Bonsal, Stephen
Stories
2
Chapters
255
Words
240.5 K
Comments
0
Reading
20 h, 2 m
While I am frequently told that I exaggerate its importance, that the future of Schleswig and above all the canal is a local problem and one that should be left to the Danes to cope with, I persist in thinking that its future is vital to the peace of Europe and indeed to world security. The Kiel Canal and the surrounding districts that control it should be returned to the Danes from whom the land was stolen in 1866 and their possession of it should be guaranteed by the Powers. Clearly, like Alsace which is…- 113.7 K • Completed
- My presence at the Danish meeting has brought me many visitors and I find them without exception charming people. They understand that while the Schleswig problem bulks large with them, it is not a major problem (or at least is not so regarded by many of the delegates); that they must halt at my desk and for the present cannot hope to penetrate into the inner sanctum where the Colonel presides and the major discussions are held. Undoubtedly they have had a hard time during the war years, and they think,…
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- Pierre Quirielle and several other editors of the Temps took me this afternoon to a meeting of the Schleswig Danes in a salle of the Deux Magots where I found assembled all or nearly all the shepherds of the submerged nationalities. Steed, foreign editor of the London Times, was there and was enthusiastically acclaimed when he said that the failure of England in 1864 to prevent the annexation of Schleswig by Germany was directly responsible for the rape of Alsace-Lorraine in 1871. The first Danish speaker…
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- As a relief to the tragic history of his unfortunate people, Nubar told me last evening a story which ranks with that of Queen Marie Antoinette’s necklace and its disappearance, out of which so many mystery yarns have been spun. However, from this incident far-reaching political repercussions are not likely to flow, thanks to the prestige of his powerful father, the great Nubar. When but a boy, in 1869, the young Nubar participated in all the fetes with which the Suez Canal was opened and the…
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- Here is the sequel to this episode which, though tempted, I cannot suppress. General Harbord and his associates made a very intelligent report upon the Armenian problem, but there was no perceptible reaction to it in America or anywhere else. A vague, face-saving clause was inserted in the Versailles Treaty, but it never became operative. It read: “An area to be delimited by the President of the United States is to be given to the Armenians,” doubtless for the purpose of “constituting their free…
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- Thanks to information received from the Honorable Carter Glass, Secretary of the Treasury under the War President, I am able to say that, unlike many who sponsored Armenia at the Peace Conference, Mr. Wilson, at least, stood by his guns. It was our misfortune and not his fault that later these guns did not carry the heavy metal they fired in 1918, when the Fourteen Points promised to a distracted world a new freedom. An hour or two before leaving for the San Francisco Democratic National Convention…
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- Colonel House told me that the President had decided to send a fact-finding mission to Armenia and he will ask General Pershing to designate a competent officer to head it. He will publish the report and then await popular reaction at home on its findings. Poor Nubar! Poor Aharonian! Unfortunate Armenians! Our promises are out the window, and the reconstituted Armenian state has not a Chinaman’s…
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- While the President was in America and House was taking his place at the meetings of the Supreme Council on March 7, Lloyd George and Clemenceau formally raised the question of the future of Armenia and the disposition of the Rhinelands. House made immediately a report by cable to the President in Washington. He said: “In discussing the dismemberment of the Turkish Empire both George and Clemenceau expressed the wish that we accept mandates for Armenia and for Constantinople.” In his cabled reply,…
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- The Colonel is willing—indeed more than willing, he is eager—to accept our share of responsibility for the Armenian settlement, but he is not willing to go into it with our eyes shut. He has noted the increasing reluctance of our people to shoulder European responsibilities, and he is particularly averse to going into an Asiatic adventure which may lead us we know not whither. The problem has been with us for years, long before the outbreak of the war, but whenever it reaches the agenda it is…
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- Yesterday Sir William Wiseman of the British Intelligence Service: dropped in and it was evident he had something on his mind. He often acts as a messenger for Lloyd George and not seldom he comes, on missions that are evidently self-imposed. During the war, when he served in New York, Wiseman had many contacts with the Colonel, who thinks that they were to his advantage. On this point we of his staff are not in complete agreement. After beating about the bush for some minutes, Wiseman came to the…
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