WORLD'S END

What did it mean to talk about forty billion dollars? In what form would you collect it? There wasn't gold enough in the world; and if France took goods from Germany, that would make Germany the workshop of the world and condemn French industry to extinction.

This seemed obvious to an American expert; but you couldn't say it to a Frenchman, because he was suffering from a war psychosis. You couldn't say it to a politician, whether French or British, because he had got elected on the basis of making Germany pay. "Squeeze them until the pips squeak," had been the formula of the hustings, and one of Lloyd George's "savages," Premier Hughes of Australia, had come to the conference claiming that every mortgage placed on an Australian farm during the war was a part of the reparations bill. Privately Lloyd George would admit that Germany couldn't pay with goods; but then he would fly back to England and make a speech in Parliament saying that Germany should and would pay. The Prime Minister of Great Britain had Northcliffe riding on his back, a press lord who was slowly going insane, and revealing it in his newspapers by clamoring that the British armies should be demobilized and at the same time should march to Moscow. Lloyd George pictured the Peace Conference as trying to settle the world's problems "with stones crackling on the roof and crashing through the windows, and sometimes wild men screaming through the keyholes."

The time came when Clemenceau lost his temper and called Woodrow Wilson "pro-German" to his face. It may have been a coincidence, but right after that the President was struck down by influenza and retired to his bed under doctor's orders. When next he saw the Premier and the Prime Minister it was in his bedroom, and they had to be considerate of an invalid. Once more the fate of the world waited upon the elimination of toxins from the bloodstream of an elderly gentleman whose powers of resistance had been dangerously reduced.

Everybody quarreling with everybody else! General Pershing in a row with Foch, because he wouldn't obey Foch's orders as to the repression of the Germans on the Rhine; Americans wouldn't treat a beaten foe as the French demanded. The Marshal was in a row with his Premier, and Poincarй, President of France, was at outs with both. Wilson was snubbing his Secretary of State, who agreed with none of his policies, yet didn't choose to resign. There was open conflict with the Senate opposition, which now had couriers bringing news from Paris, because it didn't trust what President Wilson was telling the country. There were even rumors among the staff to the effect that a coolness was developing between Wilson and his Texas colonel. Had the latter made too many concessions? Had he taken too much authority? Some said yes and some said no, and the whispering gallery hummed, the beehive quivered with a buzz of gossip and suspicion.

II

The question of the blockade had narrowed down to this: was America willing to sell the Germans food on dubious credit, or would she insist on having some of the gold which the French claimed for theirs? A deadlock over the issue, while mothers hungered and babies died of rickets. The American government had guaranteed the farmers a war price for their food, and now the government had to have that price. At least, so the Republicans clamored - and they controlled the new Congress that was going to have no more nonsense about "idealism."

Lanny listened to controversies among members of the staff. What would our government do with the gold if we took it? Already we had an enormous store which we couldn't use. Alston insisted that when it came to a showdown the French wouldn't dare to take Germany's gold, because that would wreck the mark, and if the mark went, the franc would follow; the two currencies were tied together by the fact that French credits were based upon the hope of German reparations.

Lanny was finding out what a complicated world he lived in; he wished his father could be here to explain matters. But the father wrote that he expected to be busy at home for quite a while. Budd's had been forced to borrow money and convert some of the plants to making various goods, from hardware and kitchen utensils to sewing machines and hay rakes. For some reason Robbie considered this a great comedown. Incidentally he was in a fresh fury with President Wilson, who had failed to repudiate the British demand that increases in the American navy, already voted by Congress, should be canceled and abandoned.

Mrs. Emily hadn't heard again from "M. Dalcroze," and an invitation addressed to him in care of poste restante had been returned. Lanny said: "He must have gone back to Germany," and Beauty said: "Thank God!" But Lanny was only half convinced, and was troubled by imaginings of his friend in a French prison or a French grave.