WORLD'S END

Lanny had been too busy to return to the mansion on the Avenue Hoche; but every now and then he would come upon another strand of the web of that busy old spider. Right in the midst of the bright dream of saving Kurt's home came news that gave everybody at the Crillon a poke in the solar plexus: a Greek expedition had landed at Smyrna and taken the city, with British and French warships supporting them, and - here was the part which the Americans could hardly believe - the battleship Arizona and five United States destroyers lending aid! The French took the harbor forts, the British and Italians held the suburbs, while the Greeks invaded the center of the city and slaughtered the Turkish inhabitants.

Turkey was going to be dismembered, of course. The British and French were going to quarrel over the oil. The Italians were going to hold some of the islands. The Greeks were going to get Smyrna, as a reward for sending troops to Odessa to help fight the Bolsheviks. But what was America getting out of it, and why were American warships assisting against Turks, upon whom we had never declared war?

These developments had been foreseen by Robbie Budd, and Lanny now passed his information on to Alston and others of the staff. Zaharoff was a Greek, and hatred of Turkey was, next to money-making, the great passion of his life. Zaharoff controlled Lloyd George through the colossal armaments machine which had saved Britain. Zaharoff controlled Clemenceau through Schneider-Creusot - to say nothing of Clemenceau's brother and son. The Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor had practically an official status at the Peace Conference, and was now getting himself a port for the future conquest of Turkey and the taking of its oil. America was to accept a mandate for Constantinople, which meant sending an army and a navy to keep the Bolsheviks shut up in the Black Sea; also a mandate for Armenia, which meant blocking them off from the Mosul oil fields. Lloyd George had a map showing all this - young Fessenden had revealed the fact to Lanny without quite realizing its importance.

One fact Lanny failed to grasp - what he was doing to himself by talk such as this in the Crillon. His mother was fondly imagining that he might have a diplomatic career, something so distinguished and elegant. He himself was finding it thrilling to be behind the wings and at least on speaking terms with the great actors. But he forgot about the whispering gallery, the busy note-takers and filers of cards. Zaharoff had tried to hire him as a spy. Did he imagine that Zaharoff had failed to hire others? Did he imagine that one could sit in with the Alston malcontents and discuss the project of resigning, and not have all that noted down in one or many black-books?

35

_{I Can No Other}

I

LANNY BUDD was in a state of mental confusion. He had absorbed, as it were through the skin, the point of view of his chief and the latter's friends, the little group who called themselves "liberals." According to these authorities, the President of the United States had muffed a chance to save the world and that world was "on the skids"; there was nothing anybody could do, except sit and watch the nations prepare for the next war. George D. Herron went back to his home in Geneva, sick in body and mind, and wrote his young friend a letter of blackest depression couched in the sublimest language. Uncle Jesse, on whom Lanny paid a call, had the same expectations - only he didn't worry, because he said it was the nature of capitalism on its way to collapse. "Capitalism is war," said the painter, "and what it calls peace is merely time to get ready. To try to change it is like reforming a Bengal tiger." A very young secretary listened to these ideas, bandied back and forth among the staff. He tried to sort them out and decide which he believed; it was hard, because each man was so persuasive while he talked. And meanwhile Lanny was young, and it was May in Paris, a beautiful time and place. Rains swept clean the streets and the air, and the sun came out with dazzling splendor. The acacia trees in the Bois, loaded with masses of small yellow blossoms, were bowed in the rain and then raised up to the sun. Children in bright colored dresses played on the grass, and bonnes with long ribbons dangling from the backs of their caps chatted together and flirted impartially with doughboys, Tommies, Anzacs, and chocolate soldiers from Africa. The beautiful monuments and buildings of Paris proclaimed victory, the traffic hummed and honked, and life was exciting, even though it might be on the way to death.