WORLD'S END

Kurt stopped. His face was drawn, which made him look old; but he gave no other sign of emotion. "There wasn't enough food for anybody, unless it was speculators who broke the law. Elsa kept the truth from me, and the result was the baby was born dead, and she died of hemorrhages a few days later. So that's all there was to my marriage."

Beauty sat with a mist of tears in her eyes; and Lanny was thinking a familiar thought: "Oh, what a wicked thing is war!" He had lived through the agony of France with Marcel and his mother, and the agony of Britain with Rick and Nina; now in Germany it was the same. The younger man, thinking always of patching matters up between his two friends, remarked: "Nobody has gained anything, Kurt. Rick is crippled for life and is seldom out of pain. He crashed in a plane."

"Poor fellow!" said the other; but his voice sounded dull. "At least that was in a fight. His wife hasn't died of starvation, has she?"

"The British had their food restrictions, don't forget. Your submarine campaign was effective. Both sides were using whatever weapons they had. Now we're trying to make peace."

"What they call peace is to be just another kind of war. They are taking our ships and railroad stock, our horses and cattle, and saddling us with debts enough to last a century."

"We are trying to make a League of Nations," pleaded the American; "one that will guarantee the peace."

"If it's a league that France and England make, it will be a league to hold Germany down."

Lanny saw that it wouldn't do any good to argue. For a German officer, as for a French one, it was still war. "We Americans are doing everything in our power," he declared. "It just takes time for passions to cool off."

"What you Americans should have done was to keep out of it. It wasn't your fight."

"Maybe so, Kurt. I wasn't for going in, and now most of our men at the Crillon are doing their best to reconcile and appease. Do what you can to help us."

"How can we do anything when we're not allowed near your so-called 'conference'?"

A hopeless situation! Lanny looked at his watch, recalling that there would be an Armenian gentleman waiting for him at the hotel. "My time isn't my own," he explained, and rose to go.

Kurt rose also. But Beauty interposed. "Kurt, you oughtn't to go out until after dark!"

"I came before dark," he replied.

"I don't want you to go out with Lanny," she pleaded. "Why risk both your lives? Please wait, and I'll go with you." She couldn't keep the trembling out of her voice, and her son understood that for her too the war was still being fought. "I want to talk to you about Emily Chattersworth," she added; "she and I are hoping to do something."

"All right, I'll wait," said Kurt.

IV

The deadlock among the Big Four continued; until one day came a rumor that shook the Hotel Crillon like an earthquake: President Wilson had ordered the transport George Washington to come to France at once. That meant a threat to break off the conference and go back to his own country, which so many thought he never should have left. Like other earthquakes, this one continued to rumble, and to send shivers through many buildings and their occupants. Denials came from Washington that any such order had been received. Then it was rumored that the British had held up the President's cablegram for forty-eight hours. Had they, or hadn't they? And did Wilson mean it, or was it a bluff?

Anyhow, it sufficed to send the French into a panic. Clemenceau came hurrying to the President's sickroom to inquire, and to apologize and try to patch matters up. Even though he had called the stiff Presbyterian "pro-German," he couldn't get along without him, and his departure would mean calamity. A whole train of specters haunted the French: the Germans refusing to sign, war beginning again, and revolution spreading to both countries!

They resumed meeting in the President's room, and patched up a series of compromises. They decided to let the French have the Sarre for fifteen years, during which time they could get out the coal and keep their industries going until their own mines were repaired. Then there would be a plebiscite, and the inhabitants would choose which country they preferred. The Rhineland would go back to Germany after fifteen years, permanently demilitarized. Marshal Foch went on the warpath again, and it wasn't long before he and his friends were trying to start a revolt of the French population in the Rhineland, to form a government and demand annexation to la patrie.