WORLD'S END

Said the father: "I could tell you a hundred different facts which I know, and which all fit into one pattern. The great source of steel for both France and Germany is in Lorraine, called the Briey basin; get your map and look it up, and you will see that the battle line runs right through it. On one side the Germans are getting twenty or thirty million tons of ore every year and smelting it into steel, and on the other side the French are doing the same. On the French side the profits are going to Francois de Wendel, President of the Comite des Forges and member of the Chamber of Deputies; on the other side they are going to his brother Charles Wendel, naturalized German subject and member of the Reichstag. Those huge blast furnaces and smelters are in plain sight; but no aviators even tried to bomb them until recently. Then one single attempt was made, and the lieutenant who had charge of it was an employee of the Comite des Forges. Surprisingly, the attempt was a failure."

Robbie went on to explain that the same thing was happening to the four or five million tons of iron ore which Germany was getting from Sweden; the Danish line which brought this ore to Germany had never lost a vessel, in that service or any other, and the Swedish railroads which carried the ore burned British coal. "If it hadn't been for this," wrote the father, "Germany would have been out of the war a year ago. It's not too much to say that every man who died at Verdun, and everyone who has died since then, has been a sacrifice to those businessmen who own the newspapers and the politicians of France. That is why I tell you, if you are going to be patriotic, let it be for the American steel kings, of whom you may some day be one. Don't be patriotic for Schneider and the de Wendels, nor for Deterding, nor for Zaharoff!"

VI

Lanny kept that letter and studied it, and thought about it as hard as he knew how. He did not fail to note the curious thing that Marcel had commented upon, the similarity of his father's views with those of the outlawed uncle. The uncle and the father agreed upon the same set of facts, and they even drew the same conclusion - that nobody ought to be patriotic. The point where they split was that Robbie said you had to stuff your pockets, because you couldn't help it; whereas Uncle Jesse - Lanny wasn't sure what he wanted, but apparently it was to empty Robbie's pockets!

Lanny took this letter to his mother, and it threw her into a panic. Politics and high finance didn't mean much to her, but she thought about the effect of such news upon her husband, and made Lanny promise not to mention it to him. Just now he was putting the finishing touches on his "Sister of Mercy," and was much absorbed in it. If the French weren't winning the war, at least they weren't losing it, so Marcel 'could be what his wife called "rational." As it happened, it was in that Briey district that he had been sitting in a kite balloon, surveying those blast furnaces and smelters which were the source of the enemy's fighting power. He had been praying for the day when France might have enough planes to destroy them. If now the terrible idea was suggested to him that la patrie had the power, but was kept from using it by traitors, who could guess what frenzy might seize him?

So Lanny took the letter to his adviser in international affairs, M. Rochambeau. This old gentleman represented a small nation which was forced to buy its oil at market prices, and had never engaged in attempts to despoil its neighbors; therefore he could contemplate problems of high finance from the point of view of the eighth and tenth commandments. When Lanny expressed his bewilderment at the seeming agreement between his conservative father and his revolutionary uncle, the retired diplomat answered with his quiet smile that every businessman was something of a revolutionist, whether he knew it or not. Each demanded his profits, and sought the removal of any factor that menaced his trade or privileges.

Lanny, whose mind was questioning everything and wondering about his own relation to it, was thinking a great deal about whether he wanted to follow in his father's footsteps and become the munitions king of America, or whether he wanted to play around with the arts. And now he heard this old gentleman, who knew the world and met it with suavity, point out the difference between business and art. One might look at a Rembrandt picture, or hear a Beethoven symphony, without depriving others of the privilege; but one couldn't become an oil king without taking oil away from others.

Said Lanny: "My father argues that the businessman creates wealth without limit."

Replied the other: "The only thing that I have observed to be without limit is the businessman's desire for profits. He has to have raw materials, and he has to have patents, and if he has too many competitors, his profits vanish."