“Pity won’t do, my dear,” said he.
“Then you must go your own way.”
“I’m going it,” said Baltazar. “Perhaps you’ll come to Sussex Gardens now and then to see Godfrey. Possibly Quong Ho?”
“I might even come to see John Baltazar,” said Marcelle.
So Baltazar settled down in the big house and gave himself up to the infinite interests of war-racked London. The weeks and the months passed. Quong Ho at Cambridge, under the benign tutelage of Dr. Sheepshanks, began the study of Greek for his Little Go, and wrote to his patron curious impressions of the University. “I have the option,” said he, “of taking up for this examination either an infant’s primer on Logic compiled by an illustrious thinker of a bygone age, called Jevons, or a humorous work on the Evidence of Christianity, by the divine Paley, who seems to have been one of the patriarchs of the Anglican Church. As the latter seems the more entertaining, seeing that it tends to destroy in the mind of the reasoning believer all faith in the historical truth of the Christian religion, I am studying it with a deep interest based on the analogy between English and Chinese academic conservatism. On the other hand, dear sir and most venerated master, if you could suggest a course in Theology more in consonance with modern philosophical thought, I should derive from it much instruction and recreation.” Baltazar bade him get on with his Greek, so that if he wanted light reading, he could soothe his leisure hours with Aristotle and Thucydides. “I am working at Greek, like stags,” wrote Quong Ho later; “with all the more zeal because I find I have completed already the mathematical course required for my Tripos.” Some time afterwards he wrote again: “If you, most honoured sir, would permit me, I should esteem it a privilege to read for the Science Tripos as well as the Mathematical. I should enjoy the possibility of the application of my sound mathematical equipment to the higher branches of physics.” “Do what you like, my dear fellow,” replied Baltazar. “Suck the old place dry.” Quong Ho delighted him. Sheepshanks wrote enthusiastically of the rare bird. “He will be a monument,” said he, “to your sound and masterly teaching. I wish you would come back to us.” But Baltazar had other things to do. Having set his house in order, established Quong Ho at Cambridge, seen Godfrey accept his filial position and cemented relations, such as they were, with Marcelle, he plunged head foremost into the war. Others floundered about in it, tired after two strenuous years of buffeting. He came to it fresh, with new zeal and unimpaired strength of mind and body. With a new, keen judgment, too, being in the unique position of one with historical perspective. Others had lived through the fateful years and could not clear their brains of the myraid cross-currents that had swirled through them day by day, almost hour by hour, and had systematized themselves into their mental being, so that, with all their passionate patriotism, they could not see the main course. Baltazar brought an untroubled and vigorous intellect to bear on an accurately studied situation.
“We’re all at sixes and sevens,” cried Weatherley one day in despair, when they were discussing the new weekly review of the Far Eastern policy which he had asked Baltazar to control. “Unless we’re careful, the project will drop to pieces. Russell now declines to edit it unless we give him an autocratic hand. But Russell’s mad on Slovenes and Ruthenes and Croats. Clever as he is, he has no sense of proportion. I don’t know what the devil we’re going to do. There’s no one else can give the time. For the review to be any good, a man must throw his whole soul into it.”
Baltazar had one of his flashes. “If you like, I’ll edit the damned thing. You’ve all been fiddling about for a title. I’ve got one. ‘The New Universe.’ I’ll undertake to make a living thing of it, wipe out all the dreary, weary old weekly and monthly respectabilities. We won’t have a second-rater writing for it. We’ll appeal to ‘Longleat’s towers’ and ‘Mendip’s sunless caves.’ We’ll make it the one thing that matters in this quill-driven country. We’ll have it translated into all known languages and circulate it over the civilized earth. It’ll be the only publication that’ll give everybody the truth about everything.”
He went on in his vehement way. When Weatherley asked him where the money for so gigantic a scheme was to come from, he quoted the Tichborne claimant.
“Some has money and no brains and some has brains and no money. If those with no money can’t get money from those with no brains, God help them.”
And it came to pass, a few days afterwards, at a meeting of the committee of the new review, that Baltazar had his way. As he looked with even vision on Ruthenes, Slovenes, Belgians, Hereros, Jugo-Slavs, British miners, Samoans, the staff of the Foreign Office, Indian princes, Mrs. Annie Besant, the denizens of Arkansas, the Southern Chinese, the gilded adorners of Newport, the Women’s Emergency League, the Wilhelmstrasse, Armenians, and the Young Men’s Christian Association, a fact elicited by lengthy discussion of the multitudinous phases of world politics, and as he succeeded in convincing all the several zealots of particular interests, that their impassioned aims were an integral part of his far-reaching scheme, they came unanimously to the conclusion that no one but he had the universality to edit The New Universe, and passed a resolution promising him their loyal co-operation.