Пользователь - WORLDS END Страница 62

"But, Robbie," argued his son, "a lot of the Fourteen Points are what you yourself say ought to be done."

"Yes, but Europe isn't going to do them, and it's not our business to make them."

"But what harm can it do to give them advice? Professor Alston says" - and Lanny would repeat some of his new friend's statistics regarding the economic unity of Europe, which was being crippled in so many ways by its political subdivisions. Robbie didn't deny the facts, but he didn't want to take them from a "scholar in politics." The scholar's place was the classroom, or his own cloistered study, where he would be free to write books - which Robbie wouldn't read!

III

However, the scholar was in politics - and no way to get him out until the next election. The former president of Princeton University had got the whole civilized world for his classroom, with hundreds of reporters eagerly collecting every word that he might speak, and paying fortunes to cable it to China and Peru. He had caused to be assembled a troop of his kind, a sort of general staff of peace, which, under the name of "The Inquiry," had been working more than a year to prepare for the time when the war drums throbbed no longer and the battle flags were furled.

The task of organizing this "Inquiry" had been passed on by the President to his Texas friend, Colonel House, who in turn had put the president of another college in charge. Some two hundred scholars had been selected and set to work accumulating a huge mass of data. Elaborate detail maps had been prepared, covering every square mile of Europe; statistics had been dug up, both in libraries and in the "field," as to populations, languages, industries, resources - every question which might arise during the making over of the world. Several carloads of material had been boxed and loaded onto the transport George Washington, together with many of the learned persons who had helped to prepare it, and all had been conveyed to the harbor of Brest under the escort of a battleship and half a dozen destroyers.

Professor Alston had been left behind, laid up with the dreadful "flu" which had come in the wake of war; a mysterious scourge which science was powerless to explain, and which many looked upon as a judgment of Providence upon the disorderly nations. The frail professor was hardly well enough to travel, but was worrying himself because of what might appear a shirking of all-important duties. Robbie Budd consoled him by saying: "You won't find all the problems settled when you get to Paris. You may not find them settled when you leave. Your learning may be saved for the next conference."

The professor didn't have his feelings hurt. "Yes, Budd," he answered, patiently. "That's what makes our task so hard - the dreadful weight of skepticism which rests upon so many minds."

IV

The curtain was about to rise upon the last act of the great world melodrama which Lanny Budd had been watching through four and a half impressionable years. During the eight days of the steamer voyage his new friend helped him to peep through the curtain and see the leading characters taking their positions. This melodrama differed from others in that it was not written, it was to be played impromptu, and only once; after that it would be precedent, and would determine the destinies of mankind perhaps for centuries. Each of the actors hoped to write it his way, and no living man could say what the dйnouement would be.

Professor Alston talked about history, geography, and those racial and language differences which made such a complex. As a scientist, he was dedicated to the truth; he said that he had but one thought, to understand men and nations, and help to bring about a peace that could endure because it was just and sound.

That was the "way Lanny wanted things to be; that was his dream, to find some method which would bring his friend Rick and his friend Kurt together, now that the war was over. For hours on end, helping the professor to practice his French, the youth asked questions, and showed himself so eager and understanding that on the last day of the voyage, when the steamer was in sight of the lighthouse of Pointe de St.-Mathieu, the frail scholar was moved to inquire: "Lanny, how would you like to have a job?"

"What sort of job?" asked the other, surprised.

"The State Department, which is my employer, has not seen fit to allow me the services of a secretary; but the nearer I get to France, the more I realize how I shall need one. It's going to be some time before I recover my full strength, and the duties before me are certain to be heavy."

"But a secretary has to know shorthand and typing, doesn't he?"

"Your knowledge of languages and of European ways would count far more with me."

"Don't you think I'm rather young for such a task?"

"You are older than you look. The main thing is that I can trust you. I couldn't pay you what you would consider an adequate salary - "

"Oh, I wouldn't let you pay me, Professor Alston!"

"I'll try to get the department to foot the bill. But in any case I would insist upon your being paid. It'll be one of those all day and most of the night jobs that one does because they're urgent, and because they're interesting. You'd meet a lot of important people, and you'd be on the inside of affairs. I should think it ought to be worth a year in college."

"It sort of takes my breath away," said Lanny. "It would be the first time I ever earned anything."

"What do you suppose your father would say?"

"He wants me to meet people; but he's all the time hoping I'll begin to take hold of the munitions business."

"Well, there's a competition between your father's business and mine right now." The professor was smiling.

"My father won't fight you," replied Lanny, seriously; "but he'll wait, feeling sure that the forces on his side will lick you."

"Perhaps I'd better be the one to put the proposal to him," said the professor. "I don't want him to think I'm trying to steal his son."

Robbie was broader-minded about it than they had foreseen. He saw the advantages which such an opening would give to Lanny. That was the way young Englishmen began their careers in politics and diplomacy; and Robbie wasn't afraid of his son's being led astray by the peace-makers. He said that the same men who made the peace would be making the next war, and Lanny would have a chance to meet and know them. "I'm going to be all over Europe during the next couple of months," added the wise father. "I'll tell you things and you can tell me things."

Lanny thought about that. "Listen, Robbie. If I'm going to be on the payroll of the government, I'll have to work for it, and there may be things I can't tell."

The other was amused. "That's O.K. by me," he said, in the slang of the day. "But this job won't last forever, and when it's done, we'll join forces again."

V

Lanny took the job. Because he liked his new boss, he became not merely secretary, but male nurse, valet, and handyman; he helped the professor to get his things packed, and to get on board the boat train, and to get to his hotel. Oddly enough, the one which Robbie had always patronized, the Crillon, had been taken by the United States government for the use of the Peace Commission and its advisers. Lanny and his professor could have rooms there, but Robbie couldn't - not for love or money. A symbol of the new order of things, under which businessmen were being ousted from the seats of authority and replaced by scholars in politics!

Lanny found himself, with hardly any warning, thrust into the midst of a beehive, or antheap, or whatever simile best indicates a great number of creatures in a state of violent activity. It has always been the practice of scholars and specialists to meet in congresses and conventions, and they always feel that what they are doing is of vital importance; but it may be doubted if any group of such persons had ever before had such good reason to hold this conviction. Some fifty American scholars, plus librarians and custodians of documents and typists and other assistants, several hundred persons in all, had been appointed to remedy the evils of Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australasia, which had been accumulating for no one could say how many hundreds of years. All the world had been told that the evils were to be remedied, and all but a few skeptical ones believed it, and waited in suspense for the promises to be kept. The fate of hundreds of millions of persons for an indefinite future might depend upon the advice which these scholars would give; so the learned ones carried in their souls a colossal burden of responsibility, and never in the history of mankind had so much conscientiousness been crowded into one structure as was to be found at the junction of the Rue Royale and the Place de la Concorde at Christmas time of the year 1918.

The first few hours for Lanny Budd were a blur of faces, names, and handshakes. He met so many persons that he gave up trying to keep them in mind. But quickly they began to sort themselves out. Professor Alston's immediate associates were eager to tell him all that had happened during the two or three weeks he had lost. Alston informed them that Lanny was to be his confidant, and so he had a front seat at the rising of the curtain upon the fateful last act of the great world melodrama.

The art work of the ages to which this production most nearly approached was the story of Daniel in the lions' den. The title role was taken by the scholar from Princeton, and the scholars from Yale, Harvard, Columbia, and other institutions were gathered in his train, striding with bold miens but quaking hearts into an arena filled with British lions, and with tigers, hyenas, jackals, crocodiles, and other creatures whose national affiliations had better not be specified. Each of these creatures had jaws dripping with blood, and under its claws lay other creatures, equally fierce, but now torn, bleeding, and near to death.

Such was the aspect of the world at the conclusion of the greatest of recorded wars, and the task of Daniel and his associates and advisers was to persuade the victorious ones to abandon at least a part of the prey they had seized, and permit it to be hospitalized and have its wounds attended and be set upon its feet again, under solemn pledges to abandon its predatory ways and live thereafter in a millennial state of brotherhood and legality. If into this description there creeps a trace of mockery, it is due to the fact that Robbie Budd was sojourning at the Hotel Vendфme not far away, meeting his son at intervals, and hearing his description of the academic gentlemen and their activities. If it had been an assemblage of steel, oil, and munitions manufacturers meeting to apportion the trade of the world, Robbie would have taken its decisions with seriousness; but to his mind there was something inherently comical about any large group of college professors. The kindest comparison he could make was to the behavior and conversation of a flock of elderly hens in a chickenhouse when the fox comes sneaking round at night.

VI

When Lanny got to know the members of the American staff, he found that some were according to his father's imagining, but the little group of Alston's intimates had a point of view which included Robbie's far more than Robbie's included theirs. They were informed concerning munitions manufacturers and salesmen, and the part which these played in the beginning and continuing of wars. They knew it so well that they were a bit uneasy at the idea of having their intimate conversations listened to by a son of Budd's, They had to sound him out and watch his reactions for a while before they would completely trust him.

Besides academic persons the staff included a number of young men of independent means who were playing at politics and diplomacy in what they were pleased to consider the "people's cause." Lanny discovered that these fellows knew about Zaharoff, and the de Wendels, and the Briey Basin, which had come out of the war without any serious bombing. They knew about the politicians and propagandists both official and unofficial who now surrounded them. Their conversation was full of jokes about being flimflammed and bamboozled and hoodwinked, short-changed or sold a gold brick or a gross of green spectacles. They watched suspiciously every person who approached them, and received a compliment as if it might be a loaded hand grenade. Many had their wives with them, and these helped to mount guard.

The concern of many had been aroused at the outset by the fact that there was no peace conference under way, and no sign of getting ready for one. The French government had requested that President Wilson should arrive by the fourteenth of December and the President had done so. They had given him a grand reception - the people of Paris turning out and making it the most tumultuous in history. But nothing had been said about a conference; the French hadn't even named their delegates.

The more suspicious of the staff put their heads together. What did it mean? Doubtless they had wanted to get the President over here so that they could wine him and dine him and tell him that he was the greatest man in the world. They would study him, discover his weak points, and see what they could do with him. They offered to take him to inspect the war zones, and the meaning of that was obvious; they would stir up his emotions, fill him with the same hatred of the Germans which they themselves felt. Meanwhile the military men would go on weakening Germany, taking out of the country all those things which the armistice had required - five thousand locomotives, as many trucks, and a hundred and fifty thousand freight cars. Germany would be blockaded, and its remaining stocks of food exhausted - in short, those who wanted a Carthaginian peace would be getting it.

Within the Allied lines there was a struggle getting under way between those who wanted to make peace and those who wanted to wage the next war. In general the French were on one side and the Americans on the other, with the British wavering between the two. Lloyd George, who had become Prime Minister during the war, had only a faction behind him, and had seen the opportunity to cement his power by throwing the country into a general election - the "khaki election," it was called, because of the spirit in which it was carried on. Lloyd George had promised that the Kaiser should be tried, and at the hustings the cry had arisen for him to be hanged. The German people must somehow be made to suffer, as the British and French and Belgians had done. But there was a liberal element among the British representatives in Paris, especially the younger ones, who were sympathetic to the American program of peace with reconciliation. These, of course, wished to meet and know the Americans. Was it proper for the Americans to meet them? Or would that, too, be "propaganda"?

VII

Lanny had sent his mother a telegram upon his arrival in Brest, mentioning the exciting tidings that he had got a job. It meant that he could not come to Juan - at least, not until he had finished solving the problems of Europe. He wrote, suggesting that she should come to Paris.

Of course Beauty had to see her boy; and Robbie thought it would be a good thing if she left home for a while. He didn't take much stock in her efforts at rehabilitating broken Frenchmen; that was all right for women of a certain type, but not for Beauty, who was made for pleasure. Writing to Lanny, she protested that everything in Paris would be so dreadfully expensive; and Robbie answered in his usual way, by giving their son an extra check to send her. It was one of his ways of educating Lanny, helping him to realize how pleasant it was to have money, heigh-ho!