Books: The Hohenzollerns in America
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Stephen Leacock >> The Hohenzollerns in America
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Boobenstein remained for a time in deep thought, his
fingers beating a tattoo on the little table. Then he
spoke.
"Do you remember," he said, "the old times of long ago
when you first knew me?"
"Very well, indeed," I answered. "You were one of the
German waiters, or rather, one of the German officers
disguised as waiters at McConkey's Restaurant in Toronto."
"I was," said the count. "I carried the beer on a little
tray and opened oysters behind a screen. It was a
wunderschoen life. Do you think, my good friend, you could
get me that job again?"
"Boobenstein," I exclaimed, "I can get you reinstated at
once. It will be some small return for your kindness to
me in Germany."
"Good," said the count. "Let us sail at once for Canada."
"One thing, however," I said. "You may not know that
since you left there are no longer beer waiters in Toronto
because there is no beer. All is forbidden."
"Let me understand myself," said the count in astonishment.
"No beer!"
"None whatever."
"Wine, then?"
"Absolutely not. All drinking, except of water, is
forbidden."
The count rose and stood erect. His figure seemed to
regain all its old-time Prussian rigidity. He extended
his hand.
"My friend," he said. "I bid you farewell."
"Where are you going to?" I asked.
"My choice is made," said Von Boobenstein. "There are
worse things than death. I am about to surrender myself
to the German authorities."
III.--Afternoon Tea with the Sultan
A Study of Reconstruction in Turkey
On the very day following the events related in the last
chapter, I was surprised and delighted to receive a
telegram which read "Come on to Constantinople and write
US up too." From the signature I saw that the message
was from my old friend Abdul Aziz the Sultan.
I had visited him--as of course my readers will instantly
recollect--during the height of the war, and the
circumstances of my departure had been such that I should
have scarcely ventured to repeat my visit without this
express invitation. But on receipt of it, I set out at
once by rail for Constantinople.
I was delighted to find that under the new order of things
in going from Berlin to Constantinople it was no longer
necessary to travel through the barbarous and brutal
populations of Germany, Austria and Hungary. The way now
runs, though I believe the actual railroad is the same,
through the Thuringian Republic, Czecho-Slovakia and
Magyaria. It was a source of deep satisfaction to see
the scowling and hostile countenances of Germans, Austrians
and Hungarians replaced by the cheerful and honest faces
of the Thuringians, the Czecho-Slovaks and the Magyarians.
Moreover I was assured on all sides that if these faces
are not perfectly satisfactory, they will be altered in
any way required.
It was very pleasant, too, to find myself once again in
the flagstoned halls of the Yildiz Kiosk, the Sultan's
palace. My little friend Abdul Aziz rose at once from
his cushioned divan under a lemon tree and came shuffling
in his big slippers to meet me, a smile of welcome on
his face. He seemed, to my surprise, radiant with happiness.
The disasters attributed by the allied press to his
unhappy country appeared to sit lightly on the little man.
"How is everything going in Turkey?" I asked as we sat
down side by side on the cushions.
"Splendid," said Abdul. "I suppose you've heard that
we're bankrupt?"
"Bankrupt!" I exclaimed.
"Yes," continued the Sultan, rubbing his hands together
with positive enjoyment, "we can't pay a cent: isn't it
great? Have some champagne?"
He clapped his hands together and a turbaned attendant
appeared with wine on a tray which he served into
long-necked glasses.
"I'd rather have tea," I said.
"No, no, don't take tea," he protested. "We've practically
cut out afternoon tea here. It's part of our Turkish
thrift movement. We're taking champagne instead. Tell
me, have you a Thrift Movement like that, where you come
from--Canada, I think it is, isn't it?"
"Yes," I answered, "we have one just like that."
"This war finance is glorious stuff, isn't it?" continued
the Sultan. "How much do you think we owe?"
"I haven't an idea," I said.
"Wait a minute," said Abdul. He touched a bell and at
the sound of it there came shuffling into the room my
venerable old acquaintance Toomuch Koffi, the Royal
Secretary. But to my surprise he no longer wore his
patriarchal beard, his flowing robe and his girdle. He
was clean shaven and close cropped and dressed in a short
jacket like an American bell boy.
"You remember Toomuch, I think," said Abdul. "I've
reconstructed him a little, as you see."
"The Peace of Allah be upon thine head," said Toomuch
Koffi to the Sultan, commencing a deep salaam. "What wish
sits behind thy forehead that thou shouldst ring the bell
for this humble creature of clay to come into the sunlight
of thy presence? Tell me, O Lord, if perchance--"
"Here, here," interrupted the Sultan impatiently, "cut
all that stuff out, please. That ancient courtesy business
won't do, not if this country is to reconstruct itself
and come abreast of the great modern democracies. Say to
me simply 'What's the trouble?"'
Toomuch bowed, and Abdul continued. "Look in your tablets
and see how much our public debt amounts to in American
dollars."
The secretary drew forth his tablets and bowed his head
a moment in some perplexity over the figures that were
scribbled on them. "Multiplication," I heard him murmur,
"is an act of the grace of heaven; let me invoke a blessing
on FIVE, the perfect number, whereby the Pound Turkish
is distributed into the American dollar."
He remained for a few moments with his eyes turned, as
if in supplication, towards the vaulted ceiling.
"Have you got it?" asked Abdul.
"Yes."
"And what do we owe, adding it all together?"
"Forty billion dollars," said Toomuch.
"Isn't that wonderful!" exclaimed Abdul, with delight
radiating over his countenance. "Who would have thought
that before the war! Forty billion dollars! Aren't we
the financiers! Aren't we the bulwark of monetary power!
Can you touch that in Canada?"
"No," I said, "we can't. We don't owe two billion yet."
"Oh, never mind, never mind," said the little man in a
consoling tone. "You are only a young country yet. You'll
do better later on. And in any case I am sure you are
just as proud of your one billion as we are of our forty."
"Oh, yes," I said, "we certainly are."
"Come, come, that's something anyway. You're on the right
track, and you must not be discouraged if you're not up
to the Turkish standard yet. You must remember, as I told
you before, that Turkey leads the world in all ideas of
government and finance. Take the present situation. Here
we are, bankrupt--pass me the champagne, Toomuch, and
sit down with us--the very first nation of the lot. It's
a great feather in the cap of our financiers. It gives
us a splendid start for the new era of reconstruction
that we are beginning on. As you perhaps have heard we
are all hugely busy about it. You notice my books and
papers, do you not?" the Sultan added very proudly, waving
his hand towards a great pile of blue books, pamphlets
and documents that were heaped upon the floor beside him.
"Why! I never knew before that you ever read anything!"
I exclaimed in amazement.
"Never did. But everything's changed now, isn't it,
Toomuch? I sit and work here for hours every morning.
It's become a delight to me. After all," said Abdul,
lighting a big cigar and sticking up his feet on his pile
of papers with an air of the deepest comfort, "what is
there like work? So stimulating, so satisfying. I sit
here working away, just like this, most of the day.
There's nothing like it."
"What are you working at?" I asked.
"Reconstruction," said the little man, puffing a big
cloud from his cigar, "reconstruction."
"What kind of reconstruction?"
"All kinds--financial, industrial, political, social.
It's great stuff. By the way," he continued with great
animation, "would you like to be my Minister of Labour?
No? Well, I'm sorry. I half hoped you would. We're having
no luck with them. The last one was thrown into the
Bosphorous on Monday. Here's the report on it--no, that's
the one on the shooting of the Minister of Religion--ah!
here it is--Report on the Drowning of the Minister of
Labour. Let me read you a bit of this: I call this one
of the best reports, of its kind, that have come in."
"No, no," I said, "don't bother to read it. Just tell me
who did it and why."
"Workingmen," said the Sultan, very cheerfully, "a
delegation. They withheld their reasons."
"So you are having labour troubles here too?" I asked.
"Labour troubles!" exclaimed the little Sultan rolling
up his eyes. "I should say so. The whole of Turkey is
bubbling with labour unrest like the rosewater in a
narghile. Look at your tablets, Toomuch, and tell me what
new strikes there have been this morning."
The aged Secretary fumbled with his notes and began to
murmur--"Truly will I try with the aid of Allah--"
"Now, now," said Abdul, warningly, "that won't do. Say
simply 'Sure.' Now tell me."
The Secretary looked at a little list and read: "The
strikes of to-day comprise--the wig-makers, the dog
fanciers, the conjurers, the snake charmers, and the
soothsayers."
"You hear that," said Abdul proudly. "That represents
some of the most skilled labour in Turkey."
"I suppose it does," I said, "but tell me Abdul--what
about the really necessary trades, the coal miners, the
steel workers, the textile operatives, the farmers, and
the railway people. Are they working?"
The little Sultan threw himself back on his cushions in
a paroxysm of laughter, in which even his ancient Secretary
was feign to join.
"My dear sir, my dear sir!" he laughed, "don't make me
die of laughter. Working! those people working! Surely
you don't think we are so behind hand in Turkey as all
that! All those worker's stopped absolutely months ago.
It is doubtful if they'll ever work again. There's a
strong movement in Turkey to abolish all NECESSARY work
altogether."
"But who then," I asked, "is working?"
"Look on the tablets, Toomuch, and see."
The aged Secretary bowed, turned over the leaves of his
"tablets," which I now perceived on a closer view to be
merely an American ten cent memorandum book. Then he
read:
"The following, O all highest, still work--the beggars,
the poets, the missionaries, the Salvation Army, and the
instructors of the Youths of Light in the American
Presbyterian College."
"But, dear me, Abdul," I exclaimed, "surely this situation
is desperate? What can your nation subsist on in such a
situation?"
"Pooh, pooh," said the Sultan. "The interest on our debt
alone is two billion a year. Everybody in Turkey, great
or small, holds bonds to some extent. At the worst they
can all live fairly well on the interest. This is finance,
is it not, Toomuch Koffi?"
"The very best and latest," said the aged man with a
profound salaam.
"But what steps are you taking," I asked, "to remedy your
labour troubles?"
"We are appointing commissions," said Abdul. "We appoint
one for each new labour problem. How many yesterday,
Toomuch?"
"Forty-three," answered the secretary.
"That's below our average, is it not?" said Abdul a little
anxiously. "Try to keep it up to fifty if you can."
"And these commissions, what do they do?"
"They make Reports," said Abdul, beginning to yawn as if
the continued brain exercise of conversation were fatiguing
his intellect, "excellent reports. We have had some that
are said to be perfect models of the very best Turkish."
"And what do they recommend?"
"I don't know," said the Sultan. "We don't read them for
that. We like to read them simply as Turkish."
"But what," I urged, "do you do with them? What steps do
you take?"
"We send them all," replied the little man, puffing at
his pipe and growing obviously drowsy as he spoke, "to
Woodrow Wilson. He can deal with them. He is the great
conciliator of the world. Let him have--how do you say
it in English, it is a Turkish phrase--let him have his
stomach full of conciliation."
Abdul dozed on his cushions for a moment. Then he reopened
his eyes. "Is there anything else you want to know," he
asked, "before I retire to the Inner Harem?"
"Just one thing," I said, "if you don't mind. How do you
stand internationally? Are you coming into the New League
of Nations?"
The Sultan shook his head.
"No," he said, "we're not coming in. We are starting a
new league of our own."
"And who are in it?"
"Ourselves, and the Armenians--and let me see--the Irish,
are they not, Toomuch--and the Bulgarians--are there any
others, Toomuch?"
"There is talk," said the Secretary "of the Yugo-Hebrovians
and the Scaroovians--"
"Who are they?" I asked.
"We don't know," said Abdul, testily. "They wrote to us.
They seem all right. Haven't you got a lot of people in
your league that you never heard of?"
"I see," I said, "and what is the scheme that your league
is formed on?"
"Very simple," said the Sultan. "Each member of the league
gives its WORD to all the other members. Then they all
take an OATH together. Then they all sign it. That is
absolutely binding."
He rolled back on his cushions in an evident state of
boredom and weariness.
"But surely," I protested, "you don't think that a league
of that sort can keep the peace?"
"Peace!" exclaimed Abdul waking into sudden astonishment.
"Peace! I should think NOT! Our league is for WAR. Every
member gives its word that at the first convenient
opportunity it will knock the stuff out of any of the
others that it can."
The little Sultan again subsided. Then he rose, with some
difficulty, from his cushions.
"Toomuch," he said, "take our inquisitive friend out into
the town; take him to the Bosphorous; take him to the
island where the dogs are; take him anywhere." He paused
to whisper a few instructions into the ear of the Secretary.
"You understand," he said, "well, take him. As for me,"--he
gave a great yawn as he shuffled away, "I am about to
withdraw into my Inner Harem. Goodbye. I regret that I
cannot invite you in."
"So do I," I said. "Goodbye."
IV.--Echoes of the War
1.--The Boy Who Came Back
The war is over. The soldiers are coming home. On all
sides we are assured that the problem of the returned
soldier is the gravest of our national concerns.
So I may say it without fear of contradiction,--since
everybody else has seen it,--that, up to the present
time, the returned soldier is a disappointment. He is
not turning out as he ought. According to all the
professors of psychology he was to come back bloodthirsty
and brutalised, soaked in militarism and talking only of
slaughter. In fact, a widespread movement had sprung up,
warmly supported by the business men of the cities, to
put him on the land. It was thought that central Nevada
or northern Idaho would do nicely for him. At the same
time an agitation had been started among the farmers,
with the slogan "Back to the city," the idea being that
farm life was so rough that it was not fair to ask the
returned soldier to share it.
All these anticipations turn out to be quite groundless.
The first returned soldier of whom I had direct knowledge
was my nephew Tom. When he came back, after two years in
the trenches, we asked him to dine with us. "Now, remember,"
I said to my wife, "Tom will be a very different being
from what he was when he went away. He left us as little
more than a school boy, only in his first year at college;
in fact, a mere child. You remember how he used to bore
us with baseball talk and that sort of thing. And how
shy he was! You recall his awful fear of Professor Razzler,
who used to teach him mathematics. All that, of course,
will be changed now. Tom will have come back a man. We
must ask the old professor to meet him. It will amuse
Tom to see him again. Just think of the things he must
have seen! But we must be a little careful at dinner not
to let him horrify the other people with brutal details
of the war."
Tom came. I had expected him to arrive in uniform with
his pocket full of bombs. Instead of this he wore ordinary
evening dress with a dinner jacket. I realised as I helped
him to take off his overcoat in the hall that he was very
proud of his dinner jacket. He had never had one before.
He said he wished the "boys" could see him in it. I asked
him why he had put off his lieutenant's uniform so quickly.
He explained that he was entitled not to wear it as soon
as he had his discharge papers signed; some of the fellows,
he said, kicked them off as soon as they left the ship,
but the rule was, he told me, that you had to wear the
thing till your papers were signed.
Then his eye caught a glimpse sideways of Professor
Razzler standing on the hearth rug in the drawing room.
"Say," he said, "is that the professor?" I could see that
Tom was scared. All the signs of physical fear were
written on his face. When I tried to lead him into the
drawing room I realised that he was as shy as ever. Three
of the women began talking to him all at once. Tom
answered, yes or no,--with his eyes down. I liked the
way he stood, though, so unconsciously erect and steady.
The other men who came in afterwards, with easy greetings
and noisy talk, somehow seemed loud-voiced and
self-assertive.
Tom, to my surprise, refused a cocktail. It seems, as he
explained, that he "got into the way of taking nothing
over there." I noticed that my friend Quiller, who is a
war correspondent, or, I should say, a war editorial
writer, took three cocktails and talked all the more
brilliantly for it through the opening courses of the
dinner, about the story of the smashing of the Hindenburg
line. He decided, after his second Burgundy, that it had
been simply a case of sticking it out. I say "Burgundy"
because we had substituted Burgundy, the sparkling kind,
for champagne at our dinners as one of our little war
economies.
Tom had nothing to say about the Hindenburg line. In
fact, for the first half of the dinner he hardly spoke.
I think he was worried about his left hand. There is a
deep furrow across the back of it where a piece of shrapnel
went through and there are two fingers that will hardly
move at all. I could see that he was ashamed of its
clumsiness and afraid that someone might notice it. So
he kept silent. Professor Razzler did indeed ask him
straight across the table what he thought about the final
breaking of the Hindenburg line. But he asked it with
that same fierce look from under his bushy eyebrows with
which he used to ask Tom to define the path of a tangent,
and Tom was rattled at once. He answered something about
being afraid that he was not well posted, owing to there
being so little chance over there to read the papers.
After that Professor Razzler and Mr. Quiller discussed
for us, most energetically, the strategy of the Lorraine
sector (Tom served there six months, but he never said
so) and high explosives and the possibilities of aerial
bombs. (Tom was "buried" by an aerial bomb but, of course,
he didn't break in and mention it.)
But we did get him talking of the war at last, towards
the end of the dinner; or rather, the girl sitting next
to him did, and presently the rest of us found ourselves
listening. The strange thing was that the girl was a mere
slip of a thing, hardly as old as Tom himself. In fact,
my wife was almost afraid she might be too young to ask
to dinner: girls of that age, my wife tells me, have
hardly sense enough to talk to men, and fail to interest
them. This is a proposition which I think it better not
to dispute.
But at any rate we presently realized that Tom was talking
about his war experiences and the other talk about the
table was gradually hushed into listening.
This, as nearly as I can set it down, is what he told
us: That the French fellows picked up baseball in a way
that is absolutely amazing; they were not much good, it
seems, at the bat, at any rate not at first, but at
running bases they were perfect marvels; some of the
French made good pitchers, too; Tom knew a poilu who had
lost his right arm who could pitch as good a ball with
his left as any man on the American side; at the port
where Tom first landed and where they trained for a month
they had a dandy ball ground, a regular peach, a former
parade ground of the French barracks. On being asked
WHICH port it was, Tom said he couldn't remember; he
thought it was either Boulogne or Bordeaux or Brest,--at
any rate, it was one of those places on the English
channel. The ball ground they had behind the trenches
was not so good; it was too much cut up by long range
shells. But the ball ground at the base hospital (where
Tom was sent for his second wound) was an A1 ground. The
French doctors, it appears, were perfectly rotten at
baseball, not a bit like the soldiers. Tom wonders that
they kept them. Tom says that baseball had been tried
among the German prisoners, but they are perfect dubs.
He doubts whether the Germans will ever be able to play
ball. They lack the national spirit. On the other hand,
Tom thinks that the English will play a great game when
they really get into it. He had two weeks' leave in London
and went to see the game that King George was at, and
says that the King, if they will let him, will make the
greatest rooter of the whole bunch.
Such was Tom's war talk.
It grieved me to note that as the men sat smoking their
cigars and drinking liqueur whiskey (we have cut out port
at our house till the final peace is signed) Tom seemed
to have subsided into being only a boy again, a first-year
college boy among his seniors. They spoke to him in quite
a patronising way, and even asked him two or three direct
questions about fighting in the trenches, and wounds and
the dead men in No Man's Land and the other horrors that
the civilian mind hankers to hear about. Perhaps they
thought, from the boy's talk, that he had seen nothing.
If so, they were mistaken. For about three minutes, not
more, Tom gave them what was coming to them. He told
them, for example, why he trained his "fellows" to drive
the bayonet through the stomach and not through the head,
that the bayonet driven through the face or skull sticks
and,--but there is no need to recite it here. Any of the
boys like Tom can tell it all to you, only they don't
want to and don't care to.
They've got past it.
But I noticed that as the boy talked,--quietly and
reluctantly enough,--the older men fell silent and looked
into his face with the realisation that behind his simple
talk and quiet manner lay an inward vision of grim and
awful realities that no words could picture.
I think that they were glad when we joined the ladies
again and when Tom talked of the amateur vaudeville show
that his company had got up behind the trenches.
Later on, when the other guests were telephoning for
their motors and calling up taxis, Tom said he'd walk to
his hotel; it was only a mile and the light rain that
was falling would do him, he said, no harm at all. So he
trudged off, refusing a lift.
Oh, no, I don't think we need to worry about the returned
soldier. Only let him return, that's all. When he does,
he's a better man than we are, Gunga Dinn.
2.--The War Sacrifices of Mr. Spugg
Although we had been members of the same club for years,
I only knew Mr. Spugg by sight until one afternoon when
I heard him saying that he intended to send his chauffeur
to the war.
It was said quite quietly,--no bombast or boasting about
it. Mr. Spugg was standing among a little group of
listening members of the club and when he said that he
had decided to send his chauffeur, he spoke with a kind
of simple earnestness, a determination that marks the
character of the man.
"Yes," he said, "we need all the man power we can command.
This thing has come to a showdown and we've got to
recognise it. I told Henry that it's a showdown and that
he's to get ready and start right away."
"Well, Spugg," said one of the members "you're certainly
setting us a fine example."
"What else can a man do?" said Mr. Spugg.
"When does your chauffeur leave?" asked another man.
"Right away. I want him in the firing line just as quick
as I can get him there."
"It's a fine thing you're doing, Spugg," said a third
member, "but do you realise that your chauffeur may be
killed?"
"I must take my chance on that," answered Mr. Spugg,
firmly. "I've thought this thing out and made up my mind:
If my chauffeur is killed, I mean to pay for him,--full
and adequate compensation. The loss must fall on me, not
on him. Or, say Henry comes back mutilated,--say he loses
a leg,--say he loses two legs,--"
Here Mr. Spugg looked about him at his listeners, with
a look that meant that even three legs wouldn't be too
much for him.
"Whatever Henry loses I pay for. The loss shall fall on
me, every cent of it."
"Spugg," said a quiet looking, neatly dressed man whom
I knew to be the president of an insurance company and
who reached out and shook the speaker by the hand, "this
is a fine thing you're doing, a big thing. But we mustn't
let you do it alone. Let our company take a hand in it.
We're making a special rate now on chauffeurs, footmen,
and house-servants sent to the war, quite below the rate
that actuarial figures justify. It is our little war
contribution," he added modestly. "We like to feel that
we're doing our bit, too. We had a chauffeur killed last
week. We paid for him right off without demur,--waived
all question of who killed him. I never signed a check
(as I took occasion to say in a little note I wrote to
his people) with greater pleasure."
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