“Darling,” he answered, “Wickthorpe is a member of the British aristocracy, and is here to fight for the Empire. He’s got pretty much of everything he wants, so naturally he can take things easy.”
“Haven’t you got what you want, Lanny?”
“Not by a darn sight! I want a better life for masses of people who aren’t in the British Empire, and for many in the Empire whom Wickthorpe leaves out of his calculations.”
“But, Lanny, you heard him say: ‘We’re all Socialists now.’”
“I know, dear; it’s a formula. But they write their definition of the word, and it means that Wickthorpe will do the governing, and decide what the workers are to get. The slum-dwellers in the East End will go on paying tribute to the landlords, and the ryots in India and the niggers in South Africa will be sweated to make luxury for British bondholders.”
“Oh, dear!” exclaimed the would-be salonnière. “Who will want to come to see us if you talk like that?”
VII
Lanny was interested in the point of view of these official persons, and sat in the splendid library of his wife’s rented home and listened to Rick discussing the Nazi movement with Wickthorpe and his secretary, Reggie Catledge, who was also his cousin. It was a point of view in no way novel to Lanny, his father having explained it when he was a very small boy. The governing classes of Britain made it a fixed policy never to permit one nation to become strong enough to dominate the Continent; regardless of which nation it might be, they would set themselves the task of raising some rival as a counterweight.
Wickthorpe disliked the Nazis and what they were doing, but he didn’t rave at them; he just said they were a set of bounders. He took it for granted that their fantastic promises had been made as a means of getting power. “Just politics,” he said, and refused to be disturbed by the possibility that the bounders might mean what they said. The two Englishmen listened with interest to what Lanny had to tell about his meeting with Hitler, and asked him some questions, but at the end they were of the same opinion still.
“We’ve had so many wild men in our public life,” said his lordship. “You and I are too young to remember how old John Burns used to rave in his speeches at Trafalgar Square, but my parents got up slumming parties to go and listen. Long afterward you could meet the old boy in the New Reform Club and hear him talk about it—in fact you could hardly get him to talk about anything else.”
“He was a very strict teetotaler, but his face was as red as a turkey-cock’s wattles,” added Catledge.
“Hitler doesn’t drink, either,” said Lanny; but the others didn’t appear to attach any importance to that.
They went on to point out to Rick that the French imperialists were arrogant, and their diplomats had made a lot of trouble in Syria, Iraq, and other places. French bankers had a great store of gold, and made use of it in ways inconvenient to their rivals. Wickthorpe didn’t say that Hitler would serve to keep the French occupied, but his arguments made plain the general idea that you couldn’t entrust any one set of foreigners with too much power. It was even possible to guess that he wasn’t too heartbroken over what had happened in Wall Street during the past four years; because a large part of Britain’s prosperity depended upon her service as clearinghouse for international transactions, and it had been highly embarrassing to have the dollar prove more stable than the pound.
Wickthorpe and his cousin had it comfortably figured out what was to be Hitler’s role in world affairs. Assuming that he was able to continue in power, he was going to fight Russia. He was the logical one to do this, because of his geographical position; for Britain this factor made it almost impossible. Lanny wanted to ask: “Why does anybody have to fight Russia?”—but he was afraid that would be an improper question.
Here sat this tall young lord, smooth-skinned, pink-cheeked, with his fair hair and little toy mustache; perfectly groomed, perfectly at ease; one couldn’t say perfectly educated, for there were many important things about which he knew nothing—science, for example, and the economics of reality as opposed to those of classical theory. He knew ancient Greek and Roman civilization, and Hebrew theology made over by the Church of England; he had recent world affairs at his fingertips. He possessed perfect poise, charm of manner, and skill in keeping to himself those thoughts which particular persons had no right to share. He was sure that he was a gentleman and a Christian, yet he took it for granted that it was his duty to labor and plan to bring about one of the most cruel and bloody of wars.
“You know, you might do quite a spot of trade with the Soviet Union,” suggested Lanny, mildly. “They have the raw materials and you have the machines.”
“Yes, Budd, but one can’t think merely about business; there are moral factors.”
“But might not the Reds be toned down and acquire a sense of responsibility, just as well as the Nazis?”
“We can’t trust the blighters.”
“I’m told that they meet their bills regularly. The Chase National gets along with them quite well.”
“I don’t mean financially, I mean politically. They would start breaking into the Balkans, or India, or China; their agents are trying to stir up revolution all the time.”
Lanny persisted. “Have you thought of the possibility that if you won’t trade with them, the Nazis may? Their economies supplement each other.”
“But their ideologies are at opposite poles!”
“They seem to be; but you yourself say how ideologies change when men get power. It seems to me that Stalin and Hitler are self-made men, and might be able to understand each other. Suppose one day Stalin should say to Hitler, or Hitler to Stalin: ‘See here, old top, the British have got it fixed up for us to ruin ourselves fighting. Why should we oblige them?’”
“I admit that would be a pretty bad day,” said young Lord Wickthorpe. He said it with a smile, not taking it seriously. When Rick pinned him down to it, he gave yet another reason why it was impossible to consider a large-scale deal with the Soviet Union—the effect it would have upon politics at home. “It would set up the Reds, and it might bring labor back into power.”
Said Rick to Lanny, when they were alone: “Class is more than country!”
VIII
The Nazi program of repression of the Jews was being carried out step by step, which was going to be the Nazi fashion. Civil servants of Jewish blood were being turned out of their jobs and good Aryans of the right party affiliations put in their place. Jewish lawyers were forbidden to practice in the courts. “Jew signs” were being pasted or painted on places of business which belonged to the despised race. Beatings and terrorism were being secretly encouraged, for the purpose of driving the Jews out and depriving them of jobs and property. When such incidents were mentioned in the press they would be blamed upon “persons unknown masquerading as Stormtroopers.”
But refugees escaping to the outside world would report the truth, and there was a ferment of indignation among the Jews of all countries; they and their sympathizers held meetings of protest, and a movement was started to boycott trade with Germany. The reaction in the Fatherland was immediate, and Johannes wrote about it—very significantly he wrote only to Lanny, never to his son, and mailed the letters unsigned and with no mark to identify them. It had been made a prison offense to give information to foreigners, and in his letters Johannes addressed Lanny as a German, and warned him not to tell anyone in Paris!
The boycott was worrying the business men of the country, and at the same time enraging the party leaders, and it was a question which point of view would prevail. Jupp Goebbels was calling for a boycott of Jewish businesses in Germany, and the result was a panic on the stock exchange—for some of the principal enterprises of the Fatherland were Jewish-owned, including the big department stores of Berlin. These were the concerns which the original party program had promised to “socialize,” and now the ardent young S.A.’s and S.S.’s were on tiptoe to go in and do the job.
The Cabinet was having
one of its customary rows over the question, so Johannes explained. The business magnates who had financed Hitler’s rise were coming down on him; how could they pay taxes, how could the government be financed, if rowdies were to be turned loose to wreck business both at home and abroad? The result of this tug-of-war was a curious and rather comical compromise; the boycott which the party fanatics had announced to begin on the first day of April was to be carried on, but it was to continue for only one business day of eight hours; then Germany would wait for three days, to see if there was a proper response from the foreign agents and Jewish vampires who had been so shamelessly lying about the Fatherland. If they showed repentance and abandoned their insolent threats, then Germany would in turn permit the Jewish businesses to continue in peace; otherwise they would be sternly punished, perhaps exterminated, and the blame would rest upon the Jewish vampires abroad.
This boycott was the idea of Dr. Goebbels—the Führer himself being busy with the reorganizing of the various state governments. On the evening before the event the crippled little dwarf with the huge wide mouth spoke to his party comrades at a meeting in a hall of the West End, and all over Germany the Stormtroopers listened over the radio. The orator called for a demonstration of “iron discipline”; there must be no violence, but all Jewish establishments would be picketed, and no German man or woman would enter such a place.
The day was made into a Nazi holiday. The Jews stayed at home, and the Brownshirts marched through all the cities and towns of the Fatherland, singing their song to the effect that Jewish blood must spurt from the knife. They posted “Jew signs” wherever there was a merchant who couldn’t prove that he had four Aryan grandparents. They did the same for doctors and hospitals, using a poster consisting of a circular blob of yellow on a black background, the recognized sign of quarantine throughout Europe; thus they told the world that a Jewish doctor was as bad as the smallpox or scarlet fever, typhus or leprosy he attempted to cure.
These orders were followed pretty well in the fashionable districts, but in poorer neighborhoods and the smaller towns the ardent Stormtroopers pasted signs on the foreheads of shoppers in Jewish stores, and they stripped and beat a woman who insisted on entering. That evening there was a giant meeting in the Tempelhof Airdrome, and Goebbels exulted in the demonstration which had been given to the world. The insolent foreigners would be awed and brought to their knees, he declared; and since most of the newspapers had by now been confiscated, the people could either believe that or believe nothing. The foreigners, of course, laughed; they knew that they weren’t awed, and the mass meetings and distribution of boycott leaflets went on. But the Nazi leaders chose to declare otherwise, and next day there was a washing of windows throughout Germany, and “business as usual” became the motto for both Aryans and non-Aryans.
IX
There were curious outgrowths of this anti-Semitic frenzy. An “Association of German National Jews” was formed, and issued a manifesto saying that the Jews were being fairly treated and there was no truth in the stories of atrocities; some leading Jews signed this, and the name of Johannes Robin was among them. Perhaps he really believed it, who could say? He had to read German newspapers, like everybody else; those foreign papers which reported the atrocities were banned. Perhaps he considered that the outside boycotts would really do more harm than good, and that the six hundred thousand native Jews in the Fatherland were not in position to offer resistance to a hundred times as many Germans. The Jews had survived through the centuries by bending like the willow instead of standing like the oak. Johannes didn’t mention the subject in his letters, either signed or unsigned. Was he a little ashamed of what he did?
It seemed to an American that a man could hardly be happy living under such conditions. Lanny wrote a carefully guarded letter to the effect that Hansi was giving important concerts and Irma various social events; they would be delighted to have the family present. Johannes replied that some business matters kept him from leaving just now; he bade them not to worry about the new decrees forbidding anyone to leave Germany without special passports, for he could get them for himself and family whenever he wished. He added that Germany was their home and they all loved the German people. That was the right sort of letter for a Jew, and maybe the statements were true, with a few qualifications.
The Nazis had learned a lesson from the boycott, even though they would never admit it. The brass band stage of persecution was at an end, and they set to work to achieve their purpose quietly. The weeding out of Jews, and of those married to Jews, went on rapidly. No Jew could teach in any school or university in Germany; no Jewish lawyer could practice; no Jew could hold any official post, down to the smallest clerkship. This meant tens of thousands of positions for the rank and file Nazis, and was a way of keeping promises to them, much easier than socializing industry or breaking up the great landed estates.
The unemployed intellectuals found work carrying on genealogical researches for the millions of persons who desired to establish their ancestry. An extraordinary development—there were persons who had an Aryan mother and a Jewish father, or an Aryan grandmother and a Jewish grandfather, who instituted researches as to the morals of their female ancestors, and established themselves as Aryans by proving themselves to be bastards! Before long the Nazis discovered that there were some Jews who were useful, so there was officially established a caste of “honorary Aryans.” Truly it seemed that a great people had gone mad; but it is a fact well known to alienists that you cannot convince a madman of his own condition, and only make him madder by trying.
By one means or another it was conveyed to leading Jews that they had better resign from directorships of corporations, and from executive positions which were desired by the nephews or cousins of some Nazi official. Frequently the methods used were such that the Jew committed suicide; and while these events were not reported in the press, word about them spread by underground channels. That was the way with the terror; people disappeared, and rumors started, and sometimes the rumors became worse than the reality. Old prisons and state institutions, old army barracks which had stood empty since the Versailles treaty, were turned into concentration camps and rapidly filled with men and women; motor trucks brought new loads daily, until the total came near to a hundred thousand.
Lanny wrote again to say what a mistake his friends were making not to come and witness Hansi’s musical and Irma’s social triumphs. This time Johannes’s reply was that his business cares were beginning to wear on him, and that his physicians advised a sea trip. He was getting the Bessie Budd ready for another cruise, this time a real one; he wanted Hansi and Bess to meet him at one of the northern French ports, and he hoped that the Budds would come along—the whole family, Lanny and Irma, Mr. and Mrs. Dingle, Marceline and Baby Frances, with as many governesses and nurses as they pleased. As before, the cruise would be to whatever part of the world the Budd family preferred; Johannes suggested crossing the Atlantic again and visiting Newcastle and Long Island; then, in the autumn, they might go down to the West Indies, and perhaps through the Panama Canal to California, and if they wished, to Honolulu and Japan, Bali, Java, India, Persia—all the romantic and scenic and historic places they could think of. A university under Diesel power!
X
This made it necessary for Irma to come to a decision which she had postponed to the last moment. Was she going to take the palace for another year? She had got used to it, and had a competent staff well trained; also she was established as a hostess, and it seemed a shame to lose all this momentum. But, on the other hand, money was growing scarcer and scarcer. The dreadful depression—Lanny had shown her the calculations of an economist that it had cost the United States half a dozen times the cost of the World War. Thanks to the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, interest payments on industrial bonds were being met, but many of Irma’s “blue chip” stocks were paying no dividends, and she was telling her friends that she was living on chocolate, biscuits, and Coca-Cola—meaning
not that these were her diet, but her dividends.
She had Shore Acres on her hands with its enormous overhead; she had had to cut down on her mother, and the mother in turn had notified all the help that they might stay on and work for their keep, but there would be no more salaries. Even so, the food bill was large, and the taxes exorbitant—when were taxes not? Mrs. Barnes’s letters conveyed to her daughter a sense of near destitution.
“You don’t really care very much for this palace, do you, Lanny?” So asked the distressed one, lying in the pink satin splendor of the bed in which Madame de Maintenon was reputed to have entertained the Sun King.
“You know, dear, I don’t undertake to tell you how to spend your money.”
“But I’m asking you.”
“You know without asking. If you spend more money than you have, you’re poor, no matter what the amount is.”
“Do you think if we come back to Paris after the depression, I’ll be able to start as a hostess again?”
“It depends entirely upon how much of your money you have managed to hold on to.”
“Oh, Lanny, you’re horrid!” exclaimed the hostess.
“You asked for it,” he chuckled.
Nearly a year had passed since the Queen Mother had seen her grandchild, and that was something to be taken into consideration. Her satisfaction would be boundless; and it would be a pleasure to meet all those New York friends and hear the gossip. Lanny could stand it if it wasn’t for too long. And what a relief to Uncle Joseph Barnes, trustee and manager of the Barnes estate, to know that his charge wouldn’t be drawing any checks for a year!
Dragon's Teeth Page 34