5

I had the experience of meeting a contemporary king upon this journey.  He was the first king I had ever met.  The Potsdam figure—­with perhaps some local exceptions behind the Gold Coast—­is, with its collection of uniforms and its pomps and splendours, the purest survival of the old tradition of divine monarchy now that the Emperor at Pekin has followed the Shogun into the shadows.  The modern type of king shows a disposition to intimate at the outset that he cannot help it, and to justify or at any rate utilise his exceptional position by sound hard work.  It is an age of working kings, with the manners of private gentlemen.  The King of Italy for example is far more accessible than was the late Pierpont Morgan or the late Cecil Rhodes, and he seems to keep a smaller court.

I went to see him from Udine.  He occupied a moderate-sized country villa about half an hour by automobile from headquarters.  I went over with General Radcliffe; we drove through the gates of the villa past a single sentinel in an ordinary infantry uniform, up to the door of the house, and the number of guards, servants, attendants, officials, secretaries, ministers and the like that I saw in that house were—­I counted very carefully—­four.  Downstairs were three people, a tall soldier of the bodyguard in grey; an A.D.C., Captain Moreno, and Col.  Matteoli, the minister of the household.  I went upstairs to a drawing-room of much the same easy and generalised character as the one in which I had met General Joffre a few days before.  I gave my hat to a second bodyguard, and as I did so a pleasantly smiling man appeared at the door of the study whom I thought at first must be some minister in attendance.  I did not recognise him instantly because on the stamps and coins he is always in profile.  He began to talk in excellent English about my journey, and I replied, and so talking we went into the study from which he had emerged.  Then I realised I was talking to the king.

Addicted as I am to the cinematograph, in which the standard of study furniture is particularly rich and high, I found something very cooling and simple and refreshing in the sight of the king’s study furniture.  He sat down with me at a little useful writing table, and after asking me what I had seen in Italy and hearing what I had seen and what I was to see, he went on talking, very good talk indeed.

I suppose I did a little exceed the established tradition of courts by asking several questions and trying to get him to talk upon certain points as to which I was curious, but I perceived that he had had to carry on at least so much of the regal tradition as to control the conversation.  He was, however, entirely un-posed.  His talk reminded me somehow of Maurice Baring’s books; it had just the same quick, positive understanding.  And he had just the same detachment from the war as the French generals.  He spoke of it—­as one might speak of an inundation.  And of its difficulties and perplexities.