t of view of
the Yildiz, the Wilhelmstrasse is just a thing of yesterday."

"Quite so," I said.

"Of course," he added, "the Ballplatz is quite different."

"Altogether different," I admitted.

"And mind you," he said, "the Ballplatz itself can be largely moved from
the Quirinal through the Vatican."

"Why of course it can," I agreed, with as much relief in my tone as I
could put into it. After all, what simpler way of moving the Ballplatz
than that?

The Eminent Authority took another sip at his tea, and looked round at
us through his spectacles.

It was I who was taking on myself to do most of the answering, because
it was I who had brought him there and invited the other men to meet
him. "He's coming round at five," I had said, "do come and have a cup
of tea and meet him. He knows more about the European situation and
the probable solution than any other man living." Naturally they came
gladly. They wanted to know--as everybody wants to know--how the war
will end. They were just ordinary plain men like myself.

I could see that they were a little mystified, perhaps disappointed.
They would have liked, just as I would, to ask a few plain questions,
such as, can the Italians knock the stuff out of the Austrians? Are the
Rumanians getting licked or not? How many submarines has Germany got,
anyway? Such questions, in fact, as we are accustomed to put up to one
another every day at lunch and to answer out of the morning paper. As it
was, we didn't seem to be getting anywhere.

No one spoke. The silence began to be even a little uncomfortable. It
was broken by my friend Rapley, who is in wholesale hardware and who has
all the intellectual bravery that goes with it. He asked the Authority
straight out the question that we all wanted to put.

"Just what do you mean by the Ballplatz? What is the Ballplatz?"

The Authority smiled an engaging smile.

"Precisely," he said, "I see your drift exactly. You say what _is_ the
Ballplatz? I reply quite frankly that it is almost impossible to answer.
Probably one could best define it as the driving power behind the
Ausgleich."

"I see," said Rapley.

"Though the plain fact is that ever since the Herzegovinian embroglio
the Ballplatz is little more than a counterpoise to the Wilhelmstrasse."

"Ah!" said Rapley.

"Indeed, as everybody knows, the whole relationship of the Ballplatz
with the Nevski Prospekt has emanated from the Wilhelmstrasse."

This was a thing which