WORLD'S END

"It doesn't happen in Koblenz," declared the other, emphatically. He was part of the army which had gone into the Rhineland to guard the bridgeheads pending the signing of a treaty. Jerry's brigade was covering a semicircle of German territory, some forty miles in diameter on the far side of the river, and his company had been quartered for three months in a tiny village where they had every opportunity to know the population. The lieutenant himself was billeted in a farmhouse where everything was so neat, and the old couple so kind, so patient and humble, grateful for the tiniest favor - it was exactly as Kurt had told Lanny it would be, the doughboys had learned that the Germans were not the Huns they had been pictured. More and more the Americans were wondering why they had had to fight such people, and how much longer they were going to have to stay and blockade them from the rest of the world.

The Rhineland is a rich country and produces food and wine in abundance; but it had been just behind the fighting front for four years and the retreating German armies had carried off all they could. Now the people were living on the scantiest rations and the children were pale and hollow-eyed. The well-fed Yanks were expected to live in houses with undernourished children and pregnant women and never give them food. There were strict orders against "fraternizing with the enemy"; but did that include stuffing half a load of bread into your overcoat pocket and passing it out to the kids?

And what about the Frдuleins, those sweet-faced, gentle creatures with golden or straw-colored braids down their backs, and white dresses with homemade embroidery on the edges? Their fellows had been marched back into the interior of Germany, and here were handsome upstanding conquerors from the far-off prairie states, with chocolates and canned peaches and other unthinkable delicacies at their disposal. Lieutenant Pendleton chuckled as he told about what must surely have been the oddest military regulation ever issued in the history of warfare; the doughboys had been officially informed that entering into intimate relations with German Frдuleins was not to be considered as "fraternizing" within the meaning of the army regulations!

"Is that why you've lost interest in Cannes?" asked Lanny, with a grin.

"No," said Jerry, "but I'll tell you this. If somebody doesn't hurry up and make up his mind about peace terms, a lot of our fellows are just going to take things into their own hands and go home - and their Frдuleins with them. What's the matter with these old men in Paris, Lanny?"

"I'll introduce you to some of them," answered the youth, "and you can find out for yourself."

VI

Jerry Pendleton having lunch at the Crillon; a piece of luck that rarely fell to the lot of a "shavetail," even one who had fought through a war! It would be something to tell at the officers' mess in the Rhineland; it would be something to tell to his grandchildren in Kansas, in days when all this was in the history books - the "First World War."

Lanny sat at table with his chief, because meals were times for confidential chats and informal reports, and perhaps for helping to translate the excited French of somebody who wanted more territory for his tiny state. A young officer on leave from the front might hear things that would give him a jolt - for these college professors had opinions of their own, and did not hesitate to bandy about the most exalted names.

The young lieutenant was asked to what unit he belonged and what service he had seen. When he said that he had been through the Meuse-Argonne - well, it was no great distinction, for more than a million others could say the same, not counting fifty thousand or so who would never speak of that, or anything else. The conversation turned to that six weeks' blood-bath, hailed as a glory in the press at home. What was the real truth about it? Had Foch wished to set the Americans a task at which no army could succeed?

Had he been punishing General Pershing for obstinacy and presumption?

The young lieutenant learned that from the hour when the first American division had been landed in France there had been a war going on between the American commander-in-chief and the British and French commands, backed by their governments. It had been their idea that American troops should be brigaded in with British and French troops and used to replace the wastage of their battles; but Pershing had been determined that there should be an American army, fighting under the American flag. He had declared this purpose and hung onto it like any British bulldog. But the others had never given up; they had used each new defeat as an excuse for putting pressure; they had pulled every sort of political wire and worried every American who had any authority or influence.