WORLD'S END

THERE were five members of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace. President Wilson was of course its head, and the French government had lent him a palace to stay in, the home of the Princess Murat. The second member was Mr. Lansing, Secretary of State, who did not agree with his chief about the League or anything else very much; he was a lawyer, and thought that things ought to be done according to juridical formulas which he had learned. He spent his time recording his objections in a diary; also making comical little sketches of the other diplomats. To him and his fellow members had been assigned apartments on the second floor of the Crillon, looking out on the Place and having the highest ceilings, the biggest chandeliers, and the most gilt and pink upholstery.

One of these others was General Bliss, a bluff and kindly old soldier who gave good practical advice when asked. Another was a veteran diplomat, Mr. Henry White, who owed his appointment to the fact that etiquette required that the Republican party should have representation on the Peace Commission. Mr. White was so old that the Republicans had forgotten him, but he was in the history books and nobody could question his credentials. He had been in Paris at the time of the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune, nearly fifty years back, and he liked to drive people around and show them the places and tell what he had seen; but he wasn't seeing very much now.

The fifth member was of a retiring nature, but that didn't prevent his suite from becoming the most frequented of all. Two naval yeomen in uniforms and white caps stood guard at the door, and in the anterooms you would see the great ones of the earth coming and going at all hours, and many cooling their heels, waiting in hope of an interview. The name of this commissioner was Colonel House. He was not a military man, but the kind known as a "Kentucky colonel" - although he came from Texas. He was a frail little gentleman of sixty or so, and had never enjoyed health enough to be a warrior, or even to engage in the turmoil of politics; he didn't like crowds and shrank from publicity as a mole from sunlight. What he liked to do was to consult and advise and persuade; he liked to sit behind the scenes and pull wires and manipulate the actors. Being wealthy, he could indulge in this hobby; he had made several governors of his home state, and then had picked out the head of a college as a likely "prexy" for the forty-eight states. He had promoted him and "put him over," and was now his friend and authorized agent in most of the peace negotiations.

He had come to Europe before the outbreak of the war. He had come more than once during the conflict, trying to work out ways to end it. He was gentle and unassuming, and never sought anything for himself; people compared him to a little white mouse - and right now the words of this mouse were backed by most of the money and most of the food in the world. America had financed the last year and a half of the war, and America must finance whatever peace there was to be. What did America want? What would America accept? The answer was: "See Colonel House."

So it came about that through the doors where stood the naval yeomen, polite yet impressive with their side-arms, came diplomats and politicians and journalists from pretty nearly every nation of the earth. In those anterooms you saw uniforms worthy of the most expensive grand opera production: gold and cream and scarlet, rose-pink, sky-blue. You saw civilian costumes out of the gorgeous East, Near and Far: burnooses, mantles, and togas, turbans, fezzes, and sugarloaf hats. You saw Koreans and Malayans, Kabardians and Lezghians, Buriats and Kirghiz, Kurds, Persians, Georgians, Azerbaijan Moslems, Assyrian Christians, and all the varieties of Syrians - Moslem, Druse, and Greek Orthodox. Had ever in the history of Texas a stranger fate befallen one of its sons than to be receiving this stream of day and night callers, and to know that his smile was a matter of life and death to their peoples?

II

To this Mecca of peace-seekers now came Professor Alston, bringing the tidings that he had established contact with certain of the extremely elusive Bolshevik agents in Paris. Might it be that this would offer to President Wilson and his staff an opportunity of sounding out the revolutionaries and judging the probabilities of success for any conference?

The little white mouse found that interesting. It was the sort of thing he liked to do. He pinned his faith upon quiet talks and understandings among key people. That was the way the Democratic party was run in Texas; that was the way a college president had been nominated for President of the United States; that was the way peace was now to be brought to Europe. When the details had been agreed upon, the results would be proclaimed, and that would be "open covenants openly arrived at."