Bonsal, Stephen
Stories
2
Chapters
255
Words
240.5 K
Comments
0
Reading
20 h, 2 m
In my first talk since my return with General Smuts today, he was not as reticent as to his bout with Kun as he had been in Vienna, but even so what he did say was not very enlightening. He evidently did not regard the incident as a diplomatic triumph and soon the conversation turned to other fields. He admitted, however, that he had told Kun that the scattered forces, more or less under his control, on the Czech frontier were violating the terms of the Armistice and that sooner or later this attitude…- 128.6 K • Completed
- Yesterday I paid my farewell visit to Princess Metternich; her palace out on the Rennweg is dark and gloomy and oh, so cold. Once the meeting place of the noblesse, it is now dreary and deserted. No equipages block the driveway, and all the bedizened flunkeys have vanished. A crippled retainer took in my card. Like everyone else the Princess, once the toast in Paris and supreme in Vienna, has fallen upon evil days, and she has fallen farther than most, for her place was very high. “Die Pauline,”…
- 128.6 K • Completed
- Having heard that I was leaving, Herr Karl Renner came in this afternoon for a few last words. Obviously, and how natural it was, he wished to draw me out, but of course I stood by my instructions. “I came with a message and I have delivered it. Of course I shall be pleased to carry to Paris any suggestions you may care to make. I am sure they will be considered sympathetically by Colonel House and I believe by others who fully appreciate your unfortunate position.” This pleased him and he…
- 128.6 K • Completed
- Another request came today from Ballplatz, this time in official form, asking me to move to the Hofburg and occupy at least a wing of it. Again I declined, stating I would not do so unless instructions to that effect came from Paris. But a few hours later I was beset by a temptation that was much more difficult to resist than the previous invitations. The major-domo of Duke Philip of Coburg put in an appearance at my dismal quarters in the hotel. He came with letters from Admiral Hohnel and a card from…
- 128.6 K • Completed
- Yesterday a petit mot, brought by a shabby Dienstmann came from Princess Metternich, asking me to call; evidently the great lady is no longer served by the gorgeous palace lackeys who in former days ran her errands and did her bidding. I felt I had been remiss in not calling without awaiting an invitation, but the new people with whom I had my contacts were not at all likely to know her whereabouts and so I had assumed, and indeed hoped, that the Princess had been able to escape from the mourning, starving…
- 128.6 K • Completed
- As far as I can make out this is the immediate background of the present very insistent Magyar problem. Nearly a month ago the Karolyi government collapsed under the weight of its stupidity. Apparently it was neither Tory nor Red, neither fish nor fowl nor even good red herring. Anarchy was spreading through the land, and at this juncture Bela Kun, the shrewd little Polish Jew who for some time, as an agent of Lenin, had been engaged in subterranean work in Hungary, entered the government and in a very few…
- 128.6 K • Completed
- Contrary to the expectations of many friends, I am back safe and sound from my sojourn of three days in Budapest under the Red Star, the hammer and sickle-the advance post of Bolshevism in Europe. None of the difficulties that had been expected materialized. Everything passed off so smoothly that I have an uneasy feeling that perhaps my journey was not clandestine after all and that the new authorities not only acquiesced in my venture but connived at it! The only unpleasant incident took place on the…
- 128.6 K • Completed
- I am back from a brief dip in the troubled waters of the Balkans, for so many years my familiar swimming hole, where, surprisingly enough, I did not hear a hostile shot. In this respect it was a record-breaking journey. Down there, with stoical determination, all the peoples are digging themselves out of the wreckage that four years of war have wrought, and now back in peace-loving and traditionally frivolous Vienna I find myself involved in riots and in mass killings so surprising that at times I am…
- 128.6 K • Completed
- I wandered up the hillside through the ruins of the White City with whose broad avenues and byways I had been familiar not so long ago. All man’s work has been destroyed by man’s diabolical inventions. Only the Danube and the Save majestically flow on to their union under the old Turkish citadel, and so I know I am in Belgrade, or what is left of it. At times there was such an uproar I thought that once again the capital of the Serbs was under fire, but that was not the case. Gangs of soldiers…
- 128.6 K • Completed
- A report of German plotting in Belgrade forwarded by our delegation in Paris reached me yesterday. It came without an expression of belief or skepticism, merely registering a rumor to the effect that German agents in Yugoslavia, particularly in Croatia, are planning to supplant the pro-ally, Regent Alexander, by his elder brother, Prince George. For some months now, as was well known, George had been under restraint, practically under arrest, in a country house near Nish. Apparently the young man is…
- 128.6 K • Completed
- Previous 1 … 20 21 22 … 26 Next
