Bonsal, Stephen
Stories
2
Chapters
256
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242.3 K
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0
Reading
20 h, 11 m
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…- 113.7 K • Completed
- A long talk with Nubar Pasha (the ranking delegate of the Egyptian-Armenian contingent) today. He takes me back to the cradle of his unfortunate people. He says the Armenians are closely related to the Hittites, although he admits that some of the Arab clans in Syria claim, mistakenly of course, similar descent. I refuse to follow Nubar back to the dawn of history. There should be limits as to the research of national paternity, I insist, and finally he agrees. He maintains that the pure inhabitants of the…
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- Even before the Conference assembled, the Armenian delegates, official and otherwise, were on hand. Perhaps today I should review their activities as far as they are known to me. They hail Mr. Wilson as their liberator after twenty-four centuries of slavery; and as one of them told me, the Fourteen Points, their charter of liberty, they regard as Holy Writ. “Your Wilson came from Washington,” said Aharonian, chairman of the delegation, “but he was sent by God.” They have had their day before the…
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- As is now only too evident, it was unwise of me to communicate to my colleagues of Colonel House’s “family” the flattering tributes that were showered upon me by the grateful delegates from the Euxine Pontus. They had hailed me as “Stephen, garland-crowned son of Hermes,” and, of course, it was after all no mean feat to secure food from Mr. Hoover, or at least the promise of it, in twenty-four hours. I was also, I think, deserving of praise in squelching the plan of the delegates, which they…
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- M. Coromilas, the No. 3 Greek delegate, came in today and “after compliments” made an open attack on my table of the languages spoken in that salad of wild tribes which is the Macedonia of today. He objected to my “mother tongue” definition as to the ethnic factors in this land of Babel and yet that is, as far as I can see, the only yardstick we have to rely on. “The situation is not as simple as you present it,” he objected. “For instance, you leave out the Bulgaro-phone Greeks…
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- Venizelos has had a series of long talks with the Colonel during the past week. He is evidently greatly perturbed over the outlook which seems to me, and evidently to him also, rather nebulous. He is convinced that Wilson will not accept for America a mandate for Constantinople and the control of the Straits that has been offered. Of course, he was never an outspoken advocate of this arrangement, although he did not openly oppose it. He was evidently convinced that, if accepted, in a short time Washington…
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- Even at this early stage of the diplomatic battle I have been drawn into the circle in which Venizelos, the Greek Premier, exercises his fascinating and, as many think, his dangerous influence. Last week he came to the Colonel, ostensibly to place before him some documents, very illuminating he thought, as to the actual conditions within the Reich. I was called in to test the translations and found that many of them were misleading. Sighing, the Greek leader said: “When you were studying at Heidelberg…
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- The event of the week, with all its social, political, and economic repercussions, is the expected arrival any day now of the beautiful Queen Marie of Rumania. While like almost everyone else she comes a-borrowing, the ceremonial officer has decided that in homage to protocol some important member of our delegation should be at the station to greet her, to see that the red carpet is worthy of royal feet and properly spread. Frazier and I discussed the matter without any particular personal enthusiasm and…
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- One of President Wilson’s marked dislikes is his aversion for Bratianu, the beetle-browed prime minister of Rumania with the notorious Byzantine background. Up to the present he has avoided the tête à tête with him which the Bucharest leader so ardently desires. He puts him off with messages through House. “Tell him,” says the President, “that the frontiers we are tracing are temporary, certainly not final, and that later on, in a calmer moment and informed by longer study, the League of Nations…
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- Duly announced with a flourish of trumpets over the telephone from Rumanian headquarters, M. Goga came to see me this morning. Fortunately, I had heard that a man of this name, the “bard of Transylvania,” was expected to join Bratianu and bear testimony to the pure Rumanianism of the people who dwell in that beautiful mountain country where the Telekis and the other Hungarian magnates have lorded it for centuries and carved out for themselves quite sizeable estates which, not unnaturally, they are…
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