e French train is to
compete and intrigue to get a twelfth ticket for your lunch. You will
find that this useless ticket will follow you all the way to Geneva
and will always assert itself when you are accosted by a ticket
inspector. I even know a traveller who arrived eventually at the
Swiss frontier with no other paper of identity or justification; for
a passport which should have given his name, address, motive for
travelling, shape of mouth, size of nose and any other peculiarities,
he could only tender documentary evidence of his having eaten the
nineteenth lunch of the first series of the day before.

Two things catch the eye about Geneva. In the first place it is on a
lake, and in the second place it is always brimful of International
Unions, Leagues, Congresses and Conferences. The lake is navigated
in the season by a fleet of sizeable steamers, and one of these, a
two-hundred tonner, used to call every morning of the season at the
little pier outside my house to take me to business, and brought me
back again every evening. By the pier rests an old, old man whose
only duty in life it is to catch the hawser as it is thrown from the
incoming liner. Twice a day for four months that hawser was thrown for
the old man to catch, and twice a day for four months he missed it. I
spoke to him about this on the last day, and he showed a fine courage
which nothing can depress. Next season he means to try again. As he
will be out of a job in the interval I am plotting to secure for him
the post of naval expert to the League.

Turning from the lake to the international delegates, who abound
in Geneva, it is to be noted that the last lot here were the
International Congress of Leagues of Women. Their main agendum was to
pronounce their complete independence of men. One of these delegates
went for a row on the lake and fell in. She was pulled out again by a
man.

You will find that Geneva was nominated as the seat of the League in
the Peace Treaty of Versailles. Ever since, the people of Geneva have
been busy conjecturing what the League of Nations will do upon its
arrival in Geneva. It will do exactly what you and I would do in
similar circumstances. Stepping out of the station exit it will hurry
off to its hotel. But when Leagues go to hotels they buy the darned
things outright. I don't know what they do about notices on the walls;
alter some and remove others, no doubt. The international delegates
will be requested to rin