'As I passed through Paris on my return, Galliffet wrote: "You are as a writer full of kindness, but very dangerous as an observer, and next time I shall certainly put you on the treatment of the military attachés--plenty of dinners, plenty of close carriages, plenty of gendarmes, no information, and a total privation of field-glasses. This will be a change for you, especially in the matter of dinners. Lady Dilke cannot have forgiven me for sending you back in such wretched condition."' M. Joseph Beinach wrote in 1911: 'Nous recommandions tous deux le rajeunissement des cadres. II s'est trouvé enfin un ministre de la guerre, M. le général Brun, pour aborder résolument le problème. Comme nos souvenirs revenaient fréquemment aux belles journées de ces manoeuvres de l'Est! Je revois encore Dilke chevauchant avec nous dans l'état-major de Gallififet. II y avait la le général Brault, le général Darras, le général Zurlinden, le "commandant" Picquart, Thierry d'Alsace, le marquis Du Lau.... Ah! la "bataille" de Margerie-Haucourt, sous le grand soleil qui, dissipant les nuages de la matinée, fit scintiller tout à coup comme une moisson d'acier les milliers de fusils des armées réunies! Comme c'est loin! Que de tombeaux!... Mais nous sommes bien encore quelques-uns à avoir gardé intactes nos âmes d'alors!' [Footnote: An article in the _Figaro_ written after Sir Charles Dilke's death.] II. It was in 1889 that Sir Charles Dilke came into touch with Cecil Rhodes during a visit paid by the latter to England. 'In July, 1889, I saw a good deal of Cecil Rhodes, who was brought to my house by Sir Charles Mills, [Footnote: Then Agent-General for the Cape and a great personal friend.] and afterwards came back several times. He was at this moment interesting, full of life and vigour, but when he returned to England after the British South Africa Company had been started he seemed to have become half torpid and at the same time dogmatic. The simplicity which had distinguished him up to the end of his visit of 1889 seemed to have disappeared when he came back in 1891; and his avowed intention of ultimately coming to England to take part in English politics seemed also a strange mistake, as he was essentially a man fitted for colonial life, and had none of the knowledge, or the mode of concealing want of knowledge, one or other of which is required for English public work.' 'In August, 1889, I received a note from Rhodes from Lisbon which constitutes, I believe, a valuable autograph, for his friends all say he "never writes." I had asked him to clear up an extraordinary passage in one of Kruger's speeches (on which I afterwards commented in _Problems of Greater Britain_), and Rhodes wrote: