He groped his way through the blackout to his hotel, and spent the night without sleep, listening to the uproar of that infernal battle. He had made the mistake of choosing a hotel which was just across the street from Hyde Park, and all London parks were full of antiaircraft guns. Every time one of these went off the blast of air shot the window curtains straight out into the room and tried to lift the covers off Lanny’s bed. The walls shook as in an earthquake, and small objects on bureau and tables jumped and rattled. Lanny decided that it was folly to risk staying in bed, and put on his clothes and went down into a crowded shelter. His knees were shaking and his teeth chattering—not merely for himself but for England. He knew this was the real blitz, this was the supreme effort, which both Hitler and Göring had told him was coming. Up there in black sky the night-fighter pilots were racing at a speed of four hundred miles an hour, hunting the murderers, trying to save England, trying to save the democratic world. Lanny’s prayers went up for them, and his thoughts were those that Winston Churchill was soon to put into immortal words: that never in history had so many owed so much to so few.
BOOK TWO
Comes the Moment to Decide
4
Hands across the Sea
I
From the smooth water of a little port on the coast of Ireland the magical Clipper transported Lanny Budd to the smooth water of a larger port near the end of Long Island: a safe and comfortable journey, but slightly monotonous, for in the calm weather in early September one part of the Atlantic looked exactly like another part, and you could only wonder why the Lord had taken the trouble to make such immense quantities of water. Lanny entertained himself with magazines which he had brought along, and in one of them he read an article about a huge plant on the coast of Texas which was busily extracting magnesium from ocean water and turning it into airplane parts, and also incendiary bombs to be dropped from the planes. So he turned his thoughts from the works of God to those of man, and found one as incomprehensible as the other.
At the airport he put his painting in storage with the customs authorities, and went straight to the nearest telephone. In his mind he carried the number of a little brick house in his national capital, and now he called it and asked for a man named Baker. He had never been told this man’s first name, or what he did; the man meant just one thing, the way to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s bedroom, whether at the White House or at Hyde Park, New York. At this hot season of the year it would have been the great man’s pleasure to be at his country home; but in this hottest of war seasons he was chained to the sweltering capital.
Lanny spoke: “Is this Baker?”—and then: “Zaharoff One-oh-three.” The reply was: “Call me in three hours”—that being, presumably, the time it took to get to the White House and arrange an appointment. Lanny wondered: Were there really a hundred and three presidential agents, or had some of them died or quit? And were the same precautions taken with all who were still working? He would never ask these questions.
He went in to New York, got himself a hotel room, and telephoned to his father. He bathed and shaved and fed himself, and read the latest newspapers; in times like these the history of the world might be changed between the three-star edition and the four. It was hard for Lanny Budd to think about anything but that sky battle over London—it was going on while a P.A. was bathing, shaving, eating, or whatever it might be. Alfy would be in it, and perhaps at that very instant was blacked out, or shot, and plunging headlong from a height of several miles.
Promptly on the minute Lanny put in his call and was told: “There is a reservation for you on the 7 p.m. plane from La Guardia Field. Meet me at the usual corner at 10 p.m.” He replied: “O.K.,” and that was all. He could tell from the promptness of the appointment that the Big Chief was eager for his report. The Chief knew, even better than Lanny, about the sky battle and its meaning in the history of mankind.
Lanny’s ticket was paid for and he had only to board the plane and sit and make note of the familiar sounds and feelings while it was airborne. Never would he cease to marvel at this happening; he was old enough to have heard of its first beginnings, and now it was in process of reducing the size of the world, making the nations one and compelling the formation of an international government. So, at any rate, Lanny had come to believe, and the only question was who was to run that government. Hitler or Roosevelt? So the issue presented itself, not merely to the son of Budd-Erling, but to those two heads of states: two masterful men, each of whom knew what he wanted, and knew that he could get it only by thwarting the other.
Lanny used the hour of this flight to go over in his mind exactly what he wanted to say. In these rare interviews—he had had nine of them in three years—he felt that he was helping to change the world, which needed it so greatly. He couldn’t get in everything he planned, for F.D. also liked to talk, and was used to having the right of way. But before Lanny left he could always say: “There is one matter that I ought to speak of Governor,’ and the “Governor” would answer: “Shoot!” If it was something that surprised him he would exclaim: “Great guns!’—or perhaps: “You don’t tell me!” Lanny had found himself taking up these phrases, as he had taken up many of the ideas and points of view of this great leader whom he loved.
II
At ten o’clock on a hot September evening the P.A. strolled idly by a Washington street corner, and a car drew up at the curb and he stepped in. There were two men in the car, and while one of them drove, the other flashed a torchlight into the passenger’s face. “Zaharoff,” Lanny said, and the other replied with the indispensable “O.K.” In the old days they had searched him, but now they knew him, and if the Chief wanted to see him, that was all there was to it.
The front door of the White House, under the tall white pillars, is known as the “social door,” and serves the purpose of a back door, since it is rarely used. Lanny had always been taken there, and usually no word had been spoken. But now it was wartime and there were two soldiers on duty. One of them said to Baker: “You know this party?” and then: “The President is expecting him?” So they were passed in, and went up by the side stairway. The President’s Negro valet sat dozing in a chair just outside the bedroom door, ready to give help to a crippled man whenever the buzzer sounded. Baker tapped, and Lanny heard the warm voice which all the world knew over the radio: “Come in.”
He entered that high-ceilinged bedroom with the old prints on the wall and the big mahogany bed with the blue counterpane. Sitting propped up with pillows was the man with the big head and massive shoulders, covered by a pajama coat of blue-and-white-striped pongee. He held out a large hand, and his features wore the usual welcoming smile; he spoke first to Baker, saying: “All right, and thanks.” The man went out, closing the door behind him, and only then did F.D. address Lanny. “Welcome to our city! Take a seat, and tell me all about Europe!” Never would this genial soul begin an interview in any but a playful mood. But in spite of that, Lanny thought that he was paler, and his face lined with care.
“You got my reports?” the visitor asked.
“Every one, according to number.” He pointed to a stack on his reading table. “I got them out in your honor. They have been invaluable.”
“That is what I need to hear. I have just come from London, where I saw the bombing of the night before last. It has been going on continuously ever since, as I read in the papers.”
“It has been going on tonight, so Churchill told me a couple of hours ago. I could hear some of the racket over the phone.”
“I take it to mean that Hitler has made up his mind there’s no chance of the collaborationists having their way. One item I have just learned: Lord Wickthorpe is resigning from the Foreign Office, and that means the same thing—he is hopeless as to making progress at the moment.”
“Will that restrict your access to information?”
“I think it may have the opposite effect. He will feel more free to talk when he is not bound by his official conscience.”
“Such people won’t count for much in England now, I imagine.”
“They will bide their time and wait for the world to come their way. I have been on their errands to Madrid and Paris and Vichy, and it’s curious to note how they are the same crowd, whatever their nationality. It is one type of mind all over Europe—and America, too, I gather. The cookie-pushers whom our State Department sends to Vichy might be Marshal Pétain’s own sons, or grandsons.”
“But we have to send that type, Lanny! If I sent a Pink like you, the old gentleman would decide that I must be Stalin’s brother-in-law. Nobody can talk to those people but a Catholic.”
“I suppose not; but the trouble is, they talk so much like Pétain that he thinks it’s his own voice.”
“We have some liberal Catholics, Lanny.”
“I have heard it said, and it may be so. All I can tell you is that the only way a Catholic can be liberal is by being ignorant of the fundamental doctrines of his Church.”
“Well, what they don’t know won’t hurt them,” chuckled the President. “My job is to try to keep the French Fleet out of the hands of the Nazis. I have a good old Irish Catholic admiral here in Washington, and I’m thinking of sending him over to pray with the Marshal day and night.”
III
The Chief Executive had on his reading table a report from Lanny Budd giving the essential facts as to the situation in Unoccupied France. But the Chief was more than a filing cabinet full of facts, he was a human being with personal curiosities, a boy who loved adventure stories. He wanted to see these persons and hear their voices; he plied his agent with questions about the aged Marshal and his entourage; about Darlan the Admiral of the Fleet and Weygand the General of the North African Armies, and especially about the evil Pierre Laval and his wretched family. “I envy you, Lanny,” said F.D., and not altogether jokingly. “You can travel and see the world, while I—look at what I have to read and sign!”—pointing to the stack of papers on the bed beside him. “By golly, if I’d known what they were wishing onto me, I’d have remained the Squire of Krum Elbow and Senior Warden of St. James’s Episcopal Church in Hyde Park.”
But this man of great affairs had put his hand to the plow, and had to go to the end of the furrow. Different from most plowmen, he was working in the dark and couldn’t see what lay ahead. Many boulders, many stumps, and perhaps—who could say?—enemy-planted mines! Just now a national election lay ahead; and how many blunders a free-spoken political manipulator might commit! One careless sentence might be enough to turn an election, and bring to naught the labors of eight years!
After hearing about Vichy France, he wanted to know about Paris and the masters of that country—the Comité des Forges, the cartel owners, and the deals they were making with the military conquerors to save their possessions and power. What was Schneider doing, and was Le Creusot going all out for German munitions production? Lanny said: “He is greatly humiliated, because the Germans have reported that his works are out-of-date and they can’t make much use of them.”
“And what about the British? Will they bomb these and other plants, or will there be a gentlemen’s agreement, as before?” Lanny replied: “This time they will go all out. This isn’t going to be a gentlemen’s war.”
And then the Nazi leaders! Hitler, Göring, Hess, Abetz—the President of the United States would never have the pleasure of meeting any of these extraordinary characters, but wanted to see them with his mind’s eye. Lanny said: “Unless the British should capture them, and send them over and exhibit them in cages.” This brought one of F.D.’s hearty laughs. He listened, fascinated, while Lanny described the Führer of the Germans doing a little jig in front of the motion-picture cameras after the astonishing armistice had been signed, and then brooding in front of the tomb of Napoleon, whom he greatly admired and meant to supplant on the pedestal of Europe’s history.
“He doesn’t want to fight Britain,” Lanny explained. “He really means that with all his heart; he considers it a painful necessity which has been forced upon him by vicious politicians, and the pluto-democratic-Jewish press, which he calls irresponsible, meaning that the press lords publish what they please, instead of being told by the government.”
“This air war is the real beginning, I take it?” queried the other.
“I should guess so. There were rumors when I left London that an attempt had been made to embark an invasion army from Belgium. I didn’t have time to find out if it was true.”
“I can tell you about it, if you won’t pass it on.”
“I never pass anything on, Governor—except what you have told me to.”
“It was a rehearsal; the Germans were practicing embarkation, but the British didn’t see any reason for sparing them on that account. The bombers dropped large tanks of oil with devices to ignite them. From my accounts there were thousands of enemy troops consumed in the holocaust.”
“They will try it again,” the agent opined. “Hitler has a million men whom he considers expendable, because he expected to lose them in France and didn’t. But first he has to knock out the R.A.F.”
“What do you hear about the chances?”
Lanny described his interview with the baronet’s grandson, who had worn the “old school tie” but didn’t love it, at least not as much as he loved the work shirt. Lanny told what he had seen of the bombing and of the air-raid shelter in the tube. He did not spare the Budd-Erling plane, but told what Alfy had said about its weaknesses. “I thought it was the best in the world,” remarked F.D., and Lanny replied: “It was, a year ago; but these days a year’s improvements are crowded into a month. As Alfy said: ‘Your father is making planes for money, but we are making them for our lives.’”
“Your father will be catching up, I hope.”
“I asked him over the telephone if he had a new model on the drawing boards, and he said: ‘We have it in production.’ You can be sure he’s getting full reports.”
IV
They talked for a while about this battle of the skies, upon which everything else depended. Tennyson had predicted it a hundred years earlier, but he had probably not foreseen that it would be over his own village. “It is touch and go,” declared the President. “Britain has never been in such peril—not even from the Spanish Armada.”
Said the visitor: “For God’s sake, do everything you can to help.”
“I have emptied our arsenals into Britain. They weren’t so very full, alas!”
“May I ask you a question, Governor?”
“Sure thing.”
“I heard some talk about our over-age destroyers that the British are hoping to get. I didn’t know what to answer—and you know it helps me to get information if I am able to give some.”
‘It’s a curious situation, which can’t be talked about because it would be taken as putting blame on Churchill. We’ve been reconditioning fifty of those old four-stackers and have them practically ready—torpedoes in the tubes, oil in the tanks, food in the storerooms—they could be in Halifax in a few days. But you see, it was my idea to exchange these ships for the bases we must have in British territory on this side of the water. I want to call it a trade, and it seems a fair one, considering the fact that we have to build the bases and that they will be as important for British defense as for ours.”
“And Churchill can’t see it?”
“Darned if I can make out what is in his mind. Apparently it’s something ancestral, perhaps racial. He is a Tory imperialist—or is that a redundant phrase?”
“I suppose one could think of an imperialist who isn’t a Tory. Cecil Rhodes might be an example. Does Churchill think you want to get possession of his islands?”
“I have sworn to him that he couldn’t give them to me if he tried. Believe me, they have been my fishing ground, and I know them. They would be nothing but headaches, and we have enough already in Porto Rico and the Virgins. They are economic vacuums; worse yet, their populations are mostly Negro, and we have enou
gh race problems already. Imagine me having to administer the affairs of colored people who have been brought up in the British fashion, to sit in their local councils and be received as social equals! Imagine what our Southern congressmen would say, and what our Harlem population would answer!”
“Churchill can’t see that?”
“I don’t think he doubts my word, but apparently he doesn’t trust the future. He has some queer idea of prestige; he thinks it would be more noble and dignified to make us a present of the concessions, and then we’d make him a present of the fifty destroyers. But I tell him our people wouldn’t see it that way. Every Yankee knows what a horse trade is; but a gift, that is something else, and it would raise a hullabaloo, it might cost me the election. There’s a grave question whether the deal will be constitutional anyhow; Jackson, my attorney general, has been tearing the law books to pieces trying to find some justification. But I can’t get Churchill to see it my way; I think he has the idea that if he makes us a free and generous gift, some President ninety-nine years from now may be less tempted to hold onto the lease!”
“And you mean that he’s letting the U-boats sink his shiploads of munitions because of a point of prestige?”
“He’s been doing precisely that for a couple of months.”
“May I make a suggestion, Governor?”
“I’ve said that if anybody can solve this problem for me I’ll give him all the plastic elephants on my office desk!”
“Tell me what the bases are that we’re to get.”
“Two up in Newfoundland, and then Bermuda, and half a dozen spots on the islands from the Bahamas to Trinidad. It’s really a tremendously important thing, because it means that British sea and air power is being replaced by ours in the Western Atlantic. Empires don’t give up so easily as a rule.”
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