red, 'but
what is there to give him?' 'That's the easiest thing in the world,' I
replied. 'There is nothing that would give Nicholas so much pleasure as
an engraving of his dear father--on a thousand-franc note.'"

Prince Nicholas, the future king of Rumania, who is being educated at
Eton, looks and acts like any normal American "prep" school boy.

"Do the boys still wear top hats at Eton?" I asked him.

"Yes, they do," he answered, "but it's a silly custom. And they cost two
guineas apiece. I leave it to you, Major, if two guineas isn't too much
for any hat."

When I told him that in democratic America certain Fifth Avenue hatters
charge the equivalent of five guineas for a bowler he looked at me in
frank unbelief. "But then," he remarked, "all Americans are rich."

Shortly before luncheon we were joined by King Ferdinand, a slenderly
built man, somewhat under medium height, with a grizzled beard, a genial
smile and merry, twinkling eyes. He wore the gray-green field uniform
and gold-laced kepi of a Rumanian general, the only thing about his
dress which suggested his exalted rank being the insignia of the Order
of Michael the Brave, which hung from his neck by a gold-and-purple
ribbon. Were you to see him in other clothes and other circumstances you
might well mistake him for an active and successful professional man.
King Ferdinand is the sort of man one enjoys chatting with in front of
an open fire over the cigars, for, in addition to being a shrewd judge
of men and events and having a remarkably exact knowledge of world
affairs, he possesses in an altogether exceptional degree the qualities
of tact, kindliness and humor.

The King did not hesitate to express his indignation that the re-making
of the map of Europe should have been entrusted to men who possessed so
little first-hand knowledge of the nations whose boundaries they were
re-shaping.

"A few days before the signing of the Treaty of St. Germain," he told
me, "Lloyd George sent for one of the experts attached to the Peace
Conference.

"'Where is this Banat that Rumania and Serbia are quarreling over?' he
inquired.

"'I will show you, sir,' the attache answered, unrolling a map of
southeastern Europe. For several minutes he explained in detail to the
British Premier the boundaries of the Banat and the conflicting
territorial claims to which its division had given rise. But when he
paused Lloyd George made no response. He was sound asleep!

"Yet a