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"How does he manage it, Lanny?"

"He's watching all the time, and he keeps his money where he can shift it quickly. He's a bull

in good times and a bear in bad."

"It's really quite wonderful," said Irma. "Do you suppose we could learn to do things that

way?"

"Nothing would please him more than to teach us; but the trouble is you have to put your

mind on it and keep it there."

"I suppose it would get to be a bore," admitted Irma, stretching her lovely arms and yawning

in the pink satin couch of the Grand Monarque's official mistress.

XI

The young couple ran down to Juan, and Irma and Beauty held a sort of mothers' conference

on the problems of their future. Beauty was keen on yachting trips; she found them a

distinguished mode of travel; she had learned her geography and history that way, and Irma

might do the same. But the important thing was the safety they afforded. Beauty didn't care

how much Red and Pink talk her young people indulged in, provided that outside Reds and

Pinks couldn't get at them, to borrow their money, get them to start schools or papers or what

not, and involve them in fights with Fascists and police. Carry them off to sea and keep them—

and perhaps find some lovely tropical island where they could settle down and live in peace

and harmony until the cycle of revolutions and counter-revolutions had been completed! Let

the yacht serve as a supply ship to bring the latest musical compositions and whatever else

they had read of; but no Communist or Socialist agitators, no Fascists or Nazis marching,

shouting, brandishing guns and daggers! "Do you suppose they have mosquitoes in the South

Seas?" inquired the soft pink Beauty Budd.

She persuaded Irma that this was the way to keep her temperamental husband happy and

safe. Paris was a frightfully dangerous place right now; look at the way Jesse was carrying on,

rushing about from one meeting to another, making hysterical speeches, calling the Nazis all

the bad names in the French language! A copy of L’Humanité came every day to Bienvenu,

and Beauty would look into it sometimes, thinking that it was her duty to keep track of her

brother's doings; it made her quail, for she knew what fury it would arouse in the Hitlerites,

and she knew how many rich and important persons in France sympathized with them. The

Croix de Feu, the Jeunesse Française and other groups were preparing to meet force with

force; the great banks and other vested interests would surely not permit their power to be

destroyed without a fight, and it would be far more bloody and terrible than what had

happened in Germany. "Let's get away from it," pleaded Beauty. "Stay until the storm blows

over, and we can judge whether it's safe to return."

Irma was persuaded, and they sat down and composed between them a letter to Nina,

tactfully contrived to be read by Rick without giving him offense. There wasn't any danger in

England—at least, none that Rick would admit—and the word "escapist" was one of his

strongest terms of contempt. To Rick the cruise was presented as an ideal opportunity to

concentrate upon the writing of a new play. On Nina's part it would be an act of friendship to

come and make a fourth hand at bridge. To Alfy it would offer lessons in geography and

history, plus a chance to fight out his temperamental differences with Marceline. If the

parents didn't want to take the youngster from school so early, he could cross to New York

by steamer and spend the summer with the party.

They read this letter to Lanny, who said it was all right, but he could do better as concerned

his chum. Lanny was cooking up in his head a marvelous scheme. He was guessing the

psychology of a Jewish money-master who had just witnessed the seizing of his country by a

bunch of gangsters. It was bound to have made a dent in his mind, and dispose him to realize

that he and the other capitalists were living and operating inside the crater of a volcano. Lanny

was planning to lay a subtle and well-disguised siege to one of the wealthiest of Jews, to

persuade him that some form of social change was inevitable, and to get his help to bring it

about in orderly fashion. It was the plan which Lanny had already discussed with Rick, to start

a weekly paper of free discussion, not pledged to any party or doctrine, but to the general

tendency towards co-operative industry conducted under the democratic process.

"We can have him to ourselves for several months, maybe for a year; and if we can persuade

him to back us, we can do the job on a big scale and make a real go of it. Won't you come and

help? You can answer his questions so much better than I, and I believe you could put it

through."

This was a greater temptation than any Utopian dreamer could resist. Rick said, "All right,"

and Lanny telegraphed the decision to Johannes. He was tempted to repeat the quotation from

Tennyson's Ulysses which he had used a few years ago on a similar occasion—"My purpose

holds to sail beyond the sunset and the baths of all the western stars, until I die." But he

reminded himself that the Fatherland was now Hitlerland, and a sense of humor has never

been a prominent German characteristic. What might not a Nazi party censor make out of eight

or ten lines of English blank verse telegraphed from the French Riviera!

BOOK FOUR

As on a Darkling Plain

16

Root of all evil

I

A WORLD conqueror had appeared in modern times. Alexander, Caesar, Attila, Genghis

Khan, Napoleon—another such as these, appearing in the age of electricity, of rotary presses

and radio, when nine men out of ten would have said it was impossible. A world conqueror has

to be a man of few ideas, and those fixed; a peculiar combination of exactly the right qualities,

both good and bad—iron determination, irresistible energy, and no scruples of any sort. He

has to know what he wants, and permit no obstacle to stand in the way of his getting it. He has

to understand the minds of other men, both foes and friends, and what greeds, fears, hates,

jealousies will move them to action. He must understand the mass mind, the ideals or

delusions which sway it; he must be enough of a fanatic to talk their language, though not

enough to be controlled by it. He must believe in nothing but his own destiny, the glorified

image of himself on the screen of history; whole races of mankind made over in his own image

and according to his will. To accomplish that purpose he must be liar, thief, and murderer

upon a world-wide scale; he must be ready without hesitation to commit every crime his own

interest commands, whether upon individuals or nations. He must pave the highway for his

legions with the bones of his enemies, he must float his battleships upon oceans of human

blood, he must compose his songs of glory out of the groans and curses of mankind.

The singular advantage enjoyed by Adolf Hitler was that his own people believed what he

said, while other peoples couldn't and wouldn't. The attitude of the outside world to him was

that of the farmer who stared at a giraffe in the circus and exclaimed: "There ain't no sich

animal!" The more Adolf told the world what he was and what he meant to do, the more the

world smiled incredulously. There were men like that in every lunatic asylum; the type was so

familiar that any psychiatrist could diagnose it from a single paragraph of a speech or a single

page of a book. Sensible men said: "Nut!" and went on about their affairs, leaving Adolf to

conquer the world. Here and there a man of social insight cried out warnings of what was

going on; but these, too, were a well-known type and the psychiatrists had names for them.

Adolf Hitler got the mastery of the National Socialist Party because of his combination of

qualities; because he was the most fanatical, the most determined, the most tireless, and at the

same time the shrewdest, the most unscrupulous, the most deadly. From the beginning men

had revolted against his authority, and while he was weak he had wheedled and cajoled them

and when he became strong he had crushed them. There had been split after split in his

movement, and he had gone after the leaders of the factions without ruth; even before he had

got the authority of government in his hands, his fanatical Stormtroopers had been beating and

sometimes murdering the opponents of this new dark religion of Blut und Boden, blood and

soil. Work with Adolf Hitler and you would rise to power in the world; oppose him, and your

brains would be spattered on the pavement, or you would be shot in the back and left unburied

in a dark wood.

Hermann Goring, aviator and army officer, man of wealth, of luxurious tastes and insatiable

vanities, hated and despised Joseph Goebbels, the blabbing journalist, the club-footed little

dwarf with the venom-spitting tongue; and these sentiments were cordially reciprocated. Jupp

would have thrown vitriol into Hermann's face, Hermann would have shot Jupp on sight—if

either had dared. But the Führer needed Hermann as a master executive and Jupp as a master

propagandist, and he put them into harness and drove them as a team. The same thing was

true of hundreds of men in that party of madness and hate: World War victims, depression

victims, psychopaths, drug addicts, perverts, criminals—they all needed Adolf a little more than

Adolf needed them, and he welded them into something more powerful than themselves.

Hardly one who wasn't sure that he was a greater man than Adolf, and better fitted to lead the

party; in the old days many had patronized him, and in their hearts they still did so; but he

had won out over them, because of the combination of qualities. He was the one who had

persuaded the masses to trust him, and he was the one who could lead the N.S.D.A.P. and all its

members and officials upon the road to conquest.

II

Adolf Hitler had watched Lenin, he now was watching Stalin and Mussolini, and had

learned from them all. In June of the year 1924, when Lanny Budd had been in Rome, Benito

Mussolini had been Premier of Italy for more than twenty months, but the Socialists were still

publishing papers with several times as many readers as Mussolini's papers, and there was

still freedom of speech in the Italian parliament and elsewhere; there was still an opposition

party, there were labor unions and co-operatives and other means of resistance to the will of the

Fascists. It had taken the murderer of Matteotti another year and more to accomplish his

purpose of crushing opposition and making himself master of the Italian nation.

But Adolf's time-table was different from that. Adolf had a job to do in the outside world, and

had no idea of dawdling for three years before beginning it. He knew how to wait, but would

never wait an hour longer than necessary, and would be his own judge of the timing; he

would startle the world, and even his own followers, by the suddenness and speed of his

moves.

First, always first, the psychological preparation. Was he going to wipe out the rights of

German labor, to destroy a movement which the workers had been patiently building for

nearly a century? Obviously, then, the first step was to come to labor with outstretched hands,

to enfold it in a brotherly clasp while it was stabbed in the back; to set it upon a throne where it

could be safely and surely riddled with machine gun bullets.

Europe's labor day was the First of May, and everywhere over the continent the workers

paraded, they held enormous meetings, picnics and sports, they sang songs and listened to

speeches from their leaders, they heartened and inspired themselves for the three hundred

and sixty-four hard days. So now, several weeks in advance, it was announced that the Hitler

government was going to take over the First of May and make it the "Day of National Labor."

This was a government of "true Socialism"; it was the friend of labor, it was labor, and no

longer could there be a class struggle or any conflict of interest. The revolution having been

accomplished, the workers would celebrate their conquest and the new and splendid future

which lay before them. All these golden, glowing words —and all the power of press and radio to

carry the message to every corner of the Fatherland. Also, of course, the power of the police and

the private Nazi armies to terrify and crush anyone who might try to voice any other idea.

"Oh, Lanny, you should come to see it!" wrote Heinrich Jung, ecstatically. "It will be

something the like of which has not been seen in the world before. All our youth forces will

assemble in the Lustgarten in the morning and President Hindenburg himself will address us.

In the afternoon there will be costume parades of every craft and trade, even every great

factory in Germany. All will gather in the Tempelhof Airfield, and the decorations will exceed

anything you could imagine. The rich are paying for them by buying tickets so as to sit near

the Führer. Of course He will speak, and afterwards there will be fireworks like a battle—three

hundred meters of silver rain! I beg you and your wife to come as my guests—you will always

be glad that you witnessed these historic scenes. . . . P.S. I am sending you some literature

about our wonderful new labor program. You cannot have any doubts after this."

Lanny wrote, acknowledging the letter and expressing his regrets. It cost nothing to keep in

touch with this ardent young official, and the literature he sent might some day be useful to Rick.

Lanny was quite sure that he wouldn't care to enter Germany so long as Adolf Hitler remained

its Chancellor.

III

The celebration came off, with all the splendor which Heinrich had promised. Everything was

the biggest and most elaborate ever known, and even the hardboiled foreign correspondents

were awestricken; they sent out word that something new was being born into the world. On

the enormous airfield three hundred thousand persons had assembled by noon, to sit on the

ground and await ceremonies which did not begin until eight in the evening. By that time