proved of great value to the British Government when information concerning routes was required for the advance of the British army into Palestine during the World War. In 1914-5 she was in control of a special department of the British Red Cross, occupied in trying to trace soldiers reported as " missing." From 1916-7 she was attached to the Admiralty Intelligence Office in Cairo. In 1917 she went with the mili- tary authorities to Basra and followed the army up to Bagdad, where she subsequently acted as assistant political officer, the first woman to occupy so important an administrative post. In 1918 she received the founder's medal of the Royal Geographical Society.
Amongst her publications are: Poems from the Divan of Hafiz (translations, 1897); The Desert and the Sown (1907); The Thou- sand and One Churches (with Sir W. M. Ramsay, 1909); Palace and Mosque at Ukhaider (1914). She is also the author of the Review of the Civil Administration of Mesopotamia, issued as a White Book by the India Office, Dec. 1920.
BELLEW, HAROLD KYRLE (1855-1911), English actor, was born in Lanes, in 1855. He first appeared on the stage in
Australia in 1874, afterwards coming to London and acting for
two years with Irving at the Lyceum from 1878 to 1880. He
had the reputation of being the handsomest man on the con-
temporary stage. In 1888 he joined Mrs. Brown-Potter in a
tour round the world, and for the last ten years of his life played
romantic and modern comedy parts in the United States. He
died at Salt Lake City, Utah, Nov. i 1911.
BELLOC, HILAIRE (1870- ), British man of letters, was born near Versailles July 27 1870. His father was a Frenchman;
his mother, an Englishwoman whose maiden name was Bessie
Rayner Parkes, took an active share at an early date in the
woman-suffrage movement (see 28.787). Educated at Edgbaston, he served as a driver in the 8th Regiment of French artillery before proceeding to Balliol College, Oxford. At Oxford he was prominent both in his schools and at the Union, and soon became known as a clever writer and speaker. He sat
in the House of Commons for Salford from 1906 to 1910 as a Liberal. His very numerous writings include verse, children's books, essays, biography and fiction, as well as military history.
Amongst them may be mentioned Danton (1899); Robespierre (1901); The Path to Rome (1902); Esto Perpetua (1906); Cautionary Tales (1907); Mr. Clutlerbuck's Election (1908); A
Change in the Cabinet (1909); Marie Antoinette (1910) and A
General Sketch of the European War (1915-6).
His sister, MARIE ADELAIDE BELLOC-LOWNDES (b. 1868), who in 1896 married Frederick Sawrey Lowndes, a member of the staff of The Times, also became well-known as the author of numerous novels and striking short stories, including The Pulse of Life (1907); The Uttermost Farthing (1908); Studies in Wives (1909); The Chink in the Armour (1.912); The Lodger (1913), etc. Dramatized versions of the last two, by H. A. Vachell, were played in London as The House of Peril (1919) and Who is He? (1915). She published besides a biography of Charlotte Elizabeth, Princess Palatine (1889) and Told in Gallant Deeds, a history of the World War for children (1914).
BELOW, FRITZ VON (1853-1918), German general, was born Nov. 23 1853 at Danzig. He took part in the war of 1870-1
as a young officer. In 1912 he was appointed to the
command of the XXI. Army Corps. In this capacity he
fought with the VI. Army on the western front at the begin-
ning of the World War, but his corps was transferred in 1915 to
the eastern front. In 1916 he was chief in command of the
I. Army, which fought with success in Nov. 1916 on the
Somme. He died in a field hospital on the western front in
Nov. 1918.
BELOW, OTTO VON (1857- ), German general, was born at Danzig June 18 1857. At the beginning of the World
War he was in command of the 2nd Infantry Div. at Inster-
burg in East Prussia. He was first of all promoted to the com-
mand of the I. Reserve Corps, and in this capacity took part
in the battles against the Russian army of the Narev which
resulted in the almost complete destruction of that army. He
was then appointed to the chief command of the VIII. Army
which bore an essential part in the victory over the Russian X. Army at the battles of the Masurian Lakes (Feb. 7-15 1915). In May 1915 he was placed in chief command of the German Niemen army and pressed forward with it in Courland (Kurland) and Lithuania as far as the southern reaches of the Dvina. In the autumn of 1916 he received the command of the German army group in Macedonia and in the autumn of 1917 was placed in chief command of the XIV. Army, which was fighting against Italy. In 1918 he led the XVII. Army, which particularly distinguished itself in the battles around Arras. After the war he was for a short period general in command of the XVII. Army Corps at Danzig. He resigned in June 1919.
BENCKENDORFF, ALEXANDER, COUNT (1849-1917), Russian diplomat, was born in 1849. His family came from Livonia, one of his ancestors having been burgomaster of Riga. His great-uncle, who achieved great distinction in the Russian imperial
service in the reign of Nicholas I., becoming minister of the police and being raised to the rank of a count, died childless, the title and estates passing to his nephew, Count Alexander's father. The mother of Count Alexander was a princess of Croy.
He was educated in a private school in Paris and passed his baccalaureat in due course. He entered the diplomatic service
in 1869 and began as an attache in Florence, eventually in Rome.
He resigned in 1876 and lived nearly 10 years on his estates, in
St. Petersburg and abroad. He married in 1879 Countess Sophie
Schuvaloff. In 1886 he returned to diplomacy and served as
first secretary in Vienna under Prince Lobanoff-Rostovsky and Count Kapnist. In 1897 he was appointed minister in Copenhagen and remained there until 1903. The Copenhagen post gave him, as well as some other diplomats, an exceptional opportunity of watching the principal moving powers of European politics from a point of vantage, as the matrimonial alliances of the Danish royal family occasionally brought together in a friendly family circle the widow of Alexander III., Nicholas II. and the Prince of Wales who was to become King Edward VII. In this way Count Benckendorff received his initiation into the spirit of an Anglo-Russian rapprochement even before it actually resulted in an Entente. When he was promoted in 1903 ambassador to the Court of St. James as a successor to Baron de Staal, the atmosphere seemed anything but favourable to such a rapprochement. The rivalry of the two Powers in the East, cunningly exploited by the Kaiser, was growing more and more acute. When the storm had discharged itself in the Japanese war, reasonable statesmen on both sides, King Edward, Lord Lansdowne, and the Russian Foreign Minister Isvolsky, changed the course both for Great Britain and for Russia, and thus frustrated the plans of the terlius gaudens. Count Benckendorff had an important share in bringing about this change. At a very critical moment, when the Kaiser had actually mesmerized Nicholas II. into the conclusion of a secret and personal convention at Bjorko, which purported to aim at a defensive agreement, but would have led by necessity to the disruption of the Franco-Russian Alliance and to the vassalage of Russia in a continental league against England, Count Benckendorff was invited to Copenhagen and had an opportunity of serving as a confidential intermediary between Russia and Great Britain. The Kaiser was exceedingly angry and gave vent to his feelings in a letter to " Nicky " : : " Like brigands in a wood he has sent Benckendorff your Ambassador to Copenhagen on a clandestine mission to your mother, with the instructions to win her over to influence you for a policy against me. The Foreign Office in London knows about his journey, which is denied at your embassy there." Tsar Nicholas's reply to this letter shows in what esteem Count Benckendorff was held by his sovereign: " Benckendorff went by my permission as my mother invited him to come as a friend of the Danish family. What sort of conversation went on I certainly do not know. But I can resolutely assure you that nothing can influence me except the interest, safeguard, and honour of my country. Benckendorff is a loyal subject and a real gentleman. I know he would never lend himself to any false tricks, even if they came from the 'great mischief-maker himself.'" The Bjorko intrigue evaporated without leaving any
