autonomy which Rumanian, Polish, and Russian statesmen, as well as many
of their Jewish fellow-subjects, regarded as tantamount to the creation
of a state within the state. Whether this estimate is true or erroneous,
the concessions asked for were given, but the supplementary treaties
insuring the protection of minorities are believed to have little chance
of being executed, and may, it is feared, provoke manifestations of
elemental passions in the countries in which they are to be applied.

Twice every day, before and after lunch, one met the "autocrats," the
world's statesmen whose names were in every mouth--the wise men who
would have been much wiser than they were if only they had credited
their friends and opponents with a reasonable measure of political
wisdom. These individuals, in bowler hats, sweeping past in sumptuous
motors, as rarely seen on foot as Roman cardinals, were the destroyers
of thrones, the carvers of continents, the arbiters of empires, the
fashioners of the new heaven and the new earth--or were they only the
flies on the wheel of circumstance, to whom the world was unaccountably
becoming a riddle?

This commingling of civilizations and types brought together in Paris by
a set of unprecedented conditions was full of interest and instruction
to the observer privileged to meet them at close quarters. The average
observer, however, had little chance of conversing with them, for, as
these foreigners had no common meeting-place, they kept mostly among
their own folk. Only now and again did three or four members of
different races, when they chanced to speak some common language, get
an opportunity of enjoying their leisure together. A friend of mine, a
highly gifted Frenchman of the fine old type, a descendant of
Talleyrand, who was born a hundred and fifty years too late, opened his
hospitable house once a week to the élite of the world, and partially