WORLD'S END

George D. Herron, distressed over these developments, left his home in Geneva and returned to Paris. He saw the President and afterwards told Alston and Lanny about it. Wilson was a sick man, paying the penalty of his temperament. As Herron explained it, he was lacking as an executive. "He knows how to judge himself, but not others; he knows how to drive himself, but not others; he can't trust anyone to write his speeches and memoranda, or even to typewrite them. The result is that he's overwhelmed. He and he alone is the American Commission to Negotiate Peace, and the number of matters he has to consider and decide are more than can be got into one human brain."

What troubled the President in this crisis was the fear of seeing Europe fall prey to Bolshevism. The French assured him that this would happen; and might it not be true? The American staff had prepared a map, with terrifying large red arrows pointing into Lithuania, Prussia, Poland, Hungary, the Ukraine, Georgia. If Wilson were to break off negotiations and take the American army home, the Germans might refuse to sign the peace treaty, the war might start again, and revolts might follow in Paris and even in Britain.

A young member of the Crillon staff had been picked by the President and sent to Moscow. "Bill" Bullitt was his name, and he had taken with him a journalist friend, once famous as a "muckraker." In the days when Lanny had been a toddler on the beach at Juan, this man had been traveling over the United States probing into political corruption, interviewing "bosses" and their big-business paymasters. Latterly his work had been forgotten, and Lanny had never heard the name of Lincoln Steffens until he was told that the "Bullitt mission" had set out for the land of the Reds.

They had come back with surprising news. Lenin wanted peace, and was ready to pay almost any price for it. He would give up all Siberia and the Urals, the Caucasus, Archangel, and Murmansk, even most of the Ukraine and White Russia. He would recognize all the White governments. But, alas, President Wilson had a severe headache that evening, and Colonel House also was ill. Bullitt saw Lloyd George first and told him the terms; Wilson, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, was so angry at this slight that he wouldn't see Bullitt, he wouldn't hear of peace with wicked Bolsheviks. And Lloyd George stood up in the House of Commons and denied that he had ever known anything about the Bullitt mission!

All this suited the French, who didn't want peace under any circumstances. They were being beaten, but dared not admit it. They were having to back out of the Ukraine; their armies were becoming unreliable - this dreaded new kind of war, fought not merely with guns but with ideas. War-weary soldiers listened, and began to whisper that maybe this was the way to end matters. There were mutinies in the French fleet in the Black Sea, and when Colonel House was asked by newspapermen about Odessa, he replied: "There's no more Odessa. The French are clearing out." British troops, ordered to embark at Folkestone for Archangel, refused to go on board. No use to look for such events in newspapers, whether British or American; but the staff at the Majestic knew, and Fessenden gossiped to Lanny with wide-open startled eyes. "For God's sake, what's-going to happen next?"

IX

Lanny kept thinking he ought to hear from Kurt; but no word came. He wondered about his Uncle Jesse, whether he was getting more money and what he was doing with it. Having a couple of hours off one afternoon, Lanny yielded to the temptation and turned his steps in the direction of Montmartre.

It was the first day of April; bright sunlight, blue sky, fleecy white clouds; crocuses blooming in the gardens, daisies in the grass of the parks; the trees just far enough in the bud to show a pastel green. The poor frightened world was coming out of the winter of war; Lanny, climbing the hill, carried a thought which by now had become his familiar companion: Why, oh, why did men have to make their lives so ugly? What evil spell was upon them that they wrangled and scolded, hated and feared?

He climbed the stairs in the dark hallway which hadn't yet learned that winter was over. He knocked on his uncle's door, and a voice called: "Come in"; he did so, and saw there was a visitor, seated in the extra chair from which a load of books and papers had been dumped. He was a short, compactly built man with brown hair and small gray imperial and mustache trimmed neatly; a rather square face with glasses, and small blue-gray eyes with many wrinkles around them, giving him a quizzical appearance. The visitor was plainly but neatly dressed, and you would have taken him for a small businessman, or perhaps a college professor. Said Uncle Jesse: "This is Lincoln Steffens."

Lanny was surprised', also pleased, and showed it. "I've been hearing about you at the Crillon!"