The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke Volume I Part 52

'"The reserve, the abstention of Germany and Austria, which Powers pretended to disinterest themselves from the Egyptian question, and opened to France in Africa a chance of compensation for the loss of Alsace, helped to keep Mancini and Depretis, tied also by party connections to the French democracy, in the absurd idea that Italy could keep herself in stable equilibrium between two alliances--an alliance with Germany in Continental affairs, and with France in Mediterranean questions. This idea had for its result to render unintelligible for the Italian public the alliance of Italy with the Central Powers, sterilized and perverted through not being boldly applied by Italy to the affairs of the Mediterranean and of the Levant. But once again Italy did not believe herself strong enough to overcome the indifference which England showed for Mediterranean questions--more and more thrown into the background in English minds by the interests of the British colonial empire in distant seas. Australia seemed looked upon at London as more important than Turkey or Egypt itself, and the idea that the first line of defence of India is at Constantinople, the seat of the Khalifat, seemed forgotten by the successors of Disraeli. It took seven years for the idea, born in 1881, of making Italy a connecting link in an Anglo-German alliance, to become a practical one at Home, as it did under Crispi.

'"To return to the question of the refusal of Italy to intervene alone with England in Egypt in 1882, it is necessary to know that when the French Government was informed of the drawing together of Italy and of the Central Powers, France hastened at the end of 1881 to exercise pressure upon the Mancini-Depretis Cabinet by threatening it, not only with fresh enterprise in Tripoli, but with direct hostility if Italy took sides against France in those Egyptian affairs which were at that moment becoming complicated. The Radical Committees of France and Italy were threatening armed movements in the former Papal States, and French money was spent in the Italian elections of 1881. The greater part of the Italian Press was bought up by a Gambetta-Wilson group in such a way that Italian opinion was directed from Paris by the Italian newspapers, as it had already been by the Stefani-Havas Agency. The effect of this preparation was seen when the bombardment of Alexandria was taken as the text for a general opening of fire on the part of the Italian and French Press against England. When Freycinet refused the English proposal for treble intervention, he caused it to be known at Rome that France would look upon it as an act of hostility on the part of Italy if that Power should take in Egypt the position which belonged to France, and occupy, without France, any portion of Egyptian territory.

'"He also used as a bait to Mancini the idea of a treble condominium, by making him believe that Italy and Russia could, by procuring for a treble intervention the adhesion of the whole concert of European Powers, prevent it becoming dangerous from the point of view of the two-faced policy of which Germany was suspected at Rome. To act so that France could, without the fear of a snare on the part of Germany, intervene in Egypt with Italy and England--such was the part which France proposed to Mancini that he should play, and which he accepted and did play in the Constantinople conference. The outward and visible sign of this programme was that wonderful patrol of the Ca.n.a.l which was adopted in principle on the motion of Corti, and was intended to lead up to the treble condominium by the treble occupation of the Suez Ca.n.a.l with a mandate of Europe. 'Success seemed certain,' funnily declared the Mancini telegrams of the moment, when came the British invitation to Italy for a double intervention.

Neither Menabrea, nor Mancini, nor Corti, took this invitation seriously, and they saw in it only the hesitation of England, a Power which they supposed entirely incapable of such boldness as isolated action. They never believed for a moment but that the refusal by Italy of a double intervention would have for effect a treble occupation. You know how this illusion of a treble occupation died a wretched death in the ridiculous appearance of Italian and French ships in the neighbourhood of the Ca.n.a.l just at the moment when Wolseley seized it before Tel-el-Kebir.

'"The same idea of becoming the binding link in Mediterranean affairs, not between Berlin and London, but between Paris and London, continued to animate Mancini and Depretis even after England had become the sole power in occupation of Egypt. The expedition to Ma.s.sowah in 1885 was an expression of this tendency. From the beginning of 1884, in face of the Hicks disaster, of the prolongation of the British occupation, of the return to power of Nubar, France considered a plan for disembarking at Ma.s.sowah troops recalled from Tonquin, where she was supposed to be safe after the success of Sontay. In order not to leave without some counterweight in the Red Sea the consolidation of British domination in Egypt, France would have returned to Egypt by Ma.s.sowah and the Soudan.

When she decided to suspend this operation, she advised it to Italy as a means of giving expression to the Franco-Italian view of the internationality of the Ca.n.a.l and Red Sea. Mancini, whom the Italian Chamber blamed for having not taken part in the colonial fever which had affected Germany herself in 1884-85, adopted the idea of an expedition to Ma.s.sowah at the moment when Wolseley seemed likely to enter Khartoum.'

'"We have not as yet been able to get out of this trap in which we are caught, and in which the Russians and French try to keep us paralyzed.

Capital and disastrous blunders, evident contradictions with the idea of the alliance of Italy with the Central Powers, completed by the understanding with England! But England herself, is she without fault? Is her Egyptian policy more clear and more strong? Is she not herself in Egypt also taken in the toils of Franco-Levantine influences, as dominant at Cairo as they are at Constantinople? It is not on the national and Mohammedan spirit that England in Egypt leans, but on Franco-Levantine cliques and Graeco-Armenian cliques sold to French finance. Hence the decline of British influence in the Levant. The memorandum which I have sent shows what a different line Italy and England may follow if they do not wish the Mediterranean to become a Franco-Russian lake, and the Khalif, in the character of a new Bey of Tunis, lending the flag of the Prophet to Russia for the conquest of India and to France to complete her African Empire."

'The memorandum enclosed by him to which he refers was sent by him for the purpose that it should be communicated by us to friends in Rome who were likely to bring it before Crispi, whose Foreign Minister in 1893 Blanc became.'

CHAPTER x.x.x

ENTRY INTO THE CABINET SEPTEMBER TO DECEMBER, 1882

I.

Part of Sir Charles's routine was his morning bout of fencing. [Footnote: Sir Charles's fencing seems to have dated from 1874, during his stay in Paris after his first wife's death. Fuller reference to fencing at 76, Sloane Street and to his antagonists will be found in Chapter XLVII. (Vol.

II., pp. 233, 234). ] This was the relaxation which he managed to fit into his crowded daily life, but his weekly holiday he spent upon the river. He notes, just before the Parliamentary crisis due to the bombardment of Alexandria:

'At this time I had given up the practice of going out of town to stay with friends for Sundays, and I did not resume it, for I found it better for me to get my work done on the Sat.u.r.day night and my Foreign Office boxes early on the Sunday morning, to go to the Abbey on the Sunday morning at ten, and after this service to go on the river, and go to bed at eight o'clock at least this one night in the week, and I bought a piece of land at Dumsey Deep, near Chertsey, with the view of building a cottage there.'

It was not here, however, that he built his riverside house, but close by, at Dockett Eddy, which he bought in the following summer. [Footnote: A fuller account of life in his riverside home is to be found in Chapter LI.

(Vol. II., pp. 317-324).] The two pieces of ground were connected by a long strip of frontage which he acquired, thereby saving the willows and alders which then sheltered that reach, and made it a windless course for sculling. Even more perfect was it, by reason of its gravelly bottom, for another form of watermanship. On Sunday, October 22nd, 1882,

'after Westminster Abbey I went down to Teddington, and took a lesson in punting from Kemp, the Teddington fisherman, and from this time forward became devoted to the art, for which I gave up my canoeing.'

His resolve to spend his Sundays in retreat on the river did not pa.s.s without protest from his friends, as is shown by a characteristic letter from Sir William Harcourt:

"CUFFNELLS, LYNDHURST, "_August 28_, 1882."

"DEAR DILKE,"

"Don't be an odious solitary snipe in the ooze of the Thames, but come down here at once and nurse Bobby.

"Yours ever, W. V. H."

"Bobby" was Mr. Robert Harcourt, now M.P. for the Montrose Burghs.

He replied:

"LALEHAM FERRY (_for this night only.

I shall be at the P.O. every day this week_).

"_August 29th._

"MY DEAR HARCOURT,

"I went to bed on Saty. night at dark and on Sunday night at dark.

Last night I was late from London, and sat up till nearly 9! Bobby himself can hardly beat that, can he? On the other hand, he does not get a swim in the Thames at 5 a.m., or breakfast at 6, as I do.

"It is very good of you--and like old times--for you to press me to come down, and, believe me, I should like my company. But when, as now, I am splendidly well, and only want to make up arrears of sleep, the river is the best place for me. I shall go to Walmer next week, but then that is sea, and sea is sleepy too; and I have all my work there with the telegraph in the House, and messengers four times a day as if I was in the F.O., so I can be away--and yet be on duty--as I promised to be till 19th or 20th Septr....

"... This is the longest letter that I was ever known to write in all my life, except perhaps once or twice to you in the old days."

It had now been decided that Wentworth Dilke, being eight years old, should go to school and leave Mr. Chamberlain's house, of which he had been an inmate for some eighteen months.

'On the day of Tel-el-Kebir I received a very pleasing letter from Chamberlain, thanking me for what I had said to him about his reception for so long a period at Highbury of my son. It was a touching letter, which showed both delicacy and warmth of affection.'

On September 21st Sir Charles Dilke went to Birmingham to take his boy to Mrs. Maclaren's school at Summerfields, near Oxford. 'Then crossing to Waterford, spent five days in the South of Ireland--and afterwards went straight to St. Tropez to stay with M. emile Ollivier.' "Il faut fermer la boutique et alors on se trouve tout de suite bien," is his comment as he started on one such journey.

'During my visit to Ollivier I explored the south coast of the mountains of the Moors, along which there was no road, and bought some land at Cavalaire, against the possible chance of a boulevard being made through my land at Toulon in such a way as to cut me off from the sea. I walked from Bormes to the Lavandou upon the coast, and fancied I found the path by which St. Francis journeyed when he landed to save Provence from the plague. It is hollowed out by feet, in some places to three feet deep through the hard quartz and schist, and everywhere at least six inches, so its age is evidently great, and it must have been a path in the days of Saracen domination, if not even in or before the Roman times, for the two villages were ever small.

'At Ste. Claire, the first bay eastward from the Lavandou, I had seen a funeral in which all the crucifixes were borne before the corpse by women, and the coffin carried by women. Ollivier's father was still living--Demosthene, born under the First Republic, and a deputy under the Second: an old Jacobin of an almost extinct type. Ollivier's house is as pretty as the whole coast. It stands on a peninsula with perfect sands, one or other of which is sheltered for bathing in any wind, and instead of the usual parched sterility of Provence, springs rise all round the house, which is lost in a dense forest of young palms. The views are not from the house, but from the various sh.o.r.es of the peninsula, all these, however, being close at hand. I had for escort in my trips about the coast the famous Felix Martin, founder and Mayor of St. Raphael and of Valescure, a railway engineer who was known as the American of Provence, and who, in fact, is the most desperate and the most interesting and pleasant speculator of France. Speaking to me of Frejus, my favourite town, and its surroundings, Martin called it "the Roman Campagna on the Bay of Naples," a very pretty phrase, absolutely true of it, for the scenery is that of the plain between Naples and Capua, but the ruins and the solemnity of the foreground were those of the outskirts of Rome till Martin spoilt it. At the spot where I bought my land eighty boats of Spanish and Italian coral fishers were at anchor. I picked up Roman tiles upon my ground, and found a Roman tomb in the centre of my plot.'

'I was struck with some of the old chateaux in the woods as I returned along the coast to Toulon. Near Bormettes there are two which were nationalized at the Revolution, and the families of the buyers, having turned Legitimist and put stained gla.s.s into the chapel windows, are now becoming n.o.bles in their turn, at all events in their own estimation, and thriving upon cork and American vines.[Footnote: The piece of land at Cavalaire was never built on by Sir Charles, but he remained owner of it till 1905, when it was sold by him. His friendship with the Ollivier household continued till the end of his life.]

'It was during this visit that Ollivier made use of a phrase which I have repeated: "When one looks at the Republic one says: 'It can't last a week--it is dead.' But when one looks at what is opposed to it, one says: 'It is eternal.'"'

The true inner history and genesis of the Franco-Prussian War formed matter for talk with Ollivier, who was among the half-dozen men in Europe best able to inform Sir Charles on the question. The Memoir records a reminiscence told by M. Ollivier.

'When the war broke out, he naturally asked the Emperor about his alliances. The Emperor, who was singularly sweet and winning in his ways, smiled his best smile but said nothing, walked to a table, unlocked a drawer, and took out two letters-one from the Emperor of Austria, and the other from the King of Italy, both promising their alliance. But, although this was Ollivier's story, the Italian letter must have been conditional. Ollivier set down the defeat to this slowness of action, and supineness, due first to the Emperor's firm belief that Austria would move, and then to his stone in the bladder and refusal to let anyone else command. At a later date I became aware of the true story, which was that afterwards told by me in _Cosmopolis_. [Footnote: "The Origin of the War of 1870," by Sir Charles Dilke, _Cosmopolis_, January, 1896.] Austria had declined to join in a war begun in the middle of the summer. It had been fixed for May, 1871. Bismarck found this out from the Magyars, and made the war in 1870.'

To the detail thus gained at first hand Sir Charles Dilke added another in the next year. On February 1st, 1883, he met at Sir William Harcourt's house the Italian Amba.s.sador Count Nigra, who had been in 1870 Minister in Paris:

'He told me that in 1866 the Italians had sent to Paris to ask whether they should join Prussia or Austria, both of whom had promised to give them Venice, and how the Emperor had told them that Italy was to join Prussia as the weaker side, and that when the combatants were exhausted he intended to take the Rhine. Nigra also told me that in 1870 the Emperor had told him that he meant peace, and that it was Gramont on his own account who had told Benedetti to get from the King of Prussia the promise for the future. This was all superficial, as we now know that Nigra was, as the Empress Eugenie said in 1907, a "false friend." Nigra said that Bismarck had made the war by telegraphing his own highly coloured account of the interview; for the French official account, which had only reached Paris (according to Nigra) after war had been declared, had shown that the King had been very civil to Benedetti, although the French Amba.s.sador had persisted in raising the question no less than three several times.... [Footnote: The famous interview at Ems between the King of Prussia and M. Benedetti, the French Amba.s.sador at Berlin, is referred to. See Benedetti, _Ma Mission en Prusse_, chap. vi.; _Bismarck, His Reflections and Reminiscences_, translated from the German under the supervision of A.

J. Butler, vol. ii., chap, xxii.; _Life of Granville_, vol. ii., chap.

ii.]

'On my return through Paris in September, 1882, I had interviews with Duclerc, the French Prime Minister, and with Nubar, as well as with Gambetta. Duclerc I found a cross old man, who was furious because I mentioned Madagascar. On the Tunis capitulations I found the French willing to come to an agreement; but Egypt, the Suez Ca.n.a.l, the Congo, the Pacific Islands, and Newfoundland were all of them difficult questions at this time....

'In a talk with Gambetta on October 19th he said to me that it was his intention, "whether _I_ liked Duclerc or not," to keep him in power, whether he does what he ought, does nothing, or does what is ridiculous. The curse of France is instability. Duclerc is an honest man.' Gambetta was 'aged and in bad spirits.'

Sir Charles communicated this expression through Mr. Plunkett, the British Charge d'Affaires, to M. Duclerc. "I gave him the third alternative in more diplomatic language," Mr. Plunkett wrote, "but he understood me, and we laughed over the idea."

A general reflection of this year is that 'Gambetta hates fools in theory, and loves them, I think, in practice.'

In London during the autumn session Sir Charles records some interesting gossip, to which may be added this first entry of earlier date:

'Lord Granville was a most able man, who did not, in my opinion, decline in intellectual vigour during the many years in which he took a great part in public affairs. He always had the habit of subst.i.tution of words, and I have known him carry on a long conversation with me at the Foreign Office about the proceedings of two Amba.s.sadors who were engaged on opposite sides in a great negotiation, and call "A" B, and "B" A through the whole of it, which was, to say the least of it, confusing. He also sometimes entirely forgot the princ.i.p.al name in connection with the subject--as, for example, that of Mr. Gladstone when Prime Minister--and had to resort to the most extraordinary forms of language in order to convey his meaning. The only other person in whom I have ever seen this peculiarity carried to such a point was the Khedive Ismail, who sent for me when I was in office and he in London, and when the Dervishes were advancing upon Egypt, to say that he had an important piece of information to give the Government, which was the name of a spot at which the Dervishes might easily be checked, owing to the narrowness of the valley. He kept working up to the name, and each time failing to give it, so that I ultimately went away without having been able to get from him the one thing which would have made the information useful. Each time he closed his speech by saying, "Le nom de ce point important est--chose--machine--chose," and so on...

'On Thursday, November 2nd, I breakfasted with Mr. Gladstone to meet the Duc de Broglie. We discussed the question of the authorship of the pretty definition of Liberal-Conservatives as men who sometimes think right, but always vote wrong. But even Arthur Russell, who was at the breakfast with his wife, could throw no light upon the matter. Madame Olga Novikof was also present, and, of course, the Duc de Broglie took me into a corner to ask me if it was true that Mr. Gladstone was absolutely under her influence. She announced her intention of going the next day to Birmingham, and Mr. Gladstone asked Chamberlain to go with her, although he did not know her and although there was a Cabinet; but Chamberlain refused.