Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt Part 28

"_October 26._ Count Corti came to take us in a steam launch to Therapia. We had luncheon with the Wyndhams, and called on the Noailles (at the English and French Emba.s.sies).... On our way back to Constantinople Count Corti entertained us with stories of the Berlin Congress and of Lord Salisbury's antics there. Disraeli and Salisbury had gone there quite on their high horse to curb the territorial ambitions of Russia, and the publication of the secret convention for the acquisition of Cyprus was a great shock to everybody. Salisbury broke it gently to Waddington before the news was published, and Waddington consulted his colleagues, it being generally agreed that there was no middle course between going to war and saying nothing. 'Il faut la guerre ou se taire.' But the publication was a great blow to Disraeli, who took to his bed and did not appear for four or five days. Lord Salisbury, however, brazened it out, and came to the Congress with an air of defiance.

There was no rupture between him and Waddington, and they remained on apparently friendly terms, but Waddington had his revenge. He was sitting one day with Salisbury, and, the conversation leading that way, Waddington asked what the English Government would say to France taking Tunis, and Salisbury said he did not see the harm.

Whereupon Waddington communicated this to Paris, and on his return the French amba.s.sador in London was instructed to write to Lord Salisbury reminding him of his words. Thus Salisbury was caught.

'But,' said Corti, 'if he had known anything of his business he would have declined to answer the note officially and would have pleaded a private conversation.' He did not believe that any arrangement of _condominium_ was come to between Salisbury and Waddington at that time, though I told him, without mentioning names, of the letter Lytton had shown me. Corti is interesting diplomatically, as he has been to more congresses than any man in Europe."

This entry, which is a contemporary record of Count Corti's recollection of the incident, five years after it happened, shows that the two secret agreements had remained closely connected in his mind as the cause of Waddington's displeasure. They certainly were present in the Duke of Richmond's mind when, representing the Foreign Office on 17th June, in answer to a further question about the authenticity of the full text of the Anglo-Russian Agreement, he said "as an explanation of the policy of Her Majesty's Government it is _incomplete_ and therefore inaccurate,"

for this _incompleteness_ can only be understood as an allusion to the Cyprus Convention in 1878, and the seizure of Tunis by France in 1881, which after all is the important matter. Some day, no doubt, the whole incident will be made clear by a publication of the secret records at the Foreign Office or at the Quai d'Orsay. In the meantime we may accept it as probable that, finding the Russian Agreement divulged, Lord Salisbury resolved to make a clean breast also of the other Agreement, and, in Count Corti's words, broke gently to M. Waddington the existence also of a Convention with Turkey. One thing I am certain of in my recollection, that the letter shown me at Simla described the quarrel and the terms obtained in the reconciliation with M. Waddington.

The Cyprus Convention was published in London on the 9th July, having been signed on the 4th June, but there is evidence of its having been in Lord Beaconsfield's thoughts at least three months earlier, for Lord Derby, speaking in the Lords, 18th July, gave it as his reason for leaving the Cabinet in March that the policy of the Government had become such, that it was already, at that date, being considered necessary "to seize and occupy the island of Cyprus."

W. S. B.

APPENDIX VI

THE WIND AND THE WHIRLWIND

A POEM BY WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT

PUBLISHED 1883

I

I have a thing to say. But how to say it?

I have a cause to plead. But to what ears?

How shall I move a world by lamentation-- A world which heeded not a Nation's tears?

How shall I speak of justice to the aggressors,-- Of right to Kings whose rights include all wrong,-- Of truth to Statecraft, true but in deceiving,-- Of peace to Prelates, pity to the Strong?

Where shall I find a hearing? In high places?

The voice of havock drowns the voice of good.

On the throne's steps? The elders of the nation Rise in their ranks and call aloud for blood.

Where? In the street? Alas for the world's reason!

Not Peers not Priests alone this deed have done.

The clothes of those high Hebrews stoning Stephen Were held by all of us,--ay every one.

Yet none the less I speak. Nay, here by Heaven This task at least a poet best may do,-- To stand alone against the mighty many, To force a hearing for the weak and few.

Unthanked, unhonoured,--yet a task of glory,-- Not in his day, but in an age more wise, When those poor Chancellors have found their portion And lie forgotten in their dust of lies.

And who shall say that this year's cause of freedom Lost on the Nile has not as worthy proved Of poet's hymning as the cause which Milton Sang in his blindness or which Dante loved?

The fall of Guelph beneath the spears of Valois, Freedom betrayed, the Ghibelline restored, --Have we not seen it, we who caused this anguish, Exile and fear proscription and the sword?

Or shall G.o.d less avenge in their wild valley Where they lie slaughtered those poor sheep whose fold In the gray twilight of our wrath we harried To serve the worshippers of stocks and gold?

This fails. That finds its hour. This fights. That falters.

Greece is stamped out beneath a Wolseley's heels.

Or Egypt is avenged of her long mourning, And hurls her Persians back to their own keels.

'Tis not alone the victor who is n.o.ble.

'Tis not alone the wise man who is wise.

There is a voice of sorrow in all shouting, And shame pursues not only him who flies.

To fight and conquer--'tis the boast of heroes.

To fight and fly--of this men do not speak.

Yet shall there come a day when men shall tremble Rather than do misdeeds upon the weak,--

--A day when statesmen baffled in their daring Shall rather fear to wield the sword in vain Than to give back their charge to a hurt nation, And own their frailties, and resign their reign,--

--A day of wrath when all fame shall remember Of this year's work shall be the fall of one Who, standing foremost in her paths of virtue, Bent a fool's knee at War's red altar stone.

And left all virtue beggared in his falling, A sign to England of new griefs to come, Her priest of peace who sold his creed for glory And marched to carnage at the tuck of drum.

Therefore I fear not. Rather let this record Stand of the past, ere G.o.d's revenge shall chase From place to punishment His sad vicegerents Of power on Earth.--I fling it in their face.

II

I have a thing to say. But how to say it?

Out of the East a twilight had been born.

It was not day. Yet the long night was waning, And the spent nations watched it less forlorn.

Out of the silence of the joyless ages A voice had spoken, such as the first bird Speaks to the woods, before the morning wakens,-- And the World starting to its feet had heard.

Men hailed it as a prophecy. Its utterance Was in that tongue divine the Orient knew.

It spoke of hope. Men hailed it as a brother's.

It spoke of happiness. Men deemed it true.

There in the land of Death, where toil is cradled, That tearful Nile, unknown to Liberty, It spoke in pa.s.sionate tones of human freedom, And of those rights of Man which cannot die,--

--Till from the cavern of long fear, whose portals Had backward rolled, and hardly yet aloud, Men prisoned stole like ghosts and joined the chorus, And chaunted trembling, each man in his shroud.

Justice and peace, the brotherhood of nations,-- Love and goodwill of all mankind to man,-- These were the words they caught and echoed strangely, Deeming them portions of some G.o.dlike plan,--

A plan thus first to their own land imparted.

They did not know the irony of Fate, The mockery of man's freedom, and the laughter Which greets a brother's love from those that hate.

Oh for the beauty of hope's dreams! The childhood Of that old land, long impotent in pain, Cast off its slough of sorrow with its silence, And laughed and shouted and grew new again.

And in the streets, where still the shade of Pharaoh Stalked in his sons, the Mamelukian horde, Youth greeted youth with words of exultation And shook his chains and clutched as for a sword.

Student and merchant,--Jew, and Copt, and Moslem,-- All whose scarred backs had bent to the same rod,-- Fired with one mighty thought, their feuds forgotten, Stood hand in hand and praising the same G.o.d.

III