Bonsal, Stephen
Stories
2
Chapters
255
Words
240.5 K
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0
Reading
20 h, 2 m
For several reasons I did not retain a copy of the memorandum which I sent on to House within an hour of my last interview with Senator Lodge. The first was, as a result of my telephone talk with him, I had expected House to come to Washington in a very few days and that this was his plan is indicated by the letter to me from Frazier, who was with the Colonel at this time. But there was another and a more powerful reason for my apparent negligence. The copy of the Covenant which the Senator and I had…- 128.6 K • Completed
![Washington, November 5th Cover]()
Frazier, who had rejoined House, Wrote me yesterday: “The Colonel was most complimentary about the work you have done for him in Washington, and he is especially appreciative of your interviews with Senator Lodge. The Colonel expects to go to Washington himself next week.” (As no answer came from the silent White House to his letters, this expectation was not…- 128.6 K • Completed
![Washington, October 30th Cover]()
Three days after my return from Germany, at Brest, I was squeezed on board the Siboney, a narrow, slim-waisted vessel, on which I had often sailed the summer seas of the Caribbean. She was now masquerading as a troop ship; as a talking point to the tourist trade the Siboney boasted windows instead of narrow portholes. She was certainly not the craft I would have chosen on which to buck the autumnal gales of the Western Ocean. She rolled and she pitched and she wallowed in a gray world of fog and mist and…- 128.6 K • Completed
![Paris, October 5th Cover]()
Authority to ratify the Treaty of Versailles was given the President of the Republic by the Chamber yesterday, by a vote of 372 to 53. It was not the victoire éclatante which Clemenceau hoped for but hardly expected. The fact that 73 deputies abstained from voting was a significant feature of the balloting. I hope we shall do as well in Washington. Barrés made quite a few “critical observations” (as he called them) on behalf of his group. He said the Treaty was accepted as a “continuing…- 128.6 K • Completed
![Paris, Hotel Crillon, October 4th Cover]()
Well, here I am again, but not without having been subjected to quite a few trials and tribulations on the journey. And the Colonel has flown! Well, not exactly flown; he was able to make the journey to Brest on his own feet although suffering from another acute attack of the gallstones. He was in much pain himself, and of course greatly distressed at the news of the President’s illness; there was ample room for him and his large party on the Northern Pacific and for the following week few sailings were…- 128.6 K • Completed
![Berlin, October 1st Cover]()
I have not written a line or raised a finger, and yet it has been arranged that I am to see Herr Ebert, the former harness maker, now the chief magistrate of the new German Republic-Reich on Tuesday next. What a change in procedure and protocol since the imperial days of William der Siegreicher and Frederick the Peace-loving, and of Bismarck, the Man of Blood and Iron! It will be difficult to display no surprise at the way all doors fly open, in the Berlin I once knew so well, when they were all close…- 128.6 K • Completed
![September 27th Cover]()
Browsing in the Zimmerstrasse bookshop this afternoon, a familiar haunt in other days, I came across a sheaf of propaganda broadsides that were put out by Finance Minister Helfferich early in 1918 to push the Seventh War Loan, which apparently was not going like hot cakes and needed pushing. The many advantages of these bonds were set forth in glowing language, but there was one feature as to the collateral behind these scraps of yellow wilted paper which amused me. It read: “OUR ENEMIES WILL PAY.” Now…- 128.6 K • Completed
![Berlin — undated Cover]()
... In the War Office records which the Majority Socialists open to me apparently without reserves of any kind, everything that is damaging to the “Imperial clique and the stupid High Command,” to use the language of the men of Weimar, is emphasized and spotlighted. In nearly all of them Ludendorff, who with prudence and wisdom fled to Sweden, is made the scapegoat. But with due allowance for the animus behind these revelations, the conclusion is inescapable: the imperial armies on the Western Front…- 128.6 K • Completed
![Berlin, September 26th Cover]()
I am not getting about as much as I would like, the line-up of my visitors is long, and the unfortunate people who wait and wait to see me seem to find comfort in the “sight,” though why they should, the Lord only knows. I can do nothing for them. I did, however, get out to Potsdam on Sunday and attended service, a penitential service, in the Garrison Church. It was thronged with the widows and the mothers of the Junkers whose broken bodies are rotting all over Europe from the Baltic to the Black Sea,…- 128.6 K • Completed
![September 26, 1919 Cover]()
I could not have imagined that the war records of the Great General Staff would have been opened to me at this early day, or indeed at any time, but as a matter of fact this surprising thing has happened. I understand, of course, the political reasons which have induced prominent members of the Weimar government who must be nameless to take this step; in any event, I am glad to profit by it. Ever since the Armistice old Prussian officers without number have been insisting that at the front the army could…- 128.6 K • Completed
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