Frenzied Fiction, Stephen Leacock [books to read in a lifetime txt] 📗

“Why of course it can,” I agreed, with as much relief in my tone as I could put into it. After all, what simpler way of moving the Ballplatz than that?

The Eminent Authority took another sip at his tea, and looked round at us through his spectacles.

It was I who was taking on myself to do most of the answering, because it was I who had brought him there and invited the other men to meet him. “He’s coming round at five,” I had said, “do come and have a cup of tea and meet him. He knows more about the European situation and the probable solution than any other man living.” Naturally they came gladly. They wanted to know—as everybody wants to know—how the war will end. They were just ordinary plain men like myself.

I could see that they were a little mystified, perhaps disappointed. They would have liked, just as I would, to ask a few plain questions, such as, can the Italians knock the stuff out of the Austrians? Are the Rumanians getting licked or not? How many submarines has Germany got, anyway? Such questions, in fact, as we are accustomed to put up to one another every day at lunch and to answer out of the morning paper. As it was, we didn’t seem to be getting anywhere.

No one spoke. The silence began to be even a little uncomfortable. It was broken by my friend Rapley, who is in wholesale hardware and who has all the intellectual bravery that goes with it. He asked the Authority straight out the question that we all wanted to put.

“Just what do you mean by the Ballplatz? What is the Ballplatz?”

The Authority smiled an engaging smile.

“Precisely,” he said, “I see your drift exactly. You say what is the Ballplatz? I reply quite frankly that it is almost impossible to answer. Probably one could best define it as the driving power behind the Ausgleich.”

“I see,” said Rapley.

“Though the plain fact is that ever since the Herzegovinian embroglio the Ballplatz is little more than a counterpoise to the Wilhelmstrasse.”

“Ah!” said Rapley.

“Indeed, as everybody knows, the whole relationship of the Ballplatz with the Nevski Prospekt has emanated from the Wilhelmstrasse.”

This was a thing which personally I had not known. But I said nothing. Neither did the other men. They continued smoking, looking as innocent as they could.

“Don’t misunderstand me,” said the Authority, “when I speak of the Nevski Prospekt. I am not referring in any way to the Tsarskoe Selo.”

“No, no,” we all agreed.

“No doubt there were, as we see it plainly now, under currents in all directions from the Tsarskoe Selo.”

We all seemed to suggest by our attitude that these undercurrents were sucking at our very feet.

“But the Tsarskoe Selo,” said the Authority, “is now definitely eliminated.”

We were glad of that; we shifted our feet back into attitudes of ease.

I felt that it was time to ask a leading question.

“Do you think,” I said, “that Germany will be broken up by the war?”

“You mean Germany in what sense? Are you thinking of Preuszenthum? Are you referring to Junkerismus?”

“No,” I said, quite truthfully, “neither of them.”

“Ah,” said the Authority, “I see; you mean Germany as a Souverantat embodied in a Reichsland.”

“That’s it,” I said.

“Then it’s rather hard,” said the Eminent Authority, “to answer your question in plain terms. But I’ll try. One thing, of course, is absolutely certain, Mittel-Europa goes overboard.”

“It does, eh?”

“Oh, yes, absolutely. This is the end of Mittel-Europa. I mean to say—here we’ve had Mittel-Europa, that is, the Mittel-Europa idea, as a sort of fantasmus in front of Teutonism ever since Koniggratz.”

The Authority looked all round us in that searching way he had. We all tried to look like men seeing a fantasmus and disgusted at it.

“So you see,” he went on, “Mittel-Europa is done with.”

“I suppose it is,” I said. I didn’t know just whether to speak with regret or not. I heard Rapley murmur, “I guess so.”

“And there is not a doubt,” continued the Authority, “that when Mittel-Europa goes, Grossdeutschthum goes with it.”

“Oh, sure to,” we all murmured.

“Well, then, there you are—what is the result for Germany—why the thing’s as plain as a pikestaff—in fact you’re driven to it by the sheer logic of the situation—there is only one outcome—”

The Authority was speaking very deliberately. He even paused at this point and lighted a cigarette, while we all listened breathlessly. We felt that we had got the thing to a focus at last.

“Only one outcome—a Staatenbund.”

“Great heavens,” I said, “not a Staatenbund!”

“Undoubtedly,” said the Authority, puffing quietly at his cigarette, as if personally he wouldn’t lift a finger to stop the Staatenbund if he could, “that’s the end of it, a Staatenbund. In other words, we are back where we were before the Vienna Congress!”

At this he chuckled heartily to himself: so the rest of us laughed too: the thing was too absurd. But the Authority, who was a man of nice distinctions and genuinely anxious to instruct us, was evidently afraid that he had overstated things a little.

“Mind you,” he said, “there’ll be something left—certainly the Zollverein and either the Ausgleich or something very like it.”

All of the men gave a sort of sigh of relief. It was certainly something to have at least a sort of resemblance or appearance of the Ausgleich among us. We felt that we were getting on. One could see that a number of the men were on the brink of asking questions.

“What about Rumania,” asked Nelles—he is a banker and interested in government bonds—“is this the end of it?”

“No,” said the Authority, “it’s not the end of Rumania, but it is the end of Rumanian Irridentismus.”

That settled Nelles.

“What about the Turks?” asked Rapley.

“The Turks, or rather, I suppose it would be more proper to say, the Osmanli, as that is no doubt what you mean?” Rapley nodded. “Well, speaking personally, I should say that there’s no difficulty in a permanent settlement in that quarter. If I were drawing up the terms of a treaty of peace meant to be really lasting I should lay down three absolute bases; the rest needn’t matter”—the Authority paused a moment and then proceeded to count off the three conditions of peace on his fingers—“These would