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[Transcriber's Notes:
The Greek phrase on the title page has been transliterated and placed
between +plus marks+.
Every effort has been made to replicate this text as closely
as possible, including most inconsistencies in spelling and
hyphenation. A list of examples of the above, as well as a list
of changes (corrections of spelling and punctuation) made to
the original text appears at the end of this book.
]
* * * * *
MYSTERY AT GENEVA
An improbable tale of singular happenings
by
ROSE MACAULAY
Author of "Dangerous Ages," "Potterism," etc.
+hostis toia echei en hêdonê echei en hêdonê toia.+
LONDON: 48 PALL MALL
W. COLLINS SONS & CO. LTD.
GLASGOW MELBOURNE AUCKLAND
Copyright 1922.
LONDON AND GLASGOW: W. COLLINS SONS AND CO. LTD.
MYSTERY AT GENEVA
NEW NOVELS
TYLER OF BARNET BERNARD GILBERT
PILGRIM'S REST F. BRETT YOUNG
PIRACY MICHAEL ARLEN
BEANSTALK MRS. HENRY DUDENEY
ROSEANNE E. MARIA ALBANESI
BIG PETER ARCHIBALD MARSHALL
NOTE
As I have observed among readers and critics a tendency to discern
satire where none is intended, I should like to say that this book is
simply a straightforward mystery story, devoid of irony, moral or
meaning. It has for its setting an imaginary session of the League of
Nations Assembly, but it is in no sense a study of, still less a skit
on, actual conditions at Geneva, of which indeed I know little, the
only connection I have ever had with the League being membership of
its Union.
1
Henry, looking disgusted, as well he might, picked his way down the
dark and dirty corkscrew stairway of the dilapidated fifteenth century
house where he had rooms during the fourth (or possibly it was the
fifth) Assembly of the League of Nations. The stairway, smelling of
fish and worse, opened out on to a narrow cobbled alley that ran
between lofty mediæval houses down from the Rue du Temple to the Quai
du Seujet, in the ancient wharfside quarter of Saint Gervais.
Henry, pale and melancholy, his soft hat slouched over his face,
looked what he was, a badly paid newspaper correspondent lodging in
unclean rooms. He looked hungry; he looked embittered; he looked like
one of the under dogs, whose time had not come yet, would, indeed,
never come. He looked, however, a gentleman, which, in the usual sense
of the word, he was not. He was of middle height, slim and not
inelegant of build; his trousers, though shiny, were creased in the
right place; his coat fitted him though it lacked two buttons, and he
dangled a monocle, which he screwed impartially now into one brown
eye, now into the other. If any one would know, as they very properly
might, whether Henry was a bad man or a good, I can only reply that we
are all of us mixed, and most of us not very well mixed.
Henry was, in fact, at the moment a journalist, and wrote for the
_British Bolshevist_, a revolutionary paper with a startlingly small
circulation; and now the reader knows the very worst of Henry, which
is to say a great deal, but must, all the same, be said.
Such as he was, Henry, on this fine Sunday morning in September,
strolled down the Allée Petit Chat, which did not seem to him, as it
seems to most English visitors, in the least picturesque, for Henry
was a quarter Italian, and preferred new streets, and buildings to
old. Having arrived at the Quai du Mont Blanc, he walked along it,
brooding on this and that, gazing with a bitter kind of envy at the
hotels which were even now opening their portals to those more
fortunate than he--the Bergues, the Paix, the Beau Rivage, the
Angleterre, the Russie, the Richemond. All these hostels were, on this
Sunday morning before the opening of the Assembly, receiving the
delegates of the nations, their staffs and secretaries, and even
journalists. Crowds of little grave-faced Japs processed into the
Hotel de la Paix; the entrance hall of Les Bergues was alive with the
splendid, full-throated converse of Latin Americans ("Ah, they live,
those Spaniards!" Henry sighed); while at the Beau Rivage the British
Empire and the Dominions hastened, with the morbid ardour of their
race, to plunge into baths after their night journey.
Baths, thought Henry bitterly. There were no baths in the Allée Petit
Chat. All his bathing must be done in the lake--and cold comfort that
was. Henry was no lover of cold water: he preferred it warm.
These full-fed, well-housed, nobly cleaned delegates.... Henry quite
untruly reported to his newspaper, which resented the high living of
others, that some of them occupied as many as half a dozen rooms
apiece in the hotels, with their typists, their secretaries, and their
sycophantic suites.
Even the journalists, lodging less proudly in smaller hotels, or in
apartments, all lodged cleanly, all decently, excepting only Henry,
the accredited representative of the _British Bolshevist_.
Bitterly and proudly, with a faint sneer twisting his lips, Henry,
leaning against the lake-side parapet, watched the tumultuous arrival
of the organisers of peace on earth. The makers of the new world. What
new world? Where tarried it? How slow were its makers at their
creative task! Slow and unsure, thought Henry, whose newspaper was not
of those who approved the League.
With a sardonic smile Henry turned on his heel and pursued his way
along the Quai towards that immense hotel where the League Secretariat
lived and moved and had its being. He would interview some one there
and try to secure a good place in the press gallery. The Secretariat
officials were kind to journalists, even to journalists on the
_British Bolshevist_, a newspaper which was of no use to the League,
and which the Secretariat despised, as they might despise the yapping
of a tiresome and insignificant small dog.
2
The Secretariat were in a state of disturbance and expectation. The
annual break in their toilsome and rather tedious year was upon them.
For a month their labours would be, indeed, increased, but life would
also move. One wearied of Geneva, its small and segregated society,
its official gossip, the Calvinistic atmosphere of the natives, its
dreary winter, its oppressive summer, its eternal lake and distant
mountains, its horrid little steamboats rushing perpetually across and
across from one side of the water to the other--one wearied of Geneva
as a place of residence. What was it (though it had its own charm) as
a dwelling-place for those of civilised and cosmopolitan minds?
Vienna, now, would be better; or Brussels: even the poor old Hague,
with its ill-fated traditions. Or, said the French members of the
staff, Paris. For the French nation and government were increasingly
attached to the League, and had long thought that Paris was its
fitting home. It would be safer there.
However, it was at Geneva, and it was very dull except at Assembly
time, or when the Council were in session. Assembly time was
stimulating and entertaining. One saw then people from the outside
world; things hummed. Old friends gathered together, new friends were
made. The nations met, the Assembly assembled, committees committeed,
the Council councilled, grievances were aired and either remedied or
not; questions were raised and sometimes solved; governments were
petitioned, commissions were sent to investigate, quarrels were
pursued, judgments pronounced, current wars deplored, the year's work
reviewed. Eloquence rang from that world-platform, to be heard at
large, through the vastly various voices of a thousand newspapers, in
a hundred rather apathetic countries.
In spite of the great eloquence, industry, intelligence, and many
activities of the delegates, there was, in that cosmopolitan and
cynical body, the Secretariat, a tendency to regard them, _en masse_,
rather as children to be kept in order, though to be given a
reasonable amount of liberty in such harmless amusements as talking on
platforms. Treats, dinners and excursions were arranged for them; the
Secretariat liked to see them having a good time. They would meet in
the Assembly Hall each morning to talk, before an audience; noble
sentiments would then exalt and move the nations and be flashed across
Europe by journalists. But in the afternoons they would cross the lake
again to the Palais des Nations, and meet in Rooms A, B, C, or D,
round tables (magic phrase! magic arrangement of furniture and human
beings!) in large or small groups, and do the work. The Assembly Hall
was, so to speak, the front window, where the goods were displayed,
but where one got away with the goods was in the back parlour. There,
too, the fiercest international questions boiled up, boiled over, and
were cooled by the calming temperature of the table and the sweet but
firm reasonableness of some of the representatives of the more
considerable powers. The committee meetings were, in fact, not only
more effective than the Assembly meetings, but more stimulating, more
amusing.
Henry, entering the Palais des Nations, found it in a state of
brilliant bustle. The big hall hummed with animated talk and cheerful
greetings in many tongues, and members of the continental races shook
one another ardently and frequently by the hand. How dull it would be,
thought Henry, if ever the Esperanto people got their way, and the
flavour of the richly various speech of the nations was lost in one
colourless, absurd and inorganic language, stumblingly spoken and ill
understood.
Henry entered a lift, was enclosed with a cynical American, a
brilliant-looking Spaniard, a tall and elegant woman of assurance and
beauty, and an intelligent-faced cosmopolitan who looked like a
British-Italian-Latin-American-Finn, which, in point of fact, he was.
Alighting at the third floor, Henry found his way to the department
he required and introduced himself to one of its officials, who gave
him a pink card assigning him to a seat in the press gallery, which he
felt would not be one he would really like.
"You've not been out here before, have you," said the official, and
Henry agreed that this was so.
"Well, of course we don't expect much of a show from your fanatical
paper...." The official was good-humoured, friendly, and tolerant.
The Secretariat were, indeed, sincerely indifferent to the commentary
on their proceedings both of the _Morning Post_ and the _British
Bolshevist_, for both could be taken for granted. One of these
journals feared that the League sought disarmament, the other that it
did not; to one it was a league of cranks, conscientious objectors,
and (fearful and sinister word) internationals, come not to destroy but
to fulfil the Covenant, bent on carrying out Article 8, substituting
judiciary arbitration for force, and treating Germany as a brother;
to the other it was a league of militarist and capitalist states,
an extension of the Supreme Allied Council, bent on destroying
Article 18 and other inconvenient articles of the Covenant, and
treating Germany as a dog. To both it was, in one word, Poppycock.
Sincerely, honestly, and ardently, both these journals thought
like that. They could not help it; it was temperamental, and the
way they saw things.
3
Henry descended the broad and shallow double stairway of the Palais
des Nations, up and down which tripped the gay crowds who knew one
another but knew not him, and so out to lunch, which he had poorly,
inexpensively, obscurely and alone, at a low eating-house near the
Secretariat. After lunch he had coffee at a higher eating-house, on
the Quai, and sat under the pavement awning reading the papers,
listening to the band, looking at the mountain view across the lake,
and waiting until the other visitors to Geneva, having finished their
more considerable luncheons, should emerge from their hotels and
begin to walk or drive along the Quai. Meanwhile he read _L'Humeur_,
which he found on the table before him. But _L'Humeur_ is not really
very funny. It has only one joke, only one type of comic picture: a
woman incompletely dressed. Was that, Henry speculated, really funny?
It happens, after all, to nearly all women at least every morning and
every evening. Was it really funny even when to the lady thus
unattired there entered a gentleman, either M. l'Amant or M. le Mari?
_Was_ only one thing funny, as some persons believed? Was it indeed
really funny at all? Henry, who honestly desired to brighten his life,
tried hard to think so, but failed, and relapsed into gloom. He could
not see that it was funnier that a female should not yet have
completed her toilet than that a male should not. Neither was funny.
Nothing, perhaps, was funny. The League of Nations was not funny. Life
was not funny, and probably not death. Even the _British Bolshevist_,
which he was reduced to reading, wasn't funny, though it did have on
the front page a column headed "Widow's Leap Saves Cat from Burning
House."
A young man sat down at Henry's little table and ordered drink; a
bright, neat, brisk young man, with an alert manner. Glancing at the
_British Bolshevist_, he made a conversational opening which elicited
the fact that Henry represented this journal at Geneva. For himself,
he was, it transpired, correspondent of the _Daily Sale_, a paper
to which the _British Bolshevist_ was politically opposed but
temperamentally sympathetic; they had the same cosy, chatty touch
on life.
The two correspondents amused themselves by watching the delegates
and other foreign arrivals strolling to and fro along the elegant
spaciousness of the Quai, chatting with one another. They noticed
little things to write to their papers about, such as hats, spats,
ways of carrying umbrellas and sticks, and so forth. They overheard
fragments of conversation in many tongues. For, clustering round about
the Assembly, were the representatives, official and unofficial, of
nearly all the world's nations, so that Henry heard in the space of
ten minutes British, French, Italians, Russians, Poles, Turks,
Americans, Armenians, Dutch, Irish, Lithuanians, Serb-Croat-Slovenes,
Czecho-Slovakians, the dwellers in Dalmatia and Istria, and in the
parts of Latin America about Brazil, Assyrio-Chaldeans, and newspaper
correspondents, all speaking in their tongues the wonderful works of
God. Geneva was like Pentecost, or the Tower of Babel. There were
represented there very many societies, which regularly settled in
Geneva for the period of the Assembly in order to send it messages,
trusting thus to bring before the League in session the good causes
they had at heart. The Women's International League was there, and the
Esperanto League, and the Non-Alcoholic Drink Society, and the
Mormons, and the Y.M.C.A. and the Union of Free Churches, and the
Unprotected Armenians, and the Catholic Association, and the Orthodox
Church Union, and the Ethical Society, and the Bolshevik Refugees (for
it was in Russia, at the moment, the turn of the other side), and the
Save the Children Committee, and the Freemasons, and the Constructive
Birth Control Society, and the Feathered Friends Protection Society,
and the Negro Equality League, and the Anti-Divorce Union, and the
Humanitarian Society, and the Eugenic Society, and the Orangemen's
Union, and the Sinn Feiners, and the Zionists, and the Saloon
Restoration League, and the S.P.G. And hundreds of Unprotected
Minorities, irresistibly (or so they hoped) moving in their appeals.
Many of the representatives of these eager sections of humanity
walked on the Quai du Mont Blanc on this fine Sunday afternoon
and listened to the band, and buttonholed delegates and their
secretaries, and chatted, and spat. The Czecho-Slovakians spat
hardest, the Costa-Ricans loudest, the Unprotected Armenians most
frequently, and the Serb-Croat-Slovenes most accurately, but the
Assyrio-Chaldeans spat farthest. The Zionists did not walk on the
Quai. They were holding meetings together and drawing up hundreds
of petitions, so that the Assembly might receive at least one an
hour from to-morrow onwards. Zionists do these things thoroughly.
Motor-cars hummed to and fro between the hotels and the Secretariat,
and inside them one saw delegates. Flags flew and music played, and
the _jet d'eau_ sprang, an immense crystalline tree of life, a snowy
angel, up from the azure lake into the azure heavens.
Henry gave a little sigh of pleasure. He liked the scene.
"Will there be treats?" he asked his companion. "I like treats."
"Treats? Who for? The delegates get treats all right, if you mean
that."
"For us, I meant."
"Oh, yes, the correspondents get a free trip or a free feed now and
then too. I usually get out of them myself; official beanos bore me.
The town's very good to us; it wants the support of the press against
rival claimants, such as Brussels."
"I should enjoy a lake trip very much," said Henry, beginning to feel
that it was good to be there.
"Well, don't forget to hand in your address then, so that it gets on
the list."
Henry was damped. 24 Allée Petit Chat, Saint Gervais--it sounded
rotten, and would sound worse still to the Genevan syndics, who knew
just where it was and what, and were even now engaged in plans for
pulling down and rebuilding all the old wharfside quarter. No; he
could not hand in that address....
"I suppose you've got to crab the show, whatever it does, haven't
you," said the _Daily Sale_ man presently. "Now I'm out to pat it on
the back--this year. I like that better. It's dull being disagreeable
all the time; so obvious, too."
"My paper _is_ obvious," Henry owned gloomily. "Truth always is. You
can't get round that."
"Oh, well, come," the other journalist couldn't stand that--"it's a
bit thick for one of your lot to start talking about truth. The lies
you tell daily--they have ours beat to a frazzle. Why, you couldn't
give a straight account of a bus accident!"
"We could not. That is to say, we would not," Henry admitted. "But we
lie about points of fact because our principles are true. They're so
true that everything has to be made to square with them. If you
notice, our principles affect _all_ our facts. Yours don't, quite all.
You'd report the bus accident from pure love of sensation. We, in
reporting it, would prove that it happened because buses aren't
nationalised, or because the driver was underpaid, or the fares too
high, or because coal has gone up more than wages, or something true
of that sort. We waste nothing; we use all that happens. We're
propagandists all the time, you're only propagandists part of the
time; and commercialists the rest."
"Oh, certainly no one would accuse you of being commercialists,"
agreed the _Sale_ man kindly. "Hallo, what's up?"
Henry had stiffened suddenly, and sat straight and rigid, like a dog
who dislikes another dog. His companion followed his tense gaze, and
saw a very neat, agreeable-looking and gentlemanly fellow, exquisitely
cleaned, shaved, and what novelists call _groomed_ (one supposes this
to be a kind of rubbing-down process, to make the skin glossy), with
gray spats, a malacca cane, and a refined gray suit with a faint
stripe and creases like knife-blades. This gentleman was strolling by
in company with the senior British delegate, who had what foreigners
considered a curious and morbid fad for walking rather than driving,
even for short distances.
"Which troubles you?" inquired the representative of the _Daily Sale_.
"Our only Lord B., or that Secretariat fellow?"
"That Secretariat fellow," Henry replied rather faintly.
The other put on his glasses, the better to observe the neat,
supercilious figure. He laughed a little.
"Charles Wilbraham. Our Gilbert. The perfect knut. The type that does
us credit abroad. Makes up for the seedy delegates and journalists,
what?... He is said to have immense and offensive private wealth. In
fact, it is obvious that he could scarcely present that unobtrusively
opulent appearance on his official salary. They don't really get much,
you know, poor fellows; not for an expensive place like this.... The
queer thing is that no one seems to know where Wilbraham gets his
money from; he never says. A very close, discreet chap; a regular
civil servant. Do you know him, then?"
Henry hesitated for a moment, appearing to think. He then replied, in
the pained and reserved tone in which Mr. Wickham might have commented
upon Mr. Darcy, "Slightly. Very slightly. As well as I wish. In fact,
rather better. He wouldn't remember me. But I'll tell you one thing.
But for a series of trivial circumstances, I too might have been ...
oh, well, never mind. Not, of course, that for any consideration I
would serve in this ludicrous and impotent machine set up by the
corrupt states of the world. Wilbraham can: I could not. My soul, at
least, is my own."
"Oh, come," remonstrated the other journalist. "Come, come. Surely
not.... But I must go and look up a few people. See you later on."
Henry remained for a minute, broodingly watching the neat receding
back of Charles Wilbraham. How happy and how proud it looked, that
serene and elegant back! How proud and how pleased Henry knew Charles
Wilbraham to be, walking with the senior British delegate, whom every
one admired, along the Quai du Mont Blanc! As proud and as happy as a
prince. Henry knew better than most others Charles Wilbraham's
profound capacity for proud and princely pleasure. He loved these
assemblies of important persons; loved to walk and talk with the
great. He had, ever since the armistice, contracted a habit of being
present at those happy little gatherings which had been, so far, a
periodic feature of the great peace, and showed as yet no signs of
abating. To Paris Charles Wilbraham had gone in 1919 (and how near
Henry had been to doing the same; how near, and yet how far!). To San
Remo he had been, to Barcelona and to Brussels; to Spa, to Genoa, even
to Venice in the autumn of 1922. Besides all the League of Nations
Assemblies. Where the eagles were gathered together, there, always,
would Charles Wilbraham be.
Henry winced at the thought of Charles's so great happiness. But let
him wait; only let Charles wait.
"Holy Mother of God!" (for Henry was a Roman Catholic), "only let him
wait!"
4
The Assembly Hall was, as seen from the Press Gallery, a study in
black and white. White sheets of paper laid on the desks, black coats,
white or black heads.
Young and old, black and white, the delegates stood and walked about
the hall, waiting for the session of the League of Nations Assembly to
begin. The hum of talk rose up and filled the hall; it was as if a
swarm of bees were hiving. What a very great deal, thought Henry, had
the human race to say, always! Only the little Japs at the back sat in
silent rows, scores and scores of them (for Japanese are no use by
ones), immobile, impassive, with their strange little masks and
slanting eyes, waiting patiently for the business of the day to begin.
When it began, their reporters would take down everything that was
said, writing widdershins, very diligently, very slowly, in their
solemn picture language. There was something a little sinister, a
little macabre, a little Grand Guignolish about the grave, polite,
mysterious little Japs. The Yellow Peril. Perilous because of their
immense waiting patience, that would, in the end, tire the restless
Western peoples out. How they stored their energy, sitting quiet in
rows, and how the Westerners expended theirs! What conversations, what
gesticulations, what laughter filled the hall! The delegates greeting
one another, shaking one another by the hand, making their alliances
and friendships for the session, arranging meals together, kindly,
good-humoured, and polite, the best of friends in private for all
their bitter and wordy squabbles in public. The chief Russian
delegate, M. Kratzky, a small, trim little ex-Bolshevik, turned
Monarchist by the recent _coup d'état_, was engaged in a genial
conversation with the second French delegate. France had loudly and
firmly voted last year against the admission of Russia to the League,
but when the _coup d'état_ restored the Monarchist Government (a
government no less, if no more, corrupt than the Bolshevik rule which
had preceded it, but more acceptable to Europe in general), France
held out to her old ally fraternal arms. The only delegates who cut
the Russians were the Germans, and among the several delegates who cut
the Germans were the Russians, for, as new members, these delegates
were jealous one of the other. The Turkish delegates, also recently
admitted, were meanwhile delightful to the Armenians, as if to prove
how they loved these unhappy people, and how small was the truth of
the tales that were told concerning their home life together. The two
Irish delegates, O'Shane from the Free State and Macdermott from
Ulster, were personally great friends, though they did not get on well
together on platforms, as both kept getting and reading aloud
telegrams from Ireland about crimes committed there by the other's
political associates. This business of getting telegrams happens all
the time to delegates, and is a cause of a good deal of
disagreeableness.
On this, the first morning of the Assembly, telegrams shot in in a
regular barrage, and nearly every delegate stopped several. Many came
from America. The trouble about America was that every nation in the
League had compatriots there, American by citizenship, but something
else by birth and sympathy, so that the Ukrainian congregation of
Woodlands, Pa., would telegraph to request the League to save their
relations in Ukraine from the atrocities of the Poles, and the Polish
settlement in Milwaukee would wire and entreat that their sisters and
their cousins and their aunts might be delivered from the marauding
Ukrainians, and Baptist congregations in the Middle West wired to the
Roumanian delegation to bring up before the Assembly the persecution
of Roumanian Baptists. And the Albanian delegate (a benign bishop) had
telegrams daily from Albania about the violation of Albanian frontiers
by the Serbs, and the Serbian delegate had even more telegrams about
the invasions and depredations of the Albanians. And the German and
Polish delegates had telegrams from Silesia, and the Central and South
American delegates had telegrams about troubles with neighbouring
republics. And the Armenians had desperate messages from home about
the Turks, for the Turks, despite the assignment to Armenia of a
national home, followed them there with instruments of torture and of
death, making bonfires of the adults, tossing the infants on pikes,
and behaving in the manner customarily adopted by these people towards
neighbours. There is this about Armenians: every one who lives near
them feels he must assault and injure them. There is this about Turks:
they feel they must assault and injure any one who lives near them. So
that the contiguity of Turks and Armenians has been even more
unfortunate than are most contiguities. Neither of these nations ought
to be near any other, least of all each other.
Meanwhile the Negro Equality League wired, "Do not forget the coloured
races," and the Constructive Birth Control Society urged, "Make the
world safe from babies" (this, anyhow, was the possibly inaccurate
form in which this telegram arrived), and the Blackpool Methodist
Union said, "The Lord be with your efforts after a World Peace,
watched by all Methodists with hope, faith and prayer," and the Blue
Cross Society said, "Remember our dumb friends," and Guatemala (which
was not there) telegraphed, "Do not believe a word uttered by the
delegate from Nicaragua, who is highly unreliable." As for the
Bolshevik refugees, they sent messages about the Russian delegation
which were couched in language too unbalanced to be made public either
in the Assembly Journal or in these pages, but they would be put in
the Secretariat Library for people to read quietly by themselves. This
also occurred to a telegram from the Non-Co-operatives of India, who
wired with reference to the freedom of their country from British
rule, a topic unsuited to discussion from a world platform.
All this fusillade of telegrams made but small impression on the
recipients, who found in them nothing new. As one of the British
delegates regretfully observed, "_Denique nullum est jam dictum quod
non sit dictum prius._"
But one telegram there was, addressed to the acting-President of the
League, and handed in to him in the hall before the session began,
which aroused some interest. It remarked, tersely and scripturally, in
the English tongue, "I went by and lo he was not." It had been
despatched from Geneva, and was unsigned.
"And who," said the acting-President meditatively to those round him
(he was an acute, courteous, and gentle Chinaman), "is this Lo? It is
a name" (for so, indeed, it seemed to him), "but it is not my name.
Does the sender, all the same, refer to the undoubted fact that I, who
shall open this Assembly as its President, shall, after the first
day's session, retire in favour of the newly elected President? Is it,
perhaps, a taunt from some one who wishes to remind me of the
transience of my office? Possibly from some gentleman of Japan ... or
America ... who knows? or does it, perhaps, refer not to myself, but
to some other person or persons, system or systems, who will, so the
sender foresees, have their day and cease to be?" The acting-President
was a scholar, and well read in English poetry. But, as his knowledge
did not extend to the English translation of the Hebrew Psalms, he
added, "It reads, this wire, like a quotation from literature?"
One of the British delegates gave him its source and explained that,
in this context, "lo" was less a name than an ejaculation, and would
probably, but for the limitations of the telegraphic code, have had
after it a point of exclamation. "The telegram," added the British
delegate, who was something of a biblical student, "seems to be a
combination of the Bible and Prayer Book translations of the verse in
question. The Revised Version of the Bible has again another
translation, a rather unhappy compromise. I believe the correct
rendering----"
"It is sarcasm," interrupted a French Secretariat official, "_C'est
l'ironie._ The sender means that we are of so little use that in his
eyes we don't exist. _C'est tout._ We're used to these gibes."
"I expect it means," said another member of the Secretariat hopefully
(he was sick of Geneva), "that the fellow thinks the League will soon
be moved to Brussels."
"Is Maxse visiting Geneva by any chance?" inquired one of the
delegates from Central Africa. "It has rather his touch. But then
Maxse would always sign his name. He's unashamed.... I dare say this
is merely some religious maniac reminding us that _sic transit gloria
mundi_. Very likely a Jew.... Look, I have a much better one than that
from the Non-Alcoholics...."
So they proceeded in their leisurely, attached, and pleasant way to
discuss these outpourings from eager human hearts all over the globe.
But the second French delegate, after brooding a while, said
suddenly, "Ce télégramme-là, celui qui dit 'j'ai traversé par là, et
voici, il est biffé!' les Boches l'ont expédié. Oui, justement. Tous
les Boches veulent détruire la Société des Nations; ils le désirent
d'autant plus depuis que l'Allemagne est admise dans la Société des
Nations. C'est une chose tout à fait certaine."
The French would talk like that about the Germans: you could not
stop them. They had not, and possibly never would have, what is
called a League mind. Central Africa, who had remonstrated gently
but to no effect, pointing out that Germans would probably not be
acquainted with the English version of the Psalms, either Prayer
Book or Bible. To prevent international emotion from running high,
the acting-President caused the bell to be rung and the Assembly to
be summoned to their seats.
5
So here, thought Henry of the _British Bolshevist_, was this great
world federation in session. He could not help being excited, for he
was naturally excitable, and it was his first (and, had he known
it, his last) Assembly. He was annoyed by the noisy moving and
chattering of the people behind him in the gallery, which prevented
his hearing the opening speech so well as he otherwise would have
done. Foreigners--how noisy they were! They were for ever passing to
and fro, shaking hands with one another, exchanging vivacious
comments. Young French widows, in their heavy crape, gayest, most
resigned, most elegant of creatures, tripped by on their pin-like
heels, sweetly smiling their patient smiles. How different from
young British widows, who, from their dress, might just as well have
only lost a parent or brother. All widows are wonderful: Henry knew
this, for always he had heard "Dear so-and-so is being simply
wonderful" said of bereaved wives, and knew that it merely and in
point of fact meant bereaved; but French widows are widows indeed.
However, Henry wished they would sit still.
Henry was at the end of a row of English journalists. On his right,
across a little gangway, were Germans. "At close quarters," reflected
Henry, "one is not attracted by this unfortunate nation. It lacks--or
is it rather that it has--a _je ne sais quoi_.... It is perhaps more
favourably viewed from a distance: but even so not really favourably.
Possibly, like many other nations, it is seen to greatest advantage at
home. I must visit Germany." For Henry was anxious to acquire a broad,
wise, unbiased international mind.
The acting-President was speaking, in his charming and faultless
English. He was saying what a great deal the League had done since
the preceding Assembly. It did indeed seem, as he lightly touched on
it, a very great deal. It had grappled with disease and drugs,
economics, sanitation, prostitution, and education; it had through its
Court of Justice arbitrated several times in international disputes
and averted several wars; other wars it had deplored; it had wrestled
with unemployment and even with disarmament ... ("not, perhaps, quite
happily put," murmured one British delegate to another). It had had
great tasks entrusted to it and had performed them with success. It
hoped to have, in the future, greater tasks yet; ... it had admitted
to membership several new nations, to whom it had extended the
heartiest fraternal welcome; ... above all it had survived in the face
of all its enemies and detractors.... This present session was faced
with a large and important programme. But before getting on to it
there must be elections, votings, committees, a new President, and so
forth.
The speaker sat down amid the applause proper to the occasion, and
the interpreter rose to translate him into French.
An elderly English clergyman behind Henry tapped his shoulder with a
pencil and said, "What paper do you represent? I am reporting for the
_Challenge_. The Churches have not taken enough interest in the
League. One must stir them up. I preach about nothing else, in these
days. The Church of England is sadly apathetic."
"It is a fault churches have," said Henry. "All the same, the Pope has
telegraphed a blessing."
Those who would fain follow the French interpreter hushed them. Henry
leant over, and watched Latin America conferring among itself, looking
excited and full of purpose. Latin America obviously had something on
its mind.
"What interests them so much?" he wondered aloud, and the journalist
next him enlightened him.
"They've made up their minds to have a Latin American President again.
They say they make a third of the Assembly, and it's disgraceful that
they don't have one every year. They don't want Edwardes again; they
want one who'll let the Spanish-Americans get on their legs every few
minutes. Edwardes had lived abroad too long and was too cosmopolitan
for them. They're going to put up a really suitable candidate this
time, and jolly well see he gets it. He won't, of course. But there
may be the hell of a row."
"That will be very amusing," said Henry hopefully.
They were taking the votes of the delegates for the committee on the
credentials of delegates. Suppose, thought Henry, that in that hall
there were one or more delegates whose credentials were impeachable;
delegates, perhaps who had come here by ruse with forged authority, or
by force, having stolen the credentials from the rightful owner.... It
might be done: it surely could be done, by some unprincipled
adventurer from a far country. Perhaps it had been done, and perhaps
the committee would never be the wiser. Or perhaps there would be a
public _exposé_.... That would be interesting. Public _exposés_ were
always interesting. Henry's drifting glance strayed to the platform,
where the Secretariat staff sat, or went in and out through the
folding door. There, standing by the door and watching the animated
scene, was Charles Wilbraham, composed, pleased, serene, looking like
a theatrical producer on the first night of a well-staged play.
Yes, public _exposés_ were interesting....
The committee was elected and the Assembly dispersed for lunch, over
which they would occupy themselves in lobbying for the Presidential
election in the afternoon. Henry saw Charles Wilbraham go out in
company with one of the delegates from Central Africa. No doubt but
that the fellow had arranged to be seen lunching with this mainstay of
the League. To lunch with the important ... that should be the daily
goal of those for whom life is not a playground but a ladder. It was
Charles Wilbraham's daily goal: Henry remembered that from old days.
6
At the afternoon session the Assembly voted for a President and six
Vice-Presidents. It took a long time, and considerable feeling was
involved. Five candidates were proposed: Roumania suggested a French
delegate, Great Britain an Albanian bishop, Japan the senior British
delegate, Central Africa an eminent Norwegian explorer, and the Latin
Americans put up, between them, three of their own race. Owing to
unfortunate temporary differences between various of these small
republics they could not all agree on one candidate.
After what seemed to Henry, unversed in these matters, a great deal of
unnecessary voting on the part of the Assembly and of the Council, it
was announced that the delegate for Norway, Dr. Svensen, was elected
President. Amid cheers from those delegates who were pleased, from
those who had self-control enough to conceal their vexation, and from
the public in the galleries (for Dr. Svensen was the most widely
popular figure in the Assembly), the new President took his place and
made the appropriate speech, in his sonorous English. Many in the hall
were bored, some because the new President was known to be in with the
English, who are not always liked by other nations; some because he
spoke English readily and French ill, and most of them understood
French readily and English not at all; others because he was of the
party which was bent on carrying out certain measures in Europe for
which they saw no necessity.
However, Dr. Svensen, a brief person and no word-waster, did not
detain his audience long. At six o'clock the Assembly adjourned.
7
Henry despatched a short scornful story of the proceedings to his
newspaper (which would not, he knew, print a long or effusive one),
and dined with another English journalist in a café in the old _cité_.
The other journalist, Grattan, came from Paris, and was bored with the
League and with Geneva. He preferred to report crime and blood,
something, as he said, with guts in it. Statesmen assembled together
made him yawn. For his part, he wished something would happen during
the Assembly worth writing home about--some _crime passionnel_, some
blood and thunder melodrama. "Perhaps," said Henry, hopefully, "it
will."
"Well, it may. All these hot-blooded Latins and Slavs herded
together ought to be able to produce something.... I bet you the
Spanish Americans are hatching something to-night over there...." He
waved his hand in the direction of the other side of the lake, where
the great hotels blazed their thousand windows into the night. Behind
those windows burnt who knew what of passion and of plot?
8
Dr. Svensen, strolling at a late hour across the Pont du Mont Blanc
(he was returning from dinner at the Beau Rivage to his own hotel),
was disturbed by a whimpering noise behind him, like the mewing of a
little cat. Turning round, he saw a small and ragged form padding
barefoot after him, its knuckles in its eyes. The Norwegian explorer,
unlike most great men, was tender-hearted to children. Bending down to
the crying urchin, he inquired of it the cause of its trouble. Its
answer was in Russian, and to the effect that it was very hungry. Dr.
Svensen softened yet more. A hungry Russian child! That was an object
of pity which he never could resist. Russia was full of them; this one
was probably an exiled Bolshevik. He felt in his pockets for coins,
but the hungry Russian infant tugged at his coat. "Come," it said, and
Dr. Svensen gathered from it that there were yet more hungry Russians
where this came from. He followed....
9
The morning session of the Assembly was supposed to begin at ten, and
at this hour next morning the unsophisticated Henry Beechtree took
his seat in the Press Gallery. He soon perceived his mistake. The show
obviously was not going to begin for ages. No self-respecting delegate
or journalist would come into the hall on the stroke of the hour. The
superior thing, in this as in other departments of life, was to be
late. Lateness showed that serene contempt for the illusion we call
time which is so necessary to ensure the respect of others and
oneself. Only the servile are punctual....
But "Nothing to swank about in being late," thought Henry morosely;
"only means they've spent too long over their coffee and bread and
honey, the gluttons. I could have done the same myself."
Indeed, he wished that he had, for he fell again into the hands of the
elderly clergyman who had addressed him yesterday, and who was, of
course, punctual too.
"I see," said the clergyman, "that you have one of the French comic
papers with you. A pity their humour is so much spoilt by
suggestiveness."
Suggestiveness. Henry could never understand that word as applied in
condemnation. Should not everything be suggestive? Or should all
literature, art, and humour be a cul-de-sac, suggesting no idea
whatsoever? Henry did not want to be uncharitable, but he could not
but think that those who used this word in this sense laid themselves
open to the suspicion (in this case, at least, quite unjustified),
that their minds were only receptive of one kind of suggestion, and
that a coarse one.
"I expect," he replied, "that you mean coarseness. People often do
when they use that word, I notice. Anyhow, the papers are not very
funny, I find."
"Suggestiveness," said the clergyman, "is seldom amusing."
Before Henry had time to argue again about this word, he hurried on.
"I sent yesterday a long message to the _Church Times_, the
_Guardian_, the _Commonwealth_, and the _Challenge_ about the first
meeting. It is most important that these papers should set before
their readers the part that the Church ought to play in promoting
international goodwill."
"Indeed," said Henry, who did not see Anglican journals. He added
vaguely, "The Pope sent a telegram...." For when people spoke to him
of Church life, he said "the Pope" mechanically; it was his natural
reaction to the subject.
"You interest me," said the English clergyman. "For the second time
you have mentioned the Pope to me. Are you, perhaps, a Roman
Catholic?"
"I suppose," Henry absently agreed, "that is what you would call it."
"We do, you know," the clergyman apologised. "Forgive me if it seems
discourteous.... You know, then, of course, who that is, opposite?"
Henry looked across the hall to the opposite gallery, and perceived
that his companion was referring to a small, delicate-looking elderly
man, with the face of a priest and the clothes of a layman, who had
just taken his seat there.
"I do not indeed."
"He is the ex-cardinal Franchi. You know him by reputation, of
course."
"Wasn't he suspended for heresy? I have, I think, seen some of his
books."
"He is a great scholar and a delightful writer. No one has gone more
deeply into mediæval Church history and modern theological criticism.
So I am told, but I have not read him myself, as he prefers to write
in Italian, though he has a perfect command of several other tongues."
"Nor I, as I am not very much interested in Church history or
theological criticism. Besides, his writings are, I suppose,
heretical."
"I don't know as to that; I am no judge. But he was, I believe, as you
say, retired for heresy. And now he lives in the most delightful of
mediæval châteaux at Monet, a little village up the lake. I have been
to see him there. If I may, I will introduce you. He enjoys making the
acquaintance of his co-religionists. In this Calvinistic part of the
world the educated classes are nearly all Protestants. The ex-cardinal
does not care for Protestants; he finds them parvenus and bourgeois.
He is a delightfully courteous host, however, even to those, and a
wonderful talker. And his heart is in the League. A wit, a scholar, an
aristocrat, a _bon-viveur_, and a philanthropist. If your Church
retains many priests as good as those she expels, she is to be
congratulated."
"She is," Henry agreed. "She can afford to fling out one or two by the
way. Yes; I would like to know him, the ex-cardinal; he looks witty
and shrewd, and at the same time an idealist.... But how late they are
in beginning. My watch is seldom right, but I imagine it must be after
ten-thirty."
The young man Grattan, with whom Henry had dined last night, lounged
in, with his cynical smile.
"You're very young and innocent, Beechtree. I suppose you've been here
since ten. It's just on eleven now. The President's not to hand and no
one seems to know where he is. Oh, well, it's not his fault; people
spoil him. His head's turned, poor Svensen. I expect he made a night
of it and is lying in this morning. I don't blame him. We don't need a
President. But there seems to be some unrest among the Secretariat."
This seemed, indeed, to be so. The members of this body, standing
about the hall and platform, were animated and perturbed; the
more irresponsible juniors seemed amused, others anxious. The
Secretary-General was talking gravely to another high official.
The correspondent of the _Daily Insurance_, who had been talking in
the hall to the delegates and Secretariat, watched by Henry from above
with some envy, at this point entered the Press Gallery, edged his way
to his seat, picked up the papers he had deposited there earlier, and
made rapidly for the exit.
"Got a story already?" Grattan said to him.
"No, but there may be one any moment. They've sent round to the
Metropole, and Svensen didn't sleep in his bed. He never came in last
night after dinner."
He was off. Grattan whistled, and looked more cheerful.
"That's good enough. That's a story in itself. Didn't sleep in his
bed. That's a headline all right. Good old Svensen. Here, I'm going
down to hear more. Mustn't let Jefferson get ahead of us. Come
along, Beechtree, and nose things out. This will be nuts for our
readers. Even your crabbed paper will have to give a column to Svensen
Not Sleeping in his Bed. Can't you see all the little eyes lighting
up?"
He rushed away, and Henry followed. Meanwhile the bell was rung and
MM. les Délégués took their seats. The deputy-President, the delegate
for Belgium, took the chair. The President, he announced, was
unfortunately not yet in attendance. Pending his arrival, the Assembly
would, since time pressed, proceed with the order of the day, which
was the election of committees.... The Assembly, always ready to vote,
began to do so. It would keep them busy for some time.
10