WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 67, 13 December 1926, Page 8

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By

T.D.H.)

The following letter, in a familiar handwriting, reached us last evening:— ' , •My Dear T.D.H., —You are authorised to announce that I have now returned from the mission on which I was urgently called abroad some months ago. As to the nature of that mission, my lips, as you will understand, are absolutely sealed. So many delicate issues of the utmost importance are involved that premature disclosure would be in the highest degree prejudicial to the stability of the European situation. The full narrative is contained in my memoirs, which, at the special request of Mr. B-ldw-in and L-d B-lf-r, were deposited for security in a triple-sealed chest in the vaults of the Bank of England, under the personal custody of the Governor of the Bank.

From the carbon copy which I retained, however, and which lies before me as I write, 1 think I may, without impropriety, permit you to use a few excerpts. I feel sure that your readers, as persons of honour and integrity, can be relied upon to understand that my observations are strictly confidential, and that dissemination of the information herein contained —as, for example, by using this sheet of The Dominion for wrapping butter and eggs and passing on to persons of unknown, character —may well involve them in instant arrest for high treason under the laws of some seven European countries.

I am willing to confess, my dear T.D.H., that I was not a little disturbed that chilly evening in August last when I found awaiting me at my apartment at the Basin Reserve a cypher telegram from Paris from tny old friend Ar-st-d Br-nd. Mon Cher Aristide has invariably consulted me in all the crises of his career ever since those? happy days of ’55 when I counted him the most promising of the pupils under my instruction at the Ticole Militaire. ’ Glancing at the telegraph form, I trembled for Europe. The crisis must, indeed, be severe. An unprecedented thing had occurred. Mon aime had sent a deferred and not a week-end cablegram. With trembling fingers I unlocked my safe and drew from it Cypher Z « *

.In less than two hours I had decoded the message. “Dawes Plan collapsing. European financial crisis inevitable. Probable upheaval in Far East. What do you advice?” It was as I had foreseen. I had from the first felt that this “Hell-and-Maria” Dawes person was out of his depth; but I had dismissed the presentiment from my mind. It was, I had argued with myself, mere prejudice due to my abhorrence of the use of profanity, particularly by a d d Yankee. But how unerringly does instinct guide us would we but heed its voice 1

Looking at the newspaper, I found 1 had a bare twenty minutes to catch the mail train connecting with pie outward Vancouver steamer. I seized my valise, and, well realising that my absence might be prolonged, crammed into it both my best shirt and the other one, all three collars, and my spare back stud. ... It would be tedious to recapitulate in detail the momentous events in which I thereafter became a principal actor. ... We made excellent connections on the journey. . . - The president of the • Canadian-Pacific Railway Company, who chanced to be in Vancouver,, most courteously placed his special train at my disposal, abandoning a hunting trip in the Rockies . This enabled me to connect with the Berengaria, saving four vital days and averting the complete collapse of the franc. ... On Sending in my card to the managing director of the shipping concern at New York, he insisted on holding back the great vessel until 2 a.m. to permit me to refresh myself at a performance of the “Midnight Follies.” . . . How different, I reflected, from my usual reception on the Nikau, in which vessel the steward seems invariably unable to offer me more than a mattress under the dining-table.

But I digress. ftn disembarking at Le Havre from the battleship Lorraine, placed at my disposal for the last stage of the journey, I landed in the guise of a professor of mineralogy, disguised in a false beard. It was essential that my presence in .Europe should be unknown. So true to character was my disguise, that when I presented myself at the' Quai d’Orsay and requested an immediate interview with M. le Ministre, the hall-porter threatened to give me in charge as drunk and disorderly. A noisy altercation ensued, and—as. I iiad intended—in the midst of the disturbance the door of the inner sanctum was thrown open and Aristide emerged, his face livid with fury- at this unseemly interruption. *

Dashing a carafe of water in the face of the hall porter to prevent him observing my action, I at once gave the countersign. Aristide stood, as a man dumbfounded. Seizing him by the arm I pushed him back into his room, locked the door behind me, threw mv false nose into the cuspidor, wiped the perspiration from my brow with my artificial beard, and sank into a chair. My task had begun.

It was an affecting moment. My old pupil confessed that he had hardly dared to hope that I would make this great sacrifice at my time of life in response to his call. He had calculated that the only wav I could arrive in time would be by crossing the. United States, and he had felt that it was unthinkable that I would subject myself to the intolerable restrictions, upon the liberty of the individual, now imposed by law in that country. He admits ted, indeed, that he had even feared that this interference with my . diet during the crossing of the continent might prove fatal to me. Happily, I was able to reassure him that the. position in the American continent is not as serious as has been depicted. The quality of the sustenance available, however, leaves much to be desired: the doctors had feared after dinner on the third day of my stay in the United ’ States that I was doomed to suffer from total blindness for life. Subsequently it was found that the vision of only one eye had been permanently obscured. “But what,” I murmured, “would I not suffer for La Belle France.” "How extraordinarily absent-minded of me!’ said Aristide? “You shall suffer no longer. Say when.” My emotion almost overcame me. It was some moments before I could trust myself to speak. , . , 'As for the result of my labours, my life-long repugnance to self-adver-tisement makes it distasteful tp me to dwell on this. It is not what we mortals achieve that really counts,. but what we attempt. All else is tinsel and trash. In my case your newspaper cable message’ of December 5 has already given vou the result of niy work.’ But, indeed, this was the least of the labours to which it was insisted bv the Chancelleries of Europe that I should devote myself.—l am, etc., MARMADUKE FITZURSE, Major (retired). [The message to which Major Fitsurse refers is evidently that of Tuesday last, stating that, under the second year of the Dawes Plan, Germany had paid 1,167,900,000 marks.]