'"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 Canal 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 Canal 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 Canal 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 Massowah 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 Massowah 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 Massowah 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 Canal 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 Massowah 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 XXX
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 Saturday 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,