Fall of Giants

by Follett, Ken

  But who was she, to ask for so much from life? She was Ethel Williams, born in a coal miner’s cottage! How could she turn up her nose at a lifetime of ease? You should be so lucky, she told herself, using one of Bernie’s sayings.

  And then there was Lloyd. He would have a governess, and later Fitz would pay for him to go to a posh school. He would grow up among the elite and lead a life of privilege. Did Ethel have the right to deny him that?

  She was no nearer an answer when she opened the newspapers in the office she shared with Maud and learned of another dramatic offer. On December 12 the German chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, proposed peace talks with the Allies.

  Ethel was elated. Peace! Was it really possible? Might Billy come home?

  The French premier immediately described the note as a crafty move, and the Russian foreign minister denounced the Germans’ “lying proposals,” but Ethel believed it was the British reaction that would count.

  Lloyd George was not making public speeches of any kind, claiming he had a sore throat. In London in December half the population had coughs and colds, but all the same Ethel suspected Lloyd George just wanted time to think. She took that as a good sign. An immediate response would have been a rejection; anything else was hopeful. He was at least considering peace, she thought optimistically.

  Meanwhile President Wilson threw America’s weight into the balance on the side of peace. He suggested that as a preliminary to talks all the warring powers state their aims—what they were trying to achieve by fighting.

  “That’s embarrassed them,” said Bernie Leckwith that evening. “They’ve forgotten why they started it. They’re fighting now just because they want to win.”

  Ethel remembered what Mrs. Dai Ponies had said about the strike: These men—once they get into a fight, all they care about is winning. They won’t give in, whatever the cost. She wondered how a woman prime minister might have reacted to a peace proposal.

  But Bernie was right, she realized over the next few days. President Wilson’s suggestion met with a strange silence. No country answered immediately. That made Ethel more angry. How could they carry on if they did not even know what they were fighting for?

  At the end of the week Bernie organized a public meeting to debate the German note. On the day of the meeting, Ethel woke up to see her brother standing beside her bed in his khaki uniform. “Billy!” she cried. “You’re alive!”

  “And on a week’s leave,” he said. “Get out of bed, you lazy cow.”

  She jumped up, put on a dressing gown over her nightdress, and hugged him. “Oh, Billy, I’m so happy to see you.” She noticed the stripes on his sleeve. “Sergeant, now, is it?”

  “Aye.”

  “How did you get into the house?”

  “Mildred opened the door. Actually, I been here since last night.”

  “Where did you sleep?”

  He looked bashful. “Upstairs.”

  Ethel grinned. “Lucky lad.”

  “I really like her, Eth.”

  “So do I,” Ethel said. “Mildred is solid gold. Are you going to marry her?”

  “Aye, if I survive the war.”

  “You don’t mind about the age difference?”

  “She’s twenty-three. It’s not like she’s really old, thirty or something.”

  “And the children?”

  Billy shrugged. “They’re nice kids, but even if they weren’t I’d put up with them for her sake.”

  “You really do love her.”

  “It’s not difficult.”

  “She’s started a little business, you must have seen all the hats up there in her room.”

  “Aye. Going well, too, it is, she says.”

  “Very well. She’s a hard worker. Is Tommy with you?”

  “He come over on the boat with me, but now he’ve gone to Aberowen on the train.”

  Lloyd woke up, saw a strange man in the room, and began to cry. Ethel picked him up and quieted him. “Come in the kitchen,” she said to Billy. “I’ll make us some breakfast.”

  Billy sat and read the paper while she made porridge. After a moment he said: “Bloody hell.”

  “What?”

  “Bloody Fitzherbert’s been opening his big mouth, I see.” He glanced at Lloyd, almost as if the baby might be offended at this scornful reference to his father.

  Ethel looked over his shoulder. She read:PEACE: A SOLDIER’SPLEA

  “Don’t Give Up on Us Now!” Wounded Earl Speaks Out

  A moving speech was made yesterday in the House of Lords against the current proposal of the German Chancellor for peace talks. The speaker was Earl Fitzherbert, a Major in the Welsh Rifles, who is in London recovering from wounds received at the Battle of the Somme.

  Lord Fitzherbert said that to talk peace with the Germans would be a betrayal of all the men who have given their lives in the war. “We believe we are winning and can achieve complete victory provided you don’t give up on us now,” he said.

  Wearing his uniform, with an eye patch, and leaning on a crutch, the earl made a striking figure in the debating chamber. He was listened to in absolute silence, and cheered when he sat down.

  There was a lot more of the same. Ethel was aghast. It was sentimental claptrap, but it would be effective. Fitz did not normally wear the eye patch—he must have put it on for effect. The speech would prejudice a lot of people against the peace plan.

  She ate breakfast with Billy, then dressed Lloyd and herself and went out. Billy was going to spend the day with Mildred, but he promised to come to the meeting that evening.

  When Ethel arrived at the office of The Soldier’s Wife she saw that all the newspapers had reported Fitz’s speech. Several made it the subject of a leading article. They took different views, but agreed he had struck a powerful blow.

  “How can anyone be against the mere discussion of peace?” she said to Maud.

  “You can ask him yourself,” Maud said. “I invited him to tonight’s meeting, and he accepted.”

  Ethel was startled. “He’ll get a warm reception!”

  “I certainly hope so.”

  The two women spent the day working on a special edition of the newspaper with the front-page headline SMALL DANGER OF PEACE. Maud liked the irony but Ethel thought it was too subtle. Late in the afternoon Ethel collected Lloyd from the child minder, took him home, fed him, and put him to bed. She left him in the care of Mildred, who did not go to political meetings.

  The Calvary Gospel Hall was filling up when Ethel arrived, and soon there was standing room only. The audience included many soldiers and sailors in uniform. Bernie chaired the meeting. He opened with a speech of his own that managed to be dull even though short—he was no orator. Then he called on the first speaker, a philosopher from Oxford University.

  Ethel knew the arguments for peace better than the philosopher did, and as he spoke she studied the two men on the platform who were wooing her. Fitz was the product of hundreds of years of wealth and culture. As always, he was beautifully dressed, his hair well-cut, his hands white, and his fingernails clean. Bernie came from a tribe of persecuted nomads who survived by being cleverer than those who tormented them. He was wearing his only suit, the heavy dark gray serge. Ethel had never seen him in anything else: when the weather was warm he simply took off the jacket.

  The audience listened quietly. The Labour movement was divided over peace. Ramsay MacDonald, who had spoken against the war in Parliament on August 3, 1914, had resigned as Labour Party leader when war was declared two days later, and since then the party’s M.P.s had supported the war, as did most of their voters. But Labour supporters tended to be the most skeptical of working-class people, and there was a strong minority in favor of peace.

  Fitz began by speaking of Britain’s proud traditions. For hundreds of years, he said, Britain had maintained the balance of power in Europe, generally by siding with weaker nations to make sure no one country dominated. “The German chancellor has not said anything
about the terms of a peace settlement, but any discussion would have to start from the status quo,” he said. “Peace now means that France is humiliated and robbed of territory and Belgium becomes a satellite. Germany would dominate the continent by sheer military force. We cannot allow that to happen. We must fight for victory.”

  When the discussion opened, Bernie said: “Earl Fitzherbert is here in a purely personal capacity, not as an army officer, and he has given me his word of honor that serving soldiers in the audience will not be disciplined for anything they say. Indeed, we would not have invited the earl to attend the meeting on any other basis.”

  Bernie himself asked the first question. As usual, it was a good one. “If France is humiliated and loses territory, then that will destabilize Europe, according to your analysis, Lord Fitzherbert.”

  Fitz nodded.

  “Whereas if Germany is humiliated and loses the territories of Alsace and Lorraine—as she undoubtedly would—then that will stabilize Europe.”

  Fitz was momentarily stumped, Ethel could see. He had not expected to have to deal with such sharp opposition here in the East End. Intellectually he was no match for Bernie. She felt a bit sorry for him.

  “Why the difference?” Bernie finished, and there was a murmur of approval from the peace faction in the audience.

  Fitz recovered rapidly. “The difference,” he said, “is that Germany is the aggressor, brutal, militaristic, and cruel, and if we make peace now we will be rewarding that behavior—and encouraging it in the future!”

  That brought a cheer from the other section of the audience, and Fitz’s face was saved, but it was a poor argument, Ethel thought, and Maud stood up to say so. “The outbreak of war was not the fault of any single nation!” she said. “It has become the conventional wisdom to blame Germany, and our militaristic newspapers encourage this fairy tale. We remember Germany’s invasion of Belgium and talk as if it was completely unprovoked. We have forgotten the mobilization of six million Russian soldiers on Germany’s border. We have forgotten the French refusal to declare neutrality.” A few men booed her. You never get cheered for telling people the situation is not as simple as they think, Ethel reflected wryly. “I don’t say Germany is innocent!” Maud protested. “I say no country is innocent. I say we are not fighting for the stability of Europe, or for justice for the Belgians, or to punish German militarism. We are fighting because we are too proud to admit we made a mistake!”

  A soldier in uniform stood up to speak, and Ethel saw with pride that it was Billy. “I fought at the Somme,” he began, and the audience went quiet. “I want to tell you why we lost so many men there.” Ethel heard their father’s strong voice and quiet conviction, and she realized Billy would have made a great preacher. “We were told by our officers”—here he stretched out his arm and pointed an accusing finger at Fitz—“that the assault would be a walk in the park.”

  Ethel saw Fitz shift uncomfortably in his chair on the platform.

  Billy went on: “We were told that our artillery had destroyed the enemy positions, wrecked their trenches and demolished their dugouts, and when we got to the other side we would see nothing but dead Germans.”

  He was not addressing the people on the platform, Ethel observed, but looking all around him, sweeping the audience with an intense gaze, making sure all eyes were on him.

  “Why did they tell us those things?” Billy said, and now he looked straight at Fitz and spoke with deliberate emphasis. “Things that were not true.” There was a mutter of agreement from the audience.

  Ethel saw Fitz’s face darken. She knew that for men of Fitz’s class an accusation of lying was the worst of all insults. Billy knew it, too.

  Billy said: “The German positions had not been destroyed, as we discovered when we ran into machine-gun fire.”

  The audience reaction became less muted. Someone called out: “Shame!”

  Fitz stood up to speak, but Bernie said: “One moment, please, Lord Fitzherbert, let the present speaker finish.” Fitz sat down, shaking his head vigorously from side to side.

  Billy raised his voice. “Did our officers check, by aerial reconnaissance and by sending out patrols, how much damage the artillery had in fact done to the German lines? If not, why not?”

  Fitz stood up again, furious. Some of the audience cheered, others booed. He began to speak. “You don’t understand!” he said.

  But Billy’s voice prevailed. “If they knew the truth,” he cried, “why did they tell us otherwise?”

  Fitz began to shout, and half the audience were calling out, but Billy’s voice could be heard over everything else. “I ask one simple question!” he roared. “Are our officers fools—or liars?”

  { V }

  Ethel received a letter in Fitz’s large, confident handwriting on his expensive crested notepaper. He did not mention the meeting in Aldgate, but invited her to the Palace of Westminster on the following day, Tuesday, December 19, to sit in the gallery of the House of Commons and hear Lloyd George’s first speech as prime minister. She was excited. She had never thought she would see the inside of Westminster Palace, let alone hear her hero speak.

  “Why do you suppose he’s invited you?” said Bernie that evening, asking the key question as usual.

  Ethel did not have a plausible answer. Sheer unadulterated kindness had never been part of Fitz’s character. He could be generous when it suited him. Bernie was shrewdly wondering if he wanted something in return.

  Bernie was cerebral rather than intuitive, but he had sensed some connection between Fitz and Ethel, and he had responded by becoming a bit amorous. It was nothing dramatic, for Bernie was not a dramatic man, but he held her hand an instant longer than he should have, stood an inch closer to her than was comfortable, patted her shoulder when speaking to her, and held her elbow as she went down a step. Suddenly insecure, Bernie was instinctively making gestures that said she belonged to him. Unfortunately, she found it hard not to flinch when he did so. Fitz had reminded her cruelly of what she did not feel about Bernie.

  Maud came into the office at half past ten on Tuesday, and they worked side by side all morning. Maud could not write the front page of the next edition until Lloyd George had spoken, but there was a lot else in the paper: jobs, advertisements for child minders, advice on women’s and children’s health written by Dr. Greenward, recipes, and letters.

  “Fitz is beside himself with rage after that meeting,” Maud said.

  “I told you they would give him a hard time.”

  “He doesn’t mind that,” she said. “But Billy called him a liar.”

  “You’re sure it’s not just that Billy got the better of the argument?”

  Maud smiled ruefully. “Perhaps.”

  “I just hope he doesn’t make Billy suffer for it.”

  “He won’t do that,” Maud said firmly. “It would be breaking his word.”

  “Good.”

  They had lunch in a café in the Mile End Road—“A Good Pull-In for Car Men,” according to its signboard, and it was indeed full of lorry drivers. Maud was greeted cheerfully by the counter staff. They had beef and oyster pie, the cheap oysters added to eke out the scarce beef.

  Afterward they took a bus across London to the West End. Ethel looked up at the giant dial of Big Ben and saw that it was half past three. Lloyd George was due to speak at four. He had it in his power to end the war and save millions of lives. Would he do it?

  Lloyd George had always fought for the workingman. Before the war he had done battle with the House of Lords and the king to bring in old-age pensions. Ethel knew how much that meant to penniless old people. On the first day the pension was paid out she had seen retired miners—once-strong men now bent and trembling—come out of the Aberowen post office openly weeping for joy that they were no longer destitute. That was when Lloyd George had become a working-class hero. The Lords had wanted to spend the money on the Royal Navy.

  I could write his speech today, she thought. I would say: �
�There are moments in the life of a man, and of a nation, when it is right to say: I have done my utmost, and I can do no more, therefore I will cease my striving, and seek another road. Within the last hour I have ordered a cease-fire along the entire length of the British line in France. Gentlemen, the guns have fallen silent.”

  It could be done. The French would be furious, but they would have to join in the cease-fire, or take the risk that Britain might make a separate peace and leave them to certain defeat. The peace settlement would be hard on France and Belgium, but not as hard as the loss of millions more lives.

  It would be an act of great statesmanship. It would also be the end of Lloyd George’s political career: voters would not elect the man who lost the war. But what a way to go out!

  Fitz was waiting in the Central Lobby. Gus Dewar was with him. No doubt he was as eager as everyone else to find out how Lloyd George would respond to the peace initiative.

  They climbed the long staircase to the gallery and took their seats overlooking the debating chamber. Ethel had Fitz on her right and Gus on her left. Below them, the rows of green leather benches on both sides were already full of M.P.s, except for the few places in the front row traditionally reserved for the cabinet.

  “Every M.P. a man,” Maud said loudly.

  An usher, wearing full formal court dress complete with velvet knee breeches and white stockings, officiously hissed: “Quiet, please!”

  A backbencher was on his feet, but hardly anyone was listening to him. They were all waiting for the new prime minister. Fitz spoke quietly to Ethel. “Your brother insulted me.”

  “You poor thing,” Ethel said sarcastically. “Are your feelings hurt?”

  “Men used to fight duels for less.”

  “Now there’s a sensible idea for the twentieth century.”

  He was unmoved by her scorn. “Does he know who is the father of Lloyd?”