'Yours ever,

'Chs. W. D.'

'November, 1891, we spent in France…. While I was away I had a correspondence with Chamberlain about his speech on Egypt' (in reply to Morley), 'and pointed out to him,' says the Memoir,' that he had changed his mind so completely about evacuation that it was hardly prudent in him not frankly to admit the change of mind, as he had done in at least one speech previously.' He replied:

'"I have looked the matter up, and I think it is quite true that in 1884 we were all for evacuation as early as possible. But I did not then estimate properly the magnitude of the task we had undertaken, nor did I know how splendidly it would be performed by Baring and his colleagues. Baring himself began as a strong advocate for evacuation."

'In my answer, I said that Baring had only changed his mind in the way in which all people are apt to change their minds when they are employed as the agents of a policy, and I combated Chamberlain's military views, which were, in fact, for defending Egypt by the fleet—that fleet which is expected to do everything!'

Sir Charles set out in an article in the Speaker all the pledges to evacuate which had been given by the Liberal Government and repeated by Lord Salisbury. Thereupon Mr. Morley, whose general views on foreign policy were not as a rule at all the same as those of Sir Charles, wrote from Biarritz, where he was in Mr. Gladstone's company, that he had read the Speaker with enormous satisfaction. It would have a stimulating effect in quarters where a little stimulus was much needed, and had given much satisfaction to other people in Biarritz besides himself.

'"Quarters" of course meant Rosebery,' is Sir Charles's comment, and he adds:

'In order to meet the Rosebery objection to evacuation, I wrote an article for the January Fortnightly, of which the editor changed nothing but the title. I had called it "Lords Salisbury and Rosebery," and he changed it to "Conservative Foreign Policy."'

At a later date, in a letter [Footnote: This letter was apparently written on April 14th, 1893:

'Those of us who bitterly dislike the occupation of Egypt by a British force have been both to add to your work before and during a session in which, not to speak of the ordinary demand on the time of a Prime Minister, your unprecedented relation to the chief measure makes it the duty of your supporters to confine themselves to helping clear the road. Naught else could have excused us from having hitherto refrained from pressing the state of Egypt on the consideration of yourself, or of the House of Commons. It is only because since the publication of a recent despatch we feel that the time has nearly come for making up one's mind to be for ever silent upon the question, and because I cannot do so, given the strong feeling that I have with regard to it, without one last attempt to cause some change in a "temporary" situation now crystallizing into permanency, that I venture to address you. I ask for no reply. I shall have to bring the question before the House of Commons. I have no illusions as to what is likely to be the result of so doing. Sir E. Grey will tell us that the occupation is still "temporary," but must last, "for the sake of Egypt," till we can "with safety" leave: and so it will continue, with all its dangers to ourselves, till the next great war. Whoever else may again raise the Egyptian question in the future, I shall not. Vote I must, whenever it comes before the House, but I need not do more.