"
"Just how is it appealing to you at the moment?" Nigel enquired.
"I'll try and tell you," was the meditative reply. "It's your
extraordinary insouciance. It seems to me, as a budding diplomat, that
you are running the most ghastly risks on earth."
"In what direction?"
The young American shrugged his shoulders.
"Well, you've got a thoroughly democratic Government--not such a bad
Government, I should say, as things go. They've bled your _bourgeoisie_
a bit, and serve 'em right, but with an empire to keep up you're losing
all touch upon international politics. Your ambassadors have been
exchanged for trade consuls, the whole of your secret service staff has
been disbanded, you place your entire faith on this sacred League of
Nations. Say, Dorminster, you're taking risks!"
"You mustn't forget," Dorminster replied, "that it was your country who
started the League of Nations."
"President Wilson did," Chalmers grunted. "You can't say that the
country ever backed him up. That's the worst of us on the other side--we
so seldom really get a common voice."
"The League of Nations was a thundering good idea," Nigel declared, "but
it belongs to Utopia and not to this vulgar planet."
"Just so," Chalmers rejoined, "and yet you are about the only nation who
ever took it into her bosom and suckled it. To be perfectly frank with
you, now, what other nation in the world is there, except yours, which
is obeying the conventions strictly? I tell you frankly, we keep our eye
on Japan, and we build a good many commercial ships which would astonish
you if you examined them thoroughly.
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