r," one would urge; "he's a
little rubbed up the wrong way at not getting what he wants, and will
not put the thing pleasantly to his own people when he fetches up at
their end. You can smooth him down as nobody else could, and then
he'll go away off out of this like a lamb and be quite good." "Oh
well, bring him along. But, look here. You must have him away again
sharp out of my room, or he'll keep on giving tongue here all the rest
of the day." What actually happened as a rule on such occasions was
that Lord K. would not let the missionary get a word in edgeways,
smothered him with cordiality, chattered away in French as if he were
wound up, and the difficulty was, not to carry the man off but to find
an opportunity for jumping up and thereby conveying a hint to our
friend that it was time to clear out. "Comme il est charmant, M. le
Marechal," the gratified foreign officer would say after one had
grabbed him somehow and conducted him out of the presence; "je
n'oublierai de ma vie que je lui ai serre la main." And he would go
off back to where he had come from, as pleased as Punch, having
completely failed in his embassy.

But Lord K. could if the occasion called for it, adopt quite a
different tone when dealing with an Allied representative, and I have
a vivid remembrance of one such interview to which there seems to be
no harm in referring now. Some aspects of the tangled political web of
1915, in the Near East, will be dealt with at greater length in
Chapter VII. Suffice it to say here that, at the juncture under
reference, Serbia, with formidable German and Austro-Hungarian hosts
pouring into her territory from the north and aware that her
traditional foe, Bulgaria, was mobilizing, desired to attack Tsar
Ferdinand's realm before it was ready. That, from the purely military
point of view, was unquestionably the sound procedure to adopt.
"Thrice is he armed who has his quarrel just, but four times he who
gets his blow in fust." We know now that it would have been the sound
procedure to adopt, even allowing for arguments against such a course
that could be put forward from the political point of view. But our
Government's attitude was that, in view of engagements entered into by
Greece, the Serbs must not act aggressively against the still neutral
Bulgars. Nor do I think that, seeing how contradictory and
inconclusive the information was upon which they were relying, they
were to blame for maintaining an attitude whi