Ken Follett - Fall of Giants

Fitz stared stony-faced, but both Murray and Evans looked startled. They had not known all this personal stuff.

Billy said: “I have one more point to make. The German kaiser stands accused of war crimes. It is argued that he declared war, with the encouragement of his generals, against the will of the German people, as clearly expressed by their representatives in the Reichstag, the German parliament. By contrast, it is argued, Britain declared war on Germany only after a debate in the House of Commons.”

Fitz pretended to be bored, but Murray and Evans were attentive.

Billy went on: “Now consider this war in Russia. It has never been debated in the British Parliament. The facts are hidden from the British people on the pretense of operational security-always the excuse for the army’s guilty secrets. We are fighting, but war has never been declared. The British prime minister and his colleagues are in exactly the same position as the kaiser and his generals. They are the ones acting illegally-not me.” Billy sat down.

The two captains went into a huddle with Fitz. Billy wondered if he had gone too far. He had felt the need to be trenchant, but he might have offended the captains instead of winning their support.

However, there seemed to be dissent among the judges. Fitz was speaking emphatically and Evans was shaking his head in negation. Murray looked awkward. That was probably a good sign, Billy thought. All the same he was as scared as he had ever been. When he had faced machine guns at the Somme and experienced an explosion down the pit, he had not been as frightened as he was now, with his life in the hands of malevolent officers.

At last they seemed to reach agreement. Fitz looked at Billy and said: “Stand up.”

Billy stood.

“Sergeant William Williams, this court finds you guilty as charged.” Fitz stared at Billy, as if hoping to see on his face the mortification of defeat. But Billy had been expecting a guilty verdict. It was the sentence he feared.

Fitz said: “You are sentenced to ten years penal servitude.”

Billy could no longer keep his face expressionless. It was not the death penalty-but ten years! When he came out he would be thirty. It would be 1929. Mildred would be thirty-five. Half their lives would be over. His façade of defiance crumbled, and tears came to his eyes.

A look of profound satisfaction came over Fitz’s face. “Dismissed,” he said.

Billy was marched away to begin his prison sentence.

On the first day of May, Walter von Ulrich wrote a letter to Maud and posted it in the town of Versailles.

He did not know whether she was dead or alive. He had heard no news of her since Stockholm. There was still no postal service between Germany and Britain, so this was his first chance of writing to her in two years.

Walter and his father had traveled to France the day before, with 180 politicians, diplomats, and foreign ministry officials, as part of the German delegation to the peace conference. The French railway had slowed their special train to walking pace as they crossed the devastated landscape of northeastern France. “As if we were the only ones who fired shells here,” Otto said angrily. From Paris they had been bused to the small town of Versailles and dropped off at the Hotel des Réservoirs. Their luggage was unloaded in the courtyard and they were rudely told to carry it themselves. Clearly, Walter thought, the French were not going to be magnanimous in victory.

“They didn’t win, that’s their trouble,” said Otto. “They may not have actually lost, not quite, because they were saved by the British and Americans-but that’s not much to boast about. We beat them, and they know it, and it hurts their pumped-up pride.”

The hotel was cold and gloomy, but magnolias and apple trees were in blossom outside. The Germans were allowed to walk in the grounds of the great château and visit the shops. There was always a small crowd outside the hotel. The ordinary people were not as malign as the officials. Sometimes they booed, but mostly they were just curious to look at the enemy.

Walter wrote to Maud on the first day. He did not mention their marriage-he was not yet sure it was safe, and anyway the habit of secrecy was hard to break. He told her where he was, described the hotel and its surroundings, and asked her to write to him by return. He walked into the town, bought a stamp, and posted his letter.

He waited in anxious hope for the reply. If she were alive, did she still love him? He felt almost sure she would. But two years had passed since she had eagerly embraced him in a Stockholm hotel room. The world was full of men who had returned from the war to find that their girlfriends and wives had fallen in love with someone else during the long years of separation.

A few days later the leaders of the delegations were summoned to the Hotel Trianon Palace, across the park, and ceremonially handed printed copies of the peace treaty drafted by the victorious allies. It was in French. Back at the Hotel des Réservoirs, the copies were given to teams of translators. Walter was head of one such team. He divided his part into sections, passed them out, and sat down to read.

It was even worse than he expected.

The French army would occupy the border region of Rhineland for fifteen years. The Saar region of Germany was to become a League of Nations protectorate with the French controlling the coal mines. Alsace and Lorraine were returned to France without a plebiscite: the French government was afraid the population would vote to stay German. The new state of Poland was so large it took in the homes of three million Germans and the coalfields of Silesia. Germany was to lose all her colonies: the Allies had shared them out like thieves dividing the swag. And the Germans had to agree to pay reparations of an unspecified amount-in other words, to sign a blank check.

Walter wondered what kind of country they wanted Germany to be. Did they have in mind a giant slave camp where everyone lived on iron rations and toiled only so that the overlords could take the produce? If Walter was to be one such slave, how could he contemplate setting up home with Maud and having children?

But worst of all was the war guilt clause.

Article 231 of the treaty said: “The Allied and Associated Governments affirm, and Germany accepts, the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies.”

“It’s a lie,” Walter said angrily. “A stupid, ignorant, wicked, vicious, damned lie.” Germany was not innocent, he knew, and he had argued as much with his father, time and time again. But he had lived through the diplomatic crises of the summer of 1914, he had known about every small step on the road to war, and no single nation was guilty. Leaders on both sides had been mainly concerned to defend their own countries, and none of them had intended to plunge the world into the greatest war in history: not Asquith, nor Poincaré, nor the kaiser, nor the tsar, nor the Austrian emperor. Even Gavrilo Princip, the assassin of Sarajevo, had apparently been aghast when he understood what he had started. But even he was not responsible for “all the loss and damage.”

Walter ran into his father shortly after midnight, when they were both taking a break, drinking coffee to stay awake and continue working. “This is outrageous!” Otto stormed. “We agreed to an armistice based on Wilson’s Fourteen Points-but the treaty has nothing to do with the Fourteen Points!”

For once Walter agreed with his father.