OF politics as such there is very little in the shook. But the few records of diplomatic workings in social life are very interesting. Especially so is the story, told in the chapter headed "Berlin," of how Cecil Rhodes, fearing German interference in the Cape-to-Cairo railway, deliberately headed the Kaiser off his schemes for African trade development by being apparently unguardedly enthusiastic about the potential granaries of Mesopotamia and the obvious route through Bagdad.
was at a dinner given in 1399 at the British Embassy in Berlin to the Kaiser, at which Cecil Rhodes was the guest of honour asked to meet him. After the ladies retired Rhodes and the Emperor fell into animated conversation.
Before leaving Rhodes whispered to Lady Susan "Thank God, I believe 1 have done the trick. I have sidetracked him out of Africa!" And the Kaiser, who ''was pensive" after Rhodes' departure, said to her, before he went, "If I had a man like Rhodes to carry out my schemes, I should be the greatest Emperor in the world." Lady Susan says: "TI am convinced that at that moment was born the idea of the Bagdad-Hahn."
For the most part the book records the authoress's relations with the great people of the lands in which she has lived. Such as the teas with Tse-Hsi, the late Empress-Dowager of China, in Peking, dinners with Roosevelt and Taft at Washington, talks at the sofa of Carmen Silva at Bucharest, with the fifteen-year old Shah of Persia at Teheran (who told his interpreter te tell her that "he hoped she would come and see him again, as it was the only foreign audience he had ever enjoyed.") From Teheran in 1913 she made a quick journey to London. "I had undertaken," she says, "to deliver certain despatches from my husband to the Foreign Office, and determined to acquit myself of my mission in the shortest possible time. I did the journey from door to door in eight nights. It was at that time, and may still be, a world record." This journey and the return, as related by Lady Susan, makes an exciting and amusing tale.
In the beginning of i917 Sir Walter Townley was appointed Minister at The Hague and he and Lady Susan worked hard there till the end of the war.
During the years of Sir Walter's service abroad the maintenance of easy friendliness in diplomatic relations was by no means always 3 simple matter. And, though Lady Susan does not touch upon this aspect of her own career, one feels, through her simple stories of soda! and domestic life, of cooks ana queens, chauffeurs and Emperors, that no situation was beyond her delicate and, withal, straightforward and' human, handling. She has insight, sympathy, understanding and humour; and, above all, she inspires trust. One feels that all Englishwomen who know her or know of her must be proud te have had her to represent them in the foreign countries and courts, where she held the honour and integrity of her country so high That is why, coming to the end of
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.