PEOPLE AND THINGS
By HAROLD NICOLSON
IRECEIVED this morning a letter from a citizen of one 1 of our more enlightened provincial capitals, in which he asked me to address the local branch of the League of Nations Union. " Now," this correspondent blithely began, " that things in Europe are settling down. . . ." I groaned aloud. I laid the letter beside me and placed upon it (for the south wind was blowing in from the garden through the open window) a stone which I once looted from the palace at Persepolis, and upon which the curls of the beard of some Achaemenid trace their spirals. The gesture seemed sym- bolic. The weight of one fallen Empire was controlling the levity of another. " Now," may Darius have read 2,275 years ago, " that things in Europe are settling down owing to the welcome assassination of Philip of Macedon and the fact that the boy Alexander is a weakling in health and much enervated by the teachings of a sophist whom his father brought from Stagira to Pella hoping thereby to render the lad unfit for the succession ; for, as Your Majesty is aware from my previous reports, the late King had early tired of Olympias and was desirous of leaving his throne to the off- spring of his second marriage, being much enamoured of the wench Cleopatra ; and now (if the King of Kings will forgive his servant this digression) that things in Europe are settling down . . . " I stared and stared into the garden, pondering upon the nature of British optimism.
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