The Hohenzollerns in America<br />With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and Other Impossibilities by Stephen Leacock (best memoirs of all time TXT) 📖
- Author: Stephen Leacock
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"Forty-three," answered the secretary.
"That's below our average, is it not?" said Abdul a little anxiously. "Try to keep it up to fifty if you can."
"And these commissions, what do they do?"
"They make Reports," said Abdul, beginning to yawn as if the continued brain exercise of conversation were fatiguing his intellect, "excellent reports. We have had some that are said to be perfect models of the very best Turkish." "And what do they recommend?""I don't know," said the Sultan. "We don't read them for that. We like to read them simply as Turkish."
"But what," I urged, "do you do with them? What steps do you take?"
"We send them all," replied the little man, puffing at his pipe and growing obviously drowsy as he spoke, "to Woodrow Wilson. He can deal with them. He is the great conciliator of the world. Let him have—how do you say it in English, it is a Turkish phrase—let him have his stomach full of conciliation."
Abdul dozed on his cushions for a moment. Then he reopened his eyes. "Is there anything else you want to know," he asked, "before I retire to the Inner Harem?"
"Just one thing," I said, "if you don't mind. How do you stand internationally? Are you coming into the New League of Nations?"
The Sultan shook his head.
"No," he said, "we're not coming in. We are starting a new league of our own."
"And who are in it?"
"Ourselves, and the Armenians—and let me see—the Irish, are they not, Toomuch—and the Bulgarians—are there any others, Toomuch?"
"There is talk," said the Secretary "of the Yugo-Hebrovians and the Scaroovians—"
"Who are they?" I asked.
"We don't know," said Abdul, testily. "They wrote to us. They seem all right. Haven't you got a lot of people in your league that you never heard of?"
"I see," I said, "and what is the scheme that your league is formed on?"
"Very simple," said the Sultan. "Each member of the league gives its WORD to all the other members. Then they all take an OATH together. Then they all sign it. That is absolutely binding."
He rolled back on his cushions in an evident state of boredom and weariness.
"But surely," I protested, "you don't think that a league of that sort can keep the peace?"
"Peace!" exclaimed Abdul waking into sudden astonishment. "Peace! I should think NOT! Our league is for WAR. Every member gives its word that at the first convenient opportunity it will knock the stuff out of any of the others that it can."
The little Sultan again subsided. Then he rose, with some difficulty, from his cushions.
"Toomuch," he said, "take our inquisitive friend out into the town; take him to the Bosphorous; take him to the island where the dogs are; take him anywhere." He paused to whisper a few instructions into the ear of the Secretary. "You understand," he said, "well, take him. As for me,"—he gave a great yawn as he shuffled away, "I am about to withdraw into my Inner Harem. Goodbye. I regret that I cannot invite you in."
"So do I," I said. "Goodbye."
IV.—Echoes of the War
1.—The Boy Who Came Back
The war is over. The soldiers are coming home. On all sides we are assured that the problem of the returned soldier is the gravest of our national concerns.
So I may say it without fear of contradiction,—since everybody else has seen it,—that, up to the present time, the returned soldier is a disappointment. He is not turning out as he ought. According to all the professors of psychology he was to come back bloodthirsty and brutalised, soaked in militarism and talking only of slaughter. In fact, a widespread movement had sprung up, warmly supported by the business men of the cities, to put him on the land. It was thought that central Nevada or northern Idaho would do nicely for him. At the same time an agitation had been started among the farmers, with the slogan "Back to the city," the idea being that farm life was so rough that it was not fair to ask the returned soldier to share it.
All these anticipations turn out to be quite groundless.
The first returned soldier of whom I had direct knowledge was my nephew Tom. When he came back, after two years in the trenches, we asked him to dine with us. "Now, remember," I said to my wife, "Tom will be a very different being from what he was when he went away. He left us as little more than a school boy, only in his first year at college; in fact, a mere child. You remember how he used to bore us with baseball talk and that sort of thing. And how shy he was! You recall his awful fear of Professor Razzler, who used to teach him mathematics. All that, of course, will be changed now. Tom will have come back a man. We must ask the old professor to meet him. It will amuse Tom to see him again. Just think of the things he must have seen! But we must be a little careful at dinner not to let him horrify the other people with brutal details of the war."
Tom came. I had expected him to arrive in uniform with his pocket full of bombs. Instead of this he wore ordinary evening dress with a dinner jacket. I realised as I helped him to take off his overcoat in the hall that he was very proud of his dinner jacket. He had never had one before. He said he wished the "boys" could see him in it. I asked him why he had put off his lieutenant's uniform so quickly. He explained that he was entitled not to wear it as soon as he had his discharge papers signed; some of the fellows, he said, kicked them off as soon as they left the ship, but the rule was, he told me, that you had to wear the thing till your papers were signed.
Then his eye caught a glimpse sideways of Professor Razzler standing on the hearth rug in the drawing room. "Say," he said, "is that the professor?" I could see that Tom was scared. All the signs of physical fear were written on his face. When I tried to lead him into the drawing room I realised that he was as shy as ever. Three of the women began talking to him all at once. Tom answered, yes or no,—with his eyes down. I liked the way he stood, though, so unconsciously erect and steady. The other men who came in afterwards, with easy greetings and noisy talk, somehow seemed loud-voiced and self-assertive.
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