ing, only to return for more whispers.
Mr. Balfour, whose personality made all the other delegates look
common, would quietly sleep. The Marquis Siongi was the only other man
who could hold his own at all with Mr. Balfour in dignity of
appearance.

As a whole there was just a little mass of black frock-coated
figures--"frocks" as we called them--sitting and moving about under
the vast decoration of "Le Salon de l'Horloge." Some of the little
people seemed excited, but for the most part they looked profoundly (p. 101)
bored, yet they were changing the face of the map, slices were being
cut off one country and dumped on to another. It was all very
wonderful, but I admit that all these little "frocks" seemed to me
very small personalities, in comparison with the fighting men I had
come in contact with during the war.

[Illustration: XLIII. _Field-Marshal Sir Henry H. Wilson, Bart.,
K.C.B., etc._]

They appeared to think so much--too much--of their own personal
importance, searching all the time for popularity, each little one for
himself--strange little things. President Wilson made a great hit in
the Press with his smile. He was pleased at that, and after this he
never failed to let you see all his back teeth. Lloyd George grew hair
down his back, I presume from Mr. Asquith's lead. Paderewski--well, he
was always a made-up job. In short, from my window-seat it was easy to
see how self-important the majority of all these little black "frocks"
thought themselves. It was all like an _opera bouffe_, after the
people I had seen, known and painted during the war; and these, as the
days went by, seemed to be gradually becoming more and more forgotten.
It seemed impossible, but it was true. The fighting man, alive, and
those who fought and died--all the people who made the Peace
Conference possible, were being forgotten, the "frocks" reigned
supreme. One was almost forced to think that the "frocks" won the war.
"I did this," "I did that," they all screamed, but the silent soldier
man never said a word, yet he must have thought a lot.

I remember when the Peace Terms were handed to the Germans at the
Trianon Palace, I tried my hardest to get a card to enable me to see
it, but failed. This may not seem strange, but it really was,
considering that about half the people who were present were there out
of curiosity alone. They were just friends of the "frocks." This (p. 102)
ceremony took place at 2.30 p.m. on that particu