Пользователь - WORLD'S END

"There's no doubt," the youth added, "that President Wilson means what he says, the American troops are going to find a way to withdraw from the fighting." And when Zaharoff brought up another subject, he replied: "I really don't know what's going to happen at Batum. The British can't seem to make up their minds. Have you heard the bad news as to the troubles of the French in the Ukraine?"

All that was sparring, of course; and Zaharoff knew it. He knew what it meant when Lanny explained that, unfortunately, on the few occasions when he did get advance news of the Crillon's intentions, it was always confidential, and so his lips were sealed. The munitions king realized that he had wasted his afternoon. He didn't show any signs of irritation, but brought the interview politely to a close and parted from the youth on terms which would make it possible for the duquesa to invite him again.

But she didn't; and Lanny didn't see those shy and well-bred young ladies for quite a while - until he met one of them as the wife of an English ship owner who was said to be helping Zaharoff secretly re-arm Germany. He learned that the other one had married a nobleman and gone to live in Constantinople, where she had become celebrated for the protection she offered to the pariah dogs of that city. The wheel of fate had made a circle, and a portion of Zaharoff's fortune had returned to the place from which it had made its not so creditable start!

29

A Friend in Need

I

THE Supreme Council was now going ahead under full steam. They were hearing the claims of the small nationalities, and it was proving a tedious procиss. As the Americans reported it, Dmowski, presenting the case of Poland, began with the fourteenth century at eleven o'clock in the morning, and reached 1919 at four in the afternoon. Next day came Benes to present the claims of the Czechs, ahd he began a century earlier and finished an hour later.

Professor Alston had to be there, for no one could say at what moment an American commissioner might beckon to him and ask some question; Lanny had to be there, because of the heavy portfolios, and also because the professor's French couldn't cope with the outbursts of Clemenceau, who used not merely the slang of the boulevards, but that of the underworld - many of his ejaculations being so obscene that Lanny was embarrassed to translate them and the recorders of the proceedings had to be told to expurgate them.

A weary, weary ordeal! You couldn't lounge or tilt back in a frail gilded chair a couple of hundred years old; you had to sit stiff and motionless and tell yourself it was a history lesson. But did you want to know all that history? Lanny would close his eyes and remember the beach at Juan, the blue water sparkling in the sunshine, and the little white sailboats all over the Golfe. He would summon up the garden with the masses of bougainvillaea in bloom; he would remember the piano, and yearn over those boxes of books which he had had shipped from the home of Great-Great-Uncle Eli and which some day he was going to have the delight of unpacking. Did he really want to be a person of distinction, live in the grand monde and submit to endless, unremitting boredom?

He would open his eyes and watch the faces of the old men who were here deciding the destinies of the nations. Clemenceau sat shrunken into a little knot, the hands with the gray gloves folded over his stomach, the heavy lids covering his weary brown eyes. Was he asleep? Maybe so,' but he had an inner alarm clock, for the moment anyone said anything against the interests of his beloved patrie he was all alert, bristling like the tiger he was named for. The pink, cherubic Lloyd George quite frankly dozed; he told one of the Americans that two things had kept him alive through the ordeal of the war - naps were one and the other was singing Welsh hymns.

Woodrow Wilson was unsparing of himself, and as the weeks passed his health caused worry to his associates. He was attending these Council sessions all day, and in the evenings the sessions of the League of Nations Commission. He was driving himself, because he had to sail on the fourteenth of February to attend the closing sessions of the Congress, and he was determined to take with him the completed draft of the Covenant of the League. A thousand cares and problems beset him and he was getting no sleep; he became haggard and there began a nervous twitching of the left side of his face. Lanny, watching, him, decided never to. aspire to fame.

The oratory became intolerable, so the Council picked out the talkers, and appointed them on what was called the "Clarification Commission," where they could talk to one another. Altogether there were appointed fifty-eight commissions to deal with the multiplicity of problems, and these commissions held a total of 1646 sessions. But that didn't remedy the trouble, because all the commissions had to report - and to whom? Where was the human brain that could absorb so many details? Hundreds of technical advisers assembling masses of information and shaping important conclusions - and then unable to find a way to make their work count!

All the problems of the world had been dumped onto the shoulders of a few elderly men; and the world had to crumble to pieces while one after another of these men broke down under the strain. There was that terrible influenza loose in Paris, striking blindly, like another war. It was the middle of winter, and winds came storming across the North Sea, tempered somewhat by the time they got to Paris, but laden with sleet and snow. It would cover the mansard roofs and pile up on the chimney pots; it didn't last many hours, and then the streets would be carpeted with slush, and the miasma that rose from it bore germs which had been accumulating through a thousand years of human squalor.

II

Early in February the Bolshevik government announced its willingness to send delegates to the Prinkipo conference. That put it up to President Wilson to act, if he was going to stand by his project. A few days later Alston told his secretary an exciting piece of news: the President had decided to name two delegates, one an American journalist, William Allen White, and the other Alston's old-time mentor, George D. Herron!

The official announcement was made a day or two later and raised a storm of protest from the "best" people back home. The New York Times led off with an editorial blast exposing the Socialist ex-clergyman's black record; the Episcopal bishop of New York followed suit, and the church people and the women's clubs rushed to the defense of the American home. It was bad enough to propose sitting at a council table with bloody-handed thugs and nationalizers of women; but to send to them a man who shared their moral depravity was to degrade the fair name of Columbia the Gem of the Ocean. All this was duly cabled and printed in Paris, and reinforced the efforts of the Quai d'Orsay to torpedo the Prinkipo proposal.

Herron, who had gone back to his home in Geneva, now returned to Paris, deeply stirred by the opportunity which had come to him. No longer would he have to sit helpless and watch the world crumble. He saw himself arbitrating this ferocious class war which had spread over one-sixth of the globe and was threatening to wreck another huge section of Europe. He was busy day and night with conferences; the newspaper men swarmed about him, asking questions, not merely about Russia and the Reds, but about free love in relation to the Christian religion, and whatever else might make hot news for the folks at home.

The Socialist prophet was all ready to go to work. But how was he to do it? He had never held an official position, and came to Alston for advice. How did one set about working for a government? Where did one go? If he was to set out for Prinkipo, presumably he would have a staff, and an escort, and some funds. Where would he get them?