the world were to be melted and recast.
Every day, in my walks, in my apartment, or at restaurants, I met
emissaries from lands and peoples whose very names had seldom been heard
of before in the West. A delegation from the Pont-Euxine Greeks called
on me, and discoursed of their ancient cities of Trebizond, Samsoun,
Tripoli, Kerassund, in which I resided many years ago, and informed me
that they, too, desired to become welded into an independent Greek
republic, and had come to have their claims allowed. The Albanians were
represented by my old friend Turkhan Pasha, on the one hand, and by my
friend Essad Pasha, on the other--the former desirous of Italy's
protection, the latter demanding complete independence. Chinamen,
Japanese, Koreans, Hindus, Kirghizes, Lesghiens, Circassians,
Mingrelians, Buryats, Malays, and Negroes and Negroids from Africa and
America were among the tribes and tongues forgathered in Paris to watch
the rebuilding of the political world system and to see where they "came
in."

One day I received a visit from an Armenian deputation; its chief was
described on his visiting-card as President of the Armenian Republic of
the Caucasus. When he was shown into my apartment in the Hotel Vendome,
I recognized two of its members as old acquaintances with whom I had
occasional intercourse in Erzerum, Kipri Keui, and other places during
the Armenian massacres of the year 1895. We had not met since then. They
revived old memories, completed for me the life-stories of several of
our common friends and acquaintances, and narrated interesting episodes
of local history. And having requested my co-operation, the President
and his colleagues left me and once more passed out of my life.

Another actor on the world-stage whom I had encountered more than once
before was the "heroic" King of Montenegro. He often crossed my path
during the Conference, and set me musing on the marvelous ups and downs
of human existence. This potentate's life offers a rich field of
research to the psychologist. I had watched it myself at various times
and with curious results. For I had met him in various European capitals
during the past thirty years, and before the time when Tsar Alexander
III publicly spoke of him as Russia's only friend. King Nikita owes such
success in life as he can look back on with satisfaction to his
adaptation of St. Paul's maxim of being all things to all men. Thus in
St. Petersburg he was a good Russian, in Vi