Further Foolishness Part 18

"Food supply!" he roared. "My dear fellow, you must have been reading the English newspapers! Food supply! My dear professor! Have you not heard? We have got over that difficulty entirely and for ever. But come, here is a restaurant. In with you and eat to your heart's content."

We entered the restaurant. It was filled to overflowing with a laughing crowd of diners and merry-makers. Thick clouds of blue cigar smoke filled the air. Waiters ran to and fro with tall steins of foaming beer, and great bundles of bread tickets, soup tickets, meat cards and b.u.t.ter coupons.

These were handed around to the guests, who sat quietly chewing the corners of them as they sipped their beer.

"Now-then," said my host, looking over the printed menu in front of him, "what shall it be? What do you say to a ham certificate with a cabbage ticket on the side? Or how would you like lobster-coupon with a receipt for asparagus?"

"Yes," I answered, "or perhaps, as our journey has made me hungry, one of these beef certificates with an affidavit for Yorks.h.i.+re pudding."

"Done!" said b.o.o.benstein.

A few moments later we were comfortably drinking our tall gla.s.ses of beer and smoking _Tannhauser_ cigars, with an appetising pile of coloured tickets and certificates in front of us.

"Admit," said von b.o.o.benstein good-naturedly, "that we have overcome the food difficulty for ever."

"You have," I said.

"It was a pure matter of science and efficiency," he went on. "It has long been observed that if one sat down in a restaurant and drank beer and smoked cigars (especially such a brand as these _Tannhausers_) during the time it took for the food to be brought (by a German waiter), all appet.i.te was gone. It remained for the German scientists to organise this into system. Have you finished? Or would you like to take another look at your beef certificate?"

We rose. Von b.o.o.benstein paid the bill by writing I.O.U.

on the back of one of the cards--not forgetting the waiter, for whom he wrote on a piece of paper, "G.o.d bless you"--and we left.

"Count," I said, as we took our seat on a bench in the Sieges-Allee, or Alley of Victory, and listened to the music of the military band, and watched the crowd, "I begin to see that Germany is unconquerable."

"Absolutely so," he answered.

"In the first place, your men are inexhaustible. If we kill one cla.s.s you call out another; and anyway one-half of those we kill get well again, and the net result is that you have more than ever."

"Precisely," said the Count.

"As to food," I continued, "you are absolutely invulnerable.

What with acorns, thistles, tanbark, glue, tickets, coupons, and certificates, you can go on for ever."

"We can," he said.

"Then for money you use I.O.U.'s. Anybody with a lead pencil can command all the funds he wants. Moreover, your soldiers at the front are getting dug in deeper and deeper: last spring they were fifty feet under ground: by 1918 they will be nearly 200 feet down. Short of mining for them, we shall never get them out."

"Never," said von b.o.o.benstein with great firmness.

"But there is one thing that I don't quite understand.

Your navy, your s.h.i.+ps. There, surely, we have you: sooner or later that whole proud fleet in the Kiel Ca.n.a.l will come out under fire of our guns and be sunk to the bottom of the sea. There, at least, we conquer."

Von b.o.o.benstein broke into loud laughter.

"The fleet!" he roared, and his voice was almost hysterical and overstrung, as if high living on lobster-coupons and over-smoking of _Tannhausers_ was undermining his nerves.

"The fleet! Is it possible you do not know? Why all Germany knows it. Capture our fleet! Ha! Ha! It now lies fifty miles inland. _We have filled in the ca.n.a.l_--pushed in the banks. The ca.n.a.l is solid land again, and the fleet is high and dry. The s.h.i.+ps are boarded over and painted to look like German inns and breweries. Prinz Adelbert is disguised as a brewer, Admiral von Tirpitz is made up as a head waiter, Prince Heinrich is a bar tender, the sailors are dressed up as chambermaids. And some day when Jellicoe and his men are coaxed ash.o.r.e, they will drop in to drink a gla.s.s of beer, and then--pouf!

we will explode them all with a single torpedo! Such is the naval strategy of our scientists! Are we not a nation of sailors?"

Von b.o.o.benstein's manner had grown still wilder and more hysterical. There was a queer glitter in his eyes.

I thought it better to soothe him.

"I see," I said, "the Allies are beaten. One might as well spin a coin for heads or tails to see whether we abandon England now or wait till you come and take it."

As I spoke, I took from my pocket an English sovereign that I carry as a lucky-piece, and prepared to spin it in the air.

Von b.o.o.benstein, as he saw it, broke into a sort of hoa.r.s.e shriek.

"Gold! gold!" he cried. "Give it to me!"

"What?" I exclaimed.

"A piece of gold," he panted. "Give it to me, give it to me, quick. I know a place where we can buy bread with it.

Real bread--not tickets--food--give me the gold--gold--for bread--we can get-bread. I am starving--gold--bread."

And as he spoke his hoa.r.s.e voice seemed to grow louder and louder in my ears; the sounds of the street were hushed; a sudden darkness fell; and a wind swept among the trees of the _Alley of Victory_--moaning--and a thousand, a myriad voices seemed to my ear to take up the cry:

"Gold! Bread! We are starving."

Then I woke up.

XII. Abdul Aziz has His: An Adventure in the Yildiz Kiosk

"Come, come, Abdul," I said, putting my hand, not unkindly, on his shoulder, "tell me all about it."

But he only broke out into renewed sobbing.

"There, there," I continued soothingly. "Don't cry, Abdul.

Look! Here's a lovely narghileh for you to smoke, with a gold mouthpiece. See! Wouldn't you like a little latakia, eh? And here's a little toy Armenian--look! See his head come off--snick! There, it's on again, snick! now it's off! look, Abdul!"

But still he sobbed.

His fez had fallen over his ears and his face was all smudged with tears.

It seemed impossible to stop him.

I looked about in vain from the little alcove of the hall of the Yildiz Kiosk where we were sitting on a Persian bench under a lemon-tree. There was no one in sight. I hardly knew what to do.

In the Yildiz Kiosk--I think that was the name of the place--I scarcely as yet knew my way about. In fact, I had only been in it a few hours. I had come there--as I should have explained in commencing--in order to try to pick up information as to the exact condition of things in Turkey. For this purpose I had a.s.sumed the character and disguise of an English governess. I had long since remarked that an English governess is able to go anywhere, see everything, penetrate the interior of any royal palace and move to and fro as she pleases without hindrance and without insult. No barrier can stop her. Every royal court, however splendid or however exclusive, is glad to get her. She dines with the King or the Emperor as a matter of course. All state secrets are freely confided to her and all military plans are submitted to her judgment. Then, after a few weeks' residence, she leaves the court and writes a book of disclosures.

This was now my plan.

And, up to the moment of which I speak, it had worked perfectly.

I had found my way through Turkey to the royal capital without difficulty. The poke bonnet, the spectacles and the long black dress which I had a.s.sumed had proved an ample protection. None of the rude Turkish soldiers among whom I had pa.s.sed had offered to lay a hand on me.

This tribute I am compelled to pay to the splendid morality of the Turks. They wouldn't touch me.