Part 3 chapter 1

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THE Ambassador had returned. He assembled his two colleagues and the military attaché for tea. Mme Laurent and Francoise were not there.

M. Laurent had nothing but compliments to distribute. He declared that the First Secretary’s handling of affairs had been much appreciated, the Bag well filled, and all departments of the Embassy had shown equal activity. The French visitors to Athens, from André H---- to the surgeons, had sung the praises of the chargé d’affaires and of the colonel. The Ambassador said not a word of the Steua Marina. Redouté could only interpret this silence as forgiveness for his blunder. Better still, he was assured that his rank of counsellor was a foregone conclusion. Léger and Robien had given him their word.

“As for you, Colonel,” added M. Laurent, “I need not tell you that the extracts from your correspondence, which we had sent to the Quai d’Orsay, are attentively read there. Everyone envies me such a versatile and zealous military attaché.”

It was clear that the Ambassador wanted to inaugurate an era of peace on the occasion of his return. He had renewed his stock of balm from the Quai d’Orsay. Nor could it be denied that he had more serious reasons for satisfaction.

“Any extension of the Spanish war will now be avoided,” he said. “It is true that we are obstinately encouraging the Reds----”

“The Republicans,” said the colonel.

“---but England is beginning to swing round towards the Whites. Herbette has been recalled: he was no longer very Red, but Labonne, who has been sent instead, is quite colourless. The Austrian Nazis seem to be calming down. The Quai d’Orsay is always Germanophobe; but our damned friends on the Elbe, the Vistula, and the Danube are losing ground: so much more ground gained for peace.”

“You mean for war!” cried the colonel in an angry voice.

The initial politeness had not masked the discord for long.

“Calm yourself, please,” said the Ambassador. “Poincaré himself extolled the ‘peaceful force’ of the French Army.”

“Please excuse my outbursts: I am only ‘a blower of bugles’, like Dérouléde.”

“Come now; do you seriously believe, my dear Colonel, that the Czechs and the rest are the reason why Germany hesitates to attack France? But what is terrible is that France should have to attack Germany on their behalf. You know as well as I do that Czechoslovakia, Poland, Jugoslavia, and Rumania simply do not exist as military powers. Their armies, though trained by your Ecole de Guerre and made up of brave soldiers, are beaten in advance. General Pelle, you remember, when he was in charge of the military mission in Prague, said, ‘I have no great trust in an army whose soldiers take their oath of loyalty in four languages.’ As for the Russians, the only purpose they have served is to prevent us from reaching an understanding with Germany.”

“I know only one thing: that Germany is preparing her revenge and that we are the guarantors of the status quo.”

“She only wants to respect us and be respected by us. Look at the result of the recent meeting between Hitler and Mussolini: the German Government has confirmed Belgian neutrality.”

“We remember how they observed the same obligation in 1914.”

“It is not for us to revive the state of affairs of 1914, rather, since we have revived it, we must not maintain it.”

“You sound as though you regretted the victory of 1918.”

“I regret the Peace of 1919: as the well-known witticism goes, it established a just and permanent war. It made Mussolini and Hitler. It has already on its conscience the Abyssinian war and the prolongation of the Spanish war. It has landed us in a patchwork of contradictions which threatens to cause more wars. The only sensible Frenchmen are the schoolteachers of the Seine Department, who last year called for the revocation of the Treaty of Versailles.”

“I know them, those Seine schoolteachers! They are on our black list, like the P.T.T. in the same department.”

“The military attaché’s Black Book is as fearsome as that of the Jesuits,” said Redouté.

The Ambassador poured his guests another cup of tea and went on.

“You will, I trust, do me the honour of believing that I spoke as freely in Paris as I do in Athens. Naturally, I did not see the Minister, but I saw Léger several times and I told him what I thought---what I thought Gobineau would have thought. It is much more difficult to know what he is thinking. But he listened to me with promising attention. He even admitted to me that I was not the only diplomat to take a stand against dangerous alliances.”

The colonel held his peace by biting his lip.

“How is the balance of forces at the Quai d’Orsay at present?” asked the First Secretary.

“The warmongers still get their support from the Protestants and the women,” replied M. Laurent. “It makes a less notable party than that of the clergymen and old maids who rule England. But the Protestant group still hold the fortress of political control.”

“I thought I knew everything,” said the colonel, “but I didn’t know that you had a war of religion in your department.”

“It is not the less lively, nor the less complicated, for being an underground war. Besides the old nobility with their Cross of Malta, we have a Catholic bourgeoisie which is keen to be considered one with it; but we have also a Protestant bourgeoisie, helped by a few Jews who have infiltrated into the Service, though the interview is intended to keep them out.”

“What! You introduced race-discrimination before Hitler?”

“Class-discrimination at the most. As Jews have relatives in every country, we wish to limit contacts which might be dangerous.”

“I suppose you congratulated yourselves on the fact that before the war some of our diplomats in Berlin were related to the German nobility?”

“It would be more difficult to send our Jewish colleagues there nowadays. We could hardly ask them to love a Germany which persecutes their kinsmen. One might have expected, on the other hand, that the Protestants would be better disposed towards a Protestant country, but, whether from dogmatism, fanaticism or sentimentality, they make a point of adopting the contrary attitude.”

“I didn’t know, either, that the Quai d’Orsay was run by old maids. I don’t seem to remember that all your typists are old. In fact, Sarre has told me that there are even some charmers who have married diplomats.”

“I was not speaking of typists, but of assistants, filing clerks, and other female staff who have not married anyone yet. Like all manless women, they want war.”

“And Mlle. Borel?” asked the colonel. “Would you treat her with any greater respect?”

“D’you mean to say you know Mlle. Borel?”

“I know her by reputation.”

“There’s something for you!” said Redouté. “The only member of her sex who has got through the exam! She infuriated Briand, because he declared that she could not discharge the functions of a consul.”

“An absurd remark to make about a senior officer’s daughter. But it is much better that she should be at the Quai d’Orsay. She is much more useful there.”

“Useful? How, I should like to know,” said M. Laurent.

“She sends us educational films: I don’t think she has a hand in anything else.”

“Whether she has a hand in everything or nothing, she is a friend of my friends who are attached to the Quai d’Orsay: in your terrifying establishment she is one of the few who have their eyes on the Rhine.”

They all laughed at this picturesque phrase.

“What with Mlle. Borel in Paris and Mme. Giletière in Athens, France can sleep peacefully,” said the Ambassador. “She has never before had the luck to possess two Jeannes d’Arc. But thank goodness there are a good number of elements in the Ministry to balance these firebrands in frockcoats, morning coats, or petticoats: Robien at Personnel, Rochat in the Minister’s office, and some young men with a future.”

“I should think that their future was limited.”

“And of course there is the Madman of Zanzibar.”

“The Madman of Zanzibar?”

“Ah! Another thing you don’t know about, Colonel. Of the seven or eight hundred letters which arrive every day at Foreign Affairs, there is an average of seven or eight from madmen: they are often the most interesting. They are not answered, but that doesn’t mean that they are not studied. Naguére, who of all the lunatics has the most influence with the Ministry, came from St. Louis, Missouri. He was a specialist on the disarmament question, and they say that Briand used to have his letters shown to him, The Madman of Zanzibar also fights the good fight: he has sworn a mortal hatred against Benes, whom he has never seen. ‘This Benes, this traitor,’ he is always writing---nor I may say, without some perception.”

“Your madman seems to me to be as like a German secret agent as one pea is to another. At any rate, let me express my surprise that French diplomats profess the same opinion of one of France’s greatest friends as does this real or pretended Madman of Zanzibar.”

“These ‘great friends of France’, whom France did not ask for, remind me of what old man Berthelot said about the young Philippe: ‘There is a little boy,’ he said one day, ‘of whom France must take care.’ God forbid that the little boy ever takes care of France!”

+++

One of the satisfactions which the Ambassador and the colonel gave themselves was never to take their leaves at the same time. So each had several weeks of peace. More strictly, the colonel’s absence gave the Ambassador peace: but when the Ambassador was away the colonel made more of a stir than ever.

One day, Georges went to see the latter and found him in the midst of his preparations, sorting identity-cards in his wallet.

“Are you taking away your secret agents’ cards?”

“Not at all: these are my own cards, my French cards. I’m putting them in order: my officer’s card, my ex-Serviceman’s card, and various others, such as, for example, that of the National Federation of Cuirassiers of France.”

“You belong to the colonial infantry, as I remember?”

“That doesn’t prevent me from belonging to the Federation of Cuirassiers.”

“You remind me of the ‘free members’ of the scientific congresses.”

“I was determined to belong to the Federation because the general who is head of it is a veteran of Reichshoffen. I am the link between the three wars: 1870, 1914, and the next one.”

“For that one I hope you have all your staff maps.”

“I have there, in my trunk, some of the Rhineland and the Saar, which perhaps the German military attaché has not got.”

“But have you any of France? In 1870, if my history is correct, our General Staff had maps of Germany but none of France: but it was in France that the war was fought, in spite of the heroism of the cuirassiers of Reichshoffen.”

“You may be sure that today the General Staff has all the necessary maps. And while we are on the subject, I will tell you something in confidence: I and the Ambassador have just been drawing up the list of the ‘specially posted’---that is to say, the Frenchmen who will be mobilized in Athens under my orders in case of war. You see it was no use getting yourself discharged by an obliging major: your excellent health would have marked you to be mobilized in France. It would have served you right for having played tricks with military service, and certainly you did not deserve to be enrolled on my list. It is not a list of the proscribed, but a list of the favoured. Many a one will envy you making war in Athens.”

Georges thanked him in some embarrassment. Although he still did not believe in the coming war, he was none the less obliged to the colonel for trying to make it a soft one for him. He discovered, by the same token, that the colonel himself intended to make war from Athens: his maps of the Rhineland and the Saar would see the fighting front only from afar.

The naval attaché, returning from his leave, replaced the military attaché. It was to be expected that whatever might happen his term of office would be quieter. Jealous of the colonel’s wealth and having a low opinion of his character, he delighted to adopt the contrary attitude: his reports were extremely short; he showed them all faithfully; he never used the “secret” stamp; he talked as little as possible; he hardly did any entertaining. His principal occupation was the study of old texts from which he extracted meteorological observations. He was engaged on a work on the storms in Homer, which would no doubt make a pendant to M. Bergeret’s Virgil the Sailor. This gave him a solid foundation from which he watched unmoved both diplomatic tempests and unknown submarines.

Once, before going on an excursion, Georges asked him what the weather was going to do. He received the following little typewritten note, which obviated the necessity of ever consulting him again, as it provided for every eventuality with one exception: “Eleven times out of twelve the weather remains the same till the change of the moon as it was on the fifth day of the moon, provided that on the sixth day it was the same as on the fifth.”