out and privately circulated by a group which claimed to be initiated.  It was summarized as follows:  “The Israelite, Bela Kuhn, who is leading Hungary to destruction, has been heartened by the Supreme Council’s indulgent message.  People are at a loss to understand why, if the Conference believes, as it has asserted, that Bolshevism is the greatest scourge of latter-day humanity, it ordered the Rumanian troops, when nearing Budapest for the purpose of overthrowing it in that stronghold, first to halt, and then to withdraw.[85] The clue to the mystery has at last been found in a secret arrangement between Kuhn and a certain financial group concerning the Banat.  About this more will be said later.  In one of my own cablegrams to the United States I wrote:  “People are everywhere murmuring and whispering that beneath the surface of things powerful undercurrents are flowing which invisibly sway the policy of the secret council, and the public believes that this accounts for the sinister vacillation and delay of which it complains."[86]

In the fragmentary utterances of the governments and their press organs nobody placed the slightest confidence.  Their testimony was discredited in advance, on grounds which they were unable to weaken.  The following example is at once amusing and instructive.  The French Parliamentary Committee of the Budget, having asked the government for communication of the section of the Peace Treaty dealing with finances, were told that their demand could not be entertained, every clause of the Treaty being a state secret.  The Committee on Foreign Affairs made a like request, with the same results.  The entire Chamber next expressed a similar wish, which elicited a firm refusal.  The French Premier, it should be added, alleged a reason which was at least specious.  “I should much like,” he said, “to communicate to you the text you ask for, but I may not do so until it has been signed by the President of the Republic.  For such is the law as embodied in Article 8 of the Constitution.”  Now nobody believed that this was the true ground for his refusal.  His explanation, however, was construed as a courteous conventionality, and as such was accepted.  But once alleged, the fiction should have been respected, at any rate by its authors.  It was not.  A few weeks later the Premier ordered the publication of the text of the Treaty, although, in the meantime, it had not been signed by M. Poincare.  “The excuse founded upon Article 8 was, therefore, a mere humbug,” flippantly wrote an influential journal.[87]

An amusing joke, which tickled all Paris was perpetrated shortly afterward.  The editor of the Bonsoir imported six hundred copies of the forbidden Treaty from Switzerland, and sent them as a present to the Deputies of the Chamber, whereupon the parliamentary authorities posted up a notice informing all Deputies who desired a copy to call at the questor’s office, where they would receive it gratuitously as a present from the Bonsoir. Accordingly the Deputies, including the Speaker, Deschanel, thronged to the questor’s office.  Even solemn-faced Ministers received a copy of the thick volume which I possessed ever since the day it was issued.