True it is that Lord Curzon was apt to address
other human beings in the manner of "the Divinity addressing black-beetles." Yet he was always careful to make it clear (a) that he regarded black-beetles as entertaining little animals and (b) that some beetles were blacker than others. It was a relief, for instance, for Mussolini (then at the em- barrassed outset of his pantomime) to observe that, whereas Lord Curzon treated him as a romantic type of cockroach, he did not treat Monsieur Poincare as romantic in the very least. It was pleasurable for Ismet Pasha, during the course of those endangered weeks, to notice that Lord Curzon regarded him as a species of orthopterous insect (the blatta orientalis) more interesting than the ordinary West European specimen, such as was represented by M. Bompard.
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