Friday, 1st November

Luncheon. Reading had luncheon out. Rawly and his A.D.C. [blank] whose father had been at Wellington with me and who is a great friend of Arty's, had luncheon, also Henry Wilson. He would talk of nothing else but the news which apparently is official that the Kaiser has abdicated, and as far as they know in favour of nobody, so it may mean a Republic; that the Yugo-Slavs had revolted and seized the whole of the Austrian Fleet and also the mercantile fleet. Hideous complications are likely to come from this as they have sent official notice that if any Italian lands on the soil they claim he will be shot and that they will hand over the Fleet to nobody except the Americans. Meanwhile the Italians having got nobody to fight have announced their intention of advancing right through Austria. There is a further complication that apparently Austria is now just as Russia was after the Revolution and there is practically nobody to make Peace with. Altogether things are in a very disagreeable state.

I forgot to say that Bonar Law came to see me this morning and we had a walk in the garden. There is a tremendous row going on about Hayes Fisher. Roughly the story is this. It has now been discovered that, owing to the Registrars of the various electoral districts not having sent in their returns in sufficient time to the War Office Record Office, if they have an Election in December only about one third of the soldiers will be able to vote. They are keeping this very secret for the moment but of course it will create a tremendous row. The Registrars are under the Local Government Board and Lloyd George blames Hayes Fisher for this contretemps, but he goes rather further and does not blame him for having made the mistake but thinks he has done it deliberately working with Walter Long because he is opposed to an immediate Election.