Wemyss: I wouldn’t go so far.
The Marshal: It will get better terms in the end. And more lives thereby saved than would be lost while a man smokes a pipe. Do you ever go in for pipes?
Wemyss: I’m used to tailor-made.
The Marshal: Turkish.
Wemyss: Turkish, yes.
He did not however produce one. He sat back with eyes almost closed. Hoping the Marshal could not tell how much he wanted to get back to the table.
The Marshal: This is a North African tobacco. Strong, yes. But I like its smell.
Wemyss: Very aromatic.
His lids still down, he put the German documents on a leather-tooled coffee table. To indicate how easy he felt.
Wemyss: We mustn’t forget those.
The Marshal: What?
Wemyss: Those accreditation papers.
HOPE’S LETTER TO HIS WIFE
Meanwhile Admiral Hope had sat at the table and begun a letter to his wife:
Darling Nora,
By the time you receive this the news it carries will be public knowledge.…
The German plenipotentiaries watched him, the goats watching the sheep on judgment day. Admiral Hope did not look up at them or, in the ferment of the occasion, think it a strange time to write to one’s wife.
… The German delegates are in front of me at this moment. They represent the final cowardice of that empire. None of their notorious leaders have come to face us. Instead a minister without portfolio, a decadent count, an out-of-work general, and a mere captain of that great imperial fleet!
None the less he realized all at once he did not want to be there, was close to a sort of vertigo.
None the less [he wrote] I feel the heavy onus of being placed here by God and Britain. Our responsibility, to balance demands for proper precautions against mere lust for vengeance, to destroy the mechanisms of the German empire without destroying young and old indiscriminately. I believe that never since Pentecost has a descent by the holy spirit of wisdom upon mere men been so necessary.
And with the writing of the words he began, in fact, to feel Pentecostal, infused: and his breathing eased.
Of course, one suffers a bit from that old recurring question: why me? There are so many generals, so many admirals, so many nations to speak for. It is exactly the way one feels in battle while timing the flight of enemy shells. Why should this ship of all the British ships in all the British seas be the one to go sailing amongst the vapors of death?
You and I know the answer: there is no arrangement that is not divinely arranged.
How are Catherine and dear little Edmond? I’m glad that at last Major Henderson has stopped calling on her. I think he’s an insensitive man, a common enough kind of regimental oaf, not up to Trevor’s weight. On the other hand, there is really no need for her to go about dressed as a widow all the time—three months black is enough these days. Now that I have seen the front, there is something I wish you to pass on to her. Tell her that if it was meant for Trevor to die it was best it happened quickly, as soon as the German artillery began firing. On our way here I met Horace Turner, who is commanding a division near Amiens. He told me that when our retreat began, men trampled over the wounded in the rain, became mad things shut off from each other, lost to brotherhood. He says he saw a shell-shocked subaltern walk calmly down a line of wounded shooting through the head whoever groaned loudly. This is such a terrible war that we cannot be sure it was not precisely such a destiny that even an upright young man like Trevor was saved from by his instant death. Do I sound too callous? France is a running graveyard, my love, from Calais south, but, because I cannot believe that God refused to admit to his light any of the young who died here, it follows that there are worse things than death. There are living hells and the memory of living hells. As painful as it may be to say, it must be said. There are men alive now who would gladly take Trevor’s place in quick and honorable oblivion. How to say this to Catherine? I can’t say. But I rely, my darling, on your tact and wisdom.…
READING OF TERMS
The Marshal and Lord Wemyss returned in a faint tobacco sourness. Erzberger was asked to indicate his party, the Marshal introduced his, the nervous interpreters referred to each other for the spelling of names. Von Winterfeldt at center table had sense to know they would not like his aid.
All this settled, the Marshal signaled that they could take their places and with a similar bare gesture of his left hand that Erzberger should speak. Phlegm impeded Matthias’s throat and could not be easily expelled. When he could talk his words were breathless, the voice furry.
Erzberger: I have come to hear the Allied proposals for an armistice.
Laperche translated to French, the Marshal answered, Laperche transmitted, in merely viable German, the answer. That was the pattern.
The Marshal: I have no proposals to make.
The count put a combative elbow on the table, in the manner of sane diplomats.
Maiberling: We wish to inquire as to the conditions under which the Allies would agree to an armistice.
The Marshal: I have no conditions to propose.
On Erzberger’s left von Winterfeldt exhaled, expelling perhaps his last residues of Gallic enthusiasm. It wouldn’t be of any use to remind the Marshal that they had once dined together. Beyond von Winterfeldt, however, Maiberling, glowering at his hands, showed the most urbane anger. Now that diplomatic contact had been made he seemed a man of exquisite protocol and sense. The idea of his extracting his armament from the overcoat and putting a bullet into the Marshal’s stiff neck was no longer probable.
Erzberger: President Wilson informed our government that you have authority to state conditions. I would like my colleague Count von Maiberling to read our last communiqué from the government of the United States.…
The Marshal permitted it. Perhaps he had not received a copy himself before leaving Senlis. Perhaps the American President did not honor his allies with copies of all state papers exchanged by Germany and the United States. Perhaps that was why the Marshal had permitted no American here.
Maiberling began to read, pausing at the ends of sentences for the French interpreter.
Matthias watched the Marshal haul furiously at the ends of his pipe-stained mustache. And Wemyss, ample face concentrated on the keeping of his monocle in his right eye, taking from his pocket first one pair of spectacles, then another. A regular Cowes review of his optical armament.
How shall I speak to them? It is almost beyond belief that they manage to speak to each other.
Maiberling finished the reading of the American communiqué.
The Marshal drove his body forward in the chair. Out of furious good will he would sort out their clumsy overtures.
The Marshal: I am here to answer you as to terms if you require an armistice. Do you require an armistice?
He drew the possibility in the air as if it were a remote and theoretic one.
The Marshal: If you do, I can acquaint you with the terms. I cannot make them myself. That is the work of the governments I represent.
He stored his tongue in his left cheek and held it there, something cleverly achieved.
Matthias and the count both spoke at once. Eager to be acquainted with terms.
General Weygand began to read from the document before him. Even in French it sounded ruinous to Erzberger, doubly ruinous when Helldorf translated. The massive terms rose, sucked oxygen out of the air, made Erzberger dizzy, gallows-gay.
They wanted Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Alsace, Lorraine evacuated in fourteen days. They wanted repatriation of all natives of the nominated areas in fourteen days. These demands stung Matthias on the raw side of his conceit—he wrote on the paper provided, Der Volkerbund, Chapter IV. It was as far as he could go toward telling them: in the book whose title he had just noted down he had chastely written against expatriation, and now felt insulted by the punishing time limit.
They wanted five thousand heavy and field guns given up in go
od condition. Thirty thousand machine guns (good news for the soviets), five thousand trench mortars, two thousand fighters and bombers.
Von Helldorf translated impassively; perhaps he was happy if the regimental horses were not touched.
They wanted evacuation of the districts on the left bank of the Rhine. And across the river from Mainz, Coblenz, Cologne, and Strasbourg, bridgeheads thirty kilometers deep. From the end of the table came the noise of choking. Captain Vanselow had begun to weep. Was he a Rhinelander? Erzberger could not help feeling the captain was off cue. Weren’t his tears supposed to be for the fleet?
Matthias himself was being watched by Lord Wemyss, who noticed his pained mouth and the way that, at each clause, his eyes slewed up and down the table. Wemyss thought, he believes he’s in control, but in fact is well under, two-thirds gone. I ought to be pleased.…
Clause V, the army had twenty-eight days to get out of the Rhineland. Clause VI, no one was to be harmed by the evacuating armies and no food or other stores destroyed.
There won’t be time for any vandalisms or other barbarities, Erzberger could have promised. They’ll be all trying to get out by mule or bike or even by catching a train. Even the notorious Death’s Head Hussars, featured Herod-style in the American press as baby-roasters. No time for a single baby barbecue for the hussars this November.
Clause VII, five thousand locomotives and one hundred and fifty thousand wagons in good repair to be delivered to the Associated Powers within thirty-one days.
Surely I can depend on Maiberling now to turn earthy and scream: famine-mongers! Dealers in scrofula!
But Maiberling stayed cool and businesslike.
Clause VII brought forward its other surprises. Ten thousand trucks to be delivered inside a month.
Innocuous Clause VIII. The German Command shall be responsible for revealing within forty-eight hours all mines or delayed-action fuses disposed on territories evacuated by German troops.…
Genial Clause IX. In the east, all German troops to withdraw inside the frontiers of Germany as they existed on 1 August 1914.
It was possible to breathe amongst such clauses.
Vanselow had now got himself under control and packed away his handkerchief.
Financial clauses: Reparation for damage done. Return of the cash deposit in the Bank of Belgium, return of Romanian and Russian gold.…
Such a gambling race we are. Now all the bills will be called up at the one time.
Naval clauses.
Don’t go to pieces again, my captain.
Vanselow listened mutely.
“Immediate cessation [read Weygand] of all hostilities at sea and definite information to be given as to the position and movements of all German ships.… To surrender at the ports specified by the Allies and the United States all submarines at present in existence (including all submarine cruisers and mine layers), with armament and equipment complete.… The following German surface warships which shall be designated by the Allies and the U.S.A., shall forthwith be disarmed and thereafter interned in neutral ports, or, failing them, Allied ports, and placed under surveillance of the Allies and the U.S.A., only caretakers being left on board, namely:
6 battle cruisers
10 battle ships
8 light cruisers
50 destroyers of the most modern style.
“All other surface warships (including river craft) to be concentrated in German naval bases to be designated by the Allies and the U.S.A., completely disarmed and placed under the supervision of the Allies and the U.S.A. All vessels of the auxiliary fleet are to be disarmed.”
Matthias watched the captain’s hand skid across his note paper, leaving deft shorthand in its wake.
THE KILLING AND NUMBING CLAUSE
Clause XXVI was the killing and numbing clause. In fact Erzberger heard very little of Clause XXVII onward after Clause XXVI fell on him.
The existing blockade conditions set up by the Allied and Associated Powers are to remain unchanged, and all German merchant ships found at sea are to remain liable to capture.
Erzberger found himself dipping his pen into ink and writing according to his futile Reichstag rhetoric on the virgin paper set for him. “We will let you [he wrote] render the army helpless, destroy the fleet. The Rhine can be your sewer. But you want to strike at the grocers’ shops and soup kitchens.”
He noticed that Admiral Wemyss, who had gone on tampering with his spectacles all through the army, territorial, and financial clauses, kept his hands emphatically still throughout the reading of the naval terms. Lest anyone think he didn’t mean to impose them.
It was one of those special moments, Erzberger realized, when the diluted emotions a politician (this politician, Matthias Erzberger) takes with him to any conference table are reduced to unity and all he wants to do is scream across the table, “Murderer!” For he finds, in spite of all the self-doubts and secret pride that drove him to the hustings, that he is one with the apolitical others—the people with ration books.
When he was conscious of the men at the table again he found he was being watched, though the Marshal’s face was clamped down tight over the Marshal’s curiosity.
He saw too that he had covered the page with feverish writing. There were a lot of exclamation marks.
He sat upright, turned the littered page face down.
Weygand finished reading and dropped the armistice document to the table. Erzberger could see across the table that there were typing errors in it, many words X-ed out.
Helldorf reported that the duration of the Armistice was to be thirty-six days. With the option to extend.
THE MARSHAL AS EXEGETE
The Marshal: Well?
Erzberger thought, I’m the one who has to speak. What do I say that will show up against those mountainous propositions? As an outsider and with disbelief he heard his own speech.
Erzberger: We wish to appeal for an immediate cease-fire while the terms are considered. Our request is not a military stratagem, Marshal. I can tell you only that our armies are in a state of Bolshevik anarchy. We had such difficulty crossing our own lines. I could certainly provide the Allied plenipotentiaries with a list of cities where Bolshevik revolutionaries have taken control of local affairs. We ask for a cease-fire not only for Germany’s sake but for the sake of Western Europe as a whole.
Wemyss sighted the white paper with his right eye and wrote, A little late to go pan-European.
The Marshal: Rebellion is quite normal in defeated armies. Western Europe can look after itself.
Von Winterfeldt begged to read a memorandum He had been given in Spa. He read it in his smooth French and between sentences looked up at the Marshal and Weygand as if inviting approval of his accent. It spoke of those who would die during the consideration of the terms who would otherwise be restored to their families.
The Marshal: There will be a cease-fire when the terms are accepted. That is the whole rationale of the terms.
Erzberger’s ears still rang.
Erzberger: I appeal to your President.
The Marshal: There’s no sense in such an appeal. The terms are strategic matters and the business of soldiers. Therefore you are here as military deputies. You cannot appeal to a President.
The count advanced a well-ordered face in front of von Winterfeldt and stared Matthias in the eyes. I’m with you, said the eyes. Matthias thought without comfort, so you are.
Erzberger: I must of course seek your permission to radio the terms to the imperial Chancellor and to OHL in Spa.
Foch: The terms can be transmitted by radio in code. If you are worried about revolution in your army we can’t very well send them en clair. Any radio operator who picked them up could pass them on to other soldiers or even suppress them. If you don’t wish to use coded radio you may send a courier, one of the German officers you have in your party.
From the table in the corner Captain Blauert had risen and dropped a slip of paper onto Erzberger’s blotter. It said,
Impossible for us to encode such detailed clauses. Possess no cipher books.
Erzberger: Our departure was so hurried we could not gather the requisite cipher books to encode the terms. On the other hand it will take a courier at least twelve hours to reach OHL at Spa. Therefore I request an extension of one day to the deadline for acceptance of terms.
The Marshal: I have no authority to do that. The deadline stands. Seventy-two hours from conclusion of this meeting, say eleven A.M. That makes the final hour for acceptance eleven A.M. on Monday.
Everybody at the table, except the Marshal and the interpreters, wrote it down: eleven A.M., Monday.
The Marshal: My staff will arrange for your courier’s safe-conduct and provide him with maps that indicate our requirements in the Rhineland. You yourself are free to inform Spa and your Chancellor that the courier is on his way. You should present any messages to my staff who will be on duty in this carriage.
Weygand: You may seek further general or individual meetings with members of our mission.
The Marshal: I do not advise you to look for any softening of terms as they now stand.
DO THEY TAKE IN WUPPERTAL?
He stood. Can I stand? Erzberger wondered. Have they left us our legs?
The British admirals, the French generals abandoned the table. Climbing down to the duckboards Erzberger felt his calves tremble as if he had had a hard day’s walk with hills and some rock climbing. Not looking back: some staff officer had no doubt been set to watch them and behold them fall into a terrified knot of strangers bickering amongst the low elms. He heard Maiberling whisper Jesus and the nearly devout word blew over his shoulder as a short puff of vapor.
They sought the deep chairs in the saloon and wallowed, panting; they had gained the summit of the German defeat. Four climbers from seventy million. Von Helldorf and Blauert, who had had their work to do in 2417D and were in any case young, stood by, lithe, ancillary, remotely sympathetic. General von Winterfeldt, having got his breath back, went statuesque again. Captain Vanselow called for paper, wrote a proposition or two for use in the face of the British admirals, lifted his pen after a few lines and spilled tears onto what he had written.