We have in the last six years become so inured
to dramatic situa- tions that we are by now almost impervious to the ironies of history. Yet to even the most numbed among us it must seem strange that Truman, Stalin and Winston Churchill should meet together in the areopagus of Prussian militarism. In the vault behind the pulpit of the Garrison Church at Potsdam lie the bones of Frederick the Great ; beside that tomb Napoleon paused in reverie ; above that vault the Tsar of Russia, King Frederick William III and Queen Louise, by the light of torches, swore eternal fidelity. On the edge of the little town stands the vast Neues Palais which Frederick the Great in a mood of arrogance erected at the cost of half a million pounds on the conclusion of the Seven Years War. Red, enormous and ornate, this excessive Hampton Court rises among the lakes and pine trees, recalling, not the meagre splendours of the great Frederick. but the voluble ostentation of William II. Upon the large terrace which the last of the German Kaisers erected and adorned with huge candelabra he could be observed on Sunday mornings, striding up and down in his eagle helmet, arguing with fierce emphatic gestures among the admirals, the generals and the diplomatists who formed his suite. The people of Potsdam, the tourists from Berlin, would stand in rows below the terrace, gaping at this portentous and mis- leading spectacle.
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