Пользователь - WORLD'S END

"Not at all," said Robbie. It was a concession on his part.

"So little Hansi is thinking: 'I will play the violin better and better, and then some day, when I meet the wonderful Lanny Budd, he will wish to play duets with me. He will really judge my music, and not as the rich boys do at school, my Jewishness.' That is what my Hansi has said to me; and now, should I smash his dream that the wonderful Lanny Budd might wish to play music with him? Shall I have to hear him say: 'No, Papa, I cannot have Lanny Budd for a friend, because his father says that you are not honest in business, that you took advantage of him when he trusted you'? So you see, Mr. Budd, I should have to go straight, even if it was against my nature."

"A new kind of business credentials, Mr. Robin!" said the other, smiling. "How much money would you say you could use to advantage in this business?"

"It is hard to know in advance. You understand that the buying will always be a spot-cash proposition. I would say a hundred thousand dollars should be in the bank. I would report to you what I am doing, and if I saw a use for further sums, you could judge each proposition on its merits."

Robbie had never told his son just how much money he had made in the last few years; so Lanny was startled when his father said: "I guess I could find a hundred thousand without too much trouble. You give me the references you speak of, Mr. Robin, and I'll look into them, and if they are what you tell me, I'll take a flier with you."

Lanny was pleased, but he didn't say so until they had dropped the dealer at his hotel. Then he chuckled and said: "You're in the junk business, Robbie!"

27

The Federation of the World

I

THE Peace Conference had begun its sessions. They had long debates as to whether they should debate in the English language or the French, and finally decided that they would use both, and have everything translated back and forth. They had a bitter controversy over the question whether they were going to try the Kaiser for his crimes; they had solemnly announced that they would do so, but the Kaiser was in Holland, which wouldn't give him up, and gradually the debate petered out - there were so many more urgent problems. Their armies were costing several million dollars a day, and so many women wanted their men back home!

President Wilson had set it as the first item on his program to establish a League of Nations and get it going. Everything else depended upon that, for without it you couldn't be sure that any arrangements you made would last a year. Premier Clemenceau had publicly sneered at the idea; what he believed in was the "balance of power" - which meant a group of nations strong enough to lick Germany. He and the President were now meeting daily, testing out each other's sparring power; meanwhile the American professors had to live upon scraps of gossip. Was it the Premier or the President who had been frowning when they emerged from the conference room that day?

The guessing grew hot when the problem of a League of Nations was assigned to a commission. That, obviously, represented Clemenceau's effort to shelve and forget it. But Wilson countered by appointing himself as one of the American members of the League of Nations Commission. Naturally he became chairman of it, since it was his idea and his hobby; when he began attending its daily sessions, he hadn't time to attend any other sessions, and so Clemenceau was left to fume and fret. The Americans rubbed their hands with delight. The Big Chief was really going to fight!

Everybody in the American staff began talking League. Even those who were supposed to be busy on other assignments couldn't keep their fingers out of the pie. Such a colossal enterprise, the most momentous in history! The poet Tennyson had sung about "the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World," and all these professors had learned the verses in school. How much of sovereignty was each nation to part with? What representation was each to have? Should the little ones have equal power with the big ones? And what about the colonial peoples? What about the national minorities?

President Wilson had a draft of the League somewhere among his baggage. Several members of "The Inquiry" had their drafts. The British, having an "Inquiry" of their own, had prepared a layout, of which a prominent feature was that each of the British dominions should count as a separate nation and have its own delegates. The French had a plan, of which the most important feature was an international army, to make sure that Germany could never again invade France. All these plans had to be put together, in spite of their being incompatible.

II

Lanny Budd had been assigned to a room on the top floor of the Crillon, on the courtyard, along with two other secretaries. But after a couple of weeks the three were moved out to a near-by hotel, to make room for more important persons who kept arriving from America. However, Lanny still had his meals in the hotel dining room, because Professor Alston wanted him. Under the regulations he was allowed to have one guest each day. He would invite his father to meet the staff and convince himself that they were not so tender-minded as they had been imagined. He would give his mother a chance to exercise her charms upon a susceptible group of gentlemen a long way from home and not having much opportunity to enjoy feminine society.

It had been only a little more than six months since Marcel had disappeared into the furnace of war; but Beauty's grief was less, because, as she explained to Lanny, she had suffered so much of it in anticipation. This suffering had given her dignity, without depriving her of those weapons of earlier days. She was still on the good side of forty, and deducted a couple of years more in her thoughts about herself. She couldn't very well deduct more, with a son seated at her side, several inches taller than herself!

Beauty was far too much a woman of the world to pretend to knowledge before these professors; she chose the line of calling herself an ignoramus and deploring her wasted youth. "Oh, Professor Alston," she would exclaim, "do make these wonderful ideas of yours work, so that we women in Europe won't have a nightmare pouncing down on us every generation!" It was an old practice of hers, in dealing with the male sex, to ask each about his own work, listen attentively, and express admiration. This proved as effective with scholars as with those of higher station, and Beauty might have eaten all her meals at the expense of the United States government if she had cared to accept the invitations showered upon her.

She told these learned ones about her friend Emily Chattersworth, and many of them knew the name; the older ones remembered the banking scandal, back in the bad old days when pirates had sailed the high financial seas. Mrs. Emily had rented a town house, and had teas every Thursday, and a salon on a modest scale on Sunday evenings; with her permission, Beauty invited Lanny's chief, and he went, and met important people: a member of the French cabinet, or a general just returned from service in Salonika; an English statesman who had flown from London that afternoon, or a Russian grand duke who had escaped from the Bolsheviki by way of Siberia and Manchuria. A youth who had access to social opportunities such as these was considered an unusually good secretary.

III

One of the persons whom Lanny saw most frequently was George D. Herron. This prophet of the new day came to see Alston, and they talked, and Lanny listened. Herron seemed to take a fancy to the youth, perhaps thinking of him as a possible convert. They sat on a bench by the embankment of the Seine, and the older man interpreted the events of the time in accordance with his peculiar ideas.