to recommend it, and also memories of pious
Charlemagne, on which members of the Conference might reflect when not
engaged in feasting and providing the Press with fiction. Constantinople
would also have been well suited to an International Conference in the
tenth century. The Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus was rather a dull
dog, but he kept a glittering court, and none but the most refined
society is good enough for secretaries, bottlewashers and other numerous
hangers-on of conferences. Kings and rulers would probably have attended
the Conference in person, not being willing to afford the luxury of
allowing a Prime Minister to neglect home affairs. It would have been a
pretty gathering, Constantine Porphyrogenitus the bookworm probably as
president, AEthelstan of England, Charles the Simple of France or as much
as his neighbours allowed him, that doughty poacher Henry the Fowler,
German King, and Pope Leo not on speaking terms with him, St. Wenceslaus
of Bohemia trying to make peace with Henry, and a make-weight of German
counts and churchmen, possibly representatives of Vikings, Hungarians
and Saracens. The proceedings would have been marked by a "certain
liveliness," as we used to say at the front when the fur began to fly.
The Conference would have differed from those of the present day, by
leading to a definite result if only in the form of a handsome row of
corpses; Counts of the Marches, Vikings and others would have attended
to that. It would have been interesting to note how monkish reporters
would clothe, or rather veil, their account of proceedings in suitable
language.

On the accession of Wenceslaus I the relations between his house and
the German King were strained. This, we have seen, was due to
Dragomira's anti-German foreign policy. Wenceslaus, however, as we know,
had occasion to send his mother into exile; she cannot have gone very
far, as according to popular belief the earth swallowed her up before
she had had time to get clear of the Castle Hill. Later generations put
up a chapel over the spot where Dragomira vanished; I consider this
conduct lacking in tact.

Anyway, Wenceslaus had to face a guileful, determined and quite
unscrupulous adversary, who had even called at Prague with an army; so,
being a man of peace, he came to terms with King Henry for a slight
consideration, namely, an annual tribute of six hundred silver marks and
one hundred and twenty head of cattle. This warded off troub