Frenzied Fiction, Page 3

  III. The Prophet in Our Midst

  The Eminent Authority looked around at the little group of us seatedabout him at the club. He was telling us, or beginning to tell us,about the outcome of the war. It was a thing we wanted to know. We werelistening attentively. We felt that we were "getting something."

  "I doubt very much," he said, "whether Downing Street realizes theenormous power which the Quai d'Orsay has over the Yildiz Kiosk."

  "So do I," I said, "what is it?"

  But he hardly noticed the interruption.

  "You've got to remember," he went on, "that, from the point of view ofthe Yildiz, the Wilhelmstrasse is just a thing of yesterday."

  "Quite so," I said.

  "Of course," he added, "the Ballplatz is quite different."

  "Altogether different," I admitted.

  "And mind you," he said, "the Ballplatz itself can be largely moved fromthe Quirinal through the Vatican."

  "Why of course it can," I agreed, with as much relief in my tone as Icould put into it. After all, what simpler way of moving the Ballplatzthan that?

  The Eminent Authority took another sip at his tea, and looked round atus through his spectacles.

  It was I who was taking on myself to do most of the answering, becauseit was I who had brought him there and invited the other men to meethim. "He's coming round at five," I had said, "do come and have a cupof tea and meet him. He knows more about the European situation andthe probable solution than any other man living." Naturally they camegladly. They wanted to know--as everybody wants to know--how the warwill end. They were just ordinary plain men like myself.

  I could see that they were a little mystified, perhaps disappointed.They would have liked, just as I would, to ask a few plain questions,such as, can the Italians knock the stuff out of the Austrians? Are theRumanians getting licked or not? How many submarines has Germany got,anyway? Such questions, in fact, as we are accustomed to put up to oneanother every day at lunch and to answer out of the morning paper. As itwas, we didn't seem to be getting anywhere.

  No one spoke. The silence began to be even a little uncomfortable. Itwas broken by my friend Rapley, who is in wholesale hardware and who hasall the intellectual bravery that goes with it. He asked the Authoritystraight out the question that we all wanted to put.

  "Just what do you mean by the Ballplatz? What is the Ballplatz?"

  The Authority smiled an engaging smile.

  "Precisely," he said, "I see your drift exactly. You say what _is_ theBallplatz? I reply quite frankly that it is almost impossible to answer.Probably one could best define it as the driving power behind theAusgleich."

  "I see," said Rapley.

  "Though the plain fact is that ever since the Herzegovinian embrogliothe Ballplatz is little more than a counterpoise to the Wilhelmstrasse."

  "Ah!" said Rapley.

  "Indeed, as everybody knows, the whole relationship of the Ballplatzwith the Nevski Prospekt has emanated from the Wilhelmstrasse."

  This was a thing which personally I had _not_ known. But I said nothing.Neither did the other men. They continued smoking, looking as innocentas they could.

  "Don't misunderstand me," said the Authority, "when I speak of theNevski Prospekt. I am not referring in any way to the Tsarskoe Selo."

  "No, no," we all agreed.

  "No doubt there were, as we see it plainly now, under currents in alldirections from the Tsarskoe Selo."

  We all seemed to suggest by our attitude that these undercurrents weresucking at our very feet.

  "But the Tsarskoe Selo," said the Authority, "is now definitelyeliminated."

  We were glad of that; we shifted our feet back into attitudes of ease.

  I felt that it was time to ask a leading question.

  "Do you think," I said, "that Germany will be broken up by the war?"

  "You mean Germany in what sense? Are you thinking of Preuszenthum? Areyou referring to Junkerismus?"

  "No," I said, quite truthfully, "neither of them."

  "Ah," said the Authority, "I see; you mean Germany as a Souverantatembodied in a Reichsland."

  "That's it," I said.

  "Then it's rather hard," said the Eminent Authority, "to answeryour question in plain terms. But I'll try. One thing, of course, is_absolutely_ certain, Mittel-Europa goes overboard."

  "It does, eh?"

  "Oh, yes, absolutely. This is the end of Mittel-Europa. I mean tosay--here we've had Mittel-Europa, that is, the Mittel-Europa _idea_, asa sort of fantasmus in front of Teutonism ever since Koniggratz."

  The Authority looked all round us in that searching way he had. We alltried to look like men seeing a fantasmus and disgusted at it.

  "So you see," he went on, "Mittel-Europa is done with."

  "I suppose it is," I said. I didn't know just whether to speak withregret or not. I heard Rapley murmur, "I guess so."

  "And there is not a doubt," continued the Authority, "that whenMittel-Europa goes, Grossdeutschthum goes with it."

  "Oh, sure to," we all murmured.

  "Well, then, there you are--what is the result for Germany--why thething's as plain as a pikestaff--in fact you're driven to it by thesheer logic of the situation--there is only _one_ outcome--"

  The Authority was speaking very deliberately. He even paused at thispoint and lighted a cigarette, while we all listened breathlessly. Wefelt that we had got the thing to a focus at last.

  "Only one outcome--a Staatenbund."

  "Great heavens," I said, "not a Staatenbund!"

  "Undoubtedly," said the Authority, puffing quietly at his cigarette, asif personally he wouldn't lift a finger to stop the Staatenbund if hecould, "that's the end of it, a Staatenbund. In other words, we are backwhere we were before the Vienna Congress!"

  At this he chuckled heartily to himself: so the rest of us laughed too:the thing was _too_ absurd. But the Authority, who was a man of nicedistinctions and genuinely anxious to instruct us, was evidently afraidthat he had overstated things a little.

  "Mind you," he said, "there'll be _something_ left--certainly theZollverein and either the Ausgleich or something very like it."

  All of the men gave a sort of sigh of relief. It was certainly somethingto have at least a sort of resemblance or appearance of the Ausgleichamong us. We felt that we were getting on. One could see that a numberof the men were on the brink of asking questions.

  "What about Rumania," asked Nelles--he is a banker and interested ingovernment bonds--"is this the end of it?"

  "No," said the Authority, "it's not the end of Rumania, but it _is_ theend of Rumanian Irridentismus."

  That settled Nelles.

  "What about the Turks?" asked Rapley.

  "The Turks, or rather, I suppose it would be more proper to say, theOsmanli, as that is no doubt what you mean?" Rapley nodded. "Well,speaking personally, I should say that there's no difficulty in apermanent settlement in that quarter. If I were drawing up the termsof a treaty of peace meant to be really lasting I should lay down threeabsolute bases; the rest needn't matter"--the Authority paused a momentand then proceeded to count off the three conditions of peace on hisfingers--"These would be, first, the evacuation of the Sandjak; second,an international guarantee for the Capitulations; and third, forinternal matters, an arrangement along the lines of the original firmanof Midhat Pasha."

  A murmur of complete satisfaction went round the group.

  "I don't say," continued the Eminent Authority, "that there wouldn't beother minor matters to adjust; but they would be a mere detail. Youask me, for instance, for a _milice_, or at least a gendarmerie, in theAlbanian hinterland; very good, I grant it you at once. You retain, ifyou like, you abolish the Cypriotic suzerainty of the Porte--all right.These are matters of indifference."

  We all assumed a look of utter indifference.

  "But what about the Dardanelles? Would you have them fixed so that shipscould go through, or not?" asked Rapley.

  He is a plain man, not easily put down and liking a plain
answer. He gotit.

  "The Dardanelles," said the Authority, "could easily be denationalizedunder a quadrilateral guarantee to be made a pars materia of the pactumfoederis."

  "That ought to hold them," I murmured.

  The Authority felt now that he had pretty well settled the map ofEurope. He rose and shook hands with us all around very cordially. Wedid not try to detain him. We felt that time like his was too valuableto be wasted on things like us.

  "Well, I tell you," said Rapley, as we settled back into our chairs whenthe Great Authority had gone, "my own opinion, boys, is that the UnitedStates and England can trim Germany and Austria any day in the week andtwice on Sunday."

  After which somebody else said:

  "I wonder how many of these submarines Germany has, anyway?"

  And then we drifted back into the humbler kind of war talk that we havebeen carrying on for three years.

  But later, as we walked home together, Rapley said to me:

  "That fellow threw a lot of light on things in Europe, didn't he?"

  And I answered:

  "Yes."

  What liars we all are!