In Europe

differ.
    Sunday, 2 March
    Dine with Princess Soutzo at the Ritz – a swell affair … Marcel Proust and Abel Bonnard … there as well. Proust is white, unshaven, grubby, slip-faced. He puts his fur coat on afterwards and sits hunched there in white kid gloves. Two cups of black coffee he has, with chunks of sugar. Yet in his talk there is no affectation. He asks me questions. Will I please tell him how the committees work? I say: ‘Well, we generally meet at 10.0, there are secretaries behind …’ ‘
Mais non, mais non
, you are going too fast. Start anew. You take a car to the delegation. You get out at the Quai d'Orsay. You walk up the steps. You enter the Great Hall. And then? With more precision, dear sir, more precision.’ So I tell him everything. The sham cordiality of it all: the handshakes: the maps: the rustle of papers: the tea in the next room: the macaroons. He listens enthralled, interrupting from time to time: ‘But with more precision, dear sir, do not go too fast.’
    Saturday, 8 March
    Very tired, dispirited and uneasy.
Are
we making a good peace? Are we? Are we? There was a very gloomy telegram in from [General]Plumer. He begs us to feed Germany. Says our troops cannot stand spectacle of starving children.
    Thursday, 3 April
    Arrive Vienna at about 10.0 a.m. Allen and I walk to the embassy, where our mission is in residence. The town has an unkempt appearance: paper lying about: the grass plots round the statues are strewn with litter: many windows broken and repaired by boards nailed up. The people in the streets are dejected and ill-dressed: they stare at us in astonishment. And indeed we are a funny sight, when viewed in a bunch like that … I feel that my plump pink face is an insult to these wretched people.
    Tuesday, 13 May
    To President Wilson's house … The door opens and Hankey tells me to come in. A heavily furnished study with my huge map on the carpet. Bending over it (bubble, bubble, toil and trouble) are Clemenceau, Lloyd George and President Wilson. They have pulled up armchairs and crouch low over the map. Lloyd George says – genial, always – ‘Now, Nicolson, listen with all your ears.’ He then proceeds to expound the agreement which they have reached. I make certain minor suggestions, plus a caveat that they are putting Konia in the Italian Zone. I also point out that they are cutting the Baghdad railway. This is brushed aside. President Wilson says: “And what about the Islands?’ ‘They are,’ I answer firmly, ‘Greek islands, Mr. President.’ ‘Then they should go to Greece?’ Harold Nicolson: ‘Rath
er
!’ President Wilson: ‘Rat HER !’ …
    It is immoral and impracticable. But I obey my orders … Nearly dead with fatigue and indignation.
    Wednesday, 28 May
    Have been working like a little beaver to prevent the Austrian peace treaty from being as rotten as the German. The more I read the latter, the sicker it makes me. The great crime is in the reparation clauses, which were drawn up solely to please the House of Commons, and which are quite impossible to execute. If I were theGermans, I shouldn't sign for a moment. You see it gives them
no
hope whatsoever, either now or in the future.
    Sunday, 8 June
    There is not a single person among the younger people here who is not unhappy and disappointed at the terms. The only people who approve are the old fire-eaters.
    Finally, the day of the signing at Versailles itself arrives: 28 June, 1919. Harold Nicolson described the genial conversation in the Hall of Mirrors. ‘It is, as always on such occasions, like water running into a tin bath.’
    The German delegation, consisting of two men, was announced. The silence was oppressive. Their footsteps creaked on the parquet. They were deathly pale. They entered with eyes fixed on the ceiling, but there too, I see now, they found only humiliation. The entire ceiling is covered with scenes of French victory, of routed Dutchmen and Prussians, of proud French kings, their enemies grovelling in the dust at their feet.
    ‘It has all been terrible. To bed, sick of life.’



Chapter ELEVEN
Doorn
    ‘ I WAS, UNTIL MY RETIREMENT, A MANUFACTURER OF COLOURINGS and flavourings. Queen Victoria was my great-great-grandmother, Kaiser Wilhelm II was my grandfather. We live here, close to Hanover, in a villa to which we gradually added more wings as the children came along. As you can see: a nice sitting room, a dining room, a fine house. Yes, those royal portraits came