er at
any time did he betray a doubt that all this chaotic conflict would end.
No nurse during a nursery uproar was ever so certain of the inevitable
ultimate peace. From being treated as an amiable dreamer he came by
insensible degrees to be regarded as an extravagant possibility. Then he
began to seem even practicable. The people who listened to him in 1958
with a smiling impatience, were eager before 1959 was four months old
to know just exactly what he thought might be done. He answered with the
patience of a philosopher and the lucidity of a Frenchman. He began to
receive responses of a more and more hopeful type. He came across
the Atlantic to Italy, and there he gathered in the promises for this
congress. He chose those high meadows above Brissago for the reasons we
have stated. 'We must get away,' he said, 'from old associations.' He
set to work requisitioning material for his conference with an assurance
that was justified by the replies. With a slight incredulity the
conference which was to begin a new order in the world, gathered itself
together. Leblanc summoned it without arrogance, he controlled it by
virtue of an infinite humility. Men appeared upon those upland slopes
with the apparatus for wireless telegraphy; others followed with tents
and provisions; a little cable was flung down to a convenient point
upon the Locarno road below. Leblanc arrived, sedulously directing every
detail that would affect the tone of the assembly. He might have been a
courier in advance rather than the originator of the gathering. And
then there arrived, some by the cable, most by aeroplane, a few in other
fashions, the men who had been called together to confer upon the state
of the world. It was to be a conference without a name. Nine monarchs,
the presidents of four republics, a number of ministers and ambassadors,
powerful journalists, and such-like prominent and influential men, took
part in it. There were even scientific men; and that world-famous old
man, Holsten, came with the others to contribute his amateur statecraft
to the desperate problem of the age. Only Leblanc would have dared so to
summon figure heads and powers and intelligence, or have had the courage
to hope for their agreement....

Section 2

And one at least of those who were called to this conference of
governments came to it on foot. This was King Egbert, the young king
of the most venerable kingdom in Europe. He was a rebel, and had always
been of