In May, June and July, 1914, within three months of the war, every
donkey in London was cutting, or trying to cut us, for wishing to
settle this very same Irish question. My presence at a hall with
Elizabeth--who was seventeen--was considered not only provocative
to others but a danger to myself. All the brains of all the
landlords in Ireland, backed by half the brains of half the
landlords in England, had ranged themselves behind Sir Edward
Carson, his army and his Covenant. Earnest Irish patriots had
turned their fields into camps and their houses into hospitals;
aristocratic females had been making bandages for months, when von
Kuhlmann, Secretary of the German Embassy in London, went over to
pay his first visit to Ireland. On his return he told me with
conviction that, from all he had heard and seen out there during a
long tour, nothing but a miracle could avert civil war, to which I
replied:
"Shocking as that would be, it would not break England."
Our follies in Ireland have cursed not only the political but the
social life of this country.
It was not until the political ostracisms over Home Rule began all
over again in 1914 that I realised how powerful socially my
friends and I were in the 'eighties.
Mr. Balfour once told me that, before our particular group of
friends--generally known as the Souls--appeared in London,
prominent politicians of opposite parties seldom if ever met one
another; and he added:
"No history of our time will be complete unless the influence of
the Souls upon society is dispassionately and accurately
recorded.
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