I regard it as one of the exploits of my life that I got through all this disgusting business in two days. I could not have done it but for the good fortune that threw me into the hands of considerate officials and for my own British pertinacity. As it was I came out of the French office in Bedford Square only five minutes before the office closed!
So I started by the usual early morning train to Folkestone, tired but triumphant, and feeling that the nuisances ahead of me, calculated to ruin more tempers and create more racial antagonisms than half a century of war, were light by comparison with that whirling rush from photographer to guarantor, from guarantor to passport office, from passport office to doctor, from doctor to banker, from banker to Legation, from Legation to Permit offices, with the endless filling of forms and the interminable aching hours of waiting which I had endured before the journey could begin.
It was a madwoman’s rush across sea and land. The Paris train was nearly two hours late. The Gare du Nord and the Gare de Lyon are on opposite sides of Paris. The wildest scrimmage for taxis took place. My lucky star being still in the ascendant, I secured one, hurled myself across Paris like a lunatic and, like a maniac, tossed myself and my bag into the Belgarde portion of the Geneva express as the train was actually signalled to leave!
There was no empty seat in the whole of the train. I had a first-class ticket, but I passed the night in the corridor sitting on the end of my suit-case. French trains are always super-heated. There had been no time for food in Paris. Hunger, thirst and sleeplessness made that night memorable to me. And as I have already shown, Geneva was not the end. There was the long wait in the city and the seven hours’ journey to Berne to follow the sleepless night from Paris to Belgarde. But it is marvellous what can be done and endured if one is only determined enough. I drove up to the Belle Vue Hotel at 11 o’clock on the evening of March 2; and the Conference was due to begin the following morning. My two fellow delegates of the Peace Council were still in London, although they began the passport business days before I knew that I was to be a delegate; but they yielded to the fatal temptation to leave after waiting for a short time, returning at intervals to the office, instead of seeing the thing through.
I had been in my room just long enough to turn the key in the lock when the telephone bell rang vigorously: “Hallo, Mrs. Snowden!” came the cheerful voice of a friend. “I have just seen your name in the hotel register. But this is wonderful! Come and have coffee at the Vienna Café.”
“Thank you, no,” I replied. “I’m almost dead with fatigue. If anybody tries to keep me out of bed for five minutes, I’ll denounce him to the police as a Bolshevik spy! I’ll see you in the morning. Good night.” Swiss beds are soft and white and very comfortable. In ten minutes I was snugly curled up in one of the best of them, for the first and only time in my life grateful for the Continental habit of unpunctuality. “That Conference is timed to begin at ten, but I am quite sure it will be eleven,” was the last muttered thought as I fell soundly asleep.
The sun was streaming in at the window when I awoke the next morning. I sprang out of bed and pulled back the curtain. Thick snow lay on the ground and reflected dazzlingly the light from the sun. The sky was a bright blue and without a cloud. Again the telephone bell rang. “There are two young ladies to see you, madam. Shall I ask them to wait?” asked the hotel clerk. “No, send them up—and the coffee,” I said, scrambling back into bed and wondering who on earth it could be. Two minutes later there followed the waiter into the room two pale girls about twenty years of age with soft, shy manners.
“We have come to give you a welcome to the Conference and to ask you if you will be good enough to speak at the opening session. Dear Mrs. Snowden, we know how tired you must be, but it is so wonderful that you are here. Do please come and say a few words of greeting to us. It will make us so happy and we are very miserable.” They were starved girls from Munich.
“Of course,” I said. “If you will leave me now, I will be with you in half an hour.” And they left looking very pleased.