ere
literally perishing of hunger. A Polish commission was sent to an
English-speaking country to interest the government and people in the
condition of the sufferers and obtain relief. The envoys had an
interview with a Secretary of State, who inquired to what port they
intended to have the foodstuffs conveyed for distribution in the
interior of Poland. They answered: "We shall have them taken to Dantzig.
There is no other way." The statesman reflected a little and then said:
"You may meet with difficulties. If you have them shipped to Dantzig you
must of course first obtain Italy's permission. Have you got it?" "No.
We had not thought of that. In fact, we don't yet see why Italy need be
approached." "Because it is Italy who has command of the Mediterranean,
and if you want the transport taken to Dantzig it is the Italian
government that you must ask!"[62]

The delegates picked up a good deal of miscellaneous information about
the various countries whose future they were regulating, and to their
credit it should be said that they put questions to their informants
without a trace of false pride. One of the two chief delegates wending
homeward from a sitting at which M. Jules Cambon had spoken a good deal
about those Polish districts which, although they contained a majority
of Germans, yet belonged of right to Poland, asked the French delegate
why he had made so many allusions to Frederick the Great. "What had
Frederick to do with Poland?" he inquired. The answer was that the
present German majority of the inhabitants was made up of colonists who
had immigrated into the districts since the time of Frederick the Great
and the partition of Poland. "Yes, I see," exclaimed the statesman, "but
what had Frederick the Great to do with the partition of Poland?" ... In
the domain of ethnography there were also many pitfalls and accidents.
During an official _expose_ of the Oriental situation before the Supreme
Council, one of the Great Four, listening to a narrative of Turkish
misdeeds, heard that the Kurds had tortured and killed a number of
defenseless women, children, and old men. He at once interrupted the
speaker with the query: "You now call them Kurds. A few minutes ago you
said they were Turks. I take it that the Kurds and the Turks are the
same people?" Loath to embarrass one of the world's arbiters, the
delegate respectfully replied, "Yes, sir, they are about the same, but
the worse of the two are the Kurds."[63]

Gr