Evening star., 1946-05-26

44btt, % ~
With this new volume Of Versailles
memoirs, Stephen Bonsal follows up
his unfinished Business" which
won the Pulitzer Prize for history
in 1914 1t is delightful thing to
read. It is the story of the little
nations which came to the Peace
Conference of 1918 Wistfully Or de-
family, as their case might be. and
1t deals with their problems with a
delicate humor and pervasive sense
Of civilization markedly in contrast
with the subject matter-Europe
everlasting blood feuds Col. Bon
sal himself scarcely needs an intro
duction. He is veteran newspaper
man with international experience
of over a quarter of a century, he
was President Wilson's confidential
Interpreter at the Peace Conference
and he is an excellent writer. 1t is
hard to imagine him telling any
story and not rendering it fascinat-
ing.
The little nations Of which he
writes provided some of the most
picturesque material Of the Inflated
conference. There were. for in
stance. the rulers, respectively, of
Montenegro and Albania, whose
pride it was that they had been
fighting one another for 400 years
without getting anything settled.
King Nicholas lost his country at
Versailles, but won the sympathy of
Col. Bonsal and Col House, the
latter of whom remarked that, we
must leave nothing undone to help
these gallant people and their noble
King, If the powers fail us, / shall
ask Texas to take Montenegro under
her wing"
There also was a Polish question
at Versailles and Col House shame
lesslV shunted it to Col. Bonsals
shoulders. Thirty delegates arrived
at the conference from Poland-it
was necessary to reduce this number
to tTo Col Bonsal conducted the
30 to a room made the hard an
nOunCement and went away to let
them fight out their choice.
Il came back in an hour" he
writes, The hubbub in the confer
enCe room was terrible l did not
even knock. An hour later I
came back. The uproar was still
deafening When l came back at
the end of the third hour, a holy
calm seemed to have settled over
the place. At first I thought they
were all dead. Timidly, opened the
door. We have reached complete
agreement they said in chorus.
ST. Mlclacl and all the angels have
guided Us. They had chosen
Paderewski and DmoWski as dele
gates and trouble was monaentarily
averted.
The Arats and their splendid
King Feisal, their champions. T. E.
Lawrence ana Gertrude Bell, march
colorfully through the colonel's
pages, as do host of now nearly
forgotten fgures-D'Annunzio and
his Arditi, Queen Marie, Kerensky,
Masaryk, Father Hlinka, Petliura
Venizelos, Ismail Pasha and yet
others. Clemenceau, the colonels
great friend, is shown in a num-
ber Of informal off-the-record i'll
terVieWs, as that in which he re-
marked to Col. House, How absurd
ly patient the poor hoodwinked
people are! Rarely, very rarely, do
they hang diplomat. Less favor
able pictures of Lloyd George ap-
pear in the text and the famous
double-dealing by which Balfour
promised Palestine both to the
Arabs and the Jews, is reported
once again. There are number
of important accounts of President
Wilson's conversations and views,
too.
1t is unquestionably a valuable
book and it is thoroughly enter
tanning one. The ironical light
which it throws Oh the seriousness
with which we took Europes prob
.ems 25 years ago should Go some