The Devil's Advocate: The Epic Novel of One Man's Fight to Save America From Tyranny

by Taylor Caldwell

  Morrow leaned sideways against a window and looked down at the street with an air of polite indifference. The farmers craned their necks and stared down, sullenly, without answering.

  “Then you talk of your ‘patriotism’ and your ‘service’!” cried Durant, his face now congested with loathing and rage. “What have you farmers ‘sacrificed,’ as you call it? When have you sacrificed anything at all, for forty years? Do you call your gold-stuffed banks ‘sacrifice’? Do you call your privileged status ‘sacrifice’? Why, you bastards, you’ve sucked the life-blood of this country for forty years and made Presidents and politicians and a whole people pay for the right to live and eat what you produce!”

  Even the most courageous and defiant were silent now. The jaws might set grimly, and the eyes narrow with scorn and avarice, but no one spoke.

  “The cities have been your slaves, and all the people in them,” continued Durant. “They’ve been like cattle, waiting for you to slaughter them. You’ve take the gold from the teeth of men and women, and the last rings from their fingers, and the hard-won treasures of their houses, and the lives of their starving children. For your own profit. You’ve thundered in Washington, for forty years, and threatened, and challenged, and withheld your produce, and intimidated your Senators, until you got what you wanted: the bodies and souls of a nation. Because men have to eat. Because men want to live.” His voice dropped, became hoarse. “Because men want to live.”

  Morrow stirred and regarded him closely. The farmers shifted on their big feet. They stared at Durant with the heavy hatred of countrymen.

  He turned his back to them, and now his voice was almost inaudible.

  “You agreed to every war, and to more wars, and then more wars, so you could become richer and more powerful. When a President tried for peace, you wouldn’t support him. You created inflation with your parities and your prices, until thousands in the nation died of starvation because they couldn’t buy what you had to sell. That is your ‘sacrifice.’ You sacrificed a whole country.”

  Morrow lifted his body away from the window, and now he looked at Durant piercingly, at the passionate gestures, at the pale dark face, all in such violent contrast to the low voice.

  Durant lifted his left hand. “But now you’ve come to the end of the road, you farmers. We have a new war. Your parities are gone, as of today. You’ll sell at a price I’ll fix, myself. Your bank accounts will be paper, not gold. You’ll be permitted to eat only what the people in the cities eat. You’ll have your ration cards, and not a single piece of your meat will be yours, except what is allowed on these cards. You’ll begin to pay taxes on your income back to January first of this year. You’ll pay taxes on every single, solitary thing in your houses. No exemptions for you. No more privileges. If the cities die, then you’ll die with them. You’ll starve with them, right in the very center of your fields and your barns. You’ve never had any fear of any God or any man. Today, you’ll begin to fear.”

  He studied each appalled and aghast face. He saw the deep pallor on every man’s cheek, and the terror in every man’s eye. and he saw the hatred and silent rage and the stiffening of bodies.

  “Yes! Look at me!” he went on, with a malignant smile. “I’m your master. I’m the Military. You gave me my power. You put this uniform on me. You put those guns in the hands of my men. So we could protect you and help you. Look at me! We’re your masters, after all. And the laws and the power you gave us will be used against you, for the welfare of The Democracy.”

  He turned to his officers. “All right, that’s all. Let’s go.”

  Then Morrow said very quietly: “Major, could I see you alone for a minute?”

  Durant was about to refuse, then he said: “Yes. For one minute.”

  He followed Morrow out of the hall, in the thickest silence he had ever heard. Every eye followed the two men, and it was as if statues were staring. Morrow led him into a small room at the rear of the platform, which was luxuriously furnished as an office. “Please sit down, Major,” said Morrow, indicating a deep leather chair. Durant sat down. His breath was still hard and rapid, his face still very pale. “Cigar, Major?”

  “No,” said Durant. He twisted his left wrist and glanced at his watch.

  Morrow sat down behind the leather and mahogany desk in the center of the room. He clasped his hands on it and gazed at Durant with the utmost gravity.

  “I suppose, Major, that because the Chief Magistrate has approved your directives for Section 7 that all the other Sections will follow your example.”

  “Of course,” said Durant.

  Morrow studied his hands. He said softly: “The farmers have had their privileges and their wealth and their security so long that they won’t give it all up—very easily. They’ll—make a fight of it, Major.”

  Durant was silent.

  Morrow began to smile inscrutably. “You’re very eloquent, sir. Very eloquent.”

  “What are you leading up to, Morrow?” asked Durant irritably. “Are you trying to intimidate me with your threat that the farmers will ‘make a fight of it’?”

  Morrow’s smile broadened. “No, Major. Not at all.”

  “Then what are you trying to say?”

  Morrow turned his big gray head so that he could look at the paneled wall. “I’m merely saying that the farmers will fight. And hard. They’re very strong, Major.” He turned back to Durant. “Isn’t that what you want to hear?”

  Durant sat very still. He could not speak for several moments, then he blustered: “I want to hear—I want to hear—that the farmers understand their new position, without any doubts.”

  Morrow nodded. “They understand. As I said, you’re very eloquent, Major.”

  Durant stood up. He looked down at Morrow, whose smile was more cryptic than ever. He could not prevent himself from saying abruptly: “Who are you, Morrow?”

  “Me?” Morrow lifted his gray eyebrows, as if puzzled. “I’m president of the local Grange.” He paused. “I’ve been president for two years.”

  “Were you ever a farmer?” asked Durant, feeling something strange in the atmosphere.

  Morrow shifted in his chair. “No, Major,” he said thoughtfully. “I was never a farmer. I used to be what you soldiers call a bureaucrat. I was once Assistant Secretary of Agriculture. That was five years ago. The farmers owe a great deal to me.” He glanced at Durant, and those hard brown eyes shone with secret amusement.

  He stood up, and offered his hand to Durant. “I’ll tell the farmers they can do nothing. Of course, that won’t prevent them from doing what they can. And, Major, we’ll probably meet again. Somewhere.”

  Durant, his head buzzing, all his instincts stirring so strongly that they confused him, found himself shaking hands with Morrow. Morrow’s smile began to broaden into a laugh. “Tell the Chief Magistrate, when you see him again, that Walter Morrow will cooperate with him fully, at any time, and with you, Major.”

  He opened the door for Durant and bowed him out. The farmers were standing as they had left them, and now they searched Morrow’s face eagerly. It was very quiet and very solemn. They still stood, watching their leader, as the officers and men marched out.

  “Well, that finishes the farmers!” said Grandon happily, in the elevator.

  But Durant made no comment. Something’s very damned wrong, or something’s very damned good, he thought, dazed. Whatever it is, the tempo’s got to be stepped up.

  Durant could feel the city simmering with excitement all around him. It was a new and heartening sensation, a unique one, for a man who had known only the excessive and humble docility and the suppressed violence of New York, which had been merely the violence of despair without hope. But this simple excitement had a warmth of humanity about it, which indicated that Philadelphia was not yet completely dead. Even his directives against the workers of the city—reduced rations, increased hours of work and a new tax—had not thrown the people into fresh misery. For they now had companions, their anci
ent enemies: the farmers, the bureaucrats, the MASTS. Therefore, the workers had accepted the insupportable directives against them almost with amusement. They had so short a way to fall; the others were falling mightily, into chaos, into ruin, into the very bottomless pit that held the whole of Section 7 now.

  Durant tried to sense if behind the people’s exaltation in the fall of their traditional foes there was a hint of revolt. He knew that hope had a way of being born when a man’s spirit was even momentarily released from its awful preoccupation with its own agony. The clergymen might deplore that one man’s suffering could appear to lighten his neighbor’s. But there it was; it was part of the character of humanity, and it was a factor which only a fool would ignore and not use in his reckoning. Yes, there was some possibility; once all the people were united against the Military, and there were exemptions for none in a common slavery, revolt could be expected, or at least hoped for.

  The new war was hardly mentioned these days in the papers. There was always a war and the people had become conditioned to war as an ox becomes conditioned to the whip. The papers still rang their mechanical bells of “Unity! Duty! Sacrifice!” but they were mostly preoccupied with the alarm, rage and indignation expressed by the Public Psychiatry Department because of the new directive that the children of the privileged groups were to attend the Government schools. Dr. Healy had recklessly stated that he was “certain” that this directive of the new major would be rescinded by the “proper authorities.” He had gone to New York to see the Chief Magistrate, himself. Dr. Healy did not return for a week or two, but the news of that meeting had rushed to Philadelphia before him. The Chief Magistrate had declined to interfere.

  It was reported that the bureaucrats, the MASTS and the farmers were gathering repeatedly for “discussion,” and that the meetings were notable for their expressions of anger and outrage. However, it was carefully noted, the meetings invariably closed with new avowals of loyalty and devotion to The Democracy. It was all really a “mistake.” “Something” would be done. Washington, said a spokesman for the privileged groups, would not allow its dedicated classes to be ruined, would not permit the nurseries of “leadership” to remain closed very long. The President would intervene. It was rumored that the Chief Magistrate had been called to Washington. No word of disrespect against Arthur Carlson was uttered; every man affected by the new directives was very eloquent in his words of admiration for and fidelity to the Chief Magistrate. One or two gentlemen went so far as to speak of the “youth” of the new major, and his apparent “unfamiliarity” with “certain problems,” and they piously hoped that he would soon “understand.”

  The privileged groups, then, received the dismayed Dr. Healy with equanimity, and talked with him in private.

  Their equanimity was severely shaken at the directive, which came later, that the formerly “unavailable labor” assigned as servants to the privileged groups would now be assigned to “essential industry.” No sound reached Durant of the loud and furious outcries of the wives of the privileged when their house-and-garden slaves were called to labor in the war plants and in the fields. However, Durant was quite sure that husbandly ears were torn to shreds by the screams of sleek and impudent women in the privacy of secluded bedrooms. A man, he reflected, could endure a great many more important calamities with considerable calm, but he could never endure the shrieks, complaints, threats and tears of his wife. Even the new directive that the privileged groups were no longer to be exempt from the ten percent tax on all personal and real properties would not reduce the powerful to such despair as the rampagings of their outraged women-folk.

  From such mean, trivial and ignoble sources, Durant thought, often came the fires of revolt. He prayed that the women, deprived of slaves who ministered to their gleaming bodies and who filled their kitchens and houses, would incite their husbands, by their nagging, tantrums and acidulous shrieks to a blazing revolution.

  Seize a man’s body, annihilate his soul, reduce him to serfdom, Durant told himself, and centuries would pass without a murmur from him. But touch his purse, touch his privileged comfort, and he would shake the very foundations of the world with the blows of his rage, and he would set the very cities on fire, in a few hours, a few weeks, or a few months. Take away his liberty, destroy his dignity as a man, and he would only murmur weakly, then forget. But take away his gold, his pomp and circumstance, his little personal power, and even hell would quail at the measure of his vengeance. What a thing was man! What a mean and contemptible thing!

  Yet, out of the very contemptibleness of man could heroic things be born, not voluntarily, not by contemplation and prayer and earnest seeking, but merely as a side product. Oh, was it as Arthur Carlson had said, that the revolt of the self-serving gave opportunity to good men heretofore kept silent?

  It was from the office of Dr. Benjamin Colburn that the directive had come that all personal, and real, properties held by the MASTS were to be taxed the prevailing ten percent. A delegation called upon Durant with anxious recriminations against Mr. Woolcott, director of the Bureau of Mobilized Labor. It was all very well, said the well-tailored gentlemen, for the farmers to be so taxed, as directed by Major Curtiss, for, who were the farmers?

  “Who, indeed?” agreed Durant.

  Encouraged, the gentlemen congratulated Durant upon his directives against the farmers, who were, really, only rustics and illiterates. But it appeared that Mr. Woolcott had a personal prejudice against those whom The Democracy had recognized as very important personages, and who had been granted exemptions accordingly. As Major Curtiss was the Military commandant, he would surely inform Mr. Woolcott that this directive should not, and could not, be enforced. There was also the matter of servants. A gentleman and officer, such as Major Curtiss, quite understood that it was not to be expected that the wives of very important personages scrub their own kitchens, take care of their own children and cook their own food.

  Major Curtiss, the officer and gentleman, listened pleasantly to the well-bred complaints. Then he said: “Before any Bureau can issue any directive it has to clear with me. Gentlemen, I regret to say that every directive to which you are objecting has received my approval. And, gentlemen, you are well aware of the fact that I have been given absolute power in this Section. The Military, gentlemen, must, and shall, be obeyed.”

  The delegation looked at him with consternation. It was understood, naturally, that the Military was supreme—

  “It is,” interrupted Durant, still smiling pleasantly. “I’m glad you know that. It seems that for some time there has been a misapprehension about the matter. I’m here to correct the misapprehension. We have a new war, gentlemen. A new war. We must Labor; we must Live Austerely; we must Pull in our Belts.” This new emergency had created an unprecedented situation in The Democracy. All, now, were to be called upon to Sacrifice Everything. “But everything,” Durant emphasized. He was certain that the gentlemen understood, and that, as loyal citizens of The Democracy, they would stand United Against the Common Enemy, working shoulder to shoulder with every other citizen, sleepless in their devotion, Giving their All.

  They listened to this unctuous and sonorous speech with expressions of delicate distaste, though some were discreet enough to nod soberly and agree, but—

  “But, what?” asked Durant seriously.

  “The morale of Those Who Lead,” suggested the spokesman, a very urbane gentleman with an air of sweet reasonableness. “Our morale might be injured. I might even say it would definitely be injured. So, for the sake of The Democracy, and in order to conquer the new Enemy, it is most necessary that the morale of the leaders be sustained.”

  Durant regarded them in silence, his eyes narrowing. The silence became prolonged, until some of the gentlemen shifted uneasily in their seats about Durant’s desk. Then he said very softly: “And the morale of the people, Mr. Remington?”

  Mr. Remington shrugged. “Oh, the people,” he answered indulgently. “They do as they’re told.
”

  “And you’re implying that you won’t do as you’re told?”

  Mr. Remington was alarmed. “I did not say that, sir! I am merely implying that we are men of intelligence, and the people are only morons.”

  Durant leaned his elbow on his desk and studied Mr. Remington with intense curiosity. Mr. Remington was a man in his late sixties, short, thin, aristocratic of feature, and with a thick mane of very silvery hair. He was a manufacturer of diversified war materials, and some twenty years ago, when he had been forty-five, he had been called upon as advisor to the President then in office. It had been his duty to “coordinate manpower.” Durant had never met him before, but he knew his history. Mr. Remington, twenty years ago, had been fervent in his praise of the Common Man, and the Common Man’s propensity for unity, duty and sacrifice during wars. All civilization, Mr. Remington had said, rested on the broad shoulders of Labor. Without the brawn and the devotion and the intellect of Labor the whole world would be engulfed in barbarism and slavery.

  “Some twenty years ago,” Durant said, “you, Mr. Remington, declared that only the people, only Labor, was significant, and you didn’t spare the adjectives. Now, you call them ‘only morons.’ Have you changed your mind about them, Mr. Remington, or were you a hypocrite? For your own purposes?”