“We haven’t lost it yet,” I said, “but some of us are doing our best. I wish you’d explain to me, Lucien, how you expect to make Germany pay for the war when you’re standing with your foot on her throat.” “I am sorry if we are keeping you from trading with her,” he answered with icy politeness, “but security is as necessary to France as trade is to England. You made _yourselves_ secure when you took the German fleet. Now, when France is left alone . . .” He glanced malevolently at Clifford van Oss and turned again to the window. “But, hell, Wilson had no power to commit us!” Clifford protested. “If you’d any of you gotten down to the constitution of the United States . . .” “I fancy America signed the treaty?,” said Lucian coldly. “We’d best quit talking about bad faith,” Clifford recommended, without, however, following his own advice. “Clemenceau and Lloyd-George let up on Wilson over the fourteen points; they let up on the Germans . . .” I turned to Hornbeck, whose square face was alight with malicious enjoyment. “What are you supposed to be doing nowadays?,” I asked, as we strolled up and down the room where we had worked so long together. “I’m adviser to the secretariat,” he answered. “What does that mean? Well, you may say, if you like, that I’m preparing for the next war.” “It’s a pity there’s no one to bang all our heads together,” I murmured, as a new wrangle broke out between Clifford and Lucien. “The German menace has gone, but there’s a French menace coming. Nine or ten months ago I told Lucien in Paris that his people were at the top of their prestige; now they’re the most hated, feared and despised people in Europe. A mad war, a mad peace . . .” “And nothing to prevent another war as mad,” Hornbeck began. Then we stood without speaking, in a silence that spread over London, freezing sound and movement. The customary rumble of traffic receded to a distance and faded away; the blare of horns, the ringing of bells, the click of typewriters, all the shouting, speaking and whispering that made up the unceasing drone of a great city now, for two minutes, ceased. Then, very far away, the rumble of traffic began again. I felt as if I were recovering consciousness after an anæsthetic. Nearer at hand I heard voices, then the scuffle of feet; a typewriter clicked interrogatively, as though wondering if the two minutes were over; then a telephone-bell rang; and the city heaved and roared its way back to life. “We’re no better off,” Hornbeck resumed. “Only you sentimentalists ever thought we should be.”