SUITORS AND SUPPLIANTS

[2]A week later "Nat" Simpkins died of septic pneumonia.

[3]Arthur Hugh Frazier of the Foreign Service, who had been secretary of the American Embassy in Vienna and Paris, was one of the three aides to Colonel House. Major Bonsal and Gordon Auchincloss, son-in-law and private secretary to House comprised the nucleus of the Colonel's family.

[4]General Haig was commander in chief of the British forces on the Western Front.

[5]It is only fair to say that Savinkov hated Stalin as the Devil hates Holy Water.

[6]See the next chapter on the Arabi.

[7]Emir Faisal, third son of Sherif Hussein, was commander in chief of the Arab forces which, with the help of T. E. Lawrence, so materially contributed to English General Allenby s victories in the Near East. He was later (1920) proclaimed King of Syria.

[8]See Albanian chapter in the author's Heyday in a Vanished World (W. W. Norton, New York and London, 1937)

[9]The Albanians and many of the Balkan peoples often, to the confusion of the Westerling, referred to the Sultan as Tsar.

[10] A term the Montenegrins and other South Slavs use when they wish to speak disrespectfully of the Germans - and that is generally their wish.

[11]The British Museum possessed, before the Blitz at least, a book from the Obod Press printed in 1495 - the year after the discovery of America! And there are said to be many other books bearing this imprint in the monasteries of Ryllo, but I have never seen them.

[12]Nikola Pasitch, called "the Old Fox of the Balkans," was a wily, violent, ex-radical who, after a youth spent in being condemned to death and banished for his anti-royalist plots, served as premier of Serbia and its successor state, Yugoslavia, 1906 -1926.

[13]Dr. Heinrich Friedjung was a historian of some standing in Austria who in the Viennese press published a series of articles charging a number of Serbo-Croat politicians with treasonable practices. He was sued for libel by fifty-two of these aggrieved statesmen. In the course of the trial it was proved that the unfortunate historian had received most of the documents upon which the charges were based from the Austrian Foreign Office and also that two thirds of them were bare-faced forgeries.

[14]See Chapter XVII, "The Conference Runs into Heavy Weather."

[15]Italian possession of Fiume came to symbolize to this wildly romantic radical the conflict between Italy's aspirations and the more restricted benefits the Allies wished to impose. A year later, in September, 1919, he marched into Fiume and for fifteen months defied his own government and indeed the whole Europe. Ousted finally in January, 1921, he became an ardent Fascist and was titled a prince in 1924. On March 1, 1938, he died.

[16]Thomas Nelson Page, American Ambassador to Italy.

[17]This is the first official reference to this remarkable figure that I have come across. S. B.

[18]Later Pope Pius XI.

[19]Herbert Hoover was chairman of the American Relief Administration, the 1918 counterpart to World War II's United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.

[20]1923. As this statement has been challenged in some quarters it is perhaps proper for me to say thet, as instructed, I drew up the dispatch in question and decoded the President's reply from Washington, dated October 29, 1918. In it he accepted the memorandum as "satisfactory interpretation of the principles involved." In the circumstances, House was certainly justified in regarding the Commentary as a complete elucidation of the President's world program; and as a matter of fact in the course of the Armistice negotiations, when queried by the delegates for more precise information as to points which were regarded by some as obscure, he read aloud to them the explanations which the President had formerly sanctioned. S. B.

[21]Abdul Hamid, Sultan of Turkey (1876 - 1909) was very pro-German and, as the instigator of the horrible Armenian massacres of 1894 - 1896, he was dubbed the great Assassin, the Red Sultan. He was dethroned eventually by the Young Turks.

[22]Neville Chamberlain used these words on his return from Germany. How quickly the facts of history are forgotten, especially when disgraceful.

[23]The basis of the Rhine agreement was: The left bank of the Rhine remained German, was demilitarized "Forever," and was to be occupied by Allied troops in three zones for fifteen years, if Germany faithfully carried out all the conditions of the peace. France had allowed the Rhineland to remain under German civil rule on the understanding that England and the United States would sign with her a pact of guarantee, a protocol against German aggression. As the United States refused to ratify it, this guarantee never came into being.

[24]The Inquiry, organized in 1918 at the suggestion of Colonel House, was composed of men drawn largely from the universities who were informed as to the war aims and the problems that would have to be considered in shaping the peace. Dr. Bowman of Johns Hopkins was the executive officer and Walter Lippmann, the able journalist, acted as secretary. After the Armistice twenty-five members of the organization came to Paris with President Wilson on the George Washington and were given varied duties as here described.

[25]I fear the unreliable Mr. Liu also received a handsome cumshaw for this.

[26]Later puppet president of China, in the control and pay of the invading Japanese.

[27] [British General Jan Christiaan Smuts (1870 - 1950) fought against the British during the Boer War, later he was instrumental in creating the Union of South Africa in 1910 where he was prime minister between 1919 - 1924, and 1939 - 1948.]

[28]So far as I know, this was the only public reference to the Sudeten problem at this time and for months later. The Germans of this hill country did not normally approach the Conference, and I am not aware that they attempted to do so. As a matter of fact, a fact that is so often lost sight of, they never had belonged to Germany and most of them settled in the Bohemian hills in the hope of escaping German rule. Renner was not the only man in touch with the Sudeten people who thought that the present was a most inopportune moment for them to join with the Reich Germans suffering deserved hardships, and perhaps some undeserved. It was not until the year 1930, when the world economic depression bore down upon them more heavily than upon the agricultural Czechs, that the Sudeten people gave ear to the propaganda that came to them from Munich and Berlin--with what effect all the world knows. While the Sudeten might have been more wisely treated, as some maintain, it is certain that no minority in Europe during these troubled years enjoyed such considerate and kindly treatment as they did. It is frequently asserted that President Masaryk was opposed to taking over the Sudeten and also averse to bringing into his republic the Carpathian Ruthenians of Russinia, as I think we called this mountain land at the time. These statements, however, are without any foundation in fact, at least as regards the Sudeten, as my talk with the President in Prague fully demonstrated. While he never broached the subject, at least not to me, I do think he was far from eager to annex Russinia. But nobody wanted this poverty-stricken province at the time, except Hungary, and no one wanted to enlarge the territory of what had been the misruled kingdom of St. Stephen.

[29]I was particularly interested in this statement. I had known Pallavicini in the days of King Milan in Belgrade when the "Pig war" broke, that harbinger of the great disaster.

[30]The rumor that came from Berne to our delegation in Paris was to the effect that an attempt was about to be made to place the elder and probably insane brother of Prince Regent Alexander on the throne and that discontented Croatian as well as foreign groups were behind it. If successful, it was hoped that the conspiracy would give the Belgrade Government an entirely new orientation. There was, as it turned out, no foundation to the story beyond the fact that Prince George was insane and was being held under proper and most necessary restraint.

[31][1870 - 1936]

[32]The title generally given to the seagoing owner of the New York Herald both at home and abroad.

[33]Archibald Cary Coolidge, of Harvard.

[34]Later professor of international law at Princeton.

[35]He sneaked out of Budapest three months later.

[36]He had been making a rabble-rousing trip to America and on his return journey he was picked up by the Allied authorities and interned in france for the duration.

[37]The Kun regime lasted longer by many months than Smuts predicted it would, and even longer than I thought, though I gave Kim a longer lease of power than did the Afrikander. Kim only skipped out in the following August (1919), and my information is that he did not get back to Russia via Vienna with the great treasure that the papers reported. My information is that the "Lenin boys" took charge of that. I have always thought that the devastation of Hungary by the Roumanians and the massacres of many so-called "Reds" at the hands of the Whites that followed on the fall of Kun could and should have been prevented by firm and timely action on the part of the Peace Conference.

[38]The fact that practically from the outbreak of the war Berlin kept two divisions of second-line troops in and around Vienna, really an army of occupation, was not an idle gesture; indeed from 1916 on it was a wise precautionary move. They kept in check the partisans of a separate peace and also any danger of a revolt among the Slav factions of the Dual Monarchy. Had the plan to dismember Germany. urged at this time by many French leaders, prospered, I have no hesitation in saying that the Austrians would have welcomed a union with the Bavarians and the Catholic Rhinelands. And the Roman Catholic Church, so powerful in these regions, would have strongly favored this redistribution of the congregations, without the least doubt.

[39]The substantial Republican returns of the November elections lost Wilson the control of the Senate and presented him with a Senate Foreign Relations Committee dominated by his political and personal opponents.

[40]See Chapter VII.

[41]Hunter Miller and James Scott of the legal staff.

SUITORS AND SUPPLIANTS