  A model for soft high-energy scattering is developed. The model is formulated
in terms of effective propagators and vertices for the exchange objects: the
pomeron, the odderon, and the reggeons. The vertices are required to respect
standard rules of QFT. The propagators are constructed taking into account the
crossing properties of amplitudes in QFT and the power-law ansaetze from the
Regge model. We propose to describe the pomeron as an effective spin 2
exchange. This tensor pomeron gives, at high energies, the same results for the
p-p and p-pbar elastic amplitudes as the standard Donnachie-Landshoff pomeron.
But with our tensor pomeron it is much more natural to write down effective
vertices of all kinds which respect the rules of QFT. This is particularly
clear for the coupling of the pomeron to particles carrying spin, for instance
vector mesons. We describe the odderon as an effective vector exchange. We
emphasise that with a tensor pomeron and a vector odderon the corresponding
charge-conjugation relations are automatically fulfilled. We compare the model
to some experimental data, in particular to data for the total cross sections,
in order to determine the model parameters. The model should provide a starting
point for a general framework for describing soft high-energy reactions. It
should give to experimentalists an easily manageable tool for calculating
amplitudes for such reactions and for obtaining predictions which can be
compared in detail with data.
