WORLD'S END

Already they had fourteen little wars going - one for each of the Fourteen Points, said Professor Alston, bitterly. They were getting ready for the really big war, the Allied invasion of Russia. The blockade was screwed down tighter than ever; the Allies refused to lift it even from Poland and the new state of Czechoslovakia, for fear that supplies might get into Germany, or that Red agents might get out through the cordon sanitaire.

Clemenceau got out of his sick bed and resumed his place in command of the conference. He sat slumped in his chair, a pitiful, shrunken figure - but try to take anything from under his claws, and hear the Tiger snarl! This statesman aged in bitterness had performed a strange mental feat, transferring all that he had of love to an abstraction called la patrie. Individual Frenchmen he despised, along with all other human creatures; he humiliated and browbeat his subordinates in public, and poured the acid of his wit upon the pretense of idealism in any person in public life. But France was glory, France was God, and for her safety he was willing to destroy everything else in Europe and indeed in the world.

Colonel House was representing the President. The "little white mouse" didn't have a one-track mind, and hadn't come to Europe unprepared; he knew the age-long hatreds which made life a torment on that continent. He was trying to placate and persuade, and was sending long cablegrams to his chief about his great failures and his small successes. The staff at the Crillon watched and whispered, and the hundred and fifty registered newspaper correspondents from America hung about on the outskirts, gathering rumors and sending long wireless messages about secret covenants being secretly arrived at.

II

Meanwhile Lanny was taking all the time his chief could spare to run over to his mother's hotel and try to solve the embarrassing problem of his German friend. First he had the bright idea that Jerry Pendleton was the trustworthy person who would take this charge of dynamite off his hands. Jerry was going back to his regiment; surely he could take with him a Swiss musician friend, and find some pretext, a concert, or something, to get him into Koblenz. Let him entertain the regiment! After that it would be easy for him to disappear into Germany, for the American lines were loosely held and peasants and others came freely into Koblenz.

Lanny even worked up a likely story for the lieutenant to tell about how he had met this musician; he phoned to the Hotel du Pavillon - one of the "Y" shelters, where Jerry had been staying - and to his vexation learned that his friend had departed, leaving no address. Next morning came a post card marked Cannes. After all that scolding at the French, and all those doubts and fears, Jerry had gone running off to his girl!

Lanny's mother wasn't surprised. Lovers were like that, she declared: full of agonies and uncertainties, embarrassments and extravagances, impulses and remorses; quarreling bitterly, parting forever, and making it up next day. You just couldn't tell what unlikely sort of partner anyone would pick, or what crazy thing he or she would do. Lanny could understand that a man who had been drilled and disciplined for a year and a half, and had fought through one of the greatest battles in history, was apt to be restless and moody - and very much in need of feminine society.

Lanny sent his friend a telegram: "Don't fail to see me before you return to duties." A couple of days later he was bowled flat by a letter from the lieutenant, saying that he was never going to return to his duties, and that Uncle Sam could come and get him if and when he could find him. Jerry was going to marry his Cerise, and settle down to helping run a boarding house without boarders. "Tell those old buzzards to hurry up and sign the peace," said the ex-tutor from Kansas, "so that tourists can begin coming back to the Riviera!"

Lanny was much worried about this, for he knew that desertion in wartime was a serious matter. He took occasion to bring up the subject with one of the military men at the Crillon, and learned that the army had been severe with the A.W.O.L.'s at the outset, but was becoming less so every day as a matter of sheer necessity. Men who had submitted cheerfully to the draft now considered that their duty was done, and wanted to go home before some other fellow got their girls and their jobs; there were so many deserters in Paris that the M.P.'s couldn't bring them in nor the guardhouses hold them. Lanny wrote his friend for heaven's sake to take off his uniform and not show himself in public places until after the peace was signed. Then, presumably, the army would go home and forget him!