It Can't Happen Here

by Sinclair Lewis

  “Rats! Just a lot of irresponsible wind bags!” jeered President Windrip. “Why! I thought you were supposed to be the camera-eyed gink that kept up on everything that goes on, Lee! You forget that I myself, personally, made a special radio address to that particular section of the country last week! And I got a wonderful reaction. The Middle Westerners are absolutely loyal to me. They appreciate what I’ve been trying to do!”

  Not answering him at all, Sarason demanded that, in order to bring and hold all elements in the country together by that useful Patriotism which always appears upon threat of an outside attack, the government immediately arrange to be insulted and menaced in a well-planned series of deplorable “incidents” on the Mexican border, and declare war on Mexico as soon as America showed that it was getting hot and patriotic enough.

  Secretary of the Treasury Skittle and Attorney General Porkwood shook their heads, but Secretary of War Haik and Secretary of Education Macgoblin agreed with Sarason high-mindedly. Once, pointed out the learned Macgoblin, governments had merely let themselves slide into a war, thanking Providence for having provided a conflict as a febrifuge against internal discontent, but of course, in this age of deliberate, planned propaganda, a really modern government like theirs must figure out what brand of war they had to sell and plan the selling-campaign consciously. Now, as for him, he would be willing to leave the whole set-up to the advertising genius of Brother Sarason.

  “No, no, no!” cried Windrip. “We’re not ready for a war! Of course, we’ll take Mexico some day. It’s our destiny to control it and Christianize it. But I’m scared that your darn scheme might work just opposite to what you say. You put arms into the hands of too many irresponsible folks, and they might use ‘em and turn against you and start a revolution and throw the whole dern gang of us out! No, no! I’ve often wondered if the whole Minute Men business, with their arms and training, may not be a mistake. That was your idea, Lee, not mine!”

  Sarason spoke evenly: “My dear Buzz, one day you thank me for originating that ‘great crusade of citizen soldiers defending their homes’—as you love to call it on the radio—and the next day you almost ruin your clothes, you’re so scared of them. Make up your mind one way or the other!”

  Sarason walked out of the room, not bowing.

  Windrip complained, “I’m not going to stand for Lee’s talking to me like that! Why, the dirty double-crosser, I made him! One of these days, he’ll find a new secretary of state around this joint! I s’pose he thinks jobs like that grow on every tree! Maybe he’d like to be a bank president or something—I mean, maybe he’d like to be Emperor of England!”

  * * *

  President Windrip, in his hotel bedroom, was awakened late at night by the voice of a guard in the outer room: “Yuh, sure, let him pass—he’s the Secretary of State.” Nervously the President clicked on his bedside lamp. . .. He had needed it lately, to read himself to sleep.

  In that limited glow he saw Lee Sarason, Dewey Haik, and Dr. Hector Macgoblin march to the side of his bed. Lee’s thin sharp face was like flour. His deep-buried eyes were those of a sleepwalker. His skinny right hand held a bowie knife which, as his hand deliberately rose, was lost in the dimness. Windrip swiftly thought: Sure would be hard to know where to buy a dagger, in Washington; and Windrip thought: All this is the doggonedest foolishness—just like a movie or one of these old history books when you were a kid; and Windrip thought, all in that same flash: Good God, I’m going to be killed!

  He cried out, “Lee! You couldn’t do that to me!”

  Lee grunted, like one who has detected a bad smell.

  Then the Berzelius Windrip who could, incredibly, become President really awoke: “Lee! Do you remember the time when your old mother was so sick, and I gave you my last cent and loaned you my flivver so you could go see her, and I hitch-hiked to my next meeting? Lee!”

  “Hell. I suppose so. General.”

  “Yes?” answered Dewey Haik, not very pleasantly.

  “I think we’ll stick him on a destroyer or something and let him sneak off to France or England. . .. The lousy coward seems afraid to die. . .. Of course, we’ll kill him if he ever does dare to come back to the States. Take him out and phone the Secretary of the Navy for a boat and get him on it, will you?”

  “Very well, sir,” said Haik, even less pleasantly.

  It had been easy. The troops, who obeyed Haik, as Secretary of War, had occupied all of Washington.

  Ten days later Buzz Windrip was landed in Havre and went sighingly to Paris. It was his first view of Europe except for one twenty-one-day Cook’s Tour. He was profoundly homesick for Chesterfield cigarettes, flapjacks, Moon Mullins, and the sound of some real human being saying “Yuh, what’s bitin’ you?” instead of this perpetual sappy “oui?”

  In Paris he remained, though he became the sort of minor hero of tragedy, like the ex-King of Greece, Kerensky, the Russian Grand Dukes, Jimmy Walker, and a few ex-presidents from South America and Cuba, who is delighted to accept invitations to drawing rooms where the champagne is good enough and one may have a chance of finding people, now and then, who will listen to one’s story and say “sir.”

  At that, though, Buzz chuckled, he had kinda put it over on those crooks, for during his two sweet years of despotism he had sent four million dollars abroad, to secret, safe accounts. And so Buzz Windrip passed into wabbly paragraphs in recollections by ex-diplomatic gentlemen with monocles. In what remained of Ex-President Windrip’s life, everything was ex. He was even so far forgotten that only four or five American students tried to shoot him.

  * * *

  The more dulcetly they had once advised and flattered Buzz, the more ardently did most of his former followers, Macgoblin and Senator Porkwood and Dr. Almeric Trout and the rest, turn in loud allegiance to the new President, the Hon. Lee Sarason.

  He issued a proclamation that he had discovered that Windrip had been embezzling the people’s money and plotting with Mexico to avoid war with that guilty country; and that he, Sarason, in quite alarming grief and reluctance, since he more than anyone else had been deceived by his supposed friend, Windrip, had yielded to the urging of the Cabinet and taken over the Presidency, instead of Vice-President Beecroft, the exiled traitor.

  President Sarason immediately began appointing the fancier of his young officer friends to the most responsible offices in State and army. It amused him, seemingly, to shock people by making a pink-cheeked, moist-eyed boy of twenty-five Commissioner of the Federal District, which included Washington and Maryland. Was he not supreme, was he not semi-divine, like a Roman emperor? Could he not defy all the muddy mob that he (once a Socialist) had, for its weak shiftlessness, come to despise?

  “Would that the American people had just one neck!” he plagiarized, among his laughing boys.

  In the decorous White House of Coolidge and Harrison and Rutherford Birchard Hayes he had orgies (an old name for “parties”) with weaving limbs and garlands and wine in pretty fair imitations of Roman beakers.

  * * *

  It was hard for imprisoned men like Doremus Jessup to believe it, but there were some tens of thousands of Corpos, in the M.M.’s, in civil service, in the army, and just in private ways, to whom Sarason’s flippant régime was tragic.

  They were the Idealists of Corpoism, and there were plenty of them, along with the bullies and swindlers; they were the men and women who, in 1935 and 1936, had turned to Windrip & Co., not as perfect, but as the most probable saviors of the country from, on one hand, domination by Moscow and, on the other hand, the slack indolence, the lack of decent pride of half the American youth, whose world (these idealists asserted) was composed of shiftless distaste for work and refusal to learn anything thoroughly, of blatting dance music on the radio, maniac automobiles, slobbering sexuality, the humor and art of comic strips—of a slave psychology which was making America a land for sterner men to loot.

  General Emmanuel Coon was one of the Corpo Idealists.

  Suc
h men did not condone the murders under the Corpo régime. But they insisted, “This is a revolution, and after all, when in all history has there been a revolution with so little bloodshed?”

  They were aroused by the pageantry of Corpoism: enormous demonstrations, with the red-and-black flags a flaunting magnificence like storm clouds. They were proud of new Corpo roads, hospitals, television stations, aëroplane lines; they were touched by processions of the Corpo Youth, whose faces were exalted with pride in the myths of Corpo heroism and clean Spartan strength and the semi-divinity of the all-protecting Father, President Windrip. They believed, they made themselves believe, that in Windrip had come alive again the virtues of Andy Jackson and Farragut and Jeb Stuart, in place of the mob cheapness of the professional athletes who had been the only heroes of 1935.

  They planned, these idealists, to correct, as quickly as might be, the errors of brutality and crookedness among officials. They saw arising a Corpo art, a Corpo learning, profound and real, divested of the traditional snobbishness of the old-time universities, valiant with youth, and only the more beautiful in that it was “useful.” They were convinced that Corpoism was Communism cleansed of foreign domination and the violence and indignity of mob dictatorship; Monarchism with the chosen hero of the people for monarch; Fascism without grasping and selfish leaders; freedom with order and discipline; Traditional America without its waste and provincial cockiness.

  Like all religious zealots, they had blessed capacity for blindness, and they were presently convinced that (since the only newspapers they ever read certainly said nothing about it) there were no more of blood-smeared cruelties in court and concentration camp; no restrictions of speech or thought. They believed that they never criticized the Corpo régime not because they were censored, but because “that sort of thing was, like obscenity, such awfully bad form.”

  And these idealists were as shocked and bewildered by Sarason’s coup d’état against Windrip as was Mr. Berzelius Windrip himself.

  * * *

  The grim Secretary of War, Haik, scolded at President Sarason for his influence on the nation, particularly on the troops. Lee laughed at him, but once he was sufficiently flattered by Haik’s tribute to his artistic powers to write a poem for him. It was a poem which was later to be sung by millions; it was, in fact, the most popular of the soldiers’ ballads which were to spring automatically from anonymous soldier bards during the war between the United States and Mexico. Only, being as pious a believer in Modern Advertising as Sarason himself, the efficient Haik wanted to encourage the spontaneous generation of these patriotic folk ballads by providing the automatic springing and the anonymous bard. He had as much foresight, as much “prophetic engineering,” as a motorcar manufacturer.

  Sarason was as eager for war with Mexico (or Ethiopia or Siam or Greenland or any other country that would provide his pet young painters with a chance to portray Sarason being heroic amid curious vegetation) as Haik; not only to give malcontents something outside the country to be cross about, but also to give himself a chance to be picturesque. He answered Haik’s request by writing a rollicking military chorus at a time while the country was still theoretically entirely friendly with Mexico. It went to the tune of “Mademoiselle from Armentières”—or “Armenteers.” If the Spanish in it was a little shaky, still, millions were later to understand that “Habla oo?” stood for “Habla usted?” signifying “Parlez-vous?” It ran thus, as it came from Sarason’s purple but smoking typewriter:

  Señorita from Guadalupe,

  Qui usted?

  Señorita go roll your hoop,

  Or come to bed!

  Señorita from Guadalupe

  If Padre sees us we’re in the soup,

  Hinky, dinky, habla oo?

  Señorita from Monterey,

  Savvy Yank?

  Señorita what’s that you say?

  You’re Swede, Ay tank!

  But Señorita from Monterey,

  You won’t hablár when we hit the hay,

  Hinky, dinky, habla oo?

  Señorita from Mazatlan,

  Once we’ve met,

  You’ll smile all over your khaki pan,

  You won’t forget!

  For days you’ll holler, “Oh, what a man!”

  And you’ll never marry a Mexican.

  Hinky, dinky, habla oo?

  If at times President Sarason seemed flippant, he was not at all so during his part in the scientific preparation for war which consisted in rehearsing M.M. choruses in trolling out this ditty with well-trained spontaneity.

  His friend Hector Macgoblin, now Secretary of State, told Sarason that this manly chorus was one of his greatest creations. Macgoblin, though personally he did not join in Sarason’s somewhat unusual midnight diversions, was amused by them, and he often told Sarason that he was the only original creative genius among this whole bunch of stuffed shirts, including Haik.

  “You want to watch that cuss Haik, Lee,” said Macgoblin. “He’s ambitious, he’s a gorilla, and he’s a pious Puritan, and that’s a triple combination I’m scared of. The troops like him.”

  “Rats! He has no attraction for them. He’s just an accurate military bookkeeper,” said Sarason.

  That night he had a party at which, for a novelty, rather shocking to his intimates, he actually had girls present, performing certain curious dances. The next morning Haik rebuked him, and—Sarason had a hangover—was stormed at. That night, just a month after Sarason had usurped the Presidency, Haik struck.

  There was no melodramatic dagger-and-uplifted-arm business about it, this time—though Haik did traditionally come late, for all Fascists, like all drunkards, seem to function most vigorously at night. Haik marched into the White House with his picked storm troops, found President Sarason in violet silk pajamas among his friends, shot Sarason and most of his companions dead, and proclaimed himself President.

  Hector Macgoblin fled by aëroplane to Cuba, then on. When last seen, he was living high up in the mountains of Haiti, wearing only a singlet, dirty white-drill trousers, grass sandals, and a long tan beard; very healthy and happy, occupying a one-room hut with a lovely native girl, practicing modern medicine and studying ancient voodoo.

  * * *

  When Dewey Haik became President, then America really did begin to suffer a little, and to long for the good old democratic, liberal days of Windrip.

  Windrip and Sarason had not minded mirth and dancing in the street so long as they could be suitably taxed. Haik disliked such things on principle. Except, perhaps, that he was an atheist in theology, he was a strict orthodox Christian. He was the first to tell the populace that they were not going to get any five thousand dollars a year but, instead, “reap the profits of Discipline and of the Scientific Totalitarian State not in mere paper figures but in vast dividends of Pride, Patriotism, and Power.” He kicked out of the army all officers who could not endure marching and going thirsty; and out of the civil branch all commissioners—including one Francis Tasbrough—who had garnered riches too easily and too obviously.

  He treated the entire nation like a well-run plantation, on which the slaves were better fed than formerly, less often cheated by their overseers, and kept so busy that they had time only for work and for sleep, and thus fell rarely into the debilitating vices of laughter, song (except war songs against Mexico), complaint, or thinking. Under Haik there were less floggings in M.M. posts and in concentration camps, for by his direction officers were not to waste time in the sport of beating persons, men, women, or children, who asserted that they didn’t care to be slaves on even the best plantation, but just to shoot them out of hand.

  Haik made such use of the clergy—Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and Liberal-Agnostic—as Windrip and Sarason never had. While there were plenty of ministers who, like Mr. Falck and Father Stephen Perefixe, like Cardinal Faulhaber and Pastor Niemoeller in Germany, considered it some part of Christian duty to resent the enslavement and torture of their appointed flocks, ther
e were also plenty of reverend celebrities, particularly large-city pastors whose sermons were reported in the newspapers every Monday morning, to whom Corpoism had given a chance to be noisily and lucratively patriotic. These were the chaplains-at-heart, who, if there was no war in which they could humbly help to purify and comfort the poor brave boys who were fighting, were glad to help provide such a war.

  These more practical shepherds, since like doctors and lawyers they were able to steal secrets out of the heart, became valued spies during the difficult months after February, 1939, when Haik was working up war with Mexico. (Canada? Japan? Russia? They would come later.) For even with an army of slaves, it was necessary to persuade them that they were freemen and fighters for the principle of freedom, or otherwise the scoundrels might cross over and join the enemy!

  So reigned the good king Haik, and if there was anyone in all the land who was discontented, you never heard him speak—not twice.

  And in the White House, where under Sarason shameless youths had danced, under the new reign of righteousness and the blackjack, Mrs. Haik, a lady with eyeglasses and a smile of resolute cordiality, gave to the W.C.T.U., the Y.W.C.A., and the Ladies’ League against Red Radicalism, and their inherently incidental husbands, a magnified and hand-colored Washington version of just such parties as she had once given in the Haik bungalow in Eglantine, Oregon.

  36

  THE BAN ON INFORMATION at the Trianon camp had been raised; Mrs. Candy had come calling on Doremus—complete with cocoanut layer cake—and he had heard of Mary’s death, the departure of Emma and Sissy, the end of Windrip and Sarason. And none of it seemed in the least real—not half so real and, except for the fact that he would never see Mary again, not half so important as the increasing number of lice and rats in their cell.

  During the ban, they had celebrated Christmas by laughing, not very cheerfully, at the Christmas tree Karl Pascal had contrived out of a spruce bough and tinfoil from cigarette packages. They had hummed “Stille Nacht” softly in the darkness, and Doremus had thought of all their comrades in political prisons in America, Europe, Japan, India.