“It is the League of Nations,” said the delegate, with a little frown.
“To be sure it is,” Henry recollected himself. He had merely used “so-called” as a term indicative of contempt, like “sic,” forgetting that he was not addressing the readers of the British Bolshevist. “Well, before the League of Nations existed—to be exact, in the year 1919—I had occasion, by chance, to discover some things about this individual. I learnt that his wife was the daughter of an armaments knight, and that he himself had a great deal of money in the business. There was no great harm in this, from his point of view; he never, in those days, professed to be a pacifist, for, though he wielded throughout the war a pen in preference to a sword, he truly believed it to be mightier; he was, in fact, in the Ministry of Information. He was not inconsistent in those days, though he was, I imagine, never easy in his mind about this money he had, and held his shares under his wife's name only. But when the League Secretariat was formed, he was one of the first to receive an appointment on it. It was not generally known where he got his income from, and he found himself in a prominent position on the staff of a League, one of whose objects, if only one among many, is to end war. So there he was, his fortune dependent on the continuation of the very thing he was officially working to suppress. It wasn't to be expected that he should be pleased at the prospect of the disarmament question coming up before the Assembly; or at the prospect of the various disputes going on now in the world being discussed in the Assembly and referred to judicial arbitration. Much better for him if the rumours and threats of war should continue.”
“Continue,” stated the delegate, “they always will. That, Mr. Beechtree, we may take as certain, in this imperfect world. Yes.... He's an Englishman, I assume, this friend of yours?”
“An Englishman, yes. Intensely an Englishman.” Henry paused a moment. “I had better tell you at once; he is Charles Wilbraham.”
“Wilbraham!” M. Croza was startled. He felt no love for Wilbraham, who, for his part, felt and showed little for the Latin American republics. M. Croza bitterly remembered various sneers which had been repeated to him.... Besides, it was Wilbraham who had cast suspicion on Paraguay. Further, he had been at Oxford with Wilbraham, and had disliked him there.
“Go on, sir,” he said gravely and yet ardently.
“So,” said Henry, “Wilbraham hatches a scheme. Or, possibly it is hatched by his father-in-law, Sir John Levis (he's one of the directors of Pottle & Kett's, the great armament firm), and Wilbraham is persuaded to carry it out; it doesn't matter which. Levis has been in Geneva now for some days. He has lain rather low and has not been staying at Wilbraham's house, but I've evidence from his secretary that they have been constantly together. They cast around to find convenient colleagues, unscrupulous enough to do desperate things, and with their own reasons for wishing to nullify the work of the League and to hold up discussion of international affairs while disturbances come to a head.”
“Such colleagues,” mused M. Croza, “would not be hard to find.”
“Whom do they pitch on? There are a number of possibly suitable helpers, and I can't say how many of them are involved. But what I have evidence of is that they brought in the Russian delegate to their councils—Kratzky, who is a byword even among Russians for sticking at nothing. If Kratzky could stave off discussion of European politics and paralyse the Assembly until Russia should be ready and able to pounce on and hold by force the new Russian republics—well, naturally monarchist Russia would be pleased. I have evidence that Wilbraham and Levis have been continually meeting and conferring with Kratzky since the Assembly began. Kratzky, that bloody butcher....”
M. Croza, whose sympathy was all with small republics against major powers, agreed about Kratzky.