“Or unless,” said his Excellency like a man commenting on the weather, “I destroy them.”
There was a deep quiet. So Varensky had been a true prophet. It was the end of the world they were discussing—the end of truth, justice, mercy, everything that was kind.
Across the silence a bugle-call spurted like a stream of blood.
“You see my position?” his Excellency resumed reasonably. “If I buy from you, I prolong the agony; worse still, I run my country further into debt. If I give the call to arms, many of us will die; but it's better to die fighting than from hunger. Besides, in the topsy-turvydom of war, who knows, we may find ourselves arrayed on the winning side.” Hindwood was too stunned to think quickly. He was still refusing to believe the worst. “I miss your point. Would your Excellency mind explaining?”
“My point's simple enough. The condition of Hungary and of the whole of Central Europe is due to two causes: the first that we made a world-war; the second that we lost it. The victors had a right to exact a penalty, but look at what they've done. We were exhausted; nevertheless, if they'd told us what we owed them, we'd have paid them. Instead of that, they cloaked revenge with idealism. They constituted themselves evangelists, fore-ordained to reform us. With their gospel of self-determination, they gave every racial hostility within our borders a voice. They carved us up into bickering factions, which they called nations, and bestowed on them the power to make themselves annoying behind new frontiers. They dipped their hands into our national resources and made gifts to their favorites. Transylvania was our granary; it went to Rumania. Bohemia was our coal-supply; the Czechs have it, Hungary is no longer self-supporting. We have our factories, but no fuel to run them; our skilled workmen, but no means of employing them. On every side we're fenced in by mushroom democracies drawing sustenance from what was once our body. The wrong they have done us is the motive of their hate. We European countries fall into three categories: the robbers, the receivers of stolen goods and the pillaged. There's no intercourse between us; confidence is at an end. Our currency has become worthless as the paper on which it's printed. There's no flow of trade. We each have too much of one commodity and none whatsoever of others—too many factories here, too much wheat there, too much coal in another place. We're rival storekeepers, overstocked in certain lines, who refuse to take down our shutters. If we could forget our quarrels and club together, we'd have all the means of life. We deserve our fate, you'll say. But no—it was the Allies' surgeons who carved us into impotence and on top of that imposed indemnities. We have nothing to eat, so we prefer to fight.”
“But what do you gain by it?”
His Excellency smiled. “Everything or nothing. We can't be worse off. The Russian menace may prove to be our salvation. The Red Terror has vanished; the Famine Terror has taken its place. If the starving hordes pouring westwards aren't halted, civilization will be blotted out by savagery. And who's to halt them? Not the Allies. Their common people are rebellious; they know that in the last war they were as much cheated and exploited as any of the enemy whom they routed. And not their politicians and profiteers; they're too bloated with their spoils. It's the story of Rome repeating itself. The obesity which follows victory has conquered the conquerors. Their fighting days are ended; they'll have to hire mercenaries. The only mercenaries available are the nations they have trampled. Hungary holds herself for hire at a price.”
“What price?”
“The restoration of her old frontiers.”
Hindwood spoke eagerly. “No one shall die. We've had enough of dying. I have a better solution—bread. My food-trains should be arriving tonight or to-morrow. I wired for them before I left Vienna. I'll build a wall of bread from the Black Sea to the Baltic.”