March — undated

Last night the Colonel was giving one of his grand dinners and Frazier and I naturally planned for ourselves a holiday, a carefree evening en petit comité. But as we put away our unfinished business in the safe our chief appeared. “I shall expect you to be present tonight. Two delegates down with the flu have dropped out. You must come to make up the quota of eighty.” Smiling, he added: “You will have nothing to do but enjoy yourselves. I have unloaded the seatings and all the other troubles on the ceremonial officer.” But this harassed gentleman, as it soon developed, like Jove, had nodded, and little Ali-Kuli Khan, the second Persian delegate snooping about the groaning board and surveying the place cards, saw that his first delegate, the Prince from Tabriz, had not been assigned the place that was rightfully his. “His Highness sits far from where Mrs. House is enthroned,” he complained. “He, the noble representative of a glorious monarchy that goes back six thousand years, indeed to the very dawn of history, is placed below M. Benes, the representative of a republic that came into the world only six weeks ago. This would degrade my prince. I shall advise him to withdraw.”

There was nothing of the silken Persian about Ali-Kuli Khan. He had, as consul, dwelt for years in America and had taken on much of our roughness, and now he was evidently mad all through. “I shall advise my prince to withdraw,” he repeated, and Frazier, the coward, under pretext of looking for the ceremonial officer who was far away, rushed out of the room. “Let me explain to the Prince,” I stuttered. Here at last was an opportunity to qualify as a diplomatist and lie for my country, and, as it seemed to me, no moral turpitude was involved! With blazing eyes Ali-Kuli Khan led me up to his chief, a tall and very picturesque personality. I began: “Your Highness, I should have advised you, but I trust even now it is not too late. The seatings tonight are not arranged according to protocol. This is a birthday party in honor of the new-born Republic of Czechoslovakia, its representative and his charming lady. His people, unlike the fortunate Persians, have long been in duress. Tonight it was the thought of Colonel House to welcome them right royally into the comity of nations from which they have been disbarred for so many generations. Consequently we have given precedence to M. Benes and we hope that this gesture will meet with your sanction. Of course wherever he may be seated the place occupied by the delegate of a realm of such glorious history as Persia is always the head of the table. The Prince, who looked a trifle stern as I approached him, immediately relaxed and not only in excellent French but with a certain elegance Latine he said: “I think it is a graceful gesture, and I am most happy to yield the pas to the newcomer.” Ali Khan was by no means pleased, but he bowed low to the Prince from Tabriz and the incident was closed.

But I cannot say that the Prince was the life of the party; in fact, there was no life or vivacity to the party at all. The Italians glared at the Yugoslavs, and even the neutrals were ill at ease, and the bright, enlivening talk of Mrs. House gradually died away into whispers. Frazier and I and some other young and unimportant folk, once the crisis was conjured, took refuge at the far end of the table. We were so far from the throne that we escaped the glacial atmosphere that enveloped it. We laughed a great deal but what it was about I have no idea. Near the throne sat Lady Asquith, Countess of Oxford, and she gradually succumbed to the surrounding gloom. Suddenly, with an energetic gesture, she rose, Walked the whole length of the banqueting hall, and planked herself down between Frazier and me. As we made room for her she said: “Thank God I’m no longer in office. Why shouldn’t I have a good time? Go on laughing, or I’ll begin to cry.” We did our best, but it was not a great success. Lady Asquith was vivacious but so vitriolic in her judgments. She made a butt of poor Mrs. Lloyd George. “How wise is the little Welshman in keeping her at home.” Then she began mauling the feminine entourage of Mr. Balfour. “Dear boys (of course we liked that!), have you ever seen such an unattractive bevy of women as those sisters and cousins and aunts that surround poor Arthur? For the honor of old England they ought to be put to death, painlessly of course but firmly, as Dean Inge said the world would treat another useless category of people when we become really civilized.” Well, we were glad when the banquet was over, and so, judging from their precipitate flight, were the eighty participants in it. “I knew it would be terrible,” commented the Colonel, “but it surpassed my most gloomy expectations.” “What were you laughing at at your happy end of the table?” inquired Mrs. House, but frozen to the marrow by Lady Asquith’s bitter tongue we could not recall the wisecracks that had enlivened our little group before the acidulous Countess joined us.

The Colonel’s little dinners of eight or ten are a delight to the forUb nate few who are bidden to them, but the banquets are an ordeal not easily survived and never to be forgotten. “Thank God,” said the Colonel, “there is only one more and then I will have dined and wined all the delegates.” Then he recovered his spirits. “Did you notice how, possessed as it were by an irresistible impulse, at the very first opportunity they all rushed away, even the stately Prince from Tabriz ‘got a move on’? They did not stand on the order of their going. They went out pell-mell in the way, though in reverse, that Tom Jefferson sought to solve the plaguey question of precedence in the early days of the White House.”

Three days after the banquet of unhappy memories a most gorgeously attired messenger from the Persian Legation appeared, and after running the gauntlet of our very suspicious sailors presented me with an invitation to dine at the residence of the Plenipotentiary of Iran on the following evening. Less picturesque duties for that evening, a séance with the drafting of the Covenant Commission, prevented me from accepting, but I called, as in duty bound, and in a few days there came another invitation. This was to a déjeuner intime. And intimate it was. The Prince from Ispahan, or was it Tabriz? and I sat down alone. I confess I came to this encounter with some trepidation. Persia was not on my beat, I had never been there. Some years ago the charming Professor Browne of Oxford or Cambridge, I cannot remember which, thinking that my wandering footsteps might lead me to Teheran, gave me a tip which he said would prove useful. “Once there,” he said, “do not mention that you adore, as all foreigners do, that book of Morier’s; The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan. It’s a great book and a true picture of a Persian scamp that Morier drew from the life, but the Persians do not like it—small blame to them. It curdles their blood and on several occasions has embittered diplomatic relations. Leave the Hajji alone, but they will warm to you if you mention the kasidas of Jami, of Hafiz, and, last but not least, the verses of Hatif of Ispahan.” And that is exactly what I did, and the Prince glowed with pride as he showed me a painting of the still-scented garden where the great Hatif had written his sonnets and his odes.

But after an excellent lunch it developed that this was not to be a poetry party. His ancient country had not received an invitation to participate in the drafting of the Treaty of Versailles, he told me, yet he had no reproaches to make to anyone on this score. He admitted that after all the injuries that the Russians had inflicted on his country it would have been unpopular in Persia to ride boot to boot with the unspeakable Cossacks at the outbreak of the war.

“Fortunately,” continued the Prince, “our great and good friends in France understood and appreciated the difficulties of our position during the hostilities and were content that we should maintain an attitude of benevolent neutrality. Despite our justified hatred of the Russians, we fought like tigers to prevent the Turks from using our territory as a basis for their operations against them. And we were successful, but at what a cost! Our most fertile territories were devastated and our priests, at least many of them, were in open rebellion. How can we stand aside, much less aid the infidels, in a war which the most holy men of our religion have pronounced a holy war? However, we stood firm, and with the exception of Serbia and Belgium none of the participants in the war suffered as great losses as we did in maintaining our neutrality. And yet here at the Great Peace well, we are regarded as interlopers.” I told the Prince that as an actual declaration of war on the part of the Shah was lacking, however favorable to the Allies this inaction had proved, Persia could not participate in the Treaty, but I felt confident his historic land would be bidden to join the new comity of civilized nations and be asked to sign the Covenant. He gave me several documents which he thought might be helpful in securing this boon. One was a declaration by the Parliament and the Shah denouncing les violations du droit des gens commises par l’Allemagne, spécialement dans la guerre sous-marine.¹