Queer people

Three days before the Armistice was signed I went to Paris with representatives of the Office of Works and the Foreign Office to secure premises for the British Delegation in the Peace Negotiations. I believe that Brussels and Geneva were both considered as meeting-places, but for reasons, chiefly of lack of accommodation, were dismissed as unsuitable. The Majestic and the Astoria Hotels, the one for housing the people and the other for office accommodation, both near the Arc de Triomphe, seemed to be the only possible buildings available, and in due course the British Ambassador called on Monsieur Clemenceau to ask that they should be commandeered. He asked how many people had to be housed, and was told that the number would be approximately four hundred, on which followed the quick comment, ‘Ah, then the demobilisation of the British Army has already begun!’

We spent Sunday afternoon, 10th November, driving about Paris with M. Clemenceau’s A.D.C. to inspect premises for the accommodation of the Foreign Office printing staff. I noticed late in the afternoon that the Champs Elysée was full of a holiday crowd carrying flags rolled tightly round the stick. All Paris was waiting for the news that the Germans had signed the Armistice. I had not seen the terms, but knowing that they were hard, I asked the French officer whether he thought that the Germans would accept them. He replied, ‘Oui, les conditions sont dures, mais ils signeront.’ I was in Boulogne by 11 A.M. on Armistice morning, and I had the news of the Armistice when I reached my daughter’s hospital at Wimereux. The news had not then reached the French. At the entrance to the hospital I had to stand aside to let a party of German prisoner orderlies pass. They were laughing and singing, though the news had not actually reached the hospital by telephone at that time. No doubt they were banking upon the rumours of revolution in Germany. When our steamer sailed two hours later every whistle and siren was in full blast; the quays were lined with waving and cheering crowds; the sleepy old town was awake for once.

When the delegation was installed at the Hôtel Majestic and the two subsidiary hotels, if one could believe the newspapers, the members spent their time in eating and drinking, in music, theatricals, and dancing. But one could not believe the newspapers. No doubt in the early days of those protracted negotiations the staff was too big for the work, and in the later stages the work was too big for the staff, but considering the enormous number of experts who had to be consulted on the whole range of human endeavour, political, naval, military, geographical, racial, and industrial, it cannot be said that the staff was too numerous or that it did less than a day’s work. Its recreations were certainly not excessive, seeing that for many dancing was the only possible exercise. It may well be asked what a police officer had to do with peace negotiations. He had nothing whatever to do with them. As Chief Security Officer, my function was to prevent if possible the leakages of information that took place during the Peace Conference in Vienna, and for this purpose I took over with me a body of Special Branch officers to control the doors, and see that no unauthorised person obtained access to the buildings. If occasionally they wounded susceptible feelings, they were of great use to visitors in the matter of passports and travelling facilities. There were arduous moments in their service. On one occasion I was asked to furnish the escort for a furniture van which was to be packed with papers of so secret a nature that the escort must remain with it night and day until it arrived in Paris. The van was packed and sealed in London, and a very zealous young police officer left with it for Havre via Southampton. At Havre the French railway officials positively refused to attach the truck on which it was loaded to the express: it must proceed by the slow train. The escort telephoned this news quite cheerfully, though the rain was coming down in torrents. We made frequent inquiries at the Gare St. Lazare, receiving conflicting accounts of the progress of the truck, until at last late on a Saturday afternoon we heard that it had arrived some hours before, and had been shunted into a goods shed, where it would remain until the following Monday. Feeling sure that our zealous policeman had not deserted it, we sent the senior inspector to the station-master. He was adamant; the rules must be observed; even if an English policeman starved, the van must stay where it was till Monday. But the inspector was a man of resource: he was a Freemason and so, as it now appeared, was the station-master. So potent was this appeal that the shed was opened, and there was our man wet through, stiff and faint for want of food. We took him and his van to the hotel, and under restoratives and a hot bath he soon recovered. So far I can vouch for the story. The sequel may be less authenticated. The seals were broken; the van was opened, and lo! so the story ran, it contained nothing but the ninth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. In London some one had blundered.

My principal duties being in London, I made flying visits of inspection to Paris at intervals of about a fortnight—flying in the literal sense occasionally—and it was curious to see how the amenities of the Hôtel Majestic were modified as time went on. In the early days there was a full staff of House of Commons waiters and waitresses, who found so much to grumble at that they were soon sent home. Apart from the inevitable epidemic of influenza, the sick ward was always filled: at least two broken legs were being mended, besides minor accidents. Gradually the scale of entertainment became more Spartan, the edges began to wear off tempers, the spirit of criticism to rear its head, and in my last visit the glory of the great Peace Conference had departed. Curious folk of every colour came as deputations from nearly every race under the sun to have their grievances redressed. They vanished as unobtrusively as they came, elated or disappointed according to their reception.

The Americans had established an excellent system of intelligence throughout Europe, and, as we had been closely associated before, we agreed to pool our information. At that time there was not much happening in the underworld of Europe and America that we did not know. How admirably the Americans had profited by their experience probably few know so well as I.

It was very interesting to note the decline and fall of President Wilson’s prestige among the French. At first he was expected to remedy all the evils from which Paris was suffering: he was to lower prices and raise the exchange; the maidservant thought that he would raise her wages. Week followed week, and he did nothing sensational to justify these great expectations. When he announced the establishment of the League of Nations it was too late; his star was in eclipse, and nothing he could say or do would ever bring him back to public favour. It is the fate of all mortals from whom too much is expected. I confess that his speech at the League of Nations plenary session disappointed me both in substance and delivery. When I said so to two of my American colleagues that evening one of them said: ‘There are only two men at the Peace Conference who could have carried it off—Mr. Balfour and Lord Reading.’

One of my friends, in whose cranium the bump of Veneration has been atrophied, wrote the following witty lines:—

At last the Peace Treaty was signed at Versailles. We know what contemporaries think of it; we can only guess at the verdict of posterity. We see through a glass darkly that a rearrangement of frontiers which includes a corridor, a reduction of Austria to such proportions that she cannot feed herself, will not stand. The epigram ascribed to Herr Rathenau that the Treaty of Versailles set out to Europeanise the Balkans and has succeeded only in Balkanising Europe will gather truth with every month we live.