Vienna, April 9th

Evidently the wires are crossed between Archibald Coolidge, of the Enquiry, and the delegation in Paris, and doubtless this is one of the reasons why I am detained here. Coolidge says, in his indignation, that a letter to Santa Claus has a better chance of being answered than an inquiry sent to the delegation! The Peace Commissioners come back with the statement that if you ask Coolidge for facts to aid in an appreciation of the actual situation, he replies with a learned disquisition on the Pragmatic Sanction. He is a learned man, but muy pesado, as the Spaniards have it. And he is living in the eighteenth century.

On the other hand, Professor Brown, in Budapest, is regarded as a “pink,” by some even as a Bolshevik, because he pays some attention to the Bela Kun movement in Hungary. I have had an opportunity to read some of Brown’s dispatches, and they are excellent. The highhanded proceedings of the territorial lords and magnates share with Moscow responsibility for the anarchy that prevails on the Hungarian plain. Most of the agents down there, diplomatic and otherwise, are greatly handicapped by the fact that all wire communications are interrupted. Thanks, however, to the Hoover organization and the diplomatic as well as mechanical ability of their telephone expert, Captain Clapp, I now talk to my colonel in the Crillon whenever I want to. It is difficult to maintain, but I am sworn to secrecy, for if this surreptitious means of communication were even suspected, a way undoubtedly would be found to interrupt it.