MELBA'S MEMOIRS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19216, 4 January 1926, Page 4

MELBA'S MEMOIRS.

THE DARK DAYS OF WAERED CROSS WORK. (Copyright.) CHAPTER XXYn. From Londjm I went to Paris, prepared to enjoy myself boforo my trip home to Australia. How wonderful those last weeks in Paris were! Looking back on it to-day, it seems almost as though we were all liko the revellers at some great ball, dancing faster and faste:r, more and more madly in the last hours l>efore the coming of dawn. Of course, the simile cannot bear examination, since wo had no hint of tho coming catastrophe. We imagined that life would go on like this for ever. , And yet, there now came my way one of tho most remarkable prophecies that I have ever heard, from the mouth of one who was not usually much given to prophesying—Lord Bertie —our Ambassador. It happened like this. I had given a birthday party for Gladys de Grey (whom I must now call Gladys Ripon), at im flat, of which Lord Bertie had apparently heard. At least, when ho came to tea with mo two days later, wo had not been talking for more than ten minutes beforo his voice suddenly changed and a shadow came over his face as he said to me; "I see all you middle-aged women were dancing here the other day." Myself: "We can't help being middleaged." Lord Bertie: "Are you well up in your Roman history?" Myself: "I shouldn't like to pass an exam, in it." Lord Bertie: "Do you know that beforo the fall of the Roman Empire the women of Rome were behaving just like the women of to-day ? Do you know that they were indulging in every extravagance, wearing green wigs, red wigs, painting their faces, caring for nothing but pleasure ? And do you know what came of it ? There was a pause. Then very slowly and emphatically he said: "Dancing feet bring war!" I shivered a little, for there seemed something more in his words than the mere statement of fact. But such is tho constitution of human nature, that they soon passed out of mind. It was not till war had actually been declared, and was raging in all its violence, that I recalled Lord Bertie's words, and when I wrote to him I sadly reminded him of them, and asked if, when he said them, he actually knew facts that were denied to me. "No," he wrote back. "I knew nothing. The was absolutely without a cloud. But though I knew no facts, I felt. ..." And he did not finish the sentence. The month of August in Australia is wattle month. Perhaps that may not mean very much to an Englishman or an American, but to an Australian it brings with it a rush of fragrance, a vision of tossing golden branches, a breath of home itself. And in August, 1914, as I remember, the wattle was particularly beautiful. All the wattles round Coombe seemed filled with beacons of light, ranging from the palest shades of yellow to tho deepest hues of gold and outside my dining room on the lawn a great wattle tree, which had been there since the house was built, was the finest o:f them all. I have often wondered, looking back on the tragic sequence of events that followed August 4, 1914, whether the various nations of the world were affected psychologically by the season in which the catastrophe occurred. In England, of course, it was hot and thundery, and, indeed, in all the countrie.s which were to participate in the struggle. But over Australia hung the first hint of spring. And to me there will always be a memory of spring associated with that dark epoch, a memory which seems somehow to soften in some slight degree the horror of it all. We, none of us, in those early days, took the war seriously. In fact,' it was not till after the struggle was over that we really understood the horror (and the heroism) of it all. Not until 1922, for instance, did I hear at first hand, a story which gave me a true insight into the amazing courage of the Belgian people. It was Max, the famous Burgomaster of Brussels, who told it to me. At first ho was reluctant to talk about himself, for I believe he had been cross-examined by curious busybodies and insatiable reporters until he must have felt almost murderous. But when he saw that I did not wish to draw him out against his will, he began to talk, and; as he did so, it seemed as though a vivid light was being thrown back on those amazing days in 1914. "When the Germans came to the Hotel de Ville," he said, "one of their first demands was for a dozen beds to be installed without a moment's delay. They expected me to rush off at once to order them, but I quietly went on with my duties, and then departed to order, not twelve beds, but thirteen. As soon as this was discovered, I was summoned before the commanding officer, " 'You have ordered thirteen beds V he demanded. " ' Certainly,' I replied. " ' I ordered only twelve. For whom is the thirteenth bed?' That's for me,' I said. And I slept in it, too," chuckled Max, "though how I managed it, 1 never quite realise for, after all, we were powerless before them. "The next day," continued Max, "there was a conference in one of the committee rooms of the Hotel de Ville, to deal with certain urgent matters of neutrality. I shall never forget the little room, filled with officers. German officers in their swaggering uniforms, and, among others, the American Ambassador, and just as the conference began, the German commanding officer drew a revolver from his pocket, and threw it down in front of him. Tho incident would probably have passed unnoticed,, had not tho American Ambassador, who was sitting opposite, at once dived his hand into his own pocket, and brought out another revolver slightly larger than that of the German's. "There was a moment's silence, and then the German officer growled: " 'What are you doing?' "'Well, and what are you doing?' drawled the American. " ° " 'You are not at war,' said the German. The American looked him straight in the eyes. 'No,' he said. 'We're not at war with you. But when a man puts a gun on the table, I do the same.' The German glared. The American smiled. The gun remained." However, in 1914, we thought it would all be over" in a few weeks, and I remember my feelings of incredulous astonishment when Lord Kitchener announced that the struggle would last at least three years—a feeling almost as though he had said something alarmist—something needlessly and foolishly pessimistic. How it gradually dawned on us, I don't think, even to this day, we quite realise. We women saw our mun off with smiling faces, and did our crying in bedrooms. But even so, we refused to admit things. We refused to face the black, end!css° horror of it all for fear of going mad. The only sign that we knew more than we would admit was in the universal desire, even of the most useless jS us, to do something- j something practical, anything that would i stop us thinking. I was seized with that desire myself. My concerts—and they were legion—in aid of the Red Cross, and other war charities, did not seem to fill the gap which I so longed to fill. If anything, they reminded me by the very closeness of their associa-

tion with our cause of exactly tho things that were, day and night, preying upon my mind. And so, I tried to knit. Pathetic memory! Tho wool I wasted, the number of stitches I dropped, the scarves that unravelled themselves at the slightest touch, tho socks that would never have fitted any human being! If everybody had been as inefficient as I was, our poor armies would have been going about with, bare l'eet. Knitting became almost an obsession with me. Not my own knitting, I mean, but other people's. One's whole life seemed to be dominated by the monotonous rhythm of those eternal needles. It seemed to click with my music, to turn every tempo into a ragtime. On one of my first concerts after the declaration of tho war. I noticed, as soon as I had stepped on to the platform, that almost every woman in tho audience seemed to be knitting. I stood there, feeling suddenly isolated, incapable of singing, shut off from tho usual circle of sympathy which every artist tries to creato. Tho first bars were plaved of my accompaniment. They meant nothing to me. Still that terrible clicking, that distracting flash of needles continued. And suddenly I stepped forward, spread out my hands, <>nd cried: "Stop! Please stop! You are driving mo mad." Like magic the needles dropped. Every eye riveted itself upon me. I laughed nervously. "I know the soldiers will forgive me," I said, "if I ask you just for a fow moments to stop. It is almost driving mo mad." They stopped, of course. But, I often wonder, to this day, if they realise how near they were to witnessing a real "Mad Scene,not from Lucia, but from life. My nephew, who was a brother of Gerald Paterson (of tenuis fame), was 15 when the war broke out. He immediately went down to the nearest recruiting station, and told them with a gruff voice, and as elderly a bearing as he could assume, that he was 21. I am afraid that his conspicuously youthful schoolboy complexion aroused tho suspicions of the recruiting sergeants, for when they began to question him a little and discovered that he was my nephew, they rang me up to ask me how old he really was. "Ho is only fifteen," I cried, "Don't tell mo that you .are going to put him into the army!" There was a laugh from the other end of the telephone. "We thought as much, Madame," they said. "But we would like to tell you tlisit ho is a sportsman." He was. For as soon as he discovered that it was useless for him to try to enlist, he begged from his father a small plot of the kitchen garden, and throughout tho war you might have seen that small boy, in rain' and sunshine, digging away breathlessly to plant tho vegetables which he sent to the soldiers, as though on his efforts depended tho entire food supply of the Allies. Something of the stress and drama ot those days was revealed to me at a dinner in Washington by Lord Heading. Lord Heading is one of the few men whom I have ever met whom one feels instinctively would have been great in whatever career he had adopted. • Other men, ono knows, are born statesmen, inevitable millionaires, or natural-scientific geniuses. But Reading struck mo as having a breadth of mind and outlook which could have taken him to tho top whatever he had attempted. /j. On this particular evening he told mo the story of the greatest crisis through which he had ever passed. "You remember the days of 191b, when tho Germans were pouring into France in numbers which seemed overwhelming . "Well, for me, those days were particularly arduous. I was, of course, American Ambassador alt the time, and jt happened that I was engaged to deliver an evening lecture at tho Lotos Club on tho day when, to the best of my recollections, things looked blacker in I 1 ranee than ever before* Just before T left Washington tho first portions of a very long cable from Mr. Lloyd George were delivered to me, telling me of the imminence of tne danger and urging me to impress upon America the necessity of putting forward every ounce of hard strength to meet it. lhe cable was so serious that I was forced, as I went up in the train to New lork, to alter tho whole tenor of my speech, especially in view of the fact that I naa not received the whole of the cable and more portions of it were handed to mo as soon as I arrived.. "That dinner was a nightmare for me. No sooner had I risen to my feet than another portion of cable was handed in and glancing at it I saw that things were even worse than I had imagined. I do not know how I ever finished my lecture, but I do know that the effort of concentration was almost too much for me. A few days later I went to see President Wilson m Washington, and I was able to put before him tho full facts of the situation. I cannot tell you all that passed between us; but we talked all night, and before we had reached tho end the light of dawn was creeping through the windows and tho birds were singing in the gardens of the White House." How endless; and appalling was the strain—£o monotonous that it is diiiicult to pick out isolated incidents from this uniformity of disaster. I remember, however, that Sir Ronald Munro-FergusoK, whom you will probably recall more easily by his present title of Lord Novar, was Governor-General in those days, and now and then he would come tip and stay with me at Coombo, to rest from the arduous labours which tho war entailed. It it had not been for these rare rests, 1 do not believe he would have escaped some sort of a breakdown, for ho was the hardest worker I ever kn sw. But 1 think he regarded Coojnbo as a little oasis. One morning, when ho and Lady Helen had been staying with me, an urgent message arrived from Melbourne, saying that there was an important meeting that he must attend at Government House at 11 o'clock. I sent immediately to inform him of the fact, and when he couldl not be found I began to hunt for him myself. Over the whole houso I went railing, out into the garden, into the paddocks, and eventually, as a forlorn hope, I thought I would try tho outhouses. And there I found the Governor-General in his shirt sleeves, chopping wood with the odd man. The odd man did not look very embarrassed, nor did tho Governor-General. " Don't tell me you are going to take me away," he said. ' I have been having such a good timo with my new friend here." (To-Morrow: Happy Stories.)