A World to Win

by Sinclair, Upton;

  This code expressed boundless cynicism concerning human nature, an unfaith become a faith. It was contempt fanned by the fires of greed; it was treason to the soul of man erected into a business system, organized, systematized, and spread into every corner of the earth. This particular “hunk of cheese”—one of the phrases Lanny had learned on the previous evening—was being offered to a world tottering upon the edge of an abyss. While it was being previewed, London Bridge might be falling down, and the British Empire crashing to its doom; before the picture had finished its run, America itself might he fighting for its life; but the mob would still guffaw at a “dame” being slapped on her “butt.”

  Lanny thought it was no accident that Hearst had sought refuge in this screen world; his personality and his life had been an incarnation of the same treason to the soul of man. For more than half a century his papers had been feeding scandal and murder to the American public; he had been setting psychological traps for their pennies and nickels, and because these traps succeeded, his contempt for the victims had been confirmed. By such means he had accumulated the second greatest fortune in America, and when he had got it he didn’t know what to do with it, except to build this caricature of a home, this costliest junk yard on the earth. Here it was, and he had invited a swarm of courtiers and sycophants, and entertained them by presenting them with a caricature of themselves, a world as empty and false as San Simeon itself. The most incredible fact of all—so thought the presidential agent—he made them look at it! He rubbed their noses in their own vomit! Did he hate them that much?

  III

  The host had been told about his new guest, and after the showing invited him to view some of the special treasures in this home. Thus Lanny learned a new aspect of this strange individual; he really loved beautiful things. Not the men who produced them—during his stay in San Simeon Lanny didn’t meet a single artist, and he saw very few objets d’art produced by living persons. What Hearst loved were the objects, as things to admire, to show, and above all, to possess. He unlocked a special cabinet and took out a rare vase of Venetian glass; it was something marvelous, a rich green fading into the color of milk, cloudy, translucent, and when you held it up to the light the colors wavered and pulsed as if the object were alive. “When you have something like that,” remarked the Duce of San Simeon, “you have a pleasure that endures; you come to think of it as a friend.”

  “Ah, yes,” replied the expert, who had learned something about the human heart as well as the price of paintings. “And it does not turn out to be something other than you had thought. It does not become corrupted; it does not betray you or slander you; it does not try to get anything out of you.”

  Was there a flash of light in those pale blank eyes, or was it just a reflection from the shiny surface of the vase? “I see you understand the meaning of art, Mr. Budd,” remarked the host.

  They wandered through the halls of this private museum, and Lanny hadn’t needed any advance preparation. He knew these painters and their works, and could tell interesting stories about both; he could make technical comments that were right; and most important of all, he knew values. He was used to talking to men who lived by and for money, and here was one of the world’s greatest money masters, a man who had bought not merely all kinds of things but men and women for a vast array of purposes. When he had come to New York, half a century ago, to shoulder his way into metropolitan journalism, he had bought most of Pulitzer’s crack staff; he had even hired a room in the World Building so as to do it with speed and convenience. He had bought editors, writers, advertising and circulation men, all by the simple process of finding out what they were getting and offering them twice as much. And he had the same attitude toward paintings; when he wanted one he got it, regardless of price—but he remembered the price!

  So now Lanny remarked: “I found a Goya rather like that four years ago, while I was running away from the war in Spain, and I sold it in Pittsburgh for twenty-five thousand dollars.” The host replied: “I got that one for seventeen thousand, but it was a long time ago.” And then Lanny: “It is a fine specimen; it might bring thirty or forty thou sand now. The well-to-do have discovered that old masters are a form of sound investment, and offer the advantage that you don’t have to pay duty.”

  Presently they were in front of a Canaletto, a glimpse of Venice, bright and clear like the tones of a small bell. Lanny remarked: “I sold one for Hermann Göring not long ago.”

  It was a bait, and was grabbed instantly. “Louella tells me you know Göring well, and also Hitler.”

  “I have had that good fortune. I have known the Führer for some thirteen years, and Hermann for half that.”

  “They are extraordinary men,” said the host. “I should like to talk with you about them sometime while you are here.”

  “With pleasure, Mr. Hearst.” It was a date.

  IV

  In the middle of Sunday morning, while the guests sallied forth to amuse themselves on the estate, or sat on the veranda in the sunshine reading copies of the Examiner which had been flown in by plane, the publisher invited his new friend into the study where no one came save by invitation. There Lanny spread before him a treasure of knowledge concerning Nazi-Fascism which he had been accumulating over a period of two decades. He told how he had first seen Mussolini, then a journalist, in a trattoria in San Remo, in a furious argument with his former Red associates; how later, in Cannes, he had interviewed him during an international conference. He told about Schloss Stubendorf, where he had visited Kurt Meissner as a boy, and about Heinrich Jung who had become one of the earliest of the Nazis, and had taken Lanny to Adi’s apartment in Berlin in the days before the Führer had had that or any other title.

  “I thought I was something of a Pink in those days,” Lanny said, “and Hitler had a program very much like the one you had when you were young, Mr. Hearst. He was going to put an end to interest slavery, as he called it, and ‘bust the trusts’; it sounded like one of Brisbane’s editorials with all the important phrases in caps.”

  “That was a long time ago,” remarked the publisher, with perhaps a trace of nostalgia. “We have all learned that the trusts can be made useful with proper regulation.”

  “Of course; but the program pleased the people, in Berlin and Munich as it had in New York and Chicago. It is a fact which I have pointed out to my friends in England and France, that the Nazis did not come into power as a movement to put down the Reds and to preserve large-scale business enterprise; they came as a radical movement, offering the people what they thought was a constructive program. It very much resembled the old Populist program in this country.”

  “You are correct,” said Mr. Hearst. “But the trouble is, Roosevelt has stolen all our thunder, and what can we do?”

  “Congressman Fish asked the same question when I mentioned the subject to him. I cannot answer, because my specialty is painting, not statesmanship. All I can do is to point out the facts I have observed. In countries where the people have the ballot you have to promise them something desirable, otherwise the opposition will outbid you.”

  “They are raising the price higher and higher, Mr. Budd. I have long been saying that if the bidding continues, it will result in the destruction of our democratic system.”

  “You may be right. There are many in England who observe labor’s demands continually increasing, and who look with envy upon what Hitler has been able to achieve.”

  “But even he has to go on making promises, Mr. Budd.”

  “Of course; but he is able to put off the fulfillment until after victory is won. Then, in all probability, he will find it possible to keep the promises. The Germans will be a ruling race, and all others on the Continent will work for them; so it should be possible to give German workers a larger share of the product.”

  “You think he is certain to win?”

  “How is it possible to think otherwise? He no longer has any opponent but Britain; and can Britain conquer the Continent
of Europe? Sooner or later their resources will give out, and they will have to accept the compromise which Hitler holds out to them. I can tell you about this, because I myself have been the bearer of messages from the Führer to Lord Wickthorpe, who has just resigned his post at the Foreign Office in protest against Churchill’s stubbornness.”

  V

  Naturally, the publisher of eighteen newspapers wanted to know all about this mission. He wanted to know what the proposals were and what chance there would be of modifying them. He wanted to know what terms had been offered to the French, and what secret clauses might be in the armistice agreement with France. He wanted to hear about the struggle going on between Laval and Pétain within the Vichy Government, and how that was likely to turn out. Was Hitler going to get the French Fleet, and was he strong enough to take Gibraltar? What was the actual strength of the Italian army, and would it be able to break into Egypt and close the Suez Canal? An extraordinarily complicated war, and fascinating if you could take an aloof position, and not be worried about the possibility of your own country being drawn into it!

  A year or so after the Nazis had taken power, William Randolph Hearst had paid a visit to both Rome and Berlin. He had made a deal with the Nazis whereby his International News Service was to have the exclusive use of all Nazi official news—a very good thing financially. The publisher had had several confidential talks with the Führer, and told Lanny how greatly he had been impressed by this man’s grasp of international affairs. “Naturally, I am sympathetic to his domestic program,” he explained. “There can be no question that he has made Germany over, and that he has been a blessing to the country. But I could not continue to endorse him, because of what he has done to the Jews. You understand that—if only for business reasons.”

  “Certainly,” replied Lanny with a smile. “New York appears to have become a Jewish city.”

  Six years had passed since Mr. Hearst’s visit; and what had these years done to the Führer, and to his Nummer Zwei and his Nummer Drei? The host plied his guest with questions, and the guest answered frankly, telling many stories about the Führer’s home life, both at Berchtesgaden and Berlin; about Göring’s hunting lodge in the Schorfheide, which had been the property of the Prussian State, but Göring had calmly taken it over and built it into a palace, much on the order of San Simeon, though Lanny forbore to mention that. He talked about Hess’s interest in astrologers and spirit mediums, that being no secret in regard to the head of the Nazi Party. He told of confidential talks with these men, and explained how it was possible for them to accept an American art expert as a friend and even an adviser. There had to be somebody to take messages to other countries and bring replies, and official personalities were often unsatisfactory because they had become involved in factional strife and intrigues at home.

  “Göring hates Ribbentrop like poison, and so does Hess,” Lanny explained, “and all three of them hate Goebbels. The Führer uses them all, and plays one against another; he never trusts anyone completely, except possibly Hess, and when I come along he may be relieved to meet somebody who is untouched by this steam of jealousy and suspicion. He feels that he has known me from boyhood, because of my intimacy with Kurt Meissner and Heinrich Jung, two men who have been his loyal followers from the beginning and who have never once asked a favor of him. Then, too, both the Führer and Göring have more than once offered me money, and I have refused it, which impresses them greatly.”

  “They wanted you in their service?”

  “Yes; but I explained to them that if I incurred such obligations I should part with my sense of freedom; I should begin to worry about whether or not I was earning my keep, and they would begin to think I was an idler, and would start making demands upon me.”

  A smile came upon the long face of this man of so many millions. “Are you telling me this so that I won’t make you a proposal, Mr. Budd?”

  “No, it hadn’t occurred to me that you might wish to.”

  “You are a modest man, indeed. What you have been telling me is of importance to one who is getting on in years and inclined to stay in his own chimney corner. Firsthand information is not easy to come by, and I would be very pleased to pay for it, and would promise never to put the least pressure upon you. If you would come to see me now and then and let me pump your mind as I have just been doing, it would be worth, say, fifty thousand dollars a year to me—or more, if that would help.”

  “I have always heard that you were munificent, Mr. Hearst, and now you are proving it. I would be glad to be numbered among your friends, and now and then to run out and see you; but I would rather do it as I do for other friends, because of the pleasure I get from being helpful. My profession of art expert provides for my needs, and I am one of those fortunate persons whose work is play.”

  “You are able to earn so much?”

  “I don’t need so much, because I am a guest wherever I go—at my father’s home in Connecticut, at my mother’s home on the Riviera, at my former wife’s home in England. It sounds odd, so I must explain that Lord Wickthorpe married Irma Barnes, and we have managed to remain friends. I have a little daughter who lives at Wickthorpe Castle, and I go there to stay with her. It is a box seat from which to view the affairs of the British Empire.”

  The man of money was troubled by this attitude toward his own divinity, which was money. Quite possibly nothing of the sort had ever happened to him before. “You do not consider the necessity of providing for your old age?”

  “There, too, I have been favored by fortune. My father has considerable money, and if I should reach old age, I have reason to expect to inherit a share of it.”

  That put the matter on a different basis; it established this suave gentleman among the small group of social equals. “I suppose I have to accept your decision, Mr. Budd; but bear me in mind on your travels, and any time you have information or advice which you think I ought to have, send it to me by cable, and if you will let me have the name of your bank in this country, I will see that the cost is deposited to your account.”

  “As you know, Mr. Hearst, the British government makes cabling a dubious matter in wartime. But when I am in this, country I can telegraph you—and it does sometimes happen that I have a suggestion that might be of interest.”

  “Dictate it to a stenographer and send it collect,” commanded the Duce of San Simeon. “Don’t worry about the length—you have carte blanche from this time forth.”

  VI

  Louella Parsons had told Lanny that he might be invited to stay as long as he pleased, and so it turned out. He accepted, because he was curious about this man of vast power whom he regarded as one of the fountainheads of American Fascism; also about the guests who came and went so freely at this free country club. They were the rulers of California; the officials, the judges, the newspaper managers and editors, the big businessmen; but above all the motion-picture colony in its higher departments, the masters of super-publicity.

  The oddest business in the world, it seemed to the son of Budd-Erling; the providing of dreams to all the peoples of the earth. “The industry” was about as old as Lanny himself, and the men in it had grown up with it, and didn’t find it so strange. Its big businessmen were very little different from those who provided clothing in New York and other cities; there, too, the fashions had to be studied; elegance was another kind of dream, and the public’s whims could make or break you. The men who manufactured and marketed entertainment bought the services of other men and women, just as a newspaper publisher did, and they estimated the value of these persons by what could be made out of their talents.

  If a man wrote a best-selling novel they would hire him to write for them at several thousand dollars a week, and would install him in a cubicle with a typewriter and a secretary; if they had nothing for him to do at the moment they would expect him to wait, and they might forget him for six months, but they saw no reason why he should object, so long as he was receiving his salary check. His best-seller might
have had to do with, say, the sufferings of the sharecroppers of Louisiana, and they would put him to work on a script having to do with a murder mystery in Hawaii. You might hear half a dozen anecdotes similar to this in a morning’s chat at San Simeon, but you weren’t supposed to laugh—a polite little smile would answer all purposes.

  Just now the presidential campaign was at its climax, and much of the conversation of the guests had to do with this subject. “That Man in the White House” was trying to grab off a third term, and most of the top men in “the industry,” like the top men in all the other industries, considered that the salvation of the country depended upon the rebuking of this insolent ambition. Every morning the Examiner came, and every afternoon the Herald-Express, Hearst papers filled with editorials and columns and doctored news, all in a frenzied effort to discredit the Administration. The guests read these papers, and talked in the same vein. Lanny heard nobody dissenting; the nearest any came to it were two or three who suggested mildly that the affairs of the country would go on much the same whether it was Willkie or Roosevelt. These men were looked upon as in very bad taste, and Lanny kept carefully away from them.

  VII

  Every day at San Simeon there arrived by airmail copies of eighteen Hearst newspapers from all over America. Presumably one man couldn’t read them all, but he could glance over them with a pair of eyes practiced for more than half a century; then he would dictate a telegram to the managing editor of each paper, saying what was wrong, and the telegrams were famous for their vigorous language. This had been the practice ever since 1887, when Willie Hearst had taken over his daddy’s newspaper, the San Francisco Examiner—soon after being expelled from Harvard University for the offense of sending to each of his professors an elegant pot de chambre with the professor’s name inscribed in gold letters on the inside.