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I I "Ii '',THE BOOK WINDOW.…

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THE BOOK WINDOW. THE DIVERTING MEMORIES AND EXPERIENCES OF A BRITISH DIPLOMAT. PKOPLE who have the most interesting things to tell are generally least inclined to tell them, for one reason, perhaps, be- cause they hate the task of writing. A diplomatist, for instance, has so much writing, of a sort, to do during his years of diplomacy that by the time he gets leisure his pen is tired. Moreover, there is a rule that a diplomatist, even after he has retired, must be silent or run the risk of losing his pension. There is, however, one way out, anonymity, and that enables us to get (from Hodder and Stoughton) a very readable book entitled The Vanished Pomps of Yesterday, a tiame suggested by Rudyard Kipling's lines I Lo, all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and'Tyre. We have no inkling as to the identity of the author of the book, but he will be spotted quickly enough by other gentlemen of the diplomatic service; necessarily, because he has much to say .which they will recall as also happening within their experience. He has a word of generalisation on the disappearance of the- Courts of the three Empires of Eastern Europe, Russia, Germany and Austria, with all their glister and pageantry: I will hazard no opinion as to whether the world is better for their loss or not; I; cannot, though, help experiencing a feeling of regret that this prosaic, drab-coloured twentieth century should have definitely lost so strong an element of the picturesque and should have permanently severed a link which bound it to the traditions of the mediaeval days of chivalry and romance, with their glowing colour, their splendid spectacular displays and the feel- ing of continuity with a vanished past Which they inspired. Berlin and Wagner. Our British Diplomat" recalls Ber- lin when Wagner was the great ligho there, and he describes the odd homage that surrounded him when, after play- j ing, he sat down solitary, but surrounded by his admirers, to take supper i. The great ladies of Berlin would allow no one to wait on the Master but them- selves, and the bearers of the oldest and the proudest names in Prussia bustled about with prodigious fussing, carrying j plates of sauerkraut, liver sausage, black- puddings and herring-salad, colliding with each other, but, in spite of that, managing to heap the supper-table with more Teu- tonic delicacies than even Wagner's very j ample appetite could assimilate. j It seems that Wagner, like Germans of lesser name and fame, was what we should call a gross feeder. Anyhow, some- body-a woman, of course—would be heard saying ai Dearest Princess, Limburger cheese is the only sort the Master cares for; you had better take that Gruyere cheese away; whilst an extremely attractive little countess, the bearer of a great German name, would trip vaguely about, announc- ing to the world that The Master thinks he could eat two more black-puddings. Where do you. imagine that I could find them? Bismarck. We hear a good deal about Bismarck, a boorish fellow, as every new word on him shows, but always a great person- ality. He took umbrage at the use of French in diplomacy, and directed that despatches from the German Foreign; Office should go out in German. The i Russian Ambassador retorted with one' in Russian, got no answer, and asked1 why. Ah," said Bismarck, reflectivelv. (t now that your Excellency mentions it, v I think we did receive a despatch in some unkaowh tongue. I ordered it to be put carefully away until we could procure the services of an expert ta decipher it, I hope to be able to find such an expert in the course of the next three or four months, and can only trust that the matter was not a yery pressing one." That was the Bismarckian way, and it had to be accepted in Berlin in the 'seventies and early 'eighties. The big man liked to be talked about, and liked also to talk, and we get snatches of that talk: Bismarck was very fond of enlarging on his favourite theory of the male and female European nations. The Germans, themselves, the three Scandinavian peoples, the Dutch, the English proper, the Scotch, the Hungarians and the Turks he declared to be essentially male races. The Russians, the Poles, the Bohemians and, indeed, every Slavonic people, and all the Celts, he maintain.ed. just as emphatically, to be female races. There is a fine ornamental lake at Potsdam and yachting was possible on it, and was indulged in by the ex-Kaiser when he was only Prince William of Prussia. We are, in that relation, told a dramatic story which, if it had had a different ending, might have given all the history of Europe a different turn, 4 Lord Amp thill was then our Ambassador at Berlin and Lady Ampthill was de- voted to boating. Prince William liked to boat with her, and on one occasion he especially wanted instruction in sculling. Well- Lady Ampthill, with the caution of one used to light boats, got in carefully, made her way aft and grasped the yoke-lines. She then explained to Prince William that this was not a heavy boat such as he had been accustomed to, that he must exercise extreme care, and in getting in must tread exactly in the centre of the boat. William of Hohenzollern, who had never taken advice from anyone in his life, and was always convinced that he himself knew best, responded by jumping into the boat from the landing-stage and throwing him- self and Lady Ampthill into sixteen feet of water. Prince-William, owing to his malforma- tion, was unable to swim one stroke, but Lady Ampthill, a very strong swimmer, managed, in spite of the weight of her clothing, to support him in the water for five minutes until help came and they were both rescued. No mean exploit for a lady. Otherwise William of Hohenzollern would unquestionably have ended his life in the Jungfernsee at Potsdam that day, and millions of other men would have ben permitted to live out their allotted span of existence. The "Third Section." Not less interesting are our" Diplo- mat's memories of Petrograd, when it was St. Petersburg and people had to be silent in case they found themselves in the hands of the "Third Section One night at a supper party a certain Countess B- criticised in very open and most unflattering terms a lady to whom the Emperor Alexander II. was known to be devotedly attached. Next morning, at 8 a.m., the Countess was awakened by her terrified maid, who told her that the; Third Section were there and de-! manded instant admittance. Two men j came into the Countess's bedroom and in- formed her that their orders were that she was to take the 12.30 train to Europe j that morning. They would remain with I her till then and would accompany her to ] the frontier. As she would not be allowed 1 to return to Russia for twelve months, they begged her to order her maid to pack what 1 was necassary; and nobody knew better ] than Countess B- how useless any attempted resistance would be. Amusing is the story about a blessing j of the orchards in the Crimea by a local priest. The peasants came forth with their first-fruits and stood in a long line awaiting the holy word on them and on themselves s. The red-bearded priest, quite a young man, passed down the street, sprinkling fruit and grower alike with holy water and repeating a blessing to each one. The young priest approached, and my friend could hear quite plainly the words of his blessing. No-it was quite impossible! It was incredible, and yet he could not doubt the evidence of his own ears. The young priest was speaking in good Scots and the words of the blessing he bestowed, on each parishioner were, HRere, man, tak' it. If it does ye nae guid, it canna possibly dae ye any harm." The men ad- dressed, probably taking this for a quota- tion from Scripture in some unknown tongue, bowed reverently as the words were pronounced over them. How that young Scot came to be a Russian priest, the book tells as it will tell you other odd things if you get it and dip into its fruitful pages. ELIOT BTJCKRAM., Other Books to Read. I. The Life of a Simple Man, by Emile Guulaumm, translated by Margaret Holden. (Selwyn and Blount. 7s. net.) Miss Eden's Letters, edited by Violet Dickinson. (Macmillan. 18s. net.) My Bohemian Days, by Harry Furniss. (Hurst and Blackett. 16s. net.) II. All Roads Lead to Calvary, by Jerome K. Jerome, (Hutchinson. 6s. Pd. net.) The Mask, by John Cournos. (Methuen. Gs. net.) The World of Wonderful Reality* by Temple Thurston. (Hodder and Stough- ton. 7s. net.)

USEFUL BOOK.

.—1— "ALL ROADS LEAD TO CALVARY."

"CIRCUITS."

" BENJY."

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