War and the Future | Page 8

series of crowned and cloaked and semi-divine

personages which has included Caesar and Alexander and Napoleon the
First-- and Third. In the light of the new time we see the emperor-god
for the guy he is. In the August of 1914 he set himself up to be the
paramount Lord of the World, and it will seem to the historian to come,
who will know our dates so well and our feelings, our fatigues and
efforts so little, it will seem a short period from that day to this, when
the great figure already sways and staggers towards the bonfire.
5
I had the experience of meeting a contemporary king upon this journey.
He was the first king I had ever met. The Potsdam figure--with perhaps
some local exceptions behind the Gold Coast-- is, with its collection of
uniforms and its pomps and splendours, the purest survival of the old
tradition of divine monarchy now that the Emperor at Pekin has
followed the Shogun into the shadows. The modern type of king shows
a disposition to intimate at the outset that he cannot help it, and to
justify or at any rate utilise his exceptional position by sound hard work.
It is an age of working kings, with the manners of private gentlemen.
The King of Italy for example is far more accessible than was the late
Pierpont Morgan or the late Cecil Rhodes, and he seems to keep a
smaller court.
I went to see him from Udine. He occupied a moderate-sized country
villa about half an hour by automobile from headquarters. I went over
with General Radcliffe; we drove through the gates of the villa past a
single sentinel in an ordinary infantry uniform, up to the door of the
house, and the number of guards, servants, attendants, officials,
secretaries, ministers and the like that I saw in that house were--I
counted very carefully--four. Downstairs were three people, a tall
soldier of the bodyguard in grey; an A.D.C., Captain Moreno, and Col.
Matteoli, the minister of the household. I went upstairs to a
drawing-room of much the same easy and generalised character as the
one in which I had met General Joffre a few days before. I gave my hat
to a second bodyguard, and as I did so a pleasantly smiling man
appeared at the door of the study whom I thought at first must be some
minister in attendance. I did not recognise him instantly because on the

stamps and coins he is always in profile. He began to talk in excellent
English about my journey, and I replied, and so talking we went into
the study from which he had emerged. Then I realised I was talking to
the king.
Addicted as I am to the cinematograph, in which the standard of study
furniture is particularly rich and high, I found something very cooling
and simple and refreshing in the sight of the king's study furniture. He
sat down with me at a little useful writing table, and after asking me
what I had seen in Italy and hearing what I had seen and what I was to
see, he went on talking, very good talk indeed.
I suppose I did a little exceed the established tradition of courts by
asking several questions and trying to get him to talk upon certain
points as to which I was curious, but I perceived that he had had to
carry on at least so much of the regal tradition as to control the
conversation. He was, however, entirely un-posed. His talk reminded
me somehow of Maurice Baring's books; it had just the same quick,
positive understanding. And he had just the same detachment from the
war as the French generals. He spoke of it--as one might speak of an
inundation. And of its difficulties and perplexities.
Here on the Adriatic side there were political entanglements that by
comparison made our western after-the-war problems plain sailing. He
talked of the game of spellicans among the Balkan nationalities. How
was that difficulty to be met? In Macedonia there were Turkish villages
that were Christian and Bulgarians that were Moslem. There were
families that changed the termination of their names from /ski/ to /off/
as Serbian or Bulgarian prevailed. I remarked that that showed a certain
passion for peace, and that much of the mischief might be due to the
propaganda of the great Powers. I have a prejudice against that blessed
Whig "principle of nationality," but the King of Italy was not to be
drawn into any statement about that. He left the question with his
admission of its extreme complexity.
He went on to talk of the strange contrasts of war, of such things as the
indifference of the birds to gunfire and desolation. One day on the
Carso he