Grand Days (43 page)

Ambrose broke into laughter and his laughter instantly freed her from the earnest agonies of her working day concerns. She told him of her magnificent defence of the souveniring. He was so good like this. No matter how much of a personal disaster a situation was Ambrose would say, ‘What a romp', or ‘How delicious', and it would dissolve.

She did not tell him of the infertility of France and the obvious potency of Mr Dole.

‘Oh, and another thing,' she said.

‘Yes?'

‘M. Dupont, the Chef de Securité of the Metropole — I said I would get him a position in the League of Nation's police force.'

‘Police force?' He laughed.

‘I promised. It was an agreement.'

‘For having done such a service to world peace, he deserves a position.'

‘Will you write to him and say something encouraging?'

‘I will write to him and say that if we ever form a police force, he shall be Commissioner in Chief.'

‘I don't think he wants to be chief. Just detective will be enough.'

She told him how Captain Strongbow had sworn in M. Dupont as a world sheriff.

‘Did he believe it?'

‘Apparently not,' and then added, laughing, ‘At the time I almost did.'

She again went back to his apartment and to bed.

After, as they lay still, she chattered about the Pact of Peace. Ambrose listened and then rose on an elbow to interrupt her.

‘Edith, there is something of which you should be aware,' The boy-girl lover had gone and he was now diplomat and man. How extraordinary that the transformation could seem so natural.

‘Yes?'

‘I don't wish to quell your spirit — I admire your spirit — but there is a doctrine in international law which you should know. It is known as
rebus sic stantibus
.' Ambrose changed his tone of voice to pronounce the Latin.

She had done Latin at school but she did not know this expression. ‘Which means?'

‘Which means that the circumstances surrounding the treaty must continue to exist if that treaty is to continue to exist. You should always remember this.'

She said nothing, allowing the lesson to wander in her mind, searching for companionship among her many ideas. It was a more severe idea than the others she had stored away.

‘Doesn't that mean that any pact can be abandoned whenever a nation has a whim?'

‘Well, yes. Germany created the doctrine when she invaded
Belgium in 1914 after having pledged to respect the borders. She used the existence of a treaty as a military tactic. Put them off-guard.'

She found this idea disconcerting and she was not ready to talk about it.

 

On the third day of the commission she found Mr David Hunter Miller, one of the American team from the United States State Department, and had coffee with him at the kiosk across from the Salle de la Réformation. He was said to be an expert on treaties and said to be pro-League.

‘You see,' the very scholarly American said, ‘it is impossible to imagine a breach of this new pact which was not also a breach of the League Covenant. Consequence: like it or not, the United States is involved with the League and the League is involved with the United States.'

‘Tell me how the Pact of Peace will work?'

He smiled gently. ‘A crisis occurs. The United States is consulted by telegraphic exchange. Every one of the pact signatories, except the United States, is a member of the League. So at the same time that the pact is involved, the League becomes involved. Only a very rash and uncontrolled government would resist the United States and the Council of the League in combination. The pact is a psychological obstruction to war planning and then an obstruction to war itself.'

‘Mr Dole is saying that it is really a military alliance between France and the United States.'

‘I've read his pieces. He's wrong. The pact links the United States not to France but to the League and therefore to the world. It involves sanctions as well and it's accepted wisdom that the
fear
of sanctions, rather than sanctions themselves, will make
this work. Really, I see the great contribution of the League and this pact as being
delay
. The dragging out of a dispute without settlement.'

Edith expressed surprise.

He said, ‘I know it sounds odd. To call this “peace”. But peace is inactivity. There is little difference between a dispute without settlement and “settlement”, as long as nothing is done about that dispute. The delay can become the status quo. The dispute often disappears.'

‘An example?'

‘An example: the dispute between Great Britain and the Argentine over the islands.'

Edith didn't know about this dispute.

Miller warmed to it, having obviously used it many times in his classrooms and elsewhere. ‘The dispute has existed on paper since 1833. It remains an unsettled dispute. What characterises this dispute which should interest us?'

As if a bad student, Edith was without an answer.

He did not let her hang there in ignorance for long. ‘Answer: it is a dispute which the lapse of time has neutralised. Nothing has happened.'

He paused, drinking from his iced tea, which he was having instead of coffee, to which he said he was opposed because he felt coffee was an addictive drug, which one day when other things were put aside the League might like to examine — the coffee trade, that is. With enthusiasm, he continued his exposition. ‘The most significant change in international relations since the War has been …?'

Edith shook her head, not wishing to guess.

‘The substitution of the “conference” for diplomatic letters and notes.'

Edith's mind went to her stationery holders which had not disappeared again.

‘It has introduced common sense into negotiation because a conference is a face-to-face affair. In any face-to-face situation, common sense will be present. If the Pact of Peace is signed, it will be perpetual. The parties are bound for ever. That is the big difference with this treaty. It is perpetual.'

She sat there with this idea, the perpetual treaty in collision with what Ambrose had taught her about
rebus sic stantibus
, not knowing what to do with this collision. She assumed Professor Miller and the State Department had taken it into consideration. She felt that it wasn't up to her to tell the Professor or the American State Department about
rebus sic stantibus
. She feared it might quell his ardour. The world needed American ardour and she didn't want to be responsible for quelling it when they seemed to be edging closer to the world community.

She wanted to believe Mr David Hunter Miller but
rebus sic stantibus
and Dole were haunting her. Dole remained in her mind, in his long-faced melancholy way.

Later that day in the Salle de la Réformation, she heard informally that the news from Paris was that the Kellogg–Briand Pact of Peace to outlaw war was assured of all signatories. Although this was not the business of her commission there in the Salle, it was of intense concern.

There was also a note of apology from Robert Dole on her desk. It had been a week of written apologies. Never had so many people desired her forgiveness. But no apology or acceptance had come from Florence.

In formal session she heard the President mention the Kellogg–Briand Pact but he warned the delegates that there was a danger in empty demonstrations of good intention. But he went
on to say that according to information received by him personally that day the time of empty words was finished. ‘It is now obvious,' he said, ‘that the principal nations are persuaded at last that a frank renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy should be made.' He indicated that he had been informed that the final document would be drawn up and signatures affixed in Paris following ratification by the Congress of the United States.

There were hear, hears. Bravos. An outburst of clapping.

Disarmament would come next.

Edith was jubilant. And you can take the stationery stands, take home whatever you want, Edith cried out in herself, take the furniture. She remembered that she had to secure one stationery stand for Sir Eric and one for Ambrose. Rosting, she'd noticed, had taken one already.

Afterwards, clutching two stationery stands, she went to the Bavaria to find Ambrose and instead found Dole who was writing at a corner table.

‘It is going to happen, Mr Dole,' she called to him as she pushed through the crowd.

‘What is going to happen?' He was deep in self-preoccupation and, for whatever perverse reason, obviously had not been at the concluding meeting of the talks. ‘What, Edith Campbell Berry, is going to happen?'

She tried to bring her voice to a level of diplomatic calm.

Unpredictably, she felt protective of the worried Mr Dole. She saw him as a person who was concerned, despite his strange thinking; she sensed her protective feelings had to do with her upbringing as a woman more than they had to do with Edith, the international diplomat. She felt sorry that she had to break the news to him and spoil his fearful view of things. ‘There is going to be a renunciation of war, Mr Dole.'

He smiled at her. ‘Ambrose Bierce said peace is a period of cheating between wars.'

‘I see you are a follower of
rebus sic stantibus
,' she said, feeling that having said it for the first time, she had taken away its mightiness as a diplomatic dictum, and she felt that by saying it to Mr Dole she had neutralised him. She also saw, but pushed aside, that she was displaying it, seeking Mr Dole's approval. She must not sit with him. His gaze was transfixing and his manner always reached out at her.

‘
Rebus sic stantibus
,' Dole repeated, looked up at her again, focusing on her, smiling with approval, ‘I am relieved that you know
rebus sic stantibus
, Edith Berry, very much relieved.' He returned to his drink. ‘Very much relieved.'

‘Mr Dole, you miss the importance of all this. For the first time, nations are
talking
like this. Don't you see? And the circumstances surrounding this pact will continue to exist. A change has happened in the psychology of the world. That is what has happened, Mr Dole.'

He did not seem convinced.

‘And here — here is a memento of this historic occasion,' and she gave him one of the stationery stands.

He took it, surprised and pleased. He turned it around, admiringly.

‘I thank you, Edith Berry. And once again I apologise, not for my position, but for my ungentlemanly behaviour. I trust you got my note?'

She nodded.

‘I was trying to make someone listen,' he mumbled, obviously finding it hard to say.

‘I listened, Mr Dole.'

She broke away from his gaze and left him to find Ambrose.

‘They are going to do it,' she said.

‘I heard. It was buzzing all over the Palais an hour ago.'

‘Buy some champagne.'

‘I will.'

Edith reminded herself that history was ‘being made' and she was where it was being made. She laughed wryly at her contribution to history — stationery stands and bottled waters.

That night even the Bavaria was ebullient, even the journalists. Except for poor Robert Dole.

On the day that Sacco and Vanzetti were executed in Boston, Edith suffered an intermittent discomforting anxiety, which was weakly opposed by a barely enjoyable probity. She had refused to sign a petition protesting their conviction, which she still believed to be a correct stand, but now, as the day of their execution arrived, the atmosphere of publicly expressed outrage, even in Geneva, had disturbed her, making her feel distantly, but morally, implicated in their execution.

All along she'd had none of the emotional involvement in the American anarchists' fate — she was too conservative — but she was against capital punishment and felt for the men. But frankly, her moral calendar was full and she'd had all the human tribulation she could handle in the day to day life of the League. More than that, for her the anarchist and communist attitudes were, like those of the Action Civique, out of step with the spirit of Locarno and the negotiating spirit of the League — out of step with history. And they seemed to hate the League. She felt they were a creation of impatience. The politics of impatient outrage. She could sympathise with those emotions but they were driven by a belief that for every problem there was a dramatic and violent solution. Or any sort of solution. She had a deeper conviction that procedures and attitudes could be evolved that extracted the poison from disagreement. She had a fantasy that there was always a formulation which could give painless compromise, if one only had the time.

Individuals were defeated and gave up, but the League went
on. Always adjourn, never give up. She wanted things to be arranged in such a way as to bring about those political conditions which avoided intolerable and brutal choices.

She couldn't find anything very civilised in the reports she had about Russia.

She'd been at a lunch at the Expatriates' Club where they'd had one of the drivers from the Russian Auto Trial as guest speaker. The auto trial had been run by the Soviet government to test cars for Russian conditions and went through St Petersburg–Moscow–Tiflis and back — 5,000 kms. More than any foreigners had seen of Russia recently. He said that after nearly ten years of Communist rule the country was primitive and the people badly treated, which contradicted the propaganda put out by the Soviet government. Eight nationalities were represented among the drivers and those who survived were unanimous about the wretched treatment of the Soviet people. One of the jokes that the driver had heard from the Russian people was: ‘We had 200 bad years under the Ivans, then 300 bad years under the Romanovs — now we shall have 400 bad years under the Soviets.'

She dismissed the desire to abolish all government; what was needed was more people involved in more kinds of government — not the absence of government. Governing and arranging our lives, from the art of the domestic to the universal, was what life was all about. That was the truly Great Experiment. She had been in a conversation with Sir Arthur Salter, Director of Financial Section, one of the best financial brains that the League had, and he'd pointed out that since the Great War, prosperity had been regained and parliamentary government was spreading and everything seemed to point to the emerging of a civilisation much richer than anything the world had known.

Nor was she a pacifist. She knew there was a time for taking
up arms against evil. She knew that there were times for citizens to go into armed rebellion against grossly unjust government. But she was against the use of political violence within a properly working country.

A month earlier, when Caroline and Liverright had approached her to sign the petition at lunch in the office restaurant, wine glasses and
pichet
in hand, it caused her great discomfort to resist their social pressures. In the office restaurant at a busy lunchtime was not the way to handle political matters.

‘Put your name on this,' Caroline said with a smile, pushing the petition across to her.

‘One day, come the revolution, the names on this petition will be hallowed,' Liverright said with mock solemnity, ‘and those who are not on it will be …' He made a throat-cutting gesture, and poured out what must have been his third glass of lunchtime wine.

‘Ah, the revolutionaries of the League,' she joked back at them. ‘Let me see what you're up to.'

She read through the petition and then pushed it back to them, smiling. ‘Petitions are not my cup of tea.'

‘This is a very special petition. Two men's lives depend on this petition,' Caroline said determinedly, out of character with her usual flippancy about life.

Liverright said half-seriously, ‘If you don't, you'll be vilified by history.' He could never say anything with much conviction.

‘How could I possibly know whether they're innocent?'

‘The American system is politically prejudiced against the radical … ' said Liverright, repeating it as a formula, again without conviction, drinking from his wine glass as if to wash down the words.

She liked them both now. From her first day, Liverright had attracted her and had, in a diffident way, courted her for a
short time. She felt that his political posturing came from some Viennese despair. With Caroline, it was a personal anger which came, perhaps, from her broken heart. Her anger came and went. Some days she was against all politics and called herself whatever was the fashionable artistic label, surrealist or whatever. Edith couldn't understand why they were still going around together after what Caroline had written about Liverright in her novel.

Edith glanced around to see who was listening to the conversation, and was relieved that it was not being attended to by the whole table. On the other hand, across the room sat Florence. Usually she would be eating lunch with Florence but they still hadn't made up after the night of the reading. It looked as though they might never make up. They were avoiding each other.

‘I am afraid I can't sign.'

‘Because of your neutrality and all that?' Caroline said at her.

That was in her mind, but to hide behind it would be cowardly too. ‘Not only that,' she said. ‘If I felt strongly about it, I would disregard that.'

‘You don't want to protest about two simple people like this being put to death?'

‘I would sign something against the electric chair. I would sign something against a corrupt legal system, if I knew it were corrupt.'

‘Sign it because you're against electric chairs,' said Liverright.

‘The petition says “we protest the innocence” of these people. I don't know if they're innocent.'

‘Come on,' Caroline said to Liverright, ‘Edith's not with us.'

There was something intimidating in the situation, an implication that her refusing to sign would cut her out of their lives altogether for ever more. Just when she and Caroline were
beginning to become friends. She had even shown Caroline some of her poems. The first person to ever read them. Not even Ambrose had seen them.

‘Let me see it again,' she said weakly, and took the petition and read it again. It said that the people who signed the petition ‘knew' that the two men were innocent and that they had not been given a fair trial. She didn't know either of these things and had no way of finding out. She really wished she could sign and be part of the emotional flow of things, or be sociable, which was a silly way of looking at it. They were part of her crowd. She looked through the list of others who'd signed, nearly everyone at their level. Florence. Even Ambrose, who was at a higher level, had signed it. She felt weakened by the loss of her friendship with Florence. She couldn't see Victoria's name on it.

‘Jeanne has signed twice.' She pointed this out to them.

‘We'll cross out one,' said Caroline.

‘Jeanne feels twice as strongly as most people,' said Liverright.

‘No, I can't sign this.'

‘Even if they're guilty,' Liverright said, ‘it's an economic crime — not a crime against people.'

‘They're accused of killing people.'

‘Come on,' Caroline said to Liverright, ‘we can't torture her into signing.' They moved off, Liverright carrying the petition and the wine glass and the
pichet
, marching behind Caroline. He turned and gave her a smile behind Caroline's back. She watched them go over to Florence's table and sit down, laughing. What had Florence told people about the night of the reading? She doubted that Florence could get the words out to tell and then wouldn't be believed. It would sound like maliciousness. She hoped.

The refusal to sign the petition had been a month ago. Now she was suffering remorse and that wasn't just. Why should she suffer because she'd been sensible? It wasn't that she lacked compassion. She felt sickened by the executions. For the last month, Caroline had worn a black armband, although Liverright had not gone along with that. He was reported as saying that if he began wearing a black armband every day he felt grief, he might as well wear one all the time.

On the day of the execution she avoided Caroline and avoided going to the restaurant for lunch. She was skulking in her office when Miss Figgis, Dame Rachel's secretary, came in and asked her if she would like to attend a slide talk at the International Students' Union that night because they'd heard an Australian student would be at the meeting. Australian students were so rare in Geneva and they were usually lonely. She eagerly said, yes, for the company.

At the meeting, she introduced herself to the student but he wasn't that lonely. His family were in Geneva, his father was attached to a bank there, and consequently, she had no patriotic duties to perform with him. She was rather disappointed that he wasn't lonely, although he was a little young to drag along to the Bavaria or Maxim's.

A few of the students wanted to talk about the Sacco and Vanzetti case but, as the matter came up, Dame Rachel said firmly that she had been invited there to talk about Traffic in Women and Children. Those who wanted to talk about other matters should go elsewhere. No students left the meeting, probably for mixed reasons — Traffic in Women and Children being a rather notorious subject because of its titillating references. The students, all men except for two women, had probably heard that Dame Rachel's talk included lantern slides of girls who'd been sold into Baghdad licensed houses. The talk went well.

They were driving back to the League garage when they came across a crowd blocking the road at the Hôtel Beau-Rivage. Coolly without a word, Miss Figgis swung into the rue Plantamour to avoid it.

‘What's it all about?' Dame Rachel asked.

Edith knew immediately — Sacco and Vanzetti. They were probably after her for not having signed the petition.

‘It's probably to do with the wretched Sacco thing.' Miss Figgis said the word ‘wretched' in such a British way you weren't sure whether she was annoyed at Sacco and Vanzetti or the American legal system or the Issue or the crowd or what. Just annoyed at being inconvenienced, at being diverted from her own mission.

‘Poor devils,' said Dame Rachel.

Again, Edith didn't know whether she meant Sacco and Vanzetti or the crowd in the street.

‘I think it's me they want,' she tried to joke. ‘I didn't sign the petition.' Maybe they'd both signed it.

‘It was poorly worded,' Miss Figgis said. ‘Nor did I.'

That cheered her. Dame Rachel didn't comment.

They encountered another angry crowd further along rue Plantamour. The crowd was shouting slogans against America and the capitalists.

‘Oh dear,' said Dame Rachel. ‘They
are
angry.'

Miss Figgis turned again, into the rue des Paquis. A few decently dressed men flagged them down.

‘Shall I stop?' asked Miss Figgis. ‘They don't seem to be part of the rabble.'

‘See what they can tell us,' said Dame Rachel. ‘Yes, they seem not to be part of the mob.'

Miss Figgis pulled up without stopping the engine and wound the window halfway down. The men were agitated, and
warned them to get out of Geneva because the rioters were burning down all things American. The American garage where the motor-car was usually housed was on fire. The men said that the rioters were attacking any American manufactured motor-car, which theirs was.

Dame Rachel leaned forward and thanked the men. ‘Wind up the window,' she said to Miss Figgis. ‘We shall not retreat to the countryside simply because we drive a Ford motor-car.'

It sounded a very attractive idea on a summer's night. Edith had to stop herself saying, ‘Why not?'

‘Figgis, drive to the Palais Wilson. We'll put the car there.'

Miss Figgis was driving very well under the strain. Even relishing it, it seemed to Edith. Maybe it reminded her of driving ambulances during the War. Edith was not relishing it.

They got to rue Butini and drove in through the open gates and Miss Figgis parked the motor-car.

‘Park over there in the dark corner,' Dame Rachel instructed. Miss Figgis started up the motor-car again and moved it.