Ken Follett - Fall of Giants

She feared that the victorious Allies would want to punish the German people, but Lloyd George’s speech to Liberal M.P.s that day was reassuring. According to the evening papers, he said the peace treaty with Germany must be fair and just. “We must not allow any sense of revenge, any spirit of greed, or any grasping desire to overrule the fundamental principles of righteousness.” The government would set its face against what he called “a base, sordid, squalid idea of vengeance and avarice.” That cheered her up. Life for the Germans now would be hard enough anyway.

However, she was horrified the following morning when she opened the Daily Mail at breakfast. The leading article was headed THE HUNS MUST PAY. The paper argued that food aid should be sent to Germany-only because “if Germany were starved to death she could not pay what she owes.” The kaiser must be put on trial for war crimes, it added. The paper fanned the flames of revenge by publishing at the top of its letters column a diatribe from Viscountess Templetown headed KEEP OUT THE HUNS. “How long are we all supposed to go on hating one another?” Maud said to Aunt Herm. “A year? Ten years? Forever?”

But Maud should not have been surprised. The Mail had conducted a hate campaign against the thirty thousand Germans who had been living in Britain at the outbreak of war-most of them long-term residents who thought of this country as their home. In consequence families had been broken up and thousands of harmless people had spent years in British concentration camps. It was stupid, but people needed someone to hate, and the newspapers were always ready to supply that need.

Maud knew the proprietor of the Mail, Lord Northcliffe. Like all great press men, he really believed the drivel he published. His talent was to express his readers’ most stupid and ignorant prejudices as if they made sense, so that the shameful seemed respectable. That was why they bought the paper.

She also knew that Lloyd George had recently snubbed Northcliffe personally. The self-important press lord had proposed himself as a member of the British delegation at the upcoming peace conference, and had been offended when the prime minister turned him down.

Maud was worried. In politics, despicable people sometimes had to be pandered to, but Lloyd George seemed to have forgotten that. She wondered anxiously how much effect the Mail’s malevolent propaganda would have on the election.

A few days later she found out.

She went to an election meeting in a municipal hall in the East End of London. Eth Leckwith was in the audience and her husband, Bernie, was on the platform. Maud had not made up her quarrel with Ethel, even though they had been friends and colleagues for years. In fact Maud still trembled with anger when she recalled how Ethel and others had encouraged Parliament to pass a law that kept women at a disadvantage to men in elections. All the same she missed Ethel’s high spirits and ready smile.

The audience sat restlessly through the introductions. They were still mostly men, even though some women could now vote. Maud guessed that most women had not yet got used to the idea that they needed to take an interest in political discussions. But she also felt women would be put off by the tone of political meetings, in which men stood on a platform and ranted while the audience cheered or booed.

Bernie was the first speaker. He was no orator, Maud saw immediately. He spoke about the Labour Party’s new constitution, in particular clause four, calling for public ownership of the means of production. Maud thought this was interesting, for it drew a clear line between Labour and the pro-business Liberals; but she soon realized she was in a minority. The man sitting next to her grew restless and eventually shouted: “Will you chuck the Germans out of this country?”

Bernie was thrown. He mumbled for a few moments, then said: “I would do whatever benefited the workingman.” Maud wondered about the working woman, and guessed that Ethel must be thinking the same. Bernie went on: “But I don’t see that action against Germans in Britain is a high priority.”

That did not go down well; in fact it drew a few scattered boos.

Bernie said: “But to return to more important issues-”

From the other side of the hall, someone shouted: “What about the kaiser?”

Bernie made the mistake of replying to the heckler with a question. “What about the kaiser?” he rejoined. “He has abdicated.”

“Should he be put on trial?”

Bernie said with exasperation: “Don’t you understand that a trial means he will be entitled to defend himself? Do you really want to give the German emperor a platform to proclaim his innocence to the world?”

This was a compelling argument, Maud thought, but it was not what the audience wanted to hear. The booing grew louder, and there were shouts of “Hang the kaiser!”

British voters were ugly when riled, Maud thought; at least, the men were. Few women would ever want to come to meetings like this.

Bernie said: “If we hang our defeated enemies, we are barbarians.”

The man next to Maud shouted again: “Will you make the Hun pay?”

That got the biggest reaction of all. Several people shouted out: “Make the Hun pay!”

“Within reason,” Bernie began, but he got no further.

“Make the Hun pay!” The shout became common, and in a moment they were chanting in unison: “Make the Hun pay! Make the Hun pay!”

Maud got up from her seat and left.

Woodrow Wilson was the first American president ever to leave the country during his term of office.

He sailed from New York on December 4. Nine days later Gus was waiting for him at the quayside in Brest, on the western tip of the Brittany panhandle. At midday the mist cleared and the sun came out, for the first time in days. In the bay, battleships from the French, British, and American navies formed an honor guard through which the president steamed in a U.S. Navy transport ship, the George Washington. Guns thundered a salute, and a band played “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

It was a solemn moment for Gus. Wilson had come here to make sure there would never be another war like the one just ended. Wilson’s Fourteen Points, and his League of Nations, were intended to change forever the way nations resolved their conflicts. It was a stratospheric ambition. In the history of human civilization, no politician had ever aimed so high. If he succeeded, the world would be made new.

At three in the afternoon the first lady, Edith Wilson, walked down the gangplank on the arm of General Pershing, followed by the president in a top hat.

The town of Brest received Wilson as a conquering hero. Vive Wilson, said the banners, Defenseur du Droit des Peuples; Long Live Wilson, Defender of People’s Rights. Every building flew the Stars and Stripes. Crowds jammed the sidewalks, many of the women wearing the traditional Breton tall lace headdress. The sound of Breton bagpipes was everywhere. Gus could have done without the bagpipes.

The French foreign minister made a speech of welcome. Gus stood with the American journalists. He noticed a small woman wearing a big fur hat. She turned her head, and he saw that her pretty face was marred by one permanently closed eye. He smiled with delight: it was Rosa Hellman. He looked forward to hearing her view of the peace conference.

After the speeches, the entire presidential party boarded the night train for the four-hundred-mile journey to Paris. The president shook Gus’s hand and said: “Glad to have you back on the team, Gus.”

Wilson wanted familiar associates around him for the Paris Peace Conference. His main adviser would be Colonel House, the pale Texan who had been unofficially counseling him on foreign policy for years. Gus would be the junior member of the crew.