But with the unfailing courtesy which the best Englishman never denies to the women whose "interference" he most resents, "I hope you made our position clear to your friends the Turks. Those who serve our Government have always done so of their own free-will. That is why we are served so well!"
I approached this question from another angle at Lausanne. As I have already pointed out, and illustrated from experience in an earlier chapter, it is most advisable, if not essential, that the Ambassador, like other great "Personages," should employ agents to "try out" the petty "first steps" of any change in policy.
I was told by way of reply, that "the first qualification for 'entering diplomacy' is to be twenty-one!" This, of course, excludes a woman over thirty; a fact that may serve for answer to many bitter attacks upon my "Disadvantage of Being a Woman." A man of threescore is seldom considered too old for diplomacy; a woman of thirty-five is fourteen years beyond the limit.
"What would you do with the old men?" I was asked.
"Teach them golf," was my prompt retort.
At the Front in a French uniform, speaking French to my own compatriots, I was always unwilling to confess my nationality. So long as they thought I was French, they forgot the lady, and made a friend of the woman! Shedding their "own" uniform, as it were, they "let go" in homage and devotion; giving, being, and appealing for themselves. But the moment it came out that I was English, the open oyster closed down and hid its pearl. From these spruce, upright, and tightly-buttoned uniforms I could never get through the politeness.
As an interpreter in the Guards once explained it: "When one of your Generals asks me to buy him a
