Kurt couldn't bear to listen to it. He broke in. “Do you know what is being done to my people by the blockade? The food allowance is one-third of normal, and the child death-rate has doubled. Of course our enemies would like them all to die, so there wouldn't be any more of us in the world. But is that what President Wilson promised?”
Lanny replied: “There isn't a man I know in the American delegation who doesn't consider it a shame. They have protested again and again. Mr. Hoover is in Paris now, wringing his hands over the situation.”
“Wringing Mr. Hoover's hands won't feed the starving babies. Why doesn't President Wilson threaten to quit unless Clemenceau gives way?”
“He can't be sure what that would do. The others might go on and have their way just the same. It's hard to get a sane peace after a mad war.”
Said the captain of artillery: “Are you aware that our people still have some of their gold reserve? They don't ask anybody to give them food, they ask merely to be allowed to buy it with their own money. And there's plenty of food in America, is there not?”
“So much that we don't know what to do with it. The government has agreed to take it from the farmers at fixed prices, but now there's no market. There are millions of pounds of pork that is going to spoil if it isn't used.”
“But still our people can't spend their own money for it!”
“The French say they want that gold to restore their ruined cities with.”
“Don't you know that we have offered to come and rebuild the cities with our own hands?”
“That's not so simple as it sounds, Kurt. The people here say that would throw their own workers out of jobs.”