He noticed how few of the marchers looked about them, or paid any attention to the watching crowds. They stared before them with a fixed gaze. Lanny remarked this to his companion, who replied: “They are looking into the future.”
“Do you really want it, Mr. Steffens?” Lanny asked him.
“Only half of me wants it,” replied the muckraker. “The other half is scared.” He meant to say more, but his words were drowned by the menacing thunder of the “Internationale”:
Arise, ye pris’ners of starvation,
Arise, ye wretched of the earth;
For justice thunders condemnation,
A better world’s in birth.
33
Woe to the Conquered
I
There was another question which the Big Four had to settle, and which they kept putting off because it contained so much dynamite. The problem of money, astronomical sums of money, the biggest that had ever been talked about in the history of mankind. Who was going to pay for the rebuilding of northeastern France? If this peasant people had to do it out of its own savings, it would be crippled for a generation. The Germans had wrought the ruin—a great deal of it quite wanton, such as the cutting of vines and fruit trees. The French had set the cost of reparations at two hundred billion dollars, and thought they were generous when they reduced it to forty. The Americans were insisting that twelve billions was the maximum that could be paid.
What did it mean to talk about forty billion dollars? In what form would you collect it? There wasn’t gold enough in the world; and if France took goods from Germany, that would make Germany the workshop of the world and condemn French industry to extinction.
This seemed obvious to an American expert; but you couldn’t say it to a Frenchman, because he was suffering from a war psychosis. You couldn’t say it to a politician, whether French or British, because he had got elected on the basis of making Germany pay. “Squeeze them until the pips squeak,” had been the formula of the hustings, and one of Lloyd George’s “savages,” Premier Hughes of Australia, had come to the conference claiming that every mortgage placed on an Australian farm during the war was a part of the reparations bill. Privately Lloyd George would admit that Germany couldn’t pay with goods; but then he would fly back to England and make a speech in Parliament saying that Germany should and would pay. The Prime Minister of Great Britain had Northcliffe riding on his back, a press lord who was slowly going insane, and revealing it in his newspapers by clamoring that the British armies should be demobilized and at the same time should march to Moscow. Lloyd George pictured the Peace Conference as trying to settle the world’s problems “with stones crackling on the roof and crashing through the windows, and sometimes wild men screaming through the keyholes.”
The time came when Clemenceau lost his temper and called Woodrow Wilson “pro-German” to his face. It may have been a coincidence, but right after that the President was struck down by influenza and retired to his bed under doctor’s orders. When next he saw the Premier and the Prime Minister it was in his bedroom, and they had to be considerate of an invalid. Once more the fate of the world waited upon the elimination of toxins from the bloodstream of an elderly gentleman whose powers of resistance had been dangerously reduced.
Everybody quarreling with everybody else! General Pershing in a row with Foch, because he wouldn’t obey Foch’s orders as to the repression of the Germans on the Rhine; Americans wouldn’t treat a beaten foe as the French demanded. The Marshal was in a row with his Premier, and Poincaré, President of France, was at outs with both. Wilson was snubbing his Secretary of State, who agreed with none of his policies, yet didn’t choose to resign. There was open conflict with the Senate opposition, which now had couriers bringing news from Paris, because it didn’t trust what President Wilson was telling the country. There were even rumors among the staff to the effect that a coolness was developing between Wilson and his Texas colonel. Had the latter made too many concessions? Had he taken too much authority? Some said yes and some said no, and the whispering gallery hummed, the beehive quivered with a buzz of gossip and suspicion.
II
The question of the blockade had narrowed down to this: was America willing to sell the Germans food on dubious credit, or would she insist on having some of the gold which the French claimed for theirs? A deadlock over the issue, while mothers hungered and babies died of rickets. The American government had guaranteed the farmers a war price for their food, and now the government had to have that price. At least, so the Republicans clamored—and they controlled the new Congress that was going to have no more nonsense about “idealism.”
Lanny listened to controversies among members of the staff. What would our government do with the gold if we took it? Already we had an enormous store which we couldn’t use. Alston insisted that when it came to a showdown the French wouldn’t dare to take Germany’s gold, because that would wreck the mark, and if the mark went, the franc would follow; the two currencies were tied together by the fact that French credits were based upon the hope of German reparations.
Lanny was finding out what a complicated world he lived in; he wished his father could be here to explain matters. But the father wrote that he expected to be busy at home for quite a while. Budd’s had been forced to borrow money and convert some of the plants to making various goods, from hardware and kitchen utensils to sewing machines and hay rakes. For some reason Robbie considered this a great comedown. Incidentally he was in a fresh fury with President Wilson, who had failed to repudiate the British demand that increases in the American navy, already voted by Congress, should be canceled and abandoned.
Mrs. Emily hadn’t heard again from “M. Dalcroze,” and an invitation addressed to him in care of poste restante had been returned. Lanny said: “He must have gone back to Germany,” and Beauty said: “Thank God!” But Lanny was only half convinced, and was troubled by imaginings of his friend in a French prison or a French grave.
One hint Lanny picked up. At luncheon the professors discussed the amazing change in the attitude of one of the great French dailies toward the subject of reparations and blockade. Actually, it appeared that light was beginning to dawn in French financial circles. A Paris newspaper pointing out editorially that Germany couldn’t pay unless she acquired foreign exchange, and that to do this she had to manufacture something, and to do this she had to have raw materials! A miracle, said the hardheaded Professor Davisson—who ordinarily didn’t believe in them.
Lanny got a copy of the paper, and did not fail to note that the publisher was the man with whom Kurt had been getting acquainted in Mrs. Emily’s drawing room. Lanny hadn’t forgotten what his father had told him concerning the method by which “miracles” were brought about in the journalistic world. Before the war the Russians had sent gold to Paris and paid cash for the support of French newspapers; and now the Germans were trying to buy mercy! Could it be that Kurt had moved into those higher regions where a man was safe from both police and military authorities?
III
One couldn’t talk about such matters over the telephone, so Lanny went that afternoon to call upon his mother. He rode up in the lift unannounced and tapped on her door. “Who is it?” she called; and when he answered she opened the door cautiously, and after she had let him in, whispered: “Kurt is here!”
The German officer gave no sign until Beauty went to the door of the inner room and called him. When he emerged, Lanny saw that he had adopted fashionable afternoon garb, in which he looked handsome. He wore a little mustache, trimmed close in English fashion, and his straw-colored hair, which had been perhaps a quarter of an inch long when Lanny first met him at Hellerau, was now of a length suited to a musician. Kurt was pale, but easy in manner; if the life of a secret agent was wearing on his nerves, his friends were not going to be troubled with the fact. “I thought I owed it to you both to let you know I’m all right,” he said to Lanny.
“Isn’t it dangerous to come here, Kurt?”
>
“Things are all right with me so far as I know. Don’t ask more.”
The other held up the newspaper, saying: “I was bringing my mother a copy of this.” There was a flash of the eyes between the two friends, but no more was said.
They seated themselves, and Kurt drew his chair close, so that he could speak in a low tone. He asked first what Lanny knew about the intentions of the Peace Conference regarding the district of Stubendorf; Lanny had to tell him the worst, that it was surely going to the Poles. Then Kurt wanted to know about the blockade; Lanny outlined different projects which were being discussed, and the attitude of various personalities he knew or knew about. Kurt repaid his friend by talking about developments in Germany, information which might be valuable to the Crillon staff.
This talk went on for quite a while. When there came a lull, Beauty remarked: “Kurt has told me something that I think you ought to know about, Lanny—his marriage.”
“Marriage!” exclaimed Lanny, dumfounded. The smile went off the other’s face.
Another of those tragic tales of love in wartime—amor inter arma. The affair had begun when Kurt lay in hospital after his second wounding, some pieces of his ribs torn out by a shell fragment.
“It was a small town near the eastern border,” said the officer. “The front had shifted back and forth, so there was a lot of wreckage and suffering. The nurse who took care of me was about a year younger than I, a fine, straight girl—her father was a schoolteacher, and poor, so she had been obliged to work for her education. I’d got a touch of gangrene, so I had a long period of convalescence and saw a great deal of her, and we fell in love. You know how it is in wartime—”
Kurt was looking at Beauty, who nodded. Yes, she knew! Lanny said: “The same thing happened to Rick. Only it wasn’t a nurse.”
“Indeed! I must hear about that. Well, I was going back to duty and the time was short, so I married her. I didn’t tell my parents, because, as you know, we pay a good deal of attention to social status in Germany, and my parents wouldn’t have considered it a suitable match. My father was ill with influenza and my mother was under heavy strain, so I just sent my father’s lawyer a sealed letter, to be opened in the event of my death, and I let the matter rest there until the war was over. Elsa wouldn’t give up her duties as nurse, even though she was pregnant; and in the last weeks of the war she collapsed from undernourishment. So you see this blockade meant something personal to me.”
Kurt stopped. His face was drawn, which made him look old; but he gave no other sign of emotion. “There wasn’t enough food for anybody, unless it was speculators who broke the law. Elsa kept the truth from me, and the result was the baby was born dead, and she died of hemorrhages a few days later. So that’s all there was to my marriage.”
Beauty sat with a mist of tears in her eyes; and Lanny was thinking a familiar thought: “Oh, what a wicked thing is war!” He had lived through the agony of France with Marcel and his mother, and the agony of Britain with Rick and Nina; now in Germany it was the same. The younger man, thinking always of patching matters up between his two friends, remarked: “Nobody has gained anything, Kurt. Rick is crippled for life and is seldom out of pain. He crashed in a plane.”
“Poor fellow!” said the other; but his voice sounded dull. “At least that was in a fight. His wife hasn’t died of starvation, has she?”
“The British had their food restrictions, don’t forget. Your submarine campaign was effective. Both sides were using whatever weapons they had. Now we’re trying to make peace.”
“What they call peace is to be just another kind of war. They are taking our ships and railroad stock, our horses and cattle, and saddling us with debts enough to last a century.”
“We are trying to make a League of Nations,” pleaded the American; “one that will guarantee the peace.”
“If it’s a league that France and England make, it will be a league to hold Germany down.”
Lanny saw that it wouldn’t do any good to argue. For a German officer, as for a French one, it was still war. “We Americans are doing everything in our power,” he declared. “It just takes time for passions to cool off.”
“What you Americans should have done was to keep out of it. It wasn’t your fight.”
“Maybe so, Kurt. I wasn’t for going in, and now most of our men at the Crillon are doing their best to reconcile and appease. Do what you can to help us.”
“How can we do anything when we’re not allowed near your so-called ‘conference’?”
A hopeless situation! Lanny looked at his watch, recalling that there would be an Armenian gentleman waiting for him at the hotel. “My time isn’t my own,” he explained, and rose to go.
Kurt rose also. But Beauty interposed. “Kurt, you oughtn’t to go out until after dark!”
“I came before dark,” he replied.
“I don’t want you to go out with Lanny,” she pleaded. “Why risk both your lives? Please wait, and I’ll go with you.” She couldn’t keep the trembling out of her voice, and her son understood that for her too the war was still being fought. “I want to talk to you about Emily Chattersworth,” she added; “she and I are hoping to do something.”
“All right, I’ll wait,” said Kurt.
IV
The deadlock among the Big Four continued; until one day came a rumor that shook the Hotel Crillon like an earthquake: President Wilson had ordered the transport George Washington to come to France at once. That meant a threat to break off the conference and go back to his own country, which so many thought he never should have left. Like other earthquakes, this one continued to rumble, and to send shivers through many buildings and their occupants. Denials came from Washington that any such order had been received. Then it was rumored that the British had held up the President’s cablegram for forty-eight hours. Had they, or hadn’t they? And did Wilson mean it, or was it a bluff?
Anyhow, it sufficed to send the French into a panic. Clemenceau came hurrying to the President’s sickroom to inquire, and to apologize and try to patch matters up. Even though he had called the stiff Presbyterian “pro-German,” he couldn’t get along without him, and his departure would mean calamity. A whole train of specters haunted the French: the Germans refusing to sign, war beginning again, and revolution spreading to both countries!
They resumed meeting in the President’s room, and patched up a series of compromises. They decided to let the French have the Sarre for fifteen years, during which time they could get out the coal and keep their industries going until their own mines were repaired. Then there would be a plebiscite, and the inhabitants would choose which country they preferred. The Rhineland would go back to Germany after fifteen years, permanently demilitarized. Marshal Foch went on the warpath again, and it wasn’t long before he and his friends were trying to start a revolt of the French population in the Rhineland, to form a government and demand annexation to la patrie.
It was easy to understand the position of a man who had spent his life learning to train armies and to fight them. Now he had the biggest and finest army ever known in the world; troops from twenty-six nations, and more races and tribes than could be counted. Two million Americans, fresh and new, magnificent tall fellows, Utopian soldiers, you might call them—and now they were being taken away from their commander, he wasn’t going to be allowed to use them! The generalissimo had worked out detailed plans for the conquest of Bolshevism in Russia, and in Central Europe, wherever it had shown its ugly head; but the accursed politicians were turning down these plans, demobilizing the troops and shipping them home! The voluble little Frenchman was behaving like one demented.
Three subcommissions had been studying the question of reparations, but all in vain; so finally they decided to dodge the issue of fixing the total amount. Germany was to pay five billion dollars in the first two years, and after that a commission would decide how much more. Another job for the League of Nations! Woodrow Wilson was having his heart’s desire, the League
and the treaty were being tied together so that no one could pry them apart. But Clemenceau had his way on one basic point—Germany was not to be admitted to the League.
This last decision filled the American advisers with despair. They had been working day and night to devise an international authority which might bring appeasement to Europe, and now it was turning into just what Kurt had called it, a League to hold Germany down! There were rumors that the President was going even farther and granting the French demand for an alliance, a promise by England and America to defend her if she was again attacked. President Wilson had given way on so many points that Alston and others of the “liberal” group were in despair about him. All agreed that any such alliance would be meaningless, because the American Senate would never ratify it.
V
All day long and most of the night Lanny listened to arguments over these questions. He was not just a secretary, carrying out orders; he was concerned about every step that was being taken, and his chief dealt with him on that basis, pouring out his hopes and fears. Lanny had the image of Kurt Meissner always before him, and he pleaded Kurt’s cause whenever a chance arose. He couldn’t say: “I have just talked with a friend who lives in Germany and has told me about the sickness and despair.” He would say, more vaguely: “My mother has friends in Germany, and gets word about what is happening. So does Mrs. Chattersworth.”
These, of course, were grave matters to occupy the mind of a young man of nineteen. With him in the hotel suite were two other secretaries, both college graduates and older than he. They also carried portfolios, and filed reports, and made abstracts, and kept lists of appointments, and interviewed less important callers, and whispered secrets of state; they worked overtime when asked to, and when they grumbled about low pay and the high cost of cigarettes, it was between themselves. But they didn’t take to heart the task of saving Europe from another war, nor even of protecting Armenians from the fury of Turks. They enjoyed the abundant food which the army commissary provided, mostly out of cans—and found time to see the night life which was supposed to be characteristic of Paris, but in reality was provided for foreign visitors.
World's End Page 67