CHAPTER XVI ANGORA II.—AT THE HOME OF MY KIND AND COURTEOUS HOST THE next morning we breakfast, “when I am ready,” which is 8.30. My host’s face beams with delight, and the generous _menu_ could hardly fail to put “the guest” in good spirits—toast and boiled eggs (my allowance being half a dozen a day), biscuits and cheese, olives, and glasses of tea. In Nationalist houses “reading the papers” and discussing foreign telegrams have become almost a religious rite. This morning, clearly, there is “good news”! The very air we breathe seems lighter, faces look less anxious, men are greeting each other in hopeful tones! What can it be? Of course, I am not kept long in suspense—“Mr. Lloyd George is a fallen angel!” Well, certainly, I shall not go into mourning; but, at the same time, the animosity thus so sharply revealed makes one sad for one’s own country. With their inborn tact, my friends suggest that we all go to the Pasha’s to celebrate, _not_ the fall of a “Lost Leader,” but the prospect of the Conservatives’ return to power. To them, as in England, the change is welcome for the long vista of possibilities it opens up. Shall we resume the Beaconsfield traditions without Gladstone’s sentimentality? Will Mr. Bonar Law find means to justify our faith? It is obviously early days yet for any assurance in prophecy. Yet, if the exit of Mr. Lloyd George delighted the Continent and the Near East—as if a modern Nero had been assassinated—I, for one, could only think with sorrow upon the “splendour of opportunity” which he has missed and lost. No man, since the world began, ever held in his hands such a power for good in England and among all nations. He could have raised the prestige of Empire to even greater heights and led the councils for peace. Almost the contrary has come to pass. To-day, certainly, our faith, our good word, our justice, and our fair play (without which England is _not_ England) are almost everywhere subjected to suspicion and distrust. When Turks tell me it is as easy “to buy” one of our officers as those of other nations, that they have done so over and over again in Constantinople, I try to say that it cannot be. When my host tells me they paid £6,000 sterling for our men’s assistance to charter a boat and escape from Malta, I can only admit, in silence, that they did—somehow—escape. When I learn that at least _one_ correspondent in Constantinople is subsidised by the Greeks, I can bear no more. Whence have bribery and corruption invaded our country against the traditions of centuries? I told them I used to feel that “I was sitting on a rock amidst howling and roaring seas; now even the rock itself is sinking.”