Ken Follett - Fall of Giants

The Liberal candidate had supported the Lloyd George coalition, so there had been no Conservative candidate. Consequently the Conservatives had voted Liberal, and the combination had been too much for Labour to beat.

Bernie congratulated his winning opponent and came down off the platform. The other Labour Party members had a bottle of Scotch and wanted to hold a wake, but Bernie and Ethel went home.

“I’m not cut out for this, Eth,” Bernie said as she boiled water for cocoa.

“You did a good job,” she said. “We were outwitted by that bloody Lloyd George.”

Bernie shook his head. “I’m not a leader,” he said. “I’m a thinker and a planner. Time and again I tried to talk to people the way you do, and fire them with enthusiasm for our cause, but I never could do it. When you talk to them, they love you. That’s the difference.”

She knew he was right.

Next morning the newspapers showed that the Aldgate result had been mirrored all over the country. The coalition had won 525 of the 707 seats, one of the largest majorities in the history of Parliament. The people had voted for the man who won the war.

Ethel was bitterly disappointed. The old men were still running the country. The politicians who had caused millions of deaths were now celebrating, as if they had done something wonderful. But what had they achieved? Pain and hunger and destruction. Ten million men and boys had been killed to no purpose.

The only glimmer of hope was that the Labour Party had improved its position. They had won sixty seats, up from forty-two.

It was the anti-Lloyd George Liberals who had suffered. They had won only thirty constituencies, and Asquith himself had lost his seat. “This could be the end of the Liberal Party,” said Bernie as he spread dripping on his bread for lunch. “They’ve failed the people, and Labour is the opposition now. That may be our only consolation.”

Just before they left for work, the post arrived. Ethel looked at the letters while Bernie tied the laces of Lloyd’s shoes. There was one from Billy, written in their code. She sat at the kitchen table to decode it.

She underlined the key words with a pencil and wrote them on a pad. As she deciphered the message she became more and more fascinated.

“You know Billy’s in Russia,” she said to Bernie.

“Yes.”

“Well, he says our army is there to fight against the Bolsheviks. The American army is there too.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“Yes, but listen, Bern,” she said. “We know the Whites can’t beat the Bolsheviks-but what if foreign armies join in? Anything could happen!”

Bernie looked thoughtful. “They could bring back the monarchy.”

“The people of this country won’t stand for that.”

“The people of this country don’t know what’s going on.”

“Then we’d better tell them,” said Ethel. “I’m going to write an article.”

“Who will publish it?”

“We’ll see. Maybe the Daily Herald.” The Herald was left-wing. “Will you take Lloyd to the child minder?”

“Yes, of course.”

Ethel thought for a minute, then, at the top of a sheet of paper, she wrote:

Hands Off Russia!

Walking around Paris made Maud cry. Along the broad boulevards there were piles of rubble where German shells had fallen. Broken windows in the grand buildings were repaired with boards, reminding her painfully of her handsome brother with his disfigured eye. The avenues of trees were marred by gaps where an ancient chestnut or noble plane had been sacrificed for its timber. Half the women wore black for mourning, and on street corners crippled soldiers begged for change.

She was crying for Walter, too. She had received no reply to her letter. She had inquired about going to Germany, but that was impossible. It had been difficult enough to get permission to come to Paris. She had hoped Walter might come here with the German delegation, but there was no German delegation: the defeated countries were not invited to the peace conference. The victorious Allies intended to thrash out an agreement among themselves, then present the losers with a treaty for signing.

Meanwhile there was a shortage of coal, and all the hotels were freezing cold. She had a suite at the Majestic, where the British delegation was headquartered. To guard against French spies, the British had replaced all the staff with their own people. Consequently the food was dire: porridge for breakfast, overcooked vegetables, and bad coffee.

Wrapped in a prewar fur coat, Maud went to meet Johnny Remarc at Fouquet’s on the Champs-Elysées. “Thank you for arranging for me to travel to Paris,” she said.

“Anything for you, Maud. But why were you so keen to come here?”

She was not going to tell the truth, least of all to someone who loved to gossip. “Shopping,” she said. “I haven’t bought a new dress for four years.”

“Oh, spare me,” he said. “There’s almost nothing to buy, and what there is costs a fortune. Fifteen hundred francs for a gown! Even Fitz might draw the line there. I think you must have a French paramour.”

“I wish I did.” She changed the subject. “I’ve found Fitz’s car. Do you know where I might get petrol?”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

They ordered lunch. Maud said: “Do you think we’re really going to make the Germans pay billions in reparations?”

“They’re not in a good position to object,” said Johnny. “After the Franco-Prussian War they made France pay five billion francs-which the French did in three years. And last March, in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Germany made the Bolsheviks promise six billion marks, although of course it won’t be paid now. All the same, the Germans’ righteous indignation has the hollow ring of hypocrisy.”

Maud hated it when people spoke harshly of the Germans. It was as if the fact that they had lost made them beasts. What if we had been the losers, Maud wanted to say-would we have had to say the war was our fault, and pay for it all? “But we’re asking for so much more-twenty-four billion pounds, we say, and the French put it at almost double that.”

“It’s hard to argue with the French,” Johnny said. “They owe us six hundred million pounds, and more to the Americans; but if we deny them German reparations they’ll say they can’t pay us.”

“Can the Germans pay what we’re asking?”

“No. My friend Pozzo Keynes says they could pay about a tenth-two billion pounds-though it may cripple their country.”

“Do you mean John Maynard Keynes, the Cambridge economist?”

“Yes. We call him Pozzo.”

“I didn’t know he was one of… your friends.”

Johnny smiled. “Oh, yes, my dear, very much so.”

Maud suffered a moment of envy for Johnny’s cheerful depravity. She had fiercely suppressed her own need for physical love. It was almost two years since a man had touched her lovingly. She felt like an old nun, wrinkled and dried up.

“What a sad look!” Johnny did not miss much. “I hope you’re not in love with Pozzo.”

She laughed, then turned the conversation back to politics. “If we know the Germans can’t pay, why is Lloyd George insisting?”

“I asked him that question myself. I’ve known him quite well since he was minister for munitions. He says all the belligerents will end up paying their own debts, and no one will get any reparations to speak of.”

“So why this pretense?”

“Because in the end the taxpayers of every country will pay for the war-but the politician who tells them that will never win another election.”

Gus went to the daily meetings of the League of Nations Commission. This group had the job of drafting the covenant that would set up the league. Woodrow Wilson himself chaired the committee, and he was in a hurry.