Bonsal, Stephen
Stories
2
Chapters
255
Words
240.5 K
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0
Reading
20 h, 2 m
There came for me today a telegram which put me back in diplomacy, even in secret diplomacy. And yet it was not in code, but open and aboveboard for anybody to read, and it ran: If a complete set of Grillparzer's ‘works, the 1872 edition, is available, secure an option and wire me the price. Signed: Harold Johnson I understood now why I had been detained in Vienna and detached from the Smuts mission. My instructions had nothing to do with the sale of the Viennese dramatic poet’s works, and if,…- 128.6 K • Completed
- Vienna—Prague—Belgrade—Budapest Note: General Smuts left on his tour of southeastern Europe on April 1st and the following excerpts are from the diary of Colonel Bonsai, who joined him in Vienna. Generally, but not invariably, they are headed by the day of the week and not by the day of the month. While, as will appear, Colonel Bonsai on this tour covered a good deal of ground, he was back in Paris on the afternoon of April 11th to resume his duties with the Commission engaged in drafting the…
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- Albert, the Tiger’s shadow and valet, is a handsome fellow and a lucky one. He went through the war on the Western Front without receiving a scratch. “He’s lucky, and that is one of the reasons why I like to have him around,” said Clemenceau. “I seem to remember that whenever a ranking officer was suggested for an important post, Napoleon would always ask—is he lucky? Well, Albert is lucky. While he has done many foolish things he always comes out smiling and as plump as a partridge. Ce…
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- At this time, as he said for my personal guidance and for the benefit of the generations to come, the Tiger made a remark which I trust I shall bear in mind when, as I hope, my writing days—for the public, not for sealed archives—begin again. He indeed repeated it so often that it took on the shape of an injunction. “Someday,” he said, “you will put down in writing what you saw at the war and during the course of the Conference and what you think you know about it all. Just as I will,…
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- “I never said, as widely reported (the Paris papers were filled with suggestions to this effect at the time),” insisted Clemenceau in my talk with him this evening, “that Wilson was pro-German, but I did think and I probably said, as I generally say what I think, that many of his plans and proposals were unduly and most unwisely helpful to the Germans in their present unregenerate state. I confess that from my first cable contact with it Wilsonism alarmed me, and that is why on the eve of the…
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- Two days after the “half-wit” fired his shots at M. Clemenceau (February 19th) as he was leaving his house in the Rue Franklin for a conference with Balfour and House at the Crillon, I was detailed to remain in constant attendance on the French Premier. Everybody took a serious view of the incident and the resulting wound except Clemenceau himself. Seven shots had been fired deliberately and at close quarters; fortunately, only one took effect. (The bullet, never extracted, had lodged very close to…
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- It is not news that misfortunes never come singly, but that saying does not make the budget of today any easier to bear. A few hours after the shooting of Clemenceau we heard of the murder of Kurt Eisner in Munich. Then came the beetle-browed Bratiano with his Job’s post, and hardly had he gone when Premier Voldemar Priene, the envoy of Lithuania, appeared, and he, too, was draped in the garments of woe. While of course it was not so intended, the clause in the Armistice prolongation of February 17th, by…
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- Georges Mandel, regarded by some as Clemenceau’s fidus Achates (by those who like him not as the “Tiger’s jackal”), came in after lunch with an urgent message from the wounded Premier, and at two-thirty I accompanied Colonel House to his lair in the Rue Franklin, named after our Benjamin, who guided American diplomacy with such skill throughout the Revolution. It is in the Passy quarter where Franklin lived during his fruitful sojourn in Paris and is still redolent of memories of the truly great…
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- Balfour was in the Colonel’s office when the startling news came that Cottin had shot Clemenceau (February 19th) and his remark was: “Dear, dear, I wonder what that portends?” just as though someone had spilled a cup of tea. “I don’t know,” said the Colonel, “but we must find out.” He grabbed his hat and the lanky Balfour by the arm and hurried him into his car and sped away to the Rue Franklin. The Colonel did not know what it portended, but he meant to find out. How quickly men…
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- With the President on the high seas, with the first draft of his Covenant in his pocket, now no longer a secret document but, by the miracle of almost instant communications, already informally at least before the Congress and the world, the time has come to make what record I can of how what many regard as a miracle was wrought. The delegates, those who assembled from all over the world to take part in the Great Assizes, have had ten sessions in a large and spacious room on the third floor of the Hotel…
- 128.6 K • Completed
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