uld not. It was all puzzling, baffling, mysterious.

It seemed as if all our efforts to forward the calling of the next
conference in the interest of permanent peace brought up dead against an
invisible barrier, an impassable wall like the secret line drawn in the
air by magic, thinner than a cobweb, more impenetrable than steel. What
was it? Indifference? General scepticism? Preoccupation with other
designs which made the discussion of peace plans premature and futile? I
did not know. But certainly there was something in the way, and the
undiscovered nature of that something was food for thought.

The next jolt that was given to my comfortable hope that the fair
weather in Europe was likely to last for some time was a very slight
incident that happened in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, to which small
sovereign state I was also accredited as American Minister.

The existence and status of Luxembourg in Europe before the war are not
universally understood in America, and it may be useful to say a few
words about it. The grand duchy is a tiny independent country, about
1,000 square miles of lovely hills and dales and table-lands, clothed
with noble woods, watered by clear streams, and inhabited by about
250,000 people of undoubted German-Keltic stock and of equally undoubted
French sympathies. The land lies in the form of a northward-pointing
triangle between Germany, Belgium, and France. The sovereign is the
Grand Duchess Marie Adelheid (of Nassau), a beautiful, sincere,
high-spirited girl who succeeded to the crown on her father's death. The
political leader for twenty-five years was the Minister-President Paul
Eyschen, an astute statesman and a devoted patriot, who nursed his
little country in his arms like a baby and brought it to a high degree
of prosperity and contentment.

Like Belgium, Luxembourg was a neutralized country--the former by the
Treaty of 1831; the latter by the Treaty of 1867; both treaties were
signed and guaranteed by the Great Powers. But there was a distinct
difference between the two neutralities. That of Belgium was an armed
neutrality; her forts and her military forces were left to her. That of
Luxembourg was a disarmed neutrality; her only fortress was dismantled
and razed to the ground, and her army was reduced and limited to one
company of gendarmes and one company of infantry. Thus Belgium had the
right, the duty, and the power to resist if her territory were violated
by the armed forces