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mildly. "They have the raw materials and you have the machines."

"Yes, Budd, but one can't think merely about business; there are moral factors."

"But might not the Reds be toned down and acquire a sense of responsibility, just as well as

the Nazis?"

"We can't trust the blighters."

"I'm told that they meet their bills regularly. The Chase National gets along with them quite

well."

"I don't mean financially, I mean politically. They would start breaking into the Balkans, or

India, or China; their agents are trying to stir up revolution all the time."

Lanny persisted. "Have you thought of the possibility that if you won't trade with them, the

Nazis may? Their economies supplement each other."

"But their ideologies are at opposite poles!"

"They seem to be; but you yourself say how ideologies change when men get power. It seems

to me that Stalin and Hitler are self-made men, and might be able to understand each other.

Suppose one day Stalin should say to Hitler, or Hitler to Stalin: 'See here, old top, the British

have got it fixed up for us to ruin ourselves fighting. Why should we oblige them?'"

"I admit that would be a pretty bad day," said young Lord Wickthorpe. He said it with a

smile, not taking it seriously. When Rick pinned him down to it, he gave yet another reason

why it was impossible to consider a large-scale deal with the Soviet Union—the effect it would

have upon politics at home. "It would set up the Reds, and it might bring labor back into

power."

Said Rick to Lanny, when they were alone: "Class is more than country!"

VIII

The Nazi program of repression of the Jews was being carried out step by step, which was

going to be the Nazi fashion. Civil servants of Jewish blood were being turned out of their jobs

and good Aryans of the right party affiliations put in their place. Jewish lawyers were

forbidden to practice in the courts. "Jew signs" were being pasted or painted on places of

business which belonged to the despised race. Beatings and terrorism were being secretly

encouraged, for the purpose of driving the Jews out and depriving them of jobs and property.

When such incidents were mentioned in the press they would be blamed upon "persons

unknown masquerading as Stormtroopers."

But refugees escaping to the outside world would report the truth, and there was a ferment

of indignation among the Jews of all countries; they and their sympathizers held meetings of

protest, and a movement was started to boycott trade with Germany. The reaction in the

Fatherland was immediate, and Johannes wrote about it—very significantly he wrote only to

Lanny, never to his son, and mailed the letters unsigned and with no mark to identify them. It

had been made a prison offense to give information to foreigners, and in his letters Johannes

addressed Lanny as a German, and warned him not to tell anyone in Paris!

The boycott was worrying the business men of the country, and at the same time enraging

the party leaders, and it was a question which point of view would prevail. Jupp Goebbels was

calling for a boycott of Jewish businesses in Germany, and the result was a panic on the stock

exchange—for some of the principal enterprises of the Fatherland were Jewish-owned,

including the big department stores of Berlin. These were the concerns which the original

party program had promised to "socialize," and now the ardent young S.A.'s and S.S.'s were on

tiptoe to go in and do the job.

The Cabinet was having one of its customary rows over the question, so Johannes explained.

The business magnates who had financed Hitler's rise were coming down on him; how could

they pay taxes, how could the government be financed, if rowdies were to-be turned loose to

wreck business both at home and abroad? The result of this tug-of-war was a curious and

rather comical compromise; the boycott which the party fanatics had announced to begin on

the first day of April was to be carried on, but it was- to continue for only one business day of

eight hours; then Germany would wait for three days, to see if there was a proper response

from the foreign agents and Jewish vampires who had been so shamelessly lying about the

Fatherland. If they showed repentance and abandoned their insolent threats, then Germany

would in turn permit the Jewish businesses to continue in peace; otherwise they would be

sternly punished, perhaps exterminated, and the blame would rest upon the Jewish vampires

abroad.

This boycott was the idea of Dr. Goebbels—the Führer himself being busy with the

reorganizing of the various state governments. On the evening before the event the crippled

little dwarf with the huge wide mouth spoke to his party comrades at a meeting in a hall of the

West End, and all over Germany the Stormtroopers listened over the radio. The orator called

for a demonstration of "iron discipline"; there must be no violence, but all Jewish

establishments would be picketed, and no German man or woman would enter such a place.

The day was made into a Nazi holiday. The Jews stayed at home, and the Brownshirts

marched through all the cities and towns of the Fatherland, singing their song to the effect that

Jewish blood must spurt from the knife. They posted "Jew signs" wherever there was a

merchant who couldn't prove that he had four Aryan grandparents. They did the same for

doctors and hospitals, using a poster consisting of a circular blob of yellow on a black

background, the recognized sign of quarantine throughout Europe; thus they told the world

that a Jewish doctor was as bad as the smallpox or scarlet fever, typhus or leprosy he

attempted to cure.

These orders were followed pretty well in the fashionable districts, but in poorer

neighborhoods and the smaller towns the ardent Stormtroopers pasted signs on the foreheads

of shoppers in Jewish stores, and they stripped and beat a woman who insisted on entering.

That evening there was a giant meeting in the Tempelhof Airdrome, and Goebbels exulted in

the demonstration which had been given to the world. The insolent foreigners would be awed

and brought to their knees, he declared; and since most of the newspapers had by now been

confiscated, the people could either believe that or believe nothing. The foreigners, of course,

laughed; they knew that they weren't awed, and the mass meetings and distribution of boycott

leaflets went on. But the Nazi leaders chose to declare otherwise, and next day there was a

washing of windows throughout Germany, and "business as usual" became the motto for both

Aryans and non-Aryans.

IX

There were curious outgrowths of this anti-Semitic frenzy. An "Association of German

National Jews" was formed, and issued a manifesto saying that the Jews were being fairly

treated and there was no truth in the stories of atrocities; some leading Jews signed this, and

the name of Johannes Robin was among them. Perhaps he really believed it, who could say?

He had to read German newspapers, like everybody else; those foreign papers which reported

the atrocities were banned. Perhaps he considered that the outside boycotts would really do

more harm than good, and that the six hundred thousand native Jews in the Fatherland were

not in position to offer resistance to a hundred times as many Germans. The Jews had

survived through the centuries by bending like the willow instead of standing like the oak.

Johannes didn't mention the subject in his letters, either signed or unsigned. Was he a little

ashamed of what he did?

It seemed to an American that a man could hardly be happy living under such conditions.

Lanny wrote a carefully guarded letter to the effect that Hansi was giving important concerts

and Irma various social events; they would be delighted to have the family present. Johannes

replied that some business matters kept him from leaving just now; he bade them not to worry

about the new decrees forbidding anyone to leave Germany without special passports, for he

could get them for himself and family whenever he wished. He added that Germany was their

home and they all loved the German people. That was the right sort of letter for a Jew, and

maybe the statements were true, with a few qualifications.

The Nazis had learned a lesson from the boycott, even though they would never admit it. The

brass band stage of persecution was at an end, and they set to work to achieve their purpose

quietly. The weeding out of Jews, and of those married to Jews, went on rapidly. No Jew could

teach in any school or university in Germany; no Jewish lawyer could practice; no Jew could

hold any official post, down to the smallest clerkship. This meant tens of thousands of

positions for the rank and file Nazis, and was a way of keeping promises to them, much easier

than socializing industry or breaking up the great landed estates.

The unemployed intellectuals found work carrying on genealogical researches for the

millions of persons who desired to establish their ancestry. An extraordinary development—

there were persons who had an Aryan mother and a Jewish father, or an Aryan grandmother

and a Jewish grandfather, who instituted researches as to the morals of their female ancestors,

and established themselves as Aryans by proving themselves to be bastards! Before long the

Nazis discovered that there were some Jews who were useful, so there was officially

established a caste of "honorary Aryans." Truly it seemed that a great people had gone mad;

but it is a fact well known to alienists that you cannot convince a madman of his own

condition, and only make him madder by trying.

By one means or another it was conveyed to leading Jews that they had better resign from

directorships of corporations, and from executive positions which were desired by the nephews

or cousins of some Nazi official. Frequently the methods used were such that the Jew

committed suicide; and while these events were not reported in the press, word about them

spread by underground channels. That was the way with the terror; people disappeared, and

rumors started, and sometimes the rumors became worse than the reality. Old prisons and

state institutions, old army barracks which had stood empty since the Versailles treaty, were

turned into concentration camps and rapidly filled with men and women; motor trucks

brought new loads daily, until the total came near to a hundred thousand.

Lanny wrote again to say what a mistake his friends were making not to come and witness

Hansi's musical and Irma's social triumphs. This time Johannes's reply was that his business

cares were beginning to wear on him, and that his physicians advised a sea trip. He was

getting the Bessie Budd ready for another cruise, this time a real one; he wanted Hansi and

Bess to meet him at one of the northern French ports, and he hoped that the Budds would

come along— the whole family, Lanny and Irma, Mr. and Mrs. Dingle, Marceline and Baby

Frances, with as many governesses and nurses as they pleased. As before, the cruise would be

to whatever part of the world the Budd family preferred; Johannes suggested crossing the

Atlantic again and visiting Newcastle and Long Island; then, in the autumn, they might go

down to the West Indies, and perhaps through the Panama Canal to California, and if they

wished, to Honolulu and Japan, Bali, Java, India, Persia—all the romantic and scenic and

historic places they could think of. A university under Diesel power!

X

This made it necessary for Irma to come to a decision which she had postponed to the last

moment. Was she going to take the palace for another year? She had got used to it, and had a

competent staff well trained; also she was established as a hostess, and it seemed a shame to

lose all this momentum. But, on the other hand, money was growing scarcer and scarcer. The

dreadful depression—Lanny had shown her the calculations of an economist that it had cost

the United States half a dozen times the cost of the World War. Thanks to the Reconstruction

Finance Corporation, interest payments on industrial bonds were being met, but many of

Irma's "blue chip" stocks were paying no dividends, and she was telling her friends that she

was living on chocolate, biscuits, and Coca-Cola—meaning not that these were her diet, but

her dividends.

She had Shore Acres on her hands with its enormous overhead; she had had to cut down on

her mother, and the mother in turn had notified all the help that they might stay on and work

for their keep, but there would be no more salaries. Even so, the food bill was large, and the

taxes exorbitant—when were taxes not? Mrs. Barnes's letters conveyed to her daughter a sense

of near destitution.

"You don't really care very much for this palace, do you, Lanny?" So asked the distressed one,

lying in the pink satin splendor of the bed in which Madame de Maintenon was reputed to

have entertained the Sun King.

"You know, dear, I don't undertake to tell you how to spend your money."

"But I'm asking you."

"You know without asking. If you spend more money than you have, you're poor, no matter

what the amount is."

"Do you think if we come back to Paris after the depression, I'll be able to start as a hostess

again?"

"It depends entirely upon how much of your money you have managed to hold on to."

"Oh, Lanny, you're horrid!" exclaimed the hostess.

"You asked for it," he chuckled.

Nearly a year had passed since the Queen Mother had seen her grandchild, and that was

something to be taken into consideration. Her satisfaction would be boundless; and it would

be a pleasure to meet all those New York friends and hear the gossip. Lanny could stand it if it

wasn't for too long. And what a relief to Uncle Joseph Barnes, trustee and manager of the

Barnes estate, to know that his charge wouldn't be drawing any checks for a year!

"Lanny, do you suppose that Johannes can really afford to take care of us all that time?"

"He could go alone if he preferred," replied the son of Budd's. "As a matter of fact, I suspect

the rascal has more money now than ever before in his life. He makes it going and coming;

whether times are good or bad; whether the market goes up or down."