In October, 1912, many people still believed that the British Government had a Balkan policy. The war had been foreseen for so many years, its repercussion on Asia Minor and the whole Mohammedan world could hardly fail to be considerable, while the risk of the conflagration spreading, so as to involve all Europe, was universally recognized. Under such circumstances, it seemed incredible that those responsible for the maintenance of the British Empire would leave anything to chance. Of course, we British had a policy, but personally I hadn’t the faintest idea what it was, nor, for the moment, could I think of any one who had. At last the hotel was reached. A sleepy “concierge” showed me to my room, a vast apartment whose outstanding feature was its painted ceiling. This work of art was oval in shape and consisted of a vault of almost inky blue spangled with stars, round which were cherubs and angels in appropriately exiguous costumes. The subject was perhaps meant to be a celestial choir, but the artist had somehow missed his mark; the faces were neither angelic nor cherubic; they wore an air of mystery not unmingled with self-satisfaction. The figures emerged in stiff, conventional fashion from the edges of the ceiling into the central blue, and, if it hadn’t been for their lack of dress and look of conscious superiority, they might have been a collection of quite ordinary men, gathered round an oval table stained with ink. One of the cherubs bore a strong facial resemblance to a distinguished diplomat of my acquaintance; he was whispering something in his neighbour’s ear, and the latter seemed amused. The neighbour was a cherub, not an angel; he had a queer, wizened face of somewhat Slavonic type. I was tired out, but I did not sleep well. I had been thinking about British policy in the Balkans before I fell asleep, and had strange dreams which were almost nightmares. It was all the fault of the ceiling; that cherub was so exactly like the diplomat and I dreamed he was telling the other one a secret, this explained the whispering, and that it was an important State secret, connected with my visit to Belgrade. Who knows? The artist who had painted that hideous ceiling may have done so in a mood of irony. He may have chosen, as models for his cherubs, some well-known personages engaged in propping up a crazy structure known as “the balance of power in Europe.” CHAPTER II BELGRADE--OCTOBER, 1912 A VIEW FROM A WINDOW