The tender-minded among the leftwingers called themselves Social-Democrats; they believed in social justice and hoped to get it by the patient labor of education, through the democratic process of political struggle and popular consent. But the tough-minded said: “It is a dream and will never come true; the capitalist class will never permit it to happen.” They would cite cases of the politicians who had risen to power through working-class activity, and then had turned conservative and betrayed their followers: Ramsay MacDonald and Philip Snowden, Briand and Viviani and Daladier and Laval, the vile Mussolini—a long list. No, the overthrow of the exploiters was a grim business; it would have to be done by fighting men, and the dictatorship of the proletariat was the only way. Prior to 1917 that had been just theory, evolved by Marx and Lenin; but now the world had seen it in action. “I have seen the future and it works!” Who now, after nearly a quarter of a century, could doubt that the Soviet Union was the workers’ Fatherland, and that the protection of that Fatherland was the first duty of every worker’s friend?
Such was the faith of Lanny’s half-sister, the surprisingly rebellious daughter of Esther Remsen and Robbie Budd. When the rich go over-board, politically speaking, they go all the way and with all their clothes on. They have been used to having what they want, and patience is apt to be the least of their virtues. Bessie Budd had joined the Communist Party, and she followed the Party line, keeping her eyes fixed upon it so closely that she couldn’t even see how it wobbled, and would be greatly irritated if you called her attention to the chart. This was a capitalist war, and the Soviet Union was keeping out of it, and it was the duty of every class-conscious worker in the world to uphold that attitude. Whichever side won, the workers of that side would gain nothing. Efforts to make distinctions between capitalist nations were just propaganda of the ruling classes; in the long run all nations would become the same, for when the workers got strong enough to threaten the power of their masters, the masters would put an end to the so-called “democracy.” That was how Fascism, Nazism, Falangism, had come, and it was an inevitable stage in the development of the proletarian revolution.
Hansi took his brother-in-law off and said, with tears in his eyes: “It’s utterly hopeless, Lanny. I can’t stand it much longer. Bess has got so that she puts words into my mouth; she knows what I am thinking and takes offense at that. It is like walking in a field that is sowed with mines; you never know where to put your foot.”
“You must make allowances for her, Hansi. History is being pretty hard on the Communists just now.”
“It would be hard on anybody who tried to fit Russian theories into an American mold. Imagine having to believe that there is no difference between the filthy Nazis with their torture camps, and the police and public authorities here in America, who leave Bess free to get up on a public platform and denounce them all she pleases! And when she knows that the Nazis murdered my harmless brother and robbed my father of everything he owned! When she knows that they are torturing and killing millions of good Germans for no crime save that of belonging to my race—and the race of our children—for you know that under the Nazi theories if you are half Jewish you might as well be all Jewish.”
“Bess insists that she hates the Nazis just as much as you, Hansi.”
“I know. In theory the Communists do; but in practice they save all their denunciation for those who are fighting to end Nazism. To hear Bess talk you would think that Roosevelt, the warmonger, is the most dangerous man in the world.”
“Yes, Hansi. I, too, have to live among wrong-headed people, and learn to bite my lips and keep silent.”
“But not the person you love most in the world, Lanny!”
“Even that—when I was married to Irma. And I was prepared to stick it out. It was she who broke it up.”
“I sometimes wonder if Bess is not planning to break it up, Lanny. She has been so impatient of late. We made a bargain, but she can’t stick to it.”
“You know the old saying, that the darkest hour is just before dawn; and I’ve an idea this may apply to your case. Go to your study and fiddle, and leave Bess to me for a while. I have some news for her.”
III
There was a summer house on a little point of land facing the water. It had seats inside and out, so that when the weather was cool you could sit in the sunshine and when it was hot you could sit in the shade. On this afternoon of late May the sun was welcome, flinging showers of gold over the blue water. Lanny led his half-sister there, saying that he had family matters to talk to her about.
When Lanny first met his half-sister she had been a child, round-faced, gentle, and trusting, full of the wonder of being alive. Because Lanny, seven years older, came from abroad, and could speak French and German fluently and played piano music tumultuously, she bad draught him the most wonderful person in the world. Later, when she had fallen in love with Hansi, Lanny had advised and helped her, and for that she owed him a debt she could never repay. But as the years had passed she had been disappointed in him; she thought him a dilettante, a playboy of the arts, making money out of trading in the labors of Marcel Detaze and other men of genius. She was sure he did not really hold Fascist ideas, but she thought he put on that coloration in order to frequent moneyed circles in Europe. If it had been any other man, she would have considered that this placed him beyond the pale.
For herself Bess had developed two life goals: the first, to become a worthy accompanist for Hansi’s virtuosity; and the second, to put an end to the exploitation of man by man everywhere over the earth. In the first effort she had done reasonably well, according to the critics; the general tendency was to patronize a wife, but they didn’t say that she spoiled the rendition. In the second goal, alas, it was hard to see that she had made much progress to date, and worry over this had caused her face to become thinner and her expression serious, even stern. She dressed simply, even for the concert stage, and did nothing to attract attention to herself. Her flaxen hair she made into two long braids and wound them about her head like a crown. She received a share of the concert earnings, and the greater part of this she gave to the Party. Lanny had called her a granddaughter of the Puritans; he said it playfully, but he really meant it.
When they were seated beside the summer house, looking over the Sound dotted with white sails, Bess began with her characteristic impatience. “I know what you want to talk to me about, Lanny. My husband is getting ready for war in his soul, and he expects me not to be unhappy about it.”
“A lot of people are getting ready for war, and not only in their souls, Bess.”
“I know. The whole country is being made over for war, and I hate it, I hate it! I’ll never compromise with it!”
“Listen, dear,” he said. “I have some information that you ought to possess. But you’ll have to make me a promise and take it seriously. It must be for yourself alone. You will not be at liberty to pass it on.”
“I, too, have sources of information, Lanny; and it may be that I already know what you are about to tell me.”
“I am quite sure you don’t. If it isn’t new to you, then of course you are free. But if it is new, then you have to wait until you hear it from other sources than me. I am not at liberty to tell you my reasons, but I cannot take the risk of having my sister become the fountainhead of this news—and especially not while I am here or have just been here.”
“You sound very mysterious, Lanny. I will promise, of course.”
“Very well. The news is that Hitler is going to attack the Soviet Union in a little more than one month.”
She stared at him, and the blood was drained out of her face. She clasped her hands before her so tightly that the knuckles were white. “Oh, Lanny! How horrible!” And then: “How do you know that?”
“Hitler told me, and discussed his plans in detail. So did Hess; and Göring practically admitted it. The plans have been made to the last item, and the armies are now being moved to the front.”
“But Lanny! W
hat excuse can they have?”
“Hitler doesn’t wait for excuses. He takes what he wants.”
“But he has a treaty of non-aggression with the Soviet Union!”
“That means nothing to him. That is just to keep the Russians quiet until he is ready. What Hitler has to have is oil; he cannot win this war without it.”
“But, Lanny, the man is mad! The Red Army will be a stone wall!”
“That may be, but he does not think so. He expects his. Panzer divisions to break through and surround whole corps, whole armies at a time, and chop them to pieces. We shall have to wait and see.”
“The Red Army has its plans also, Lanny. I have been told about them. They will fall back and go on fighting—all the way to the Urals, if necessary.”
“Certainly I hope so, but also I am afraid. I just don’t know what will happen.”
The look on his sister’s face was that of one enduring physical agony. “Oh, Lanny, what a dreadful thing! All that wonderful country the Soviets have been working to develop! The three five-year plans! The great dams, the bridges, the mines, the factories! Lanny, I have felt that I owned that country and everything in it! That has been my Socialist Fatherland, the workers’ homeland!”
“I know, old dear. You will have to wait, and keep up your courage. What has been built once can be rebuilt more easily.”
“Look, Lanny! You put a restriction on me, but this is terrible. The Soviets should be warned!”
“You don’t have to have that on your conscience. Oumansky has been told.”
“Who told him?”
“That I am not free to say, but it was somebody far more credible than you or I. That I can assure you positively.”
“And how did he take it?”
“He refused to believe it. That was some two months ago, and I have no doubt that he has changed his mind now. The matter has progressed to a point where all the insiders know it. Armies of several million men cannot be assembled over a front of a thousand miles without spies being able to find it out. You must understand that the front is no longer the German border; it has been advanced everywhere into foreign territory, and the peasants come and go—you can safely count upon it that no German division is shifted without the Red Army staff knowing when and where.”
“I suppose that is true, and of course they will have to fight. But the thought of it makes me physically ill.”
“You will have to face it sooner or later, old girl; and I think it had better be sooner, on Hansi’s account.”
IV
Lanny sat for a while looking out over the peaceful strait of water, which makes a playplace as well as a channel of commerce for the great metropolis. He knew well the tumult of fear and grief that must be in this woman’s soul. Rightly or wrongly, She had centered her hopes upon the social experiment being tried in the Soviet Union, and it was her fond dream that this might go on uninterrupted while the capitalist world tore itself to shreds. To face this new situation meant turning all her thinking upside down.
At last he said gently: “You know, Bess, you have a great man in your keeping. You have to think not merely of his happiness but of the happiness he gives to millions of others.”
“Yes, I know that.” There was a chastened tone to her voice.
“You remember, some two years ago, when I told you there was a possibility of a deal between Stalin and Hitler, you laughed at me, and even became a little angry. Now there will have to be another change in the Party line, pretty nearly a rightabout face. I thought it might help you if you had time to adjust your mind, and especially your emotions.”
“Lanny, we have to stand a lot of ridicule for having a Party line and sticking to it. That is easy enough for café celebrities who earn their sumptuous livings writing for the capitalist press, and owe no allegiance except to their latest wisecrack. But the Communists have been at war ever since the Party was founded; and when you are at war you have to have discipline, you have to obey orders even though you may sometimes think they are wrong.”
“I know all about that,” he said, for his Uncle Jesse had explained it to him when he was a boy. “If that’s the way you feel you can work best, it’s all right with me. What I’m concerned to do is to save Hansi’s happiness, as well as yours. You’re going to have to come around to his point of view, you know.”
“I suppose so,” she said—very slowly, reluctantly. “I can’t make it real to myself.”
“Face up to it, like a good soldier. You are going to become a warmonger. You are going to think that Roosevelt is the greatest President this country has ever had. You are going to become a pal and bosom friend of good old Winnie.”
“Don’t tease me, Lanny! This is a ghastly tragedy.”
“Yes, old dear; but we might as well get a little fun out of life as we go along, and the spectacle of the Duke of Marlborough’s seventh lineal descendant co-operating wholeheartedly with the shoemaker’s Red bandit from Tifliś is one which ought to afford you a smile now and then!”
“Is that really going to happen, Lanny?”
“Understand, all this is under the seal of secrecy. The reason that Hess flew to Britain was to try to persuade Ceddy Wickthorpe and other appeasers to make a deal with him on the basis that Germany was going to conquer Russia and that Britain would stand by and keep hands off.”
“That is what I have been dreading, more than anything in this world.”
“I know, bless your heart; but it didn’t work out according to the class-struggle formula. It appears that your English forebears have certain moral standards, even older than capitalism, and Adi Schicklgruber has failed to conform to them. The British refuse to trust him an inch farther.”
“But will they trust Stalin?”
“This much I know: they have Rudi Hess under guard and are pretending to negotiate with him, thus worming out of him all the secrets they can. And meantime, good old Winnie has the speech all written which he intends to deliver the day Hitler moves into Russia—and it’s a speech of brotherly welcome to a partner in a righteous war. The Hess part I really know; and Rick says he has heard about the speech and believes it. Churchill is wearing out the patience of his friends, making them listen to him rehearsing his periods.”
“Lanny, that takes a terror out of my soul.”
“Yes, dear; and you can get busy and adjust yourself to the brave new world. My suggestion is that you don’t tell Hansi what I have told you. Play a little game with him, for the sake of your love; let him think that he is converting you, little by little, and it will make him the happiest man on the Connecticut shore.”
Bess couldn’t keep from smiling. “Lanny, you are a rascal—the shrewdest one I know, and the dearest.”
“Don’t jump all at once, you understand, for that might awaken suspicion. Get into an argument and let him convince you, step by step. Admit that there are such things as moral standards, even in the class struggle. Admit that Hitler may be a little bit worse than Roosevelt. Admit that there is more free speech in America than in Naziland. Admit that America has to arm in a world where all Europe is an armed camp. Admit that you hope to see Britain win, and next day you are ready to allow that lend-lease may not be the very worst of crimes. Easy does it, little by little—it’s like bringing a big transport down on a landing field!”
V
Lanny had asked his half-sister about Uncle Jesse. She had been to a meeting where he had spoken; he was old and withered, but still full of fire. She had had a few minutes’ talk with him, and she gave Lanny his address, which was an obscure hotel in the Gramercy Park section, not far from Union Square where the “Commies,” as they were called, had their headquarters. When Lanny returned to the city he called the number, and there was the mocking voice which he had not heard for more than a year. Lanny said: “This is your friend from Bienvenu. Take a walk around the park and I’ll pick you up.” These two were old hands at dodging the cops and their spies.
The little park, which is s
maller than a city block, has an iron fence all around it and is reserved, apparently, for the nursemaids and children of the residences which front it. Lanny didn’t think the Nazi agents in New York would be keeping track of all the Communists, so he was satisfied to drive once around the park and make sure that his car wasn’t being followed. There was the tall erect figure, defying age, and the perfectly bald scalp defying the weather. Lanny drew up, and the lively old man hopped in, and away they went.
“Well, Uncle Jesse! I missed you in Paris, and then in London, I believe.”
“You should have come to Moscow. There is the city worth seeing—where the world’s decisions are going to be made.”
This pair had been arguing with each other for almost a quarter of a century. It was much the same controversy as between Hansi and Bess, but here it was carried on with a sense of humor. Lanny, the tender-minded one, believed, or at any rate hoped, that mankind might be influenced by reason, and that social changes might take place without slaughter and waste; Jesse, the tough-minded one, told the fond dreamer that mankind wasn’t made that way, and that history was written in blood, not in ink. Bourgeois politics was a farce—and surely he ought to know, having been in the French Chamber for more than a decade.
If you asked why he had stayed, he would answer: it was a platform from which he had been able to tell the people of France about the crooks who were representing them, and about the great interests which were putting up the money. If you asked about the position of France at present, Uncle Jesse would say it was doubtless worse from the material point of view, but better intellectually, for at least the French people weren’t being fooled any more—they knew who their enemies were. If you asked what the French could do about it, you would start an exposition of Marxist-Leninist theories. Lanny didn’t ask the question, because he had heard it all before, and had told his propagandist uncle that it was like putting a phonograph record on a machine.
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