Granville in the first weeks of January doubtless plumed themselves on having gained an important object and strengthened the friendly link between their two Governments by a common agreement. Gambetta had got his note, Granville his treaty. But neither rogue was really able to bring home his booty. Gambetta, though he exerted all his influence with the Chamber to get the Commercial Treaty with England renewed,
failed to obtain a majority and the treaty lapsed, and with it the Liberal argument that Free Trade was not isolating England. On the other hand, though he had got Granville unwillingly to sign the Note, which he intended to use for the glory of France, Gambetta found that he had forged a weapon which he could not himself wield and which within six months passed into his rival's hand, while the friendly arrangement proved almost as soon as it was come to, to be the destruction of all cordial feeling between the two nations for close on a generation. Personally, in the disappointment of the two intriguers and the rival interest of the two nations, I am able to hold a detached attitude. What seems to me tragic in the matter is that for the sake of their paltry ambitions and paltrier greeds a great national hope was wrecked, and the cause of reform for a great religion postponed for many years. The opportunity of good thrown away by the two statesmen between them can hardly recur again in another half century.
The effect of Gambetta's menace to the National Party was disastrous at Cairo to the cause of peace. I was with Malet soon after the note arrived, and he gave it me to read and asked me what I thought of it. I said: "They will take it as a declaration of war." He answered: "It is not meant in a hostile sense," and explained to me how it might be interpreted in a way favourable to the National hopes. He asked me to go to the Kasr el Nil and persuade Arabi, who had just been made Under-Secretary of War, to accept it thus, authorizing me to say, "that the meaning of the Note as understood by the British Government was that the English Government would not permit any interference of the Sultan with