She had hardly changed, except for a few streaks of grey in her brown
hair. Her low, broad forehead was as smooth as before, her brown eyes
shown with their old steady light. She had not lost her sense of
humour, though she had seen a good deal of blood and agony and death.
“How’s humanity?” I asked, and she laughed and shrugged her shoulders.
“What can one do with it? I thought we were going to catch the old
devil by the tail and hold him fast, but he’s broken loose again. This
Peace! Dear God!... And all the cruelty and hatred that have survived
the massacre! But I don’t despair, even now. In this room there is
enough good-will and human kindness to create a new world. We’re going
to have a good try to make things better by-and-by.”
“Who’s your star to-night?” I asked. “Who is the particular
Hot-Gospeller with a mission to convert mankind?”
“I’ve several,” said Susy.
She glanced round the room, and her eyes rested on a little man with
goggles and a goatee beard--none other than my good friend Dr. Small,
with whom I had travelled down many roads. I had no notion that he knew
Susy or was to be here to-night.
“There’s one great soul--a little American doctor whose heart is as big
as humanity itself, and whose head is filled with the wisdom of the
wise.”
“I know him,” I said. “And I agree with you.”
He caught our eyes fixed on him, and blinked through his goggles, and
then waved his hand, and made his way to us.
“Hulloa, doc,” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me you know Susy Whincop?”
“No need,” he answered. “Miss Whincop is the golden link between all
men of good-will.”
Susy was pleased with that. She patted the little doctor’s hand and
said, “Bully for you, Doctor--and may the Stars and Stripes wave over
the League of Nations!”
Then she was assailed by other guests, and the Doctor and I took refuge
in a corner.
“How’s everything?” I asked.
The doctor was profoundly dejected, and did not hide the gloom that
possessed his soul.
“Sonny,” he answered, “we shall have to fight with our backs to the
wall, because the enemy--the old Devil--is prevailing against us. I
have just come over from Paris, and I don’t mind telling you that
what I saw during the Peace Conference has made me doubt the power of
goodness over evil.”
“Tell me,” I said.
Daddy Small’s story was not pleasant to hear. It was the story of the
betrayal, one by one, of every ideal for which simple men had fought
and died, a story of broken pledges, of hero-worship dethroned, and of
great peoples condemned to lingering death. The Peace Treaty, he said,
would break the heart of the world and prepare the way for new, more
dreadful, warfare.
“How about Wilson?” I asked.
The little doctor raised his hands like a German crying, “_Kamerad!_”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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