“No,” I said.

“They had us all in that,” he continued.  “I done an American Marine.  Lots of people think it all real when they see it.”

“Why,” I said, “nearly everybody does.  Even the President—­”

“Oh, I guess he knows,” said Villa, “but, you see, there’s tons of money in it and it’s good for business, and he’s too decent a man to give It away.  Say, I heard the boy saying there’s a war in Europe.  I wonder what company got that up, eh?  But I don’t believe it’ll draw.  There ain’t the scenery for it that we have in Mexico.”

“Alas!” murmured Raymon.  “Our beautiful Mexico.  To what is she fallen!  Needing only water, air, light and soil to make her—­”

“Come on, Raymon,” I said, “let’s go home.”

XIV.  Over the Grape Juice; or, The Peacemakers

Characters

MR. W. JENNINGS BRYAN. 
DR. DAVID STARR JORDAN. 
A PHILANTHROPIST.
MR. NORMAN ANGELL. 
A LADY PACIFIST.
A NEGRO PRESIDENT. 
AN EMINENT DIVINE. 
THE MAN ON THE STREET. 
THE GENERAL PUBLIC. 
And many others.

“War,” said the Negro President of Haiti, “is a sad spectacle.  It shames our polite civilisation.”

As he spoke, he looked about him at the assembled company around the huge dinner table, glittering with cut glass and white linen, and brilliant with hot-house flowers.

“A sad spectacle,” he repeated, rolling his big eyes in his black and yellow face that was melancholy with the broken pathos of the African race.

The occasion was a notable one.  It was the banquet of the Peacemakers’ Conference of 1917 and the company gathered about the board was as notable as it was numerous.

At the head of the table the genial Mr. Jennings Bryan presided as host, his broad countenance beaming with amiability, and a tall flagon of grape juice standing beside his hand.  A little further down the table one saw the benevolent head and placid physiognomy of Mr. Norman Angell, bowed forward as if in deep calculation.  Within earshot of Mr. Bryan, but not listening to him, one recognised without the slightest difficulty Dr. David Starr Jordan, the distinguished ichthyologist and director in chief of the World’s Peace Foundation, while the bland features of a gentleman from China, and the presence of a yellow delegate from the Mosquito Coast, gave ample evidence that the company had been gathered together without reference to colour, race, religion, education, or other prejudices whatsoever.

But it would be out of the question to indicate by name the whole of the notable assemblage.  Indeed, certain of the guests, while carrying in their faces and attitudes something strangely and elusively familiar, seemed in a sense to be nameless, and to represent rather types and abstractions than actual personalities.  Such was the case, for instance, with a female member of the company, seated in a place of honour near the