Fall of Giants (The Century Trilogy)

by Ken Follett

  "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 cafe 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?"

  Ethel hesitated, not wanting to tell him but reluctant to lie.

  Her hesitation told him what he wanted to know. "I see," he said. "That would explain his vituperation."

  "I don't think you need to look for an ulterior motive," she said. "What happened at the Somme is enough to make soldiers angry, don't you think?"

  "He should be court-martialed for insolence."

  "But you promised not to--"

  "Yes," he said crossly. "Unfortunately, I did."

  Lloyd George entered the chamber.

  He was a small, slight figure in formal morning dress, the overlong hair a bit unkempt, the bushy mustache now entirely white. He was fifty-three, but there was a spring in his step, and as he sat down and said something to a backbencher, Ethel saw the grin familiar from newspaper photographs.

  He began speaking at ten past four. His voice was a little hoarse, and he said he had a sore throat. He paused, then said: "I appear before the House of Commons today with the most terrible responsibility that can fall on the shoulders of any living man."

  That was a good start, Ethel thought. At least he was not going to dismiss the German note as an unimportant trick or diversion, in the way the French and Russians had.

  "Any man or set of men who wantonly, or without sufficient cause, prolonged a terrible conflict like this would have on his soul a crime that oceans could not cleanse."

  That was a biblical touch, Ethel thought, a Baptist-chapel reference to sins being washed away.

  But then, like a preacher, he made the contrary statement. "Any man or set of men who, out of a sense of weariness or despair, abandoned the struggle without the high purpose for which we had entered into it being nearly fulfilled, would have been guilty of the costliest act of poltroonery ever perpetrated by any statesman."

  Ethel fidgeted anxiously. Which way was he going to jump? She thought of Telegram Day in Aberowen, and saw again the faces of the bereaved. Surely Lloyd George--of all politicians--would not let heartbreak of that nature continue if he could help it? If he did, what was the point of his being in politics at all?

  He quoted Abraham Lincoln. "'We accepted this war for an object, and a worthy object, and the war will end when that object is attained.' "

  That was ominous. Ethel wanted to ask him what the object was. Woodrow Wilson had asked that question and as yet had got no reply. No answer was given now. Lloyd George said: "Are we likely to achieve that object by accepting the invitation of the German chancellor? That is the only question we have to put to ourselves."

  Ethel felt frustrated. How could this question be discussed if no one knew what the object of the war was?

  Lloyd George raised his voice, like a preacher about to speak of hell. "To enter at the invitation of Germany, proclaiming herself victorious, without any knowledge of the proposals she proposes to make, into a conference"--here he paused and looked around the chamber, first to the Liberals behind him and to his right, then across the floor to the Conservatives on the opposition side--"is to put our heads into a noose with the rope end in the hands of Germany!"

  There was a roar of approval from the M.P.s.

  He was rejecting the peace offer.

  Beside Ethel, Gus Dewar buried his face in his hands.

  Ethel said loudly: "What about Alun Pritchard, killed at the Somme?"

  The usher said: "Quiet, there!"

  Ethel stood up. "Sergeant Prophet Jones, dead!" she cried.

  Fitz said: "Be quiet and sit down, for God's sake!"

  Down in the chamber, Lloyd George continued speaking, though one or two M.P.s were looking up at the gallery.

  "Clive Pugh!" she shouted at the top of her voice.

  Two ushers came toward her, one from each side.

  "Spotty Llewellyn!"

  The ushers grabbed her arms and hustled her away.

  "Joey Ponti!" she screamed, and then they dragged her out through the door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  January and February 1917

  Walter Ulrich dreamed he was in a horse-drawn carriage on his way to meet Maud. The carriage was going downhill, and began to travel dangerously fast, bouncing on the uneven road surface. He shouted, "Slow down! Slow down!" but the driver could not hear him
over the drumming of hooves, which sounded oddly like the running of a motorcar engine. Despite this anomaly, Walter was terrified that the runaway carriage would crash and he would never reach Maud. He tried again to order the driver to slow down, and the effort of shouting woke him.

  In reality he was in an automobile, a chauffeur-driven Mercedes 37/95 Double Phaeton, traveling at moderate speed along a bumpy road in Silesia. His father sat beside him, smoking a cigar. They had left Berlin in the early hours of the morning, both wrapped in fur coats--it was an open car--and they were on their way to the eastern headquarters of the high command.

  The dream was easy to interpret. The Allies had scornfully rejected the peace offer that Walter had worked so hard to promote. The rejection had strengthened the hand of the German military, who wanted to resume unrestricted submarine warfare, sinking every ship in the war zone, military or civilian, passenger or freight, combatant or neutral, in order to starve Britain and France into submission. The politicians, notably the chancellor, feared that was the way to defeat, for it was likely to bring the United States into the war, but the submariners were winning the argument. The kaiser had shown which way he leaned by promoting the aggressive Arthur Zimmermann to foreign minister. And Walter dreamed of charging downhill to disaster.

  Walter believed that the greatest danger to Germany was the United States. The aim of German policy should be to keep America out of the war. True, Germany was being starved by the Allied naval blockade. But the Russians could not last much longer, and when they capitulated, Germany would overrun the rich western and southern regions of the Russian empire, with their vast cornfields and bottomless oil wells. And the entire German army would then be able to concentrate on the western front. That was the only hope.

  But would the kaiser see that?

  The final decision would be made today.

  A bleak winter daylight was breaking over countryside patchworked with snow. Walter felt like a shirker, being so far from the fighting. "I should have returned to the front line weeks ago," he said.