The Eminent Authority looked around at the little group of us seated
about him at the club. He was telling us, or beginning to tell us,
about the outcome of the war. It was a thing we wanted to know. We were
listening attentively. We felt that we were “getting something.”
“I doubt very much,” he said, “whether Downing Street realizes the
enormous power which the Quai d’Orsay has over the Yildiz Kiosk.”
“So do I,” I said, “what is it?”
But he hardly noticed the interruption.
“You’ve got to remember,” he went on, “that, from the point of view of
the Yildiz, the Wilhelmstrasse is just a thing of yesterday.”
“Quite so,” I said.
“Of course,” he added, “the Ballplatz is quite different.”
“Altogether different,” I admitted.
“And mind you,” he said, “the Ballplatz itself can be largely moved from
the Quirinal through the Vatican.”
“Why of course it can,” I agreed, with as much relief in my tone as I
could put into it. After all, what simpler way of moving the Ballplatz
than that?
The Eminent Authority took another sip at his tea, and looked round at
us through his spectacles.
It was I who was taking on myself to do most of the answering, because
it was I who had brought him there and invited the other men to meet
him. “He’s coming round at five,” I had said, “do come and have a cup
of tea and meet him. He knows more about the European situation and
the probable solution than any other man living.” Naturally they came
gladly. They wanted to know--as everybody wants to know--how the war
will end. They were just ordinary plain men like myself.
I could see that they were a little mystified, perhaps disappointed.
They would have liked, just as I would, to ask a few plain questions,
such as, can the Italians knock the stuff out of the Austrians? Are the
Rumanians getting licked or not? How many submarines has Germany got,
anyway? Such questions, in fact, as we are accustomed to put up to one
another every day at lunch and to answer out of the morning paper. As it
was, we didn’t seem to be getting anywhere.
No one spoke. The silence began to be even a little uncomfortable. It
was broken by my friend Rapley, who is in wholesale hardware and who has
all the intellectual bravery that goes with it. He asked the Authority
straight out the question that we all wanted to put.
“Just what do you mean by the Ballplatz? What is the Ballplatz?”
The Authority smiled an engaging smile.
“Precisely,” he said, “I see your drift exactly. You say what _is_ the
Ballplatz? I reply quite frankly that it is almost impossible to answer.
Probably one could best define it as the driving power behind the
Ausgleich.”
“I see,” said Rapley.
“Though the plain fact is that ever since the Herzegovinian embroglio
the Ballplatz is little more than a counterpoise to the Wilhelmstrasse.”
“Ah!” said Rapley.
“Indeed, as everybody knows, the whole relationship of the Ballplatz
with the Nevski Prospekt has emanated from the Wilhelmstrasse.”
This was a thing which personally I had _not_ known. But I said nothing.
Neither did the other men. They continued smoking, looking as innocent
as they could.
“Don’t misunderstand me,” said the Authority, “when I speak of the
Nevski Prospekt. I am not referring in any way to the Tsarskoe Selo.”
“No, no,” we all agreed.
“No doubt there were, as we see it plainly now, under currents in all
directions from the Tsarskoe Selo.”
We all seemed to suggest by our attitude that these undercurrents were
sucking at our very feet.
“But the Tsarskoe Selo,” said the Authority, “is now definitely
eliminated.”
We were glad of that; we shifted our feet back into attitudes of ease.