Page:Ambassador Morgenthau's Story.djvu/85

 months were peaceful; all the ambassadors and ministers and their families were thrown constantly together; here daily gathered the representatives of all the powers that for the last four years have been grappling in history's bloodiest war, all then apparently friends, sitting around the same dining tables, walking arm in arm upon the porches. The ambassador of one power would most graciously escort to dinner the wife of another whose country was perhaps the most antagonistic to his own. Little groups would form after dinner; the Grand Vizier would hold an impromptu reception in one corner, cabinet ministers would be whispering in another; a group of ambassadors would discuss the Greek situation out on the porch; the Turkish officials would glance quizzically upon the animated scene and perhaps comment quietly in their own tongue; the Russian Ambassador would glide about the room, pick out someone whom he wished to talk to, lock arms and push him into a corner for a surreptitious tête-à-tête. Meanwhile, our sons and daughters, the junior members of the diplomatic corps, and the officers of the several stationnaires, dancing and flirting, seemed to think that the whole proceeding had been arranged solely for their amusement. And to realize, while all this was going on, that neither the Grand Vizier, nor any of the other high Turkish officials, would leave the house without outriders and bodyguards to protect them from assassination—whatever other emotions such a vibrating atmosphere might arouse, it was certainly alive with interest. I felt also that there was something electric about it all; war was ever the favourite topic of conversation; everyone seemed to realize that this peaceful, frivolous life was