WORLD'S END

It was nearing the end of March. Relations with Germany had been severed for many weeks, and President Wilson had declared a state of what he called "armed neutrality." America was going to arm its merchant vessels, and in the meantime Germany was going on sinking them, day after day. Shipping was delayed, the vessels in American harbors were afraid to venture out.

"What can we do?" repeated Robbie. "The only alternative is to declare an embargo, and abandon our European trade entirely."

"What would that do?"

"It would bring a panic in a week. Budd's would have to shut down, and throw twenty thousand men out of work."

Driving to their hotel in a horse-drawn cab, Robbie explained this situation. A large-scale manufacturing enterprise was geared to a certain schedule. A quantity of finished goods came off the conveyors every day, and was boxed and put into freight cars or trucks - or, in the case of Budd's, which had its own river frontage, onto ships. Vessels were loaded and moved away, making room for others. If for any reason that schedule was interrupted, the plant would be blockaded, because its warehouses could hold only a few days' output. The same thing would happen at the other end, because raw materials came on a fixed schedule - they had been ordered and had to be taken and paid for, but there was place to store only a limited supply; they were supposed to go through the plant and be moved on.

That, said Robbie, was the situation not merely with steel mills and munitions plants, but with meat packing and flour milling, making boots and saddles, automobiles and trucks, anything you could think of. Rightly or wrongly, wisely or unwisely, American business had geared itself to the task of supplying the need of the nations of Europe. American finance had geared itself to taking and marketing their bonds. If all this were suddenly stopped, there would be such a breakdown as had never been known in the world before - "ten or twenty million men out of work," declared the representative of Budd Gunmakers Corporation.

Lanny had heard many persons express disapproval of those who were making money out of this war; Kurt, and Rick, and Beauty, Sophie, Marcel, and M. Rochambeau. But when he listened to his father, all that vanished like mist before the morning sun. He saw right away that things had to be like this; if you were going to have machinery, and produce goods on a big scale, you had to do it in a fixed way. The artists and dreamers and moralists were just talking about things they didn't understand.

At least that was the way it seemed until Lanny got off by himself. Then he began to have troubles in his thinking. Robbie was all for Budd's, and defended the right of Budd's to get all the business it could, and to keep its workers employed. But Robbie didn't like Zaharoff, and had a tendency to resent the business that Vickers got. Robbie blamed Schneider-Creusot because it sold goods to neutral countries which resold them to Germany; he objected to the French de Wendels' protecting their properties in Germany. But suppose that Budd's had owned plants in Germany - wouldn't Robbie be trying to take care of them, and pointing out the harm it would do if they were bombed?

In short, wasn't there as much to be said for one set of businessmen as for another? As much for Germans as for British or French or Americans? Lanny felt in duty bound to be fair to his friend Kurt, and to Kurt's family who had been so kind to him. He could not forget having heard Herr Meissner using these very same arguments about the need of German manufacturers to get raw materials and to win foreign markets, in order to keep their workers employed and their plants running on schedule. It was extremely puzzling; but Lanny didn't say much about it, because for two years and a half he had been learning to keep his ideas to himself. In wartime it appeared that nobody wanted to see both sides of any question.

IV

Of course the father and son didn't spend all their time discussing world politics. Lanny had to tell about Beauty and Marcel; about the painter's wounds, and his way of life, and his work; about the new baby they were going to have, on purpose - a somewhat rare event nowadays, so Robbie remarked. And about Sophie and her Eddie Patterson and his ambulance driving; about Mrs. Emily and Les Forкts, and old M. Priedieu and how he had died; about Sept Chкnes, and the war victims who were being re-educated, including Lanny's gigolo, who would never jig again. And about Mr. Robin, and the letters to Kurt, and the little Robins, and the Jews, and didn't Robbie like them, and why not? And about Rosemary - a large subject in herself; and Rick and his flying - as soon as Lanny learned that he was to have a few days in Paris he got off a card to Rick, on the chance that he might be able to get a day's leave and visit his friend.