lake. For many years such gatherings had been Lanny's favorite form of diversion; he had
attended a dozen, and had met all the interesting people, the statesmen and writers, the
reformers and cranks. Irma had never been to one, but had heard him tell about them, and
always in glowing terms. Now he proposed: "Let's stop off on our way to Berlin." "O.K. by me!"
said Irma.
VIII
They followed the course of the River Rhone, every stage of which had some memory of
Marie de Bruyne: the hotels where she and Lanny had stopped, the scenery they had admired,
the history they had recalled. But Lanny judged it better for Irma to have her own
memories, unscented by the perfume of any other woman. They climbed into the region of
pine-trees and wound through rocky gorges where the air was still and clear. Many bridges
and a great dam, and it was Lake Leman, with Geneva, home of the League of Nations, an
institution which for a few years had been the hope of mankind, but now appeared to have
fallen victim to a mysterious illness. Since the beginning of the year a great Conference on
Arms Limitation, with six hundred delegates from thirteen nations, had been meeting here,
and was to continue for a year longer; each nation in turn would bring forward a plea to
limit the sort of weapon which it didn't have or didn't need, and then the other nations would
show what was wrong with that plan.
Farther up the lake was Lausanne, where the premiers and foreign ministers were gathered to
debate the ancient question of reparations. Lanny Budd greeted his friend Pete and other
journalists whom he had been meeting off and on since the great peace conference thirteen
summers ago. They remembered him and were glad to see him; they knew about his gold-
embossed wife and her palace in Paris; they knew about Rick and his play. Here was another
show, and a fashionable young couple was taken right behind the scenes.
Lausanne is built on a mountainside, with each street at a different level. The French had a
hotel at the top, the British one at the bottom, and the other nations in between; the
diplomats ascended or descended to have their wrangles in one another's suites, and the
newspapermen wore themselves thin chasing the various controversies up hill and down.
Such, at any rate, was Corsatti's description. The statesmen were trying to keep their doings
secret, and Pete declared that when one saw you he dived into his hole like a woodchuck.
Your only chance was to catch one of them in swimming.
It was good clean fun, if you were a spectator who liked to hear gossip and ferret out
mysteries, or a devil-may-care journalist with an expense account which you padded freely.
The food was of the best, the climate delightful, the scenery ditto, with Mont Blanc right at
your back door—or so it seemed in the dustless Alpine air. You would be unhappy only if you
thought about the millions of mankind whose destiny was being gambled with by politicians.
The gaming-table was a powder-keg as big as all the Alps, and the players had no thought but
to keep their own country on top, their own class on top within their country, and their own
selves on top within their class.
IX
The statesmen had to drop the Young Plan, by which Germany had been bound to pay
twenty-five billion dollars in reparations. But France couldn't give up the hope of getting
something; so now with incessant wrangling they were adopting a plan whereby at the end
of three years Germany was to give bonds for three billion marks. But most observers agreed
that this was pure futility; Germany was borrowing, not paying. Germany was saying to the
bankers of the United States: "We have five billions of your money, and if you don't save us
you will lose it all!" The people of Germany were saying: "If you don't feed us we shall vote
for Hitler, or worse yet for Thalmann, the Bolshevik." The statesmen of Germany were saying:
"We are terrified about what will happen"—and who could say whether they were really
terrified or only pretending? Who could trust anybody in power, anywhere in all the world?
Robbie Budd had told his son a story, which he said all business men knew. A leather
merchant went to his banker to get his notes renewed and the banker refused to comply with
the request. The leather merchant told his troubles and pleaded hard; at last he asked: "Were you
ever in the leather business?" When the banker replied: "No," the other said: "Well, you're in it
now." And that, opined Pietro Corsatti, was the position of the investing public of the United
States; they were in the leather business in Germany, in the steel and coal and electrical and
chemical businesses, to say nothing of the road-building business and the swimming-pool
business. Nor was it enough to renew the notes; it was necessary to put up working capital to
keep these businesses from falling into ruins and their workers from turning Red!
Irma knew that this was the "great world" in which her career was to be carried on, so she
