World's End

by Upton Sinclair

  “I haven’t much money,” said he, quickly.

  “I know, you say that. But you have what looks like it to a girl on the salary our Foreign Office pays. I waited, hoping you would speak, but you didn’t.”

  It was a dangerous conversation. Their hearts were bared to each other and their feelings were stirred; it wouldn’t have taken much to “start things up.” But something like an alarm bell was ringing in the young man’s soul. This was a lovely girl, and she was entitled to a square deal. It might be that she would call off her engagement and take a chance with him; from vague hints he guessed that the man in London was in business, and was not glamorous to her. But to break with him would be a serious step. If Lanny caused her to do it, he would be under obligations—and was he prepared to keep them? The Peace Conference was drawing to its close and their ways would part. Did he want to invite Penelope to Juan? If so, what would become of her job and her boasted independence? On the other hand, would he follow her to London?

  No, he hadn’t intended anything so serious. He had been thinking about a little pleasure, in the mood of these days, when men and women had the feeling that life was cheating them. Penelope said something like that; she was leaning closer to him, practically in his arms, and all he had to do was to close them.

  “Listen, dear,” he said; and his tone forecast what he was going to say: “If we do this, we’ll get fond of each other, and then we’ll be unhappy.”

  “Do you think so, darling?”

  “You may be thinking you can go back to that chap at home. But perhaps you’ll find you don’t care for him any more, and you’ll make yourself miserable, and him too.”

  “I’ve thought about it a lot, Lanny. We do what we think is right—and then we go off and spend many a lonely hour wondering if we didn’t make a mistake.”

  “I’m judging by the way I am with that English girl I told you about.”

  “You can’t forget her?”

  “I’ve tried to, and I ought to, but I just don’t.”

  “I suppose that’s what’s the matter between us,” reflected Penelope. “There’s a German poem that tells about a youth who loved a maiden who had chosen another.”

  “I know—Heine. And whom it just touches, his heart breaks in two.”

  “I don’t suppose there’ll ever be a remedy for that,” said the girl.

  They sat listening to the concertina player, who was evidently a returned poilu; he played their songs, which Lanny knew from Marcel and the other mutilés. Many of them dealt with love, and as a rule were sad; the toughest old campaigner would sit with a mist of tears in his eyes, hearing about the girl he had left behind him and wouldn’t see again. Lanny told Penelope what was in these songs, and with echoes of them in their ears they strolled to the car and drove back to the city. Afterward, it was just as she had said—they both wondered if they hadn’t made a mistake.

  IV

  The Germans were continuing their bombardment of the treaty, and were getting the help of liberal and “radical” groups all over the world. The statesmen in Paris who had pledged themselves to “open covenants openly arrived at” were now doing their best to keep the terms of this treaty from reaching the public; the text was unobtainable in America, and even in France, but you could buy a copy for two francs in Belgium, and protests against it arose more loudly every day in the neutral lands. The British Labour Party denounced it, which meant many votes and had a disturbing effect upon the “mercurial” Prime Minister. He began wobbling again and caused an amusing situation.

  Through all the battles, it had been the Presbyterian President against the cynical Tiger, with Lloyd George holding the balance of power, and generally giving the decision to the Tiger. But now, here was the little Welshman fighting the Tiger, and President Wilson having the decision—and he too giving it to the Tiger! This amazed the people at the Majestic. One of the staff, Mr. Keynes, said that Lloyd George had set out to bamboozle the American President and had succeeded too well; now, when he set out to “debamboozle” him, it couldn’t be done. The agile-minded little Welshman was helpless before the stiff “Covenanter” temperament, which had to convince itself that what it did was divinely inspired, and then, having acquired that conviction, had to stand by it, no matter how many votes it might cost.

  Lanny heard the President’s side from Davisson and others who were defending him in hot arguments with Alston. At the time when Wilson had needed Lloyd George’s help it had been refused. Now the treaty had been presented to the enemy, and it was a question of making him sign it. What time was this for the Allies to start weakening? Clemenceau couldn’t give way, for he had Foch on his back, and Poincaré watching for the moment to trip him. All that could be brought about was another deadlock, such as they had had two months ago, and starting the whole weary wrangle all over again.

  One aspect of the problem could be mentioned only in whispers. General Pershing wasn’t sure how long he could control his troops. His armies were melting away. All over France, Belgium, Switzerland, were not merely doughboys but also officers who had quit in disgust. No need for Jerry Pendleton to hide, or for Lanny to worry about him any more! And if the Germans should refuse to sign the treaty, would the men still under arms consent to march and fight? Congress had been summoned in special session, and there was a resolution before the Senate declaring that a state of peace existed with Germany. Just as easy as that!

  Clemenceau and Marshal Foch wouldn’t yield an inch; no, not an inch; but having said that and sworn it, they began to yield, a fraction of an inch here and a fraction there. Germany was going to be admitted to the League of Nations after all. And there was going to be a plebiscite for a part of Upper Silesia—not the part containing Schloss Stubendorf, alas, but the part with the coal mines, which the Poles wanted so badly, and which the French wanted to use against Germany the next time. So it went, and each small concession was a bite out of the body and soul of France; the screams were loud and terrifying—and Lanny, most of whose life had been lived among the French, couldn’t make up his mind whether to listen to his boyhood friends, or to these new ones who talked so impressively about justice, chivalry, democracy, and other abstractions.

  It was a complex problem that taxed the mental powers of the ablest minds in the world, and would continue to be argued about by historians. Professor Davisson and others to whose arguments Lanny listened declared that these were not questions of right and wrong, of morality or immorality, but of statesmanship. Of course it wasn’t just that Germany should be shut off from East Prussia; but wouldn’t it be equally unjust if Poland should be shut off from the sea? The real question was, which course would provide for international security. Said Davisson: “The main lines of this settlement have been established by the processes of history. It is fighting against these processes not to recognize the successor states, especially Poland and Czechoslovakia, and give them the territory and resources to maintain and defend themselves.”

  There were those who went even farther, driven by the mood of war; they insisted that the Allied armies should have marched to Berlin, to let the Germans know what war is really like, and cure them of their fondness for it. The peace terms should now provide for the dividing of Germany into a number of small states, as in the days before Bismarck. The Prussians were a tribe incapable of understanding any ideal save that of conquest, and it should be made impossible for them to use the peace-loving Germans of Bavaria and the Rhineland in their adventures. Lanny didn’t associate with persons who held such views, because Alston and his group considered them outside the pale; but he met them among his mother’s friends, and among those who came to Mrs. Emily’s. They seemed to know a lot of history.

  V

  Bullitt and Steffens had journeyed to Russia on a mission, of a sort contrived by statesmen who wish to keep themselves free either to accept the results, in which case it was an official mission; or to reject the results, in which case the statesmen had nothing to do with the missio
n and didn’t even know about it. In the case of the expedition to Russia, Wilson and Lloyd George had chosen the latter course; and now what were the expeditioners going to do?

  Lincoln Steffens had already had his experience of martyrdom, and was having it still. He had written too sympathetically about various “radicals” in trouble, and as a result no magazine of any circulation was willing to have his name appear in its pages. Here he was, a highly trained journalist in Paris, enjoying contacts such as no other had; every day he collected marvelous stories—and could do nothing with them but hand them over to less competent men.

  Lanny sat in Stef’s room, listening to some of these tales, when in came Bill Bullitt; bouncing, eager young newspaper fellow, now being suddenly matured and sobered. His was an old and wealthy family of Philadelphia, and young men of exalted social position perhaps have their own way too easily, and are impatient of neglect and frustration. Also, they can afford the luxury of moral scruples. It made young Bullitt furious when Lloyd George would send for him, and pump his mind of everything he had seen and heard in the land of the Soviets, express deep appreciation of the service which Bullitt had performed—and then get up in Parliament and officially lie about him. The young aristocrat was like a man who strolls in a lovely garden, picking the fruit and tasting it, and suddenly falls through the sod and discovers that the garden is made over a charnel pit. When Lanny first met him, Bill had just scrambled out, his eyes and mouth full of horrors. He was hating it in a blind fury, and determined to expose it to the world.

  And here was Stef, middle-aged, sad, and accustomed to the odors of charnel pits; they were ancient institutions, all the national gardens of Europe were built over them. If any young fellow wanted to go on a crusade against lying and cheating in diplomacy, all right, but let him know what he was fighting. It was nothing less than the property system, which was the foundation of modern western culture; and were you prepared to scrap it? If not, why all this fuss about a few of its by-products?

  Stef told about two French journalists who had come to him at the outset of the Peace Conference, obviously sent by Clemenceau or one of his agents, putting up to the Americans the question: Just how much of his Fourteen Points did President Wilson really mean, and how far were the Americans ready to go in support of these exalted principles? Did they mean to apply them to India, to Hong Kong, Shanghai, Gibraltar? Of course they didn’t; of course they meant to let the British Empire keep on going—so why not a French empire? This put the Americans in a hole, as it was meant to do. The whole world saw, the first thing President Wilson did when he reached London was to begin hedging on his “freedom of the seas,” making plain that it didn’t mean what everybody but statesmen had supposed it meant.

  “All right,” said Stef, “go in and fight; but don’t start until you know who your enemy is, and have some idea of his strength. The war on Russia which we denounce, and the peace treaty, are parts of the same imperialist program. The Polish Corridor, the new Baltic states, and all the rest of it, are meant to keep Germany and Russia apart, so that the British Empire and the French Empire can deal with them separately. That’s what empires do, and must do if they are to go on existing. What we Americans have to get clear is that the same forces are building the same kind of empire at home, and we’ll be doing the same thing as the British and French, because we have to have foreign trade, and outposts like the Panama Canal and Hawaii. So why not start reforming ourselves, Bill?”

  Young Bullitt didn’t see that; and Lanny only half saw it. He listened to the muckraker talking in his quizzical fashion, teasing people with paradoxes, often saying the opposite of what he really meant; Lanny decided all over again that these radicals were damned irritating. But at the same time he was embarrassed to discover how much they knew, and how often their unpleasant predictions came true. He decided that maybe he’d agree with them after they were able to agree among themselves.

  VI

  In a private dining room of the Crillon a small group met to choose their future course. They were in a painful situation, and some were wishing they had never crossed the seas. They had to choose whether to let their names and reputations be used in support of what they believed to be falsehoods and blunders, or to get themselves called unpatriotic and eccentric, to be looked upon as unreliable, perhaps touched with the poison of “radicalism.”

  It was a not too luxurious dinner, for most of them were not well off. Even for those who had private fortunes it was a grave decision, for they didn’t want to live idle lives—they had come with a fond dream of helping to make the world better, and the course they now contemplated might put them on the shelf for a long time, perhaps for life. Their wives came with them, and over a dinner table decorated with yellow jonquils and red roses they talked more solemnly and frankly than Lanny had ever heard from persons of their clever sort. Were they going to ride along on the bandwagon, or climb off as a gesture of protest?

  It was a young people’s party; the only middle-aged ones were Steffens and Alston. Bullitt was twenty-eight, and Adolf Berle, acting chief of the Russian Section, was only twenty-four; there were others of that age, and their wives were still younger. You could feel the spiritual wrestling going on; but they all tried, in the modern fashion, to take it lightly and not look or act like martyrs, or heroes, or anything that was bad form. Over the liqueurs and coffee everyone had his say, and heard what the others thought about his arguments, and even about his moral status.

  Those who were not resigning built themselves a defense mechanism. They were members of a team and had to stand by their captain. He had done the best he could, and they had to exclude from their minds all arguments against his many surrenders. Or else they declared that they were subordinates, employed to furnish information, not to make decisions. Certainly they weren’t signing any treaties. Some were in the army, and for them to resign would mean courtmartial!

  Those who were resigning were none too patient with these excuses. Being young, their judgments were harsh; black was black and white was white, and no half-tones between. “Oh, yes!” they said. “Be a good boy and do what you’re told! Feather your own nest and let the world go to hell!” One of the group had decided at the last minute not to attend; it was rumored that he had been promised a job on the Secretariat of the new League of Nations, which seemed the way to a glamorous European career. “He has his thirty pieces of silver!” exclaimed the resigners.

  They had been sold out; that was the general sentiment of the rebels. Each had his own department, about which he knew, and on which he contributed information. Samuel Morison of the Russian Section was furious because the Allies were trying to use his favorite Baltic states as a springboard for White Russian interventions. Bullitt’s anger was because the French General Staff had a mandate to run Europe. Berle was indignant because the Allied and associated powers remained untouched by the high moral principles which they were applying to their enemies. Said Alston: “It is not a new order in Europe but a piece of naked force.” Because of his age his words carried weight.

  The non-resigners fought back, and their wives helped them. They talked about “futile gallantry”; one woman compared them to a group of mosquitoes charging a battleship. It was an old, old question, which Lanny had confronted in talks with Kurt and his father. What part do moral forces play in history? Is there any real use in making yourself uncomfortable for a lot of people who will never hear about it, and wouldn’t appreciate it if they did? “It’s going to be a long, long time before the verdict of history is rendered on this treaty,” said one; and when Alston appealed to the public at home, another said: “All they are thinking about is to punish the Germans; if you try to stop it, you’re ‘pro-German,’ and that’s the end of you.”

  When it came Lanny’s turn, he said that Alston was his chief, and he meant to follow him. Alston answered that it might be better if Lanny stayed, because he knew the files and the contents of many reports, and could be of help to whoever took over
the job. But Lanny said: “I joined on your account. If you go, I’m sick of the whole business.” When the voting was over, one guest reached out and took some of the flowers which decorated the table and, pulling the blossoms off the stems, tossed one to each person—red roses to the resigners, and yellow jonquils to the “good boys” and their girls. It was highly poetical.

  When they broke up, close to midnight, Lanny and young Berle walked twice around the Place de la Concorde, in the blue fog and between the rows of looming guns. The acting chief of the Russian Section reminded his still more youthful companion of the saying of Count Oxenstjerna, Swedish diplomat of nearly three hundred years back: “Go forth, my son, and learn with how little wisdom the world is governed!”

  VII

  The few protestants were in the mood of Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms: “God help me, I can no other!” Carefully and conscientiously each one composed a letter to the State Department, setting forth the reasons which impelled him to the grave step. These letters were duly handed in, and copies were given to the press representatives. Having fired the shot which was supposed to be heard round the world, each patriot held his breath and waited for the echoes.

  Alas, they had things to learn about the World they lived in. One of the great New York papers gave an inch or two to the report of some resignations, naming no names; the rest of the press gave not a line to the matter. And then—a pathetic sort of anticlimax—the tactful secretary-general of the American Commission sent for each of the resigners separately and said that their objections had been duly recorded on the books of history; so their honor must now be considered to be satisfied. Wouldn’t they kindly consent to stay on and perform their duties during the short time still remaining? No one else knew what they knew; they were really indispensable. Amateurs in diplomacy, they could hardly evade this trap. A couple of days later the department in Washington gave to the press a denial that anyone had resigned except Bullitt, and one professor who was returning on account of pressing duties at home.