I
ON the fourteenth of February the Supreme Council ratified the Covenant of the League of Nations at a stately ceremony; and immediately thereafter President Wilson took the night train for Brest, to return to Washington for the closing sessions of Congress. He and his purple-clad lady walked on red plush carpets spread all the way to the train, between rows of potted palms set out by a polite government. All official France attended to see him off; and thereafter it was as in a barn when the cat has departed and the mice come out to devour the stores of grain. The diplomats of the great states began helping themselves to German and Russian territory, and the reactionary newspapers of Paris declared with one voice that the foolish and Utopian League was already dead and that the problems of Europe were going to be settled on a “realistic” basis.
Professor Alston said that this was the voice of Clemenceau, who controlled a dozen newspapers of the capital and could change their policies by crooking his finger. Alston and his friends were greatly depressed. What was the use of meeting all day and most of the night, wrestling over questions of fair play and “self-determination,” when it was evident that those who held the reins of power would not pay the least attention to anything you said? The French delegates now wore a cynical smile as they argued before the commissions; they had their assurance that their armies were going to hold the Rhineland and the Sarre, and that a series of buffer states were to be set up between Germany and Russia, all owing their existence to France, all financed with the savings of the French peasants, and munitioned by Zaharoff, alias Schneider-Creusot. France and Britain were going to divide Persia and Mesopotamia and Syria and make a deal for the oil and the laying of pipelines. Italy was to take the Adriatic, Japan was to take Shantung — all such matters were being settled among sensible men.
Lanny continued to attend sessions and listen to tedious discussions of imaginary boundary lines. His chief was called in to advise the American delegates on the commission which was trying to pacify the Italians and the Yugoslavs, who for a month or two had been taking pot-shots at one another. The revolting Yugoslav sailors had seized the Austrian war vessels, and the Italians wanted them, but the Yugoslav sailors wanted the Americans to take charge of them. The Italians were trying to seize Fiume, a city which hadn't been granted to them even in the secret treaty. They were like the man who said he wasn't greedy for land, he just wanted the land adjoining his own. They made a fuss, they interrupted proceedings, they blocked decisions on other questions — and how execrable was their accent when they tried to speak French!
A pathetic victim of this system of muddle was George D. Herron. He had been formally appointed a member of a delegation to travel to Prinkipo; but now President Wilson had set out for America without even taking the trouble to let him know that the project was dropped. The poor man, whose arthritis made moving about an ordeal, was left to spend his money and time holding preliminary consultations with various Russian groups in Paris; he would convince them one day and the French would unconvince them the next. The first hint he got that he had been laid on the shelf was when his friend Alston brought him a report that the President had appointed a mission which was already on its way to Moscow, to find out the situation and report.
Watching Herron and listening to him, Lanny learned how dangerous it was to have anything to do with unpopular ideas. The prophet was called a Red, when in truth he looked upon Bolshevism as his Hebrew predecessors looked upon Baal and Moloch. He had heard about Jesse Blackless and was worried for fear Lanny might be lured by the false faith of his uncle. He told the youth, in his biblical language, that dictatorship was a degradation of the soul of man, and that anyone who took that road would find himself in the valley of the shadow of death. Either Socialism must be the free, democratic choice of the people, or it would be something worse than the rule of Mammon which it sought to replace. Lanny promised very gravely that he would remember this lesson. Privately, he didn't think he was going to need it.
II
The conspirator for charity expected every day to have a note from Kurt, but none came. He spent some time trying to figure out what Kurt would be doing, and wondering if it would be possible for a German spy in Paris to be apprehended and shot without anything getting into the papers. There were great numbers of persons of German descent living in Switzerland, in Holland and the Scandinavian countries, so it was possible for Germans to pass as citizens of these countries. All through the war German spies had been doing this, and there was no reason to imagine that they had all gone home when the armistice was signed. Kurt must be a member of such a group; and being young, he would have a superior who told him what to do.
When the weather was decent and Lanny had time, he liked to walk, to get the air of the overheated conference rooms out of his lungs. One of his walks took him to Montmartre, and he climbed the musty stairs of the old tenement, and found his uncle covered up on his cot to keep warm, absorbed in the reading of a workers' newspaper. The first thing the uncle said was: “Well, by God, from now on I believe in Santa Claus!”
It really had happened: the knock on his door, the exchange of passwords, the package placed in his hands! He chuckled as if it was the funniest thing that had occurred to a Red agitator since the birth of Karl Marx. “Every sou has been honestly spent, so tell your friend to come again — the sooner the better!