'During the period of the invasion of Egypt by us I used to meet Childers, Northbrook, and Hartington at the War Office almost every day, when Hartington was in town, and the other two when Hartington was away. Tel-el-Kebir was on September 13th, and we met on that day as well as the days before and immediately after.
'Immediately after Tel-el-Kebir I had from Auberon Herbert a letter, which began: "My dear successful Jingo, whom Heaven confound, though it does not appear to have the least intention of doing so…. How I hate you all! But am bound to admit you have managed your affair up to this point skilfully and well. The gods, however, do not love, says Horace, people who have three stories to their houses."'
APPENDIX
'The refusal of the Italian Cabinet was afterwards explained to me in a
most interesting letter from Baron Blanc, at that time (March, 1888)
Italian Ambassador at Constantinople, and afterwards (December, 1893)
Italian Minister for Foreign Affairs:
'"The refusal of the Cabinet of Rome in 1882 to intervene, with England only, as allies in Egypt was a success of French diplomacy, but at the same time a result of the past policy of England.
'"Nothing on the part of England had prepared the Italian Government to believe it possible that England would cease to gravitate towards France in Mediterranean questions, especially when Mr. Gladstone was in power. The hope that England would join the Italian-German understanding, concluded in principle in 1882, had remained in these early days merely theoretic. The Mancini Cabinet, in doing that which Minghetti, Visconti, Bonghi—the old Right, in short—had not dared to do—that is, in drawing towards the Central Powers—did not go so far as to understand that the rupture of the English-French condominium in Egypt—brought about in 1881- 82 by the appearance on the scene of the Arabi party, secretly pushed from Berlin—offered Italy the chance of leading Gladstone himself to lean on Italy and her allies, and no longer upon Paris and Petersburg; or, if it was understood, faith and courage were wanting.
'"It was an axiom with Menabrea, with Nigra, with Corti, that Italy and England herself could do nothing in the Mediterranean without France, still less do anything against France. The last conversation of Corti with Crispi shows plainly his conviction that a real alliance of Italy and England was a Utopia. How many times after 1870 had not Italy been disappointed in attempts to obtain from England a share of influence in Egypt! How many times had not Italy been sacrificed to the private arrangements of England with France in Egyptian affairs! How could the idea that Germany was to replace France in the Eastern policy of Italy and England have entered into the mind of the Cabinet of Rome when it had not entered into the mind of the Cabinet of St. James's!
'"A thousand financial, journalistic, parliamentary connections attached to France both the Gladstone Cabinet and the Ministry of Mancini—the legal counsel of M. de Lesseps. The dream of treble condominium in Egypt was strong in Mancini and Depretis, as in Minghetti, Visconti, and Cairoli. This dream was encouraged by the Cabinet of Paris, which kept Italy in tow by this vain hope, and also by the fear of fresh French enterprises in Africa, for the French threatened Italy with renewing in Tripoli the precedent of Tunis if Italy broke towards French policy in the East the bonds contracted between them in the Crimean War and the treaties of 1856.
'"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.