Anglo-American Establishment полностью

Committee of Enquiry (except Labouchere) were making every effort to conceal the real

facts while still providing the public with a good show.

Before leaving the discussion of Miss Shaw and the Jameson Raid, it might be fitting

to introduce testimony from a somewhat unreliable witness, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, a

member by breeding and education of this social group and a relative of the Wyndhams,

but a psychopathic anti-imperialist who spent his life praising and imitating the Arabs

and criticizing Britain's conduct in India, Egypt, and Ireland. In his diaries, under the date

25 April 1896, he says: "[George Wyndham] has been seeing much of Jameson, whom he

likes, and of the gang that have been running the Transvaal business, about a dozen of

them, with Buckle, The Times editor, and Miss Flora Shaw, who, he told me

confidentially, is really the prime mover in the whole thing, and who takes the lead in all

their private meetings, a very clever middle-aged woman."(13) A somewhat similar

conclusion was reached by W. T. Stead in a pamphlet called Joseph Chamberlain:

Conspirator or Statesman, which he published from the office of The Review of Reviews

in 1900. Stead was convinced that Miss Shaw was the intermediary among Rhodes, The

Times, and the Colonial Office. And Stead was Rhodes's closest confidant in England.

As a result of this publicity, Miss Shaw's value to The Times was undoubtedly

reduced, and she gave up her position after her marriage in 1902. In the meantime,

however, she had been in correspondence with Milner as early as 1899, and in December

1901 made a trip to South Africa for The Times, during which she had long interviews

with Milner, Monypenny, and the members of the Kindergarten. After her resignation,

she continued to review books for The Times Literary Supplement, wrote an article on

tropical dependencies for The Empire and the Century, wrote two chapters for Amery's

History of the South African War, and wrote a biographical sketch of Cecil Rhodes for

the eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

A third member of this same type was Valentine Chirol (Sir Valentine after 1912).

Educated at the Sorbonne, he was a clerk in the Foreign Office for four years (1872-

1876) and then traveled about the world, but chiefly in the Near East, for sixteen years

(1876-1892). In 1892 he was made The Times correspondent in Berlin, and for the next

four years filled the role of a second British ambassador, with free access to the Foreign

Ministry in Berlin and functioning as a channel of unofficial communication between the

government in London and that in Berlin. After 1895 he became increasingly anti-

German, like all members of the Cecil Bloc and the Milner Group, and was chiefly

responsible for the great storm whipped up over the "Kruger telegram." In this last

connection he even went so far as to announce in The Times that the Germans were really

using the Jameson episode as part of a long-range project to drive Britain out of South

Africa and that the next step in that process was to be the dispatch in the immediate

future of a German expeditionary force to Delagoa Bay in Portuguese Angola. As a result

of this attitude, Chirol found the doors of the Foreign Ministry closed to him and, after

another unfruitful year in Berlin, was brought to London to take charge of the Foreign

Department of The Times. He held this post for fifteen years (1897-1912), during which

he was one of the most influential figures in the formation of British foreign and imperial

policy. The policy he supported was the policy that was carried out, and included support

for the Boer War, the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, the Entente Cordiale, the agreement of

1907 with Russia, the Morley-Minto Reforms in India, and the increasing resistance to

Germany. When he retired in 1912, he was knighted by Asquith for his important

contributions to the Morley-Minto Reforms of 1909 and was made a member of the

Royal Commission on Public Services in India (1912-1914). He remained in India during

most of the First World War, and, indeed, made seventeen visits to that country in his

life. In 1916 he was one of the five chief advisers to Lionel Curtis in the preparatory work

for the Government of India Act of 1919 (the other four being Lord Chelmsford, Meston,

Marris, and Hailey). Later Chirol wrote articles for The Round Table and was a member

of the British delegation at the Paris Peace Conference.

Chirol was replaced as head of the Foreign Department during his long absences from

London by Leopold Amery. It was expected that Amery would be Chirol's successor in

the post, but Amery entered upon a political career in 1910, so the position was given

briefly to Dudley Disraeli graham. graham, a former classmate of many of the