“Of course she had no case,” said Laurel. “Reputable lawyers told her so; but there are always shysters ready to prey upon a woman, and Flo has paid most of her inheritance over to them. If she isn’t mentally deranged she is close to it, and spends all her time hating our stepmother and trying to figure out ways of punishing her. Nothing can keep her from talking about her grievance, and she is always in debt and trying to borrow money. Now she has the idea that I have married a rich man, and she will want to try you, and to meet your family, and tell her troubles to them. I want you to be out when she calls, or stay in your room and read.”
That was the sort of story you ran into anywhere you went among the rich in America. Children were brought up to believe that the world owed them a luxurious living, without their making any sort of return. Servants waited upon them, all the world was at their beck and call; they were taught to believe themselves superior to other people, all but a very select few. By the time they were grown they were hopelessly spoiled and doomed to unhappiness for the rest of their lives. Money was everything to them; if they had plenty they used it to dominate the lives of others, and if they didn’t have it they became parasites, little brothers or sisters of the rich.
Lanny didn’t meet Flo; he went to the public library and did research, had lunch in an Automat—amusing product of a mechanical age—and then took a long walk in the park. He took the precaution to phone before he went home. There had been a scene of some sort; Laurel was upset, but she didn’t want to talk about it, and he respected her right to keep her family skeletons locked up in her own closet.
IV
Lanny Budd, halfway through his forties, had become a serious-minded gentleman, brooding over the sorrows and perils of the world. But there had to be some form of recreation, and Hansi and Bess would come to town and they would attend symphony concerts. There was a piano in the apartment, and the two artists would play—they were just as happy playing for two or three persons whom they loved as for a large audience. In the old days they had helped their cause by playing for political groups, but now Hansi wouldn’t play for Communists and Bess wouldn’t play for Socialists. They played for charity, especially for the refugees and displaced persons. Hansi chose sorrow-laden music by Ernest Bloch and other Jewish composers, and the listeners would sit with tears running down their cheeks.
This married pair had reached a state of tension that was pitiful. There was hardly any subject they could talk about without trouble. Just as all roads had once led to Rome, so now all conversations led to the class struggle. It was history, it was geography, it was current events, it was literature, it was even getting to be music. “We can’t agree now about the shape of a phrase of Mozart,” said Hansi sadly; and Lanny couldn’t joke about there being a party line for Mozart, for he knew that the Soviet authoritarians kept close watch over their composers and gave even the world-famous ones a dressing down now and then.
The violinist said this only when his wife had gone off, presumably to meet some of her party comrades. She was getting more severe all the time, he reported, more doctrinaire and less devoted to the art of music. “The comrades think the world is theirs,” reported Hansi, “and they grow more and more avid. They don’t talk much in front of me, but I pick up a phrase now and then, and it bodes ill for us dreamers of peace.”
The gentle idealist was in a state of profound depression. He hated the militarists, yet he was coming to believe that they were necessary; the world was going to belong to them, perhaps for a long, long time. Hansi was more in fear of violent revolution than even the former publisher of the Garland Fund books. He was beginning to fear that the so-called democratic world had no weapons with which to meet the offensive of the grimly determined Reds.
Said Lanny, “You mean you really think that Russia could beat the United States if it came to a showdown?”
“It won’t come to a showdown, Lanny; the Reds won’t let it. They will use the much more deadly weapons of propaganda and intrigue. You know that they have got the Balkans; and does anybody imagine they won’t know how to root out the opposition and put those peoples under the dictatorship of the Politburo? We invited them into China; and that means they will have four hundred million hard-working people thoroughly indoctrinated. Britain is going to have to get out of India, and how long will it be before the Communist propaganda will begin to show its effects there?”
“We democrats have some propagandists too,” suggested Lanny mildly.
“Yes, but we go into the fight with one hand tied behind our backs. We believe with all our might in democracy in politics; but what about democracy in industry? Can you seriously believe that our Big Business masters are going to give up their privileges and their power for the sake of being able to counter the Reds, or for any other reason on earth?”
“Their power has been very much trimmed down of late. Haven’t you heard their squeals?”
“I know, Lanny, but that’s all over now. Big Business is riding high. And what have we halfway democrats to offer the depressed peoples of the earth—the Chinese, the Hindus, the Indonesians? We offer them free speech, but what they want is to get the landlords and the moneylenders off their backs.”
“You have been listening to Bess too long!” was Lanny’s serious answer.
V
The one who listened most patiently to Bess was Laurel. Somehow Lanny’s half-sister had got the idea that she might make a convert of Lanny’s wife; perhaps it was because Laurel had a Southerner’s deeply ingrained politeness, and perhaps it was because she liked to hear all sorts of people and try to understand them. Someday she might want to put a Communist into a story.
She even let Bess take her to meetings, at which she was introduced as “Miss Creston.” She sat and listened to the speakers and watched the audience, many of them foreigners or of foreign descent. What suffering had driven them to these extremes of bitterness, of fixed and implacable rage against the system which true-blue Americans glorified under the title of “free enterprise”? Under that system a few had risen to the top and settled themselves and found the view pleasant. If you questioned the arrangement, individuals who had recently managed to shove their way up were pointed out. Wasn’t that fair? Laurel would tell them the fable of Pestalozzi, about the carp in the pond who had complained of the voracity of the pike. The pike held a meeting to consider the grievance and admitted that the complaint was well based. A program was adopted agreeing that every year thereafter two carp should be permitted to become pike.
It was remarks like that which caused Bess to decide that Laurel was “coming on”; but the truth was Laurel would come on for a step or two and then retreat as many. She admitted the justice of the Communists’ indictment; it was their methods which repelled her. Why couldn’t Stalin stick to the program he had talked about, of “Socialism in one country”? Why not take American loans and machinery and develop that vast land, show the greater economy of the co-operative method, and convert the rest of the world by example? Certainly American capitalism could do nothing to interfere with such a program, and the needed social changes could come about by peaceful means—
“Peaceful, hell!” said Bess—from whose language you would never have guessed that she was the daughter of Esther Remsen Budd. “American capitalism can talk about peace because it has the money, the natural resources, the know-how—everything in its greedy fists. All that Big Business wants is to have the game go on under its rules, and in a few years it will have the whole world in its debt as it now has America. That’s what ‘peace’ means to capitalism—ownership and debt; the masses become well-trained slaves, and the masters build an industrial empire with the fraudulent label of democracy.”
“I don’t mean that the masses are to submit tamely to any such program, Bess. I mean that they can use the political power they have to win industrial power.”
“It’s a pipe dream, Laurel. Capitalist power builds a civilization and then capitalist war destroys it. The people are sick and tire
d of being robbed by exploiters and cheated by slick politicians.”
Lanny had on his dressing table a picture of his “little sister” as she had been as a girl—some eight years younger than he. She had been a lovely pale blonde, with gentle features and a sweet smile, adoring when she fixed it upon Lanny. At the age of seventeen she had met the shepherd boy out of ancient Judea, as Lanny had called Hansi, in Emily Chattersworth’s drawing-room; Hansi had played, and she had listened to the most entrancing sounds she had ever heard on earth. That had been twenty years ago, and Bess had made herself a competent pianist for her husband’s sake.
Now she would tell you that she had become a Communist for humanity’s sake; her face had become lean and her expression severe—don’t think she didn’t suffer over the chasm that had opened in her marriage, don’t think she didn’t know what tragedy she was preparing. She was, as Lanny had told Esther, a true granddaughter of the Puritans. Her forefathers had sailed in a tiny vessel across a turbulent sea and landed on a cold, inhospitable coast; they had risked their lives for the sake of freedom of conscience. Now Bess was ready to give her happiness for the sake of this new religion which despised religion but which manifested all the symptoms and practiced all the zealotry of those who had received a revelation direct from God.
Nothing made Bess madder than for anybody to tell her this; Lanny kept teasing her with it, in the hope of taming her down just a little. “What are you going to do when your friends have taken control of America and are ready to shoot Hansi and me in the back of the neck? Will you try to save us?”
“I am trying to save you right now,” replied Bess. “Make note of it and remember that I gave you warning.”
VI
Harry Hopkins, retired to civilian life, had got himself a house on Fifth Avenue, New York, and Mayor La Guardia had appointed him “impartial authority” for the garment trade, an arbitration job. Perhaps the friendly labor leaders understood what a sick man he was, for they settled all their disputes without bothering him. Lanny went to see him, intending to invite him to take part in a broadcast, but when he saw that wasted frame he turned it into a purely social call. Harry the Hop was losing the ability to assimilate food and was just fading away.
But he couldn’t let go. There were two or three books he wanted to write; he had a man sorting out his forty cases of records, and he would make efforts to study them and revive the past. Lanny’s presence rekindled the old fires. A dealer friend had loaned him some modern paintings for his room, and they talked about these: Utrillo, Picasso, Yves Tanguy, Serge Ferat, Marsden Hartley. Lanny entertained him with stories of the Monuments work, of Göring’s monstrous collection and of how the false Vermeer had taken him in—a forger getting the better of a bandit!
Old memories came to life, and Harry talked about his last visit to Stalin, a trip he had taken at the other Harry’s request, and which had prepared the way for the Potsdam Conference. Both Harrys had done their best, but apparently the job had been too much for any number of men. Hopkins said, “I have my doubts whether Stalin himself could check the revolutionary drive of world Communism. He has raised up a genie.”
When the visitor asked, “Do you think it is destined to conquer the world?” the answer was, “I think it’s touch and go. It depends upon whether the blind greeds of capitalism can be chained. I believe that another depression would mean the end of our system.”
There had just been a general election in France, and the middle group, including the Socialists, had won power. Harry thought that encouraging; it showed the soundness of the democratic process. Lanny remarked, “The French will have to learn to pay taxes,” and the other replied, “If the Russians make us start rearming, the whole world will learn something new about taxes.”
They talked about Churchill, incorrigible old Tory who had been relegated to the position of Leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition—a title that appealed to the sense of humor of an American but apparently not of a Britisher. Harry told of their combats over the issue of Normandy versus the Balkans, “Overlord” versus “the soft underbelly of Europe.” Throughout the war the issue was never quite settled, and Harry again and again would have to be flown to London. He described one of the scenes with a flash of his old humor. “Winston would throw the British Constitution at me; but as it isn’t written, no damage was done.”
VII
In between conferences the four Peace conspirators would thresh out what they had got and try to draw conclusions. They had accumulated a dossier on every suggested plan, and it seemed to be the opinon of the experts that all plans were impossible; apparently this group of novices would have to choose some one impossible plan and blunder along with it.
After many hours of discussion they found that each had settled upon a different method of getting rid of Emily’s money. Laurel wanted a monthly magazine, small but distinguished in appearance. Being herself a fastidious person, she argued that few people would pay attention to reading matter that looked cheap and shoddy, no matter how excellent its content. She wanted to take time and get material of the very first quality, which people would treasure as literature; so, even if the magazine ran for only a year or two, it would have a permanent effect on men’s minds.
Rick, long-time Labour propagandist, had no more use for the carriage trade in the field of literature than in that of the stage. He said that leisure-class standards were wholly corrupted by snobbery, and it was no use paying any attention to them, either in the appearance of a magazine or in its content. The highly esteemed writers of the time were sophisticated persons, motivated by delicate, well-camouflaged self-love. They wanted to show how much more they knew, how much more subtle and elegant they could be, than anybody else in their field. They wrote for small select groups and had very little to say; that little was pessimism and futility. What Rick wanted was pamphlets for the masses, telling them exactly what they needed; not many titles, but many copies” of one title—like that by which the British Labour party had fought the election.
Nina was clinging to her idea that all printed matter was out of date; what counted was the radio. She was still collecting data about small stations and the possibility of building up a chain. “Work out an interesting program once a week, advertise it widely, and ask the people to help. If they like it they will tell their friends and it will spread. Even one of the big chains might take it in the end.”
Lanny, thinking about a small cheap paper, had been down at the post office, making inquiries about postal rates, and had learned of a quirk in the regulations which he thought put books and pamphlets out of the running. On a single copy of a book, no matter how small, you had to pay four cents. On a leaflet, or anything classified as printed matter, you had to pay a minimum of a cent and a half on each separate piece. But on newspapers or magazines having “second-class entry” the postage was figured in bulk instead of on the individual parcel, and the rate in the first zone was only one and one-half cents a pound; a small four-page newspaper might weigh less than an ounce, and the postage would be only a small fraction of a cent. What this regulation amounted to was a government subsidy to newspapers and magazines, on the theory that they were educational; the subsidy amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars every year, and surely a foundation ought not to fail to take advantage of it.
What Lanny had in mind was a weekly newspaper, smaller than tabloid size. Its material would be packed, every sentence made to count, and, coming to the people once a week, its effect would be cumulative. Addressed by a stencil machine, such papers could go out at very low cost. Lanny had learned from the files of the “little old Appeal” a way to get circulation—by bundle orders. Persuade your readers to order the paper in hundred- or thousand-copy lots for distribution from door to door or at meetings. Make your paper so interesting that people would read it, talk about it, and pass it around.
VIII
Rick admitted that this provision in the postal laws put his pamphlet idea on the shelf. A wee
kly paper could be of use, no doubt about it; there had been the London Clarion in Blatchford’s day, and now there were the Tribune and the Socialist Leader; from time to time there had been many smaller papers, put out by the “ginger” groups. But how were you to get the subscribers to start with?
Lanny answered, “My idea would be to put the price of the paper below cost, because we’re not trying to make money but to spend it. Fifty cents a year for a weekly sheet is a price that no commercial concern could meet; at that price people will take up collections for us at meetings; workingmen will go about in shops and union halls; people will make lists of their friends and send us five or ten dollars. All the post-office people require you to have for a second-class entry is a list of paid subscriptions. We could get up a meeting at the Rand School and let Rick explain the plan to the audience; we could hand out blanks and get such a list in one evening.”
Nina said, “You’re forgetting my radio. For the same money you can hire time on a small station, have an interesting program, and tell the audience you are going to print such programs every week in a small paper and mail it to them for less than one cent a copy. Ask them to send you a dollar bill with two names, or a five dollar bill with ten names, and you may find yourself swamped.”
So they came back to the radio: that marvelous discovery, not more than a quarter of a century old, whereby a person could save carfare, or wear and tear on the family “bus,” and sit quietly at home and listen to voices from the other side of the world. People hunted for worth-while programs, and sometimes they got one—sandwiched in between the praises of soap powders and cigarettes that their own manufacturers couldn’t have told from any other brand. If people heard an interesting discussion of some important topic and at the end a quiet persuasive voice invited them to subscribe to a paper along that line—well, it surely wouldn’t cost much to try.
O Shepherd, Speak! Page 45