
judgment" [Footnote: Mr. Osborne was a member of the Amalgamated Society
of Railway Servants. He brought an action against them for a declaration
that the rule providing contribution for Parliamentary representation is
invalid, and for an injunction to restrain the funds being used in this
way. He was successful in the Court of Appeal and in the House of Lords
(A.S. of R.S. _v_. Osborne, 1910, A.C., 87). This practically made it
impossible for trade-unions to support the Labour party.] or the
Unemployed Bill, he thought that he detected weakening in the ranks of
the Labour party in their fight for these Bills, he noted it gravely.

His view that Labour should find its leaders in its own ranks was not
shared by Chamberlain and others who initiated Labour legislation;
[Footnote: April, 1893, letter to Dilke from Chamberlain: "A political
leader having genuine sympathy with the working classes and a political
programme could, in my opinion, afford to set them [Labour leaders]
aside." Reference to this letter has been made also in Chapter XLIX., p.
288.] but Dilke's principle was to act as spokesman for Labour only so
long as it stood in need of an interpreter; when the movement had
attained stability and become articulate, his work as the advocate who
had expressed its aspirations and compelled public attention for them
was done.

His policy did not involve his silence on points in which he differed
from the Labour party. In his first speech in the House of Commons in
1893, on the question of the destitute alien, he did not agree with some
trade representatives, who would in those days have excluded aliens, in
fear of their competition. His dissection of the figures on which the
plea of exclusion was based showed that they were misleading, since
emigration and immigration were not accurately compared. He maintained
that protective legislation with regard to conditions and wages would
deal with the danger from competition which the trades feared, and he
pointed out that anti-alien legislation must strike at the root of that
right of asylum which had always been a distinguishing feature of
British policy.

He met the contention of those who wished for a Labour Ministry by
pointing out that co-ordination and readjustment, not addition to the
number of Ministers, was needed. The size of our Cabinets was
responsible for many governmental weaknesses in a country where
Ministers were already far more numerous than was the case in other
great European countries; too numerous to be accommodated on the
Treasury Bench, and with salaries which would almost have met the cost
of payment of members.

From Labour developments everything was to be hoped, and nothing to be
feared, in the interests of the State or community. The only danger
which menaced the gradual and wise evolution of Labour was "an
unsuccessful war." The danger to peaceful evolution from such a war
would be great indeed. He warned those who advocated the settlement of
international difficulties by arbitration, that this result could only
be obtained when the workers of the different countries were in a
position to arrive at settlement by this means. Till then we could not
neglect any precaution for Imperial Defence.

Complete data are needed to carry out efficient work, and to Sir
Charles's orderly mind the confusion of our Labour and other statistics,
and the absence of correlation arising from their production by
different departments, were a source of constant irritation. Both by
question and speech in the House of Commons and as President of the
Statistical Society he laboured to obtain inquiry into "this
overlapping, to obtain co-ordination of statistics and the possibility
of combining enforcement with economy under one department," instead of
under three or four. [Footnote: Sir Bernard Mallet, Registrar-General,
gives an account of Sir Charles's work in this direction. See Appendix
I. to this chapter.]

Trade-unionism had by no means achieved "its perfected work," and
outside the highly organized trades there was a vast unorganized mass of
labour, largely that of women. The existence of such a body of workers
undermined the Labour position, and of all Sir Charles's efforts to
improve industrial conditions none is more noteworthy than that which
was done by himself and Lady Dilke for women and children. His wife's
work for the Women's Trade-Union League, to which are affiliated women's
trade-unions (the League increased its membership from ten to seventy
thousand during her lifetime), brought him increasingly in touch with
women's work; and, from his return to Parliament in 1892 to the end,
scarcely a month in any Session passed without many questions being put
by him in the House of Commons on points dealing with their needs. These
questions tell in themselves a history of a long campaign; sometimes
dealing with isolated cases of suffering, such as accident or death from
ill-guarded machinery, or a miscarriage of justice through the hide-
bound conservatism of some country bench; sometimes forming part of a
long series of interrogatories, representing persistent pressure
extending over many years, directed to increased inspection, to the
enforcement of already existing legislation, or to the promotion of new.
The results were shown not only by redress of individual hardships and
by the general strengthening of administration, but by the higher
standard reached in the various measures of protective legislation which
were passed during his lifetime. Nearly every Bill for improving Labour
conditions, for dealing with fines and deductions, for procuring
compensation for accident, bore the stamp of his work. [Footnote: As
Minister he helped in measures far outside his department. Mr. W. J.
Davis, father of the Parliamentary Committee of the Trade-Union
Congress, tells how once, at Dilke's own suggestion, he and Mr.
Broadhurst came to see Sir Charles, then Under-Secretary for Foreign
Affairs, about the Employers' Liability Bill and the Contracting-out
Clause. "We spent an hour with him in the smoking-room," says Mr. Davis,
"and left, Sir Charles having agreed to see the full Committee at 9.30
next morning. The House did not rise until 3 a.m., but Sir Charles was
at our offices in Buckingham Street prompt to time. In the afternoon he
met a few of us again, to consider an amendment for extending the time
for the commencement of an action to six months instead of six weeks.
This desirable alteration he succeeded in obtaining. When the Bill was
passed--which, with all its faults, restored the workers' rights to
compensation for life and limb--there was no member of the Government,
even including the Home Secretary (Sir William Harcourt), from whom the
Parliamentary Committee had received such valuable help as from the
Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs."]

Characteristically he mustered for use every scrap of information
available on a subject. Thus, he detected in the Employment of Children
Act (1903) powers which neither the framers nor the promoters of the Act
had foreseen, and, by speech and question, pressed their use till these
previously unknown powers of protection for children were exercised by
the officials to the full. Equally characteristic was his fashion of
utilizing his specialized knowledge of regulations in one department in
order to drive home his point in another. Thus, having cited the case of
a stunted child told off to carry loads amounting to 107 pounds, he was
able to add the information that, "in regulating the weight to be lifted
by blue-jackets in working quick-firing guns, the limit was put at 100
pounds."

His care for women workers was not confined to public advocacy; it
showed itself in unostentatious and unremitting help to those who worked
with him or came to him for advice. Such advice was not confined to
large questions of policy: he spent himself as faithfully on the
smallest points of detail which made for the efficiency of the work. His
knowledge furnished "briefs" for that group of workers which his wife's
care for the Women's Trade-Union League drew round them both, and it
guided and inspired their campaign. He watched every publication of the
League. However busy, he would find time to correct the proofs of
articles brought to him, to dissect Blue-books and suggest new points;
each quarter he read the review which was issued of the League's work.

The man who knows, and is ready to help, is early surrounded by clients.
Tributes from the organizers and leaders of the great trades are as
frequent as the testimony to his help which came from workers in
unorganized and sweated trades. The representative of a mining
constituency in later years, his work for the miners was great, and
repaid by their trust and support. [Footnote: "During the whole of his
Parliamentary life he was always ready and willing to help the miners,
assist in preparing and drafting Mines Bills, regulations for increased
safety in mines, and the eight hours. He was in charge of the Mines
Regulation Amendment Bill, bringing it before the House every Session
until the Government appointed a Royal Commission, and ultimately
brought in a Bill which became an Act of Parliament. By his tact and
influence he managed some years ago to get a short Bill passed raising
the working age underground from twelve to thirteen," writes Mr. T.
Ashton, secretary of the Miners' Federation.] From a standpoint which
gives an estimate of all his Labour work come these words from Mr.
Sidney Webb:

    "He was an unfailing resource in every emergency. No one will ever
    know how much the Progressive Movement, in all its manifestations,
    owed to his counsel, his great knowledge, and his unsparing
    helpfulness. Trade-unionism among women as well as men; the movement
    for amending and extending factory legislation; the organization of
    the Labour forces in the House of Commons, are only some of the
    causes in which I have myself witnessed the extraordinary
    effectiveness which his participation added. There has probably been
    no other instance in which the workmen alike in the difficulties of
    trade-union organization and amid the complications of Parliamentary
    tactics have had constantly at their service the services of a man
    of so much knowledge and such extensive experience of men and
    affairs. But the quality that more than any other impressed me in
    Sir Charles Dilke as I knew him was his self-effacement. He seemed
    to have freed himself, not only from personal ambitions, but also
    from personal resentments and personal vanity. What was remarkable
    was that this 'selflessness' had in it no element of 'quietism.' He
    retained all the keenness of desire for reform, all the zest of
    intellectual striving, and all the optimism, of the enthusiast."


II.

That "true Imperialism" which Sir Charles advocated was never more
clearly shown than in matters of Social Reform. His demand that we
should learn from the example of our Colonies was dictated by his desire
to promote the homogeneity of the Empire. He believed in developing our
institutions according to the national genius, and he viewed, for
example, with distrust the tendency to import into this country such
schemes as that of contributory National Sickness Insurance on a German
pattern. His attitude during the early debates on Old-Age Pensions
helped to secure a non-contributory scheme. He laid, then as always,
special stress on the position of those workers who never receive a
living wage and already suffer from heavy indirect taxation, holding
that to take from such as these is to reduce still further their
vitality and efficiency. During the debates on the Workmen's
Compensation Act he urged the extension of the principle to out-workers
and to all trades. The protection should be universal and compulsory.

In a speech of April 27th, 1907, he promised to "fight to the death any
scheme of Old-Age Pensions based on thrift or on the workers'
contributions." Later, when the proposals as to workmen's insurance were
nebulous, but nevertheless pointed to a contributory scheme, he,
criticizing some words of Mr. Haldane's, spoke his anxiety lest "to have
a system for all labour, including the underpaid labour of unskilled
women, based on contributions by the individual, might involve the
difficulty expressly avoided by the Government in the case of pensions--
namely, the use of public money to benefit the better-paid class of
labour, inapplicable to the worst-paid class, but largely based on
taxation which the latter paid." One of his last pencillings on the
margin of an article reviewing the Government's forecast of the scheme
for sickness insurance includes a note of regret and indignation at the
apparent omission to make any special provision for the lowest-paid
classes of workers.

One neglected class of Labour whose grievances he sought to remedy by a
measure which has not yet reached fulfilment was that of the shop
assistants. Year after year, from 1896, he spoke at their meetings,
introduced their Bill in the House of Commons, urged its points,
inspired its introduction in the Lords, till at last the Liberal
Government, in 1909, introduced proposals embodying its main features.
The question of the representation of the shop assistants on the Grand
Committee when the Bill should reach that stage was discussed by him
just five days before his death, and many attributed very largely to his
absence the fact that the Government were obliged to permit mutilation
of their proposals before they became law in 1911. The National Union of
Shop Assistants have commemorated his work for them by giving his name
to their new headquarter offices in London.

An amusing tribute to his legislative activities and the effect they
produced on reactionaries is to be found in a speech by that famous
"die-hard" of the individualist school, the late Lord Wemyss, who warned
the House of Lords that their lordships should always scrutinize the
measures that came from "another place," and "beware of Bills which bear
on their backs the name of that great municipal Socialist, Sir Charles
Dilke."

A minor but important characteristic of Sir Charles's views as an
administrator was his conviction that wherever the interests of women
and children are concerned the inspectorate should include an effective
women's staff. The appointment of women inspectors for the Local
Government Board made by him in 1883 was a pioneer experiment, which he
vainly urged Sir William Harcourt to follow in the Home Department--a
reform delayed till twelve years later, when Mr. Asquith as Home
Secretary carried it out.

But his most important service to Labour in the direction of
administration is connected with the Home Office Vote. Though Bills were
closely followed by him in Committee, he refused to take part in any
obstruction upon them, holding that "all obstruction is opposed to the
interests of Radicalism, in the long-run." Acting on this view, he with
others helped the Government to get votes in Supply. The true policy
was, in his view, to obtain "ample opportunity for the discussion of
important votes at those times of the Session when we desire to discuss
them." So he dealt with Home Office administration on its industrial
side. Some more marked and centralized criticism of the workings of this
great department was necessary than that supplied by questions in
Parliament, correspondence, and private interviews. The administration
of the War Office, the conduct of Foreign Affairs, or of the Admiralty,
claimed the attention of the House of Commons as the annual vote on the
Estimates came round. It was not so with the "Ministry of the Interior,"
and it was practically left to Sir Charles to create that annual debate
on the Home Office Vote, which dealt with the industrial side of that
department's administration. Year after year he reviewed its work,
forcing into prominence the Chief Inspector's Report on Factories and
Workshops; examining the orders, exemptions, exceptions, and
regulations, by which the Home Office legislates under the head of
administration, always with a view to the levelling up of industrial
conditions and the promotion of a universal incidence of protection for
the workers. "We can trust no one but Sir Charles Dilke in Parliament to
understand the principles of factory legislation," wrote Mr. Sidney Webb
in comment on some destructive Government proposals as to industrial
law. This appreciation of the fundamental ideal underlying our
legislative patchwork of eccentricities went hand in hand with a half-
humorous and half-lenient understanding of his countrymen's attitude to
such questions. "We passed Acts in advance of other nations," he said,
"before we began to look for the doctrines that underlay our action, and
long before we possessed the knowledge on which it was said to have been
based." But for one afternoon in the year the attention of the House of
Commons was intelligently focussed on the details of the suffering of
those, the weakest workers of all, on whose shoulders the fabric of our
industrial system rests. Matters left previously to the agitation of
some voluntary society or to the pages of the "novel with a purpose"
were marshalled according to their bearing on different administrative
points, and discussed in orderly detail. The overwork of women and girls
in factory or workshop; the injury to health and the risks that spring
from employment in dangerous trades; poor wages further reduced by fines
and deductions; the employment of children often sent to work at too
early an age, to stagger under loads too heavy for them to bear; the
liability to accident consequent on long hours of labour--these were the
themes brought forward on the Home Office Vote, not for rhetorical
display, but as arguments tending to a practical conclusion, such as the
inadequacy of inspection or the insufficient numbers of the available
staff.

In the atmosphere thus created much progress was possible. Take, for
example, one dangerous trade, that of the manufacture of china and
earthenware, in which during the early nineties suffering which caused
paralysis, blindness, and death, was frequent and acute. Speaking as
late as 1898 on the Home Office Vote, and quoting from the official
reports, Sir Charles showed that the cases for the whole country
amounted to between four and five hundred out of the five to six
thousand persons exposed to danger. Under his persistent pressure
Committee after Committee inquired into this question and promulgated
special rules; attention was focussed on the suffering, and this evil,
though still unfortunately existing, abated both in numbers and
acuteness, till at his death the cases had fallen to about a fifth of
those notified in 1898.

His standpoint was one which raised industrial matters out of the arena
of party fight, and on both sides of the House he found willing
co-operators.

Help came not from the House of Commons alone. Lord James of Hereford,
Lord Beauchamp, Lord Milner, lent their aid on different occasions, and
Lord Lytton paid generous tribute to one "who was always ready to place
his vast knowledge and experience, his energy and industry, at the
service of any cause which has for its object the social well-being of
the people of this country."

In Sir Charles's crowded day, the early luncheon at half-past twelve
which allowed time for talk before the House met was often set aside for
interviews. During the meal itself conversation for the greater part
ranged wide, but towards the end he would turn to his guest with a
demand for information on the point at issue, or, if his advice were
needed, with an appeal for questions. The mass of information which he
elicited was due to the simplicity of his talk with all who came to him.
"He asked me my views as if I were of his own standing," said the young
secretary of the Anti-Sweating League after his first interview.

[Footnote: Apart from these scattered conversations, Sir Charles met the
united representatives of trade-unionism once a year at the opening of
Parliament, for then the Trade-Union Congress Parliamentary Committee
lunched with him and talked over Labour questions at the House of
Commons. This custom, which began in 1880 and lasted through Mr.
Broadhurst's secretaryship, was resumed in 1898, and was continued to
the end, and the meeting was fruitful of results. "These annual
conversations," says Mr. Davis, "had much more to do with the policy of
the legislative Labour party than could be understood by the party as a
whole, but always the object was to aid the main aspirations of the
Trade-Union Congress; indeed, from 1901 to 1906 the luncheons were
followed by a conference of Labour and Radical members in one of the
conference-rooms, where arrangements were made to support Labour Bills
or to oppose reactionary proposals made by a reactionary Government.
This would have continued, but in 1906 the larger Labour party returned
to Parliament made it unnecessary."

The advent of the "larger Labour party," though it affected the
conferences, did not affect the social meetings, which ceased only with
Sir Charles Dilke's death. The last of these dinners was one at which
the Parliamentary Committee in their turn entertained him, paying warm
tribute to the years of help he had given to the trade-union movement.
It was in the vacation, but there was a full attendance, all the
provincial members of the Parliamentary Committee without exception
coming up or staying in London for the dinner. One of his prized
possessions in the after-months was the gold matchbox they gave him,
inscribed with the badge of the Trade-Union Congress and the word
"Labour." Round it were engraved his name and the date of the
Parliamentary Committee's presentation.]

The reformer does not generally count on the aid of representatives of
the great Government departments, yet the independent and non-party
attitude of Sir Charles and the friends who worked with him for Social
Reform secured not only the attention of successive Ministers, but also
the help of those permanent officials who finally came to do him honour
at the dinner which commemorated the passing of the Trade Boards Act in
1910.

Conspicuous among the friends who worked with him in the House of
Commons for the promotion of Social Reform in different directions were
Mr. H. J. Tennant (afterwards Secretary for Scotland in Mr. Asquith's
Coalition Government), Captain Norton (now Lord Rathcreedan), Mr.
Masterman, and Mr. J. W. Hills, member for Durham, a leader of the
Social Reform group among the Conservatives. Mr. Hills's estimate of
this side of Sir Charles's Parliamentary achievements may fitly be given
here:

    "Dilke's interest in Labour questions sprang not only from his sense
    of justice and sympathy with the unfortunate, but also from his
    clear and logical mind, which recognized that starvation,
    underpayment, and servile conditions are the negation of that
    democracy in which he believed for the United Kingdom and the
    Empire. For this reason he was the admitted champion of the coloured
    races; and he was the originator of a growing school of reformers of
    all countries, who realize that the nations of the world must
    advance together, for if one lags behind all suffer. He therefore
    took a most active interest in the International Association for
    Labour Legislation; he was the mainstay of the English branch, and
    he kept closely in touch with men like Dr. Bauer of Switzerland, M.
    Fontaine of France, and M. Vandervelde of Brussels, who were working
    on the same lines in other countries. Of the earlier and more
    difficult part of the work I saw nothing, for when I joined the
    association it had an assured position, and had behind it two great
    outstanding successes--the abolition of white phosphorus in the
    making of matches, and the regulation of nightwork for women. His
    knowledge of foreign countries, his familiarity with their
    industrial questions and modes of thought, and his facility in their
    languages, gave him, by common consent, a position such as no one
    holds now. The work has been little recognized in England; our
    Government, unlike foreign Governments, was slow to give help to the
    association, and it was only Dilke's unbounded energy that compelled
    them to support this important and hopeful movement.

    "What struck me about his position in domestic Labour questions was
    that his support or opposition was always the dominating fact of the
    situation. What his relations were with Labour I do not know--he
    never talked about it; but I have no doubt that he was their
    counsellor and adviser throughout their history.

    "Dilke had a deeper hold on Labour than his knowledge and ability
    alone would have given him. He held their hearts and affection as
    well. They looked upon him as the one man who had always stood up
    for the workers, through bad and good report, whether they had votes
    or had not. He had championed their cause when they were voiceless,
    when it had little support in Parliament and gave little advantage
    at elections. Nowadays such championship is both easy and
    profitable, but that was by no means the case in the sixties and
    seventies. It was exceedingly unpopular, and out of touch with the
    political philosophy of all except a few. I was greatly struck with
    this at the dinner given to Dilke in 1910 to celebrate the passing
    of the Trade Boards Act. I realized that many had come there to do
    honour to the one man who had always fought for them. They knew that
    so long as he was alive there was someone who would support them,
    regardless of consequences.

           *       *       *       *       *

    "Of his activities in Parliament, I remember most vividly those in
    which I was personally concerned. In two such cases I was on the
    opposite side; in two I worked with him. The Trade Disputes Act of
    1906 was in reality carried by Dilke and Shackleton, for the
    Government were hopelessly compromised by the two voices with which
    nearly all their leaders had spoken. Again in 1907, when I was
    trying to plead for Preferential Trade, he marshalled against it all
    the force of his wide knowledge and ripe experience.

    "On the other hand, in 1909 the luck of the ballot enabled me to
    bring in a private member's Bill, and I introduced Dilke's Sweated
    Industries Bill. Dilke was to second it. When the Bill came on I was
    laid up with influenza, but I was determined to go to the House, and
    got out of bed to do so, though when I got there I was only capable
    of a few sentences and had to return to bed. But the effect of the
    introduction of Dilke's Bill was to stir up the Government, so much
    so that a few days later Winston Churchill introduced his Bill,
    which, being a Government Bill, took precedence of ours and became
    law as the Trade Boards Act. In 1910 again, on the Home Office Vote,
    an occasion on which Dilke always made a masterly review of the
    industrial history of the year, he asked me to second him, and to
    deal particularly with lead-poisoning in the Potteries. He always
    tried to detach Labour questions from party. It was entirely owing
    to him that I took an interest in the subject.

    "I never actually worked with him, but I should imagine that he
    worked at a pace that few could follow. He was wonderful at
    mastering facts, and he had the instinct of knowing what facts were
    important. His method must have been somewhat unconventional, for
    not only did he tear the heart out of a book, but he frequently tore
    pages out as well. He had got what he wanted, and the rest was waste
    paper."


III.

The testimony of Mr. Hills has touched on several objects for which Sir
Charles worked till his death, but of these one upon which he struggled
to establish an international understanding--that of the minimum wage--
claims a fuller consideration. The interdependence of Labour was always
apparent to him, and under the sympathy for suffering which inspired his
action on such questions as the native races or the treatment of the
alien Jew, there lay the sense that the degradation of any class of
labour in one country affected its status in all, and that to be insular
on industrial questions was to undermine everything that the pioneers of
English Labour had fought for and achieved.

The wages of many workers were left untouched by the imperfect
development of trade-unionism. Sweating was the result. To check this
evil, machinery must be created by legislation to deal with low wages,
while international understanding was essential here, as in other
questions of Social Reform, to enable the democracies of the various
countries to keep abreast.

The question of the minimum wage had occupied Sir Charles Dilke's
attention from the days of his discipleship to John Stuart Mill. He had
been much impressed by the debates which took place during his
presidency in 1885 at the Conference on Industrial Remuneration. A few
years later he had been present at a meeting convened by the Women's
Trade-Union League during the Trade-Union Congress at Glasgow, and the
impression made on him by that meeting he thus described:

    "I had long been used to Labour meetings, but was then brought face
    to face with hopeless difficulties, heartbreaking to the organizer,
    because of a rooted disbelief among the workers in the possibility
    of improvement. There is a stage in which there is hope--hope for
    the improvement of wages and of conditions, possibly to be won by
    combined effort. There is a stage, familiar in the East End of
    London, when there is no hope for anything, except, perhaps, a hired
    feather and the off-chance of an outing. Yet even the roughest
    trades employing women and children in factories or large workshops,
    to be found in the East End or in the outskirts of Glasgow, have in
    them the remote possibility of organization. Home industries in many
    cases have not even that bare chance. There is in them a misery
    which depresses both the workers and those who would help them. The
    home life of the poorest class of factory workers is not much, but
    it means, nevertheless, a great deal to them. The home life of the
    home worker is often nothing. The home becomes the grinding shop.
    Factory slavery finds a refuge even in a hard home. 'Home' slavery
    has none.... It is in this class, utterly incapable of fixing a
    minimum wage for itself, that the evil of its absence stands
    revealed in its worst form."

Turning, as was his custom, to our colonies for successful experiment
and example, he discussed with Mr. Deakin (the Victorian Minister of
whom he prophesied in 1887 that he would be the First Prime Minister of
that federated Australia which was then called "Deakin's Dream") the
example of a Wages Board which was being introduced in Victoria. An
Anti-Sweating League had been formed in 1893 in Victoria, and had
adopted this scheme, carrying it into law in 1895. The vital part of the
scheme was the creation of Conciliation Boards on which representatives
of employers and employed were represented--Boards which should discuss
wages and fix a minimum rate in the trade concerned.

As opposed to any larger scheme of conciliation for all trades, this
plan had to Sir Charles's mind certain marked advantages: it would not
interfere with the activities of the great trade-unions which already
stood possessed of similar voluntary machinery, while its application
only to those whose depressed and miserable condition invoked public
sympathy would create an atmosphere likely to induce successful and
harmonious development.

In 1898 he introduced his Wages Boards Bill, from that time annually
laid before Parliament; but it made no progress, and there were moments
when even his optimism almost failed. It was not till 1906, when a
Sweated Industries Exhibition was organized by the _Daily News_, that a
step forward was made. The sight of the workers, engaged in their
ill-remunerated toil, brought home to the public an evil till then too
little realized. The movement was international. A similar exhibition in
Berlin had already been held, and others now followed in America, in
Continental countries, in Scotland, and in various parts of England. In
this country a National Anti-Sweating League came into existence. A
great meeting of trade-unionists and Labour representatives was held at
the Guildhall, Sir Charles Dilke presiding on the first day, and the
question of the minimum wage was debated by Labour; Sir George Askwith,
Mr. Sidney Webb, and Mr. W. P. Reeves, with other Colonial
representatives, speaking from the platform. Many conferences followed,
and M. Vandervelde came from Belgium, M. Arthur Fontaine from France, to
combat insular and Tariff Reform arguments, and to point out that the
movement was not confined to our own shores. A great deputation
representative of every shade of political opinion, introduced by Sir
Charles Dilke and the Archbishop of Canterbury, waited on the Prime
Minister on December 4th, 1908, and laid their views before him. Sir
Charles put the Bill into the hands of the Labour party in Parliament. A
Committee of the House was appointed to consider the question of home
work and the proposed measure, and, after the stages which Mr. Hills has
described, it became law as the Trade Boards Act in 1909. The Act at
first applied to only four trades, but there have been several
additions. Of the first extension made after Sir Charles's death, and of
the probability of the adoption of the scheme by other countries, Sir
George Askwith wrote: "It will be the first stone on Sir Charles's
cairn. I can see them all coming up the hill, nation by nation."

[Footnote: France, the first nation to reach the hill-top, passed her
Minimum Wage Act for home workers in 1915.

Minimum rates of wages under the Trade Boards Act were in operation in
Great Britain (February, 1915) as follows:

                                        _Female Persons over 18_
                                         _per Week of 52 Hours._
                                                  Per Hour. Per Week.

  Ready-made and wholesale bespoke tailoring,
    and shirt-making                               3-1/2d. 15s. 2d.
  Chain-making                                     2-3/4d. 11s. 11d.
  Paper-box-making                                 3-1/4d. 14s. 1d.
  Lace-finishing                                   2-3/4d. 11s. 11d.
  Sugar confectionery and food-preserving          3d.     13s. 0d.
  Tin-box-making                                   3-1/4d. 14s. 1d.
  Metal hollow-ware                                3d.     13s. 0d.

It is to be noted that these rates of wages, which are in every case
much higher than those they supplanted, were fixed before or in the
early part of the War, and owe nothing to the general inflation of
earnings which took place at a later stage. From the figures of the
Board of Trade Enquiry into Earnings and Hours of Labour, published in
1909, it appears that about one-third of the women employed in factories
and workshops were at the time of the Enquiry in receipt of wages of
less than 10s. per week, and the minimum rates above mentioned must be
considered in relation to these, and not to later figures.

In the various trades, shirt-making and lace-finishing excepted, minimum
rates of wages have also been fixed for adult male persons. These rates
before the War were, save in one case, 6d. per hour or upwards, and
probably one-quarter of the adult male workers in the trades benefited
by them.

The relief given by the Boards to groups of particularly ill-paid women,
such as the chain-makers, the matchbox-makers in East London, and the
lace-finishers, has been the subject of many articles in the Press.

In the chain-making trade, where the Board affected both wives and
husbands, the family income increased, in many cases, by 15s. and
upwards per week. The bearing of these higher rates of wages on the food
and clothing of those who received them, the physical condition of the
school-children, and personal and social habits, forms part of the story
which Mr. R. H. Tawney tells in _Minimum Rates in the Chain-making
Trade_.]

On April 14th, 1910, there followed the dinner to celebrate the passing
into law of his favourite project, and at that dinner, under the
presidency of Dr. Gore, then Bishop of Birmingham, representatives of
Liberalism, Labour, and Conservatism met to do Sir Charles honour. There
were many tributes paid to one whom Mr. Will Crooks dubbed "the greatest
of anti-sweaters," and of them the happiest was, probably, that of Dr.
Gore:

    "Sir Charles has played a great part publicly. In finding out,
    however, what has been going on behind the scenes, I am led to know
    that, great as has been the public part, there is a greater part Sir
    Charles has played in that region which the newspapers do not
    penetrate--the region where important decisions are hatched and
    matured, and differences made up, before appearances are made in
    public. His zeal has been unquenchable and consistent."

After Sir Charles's death, the same friend described his knowledge as
"supreme and incomparable in all matters relating to industries and
industrial law, transcending that of any of his contemporaries."

Sir Charles Dilke's nature led him to discount personal tributes, and
his verdict on the triumph of the minimum-wage principle is best summed
up in the words of Renan which he sent to one who worked with him:
"C'est ainsi qu'il se fait que le vrai, quoique n'étant compris que d'un
très petit nombre, surnage toujours, et finit par l'emporter."

There is no part of his work which brings out more the quality of
"self-effacement" to which Mr. Sidney Webb alludes. The cause of Labour
is not even yet a popular one, and there are many who held and hold that
his interest in it was not calculated to strengthen the political
position of one to whom men looked as a military expert, or an authority
on foreign affairs. But to him a grasp of social questions and a full
recognition of the place which Labour should hold in the modern State
were essential parts of a statesman's equipment, and appeals on the
ground of a weakening of his position by his unremitting care for Labour
interests could not have a feather's weight in the balance for one in
whom the chord of self had long since been struck and passed in music
out of sight.


APPENDIX I

Statistics by Sir Bernard Mallet, Registrar-General

In 1907 Sir Charles Dilke, who had been a member of the Royal
Statistical Society since 1866, accepted an invitation to become its
President, in which capacity he served for two years, with notable
advantage to the society. As the writer of the notice which appeared in
the journal on the occasion of his death observed:

    "While Sir Charles Dilke would have declined the title of
    statistician, and, indeed, frequently referred to himself as a 'mere
    user' of statistics, he possessed in a high degree what may be
    termed the statistical instinct. His genius for marshalling facts in
    orderly sequence, his passion for precision of statement even in
    minute detail, his accurate recollection of figures, as, indeed, of
    everything which he stored in the chamber of his encyclopædic
    memory, are all primary attributes of the ideal statistician, though
    in his case the wide range and magnitude of the subjects in which he
    was interested led far beyond the field of statistical
    investigation." [Footnote: _Journal of the Royal Statistical
    Society_, February, 1911 p. 320]

His assumption of this office was thus specially appropriate on general
grounds; but it was connected in his mind, as he more than once
explained, with certain definite and practical objects. He had been
impressed, during his chairmanship of the Income Tax Committee, with the
inadequacy of the published statistics on finance, and he hoped to
signalize his period of office by the promotion of the better
organization of Government statistics. He chose this subject,
accordingly, for the presidential address which he delivered before the
society in December, 1907, [Footnote: Ibid., December, 1907, pp.
553-582.] and which Mr. Arthur Bowley, in his address to the society in
furtherance of the same crusade a few months later, described as a
"terrible indictment" of the existing system, or want of system. To a
large extent this address consisted of illustrations of the lack of
co-ordination in the collection and issue of these statistics, and the
difficulties which confronted the student who desired to make use of
them. But he did not confine himself to criticism. Although no definite
scheme for dealing with this large and difficult matter could be
usefully put forward without a searching official inquiry, Sir Charles
was willing to support any proposal which would assist the object in
view, from the institution of an advisory or consultative committee of
expert statisticians, to that of a central statistical bureau on the
Continental model. He induced the council to enlarge the scope of the
society's Census Committee, then sitting to advise on measures to
improve the census to be taken in 1911, so as to include official
statistics generally; and he persuaded the Select Committee of the House
of Commons on Publications to hear evidence on the subject. [Footnote:
_Journal of the Royal Statistical Society_, September, 1908, p. 459] He
secured the consideration of his suggestions in several official
quarters, and his criticisms undoubtedly led to some improvements in
detail. It would have been a miracle if Sir Charles Dilke's vigorous
campaign had attained a more obvious measure of success, and he himself
was well aware of the extreme difficulty of securing attention in this
country to a mere question of administrative reform as distinguished
from one of political or party interest--a question, moreover, which
aroused many departmental susceptibilities. But it would be a mistake to
ignore the utility of such efforts as his in stimulating interest in the
subject and assisting those whose labours have resulted in material
improvements in recent years.

Never had the society enjoyed the advantage of a President who took so
much interest in its proceedings. He regularly attended the meetings of
the committees. He was almost invariably in the chair at the society's
meetings, and rarely failed to add to the interest of the discussion by
some illuminating comment, and he was the life and soul of the dinners
of the Statistical Club which followed the meetings.

It is difficult to exaggerate the encouragement which a President of Sir
Charles Dilke's distinction can give in these various ways to workers in
the unpopular and unattractive paths of statistical science.

       *       *       *       *       *

APPENDIX II

By Miss Mary Macarthur

The Taff Vale decision struck a vital blow at trade-union organization,
and while the case was still finally undecided the leaders of the
Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants called on Sir Charles for
advice. Afterwards, when the judgment was upheld, his services were
unreservedly at the command of the Parliamentary Committee of the
Trade-Union Congress.

He assisted the committee in 1901 at a conference in which Mr. Asquith,
Sir Robert Reid, and Mr. Haldane, committed the Liberal party to the
initiation of legislation to reverse the Taff Vale decision, and shortly
afterwards played a similar part in an interview with Lord James of
Hereford and the late Lord Ritchie, who spoke as representing the then
Government. The second conference was also satisfactory, since it drew
from Lord James the emphatic opinion that workmen on strike were
entitled in their own interest to use moral suasion to prevent their
places being taken by others.

The Tory party did not, however, take Lord James's view, and a
resolution proposing the restoration of the _status quo_ before the Taff
Vale judgment was defeated in the House of Commons by a majority of 29.
In May, 1903, a Bill introduced by Mr. D. J. Shackleton to legalize
picketing shared the same fate; while an even more ominous event was the
appointment by the Government of a Royal Commission on which Labour was
unrepresented, and before which the leaders of the trade-union movement
refused to appear.

Arguments in favour of compromise were put forward at the Trade-Union
Congress of 1903, which followed closely on the rejection of Mr.
Shackleton's Bill, and during the next three years the position of the
unions became continuously more precarious. It looked as though trade-
unions were beginning, in the phrase of Mr. Bell, to "exist very much on
sufferance."

In this crisis Sir Charles was an inexhaustible source of strength. On
everyone he could reach and influence he pressed the policy of standing
firm, and the continuing reverses of the Tory party at by-elections
played into his hands.

The Tories accepted the decision of their constituents to the extent
that Mr. Shackleton's Bill, rejected in 1903, obtained second reading by
39 votes in 1904, and by 122 in 1905. But dislike of the measure had not
abated; so many vexatious amendments were embodied in the Bill in
Committee as to render it worse than useless; and at last all but the
Tory members retired from the Grand Committee in disgust, and the Bill
was discharged from the House. But in 1906 came the General Election, by
which the Labour party found itself abruptly in the enjoyment of
prominence and power.

Faced with responsibility for legislation, the Liberal Government abated
something of their pre-election zeal, and introduced a measure which
would have given only conditional immunity to the trade-unions; but an
indignant Labour party, having secured a majority of 300 for a
thoroughgoing measure of their own, were prepared to oppose the Bill of
the Government, and this Bill was remodelled on Labour party lines.

The result was seen by everyone, but very few people understood how at
every stage the member for the Forest of Dean had intervened, using to
the utmost his powerful influence in the one camp to fix the trade-
unionists in their demand for complete reversal of the Taff Vale
judgment and the prevention of its recurrence, and in the other to bring
about an unequivocal acceptance of the demand.

[Footnote: The Trade Disputes Act, 1906, got rid of the Taff Vale
decision by Section 4. It also legalized peaceful picketing (Section 2),
and made certain acts done in furtherance of a trade dispute not
actionable on the ground merely that they interfered with business
(Section 4). Its sections dealt with the following subjects:

Section 1 amended the law of conspiracy.

Section 2 made peaceful picketing legal.

Section 3: "An act done by a person in contemplation or furtherance of a
trade dispute shall not be actionable on the ground only that it is an
interference with the trade, business, or employment, of some other
person, or with the right of some other person to dispose of his capital
or his labour as he wills."

Section 4: "An action against a trade-union, whether of workmen or
masters, or against any members or officials thereof, on behalf of
themselves and all other members of the trade-union, in respect of any
tortious act alleged to have been committed by or on behalf of the
trade-union, shall not be entertained by any court."]

Nor after this major issue was settled triumphantly did his anxiety and
watchfulness abate. He scrutinized the provisions of the Bill with
jealous care. He desired to exclude every ambiguous word. "Too easily
satisfied," he scribbled to me after Labour members had neglected to
press an amendment he considered of importance, and as the Bill slowly
moved forward several such criticisms came into my hands.

His own work in Committee on the Bill is indicated by his summary of the
risks confronting those who took part in trade disputes:

1. The liability to be hit in respect of molestation.

2. Under the word "reasonable."

3. Under the Law of Nuisance.

The first danger he diminished in an amendment accepted by the
Government. The second he tried to lessen by moving the omission of the
words "peaceably and in a reasonable manner." Unsuccessfully, for his
Labour colleagues inclined to think him extreme, and intimated their
consent to retain "peaceably."

On the third question he was supported by almost half the Committee, and
only failed to carry his amendment against the Government through a
dictum of the then Attorney-General, that the Law of Nuisance could not
be invoked to stop picketing. This law has, however, since been invoked
against the pickets of the Hotel, Club, and Restaurant Workers' Union,
and under it several members of the union have been fined, and one or
two committed to gaol. The instance is a final proof, if one were
needed, of Sir Charles's prescience. The fame of Sir Charles Dilke in
the realm of industrial legislation will mount high, but to trade-
unionists nothing will endear his memory more than the knowledge that,
if and in so far as they have now a charter invulnerable alike to the
prejudice and the caprice of those who administer the law, it is largely
due to the clear vision of Sir Charles Dilke, and to the skill and
invincible courage with which he followed his aims.




CHAPTER LIII

WORK FOR NATIVE RACES

1870-1911


I.

Perhaps no one of Sir Charles Dilke's eager activities won for him more
public and private affection and regard than the part which he took both
in and out of Parliament as a defender of the weaker races against
European oppression.

At the very outset of his career, John Stuart Mill's admiring sympathy
for the youthful author of _Greater Britain_ was specially called forth
by chapters which made a natural appeal to the son of the historian of
British India. More than twenty years later, Sir Charles, revising his
work in the full maturity of his power and knowledge, emphasized again
the first precept of his policy, which enjoined not only justice, but
courtesy:

    "Above all it is essential to the continuation of our rule under the
    changed conditions that the individual Englishman in India should
    behave towards the people as the best behave at present."

Into the question whether India would be better or worse off under some
other system he never entered; British control was accepted by him as a
fact; but, so accepting it, he insisted that justice should be done to
the Crown's Asiatic subjects.

    "Men who speak better English than most Englishmen; who conduct able
    newspapers in our tongue; who form the majority on town councils
    which admirably supervise the affairs of great cities; who, as
    Native Judges, have reached the highest judicial posts; who occupy
    seats in the Provincial, the Presidency, and the Viceregal Councils,
    or as powerful Ministers excellently rule vast Native States, can no
    longer be treated as hopelessly inferior to ourselves in
    governmental power. These men look upon the Queen's proclamations as
    their charters, and point out that, while there is no legal reason
    against their filling some proportion, at all events, of the highest
    executive posts, there are as a fact virtually no natives high up in
    the covenanted Civil Service."

Control of the military power, control of the Budget, must remain with
the governing race. But "provided war and finance are in those single
hands, autocratic or despotic if you will, which must exist for India as
a whole, in the absence of any other authority, the less we interfere in
the details of administration, to my mind, the better both for India and
for ourselves." [Footnote: _East and West_, November, 1901.]

Local self-government would give to the leading natives more opportunity
for a career, and to the governed a rule more closely in touch with
their sympathies and traditions. But there could be no general formula.
"Roughly speaking," he said, "my views are hostile to the treating of
India as a single State, and favourable to a legislative recognition of
the diversity of conditions which undoubtedly exist in India." He
contemplated administration in some parts of India by hereditary chiefs
and princes, in some cities by elective representatives of the
municipalities, in other portions of the country by a mixed system. But,
by whatever method, he was for recognizing the fact that in India we
were at many points controlling a developed though a different
civilization; that trained men were to be had in numbers; and that the
educated natives' claim for an increased and increasing part in the task
of government must be recognized.

There is a letter from him to Mr. Morley in 1897, when he thought that
freedom for the Indian Press was threatened by "blind reaction" after
the Poona murder: "The state of things in Poona has grown out of the
Committee, under the man who was stabbed but is not dead, employing
British privates (instead of employing native troops, as did General
Gatacre at Bombay) to search the houses for plague patients." The whole
position appeared to him "more dangerous than it has been at any time
since the recall of Lytton in 1880."

A policy of repression would set back the progress of liberalizing
Indian government. No one insisted more strongly on the maintenance of
sufficient force to defend the Indian Empire; but he believed that there
was a second "greatest duty" in learning "how to live with the
development of that new India which we ourselves have created."

Speaking on July 13th, 1909, when the murder of Mr. A. M. T. Jackson at
Nasik was fresh in all minds, he urged continued "measures of amnesty
and appeasement," and deprecated the policy of deporting leading members
of the National Congress. "If reform was dangerous," he said, "it was
less dangerous than leaving things alone." Describing Lord Ripon, whose
death had only just taken place, as "the Viceroy who more than any other
had touched the imagination of the people of India," he added: "If our
rule, excellent in intention, but rather wooden, is to be made
acceptable, imagination must play its part."

This lifelong advocacy of generous principles was not unrecognized. In
the last autumn of his life he was pressed in flattering terms to attend
the twenty-fifth National Congress; and for some time he entertained the
idea, which was specially urged on him by his friend and honorary agent
for the Forest of Dean, Sir William Wedderburn, who was presiding over
the Congress that year.

The project was finally set aside in view of the momentous autumn
session of 1910; but he did not feel equal to the journey. When the end
came, India mourned for him.

       *       *       *       *       *

II.

Sir Charles Dilke's concern with the vast network of problems arising
throughout Africa and the Pacific Islands from the contact of white men
with natives was infinitely detailed; yet more and more it tended to
reduce itself to one broad issue. In this relation the coloured man is
everywhere the white man's labourer; Dilke's object was to insure that
he should not be his slave. Against actual slavery he was always a
crusader, and for long years he contended against the recognition of it
implied by the practice of restoring runaway slaves in Zanzibar. Under a
Liberal Government, he carried his point at last. A letter written on
August 17th, 1907, fitly sums up this matter:

    "Dear Sir Charles Dilke,

    "I have just heard, on arriving here, that the announcement has been
    made in the House of Commons of the intention of the Government to
    abolish the legal status of slavery in Mombasa and the Coast
    District on October 1st. I can hardly say how much pleasure this has
    given me, nor can I refrain from writing to say how much we out here
    are indebted to you for the part you have taken in bringing the
    Government to this decision. I feel that without your assistance the
    affair would have dragged on, possibly, for years. With many and
    grateful thanks,

    "Believe me, yours very sincerely,

    "Alfred R. Tucker,

    "_Bishop of Uganda_"

To Sir Charles men turned if protest had to be made against the illegal
flogging of natives, or against those punitive expeditions which under a
Liberal Government were often called military patrols.

As early as 1870 he had become a correspondent of the Aborigines'
Protection Society; in 1871 he supported their action in defence of the
Demerara negroes; and to the end of his life he was in constant
communication with their leading men.

His brief tenure of office gave him power to put in force principles for
which he had contended as a private member. In 1877 he wrote to Mr.
Chesson that since 1868 he had been interested to secure fair treatment
for China, [Footnote: In 1869 Sir Charles wrote letters to the _Times_
on Chinese affairs, which, says the Memoir, 'possess a certain interest
as showing that I held the same views as to China which I have always
continued to have at heart,' and which may be sufficiently illustrated
by quotation of a single phrase. He condemned "the old, bad, world-wide
party ... which never admits that weak races have rights as against the
strong."] but China's friends must bring pressure to bear to limit the
use of torture. In 1880, having become Under-Secretary for Foreign
Affairs, he was able to inform the same correspondent that he had
"succeeded in making it certain that a strong direction would be made on
the subject of Chinese torture."

Cases of gross barbarity, cases of actual slave trading, always found
him ready to act, but his great object was to check the growth of all
systems and institutions which made for industrial servitude--to his
mind a graver peril than direct slavery. Thus, in 1878 he was in
correspondence with the Aborigines' Protection Society concerning the
proposed establishment of a Chartered Company in Borneo, and observed
that such arrangements could not be justified by proving the existence
of bad government in independent Native States. "The worse the
government of these States, the greater the difficulties which crop up
when we intermeddle." In 1881 as a Minister he resisted the grant of
that charter. All these surrenders of territory and jurisdiction to
commercial associations filled him with suspicion. He knew that
expedients lay ready to the white man's hand by which the native
population could easily be enslaved; and to these even the best
representatives of direct colonial government under the Crown were prone
to resort. In 1878 he had written anxiously to Mr. Chesson concerning
the labour tax in Fiji, which, although instituted by a Governor in whom
the society had special trust, seemed "opposed to all the principles for
which you have hitherto contended." Nearly twenty years later he was
maintaining this vigilance. "I am always uneasy about Fiji," he wrote to
Mr. Fox Bourne in August, 1896. "I attacked the labour system when it
was instituted, and continue to hold the strongest opinion against it."
But by that time the new developments which he had resisted in the
seventies had spread fast and far.

"The fashion of the day," he wrote in September, 1895, "sets so strongly
towards veiled slavery that there is nothing now to be done by
deputation to Ministers. We ought to appeal to the conscience of the
electorate, and I am willing greatly to increase my little gifts to your
society if that is done."

Part of his concern was engendered by the revelation, then recent, that
the Chartered Niger Company imposed by contract a fine of £1,000 on any
agent or ex-agent of theirs who should publish any statement respecting
the company's methods, even after his employment was ended. "I am
convinced," Sir Charles wrote, "that the secrecy which it has been
attempted to maintain puts them wholly in the wrong, even if they are
angels;" and upon this ground he kept up a steady campaign against the
Niger Company by question and debate in Parliament until Government
bought the company out and assumed direct responsibility for the
country.

South Africa was a graver centre of disquietude, for there commercial
enterprise was on a greater scale. He wrote in December, 1900, after
Great Britain had occupied the Transvaal: "My point is that the Rand
Jews have already got slavery, and our Government must repeal the laws
they have. Reading together the Pass Law and the coloured labour clause,
which you will find was the end of the latest Gold Law, we have slavery
by law."

The remedy lay, for him, in the guarantee of citizenship, at least in
some degree, to this class of labour; and with that object he put
himself at the centre of a concerted movement as soon as opportunity
offered. When, after the Boer War, the mine owners returned to the Rand,
and, pleading shortage of Kaffir labour, demanded the introduction of
indentured Chinese coolies, Sir Charles vigorously protested. The
question played a considerable part in the elections which returned the
Liberals to power with an enormous majority. It was not, however, as the
party man that Sir Charles made his protest, but as the upholder of
human rights. He feared lest "South Africa is to become the home of a
great proletariat, forbidden by law to rise above the present
situation."

When the Union of South Africa was proposed, it became manifest that
division existed as to the status of non-European citizens. In 1906,
when the Liberals came into power, immediate action was taken by a small
group of members, who addressed a letter to the Prime Minister begging
that, in view of the contemplated federation, steps should be taken to
safeguard such political rights as natives actually enjoyed in the
various colonies, and also the tribal institutions of separate native
communities. The letter advocated also an extension of Native Reserves,
and it was promptly followed (on February 28th) by a motion, brought
forward by Mr. Byles, which declared that "in any settlement of South
African affairs this House desires a recognition of Imperial
responsibility for the protection of all races excluded from equal
political rights, the safeguarding of all immigrants against servile
conditions of labour, and the guarantee to the native populations of at
least their existing status, with the unbroken possession of their
liberties in Basutoland, Bechuanaland, and other tribal countries and
reservations."

Sir Charles himself took no part in the debate; but he notes: 'I am
proud to have planned this letter and drawn the motion for Byles so that
it was carried unanimously by the House.' A resolution much stronger in
terms could easily have been carried in that Parliament; but it would
not have been unanimous, and it could hardly have been enforced later
on. Here a principle was so firmly laid down that the House could not
recede from it; and the importance of the step soon became apparent.
When the Bill for the South African Union came before Parliament in
1909, Colonel Seely, who had been one of the signatories to the letter
of 1906, represented the Colonial Office in the Commons; and Sir
Charles, warned by friends of the natives in South Africa, questioned
him as to whether the Bill as drafted empowered the self-governing
colonies to alter the existing boundaries of the Protectorates. He
received a private promise that the matter should be put beyond doubt;
and this was done in the Committee stage by a solemn declaration that
the Imperial Government absolutely reserved its right of veto upon the
alienation of native lands. As soon as the text of the proposed
Constitution became known, he raised his protest against what he
considered a permanent disfranchisement of labour; for labour in South
Africa, he held, must for all time be coloured labour. Six weeks later,
when the Bill was brought to Westminster, Mr. W. P. Schreiner, who came
specially to plead the rights of the civilized men of colour, was in
constant intercourse with Sir Charles, and scores of letters on detailed
proposals for amendment attest the thoroughness of that co-operation.
Dilke, with the support of some Labour men and Radicals, fought
strenuously against the clauses which recognized a colour-bar, and in
the opinion of some at least in South Africa, the essence of the
position was secured.

[Footnote: Mr. Drew, editor of the _Transvaal Leader_, wrote:

    "I am truly glad that (if my view of the somewhat vague cablegram is
    correct) you have alienation of native lands reserved everywhere in
    South Africa. This provision, together with the entrenchment of the
    Cape Franchise, will form a solution of the question not
    unfavourable to the natives. It gives the natives and their friends
    something to bargain with. If the Cape Franchise should ever go, its
    place will be taken by something which will benefit all the natives
    and be acceptable to all."

From a different quarter came even stronger expression of gratitude.
M. Jacottet, of the Swiss Mission, wrote:

    "I beg on behalf of all my fellow-missionaries in Basutoland, as
    well as of all the friends of justice and liberty in this territory,
    to thank you most sincerely for your courageous and strong advocacy
    of the rights and interests of Basutoland and the other territories.
    All thoughtful and civilized Basutos know how much they are indebted
    to you, and your name is held in reverence by them."]

Sir Charles, always a strong advocate of colonial autonomy, nevertheless
did not go to extreme lengths in this doctrine. An Imperialist first, he
was fully prepared to say to the colonies, So long as you claim Imperial
protection, you must recognize the full rights of citizenship within the
Empire. He feared gravely the tendencies which might develop under the
British flag, if uncontrolled liberty of action were given to the
Colonial Parliaments in dealing with such questions as forced labour.
"The Australian rule in New Guinea is going to be terrible," is a stray
note on one of his communications with the Aborigines' Protection
Society.

This labour question was to him essentially the problem of the future,
and he watched its developments with ceaseless anxiety. At the annual
meeting of the society in April, 1910, he spoke of the energy which the
Colonial Office displayed in promoting the growing of cotton as laudable
but dangerous. "The chiefs had sometimes exercised compulsion to make
their tribes cultivate the unfamiliar product." More generally he felt
that wherever the white man introduced taxation there would be a
tendency to requisition labour, and that all such projects would
inevitably generate an interested commercial support. The Portuguese
system of recruiting for the cocoa plantations might be barbarous; but
if it were pleaded in defence that without it the supply of cocoa must
fail, Sir Charles foresaw the gravest difficulties with the House of
Commons. "How are we to make that 'would-be' practical Assembly tell the
Government to induce Portugal to put an end to so enormous a
cultivation?" The only method of avoiding these evils was to prevent
their growth; and the soundest plan was to insure that the natives
retained their own familiar means of livelihood, and so could not be
brought down to the choice between starvation and selling their labour
in a restricted market. For that reason he fiercely opposed the whole
policy of concessions, and by public and private representations he
pressed the Colonial Office to reject every such alienation of native
rights in the land.

He had promised to read a paper on Indentured and Forced Labour at the
Native Races Conference held in July, 1911. It reviewed all the facts of
the situation as they existed--the growing demand for indentured
service, the respective record of the European Powers, and the varying
results produced by varying methods which the same Power has adopted in
different regions. It was, he thought, not easy to decide whether the
anti-slavery cause had lost or gained ground in his lifetime; new
insidious and widespread forms of the evil had taken a hold. Great
Britain's escutcheon was marred by the inclusion of a colour-bar in the
most recent Constitution of her oversea dominions; and the Government of
India had recently failed to obtain from some British States that
measure of rights for emigrating British Indian subjects which it had
formerly been able to secure. Forced labour was being employed under
British auspices in Egypt; while the French, who had "more nearly than
any other nation" done away with this evil in colonies, were open to
grave reproach in the matter of concessions--especially in that region
where French administration was affected by the neighbouring example of
the Congo Free State. The danger both of forced labour and of
concessions was that they alike tended to destroy native law and tribal
custom, and so to create 'one universal black proletariat'--a vast
reservoir of cheap defenceless labour.

What he wrote was duly read at the Conference, and is included in the
volume of their proceedings called _Inter-Racial Problems_. But before
the Conference took place, silence had been imposed for ever on this
advocate of equal justice. Among his papers is the manuscript of this
composition corrected for the press by him within a week of his death--
work done against the entreaty of those who cared for him, but work that
he would not leave undone.

In defending the interest of the native races, Dilke always felt himself
to be defending the dignity and the safety of labour at home--even
though the representatives of European labour did not recognize the
common concern. He was defending labour where it was weakest; and it is
in his championship of the weak that one of the younger men who worked
with him and learnt from him sees the characteristic note of his life.
General Seely writes:

    "To many of the younger men who found themselves in the Parliament
    of 1900 Dilke was an enigma. We could all appreciate his immense
    store of knowledge, his untiring industry, his courtesy to younger
    men, and his striking personality. But what the real purpose was to
    which he was devoting these talents, what was the end in view--put
    shortly, 'what he was at'--was to us a puzzle.

    "Clearly, it was no bitter hostility either to a Government with
    which as a Radical he profoundly disagreed, or to an Opposition
    amongst whom he sat, but whose chiefs had not restored him to their
    inner councils. Not the former, for in matters of foreign policy and
    in Imperial Defence, where his unrivalled knowledge gave him
    powerful weapons of attack, he never pursued an advantage he had
    gained beyond very moderate limits. Not the second, for no man was
    more steadfast in his attendance and in his support, given by speech
    and in the lobby, to those of his own political faith.

    "Still less was it personal ambition or self-seeking; for if he
    spoke often, it was only to put forward some definite point of view,
    and not for the purpose of taking part in a debate just because the
    House was crowded and the occasion important.

    "Least of all was his constant attendance in the House of Commons
    the refuge of a man with no other object in life, for no man was
    more many-sided or had so many and such varied interests.

    "His Parliamentary action was often baffling to the observer,
    especially in its restraint. It was only after many years that the
    present writer found the master-key to Dilke's actions, and it was
    revealed in a flash at the time of the passing of the South Africa
    Union Act. The question was the representation of the native
    population in the Union, and the cognate questions of their
    treatment and status. Dilke came to see me. He pleaded the native
    cause with earnestness, with eloquence, with passion. The man was
    transfigured as the emotions of pity and love of justice swept over
    him. No record could be kept of what he said; there could have been
    no thought of using his eloquence to enlist popular support or
    improve a Parliamentary position, for we were alone. And so I came
    to see that the mainspring of all his actions was the intense desire
    to help those who could not help themselves--to defend the
    under-dog.

    "Looking through the long list of the speeches he made, and of the
    questions he asked, from the beginning of the Parliament of 1900
    until the time of his death, one sees plainly that this was his
    guiding motive. No detail was so small as to escape his attention if
    the people he was endeavouring to protect were poor and helpless.

    "On the wider questions of the general treatment of natives he
    displayed the same meticulous care in finding out the true facts of
    the case. In the controversy that raged round the administration of
    the Congo, he would not move until he had ascertained the facts, not
    only from official documents, but from inquiries he himself had set
    on foot. Indians, Africans, Chinese, as well as his own countrymen
    and countrywomen, all would find in him a champion and defender,
    provided only that they were poor, unrepresented, or oppressed."


III.

In some cases the defence of the "under-dog" was a duty imposed by our
acknowledged sovereignty or by international obligations.

What might follow from the growing rush for tropical products, capital
pursuing large returns "into every jungle in the world," was shown to
Europe, in the last months of Sir Charles's life, by the revelations
from the Amazon Valley, a scandal to which he was among the first to
call attention. This was a region where Great Britain had no special
duty. But a series of facts not less horrible, on a scale infinitely
vaster, and affecting a population which, originally, could not have
numbered less than thirty millions, had, long before the Putumayo
revelations, been proved to exist throughout the basin of a great
African river. No labour of Sir Charles's later years was more
continuous and persistent than his effort to fix on the Imperial
Parliament the responsibility for what was done in the Congo Free State,
and the duty of putting an end to it.

    "He perceived with increasing clearness of vision, as the years went
    on," says Mr. Morel, "that the future relationship between the white
    and coloured races in the tropical regions of the globe was bound up
    with the problem of the Congo, and that the effects of the success
    or the failure of the movement for Congo reform would govern in
    great measure the attitude of Europe towards these questions for
    very many years."

A State that had been brought into being by England's express sanction,
for solemnly defined purposes of civilization in Africa, was proved by
its own agent to be employing cannibal troops. That was the circumstance
which most impressed a startled House of Commons when, on April 2nd,
1897, Sir Charles raised the first of many discussions upon the question
of the Congo.

In 1896 a violent action had brought home to England what had been the
fulfilment of the promised free trade for all nations, and of King
Leopold's protestations in 1884. Mr. Stokes, a British trader, was
arrested and shot by the order of a Belgian officer, Major Lothaire. His
offence was trading in ivory. Sir Charles, when he raised the debate in
April, 1897, combined then as always the diplomatic with the
humanitarian aspect of the case; and brought before the House the
existence of the secret decree of September, 1891, declaring a State
monopoly of all rubber and ivory, for violation of which Mr. Stokes had
been executed. [Footnote: Stokes was also accused of bartering guns to
the Arabs for that ivory. This, true or not, does not affect the initial
outrage, that, though he was entitled to a proper trial, he was trapped
and summarily executed without trial of any kind.] But it was the
publication of Captain Hinde's book, [Footnote: _The Fall of the Congo
Arabs_.] with its revelation of the fact that European officers had
commanded an army fed for long periods by organized cannibalism, which
gave authority to Sir Charles's demand for a new conference of the
Powers. "We should take action," he said, "to remove from ourselves the
disgrace which had fallen upon our declarations."

Mr. Curzon, who as Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs then spoke for
Lord Salisbury's Government, treated the matter coolly enough, though
admitting that the agents of the Congo State had sometimes adopted
methods repugnant to Christian feeling; and so for the moment the
controversy ended, but Sir Charles with persistent application returned
to the question again and again, although his efforts were hampered by
lack of information. So well was the secret of those dark places kept
that even he, with his widespread net of acquaintance in many capitals,
found facts hard to gather; and he was naturally attracted by the
appearance in 1900 of a series of anonymous articles in the _Speaker_,
which dealt with the system set up in the Congo, and its inevitable
results. These articles displayed an unusual knowledge of the whole
complicated subject, and revealed aspects of it which had previously
baffled inquiry. The writer proved to be Mr. E. D. Morel. So began a
co-operation whose influence upon the administration of African races
was destined to be far-reaching.

The campaign was steadily pressed. Within the House of Commons, Sir
Charles spoke session after session, using language of a vehemence that
startled in one so moderate. He organized representations to the Senate
and Chamber in Belgium, summarizing what was being done in the Congo and
urging Belgium's moral responsibility. Out of doors, the Press campaign
was vigorous--so vigorous that no Government could disregard it; and at
the beginning of 1903, in reply to a question from Sir Charles, Mr.
Balfour promised a formal debate "on the position of the signatories to
the Berlin General Act of 1885, in regard to the abuses which had grown
up under the Congo Free State's rule in violation of that Act." The
debate, on May 20th, 1903, was opened by Mr. Herbert Samuel. Sir
Charles, following him, was in turn supported by Sir John Gorst, an old
ally in such causes. Mr. Balfour, in face of a unanimous House,
accepted, not without reluctance, the motion which asked him to consult
the co-signatories of the Berlin Act, and thus committed Great Britain
to a diplomatic re-opening of the case. Inquiry necessarily followed,
and with the publication of our Consul's report in December, 1903, the
affair reached a new phase.

When the Foreign Office vote came to be discussed in the Session of
1904, Sir Charles, basing himself on that report, delivered what Sir
John Gorst called a "terrible speech." Replying for the Government, Lord
Percy used these words: "There never has been a policy of which it might
be said as truly as of this one that it was the policy not so much of
His Majesty's Government as of the House of Commons." Not less is it
true that Sir Charles had guided the House to the adoption of that
policy.

By this time the cause commanded popular interest. The questioning of
Ministers was frequent, and it was done by men from all camps. Sir
Charles could afford henceforward to select his portion of the work. He
limited himself as far as possible to the diplomatic aspect of the case,
more technical and less popular in its appeal, but giving the surest
right of intervention.

The Foreign Office does not naturally look with favour upon policies
forced upon it by the House of Commons, and perhaps for this reason the
permanent officials proved opponents very difficult for the House of
Commons to control. But Sir Charles's knowledge gave him the necessary
advantage. For instance, on November 22nd, 1906, he asked if the United
States had not expressed a desire to co-operate with Great Britain in
this matter. An official denial was given. On December 16th the question
was put again, and the admission made that "the United States have
recently expressed" such a desire.

After various obscure negotiations on the part of King Leopold to secure
German support for his personal rule, there came at length with the
beginning of 1907 the announcement that Belgium would annex the Free
State.

[Footnote: The delay which took place in the transference of the Congo
Free State from the personal rule of King Leopold to the rule of the
Belgian Government is dealt with in the following letter from Lord
Fitzmaurice from the Foreign Office to Sir Charles:

"_February_ 16th, 1906.--The King of the Belgians puts about these
stories for the same sort of reason which made the German Emperor put
about the story that there was a change of policy in regard to France.
At the same time there must be a little 'law' given to the King while
his second Commission is reporting on the methods of carrying out the
reforms indicated in the first Commission's report. As you know, I am
not a believer in the King 'at all, at all,' but one has to observe the
forms of diplomacy. It is, perhaps, not unfortunate that this pause
coincides with a moment when it is not our interest to be having a row
with Belgium also, if perchance we were having a row with Germany." This
letter was written while the Algeciras Conference was sitting.]

Yet the matter was not allowed to sleep in either House of Parliament;
it was raised by Sir Charles on the Whitsuntide adjournment, and again
in August. In 1908 the subject was mentioned in the King's Speech. But
by this time a "Colonial Law" had been proposed in Belgium, which went
far to re-establish King Leopold's power under the new system and
created new difficulties. Sir Charles's allies now were not in England
only. He had made friends with M. Vandervelde, leader of the Socialist
party in Belgium, and the one Socialist who had ventured to vote for
annexation. They met during Sir Charles's Christmas stay in Paris in
1907, and had "two days' thorough discussion of Congo." The result was
written to Lord Fitzmaurice (then Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs)
on January 6th, 1908: "I tell you confidentially that, after seeing
Vandervelde, I cease to advise moderation, and shall say so to the
private Congo Reform meeting called for the 21st." This tone made itself
felt in the debate on the Address, and in two subsequent discussions.
The points pressed for were, first, that Belgium in taking over the
Congo should take over fully and honor the Free State's treaty
obligations, and, secondly, that full guarantees should be given for
native rights. [Footnote: On Sir Charles Dilke's action in regard to the
Congo, see also _Red Rubber_ (T. Fisher Unwin), pp. 4, 11, 177, 195; and
_Great Britain and the Congo_ (Smith, Elder and Co.), pp. 122, 124, 138,
142, 193, by Mr. E. D. Morel. The official organs of the Congo Reform
Association from 1904 until Sir Charles's death contain a complete
record of his speeches, both in the House and outside, during this
period.]

But discussion in the Belgian Parliament showed reluctance to accept
this view, and on November 4th, 1908, a strong memorandum was despatched
by Great Britain. When Parliament reassembled in 1909, a question put by
Sir Charles elicited the fact that no answer had been returned to this
despatch, and an amendment to the Address was put down by a Unionist,
Sir Gilbert Parker. Sir Charles, in supporting it, laid special stress
on backing from America, being well aware that relations were strained
in Europe.

His speech indicated some fear that the question might be submitted to
the Hague Conference.

"That," he said, "is not our intention. That is not what Parliament
meant. That is not the policy which successive Governments have given
their adhesion to. In a state of Europe far more disturbed, even Lord
Castlereagh several times took in similar matters far stronger action
than is now necessary."

But the Parliament elected in 1906 did not see the end of this affair;
and when they next met in February, 1910, King Leopold had died, and
there was a new King of the Belgians. On March 10th, Sir George White
moved upon the matter, pointing out that there was no improvement in the
treatment of the natives and no extension of freedom for trade; and the
Foreign Secretary replied in a somewhat ambiguous speech. Annexation, he
said, had not yet received the sanction of Great Britain, and could not
until improvement in the administration had taken place. But beyond this
negative attitude of disapproval, Sir Edward Grey seemed to think that
Great Britain could not wisely act alone, and that under the Berlin Act
isolated action was in some measure barred. This, in the temper of the
moment, was construed as a hint that insistence on reform might drive
Belgium into the arms of Germany. Sir Charles said in this debate:

    "There is one case, and one only, where I think we see very distinct
    signs of weakening in our policy, a weakening caused by terror, and
    undue terror, of the risks which may follow. The papers issued by
    the Belgian Government with regard to the Congo show a distinct
    weakening of attitude on our part.... In the Belgian despatch they
    treat us with contempt, with a sort of lofty scorn which is almost
    inconceivable. I have never known such a thing before; it is an
    entirely new departure.

    "I believe the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs has been here
    to-day, knowing that many members in all quarters of the House have
    incurred a certain disappointment, which is reflected in the letter
    in to-day's papers from the Archbishop of Canterbury, with regard to
    the speech with which he wound up the other night the short debate
    upon the Congo question.... He says that we have not weakened our
    position, that we have given nothing away, that we have not
    'recognized.' But it is not a mere paper recognition or a paper
    non-recognition to which we attach high importance and which we
    formerly thought we understood from his speeches.... We have before
    us a Bill for the largest naval expenditure that our country has
    ever incurred in time of peace. We add for the first time to that
    expenditure colonial expenditure which swells out beyond that of our
    own Estimates. The House has supported those Estimates, and the
    Empire is spending on land forces even a larger amount than it is
    spending on the fleet. None of us believe that war is probable, but
    we do think, and many of us in this House believe, that the
    armaments of this country, if they are to have weight in time of
    peace, ought to have weight behind our diplomacy; and if they are to
    be justified by many of the arguments put before this House, there
    is no reason why at this moment we should be afraid of our own
    shadow. We have been afraid of our own shadow on the Congo question.
    I think there can be no doubt that we have received from M. Renkin,
    the Colonial Minister, such treatment as we have never had to put up
    with from any Power, at all events in recent years." Dilke warned
    members not to be silenced by unnecessary fears on these matters.
    "Not even a single question was asked in the far more dangerous case
    of the ultimatum which we now know was sent to the Turkish
    Government when they came into office in the beginning of 1906, in
    regard to the occupation of the village of Tabah. That ultimatum
    might have raised serious questions in that part of Europe. I think
    a little more courage would be desirable in a case like that of the
    Congo. It is not a question of ten pounds or one hundred pounds of
    somebody's property. We are shocked in the case of the Congo because
    that which would never happen is put as a conceivable danger at the
    end of a long train of hypothetical events. It is said that there
    might be an act of violence.... There would not be an act of
    violence, and I beg the House not to be led away by the fear of
    trifling complications following upon our insisting, not upon
    anything new, but upon that which we have been insisting upon for
    years past in a matter in which our moral obligation is very
    weighty."

Yet it was not Sir Charles's fortune to see the fulfilment of the long
labour in which he had played so great a part. Not till three years
later--in June, 19l3--did the Congo Reform Association feel that its
work was completed, and that it could disband its forces.

Sir Charles's part had been to apply in Parliament the force that was
generated outside. From a private position to have guided without
seeming to dictate; to have inspired common action among colleagues
holding all shades of political thought; to have avoided miscarriage by
infinite tact and patience; to have possessed so wide a knowledge of all
the complicated issues involved that official reluctance could never
avoid action by mysterious pretexts; to have been always so moderate in
expression that strong condemnation from him, when it came, was indeed
weighty; to have watched time and opportunity, the dispositions of men,
the temper of the assembly--all this was necessary to carry through such
a Parliamentary task without the power of office, and all this Sir
Charles performed. No finer example has been given of what in the
Imperial Parliament a member of Parliament can do; and Sir Charles Dilke
could well afford to be judged by it, and it alone, as typical of his
life-work.




CHAPTER LIV

THE BRITISH ARMY

[Footnote: This and the two following chapters are by Mr. Spenser
Wilkinson.]


In October, 1885, in the course of a speech delivered to his
constituents, Dilke expressed his opinion on the subject of the reform
of the army, then generally regarded as desirable, but also as so
extremely difficult that the old Parliamentary hands shrank from
grappling with it. "Everybody was agreed," he said, "upon this point,
that we ought to have a strong navy, but there was more difference of
opinion as to the army." Speaking personally, and without any authority
from others, he felt desirous of throwing out a suggestion whether it
would not be possible to have a separate army for India and the
colonies, the army being treated as any other trade, and the men being
permitted to withdraw when they pleased, with safeguards against the
country being involved in loss when men came home prematurely. It would
be necessary, of course, to have special training for cavalry,
engineers, and artillery, as well as officers and non-commissioned
officers; but he believed that for the great mass of the infantry, apart
from the Indian and colonial army, we might safely rely upon the
volunteers, and encourage volunteering by special advantages.

The suggestion thus modestly thrown out in 1885 proved to be the prelude
of the effort of Dilke's later life--to prepare the country and the
Empire for the times of storm and stress that were to come. His travels
as a young man had given him an unrivalled acquaintance with the chief
countries of the world, and especially with those which constitute the
British Empire. In the spring of 1887, in his articles on "The Present
Position of European Politics," as already seen, he passed in review the
aims of the several Powers of Europe, and the military means which were
available for their furtherance. His conclusion, expressed in the first
sentence of the first article, was that "the present position of the
European world is one in which sheer force holds a larger place than it
has held in modern times since the fall of Napoleon." In this condition
of Europe, the phenomenon that most impressed him was that "England is
of all Powers the most unprepared for war." That being the case, it
seemed to him to be the first duty of a British Government to set in
order the nation's defences. The next five years he devoted chiefly to
an effort to master the subject, to which he gave the name of Imperial
Defence.

The spirit and method of Dilke's work on the subject of preparation for
war mark him off from all his Parliamentary contemporaries into a class
by himself. He took the subject of war seriously. He would not speak of
it without knowledge, and, as he had not had the professional education
of a naval or military officer, he associated himself as closely as
possible in this part of his work with those who appeared to him the
most completely to command the subject. His own words were: "Writing on
the British Army as a civilian, I am only accepting an invitation which
soldiers have often given to their fellow-countrymen. At the same time I
have not the presumption to write without military help." [Footnote:
_The British Army_, p. 1.]

He diligently studied the military literature of the day, English and
foreign, treating of the questions he was considering, and collected a
great number of official reports and other documents which he digested.
At the same time he entered into correspondence with the best soldiers,
in order to learn and appreciate their views. Prominent among these was
Sir Frederick Roberts, then Commander-in-Chief in India, with whom
during the whole period he was in constant communication. He also sought
the collaboration of some congenial student of the problems of war,
organization, and national defence, in order to insure the thorough
discussion of all points, and to guard himself against the temptation to
attach too much importance to his own impressions. He wished to acquaint
himself with, and to reproduce in his writings, the best that was known
and thought in the military world. In 1887, while writing his articles
on European Politics, he frequently consulted in this way Colonel
Charles Brackenbury, R.A., one of the most accomplished officers of the
progressive school, a master of his profession and a clear exponent of
its principles.

In this spirit and in these conditions was written the sixth article of
the series on European Politics, published in June, 1887, and entitled
"The United Kingdom." It was an account of the country's military
weakness and a plea for a much-needed improvement of the army. "We spend
more upon war services than does any other empire in the world.... It is
believed abroad, and I fear with reason, that even within the last two
years our stock of rifles was so small that there were only enough guns
in store to arm the first-class army reserve, so that, in fact, there
was from the military point of view no reserve of rifles, and that our
ammunition stood at about a similar point of exhaustion.... The most
capable men of the army tell us very frankly that they are almost in
despair at its condition."

Assuming for the moment that all idea were given up of fulfilling the
nation's treaty obligations for the defence of Turkey and of Belgium,
and that no more were aimed at than the defence of India, of England,
and of the colonies, "even upon this reduced estimate of our
responsibilities, in the opinion of all competent men, we fall short of
power to accomplish our task." In view of this state of things Dilke
suggested methods of increasing the strength of the nation, and of
obtaining value for the money spent. In the first place, "it is
necessary for the statesmen, or if the statesmen will not, then for the
public, to lay down for the soldiers a basis of military policy."

    "It certainly seems clear, even to those who are not great
    scientific soldiers, that there is sufficient risk of invasion to
    make it essential to our position that we should have plenty of
    cavalry and artillery, plenty of officers, plenty of guns,
    ammunition, and other stores, always in readiness to supplement the
    large force of infantry which is provided for us by the militia and
    volunteers.... The things we need to keep in hand are the things
    which cannot be suddenly improvised--cavalry, artillery, transport,
    officers, and stores. We can, whatever some soldiers may say, make
    effective infantry of our volunteers in a short space of time."

    "What we have to look to are, mainly, the defence of India, the
    defence of England, and the supply of a possible expeditionary
    force. For the defence of India we need, according to an opinion
    which I expressed at the date of the first introduction of short
    service, a long-service army." Dilke quoted Major Buxton's words:
    "For home service and European warfare we need a reserve, and
    therefore a short-service army. What difficulties do not hamper us
    in striving to reconcile short service with foreign service! Divide
    the two services and all becomes simple. The foreign service army
    ... requires yearly fewer recruits, becomes acclimatized, and has
    fewer green young men in its ranks; it is never relieved home,
    though it moves about abroad. The question of home and foreign
    reliefs is closed for ever. Recruits go out, and time-expired men
    come home; that is all." "On the other hand, for the home army,"
    Dilke wrote, "I would rely very largely upon the militia or
    volunteers, and for the infantry privates of the expeditionary army,
    upon special volunteers from the militia or volunteers.... I am
    convinced that the time required, provided that your officers and
    non-commissioned officers are well trained, to make an infantry
    private is not very great."

    "Instead of trying to imitate at one time the Prussians, and at
    another the French, we ought, in my belief, to strike out a
    thoroughly national system for ourselves"--the direction to be taken
    being that of "giving high efficiency to the elements which cannot
    be rapidly created in the home army, and the loyal adoption for the
    infantry of the principle of localization and of union with the
    militia and volunteers."

In the autumn and winter, with Brackenbury's collaboration, which was
not disclosed, as Brackenbury was an officer on the active list, Dilke
wrote for the _Fortnightly Review_ a second series of articles,
entitled, like the volume in which they were afterwards collected, _The
British Army_. The first article appeared in November. After its
publication, Lord Wolseley wrote: "I have at this moment finished what I
may be allowed to call your very interesting military article in the
_Fortnightly Review_. I trust it may be read by every voter, and may
turn public opinion to the shortcomings of our army and of our military
establishments." Dilke thereupon wrote to ask Wolseley for some account,
of which public use might be made, of his views upon the condition of
the army and of the necessary reforms. Wolseley replied at some length,
and said: "I should not like any quotation made from this very hurriedly
written letter, but if you care to do so you may say in any of your
articles that I entertain these views and opinions." Wolseley's views
were given, accordingly, in the third article, in a paraphrase of his
letter.

A more complete exposition of England's unreadiness for war has never
been written than was contained in _The British Army_. It revealed the
neglect of successive Governments to ascertain and determine the
purposes for which in war the army would be employed, and the standards,
quantitative and qualitative, of the military forces which ought to be
kept ready. It showed the evils of excessive centralization. For an
expenditure as great as that of a Continental military Power the War
Office maintained a regular army, as to which it was doubtful whether it
could mobilize, in a condition to take the field, a single army corps.
The militia was imperfectly officered. The volunteer force was of
unequal quality, and the mass of its officers inadequately trained for
war. It was without field artillery, and the guns with which in case of
war it ought to be accompanied did not exist. The regular army at home
was sacrificed to the necessity of furnishing reliefs to the army in
India, which, however, was not in a condition to defend that country
against serious attack.

The system on which Continental armies were raised, organized, and
trained, was explained, and proposals were made for reform of the
British system. The suggestion was repeated that the British army in
India should be rendered independent of the military administration at
home, and the home army be relieved of the burden of supplying reliefs
to India. This would render possible the introduction of true short
service at home, and the enlistment for the Indian army of men willing
to serve for comparatively long periods as professional soldiers. It was
maintained that for national defence it would be found necessary to rely
mainly upon the volunteers, and that therefore they should be given a
place in the system corresponding to the call which would have to be
made upon them in case of war. In the regular army those elements should
be specially maintained which least admit of rapid training--cavalry,
field and horse artillery--and a General Staff of an English type ought
to be developed.

The cogency of Sir Charles Dilke's appeal to his countrymen to attend to
the subject of defence, the weight of authority behind his exposition of
the failure of the military administration, and the appropriateness of
the reforms which he suggested, will be better conveyed by the quotation
of a few passages than by a summary:

"The reign of force of which I have often spoken is so marked at present
that no Power can consider itself safe unless it is ready at any time to
defend its interests." "Humanly speaking, we can trust for our
protection in the last resort only to our strong right arm." "Time is
slipping by, and the unreadiness of England is a danger to the peace of
the world." "It is time that party politics should be put aside on
questions relating to the national defence." He pointed out how
dangerous was the influence of those "who may almost be said to oppose
all military expenditure, and yet whose ability and honesty gave them a
deserved influence with the electors." "It was impossible to adopt a
policy of disarmament without grave danger for the future;" but if it
was to be prevented, "the people have to be shown that large
expenditure, not only upon naval but also upon military purposes, is a
necessity of the time." He deprecated "the unwisdom of those who,
thinking our present position unsatisfactory, and more or less agreeing
about the main lines of the remedies to be applied, fight among
themselves.... The points which have a real importance are not those on
which we differ, but those upon which we are agreed."

The first question that he wished to have cleared up was what the
country would fight for. He pointed out that England was bound by treaty
to support the defence of Turkey against Russia, though he doubted
whether English opinion would support that policy, and to defend the
neutrality of Belgium, as to which he thought the attitude of
Governments had been ambiguous. He would himself approve of fulfilling
our treaty obligations as regards that country, but he said: "If indeed
we are to defend the neutrality of Belgium, we may at any time find
ourselves involved in a Continental war against Germany, with France and
Belgium for our Allies." He was prepared to accept as a minimum basis
for preparation the assumption "that we ought to defend the
coaling-stations, to be in a position to defend ourselves in India and
at home, and to send, if need were, two army corps abroad as an
expeditionary force."

One great difficulty of proving a case against the sufficiency and
efficiency of the army lay in the fact "that, while soldiers are very
willing to communicate information in their possession as to our present
weakness, to those who, they think may help in any degree to set things
straight, they not unnaturally shrink from the publication of their
names." Yet Dilke was able to express the views of Sir Frederick
Roberts, communicated to him very fully, and more briefly those of Lord
Wolseley. He was also able to quote Wolseley's statement to a Royal
Commission, that "if a hostile force of, say, 100,000 men were to land
upon our shores, there is no reason whatever, if that 100,000 were
properly led, why they should not take possession of London.... We are
not in the position we ought to be in, nor do I believe we are in the
position we should be in if the English people were told the whole
truth."

    "The inefficiency of our present organization, and its wastefulness,
    are admitted by persons who differ as greatly the one from the other
    as, on the one hand, the chief of the 'Economists,' Lord Randolph
    Churchill, and, on the other, the soldiers who are the object of his
    scorn--Lord Wolseley, Sir Frederick Roberts, and General
    Brackenbury. [Footnote: General Sir Henry Brackenbury, brother of
    Colonel Charles Brackenbury.] Our present position is, therefore,
    condemned all round, and the day has come when it behoves every
    Englishman to have an opinion as to the direction in which the
    remedy is to be sought."

    "To form armies which will be of any value against the power of
    'armed nations,' it is necessary to provide modern weapons, and here
    again we are weak just where we should be strong.... It is one of
    the most astonishing features of our 'system' that, with all our
    enormous expenditure, we manage to drop behind other nations both in
    the quality of our weapons and the proportional number of them to
    the hands that would have to use them. The reason probably is that
    the country has gradually arrived at the absurd belief that Great
    Britain alone of all nations in the world can by prudence escape the
    common lot, and never have war again except with savages. From this
    unfounded and unwise opinion springs grave carelessness as to the
    condition of the military forces, and Governments desirous of
    presenting a comparatively small Budget fail to keep up the
    necessary quantity of arms and stores, because deficiency in these
    is a weakness easy to conceal.... Thus we, who should always be in a
    state of readiness to supply arms to improvised forces, and to
    colonial levies, have never enough for the purposes of the home
    army. We are always compromising between the popularity of a
    Government and the safety of the Empire."

It will be shown later on how Dilke, when the time came, upheld this
opinion by his vote in Parliament, even against his own party and to the
sacrifice of his own political interests.

    "For an expenditure of nineteen millions the Germans can put into
    the field nineteen army corps of 37,000 men each, besides an
    enormous force of garrison troops and a territorial army, of which
    they could rapidly make a field army of thirty-five army corps in
    all. For an expenditure of twice nineteen millions we can put into
    the field in India two army corps, of which one is composed of
    native troops, but in the United Kingdom, in General Brackenbury's
    words, owing to our defective organization, we should scarcely be
    able to put one; but if the army were properly organized we should
    be able to put two into the field."

Yet it could not be said that the British army fell short in numbers:

    "The army proper, the militia, the army reserve and militia reserve,
    the volunteers, the native troops in India, the 36,000 Canadian
    militia of the first line, about 16,000 men in Australia and New
    Zealand, the South African local forces of between six and seven
    thousand well-trained men, the Irish constabulary, the armed and
    drilled portion of the Indian constabulary, the Hyderabad
    contingent, and the marines, easily make up a total of a million of
    men fit for some kind of land service, of whom very nearly the whole
    are supposed to serve even in time of peace."

    "We are more saving of peace taxes than of war debt.... If the
    arrangement for strict saving in time of peace and for wild waste in
    time of war was ever a wise one, which in my opinion it was not,
    even in the days of old-fashioned armies, it is certainly foolish in
    these times of rapid mobilization.... We are in these times exposed
    to war at a day's notice, and to invasion at very short notice, if
    our fleet can be divided or drawn away and beaten in detail."

    "We are not without men who could reduce our non-system to system.
    Sir F. Roberts, who has partly done this in India so far as the
    white army goes, and has attempted, in spite of resistance at home,
    to reform the native force--Sir F. Roberts could do it. Lord
    Wolseley, whose organization of each of his expeditions has been
    careful, energetic, and in every way remarkable, and who in his
    _Soldier's Pocket-Book_ has produced the best of all handbooks to
    the elements of the art of war--Lord Wolseley could do it. But the
    existing system does not do it."

In examining the Continental system, Dilke enumerated what he thought
the principal points. They were, first of all, personal service by all
men, which produced an enormous trained reserve; then complete
localization both of troops and stores; fully worked out plans of
mobilization and arrangements for obtaining horses instantly on the
outbreak of war; and last, but not least, "the organization of a General
Staff which shall act as the brain and nervous system of the army, and
shall draw to it and pass through its training as large a number of
officers as possible, so that experienced staff officers shall be
numerous in the event of war."

In spite of his appreciation of the Continental system, Dilke did not
advocate universal compulsory service:

    "Many of my correspondents cannot understand why I do not advocate
    for the British army that same general service which now prevails
    almost universally on the Continent, and brings with it so many good
    fruits both for the nation and the army. I have, as I have shown, no
    personal objection to it, but I have pointed out the existence of a
    fatal obstacle in certain forms of English and Scotch religious and
    certain forms of English commercial thought. It would be unpractical
    to consider at length a measure which stands no present chance of
    adoption. The time may come when we shall be drawn into a struggle
    for life or death, and it seems to me that it will very probably
    come within the next ten years, and maybe bring with it the
    necessity for that general service which would now be impossible of
    attainment. For our present ideas of the imperial position general
    service is not necessary, and, moreover, until some capacity is
    shown for organizing the troops which we already possess, I do not
    see the slightest use in obtaining a large number of fresh men. But,
    in view of the reign of force which now exists in Europe, and of
    slowly but surely advancing danger in the East, it is impossible to
    contemplate an ideal defence of the Empire without supposing that
    the inhabitants of Great Britain and all her colonies may arrive at
    a condition in which every strong man shall recognize that he owes
    to the State some kind of defensive military service. I have tried
    to make it plain that such service need not be in the regular army;
    still less need any man with us be taken against his will to fight
    outside the limits of his own country. But there can be no ideal
    defence in which the bulk of the population is not trained, however
    slightly, in the handling of military weapons, and the individual
    man trained in spirit to believe that the hearths and homes where
    his sisters or his wife live free from danger owe their immunity
    from attack, not merely to a half-despised 'mercenary army,' but to
    the strength and the skill of his own right arm."

    "My first condition for an ideal British organization would be
    freedom of the fleet from the calls of local defence. The maritime
    fortresses and coaling-stations should all be capable of defending
    themselves." This meant, of course, guns and garrisons. "My second
    ideal principle would be to look to local help for all garrisons
    where that system is possible, we retaining always a large staff of
    specially well-trained officers for the purpose of organizing and
    commanding local levies in war."

Dilke thought it needful for England to train as many officers as
possible, especially as she had an ample supply of men capable, if
trained, of being good officers.

    "Is it possible to conceive a more absurd situation than that of the
    wealthiest country in the world, with a vast reserve of high-blooded
    youth lying idle, and enormous masses of warlike people, Sikhs,
    Goorkhas, Mahrattas, Zulus, Arabs, Malays, and what not, under our
    hands 'spoiling for a fight,' while this nation is unprepared to
    defend its own possessions and its very existence in circumstances
    which all know to be more than likely to occur? This nation, our
    nation, might absolutely keep the peace of the world, yet shivers at
    every breeze of Continental politics."

Dilke's scheme was for a professional army for India and for a citizen
army at home, in which the bulk of the infantry would be volunteers,
while the special arms and the infantry of two army corps, destined to
be an expeditionary force, would be short-service soldiers. It was in
its broad outlines a forecast of the actual development that has taken
place. In particular he proposed, what was carried out by Lord Haldane's
Act, that "the militia should become liable to general service in war,
and should be organized and equipped accordingly. The volunteers should
be liable to be called out for home defence whenever the two army corps
were sent out of the kingdom."

    "My first object," he said in conclusion, "has been to point out how
    seriously our national military strength falls behind our
    requirements, and how unready we always are, in spite of our huge
    expenditure. My second object was to show that what we want most is,
    not a great and expensive increase of the regular army, but an
    endeavour to make the best possible use of what we have already, by
    proper organization and by utilizing to the utmost the voluntary
    principle, which best suits our national temper and that of the
    colonies.... We stand in presence of new forces the power of which
    is almost incalculable, and, while I admit that there are in the
    army a great number of able men, perhaps more than there ever were,
    capable both of creating new systems and of leading us to victory, I
    am inclined to think that their characters have been formed in spite
    of an obsolete and decaying system, and that they are restrained by
    the incapacity of others and the carelessness of the country from
    exercising the influence which their talents and energy ought to
    command. If the question were one of commerce, liberty, or progress
    in civil affairs, the nation would be interested, and would bring
    the resources of its accumulated knowledge to bear on the subject.
    But being, as it is, a question without the right settlement of
    which neither commerce nor liberty is safe, the public is so little
    in earnest about it that politicians are allowed to play with it,
    and the serious needs of self-defence are sacrificed to the poor aim
    of keeping constituencies in good-humour. Nothing can or will be
    done by Governments of any party till the nation can be roused to
    some expression of public opinion; and that opinion has to be formed
    before it can be expressed. In the reign of force which now prevails
    throughout Europe, carelessness as to our power of defence is
    culpable beyond possibility of exaggeration, for we may have to
    defend not only our individual interests as a nation, but all that
    enormous influence for the good of mankind which is at present
    exercised in the remotest parts of the earth by an enormous Empire
    bent on preventing war and on spreading the blessings of peace."

Coming when it did, _The British Army_ made an impression on the
educated public. It followed soon after the report of Sir James
Stephen's Commission, which had exposed the chaotic condition of the
administration of the army. Dilke revealed a grasp of every branch of
the subject. His criticisms reflected the judgment of officers familiar
with the branch of service discussed. His proposals were modest and
intelligible, and in every case represented some body of competent
military opinion. He told the public much that none of his readers fully
appreciated at the time. The German army had been largely increased in
the spring of 1887, and in the beginning of 1888 a Bill passed the
Reichstag which increased by a further 700,000 men the numbers available
in case of war. Dilke explained in one of his chapters that, "according
to the calculations of the French Staff, the total number of armed men
upon which Germany would be able to draw for all purposes would exceed
7,000,000." [Footnote: The British Army, p. 161.] This and other
forecasts may startle those readers whose curiosity tempts them to read
the volume again in 1917. But the work produced no practical result
except to put Dilke into the front rank of army reformers. The
Government took no action to remedy the military weakness which everyone
recognized. The report of the Stephen Commission remained a dead letter.
In June, 1888, a new Royal Commission was issued, in which the Marquis
of Hartington, associated with a number of colleagues of Cabinet rank
and with a General and an Admiral, was instructed to inquire into the
administration of the naval and military departments. The attempt at
reform was postponed until these Commissioners should have made their
report.




CHAPTER LV

IMPERIAL DEFENCE


I.

Sir Charles Dilke's visit to India in 1888-1889 convinced him that he
had been right in believing the Indian army to be better prepared for
war than the portion of the army which was kept at home. A great
difficulty he now saw was that there were two rival plans of campaign,
the one cherished in India, the other by officers at home. "The greater
number of Indian officers expect to march with a large force into
Afghanistan to meet the Russians, and believe that reinforcements will
be sent from England to swell their armies and to make up for losses in
the field. On the other hand, the dominant school in England expect to
send an expedition from England, in combination with Turkey or some
other allied Power, to attack Russia in other quarters." Dilke was led
accordingly to the general conclusion that the one thing needful was
"that we should try to remove the consideration of these subjects from
the home or the Indian or the Canadian point of view, and should take a
general view of the possibilities of Imperial defence."

The attempt to take this imperial view was made in _Problems of Greater
Britain_, which Dilke wrote during the remainder of the year 1889. In
this work he discussed the defence of the North-West Frontier of India
as a prelude to the examination of the defence of the British Empire.
His reason for this separate treatment was that "only on this one of all
the frontiers of the Empire the British dominion is virtually
conterminous with the continental possessions of a great military
Power." He showed that the serious import of this condition was
understood by all who knew India well and by both the political parties
in England. He dissented from the view that security could be obtained
by an agreement with Russia, because it was not easy to see "how Russia
could put it out of her own power at any moment to threaten us on the
North-West Frontier." The suggestion that Russia should be allowed to
occupy the northern portion of Afghanistan he rejected, first because it
would have been a flagrant breach of faith with the Amir, and secondly
because it would give to Russia territory which she could quickly
transform into a base of operations against India.

He thought that Russia could not invade India with a good chance of
success if she started from her present frontier, but that if she were
allowed to occupy the northern portion of Afghanistan the Indian
Government would be put to ruinous expense for the defensive
preparations which would then be required. [Footnote: 'Lord Dufferin
wrote to me from the Embassy at Rome to express his satisfaction with
the Indian portion of my book, and especially those passages in which I
demonstrated the exceeding folly of which we should be guilty if ever we
consented to a partition of Afghanistan with Russia.'] He noted that the
policy of advance upon our left, which he had recommended in 1868, had
been adopted with success, chiefly by the efficacy of the Sandeman
system of recognizing and supporting the tribal chiefs and requiring
them to maintain order, and also by the occupation and fortification of
the position of Quetta and by the opening of roads from Quetta through
the Gomul and other passes to the Indus at Dera Ismail Khan and Dera
Ghazi Khan. This would enable an Indian army to attack the right flank
of any Russian force attempting to advance along the Khyber line, which
would be resisted in the Khyber hills and at Attock, and be stopped at
the fortress of Rawal Pindi. Generally speaking, he held that Indian
"defence must be by the offensive with the field army, and the less we
have to do with fortifications, the better." He urged the extension
northwards of the Sandeman system to all the independent tribes between
the Indian and the Afghan borders. If the separate armies for the
Presidencies were to be united under a single Commander-in-Chief, as the
Indian Government had long desired, and if the principle of enlisting in
the native army only men of fighting races were fully adopted, and the
native Princes induced to place effective contingents at the disposal of
the Government, he thought that India with reinforcements from home
would be well able to resist a Russian attack starting from the frontier
that Russia then possessed.

But if Russia should once be established at Herat, with railway
communications to that point, there would be hardly any limit to the
force with which it would become necessary to resist her. He therefore
urged that the Russian Government should be given to understand that any
advance of her forces into Afghanistan would be regarded by England as a
hostile act. At the same time he admitted that it was difficult to see
how Russia was in that event to be fought. He still thought that she
would be vulnerable at Vladivostock--at any rate until her railway to
the Pacific should be completed [Footnote: He considered that, with a
view to any future struggle with Russia, the abandonment of Port
Hamilton in 1886 by Lord Salisbury had been unfortunate. See, as to Port
Hamilton, _Life of Granville_, ii. 440; _Europe and the Far East_, by
Sir Robert Douglas, pp. 190, 248]--but he was aware that this view was
shared neither by the Indian nor the British officers likely to be
heard.

In his chapter on Indian Defence Dilke had exhausted the subject from
the Indian point of view. He was fully acquainted with the ideas of all
those who had been seriously concerned with the problem, of which he had
discussed every aspect with them, and his exposition was complete. When
in his last chapter he came to "examine the conditions of the defence of
the Empire as a whole, and to try to find some general principle for our
guidance," he was to a great extent breaking new ground. The subject had
been treated in 1888 by Colonel Maurice, afterwards General Sir
Frederick Maurice, in his essay on the Balance of Military Power in
Europe, but Maurice based his scheme on the assumption of a Continental
alliance which Dilke thought impracticable. It had also been treated
with great insight as early as 1880 by Sir John Colomb in his _Defence
of Great and Greater Britain_. His brother Admiral Philip Colomb had
more recently expounded the view that the right plan was to make the
enemy's coasts our frontier, and to blockade the whole of his ports, so
that it would be impossible for his fleets to issue forth. This seemed
to Dilke to imply a superiority of naval force which England did not
possess, and was not then intending to create. But Sir John Colomb in
1880 had admitted the absolute necessity of being prepared to render
invasion impossible by purely military forces. "It was necessary," he
had said, "that invasion be efficiently guarded against, so that, should
our home fleet be temporarily disabled, we may, under cover of our army,
prepare and strengthen it to regain lost ground and renew the struggle
for that which is essential to our life as a nation and our existence as
an Empire."

Sir Charles Dilke thought this sound sense, and that it was rash, in
view of the inadequate strength of the actual navy and of the
uncertainty as to the effect of new inventions on naval warfare, to
count upon beginning a future war with a repetition of Trafalgar. He
admitted that the navy, if concentrated in home waters, would be fully
able to defend the United Kingdom, but that the fleets if so
concentrated must abandon the remainder of the Empire, and that this
would involve the destruction of our commerce and would be as severe a
blow to the Empire as the invasion of England. He inferred that the navy
must be the chief agent in defence, but backed by fortification and by
land forces. There ought to be squadrons in distant seas strong enough
to hold their own, without reinforcements, against probable enemies on
the same stations. The coaling ports must be suitably fortified and have
all the troops necessary for their garrisons on the spot in time of
peace. [Footnote: Autumn of 1889: 'Among those with whom I corresponded
about my book was Lord Charles Beresford, who gave me a great deal of
information about coaling-stations for my chapter on Imperial Defence,
in which I also had Charles Brackenbury's help to a considerable
extent.'] He carefully considered the question of food-supply at home
and the possibility of a commercial blockade of the United Kingdom. He
did not think that such a blockade could be established or maintained.
"Our manufactures would be seriously assailed, our food-supply would
become precarious, but we should not be brought to the point of
surrender by absolute starvation, and the possibility of invasion is not
excluded, as some of the naval school pretend, by the fact that it would
be unnecessary."

    "On the other hand, a defeat or a temporary absence of the fleet
    might lead to bombardments, attacks upon arsenals, and even to
    invasion, if our mobile land forces, our fortifications and their
    garrisons, were not such as to render attacks of any kind too
    dangerous to be worth attempting. In the absence of the fleet a
    landing could not be prevented. But the troops landed ought to be
    attacked. For this purpose we do not need an immense number of
    ill-trained, badly-equipped, and unorganized troops, but an army
    completely ready to take the field and fight in the open, supplied
    with a well-trained field artillery."

But the mere protection of Great and Greater Britain was not enough. "It
is idle to suppose that war could be brought to a termination unless we
are prepared in some way to obtain advantages over the enemy such as to
cause him to weary of the struggle. The _riposte_ is as necessary in
warfare as in fencing, and defence must include the possibility of
counter-attack." "In view of almost any conceivable hostilities, we
ought to be prepared to supply arms and officers to native levies which
would support our Empire in various portions of the globe." But we had
too few officers for our own troops at home, in India, and in the
auxiliary forces. The stocks of arms ought to be larger than they were,
and there ought to be centres of production for them in various parts of
the Empire. "The moneys that the British Empire spends upon defence are
immensely great, and what is wanted is that those moneys should be spent
as is decided by the best advisers who can be obtained." "The main thing
needed for a joint organization of the whole of the defensive forces of
the Empire is the creation of a body of men whose duty it would be to
consider the questions raised, and to work out the answers." For this
purpose he thought the one thing needful was a General Staff, an
institution of which he gave a brief account, based on Mr. Spenser
Wilkinson's essay _The Brain of an Army_, of which the author had sent
him the proofs. "A General Staff," Dilke wrote, "would neither inspect
troops nor regulate the promotion of the army, but it would decide the
principles which would arrange the distribution of the Imperial
forces.... The very existence of a General Staff would constitute a form
of Imperial military federation."


II.

In December, 1890, Dilke read before the Statistical Society a paper on
the Defence Expenditure of the Chief Military and Naval Powers. He had
taken great pains to ascertain what each Power spent on its army and
navy, and what return it obtained for its money. The net result was
that, while France and Germany for an expenditure of about 28 millions
sterling could each of them put into the field a mobile force of two
million men, the British Empire, at a cost of 35-1/2 millions, had "a
nominal force of 850,000 of various degrees of training wholly
unorganized, and supplied only with the professional artillery needed
for a force of about 150,000 men." The British navy was more formidable
than the French, and "the German navy does not as yet exist. I say 'as
yet,' for the Germans mean business with their navy, and have begun, in
a businesslike manner, at the top, putting at the head of it their best
administrators." The French were spending altogether on defence a total
of 36 to 36-1/2 millions, the Germans 38, and the British Empire 57
millions. The moral was that, "whatever the peace expenditure, war
cannot be commenced with a fair chance of winning by a nation which
waits until war to make her organization perfect. Germany before 1870
prepared in time of peace her corps, her armies, and provided them all
with officers for the various commands, who knew what their duties would
be in war. All countries spending much on their armies now do the same,
except the United Kingdom, which stands alone in having still
practically little but a regimental system in existence. But although we
are old-fashioned, to the point of being utterly unprepared (except in
India) for the stress of war, we nevertheless spend sums so vast as to
stagger and amaze even the French and German critics, who ought to be
pretty well used, one would think, to large sums for military
expenditure." [Footnote: Sir Charles notes in 1893: 'Sir William
Harcourt on the British Army: "One knows a man who has ten thousand a
year, sixteen horses, and ten carriages, and yet if one guest comes he
has difficulty to find a dogcart to meet him, and if two come a fly has
to be hired. The British nation also spends its money freely, and has
equal difficulty in meeting the slightest emergency."']

Early in 1891 Dilke proposed to Spenser Wilkinson that they should join
in writing a new popular book on Imperial Defence. During that year the
two men kept up a constant correspondence, and Wilkinson was frequently
Dilke's guest in London, at Dockett and Pyrford, and in the Forest of
Dean. At Whitsuntide Dilke stayed at Aldershot (where Wilkinson was in
camp with his old volunteer battalion, the 2nd Manchester), and went
every day to see the regiment at work.

In September, on the eve of Dilke's starting for the French manoeuvres,
Wilkinson sent him the draft of an introduction to the proposed book. It
challenged the widely-held opinion that war is wicked in itself, and
might by political arrangement be rendered unnecessary, and deprecated
the abstention from inquiry into its methods which this opinion
encouraged. It challenged the maxim 'No foreign policy,' which meant
either having no relations with other countries, or, having such
relations, conducting them without system. War should be conceived of as
imposed upon States by an irreconcilable opposition of purposes, and was
always a means to an end. Peace could not be secured by a policy which
adopts it as a supreme end. The confusion between defence as a political
attitude and defence as an operation of war had led to the neglect, by
English public opinion, of all naval and military preparations that
might be available for attack. But the essential elements of defensive
strength, fleets and armies, were mobile and equally available for
offensive operations, and no efficient preparation for defence was
possible that would not also serve for attack. Without a clear and true
conception of the character of war as a conflict of national purposes,
proper conduct of military operations and of defensive preparations was
impossible, and to its absence was due the unorganized condition of the
defence of the Empire. Dilke, in acknowledging the manuscript, wrote:
"I've read it all and like it, but shall shorten it a little," and in
returning the manuscript, with his modifications, wrote: "The
introduction is most excellent--stately and interesting: I can say this,
as it is almost all yours." Wilkinson then sent a chapter entitled "The
Primacy of the Navy."

    "An attack on land conducted across the sea is a most hazardous
    speculation so long as there exists anywhere a hostile fleet that is
    able to fight. In order to make such an attack safe, it is
    indispensable that the attacker should secure himself from all
    interruption by destroying or driving from the sea any hostile
    fleet. The Power which should succeed in doing this would have 'the
    command of the sea' as against its particular enemy.... The
    territories of the Power having command of the sea are virtually
    safe against attack by sea.... The British navy, then, so long as it
    maintains the superiority at sea is a sufficient protection against
    invasion for every part of the Empire except India and Canada. If,
    however, the navy were to suffer decisive defeat, if it were driven
    to seek the shelter of its fortified harbours and kept there, or if
    it were destroyed--then, not only would every part of the Empire be
    open to invasion, but the communication between the several parts
    would be cut, and no mutual succour would be possible.

    "The defeat of the British fleet or fleets would, of course, be
    effected by purely naval operations; but the acquiescence in its
    destruction could, perhaps, only be secured by a blow affecting the
    British power at its source, and therefore the establishment by an
    enemy of his naval superiority would almost certainly be followed by
    an invasion of Great Britain. So long, then, as the British navy can
    be maintained invincible, the Empire could be adequately defended
    against attack of any European Power other than Russia, and for such
    a defence, therefore, no more is needed than complete naval
    preparation, and such military preparation as is required for the
    full efficiency of the navy. Any additional military preparation is,
    as against attack of this nature, merely an insurance to cover the
    possibility of the failure of the navy. After such failure, it might
    save the British Islands, but it could not save the Empire."

Dilke wrote that this doctrine was the opposite of what he had
previously held and preached, and expressed a doubt whether, that being
the case, the book could go on as a joint work. Wilkinson replied that
the first question was whether the doctrine of the chapter was sound,
and that the question of the names on the title-page could wait till the
work was done.

In _Problems of Greater Britain_ Dilke had discussed the view of Sir
John Colomb and of his brother, Admiral Colomb. The Admiral appeared to
rely upon "blockade," which required a navy much stronger than Great
Britain possessed, and might, with modern weapons and the torpedo, be
impracticable of execution, while Sir John Colomb appeared to admit the
necessity of purely military forces to prevent invasion. Dilke, looking
at the extent of the Empire to be defended, had thought that the
concentration of the navy in home waters must involve the abandonment of
the rest of the Empire. This is the view usually held by those who are
thinking of what they have to protect. Wilkinson thought first of the
enemy's forces and how to destroy them. If they can be destroyed, the
enemy is helpless and the territories of the victor are safe, because
the enemy has no force with which to molest them. On the appearance of
_Problems_, Dilke, as the extracts from his Diary at that time show, had
begun to doubt whether this view was not the right one; Wilkinson's
exposition and the discussion which accompanied it completed his
conversion. This was the turning-point of his studies of Imperial
Defence.

The next chapter was headed "The Command of the Sea." Here the debated
doctrine was applied.

    "The purpose of Great Britain to render her territories secure would
    be perfectly accomplished by the destruction of the enemy's navy, as
    this would render any attempt at the transport of troops
    impracticable. The destruction of the enemy's navy would, of course,
    also be the best possible protection for England's sea-borne trade
    (though, no doubt, for this purpose additional measures would be
    required), and for her communications with every part of her Empire.
    Thus, in every possible war in which Great Britain could engage, the
    prime function of the British navy is to attack, and if possible to
    destroy, the organized naval forces of the enemy."

Suppose the enemy sought battle, the question would soon be decided, but
if he wished to avoid it the difficulty would be to find him and to
compel him to accept it. For this purpose the best plan was that adopted
in 1803 by Lord St. Vincent, which consisted in placing at the outset,
in front of every one of the enemy's military ports, a British squadron
superior to that which the enemy had within it. This was incorrectly
termed "blockade," as the object was not to prevent the issue of the
French fleets from their ports, but to prevent their exit unwatched and
to fight them when they should come out. This plan must be supplemented
by a reserve fleet, and by numerous cruisers to hunt such of the enemy's
cruisers as might be at large. The alternative plan of Lord Howe, of
concentrating the fleet at one of the home ports, was also discussed,
but considered less advantageous, as it left the enemy's fleet free to
proceed to sea. But it was shown that the navy of 1891 was twenty
battleships short of the number believed by naval officers to be
required for the successful adoption of St. Vincent's plan against the
French navy alone.

The defence of India was treated in two chapters entitled "The Peace of
India" and "The North-West Frontier," which were in substance a
restatement of the view expressed in _Problems of Greater Britain_.

The chapter on "The Armies" was a translation into specific shape, with
full details and calculations, of Dilke's idea of a separation between
the British and Indian systems. It was argued that the militia and
volunteers should be organized into army corps with permanent fully paid
commanders and the necessary auxiliary troops, and it was pointed out
that the volunteer department of the War Office ought to be entrusted to
volunteer officers. A chapter on "The Management of the Home Army"
asserted that "Any system proposed for the better management of the army
must satisfy three distinct conditions: It must be framed with a view to
the preparation of the army for war; it must secure unimpaired the
authority of the Cabinet; and it must provide for an efficient control
over expenditure by the House of Commons." The first requirement of a
sound system was a general who could be entrusted with the duty of
advising the Cabinet upon the conduct of war and with the actual
management of campaigns. He ought to have a proper general staff and the
field troops at home should be organized into localized autonomous army
corps. "The British army at home has no generals, and can have none
until its battalions are settled and grouped into brigades, divisions,
and army corps." There must be a second general charged with all
branches of supply.

Any satisfactory Admiralty system, it was pointed out, would provide a
competent naval adviser for the Cabinet. But it was doubted "whether it
will be possible to secure unity of design in defence so long as the War
Office and the Admiralty are separately represented in the Cabinet. The
difficulty would be overcome if it became the practice for one Minister
to hold both offices." Dilke had long had the common-sense idea that a
single Minister ought to have general charge of all the preparations for
war and its conduct by sea and land.

He had made excisions and additions in the chapters as they had reached
him, and had closely scrutinized the expression throughout. The whole
book was read through by the two men together, and each point discussed
to complete agreement. Dilke then proposed that it should appear in
Wilkinson's name, as it was substantially Wilkinson's work, and that he
himself might write a preface. Wilkinison said that it was a joint work,
that the idea of the book was Dilke's, that its substance was the
outcome of the intimate exchange of views between them, and that it
ought to bear both their names. In his diary Dilke wrote: "Wilkinson's
part in it was far greater than mine, though we argued out the whole."
When the book appeared, Admiral Colomb wrote to Dilke: "On reading the
introduction and the first and second chapters, I am inclined to sing
'Nunc dimittis,' for, as far as I can understand the matter, you put
forward all the views for which I have contended; and coming thus from
your hands, I think they will henceforth be current views." Dilke sent
the letter to Wilkinson, noting on it: "Colomb thinks _he_ has converted
me. I reply, _he couldn't_. You did--after he had failed." He regarded
his collaboration with Wilkinson as an intellectual partnership in
regard to defence, and hardly ever spoke or wrote on the subject without
referring to it.

The development of Sir Charles Dilke's thoughts on defence has now been
fully traced and his method of work revealed. His mind was unreservedly
open to take in the thoughts of others, and he was incessantly trying to
know the best that was thought and said concerning the subjects that
interested him. He assimilated the substance of a vast correspondence,
and on every topic the ideas which he received became a part of him. His
intellectual life was thus an incessant dialectic with the best minds of
his time. But he never accepted ideas from others without the most
generous acknowledgment, and did not, as so many men do, proceed, after
assimilating another man's thought, to imagine that it was his own
invention. This intellectual candour, involving a rare modesty and
absence of affectation, was one of his finest characteristics.




CHAPTER LVI

ARMY AND NAVY IN PARLIAMENT


I.

In 1892, when Sir Charles Dilke returned to the House of Commons as
member for the Forest of Dean, his mind was made up in regard to the
subject of national defence, and from that time on he worked in and out
of Parliament to bring about an organization for war of the resources of
the nation and of the Empire.

At that time the management of both services was hampered by the
accumulated changes made by three generations of statesmen intent upon
home affairs, under which were buried and hidden the traditions of an
earlier period of wars. In 1857 the Duke of Cambridge had been appointed
Commander-in-Chief in deference to the belief of the Prince Consort,
inspired by Baron Stockmar, that in order to avert revolution the royal
authority over the army must be exercised through a Prince, and not
through the channel of a Minister responsible to Parliament. The Duke
thought it his mission to resist changes, and his obstruction had been
the bane of successive Ministers. Accordingly, the statesmen of Cabinet
rank and experience were anxious at all cost to establish the supremacy
of the Cabinet over the army, and for this purpose had welcomed the
proposal of the Hartington Commission to abolish the office of
Commander-in-Chief whenever the Duke of Cambridge should cease to hold
that post. The Commission had not considered that a change of persons
might solve the difficulty, and was led astray by the proposal to
appoint "a Chief of the Staff," who was to be, not the strategical
adviser of the head of the army, but rather its administrator in chief.
In every modern army there is a Chief of the General Staff to assist the
Commander-in-Chief, the principal executive officer, as well as an
Administrator-General to manage the business of supply. The Hartington
Commission proposed to give the name "Chief of the Staff" to an
Administrator-General. It further proposed the creation of a Committee
of the Cabinet to hold the balance between the requirements of the War
Office and those of the Admiralty.

Dilke recognized as fully as the occupants of either front bench the
necessity for the paramount authority of the Cabinet. He also felt the
need for co-ordination between the War Office and the Admiralty, and
considered that both these needs would best be met by a single Minister,
the Prime Minister, supervising or taking charge of both offices. The
essence of co-ordination would consist in framing the arrangements for
both services with a single eye to victory in war.

Dilke's first step was to get into touch with those members of
Parliament who were most keenly interested in the army and navy.

    'On February 21st (1893) I had a meeting, which I had suggested,
    with Lord Wolmer, General Sir George Chesney, and H. O.
    Arnold-Forster, and agreed on joint action in all service matters,
    and to attend the meeting of the service members fixed for the next
    day, to which, although civilians, Arnold-Forster and I were asked.
    We wrote Wolmer's motion for him.'

At this time Campbell-Bannerman was Secretary of State for War. On March
9th the House was to go into Committee of Supply, and on the motion
"that Mr. Speaker do now leave the chair" Lord Wolmer moved "that in the
opinion of this House the present system of military administration
fails to secure either due economy in time of peace or efficiency for
national defence." Lord Wolmer in his speech referred to the breakdown
in the system of recruiting which had been disclosed in the report of
Lord Wantage's Committee. He was supported by Sir George Chesney, who
referred to the report of Sir James Stephen's Commission as "a scathing
exposure of mismanagement," and to that of the Hartington Commission as
"an unqualified and alarming denunciation of our military system."
Arnold-Forster also supported the resolution, in favour of which Dilke
made a short and incisive speech. Campbell-Bannerman declined to take
the discussion seriously. "The first observation," he said, "that must
occur to anyone reading the motion is, What in the world has the report
of Lord Wantage's Committee to do with the present system of military
administration? It is as if the noble lord were to call attention to the
Tenterden Steeple, and to move that the Goodwin Sands are a danger to
navigation." But the breakdown of recruiting was the crucial evidence of
the weakness of the military administration.

In September, 1893, the question of the then recent appointment of the
Duke of Connaught to the command at Aldershot was raised in the House of
Commons by Mr. Dalziel. It was defended by Campbell-Bannerman on the
ground that the Duke possessed sufficient qualifications for the post.
If that had been the sole question, said Dilke, he should have supported
the Government.

    "But there was another point. Aldershot was a training-school not
    only for the men and regimental officers there employed, but also
    for the Generals commanding. It might be said to be the only school
    in the United Kingdom where a general officer could obtain
    experience in commanding men in battle, and therefore only officers
    who were likely to command armies in case of serious war ought to be
    put in command of such a place. Was it likely that the Duke of
    Connaught, under the circumstances, would be called upon to take the
    chief command against a European enemy in case of war?"

In the division Dilke voted against the appointment.

On December 19th Lord George Hamilton moved a resolution "that a
considerable addition should at once be made to the navy." Mr. Gladstone
regarded this proposal as a vote of censure on the Government, and
delivered an indignant reply. Dilke deprecated making the navy a subject
of party controversy, and made an appeal to his Liberal friends:

    "All naval experts who have been consulted on the question have
    always laid it down that, for safety, you must have a supremacy of
    five to three in battleships, that you require that supremacy for
    the policy of blockade.... If ever we engage in war ... it is a
    necessity of the position of this country that our frontiers should
    be at the enemy's ports.... I know this is not a popular policy, but
    the existence of the Empire depends upon it.... Liberals should give
    up thinking of this question of national defence as a hateful one,
    and as one against which they ought to close their eyes and ears. I
    know that, in these days of great armaments on the Continent, the
    old tradition of the Liberal party, that they should look to the
    possibility of using the forces of this country on behalf of
    Continental freedom, has become a dream of the past. They must
    remember that our liberties at home depend upon the efficiency of
    our fleet, and that, beyond this, the very existence of our Empire
    is concerned in the question which the House is at this moment
    debating."

The sequel to this debate was Mr. Gladstone's retirement in February,
1894.

Early in the autumn of 1893 Dilke had talked over with Spenser Wilkinson
the line to be taken in Parliament by the service members. Wilkinson had
urged as a preliminary some effort to obtain agreement among the
"experts," suggesting that Chesney as the ablest of them all should
first be approached. On November 8th Chesney and Wilkinson dined at
Sloane Street, and, Chesney having expressed his general concurrence in
the views as to administration explained in _Imperial Defence_, Dilke
proposed that Wilkinson should draft a letter to the Prime Minister,
embodying the main points, to be signed by all three and by Arnold-
Forster, if he should be in accord with them, and to be sent not only to
Mr. Gladstone, but to the leaders of the Opposition. The result was the
following letter, which was eventually signed and sent on February 12th,
1894, to Mr. Gladstone (then Prime Minister), to Lord Salisbury, the
Duke of Devonshire, Mr. Balfour, and Mr. Chamberlain:

    Sir,

    The late debate in the House of Commons on the subject of the navy
    was one of many symptoms of a widespread uneasiness with regard to
    the defences of the Empire. There is a doubt of the sufficiency of
    the naval establishments and of the efficiency in some respects of
    the systems under which the navy and the army are administered. This
    failure of confidence has been of gradual growth. Those who think it
    justified do not attribute the responsibility for it to any one
    administration or to either party in the State. Yet it seems
    difficult to discuss these doubts in Parliament without, at least,
    the appearance of censure upon the Government of the day, a result
    which is unfortunate, for the subject should unite rather than
    divide parties, and upon its paramount importance there is no
    difference of opinion.

    For this reason a service may perhaps be rendered by the
    communication to the Prime Minister and to the leaders of the
    Opposition of suggestions which commend themselves to men of
    different parties who have from different points of view for many
    years given attention to questions relating to national defence.

    No arrangements which aimed at or resulted in a subversion of the
    principles which experience has shown to be essential to the working
    of constitutional government could be seriously considered. But no
    system of defence, however constitutional, can avail unless it be
    shaped with a view to war. It is to the conciliation of these two
    necessities, that of compatibility with the constitution and that of
    adaptation to the purpose of war, that our attention has been
    directed.

    If the preservation of peace depended upon the goodwill of the
    British Government, there would perhaps be little need for a navy or
    an army. The existence of these services implies that this is not
    the case, and that safety in time of war depends upon forethought
    and preparation in advance. Such preparation involves a view of the
    nature of a possible war and an estimate of the intensity of the
    effort it would impose, this view and this estimate furnishing the
    standard for the quantity and quality of the means to be kept
    available.

    The design, without which even a defensive war cannot be carried on,
    and in the absence of which preparations made during peace must fail
    to serve their purpose, is properly the secret of the Government.
    Yet, where the Government is responsible to a Parliament, it is
    indispensable either that so much of the design should be
    communicated to Parliament as will enable it to judge of the
    necessity and of the sufficiency of the preparations for which
    supplies must be voted, or that Parliament should know who are the
    professional advisers upon whose judgment the Government relies.
    Neither of these conditions seems to us at present to be fulfilled,
    and as a consequence of the omission there has arisen in the public
    mind that distrust to which we have alluded.

    The leading decision in the administration of the national defence,
    governing the whole course and character of any future war, is that
    which settles the total amount of expenditure upon preparation and
    apportions it between the naval and military services. For this
    decision the Cabinet is, and must ever be, responsible. Yet in the
    distribution of the business of the Cabinet into departments there
    appears to be no office specially entrusted with the consideration
    of war as a whole, embracing the functions both of the navy and of
    the army. Of the sums usually devoted each year to warlike
    preparations, the larger part is spent upon the army, and only a
    lesser part upon the navy, upon which the maintenance of the Empire
    and the security of Great Britain must ever chiefly depend. It is
    difficult to believe that this apportionment is the result of
    deliberate examination of the requirements of war. It would seem
    more probable that the separate existence of a department of the
    navy and a department of the army leads in practice to the
    management of each for its own sake rather than as an instrument
    serving a more general purpose.

    In order to secure the special consideration by the Cabinet of
    national defence as distinct from and superior to the administration
    either of the navy or of the army, we would suggest the appointment
    of one and the same Minister to the two offices of Secretary of
    State for War and First Lord of the Admiralty, or the amalgamation,
    with the consent of Parliament, of these two offices.

    We would further suggest that the Cabinet should select for each
    service an officer whose professional judgment commands its
    confidence, to be at once the responsible adviser of the Cabinet
    upon all questions regarding the conduct of war so far as his own
    service is concerned, and the principal executive officer of that
    service.

    We understand by a responsible adviser one who stands or falls by
    the advice which he gives. He would, of course, have at his
    disposal, in the formation of his views, the best assistance which
    the professional staff of the navy or of the army could supply. But
    the opinion which, after mature consideration, he would submit to
    the Cabinet, and formally record, would be his own and would be
    given in his own name. It follows that a difference of opinion
    between the Cabinet and its naval or its military adviser upon any
    important matter of naval or military policy would lead to the
    resignation of the latter. In our view, the essence of
    responsibility for advice is that the officer giving it is
    identified with it, and remains in the post only so long as his
    judgment upon the professional matters with reference to which he is
    consulted is acceptable to the Cabinet which he serves. In order to
    facilitate his independence in this respect, provision should be
    made, in case of his resignation, for his employment in another post
    or for his honourable retirement.

    If these suggestions were adopted, the passage in case of need from
    peace to war would take place without personal or administrative
    change. The adaptation of the whole service, whether naval or
    military, to the necessities of war, as understood by a competent
    officer studying them with full responsibility, would be assured.
    The House of Commons and the public would have in the person of the
    naval and of the military adviser a guarantee of the sufficiency and
    of the efficiency of the navy and of the army. The authority of the
    Cabinet and the control of the House of Commons would be unimpaired.

    We are, sir,

    Your obedient servants,

    Charles W. Dilke.

    George Chesney.

    H. O. Arnold-Foster.

    Spenser Wilkenson.

In December, 1893, Dilke had communicated to Mr. Balfour the draft of
this letter and his plan for sending it to the leaders of both parties.
Mr. Balfour thought the best plan for co-ordinating the two services
would be by a Defence Committee of the Cabinet, of which Dilke put his
finger on the weak point, that it gave no guarantee of meeting the
requirements of war. [Footnote: The letters printed in Appendix I., p.
451, embody the substance of previous conversations between Dilke and
Mr. Balfour. In Appendix II., p. 456, are given the replies of Mr.
Gladstone and the other leaders to the joint letter, which was
afterwards published in the newspapers.--Ed.] It was after these
communications that Mr. Balfour made his speech at Manchester on January
22nd, 1894, in which he said:

    "It is responsibility which is chiefly lacking in our present
    system. If anything goes wrong with the navy, you attack the First
    Lord of the Admiralty. If anything goes wrong in the army, you
    attack the Secretary for War. If anything goes wrong in the Home
    Department, you attack the Secretary to the Home Department. But if
    the general scheme of national and imperial defence is not properly
    managed, there is nobody to attack but the whole Cabinet; and the
    Cabinet as a whole is not, in my opinion, a very good body to carry
    on the detailed work of that, any more than of any other, department
    of the State."

These private discussions between Dilke and Mr. Balfour foreshadowed the
actual course which reform was to take. It began in 1895 with the
adoption of Mr. Balfour's plan of a Committee of the Cabinet; it ended
in 1904 by Mr. Balfour as Prime Minister adopting Dilke's plan, and
undertaking himself, as chairman of that Committee, the co-ordination of
the two services. Then and not till then the fundamental principle of
the primacy of the navy in the defence of the Empire was formally
recognized.

The next step of the signatories to the joint letter was action in
Parliament. Dilke gave notice that, on the introduction of the Army
Estimates, he would move the following resolution:

    "That this House, before voting supplies for the maintenance of
    military establishments in the United Kingdom, seeks an assurance
    from Her Majesty's Government that the estimates for that purpose
    submitted to it are framed upon consideration of possible war by sea
    and land, and upon a consideration of advice tendered in that behalf
    by such officer of either service as is fitted to command in war Her
    Majesty's forces of that service."

The debate took place on March 16th, 1894. In the course of his speech
Dilke said:

    "What I want to know, and what the Cabinet in framing the estimates
    ought to know, is this: Are the proposals before the House those
    which alone are capable of securing the safety of the country and of
    the Empire?... I wish to know whether the Government present these
    estimates as representing the least, but still what is sufficient,
    for the needs of the country for the next twelve months, not only
    for the protection of the whole country and the Empire, but for the
    protection of our trade in all parts of the world....

    "The Cabinet must obtain the best advice possible. I, for my part,
    should prefer that the advice should be concentrated for each
    service, because I think it is far more responsible advice if it
    comes mainly on the responsibility of a single man as regards the
    army and navy respectively than if you dispersed it among a great
    number of people.... As far as I am concerned, form in this matter
    is immaterial. I have stated what I want to secure, and I will put
    two or three different ways of securing it which would very often
    come to the same thing. What I ventured to suggest at first was that
    the Prime Minister should be brought to take more personal concern
    in the defence of the country than is the case at the present time;
    that he should consider himself mainly responsible for the joint
    consideration of the whole defence proposals; that he should hear
    the Secretary for War, the First Lord of the Admiralty, and their
    advisers, if he is doubtful, and that they together, more seriously
    than has been the case in the past, should go into the difficulties
    of the problem, and he should then advise with them as to the
    estimates.... There was another suggestion made--that a Defence
    Minister, a Minister who should represent the army and navy, should
    be the person charged specially with the responsibility to this
    House.... But I am not wedded to any particular form. Whether the
    Prime Minister specially undertakes the duty, whether it is
    undertaken by a Defence Minister, or whether the suggestion is
    adopted--which, I believe, is that of the Leader of the Opposition
    (Mr. Balfour)--that a Defence Committee of the Cabinet, which I have
    heard was instituted by the late Government, should be provided with
    a more avowed and distinct position, armed with permanent
    responsible advisers, and equipped with records so as to hand over
    its work to those by whom they might be succeeded in office--all
    these plans would come at the present moment to very much the same
    thing."

The resolution was seconded by Arnold-Forster, and supported in a clear
and relevant speech by Sir George Chesney. In the debate which followed,
Mr. Balfour expressed his adherence to the third of the plans described
by Sir Charles Dilke. "I rather contemplate," he said, "that the Prime
Minister, with or without his colleagues, or a Committee of the Cabinet,
with or without the Prime Minister, should constitute themselves a body
with permanent records and confidential advisers." Campbell-Bannerman
expressed general agreement with the object Dilke had in view, and
added: "I entertain almost identically the opinion which has been
expressed by the Leader of the Opposition." Having thus obtained the
concurrence of both parties to one of the plans which, it was thought,
might fulfil the purpose in view, Dilke withdrew the motion.

In 1895 (March 11th) a resolution couched in the precise words of that
of 1894 was moved by Mr. Arnold-Forster on the introduction of the Navy
Estimates. In supporting it Dilke said:

    "The sole purpose of all this very large expenditure was to enable
    us to achieve victory at sea, which was essential to our very
    existence as a nation; and what the resolution asked was an
    assurance that the Government had had under its consideration the
    nature of the efforts that would be called for to secure victory and
    the distribution of these efforts between the land and sea forces."

On March 15th, in the discussion of the Army Estimates, Dilke raised a
doubt "whether there was in our system of military administration any
security that those we put into positions of high command, where they
were able to get military experience, were only those men who were
fitted for such posts and would hold command in time of war."

On June 21st, 1895, Campbell-Bannerman announced the retirement of the
Commander-in-Chief, the Duke of Cambridge, and his own intention to
adopt the main lines of the scheme of the Hartington Committee. He would
appoint a Commander-in-Chief with reduced powers who would be the
principal military adviser of the Secretary of State, and he, with the
other heads of departments, who would each be directly responsible to
the Minister, would constitute a deliberative Council, so that the
Secretary of State, when he gave his decisions, would be guided and
supported by the express opinions of all the experienced officers by
whom he was surrounded.

Thereupon Mr. Brodrick, now Lord Midleton, moved to reduce the salary of
the Secretary of State by way of a vote of censure on the insufficiency
of the supply of cordite ammunition. A brief debate followed in which
Campbell-Bannerman failed to convince the House that the supply was
adequate, and in the division this vote of censure was carried by 132
against 125. This division overthrew the Liberal Ministry. Dilke took no
part in the debate, but voted in the majority. For this vote
Campbell-Bannerman never forgave him.

In the new Ministry formed by Lord Salisbury as Prime Minister, Mr.
Balfour became First Lord of the Treasury and Leader of the House of
Commons, Lord Lansdowne Secretary of State for War, Mr. Brodrick
Under-Secretary of State for War, and Mr. Goschen First Lord of the
Admiralty. The first act of the new Government was to remodel the
general arrangements for national and imperial defence. The scheme was
described in general terms by Lord Lansdowne in the House of Lords on
August 26th, and more specifically by Mr. Brodrick in the House of
Commons on August 31st. There was to be a Defence Committee of the
Cabinet under the presidency of the Duke of Devonshire. Mr. Brodrick's
words implied that the creation of this body was due to the action of
Sir Charles Dilke, who, in the debate on the Address, had again urged
his views on this subject.

Of the army Lord Wolseley was to be the new Commander-in-Chief. But,
instead of being at the head of the military departments of the War
Office, he was to have charge only of the intelligence and mobilization
departments, and to be the President of an Army Board of which the other
members were to be the Adjutant-General, the Quartermaster-General, the
Director of Artillery, and the Inspector-General of Fortifications, each
of whom was to be directly responsible for his own department to the
Secretary of State. "The main principle of the change," said Mr.
Brodrick, "is the separate responsibility of the military heads of
departments to the Secretary of State for their departments, and the
focussing of military opinion by means of the Army Board presided over
by the Commander-in-Chief." When Mr. Brodrick had finished his
statement, Dilke immediately rose and said that

    "he had listened to the statement with something like dismay, for
    some of the changes made had been in his view entirely in the wrong
    direction.... There certainly had not been, during the many years he
    had been in the House, any debate in which the issues presented to
    the House had been so momentous.... To that portion of the
    Government's scheme which involved the position of the Duke of
    Devonshire in relation to Imperial defence he was fully favourable.
    He believed he was the original suggester of the proposal in 1888.
    What had been said by the Undersecretary went to suggest the
    creation of a Committee of the Cabinet only, which had been formed,
    they were told, by the late Government. If so, the matter was
    minimized, and there was less security given to the country than
    they had hoped. The first thing to be secured was that there should
    be the individual responsibility of one great member of the Cabinet
    rather than the collective responsibility of a considerable number.

    "In regard to the reorganization of the War Office itself, he viewed
    with dismay the further explanations given to-day by the
    Under-Secretary. What had been the main objection to the past
    management of the army in this country? It had been that
    responsibility had been frittered away among a great number of
    different Boards.... He hoped that the new man chosen to be the head
    of the army would be in practice the real head of the army and the
    real adviser of the Secretary of State. What he feared they were
    doing was to create a copy of the Admiralty in those particular
    points in which the Admiralty itself had been the subject of
    criticism.... The Government, he contended, ought to recommend the
    one man, the Commander-in-Chief, and in the first instance take his
    opinion and regard him as ultimately responsible. Having picked out
    the most competent man, he hoped the Government would put the
    arrangement under that man and not under the civilian Secretary of
    State.... It was a mistake to give the Commander-in-Chief a
    department; he ought to be above the departments, and the
    departments ought to report to him. He had ventured for many years
    to ask in the first place that the Cabinet should consider the whole
    problem of Imperial defence, and in the second place that they
    should pick out the best man and trust him."

In reply to Dilke, Mr. Balfour said:

    "If you put the Secretary of State for War in direct communication
    with the Commander-in-Chief alone, I do not see how the Secretary of
    State for War can be anything else than the administrative puppet of
    the great soldier who is at the head of the army. He may come down
    to the House and express the views of that great officer; but if he
    is to take official advice from the Commander-in-Chief alone, it is
    absolutely impossible that the Secretary of State should be really
    responsible, and in this House the Secretary of State will be no
    more than the mouthpiece of the Commander-in-Chief. It seems to me
    that the differences in this branch of the subject between the right
    hon. gentleman (Sir Charles Dilke) and the Government are of a more
    fundamental character than I anticipated."

The difference was indeed fundamental, for Dilke was thinking about war,
and Mr. Balfour was thinking only of Ministerial responsibility. In case
of a war in which the welfare, possibly the independence, of the nation
would be at stake, what civilian Secretary of State would wish to be
personally responsible for victory or defeat, or to be more than the
mouthpiece of a great soldier at the head of the army?

The Commander-in-Chief had been a military officer whose function was to
co-ordinate the work of the heads of the several military departments.
The change made in 1895 transferred to the Secretary of State this duty
previously performed by the Commander-in-Chief. Sir James Stephen's
Commission had reported in 1887 that it was morally and physically
impossible that any one man should satisfactorily discharge the
functions which at that time belonged to the Secretary of State. To them
in 1895 the Government added those of the Commander-in-Chief. The result
was that in 1899 the Secretary of State failed to fulfil the most
important of all his functions, that of maintaining accord between the
policy of the Cabinet and the military preparations. The Committee of
Defence, which was appointed in 1895, might perhaps have performed this
essential function if it had ever taken a serious view of its work. But
it in doubtful whether it ever did any work at all.


II.

In the new Parliament, Dilke moved on March 5th, 1896, for a return of
the number of British seamen available for service in the navy in time
of war.

"One difficulty," he said, "that had to be faced was that in debates
like the present they had no real opportunity of engaging in a
collective review of the whole defensive expenditure of the country on
the army and navy taken together.... They expected from the Government a
policy which could be explained to the House--either a policy of
alliances, to which he himself was rootedly opposed; or the policy,
which was the only true policy for this country, of keeping up such a
fleet as would make us safe against any probable combination. The point
to which he wished to draw most urgent attention was that the real
reserve of England was disappearing very fast. The British sailor was
becoming more and more a rare article of luxury. He was used on the
first-class liners, and not used elsewhere.... There was another point
of importance. Among these foreigners there were many masters of ships,
and they were taught the pilotage of our rivers. That was a very serious
matter, and might become a great danger in time of war."

It soon became evident that the changes made in 1895 had not produced
improvement either in the Government's arrangements for national defence
or in the management of the army. In November, 1896, Lord Lansdowne,
Secretary of State for War, and Sir Michael Hicks Beach, Chancellor of
the Exchequer, made speeches the same evening at Bristol. The Secretary
of State expressed the intention to make a slight increase in the number
of battalions in the army, while the Chancellor declared that he would
consent to no increase in the Army Estimates until he could feel more
confidence in the manner in which the money was expended. This
disagreement between members of the Cabinet led to inquiries, through
which Dilke became aware that the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Wolseley,
wished for a larger increase in the number of battalions than the
Secretary of State was willing to propose. The opportunity seemed
suitable for raising the question whether or not the military measures
proposed by the Government were those suggested by their military
adviser--a fundamental question. Lord Lansdowne having explained in the
House of Lords in February, 1897, that his proposal was to add two
battalions to the Guards and one to the Cameron Highlanders, and that he
hoped in this way to restore the equilibrium between the number of
battalions at home and the number abroad, Dilke in the House of Commons
pointed out (February 8th) that the measure proposed would not establish
the desired equilibrium, and that the proposal was anonymous. Who, he
asked, were the military authorities on whose advice the Government
relied? Mr. Brodrick, in reply, said that the proposals of the
Government, taken as a whole, had been gratefully accepted by one and
all of the military heads of the War Office, as, in the words of the
Commander-in-Chief, "such a step forward as has not been made for many
years." Thus it became clear that the military heads, including the
Commander-in-Chief, were as ready to be overruled in regard to their
views as to what was necessary for the army as the civilian Minister was
to overrule them.

In the Christmas recess of 1897-98 Dilke prepared for the next Session
by writing a pamphlet on Army Reform in which he reviewed the position.
He and the other reformers had steadily asserted that the home army
could not take the field until it had drawn heavily on the reserve; that
it was terribly short of artillery; that the seven to eight years'
enlistment was a hybrid, and that the sound course was to have a
short-term service with the colours at home followed by a choice between
a long term in the reserve and a long term in the Indian or Colonial
army; and, lastly, that the administration was over-centralized at the
War Office, to the detriment of the authority, the efficiency, and the
character, of the generals. The critics had further urged that the
linked-battalion system and the hybrid term, bad as they were, could not
be worked at all without a large increase of the number of battalions at
home. In 1897 the War Office had replied that an increase of three
battalions would suffice.

The new estimates were introduced in the House of Commons on February
25th, 1898, by Mr. Brodrick, who admitted that, in order to put 50,000
infantry into the field, it would be necessary to call out 28,000
reservists. In order to have artillery enough for a fraction of the army
he asked for fifteen more batteries. He had to admit that the three
battalions added in 1897 were not enough, and to ask for six more. The
speech was an admission of all the contentions of the critics, though it
began by abusing them.

In the debate Dilke moved: "That no scheme for the reorganization of the
army will be satisfactory which involves the sacrifice of one unit to
secure the efficiency of any other." He referred to the admitted
breakdown of the eight-years and linked-battalion system. Mr. Brodrick,
quoting Lord Wolseley, had reassured the country by telling them that
they could despatch two army corps abroad.

"Two army corps!" exclaimed Dilke, "when it is twenty army corps which
this country pays for!... Out of the men at home, if cavalry and
artillery were provided, twenty corps instead of two corps might be
made.... In the last three years the cost of the army has been
considerably increased, and there has been an increase in numbers voted.
Yet there has been a decrease not only in the militia, but also in the
regular army and in the army reserve as well during that period--an
additional evidence of breakdown.... The territorial system here can
never be anything more than a sham so long as we have to provide for
India and garrison coaling-stations, and so long as the battalions are
constantly moved about.... We have year by year made our statements with
regard to artillery to the House. Nobody believed a word we said, and it
was only last year, when three batteries were sent out to the Cape, and
twenty batteries wrecked in men and horses to provide them, that the War
Office at last admitted that we had all along been right.... On this
occasion we see some results, in the speech of the right hon. gentleman
to-night, of our action in the past."

The Navy Estimates were introduced in July. Lord Charles Beresford in
his argument had pointed out that the cost of the navy bore a much
smaller proportion to our mercantile marine than that of the navies of
other countries. Dilke said:

    "The position of the British Empire is such that, if by the
    mercantile policy of other countries our mercantile marine were
    wholly to disappear, or if it were to disappear as the result of a
    war in which our carrying trade passed, say, to the United States,
    it would be just as necessary as now for us to have a predominant
    fleet.... If the pressure of taxation on the poorer classes, if the
    unrest in this country on the subject, were so great that it was not
    possible to make the sacrifices which I for one think it necessary
    to make, I would sooner give up the whole expenditure on the army
    than give way upon this naval programme.... This matter of the fleet
    is vital to our position in the world. The army is an arguable
    question."

Dilke continued steadily to press for a strong navy. In 1899 he once
more supported Mr. Goschen's proposals, and again urged that, if the
cost of the army and navy should be too great, we must save on the army,
but not on the navy. His chief criticism of the Admiralty was that "we
have got into the vicious position of beginning our building programme
each year at the extreme end of the financial year."

The keynote of his speech was: "This Empire is an Empire of the seas,
and the navy is vital to our existence, but our army is not. Our Indian
army is vital to our possession of India, but India pays the full cost
of it, perhaps rather more."


III.

During the winter of 1898-99 the opposition of purposes between the
British Government and the Government of the South African Republic was
causing grave apprehension to public men. The High Commissioner, Sir
Alfred Milner, paid a visit to England, and on his return to the Cape
was authorized in May, 1899, to meet President Kruger in a Conference at
Bloemfontein. On June 7th the failure of the Conference was announced,
and was thought by many to be the equivalent of a diplomatic rupture,
the prelude to hostilities. No serious military preparations were made
by the British Government, though various measures were suggested by the
Commander-in-Chief, Lord Wolseley, and by Sir Redvers Buller. It was not
until September 10th that 10,000 men were ordered from India to Natal,
and not until October 7th that orders were issued for the calling out of
the reserve and for the mobilization of an army corps and other troops
for South Africa. The Boers began hostilities on October 11th, and the
operations were unfavourable to the British until the middle of
February, when Lord Roberts began the advance towards Kimberley.

At the end of January, 1900, the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, said in
the House of Lords: "I do not believe in the perfection of the British
Constitution as an instrument of war ... it is evident that there is
something in your machinery that is wrong."

In the debate on the Army Estimates on February 1st, Dilke, with his
usual courage, raised the question of responsibility, in a speech to
which little attention was paid at the time, but which will now, in the
light of subsequent events, be better appreciated.

"The country," he said, "has gone through an awful winter, and under our
constitutional system there are persons responsible, and we have to
examine the nature of their responsibility. Some Government speakers,
who during the recess have addressed the country, have drawn certain
comparisons between the occurrences in this war and those of the Crimean
War.... I confess that I believe the present war has been far more
disgracefully conducted than the Crimean War had been, and that the
mourning is far more applicable to this case. Now, with regard to the
checks or reverses--that is the accepted phrase--we are really afraid in
these days to talk about 'disasters.' The First Lord of the Treasury at
Manchester distinctly stated there had been 'no disaster.' There has
been no single great engagement in which we have met with an absolute
disaster, but for the first time in our military history there has been
a succession of checks or reverses--unredeemed as they have been by a
single great military success in the whole course of the war--in many of
which we have left prisoners in the enemy's hands. We began with the
abandonment of the entrenched camp at Dundee, and of the great
accumulation of stores that had been made there, of the wounded, and of
the dying General, and we lost the headquarters of a regiment of cavalry
that tried a cavalry pursuit. We lost the headquarters of two battalions
at Nicholson's Nek; we lost the headquarters of one battalion and a very
large portion of another battalion in the repulse at Stormberg; we lost
the Colonel, most of the field officers, and the whole of one company of
the Suffolks, on another occasion. These headquarters of cavalry, and
the principal portion of the remaining men of five battalions of British
infantry, are now prisoners at Pretoria--not to speak of what happened
to the Highland Brigade at Magersfontein, or of the loss of the guns in
the repulse at the Tugela, or of the fact that thirteen of our field
guns, besides a mountain battery, are now in the enemy's hands. The loss
of guns in proportion to our small strength of guns is equivalent to the
loss of some 300 guns by the German army. None of these events
constitutes what the First Lord of the Treasury calls a disaster.
Probably he is right. But can any member of this House deny that the net
result of these proceedings has been disastrous to the belief of the
world in our ability to conduct a war? Therefore, if there has been, as
the right hon. gentleman says, not one disaster, surely the result of
the proceedings has been one disastrous to the credit of this country.
There has been one immense redemption of that disaster, which is that
all the Powers, however hostile, have very frankly acknowledged on these
occasions the heroism of the officers and men. Our military reputation,
which undoubtedly never stood lower in the eyes of the world than at the
present moment, is redeemed in that respect, and the individual courage
of officers and men never stood higher in the estimate of the world than
it does now. It seems to me to be a patriotic duty of those who have in
the past discussed in this House the question of Cabinet responsibility
for military preparations to discuss the question now; to see who is
responsible, whom--I will not say we will hang, but whom we are to hold
blameworthy in the highest degree for what has occurred. I believe that
the opinion is attributed to the Prime Minister that the British
Constitution is not a fighting machine. I am told that he has thrown
doubt upon the working of the British Constitution as a Constitution
which will allow this country successfully to go to war. That is a very
serious matter. The Constitution of this country has been maintained as
a fighting machine by the members of this House who are now responsible
for the Administration. No one has ever put the doctrine of Cabinet
responsibility for the preparation for war higher than it has always
been put by the present Leader of the House (Mr. Balfour), and anything
more direct than the conflict on that point, as on many others, between
his opinion and the opinion of the Prime Minister it is impossible to
conceive.... On Thursday last the right hon. member who preceded me in
this debate--the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr.
Brodrick)--delivered a speech and said that all that had been done in
this war had been 'solely dictated by military advice,' and 'military
advice alone determined all that had been done.' I should like the House
to consider what that statement means. The right hon. gentleman was the
member who, on three occasions, brought the question of the ammunition
supplies of this country before the House: it was he who moved the
amendment which turned out the Rosebery Administration on the cordite
vote, and he led the discussion on two subsequent occasions on which we
debated the same question. At the opening of the next Parliament the
whole question of Ministerial responsibility for war preparation was
thoroughly and exhaustively considered by this House. I confess that I
did not expect to hear the right hon. gentleman--who on those three
occasions so firmly pressed, to the very extinction of the Government
itself, the doctrine of Cabinet responsibility--as it were sheltering
the Cabinet behind military advice, advice which he rejected, as also
did the Leader of the House, with scorn upon that occasion.... I feel it
a duty to myself, and to all who hold the same opinion, to press home
this doctrine of Cabinet responsibility on this occasion. In that debate
the hon. member who seems likely to follow me in this debate--the
present Under-Secretary for War (Mr. Wyndham)--took part. He was then a
private member and warmly occupied his mind upon this question, and he
used these words: 'If they were overwhelmed by disasters, the Minister
for War would be held responsible.' Not only he, but the whole Cabinet
are responsible, and the present Leader of the House, in following the
hon. member in that debate, emphasized that fact, and pointed out the
importance of complete Cabinet responsibility. That doctrine was
emphatically maintained. There are practical reasons why this question
should be pressed home on this occasion. This is obviously the time to
press it home if ever it should be done, and it seems to me that such
practical reasons are to be found in two considerations. We have been
told that at the beginning of every war it is always fated that there
should be muddling. We have been told it from both sides of the House,
that we always begin by muddling our wars. If there is one fact more
certain than another, it is that in future wars, not with Boer
Republics, but with Great Powers, there will be no time for muddling at
the beginning of war, and it is vital that this muddling should be
guarded against. If we are to look forward as a matter of certainty that
this country is always to muddle at the beginning of a war, then we may
look forward with almost certainty to defeat."

Dilke then examined the excuses that had been made for the Government,
to the effect that the war took them by surprise and that they had no
knowledge of the Boer preparations. He showed that both these pleas were
inconsistent with the facts. Mr. Balfour had said that the Government
had thought it their duty, during the negotiations which preceded the
war, to abstain from unnecessary menace. Dilke pointed out that they did
not so abstain. Lord Salisbury had said on July 28th, 1899, "the
Conventions are mortal ... they are liable to be destroyed." That could
only be understood by the Boers as holding out the prospect of a war in
which the independence of their country would be taken away. Were these
words wise when used without the smallest preparation for war having
been made? As regards knowledge of the Boer preparations, the
Intelligence Department had admirably done its work. No Government was
ever so well informed as to the resources of its opponents as the
British Government in entering upon this war. Dilke went on to say:

    "Both by those who would have anticipated war and by the Government
    it has been alleged that the existence of a Parliamentary Opposition
    was the reason why the military precautions of the Government were
    inefficacious. But the Government has been in power since July,
    1895, and has been supported by overwhelming majorities, and it
    would have had the cheerful acquiescence of the House of Commons for
    every measure of military precaution and all the military
    expenditure which was asked. The Cabinet are responsible; but if
    there is to be any difficulty on account of the existence of a
    constitutional Opposition--even a weak one--I say that by that
    doctrine we are fated to be beaten on every occasion we go to war.
    The time for the reform of our military system will come when this
    war has ended. We cannot reform it in a time of war. We have often
    addressed the House upon this subject. We preached to deaf ears. We
    were not listened to before war. Shall we be listened to when war is
    over? While I admit that in a time of war you cannot reform your
    military system, what you can do is to press home to the Cabinet the
    responsibility.... For some years past there have been discussions
    as to Empire expansion which have divided some of us from others on
    military questions. There are some of us, who are strong supporters
    of the Government in preparing for war in the present situation of
    the world, who are not in favour of what is called the expansion of
    the Empire. We have resisted it because we believed the military
    requirements of the Empire were greater--as it was put by Lord
    Charles Beresford, whom we see here no longer--than we were prepared
    to meet. And the Government now come down to the House and quietly
    tell us that that is so. They have put it in the Queen's Speech. We
    have it stated that, although the money we have to spend in military
    preparations is more than that of any other Power in the world, we
    are going to be asked to spend more. I should hope that good may
    come out of evil, and that a result of this sad war may be the
    proper utilization of our resources in preparing, in times of peace,
    all the military forces of what people call Greater Britain.... I
    venture to say that the Government went into this war without the
    preparation they should have made. Their neglect of that precaution
    has brought about the reverses we have met with, and the natural
    consequence is the failure of our arms I have described. As regards
    the Crimean War, which in some respects has been compared with this,
    one is reminded of the present Commander-in-Chief, who has written
    these momentous words: The history of the Crimean War shows 'how an
    army may be destroyed by a Ministry through want of ordinary
    forethought.' I confess that I think there is only one point in
    which the two cases are exactly parallel--for there are many
    distinctions between them--and that is in the heroism of officers
    and men."

On July 27th, 1900, on the occasion of a supplementary estimate for the
South African War, Dilke criticized the censorship of letters from the
front, in consequence of which the truth about the military mistakes
made remained unknown. He reviewed a series of blunders that had been
made in the war, and quoted the opinion of an eminent foreign strategist
to the effect that "the mistakes which had been made were mistakes on
immutable and permanent principles." Thus, there was a doubt whether the
army had been properly trained for war in the past and was being
properly trained at that moment. He asked for a full inquiry into these
matters.

That inquiry was never made. The Royal Commission appointed after the
war to inquire into its conduct began by disclaiming authority to
inquire into the policy out of which the war arose, and by asserting its
own incompetence to discuss the military operations.

In a paper contributed to the _New Liberal Review_ of February, 1901,
Dilke reviewed the South African War, and summed up:

    "The war, then, has revealed deficiency in the war training of the
    Staff in particular, and of the army generally. It has shown that
    the recommendations of the Commander-in-Chief to the Cabinet for the
    nomination of Generals to high commands were not based on real
    tests. It has called attention to the amateurishness of portions of
    our forces. It has proved that for years the reformers have been
    right, and the War Office wrong, as regards the number and
    proportion of guns needed by us and the rapidity of the mobilization
    of our artillery.

    "Remedies which will certainly be attempted are--Better training of
    the Staff, especially in the thinking out and writing of orders;
    weeding out of incompetent amateurs from among our officers; better
    pay for the men; careful preparation in time of peace of a picked
    Imperial force of mounted infantry from all parts of the Empire. But
    greater changes, urgently as they are demanded by the national
    interest, will not be accomplished, as public excitement will die
    down, and triflers and obstructives will remain at the head of
    affairs, in place of the Carnot who is needed as organizer to back
    the best General that can be found for the Commander-in-Chief.

    "The greatest of the lessons of the war was the revelation of the
    neglect, by statesmen, to prepare for wars which their policy must
    lead them to contemplate as possible.... The long duration of the
    war, with all its risks to our Imperial interests, is to be laid at
    the door of the politicians rather than of the Generals. This, the
    greatest lesson, has not been learnt."


IV.

After the General Election of December, 1900, there was a shifting of
offices in the Cabinet, by which Mr. Brodrick succeeded Lord Lansdowne
as Secretary of State for War, and Lord Selborne became First Lord of
the Admiralty instead of Mr. Goschen. Lord Roberts was brought home from
South Africa to become Commander-in-Chief, and the direction of the war
was left in the hands of Lord Kitchener. The first important event in
the new Parliament was a speech by Lord Wolseley in the House of Lords,
in which he warned the nation against the dangerous consequences of the
system introduced in 1895, which failed to give its proper place to the
military judgment in regard to preparations for war. The warning was
disregarded. Mr. Brodrick announced the determination of the Government
to maintain the system set up in 1895, and to give to Lord Roberts as
Commander-in-Chief the same position of maimed and crippled authority as
had been given to Lord Wolseley six years before.

Mr. Brodrick, while carrying on the war in South Africa, attempted at
the same time to reform the army. The results were the more unfortunate
because on vital matters, both of organization at the War Office and of
the reorganization of the army, Mr. Brodrick insisted on overriding the
great soldier to whom, as Commander-in-Chief, was due whatever
confidence the country gave to the military administration. Mr. Brodrick
was much preoccupied with the defence of the United Kingdom against
invasion. In the debate on the Army Estimates of 1901, Dilke said:

    "I am one of those who hold that the command of the seas is the
    defence of this country. I believe that the British Army exists
    mainly for the reinforcement of the Indian garrison, and, if
    necessary, as the rudiment of that army which, in the event of a
    great war, would be necessary."

Dilke continued to support the Admiralty in its endeavours to strengthen
the navy. In the debate on the Navy Estimates of 1901 (March 22nd) he
said:

    "The Secretary of State for the Colonies a few years ago made a
    speech in favour of an alliance with a military Power. [Footnote:
    See _infra_, p. 491.] He said that the alternative was to build up
    so as to make ourselves safe against a combination of three Powers,
    and that that would entail an addition of fifty per cent. to the
    estimates. Since that time we have added more than fifty per cent.
    to our estimates. Of course the expenditure is very great; but is
    there a man in this House who believes that it is not necessary for
    us to maintain that practical standard which would lead even three
    Powers to hesitate before attacking? During the last year we have,
    happily, had friendship between ourselves and Germany; I believe
    that friendship may long continue, and I hope it will. But it is
    impossible to shut our eyes to the fact that there have been
    distinctly proposed to the German Houses, by Admiral Tirpitz,
    estimates which are based on the possibility of a war with England.
    Von der Goltz, who is the highest literary authority on this
    subject, has said the same thing. We have seen also that remarkable
    preparation of strategic cables on the part of Germany ... in order
    to be entirely independent of British cables in the event of a
    possible naval war. In face of facts of that kind, which can be
    infinitely multiplied, it seems to me it would be monstrous on our
    part to fail to maintain that standard, and that it is our bounden
    duty to make up for the delays which have occurred, and to vote
    programmes for the future which should be sufficient to keep up that
    standard."

When the Navy Estimates for 1902 were introduced into the House of
Commons by Arnold-Forster as Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty,
Mr. Lough moved an amendment: "That the growing expenditure on the naval
defences of the Empire imposes under the existing conditions an undue
burden on the taxpayers of the United Kingdom." Dilke, in opposing the
amendment, deprecated the introduction of party considerations into a
discussion concerning the navy. The time taken to build ships ought to
be borne in mind. The usual period had lately been four years; many of
the ships of the 1897 programme had not yet been commissioned; therefore
it was necessary to remember that the country would go into a naval war
with ships according to the programme of four or five years before war
was declared. Mr. Goschen was a careful First Lord of the Admiralty, yet
Mr. Goschen in his programme year after year alluded to the necessity of
maintaining a fleet which would cause not two but three Powers to pause
before they attacked us. To his (Dilke's) mind, it was infinitely more
important to the country that its expenditure should be shaped, not
towards meeting a sudden attack by two Powers, which was not going to
occur, but towards meeting--not immediately, but in time to come--the
possibility of an eventual joining together of three Powers, one of
which was very rapidly building a magnificent fleet. From that point of
view the programme of the Government this year was a beggarly programme.

In introducing the Navy Estimates for 1903 Arnold-Forster said that they
were of a magnitude unparalleled in peace or war. Dilke, in supporting
them, said (March 17th):

    "The standard which Lord Spencer gave to this House was not a fleet
    equivalent to three fleets--not a fleet, certainly, on all points
    equivalent to the fleets of France, Germany, and Russia--but a
    standard which gave us such a position in the world of fleets as
    would cause three Powers to pause before they entered into a
    coalition against us. That was a position he had always contended
    was necessary for the safety of this country.... The only weak point
    that one could discern as really dangerous in the future was the
    training of the officers for high command and the selection of
    officers, which would give this country, in the event of war, that
    real unity of operations which ought to be our advantage against any
    allied Powers."


V.

On June 20th, 1902, Lord Charles Beresford had raised the question of
the organization of the Admiralty, which he held to be defective for the
purpose of preparation for war. "The administrative faculty," he said,
"should be absolutely separate from the executive faculty, but at
present they were mixed up." Campbell-Bannerman held that no change was
necessary. Dilke supported Lord Charles Beresford, and after reviewing
the cordite debates of 1895, to which both the previous speakers had
referred, gave his reasons for holding that the duty of the Cabinet was
to control both services in order to secure that each should take its
proper share in defence. "If there was a very strong man, or even one
who thought himself very strong, at the head of either department, the
present system tended to break down, because, unless there was some
joint authority in the Cabinet strong enough to control even a strong
First Lord of the Admiralty, no joint consideration of the views of the
two departments could be obtained. At the present moment the two
services competed." Lord Charles Beresford and Dilke were supported by
Sir John Colomb, and in his reply Arnold-Forster said: "I cannot but
reaffirm the belief I held before I stood at this table, and since I
have stood here, that there is a need for some reinforcement of the
intellectual equipment which directs or ought to direct the enormous
forces of our Empire." The question was raised again on August 6th by
Major Seely, in a speech in which he commented on the lack of a body
charged with the duty of studying strategical questions. Mr. Balfour
thereupon said:

    "We cannot leave this matter to one department or two departments
    acting separately. It is a joint matter; it must be a joint matter.
    I hope my honourable friend will take it from me that the Government
    are fully alive, and have, if I may say so, long been fully alive,
    to the difficulty of the problem which presents itself to his mind
    and which he has explained to the House; and that that problem is
    one always present to our minds. It is one which we certainly do not
    mean to neglect to meet and grapple with to the best of our
    ability."

In 1903, in an article contributed to the Northern Newspaper Syndicate,
Dilke wrote:

    "We are face to face with the fact that Mr. Brodrick's scheme is
    admitted from all sides, except by those actually responsible for it
    who are still holding office, to be a failure; that under this
    scheme the charge on the British Empire for defence in time of peace
    stands at eighty-six millions sterling, of which fifty-two millions
    at least are for land defence, nevertheless ill secured; that
    without a complete change of system these gigantic figures must
    rapidly increase; and that, while all agree that in our case the
    navy ought to be predominant, no one seems to be able to control the
    War Office, or to limit the expenditure upon land defence as
    contrasted with naval preparations. The service members of the House
    of Commons, who used to be charged with wasting their own and the
    nation's time upon military details, or upon proposals for increase
    of expenditure, have shown their patriotism and their intelligence
    by going to the root of this great question. They brought about the
    declaration of the Secretary of the Admiralty, Mr. Arnold-Forster,
    on June 20th, 1902, and the complete acceptance of that declaration
    by the Prime Minister on August 6th. They have now forced on
    Parliament and on the Prime Minister the necessity of taking real
    action upon his declaration that 'the problem of Imperial defence
    cannot be left to one department or two departments acting
    separately.' The utilization of the resources of the British Empire
    for war must be the business of the Prime Minister, who is above the
    War Office and the Admiralty, and who alone can lead the Cabinet to
    co-ordinate the efforts of the two services."

In October, 1903, Arnold-Forster was appointed to succeed Mr. Brodrick
as Secretary of State for War. He had previously expressed, in
conversation, his wish to see the whole subject of Imperial defence
entrusted to a Committee of three men conversant with it, and had named
Sir Charles Dilke and Sir John Colomb as two of the three whom he would
choose if he had the power. In November a Committee of three was
appointed by Mr. Balfour to report on the organization of the War
Office. Its members were Lord Esher, Admiral Sir John (now Lord) Fisher,
and Sir George Sydenham Clarke (now Lord Sydenham). The first instalment
of this Committee's report, published on February 1st, 1904, proposed
the reconstitution of the War Office on the model of the Board of
Admiralty, and as a preliminary the dismissal of the Commander-in-Chief
and the heads of the great departments at the War Office.

At the same time the Cabinet Committee of Defence was reconstituted
under the presidency of the Prime Minister (Mr. Balfour). Thus at
length, eleven years after Sir Charles Dilke's first conversations with
Mr. Balfour on the subject, was adopted the suggestion he had urged for
so many years, and so fully explained in his speech of March 16th, 1894,
that a Prime Minister should undertake to consider the needs both of the
army and navy, and the probable functions of both in war.


VI.

The result was very soon manifest in a complete change of policy, which
was no doubt facilitated by the presence in the Cabinet, as Secretary of
State for War, of Mr. Arnold-Forster, one of the signatories of the
joint letter of 1894.

On March 28th, 1905, Arnold-Forster said:

    "We have been adding million after million to our naval expenditure.
    Are all these millions wasted? If it be true, as we are told by
    representatives of the Admiralty, that the navy is in a position
    such as it has never occupied before--that it is now not only our
    first line of defence, but our guarantee for the possession of our
    own islands--is that to make no difference to a system which has
    grown up avowedly and confessedly on the basis of defending these
    islands by an armed land force against an invasion? Is that to make
    no difference? Is this view some invention of my own imagination?
    No, sir, that is the deliberate conclusion of the Government,
    advised by a body which has been called into, I believe, a useful
    existence during the last eighteen months, and which I regret was
    not called into existence much longer ago--the Committee of
    Defence.... I have seen it stated that, provided our navy is
    sufficient, the greatest anticipation we can form in the way of a
    landing of a hostile army would be a force of 5,000. I should be
    deceiving the House if I thought that represented the extreme naval
    view. The extreme naval view is that the crew of a dinghy could not
    land in this country in the face of the navy."

This speech showed the conversion of the Government, for which Sir
Charles Dilke had laboured so long, to the doctrine of the primacy of
the navy and of defence by the command of the sea.

On May 11th, Mr. Balfour in the name of the Committee of Defence put
forth the general view which that body had reached. In the first place,
provided the navy was efficient, a successful invasion of the country
upon a large scale need not be contemplated. Secondly, the Committee had
gone on the broad line that our force should as far as possible be
concentrated at the centre of the Empire. This had rendered unnecessary
expenditure which had been undertaken under a different view of our
needs, the most notable case being the works at St. Lucia, which had
been made by Lord Carnarvon into a great naval base. Lastly, with regard
to India, the Government adopted Lord Kitchener's view that in addition
to drafts there should be available in the relatively early stages of
the war eight divisions of infantry and other corresponding arms.

Dilke, who had described himself as a constant supporter of the
blue-water view, agreed with the Government with regard to invasion, and
welcomed Mr. Balfour's moderate view with regard to the needs of India.
But he pointed out that vast sums of money had been spent in the
fortification of places which were now discovered to be unnecessary.

    "He asked the Committee to remember how far the responsibility of
    all this expenditure had been on the present occupants of office. He
    believed that the Defence Committee of the Cabinet was created by
    Lord Rosebery at the end of his Administration in 1895. That was the
    first form of the Committee. Immediately the new Government came in
    it assumed its second form, and the Defence Committee of the
    Conservative Government, formed in 1895 under the presidency of the
    Duke of Devonshire, lasted for many years, and was composed of
    substantially the same gentlemen as were in power now. It was
    constantly vouched to the House as the great co-ordinating
    authority, and as the body responsible for expenditure on an
    enormous scale on principles diametrically opposed to those now
    held. The third form of the Committee was that which was adopted
    when the Prime Minister acceded to his present office. The right
    hon. gentleman came to this House and at once explained the new form
    of the Committee on March 5th, 1903.... The Committee had heard
    to-day the extent to which invasion at home was believed in by the
    Defence Committee.... It was firmly expected from the moment that
    the Government announced their naval view that the reduction would
    be under the military head. But instead of that the reduction had
    been on the Navy Estimates, and that had not been accompanied by a
    reduction on the army votes. That had been the amazing effect of the
    co-ordination. Had any member of the Committee calculated how much
    money had been wasted in the last nine and a half years by the
    non-adoption in 1895, when virtually the present Government came
    into office, of the policy which had been adopted now?"


VII.

The Government which had thus tardily followed Sir Charles Dilke's lead
had lost the confidence of the country. The General Election of 1905
gave the Liberals a large majority. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the
new Prime Minister, had not forgotten Dilke's vote in the cordite
division of 1895, and did not share his view of the necessity to be
ready for war, and to rely, not upon arbitration, but upon the
organization of defensive preparations. Dilke was not included in the
new Ministry, in which Mr. (now Lord) Haldane was appointed Secretary of
State for War. Mr. Haldane undertook a fresh reorganization of the
military forces of the country, taking the Committee of Defence and the
Army Council as they were left by Mr. Balfour after the changes proposed
by the Esher Committee. The Order in Council gave the Secretary of State
the power to reserve for his own decision any matter whatever, and to
impose that decision upon the Army Council, a power not contemplated by
the Esher Committee's report. Mr. Haldane availed himself of this power
and of the assistance of Colonel Ellison, who had been Secretary to the
Esher Committee, but was not a member of the Army Council, to prepare
his scheme. It consisted in the organization of an expeditionary force,
which was to be composed of six divisions and a cavalry division, with a
total field strength of 160,000 men, fully equipped for war, together
with additional troops at home to make good the losses of a campaign.
This force was to be made up of the regular army (of which the
establishments were reduced by some 20,000 of all arms), of its reserve,
and of the militia, renamed special reserve, also with a reduced
establishment, and with a liability to serve abroad in case of war. The
Volunteer force was to be renamed the Territorial force, and its
officers and men to be brought under the Army Act, the men to be
enlisted for a term of years and paid. It was to be organized, as the
Norfolk Commission had suggested, into brigades and divisions. But the
further suggestion of the same Commission, that a member of the Army
Council familiar with the volunteer system should be charged with its
supervision, was not adopted. Mr. Haldane's view was that the
territorial troops could not in peace receive a training which would
prepare them for war, but that, as England was not a Continental Power
and was protected by her navy, there would be six months' time, after a
war had begun, to give them a training for war. The force was to be
administered by County Associations to be constituted for the purpose.
The scheme was gradually elaborated, and in its later stage improved by
the transformation of the University and some other volunteer and cadet
corps into officers' training corps. The works which, at the suggestion
of Sir John Ardagh, had been prepared for the defence of London were
abandoned.

Mr. Haldane first expounded his plans in March, 1906, and in the debate
of March 15th Dilke said:

    "There was a little too much depreciation of the Volunteers; and
    although he had always been considered a strong supporter of the
    'blue-water' view, yet he had always believed in accepting from the
    Volunteers all the service they could give, as he believed they
    would give an enormous potential supply of men."

Mr. Haldane explained (February 25th, 1907) that the expeditionary force
would require only seventy-two batteries, while the army actually had a
hundred and five; there was therefore a surplus of thirty-three
batteries which he would use as training batteries in which to train men
for divisional ammunition columns. Upon this Dilke's comment was that
"if the officer difficulty could be solved, then the real military
problem would be solved." We could raise men fast enough through the
volunteer system, and turn them into good infantry, provided there was a
sufficient supply of officers qualified to train them; but the infantry
which could thus be produced in a few months would require to be
supplemented by artillery and cavalry which could not be improvised. He
would have faced the cost of keeping up these arms, and would not have
saved by turning batteries into ammunition columns.

In the debate on Mr. Haldane's Territorial and Reserve Forces Bill (June
3rd), Dilke voted for an amendment of which the purpose was to establish
a department at the War Office under an officer having special knowledge
and experience with the militia, yeomanry, and volunteers, ranking as
third member of the Army Council. This amendment, however, was not
carried.

In an article in the _Manchester Guardian_ of June 6th, 1907, Dilke
explained his main objections to Mr. Haldane's scheme and to the Bill
which was to lay its foundation.

"The cost," he wrote, "must undoubtedly be large, and it is difficult to
see where the substantial saving on Army Estimates, twice promised by
Mr. Ritchie when Chancellor of the Exchequer, but not yet secured, is to
be obtained. As an advocate of a strong fleet, I have a special reason,
equivalent to that of the most rigid economist, for insisting upon the
reduction in our enormous military charge, inasmuch as the money
unexpectedly needed for the army will come off the fleet."

Dilke thought that the defence of Great Britain depended upon the navy;
that so long as the navy was equal to its task invasion was not to be
feared. The function of the military forces would be to fight an enemy
abroad. He, therefore, held it a mistake to increase expenditure on
troops which it was not proposed to train to meet foreign regulars. The
Territorial army would be the volunteers under a new name, but without
an improved training. As the linked-battalion system and the long term
of service were retained, the regular army would still be costly, and
its reserves or power of quick expansion less than they might be. Mr.
Haldane would be compelled to retain a high rate of War Office
expenditure, and this would involve a reduction on the outlay for the
navy, which was all-important. Mr. Haldane, however, had the support of
a very large majority, and argument was of little avail. Sir Charles
Dilke therefore threw his weight into the debates on the Navy estimates,
in which he consistently supported the Admiralty in every increase.

Year after year he persevered in the effort to counteract the tendency
to exaggerate the importance of military schemes and military
expenditure, especially upon troops not fully trained and not kept ready
for action abroad, and to point out that the effect of such schemes
could not but be to reduce the amount of attention and of money devoted
to the navy. In 1904 (March 1st) he had said:

    "It was an extraordinary fact that, in all calculations on the
    subject of the expenditure of the army, the cost of the army outside
    the United Kingdom was never taken into account. We were spending
    vastly more upon the land services than we were upon our naval
    services, and so long as that was so he confessed that he should
    view with more than indulgence what was called the extravagant
    policy in regard to the navy."

In 1907 (March 5th) he expressed his disapproval of the sweeping change
by which the defence of ports by submarine mines had been abolished.
"Newcastle had been defended by means of an admirable system of
submarine mines which had no equal in the world. So good was it that the
volunteer submarine miners of the Tyne division were employed to do the
laying of electric mines at Portsmouth and other naval ports. Newcastle
was now without that defence." He explained that these mines, which had
cost a million, had been sold. Had they fetched £50,000? He was not
content with Mr. Haldane's account of the steps taken to prepare for
defence against possible raid. On this subject, writing for the _United
Service Magazine_ of May, 1908, a paper entitled "Strong at all Points,"
which enforced his view of the supreme importance of the navy, he said:

    "The provision for time of war, after complete mobilization of the
    Territorial army, may be perfect upon paper; but the real question
    is, how to obtain the manning of the quick-firing guns, say on the
    Tyne, in time of political complication, by trained men, who sleep
    by the guns and are able to use them when awakened suddenly in the
    dead of night."

In the discussion of the estimates of July 31st, 1907, he said that,
"bearing in mind the enormous importance in naval matters of a steady
policy, he should resist any reduction that might be moved." On the same
occasion he pointed out that, "if there was any danger from Germany, it
was not the danger of invasion or from the fleet, but it was her growing
superiority in the scientific equipment of her people." Yet he declined
to encourage panic, and in the debate of March 22nd, 1909, when the
Opposition moved a vote of censure because of a supposed unforeseen
start gained by Germany in shipbuilding, pointed out the reasons for not
indulging in a scare.

Dilke closely watched the new developments in armament and construction,
and from time to time pressed them upon the attention of the Government.
As early as 1901, in an article reviewing the progress of war in the
nineteenth century, he had said: "The greatest change in the
battlefields of the future, as compared with those of a few years ago,
will be found in the developments and increased strength of the
artillery." In 1907, in the debate on the Navy estimates, he suggested
that "the reserve of guns was a matter which needed the utmost
diligence." Docks, he thought, were proportionately more important than
battleships. In 1907 (April 25th) he said: "A base was needed east of
Dover--Rosyth or Chatham: he need not suggest or criticize the spot that
should be chosen. Whether the Hague Conference prohibited floating mines
or not, they would be used; and that being so, they must contemplate
either the extension of Chatham or the creation of an establishment at a
different point of the east coast." To this subject he repeatedly
returned. In 1908 (March 3rd): "The necessity for a large establishment
in a safer place than the Channel had been raised for many years, and
was fully recognized when Rosyth was brought before them. Both parties
had shirked the expenditure which both declared necessary." On March
10th: "There were important works, docks and basins in which big ships
could be accommodated, and these by universal admission should be made
as rapidly as possible. Big ships were worse than useless if there was
no dock or basin accommodation for them.... The limited instalment of
one dock and one basin contemplated was only to be completed in eleven
years. He believed that was bad economy.... The need for this
expenditure had long been foreseen." Again, in 1909, on July 1st, he
pointed out that the Governments of both parties had shirked the
expenditure on Rosyth, of which the need had been known as early as
1902. The delay had been enormously grave. The report which contained
the whole scheme had been presented to Parliament in January, 1902; the
land had been bought in 1903, and the contract was made only in March,
1909.

Sir Charles's command of detail made his hearers apt to suppose that he
was mainly concerned with technical matters. But no impression could be
farther from the truth. Never for a moment did he lose sight of the
large issues, and of the purpose to which all measures of naval and
military preparation are directed. It was to the large issues that his
last important Parliamentary speech on the subject of defence was
directed.

"We talk a little," he said on March 7th, 1910, "about the possibility
of invasion when we talk of our Territorial army, but we do not--the
overwhelming majority of us--believe the country is open to invasion, or
that the fleet has fallen off in its power of doing its duty as compared
with days past.... No one of us who is prepared to pay his part, and to
call upon others to pay their part, to keep the fleet up to the highest
standard of efficiency and safety which we at present enjoy--no one of
us ought to be prepared to run the Territorial army on this occasion as
though it were the main and most costly portion of the estimates that
are put before the House. The Territorial army is defensible as the
Volunteers were defensible. It is an improvement on the volunteer
system, and it might have been made without the statute on which it is
based, but that it will add an enormous expenditure to our army is not
the case. Our Territorial army, in fact, cannot be kept in view as the
first object which we have to consider in the course of these
debates.... It is supposed to be the one certain result of the last
General Election that there is a large majority in favour of maintaining
our naval position; but we cannot maintain that naval position without
straining every nerve to do it, and we shall not be able to put all our
energy into maintaining that position if we talk about invasion, and
tell the people of this country that the fleet cannot do its duty.... If
you put the doctrine of invasion so high, and if you tell them that in
any degree their safety depends upon the Territorial army trained and
serving here at home, then you run a great risk of compromising your
naval defence and taking money out of one pocket and putting it into
another, and of being weak at both points, and creating a Territorial
army which could not face a great Continental force landed on our
shores, and at the same time detracting from the power of your fleet....
The Territorial army, like the Volunteers, is really defended by most of
us, in our hearts if not in our speech, as a reserve of the regular,
expeditionary, offensive army for fighting across the seas.... My right
hon. friend Mr. Haldane has always maintained the view that your army
and army expenditure must depend upon policy. It is no good fighting
him; he has both Houses of Parliament and both parties in his pocket. He
is a man of legions political as well as military. The school
represented by myself and the dominant school represented by him have
differed, not upon the question of policy dictating your armaments, but
upon the question of how your policy and your armaments together would
work out."

Sir Charles Dilke's last utterance on defence was a review of Sir
Cyprian Bridge's _Sea-Power, and Other Studies_, in July, 1910. It was a
plea for reliance upon the navy to prevent invasion and upon a mobile
military force for a counter-stroke. "I confess," Dilke ended, "that, as
one interested in complete efficiency rather than especially in economy
to the national purse, I join Sir Cyprian Bridge in asking to be shown,
at least, the mobile, efficient, regular force ready for immediate
service across the seas."

In the effort of a quarter of a century to have his country prepared for
the struggle which was to come Dilke was associated with others, many of
them conspicuous for knowledge and zeal; the services of Arnold-Forster,
of John and Philip Colomb, and of Chesney, have been too little
appreciated by their countrymen. Of their common endeavour Dilke was the
chief exponent. At every stage of the movement his was its most
characteristic and most comprehensive expression, marking the central
line of thought. Some of the dominant ideas were his own. From him came
the conception of defence as not merely national but imperial. He first
pointed out the true function of the Prime Minister in relation to it.
The actual development proceeded along the lines which he drew--a strong
navy; a general staff at the War Office; a regular army of first-rate
quality, that could be sent abroad at short notice, most likely for the
defence of Belgium against attacks from Germany; expansion to be sought,
in the first instance, from the numbers furnished by the volunteer
system. There were points which he failed to carry--the provision of
arms and ammunition for the multitude of soldiers who would be
forthcoming from the Empire, as well as of that modern artillery which
must play so great a part in a future campaign; the search for generals
capable of command in war; the enforcement of the responsibility of
Ministers for preparations neglected. What was accomplished and what was
left undone give the measure of Sir Charles Dilke as the statesman of
Imperial Defence.



APPENDIX I


    '"_December 21st_, 1893.

    '"Dear Mr. Balfour,

    '"I have been thinking over the matter which you mentioned in the
    tea-room yesterday. I am absolutely convinced of your own detachment
    from party in connection with it, and I write as one not likely at
    any time to act generally in connection with your party, unless in
    the (I hope most improbable) event of doubtful or unfortunate war.

    '"The suggestion that I am inclined to make is that a letter should
    be written, to be signed by Sir George Chesney as a Conservative, by
    myself as a Gladstonian Liberal, by Arnold-Forster as a Liberal
    Unionist, and Spenser Wilkinson as a civilian expert, to Mr.
    Gladstone as Prime Minister, you and Chamberlain as leaders of your
    parties in the House of Commons, and Lord Salisbury and the Duke of
    Devonshire as leaders of the same parties in the House of Lords;
    that a copy should be sent by me confidentially to the Prince of
    Wales, it not being right, of course, that we should in any way
    address the Queen; that this letter should not be made public either
    at the time or later; that this letter should press for the joint
    consideration of the naval and military problem, and should point to
    the creation of a Defence Ministry, of which the War Office and the
    Admiralty would be the branches, or to a more active control of the
    Secretary of State for War and the First Lord of the Admiralty by
    the Prime Minister personally. We should be put in our places by Mr.
    Gladstone, but I fancy, probably, not by the other four.

    '"I had sooner discuss this matter first with you, if you think
    there is anything in it, than with Chamberlain, because he is, oddly
    enough, a much stronger party man than you are, and would be less
    inclined (on account of national objects which to him are
    predominant) to keep party out of his mind in connection with it. I
    have not, therefore, as yet mentioned the matter to him. If you
    think ill of the whole suggestion, and are not even disposed to
    suggest modification of it, it can be stopped at the present point.

    '"The addition of Spenser Wilkinson to a member of each party is
    because I owe to him the clearing of my own mind, and believe that
    he is probably the best man on such questions who ever lived, except
    Clausewitz. When I first wrote upon them in _The Present Position of
    European Politics_ in 1886-87, and in _The British Army_ in 1887-88,
    I was in a fog--seeing the existing evils, but not clearly seeing
    the way out. In the Defence chapter of _Problems of Greater Britain_
    I began to see my way. Admiral Colomb, and Thursfield of _The
    Times_, who are really expositors of the application to our naval
    position of the general principles of military strategy of
    Clausewitz, helped me by their writings to find a road. I then set
    to work with Spenser Wilkinson, whose leaders in the _Manchester
    Guardian_ (which he has now quitted, except as an amateur) struck me
    as being perfect, to think out the whole question; and we succeeded,
    by means of a little book we wrote together--_Imperial Defence_,
    published in February, 1892--in afterwards procuring the agreement
    of Lord Roberts in views widely different in many points from those
    which Lord Roberts had previously held. We are now in the position
    of being able to declare that in naval particulars there is no
    difference of opinion among the experts, and that in military there
    is so little upon points of importance that the experts are
    virtually agreed. This is a great point, never reached before last
    year, and it is owing to Spenser Wilkinson, and in a less degree to
    Arnold-Forster, that it has been reached.

    '"The question of the length at which the proposed letter should
    develop the existing dangers and the remedies is, of course,
    secondary.

    '"The dangers are much greater than even the alarmist section of the
    public supposes. For example, the public have not in the least
    grasped the fact that we were on the brink of war with France at the
    moment of the Siam blockade, nor have they realized the great risk
    of the fall of the monarchy in Italy and of a complete change in
    Italian policy, leading more or less rapidly to an alliance with
    France and Russia. The adoption of Lefevre's policy by the Liberal
    party, which is possible at any time, and the announcement that we
    do not hope to hold the Mediterranean, might attach to the Franco-
    Russian combination even the present advisers of King Humbert.

    '"With regard to Siam, neither the English nor the French Government
    dare publish the despatches which passed about the blockade, and
    they have not been able to come to an agreement as to what portion
    of the papers should be published, although both Governments have
    long since promised publication. The words used in the House of
    Commons by Sir Edward Grey were altered by the French Government
    into meaningless words, and the words actually used excluded by
    Governmental action from every newspaper in France."'

    [Footnote: On December 25th, 1913, M. d'Estournelles de Constant
    wrote to the _Frankfurter Zeitung_ an article warning Europe against
    the chance of war breaking out, not because it is desired, but "by
    chance, by mistake, by stupidity," and he cited an instance from his
    experiences in 1893:

    "The stage was Siam, where British India and French Indo-China were
    seeking to push, one against the other, their rival spheres of
    influence. Lord Dufferin, British Ambassador in Paris and ex-Viceroy
    of India, was upholding the British claim, but it was in London that
    the negotiations were carried on. The irreparable conflict broke out
    on the day when the French Admiral, the bearer of an ultimatum,
    anchored his ships in the very river of Bangkok. I was negotiating,
    but during this time the British Government telegraphed to the
    Admiral commanding the Pacific station to proceed also to Bangkok
    with his whole fleet, which was far superior in numbers to ours.

    "I knew nothing about it; no one knew anything about it. I was
    negotiating, and it was war almost to a certainty without anybody
    suspecting it. I only knew this later. Happily, wireless telegraphy
    did not then exist, and the orders of the Admiralty did not reach in
    time the British squadron, which was then sailing somewhere in the
    Pacific. Thanks to this chance delay, the negotiations had time to
    come to a successful conclusion, and the agreement was concluded."]

    On the same day Dilke received the following reply:

    "I shall be most pleased to have a further conversation with you on
    the all-important subject on which we had a brief talk yesterday,
    and which is dealt with in your letter of to-day.

    "I should like, however, to discuss the matter first with Lord
    Salisbury (whom I shall see to-morrow), and, if you will allow me,
    to show him your letter.

    "I may, however, say at once that I have _always_ been in favour of
    a Defence Committee of Cabinet, with expert advisers and permanent
    records carrying on the work from Government to Government; and
    that, oddly enough, I pressed the idea on Asquith last week. I think
    he and Rosebery would be in favour of the plan; not so the older
    members of the Cabinet."

    'On Friday, January 5th, 1894, I had a long interview with Balfour
    upon my letter, and wrote on it to Wilkinson as follows:

    '"_Confidential_.

      '"76, Sloane Street, S.W.,
        '"_January_ 5_th_, 1894.

    '"Dear Wilkinson,

    '"I saw Balfour (in a full discussion) this afternoon. We
    provisionally agreed, with Lord Salisbury's consent, that Sir George
    Chesney, Arnold-Forster (if he agrees), you, and I, should sign a
    letter which we should address (with the view to publishing it with
    the replies) to Mr. Gladstone as Prime Minister and leader of my
    party, to Lord Salisbury and to Balfour as leaders of Sir George
    Chesney's party, and to the Duke of Devonshire and Chamberlain as
    leaders of Arnold-Forster's party, and of which I should privately
    send a copy to the Prince of Wales in the hope of its reaching the
    Queen. In this letter we should press for the joint consideration of
    the naval and military problem, and point either to the creation of
    a Defence Ministry, of which the War Office and Admiralty would be
    the branches--to which the objection is that Parliamentary consent
    would be necessary--or to a more active control over the Secretary
    of State for War and the First Lord of the Admiralty, and their
    Estimates, by the Prime Minister personally, or to that which is
    Balfour's own scheme and which has the support, among our people, of
    Rosebery and Asquith: the creation of a Defence Committee of the
    Cabinet, ordinarily to consist of the Prime Minister, of the leader
    of the other House, of the Secretary of State for War, the First
    Lord, and (doubtless) the Chancellor of the Exchequer (?), with
    expert advisers and permanent records which would carry on their
    work from Government to Government. Mr. Gladstone would snub us. The
    other four would not, and our proposal (that is, our third proposal,
    which is Balfour's) would probably be adopted when the Conservatives
    came in, and continued by the Liberals.

    '"Balfour would be very willing to express his favourable opinion of
    our view in debate in the House of Commons, should we raise one next
    Session, and Lord Salisbury is less inclined to make a strong and
    distinctly favourable reply to our letter than is Balfour.

    '"Balfour would go more willingly, if possible, than he does into
    the schemes if he could see his way beforehand to the saving of
    money on the army for the purpose of devoting it to the navy. He
    says that he himself cannot put his finger on the waste which he
    knows must exist, that Buller has to some extent his confidence and
    tells him that there is none, although Balfour is not convinced by
    this. We discussed our Indian army scheme, to which he sees no
    objection, and (very fully) the Duke of Cambridge and the extent to
    which he will be supported by the Queen.

    '"Balfour sees immense difficulty in the absence of a sufficiently
    commanding expert, and in the consequent jealousy between the
    Admiralty and War Office officials.

    '"Will the letter which Sir George Chesney has do as a base, or
    would it be better to write a shorter and a fresh letter? If the
    latter, will you try your hand at it, if you approve? And after
    noting this will you return it to me, that I may send it to Sir
    George Chesney and then to Arnold-Forster?

    '"Balfour had in reading _us_ [Footnote: "Us" refers to the joint
    work on Imperial Defence. One of the recommendations was to
    substitute marines for soldiers in the small garrisons, such as
    Bermuda.] asked questions through George Hamilton, who agrees with
    us, on the point of further employment of marines, and has been told
    that they would be sadly costly.

                          '"Yours very truly,
                                     '"Charles W. Dilke."'


APPENDIX II

In reply to the joint letter, Chamberlain wrote to Dilke:

    "I have received the interesting paper on the subject of National
    Defence which you have communicated to me on behalf of yourself and
    the other signatories. One of the greatest difficulties which any
    politician must feel in dealing with this question has been the
    apparent difference of opinion among those best qualified to speak
    authoritatively on the subject, and it is an important advance to
    find practical proposals agreed to by some of those who have given
    special study to the problems involved. Without venturing at the
    present state of the inquiry to commit myself to any specific
    proposal, I may say that I am favourably inclined to the main lines
    laid down in your paper--namely, the closer union between the two
    great departments of national defence, and the recognition of the
    responsibility of the professional advisers of the Cabinet on all
    questions of military and naval provision and administration."

Mr. Balfour wrote:

    "I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of February 12th,
    dealing with certain very important points connected with the
    problem of National Defence. Though it would be inopportune for me
    to pass any detailed judgment upon the scheme which you have laid
    before me in outline, and though it is evident that difficulties of
    a serious kind must attend any effort to carry out so important a
    change in our traditional methods of dealing with the Admiralty and
    the War Office, I may yet be permitted to express my own conviction
    that the evils that you indicate are real evils, and that the
    imperfections in our existing system, on which you insist, might
    under certain not impossible contingencies seriously imperil our
    most important national interests.

    "That four gentlemen of different training, belonging to different
    parties in the State, approaching this subject from different points
    of view, and having little, perhaps, in common except a very
    intimate knowledge of the questions connected with National Defence,
    should be in entire agreement as to the general lines along which
    future reformation should proceed, is a fact of which the public
    will doubtless take note, and which is not likely to be ignored by
    those responsible for the preservation of the Empire."

    'Our letter was in all the papers about February 28th (1894), with
    replies from Balfour and Chamberlain. Mr. Gladstone's reply, written
    just before he resigned, was in his own hand, and more than usually
    legible. Though it was not marked "Private," I did not print it, as
    it seemed too personal and playful. It meant that he had resigned,
    but I did not know this till an hour after I had received it:

    '"You will forgive my pleading eyesight, which demanded the help of
    others and thereby retarded operations, as an excuse for my having
    failed to acknowledge the paper on Naval Defence which you were so
    good as to send me. You will, I fear, find me a less interesting
    correspondent than some who have replied at length, for I fear I
    ought to confine myself to assuring you that I have taken care it
    should come to the notice of my colleagues."

    'On March 9th I sat near to Asquith at a dinner, and he told me that
    his Defence Committee of the Cabinet, favoured by Balfour and
    Rosebery, would soon be "a fact." The decision was made known in a
    debate which I raised on the 16th.'

A note adds: 'When the Tories came in in June, 1895, they adopted the
scheme of a Minister (the Duke of Devonshire) over both army and navy,
which had been put forward in the Dilke--Chesney--Arnold-Forster--
Wilkinson correspondence with Balfour and Chamberlain, and originally
invented by me. On the night of the Government (Liberal) defeat
Campbell-Bannerman had promised a Commander-in-Chief who should be the
Chief Military Adviser, a double triumph for my view.'




CHAPTER LVII

DEATH OF LADY DILKE--PARLIAMENT OF 1905


In 1903, Chamberlain, by raising the question of Tariff Reform and
putting himself at the head of a movement for revising the Free Trade
policy which had been accepted by both the great political parties since
1846, practically broke up the Conservative Government. It survived,
indeed, under the leadership of Mr. Balfour; but it was only a feeble
shadow of the powerful Administration which Lord Salisbury had formed in
1895.

On the motion for adjournment before the Whitsuntide recess (May 28th,
1903), Sir Charles raised the whole question of commercial policy,
directing himself chiefly to the speeches that had been made by Mr.
Balfour and by Mr. Bonar Law. But it was Mr. Chamberlain's policy that
was in question. Years later, after the whole subject has been
incessantly discussed, it is difficult to realize the effect produced by
the sudden and unexpected onset of that redoubtable champion. Free Trade
had been so long taken for granted that the case for it had become
unfamiliar; what remained was an academic conviction, and against that
Chamberlain arrayed an extraordinary personal prestige backed by a
boldness of assertion to which his position as a business man lent
authority. To meet an onset so sudden and so ably conducted was no easy
task, and for Dilke there was the unhappy personal element of a first
angry confrontation with his old ally. Mr. Chamberlain described Sir
Charles's motion as gratuitous and harassing, "an affair of spies," for
a day had been fixed for the regular encounter. Yet what was needed then
was to show on the Liberal side that confidence which anticipates the
combat. The temper of the time is well indicated by a letter from an old
friend, the Bishop of Hereford:

    "I hope you will stick to the business, and protect ordinary people
    from the new sophistry both by speech and writing. So few people
    have any intellectual grip that everything may depend on the
    leadership of a few men like yourself, who can speak with knowledge
    and authority, and will take the trouble to put concrete facts
    before the public."

Meanwhile Tariff Reform had begun to act as a disintegrant on the
Unionist party, and by the end of October, 1903, Lord James was writing
to Sir Charles Dilke as to the position of Unionist Free Traders: "Can
nothing be done for these unfortunate men?" There is no evidence that
their state moved Sir Charles to compassion, but it is clear that he
feared lest a regrouping of parties should destroy the commanding
position which Radicals had gained, and as soon as Parliament
reassembled he took action.

    '_Thursday, February 11th_, 1904.--I sought an interview with John
    Redmond, to whom I said that there seemed a rapidly increasing risk
    of the speedy formation of a Whig Administration dominated by
    Devonshire influence, and that it might be wise that he, with or
    without Blake, should meet myself and Lloyd George for the Radicals,
    J. R. Macdonald for the Labour Representation Committee, and with
    him either Snowden or Keir Hardie. Redmond assented, and I then saw
    Lloyd George. Lloyd George was at first inclined to assent, but on
    second thoughts asked for time, which I think meant to see Dr.
    Clifford.

    '_Friday, February 12th_, 1904.--Lloyd George had not made up his
    mind either way, but thought that it would be wise to meet except
    for the fact that trouble might happen afterwards as to what had
    passed. I pointed out that this could be easily guarded against by
    his writing me a letter making any conditions or reservations which
    he thought necessary, which I should show to Redmond, and write to
    him that I had so shown. On this he promised to let me know on
    Monday what he thought, and probably would prepare a draft letter.

    '_February 18th, 1904.--Further talk with George. A little afraid of
    being attacked by Perks for selling the pass on education. I said
    that I must go on alone to a certain extent, and he then consented
    to come in, and on my suggesting reservations--as, for example, on
    education--he said: "No, I can trust the Irish as regards the
    personal matter, and, as I come in, I will come in freely without
    any reservations."'

Through the general unsettlement which Chamberlain's new policy had
created, a dissolution and a change of Government were now possibilities
of a not distant future, and speculations were rife as to the future
position of Sir Charles. Lady Dilke, who regarded the admission of her
husband to office as a proof of his public exoneration from the charges
brought against his character, was ardently desirous that he should
accept without reserve any offer of a place in the Cabinet, and it was
much against her wish that Sir Charles imposed conditions, in
conversation with a political friend who had been a member of the last
Liberal Cabinet. So far as anxiety again to hold office existed on his
part, it was more because of her wishes in the matter than from any
strong political ambition of his own. [Footnote: He wrote to Mr. Deakin
from Geneva, December 9th, 1904: "Only one word of what you say on 'too
tardy rewards in higher responsibilities'! I was in the inner ring of
the Cabinet before I was either a Cabinet Minister or a Privy
Councillor, 1880-1882, and I am not likely to have the offer of the
place the work of which would tempt me. The W.O. would kill me, but I
could not refuse it. I have been told on 'authority' that it will not
come to me."]

But the motive which in this, as in all else, swayed him so strongly was
now to be taken away.

Lady Dilke's wish for her husband's return to office was shared by many
Radical politicians, and in the course of the summer Captain Cecil
Norton, one of the Liberal Whips, in a speech expressed his opinion of
the value of Sir Charles Dilke's services, and his anticipation that the
fall of the Tory Government would bring back the Radical leader of 1885
to his full share of power. This utterance was enough to set the old
machinery in motion against him. A series of meetings had been organized
by the advanced Radical section of the House of Commons, and the first
was to have been held in Newington, Captain Norton's constituency, with
Sir Charles for the chief speaker. Threats of a hostile demonstration
reached the Newington committee, and it was decided--though Sir Charles
Dilke was opposed to any change--that the series should be opened with a
speech from him in his old constituency, the place where he was best
known and where he had most friends. It was fixed for October 20th,
1904.

Nothing of the reason for this change was told to Lady Dilke. Her health
had given some cause for anxiety, though at Dockett Eddy in August and
at Speech House in September she had been more bright, more gay, than
ever. She herself wrote to friends that she had "never been so happy in
her life," but felt need of rest, and was going to Pyrford for a long
rest.

She reached Pyrford with her husband on October 15th, and he wished her
to see a doctor, but she refused. "He would stop my going up with you on
Thursday, and I want to go. I think I ought to be there."

It was long since Dilke had stood before those whom he once represented,
and she was determined to be with him; she assisted at the triumphant
success of this meeting; but the strain of coming up to London and the
excitement justified her forecast of the doctor's opinion. That night
she was taken ill, yet till the morning would make no sign, for fear of
disturbing her husband. She admitted then that she was very ill; to
Pyrford, however, she was set on returning; in London she "could not
rest." By Sunday she seemed to be on the highroad to recovery, but on
that Sunday night the end came.

Those last days and hours have been fully described by Sir Charles in
the memoir prefixed to her posthumous book. All that he has written in
his own Memoir is this: 'October 23rd, 1904: Emilia died in my arms
after one of our happiest Sunday afternoons.'

So ended the marriage which, contracted under gloomy auspices in 1885,
had resulted in nineteen years of unbroken felicity. Her praise has been
written in love and reverence by her husband, who was her equal comrade.
The union between them was so complete as to exclude the thought of
gratitude, but whatever man can owe to a woman Sir Charles Dilke owed to
his wife; and though she died without achieving that end on which she
had set her heart, of utterly and explicitly cancelling by public assent
all the charges that had been brought against him, yet she had so lived
and so helped him to live that he was heedless of this matter, except
for her sake.

Over her grave many hands were stretched out to him. Chamberlain wrote
from Italy:

    "My Dear Dilke,

    "I have just seen with the deepest sympathy and sorrow the news of
    the terrible loss you have sustained.

    "Consolation would be idle in presence of such a blow, but I should
    like you to feel that as an old friend, separated by the unhappy
    political differences of these later years, I still share your
    personal grief in losing a companion so devoted to you, and so well
    qualified to aid and strengthen you in all the work and anxiety of
    your active life.

    "When the first great shock is past, I earnestly trust that you may
    find in the continued performance of your public duties some
    alleviation of your private sorrow, and I assure you most earnestly
    of my sympathy in this time of trial.
                                "Believe me,
                                      "Yours very truly,
                                             "J. Chamberlain."

Mr. Morley wrote also:

    "My Dear Dilke,

    "I did not hear the news of the unhappy stroke that has befallen you
    until it was a fortnight old. You need not to be told what a shock
    it was. I think that I had known her longer than anybody--from the
    time of a college ball at Oxford in 1859; a radiant creature she
    then was. To me her friendship was unwavering, down to the last time
    I saw her, when she gave me a long and _intime_ talk about the
    things that, as you know, she had most at heart. I am deeply and
    sincerely sorry and full of sympathy with you. Words count little in
    such a disaster, but this I hope you will believe.
                                     "Ever yours,
                                          "John Morley."

When after his wife's death Sir Charles again took up his life in
London, those who saw him off his guard recognized keenly the effect of
this last sudden blow, heavier because unexpected. The very mainspring
of his life had been weakened. But he exerted himself to prepare Lady
Dilke's unpublished writings, and to write the memoir which prefaced
them. Of this he says:

    'I put my whole soul into the work of bringing out her posthumous
    book with a proper memoir, and it nearly killed me. I was never so
    pleased with anything as with the success of the book. To hundreds
    of the best people it seems to have meant and said all that I wished
    it to say and mean.'

Probably, also, to many readers it gave for the first time a true image,
not of her only for whose sake it was written, but of him who wrote. One
letter of this moment deserves to be put on record. Mr. Arnold-Forster
wrote:

    "Dear Sir Charles,

    "In a very few days the Session, with all its conflicts, its
    misunderstandings, and its boredom, will be upon us. Before it comes
    let me take advantage of one of the few remaining days of calm to
    write a line to you.

    "It is inevitable, and no doubt right, that you and I should find
    ourselves on different sides; we shall probably differ on a good
    many points, and on some we shall very likely express our
    differences. But I trust that nothing in the rough and tumble of
    public work will interrupt the pleasant relations which have so long
    existed between yourself and me, and the existence of which I have
    so greatly valued.

    "You have been a good and kind friend to me ever since I entered the
    House, and I have always valued both your friendship and your good
    opinion, when you could give it me. I have known well enough that I
    owed much to Lady Dilke's friendship and affection for my wife; but
    I shall never forget how generously that friendship was extended to
    me. I was very deeply sensible of the privilege of receiving the
    confidence and the good-will of a very noble and wonderfully able
    woman.

    "But I must not weary you with too long a letter. All I want to tell
    you is that I cherish the hope that even now that this bond of
    union, this comprehending and reconciling presence, is no longer
    here to keep our tempers wise and sweet, you may still count me
    among your warm friends, and--despite the estrangement of party
    politics--may continue to give me your good-will and may believe in
    the continuance of mine."

The Administration of Mr. Balfour fell in the last days of 1905. Sir
Henry Campbell-Bannerman was entrusted with the formation of a Liberal
Government, and the question was at once eagerly asked, in political
circles, whether Sir Charles Dilke would be a member of it. In February,
1905, he had written to Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice expressing a hope that
he would be outside the next Government, so as to be free to oppose the
deal with Russia which in his opinion Sir E. Grey was contemplating.

The feeling of the Conservative party on the question of his return to
official life is sufficiently shown by the fact that he had previously
been sounded as to his willingness to accept the chairmanship of the
Royal Commission on the Poor Law. That the attitude of the Court towards
him had changed is also clear. Not only was his attendance at Levees
approved, but he and Lady Dilke had received the royal command to the
Queen's Garden Party at Windsor. The attitude of his own party was,
however, the determining factor.

Before the critical time actually arrived, there had been tentative
conversations, and, although Sir Charles did not expect that any
invitation would come to him, Mr. Labouchere thought otherwise, and a
letter from him describes conversations which he had held with Sir Henry
Campbell-Bannerman: "I thought then from his general observations that
you would be War Minister."

In Labouchere's opinion the determining factor was a public
correspondence in which Dr. Talbot, then Bishop of Southwark, took the
lead in protesting against any such appointment. But this was probably a
mistaken view. There is no reason to believe that the Liberal leader had
any wish to include Sir Charles in his Ministry. The Cordite vote was
not forgotten by the members of the Liberal Administration of 1892-1895.
No office was offered to Sir Charles. His answer to the letter written
by Labouchere on January 6th was:

    "I never thought C.-B. could possibly offer me the War Office, and I
    could not have refused it or made conditions for the post, and it
    would have killed me. I did not expect him to offer me any place.
    Had my wife lived, that would have hurt her, and, through her, me.
    As it is, I prefer to be outside--a thing which, though often true,
    no one ever believes of others.

    "But when in office--April, 1880, to June, 1885--I was exceptionally
    powerful, and nearly always got my own way in my department. That
    could never have been repeated--a strong reason why I have all along
    preferred the pleasant front seat in the house to a less commanding
    position on the stage."

When Mr. Haldane's name was announced for the War Office, Mr. Arnold-
Forster sent a message agreeing with Sir Charles's high estimate of the
new War Minister's abilities. "By far the best appointment they could
possibly make--with the one exception." And Mr. T. R. Buchanan,
Financial Secretary to the War Office, wrote in reply to Sir Charles's
congratulations:

    "I have taken the liberty of showing your letter to Haldane, and he
    desires me to thank you for what you say about him, and he values it
    all the more highly because of your generosity. You would certainly
    have been the natural man to be now in his place, and it is a public
    loss that you are not in it."

At the election which followed Sir Charles was re-elected by an enormous
majority for his old constituency, after issuing this, the shortest of
all his habitually short addresses:

    "Gentlemen,--I solicit with confidence the renewal of your trust.

      "Believe me, your devoted servant,
        "Charles W. Dilke."

In the autumn of 1905 he had delivered a series of addresses, mainly to
audiences of Labour men, advocating a general co-operation of Radicals
with the Irish and Labour groups. For Ireland he urged a return to the
"Parnell-Chamberlain scheme of 1885," but applied as a part of Home Rule
all round. His proposal was that the Irish members should in the autumn
sit in Dublin, the Scottish members in Edinburgh, the Welsh in Wales,
and the English at Westminster, and should then transact local affairs,
their decisions being ratified or rejected by the United House when it
met in spring as an Imperial Parliament.

In December, 1905, he wrote to Mr. Deakin:

    "The composition of the new Ministry seems to me, as to everybody
    else, good. The Imperial question will slumber, I think, until the
    Irish question has become again acute. The Ministry ought to be able
    to do very well in 1906; two Sessions up to Christmas. In 1907 I
    expect a row with Redmond, in which I shall be more or less on
    Redmond's side. The Liberal party will not face the fact that they
    cannot avoid dealing with the Irish question without the certainty
    of the Irish moderates, of whom Redmond is the most moderate, being
    forced to say: 'We can no longer keep Ireland quiet for you.' The
    Liberal party will not have coercion, and, that being so, they have
    no alternative except to do what they ought to do. It would be wiser
    to do it before they are compelled; and if they did it before
    compulsion was applied, they would have more chance of carrying the
    country with them."

In a lighter vein he wrote to Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, commenting on the
extraordinary predominance of Scottish members in the Cabinet, on
December 15th, 1905:

    "I had already, before I received your criticism on the Scotch,
    suggested to Hudson (who is with me) the things that Labouchere is
    likely to say about his friends, and had yesterday got as far as his
    turning round and asking us in a loud whisper: 'Who is it who
    represents _England_ in this Government?'

[Footnote: The Cabinet consisted of nineteen persons. Of these, the
Prime Minister (Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman); the Chancellor (Lord
Loreburn); the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Asquith); the Secretary
of State for the Colonies (Lord Elgin); the Secretary of State for India
(Lord Morley); the Secretary of State for War (Mr. Haldane); the First
Lord of the Admiralty (Lord Tweedmouth); the Chief Secretary for Ireland
(Mr. Bryce); the Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Sinclair)--nine in
all--were Scottish Peers or represented Scottish constituencies. It was
also observed that Sir Edward Grey's constituency was the Scottish
Borderland; and it was jestingly said that John Burns was put into the
Cabinet because he had persuaded the Premier that he descended from the
poet!

Mr. Birrell, when the Government was formed, was not in Parliament, but
his last constituency had been Scotch, The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland
was Lord Aberdeen.]

    "We used to think that the value of Randolph was that he gave to
    politics the constant pleasure of the unexpected. Rosebery now does
    this in the Lords, and Charles II.'s truthful saying about the House
    of Commons, 'It is as good as a play,' becomes on account of
    Rosebery temporarily true of the House of Lords. We shall all of us
    be drawn there very often, and even such a House of Commons man as
    your humble servant, grumbling the while, will nevertheless find
    himself attracted to that 'throne.'"

When the new Parliament met in 1906, Labour had for the first time a
really important representation. [Footnote: See Chapter LII., "Labour,"
p. 346.]

Sir Charles noted in his Diary: 'The Labour party was my original scheme
for the I.L.P. as developed in talks at Pyrford, before its formation,
with Champion and with Ben Tillett. To join it or lead it was never my
thought.'

His purpose was rather to be a connecting link between the varying
groups in the development of a legislative programme which he forecast
with shrewd prevision. On January 6th, 1906, he wrote to Labouchere:

    "As I now seem to have the confidence of Balfour, Redmond, and Keir
    Hardie, the position will be difficult; but in the present year
    Redmond and Keir Hardie will, I think, join with me in supporting
    Government. Next year it will be different, unless, as I expect,
    Grey goes for H.R. The small Budget of 1906 will be a
    disappointment, and so, I fear, will be the big one of 1907.

    "The really weak point is that the Government is damned unless it
    fights the Lords in 1907, and that the promise of 'five years in
    power' will prevent the hacks from fighting."

Holding these views, it was natural that he should seek to maintain that
organization of a Radical group which had existed continuously since
Fawcett established, or rather revived, it on first entering the
Parliament of 1865-1868. The Radical Club, of which Sir Charles himself
was the first secretary, grew out of this, and was largely directed by
him till 1880, when he ceased, on taking office, to be a member.
[Footnote: For earlier mention of the Radical Club, see Vol. I., Chapter
VIII., p. 100.] His brother succeeded him in the secretaryship; but with
Ashton Dilke's death the club died also, being replaced by a loose
committee organization which lasted till 1893, and then came to an
untimely end because the party Whips attempted to pack the meeting which
elected this committee. The elected body was then replaced by a
virtually self-chosen group. In 1904 an emergency committee of this
group was appointed; and when the new Parliament met, Sir Charles was
the only member of the committee left. Mr. Harcourt and Captain Norton
had taken office, Mr. Stanhope had gone to the Lords, Mr. Labouchere had
retired. It therefore fell to Sir Charles to reassemble surviving atoms
of this organism, to attract new ones, and to make known its nature and
purpose.

It had always been essential, in his view, that there should be no
"party," no chairman, and no whips; but simply a grouping for the
purpose of stimulating the Government by pressure as to practical and
immediate Parliamentary objects on which advanced men think alike or
harmoniously, and for current arrangements, such as balloting for
motions and generally making the best use of private members' time.

There was at the outset a great influx of members, and three secretaries
were appointed. At all meetings at which he was present Sir Charles took
the chair, and through this centre exercised much influence, committing
the House of Commons to a series of resolutions--abstract indeed, but
none the less important.

The various objects which Radicalism should have before it in 1906 are
sketched in a kind of shorthand summary:

    "Good understanding with Irish Nationalist members, based on at
    least the Parnell-Chamberlain National Council scheme of 1885, and
    with the Labour party for common objects.

    "So far as further political reforms are needed no registration
    reform worth having, but principle of adult suffrage of all grown
    men and women carries simplification and single vote.

    "Payment of members and expenses.

    "Single Chamber, or restriction of power of House of Lords (i.e., no
    'Reform' of = stronger). [Footnote: Sir Charles always maintained
    that "Reform" of the House of Lords would result in strengthening
    its position.]

    "Fiscal reform, capable of being dealt with by Budget or
    administratively, and money to be saved by ... increased revenue
    provided by increased graduation of death duties and by relieving
    the Imperial Exchequer of the local grants, substituting taxation of
    land values by the local authorities for the latter.

    "This last point is closely connected with full power to local
    authorities to acquire land for all purposes, and this with
    municipal trading and other forms of municipal Socialism. The heads
    of the Labour policy are now so universally embraced as not to be
    specially Radical; Taff Vale, for example, being supported by all
    Liberals and some Tories, and the Miners' Eight Hours receiving the
    support of nearly all Liberals and of some Tories."

On the question of electoral reform, and specially of woman's suffrage,
all his action was guided by one conclusion thus expressed, and embodied
in the Franchise Bill introduced by him each Session:

    "The limited franchise, if it is ever carried, will be carried as a
    party Conservative measure intended to aid Conservative opinions and
    to rest the franchise upon an unassailable limited base, and it will
    be carried in that case against the counter-proposal of the suffrage
    of all grown men and women, made by those representing the advanced
    thought of the country." [Footnote: Memorandum by Sir Charles Dilke
    on "Suffrage of All Grown Men and Women," issued by the People's
    Suffrage Federation.]

It is unnecessary to emphasize the completeness with which political
evolution has followed the lines here marked out by him. Others reaped
the harvest. But no man then living had done more to sow the seed.

The Parliament in which he found himself was one of singular interest.
He wrote:

    "The old form of party divisions is, in the great majority of
    constituencies, not yet much affected by recent events. In the House
    of Commons it is almost dead for the present year....

    "The future cannot be foreseen, and in politics it is always foolish
    to attempt to prophesy. I have frequently myself made or quoted the
    remark that in politics a year is equivalent to eternity. I have now
    limited myself to 1906. Whether the party system, in which British
    statesmen of our time and of past generations have been nurtured,
    will ever be restored is another matter. Whether the birth of a
    definite Labour party, in addition to a definite Irish Nationalist
    party, will be followed by any further division, or whether, as I
    expect, it will not, yet the division into four parties--of which
    three will compete actively for the favour of the British
    electorate--will, I think, continue, and we follow here the line of
    political development in which first the Australian Colonies, and
    now the Commonwealth, have led the way." [Footnote: _Potentia_,
    1906.]

Writing in the _Financial Review of Reviews_ for April, 1906, he spoke
of the "extraordinarily interesting nature of the debates," of which
example had already been given, and he foreshadowed no less interesting
action. The changes which he had in view, mainly financial, were "not
likely to be popular in the City, with solicitors, with the organized
representatives of the employing class," but none the less they would
probably be carried into law. The old assumption that democratic
movements would be carried into legislation "by capitalist members
steeped in Radical pledges" had ceased to correspond with the facts. A
new type of member of Parliament had appeared, and Sir Charles welcomed
the change.

    "It is possible that the members are more Radical than the
    constituencies. This is an arguable question; but that they are
    convinced upon such questions, not by pressure, but by training and
    by thought, is a conclusion which no one who knows the present House
    of Commons can resist.

    "There has probably never sat so interesting a House of Commons in
    the history of this country. With a good deal of experience of
    Parliaments and of their inner life and thought, and with the
    opportunity of frequent discussion with those who, like Mr.
    Gladstone, remembered all the Parliaments back to the early
    thirties, and those, like Mr. Vernon Harcourt, [Footnote: George
    Granville Vernon Harcourt, elected to the House of Commons as member
    for Oxford in 1831. He held his seat till 1859.] who remembered much
    earlier Parliaments, I am certain that there has never met at
    Westminster an assembly so able and at the same time so widely
    different in intellectual composition from its predecessors as that
    which is now there gathered. The development of opinion, however, is
    less of a surprise to those who have watched Australia and New
    Zealand than to those who have confined their studies to the United
    Kingdom and the Continent." [Footnote: In 1911, when Lord Hugh Cecil
    described with violent rhetoric the alleged degradation of the House
    of Commons, Mr. Balfour was moved to protest, and cited in support
    of his own view "a man whose authority had always been admitted." "I
    remember," he said, "talking over with Sir Charles Dilke the
    question of general Parliamentary practice, and he said, and I
    agree, that there has been no deterioration either in his or in my
    Parliamentary experience."]

Payment of members he did not live to see, but he always regarded it as
"an extraordinary anomaly that payment should have been discontinued in
this country."

    "Members are paid in every other country in the world, and in every
    British colony (I believe without exception). Non-payment means
    deliberate preference for moneyed oligarchy, as only rare exceptions
    can produce a democratic member under such a system. It excludes all
    poor men of genius unless they can get themselves paid by parties
    like the Irish, which makes them slaves. It throws undue power into
    the hands of the capital as the seat of the legislature, and it
    leads to poor members selling their souls to rotten compromises."

Despite the advance of age and a growing weakness of the heart, the
impression which he produced was always one of commanding vigour. His
habit of fencing kept him alert and supple in all his movements.
Notwithstanding his elaborate preparation for the work, no man's
appearances in debate were less premeditated; he spoke when he felt
inclined: had he spoken for effect, his interpositions would have been
much less frequent. But when tactics required it, no man was more
willing to efface himself. Especially was this so in all his relations
with Labour; when he could leave to the Labour party the credit of
moving an important amendment, he gladly left it to them. Yet when he
was more likely than they to secure Liberal support, he was prepared to
move against the Government, and in one notable amendment on the Trade
Disputes Bill brought down their vast majority to the bare figure of
five. [Footnote: For a fuller account of Sir Charles's work connected
with the Taff Vale Decision and the Trade Disputes Act, see "Labour,"
Chapter LII, pp. 345 and 365.]

The work which in these last years cost him most labour--in view of his
failing health, it would have been well for his friends had he never
undertaken it--was that given to the Committee on the Income Tax, of
which he became chairman in 1906. Sir Bernard Mallet (now Registrar-
General) writes in 1916:

    "In the spring of 1906 the Government decided to appoint a strong
    Committee to inquire into the questions of graduation and
    differentiation of the income tax, which had for some Sessions been
    coming into prominence in consequence of the financial difficulties
    caused by the South African War. Mr. Asquith, then Chancellor of the
    Exchequer, offered the chairmanship to Sir Charles Dilke, who had
    never claimed to be an expert in finance, and only accepted it after
    strong pressure, and the Select Committee set to work accordingly
    early in May. Having taken up the work, which occupied most of the
    summer, Sir Charles threw himself into it with immense energy. He
    familiarized himself with all the literature bearing on the
    question, and he made a point of calling, as witnesses, not only the
    usual officials, but also as many outside economists and
    statisticians as might be able to throw light upon questions which,
    as he rightly conceived, lay at the root of any proper consideration
    of the problem before the Committee. He attached special importance
    to all the evidence bearing upon foreign and colonial methods and
    principles in the taxation of income and property, and to the
    endeavour he made to get at statistics bearing on the distribution
    of income--two vitally important factors introduced by him, for the
    first time, into any official handling of the subject.

    "But the result of all the knowledge, thoroughness, and enthusiasm,
    which, as his friends could testify, he lavished without stint (and,
    it is to be feared, to the serious detriment of his health) upon the
    work, must have somewhat disappointed him. Sir Charles's attempts to
    deal with the matter in a comprehensive spirit and produce a report
    which would rival in interest the famous reports of two previous
    Select Committees on the subject, those of 1851 and 1861, were
    hampered by the necessity, under which the Committee lay, of
    devising a means to increase the yield of the income tax with the
    least political friction. The two expedients which came most
    prominently before the Committee were those of differentiating the
    rate of the income tax in favour of earned or precarious incomes,
    and of imposing a supertax upon the larger incomes. Both of these
    were included in the recommendations of the report which was
    ultimately adopted, [Footnote: Report of the Select Committee on
    Income Tax, II. of C. 365 of 1906.] and carried into effect in the
    Budgets of 1907 and 1909 respectively. [Footnote: See _British
    Budgets_, by Bernard Mallet (1913), pp. 262, 263, 274, 277-281, and
    305, where also some comments on the recommendations of the
    Committee are to be found.] Sir Charles's own view was opposed to
    both these methods. He would have preferred to differentiation, even
    in the limited form (up to £2,000 a year) in which it became law,
    the method of separate taxation of property, or income from
    property, as in Prussia and Holland, if death duties were not
    considered as sufficient taxation upon property.

    "He was certainly impressed by the unscientific character of the
    proposed differentiation; by the difficulty of distinguishing
    between 'earned' and 'unearned' incomes, and by the possibilities of
    abuse which this method of dealing with the question offered.
    Supertax he would have reserved for a national emergency, but it
    should not be supposed that his opposition to it implied opposition
    to graduation either in principle or in practice. He was, indeed,
    strongly in favour of a graduated income tax, but, in his judgment,
    a supertax was a somewhat clumsy way of effecting the purpose aimed
    at. In his opinion the universal declaration of all taxable incomes
    was an indispensable preliminary to the full and just graduation of
    the income tax, and written notes of his are in existence showing
    how much importance he attached to this point.

    "Holding these views, he could not produce a report sufficiently
    decisive in its acceptance of the methods favoured by the majority
    of his colleagues.

    "The stupendous increases which have taken place in the rates of the
    income tax owing to the present war, increases far surpassing
    anything contemplated by the Committee over which Sir Charles
    presided ten years ago, have thrown all such controversies as these
    into the shade; but apart from the practical results of its
    recommendations, which for good or ill left at the time a very
    decided mark on fiscal legislation, this investigation succeeded,
    owing mainly to his influence, in eliciting a quantity of evidence
    which will always make it of historical interest to students of
    taxation."




CHAPTER LVIII

FOREIGN AFFAIRS: 1890 TO 1910


Even before his return, in July, 1892, to Parliament, Sir Charles Dilke
was still a powerful critic of the country's foreign policy. It is a
curious commentary on the wisdom of those who believe that, except at
moments of special excitement or of public danger, it is impossible to
interest the electorate in foreign affairs, that during this period he
was constantly able to gather large public audiences in the North of
England and in Wales, and induce them to listen to careful criticisms on
questions such as the delimitation of the African continent, the
Newfoundland fisheries, British policy in the Pacific, and the future of
the Congo State. This was achieved, although no party appeal could be
made or was attempted, and although there was a deliberate effort by an
influential section of the London Press to boycott the speaker. In these
speeches Sir Charles pointed out that a perhaps too general acquiescence
existed on the part of most Liberals in the foreign policy of the
Government, merely because Lord Salisbury had made no attempt to
continue or to revive the pro-Turkish and warlike policy which had
distinguished the Government of Lord Beaconsfield in 1878. Lord
Salisbury was now mainly intent on settling outstanding questions with
France and Germany, especially in Africa, dealing with them one by one.
The ordinary Conservative partisan still said in public that nothing
could be worse than the foreign policy and practice of the Liberal
party; but he was also saying in private that the policy of his own
party was little better, that the army both at home and in India was
neglected, and that the fleet was probably insufficient. Dread, however,
of Mr. Gladstone and of the possible return of the Liberal party to
power, made him with rare exceptions silent in Parliament; while, on the
other hand, the mass of the Liberal party had become supporters of Lord
Salisbury's foreign and colonial policy. "The fact that Lord Salisbury
had not been an active Turk or an active Jingo had proved enough to
cover everything." [Footnote: "The Conservative Foreign Policy,"
_Fortnightly Review_, January, 1892, by Sir Charles Dilke.] But the
absence of any well-sustained criticism in Parliament had evident
disadvantages, and Sir Charles's speeches at this time supplied the
deficiency.

The political fortunes of France between 1887 and 1895 were at a low
ebb. The financial scandals which led to the resignation of President
Grevy in 1887, the serio-comic political career of General Boulanger,
dangerous and constant labour disturbances in the great centres of
industry, the Panama financial scandals of 1893, the assassination of
President Carnot in 1894, and the impossibility of forming stable
Ministries, caused a general lack of confidence in the future of the
Republic both at home and abroad, which the facile glories of the Paris
Exhibition of 1889 could not conceal. The foreign policy of the country
seemed to consist in a system of "pin-pricks" directed against Great
Britain, and in hostility to Italy, which culminated in anti-Italian
riots in the South of France, a tariff war, and the entry of Italy into
the alliance of the Central Powers. The letters of Sir Charles during
this period are full of expressions of despair at the condition of
French politics and at the general lack of statesmanship. The suspicion
which he entertained of Russian intentions caused him also to look
askance at the newly formed friendship of France with Russia, which,
commencing with the visit of a French naval squadron under Admiral
Gervais to Cronstadt in August, 1891, was finally sealed by a treaty of
alliance signed in March, 1895, though the precise terms were not known.
[Footnote: In a letter to M. Joseph Reinach written after the appearance
of _The Present Position of European Politics_, Sir Charles says: "I did
_not_ say Gambetta had been a great friend to the Poles. I said he hated
the Russians. He told me so over and over again. He held the same view
as Napoleon I. as to Russia, and said, 'J'irais chercher mes alliances
n'importe oui--meme a Berlin,' and, 'La Russie me tire le pan de
l'habit, mais jamais je n'ecouterais ce qu'on me fait dire.' But, in
searching for my own reasons for this in the first article, I said that
as a law student he had been brought up with a generation which had had
Polish sympathies, and that perhaps this had caused (unconsciously, I
meant) his anti-Russian views. I know he did not believe in setting up a
Poland."]

In Germany the position was different. The Dual Alliance devised by
Prince Bismarck between Germany and Austria-Hungary had become the
Triple Alliance by the accession of Italy, and had been further
strengthened by an assurance of naval support given to Italy by Lord
Salisbury in the event of the _status quo_ in the Mediterranean being
disturbed. The presumable disturber aimed at was evidently France.
[Footnote: "In 1903 Lord Lansdowne explained that in February, 1887,
there had been that exchange of notes between Italy and ourselves of
which I had written in that year. In _The Present Position of European
Politics_ I made allusion to Disraeli's proposal, before his defeat in
1880, of a league of the Powers for the defence of the _status quo_ in
the Mediterranean. The notes of February, 1887, nominally dealt only
with the Mediterranean _status quo_ desired in common, it was said, by
Italy and Great Britain. Cynics might be tempted to ask whether all
Italian Ministers desired the maintenance of a _status quo_ in a
'Mediterranean' which included the coast of Tunis, the coast of Tripoli,
and even, Lord Lansdowne added, the Adriatic." (Sir Charles Dilke in the
_English Review_, October, 1909: "On the Relations of the Powers.") On
this subject see _Crispi Memoirs_, vol. ii., chap. v.] The meddlesome
intrigues of Russian partisans, and a long series of political outrages
culminating in the murder of M. Stambouloff, were gradually forming an
Austro-German party in Bulgaria; while the wise and progressive
administration of Bosnia and the Herzegovina by Herr von Kallay had
encouraged a belief that some good thing might even yet come out of
Austria, notwithstanding the famous expression of a belief to the
contrary by Mr. Gladstone.

In the circumstances Lord Salisbury determined to base his policy on a
good understanding with Germany, and he had his reward. The African
settlement of 1890 was a comprehensive scheme which undoubtedly made
great concessions to German wishes, but, taken in connection with
subsequent enlargements and additions, it was hoped that it had at least
removed any real danger of collision between the two Powers principally
concerned. A treaty with France, recognizing a French protectorate over
Madagascar, was defended by its authors as the complement of the
arrangements of 1890, as to Zanzibar, with Germany. Subsequent treaties
with Portugal and Italy made the period decisive as to the future
division of the African continent. Both in Great Britain and Germany the
arrangements of 1890 were attacked as having yielded too much to the
other side. But looking at the treaty from an English point of view, Sir
Charles said there had been too many graceful "concessions" all round,
and of these he made himself the critic. He did not, however, identify
himself with the extreme school of so-called "Imperial" thought, which
seemed to consider that in some unexplained manner Great Britain had
acquired a prior lien on the whole unoccupied portion of the vast
African continent.

But in the treaty of 1890 there was one clause--the last--which stood
out by itself in conspicuous isolation, and this Sir Charles never
ceased to attack and denounce. It decreed the transfer of Heligoland to
Germany. The importance of the acquisition was not fully appreciated at
the time even in Germany. What the surrender might some day mean was not
understood in Great Britain. On both sides the tendency was to belittle
the transaction. [Footnote: Reventlow, 38-51. _Hohenlohe Memoirs_, ii.
470-471.] Apart from some minor interests possessed by British
fishermen, Lord Salisbury described the value of the island as mainly
"sentimental," in the speech in which on July 10th he defended the
transaction in the House of Lords.

He supported the proposal by arguing that the island was unfortified,
that it was within a few hours' steam of the greatest arsenal of
Germany, that if the island remained in our possession an expedition
would be despatched to capture it on "the day of the declaration of war,
and would arrive considerably before any relieving force could arrive
from our side." "It would expose us to a blow which would be a
considerable humiliation." "If we were at war with any other Power it
would be necessary for us to lock up a naval force for the purpose of
defending this island, unless we intended to expose ourselves to the
humiliation of having it taken." This argument, Sir Charles Dilke showed
by a powerful criticism of the whole treaty in the columns of the
_Melbourne Argus_, went a great deal too far. It could be used for the
purpose of defending the cession of the Channel Islands to France. "The
Channel Islands lie close to a French stronghold, Cherbourg, and not
very far from the greatest of French arsenals, at Brest. They are
fortified and garrisoned, but they are feebly garrisoned, and they have
not been refortified in recent times, and could not be held without
naval assistance, and the argument about locking up our fleet applies in
the case of the Channel Islands, and in the case of many other of our
stations abroad, as it was said to apply in the case of Heligoland."
[Footnote: _Melbourne Argus_, September 10th, 1890. As to Heligoland,
see _Life of Granville_, ii, 362, 363, 425; Holland Rose, _Origins of
the War_, p. 18.]

Lord Salisbury went on to point out that we had obtained a consideration
for the transfer of Heligoland to Germany "on the east coast of Africa,"
a consideration which consisted mainly in an undertaking from Germany
that she would not oppose our assumption of the protectorate of
Zanzibar. But, said Sir Charles, the protectorate, when it included not
only the island of Zanzibar, but the strip of coast now forming the
maritime fringe both of British and of German East Africa, had been over
and over again refused by us. "I was one of those," Sir Charles
continued, referring to a still earlier chapter of Lord Salisbury's
policy during the short-lived Government of 1885-86, "who thought that
the policy of 1885 with regard to Zanzibar was a mistaken policy, and
that we should have insisted on supporting our East Indian subjects, who
had and have the trade on that coast and island in their hands. We had
joined with France in arrangements with regard to the whole Zanzibar
coast, and when we concluded an agreement with Germany about that coast
it became necessary for us to force that agreement upon the French on
behalf of Germany. A most mistaken policy, in my opinion, as we should
otherwise have had the support of France in resisting a German
occupation of any portion of the coast, an occupation which it is safe
to say would not have been attempted in face of a distinct statement on
our part."

Lord Salisbury expressed his inability to understand on what ground
those interested in South Africa objected to our recognizing an
imaginary German right over a strip of territory giving the Germans
access to the upper waters of the Zambesi. He said that our chief
difficulty about this territory was that we knew nothing about it; but
this consideration, Sir Charles said, "told against the agreement,
inasmuch as we had given up a territory which seemed naturally to go
with those which have been assigned to the South Africa Company, and
which might, for anything we knew to the contrary, be of high value in
the future." It was amazing to note how obediently the great majority of
the Conservative party followed Lord Salisbury's lead in accepting the
cession of Heligoland for no consideration at all, as Sir Charles
thought--in any case, for a consideration which must seem inadequate.
Contrast, he said, the grounds upon which the cession of Heligoland was
defended with those, welcomed by shouts of triumph from the
Conservatives, upon which the occupation of Cyprus was justified. It was
inconceivable that any man possessed of reasoning powers could support
holding Cyprus (which must be a weakness in time of war), and yet argue
that Heligoland must be a weakness of a similar kind, and therefore had
better be ceded. In the case of Heligoland the vast majority of the
islanders were opposed to union with Germany. In the case of Cyprus the
vast majority of the islanders were hostile to our rule, while the
majority of Heligolanders were favourable to our rule. To cede it
against the wish of the population was a step which should not be taken,
except for overwhelming national advantage, and that advantage most
certainly could not be shown.

"I am one of those," Dilke wrote, summarizing the argument of his
speeches, "who are sometimes thought by my own party to be somewhat
unduly friendly to the foreign policy of our opponents, a fact which I
mention only to show that I do not come to the present matter with
strong prejudice. I had heard during the negotiations in Berlin, and
some weeks before the publication of the agreement, the whole of its
contents with the exception of the cession of Heligoland, and I had
formed a strong opinion upon the facts then known to me--that it was a
thoroughly bad agreement, most unfavourable to British interests. The
only change since that time has been that Heligoland has been thrown in,
so that to my mind we are ceding that British possession, for which a
very high value might have been obtained, against the wish of the
inhabitants, and ceding it for less than no consideration. Lord
Salisbury seems to be subject to strange dimness of vision when Africa
is concerned. He positively claimed it as a merit, in the course of his
speech to the South African deputation, that while the Germans demanded
an enormous slice of our Bechuanaland sphere of influence, he had
induced them to put back their frontier; but I need hardly point out
that no German traveller had ever entered the country in dispute, that
we had for years acted on the assumption that it was within our sphere,
and that the Germans might as reasonably have set up a claim to the
whole sphere of influence and to all the territories previously assigned
by us to the British South Africa Company...."

In South-East Africa, too, it was to be remembered that we were dealing
with a country which is far less populated by natives and more open to
European settlement than was the case with Central Africa. [Footnote:
See supra, p. 84, as to the differences which had arisen in Mr.
Gladstone's Cabinet on this subject in 1884-85.]

"There has been in the whole matter," he declared, "a deplorable absence
of decision. If, when Lord Salisbury came into power in 1885,
immediately after the occupation by Germany of a slice of South Africa
and of the Cameroons, and at the moment of German activity at Zanzibar,
he had let it be clearly understood that we should support the policy of
Sir John Kirk, our Consul, and the Zanzibar Sultan's rule, and had at
the same time abstained from taking steps to facilitate the operations
of the Germans in Damaraland, we certainly should have occupied at the
present moment a stronger position than we do. But, instead of this,
Lord Salisbury allowed our Indian subjects established along the coast
to be ruined by German bombardments to which the British fleet was sent
to give some sort of moral support. Our explorers have carried the
British flag throughout what is now German East Africa and the Congo
State. They had made treaties by which the leading native sovereigns of
these countries had submitted to our rule, and the Germans are too
anxious for our countenance in Europe to have been willing to have
risked the loss of Lord Salisbury's friendship had he taken a very
different line." [Footnote: _Melbourne Argus_, September 6th, 1890.]

Though not professing to be himself an "African," Sir Charles also asked
how those who professed to come within that description, and speak as
advocates of an Imperial policy in the vast and undeveloped regions of
the Dark Continent, could quietly accept, as they seemed prepared to do,
the break in the so-called Cape to Cairo route which had been allowed to
form part of the great agreement of 1890.

"What, then," he asked in 1902, "have the Tories done with the free hand
that has been given them? Above all, they have 'made up to' Germany, and
this apparently for no definite object and with no definite result. They
have given to Germany as far as they could give; they have certainly
helped her to procure the renewal of the Triple Alliance, by inducing
sanguine Italians to believe that the British fleet will protect them
against France, though as a fact we all know that the House of Commons
will not allow a British fleet to do anything of the kind. France has
wholly given up the Temporal Power, and would not have threatened Italy
had Italy held aloof from the Triple Alliance; and, in spite of a recent
speech by the Minister of Austria-Hungary which was intended to 'pay
out' Italy for her talks with Russia, it is not Austria that would have
raised the question. Our Government have given Germany, so far as they
could give, a vast tract in Africa in which British subjects had traded,
but in most of which no German had ever been. They have also given
Germany Heligoland, which they might have sold dear, and which, if Mr.
Gladstone had given, they would have destroyed him for giving.... All
this for what? What have we gained by it?" [Footnote: _Fortnightly
Review_, January, 1902.]

The policy of Lord Rosebery and Lord Kimberley from 1892 to 1895
resembled that of Lord Salisbury in so far as it aimed at the settlement
of outstanding questions with Germany and France. The apprehensions of
trouble with France were still serious, because a constant succession of
short Ministries at Paris made any permanent agreement difficult if not
impossible. The few Foreign Ministers who were occasionally able to keep
their place for any length of time at the Quai d'Orsay were also
generally those who as a rule were indifferent, if not actually hostile,
to friendship with this country, such as the Duc Decazes in the early
days of the Republic, and M. Hanotaux at a later period, who, however,
was quite ready to invite Great Britain to join in reckless adventures.
[Footnote: Sir Charles notes in November, 1896, that Mr. Morley reported
that 'Hanotaux had told him that he could not understand why England had
refused to join in a France, Russia, and England partition of China.
"China is a dead man in the house who stinks."'] Towards France Lord
Rosebery's Government twice took up a firm stand: first in regard to her
aggressive action in Siam; and secondly by the clear warning, given
through Sir Edward Grey in the House of Commons, that if the expedition
of Major Marchand, which was known to be crossing Africa from west to
east, reached the Nile Valley, as it eventually did at Fashoda, British
interests would be held to be affected. The gravity of this warning was
at the moment very inadequately comprehended by the House and by the
country, notwithstanding the repeated attempts of Sir Charles to
reinforce it before rather unconvinced audiences.

A firm attitude towards France was greatly facilitated through the
friendly position adopted towards Great Britain by Count Caprivi (the
successor in 1890 of Prince Bismarck in the Chancellorship of the German
Empire) and his Minister of Foreign Affairs, Baron Marschall. This
period indicates the high-water mark of friendly relations between
Germany and Great Britain; and though Count Caprivi retired in 1894,
when he was succeeded by Prince Hohenlohe, who had special ties with
Russia, these friendly relations may be said to have been prolonged, so
far as the official relations of the two Governments were concerned,
though with ever-diminishing vitality, up to the retirement of Baron
Marschall from the Foreign Office in 1897. [Footnote: See the
observations of Reventlow, 115-118, and Büllow, _Imperial Germany_, 31,
34.] In this period German commercial policy took a strong turn towards
freer trade, to the great wrath of the feudal and military parties in
Prussia, who were the centre of the forces hostile to a good
understanding with Great Britain. The secret treaty also which Bismarck
had negotiated with Russia, behind the back of his allies, was allowed
to lapse, and a more conciliatory attitude was adopted towards the
Poles, which gratified Liberal opinion, especially in this country. But
even in the time of Baron Marschall there were evidences of the
existence in Germany of currents of opinion of a less friendly
character, which were able from time to time to assert themselves in
African affairs. As Sir Charles Dilke pointed out, Germany had joined
with France in 1894 in objecting to, and thereby nullifying, the Congo
Treaty of that year with Belgium; and some of the territories which had
been handed over to Germany in the neighbourhood of the Cameroons in
1893, with the express object, apparently, of barring a French advance
in that region, had been handed over by Germany to France by another
treaty in 1895. [Footnote: Reventlow, pp. 52, 53, admits this. For the
treaties themselves, see Hertslet, _The Map of Africa by Treaty_, ii.
658, in. 999, 1008.]

Throughout the period from 1892 to 1895 a Liberal Ministry was in
office, but hardly in power. For the next ten years a strong Tory
Administration possessing unfettered freedom of action was in real
power, with an Opposition weakened by internal dissension. It was not
unnatural that, under such discouraging conditions as to home affairs,
Sir Charles should have again devoted most of his time to foreign
questions and army reform.

"I recognize," Mr. Balfour wrote to him, in regard to some arrangements
as to the business of the House, "that no man in the House speaks with
greater authority or knowledge on foreign affairs than yourself, and
that no man has a better right to ask for opportunities for criticizing
the course in respect of foreign affairs adopted by this or any other
Government." [Footnote: March 31st, 1897.]

This recognition was general, so much so that what he spoke or wrote on
foreign affairs was constantly translated, reproduced verbatim and
commented upon in foreign newspapers--a distinction enjoyed as a rule
only by official speakers, and not always by them; while original
contributions from his pen were eagerly sought for not only at home, but
abroad, especially in France and in the colonies, "Il a pesé constamment
sur l'opinion française," the _Figaro_ wrote at the time of his death;
and his known friendship for France and everything French made plain-
speaking at times possible without exciting resentment. Even those--and
there were many in England--who disagreed with his criticisms of the
details of Lord Salisbury's policy, felt the comprehensive grasp of his
facts, and the vast store of knowledge on which he drew; and the members
of his own party, many of whom did not altogether go with him, or
sometimes, perhaps, quite grasp his standpoint, nevertheless enjoyed,
especially while their own oracles were dumb, the sound of the heavy
guns which, after his return to Parliament, from time to time poured
political shot and shell into the ranks of the self-complacent
representatives of the party opposite. In those ranks, too, there were
men who at heart agreed very largely with the speaker, while compelled
by party discipline to maintain silence. On the other hand, there nearly
always came a moment when Conservative approval passed into the
opposite, for Sir Charles had no sympathy with the vast if rather
confused ideas of general annexation which prevailed in Conservative
circles: the policy of mere earth-hunger which Mr. Gladstone had
denounced in 1893.

[Footnote: See above, p. 256.]

When Lord Salisbury returned to the Foreign Office in 1895, the policy
of "graceful concessions" to France seemed to Sir Charles to have begun
again--concessions in Tunis, concessions in Siam, concessions all
round--and he returned to the attack. Tunis, he again pointed out, dated
back to 1878, when M. Waddington received, in his own words as given in
his own statement, a spontaneous offer of that country in the words
"Take Tunis. England will offer no opposition." But at least certain
commercial rights and privileges were then reserved. Now they were gone.
Even the nominal independence of Madagascar had finally disappeared.

Sir Charles also drew attention to the one subject of foreign affairs
upon which, during the last Parliament, Mr. Curzon never tired of
attacking, first Mr. Gladstone's and then Lord Rosebery's Government:
this was the advance of the French in Siam. Lord Rosebery had gone to
the verge of war with France in checking the French proceedings, and
when he left office France was under a promise to evacuate Chantaboon
and the provinces of Batambong and Siamrep, and to set up a buffer State
on the Mekong. We were then in military occupation of British Trans-
Mekong Keng-Cheng. Lord Salisbury came to an arrangement which left
France in Chantaboon and these provinces, thus giving away, against our
interests, what was not ours to give--as he had done in Tunis--and he
evacuated and left to France British Trans-Mekong Keng-Cheng, in which a
50 per cent, _ad valorem_ duty had just been put on British goods (from
Burmah), a duty from which French goods were free. Not only did Lord
Salisbury himself make this arrangement, but he had to submit when
France, in alliance with Russia, forced the Government of China to yield
territory to France, in direct derogation of China's treaty engagements.
Lord Salisbury had since made what was known as the Kiang-Hung
Convention with China; and it commenced by setting forth the cession by
China to France of territory which had been ceded to China on the
express condition that it should not be so ceded to France. This action
on the part of China was brought about by the violent pressure of France
and Russia at Pekin, which Lord Salisbury passed over. "The defence of
his Siam arrangements in the House of Commons consisted in Mr. Curzon,
who had become the representative of the Foreign Office, informing the
House that the provinces (which he had formerly declared most valuable)
were unimportant to British trade, and in pacifying assurances that the
Upper Mekong was not navigable, although a French steamer was actually
working on it where Mr. Curzon said no ship could go." [Footnote: Letter
to the _Liverpool Daily Post_, December 2nd and 5th, 1898.]

In the days of these petty collisions in West Africa and all the world
over--the "policy of pin-pricks" to which at this time Mr. Chamberlain
made fierce allusion in a public speech--Sir Charles arranged to publish
a dialogue between himself and M. Lavisse of the French Academy
discussing the international situation. "I shall be answering the
_Temps_ article which replies to you," he wrote to Chamberlain on
December 26th, 1898. "Lavisse, being of the Academy, wants a month to
polish his style. The dialogue will not appear till February 1st or
15th. There will be nothing in it new to you. What is new and important
is that the French, impressed by the fleet, and pressed by their men of
business, such as Henri Germain, the Director of the Credit Lyonnais,
and Pallain, now Governor of the Bank of France, want to be friends.
I've told these two and others that it is useless to try and settle
things unless they will settle Newfoundland. These two came back after
seeing Ministers, including the Foreign Minister and the Minister for
War, Freycinet, and independently said that they want to settle
Newfoundland. They've quite made up their minds that Germany does not
want them and will not buy their friendship. I have not seen Monson (the
British Ambassador) since my second interview with them, but I told
Austin Lee last night to tell him the terms on which I thought that
Newfoundland could be settled if you want to settle it. I do not put
them on paper as I am sending this by post."

The Newfoundland dispute as to rights of fishing under the Treaties of
Utrecht and Paris was one to which Dilke always attached special
importance, and immediately after this letter to Chamberlain he wrote
upon it in the _Pall Mall Magazine_ (February, 1899), describing it as
"the most dangerous of all international questions, as it is also one of
the most difficult." [Footnote: This dispute was mainly concerned with
the question whether the French fishermen possessed an "exclusive" or
only a concurrent right in the so-called French shore, under the above-
mentioned treaties (see Fitzmaurice, _Life of Shelburne_, 2nd ed., ii.
218). It was finally settled in the Lansdowne-Delcassé agreement of
1904, with other then pending questions. Sir Charles Dilke gave a useful
summary of the history of the question and its numerous developments
after 1783, in a small volume entitled _The British Empire_, published
in 1899.] Great Britain appeared to him to "have gone infinitely beyond
the strict terms of the treaty in the concessions to France made for the
sake of peace," and to have made proposals which "would not be tolerated
for an instant if any of the other ten self-governing colonies were in
question," and were only considered because of the "poverty and
feebleness of Newfoundland." Lord Salisbury was, in his eyes, no worse a
sinner in this respect than the Liberal Government of 1893, except that
Lord Salisbury had also made concessions in giving up the existing
situation secured by treaty in Madagascar, in Tunis, and in Siam,
against which there might have been set off a settlement of this "really
dangerous question." He said that in Newfoundland the British navy was
being used to coerce British colonists into submission to the French
demands; and he foresaw peril to the colonial relation, as well as peril
in the international field.

Whether it was possible during the period now under consideration to
make an alliance, or even to establish friendly relations with Germany
on a solid and permanent basis, is a question which will never fail to
be the subject of discussion and controversy: for on it hinged the
future of Europe. With an unfriendly France and a German Chancellor--
Prince Hohenlohe--aiming, and for a time with some partial success, at
re-establishing friendly relations with Russia, the advantages of a good
understanding between Great Britain and Germany were obvious; for hardly
had the difficulties on the North-West frontiers of India been for the
time quieted by the "Pamir" Treaty of 1895, [Footnote: This Treaty was
made while Lord Kimberley was Foreign Secretary.] when the war between
Japan and China opened up the long series of events in the Far East
which culminated later on in the Russo-Japanese War. In those events all
or nearly all the European Great Powers were taking a hand; Germany was
aspiring to take a leading part, and had to a certain extent obtained it
by the command-in-chief of the Allied Forces being given to Count
Waldersee, and by the expedition to relieve the Legations in Pekin. But
the Jameson Raid and the congratulatory telegram of the Emperor to
President Kruger in January, 1896, showed that Germany might intend also
to have a South African policy, which in the hands of a less skilful or
a less friendly Foreign Secretary than Baron Marschall might open,
notwithstanding all the previous treaties, a new chapter of diplomacy.
Meanwhile Baron Marschall, with the hand of a skilful jurist, softened
down the meaning of the famous telegram, by a close and minimizing
interpretation of the words, and, as a practised diplomatist, went out
of his way to meet the wishes of Lord Salisbury, who had proposed that
the cost of the recent British Expedition to Dongola should be a charge
on the funds of the Egyptian Caisse.

But Baron Marschall's tenure of his post was becoming precarious, and
Sir Charles did not believe in the possibility of any alliance or
permanent understanding with Germany. He feared, on the contrary, that
one result of the policy of concession might be ultimately to tempt
France, Germany, and Russia, to form a practical and informal union
against Great Britain, similar to that which had proved so great a cause
of anxiety in 1884-85. This, though not a formal alliance, had been
almost as dangerous as one more specific and avowed, and it was now, he
thought, likely to be found to exist with reference to events in China.

After the defeat of China by Japan in 1895, every year brought some new
and dangerous development, and the break-up of the Chinese Empire seemed
near. Any understanding on the part of Great Britain with Russia, in
regard to China, Sir Charles believed to be unreliable, and probably
impossible, and Lord Salisbury's policy, which seemed to have gone out
of its way to let Russia into Port Arthur, showed in his opinion
deplorable weakness.

Mr. Chamberlain in a speech in the winter of 1898--which was followed by
others in the same strain--had seemed almost to propose an alliance with
Germany. Following him at Birmingham, Sir Charles pointed out that the
Secretary of State for the Colonies had said: "If the policy of
isolation which has hitherto been the policy of this country is to be
maintained in the future, then the fate of the Chinese Empire may
be--probably will be--hereafter decided without reference to our wishes
and in defiance of our interests;" and went on to say: "If, on the other
hand, we are determined to enforce the policy of the open door, to
preserve an equal opportunity for trade with all our rivals, then we
must not allow jingoes to drive us into a quarrel with all the world at
the same time, and we must not reject the idea of an alliance with those
Powers whose interests most closely approximate to our own." No doubt,
Sir Charles replied, the Government were pledged to pursue the policy of
"equal opportunity for trade," but they had not successfully maintained
that policy in action. What were the Powers, he asked, which Mr.
Chamberlain had in view when he went on to say: "Unless we are allied to
some great military Power, as we were in the Crimean War, when we had
France and Turkey as our allies, we cannot seriously injure Russia"? Mr.
Chamberlain must have referred to an alliance with Germany. Personally,
Dilke said that he "was entirely opposed to a policy of standing and
permanent alliances; but was there any prospect that Germany would ever
agree to bear in Europe the brunt of defending for us--for that was what
it would come to--the most dangerous of our responsibilities? Prince
Bismarck's policy on the subject had been avowed over and over again; he
had foreseen these suggestions, and had rejected them in advance.
Speaking in 1887, Prince Bismarck said: 'Our friendship for Russia
suffered no interruption during the time of our wars, and stands to-day
beyond all doubt.... We shall not ... let anyone throw his lasso round
our neck in order to embroil us with Russia.' And again in 1888: 'No
Great Power can, in the long-run, cling to the wording of any treaty in
contradiction to the interests of its own people. It is sooner or later
compelled to say, "We cannot keep to that," and must justify this
announcement as well as it can.' [Footnote: See, too, _Bismarck
Memoirs_, ii., pp. 258, 259.] In 1890 the present German Emperor renewed
the Triple Alliance, and the relations also of Germany and Russia had
never, he believed, been closer than they were at the present time. Any
notion of a permanent or standing alliance with Germany against Russia
was, in short, a Will-o'-the-wisp. Opposed as he was to the whole policy
of alliances as contrary to the true interests of this country, he was
specially opposed to this particular proposal, because it was calculated
to lead our people to think that they could rely on the strong arm of
another Power instead of only on their own strong arm." [Footnote: The
speech of Mr. Chamberlain referred to above was made at Birmingham. It
was followed by speeches at Wakefield on December 8th, 1898, and at
Leicester on November 20th, 1899.]

Yet a strong action in the Near East, Sir Charles thought, might have
compensated for a feebler policy on the Pacific Coast. In Armenia,
Christians for whom Great Britain was answerable under the Treaty of
Berlin were being massacred, but Lord Salisbury did nothing to help
them. In November, 1896, there was a faint stir of public opinion, but
many of the suggestions made in regard to what ought to be done were
unwise. [Footnote: _November 4th_, 1896.--'Morley told me that in order
to force the hand of the Turks, before July, 1895, Kimberley had
proposed to force the Dardanelles, and that Harcourt had stopped it. Mr.
Gladstone had written to Morley to insist on his speaking about Armenia
and to complain of his lukewarmness. I said: "But Mr. G. in 1880, when
something could have been done, confined himself to what he called
'friendly' words to the Sultan.'" See on the whole subject _Crispi
Memoirs_, vol. ii., chap. ix.]

"No one," Sir Charles had said in 1896, "would protest more emphatically
than he did against some of the advice which had been given. One of the
ablest journalists and highest of financial authorities, Mr. Wilson, had
suggested the landing of a few troops and the deportation of the Sultan
to Cyprus. The defences of the Dardanelles were not such as could be
very easily forced even by the British fleet.... No British Admiral,
even if he succeeded in forcing the Dardanelles, would have troops to
land who could overcome the Turkish guard, an army corps, and the
excited Turkish population." Elsewhere, with prophetic foresight, he
showed that the forcing of the Dardanelles could not be carried out
without "heavy loss, possibly tremendous loss, and that the loss of a
first-class British ironclad is equivalent to the loss of an army corps
with all its guns." [Footnote: Letter to the _Macclesfield Chronicle_,
September 19th, 1896.]

Crete was now again in a state of chronic rebellion against Turkish
rule; and Turkish methods of repression only stimulated the popular
demand to be joined to Greece. Sir Charles Dilke thought that, if the
Powers really wished to coerce Turkey to bring about better government
within its dominions, coercion could most safely begin in the Greek
islands, where European fleets could absolutely control the issue and no
question of Continental partition need arise. In Crete the Sultan could,
Sir Charles believed, have been compelled to accept a nominal
sovereignty, such as he retained over Cyprus; and the aspiration towards
Hellenic unity, the need for Hellenic expansion, might thus have been
satisfied.

If England had taken "instant and even isolated action," France would,
he thought, not have thwarted British policy. "The effect would
ultimately have been the addition of Crete to the Greek kingdom under
the auspices, perhaps, of all the Powers, perhaps of the Powers less
Germany, perhaps of only three or four of them." [Footnote: Ibid.]

The occasion was missed, and war, declared by Turkey against Greece,
followed, and years of anarchy in Crete. The Ministers of the Powers
"even in the free Parliaments of the United Kingdom and France" "used
pro-Turkish language," and attacked those who, because they upheld the
traditional Liberal policy of both countries, were accused of abetting
the Greeks.

    "The blockade by the fleets of the Powers became pro-Turkish, and
    Europe took sides against Greece in the war. If Greece had been
    allowed to hold Crete, she could have exchanged it against Thessaly,
    if the worst had come to the worst, without those financial
    sacrifices which are now necessary. [Footnote: Such a proposal had
    actually been made in 1881 by Prince Bismarck. _Life of Goschen_, i.
    214; _Life of Granville_, ii. 226.] The very claim of the Powers to
    have localized the war by stopping the Slav States from attacking
    Turkey is in itself a claim to have interfered on one side."

When Greece was defeated, "the majority in the Parliament of the United
Kingdom, if not of the British people," Sir Charles wrote, "professed
that their burning sympathies for Greece had been destroyed by Greek
cowardice, although the stand, at Domoko, of ill-supplied young troops
against an overwhelmingly superior force of Turkish veterans deserved
fairer criticism." He interpreted his own duty differently, and when the
Hellenic cause was most unpopular he continued to express his faith in
the "rising nationalities of the Eastern Mediterranean," and looked
forward with confidence to a future in which Palmerston's generous
surrender of the Ionian Islands should be emulated by a new act of
Liberal statesmanship. "There can be little doubt that Cyprus, as a part
of a great scheme for strengthening the elements of the Eastern
Mediterranean that are hopeful for the future, will not be kept out of
the arrangement by any reluctance on the part of the United Kingdom to
let its inhabitants follow the tendencies of their race!" [Footnote: The
above Notes on Crete relate to the period when war broke out, in 1897,
between Greece and Turkey, and the Turks invaded Thessaly.]

"Oh for an hour of Canning or of Palmerston!" he said, at a great public
meeting in the North in October, 1898. "Canning was a Tory, a Tory
Foreign Secretary of State, a Tory Prime Minister, although at odds with
the Duke of Wellington upon some subjects. Lord Palmerston was looked
upon by many Radicals as a Whig, but in foreign affairs he had never
exhibited that carelessness and that absence of a willingness to run
risks for the sake of freedom which no doubt marred his conduct of home
affairs. Canning had seen the interest of Great Britain in maintaining
the Greek cause, as Palmerston had seen her interest in strengthening
Greece by allowing the Republic of the Ionian Isles, of which we had the
protectorate, to join her after the downfall of the Prince called by
Palmerston 'the spoilt child of autocracy, King Otho.' Canning had
consistently refused in circumstances of far greater difficulty and
danger than those which attended the Greek or Cretan questions in our
times, to be dragged at the heels of the great despotic Powers. Canning
resolved not only to assist the Greek cause, but in doing so to maintain
the superiority of British influence in the Eastern Mediterranean; and,
seeing the course which was clear in the interest of Europe and in our
own interest, he determined to settle the question in his own way, as he
at the same time settled that of South America to the immense advantage
of this country, which now had found in South America one of the best of
all markets for her trade. There never was a greater loss to England
than when Canning died as Prime Minister and was succeeded in office by
one of those fleeting figures who, in the language of Disraeli, were but
transient and embarrassed phantoms. [Footnote: Lord Goderich, Prime
Minister from August 8th, 1827, to January 8th, 1828.] The deeds of
Canning in the questions of Greece and South America, his regard at once
for liberty and for Britain, might be read in all the lives of that
great Minister, and what Palmerston did of the same kind in the case of
Italy was perfectly known."

In consequence of observations of this kind, he had to defend himself
more than once against the charge of "Jingoism," as the cant term of the
day had it; and more particularly in the debate on foreign policy on
June 10th, 1898, when it was made by an old political friend, Mr.
Leonard Courtney.

"I am one of those," Dilke replied, "who are in favour of large
armaments for this country, and believe in increasing the strength of
our defences for the sake of peace; and one of the very reasons why I
desire that is because I repudiate the idea of making our policy depend
upon the policy of others. I have always repudiated, and never ceased to
repudiate, the policy of grab which is commonly associated with the name
of Jingo.... I submit that the worst policy in these matters is to have
regard to our own rights only, and not to the rights of others. We want
our country to be viewed with that respect which men will ever cherish
for unbending integrity of purpose. We should be more scrupulous with
regard to asserting nominal rights which we do not intend to maintain.

    "When such transactions are criticized, the Government always reply
    by asking: 'Would you have gone to war at this or that particular
    point, for this or that particular object?' It always appears to me
    in these cases that there is some confusion in our minds about this
    risk of war on such occasions. If the intention of the other Power
    is to avoid war, war will be avoided when you quietly hold your own.
    But if the intention of the other Power is war, there will be no
    lack of pretexts to bring it about."

His policy, therefore, would have been to advance no claims but such as
could be made good, if need arose, by England's own carefully measured
resources in connection with those of France.

It was, however, impossible at this time to focus public attention upon
events in the Mediterranean, or even in the Nile Valley. The eyes of all
politicians alike were becoming fixed upon a different part of the
African continent.

Mr. Chamberlain had taken the Colonial Office in 1895, and it was in
reply to a short speech from Sir Charles Dilke during the brief Autumn
Session of that year that he expressed himself glad to outline his
general policy, and spoke of finding in the Colonies an undeveloped
estate, which he was determined to develop. His phrases caught the
popular imagination then as always. Colonial enterprise was the theme of
all pens and tongues. Then on New Year's Day of 1896 had come the
Jameson Raid. But in the stormy chapters of Parliamentary life which
followed Sir Charles took little part, beyond commending Mr.
Chamberlain's promptitude in condemning the Raid. The speech which he
made in the vote of censure on the colonial policy of Mr. Chamberlain,
moved on January 30th, 1900, as an amendment to the Address, by Lord
Edmond Fitzmaurice on behalf of the Opposition, was of an independent
character, dealing more with the military and naval aspects of the
position than those purely political. But, though standing rather apart
from the general line of attack, the speech was recognized as one of the
most weighty contributions to the debate, as it brought home to the
country on how dangerously narrow a margin of strength the policy of Mr.
Chamberlain rested, and how entirely it owed its success to the
maintenance of the navy of this country, which German Navy Bills were
about to threaten. Four years later, when the German naval preparations
were assuming a definite shape, he repeated these warnings in a still
more decisive manner by a speech which attracted great attention in
Germany itself, as well as at home. [Footnote: "Der frühere
Unterstaatsecretär des Auswärtigen, und sehr angesehene Sir Charles
Dilke, wies damals auf Deutschland bin und sagte: man vergrössere dort
die Flotte mit einer ausgewohnten Schnelligkeit und richte sich damit
öffentlich gegen England." (Reventlow, p. 242).]

Sir Charles disapproved of the Boer War, [Footnote: "I am myself opposed
to the Milner policy, which led up to the South African War. But in
spite of the Natal events I do not share the opinion either that the war
itself will be a long one, or that foreign complications will arise."
("Risk of European Coalition," _Review of the Week_, November 4th,
1899).] but he held that when the country was seized by the war-fever
interposition was useless: it did more harm than good both at home and
abroad. Staying in Paris, in the early days of the contest, when we were
suffering and beaten for the moment, he told those who commiserated us
and threatened European complications to "wait and see," laughing at the
idea that England could be permanently at a disadvantage, but not
entering into the abstract merits of the question. If forced to speak,
he admitted that the war was "unwise," but his utterances were very few.
It, however, raised a general principle, inducing him to recall facts
which had been too frequently forgotten. The party which was now
opposing government by Chartered Company was, he said, the party which
had revived it in 1881 in the case of North Borneo; while the Tories,
who then had condemned that method of colonization, were now
enthusiastic for it. Sir Charles, who had opposed the system in regard
to Borneo, where it was attended by little danger, now pointed out that
not only had it produced the Jameson Raid in South Africa, but that on
the West Coast the Niger Company threatened to involve England in
differences with France by action which England could not control. These
were conclusive proofs that the principle which in 1881 he had resisted
to the point of seriously differing from his official chief was fraught
with inconvenience and dangers. The Niger Company's position, however,
was the affair of political specialists; South African policy was
embroiled with the fortunes of a gigantic gambling speculation.
[Footnote: This is recalled by a fact in Sir Charles's personal history.
His son became entitled on coming of age in September, 1895, to a legacy
of £1,000. Sir Charles offered him in lieu of that bequest 2,000
"Chartered South African shares." Had he accepted, he could, when the
legacy became due, 'have sold them for £17,000 and cleared £16,000
profit! But he refused them when offered, and,' says Dilke, 'not
thinking them things for a politician, I sold them, and (purposely) at a
loss.']

The Transvaal War destroyed whatever prospects there might have been of
a permanent understanding with Germany, and Mr. Chamberlain before the
war was over had to make at least one speech which brought on himself
the fiercest denunciations of the German Press, when he replied in
vigorous language to the charge of cruelty brought against the British
military authorities in Africa. The absolute mastery of the sea
possessed by Great Britain probably alone prevented the Emperor forcing
his Ministers into some imprudent act; and it was clearly seen that
Count von Bülow, who had succeeded Baron Marschall as Foreign Secretary
in June, 1897, and afterwards succeeded Prince Hohenlohe as Chancellor
in 1900, though not desiring a conflict, and convinced, as he has since
told the world, that none need come, was nevertheless less friendly than
his predecessors, and intended to pursue rigidly the policy of a free
hand with a strong navy behind it. [Footnote: Bülow, _Imperial Germany_
(English translation), p. 47. A later edition, with considerable
alterations and additions, was published in 1916.] Events were visibly
fighting on the side of those who saw that France was the only possible
ally of Great Britain, and that the only other alternative was, not an
alliance with Germany, but a return to the policy of "splendid
isolation." The apologist of Prince von Bülow has himself told the world
that the policy of an absolutely "free hand" now inaugurated by the new
Chancellor was evidently one, in itself, of great difficulty, because
Germany might frequently be compelled to change front; and, to use an
expression attributed to Bismarck, might have to "face about" until
friendship with this country became impossible. The prognostication was
soon to be justified. [Footnote: Reventlow, p. 159.]

It was perhaps the decisive moment in the relations of Great Britain and
Germany, when Count von Bülow, with the ink hardly dry on the Anglo-
German treaty of October, 1900, which was supposed to be intended to
protect China against further Russian advances on the north, cynically
went out of his way to make a statement in the German Parliament that
the treaty did not apply to Manchuria. The reply of the British
Government was the Anglo-Japanese treaty of February 11th, 1902.
[Footnote: Reventlow (_German Foreign Policy_, 1888-1914) speaks of this
incident as the "Wendepunkt der Britischen Politik und der Deutsch-
Englischen Beziehungen." (p. 168). See, too, Bérard, _La Révolte de
l'Asie_, pp. 192-194, 208, 209, 293.]

In February, 1901, a typical article from Sir Charles's pen appeared in
the _Figaro_, strongly urging the absolute necessity for the creation of
really cordial relations between Great Britain and France, which he
considered were the sure and sufficient guarantee of European peace. It
was true, no doubt, that the increasing strength and efficiency of the
French army were a guarantee, up to a certain point, of peace with
Germany, just as the weakness of the French army had been an active
temptation to Germany in 1870 to attack France. The joint action of the
Powers in China at the moment was also itself a sign of improved
relations. Nevertheless, as Moltke had said, Germany would remain armed
for half a century after 1870, if she intended, as she did intend, to
keep Alsace-Lorraine; and as Europe had for the present to remain an
armed camp, more could hardly be hoped than to maintain peace, however
burdensome the cost. Europe, Sir Charles urged, should try to realize
that a great war would probably be fatal, whoever might be the victor,
to her commercial world-supremacy--as the great and ruinous burdens,
which would everywhere result, would surely cause that supremacy to pass
to America. There the development of the resources, not of the United
States only, but also of the Argentine Confederation, ought to give
pause to those who did not look beyond the immediate future and seemed
unable to realize that a Europe laden with all the effects of some
gigantic struggle would prove a weak competitor with the New World on
the other side of the Atlantic. To remind Frenchmen that the English
have not always been victorious in war was no very difficult task; but
he ventured to remind Englishmen also that, as the English army was
quite inadequate to take a large part in a Continental war under the
changed conditions of modern warfare, Great Britain and France, while
united, should more than ever walk warily, and distrust the counsels of
those who occasionally in Great Britain spoke lightly of war. It was
easy to talk about the victories of Marlborough and Wellington; but the
military history of England was really a very chequered one, and of this
Englishmen were, unfortunately, mostly unaware. Our military prestige
had never been great in the commencement of our wars, and, as he had
said in the recent debates on the Boer War, [Footnote: House of Commons,
February 1st, 1900] we had too often had to "muddle through." On more
than one occasion--in America, for example, during the Seven Years' War,
and more recently in New Zealand--we had only been got out of our
difficulties by the help of our own colonists. Here at least was a great
future source of as yet undeveloped strength. The disastrous Walcheren
Expedition was on record; even Wellington had had to retire over and
over again in the earlier period of the Peninsular War; in the Crimea we
had not shown any great military quality beyond the bravery of our
troops. These were truths, unpalatable truths, but they had to be
uttered, if on the one hand the cause of army reform in Great Britain
was to prosper, and if on the other France was not to reckon too much on
the assistance of a British army on the Continent of Europe, especially
in the earlier stages of a war. [Footnote: _Figaro_, February 11th,
1901.]

In a cordial understanding with France, therefore, Sir Charles Dilke
considered to lie the sheet-anchor of British foreign policy and the
best guarantee of peace. In 1898 the arrival of the French force at
Fashoda, on the Nile, had brought things to a crisis, and the firm
attitude then adopted by Lord Salisbury at length convinced France, as
Sir Charles always believed it would, that she must make her choice
between Germany and Great Britain. In the action of Lord Lansdowne, who
had succeeded Lord Salisbury at the Foreign Office in 1900, and in the
policy eventually embodied in the Anglo-French agreement of 1904, Sir
Charles recognized the views which persistently, but not always
successfully, he had urged for many years on his own friends in France
and England. But the new departure was only rendered possible by the
appearance at the French Foreign Office of a statesman who, after the
bitter experience of the final failure of the policy of "pin-pricks"
before Lord Salisbury's firm stand in the Fashoda affair, boldly threw
his predecessors overboard, and managed to make himself the inevitable
Foreign Minister of France for a long period of years, successfully
maintaining himself in office against every competitor and every rival,
while other Ministers came and went. Late, perhaps too late, the policy
of Gambetta was revived by M. Delcassé, and it held its own.

By 1903, owing to the complete change in the attitude of France, matters
had so much improved as between England and the Republic that Sir
Charles could write in the _Empire Review_ of "An Arrangement with
France" as possible, basing himself on recent articles in _La Dépêche
Coloniale_, which had been the extreme anti-British organ. "That the
French colonial party should have come frankly to express the desire
which they now entertain for an arrangement of all pending questions
between the English and the French is indeed a return towards relations
better than any which have existed since Gambetta's fall from power."
But this improvement in the relations of the two countries was
materially aided by the influence of the personality of King Edward
VII., which Sir Charles fully recognized, as he also did one of the
consequences, which was perhaps not so fully seen by others. "The wearer
of the crown of England plays in foreign affairs," he wrote, "a part
more personal than in other matters is that of the constitutional King.
No one can deny that there are advantages, and no one can pretend that
there are never drawbacks, attendant on this system. It is not my
purpose to discuss it, but it makes the adoption in this country of
control by a Parliamentary Committee difficult, if not impossible."
[Footnote: _English Review_, October, 1909. Article by Sir C. Dilke.]
"The great and sudden improvement in the relations between the
English-speaking world and France is largely due to the wisdom and
courtesy with which the King made clear to France that there was no
ground for the suspicions which prevailed."

[Footnote: _Quarterly Review_, July, 1905, p. 313. Article by Sir C.
Dilke. With France Sir Charles had for the moment again a certain
official relation, having been placed on the Royal Commission charged
with British interests at the Paris Exhibition--an honour due to him not
only in his own right, but as his father's son. At this moment also,
when relations between the neighbouring countries were severely
strained, he gave to the Luxembourg the reversion of Gambetta's
portrait, and sent the portrait itself to be placed among the works of
Legros on exhibition in June, 1900. M. Léonce Bénédez, curator of the
Luxembourg, in writing to press for the chance of exhibiting the
picture, said:

    "Je m'excuse vivement de mon importunité, mais je serais très
    désireux que notre public peut être admis à juger Legros sur cette
    belle oeuvre. De plus, je serais, en meme temps, très heureux que
    les amis de votre grande nation, plus nombreux que la sottise de
    quelques journalistes ne voudrait le laisser croire, fussent à même
    d'apprécier la pensée élevée et délicate de l'illustre homme d'état
    anglais qui, au milieu des circonstances présentes, a tenu à donner
    à notre pays une marque si touchante de sympathie en lui offrant le
    portrait d'un de ses plus glorieux serviteurs."

The exhibition drew Sir Charles and Lady Dilke for a summer visit to
Paris, and it was during this visit that the sculptor Roty executed his
medallion of Sir Charles.]

But wisdom and courtesy were not a little aided by the royal habit of
mixing easily with men at home and abroad, just as, on the other hand,
the long retirement of Queen Victoria had been injurious in an opposite
direction. This feeling finds expression in the fragment of commentary
in which Sir Charles dealt with the change of Sovereigns:

    'The Accession Council after the Queen's death was a curious comment
    on history. History will tell that Victoria's death plunged the
    Empire into mourning, and that favourable opinion is more general of
    her than of her successor. Yet the Accession Council, attended
    almost solely by those who had reached power under her reign, was a
    meeting of men with a load off them. Had the King died in 1902, the
    Accession Council of his successor would not have been thus gay;
    there would have been real sorrow.'

Sir Charles thought hopefully of the situation at this moment, and there
is a letter dated as far back as 1900 in which Mr. Hyndman noted the
"unusual experience" of finding an Englishman who took a more favourable
view of France than he himself, and expressed his fear that Sir Charles
underrated "the strength of the National party." [Footnote: How well he
understood France may perhaps best be judged by an article written, at
the desire of M. Labori, for the _Grande Revue_ in December, 1901. It is
called "Torpeur Républicaine," and begins with the observation that
English Radicals are tempted to think French Republicans more
reactionary than any English Tories, for the reason that all English
parties had practically, if not in theory, accepted municipal Socialism.
"In France," he said, "the electors of certain cities return Socialist
municipal councils. They are all but absolutely powerless. We, on the
other hand, elect Tory or Whig municipalities, and they do the best of
Socialist work."] But, notwithstanding the alliance of France with
Russia, the action of Russia in the Far East in the period covered by
the events which ended in the Japanese War had not diminished Sir
Charles's rooted dislike of any idea of _entente_ or alliance between
Russia and Great Britain. He considered that Sir Edward Grey meant to be
Foreign Secretary in the next Liberal Government, and was intent on
making an arrangement or alliance with Russia to which he would
subordinate every other consideration. "Grey," he wrote early in 1905 to
Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, "has always favoured the deal with Russia. I
hope I may be able to stay outside the next Government to kill it, which
I would do if outside, not within. This," he said, alluding to the
recent death of Lady Dilke, "assumes that I regain an interest in
affairs which I have wholly lost. I am well, but can at present think of
nothing but of the great person who is gone from my side." [Footnote:
February 2nd, 1905.] At this time the old controversy was again raging,
both at home and in India, over the question of the defence of the
North-Western Frontier of India; and a recent Governor-General and his
Commander-in-Chief in India, it was believed, had not altogether seen
eye to eye. The latter was credited with very extensive views as to the
necessity of an increase in the number of British troops, with a view to
the defence of the frontier against Russian attack. Sir Charles put
neither the danger of a Russian invasion nor the general strength of
Russia as a military nation so high as did some who claimed to speak
with authority; and he did not believe that we had any reason for
constant fear in India or elsewhere, or to seek alliances, in order to
avoid a Russian attack on India. The vulnerability of Russia on the
Pacific, which he had always pointed to, was demonstrated in the
Japanese War; as well as the miserable military administration of
Russia, which he had indicated thirty-eight years before as a permanent
source of weakness, certain to be exposed whenever Russia undertook
operations on a large scale at any great distance from her base.
[Footnote: In _Greater Britain_, ii. 299-312.] The Japanese alliance, he
believed, could never be directly utilized for resisting in Afghanistan
an attack by Russia on India. Happily, as he considered, the facts had
demonstrated that there was no need for such a display of timidity as
would be involved in marching foreign troops across India to defend it
on the frontier. [Footnote: _Monthly Review_, December, 1905. It is to
be observed that this argument does not involve any criticism of the
Anglo-Japanese Treaty considered as a defensive measure elsewhere.]

But if he thought that an alliance with Russia was not a necessity for a
sound British foreign policy, on the other hand he was equally convinced
that a good understanding with the United States of America was such a
necessity. He believed that if fresh subjects of difference were not
created, and any remaining questions of difference--like the Fisheries--
were settled, as the _Alabama_ and Alaska questions had been settled,
the old Jeffersonian tradition of suspicion of English policy would die
out, even in the Democratic party, and that no obstacle would then
remain to prevent the co-operation of all the branches of the race in a
common policy.

In a speech made in June, 1898, he had referred to the improved
relations with the United States in terms which gave credit for the
improvement mainly to Sir Julian Pauncefote, then Ambassador at
Washington, for whose services he had the greatest admiration.
[Footnote: Sir Julian Pauncefote had previously been Permanent Under-
Secretary for Foreign Affairs for many years.] When, in 1896, the
question of Venezuela had threatened to make trouble between the two
English-speaking Powers, he counted the claims of Great Britain in
respect of the frontiers of Guiana as "dust in the balance" when weighed
against the advantage of not "running across the national line of policy
of the United States." He desired to sink all such petty affairs in a
policy of Anglo-American co-operation in the Far East. Rivals for trade
in China they must be, but the interest of both lay in working for the
"open door" which admitted a friendly rivalry. He wrote in the _American
Independent_ for May 1st, 1899: "The will of the United States, if it be
in accordance with the will of Great Britain and of the Australian
Commonwealth--the will, in other words, of the English-speaking
peoples--will be paramount in the Pacific if they are united"; and he
was never weary of urging the improvement in England's relations with
the United States which would follow from a friendly settlement with
Ireland. [Footnote: In _Present Position of European Politics_, 1887, he
had said: "I, for one, still have hope that the causes of strangement
between Great Britain and the chief of her daughter-countries, which are
mainly to be found in the friction produced by the Irish Question, may
even within our lifetime be removed, and the tie of blood, and tongue,
and history and letters, again drawn close." And in a note written later
in his own copy are the words: "It is for the Americans of the United
States to decide how far towards firm alliance this shall be carried."
Cf. _Life of Beaconsfield_, iv. 231.]

Bearing in mind all these considerations, he believed, notwithstanding
all the wars and the rumours of wars, that the Great Armageddon so much
dreaded could be avoided by diplomacy combined with proper measures of
defence. The long chain of events formed by the Sino-Japanese War, the
Boer War, the Boxer Rebellion, the Anglo-Japanese Treaty, and the Russo-
Japanese War, were in his opinion "secondary events," however important,
appearing to threaten the peace of Europe from time to time--very
disquieting, no doubt, and ominous occasionally of yet worse things--but
things such as diplomacy had conjured away before, and ought to be able
to conjure away again. He did not think that Morocco, long regarded at
the Foreign Office as a danger-point, would ever prove a sufficient
object to induce Germany to break the general peace. She would threaten,
take all she could get, and then withdraw with the spoils, just avoiding
the danger-point; and so it no doubt turned out to be in 1905-06 at the
time of the troubles which ended in the Algeciras Conference. But he
recognized the personal character of the German Emperor as a new factor
of danger in the situation.

The essential point since 1871, he wrote in 1905, had been that there
never had existed a serious and settled intention of making the much-
dreaded "European War" on the part of any of those with whom the great
decision rested. There was, he said, to the good this main
consideration--that, if any Power had intended war, a sufficient
pretext could always have been found, yet the war had not come. The
security for the maintenance of the long "armed peace" was, in fact,
this: that no Power had really intended war, or intended it now. What
the consequences would be was too well known by the responsible leaders.
The sudden heats which most seemed to jeopardize peace had arisen in
regard to questions not of European importance, mostly outside Europe,
where sometimes on one side or the other, and sometimes upon both,
tactful treatment in advance, and what might be styled "a long view,"
would have saved the world from trouble altogether, and ought to do so
in future under analogous circumstances, whenever the question of the
Bagdad Railway and the remaining questions relating to Africa came up
for final settlement. [Footnote: _English Review_, October, 1909.]

The guarantee of peace he believed to lie in the policy of _ententes_,
but on condition that the policy begun by Lord Lansdowne and M. Delcassé
should aim at agreement between two Powers only, and be limited to
specific objects. [Footnote: See the same opinion expressed in 1871,
Vol. I., p. 133.] Beyond this it was dangerous to go. An _entente_
between more than two Powers, as distinct from one between two only,
reminded him of an American game of cards which he had seen played in
the Far West. This game when played by two persons was called _euchre_,
but when played by three persons was called by another and very
disagreeable name, because it so frequently ended in the use of knives.
The Franco-Italian agreements of 1898 and 1900, the Anglo-French
agreement of 1904, the Franco-Spanish agreement of 1904, the agreements
between Japan and Russia which had followed and grown out of the
Portsmouth Treaty of September, 1905, the Anglo-Japanese Treaty which
followed, and the Anglo-Russian agreement of 1907 as to Persia, were
guarantees for peace, because they came within the above definition. It
does not appear, however, that he considered the alliance of France and
Russia, dating so far as was then known from 1895, as a real guarantee
for peace, or that he shared the later views attributed to Gambetta, of
the desirability of an _entente_ between Great Britain, France, and
Russia.

[Footnote: "M. Gaston Thomson publishes in the _Matin_ extracts from
letters by Gambetta to M. Ranc. In one letter, written apparently at the
time of the crisis of 1875, Gambetta says:

    "'You must know that the forger of the Ems despatch is about to
    commit another act of treachery. But our calmness and
    self-possession will prevent us from falling into the same trap as
    in 1870. The croakings of a sinister raven will not plunge us into
    folly this time. He has understood his mistake. He has been able to
    transform a divided and impotent Germany into a great, strong,
    disciplined Empire. For us and for himself he was less well inspired
    when he exacted the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, which was the
    germ of death for his work.... Until they have remedied this error
    no one will disarm. The world's peace, which is so necessary for all
    peoples, will remain always at the mercy of an incident.' In order
    to prepare France to meet the future, Gambetta strove to bring about
    the alliance which to-day unites France, Great Britain, and Russia.
    In a striking passage he writes:

    "'The number and importance of Russia's difficulties grow every day.
    L---- keeps the Prince of Wales informed day by day of the
    difficulties of that Power. The political ambitions of Russia will
    be impeded by Austria, who is already assuming a hostile attitude.
    She is exerting pressure upon Rumania. Do you see, as a consequence,
    Austria allying herself with Rumania and Turkey against Russia? What
    a conflict!

    "'The Prince of Wales, however, foresees it. He does not share the
    hostility of a section of the English nation against Russia. With
    all his young authority he fights against measures which may be
    prejudicial to Russia. I see in him the makings of a great
    statesman....

    "'I desire that our enemies should be Russia's enemies. It is clear
    that Bismarck wants an alliance with the Austrians. Russia must
    therefore be made to see that we might be her ally.... Since the
    Revolution our country exerts great influence in Europe. Before long
    I see Russia and England at our side, if we only have a proper
    internal policy.'" (_Times_, December 30th, 1915).]

He was strongly convinced that the improvement of the French army since
1871 had been so great that it afforded by itself a sufficient reason to
give Germany pause, and he believed that the German Emperor considered
the French army better in some respects than his own. [Footnote: Baron
Beyens says that in 1911 it was the general opinion that in many
respects the French was in advance of the German army (_L'Allemagne
avant la Guerre_, p. 229). Ibid., p. 220.] An alliance between the two
Western Powers and Russia might, in given circumstances, on the one hand
encourage the party of _revanche_ and push the country into dangerous
adventures, and on the other tempt the war party in Germany to try again
some extreme course, as it had in 1875.

From this point of view Dilke regarded with suspicion and anxiety the
journeys of the King on the Continent after 1905, unaccompanied by a
Secretary of State according to the ancient constitutional practice, but
accompanied by the Permanent Under-Secretary of State from the Foreign
Office, a former Ambassador to St. Petersburg. This gave plausible
opportunities for encouraging the belief then prevalent in Germany that
some mysterious policy was being devised, outside the ordinary channels
of diplomacy and Parliamentary knowledge--a policy which, with the aid
of France and Russia, was to take the shape of encircling Germany with
enemies, and cutting her off from legitimate development. These
anxieties were stimulated by a considerable amount of foolish writing in
London newspapers, and still more foolish and unauthorized talk.

"France and Russia," he wrote in 1908, "are drawn together by
geographical considerations--given the detachment of French territory to
the benefit of Germany in 1871. It did not need the parade of an
alliance to cause Kings and statesmen to recognize the fact. War was
made impossible in 1875--the last occasion when the well-informed
thought renewed German attack on France probable--by the absolute
refusal of the German Emperor; but behind that refusal lay the certainty
that Russia would not forward the aims of the Prussian military party,
as she had done, for a consideration, in 1870. It is, perhaps, too
trivial a suggestion, but one which comes inevitably to the mind, that
the householder is apt to be friendly with the man who lives next door
but one, on account of their common dislike of their next-door
neighbour. During the 'reign of force,' still extant upon the Continent
of Europe, a more appropriate simile may be found in the proverbial
habit of each of two men, in a street fight, frightening his opponent by
recognition of a personage in the background. That Germany, however
ambitious, and however boastful of her military strength, should be
rendered nervous by the menace of Franco-Russian co-operation is a
consideration modified only by the universal recognition of the desire
of France for self-respecting peace. As soon as another Power is
suspected of any intention of making use of the Franco-Russian
co-operation for the purpose of isolating Germany, a dangerous situation
has arisen.

    "We are so confident in our own profound knowledge of our wish for
    European peace that we hardly realize the extreme danger for the
    future which is caused by all suggestion that we have succeeded in
    isolating Germany, or are striving to bring about that result. The
    London articles written in violent support of a supposed alliance
    did the harm; and to anyone who keeps touch for himself of
    Continental opinion the harm was undoubted, and tended to produce
    several undesirable results.

    "There is a word to be addressed to those who believe that our navy
    is our true defence, until the progress of pacific thought in the
    working classes of all countries has rendered the other Powers as
    peaceful as France. Those who crowed over the isolation of Germany
    took the best means of increasing the German Fleet, and contributed
    at the same time, by the proposed inflation of our expeditionary
    force, to the weakening of the British Navy.

    "The true explanation of the _entente_, and it needs no better, is
    to be found in the defence of its essentially pacific nature by one
    of its original authors, M. Delcassé. [Footnote: M. Delcassé had to
    resign office in 1905, under German pressure, in connection with the
    controversies about Morocco.] He had his faults as a Minister, and
    on two occasions provoked alarms or dangers, which afterwards,
    however, he did more than any other man to allay. Should
    circumstances change and European war become likely, as it has not
    in fact been likely since 1871, the basis for our alliances, if we
    needs must have them, lies in our peaceful policy, our vigour, and
    our fleet.

    "Thanks to the alarm itself, which the harum-scarum articles
    excited, prudence will once more gain control of our foreign
    affairs. The _entente_ will continue: Italy, we may hope, will not
    once more be scared out of her improved relations with Powers
    outside the Triplice. Recent occurrences may be turned to useful
    end, by courage in speaking out displayed by those who insist that a
    policy, profoundly peaceful in fact, shall not be exposed to being
    represented as directed against any one of the European Powers."

Italy, he believed--and events have justified the forecast--would be
compelled by the pressure of circumstances to leave the Triple Alliance.
How far Germany would be able to keep a permanent hold on Austria-
Hungary might also, he thought, be doubtful, as it would largely depend
on the developments of home issues in Austria itself, as to which
prophecy was always rash. Like other statesmen of an older school, he
still probably clung to the hope that the Dual Empire might yet be
gradually converted into a Federal State, in which the Slavonic
populations of the Empire would play a larger part and would not submit
to take marching orders from Berlin in regard to policy in the Balkans.
[Footnote: A short time before his death, in 1902, Lord Kimberley said
to Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice: "If ever there is another Liberal
Government--which is perhaps doubtful--Grey or you, or both of you, may
have something to say to foreign affairs. Now, remember, there is on no
account to be any quarrelling with Austria. She has been the only steady
friend we have had in Europe--I mean since 1866. The Hungarians have
always been our friends. So, I repeat, _no quarrelling with Austria_. I
have said the same thing to Grey." (Notes communicated by Lord
Fitzmaurice). See, too, the opinion of M. Ribot, cited in René Henry's
_Questions d'Autriche-Hongrie_, pp. 176-178: "Quant à l'Autriche, nos
rapports avec elle ont toujours été bons; ils ont été pleins, non
seulement de courtoisie, mais de quelque chose de plus; parceque
l'Autriche sait que, de toutes les puissances européennes, la France est
la dernière qui pourrait souhaiter que l'Empire d'Autriche, garantie
nécessaire de l'équilibre européen, se brisat et disparût pour le
malheur de l'Europe." (Speech in the Senate, March 11th, 1903). An
interesting collection of opinions on the development of Austria into a
federal State, and the probable results on the Balkan Peninsula, will be
found in the last chapter of the work of Dr. Aurel Popovici, _Die
Vereinigten Staaten von Gross-Oesterreich_ (Leipzig, 1906).]

Both in 1908 and 1909, in the debates on the Foreign Office Votes in the
House of Commons, Sir Charles had expressed apprehensions of the
development of Great Britain's _entente_ with Russia, in regard to
Persia, into something far more extensive, and therefore dangerous--into
something, in fact, very like an "alliance." He feared that in the
Bosnian question it had been pushed to extreme limits. The result, he
said, had been to lead to a diplomatic humiliation. He claimed also that
recent debates in the French Chamber, which had taken place at the time
of the fall of M. Clemenceau's Ministry in the later half of 1909,
showed that a large body of French opinion shared this view. [Footnote:
See, for a summary of these views, an article by Sir C. Dilke in the
_English Review_ of October, 1909, p. 495; and Hansard for 1908,
cxviii., 955-970; and for 1909, vol. viii., 621-635.]

With these preoccupations present to his mind he spoke on the last
occasion on which he addressed the House of Commons at any length on
foreign affairs--on July 22nd, 1909--when the policy of Sir Edward Grey
in regard to the final annexation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina by
Austria-Hungary was discussed on the Foreign Office Vote. He attacked
this policy because it seemed to confirm the belief in the alleged
tendency of the Foreign Office to extend the Anglo-Russian arrangement
in regard to Persia into a general _entente_, with the probable result
of producing exactly the opposite of the result intended, and of thereby
strengthening the consolidation of the Central Powers. The diplomatic
admissions and confessions of Lord Salisbury, both before and at the
time of the Berlin Congress of 1878, had, he thought, made it difficult
for the Foreign Office to take any decided stand against the final
annexation, which the existing position had been certain to cause sooner
or later. Turkey and Servia both complained. He did not deny that the
Turkish Revolution brought about by the so-called "Young Turks," who
were the cause of the crisis in the Balkans, held out some possible
prospect of a future less hopeless than the previous state of things;
but this might have been conceded without expressing "unreserved
approval of a military pronouncement attended by a good deal of
hanging." Servia also, no doubt, might be said in some degree to
represent democratic principles upon the banks of the Danube; but he
thought it difficult to reconcile the expression before a rather cynical
Europe--and in very strong language, too--of our official horror at the
conduct of the Servians in the barbarous murder of their King and Queen,
with our joining Russia so very soon afterwards in a support of Servia
against Austria-Hungary too absolute even for French concurrence.

Lord Salisbury, he fully believed, had become acquainted in 1877, if not
before, with the substance of an agreement between Russia and Austria
which contemplated, amongst other things, the annexation by the latter
of the Provinces; and it was perfectly clear, from what passed at the
Berlin Congress, that in 1878, before the meeting, Lord Salisbury must
himself have concluded an engagement with Austria-Hungary, though the
word "annexation," no doubt, did not appear in it, and more general
terms probably were used, but containing no reservation, and promising
support to the Austrian policy in those Provinces. Technically the
engagement might have lapsed with the treaty, and probably it had; but
the fact remained, with its moral consequences. Meanwhile Lord
Beaconsfield had taken Cyprus from Turkey, and had given a greater shock
to Europe, by the form and the secrecy of the proceedings, than could
possibly attach to the recent unilateral action of Austria-Hungary.
During the proceedings at Berlin, it must also be remembered, Lord
Salisbury had practically promised Tunis to France. Turkish sovereignty
was technically, indeed, still maintained in Cyprus, as it also had been
for thirty years in Bosnia and the Herzegovina, [Footnote: See, on the
whole subject. Hanotaux, _La France Contemporaine_, vol. iv., pp. 314,
363-370; _Etudes Diplomatiques: La Politique de l'Équilibre_, by the
same author, p. 184. A secret clause was signed on July 13th, 1878, by
the Austro-Hungarian Plenipotentiaries, in which the occupation was
described as temporary and ordered to be the subject of a special
arrangement with Turkey. The secret clause was really made to save the
face of the Turkish Plenipotentiaries on their return to
Constantinople.] and as it was at that time in the Sudan; but at no time
did the Turks expect to see those territories again under their
effective sovereignty. Insistence on the letter of the treaty also
weakened our position in regard to Crete, where, as he had so frequently
contended, nobody could wish or believe the position made by the treaty
to be permanent. Lastly, he insisted that the policy into which we had
been drawn by M. Isvolski had been damaging to our interests, not only
because it had strengthened the ties between the members of the Triple
Alliance, but because it assisted the popularity in Germany of a naval
rivalry, which oppressed us with the cost of ever-increased armaments at
sea.

Sir Edward Grey, he went on to say, had taken for his text the
declaration of the London Conference of 1871 as to the denunciation by
Russia, in 1870, of the Black Sea clauses of the treaty of 1856. But
Russia got her way, and had practically been told she would get it on
the main question before the Conference met. When in 1885 Eastern
Roumelia was swallowed by Bulgaria, all the Great Powers theoretically
protested, but nothing came of their remonstrance. In 1886 Russia broke
the article of the treaty which related to the port of Batoum; and Lord
Rosebery, no doubt, wrote a despatch based on the same doctrine as that
now adopted by Sir Edward Grey. But Lord Rosebery at least avoided
introducing new matters. His final despatch concluded with the words:
"It must be for other Powers to judge how far they can acquiesce in this
breach of an international engagement." Russia again succeeded. Why,
then, have complicated the original issue in the present case by joining
with Russia and France, at the instigation of the former, in putting
forward suggestions to be considered at a European Conference for the
territorial expansion of Servia, if possible to the Adriatic, and in
regard to the Danube, that thorniest of diplomatic subjects? [Footnote:
"L'indépendance des bouches du Danube est pour nous un dogme" were the
words attributed to Count Andrassy in June, 1877 (Hanotaux, _La France
Contemporaine_, iv. 315). See, too, the opinion of Radetzki, quoted by
René Henry, _Questions d'Autriche-Hongrie_, p. 128.]

"Our action," Dilke argued, "in such matters ought to be, as it
generally is, to bring people together for public peace, and not to
interfere with matters where our interfering in details is certain to be
resented. Of course, there was more than this in the German resistance.
That resistance was always, I think, certain. It was certain to be
provoked by common action on the part of the three Powers in such
matters, but it was doubly caused by the indiscreet language used, not
by us, but by the Press, in support of the three Governments, and
officially in Russia. We heard talk about Russia having at last
completely joined two Western Powers in an anti-Austrian movement, and
articles headed 'Revelations of a New Triple Alliance' were calculated
to intensify opposition on the part of Austria and Germany.

    "The net result has been a set-back, not so much for us as for our
    supposed and suspected client, Servia. Servia has had her position
    very much worsened by our interference on her behalf. It is
    unfortunate that small Provinces in the Balkans should be in this
    position, that when Powers who are not going to fight appear to take
    up their cause against neighbouring Powers, however natural and wise
    it may be in the abstract, the result is almost certain to be to
    make their position worse; and undoubtedly there has been a set-
    back, caused by us and Russia, to Servia. We have not even with us
    our Mediterranean ally Italy, because Italy herself abstained from
    supporting us in this matter, as she was bound to abstain under her
    engagements. I therefore end this part of the matter by saying I
    think we have set the doctrine of the sacredness of the Treaty of
    Berlin, in the circumstances, too high. We have had two previous
    examples of the risk of setting up that doctrine, and pressing it
    too far, in such a case. We have tried to set it up on two previous
    occasions, and have failed. The second of those two occasions, in
    1886, is very clear. There was a distinct violation of an article of
    the Treaty of Berlin, and of the protocol outside that article. Lord
    Rosebery wrote a strong despatch with regard to that violation, and
    he raised the same comparison of 1871 as we raised on this question,
    but nothing happened. That is a very long time ago, and the Treaty
    of Berlin has not become more sacrosanct since 1886 than it was at
    that time, which was more near its conclusion. My main point is, we
    have supported principles that we could not justifiably or wisely
    support. If we had had any political or European idea behind us, any
    idea of improving the conditions of peoples, or of giving greater
    liberty to the peoples, the country would have been more inclined to
    give support than it is on the mere bare doctrine of the sacredness
    of a treaty. On the last occasion when these matters were discussed,
    the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs made a most brilliant
    speech on the Naval Vote of Censure. In that speech he defended what
    is very near the old doctrine of the balance of power in Europe. No
    one will take exception to his statement of the effect of the
    existing balance upon our position in Europe. The danger is now, as
    it was 100 years ago, and still more 120 or 130 years ago, that you
    may be tempted by these understandings, which are good, to convert
    them into something very near, but not quite, an alliance, and to
    pursue a policy in support of the balance of power which will keep
    you in permanent hot water all round with everybody, and will risk
    war."

How far the belief in the existence of a policy of encirclement, as the
current phrase went, which existed in Germany from 1905 to 1909,
[Footnote: See Hanotaux, _La Politique de l'Équilibre_, chap, xxiii.;
Reventlow, 279, 296-305; Baron Beyens, _L'Allemagne avant la Guerre_,
pp. 220-221.] was justified is a matter which the historian of the
future will have to discuss. Certain it is, however, that the British
Foreign Office after 1909 gave no just cause of offence to Germany. The
disappointing outcome of supporting Russia in the negotiations connected
with Bosnia; the failure at this time of the Entente to produce any
satisfactory results in Crete and in various negotiations at
Constantinople, where French policy was deemed to be influenced by
considerations more financial than political; the friendly reception of
King Edward VII. at Berlin in February, 1909, and the great changes
which death or retirement brought about, in the years immediately
succeeding, in the personnel of the Ministries of Germany, France,
Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Italy--amongst others the retirement of the
German Chancellor--produced a new situation. [Footnote: Hanotaux, _La
Politique de l'Équilibre_, chap, xviii.; Reventlow, p. 339. Prince von
Bülow resigned on July 20th, 1909; M. Clemenceau on July 14th, 1909; M.
Isvolski and M. Tittoni in October, 1910; and Count Aerenthal in
February, 1912.]

In 1910 things seemed to point again to the possibility of clearer
skies. The negotiations between Germany and Great Britain in regard to
the Bagdad Railway and the still outstanding African questions were
resumed, and proceeded without any serious hindrance. Favourable results
seemed, and with good reason, to be in sight. There were also
negotiations between Germany and Russia. Thus it was that, a few days
before he passed away, Sir Charles was justified in still writing in a
hopeful strain that the Great War could and would be avoided--fortunate
at least in this, that he did not live to see the breaking up of the
foundations of the great deep. [Footnote: In his recently published
work, _England and Germany_, 1740-1914, Mr. Bernadotte Schmitt says,
speaking of the beginning of the year 1911--prior, it is to be
remembered, to the Agadir incident: "In the early summer of 1911,
Anglo-German relations, if not cordial, had lost much of the animosity
engendered by the Bosnian troubles of 1908 and the naval scare of 1909.
The German Emperor had been well received when he attended the obsequies
of his uncle, Edward VII., and again on the occasion of the unveiling of
the national monument to Queen Victoria in May, 1911. On the 13th of
March of the same year, Sir Edward Grey had remarked upon the friendly
relations obtaining with all the Powers.... In Germany the death of
Edward VII., who passed for the inspirer of the _Einkreisungs Politik_,
caused a feeling of relief." Speaking of the period immediately
preceding the outbreak of the war, the same author observes: "Whatever
Germany's motives may have been, the fact remained that in July, 1914,
Anglo-German relations were more cordial than they had been at any time
since the Boer War.... The tragedy of the Great War lies in the fact
that early in the summer of 1914 a substantial agreement had been
reached between Great Britain and Germany on those matters about which
they had previously disagreed" (pp. 195, 373). This book, by an American
Rhodes Scholar of the Western Reserve University, is a very valuable and
impartial contribution to the history of recent events. On the condition
of things in 1911 and 1912, see also the despatches of Count Lalaing and
Baron Beyens, from London and Berlin, to M. Davignon, the Belgian
Minister for Foreign Affairs, published in the official German White
book, _Belgische Actenstücke_, 1905-1914, pp. 85, 113.]




CHAPTER LIX

THE LAST YEARS


I.

Call no man happy or unhappy, said the philosopher, till you see his
end. With Sir Charles Dilke's life clear before us, if the question be
put, "Was he happy?" only one answer can be given. He was happy. With a
power of suffering which made bereavement poignant, with tragic
experience of disappointment and distress, he never lost the faculty of
enjoyment: he touched the world at many points, and his contact was
complete and vital.

Therefore, in the life that he lived after his second wife's death there
was nothing gloomy or half-hearted. At Pyrford and Dockett the same
interests continued to hold their charm, though in his home of homes,
the home that he did not make, but was born into, there was a change. At
76, Sloane Street, he still slept, breakfasted, and did his morning's
work; but he would never willingly return there for dinner, except on
very rare occasions when he entertained guests, or spend the evening
there.

He still enjoyed the life of the House of Commons. Old friends were a
pleasure, new-comers a fresh spring of interest, and the younger men
naturally drew round this most willing teacher. One of the young
Liberals [Footnote: Mr. A. F. Whyte, M.P.] who came within his influence
describes the amazing interest of his talk, with its personal memories
of the leading personalities in Europe during half a century past. But
the true attraction was something simpler than that. "He made you
extraordinarily fond of him."

What is implied in that very simple phrase has been set out by another
friend of an opposing political school, brought into touch with him by a
common interest in Social Reform: [Footnote: Mr. J. W. Hills, M.P.]

    "What first brought us together I forget; I think it was some action
    I took with regard to sweated trades. At any rate he asked me to
    stay for a Sunday at Dockett Eddy; and after my first visit I went
    often. For one thing, we were both devoted to rowing; he was, of
    course, a far more distinguished and accomplished oarsman than I,
    but he and I went extraordinarily well together in a pair. Everyone
    who has rowed knows that pair-oar rowing is the most difficult, as
    it is the most fascinating, form of the art. We had many long rows
    together.

    "The life at Dockett Eddy had an atmosphere and a colour different
    from that of other houses. Breakfast was at a fairly early hour.
    After breakfast, Dilke was invisible till lunch. Lunch was at 12.30,
    French in character, and always, wet or fine, took place on the
    broad verandah which ran along one side of the house. During the
    afternoon Dilke rowed on the river, walked about the green and
    winding paths of his beloved willow-clad island, and talked to his
    friends. The prevailing recollection that I shall always have of
    Dockett Eddy is good talk. No one who did not talk to Dilke knew the
    man. His speeches--at any rate, from 1906 to his death--did not give
    all his qualities. These came out in his talk. His amazing
    knowledge, which occasionally overloaded his speeches and diverted
    them from their main argument, wove itself naturally into the
    texture of his talk and gave it a wonderful richness and depth. And
    he talked to everybody and on all subjects; and to all he brought
    his tremendous vitality and his vivid and many-sided personality.
    You always felt that the whole force of the man was behind what he
    said--the active, eager, questioning mind, determined to master all
    facts that gave true knowledge, and when this was done, when all
    facts were noted and weighed, coming to a conclusion which was both
    clear-cut and unalterable. He was most tolerant of the views of
    others, and never overwhelmed with greater knowledge; but all that
    he had in him he gave freely and without stint. The talks I
    recollect best are either on industrial conditions in other
    countries, or on French history from 1848 onwards, or on English
    politics. On French history I always listened to him with delight;
    he not only knew literally every fact and every date, but he also
    knew personally most of the great men who had latterly played
    leading parts. On English politics it was characteristic of the man
    to have a tremendous belief in the present. For instance, I said
    something about the decadence of Parliament and Parliamentary
    speaking. He at once burst out: 'You are quite wrong. The men of
    to-day are much greater than their predecessors'; and then he went
    through all our prominent politicians and compared them with the men
    of the past. The only comparisons I remember are Winston Churchill
    with his father, and Asquith with Disraeli and Gladstone, in each
    instance to the advantage of the present generation.

    "Dilke was a great man, if ever there was one. He was a man of big
    ideas, too big for prejudice or suspicion or self-interest. His mind
    was at once imaginative and matter-of-fact, making him that rare
    combination, a practical idealist. But the abiding memory which I
    shall retain of him as long as I live is not his wide knowledge, his
    singleness of purpose, his vital energy and driving force, so much
    as the friendship he gave me. He put the whole of himself into his
    friendship, and gave himself abundantly and without reserve. He was
    so great a man, and meant so much to his friends, that he played a
    large part in the lives of all he honoured with his regard. Though I
    only knew him during the last three years, he filled so big a place
    in my life that his death left a wide and empty gap. I regarded him
    with love and veneration."

"He talked to everybody and on all subjects," and he talked to everybody
on a common ground of fellowship. Newman, the cabdriver at Shepperton,
beside whom he always insisted on sitting when he came to Dockett; Jim
Haslett, his ferryman; Busby, his old gardener and lodge-keeper at
Pyrford: these no less than "Bill" East who rowed with him, and "Fred"
Macpherson with whom he fenced, keep the same memory of his friendliness
and of the pleasure that they had in being with him. For his
constituents he was more than a representative: he was their friend, a
personal influence, a centre of affection in the lives of many among
them. "I hardly know what to do or say," wrote one of them after his
death. "For one man to say of another it seems strange, but I _loved_
Sir Charles."

Into this affection there entered that peculiar tenderness of loyalty to
the wronged which finds fit expression in these words of his old
comrade, Judge Steavenson, who had known his life since they were young
athletes together in the Trinity Hall boat: "I loved him, my oldest and
best friend, and how I mourn him! The tragedy of his life has been pain
and suffering to me for more years than I care to remember. Some say a
little band of friends never wavered in their belief in his innocence. I
am one, and so believing in good time I shall go to my grave."

Many a brave man has under the sense of injustice grown hard and bitter;
it was not so with Sir Charles. After his death a friend's widow wrote
to one who mourned him: "I should like to tell you how divinely kind he
was to me in my great grief." A lady who for long years had been on a
bed of pain said of his visits to her: "He seems to take your suffering
from you and give it back to you on a higher plane. I think he
understands because he has suffered so much himself."

In these last years after Lady Dilke's death, Sir Charles resumed, in
some moderate degree, the old habit of travel. From 1906 it grew to be
an institution that, when the Trade-Union Congress closed its sittings
in autumn, he should meet the editor of this book and her friend Miss
Constance Hinton Smith, [Footnote: Who attended these Congresses as
visitors representing the Women's Trade-Union League.] and with them
proceed leisurely from the trysting-place to Dean Forest for his annual
visit to the constituency. Thus in different years they set out from
Tewkesbury, from Bath, from Leicester, from Ipswich, and explored towns
and country places of beauty or historic interest, under the guidance of
one who had the gift for placing every detail in its setting, whether on
the physical map of England or on that crowded chart which depicts the
long course of British history. For him these journeys were each a
revisiting of places seen before--seen, as he would often recall, under
his grandfather's guidance in boyhood.

The annual Christmas visit to Paris, where his son often joined him, was
revived in company of his secretary, Mr. Hudson, and his wife. In more
than one autumn, after his stay in the Forest of Dean was completed, he
made a journey through Switzerland to the Italian lakes. He journeyed
under a resolution not to visit any gallery of pictures, for these must
recall too poignantly the companionship which had made the special joy
of all his picture-seeing. But he sent his companions that they might
compare their impressions with his memory, always astonishingly vivid
and exact. The sights to which he gave himself were sun and air,
mountain and lake. Here, as in England, trees especially appealed to
him, and in the famous garden of the Isola Madre on Lago Maggiore he
amazed the gardener by his acquaintance with all the collection, from
the various kinds of cypress and cedar down to the least impressive
shrub. But what gave him most pleasure was the actual journeying,
awakening not only associations with the places seen, but memories of
other places in far-off corners of the earth.

In the last year of his life the International Association for Labour
Legislation met at Lugano, and he stopped there on his autumn tour. His
health was already failing, he attended no meetings and received few
visitors; but experts in the subject, Ministers and ex-Ministers of
Labour from Prussia, France, Canada, and other countries, sought him, to
consult him on points of international policy. Two years later, when the
Congress met again at Zurich, M. Fontaine recalled the memory of Sir
Charles and the "conseils précieux" which other workers drew from him in
their interviews. It was only when the Congress was over that the
holiday really began, with a day on Maggiore and two days on Orta,
before the travellers made for their real destination, Aosta among its
hills, a scene new to him as to them, that filled him with fresh life.
All about it charmed him: the mountains, the Roman gateways, the
mediaeval cloisters, the long procession of the cattle coming down from
the hill-slopes during the night; the keen air gave him energy to walk
as he had never thought to walk again; and, for a touch of familiar
humours, the landlord of the rough little inn where they stayed had been
in his day a waiter in Willis's Rooms and remembered his guest among the
diners there.

An accident to one of his companions had caused him to go on alone, and,
accordingly, when he came back to Turin to fetch them it was as a guide
already fully qualified. On the drive up from Ivrea, in a valley whence
can be seen at the same moment Mont Blanc, Monte Rosa, and the glacier
of the Gran Paradiso, he could show them the fort of Bard, blocking the
gorge just as in the days when it checked Napoleon on his road to
Marengo. But the memories awakened in him were not only of Napoleon; the
valley of the Dora Baltea was a complete image of the Khyber Pass, and
Bard the very counterpart of Ali Musjid.

As they came home through France, halt was made at Lyons, and, though he
refused to see the gallery, he could describe almost every canvas and
the place where it hung; but best of all he remembered Charlet's great
picture of the retreat from Moscow and the army that "dragged itself
along like a wounded snake." In Paris, too, on that homeward journey a
stop was made, and since few of his friends were yet back from the
country, there was more theatre-going than usual. Guitry, his favourite
actor, was not playing, but Brasseur and Eve la Vallière amused him, and
he found special delight in the _Mariage de Mademoiselle Beulemans_. Yet
not even the acting of Jaques as the good-natured, choleric old Belgian
brewer could induce him to depart from his practice of going away after
the first act.

Three times in the last years of his life he went back to Provence. The
first of these visits was in the January of 1909, and he with his
companions set out from Paris on the last day of the old year,
travelling by motor-car in defiance of heavy snow and frost. These made
obstacles which only gave piquancy to his journey through scenes where
stories of the Franco-German War crowded to his tongue, and when
difficulties delayed the car he struck up wayside intimacies--once with
an old non-commissioned officer now transformed into a _Garde
Champêtre_, anon with a peasant couple from whose cottage he begged hot
water to make tea. In one such household, arriving with beard and
moustache frozen white, he announced himself to the children of the
family group as Father Christmas, and made good his claim with
distribution of little gifts.

At Hyères he was rejoined by the old servant, once his gardener and
vine-dresser, who had marketed the produce of La Sainte Campagne in the
days when Sir Charles was trading, like any other petty Provençal
landowner, in grapes and artichokes, mimosa and roses and violets, for
the Toulon market. That former life lived again in his talk as he
recalled those whom he had known in his Provençal home: neighbours,
servants, local politicians; and from his hotel at Hyères he never
failed to make excursions to Toulon, and to visit his old friend and
sometime man of business, M. Bertrand, who would carry him to the café
frequented by the leading citizens, to feast on a Provençal déjeuner
with red mullet and bouillabaisse. Another recurring visit was to Émile
Ollivier at La Moutte, his beautiful seaward-facing house on the
promontory beyond Saint Tropez.

"Sir Dilke" had friends everywhere in that corner of the world. His near
neighbour at Cap Brun, M. Noël Blache, leader of the local bar, a famous
teller of Provençal stories and declaimer of Provençal verse, said of
him: "He knows our country and our legends better than we know them
ourselves." In the years during which he lived for part of the
twelvemonth at Toulon he had followed every winding of the coast, had
explored all the recesses of the hills.

"It is my boast, probably vain," he wrote to M. André Chevrillon in
1909, "to have invented the Mountains of the Moors. Sizeranne had been
staying there for six weeks before he came into the British Hyères, but,
_he_, only on the coast. When I first showed that coast to Émile
Ollivier, Noël Blache, then President of the Conseil-Général of the Var,
and Félix Martin, the latter advised the narrow-gauge railway which
ruined the politicians of the Var, and became 'le Panama du Midi.' My
journey this time was to assure myself that the road and railway along
the coast had not spoilt the _interior_. They have improved indeed, and
I was glad, a road from the entrance to the forest on the main road from
Hyères to Cogolin, turning to the north over two cols to Collobrières.
The T.C.F. has made a road from Collobrières up the hill to the
south-east, whence the walk to La Chartreuse de la Verne is easy. I used
to have to reach that spot from Campo, the police post on the stream,
called Campeaux upon the maps. The whole forest is unharmed. It is
unknown to the British inhabitants of Hyères. Not one had been there,
or, I think, heard of it; and I met no human creature upon some twelve
miles of the finest parts of the improved road. Grimaud, at the other
end, I have no doubt you know. It was the Moorish capital. I went there
the day that I lunched with Émile Ollivier this time. There was a foot
of ice on the top, at La Garde-Freinet, and one looked back, down on to
Grimaud, standing baked by an African sun, and could make out the ripe
oranges and the heads of the great cactus."

"Why does not someone 'discover' France?" he writes to M. Joseph
Reinach. "How few Frenchmen know the sunset view _north_ from St. Tropez
in January!" And again to M. Chevrillon in 1909: "I adore the solitude
of Sainte Baume, and believe in Marie Madeleine--except her head and
tomb at St. Maxime, where Brutus Bonaparte helped keep the inn.
[Footnote: The eldest of the Bonapartes was not the only person of the
Napoleonic days as to whom stories were told in the neighbourhood.
Désirée Clary was said to have lived at the inn of St. Maxime, and Sir
Charles wrote to Mr. Morley concerning La Sainte Campagne: "My old
cottage is supposed to be that where Murat was concealed after the 100
days."] Intellect is represented here by Robert de la Sizeranne, _but_
it is only two and a half hours in motor or two and a half by rail to La
Moutte, where I make É. Ollivier read his fourteenth volume!"

All the little hill towns were known to him, and their history; he could
show the spot at Cavalaire where the Moorish lords of Provence trained
their famous horses; he knew the path at Le Lavandou, worn into the
solid rock by the bare feet of countless generations. It irked him that
the plain of Fréjus was spoilt by the intrusion of white villas on what
had once been called "a better Campagna." But these changes were of the
surface only. Provence was still Provence, its people still unchanged
from the days when Gambetta said to Sir Charles of one who projected a
watercourse at Nice: "Jamais il ne coulera par cette rivière au tant
d'eau qu'il n'en dépensera de salive à en parler." There was still the
local vintage in every inn, still the _beurre du berger_, the cheese and
the conserves of fruit which every housewife in Provence sets out with
pride in her own making; still the thin breeze of the mistral through
the tree-tops, still the long white roads running between fields of
violets and narcissi, and still white farmhouses among the terraced
oliveyards and vines. All these things were an abiding joy, but a
greater joy than all, and still more unchangeable, was the daily
oncoming of light, the subtle flush and gradations of colour before the
sun rose from that beloved sea.


II.

In the year 1908 Sir Charles's health had been very bad, and he risked
his life in attending the annual miners' meeting at the Speech House,
leaving Dockett Eddy, as his custom was, at six in the morning, and
returning home the same night. But by the following year he had regained
his physical condition and his cheerfulness. The aspect of politics,
too, had been transfigured. Speaking to his constituents in September,
1909, he reminded them how a year earlier the Liberal party had been
despondent.

    'This year all of them felt that the Government, with the country
    behind it--for the country was thoroughly behind the Government in
    the matter of the Budget--had taken, not only a new lease of life,
    but had adopted an attitude which on the whole, apart from any
    little doubts in reference to particular details, commanded a
    confident and an enthusiastic support on the part of a wider
    majority of people than any other movement of modern times.'

He told them of his own objections to the famous Budget--one in regard
to the cider duty, upon which he had carried his point, the other to the
increased tax on tobacco, which he had unsuccessfully resisted. So long
as tea and tobacco were taxed as they were, the working classes, in his
judgment, paid more than their just proportion. Still, a great stride
forward had been taken. As for the House of Lords throwing out the
Budget, "those who did not like that Chamber wanted that fight, but it
did not seem to him natural that the House of Lords would desire it,
because it appeared to him to be a fight in which the Peers were
perfectly certain to be beaten." Nevertheless it came to pass, a General
Election followed, and the huge independent Liberal majority
disappeared. Sir Charles was active to keep together the various
sections which most desired to limit the power of the House of Lords,
and on February 22nd, 1910, he, on behalf of the Radicals, held an
interview with the Labour and Irish leaders together, to ascertain and
discuss the line of action contemplated. Also, since there was a
proposal that Government should, as a matter of urgency, oust private
members and take all the time of the House, he saw Mr. J. S. Sandars,
Mr. Balfour's chief private secretary, and in Sir Charles's phrase
"factotum," to find out what the Opposition was going to do.

In the debates upon the Government's Resolutions which laid the
foundation for the Parliament Act, Sir Charles took no part. The matter
had gone as he desired.

By April the Resolutions were adopted; but before action by Bill could
be begun, the Parliamentary struggle was suspended by the death of King
Edward. In that national loss Sir Charles Dilke felt special sorrow.
Whether as Prince of Wales or as King, the dead Sovereign had
consistently shown him, not merely consideration, but friendship. It was
among the satisfactions of Sir Charles's last years of life that the
principle, for which he had incurred odium by contending forty years
earlier, now came to be fully recognized as that most respectful to the
Crown. Lord Knollys writes that on the accession of King Edward VII.,
Sir Charles had called and "offered to support any reasonable Civil List
which might be proposed." A Civil List Committee was appointed, on which
Sir Charles served, and the result of its deliberations was to recommend
a discontinuance of occasional grants from Parliament to members of the
Royal Family. It did not, indeed, go to the length of making adequate
provision for the family and leaving its distribution to the King, which
was what Sir Charles always recommended; but it moved far in that
direction, and to that extent carried out his views.

The royal funeral brought to London another Sovereign with whom Sir
Charles had friendly personal relations, and the last page in his Memoir
tells of a 'long talk with King George of Greece at Buckingham Palace.'
The King was inclined to deprecate the summoning of a National Assembly
for that autumn. He called it "stupid," whereat, says Sir Charles,
'blank look on my part.' Then, after a pause ('whereas till then we had
talked in a perpetual duet'), the King went on to admit that the
National Assembly was his own creation.

"Well, I was against it at first because we can do by law already
everything that is to be done by the National Assembly. But I saw that
it was the only way out."

"I am glad, Sir," Sir Charles quickly rejoined, "that I was not
'stupid,' for I attributed the invention to" (and he pointed) "its
author."

The King, however, was afraid that some might "blame him," and when Sir
Charles answered, "No one," he quoted the phrase once applied to him:
"Bon petit roi, manque d'énergie." The reply was: "I don't know who said
that, Sir! Your prestige is exactly opposite to the German Emperor's
prestige, but equally important to your country and to peace. It may
have been a fool who said it, but it was probably chaff."

"... My family?"

"Oh, well, that is chaff--that is what I meant by chaff."

But Sir Charles took occasion to tell a very important member of the
"family" that "Berlin and Athens were different."

When autumn came, the sitting of the Constitutional Conference silenced
Sir Charles and all men who desired a fair field for that great
experiment. Its failure precipitated a new General Election.

By this time there was no doubt in Sir Charles's mind as to the gravity
of his physical condition. To a friend, who in October was setting out
for extended travel in West Africa, he wrote these words in a letter
wishing him God-speed:

    "You are much more likely to come back alive than I am to be alive
    to welcome you. Yet I _hope_ that the less likely survival _may_ be,
    and of the other I feel pretty sure."

Knowing what he did of his own health, knowing the loyalty of his
constituents, who had within a few months returned him by a majority of
over two thousand, he might well have consented, as his friends wished,
to fight the new election by deputy. It was not his way. Haggard and
physically oppressed, he spent a fortnight in that bitter December going
the round of meetings, addressing his supporters as best his bodily
weakness allowed that strong will and fine courage to have their way.
The result was foregone: his majority was triumphant; but the exertion
killed him. None the less, he came out of the fray jubilant; his side
had won, the victory had been decisive. In Paris, where he went with Mr.
Hudson, the journalists came to him for his accustomed review of the
total situation. "Depuis que je suis au Parlement, je n'ai pas connu un
Ministère aussi solide que le Ministère présidé par M. Asquith," was his
emphatic word to M. Leudet in the _Figaro_.

The strain had in no way impaired his intellectual vitality. Those of
his old friends who saw him, such as M. Reinach, had never known him
more animated. To M. André Chevrillon, a newer friend by whom he had
been greatly attracted, he wrote:

    "I see in the _Times_ that you are writing on Russian literature and
    _music_. Please, then, include _Bell_ music: a saint's eve at
    Troitsa Sergeifski! The silver notes floating in the dusty--or the
    frozen--air. I've been there in September, and I've been there in
    December.

    "Any chance of seeing you--without moving, for I'm suffering from
    weak heart, after two winter-contested elections in one year? I'm
    extraordinarily better to-day, but am apt to 'blow' in other than
    the Australian sense."

M. Chevrillon has written his impression of the gravity which lay behind
that cheery tone.

    "J'allai le voir à l'Hôtel St. James. Je n'oublierai jamais
    l'impression que m'a laissée cette visite. II était d'une pâleur de
    marbre; il m'a dit brièvement qu'il se savait en danger immédiat,
    que le médecin l'avait averti; et tout de suite, quittant ce sujet,
    il m'a parlé avec son animation, sa verve et sa précision habituelle
    de la situation politique en Angleterre. II y avait ce jour--là sur
    cette noble figure toute blême, une dignité, j'ose dire une majesté,
    extraordinaire; il était déjà marqué par la mort; il la regardait
    venir avec une tranquillité et un courage absolu; j'emportai de
    cette visite le douloureux sentiment que je ne le reverrais pas, et
    une admiration qui me restera toujours pour ce que je venais
    d'entrevoir de son caractère."

From Paris he insisted on moving South once more. He travelled now as an
invalid; but when morning light came into the compartment where he lay,
he made his way to the window and beheld again cypress and olive,
sun-baked swarthy soil, little hills with rocky crests fantastically
chiselled, all bathed in the dazzling sunshine of the South. Leaning his
face against the window, he said: "Provence always plays up."

At Hyères he was kept in bed. But he still read the books that came to
him by post, still dictated his reviews for the _Athenaeum_, and still
enjoyed the reading aloud of French plays, which had become a habit of
holiday time. And, above all, from his window as he lay he watched with
delight unjaded the spectacle of sea and sky. "Am I not a fortunate
invalid," he said, "to have the most beautiful view in the world to look
at?"

Now and then his shout of laughter would be heard and the old spirit of
fun would assert itself. When the journey home in January, 1911, had to
be faced, he rallied for it, came to the restaurant on the train, and
during the crossing sat on deck with Miss Constance Smith, who writes:

    "At that time his thoughts seemed to stray from this last journey
    back to that which we had taken in the autumn. 'It is worth while,'
    he said, 'to have seen Aosta. I am glad to have done it. It is not
    often at my age that one can get so much pleasure out of a new
    thing.' I think he had a double motive in mentioning Aosta. He put
    it forward partly to obliterate for me the sadness of the past three
    weeks by raising the memory of the pleasant times that lay behind."

When he reached London he was happy to be again at home and he felt
better. Those with him had no fear for the immediate future, and he
himself fully expected to take his place in Parliament when it met.
Friends would have induced him to consider what part of his work could
be abandoned, but his answer was peremptory: "I won't be kept alive to
do nothing." Confined to bed as he was, work still went on; he received
and answered letters, read and annotated Blue-books. Curiously and
almost dramatically, the occupations of these last days sifted
themselves out in such fashion that the very latest things he handled
became, in some sort, an epitome of his life's work. M. Michelidakis,
President of the Cretan Executive Committee, had written to complain, on
behalf of the Cretan people, that the last note of the Powers seemed to
reverse their policy of slowly transferring Crete to a local government.
On January 24th Sir Charles answered this appeal for his help. It was
the last letter that he signed with his own hand--fit close to a
lifelong championship.

Other clients were knocking at his door that same day, other voices from
that strange retinue of petitioners who brought from all quarters of the
world to this one man their cry for protection and redress. What they
asked was no romantic action, nothing stirring or picturesque, but
simply the weight of his authority exhibited on their side, and the
wisdom of his long practice in public life for their guidance. He was to
fix a date for introducing a deputation concerning certain grievances of
the coloured people in Jamaica, and was to advise upon the best way to
raise a number of minor West African questions in the new Parliament.
His answer was sent from 76, Sloane Street:

    _January 24th_, 1911.

    "I am still lying up, but I think that I could answer any ordinary
    call to duty, and I am trying a small private meeting to-morrow
    afternoon, though I shall return to bed here.

    "I will note Thursday, 2nd, at noon, on the chance of being well
    enough.

    "The questions which personally interest me the most are those
    affecting the concessionary companies, and I should be glad if you
    would ask Wedgwood to keep very close touch with me on these. He
    likes me, and is quite willing to show me things; but he does too
    much and, like myself, is always tired, and the result is that he
    has to be reminded as to consultation in advance, though he does not
    mind this being done.

    "I doubt there being much danger about the Gambia. As for the
    Southern Nigerian ordinances, I am not competent, and have a general
    impression that as a rule we do best on more general lines, though
    some of the concessionary companies make such 'cases' as to form
    exceptions."

His strength was far spent. This letter, says Mr. Hudson, writing two
days later to the President of the Aborigines' Protection Society, "he
asked me to sign, after wishing to sign himself."

Yet the brain was clear and the will unshaken. The "small private
meeting" of which he wrote was a committee of directors of the
_Gardeners' Chronicle_, and on the 25th he was preparing to rise and
dress to attend this, but was persuaded to go back to bed. In bed, he
was still busy reading and marking Blue-books which bore upon the case
of the unorganized workers. The papers so prepared were, by his
direction, set aside for the service of the Women's Trade-Union League.
They were delivered next morning, but the messenger who took them
carried with them the tidings of Sir Charles Dilke's death. He had
slipped suddenly out of life, his heart failing, soon after four o'clock
on the morning of Thursday, January 26th, 1911.

       *       *       *       *       *

To the funeral service at Holy Trinity, Sloane Street, on January 30th,
there came from the House of Commons members of the Cabinet and of the
Ministry, representatives of Liberalism and Labour, the Irish leader
with several of his colleagues, while from the Unionist benches also men
paid this tribute to an honoured opponent. But the Parliamentary figure
of most interest was Mr. Austen Chamberlain, who carried from a
sick-room to the graveside the farewell of old comrade to old comrade.

Among the congregation were men who had been official representatives of
great dominions of the Empire or of foreign Governments. These came in
their private capacity, but one nation as a nation was represented
there. The King of the Hellenes sent his Minister in London to be his
deputy, and the Greek Government ordered a wreath, the token of their
sorrow and gratitude, to be laid upon the bier.

Tributes poured in from the great mass of his fellow-countrymen; from
philanthropic societies; from those who, in or out of Parliament, had
worked with his help and guidance. But above all there were messages
from every trade union and organization of wage-earners, letters from
men and from women in every kind of employ, testifying of service done,
of infinitely varied knowledge, of devotion that knew no limit, and that
had not gone without the one reward acceptable to the man they honoured,
their responsive love and gratitude.

So closed a life across which many commentators of the moment wrote,
some lightly, some in sincere regret, the word Failure. It was
ill-chosen. They should have written Loss. His career had not fulfilled
the promise of its opening; his abilities had never found the full scope
which once seemed assured to them; he had done for his country only what
his country permitted him to do. Over this it was natural, it was
reasonable, to speak words of sorrow. Those who said--and there were not
a few who said it--that he had accomplished more out of office than he
could ever have achieved in office, paid a tribute to the greatness of
his work, but they did not understand the force which had been wasted.
He combined two gifts rarely found in combination--the gift of
Parliamentary leadership and a profound knowledge of foreign affairs.
Amongst the men of his time he stood out as essentially a House of
Commons man, but he was also a European personality. In these
characteristics he recalls Lord Palmerston. Whether to foreign or to
domestic affairs, he brought a knowledge, a judgment, and a mastery of
detail, which none of his contemporaries surpassed and few equalled; and
he added to these the priceless gift of tact in dealing with men and
with bodies of men. In the only Parliament which knew him as an
administrator his advance was rapid and decisive: five years placed him
by universal admission in the front rank; and yet the general opinion
was not less clear than that of the few great ones. Beaconsfield and
Bismarck singled him out by their special interest; Gladstone looked to
him as probably his own ultimate successor.

Then came the day when there was taken from him for ever the opportunity
of directing great affairs, and Sir Charles Dilke's career must be
numbered among things that might have been. Yet was his "the failure"?
"It was England's misfortune, and perhaps her fault," wrote one
[Footnote: Mr. Spenser Wilkinson.] who knew him intimately and shared
but few of his political opinions, "that she could thus have been
deprived of the services of one of her best statesmen."

All that he could do to repair the misfortune to his country was done
without stint. Dismissed from his high command by a scandal, the truth
of which he persistently denied, when a life of ease was open to him he
chose, in spite of obloquy, to return to the ranks. Of what he
accomplished in the ranks some outline has been given; its record stands
as an answer to those who think, as many are tempted to think, that work
in Parliament without office is, in these days, foredoomed to futility.

Yet not in the external results of his wisdom and his labour, but in
another sphere, lies his supreme achievement. The same fate which
obscured the statesman's greatness revealed, what prosperity must have
hidden, the full measure of the man. To have requited public contumely
with public service; in the midst of humiliation to have kept his nature
unspoilt, unimbittered, every faculty bright and keen; to have abated no
jot of his happiness; and at the last to have passed away in serene
dignity, all the voices of reproach hushed and overawed--this was not
defeat, but victory; this, complete in its fulfilment, was the triumph
of Sir Charles Dilke's life.




CHAPTER LX

LITERARY WORK AND INTERESTS

[Footnote: By Miss Constance Hinton Smith.]


No view of Sir Charles Dilke's life can be complete which fails to take
account of his literary interests and activities. He disclaimed the
title of man of letters. [Footnote: 'Except in editing some of my
grandfather's papers, I never myself at all ventured into the paths of
pure literature; but I have lived near enough to it and them ... to be
able to enjoy.'] Except for the little memoir of his second wife, all
the books he gave to the world, as well as the larger part of his
periodical writing, were inspired by political, though not by party,
considerations. And throughout the years of his public career the
pressure of daily work inside and outside Parliament left him small
leisure for reading other than that through which he kept himself
acquainted with every movement, and as far as was humanly possible with
every fact, that seemed to bear upon the wide range of subjects handled
by him. So prodigious was his industry, however--only Dominie Sampson's
adjective will serve--and so quick his faculty for detecting at a glance
the quality of a book and extracting from it the pith and marrow, that
even in the busiest periods of his life he contrived to keep abreast of
the things best worth knowing, not only in English, but also in French
literature. From the time when, by his father's death, he inherited the
proprietorship of the _Athenaeum_, he exercised, through that journal, a
definite if indirect influence in the maintenance of the high standards
of literary honesty, accuracy, and taste in which he had been brought
up. This was done partly by means of his own contributions to the paper,
which covered a field which included history, travel, art, poetry, and
archaeology in two languages, and partly through "his comments and
suggestions on the proofs," of which Mr. C. A. Cook, a former acting
editor, writes with abiding gratitude. Other newspaper proprietors have
doubtless done as much to preserve uniformity of tone and principle;
few, if any, have probably brought such close and unwearied care to bear
upon those details in which tone is audible and principle expresses
itself.

Sir Charles Dilke's attitude towards literature, like his attitude to
politics and art, was peculiar to himself. He judged books, as he judged
men, not by the conventional verdict of the world--in this case the
world of critics--but by the quality his own mind discerned in them. His
judgments, therefore, were personal judgments, uncoloured, as far as
human judgments can be, by traditional respect or prejudice. This does
not mean that he had no literary canons: his grandfather's pupil could
hardly have left old Mr. Dilke's hands so unfurnished; but he never
became the slave of a rule or the docile worshipper of any reputation,
however well established. This mental freedom was partly due to
intellectual courage. The humour of Lamb, for example, delights the
majority of educated Englishmen: it had no charm for Sir Charles, and he
was not afraid to say so. But his liberty of appreciation owed something
also to the circumstances of his education. The fact that he had never
been at a public school--thus missing, in the plastic years of a
sensitive boyhood, the influences which make most strongly for
conventionality of outlook among men of a certain class--made it easier
for him than it might otherwise have been to examine literary questions
with his own eyes, and not through the medium of special glasses imposed
by authority. By the time he went up to Cambridge this habit of judging
for himself was already formed; and although Cambridge did much to
mould, she did not remake him.

The catalogue of his published writings, apart from those contributed to
magazines and newspapers, is brief. It consists practically of the early
book that made him famous as a political thinker, _Greater Britain_; the
brilliant satire, _Prince Florestan_, published anonymously in 1874, of
which he subsequently acknowledged the authorship; and the few volumes
written after the close of his official career, each of which deals with
large questions of public and international interest. _Problems of
Greater Britain_ and _Imperial Defence_ (the latter written in
collaboration with Mr. Spenser Wilkinson) were the most important of
these works, which do not represent fully the literary ambition of his
earlier years. There is plenty of evidence in the Memoir to show that,
at the time of that journey round the world of which _Greater Britain_
was the result, he had not only formed, but had begun to carry out,
several literary projects. Some of these, essays in verse, story-
writing, and metaphysical speculation, belong to the category of
experiment or amusement, and represent nothing more than the natural
activity of a fertile mind trying its powers now in this direction, now
in that. Others are more characteristic: a History of Radicalism, a
Political Geography, a book to be called _The Anglo-Saxon Race_ or _The
English World_, and a work on _International Law_. [Footnote: See
Chapter VI. (Vol. I.)]

As late as 1878 he was 'working hard at' a _History of the Nineteenth
Century_ 'for three or four months' in Provence, 'besides managing to do
some little work towards it when I was in London.' At this time he was
engaged upon the History of Germany in the early part of his chosen
period, and was corresponding with Professor Seeley as the highest
authority on that subject.

    'My history of events began with 1814. I showed that the doctrine of
    nationality had been made use of for their own purposes by the Kings
    in 1812-13, and crushed by them at congresses between 1814 and 1822,
    and then appealed to by the revolutionary party in 1823, and in a
    less degree in 1848. That doctrine of nationality was described even
    in our own times by Heine as a dead thing, when it was yet destined
    to prove, in 1859 and 1866 and 1870 and 1878, the phenomenon of the
    century, and nowhere to work such change as in Heine's own Germany.
    Heine thought that the idea of the emancipation of nationality had
    already in his day been replaced by the emancipation of humanity;
    but, whatever may be the case in the long-run, the emancipation of
    nationalities was destined to prove the more lasting side of the
    movement of 1848.'

After stating that the nineteenth century must be held to have begun in
1814, he writes:

    'History to me was one and could know no commencements, yet in the
    development of a concerted action of the Powers I found 1814 so
    convenient a starting-point as to be as good as a real beginning. In
    the rise of the new society, the social revolution,'

he found himself less fortunate. There was no clear starting-point, and
when he selected August 4th, 1789, as his,

    'I felt that I chose only the moment of the springing of the plant
    from the soil ... and stood in some danger of neglecting the
    previous germination of the seed beneath the soil.'

After delivering a lecture on "Old Chelsea," in which 'I made a
considerable attempt to clear up some points in the life of Sir Thomas
More, for whom I have a great admiration ... I conceived ... the idea of
writing a Life of More, whose life has never been well told since it was
written by his son-in-law at the time; but the immense difficulty of
writing any Life which would stand a comparison with the son-in-law's
notes ultimately deterred me.'

It is easy to understand why the foregoing projects were dropped; but
why Sir Charles never published the book on Russia which he was known to
have had in preparation is not so apparent. He had paid four protracted
visits to the country, travelled over a great part of it, and was
intimately acquainted with Russians of the most widely differing
opinions. Obviously he would have enjoyed writing the book that he had
planned. He had actually fixed the date of publication, when he found
that Mr. Hepworth Dixon had come, almost at the same time, to a decision
to write on his subject. On August 3rd, 1869, he wrote to Mr. Dixon:

    "My Dear Dixon,

    "In reference to your request that in good feeling and friendship
    towards you I should defer the publication of my _Russia_ from
    February 1st, 1870 (the date fixed with Macmillan), to a later
    period, I have carefully thought the matter over, and have decided
    to do as you wish. The only condition that I make is that you will
    write to me by return of post saying whether, if I fix January 1st,
    1871, as my day, you will date your preface not later than February
    1st, 1870, and issue your first edition not more than a week after
    that date."

Dixon wrote back on the same day:

    "My Dear Charles,

    "I am more pleased at your resolution than words can say. It is more
    than right. It is friendly and noble."

    'Mr. Dixon immediately went to Russia, where we met in the course of
    the autumn, and speedily published his _New Russia_, a remarkable
    book considering the haste with which it was prepared. After five
    visits to Russia, I handed over the whole of my notes to my brother,
    who spent two years at one time in that country, and who finished
    the book.' [Footnote: Only two chapters ever appeared--in
    magazines.]

Sir Charles's contributions to the _Athenaeum_ began while he was still
at Cambridge. His article of October 22nd, 1864, [Footnote: See Chapter
V. (Vol. I.)] was the first of a long series of reviews and notices,
which continued unbrokenly till within a week of his death. It was
natural that, as years went by, his knowledge and experience should be
drawn upon for reviews of important political biographies, and of books
on imperial and colonial questions or military history. But he did not
confine himself entirely to such grave topics. The files of the
_Athenaeum_ contain many columns from his hand dealing with the lighter
matters of topography (especially in France), travel, and fiction. The
fiction was mainly French, modern English novels commending themselves
little to his liking, though he was among the earliest and steadiest, if
also among the more discriminating, admirers of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, and
Robert Louis Stevenson's _Prince Otto_ had a place with his favourite
books. Another subject which attracted his pen was the local and
legendary history of his beloved Provence. His intimate acquaintance
with the beliefs and fancies of that region could be gathered from his
slightest notice of an ephemeral book on the country, as readily as his
store of political knowledge and familiarity with the events that made
history in his time from an extended review of a volume of _L'Empire
Libéral_ or the life of a leading contemporary in the House of Commons.
In neither case could his hand be hid.

In influencing the choice of contributors to his paper, he threw his
weight always on the side of the man who had complete knowledge of his
subject. No brilliancy of style could make up in his eyes for lack of
precision in thought or inaccuracy in statement. Next in order he
appeared to value in a reviewer a judicial quality of mind, as essential
to a sane and balanced criticism. "He disapproved"--to quote Mr. C. A.
Cook again--"of anything fanciful in expression or any display of
sentiment;" but, so long as writers kept clear of these literary
pitfalls, he let them go their own road of style, with ready
appreciation for any freshness or liveliness they exhibited on the
journey. Reviews of French books were a special object of care, and for
the _Athenaeum's_ annual survey of French literature he bestirred
himself to secure the best hand available. In a letter to M. Joseph
Reinach, dated July, 1888, he gives a list of the distinguished
men--including MM. About, De Pressensé, and Sarrazin--who had written
this survey in past years, ending with a suggestion that M. Reinach
himself might perhaps be willing to undertake the task.

In his writing, as in his speaking, his object was always either to
place facts before his audience, or to develop a closely reasoned
argument based upon the facts. He took no trouble to cultivate literary
graces in this connection; rather he seemed to distrust them, as in his
speeches he distrusted and avoided appeals to the feelings of his
hearers. But it would be a great mistake to infer from his own practice
that he was insensible to beauty of form and style. The literature he
cared for most, that which roused his enthusiasm and provoked the
expression of emotion so rare with him in the later years of his
life--the literature of France before the Renaissance, the poetry of
Keats and Shelley, some of the lyrics of the Félibres--is of the kind in
which content owes so much to beauty of form that it is impossible to
conceive of the one without the other; and he certainly took quite as
much delight in the sound as in the sense of his favourites. Even in
those favourites he was quick to detect a flaw. His grandfather's
introduction of him to the best in literature had not been wasted; and
his own early reading had given him a touchstone of taste which he used
freely as a standard, although it was powerless to obtain admission to
his accepted company of men of letters for those who made no appeal to
him individually. The Memoir shows that his self-training in literature
(for the grandfather did no more than indicate the way) was carried out
in youth; it was at Cambridge, while still an undergraduate, that he
read Shakespeare 'for pleasure.' And this was true also of the great
authors of his own time. The results of that reading remained with him
through life.

The Memoir dwells little upon his literary interests, and contains few
literary judgments. He himself gives the reason:

    'They do not pretend to be critical memoirs.... I have known
    everyone worth knowing from 1850 to my death; but, as I knew the
    most distinguished of my own country in childhood or early manhood,
    my judgments have changed. I have either to give crude judgments
    from which I dissent, or later judgments which were not those of the
    time. I have omitted both.... I knew the great Victorian authors.
    Thackeray I loved: _Vanity Fair_ delighted me, and _Esmond_ was
    obviously a great work of art; the giant charmed me by his kindness
    to me as a boy. But Dickens was to me a sea-captain with a taste for
    melodrama, and the author of _Pickwick_. It is only in old age that
    I have learnt that there was real beauty and charm in _David
    Copperfield_. So, too, Mill I worshipped; and Carlyle, though I knew
    him, I despised--perhaps too much. Mat. Arnold was to me, in his day
    and my day, only a society trifler, whereas now ... after for years
    I have visited his tomb, I recognize him as a great writer of the
    age in which he lived.'

Here and there in the Memoir are glimpses of the world of literature
with which he was often in touch. He discusses with Swinburne a much-
disputed reference in Shelley's _Epipsychidion_. In 1872 Browning reads
his _Red Cotton Nightcap Country_ at 76, Sloane Street. There are
admiring references to the work of George Eliot, and to Mrs. Lynn
Linton--'perhaps the cleverest woman I know.' When he goes to the United
States, we get his warmly drawn picture of the Boston group--Emerson,
Agassiz, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Asa Gray, Longfellow, Lowell, Dr.
Collyer, and Dr. Hedge.

[Footnote: See Chapter VI. (Vol. I., p. 60).]

Recording Stepniak's suggestion that Bismarck, Mazzini, and Oliver
Wendell Holmes were the three greatest conversationalists of our times,
'I said that, having known all three, I agreed that they were
remarkable, although I myself found Mazzini a little of the bore.
Disraeli was sometimes very good, although sometimes singularly silent;
but there were once two Russians that I put in the first rank--Herzen
and Tourgénief.'

Questions relating to one literary personality alone receive full-length
treatment in the Memoir. On any point that concerned Keats Sir Charles
was always keenly interested. He may be said to have inherited the Keats
tradition and the Keats devotion from his grandfather, and anyone
connected with Keats found easy way to his sympathy and attention. It
was his intervention which finally obtained for Keats's sister, Mme.
Llanos, a regular Civil List pension in 1880. When the Lindon family
sold to Mr. Buxton Forman Keats's letters to Miss Brawne, Mme. Llanos
wrote 'from Madrid saying how greatly she was vexed that her brother's
love-letters should have been placed before the world,' and 'I had a
good deal of correspondence with Lord Houghton over this matter....
[Lord Houghton] wrote:

    '"My Dear Dilke,

    '"Since the _Athenaeum_ fixed my place in poetical literature
    between Rogers and Eliza Cook, I have naturally not read that
    journal, but I have been shown a capital flagellation of those
    unfilial wine-merchants. [Footnote: Miss Brawne married Louis
    Lindon, a wine-merchant.] I thought I had even gone too far in my
    elegant extracts--with which you furnished me. I have, alas! no
    poetical amours to be recorded, out of which my family can make
    anything handsome."'

The letter ends with an invitation to lunch and 'talk Keats.'

Sir Charles notes further:

    'About this time (1878) Mr. Buxton Forman announced for publication
    the Keats Love-Letters, which I certainly thought I had in a vague
    way bought for the purpose of preventing publication. They had been
    long in my possession, but the son of Fanny Brawne had claimed them,
    and I, having no written agreement, had found it necessary to give
    them up--although what I had bought and paid for, unless it was the
    right to prevent publication, I do not know.'

About this time Mr. John Morley proffered a request that Sir Charles
would write a monograph on Keats for his _English Men of Letters_. Lord
Houghton thought that a "new view" from Sir Charles "would have great
interest"; but he decided to decline the undertaking.

The Memoir records at length the course of a correspondence with Joseph
Severn, on the subject of his portraits of Keats, about which the old
man's memory, in his last days at Rome, had grown very hazy. He thought
that the miniature from which the engraving for Mr. Buxton Forman's
edition had been made was the original presented to Fanny Brawne,
whereas it was the copy made for old Mr. Dilke from that original, which
itself was afterwards 'bought by my grandfather to prevent its being
sold by auction.' There was also at Pyrford a copy in oils made for Mr.
Moxon, which Sir Charles had obtained by exchange from Mr. Frederick
Locker-Lampson.

    'After completing my investigations as to the portraits, I placed
    them on record in a letter to my old friend Scharf, the Keeper of
    the National Portrait Gallery, who replied: "Thanks for your
    interesting note, which we will duly place upon record. The portrait
    which we have here is posthumous. Severn painted it in 1821, and we
    hold a very curious letter from him describing the circumstances
    under which he painted it." Here, therefore, is another undoubted
    Severn in addition to the three which I possess. But I know myself
    of at least one other.'

The gift of his collection of Keats relics to Hampstead has been
elsewhere recorded. In deciding on Hampstead for its resting-place, he
brought it within the circle of local associations with Keats himself,
and with the grandfather who had been Keats's friend. [Footnote: The
Memoir records, in 1878, a visit paid with his great-uncle, William
Dilke, to Wentworth Place, 'the little house at Hampstead in which for a
time Mr. C. W. Dilke and his brother were Keats's next-door
neighbours.']

Modern French authors interested him more than their English
contemporaries. In the former case he found, perhaps, less declension
from the standard of the giants of whom he had been an eager student in
his early manhood, when he read "all Balzac," and recorded his
admiration for the "dignity" of Mme. de Staël's _Germany_. Dumas he
loved then and always, returning to him with ever new delight, and
utilizing the rare periods of inaction imposed upon him at intervals by
illness to read the whole of _The Three Musketeers_ series 'through
again--properly.' Where other writers who held sway over the mind of
France during the nineteenth century were in question, his independence
of taste came into play. Sainte-Beuve he could 'make nothing of.' For
Chateaubriand he felt something like contempt: 'Equally feeble as a
maker and a writer of history ... the inventor of a drawing-room
Christianity without Christ;' but he recognized the high quality to be
found in the early writings of Sénancour. In later days the revival of a
Stendhal cult filled him with wondering amusement. To the best work of
Renan his affections were always faithful: _Souvenirs d'Enfance et de
Jeunesse_ was among his favourite volumes. Anatole France gave him
exquisite pleasure, and it is hard to say whether he most enjoyed the
wit, the irony, or the style of that great writer. He had his
favourites, too, among the minor gods, and was always ready to introduce
a new-comer to the charms of _François de Barbizanges_ or the fun of
Alfred Capus.

In French poetry his taste was eclectic. His feeling for Charles
d'Orléans and his contemporaries barely stopped on this side idolatry;
but the classics of the seventeenth century had no message for him, and
Victor Hugo as a poet left him, for the most part, unmoved. Indeed, he
asserted that all French verse between Ronsard and Verlaine was purely
rhetorical, and without genuine poetic quality. But in some modern
poets, he thought, the true spirit of French poetry had revived. Early
he proclaimed the genius of Charles Guérin, whose claim to high place in
his country's literature remained unrecognized till after his death;
early, too, he hailed a new poetic star in François Porché. The star
seemed to him later to wane in brilliancy, but the disappointment with
which he read the poems of M. Porché's second period never weakened his
admiring recollection of the splendour of the poet's Russian verses and
the searching pathos of _Solitude au Loin_.

His familiarity with French literature, his hearty affection for it, his
understanding of the national spirit by which it is informed and
quickened, constituted one of the strongest ties which bound him in
sympathy to his French friends. The literary forms which have had so
much attraction for the best French minds both before and after 1789--
the chronicle and the memoir--were precisely those to which his
unfailing interest in human nature led him by choice. Paradin and
Froissart were companions of whom he never grew tired; and it would be
difficult to decide whether he found more absorbing matter of
entertainment in Sully or Mme. de Dino.

But if he read these authors for delight, he read them also as a serious
student. On this point the testimony of one of the most learned men in
contemporary France is clear. M. Salomon Reinach writes: [Footnote: In a
letter addressed to the editor, and written in English.]

    "Talking with Sir Charles Dilke about Renaissance and modern
    history, I soon perceived that he had taken the trouble of going to
    the sources, and that he had read and knew many things of importance
    which a man of letters, and even a scholar, are apt to ignore. It
    was Sir Charles, to give only one instance, who revealed to me the
    value of Guillaume Paradin's _Histoire de Notre Temps_ and
    _Chronique de Savoie_, which he admired to such a degree that he put
    the now forgotten author (the name of whom is not in the British
    Encyclopaedia) on the same level as Guicciardini and the great
    historians of antiquity. I would like to know how he discovered
    Paradin, and if copies of his rare works were in his library. When I
    happened to get hold of Major Frye's manuscript, afterwards
    published by me (thanks to Sir Charles Dilke's recommendation) at
    Heinemann's, he was the first to appreciate its interest, and gave
    me much information about abbreviated names and other allusions
    which occur in that diary. He chanced to dine with me the very
    evening when I first had brought the manuscript to my house, and he
    remained till past one in the morning, picturesquely seated on the
    edge of a table, reading passages aloud and commenting upon them. He
    also knew many secret and unrecorded facts about recent French
    history; some of them have been given by him in unsigned articles of
    the _Athenaeum_, in reviews of books relating to the Franco-German
    War. I hope he may have left some more detailed notes on that
    subject. I would have had the greatest pleasure in corresponding
    with him, and regret I did not do so; but his handwriting was as
    mysterious as his mind was clear, and I soon found that I could not
    make it out."




CHAPTER LXI

TABLE TALK


After Lady Dilke's death, the Rev. W. and Mrs. Tuckwell, her brother-
in-law and her elder sister, made their home with Sir Charles Dilke at
Pyrford; and notes of his talk put together from memory and from diaries
by the old scholar give a vivid impression of the statesman as seen in
intimacy. Mr. Tuckwell says:

    During the last five years of his life I breakfasted alone with Sir
    Charles whenever he was at Pyrford. It was his "softer hour," and
    showed him in a specially endearing light. Not only was he fresh
    from his night's rest, full, often, of matter interesting or amusing
    in his letters which he had just read, but the tête-à-tête brought
    out his finest social nature. In large companies, as we saw him at
    Dockett, he was occasionally insistent, iterative, expressing
    himself, to use a term of his own, with a "fierceness" corresponding
    to the strength of his convictions. With me at our breakfasts he was
    gentle, tolerant, what Sydney Smith called "amoebean," talking and
    listening alternately. I was told that before his death the two
    experiences to which he referred in anticipating a return to his
    Pyrford home were the forestry among his pines and the early
    breakfast table.

    Much of his talk was, of course, Parliamentary, bearing on incidents
    or persons from the House. He often spoke of Harcourt, whom he
    dearly loved. When Harcourt's death was announced to a party at
    breakfast in Speech House, several in the company told anecdotes of
    the dead man or commented on his character. One lady spoke of him
    harshly. Sir Charles remained silent, but more than once during the
    meal his eyes filled with tears. He told me on another occasion that
    "Lulu" promised to be a greater man than his father, just as Winston
    Churchill is a greater man than Randolph. Lulu resembles his father
    curiously in all things except in the paternal habit of swearing.
    Once, when an attempt by the Opposition to snatch a victory in a
    thin House had been foiled, Harcourt said savagely across the table:
    "So that d----d dirty trick has failed!" Hicks Beach sprang up to
    ask the Speaker if such language were Parliamentary. Speaker Gully
    was too discreet to have heard the words. Dilke remembered being in
    company with Harcourt and Mrs. Procter, amongst several more. As she
    left the room, Harcourt said: "There goes one of the three most
    charming women I ever knew; the other two"--a pause, during which
    the ladies present looked keenly expectant--"the other two are
    dead!"

    He turned to talk of Dizzy, to whom he had first been introduced in
    his early days by Lady Lonsdale, the great man wishing to know him.
    He quoted some of Dizzy's sayings. Dizzy called Spencer Walpole and
    Russell Gurney "those two whited sepulchres of the House of
    Commons." Walpole, consequential and lugubrious, he spoke of as "the
    high-stepping hearse-horse of public life." Of deaf Mr. Thomasson,
    who, ear-trumpet in hand, was wont to place himself near every
    speaker, he said that "no man had ever so neglected his natural
    advantages."

    Of Gladstone Dilke rarely spoke, but used to describe the periodical
    entrance of Mrs. Gladstone into the meetings of the Cabinet with a
    large basin of tea for the old man. [Footnote: In the last years of
    Sir Charles's life, at a party given by Mr. and Mrs. Herbert
    Gladstone at Downing Street, he stopped in the room where Cabinet
    meetings used to be held, and pointed out to the editor of this book
    the door through which Mrs. Gladstone used to enter bearing the bowl
    of tea. For Sir Charles's recollections of Mr. Gladstone, see
    appendix at end of this chapter.] Once he had to work out with his
    chief some very difficult question. As they sat absorbed, Hamilton,
    the private secretary, entered with an apologetic air to say that
    ----, a well-known journalist, had called, pressingly anxious to see
    the Prime Minister on an important subject. Without raising his
    head, Gladstone said: "Ask him what is his number in the lunatic
    asylum."

    He told of a Cabinet in 1883 at which ---- talked a great deal, "and
    I told Chamberlain that at the Political Economy Club, where I had
    been dining on the previous night, there was a closure of debate in
    the shape of the introduction of hot muffins, which I thought would
    be excellent for Cabinets." At this Cabinet Lord Granville said: "We
    all agree that ---- is a bore, but I have never been able to make up
    my mind whether that is a drawback or a qualification so far as
    public service is concerned."

    Asquith he looked upon as one of the greatest Parliamentarians he
    had known, much superior in that capacity to Gladstone. His
    allocution on the King's death was noble; still finer his
    introduction of the Veto Bill in December, 1909. "His speech was
    perfect: forcible in manner, statesmanlike in argument, felicitous
    in epithet and phrasing." Balfour on the same occasion was at his
    worst: "hampered by his former contrary declarations, trivial in
    reasoning, feeble in delivery." He was ill, and ought not to have
    come. I asked if Balfour's frequent inconsistencies and vacillations
    were due to carelessness. He said no, but to the necessity imposed
    upon him, not of proclaiming principles, but of keeping together a
    divergent party. I asked what other notable recent speeches he could
    recall. He said the Archbishop of Canterbury's [Footnote: Dr.
    Randall Davidson.] on the Congo scandal, in the House of Lords: "a
    marvellous performance, nothing said which should not have been
    said, everything said which required saying; the speech of a great
    statesman." Bishop ---- followed him with a mere piece of missionary
    claptrap. In the Commons on the same occasion our charming friend
    Hugh Law distinguished himself, silencing some of his compatriots,
    the Irish Roman Catholics, whose line was to support Leopold because
    the Protestant missionaries abused him. Leopold II. Sir Charles
    called "the cleverest--and wickedest--man living." He broke off to
    speak of the Archbishop, whom he met weekly at Grillion's, as a
    delightfully instructive talker, not only full, that is, of light
    agreeableness, but supporting the opinions he advances with
    convincing, cogent, logical force, yet never boring his hearers. As
    another powerful speech he instanced T. P. O'Connor on Sir R.
    Anderson's indiscretions, "most terribly crushing in its grim,
    ruthless exposition," Anderson sitting in the Gallery to hear it.

    In his own great speech on Army Reform in April, 1907, Sir Charles
    said that Haldane was "all things to all men." His hearers perceived
    it to be a quotation (which in fact I had furnished), but no one
    localized it! An amusing misquotation was Arnold-Forster's in the
    same debate: he said that Haldane was like King David, who drilled
    his men by fifties in a cave. In March, 1909, Sir Charles told me
    sadly of Arnold-Forster's sudden death, which he had just learned.
    "With some defects of manner, he was very clever, writing and
    speaking well. As War Minister Balfour gave him no chance. His last
    speech in the House, a fortnight before his death, just preceded
    mine. 'I must speak,' he said to me, 'on those damned Special
    Reservists;' and speak he did for a good, well-sustained half-hour,
    going out as soon as he had finished." He had been with us at
    Dockett. He and Sir Charles sparred continually and amusingly, both
    equally aggressive, imperious, stentorian, iterative, each insistent
    on his own declamation and inattentive to his opponent's.

    Sir Charles, while on this topic of oratory, went on to quote with
    much hilarity a speech by Lord ---- in the Lords: "This Liberal
    Government injures friends no less than enemies. Look at me! I am a
    passive resister; I belong to the National Liberal Club; I have
    married my deceased wife's sister; and none of my children are
    vaccinated; yet they are meddling with my rights as a landlord." The
    Lords did not see the fun, the papers did not report it, but it is
    to be found in Hansard.

    I asked Dilke how my old pupil, Sir Richard Jebb, comported himself
    in Parliament. He said: "Handsome, beautifully groomed, with a
    slight stoop, slow delivery, speaking rarely and on subjects which
    he thoroughly understood, his phrasing perfect, manner engaging: a
    man reserved and shy, not seeking acquaintance, but, if sought,
    eminently agreeable." University members, he added, should come
    always in pairs: one to represent the high University ideal,
    embodied only in a very few; his colleague reflecting the mob of
    country parsons who by an absurd paradox elect to Parliament. Jebb
    was the ideal Cantab.; didactic, professorial, the Public Orator;
    seeming incomplete without a gown: but for his rare and apt
    appearances, he might have overdone the part.

    He told a story of Major O'Gorman. A professed Roman Catholic, he
    was dining in the House one Friday on a devilled chicken, when his
    parish priest was announced. "Waiter," he said, "take away the
    devil, and show in the priest."

    When Sir Charles first took office, he was cautioned by his
    colleague, Lord Tenterden, not to read the newspapers: "If you do,
    you will never distinguish between what you know and what you have
    just read."

    He mentioned ----. I said that his elaborate manners and bridegroom
    dress marked him out as _natus convivio feminali_, meant by nature
    to be a guest at ladies' tea-tables. Dilke assented, adding that he
    was less bland to men than to women. "Tommy" Bowles said of him in
    the House: "The right honourable gentleman answers, or, rather, does
    not answer, my questions with the pomposity of a Belgravian butler
    refusing twopence to a beggar."

    He spoke of the decadence in costume characteristic of the present
    day. I said that, according to Wraxall, we must go back for its
    beginnings to Charles Fox, who came down to the House in boots. I
    added that, when I first went up to Oxford, a frock-coat and tall
    hat were imperative in walking out; that a "cut-away" coat, as it
    was called, would have been "sconced" in Hall; that men even kept
    their boating-dresses at King's or Hall's, changing there; that a
    blazer in the High would have drawn a crowd. He said that till very
    lately--he was speaking in 1907--the custom of dress in Parliament
    had been equally rigid; that Lord Minto had recently scandalized his
    peers by wearing a straw hat; that when, some years before, a member
    whose name I forget had taken the same liberty in the Commons, the
    Speaker sent for him, and begged that he would not repeat the
    offence.

    In February, 1908, we talked of the Sweating Bill. Two years before,
    he said, it could command so little support that, having obtained
    for it the first private members' night, he withdrew it. Now it was
    accepted with enthusiasm, and the second reading passed without a
    division--the change, he added, entirely due to the Women's
    Trade-Union League.

    He expressed satisfaction with the stiffening procedure rules of
    April, 1906, but added that they would make great Parliamentary
    orations impossible. I said: "All the better, we want business in
    the Commons; for oratory there are other occasions." He said how
    transient is the public interest in men and questions; the community
    is like a kitten playing with a cork: so soon as it is tempted off
    by something else, the cork becomes dead to it. He instanced
    Rosebery; the Aliens Act; Tariff Reform, in spite of Chamberlain's
    galvanizing efforts. Of Campbell-Bannerman, then alive and well, he
    said that all his work was done for him by his subordinates: "he had
    only to read novels, prepare jokes, look inscrutable and fatherly."

    In July, 1909, he attended the memorial service for Lord Ripon at
    the Roman Catholic Cathedral. Knowing that the leading statesmen on
    both sides, Protestant to a man, would be present, the ecclesiastics
    made the show as fine as they could, bringing out all their
    properties. All the monks and priests in London attended; the
    Archbishop, in gorgeous attire, sat on a stool, with two boys behind
    holding up his train. The music was exquisite; Sir Charles had never
    heard anything so sweet as the warbling of the Requiem by the
    chorister boys. But the whole was palpably a show, the actors intent
    on their acting, never for a moment devotional; where changes in the
    service involved changes in position, they were prepared while the
    part before was still unfinished, so that the stage might never be
    empty nor the transformations lag: the whole thing a Drury Lane
    pageant; while the richly decorated catafalque in the centre, on
    which the ceremonial supposed itself to converge, was empty--
    _sepulchri supervacuos honores_--the body being at Studley. Of Ripon
    himself, whom everyone loved, he spoke affectionately.

    Of talks on miscellaneous topics I recall the following. We spoke of
    the Tilsit Secret Articles, revealed mysteriously to the English
    Government. Sir Charles thought the informant was a Russian officer,
    betraying it with or without the connivance of the Tsar. Evidence
    has since come out connecting the disclosure with a Mr. Mackenzie,
    who is supposed to have obtained the secret from General Benningsen.
    Or Canning may have learned it through the Russian Ambassador in
    England, who was his intimate friend, and strongly adverse to his
    master's French policy. [Footnote: See for a recent discussion of
    the evidence J. Holland Rose's _Life of Napoleon_, ii. 135-140.] Sir
    Charles went on to say that in history lies find easier credit than
    truth. All the books have said and say that England refused to buy
    Delagoa Bay from Portugal. He always denied this alleged refusal;
    and now Lord Fitzmaurice has caused search to be made, and finds no
    confirmatory evidence. Again, he maintained in Paris, against all
    the experts, that Nigra engineered the Franco-Prussian War. His
    words were repeated to the Empress Eugénie, who said, "Yes, he is
    right: Nigra was a false friend."

    He talked of the Japanese, whom he had known in England and lived
    with in Japan.... Their only religion is patriotism, and their
    prayers to the Emperor are formal merely, yet they are reckless of
    life and eager to die for Fatherland; indeed, so incapable of
    retreating before an enemy as sometimes seriously to damage
    strategic plans. Were they launched against the West, they would go
    through any European army.

    He spoke of the durability of the Third French Republic. It will be
    unbroken while peace lasts. War may bring a temporary Dictatorship,
    but the republic will of necessity revive again. The immense
    majority of Frenchmen are opposed unalterably to a monarchy.

    He quoted what was said to be Napoleon's only joke. In opening
    negotiations with the British Government, he found it to be demanded
    as a preliminary that, as matter of principle and without prejudice,
    he should formally recognize the Bourbon rights, "Most certainly,"
    he said, "if, also as matter of principle and without prejudice, the
    British Government would formally recognize the Stuart rights."

    Dilke spoke of the old Political Economy Club, to which he was
    introduced by John Stuart Mill. The President was Lord Bramwell; its
    dominant member William Newmarch, a rough man of powerful intellect,
    of whose ferocious criticisms everyone stood in awe, and who was
    habitually hard on Mill.

    He told a story of a well-known dandy, now a peer. The talk turned
    on "Society" in the second intention of the word ---- had
    enumerated certain houses in which you must be at home if pretending
    to the exclusive social set. It was objected that the inmates of
    some amongst these houses were persons whom the Queen (Victoria)
    would not receive. "The Queen!" said ---- in a tone of pained
    surprise--"the Queen was _never_ in Society."

    I had been to church unwittingly on "Empire Day," and reported a
    sermon stuffed with militarism. He poured cold water on the idea.
    "Ireland won't have it; Canada won't have it; South Africa loathes
    it; India has an Empire Day of its own. Only Australia cares for it.
    It is a vulgar piece of Tory bluff, and a device for annoying the
    Dutch."

    He had lately visited Dropmore: said how frequently the Dropmore
    Papers upset accepted history, but that the historian will answer,
    _Mon siege est fait_. He explained the phrase. A man had written a
    history of some famous siege; after it was published fresh facts
    were brought to his notice: he declined them--"Mon siege est fait."
    [Footnote: Ascribed to the Abbé Dubois.]

    He talked of Marlborough's victories: he hummed the opening verse of
    "Malbrook s'en va-t-en guerre." I said it was our "For he's a jolly
    good fellow": he said yes, but the tune goes back to the time of the
    Crusaders. I asked who wrote the words. He said an unknown French
    soldier on the night of Malplaquet, when Marlborough was believed to
    have been killed. Napoleon, who knew no music, often mounted his
    horse at the opening of a campaign singing the first line as he put
    his foot into the stirrup.

    He spoke often of Grillion's which he habitually frequented and much
    enjoyed. He told of its formation in 1812; of old members whom he
    had known--Sir Robert Inglis, Chenery of the _Times_, regal old Sir
    Thomas Acland, Fazakerley, Gally Knight, Wilmot Horton; of its
    effect in socially harmonizing men bitterly opposed in politics. He
    told the story of "Mr. G." dining there by accident alone, and
    entering himself in the club book as having drunk a bottle of sherry
    and a bottle of champagne. He said what care was taken to exclude
    undesirables, preserving thereby a high tone of company and of talk.
    I asked him what was the finest conversation to which he had ever
    listened. "In Boston," he said; "at Lowell's breakfast-table; the
    company Lowell, Wendell Holmes, Longfellow, Agassiz, Asa Gray."
    [Footnote: See Vol. I., Chapter VI.]

    We talked of precious stones, recalling the Koh-i-noor in its small
    gas-lighted tent at the 1851 Exhibition. He said that modern paste
    is more beautiful and effective than diamonds. The finest pearls
    known belonged to the Duchess of Edinburgh: she showed Sir Charles a
    collar valued at two millions sterling. I named the Hope jewels,
    shown also in 1851. He knew the "rich Hope," Henry, who built the
    house in Piccadilly. The "poor Hope," Beresford, had only £30,000 a
    year. They were a Dutch family, "Hoop" by name. Beresford's wife,
    Lady Mildred, aped the Queen, driving in the Park dressed in black,
    with a large hat, and finely mounted outriders. The same thing was
    done by Mme. Van de Weyer. Beresford bought the _Morning Chronicle_
    in order to promulgate his High Church views, writing under the
    signature D.C.L. He ruined the paper.

    He more than once sang the praises of Sir George Grey--honoured in
    South Africa, Australia, New Zealand; statesman, aristocrat,
    Radical, creator of the Australian Labour Party, terror of our
    Colonial Office at home; one of the few men who have done great
    things by themselves. Bismarck told Sir Charles that Cavour, Crispi,
    Kruger, were greater than himself. "I had the army and the State
    behind me; these men had nothing." Amongst Bismarck's minor desires
    was a hope that he might outlive his physician, Dr. Schweininger,
    who plagued him with limitations as to diet. "To-day potatoes will
    we eat; to-morrow comes Schweininger." He owned to having over-eaten
    himself once, and only once: "Nine nine-eyes (lampreys) did I eat."
    "People," he said, "look on me as a monarchist. Were it all to come
    over again, I would be republican and democrat: the rule of kings is
    the rule of women; the bad women are bad, the good are worse."

    Sir Charles spoke of Botha, whom he met here in 1907. People were
    unexpectedly charmed with him: they anticipated a replica of old
    Kruger; instead of that they beheld a handsome man, with the most
    beautiful eyes and mouth ever seen. His daughter with him was very
    pretty; fashionably dressed, in the style of a French American.

    He told of an Indian official under the old East India Company
    stationed in a remote place, a "Boggley Wallah," who for several
    years sent in no reports, money, or accounts. An emissary,
    commissioned to bring him to book, found him living in great luxury
    on the borders of a lake. He said that he did his work and kept his
    papers on an island in the lake, and sent a boat for them; but the
    returning boat somehow sank in mid-water, and books and papers went
    to the bottom. The Company dismissed him without a pension: he came
    to London, took his seat daily in ragged clothes just outside the
    offices in Leadenhall Street, standing up to salaam when any
    Director or official passed in or out, but speaking no word. People
    gathered to look at him, and at last the Company gave him £1,000 a
    year. He drove down in a carriage and four, and handed in a letter
    stating that he had already amassed £5,000 a year in their service,
    that they had now raised it to £6,000, and that he desired to
    express his gratitude.

    I quoted from some book I was reading a dictum that no woman
    nowadays can be called perfectly beautiful. He said he had known
    only two, Lady Dudley and Madame Castiglione. The latter was in the
    pay successively of Victor Emanuel and Louis Napoleon; in the second
    capacity supposed to have been a spy employed by Cavour.

    He spoke of John Forster, biographer of Dickens, an intimate friend
    of his own grandfather and father, as a man of violent, noisy
    passions, but very lovable; his attitude towards Dickens
    pathetically affectionate.

    He described two German Princesses whom he had met at lunch; dowdy
    and of the ordinary Teutonic type, looking on their brother "Billy"
    as the greatest of mortals. They had been shopping up and down
    Oxford Street, delighted with their purchases, and with their escape
    from Court ceremonial. He went on to say how common every Prussian
    officer looks when in plain clothes. Wearing them very rarely, the
    officers never look at ease in them; and the swagger which they
    adopt in uniform is highly ridiculous in mufti.

    When Napoleon's death was known, one of George IV.'s Ministers went
    to his master with the news: "Sir, your greatest enemy is dead."
    "Good G---! they told me she was better," was the royal answer. Sir
    Charles spoke of Jerome Bonaparte, whom he knew; a dull man, a thorn
    in the side of Napoleon III. "You have nothing of the great Napoleon
    about you," Jerome said one day. "I have his family," answered the
    worried Emperor. From him we passed to the death of the Duc
    d'Enghien. The Princes were notoriously plotting against Napoleon's
    life; by slaying a Prince of the blood he made it clear that two
    could play the game. The first copy of Mme. de Rémusat's book was
    thought to deal too plainly with this and other topics; it was
    destroyed, and rewritten in a softer tone.

    In November, 1909, Sir Charles spent some days in the Record Office,
    coming back each time in much need of a bath, after rummaging
    amongst papers which had not been disturbed for a century. He found
    amongst other papers a letter from a Grand Duke of Modena to
    Castlereagh, written just after Napoleon's fall, saying how exultant
    were his subjects at his return to them, and asking Castlereagh to
    lend him £14. With the letter was the draft of Castlereagh's answer,
    congratulating the Duke's subjects and himself, but adding that
    there would be difficulty in applying to Parliament for the loan.

    Sir Charles remarked on my _Athenaeum_ review of Francis Newman's
    Life. He said that when he himself was in bad odour for his early
    Civil List speeches, so that he had been exposed to serious
    disturbances, and a break-up of his intended meeting at Bristol was
    threatened, Newman, from sheer dislike to mob tyranny, came forward
    to take the chair; and through a tempest of shouts and rushes, and
    amid the stifling smell of burnt Cayenne pepper, sat in lean
    dignity, looking curiously out of place, but serene in vindication
    of a principle. [Footnote: See Vol. I, Chapter IX.]

    The publication of the Life of Goldwin Smith led us to talk of
    University reform. I said how by means of it my own college had
    become _ex humili potens_, had arisen from depths to heights, from
    obscurity to fame. Of his, he said, the contrary was true: his
    college had been ruined by Parliamentary interference. Trinity Hall
    was founded for the study and teaching of jurisprudence, the old
    Roman canon and civil law, on which all modern law is based. It was
    the only institution of the kind, a magnificent and useful monopoly.
    This exclusive character was destroyed by Parliament; scholarships
    in mathematics and classics were instituted; it is now like other
    colleges, and men who wish to study law at its source no longer
    frequent it. He talked to me of Cambridge, and related with mimicry
    anecdotes of "Ben" Latham, Master of Trinity Hall. Dining at Trinity
    Hall one Sunday in 1883, he said Latham told him that he had lately
    been sitting on an inter-University committee with Jowett, and that
    Jowett was so sharp a man of business that "it is like sitting to
    represent the Great Northern against the London and North-Western.
    His one idea is to draw away passengers from the rival line." Latham
    went on to say that the students for India who were made to stay two
    years at Cambridge or Oxford, under Jowett's scheme, "the first year
    learn _Sandford and Merton_ in Tamil, translated by a missionary;
    and the second year _Sandford and Merton_ in Telugu, translated by
    the same missionary. Thus they acquire a liberal education."

    He talked of Waterloo, the battlefield being known to us both. It
    was, he said, as the Duke always owned, a wonderfully near thing. If
    Napoleon had had with him the two army corps left in France to
    overawe insurrectionary districts, who would have joined him in a
    week; and if at Ligny he had persevered in so smashing the Prussians
    as to leave them powerless--if these two "if's" had become
    realities, Napoleon must have driven Wellington back on Brussels.
    Then the Belgians would have joined him, and the Austrians would
    have forsaken the Allies, Metternich wishing well to Bonaparte for
    the sake of his wife and child. The mystery of his escape from Elba,
    which the English fleet might easily have prevented, remains still
    to be explained: for the Vienna Congress was riddled with intrigue.
    [Footnote: Sir Charles Dilke discussed the whole question of
    Napoleon's escape from Elba in an article in the _Quarterly Review_,
    January, 1910, entitled "Before and After the Descent from Elba."]

    He made me laugh at a parson who in moments of provocation used to
    say "Assouan!" His friends at last remembered that at Assouan was
    the biggest dam in the world.

    He gave me a recipe for beefsteak pudding: _no beef_, fresh kidney,
    fresh mushrooms, fresh oysters, great stress laid on the epithet:
    serve the pudding in its basin.

    He came in to breakfast one morning whistling an attractive air. I
    asked what it was; he said from _Carmen_, and hummed the air
    through. He went on to say that he had well known the composer,
    Bizet, who founded his opera on Mérimée's romance. It fell flat, and
    Bizet died believing it a failure; afterwards it became the rage.

    This whistling of music was a favourite practice with him. His
    accurate ear enabled him to reproduce any tune which had at any time
    impressed him. He would give Chinese airs, would go through parts of
    a Greek Church service, would sing words and music of the _Dies Iræ.
    On the Sunday following the death of Florence Nightingale our
    Chertsey organist played Chopin's Funeral March. Sir Charles said
    its _motifs_ were Greek rustic popular airs, each of which he
    hummed, showing how Chopin had worked them in.

    The dinner given to him in April, 1910, in connection with the Trade
    Boards Bill was a great success, and much delighted him. He said
    Bishop Gore had made a splendid speech. Sir Charles had a long chat
    with Gore, and was, as always, delighted with his information and
    bonhomie.

    He talked of a Parisian jeweller who lived by selling jewels and by
    lending money to the great Indian native potentates, and had
    establishments for that purpose in India. This man wished to be
    employed by our Government as a spy: Sir Charles applied on his
    behalf to Lord George Hamilton, who handed to him the man's
    _dossier_, an appalling catalogue of crimes and misdemeanours. He
    had an extraordinarily noble presence; Sir Charles said to him:
    "_You_ ought to be Amir of Afghanistan." "No," he replied; "I should
    never have the patience to kill a sufficient number of people."

    Of a French gentleman who had come to tea, recommended by the French
    Ambassador, Sir Charles said that he was a French fool, the worst
    kind of fool, _corruptio optimi_.

    He showed the number of peerages having their origin in
    illegitimacy, although the official books conceal the fact where
    possible. The facts come out in such memoirs as Lady Dorothy
    Nevill's. He went on to talk of divorce in the Roman Church, and to
    scout their boast that with them marriage is an indissoluble
    sacrament. The Prince of Monaco was for years the husband of Lady
    Mary Hamilton. They tired of each other, wished for a divorce; the
    Pope, with heavy fees for the transaction, declared the marriage to
    have been for some ecclesiastical reason null and void. Each married
    again; but the son of the nominally annulled union succeeded his
    father as legitimate heir.

    Sir Charles spoke--this was in 1906--of Bülow's speech in the German
    Parliament, as one of the best ever made by any statesman, and
    creating universal astonishment. Its appreciation of France and of
    Gambetta was magnificent as well as generous. The French, after the
    _débâcle_, behaved as a nation self-respecting and patriotic ought
    to have behaved. His hint at the bad feeling between the Kaiser and
    King Edward was dexterous; it was real and insuperable; none of our
    Royal Family can forgive the seizure of Hanover by Prussia; and
    added to this was our King's indignation at the Kaiser's treatment
    of the Empress Frederick, a member of his family for whom he felt
    strong affection.

    Of Morny he said that he was very handsome, but in an inferior
    style. His beautiful Russian wife never cared for him, but in
    obedience to Russian custom cut off her wonderful hair to be laid
    with him in his coffin.

    He spoke of the brothers Chorley, one the supreme musical critic of
    his time, the other a profound Spanish scholar, shut up through life
    in his library of 7,300 volumes.

    Dilke told me one morning that he had been writing since five
    o'clock an article for the _United Service Gazette_, and had
    finished it to his satisfaction, adding that papers dashed off under
    an impulse were always the best. I demurred. "Those papers of mine,"
    I said, "specially praised by you have been always the fruit of long
    labour." "Ah!" he answered, "but you have style--a rare
    accomplishment; that is what I have admired in yours." "Would you,"
    I said, "admire the style if the matter were ill considered?" "Yes."

    He often talked admiringly of the Provençal language, declaiming
    more than once what he called a fine Homeric specimen:

      "Pesto, liona, sablas, famino, dardai fou,
      Avie tout affronta."

      (Pestilence, lions, sandy deserts, famine, maddening sun-heat,
      Ye have all this faced.)

    He was fond, too, of quoting Akbar's inscription on the Agra bridge:
    "Said Jesus, on whom be peace, Life is a bridge: pass over!"

    He described the French Foreign Legion: two regiments employed by
    the French chiefly among the natives in the Tonquin settlement--
    desperate men most of them, many of high social position and of army
    rank, who had "done something" and had gone wrong; disgraced, hiding
    from society, criminals escaped from justice, with a sprinkling of
    young adventurers and riotous Germans. No enormity they would not
    commit, no danger they would not court; some even seeking death; all
    knowing that if left wounded in the bush by retreating comrades they
    would be tortured horribly by the Tonquin women. They had a hospital
    served by Roman Catholic nurses, to whom they paid every respect.
    When a man newly joined once whistled rudely while the Sister was
    praying, as was her custom before leaving the ward, his comrades
    severely punished him. Intra-regimental offences, such as theft,
    were visited with death.

    He mentioned one morning that he had just received a Privy Council
    summons. I asked why the Bidding Prayer held a petition for the
    Lords _and others_ of Her Majesty's Privy Council: old Regius
    Professor Jacobson used to tell us that it was a mistake, that all
    Privy Councillors were "Lords" of the Privy Council. He thought that
    the word "others" represented the Lord Mayor, who attends Accession
    Councils and signs the parchment, but, not being a Lord of Council,
    is then required to leave, while other business proceeds.

    Twice in these years he dined at Oxford--once at All Souls as the
    guest of Mr. Spenser Wilkinson, again on the invitation of some
    undergraduates, sons mostly of his political acquaintances. He
    greatly enjoyed both; the young men were the pick and flower of
    Oxford; the All Souls high table was full of young teachers and
    professors. What a change from the aristocratic college of my time,
    whose head was Lewis Sneyd, its Fellows William Bathurst, Henry
    Legge, Sir Charles Vaughan, Augustus Barrington, etc.! Anson very
    charmingly presided; the talk was everything except political.

    He was extraordinarily impressed by the funeral of the King--a
    wonderful and novel ceremony he called it. As a senior Privy
    Councillor he had an excellent place with Asquith close to the
    coffin. The most magnificent figure in the show was Garter
    King-of-Arms, but all the heralds were splendid. The Archbishop,
    with the Dean of Westminster and a cross-bearer, was the only
    prominent ecclesiastic, the Bishops in their places as peers being
    crowded out of sight. The colouring was most effective, black
    setting off the scarlet. The singing was somewhat drowned by the
    Guards' bands, but the Dead March came in grandly through the
    windows from Palace Yard. He mentioned a curious fact: that
    Westminster Hall is controlled, not by Parliament, not by any
    Government department, but by the Great Chamberlain. It is the sole
    remaining part of the royal palace, which was lent to Parliament by
    our early Kings. I said that it had not witnessed such a scene
    since, on Mary's accession, the Sovereign and the two Houses met
    there to receive Papal absolution from the Legate Pole. He wished I
    had told him so before.

    He recalled the Cambridge Union debates of his time: the best he
    ever heard was on a personal question, the impeachment of a man
    named Harris for some breach of rule. Henry Sidgwick was in the
    chair, the speaking extraordinarily animated and well sustained. The
    finest orator of his time was a man called Payne. [Footnote: Payne
    belonged to the same college as Dilke, Trinity Hall, and was
    bracketed Senior in the Law Tripos of 1868. He had begun to make his
    mark both at the Bar and in the Press, when, still a very young man,
    he was killed in a mountaineering accident in Wales.] I said our
    best speaker in my day was Goschen; his Union reports caused
    Gladstone to pick him out and bring him forward. He said yes, but
    that Goschen never fulfilled his promise until his really powerful
    speech on Free Trade in 1903.

    He enumerated the Jewish types in England. There is (1) the sallow
    Jew with a beak; (2) the same without a beak; (3) the "hammy" Jew,
    with pink face like a _cochon-à-lait_. The Florentine type, with
    fair hair and beautiful clear face, is not seen in England.

    His criticism of a certain lady led me to ask who, of people he had
    known, possessed the most perfect manners. He said Lord Clarendon,
    who had the old carefully cultivated Whig manners, yet with the
    faintest possible tendency to pomposity. This style became
    unfashionable, and was succeeded by what he called the "early
    Christian" or "Apostolic" manners, of which the late Lord Knutsford
    was a perfect exemplar. The best-mannered woman he had known was the
    late Lady Waterford. Domestic servants too, he said, have manners;
    he instanced as magnificent specimens Turner, Lady Waldegrave's
    groom of the chambers, and Miss Alice Rothschild's Jelf. Lady
    Lonsdale once spoke of the latter as "Guelph, or whatever member of
    the Royal Family it is that waits on Alice."

    Sir Charles talked about the Wallace Collection. Sir Richard was not
    the natural son either of the fourth Lord Hertford, or of his father
    the third Lord, Thackeray's Steyne and Disraeli's Monmouth. He was
    brought up by the fourth Lord Hertford, under the name of Monsieur
    Richard, not by any means as the expectant heir; yet, excepting the
    settled estates, which went to the fifth Marquis, all was left to
    him. Part of the great art collection remained at Bagatelle, which
    became the property of a younger Wallace, an officer in the French
    army; the rest has come to the English nation through Lady Wallace,
    to whom her husband left the whole. Why Sir Richard assumed the name
    Wallace no one knows. He was French, not English, speaking English
    imperfectly: a kind, cheery, polished gentleman.

    Apropos of the Education Bill: old Lady Wilde from her window in
    Tite Street heard a woman bewailing herself in the street--her son
    had been "took away," to gaol that is. "He was a good boy till the
    Eddication came along;" then, kneeling down on the pavement and
    joining her hands, she prayed solemnly "God damn Eddication."

    Sir Charles contrasted the idiosyncrasies of some politicians: Grey
    reserved, Balfour telling everything to everybody; Arnold-Forster
    closely "buttoned up," Gorst dangerously frank. On Gorst he
    enlarged: a nominal Tory, in fact a Radical, ever battering his own
    side for the mere fun of the operation; old in years, young in
    activity of brain and body; a poor man all his life.

    He said that the two incomparable sights which this country could
    show to a foreigner were (1) Henley in regatta week; (2) the Park on
    a fine summer day: everyone out riding, and the Life Guards' band
    going down to a Drawing-room.

    I asked if he had heard a certain London preacher who was drawing
    large audiences. He said yes, and that he was well worth hearing.
    "He is High Church and anti-ritualist, Socialist and aristocrat,
    orthodox while holding every heresy extant, not cultured or
    literary, slovenly and almost coarse; yet grasping his listeners by
    the feeling impressed on each that the preacher knows and is
    describing his (the hearer's) experiences, troubles, hopes,
    life-history."

    I questioned him about Leonard Montefiore, a memoir of whom had
    caught my eye in one of the bookcases. He was a man of brilliant
    promise, unpopular at Balliol, giving himself intellectual airs;
    went unwashed, with greenish complexion and generally repulsive
    appearance; would have been prominent had he lived; was much petted
    by Ruskin.

    He said that, if London were destroyed to-morrow, in ten years' time
    its site would be covered with a forest of maple, sycamore, robinia,
    showing an undergrowth of Persian willow-herb.

    He told of a man whom his groom pronounced to be "the footiest gent
    on a 'oss and the 'ossiest gent on foot as he ever see."

    He spoke of the "Local Veto Bill," forced by Harcourt on a reluctant
    Cabinet; Harcourt was, he said, a genuine convert to the principle--
    a curious intellectual phenomenon, this development of a belated
    conviction in a mind hitherto essentially opportunist. It cost him
    his seat later on.

    Sir Charles described Speaker Peel's farewell to the House: said
    that it was quite perfect in every way. He thought Gully undesirable
    as his successor, and should not vote for him.

    Of the rising I.L.P. he said once, in early days, they had done
    wrongly in formulating a programme. Their name was a sufficient
    programme; now they would indirectly help the Tories.

    He had an extraordinary insight into the mental habits and emotions
    of domestic animals, interpreting the feelings and opinions of his
    horses when out riding, of his Pyrford dog Fafner, of his Sloane
    Street cat Calino, in a manner at once graphic and convincing. His
    love for cats amounted to a passion; a menagerie of eight or ten
    tailless white or ginger Persians was kept in an enclosure, at
    Pyrford. Once, when exploring a fine Ravenna church, we missed him,
    returning from our round to find him near the door, caressing a cat
    belonging to the custodian, which he had inveigled into his lap.

    His literary dislikes and preferences were numerous and frankly
    expressed, deeply interesting as the idiosyncrasies of a rich and
    highly trained intelligence, even when to myself somewhat
    unaccountable. While keenly appreciating the best in modern French
    literature, he could see no charm in Corneille or Racine. Quite
    lately Rabelais, reopened after many years, appealed to him
    strongly, as keen satire and invective veiled by wit, and, so only,
    tolerated by those scourged. To be laid hold of and temporarily
    possessed by a book was as characteristic of him as of old
    Gladstone; in their turn, _Pantagruel_, Anatole France's _Penguins_,
    most of all _The Blue Bird_, which he read delightedly, but would
    not see acted, formed of late the breakfast equipage as certainly as
    the eggs and toast: any utterance of conventional apology or regret
    was expressed by, "Voulez-vous que j'embrasse le chat?"

    His acquaintance with English literature was intermittent. He was
    apparently a stranger to our eighteenth-century authors, both in
    poetry and prose; of those who followed them in time, he undervalued
    Scott, disliked Macaulay, admired Napier, admired Trollope.
    Wordsworth he condemned as puerile, inheriting the _Edinburgh
    Review_ estimate of his poetry, and often called on me ecstatically
    to repeat Hartley Coleridge's parody of _Lucy_. Of Keats he was
    immeasurably fond, drawn to him by the poet's relation to his
    family, declaiming his lines often--as he did sometimes those of
    Shelley, whose verses in his own copy of the poems are heavily and
    with wise selection scored--in tones which showed a capacity for
    deep poetic feeling. A quotation would accidentally arrest him, and
    he would call for the book, usually after short perusal discarding
    the author as a "poopstick," a favourite phrase with him. I remember
    this occurring with the _Rejected Addresses_, though he knew and
    loved James Smith. A travesty of Omar Khayyám, called _The Rubaiyat
    of a Persian Kitten_, he read delightedly, much preferring it to the
    original. He professed contempt for the study of English grammar,
    more especially for the scientific analysis of English
    sentence-structure, which plays so large a part in modern education.
    The contempt was certainly, as Osborne Gordon said, not bred of
    familiarity. I fear that, like most University or public school men,
    he would have been foiled by the simplest Preliminary Grammar Paper
    of a University Local Examination to-day.

    But his knowledge of political history, foreign and domestic, during
    the last centuries was marvellously extensive and minute. In earlier
    history he was oblivious often of his own previous knowledge,
    argumentatively maintaining untenable propositions. Though fortified
    by Freeman and Bryce, I could never get him to admit that all the
    historic "Emperors," from Augustus Caesar in 27 B.C. down to
    Francis, King of Germany, who gave up the Empire in A.D. 1806, were
    Emperors, not of Germany or Austria, but of Rome; or that the
    Reformed English Church of Tudor times, with all its servility, had
    never relinquished, but steadily held and holds, its claim to
    continuous Catholicity. But a query as to the French Revolution, the
    Napoleonic dynasties, the Vienna Congress, the South African or
    Franco-Prussian War, or the developments in India, Canada, Egypt,
    would draw forth a stream of marshalled lucid information, which it
    was indeed a privilege to hear.

    "Neque ille in luce modo atque in oculis civium magnus, sed intus
    domique præstantior. Qui sermo! quæ præcepta! quanta notitia
    antiquitatis! quæ scientia juris! Omnia memoria tenebat, non
    domestica solum, sed etiam externa bella. Cujus sermone ita tunc
    cupide tenebar, quasi jam divinarem, id quod evenit, illo exstincto
    fore unde discerem neminem" (Cicero, _De Senectute_).



APPENDIX

PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF MR. GLADSTONE BY
SIR CHARLES DILKE


The difficulty in the way of furnishing reminiscences of Mr. Gladstone
in Cabinet is in part the Privy Council oath, but still more the fact
that, where the matters that would be touched are of interest, they
often affect individuals or parties. I saw the most of Mr. Gladstone
between 1880 and 1886, and to this period the restrictions imposed by
the considerations named are most highly applicable. In the earlier days
when I sat in Parliament with him, from 1868 to 1880, we were, though
sitting on the same side of the House, frequently opposed to one
another, for I was often fighting for the claims of independent
Radicalism as against his commanding personality. This was especially
the case from 1868 to 1874; and his retirement after his defeat in 1874,
when Lord Hartington became the leader of the Liberal party, was so
complete that it was not until Mr. Gladstone was aroused by the
development of the Eastern Question in 1877 that we again saw much of
him in the House of Commons. An interesting reminiscence of the great
struggle of 1878 is afforded by the copy in my possession of the Whips'
list of the Liberal party marked by Mr. Gladstone and myself. I was
acting for him, against the party Whips, in the preparations for the
division upon his famous Resolutions. We daily went through the promises
of the members who had undertaken to support his Resolutions, of those
who remained steadfast in adhesion to Lord Hartington and who were
prepared to vote against the Resolutions, and of those who would vote
neither way. The changes from day to day in the ascertained opinions of
the party were most strange. Family was divided against family--for
instance the family of Cavendish--and the cleavage followed no line that
corresponded with shades of Liberalism. The pro-Turks upon the Liberal
side were joined in their support of Lord Hartington by the "peace at
any price" section of the Radicals. Curiously enough, the division of
the party was exactly equal, and remained equal through all the changes
of individual promises. On the day on which peace was made, and (to Mr.
Gladstone's immense relief) the chances of a complete disruption
averted, the number of members pledged to Mr. Gladstone was 110, and an
exactly equal number of members was pledged to Lord Hartington and the
Whips.

Coming to later times, a reminiscence is one of April, 1893, when Mr.
Gladstone sent for me to discuss a motion of which I had given notice
upon the Egyptian occupation. He talked on that occasion with that
absolute frankness which accompanied the confidence he always placed in
others. It was not peculiar to him, but belongs more, perhaps, to the
old days in which he received the training of his mind than to present
times. We are told that democratic diplomacy is to be outspoken. But, so
far as Parliament is concerned, the older leaders were, I think, like
Mr. Gladstone, more given to outspokenness than the newer men, who find
themselves forced by the ubiquity of the Press to a greater reserve than
was formerly necessary to be maintained. Mr. Gladstone was always of a
playful mind, and it would be impossible ever to fully relate any of his
conversations without recalling the manner in which, however absorbed in
his subject, he always would break off to discuss some amusing
triviality. Sir William Harcourt has touchingly recalled Mr. Gladstone's
old-world courtesy, which was in private life his distinguishing
characteristic.--_Daily News_, May 24_th_, 1898.







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