IV
Yes, it was a trying time to be alive in the world. All those golden promises that had been made to us, those bright hopes we had cherished! All the blood of the young men that had been shed, three hundred thousand of them dead or wounded in France—and here were the allied statesmen, grim, cruel old men, sitting at the council-table and putting the world right back where it had been before! Perpetuating all the old hatreds, all the old injustices—with a thousand new ones to torment the future! Tearing Germans away from their own land and giving them to Frenchmen, giving Austrians to Italians, Russians to Poles—so on through a long list of blunders; condemning millions of people to live under governments which they feared and despised, and thus making certain they would revolt, and throw Europe into uproar again!
Men could not realize these things all at once; they got them little by little, as details of the negotiations leaked out. Every country in the world was carrying on its own propaganda, thinking about its own selfish interests; and President Wilson was in the midst of the mess, being pulled and hauled about, this way and that, quite powerless for the good aims he had proclaimed. As the picture of this got back to America, there spread over the land such a wave of disgust as had never been known before.
And then the President himself came home, to declare that he had achieved a complete victory. In the name of “self-determination of all peoples” he was giving the German Rhineland to France, and German Africa to Britain, and the German Tyrol to Italy, and a Chinese province to Japan, and to the United States a mandate over Armenia! Also he had made a perpetual alliance with France and Britain, whereby we bound ourselves to maintain this brand of self-determination forever! When this program had been thoroughly realized, a tone of hilarious cynicism became the correct thing among the young intellectuals of America; fashionable young matrons took to deceiving their husbands in the name of chastity, and college boys began toting hip-pocket flasks out of loyalty to prohibition.
The thing was particularly hard upon Bunny, because he had to go to Paradise every once in a while, and come face to face with Ruth, and explain how self-determination for the people of Siberia meant that her brother must stay there in peace time and hold a bayonet at their necks. In elucidating this singular situation, Bunny became almost as skillful a trickster as if he had had a regular diplomatic job with extra-territorial immunity. For a month or two he managed it, while the Germans were dragged to Versailles and made to sign an agreement to pay an indemnity so vast that it could not be named.
Then one day came a letter that made his task all but impossible. It was an innocent-looking letter, written in a crude hand on some sheets of cheap paper, postmarked Seattle, and addressed to “Mr. Bunny Ross, Paridise, California.” It said:
“Dear Mr. Bunny: You dont know me but I am a returned soldier that used to punch cattle in Salinas valley. Paul Watkins said I should write you because he cant get no news by the censors. I am invalidded back, have had the Asiatic dissenterry, am bleeding at the bowls three months and you should wash your hands good when you have read this letter, because it is an easy dissease to catch. I am in issolation and this will be smuggled, for God’s sake dont let on I have wrote it they would sure put me in the can. But Paul said your father might do something to get us boys out if he knew what a hell it was. Mr. Bunny what are we doing in that place and why do we have to stay? It is forty below zero most of the winter and big storms a lot of the time and you have to do sentry duty and in summer the muskeetoes is big as flies and where they bite the blood runs. And the Japs take shots at us, they are suppose to be our allies but they are sure grabbing that country there is suppose to be only seven thousand but there is seventy and why did we take them in there? Our boys is not allowed to have no side arms and the Japs have got bayonets and we have only fists. We have zones that we are supposed to control but the Japs will not keep out of them and I have saw them put out with machine guns lined up, and if we have to have a war with them over Siberia there will sure be a lot of our boys massacreed at the startoff. And them Russian refugees and officers that we have orders to help I heard our colonel say, you give them money to start a government and they go on a bust and that night you have to pull them out of a sporting house. They have got one idea which is to shoot all the workingmen they can get hands on and the women too and they torture them, Mr. Bunny I seen things that it would make you sick to read them. From General Graves down our army is sore on this job and some of them is gone crazy, there has been more than twenty in our regiment and some has been sent home in a strait jacket. But the people at home is not allowed to know nothing, there is boys in our regiment that is not had one line from their folks in half a year and they are crazy with worry. Why do we have to be there when the war is over, if you know I wish you would tell me. But Paul said not to tell his sister, because it is not so bad for himself, they move him a lot and he is always busy it is easy when you have a lot of carpenter work but for some fellers I seen them carry a stack of railway ties a hundred yards and then move them back to the old place just to keep us working. Please send me some cigarettes that will be a way to say that you have got this letter and if you send two packages I will know that you want me to write some more. Yours respectfully, Jeff Korbitty.”