Dog’s Foot.  Wyoming.  April 1.  An Indian of the Cheyenne tribe has foretold that the war will end in December.  Business among the Indians is at a standstill.

V—­DIPLOMATIC REVELATIONS

These were sent out in assortments, and labelled Vienna, via London, through Stockholm.  After reading them with feverish eagerness for nearly four years, I decided that they somehow lack definiteness.  Here is the way they ran: 

“Special Correspondence.  I learn from a very high authority, whose name I am not at liberty to mention, (speaking to me at a place which I am not allowed to indicate and in a language which I am forbidden to use)—­that Austria-Hungary is about to take a diplomatic step of the highest importance.  What this step is, I am forbidden to say.  But the consequences of it—­which unfortunately I am pledged not to disclose—­will be such as to effect results which I am not free to enumerate.”

VI—­A NEW GERMAN PEACE FORMULA

Dr. Hertling, the Imperial Chancellor, speaking through his hat in the Reichstag, said that he wished to state in the clearest language of which he was capable that the German peace plan would not only provide the fullest self determination of all ethnographic categories, but would predicate the political self consciousness (politisches Selbstbewusztsein) of each geographical and entomological unit, subject only to the necessary rectilinear guarantees for the seismographic action of the German empire.  The entire Reichstag, especially the professorial section of it, broke into unrestrained applause.  It is felt that the new formula is the equivalent of a German Magna Carta—­or as near to it as they can get.

VII—­THE FINANCIAL NEWS

The war finance, as I remember it, always supplied items of the most absorbing interest.  I do not mean to say that I was an authority on finance or held any official position in regard to it.  But I watched it.  I followed it in the newspapers.  When the war began I knew nothing about it.  But I picked up a little bit here and a little bit there until presently I felt that I had a grasp on it not easily shaken off.

It was a simple matter, anyway.  Take the case of the rouble.  It rose and it fell.  But the reason was always perfectly obvious.  The Russian news ran, as I got it in my newspapers, like this:—­

“M.  Touchusoff, the new financial secretary of the Soviet, has declared that Russia will repay her utmost liabilities.  Roubles rose.”

“M.  Touchusoff, the late financial secretary of the Soviet, was thrown into the Neva last evening.  Roubles fell.”

“M.  Gorky, speaking in London last night, said that Russia was a great country.  Roubles rose.”

“A Dutch correspondent, who has just beat his way out of Russia, reports that nothing will induce him to go back.  Roubles fell.”