Пользователь - WORLD'S END

When the two Americans were alone in the taxi, the father chuckled, and said: "Look out for yourself, kid!"

"That really was a bid, wasn't it?" inquired the youth.

"A royal command," declared the other. "You can make a bigger deal than I can. All you have to do is arrange for a regiment or two of doughboys to help the British protect Batum from the Bolsheviks!"

VIII

Lanny settled down to his new work, which was studying the manners and customs of the Georgians. They had several delegations in Paris, and word spread, quite literally with the speed of lightning, that Professor Alston at the Crillon had been charged with deciding their fate. They all came at once - even though many of them were not on speaking terms with one another. They were large, tall men with wide mustaches, and for the most part wore their national costumes - some because they had no others, and some because they had learned that it was good propaganda. The costumes included long coats of hairy goatskin, high soft boots, and large bonnets of astrakhan. Their French and English were rudimentary, and those who spoke the difficult native tongue would become so excited that they forgot to stop and give their translators a chance. Their idea of persuading you was by a kind of baptismal rite; they would put their faces close to yours and talk with such vehemence that they enveloped you in a fine salivary spray, which went into your eyes and which good manners forbade you to wipe away.

When they couldn't get hold of the professor, his secretary would do, so Lanny submitted to this rite for hours at a time. He had to meet various groups and individuals and sort them out, and try to discover what it was which caused them to sit glowering at one another. They all hated and dreaded the Bolsheviks, but differed as to the way to resist them and who was to rule after the victory had been won. There were aristocrats and democrats, land owners and peasants, clericals and Socialist intellectuals, all the warring groups, as in French politics. All were acutely aware of the treasure which lay beneath the surface of their country, and some were thinking what a noble civilization could be built with its help. But unfortunately these were idealists who lacked experience in oil production; on the other hand, those who had the experience were in the pay of some foreign interest seeking concessions. All these lied shamelessly, and Lanny, who hadn't had much experience with liars, had to work hard for every fact he reported to his chief.

The plight of the little country was precarious. Toward the end of the war the Germans had seized it, along with the Ukraine; the armistice had forced them to vacate, and the French had sent a small army into the Ukraine, while the British had taken Batum on the Black Sea and Baku on the Caspian, and were policing the railroad and the pipelines by which the oil was brought out. But meanwhile the Bolsheviks were swarming like bees all about them, using their dreadful new weapon of class incitement, arousing peasants and workers against the invasion of "foreign capitalism." They were now driving the French out of Kiev, and literally rotting their armies with propaganda. How long would the British armies stand the strain? Men who had set out cheerfully to unhorse the hated Kaiser considered that they had done their job and wanted to go home; what business had their rulers keeping them in the Caucasus to protect oil wells for Zaharoff the Greek and Deterding the Dutchman?

It was that way all over Eastern and Central Europe. The soldiers and sailors of Russia had overthrown their Tsar, the soldiers and sailors of Germany had driven their Kaiser into exile, and now the soldiers and sailors of the Allies were demanding: "What is all this about? Why are we shooting these peasants?" In Siberia the American troops were meeting the Reds and feeling sorry for them, exactly as Lanny had felt for those he had met in his uncle's tenement room. The armies were disintegrating, discipline was relaxing, and officers were alarmed as they never had been by the German invasion.

So, of course, the elder statesmen in Paris were having an unhappy time; their generals in the field were pulling them one way and the great industrialists and financiers at home were pulling them the other. Coal and oil, iron and copper - were they going to let the Reds take these treasures and use them to prove that workers could run industry for themselves? There was a clamor for war in all the big business press, and in the parliaments, and it turned the Peace Conference into a hell of intrigue and treachery. To be there was like walking on the floor of a volcano, and wherever you thrust your staff into the ground, it began to quake, and fumes shot out and boiling lava oozed up.

IX

The Georgian question, with which Lanny was occupied, was one of the hottest spots. Since the province had been a part of the old empire of the Tsar, the Georgians had been invited to send delegates to Prinkipo. President Wilson had proposed this conference, and the Council of Ten had unanimously voted it - and that had included the French. But now, what was this that the excited Georgians were stammering into the face of the shrinking Lanny Budd? They were trying to find out from him if there was going to be any Prinkipo, if the Americans really wanted it, if it was safe for the Georgians to attend. When the youth questioned them he learned that Pichon, the French Foreign Minister, had been telling them that it was all a mistake, there wasn't going to be any conference, the Bolsheviks wouldn't come and couldn't be trusted if they did.

Lanny reported this to his chief, and both of them tried to find out more. It appeared that the French were advising all the Russian Whites in Paris to oppose the proposal and refuse to attend; they were saying that the Reds had fooled Wilson into believing in their good faith; but France was not to be fooled, and would continue to support the Whites with arms and money, and if they held on they would have their estates and fortunes returned to them. More than once French agents went so far as to threaten the Georgians that, if they supported Prinkipo, they would themselves be regarded as Bolsheviks and expelled from France. So these strangers in a strange land didn't dare whisper the truth to an American until he had pledged his word not to name the source of his information. "What shall we do, Mr. Budd? Will President Wilson protect us?"

And here was Winston Churchill, powerful war minister, scholar, and orator, appearing before the Supreme Council to denounce the Bolsheviks and demand war upon them in the name of humanity, Christianity, and his ancestor, the fighting Duke of Marlborough. Here was Lord Curzon, whom his associates described as "a very superior purzon," making his appeal especially for Georgia - his lordship had visited that mountainous land in his youth, and had romantic memories of it, and didn't want these memories disturbed by dialectical materialism.

And Zaharoff! He appeared before no councils, for he was neither scholar nor orator, and had no ancestors to boast of; but he had powerful voices to speak for him. If you could believe Robbie Budd, one of these voices was that of the squat little Frenchman with the white walrus mustaches and black skull-cap who sat at the head of the conference table and choked off debate with his " Adopt й !” Robbie said that "the Tiger" had been Zaharoffs friend for years, and both his brother and his son were directors in Zaharoffs companies. If you wanted to understand a politician you mustn't pay too much attention to his speeches, but find out who were his paymasters. A politician couldn't rise in public life, in France any more than in America, unless he had the backing of big money, and it was in times of crisis like this that he paid his debts.