Many of the representatives of these eager sections of humanity walked on the Quai du Mont Blanc on this fine Sunday afternoon and listened to the band, and buttonholed delegates and their secretaries, and chatted, and spat. The Czecho-Slovakians spat hardest, the Costa-Ricans loudest, the Unprotected Armenians most frequently, and the Serb-Croat-Slovenes most accurately, but the Assyrio-Chaldeans spat farthest. The Zionists did not walk on the Quai. They were holding meetings together and drawing up hundreds of petitions, so that the Assembly might receive at least one an hour from to-morrow onwards. Zionists do these things thoroughly.
Motor-cars hummed to and fro between the hotels and the Secretariat, and inside them one saw delegates. Flags flew and music played, and the _jet d'eau_ sprang, an immense crystalline tree of life, a snowy angel, up from the azure lake into the azure heavens.
Henry gave a little sigh of pleasure. He liked the scene.
"Will there be treats?" he asked his companion. "I like treats."
"Treats? Who for? The delegates get treats all right, if you mean that."
"Oh, yes, the correspondents get a free trip or a free feed now and then too. I usually get out of them myself; official beanos bore me. The town's very good to us; it wants the support of the press against rival claimants, such as Brussels."
"I should enjoy a lake trip very much," said Henry, beginning to feel that it was good to be there.
"Well, don't forget to hand in your address then, so that it gets on the list."
Henry was damped. 24 Allée Petit Chat, Saint Gervais--it sounded rotten, and would sound worse still to the Genevan syndics, who knew just where it was and what, and were even now engaged in plans for pulling down and rebuilding all the old wharfside quarter. No; he could not hand in that address....
"I suppose you've got to crab the show, whatever it does, haven't you," said the _Daily Sale_ man presently. "Now I'm out to pat it on the back--this year. I like that better. It's dull being disagreeable all the time; so obvious, too."
"My paper _is_ obvious," Henry owned gloomily. "Truth always is. You can't get round that."
"Oh, well, come," the other journalist couldn't stand that--"it's a bit thick for one of your lot to start talking about truth. The lies you tell daily--they have ours beat to a frazzle. Why, you couldn't give a straight account of a bus accident!"