The mention of Lloyd George brought Rick into the conversation. Rick’s father knew the key men of his country, and reported what they were saying in the clubs. Lloyd George was the only one of the war chiefs who still held power, and he did it because he had no principles, but was able to say, with the most passionate fervor, the opposite of what he said the day before. The “little squirt of a Welsh lawyer” had wrecked his own party getting power, and now was the prisoner of the Conservatives; useful to them because he could talk Liberal, and that was necessary with a bitterly discontented electorate.
Lanny told a story about his English friend Fessenden, one of the secretaries attached to the British staff at the Peace Conference. Fessenden had noticed that through a long and tedious discussion Lloyd George was “doodling” on a sheet of paper, and at the end crumpled it up and threw it onto the floor. Young Fessenden rescued it, thinking it might be something that would be of advantage to his country’s opponents. He found that the British Prime Minister had covered an entire sheet with repetitions of one single word: “Votes. Votes. Votes.”
VIII
Here sat these seven friends in soft-cushioned chairs, seeing one another’s faces by the light of shaded lamps and the red and gold flames of burning cypress logs. Convenient little tables held ashtrays for their cigarettes and glasses for their drinks. On the walls around them were fine pictures, and shelves full of books for every taste. In one corner of the room was a piano, and when they asked him to play, Kurt produced soft music which turned time into beauty and glorified the processes of the human spirit.
Everything in the world appeared to be theirs, and yet their talk was troubled; it was as if the ground upon which this lovely home was built had turned to sand and might slide into the sea. On the center table lay newspapers telling with shocked headlines that the French and British armies had occupied Constantinople, which was threatened with revolution and might plunge the world into another war. When one said “another war” one didn’t count the dozen or so small wars which were going on all the time, and which one had come to take for granted; one meant another war involving one’s own land; one meant—horror of horrors—a war in which the late Allies might be fighting against each other!
Robbie Budd, newly hatched oil man, could tell them what the day’s news meant. The old Turkish Empire had collapsed, and a new Turkey was going to be born, with all the benefits of modern civilization, such as oil wells and tanks and pipelines, not to mention copper mines in Armenia and potash works on the Dead Sea. The only question was, which benevolent nation was going to have the pleasure of conferring these blessings upon the Turks? (This wasn’t Robbie’s phrase; it was Rick’s rephrasing.) The British had got hold of all the oil, but the French had got Syria and the Hejaz and were trying to control the routes of the pipelines; behind the scenes there was a furious quarrel going on, with screaming and calling of names in the nasal French language.
Now suddenly came this coup d’état in Constantinople. The benighted Turks didn’t want to accept benefits from either Britain or France, but wanted to dig their own oil wells and keep the oil; so the quarreling friends were obliged to act together in spite of their wishes. Lloyd George was talking about a holy war, in which the Christian Greeks would put down the heathen Turks; but what effect would that have upon the several hundred millions of Moslems who lived under the union Jack or near it?
Robbie pointed out that a certain Greek trader by the name of Basil Zaharoff had just been made Knight Commander of the Bath in England, a high honor rarely extended to aliens; Zaharoff controlled Vickers, the great munitions industry of Britain, and had saved the Empire at a net profit which people said was a quarter of a billion dollars—though Robbie Budd considered the figure exaggerated. Zaharoff was a friend of Lloyd George, and was reported to be one of his financial backers, which was only natural, considering how much money a politician had to have and how much governmental backing an international financier had to have. Zaharoff’s hatred of the Turks was one passion of his life that he didn’t have to hide.
“So,” said Robbie, “you can see why British troops have been put ashore in Constantinople, and why French troops had to follow, even though the French government is supporting the Turks behind the scenes. Added to this is the fact that Constantinople until eighteen months ago was a German city, and German agents have been left behind there, to make all the trouble they can for both British and French. Naturally that would include a revolution by young Turkish patriots.”
Robbie said this much and then stopped, realizing that he was in the presence of an agent whom the Germans had left behind in Paris. Kurt made no comment; of all persons in this room, he had had the best practice in keeping his thoughts to himself. But Lanny could imagine those thoughts without trouble, for only a couple of days earlier Kurt had received a letter from the comptroller-general of Schloss Stubendorf and had read passages to his friend. There, too, the British and French troops had found it necessary to intervene—not in Stubendorf itself, but in districts near by, known as “plebiscitary,” whose inhabitants were going to have the right to decide whether they wished to be German or Polish. A bitter campaign of propaganda was going on, and a fanatical Polish patriot was organizing the young Poles to intimidate the Germans and try to drive them out before the voting took place. At any rate, that was the way Kurt’s father described the events. Lanny remembered the name of Korfanty, which he was to hear frequently during the next year or two.
IX
When a fellow hasn’t seen his father for eight or nine months and can’t be sure when he will see him again, he naturally wants to make the most of his opportunity; so Lanny was pleased next morning when Robbie said: “I have some business to attend to that will interest you. Would you like to drive me?”
“Would I!” said the youth. He knew it was important because Robbie didn’t say anything about it in the presence of the others. What Beauty didn’t know she wouldn’t tell!
When the car had passed the gates and headed toward the village, Lanny said: “Which way?” The father answered: “To Monty,” and the son got a thrill.
“One guess!” he laughed. “Zaharoff?”
“You win,” was the reply.
As a method of education, Robbie had made it a practice to tell his son about his affairs. Always he would say gravely that nobody else was to know about the matter, and never in his life had the boy let anything slip. He must be especially careful now, the father warned, since one of his pals was a budding journalist and the other a German.
Robbie revealed that he had taken the munitions king of Europe into his “New England-Arabian Oil Company.” The old Greek devil had learned about it—he learned about everything in his various lines—and had sent for the American and made a proposal which it seemed the part of discretion to accept. “We’re in British mandated territory, and we can’t expect to operate without their protection; so we have to give a slice to some British insiders.”
“Who sups with the devil must have a long spoon,” quoted the youth, sagely.
“We have measured the spoon,” smiled the father. “He has a twenty-five percent interest.”
“But mayn’t he buy up some of the other stockholders?”
“I have the pledges of our American investors, and I think they’ll stick. More than thirty percent are Budds.”
Robbie told about the oil business as it was carried on in southern Arabia, a wild and desolate land, the home of fanatical tribesmen, mostly nomads. You paid one chieftan for a concession, but you couldn’t know what day he might be driven out. However, they had made a strike, and the cleanup would be rapid. Robbie portrayed khaki-clad young American engineers and leather-skinned drillers from Texas, sweating on a sun-scorched coast lined with sand and rocks, and living in a stockade with a watch tower and machine guns mounted on the walls. “Would you like to see it?” asked the father, and Lanny said: “Some time when you go.”
The youth understood quite well that his father was trying
to make the oil business sound romantic. Robbie Budd could not give up hope for the response he used to get in years past, when an eager lad had drunk in every word about the selling of machine guns and had leaped at every chance to believe that he was helping. But now, alas, Lanny’s mind had suffered a sea-change; it was full of ideas about oil as a cause of war. When he learned that his father had let Zaharoff in “on the ground floor” so that he might have a British gunboat lying in the little bay near his oil wells, Lanny wasn’t surprised, and didn’t blame anybody, but just preferred to stay at Juan and play the piano.
“You are happy in what you are doing?” asked the father, later in their drive.
“Really I am, Robbie. You’ve no idea how many fine books there are in that library. It seems every time I open one I get a new view of life. I hope you don’t think I’m wasting my time.”
“Not at all. You know what you want, and if you’re getting it, all right.”
“I want you to understand I’m not going to live on you the rest of my life, Robbie. I’ll find some way to put to use what I’ve learned.”
“Forget it,” was the reply, “So long as I have money, you’re welcome to a share.” Robbie said it and meant it, but Lanny knew that it involved giving up a long-cherished dream that these two might work together and that the son would take over what the father was building.
X
Eighteen months hadn’t been time enough to replace all the motor-vehicles of France, and the Route Nationale had less traffic than they remembered in old days. They sped past famous vistas of hills and valleys, blue sea and rocky shore, and came to Monte Carlo on its high promontory. Zaharoff was still staying at the hotel where a small boy had been able to steal his correspondence; he had a large suite there, suitable to his station as Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur and Knight Commander of the Bath. Robbie said he owned the hotel and was a heavy stockholder in the gambling casino at “Monty,” well known to be one of the gold mines of Europe.
The munitions king looked paler and even more tired than when Lanny had seen him last, in his palace on the Avenue Hoche in Paris. That had been a social occasion, but this was a business one, and the gentle duquesa and her two daughters did not put in an appearance. Robbie had come with a portfolio of documents, to give information and get advice from a one-time fireman of Constantinople who had entrusted a couple of million dollars to his care.
No manners could have been more polite than Zaharoff’s, no voice more soft and persuasive; yet it seemed to the youth that there was a subtle change in the relationship of the two men: his father was now the subordinate and the other the master. Perhaps this was just because Lanny remembered so vividly the occasions when the Levantine trader had suggested the idea that Vickers might buy out Budd’s, and Robbie had answered suavely that Budd’s might prefer to consider buying out Vickers. Time had passed, and Zaharoff’s judgment had been vindicated; Robbie’s wonderful dream of the world’s greatest munitions industry up the Newcastle River seemed dead forever. Budd’s was having to abandon that field to a great extent, while Vickers—it was having one hell of a time, as Robbie said and as the old man admitted, but Britain and France were going to keep their munitions industries, both under the control of this big-bodied Greek with the hawk’s nose, the white imperial that bobbed while he talked, and the steely-blue eyes that never smiled even when the lips pretended to.
Lanny had nothing to do but listen while his father produced documents and explained them. If Lanny ever wanted to drill a couple of dozen oil wells he would know what it cost; also he would understand that Arab sheiks, so romantic on the motion-picture screen, were rapacious and incendiary in their attitude toward petroleum companies. Zaharoff knew that he was dealing with a capable businessman, and what he had to say was put in the form of suggestions. He revealed his distrust of all Moslem peoples, so entirely lacking in modern business sense and in respect for vested capital. With that frankness which had always surprised Robbie Budd’s son, he discussed the attempted revolution in Constantinople, the scene of his youthful struggles. He defended the right of the Greek peoples to recover the lands taken long ago by the Turks, and said that he was insisting that the Allies should put the Turks out of Europe for good and all. Once more Lanny sat behind the scenes of the world puppet-show and saw where the strings led and who pulled them.
He learned that the strings reached even to that far-off land of liberty which he had been taught to consider his own. The munitions king wanted to know about the prospects of the election of a Republican president of the United States; he knew the names of the prominent aspirants, and listened attentively while Robbie described their personalities and connections. When Zaharoff heard that the Budd clan expected to have a voice in selecting a dependable man, he remarked: “You will be needing funds and may call on me for my share.” Robbie hadn’t expected that, and said so, whereupon the master of Europe replied: “When I invest my money in an American company, I become an American, don’t I?” It was a remark that Lanny would never forget.
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About the Author
Upton Sinclair (1878–1968) was a Pulitzer Prize–winning author, activist, and politician whose novel The Jungle (1906) led to the passage of the Federal Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act. Born into an impoverished family in Baltimore, Maryland, Sinclair entered City College of New York five days before his fourteenth birthday. He wrote dime novels and articles for pulp magazines to pay for his tuition, and continued his writing career as a graduate student at Columbia University. To research The Jungle, he spent seven weeks working undercover in Chicago’s meatpacking plants. The book received great critical and commercial success, and Sinclair used the proceeds to start a utopian community in New Jersey. In 1915, he moved to California, where he founded the state’s ACLU chapter and became an influential political figure, running for governor as the Democratic nominee in 1934. Sinclair wrote close to one hundred books during his lifetime, including Oil! (1927), the inspiration for the 2007 movie There Will Be Blood; Boston (1928), a documentary novel revolving around the Sacco and Vanzetti case; The Brass Check, a muckraking exposé of American journalism, and the eleven novels in Pulitzer Prize–winning Lanny Budd series.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1940 by Upton Sinclair
Cover design by Kat JK Lee
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2645-1
This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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World's End Page 84
