Пользователь - WORLD'S END

No, he hadn't intended anything so serious. He had been thinking about a little pleasure, in the mood of these days, when men and women had the feeling that life was cheating them. Penelope said something like that; she was leaning closer to him, practically in his arms, and all he had to do was to close them.

"Listen, dear," he said; and his tone forecast what he was going to say: "If we do this, we'll get fond of each other, and then we'll be unhappy."

"Do you think so, darling?"

"You may be thinking you can go back to that chap at home. But perhaps you'll find you don't care for him any more, and you'll make yourself miserable, and him too."

"I've thought about it a lot, Lanny. We do what we think is right - and then we go off and spend many a lonely hour wondering if we didn't make a mistake."

"I'm judging by the way I am with that English girl I told you about."

"You can't forget her?"

"I've tried to, and I ought to, but I just don't."

"I suppose that's what's the matter between us," reflected Penelope. "There's a German poem that tells about a youth who loved a maiden who had chosen another."

"I know - Heine. And whom it just touches, his heart breaks in two."

"I don't suppose there'll ever be a remedy for that," said the girl.

They sat listening to the concertina player, who was evidently a returned poilu; he played their songs, which Lanny knew from Marcel and the other mutil й s. Many of them dealt with love, and as a rule were sad; the toughest old campaigner would sit with a mist of tears in his eyes, hearing about the girl he had left behind him and wouldn't see again. Lanny told Penelope what was in these songs, and with echoes of them in their ears they strolled to the car and drove back to the city. Afterward, it was just as she had said - they both wondered if they hadn't made a mistake.

IV

The Germans were continuing their bombardment of the treaty, and were getting the help of liberal and "radical" groups all over the world. The statesmen in Paris who had pledged themselves to "open covenants openly arrived at" were now doing their best to keep the terms of this treaty from reaching the public; the text was unobtainable in America, and even in France, but you could buy a copy for two francs in Belgium, and protests against it arose more loudly every day in the neutral lands. The British Labour Party denounced it, which meant many votes and had a disturbing effect upon the "mercurial" Prime Minister. He began wobbling again and caused an amusing situation.

Through all the battles, it had been the Presbyterian President against the cynical Tiger, with Lloyd George holding the balance of power, and generally giving the decision to the Tiger. But now, here was the little Welshman fighting the Tiger, and President Wilson having the decision - and he too giving it to the Tiger! This amazed the people at the Majestic. One of the staff, Mr. Keynes, said that Lloyd George had set out to bamboozle the American President and had succeeded too well; now, when he set out to "debamboozle" him, it couldn't be done. The agile-minded little Welshman was helpless before the stiff "Covenanter" temperament, which had to convince itself that what it did was divinely inspired, and then, having acquired that conviction, had to stand by it, no matter how many votes it might cost.

Lanny heard the President's side from Davisson and others who were defending him in hot arguments with Alston. At the time when Wilson had needed Lloyd George's help it had been refused. Now the treaty had been presented to the enemy, and it was a question of making him sign it. What time was this for the Allies to start weakening? Clemenceau couldn't give way, for he had Foch on his back, and Poincarй watching for the moment to trip him. All that could be brought about was another deadlock, such as they had had two months ago, and starting the whole weary wrangle all over again.

One aspect of the problem could be mentioned only in whispers. General Pershing wasn't sure how long he could control his troops. His armies were melting away. All over France, Belgium, Switzerland, were not merely doughboys but also officers who had quit in disgust. No need for Jerry Pendleton to hide, or for Lanny to worry about him any more! And if the Germans should refuse to sign the treaty, would the men still under arms consent to march and fight? Congress had been summoned in special session, and there was a resolution before the Senate declaring that a state of peace existed with Germany. Just as easy as that!

Clemenceau and Marshal Foch wouldn't yield an inch; no, not an inch; but having said that and sworn it, they began to yield, a fraction of an inch here and a fraction there. Germany was going to be admitted to the League of Nations after all. And there was going to be a plebiscite for a part of Upper Silesia - not the part containing Schloss Stubendorf, alas, but the part with the coal mines, which the Poles wanted so badly, and which the French wanted to use against Germany the next time. So it went, and each small concession was a bite out of the body and soul of France; the screams were loud and terrifying - and Lanny, most of whose life had been lived among the French, couldn't make up his mind whether to listen to his boyhood friends, or to these new ones who talked so impressively about justice, chivalry, democracy, and other abstractions.

It was a complex problem that taxed the mental powers of the ablest minds in the world, and would continue to be argued about by historians. Professor Davisson and others to whose arguments Lanny listened declared that these were not questions of right and wrong, of morality or immorality, but of statesmanship. Of course it wasn't just that Germany should be shut off from East Prussia; but wouldn't it be equally unjust if Poland should be shut off from the sea? The real question was, which course would provide for international security. Said Davisson: "The main lines of this settlement have been established by the procиsses of history. It is fighting against these procиsses not to recognize the successor states, especially Poland and Czechoslovakia, and give them the territory and resources to maintain and defend themselves."

There were those who went even farther, driven by the mood of war; they insisted that the Allied armies should have marched to Berlin, to let the Germans know what war is really like, and cure them of their fondness for it. The peace terms should now provide for the dividing of Germany into a number of small states, as in the days before Bismarck. The Prussians were a tribe incapable of understanding any ideal save that of conquest, and it should be made impossible for them to use the peace-loving Germans of Bavaria and the Rhineland in their adventures. Lanny didn't associate with persons who held such views, because Alston and his group considered them outside the pale; but he met them among his mother's friends, and among those who came to Mrs. Emily's. They seemed to know a lot of history.

V

Bullitt and Steffens had journeyed to Russia on a mission, of a sort contrived by statesmen who wish to keep themselves free either to accept the results, in which case it was an official mission; or to reject the results, in which case the statesmen had nothing to do with the mission and didn't even know about it. In the case of the expedition to Russia, Wilson and Lloyd George had chosen the latter course; and now what were the expeditioners going to do?

Lincoln Steffens had already had his experience of martyrdom, and was having it still. He had written too sympathetically about various "radicals" in trouble, and as a result no magazine of any circulation was willing to have his name appear in its pages. Here he was, a highly trained journalist in Paris, enjoying contacts such as no other had; every day he collected marvelous stories - and could do nothing with them but hand them over to less competent men.