The Hohenzollerns in America<br />With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and Other Impossibilities by Stephen Leacock (reading books for 5 year olds TXT) 📗
- Author: Stephen Leacock
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So it was decided to hold the Kermesse and give all the profits realised by it to the Victims of the Peace. Everybody set to work again with a will. The Kermesse indeed had to be postponed for a few months to make room for the changes needed, but it has now been held and, in a certain sense, it has been the wildest kind of success. The club, as I said, has been a blaze of light for three weeks. We have had four orchestras in attendance every evening. There have been booths draped with the flags of all the Allies, except some that we were not sure about, in every corridor of the club. There have been dinner parties and dances every evening. The members, especially the ladies, have not spared themselves. Many of them have spent practically all their time at the Kermesse, not getting home until two in the morning.
And yet somehow one has felt that underneath the surface it was not a success. The spirit seemed gone out of it. The members themselves confessed in confidence that in spite of all they could do their hearts were not in it. Peace had somehow taken away all the old glad sense of enjoyment. As to spending money at the Kermesse all the members admitted frankly that they had no heart for it. This was especially the case when the rumour got abroad that the Armenians were a poor lot and that some of the Turks were quite gentlemanly fellows. It was said, too, that if the Russians did starve it would do them a lot of good.
So it was known even before we went to hear the financial report that there would be no question of profits on the Kermesse going to the Armenians or the Russians.
And to-night the treasurer has been reading out to a general meeting the financial results as nearly as they can be computed.
He has put the Net Patriotic Deficit, as nearly as he can estimate it, at fifteen thousand dollars, though he has stated, with applause from the ladies, that the Gross Deficit is bigger still.
The Ladies Financial Committee has just carried a motion that the whole of the deficit, both net and gross, be now forwarded to the Red Cross Society (sixty per cent), the Belgian Relief Fund (fifty per cent), and the remainder invested in the War Loan.
But there is a very general feeling among the male members that the club will have to go into liquidation. Peace has ruined us. Not a single member, so far as I am aware, is prepared to protest against the peace, or is anything but delighted to think that the war is over. At the same time we do feel that if we could have had a longer notice, six months for instance, we could have braced ourselves better to stand up against it and meet the blow when it fell.
I think, too, that our feeling is shared outside.
5.—The War News as I Remember it
Everybody, I think, should make some little contribution towards keeping alive the memories of the great war. In the larger and heroic sense this is already being done. But some of the minor things are apt to be neglected. When the record of the war has been rewritten into real history, we shall be in danger of forgetting what WAR NEWS was like and the peculiar kind of thrill that accompanied its perusal.
Hence in order to preserve it for all time I embalm some little samples of it, selected of course absolutely at random,—as such things always are—in the pages of this book.
Let me begin with:—
I—THE CABLE NEWS FROM RUSSIA
This was the great breakfast-table feature for at least three years. Towards the end of the war some people began to complain of it. They said that they questioned whether it was accurate. Here for example is one fortnight of it.
Petrograd, April 14. Word has reached here that the Germans have captured enormous quantities of grain on the Ukrainian border. April 15. The Germans have captured no grain on the Ukrainian border. The country is swept bare. April 16. Everybody in Petrograd is starving. April 17. There is no lack of food in Petrograd. April 18. The death of General Korniloff is credibly reported this morning. April 19. It is credibly reported this morning that General Korniloff is alive. April 20. It is credibly reported that General Korniloff is hovering between life and death. April 21. The Bolsheviki are overthrown. April 22. The Bolsheviki got up again. April 23. The Czar died last night. April 24. The Czar did not die last night. April 25. General Kaleidescope and his Cossacks are moving north. April 26. General Kaleidescope and his Cossacks are moving south. April 27. General Kaleidescope and his Cossacks are moving east. April 28. General Kaleidescope and his Cossacks are moving west. April 29. It is reported that the Cossacks under General Kaleidescope have revolted. They demand the Maximum. General Kaleidescope hasn't got it. April 30. The National Pan-Russian Constituent Universal Duma which met this morning at ten-thirty, was dissolved at twenty-five minutes to eleven.My own conclusion, reached with deep regret, is that the Russians are not yet fit for the blessings of the Magna Carta and the Oklahama Constitution of 1907. They ought to remain for some years yet under the Interstate Commerce Commission.
II—SAMPLE OF SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE
New York (through London via Holland and coming out at Madrid). Mr. O. Howe Lurid, our special correspondent, writing from "Somewhere near Somewhere" and describing the terrific operations of which he has just been an eyewitness, says:
"From the crest where I stood, the whole landscape about me was illuminated with the fierce glare of the bursting shells, while the ground on which I stood quivered with the thunderous detonation of the artillery.
"Nothing in the imagination of a Dante could have equalled the lurid and pyrogriffic grandeur of the scene. Streams of fire rose into the sky, falling in bifurcated crystallations in all directions. Disregarding all personal danger, I opened one eye and looked at it.
"I found myself now to be the very centre of the awful conflict. While not stating that the whole bombardment was directed at me personally, I am pretty sure that it was."
I admit that there was a time, at the very beginning of the war, when I liked this kind of thing served up with my bacon and eggs every morning, in the days when a man could eat bacon and eggs without being labelled a pro-German. Later on I came to prefer the simple statements as to the same scene and event, given out by Sir Douglas Haig and General Pershing—after this fashion:
"Last night at ten-thirty P.M. our men noticed signs of a light bombardment apparently coming from the German lines."
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