'He in fact admitted the truth of what I had said, but added that he disapproved of the Berlin conversations. "At that time everybody was telling everybody else to take something which belonged to somebody else. One more powerful than Lord Salisbury, more powerful than Lord Beaconsfield, advised me to take Tunis. [Footnote: Life of Lord Lyons, vol. ii., p. 224; letter from Lord Lyons to Lord Granville, May 13th, 1881: "They got Bismarck's leave for this.">[ Lord Salisbury advised me to take an island, and Lord Salisbury may have advised me to take Tripoli." At the State ball in the evening, I told Odo Russell this. He told me that Lord Salisbury had disgusted Corti by forgetting him on the occasion when he told the great men at the Congress of Berlin about the occupation of Cyprus, and that Corti had never forgiven him.'
Egypt also was now a growing anxiety, made graver by the events in Tunis, which excited apprehensions of like proceedings elsewhere. In such a condition of feeling even trifling incidents—as, for example, that of the Smyrna Quays, where the Porte had violated some rights of an English company—grew delicate and critical. All such matters and many others had to be dealt with in the House of Commons by question and answer—a task of no small difficulty, since the susceptibilities of foreign Powers had to be considered, while British interests, no less sensitive, could not be ignored.
The fulfilment of the Treaty of Berlin was meanwhile an enormous addition to the work of the Parliamentary Under-Secretary, especially as it was at first complicated by the ill will of Russia, which had hoped that the change of Government might bring about some modifications. It was also complicated by the Porte's unlimited capacity for wasting time. The topics regulated by the treaty and its supplementary conventions, when taken in connection with the Treaties of Paris and London, which it partly superseded, fell under at least seventeen separate heads; each of these branched off into numerous divisions and subdivisions, most of which admitted of possible controversy, while many required executive action by Commissioners on the spot, [Footnote: Thomas Erskine Holland, The European Concert in the Eastern Question, pp. 222-225.] such as the delimitation of the boundaries of the new States. Nearly every question involved communications with the signatory Powers, and each of them had a long diplomatic history which had to be studied. M. de Courcel told Sir Charles that in his dreams he always saw a second river flowing by the side of the Danube, as large and as swift, but black—the river of ink which had been shed over the Danube question! Sir Julian Pauncefote, the Permanent Under-Secretary, was credited by Sir Charles with being the only man in England who then understood it; and the question of the Danube, after all, was only one of many.
Questions were continually being asked in the House of Commons, where the expert in foreign affairs was not so rare as he became in a subsequent period; but the inquiries of inexpert persons were the most troublesome of all.
Sir Charles's power of terse and guarded reply was universally considered supreme, and was all the more valuable at a time when the practice had grown up, then comparatively new and since gradually limited, of asking questions on foreign and colonial affairs, with the object of embarrassing Ministers, and without regard to the consequences abroad. It gradually became a dangerous growth, greatly facilitated by the lax procedure, as it then existed, of the House of Commons in regard to supplementary questions. This procedure often allowed question time to degenerate into a sort of ill-regulated debate. Mr. Gladstone's habit of allowing himself very frequently to be drawn into giving a further answer, after the carefully prepared official answer had already been given by the Under- Secretary, was another complication. The brunt of all these troubles had to be borne by the representative of the Foreign Office. [Footnote: Sir Henry Lucy, writing "From the Cross Benches" in this year, discussed critically the various styles of answering questions:
"Sir Charles Dilke's answers are perfect, whether in regard of manner, matter, or style. A small grant of public money might be much worse expended than in reprinting his answer to two questions put last night on the subject of Anglo-French commercial relations, having them framed and glazed, and hung up in the bedroom of every Minister. A good test of the perhaps unconscious skill and natural art with which the answer is drawn up would be for anyone to take the verbatim report which appears in this morning's papers and attempt to make it shorter. There is not a word too much in it. It occupies just twenty-eight lines of print, and it contains a clear and full account of an exceedingly intricate negotiation. The majority of the answers given by Ministers in their places in Parliament appear much better in print than when spoken, redundancies being cut out, parentheses put straight, and hesitancy of manner not appearing. But to the orderly mind and clear intelligence which instinctively brings uppermost and in due sequence the principal points of a question, Sir Charles Dilke adds a frank manner, a clear voice, and an easy delivery.">[
Sir Charles was always a close student of Indian government, and many notes on it are scattered through his diary. On January 9th, meeting Mallet at York House with the Grant Duffs, he says: 'I had always held a strong opinion against the India Council, and Mallet confirmed me in my view that the existing constitution was bad. He ought to know.' The Government turned to Dilke for assistance in debates on foreign affairs, even in a case where the Government of India rather than the Foreign Office was involved.
By the beginning of 1881 England's policy in Afghanistan had been finally determined. The evacuation of Kandahar was now definitive, in spite of opposition from a high quarter. On January 18th 'the Queen telegraphed to Mr. Gladstone at length in a tone of severe rebuke that all her warnings as to Kandahar had been disregarded.' On March 8th Sir Charles received a preliminary warning from Lord Hartington to read up his Central Asian papers, and—
'the Cabinet of March 19th wrote to me to follow Edward Stanhope as to Kandahar debate' (who had been Lord Beaconsfield's Under-Secretary of State for India in 1878, and now naturally led the Tory attack). 'I had to move the direct negative on behalf of the Government. This was a great compliment, as the matter was not in my department, and the only three members of the Government who were to speak were Mr. Gladstone and Lord Hartington and myself.'
After the debate on March 24th, Lord Granville, having first sent his own congratulations, wrote to say: "Gladstone expressed himself almost poetically about the excellence of your speech." [Footnote: "The speech of the debate was that of Sir Charles Dilke. It was close, cogent, and to the point throughout. His facts were admirably marshalled, so as to strengthen without obscuring his arguments. There was no fencing, no rhetoric, no fighting the air.