"So have I," I told him; "we will call it the Macedonian coffee. It is you
who insisted in obtruding these international relations on my simple lunch,
and I mean to do the thing thoroughly. Better a dish of Croat Serbs where
love is than a bifteck Petrograd--Never mind, go and get the thing."

When he returned with it I fell to, but my thoughts remained with the
waiter. What a man! With his dispassionate judgment, his calm sane outlook
on men and affairs, shaken a little perhaps in 1914, but since then
undisturbed, was he not cut out above all others to settle the vexed
frontier lines of Europe? I wondered whether Lord ROBERT CECIL might not
possibly make use of him. I was tempted to try him still further.

"Have you ever heard of Mr. J.M. KEYNES?" I asked him when he brought me
the Bessarabian coffee.

"Mr. KEYNES I not know. He not come here, I zink."

"Or the Treaty of London?"

"I vill ask ze manager."

"Or President WILSON?"

A brilliant smile of illumination lit up his features.

"American, is he not?" he said. "Ver reech, ze Americans."

This saddened me a little. He was not then absolutely complete. There was a
faint tarnish on the lustre of his innocence. He was scarcely perhaps
suited for the League of Nations after all. Lighting an Albanian cigarette
I asked him for my bill.

* * * * *

THINKING ALOUD.

LORD HALDANE _loquitur_.

"Tired of laborious days and nights
Spent on the intellectual heights,
I long to raise and educate
The masters of the future State.
Besides, the people in the plains
Are lamentably short of brains,
And I have even more than KEYNES.
Already in _The Herald's_ page
Am I acclaimed as seer and sage;
Mine be it then to teach my neighbour
To quit the lowly rut of Labour,
And scale the heights of Pisgah, Nebo,
Or some equivalent gazebo,
For even Labour must afford
To keep one competent Law Lord."

* * * * *

"WAR CRIMINALS DEMAND TO BE SUSPENDED."--_Evening Paper._

Too good to be true.

* * * * *

[Illustration: MANNERS AND MODES.

A YOUNG GIRL HAS THE TEMERITY TO BRING A CHAPERON TO A DANCE.]

* * * * *

[Illustration: BEHIND THE SCENES IN CINEMA-LAND.

"THIS IS WHERE HE SWIMS THE RAPIDS. HOW SHALL WE SEND HIM--UP OR DOWN?"]

* * * * *

COX AND BOX.

MY DEAR CHARL