The Lanny Budd Novels: World's End, Between Two Worlds, and Dragon's Teeth (World's End Lanny Budd #1-3) by Upton Sinclair

This is the beginning of a series of books, about the world with Europe centre stage with time spanning from end of world war I to cold war. 

A young boy who is coming of age as the first war, then called the great war, is ending, and he happens to be in place where he can be useful as an interpreter - his father is from a US family with a gun manufacture business, and the mother - Beauty Budd, Budd being the name of the family that no one can be sure she legally does have a right to, but most find it more convenient not to challenge her on the point - living in southern coastal France is from US too, a beauty and an ex-model who worked with artists including her own brother in Paris before having a son. 

Lanny Budd is growing up with Riviera for home and Europe for a playground, and the education he receives from various sources - his New England austere and wealthy Budd family, his mother with her genial and loving, kind and compassionate character and her coterie of friends who are wealthy and of upper class; his friends from England and Germany, whom he has mutual visits with, and his extended family with various half brothers and sisters, is all giving him a base from which he grows to be a man of education and learning and a good conscience and a good heart. He is the protagonist and in some sense the soul of the world he inhabits where much is to happen - and the future of humanity is at stake. 

This is the first volume of the series that has ten volumes or eleven in all - I always forget the number but do wish one day to have them to read again. It was fortunate to stumble across them in the first place, in a library that was a refuge and a retreat all those years, and incidentally is now a landmark and a preserved heritage structure.

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World's End

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The World's End series, of eleven books that span the history of the era from the WWI to the cold war with its stage expanding from Europe to cover much of the globe, begins with this first title, the book titled World's End; and the ominous title notwithstanding, the book begins completely steeped in the leisurely beauty of a Europe that had no clue it was perilously at edge of an era it was going to be thrown headlong into, with wars, revolutions, massacres and genocides forming only a few of the horrors, millions losing lives and much more. To give a clue to someone more familiar with TV and films, think the opening scene of the first episode, first series, of Downton Abbey - not to mean that literally of course, but in spirit.

Europe, most of it anyway, was at peace in 1913 and the author describes it so superbly, reading it for only the second time one is enchanted all over again.

The first time was over four decades ago, just after finishing a second degree at another university and finishing reading plays of George Bernard Shaw, and looking forward to another beginning again, a beginning of a serious career choice. Perfect time to immerse oneself in this, then a serendipitous find in - the now heritage - David Sasson Librarywhere we were - and I still am - life members.

At that young age, it was the perfect time indeed to get to know the world and the recent history, through the eyes and writing of this author who presented truths and horrors without putting beauty and love aside, and was real without cynicism.

Reading it again, about the young teen who is looking forward to much, to everything, of life and world, one has the author say at the end of second chapter:- 

"What was the use of thinking about religion and self-dedication and all that, if men were shrimps and crabs, and nations were sharks and octopi? Here was a problem which men had been debating before Lanny Budd was born and which it would take him some time to settle!" 

And despite knowing the whole series, the beauty of writing of this author has one almost wonder if one ought to hold oneself back from indulging in the pleasure! 
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Having meanwhile read several, but not finished yet the most famous, works of William Shirer, its all the more evident there is a deep connection between the two writers of seemingly very different genre - Upton Sinclair's prose borders on poetry in all but rhyme, and William Shirer seems to act and think so very like Lanny Budd the protagonist of this series as he writes about the same era, that one has to wonder, did they ever meet? Perhaps not, and perhaps it's a deeper connection of spirit that needs no meeting of persons in physical terms, or even of them having any correspondence.
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One of the delights of this series is that while the characters in front stage, so to speak, mostly are recognisable prototypes, and some of them at centre ideals, famous names of the era are woven into the story via encounters and relationships with those in forefront, and these are from most areas of life, from politics of every sort to artists, businessmen and society, literature and more.   

Early on Lanny meets Barbara Pugliese, and it's a very moving description, of the woman who chose to live amonst poor and is emaciated. Later in this volume, after WWI as Lanny is a secretsry at the peace conference, Lanny meets Lawrence with Emir Feudal, and a page by the author sums up Lawrence of Arabia. Later volumes of course have almost everyone worth naming! 
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Lanny being told about British treaty with France denied in British parliament:-

"“That has been denied in the British Parliament,” Robbie declared, “but the British diplomat’s definition of a lie is an untrue statement made to a person who has a right to know the truth. Needless to say, there aren’t many such persons!”

Later, after Manny has discovered East End and also the dire poverty in Berkshire for tenants, he's discussing it with Robbie, who finds British poverty disgusting. 

"Robbie had been in business competition with the English, which was different from being a guest in their well-conducted homes. “They are sharp traders,” he said, “and that’s all right, but what gets your goat is the mask of righteousness they put on; nobody else sells armaments for the love of Jesus Christ.” The Empire, he added, was run by a little group of insiders in “the City”—the financial district. “There are no harder-fisted traders anywhere; power for themselves is what they are out for, and they’ll destroy the rest of the world to get and keep it.”"

And about graft in politics:-

"In our country when the political bosses want to fill their campaign chest, they put up some rich man for a high office—a ‘fat cat’ they call him—and he pays the bills and gets elected for a term of years. In England the man pays a much bigger sum into the party campaign chest, and he’s made a marquess or a lord, and he and his descendants will govern the Empire forever after—but that isn’t corruption, that’s ‘nobility’!” ... On the board of Vickers are four marquesses and dukes, twenty knights, and fifty viscounts and barons. The Empire will do exactly what they say—and there won’t be any ‘graft’ involved.”"

When Europe is on brink of war, they meet a French journalist in Paris. 

"“The German ambassador pleaded with friends of mine at the Quai d’Orsay. ‘There is and should be no need for two highly civilized nations to engage in strife. Russia is a barbarous state, a Tatar empire, essentially Asiatic.’ So they argue. They would prefer to devour us at a second meal,” added the Frenchman, his black eyes shining."
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The author uses a neat device, in setting the not entirely historical characters representing characteristics national and political, and Lanny has an upper class British nobility friend and a German one whose father is in charge in castle Stubendorf in Silesia. 

"Rick hadn’t been as much impressed by Kurt’s long words as had Lanny, and he said that anyhow, what was the use of fancy-sounding philosophy if you didn’t make it count in everyday affairs? Rick said furthermore that from now on America’s safety depended on the British fleet, and the quicker the Americans realized it the better for them and for the world."

The description comes early, but is an apt and succinct one for most of WWII:- 

"Winter was coming now. In Flanders and through northern France a million men were lying out in the open, in trenches and shell holes half full of filthy water which froze at night. They were devoured by vermin and half paralyzed by cold, eating bread and canned meat, when it could be brought to them over roads which had been turned into quagmires. All day and night bullets whistled above them and shells came down out of the sky, blowing bodies to fragments and burying others under loads of mud. The wounded had to lie where they fell until death released them, or night made it possible for their fellows to drag them back into the trenches."

"The military deadlock at the front continued. All winter long the Allies had spent their forces trying to take trenches defended by machine guns—a weapon of which the Germans had managed to get the biggest supply. It was something that Robbie Budd had helped to teach them—and which he had tried in vain to teach the French and British. He couldn’t write freely about it now, but there were hints in his letters, and Lanny knew what they meant, having been so often entertained by his father’s comic portrayals of the British War Office officials with whom he had been trying to do business. So haughty they were, so ineffable, almost godlike in their self-satisfaction—and so dumb! No vulgar American could tell them anything; and now dapper young officers strolled out in front of their troops, waving their swagger sticks, and the German sharpshooters knocked them over like partridges off tree limbs. It was sublime, but it wasn’t going to win this war of machines."

Here's something not often publicised:-

"The British had failed in their efforts to take the Dardanelles, largely because they couldn’t decide whether the taking was worth the cost. Now they were starting an advance from Salonika, a harbor in the north of Greece. That country had a pro-German king, ..."

The said King of Greece at the time was a brother of the two dowager queens, Queen Alexandra of England her sister Dagmar the mother of the last Tsar, Nicholas. What's more, his son Prince Andrew was married to Princess Alice of Hesse, a great granddaughter of Queen Victoria through her daughter Princess Alice, and his grandson Prince Philip is the Duke of Edinburgh, husband of the current monarch, Queen Elizabeth II of England. Besides, while England and Russia had closer ties with German royals and especially with Kaiser Wilhelm who was another grandson of Queen Victoria, the then king of Greece did not, not anywhere near his ties with England and Russia. Which makes his siding with Germany very curious. 

If the king referred here is the son, that close association still holds. He was, however, married to Princess Sophie of Hohenzollern royal house of Prussia, and thus perhaps the misconception. She however was again a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, and pro England! The misconception is chiefly due to his holding on to Greek position of neutral stance. 
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Lanny reads Greek literature to Marcel, his new stepfather the painter and wounded soldier. 

"For what had this gay and eager people been brought into being on those bright and sunny shores, to leave behind them only broken marble columns, and a few thousand melodious verses embodying proud resignation and despair?

"As a result of these influences, encountered at the most impressionable age, Lanny Budd became conservative in his taste in the arts. He liked a writer to have something to say, and to say it with clarity and precision; he liked a musician to reveal his ideas in music, and not in program notes; he liked a painter to produce works that bore some resemblance to something. He disliked loud noises and confusion, and obscurity cultivated as a form of exclusiveness. All of which meant that Lanny was out-of-date before he had got fairly started in life."
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Robbie instructs his son to stay neutral despite living in Europe, and it's difficult for Lanny after two years of war. Robbie writes to him. 

"“Germany is trying to break her way to the east, mainly to get oil, the first necessity of modern machine industry. There is oil in Rumania and the Caucasus, and more in Mesopotamia and Persia. Look up these places on the map, so as to know what I’m telling you. England, Russia, and France all have a share, while Germany has none. That’s what all the shooting is about; and I am begging you to paste this up on your looking glass, or some place where you will see it every day. It’s an oil man’s war, and they are all patriotic, because if they lose the war they’ll lose the oil. But the steel men and the coal men have worked out international cartels, so they don’t have to be patriotic. They have ways of communicating across no man’s land, and they do. I’m a steel man, and they talk to me, and so I get news that will never be printed.”"

"The military men were allowed to destroy whatever else they pleased, but nothing belonging to Krupp and Thyssen and Stinnes, the German munitions kings who had French connections and investments, or anything belonging to Schneider and the de Wendels, masters of the Comité des Forges, who had German connections and investments."

"“I could tell you a hundred different facts which I know, and which all fit into one pattern. The great source of steel for both France and Germany is in Lorraine, called the Briey basin; get your map and look it up, and you will see that the battle line runs right through it. On one side the Germans are getting twenty or thirty million tons of ore every year and smelting it into steel, and on the other side the French are doing the same. On the French side the profits are going to François de Wendel, President of the Comité des Forges and member of the Chamber of Deputies; on the other side they are going to his brother Charles Wendel, naturalized German subject and member of the Reichstag. Those huge blast furnaces and smelters are in plain sight; but no aviators even tried to bomb them until recently. Then one single attempt was made, and the lieutenant who had charge of it was an employee of the Comité des Forges. Surprisingly, the attempt was a failure.”

"... the same thing was happening to the four or five million tons of iron ore which Germany was getting from Sweden; the Danish line which brought this ore to Germany had never lost a vessel, in that service or any other, and the Swedish railroads which carried the ore burned British coal. “If it hadn’t been for this,” wrote the father, “Germany would have been out of the war a year ago. It’s not too much to say that every man who died at Verdun, and everyone who has died since then, has been a sacrifice to those businessmen who own the newspapers and the politicians of France.""

"England would follow her usual rule of losing every battle but the last."
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Lanny went to Connecticut to live with his father's family for the time being, as U.S. joined WWI finally, and there were large quantities of Budd clan relatives, since older generations had average ten or twenty children. 

"Most of those who were not preaching the Word were employed by Budd Gunmakers Corporation in one capacity or another, and just now were working at the task of making the days of the Germans as short as possible. The Germans had their own God, who was working just as hard for his side—so Lanny read in a German magazine which the kind Mr. Robin took the trouble to send him. How these Gods adjusted matters up in their heaven was a problem which was too much for Lanny, so he put his mind on the dates of ancient Greek and Roman wars." 
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A continuously recurring pleasure in reading this series is various references of literature, history, and quotes. One that forms a title of book three of World's End and thereafter recurs at key points is 

"Bela Gerant  Alii"

Which means "let others make war", and the first chapter heading is 

"Loved I Not Honour More".

Another, in a chapter heading "Pierian Spring", about Lanny regarding his education, is reference to verses by Alexander Pope:- 

"A little learning is a dangerous thing
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring."
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About the war, now that U.S. had entered:-

"The airplanes were going to be driven by “liberty motors,” and you ate “liberty steak” and “liberty cabbage” instead of hamburgers and sauerkraut. Robbie hated such nonsense; he hated still more to see the country and its resources being used for what he said were the purposes of British imperialism. ... when Robbie would remark that the British ruling classes were the shrewdest propagandists in the world, a sudden chill would fall at the breakfast table."
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About the Budd clan:- 

"These odd people had a way of quarreling bitterly and never making up. Uncle Andrew Budd and his wife had lived in the same house for thirty years and never spoken. Cousin Timothy and Cousin Rufus couldn’t agree upon the division of their family farm, so they had cut it in halves and lived as neighbors, but did not visit. Aunt Agatha, Robbie’s eldest sister, went off and took up residence in a hotel, and forbade the clerk at the desk ever to announce any person by the name of Budd. That was New England, Robbie said; a sort of ingrown place, self-centered, opinionated, proud." 

Lanny met his great-great-uncle Eli Budd, by his invitation, which was command since he was head of the clan, being the only surviving uncle of his grandfather Samuel Budd. 

"Between these two there took place that chemical process of the soul whereby two become one, not gradually, but all at once. They had lived three thousand miles apart, yet they had developed this affinity. The seventeen-year-old one told his difficulties and his problems, and the eighty-three-year-old one renewed his youth, and spoke words which seemed a sort of divination. Said he: 

"“Do not let other people invade your personality. Remember that every human being is a unique phenomenon, and worth developing. You will meet many who have no resources of their own, and who will try to fasten themselves upon you. You will find others eager to tell you what to do and think and be. But it is better to go apart and learn to be yourself.” 

"Great-Great-Uncle Eli was a “transcendentalist,” having known many of the old New England group. There is something in us all, he said, that is greater than ourselves, that works through us and can be used in the making of character. The central core of life is personality. To respect the personality of others is the beginning of virtue, and to enforce respect for it is the first duty of the individual toward all forms of government, all organizations and systems which men contrive to enslave and limit their fellows."


"Lanny told about his mother, and about Marcel; about Rick and his family, and about Kurt; he even told about Rosemary, and the old clergyman was not shocked; he said that customs in sexual matters varied in different parts of the world, and what suited some did not suit others. “The blood of youth is hot,” he said, “and impatience sets traps for us, and prepares regrets that sometimes last all our lives. The important thing is not to wrong any woman—and that is no easy matter, for women are great demanders, and do not scruple to invade the personality.” Great-Great-Uncle Eli smiled, but Lanny knew he was serious."
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Lanny gets a letter from Kurt, posted in N.Y.:-

"This led to the main purpose of the letter, which was to plead with Lanny to resist the subtle wiles of the British propaganda machine. Kurt wasn’t afraid that his friend might get physically hurt, for it was obvious that the British would be driven into the sea and the French would lose Paris long before the Americans could take any effective part in this war. But Kurt didn’t want his friend’s mind distorted and warped by the agents of British imperialism. These people, who had grabbed most of the desirable parts of the earth, now thought they had a chance to destroy the German fleet, build their Cape-to-Cairo railroad, keep the Germans from building the Berlin-to-Bagdad railroad, and in every way thwart the efforts of a vigorous and capable race to find their place in the sun.

"It was to be expected that France would hate Germany and make war upon her, because the French were a jealous people, and thought of Germans as their hereditary enemies; they were pursuing their futile dream of getting Alsace-Lorraine with its treasures of coal and iron. But Englishmen were blood kinsmen to the Germans, and their war upon Germany was fratricide; the crime of using black and brown and yellow troops to destroy the highest culture in Europe would outlaw its perpetrators forever. Now the desperate British militarists were spending their wealth circulating a mass of lies about Germany’s war methods and war aims; what a tragedy that Americans, a free people, with three thousand miles of ocean between them and Europe’s quarrels, had swallowed all this propaganda, and were wasting their money and their labor helping Britain to grab more territory and harness more peoples to her imperial chariot!"
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Author mentions an English play that Gracyn Phillipson is getting a chance to do, and the storyline is far too like that of Casablanca; also a bit like one written by Jarasandha, made into a film by Bimal Roy.  Another play named "The Colonel’s Lady" has title suggesting similar story to a superb Navketan film. 
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Summary by author of end of war:- 

"The Allied armies continued their grinding advance. The Hindenburg line was cracked and the Germans forced to retreat. First Bulgaria collapsed, then Turkey, then Austria; there came a revolution in Germany and the Kaiser fled to Holland ..."

And summing up father and son, when Lanny has decided to return to Europe and to the only home, Bienvenu, that he has known growing up, with his mother, in Juan-Les-Pins:-

"“You’ll be a foreigner, Lanny.” 

"“I’ll be a citizen of several countries. The world will need some like that.”"

And about Gracyn:-

"“Or else—note this: that if you’d had thirty thousand dollars, you might have licked the coffee merchant!” 

"They were in the taxi on the way to the steamer; and Lanny grinned. “There’s an English poem supposed to be sung by the devil, and the chorus runs: ‘How pleasant it is to have money, heigh-ho, how pleasant it is to have money!’”"
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Lanny is a secretary to a professor close to President Wilson, working at peace conference in Paris, while Robbie is close at another hotel. In their discussion about travails of Budd plants one can see the genesis of stance of U.S. arms industry since, from handguns to everything, and of events since, just as WWI was genesis of WWII and more. 


And then the author goes into the Jewish question, from the opposite side to that of the antisemitic stance, with Lanny's acquaintance Johannes Robin meeting him and Robbie, and speaking of business and much more. 
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Creation and building of structure of the League Of Nations is on way, and Robbie meets George D. Herron. 

"Of course Robbie couldn’t expect to keep his son in cotton wool. Lanny was in the world now and had to meet crackpots and fanatics along with sane businessmen. But at least he was going to have his father’s advice. In detail, and with as much conscientiousness as any Christian Socialist, Robbie explained that the ruling class of Germany had tried to grab the trade privileges of the British Empire, and had failed. They would try again whenever they got the chance; it was life or death for one group or the other, and would continue to be that so long as men used steel in making engines, and coal and oil—not hot air—to run them with. Lanny listened, and decided that his father was right, as always."

About the peace treaty and time between armistice and signing the treaty, 

"One thing seemed certain: Marcel would not have approved the deliberate starving of women and children. The Germans had assumed that the blockade would be lifted when they signed the armistice; but the French had no such thought. Nothing was to go into Germany until she had accepted and signed the peace terms which France meant to lay down. But the treaty wasn’t ready yet, and meanwhile children were crying with hunger. 

"To the members of the American delegation this seemed an atrocious thing. They protested to the President, and he in turn to Clemenceau—but in vain. Herbert Hoover, who had been feeding the Belgians, wanted also to feed the defeated peoples; he did finally, as a great concession, get the right to send a relief mission to Austria—but nothing to Germany. Marshal Foch stood like a block of concrete in the pathway. Lanny saw him coming out from the conference room where this issue was fought over; a stocky little man with a gray mustache, voluble, talking with excited gestures, demanding his pound of flesh. He was commander-in-chief of the Allied armies and he gave the orders. A singular thing—he was a devout Catholic, went every morning to mass, and kneeled to a merciful redeemer who had said: “Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not.” Little French children, of course; no little German children!

"This was one of the things which tormented Herron. He talked incessantly about a “Carthaginian peace,” such as the Romans had imposed when they razed a great city to the ground and drove its population into exile. If France imposed a peace of vengeance upon Germany, it would mean that “Germanism” had won the war; it would mean that France had adopted Germany’s false religion, and that the old France of the Revolution, the France of “liberty, equality, fraternity,” was no more. The black-bearded prophet suffered so over the hunger of the blockaded peoples that he couldn’t eat his own food."

And on Russia:- 

"Many times in these days Lanny had occasion to recall the words which the Graf Stubendorf had spoken, concerning “the dark cloud of barbarism in the eastern sky.” In five years that cloud had spread until it threatened to cover the firmament; it was of the hue of Stygian midnight, and its rim was red and dripping a bloody rain. No longer the Russian Tsar with his Cossacks and their whips, no longer Pan-Slavism with its marching hosts, but the dread Bolshevism, which not only formed armies, but employed a new and secret poison which penetrated the armies of its enemies, working like a strong acid, disintegrating what it touched. A good part of the secret conferences going on in Paris had to do with this peril and how to meet it. There were some who thought it made no difference what decisions the Peace Conference took, because it was all going to be swept away in a Red upheaval throughout Central Europe.

"Of course Europe had to protect itself against this Red menace, said Lanny’s friends; and so the Allied armies had established what they called a cordon sanitaire around the vast former empire of the Tsar. The Japanese and the Americans had seized Vladivostok and the eastern half of the Trans-Siberian railway. The British and Americans had occupied Archangel and Murmansk in the far North, blocking all commerce by that route. Along the European land front the Allied troops stood on guard, and French and British officers were busy organizing anti-Bolshevik Russians, and providing them with arms and money and sending them into the Ukraine, Russian Poland, and the Baltic provinces. This fighting had been going on for a year now, and each day Lanny read in the papers of “White” victories and was assured that soon the dreadful menace would be at an end. 

"But it was like a forest fire, whose sparks flew through the air; or perhaps a plague, whose carriers burrow underground and come up through rat-holes. The emissaries of the Bolsheviks would sneak through the sanitary cordon, and creep into the slums of some city of Central Europe, telling the hungry workers how the Russians had made a revolution, and offering to help do the same. The armies would catch many of them and shoot them; but there were always more. Even before the armistice, a Jewish “Red” by the name of Eisner had seized the government of Bavaria; in Berlin two others named Liebknecht and Luxemburg—the latter a woman, known as “Red Rosa”—were carrying on a war in the streets, seeking to take power from the Socialist government which had arisen in Germany after the overthrow of the Kaiser. In Hungary it was the same; a member of the nobility who called himself a Socialist, Count Karolyi, had given his estates in an effort to help the poor of that starving land, but now a Bolshevik Jew was leading a movement to unseat him and set up Soviets on the Russian pattern. 

"Always it was a Jew, people pointed out to Lanny; and this kindled to flame the anti-Semitic feeling always latent among the fashionable classes of Europe. “What did we tell you?” they would say. “The Jews have no country; they are seeking to undermine and destroy Christian society. It is a worldwide conspiracy of this arrogant people.” Robbie said something along this line; and Lanny grinned and replied: “Be careful, you’ve got a Jewish partner now!” 

"Robbie made a wry face. His Anglo-Saxon conscience troubled him, and his aristocratic feelings resented the odor of the junk business. But Johannes Robin had bought a couple of hundred thousand hand grenades, and had already sold the powder before he had got it extracted. The prospects looked excellent; and Robbie Budd just couldn’t bear to sit on a big pile of money and not make use of it—the use, of course, being to make more money." 
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This work was dates to 1940, and chapter 28 heading is 'The Red Peril'. And it's about the perception, perhaps even reality thereof, across Europe, already just after the WWI armistice, even before the Versailles treaty is yet ready. The author hasn't said much about Bolshevik atrocities, massacres of Romanov family and relatives, except a cursory mention of the Russian exiles in Paris clamouring at allies' doors and to anyone sympathetic who would lend an ear. Yet the hostility is quite definite, not just from allies business and military towards Bolsheviks but the other way round too, from staunch communists who never set foot in Russia till then towards the said business and military of allies. This comes like a punch in form of Lanny's uncle Jesse Blackless, brother of Beauty Budd (now Madame Detaze), who is met with by Lanny and his boss after Lanny hears a military intelligence man speak of a dangerous red American in Paris who is a painter. 

The author really did know! He is no friend of European imperialism or for that matter Tsar and his forces, at that, or aristocracy, but he knew then that militant and hostile reds are a danger. 
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About Colonel House being informed by Professor Alston regarding prospect of meeting Jesse Blackless:- 

"It was the sort of thing he liked to do. He pinned his faith upon quiet talks and understandings among key people. That was the way the Democratic party was run in Texas; that was the way a college president had been nominated for President of the United States; that was the way peace was now to be brought to Europe. When the details had been agreed upon, the results would be proclaimed, and that would be “open covenants openly arrived at.”"

Sounds very like the 2014 on present government of India. 
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Lanny was included in the proposed meeting along with Professor Alston, between Colonel House and Jesse Blackless, latter remarking that Robbie wouldn't like it and never learned anything. 

"Lanny wouldn’t discuss his father with this uncle whom he didn’t like. But he went off thinking hard, and wondering: Was Robbie really narrow-minded and set in his opinions? Or was this Bolshevik propaganda?" 

Author just set the stage for Lanny and the part he plays in this story of eleven volumes, his development and growth, his activities and actions! 


They met the Bolsheviks in Jesse Blackless' s room. Lanny was surprised at their personae being not quite the horrible criminals he was told they were.

"They spoke without emotion of the sufferings of the Russian peasants and workers under the lash of the Tsar, and in the civil war now raging. They reported that Petrograd was starving; a hundred thousand persons had died in the past month, and not a baby under two was left alive. The Soviets wanted peace; they would meet the Whites anywhere, and accept any reasonable terms. They had again and again declared their willingness to pay off their debts to the capitalist nations, including the monstrous debt which the Tsar had incurred to arm their country in the interest of French militarists and munitions makers. Poor as they were now, they would pay the interest in raw materials. Lanny was surprised by this, for the French newspapers were incessantly repeating that the debt had been repudiated; this was the reason for the French clamor for the overthrow of the Soviets. “You know what our newspapers are,” said the Frenchman, shrugging his shoulders; “our reptile press—I worked for it until my soul was poisoned.”
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President Wilson typed his declaration himself, and there was a session of the Council Of Ten.

"The document went on to summon all groups having power in Russia or Siberia to send representatives to a conference. President Wilson took it to the Council of Ten next afternoon, where it became the subject of much debate. Some still demanded that an army be sent into Russia to overthrow the Bolsheviks; but when it came to a showdown, they wanted the soldiers of some other nation to go. Lloyd George asked the question all around: “Would your troops go? Would yours?” Not one statesman dared say yes, and so in the end the program offered by Wilson was adopted unanimously."
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Colonel House asked Professor Alston to look into Georgia.

"The plight of the little country was precarious. Toward the end of the war the Germans had seized it, along with the Ukraine; the armistice had forced them to vacate, and the French had sent a small army into the Ukraine, while the British had taken Batum on the Black Sea and Baku on the Caspian, and were policing the railroad and the pipelines by which the oil was brought out. But meanwhile the Bolsheviks were swarming like bees all about them, using their dreadful new weapon of class incitement, arousing peasants and workers against the invasion of “foreign capitalism.” They were now driving the French out of Kiev, and literally rotting their armies with propaganda. How long would the British armies stand the strain? Men who had set out cheerfully to unhorse the hated Kaiser considered that they had done their job and wanted to go home; what business had their rulers keeping them in the Caucasus to protect oil wells for Zaharoff the Greek and Deterding the Dutchman?

"It was that way all over Eastern and Central Europe. The soldiers and sailors of Russia had overthrown their Tsar, the soldiers and sailors of Germany had driven their Kaiser into exile, and now the soldiers and sailors of the Allies were demanding: “What is all this about? Why are we shooting these peasants?” In Siberia the American troops were meeting the Reds and feeling sorry for them, exactly as Lanny had felt for those he had met in his uncle’s tenement room. The armies were disintegrating, discipline was relaxing, and officers were alarmed as they never had been by the German invasion.

"So, of course, the elder statesmen in Paris were having an unhappy time; their generals in the field were pulling them one way and the great industrialists and financiers at home were pulling them the other. Coal and oil, iron and copper—were they going to let the Reds take these treasures and use them to prove that workers could run industry for themselves? There was a clamor for war in all the big-business press, and in the parliaments, and it turned the Peace Conference into a hell of intrigue and treachery. To be there was like walking on the floor of a volcano, and wherever you thrust your staff into the ground, it began to quake, and fumes shot out and boiling lava oozed up."
................................................................................................ 


Lanny discovered that the French were against the conference with Bolsheviks at Prinkipo, and so were Winston Churchill, Curzon and Clemenceau.

"Robbie said that “the Tiger” had been Zaharoff’s friend for years, and both his brother and his son were directors in Zaharoff’s companies. If you wanted to understand a politician you mustn’t pay too much attention to his speeches, but find out who were his paymasters. A politician couldn’t rise in public life, in France any more than in America, unless he had the backing of big money, and it was in times of crisis like this that he paid his debts."
................................................................................................ 


Lanny was invited by Zaharoff and his Duquesa to meet her daughters, and a formal invitation for afternoon tea arrived. He entertained the three ladies with anecdotes.

"Thus, Arthur Balfour and Clemenceau had appeared at some function, the former with his “topper” and all the trimmings, the latter in a bowler hat. His lordship in a spirit of noblesse oblige had remarked: “I was told to wear formal dress”; to which “the Tiger,” with his mischievous twinkle, replied: “So was I.”

"Also the story of Premier Hughes of Australia, a labor leader who had fought his way up in a rough world; a violent little man who had become deaf, and carried with him a hearing machine which he set up on the table. He defied President Wilson, declaring that what his country had got it meant to keep. This delighted Clemenceau, for if Australia kept what she had got, it would mean that France might keep hers. So when they were arranging for another session, Clemenceau remarked to Lloyd George: “Come—and bring your savages with you!”"

But Lanny was required to provide Zaharoff with information, and he didn't betray his trust, thus never again being invited to meet the daughters of the Duquesa, giving up a future of marrying one and being in control of Zaharoff wealth and concerns.
................................................................................................ 


If one weren't quite aware of it before, one gets a good background,  but for someone with some background, this gives a daunting portrait of just how unappreciated Woodrow Wilson has been in recent decades dominated by mostly right wing politics. He created an unprecedented League Of Nations, in the era when monarchies were toppling only as recently as the year before, and colonial empires were as strong as they ever have been, with most politics and politicians of Europe against the very thought and process of the League. He has been unfairly painted as someone weak, ineffective, even ridiculous, in an era that seeks to reinstate Nixon as a master and Reagan as a brilliant man. But of course, trust Upton Sinclair's honest perception.

"Woodrow Wilson was unsparing of himself, and as the weeks passed his health caused worry to his associates. He was attending these Council sessions all day, and in the evenings the sessions of the League of Nations Commission. He was driving himself, because he had to sail on the fourteenth of February to attend the closing sessions of the Congress, and he was determined to take with him the completed draft of the Covenant of the League. A thousand cares and problems beset him and he was getting no sleep; he became haggard and there began a nervous twitching of the left side of his face. Lanny, watching him, decided never to aspire to fame."
................................................................................................ 


Lanny talks to another young secretary at the British commission, exchanging what they could.

"Lanny didn’t tell his English friend an appalling story which Alston’s associates were whispering. The Supreme Council was planning to recognize a new state in Central Europe called Czechoslovakia, to consist principally of territories taken from Germany and Austria. The Czechs, previously known as Bohemians, had a patriotic leader named Masaryk, who had been a professor at the University of Chicago and a personal friend of Wilson. An American journalist talking with Wilson had said: “But, Mr. President, what are you going to do about the Germans in this new country?”

"“Are there Germans in Czechoslovakia?” asked Wilson, in surprise.

"The answer was: “There are three million of them.”

"“How strange!” exclaimed the President. “Masaryk never told me that!”"
................................................................................................ 


The author goes seemingly out of the way to extol the beauties of Germany and of her literature, music, philosophy and more, for someone aware of holocaust, someone grown up post Nuremberg trials that exposed the horrors perpetrated by the Third Reich beginning over a decade after where this first volume in the series ends, and not antisemitic or racist oneself in justifying it all blindly as seemingly a lot of young do on internet. But neither racism nor antisemitism is unique or limited to Germany or even originated there, and the beauty of Germany that the author has permeating his work, the love thereof, makes the horrors all the more real. But the others in Europe, even in U.S., weren't immune to Nazi thinking, just fortunate enough to have not elected, or imposed upon them, leaders who went on to create such horrors. This much is clearer after reading through the series, at various points. He describes the sympathisers in Britain upper strata of aristocracy as well as crowds of hooligans in N.Y. city, and it's really fortunate for humanity and human civilisation that such thinking did not rule the world.
................................................................................................ 


Lanny discovers Kurt in Paris, working to lift blockade on food for Germany which Germany is able and willing to pay for, and asks Jesse Blackless for help.

"“Perhaps you read in the papers how Lenin was in Switzerland when the Russian Revolution broke out, and he wanted very much to get into Russia. The German government wanted him there and sent him through in a sealed train. They had their reasons for sending him and he had his reasons for going. His reasons won out.

"Lanny got the point and smiled in his turn. The uncle thought for a while and then told him how, many years ago, there had been a big fuss in America over the fact that multimillionaires who had corrupted legislatures and courts were trying to win public favor by giving sums of money to colleges. It was called “tainted money,” and there was a clamor that colleges should refuse such donations. One college professor, more robust than the rest of the tribe, had got up in a meeting and cried: “Bring on your tainted money!” The painter laughed and said: “That’s me!””
................................................................................................ 


After President Wilson departed for U.S.,  

"The diplomats of the great states began helping themselves to German and Russian territory, and the reactionary newspapers of Paris declared with one voice that the foolish and utopian League was already dead and that the problems of Europe were going to be settled on a “realistic” basis. 

"Professor Alston said that this was the voice of Clemenceau, who controlled a dozen newspapers of the capital and could change their policies by crooking his finger. Alston and his friends were greatly depressed. What was the use of meeting all day and most of the night, wrestling over questions of fair play and “self-determination,” when it was evident that those who held the reins of power would not pay the least attention to anything you said? The French delegates now wore a cynical smile as they argued before the commissions; they had their assurance that their armies were going to hold the Rhineland and the Sarre, and that a series of buffer states were to be set up between Germany and Russia, all owing their existence to France, all financed with the savings of the French peasants, and munitioned by Zaharoff, alias Schneider-Creusot. France and Britain were going to divide Persia and Mesopotamia and Syria and make a deal for the oil and the laying of pipelines. Italy was to take the Adriatic, Japan was to take Shantung—all such matters were being settled among sensible men."

And George D. Herron was doing his utmost for good of others, but

"Watching Herron and listening to him, Lanny learned how dangerous it was to have anything to do with unpopular ideas. The prophet was called a Red, when in truth he looked upon Bolshevism as his Hebrew predecessors looked upon Baal and Moloch. He had heard about Jesse Blackless and was worried for fear Lanny might be lured by the false faith of his uncle. He told the youth, in his biblical language, that dictatorship was a degradation of the soul of man, and that anyone who took that road would find himself in the valley of the shadow of death. Either Socialism must be the free, democratic choice of the people, or it would be something worse than the rule of Mammon which it sought to replace. Lanny promised very gravely that he would remember this lesson. Privately, he didn’t think he was going to need it." 

And at the conference, Bolshevik threat was used 

"Often it was a form of blackmail, and the French would resent it with fury. The ruling classes of Germany, Austria, and Hungary were playing up this fear in order to get out of paying for the ruin they had wrought in Europe. “All right!” the French would answer. “Go to Moscow or go to hell, it makes no difference to us.” 

"But this was a bluff. As soon as they had said it, the French would look at one another in fear. What if the Red wave were to spread in Poland, as it had spread in Hungary and Bavaria? If the Reds got the upper hand in Berlin, with whom would the Allies sign a treaty of peace? The Americans would ask this, and French and British diplomats didn’t know what to answer, and took out their irritation on the persons who asked the questions. They must be Reds, too!"
................................................................................................ 


Clemenceau was shot. 

"Lanny hadn’t thought about the matter long before realizing that he had been extremely naïve. The obvious way to relieve French pressure on Germany was to frighten France with the same kind of Bolshevist disturbances that were taking place throughout Central Europe. Kurt and his group were here for that, and they were using camouflage just as Uncle Jesse was." 

Coming after the scrupulously neutral stance kept by the author through his protagonist, this realisation, coming after the public meeting Lanny attended, must have been shocking, especially in view of the cynically said but very true and honest things Jesse Blackless had told Lanny as he agreed to doing his bit in what Kurt was sent to do. 

For, it does make a reader realise that Germany wasn't twisted all out of her previous character and doings by the subsequent Third Reich, unlike what some would like to cling to a belief in, however difficult. For those that love Germany for whatever reason, it's even harder than the Nazi horrors of holocaust and much more, to realise that, Germany had not only sent spies throughout and after the war begun essentially by Germany in the first place, to destabilise the nations Germany had set out to swallow, or dismember and swallow portions thereof, to create unrest and mayhem via propaganda against those nations in their own citizens, but even much more, had deliberately set out during the war to destroy Russia, as they did quite systematically, in sending Lenin from Switzerland in a sealed train back to Russia, knowing precisely what might and would, and in fact subsequently did, occur. 

Kaiser Wilhelm was closely related to Romanovs, in the royalty clans that mostly intermarried amongst other royals of Europe,  and were mostly all related to one another, often several ways. The Tsarina, Alexandra, was a first cousin of his, both being grandchildren of Queen Victoria. He had pursued her for her hand in marriage. She chose Nicholas over not only him but also her English cousin that her grandmother Queen Victoria had selected her to be a bride to, which was deplored by the grandmother too. 

But to be so vengeful as the Kaiser Wilhelm was, and to set in motion deliberately a revolution as fully intended in sending Lenin back, depositing him in heart of Russia brought in a sealed German train from Switzerland, thereby destroying their regime, depriving most of Romanov clan of not only their homes and property but of homeland too, forever, making them poor exiles abroad, and causing massacre of large numbers of them including the Tsar family, that's truly vicious, not accidentally in a fit of rage but something of a cold calculated manner that says, this is characteristic. 
................................................................................................ 


Kurt assured Lanny that he had nothing to do with the assassination attempt when Clemenceau was shot by someone known to Lanny's uncle. 

"“The truth is, Lanny, I have no idea what they did before the armistice. I suppose they were doing everything they could to help the Fatherland. But now they are trying to soften the French government by promoting political opposition. We have such troubles to deal with at home, and why shouldn’t the French have their share?”"

Sounds not far from the German co passenger on a train from Stuttgart to Paris we had in 2001 who lived in Paris, accused Jews of being not friendly when they found out she was German, and then remarked looking out of the window, to the effect that Germany had a much larger population than France and France had so much empty space. 

We were quite aware of German government rewarding reproduction by citizens on large scales, with cheaper or free deals not just in education but transport and more. So this was the millennium old strategy of Germany, used during crusades when Germans decided Levant was too far, and massacred all people of Prussia, occupied it, and reproduced, wiping out all but totally any memory and even general knowledge about Prussia having been not German once.  ................................................................................................ 

The political wrangles continued. Turkey was massacring Armenians in millions, attempting to finish off the genocide. 

"They wrangled over the question of Danzig and the proposed Polish Corridor to the sea. They decided it, and then, when the clamor rose louder, they undecided it and referred it back to the commission. So geographers and ethnographers and their assistants were summoned once more, and Lanny Budd lugged his portfolios into the high-ceilinged, overheated conference rooms at the Quai d’Orsay, and stood behind his chief for hours—there being not enough chairs for secretaries and translators. Lanny couldn’t help but feel grave, for there was a consensus among the American experts that here was where the next war would start. 

"The real purpose of that corridor had by now become clear to all; the French were determined to put a barrier between German manufacturing power and Russian raw materials, which, if combined, might dominate Europe. So give the Poles access to the sea by driving a wedge through Germany, with Danzig for a port. But the trouble was that Danzig was a German city, and the proposed corridor was inhabited by more than two millions of that race. When this was brought to President Wilson’s attention, he produced a report from Professor Alston, pointing out that this district had been Polish, but had been deliberately “colonized” by the Germans, by the method so well known in Europe of making the former inhabitants so miserable that they emigrated. At a conference with his advisers President Wilson said that this appeared to be a case where one principle conflicted with another principle.

"The highly conscientious gentlemen at the Crillon racked their brains for some way to prevent fighting in that corridor. Most of the scholars were inclined to sympathize with the Poles—perhaps on account of Kosciuszko, and because in their youth they had read a novel called Thaddeus of Warsaw. But, alas, their sympathies were weakened by the fact that the Poles were carrying on dreadful pogroms against the Jews; and if they were that sort of people, what were the chances for the two million Germans of the corridor? The time was out of joint: O cursèd spite, that ever college professors were born to set it right!"
................................................................................................  


The conference wrangled about territories, people and nations."The discussions among the four elder statesmen were continuing day and night and reaching a new pitch of intensity. They were dealing with questions which directly concerned France; and the French are an intense people—especially where land or money is involved. There was one strip of land which was precious to the French beyond any price: the left bank of the river Rhine, which would save them from the terror which haunted every man, woman, and child in the nation. They wanted the Rhineland; they were determined to have it, and nothing could move them; they could argue about it day and night, forever and forever, world without end; they never wearied—and they never gave up. 

"Also they demanded the Sarre, with its valuable coal mines, to make up for those which the Germans had deliberately destroyed. The French had suffered all this bitter winter; other winters were coming, and who were going to suffer—the French, or the Germans who had invaded France, blown towns and cities to dust and rubble, carried away machinery and flooded mines? The French army held both the Sarre and the Rhineland, and General Foch was omnipresent at the Peace Conference, imploring, scolding, threatening, even refusing to obey Clemenceau, his civilian chief, when he saw signs of weakening on this point upon which the future of la patrie depended. 

"The British Prime Minister very generously took the side of the American President in this controversy. Alston said it was astonishing how reasonable Lloyd George could be when it was a question of concessions to be made by France. England was getting Mesopotamia and Palestine, Egypt and the German colonies; Australia was getting German New Guinea, and South Africa was getting German Southwest Africa. All this had been arranged by the help of the blessed word “mandatory,” plus the word “protectorate” in the case of Egypt. But where was the blessed word that would enable the French to fortify the west bank of the Rhine? That was not to be found in any English dictionary.

"Lanny got an amusing illustration of the British attitude through his friend Fessenden, a youth who was gracious and likable, and infected with “advanced” ideas. Lanny had been meeting Fessenden off and on for a couple of months, and they had become one of many channels through which the British and Americans exchanged confidences. Among a hundred other questions about which they chatted was the island of Cyprus, which Britain had “formally” taken over from Turkey early in the war. What were they going to do with it? “Self-determination of all peoples,” ran the “advanced” formula; so of course the people of Cyprus would be asked to whom they wished to belong. Young Fessenden had been quite sure that this would be done; but gradually he became less so, and the time came when he avoided the subject. When it became apparent that the island was “annexed” for good, young Fessenden in a burst of friendship confessed to Lanny that he had mentioned the matter to his chief and had been told to stop talking nonsense. If the British let the question of “self-determination” be raised, what would become of Gibraltar, and of Hong Kong, and of India? A young man who wanted to have a diplomatic career had better get revolutionary catchwords out of his head."
................................................................................................   


Beauty and her friend Emily Chattersworth tried to get blockade against Germany eased, for food for German babies. 

"The blockade was cruel, no doubt, but all war was cruel, and this was part of the war. The Germans hadn’t signed the peace, and the blockade was a weapon to make them sign; so the army chiefs said, and in wartime a nation took the advice of its general staff. Yes, it might be that German babies were dying; but how many French babies had died in the war, and how many French widows would have no more babies as a result of the German invasion? The famous critic who had been Mrs. Emily’s lover for a decade or more told her that every German baby was either a future invader of France, or else a mother of future invaders of France; and when he saw the look of dismay on her face he told her to be careful, that she was falling victim to German propaganda. It didn’t make any difference whether one got this propaganda direct from Germans, or from Americans who had been infected with it across the seas." ................................................................................................   


Wilson was sick and couldnt delegate. 

"A young member of the Crillon staff had been picked by the President and sent to Moscow. “Bill” Bullitt was his name, and he had taken with him a journalist friend, once famous as a “muckraker.” In the days when Lanny had been a toddler on the beach at Juan, this man had been traveling over the United States probing into political corruption, interviewing “bosses” and their big-business paymasters. Latterly his work had been forgotten, and Lanny had never heard the name of Lincoln Steffens until he was told that the “Bullitt mission” had set out for the land of the Reds. 

"They had come back with surprising news. Lenin wanted peace, and was ready to pay almost any price for it. He would give up all Siberia and the Urals, the Caucasus, Archangel, and Murmansk, even most of the Ukraine and White Russia. He would recognize all the White governments. But, alas, President Wilson had a severe headache that evening, and Colonel House also was ill. Bullitt saw Lloyd George first and told him the terms; Wilson, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, was so angry at this slight that he wouldn’t see Bullitt, he wouldn’t hear of peace with wicked Bolsheviks. And Lloyd George stood up in the House of Commons and denied that he had ever known anything about the Bullitt mission! 

"All this suited the French, who didn’t want peace under any circumstances. They were being beaten, but dared not admit it. They were having to back out of the Ukraine; their armies were becoming unreliable—this dreaded new kind of war, fought not merely with guns but with ideas. War-weary soldiers listened, and began to whisper that maybe this was the way to end matters. There were mutinies in the French fleet in the Black Sea, and when Colonel House was asked by newspapermen about Odessa, he replied: “There’s no more Odessa. The French are clearing out.” British troops, ordered to embark at Folkestone for Archangel, refused to go on board. No use to look for such events in newspapers, whether British or American; but the staff at the Majestic knew, and Fessenden gossiped to Lanny with wide-open startled eyes. “For God’s sake, what’s going to happen next?”"

"The British, who had repudiated the idea of self-determination for Cyprus, and the French, who had repudiated it for the Sarre, were enthusiastic about it for the Adriatic—only, of course, it must be President Wilson who would lay down the law. ... There were furious quarrels in the council halls, and the Italians packed up their belongings and threatened to leave, but delayed because they found that nobody cared.

"The dispute broke into the open in a peculiar way; the Big Three agreed that they would issue a joint statement opposing the Italian demands, and the American President carried out his part of the bargain, but Lloyd George and Clemenceau didn’t, so the Americans were put in the position of standing alone against Italy. Wilson’s picture was torn from walls throughout that country, and the face which had been all but worshiped was now caricatured sub specie diaboli. The Italian delegation went home, and the French were greatly alarmed; but the Americans all said: “Don’t worry, they’ll come back”; and they did, in a few days."

When German delegation was finally invited to sign the treaty, now ready:-

"The delegation arrived on the first of May, the traditional holiday of the Reds all over Europe. A general strike paralyzed all Paris that day: métro and trams and taxis, shops, theaters, cafés—everything. In the districts and suburbs the workers gathered with music and banners. They were forbidden to march, but they poured like a hundred rivers into the Place de la Concorde, and the staff of the Crillon crowded the front windows to watch the show. Never in his life had Lanny seen such a throng, or heard such deep and thunderous shouting; it was the challenge of the discontented, a voicing of all the sufferings which the masses had endured through four and a half years of war and as many months of peacemaking.

"Lanny couldn’t see his uncle in that human ocean, but he knew that every agitator in the city would be there. It was the day when they proclaimed the revolution, and would create it if they could. Captain Stratton had told how Marshal Foch was distributing close to a hundred thousand troops at strategic points. The Gardens of the Tuileries were a vast armed camp, with machine guns and even field-guns, and commanders who meant business. But with the example of Russia only a year and a half away, could the rank and file of the troops be depended on? Fear haunted everyone in authority throughout the civilized world on that distracted May Day of 1919.

"What the Crillon thought of the marchers was that they wanted to get into the streets where the jewelry shops were. The windows of these shops were protected by steel curtains for the day, but such curtains could be “jimmied,” and doubtless many of the crowd had the tools concealed under their coats. None knew this better than the commander of the squadron of cuirassiers, in sky-blue uniforms decorated with silver chains, who guarded the line in front of the hotel. The cavalrymen with drawn sabers were stretched two deep across the Rue Royale, blocking the crowd off; there was a milling and moiling, shrieks of men and women mingled with sounds of smashing window glass. Lanny watched this struggle going on for what seemed an hour, directly under the windows of the hotel. He saw men’s scalps split with saber cuts, and the blood pouring in streams over their faces and clothing. It was the nearest he had come to war; the new variety called the class struggle, which, according to his Uncle Jesse, would be waged for years or generations, as long as it might take.

"The Crillon staff took sides on the question as to the seriousness of the danger. Of course if the Reds succeeded in France, the work done by the Peace Conference would be wiped out. If it succeeded in Germany, the war might have to be fought again. The world might even see the strange spectacle of the Allies putting another Kaiser on the German throne! But apparently that wasn’t going to happen, for Kurt Eisner, the Red leader of Bavaria, had been murdered by army officers, a fate that had also befallen Liebknecht and “Red Rosa” Luxemburg in Berlin. The Social-Democratic government of Germany hated the Communists and was shooting them down in the streets; and this was rather confusing to American college professors who had been telling their classes that all Reds were of the same bloody hue.

"Strange indeed were the turns of history! A government with a Socialist saddlemaker at its head was sending to Versailles a peace delegation headed by the Imperial Minister of Foreign Affairs, Count von Brockdorff-Rantzau, member of the haughty old nobility who despised the German workers almost as much as he did the French politicians. He and his two hundred and fifty staff members were shut up in a stockade, and crowds came to look at them as they might at creatures in the zoo. The count hated them so that it made him physically ill. When he and his delegation came to the Trianon Palace Hotel to present their credentials, he became deathly pale, and his knees shook so that he could hardly stand. He did not try to speak. The spectacle was painful to the Americans, but Clemenceau and his colleagues gloated openly. “You see!” they said. “These are the old Germans! The ‘republic’ is just camouflage. The beast wants to get out of his cage."

At Versailles,

"When it came the turn of Count von Brockdorff-Rantzau to answer, he did not rise, but sat motionless in the big leather chair. Perhaps this was because he was ill; but in that case he might have said so, and it appeared that his action was a studied discourtesy. The Allies had put into the treaty a statement to be signed by the Germans, assuming sole responsibility for the war. This filled the count with such fury that his voice shook and he could hardly utter the words: “Such a confession on my part would be a lie.”"
................................................................................................   

"The Germans were continuing their bombardment of the treaty, and were getting the help of liberal and “radical” groups all over the world." 

Familiar, in light of the highly misplaced juxtaposition of liberal left and jihadists since fifties or so. 
................................................................................................  


Lincoln Steffens, discussing then current issues with the two young men, Lanny and Bill Bullitt:-

"Stef told about two French journalists who had come to him at the outset of the Peace Conference, obviously sent by Clemenceau or one of his agents, putting up to the Americans the question: Just how much of his Fourteen Points did President Wilson really mean, and how far were the Americans ready to go in support of these exalted principles? Did they mean to apply them to India, to Hong Kong, Shanghai, Gibraltar? Of course they didn’t; of course they meant to let the British Empire keep on going—so why not a French empire? This put the Americans in a hole, as it was meant to do. The whole world saw, the first thing President Wilson did when he reached London was to begin hedging on his “freedom of the seas,” making plain that it didn’t mean what everybody but statesmen had supposed it meant.

"“All right,” said Stef, “go in and fight; but don’t start until you know who your enemy is, and have some idea of his strength. The war on Russia which we denounce, and the peace treaty, are parts of the same imperialist program. The Polish Corridor, the new Baltic states, and all the rest of it, are meant to keep Germany and Russia apart, so that the British Empire and the French Empire can deal with them separately. That’s what empires do, and must do if they are to go on existing. What we Americans have to get clear is that the same forces are building the same kind of empire at home, and we’ll be doing the same thing as the British and French, because we have to have foreign trade, and outposts like the Panama Canal and Hawaii. So why not start reforming ourselves, Bill?”"
................................................................................................  


Lanny resigned along with his boss, Professor Alston, and went to visit England, at his friend Rick's home. 

"A basic question which they discussed at length: Could you by any possibility trust the Germans? Would they be willing to settle down, let bygones be bygones, take their part in a League of Nations, and help to build a sane and decent world? Or were they incurable militarists? If they got on their feet again, would they start arming right away, and throw the world into another Armageddon? Manifestly, the way you were going to treat them depended upon the answer to these questions. Lanny, having heard the subject debated from every possible angle, was able to appear very wise to these cultivated English folk. 

"Some had had experience with Germans, before and during the war, and had come to conclusions. Sir Alfred Pomeroy-Nielson, pacifist and radical of five years back, had now become convinced that Germany would have to be split up, in order to keep her from dominating Europe. On the other hand Rick, who had done the fighting and might have been expected to hate the people who had crippled him, declared that the dumb politicians on both sides were to blame; the German and the English people would have to find a way to get rid of these vermin simultaneously. With his usual penetration, Rick said that the one thing you couldn’t do was to follow both policies at the same time. You couldn’t repress Germany à la française with your right hand, and conciliate her à l’américaine with your left. That, he added, was exactly what the dumb politicians were attempting."

One has to wonder at the author's almost prophetic perception, since this book dates 1940, a few years before Germany was divided.  ................................................................................................  

Lanny met His father in London, who asked about the conference. 

"Yes, Robbie knew all that. Robbie knew that right now Britain and France were squabbling behind the scenes over the oil in Mesopotamia. Robbie knew as well as the Crillon that nothing in the world but fear of Germany would keep Britain and France from turning against each other in that dispute. Robbie knew that the two nations were still trying to hold on to Baku with its oil, and had even succeeded in having a vessel flying the American flag in the Caspian Sea, in the effort to overawe the Bolsheviks and keep them out of their own country’s oil fields. And knowing all that—why was Robbie so disturbed when his son named the big oil promoters among the enemies of a sane peace?

"Surely Lanny couldn’t have watched modern war without realizing that oil was vital to a nation! Not a wheel in a Budd plant could turn without it; and what was going to become of America, what would be the good of dreams about liberty, democracy, or other sorts of ideals, if we failed to get our share of a product for which there was no substitute? All over the world the British were grabbing the territories in which there was any chance of oil; they were holding these as reserves and buying our American supply for immediate use—it was their deliberate policy.

"“Look at Mexico!” exclaimed the father. “Right at our own doors they are intriguing, undermining us, freezing us out. Every official in the Mexican government is for sale and the British are there with the cash. That is ‘law and order,’ ‘freedom of trade,’ ‘peace’—all those fine phrases! Everywhere an American businessman goes his British competitor is there with his government behind him—and we might as well quit and let them have the world. Fine phrases make pleasant week-end parties, Lanny, but they don’t lubricate machinery.”

"Did Lanny realize why the German armies had so suddenly begun clamoring for an armistice? It wasn’t because they couldn’t fall back and defend a new line; it wasn’t because of revolts at home; it was because the Rumanian oil field had been destroyed, and the surrender of Bulgaria had cut them off from the southeast, and there was no more oil to run the tanks and trucks without which armies were stalled."
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Lanny went with Robbie to Paris on his way home, and they were in Paris on the last day of the treaty signing ultimatum.  

"An Austrian peace delegation had come, and a Bulgarian one, and were submitting with good grace to having their feathers pulled out while they were still alive. Not a squawk from them; but the Germans had been keeping up a God-awful clamor for six or seven weeks; all over their country mass meetings of protest, and Clemenceau remarking in one of his answers that apparently they had not yet realized that they had lost a war. Their delegation was kept inside their stockade and told that it was for their safety; some of them, traveling back and forth to Germany, were stoned, and for this Clemenceau made the one apology of his career.

"The Social-Democrats were ruling the beaten country. It was supposed to have been a revolution, but a polite and discreet one which had left the nobility all their estates and the capitalists all their industries. It was, so Steffens and Herron had explained to Lanny, a political, not an economic revolution. A Socialist police chief was obligingly putting down the Reds in Berlin, and for this the Allies might have been grateful but didn’t seem to be. Stef said they couldn’t afford to let a Socialist government succeed at anything; it would have a bad effect upon the workers in the Allied lands. It was a time of confusion, when great numbers of people didn’t know just what they wanted, or if they did they took measures which got them something else. 

"In the eastern sky the dark cloud continued to lower; and here, also, what the Allies did only made matters worse. The Big Four had recognized Admiral Kolchak as the future ruler of Siberia—a land whose need for a navy was somewhat restricted. This land-admiral had agreed to submit his policies to a vote of the Russian people, but meanwhile he was proceeding to kill as many of them as possible and seize their farms. The result was that the peasants went into hiding, and as soon as the admiral’s armies moved on they came out and took back their farms. The same thing was happening all over the Ukraine, where General Denikin had been chosen as the Russian savior; and now another general, named Yudenich, was being equipped to capture Petrograd. They didn’t dare to give these various saviors any British, French, or American troops, because of mutinies; but they would furnish officers, and armaments which were charged up as “loans,” and which the peasants of Russia were expected to repay in return for being deprived of the land. 

"At any rate, that was the way Stef described matters to Lanny Budd; and Lanny found this credible, because Stef had been there and the others hadn’t. The youth had gone to call on this strange little man, whose point of view was so stimulating to the mind. Lanny didn’t tell his father about this visit, and quieted his conscience by saying, what use making Robbie unhappy to no purpose? Lanny wasn’t ever going to become a Red—he just wanted to hear all sides and understand them."

Events led to a showdown between Robbie and Jesse. 

"Lanny saw that he hadn’t accomplished anything, so he sat for a while, listening to all the things his father didn’t want him to hear. This raging argument became to him a symbol of the world in which he would have to live the rest of his life. His uncle was the uplifted fist of the workers, clenched in deadly menace. As for Robbie, he had proclaimed himself the man behind the machine gun; the man who made it, and was ready to use it, personally, if need be, to mow down the clenched uplifted fists! As for Lanny, he didn’t have to be any symbol, he was what he was: the man who loved art and beauty, reason and fair play, and pleaded for these things and got brushed aside. It wasn’t his world! It had no use for him! When the fighting started, he’d be caught between the lines and mowed down."

Lanny asked his uncle to leave. 

"“Please don’t argue any more—just go!” 

"“All right,” said the painter, half angry, half amused. “Look after him—he’s going to have his hands full putting down the Russian revolution!” 

"“Thanks,” said Lanny. “I’ll do my best.” 

"“You heard what I had to say to him!” 
"“Yes, I heard it.” “And you see that he has no answer!” 

"“Yes, yes, please go!” Lanny kept shoving his exuberant relative out into the hall. 

"A parting shot: “Mark my words, Robbie Budd—it’s the end of your world!”"

Hence the title, or here's the title worked into the story. 

Robbie speaks with Lanny.

“A man has to learn to have discretion; to take care of himself. You want friends, Lanny—but also you want to know where to draw a line. If people find out they can sponge on you, there’s no limit to it. One wants you to sign a note and bankrupt yourself. One gets drunk and wants you to sober him up. One is in a mess with a woman, and you have to get her off his neck. You’re a soft-shell crab, that every creature in the sea can bite a chunk out of. Nobody respects you, nobody thinks of anything but to use you.” 

"“I’ll try to learn from this, Robbie.” Lanny really meant it; but his main thought was: Soothe him down; cool him off! 

"“You have a friend who’s a German,” continued the father. “All right, make up your mind what it means. As long as you live, Germany’s going to be making war on France, and France on her. It doesn’t matter what they call it, business or diplomacy, reparations, any name—Germany’s foes will be trying to undermine her and she will be fighting back. If Kurt Meissner is going to be a musician, that’s one thing, but if he’s going to be a German agent, that’s another. Sooner or later you’ve got to make up your mind what it means to have such a friend—and your mother’s got to make up her mind what it means to have such a lover.

"“Tomorrow night I leave for the Côte d’Azur, and lie on the sand and get sunburned and watch the world come to an end!””
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Between Two Worlds

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The title of the second in the series is from Matthew Arnold verses 

"“Wandering between two worlds, one dead, 
The other powerless to be born.”"


This volume continues from where the World's End left off, it's now peace and time for people to find their lives, love, mates, work, roles. Between Two Worlds deals mostly with this on the level of characters in forefront, while the historic events and personages are woven into the story in background, often meeting.

Wonder if U.S. was shocked at the love stories described by the author, or did they disapprove severely but put it all in the file labelled European ways, and made a note to keep clear?

But one very distinct use made of one of the said love stories, French upper class style, comes later in the book, when Lanny is travelling in Italy for privacy with his inamorata. This love story begins almost immediately, after Beauty and Kurt are settled for present. Lanny gets Bienvenu ready with a separate studio for Kurt who is serious about music, and Beauty brings him back from Spain.

"Lanny was relieved to find that Kurt did not carry the late international unhappiness into the realm of art; he was willing to listen to English and French and even to Italian music. But he had severe standards; he liked music that was structurally sound and hated that which was showy. Presently Lanny began to note that it was the great German composers who had the desired qualities and the foreign ones who lacked them. Lanny said nothing about this, because he was trying so hard to please his friend.

"They had been able to get only a small upright piano in Spain, but still he had been able to extract a tremendous racket from it. From watching him rather than from listening, Beauty had come to understand that he was trying to find something to take the place of the war; trying to vent his rage and despair, his love for his own people, his grief at their humiliation and defeat. Watching his face while he played, Beauty lived through her agonies with Marcel, and then those with Kurt, shifting back and forth between the German soul and the French."

"All three of the great B’s of German music, Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, were calling to Kurt Meissner to carry on their tradition. Lanny talked about them with such intensity of feeling that the German was deeply touched. The new Kurt of political bitterness seemed to fade and dissolve, and the old Kurt of moral fervor and devotion came back to life. When in the twilight they descended the slope, it seemed to Lanny that the war was really over and the soul life of Europe beginning again."

Rick was crippled in war, had a wife and son, but worked at writing, and began successfully.

"The baronet’s son, brilliant and versatile, was also trying his hand at poetry. His own severest critic, he wouldn’t send any of it to Lanny. Nobody could possibly publish it, he declared, because it was so bitter. He was one of those many heroes who were not satisfied with what they had accomplished by their sacrifices and were questioning the whole universe to know who was to blame. Was it the stupid old men who had sat in the council chambers and sent the young men out to be drowned in mud and blood? Was it all mankind, which was able to invent and build machines but not to control them? Was it God, who had made men wrong—and why? Rick quoted four lines from a poem he called After War:

""Are nations like the men they make?
Or was it God who fashioned men?
O God, who willed the clay awake,
Will now to sleeping clay again!"

"It happened that in London, at the home of Lady Eversham-Watson, Lanny had met a magazine editor, and, without telling Rick, he sent the poem After War and was delighted when the editor offered to publish it and pay two guineas.

"Kurt agreed that the verses were good; and Jerry Pendleton, sarcastic fellow, remarked—not in the presence of Kurt—that any German would be glad to hear that an Englishman regretted having licked him. Jerry was one doughboy who had no sorrows over the Versailles treaty, and declared that “Old Whiskers,” as he irreverently called Kaiser Wilhelm, was a lot better off sawing cordwood at Doom."

Rick's son Alfy is few days older to Lanny's half sister Marceline, and Lanny has told the two mums to matchmake, before they meet when Rick brings his family to Juan-Les-Pins at Lanny's invitation.

"Rick’s typing machine out to a rustic table every morning when the weather was fair. There he would sit alone, and his rage against human stupidity would fan itself white hot, and molten words would pour from the typewriter, all but burning the pages. Strange as it might seem, the more he lashed the damned human race the better they liked it; such was the mood of the time—all thinking men agreed that the peoples of Europe had made fools of themselves, and it was proof of advanced views to abuse the “old men,” the “brass hats,” the “patrioteers,” the “merchants of death.”

"It was as if you had been on a terrible “bat” the night before, and had got into a row with your best friend and blacked both his eyes. Next morning you were apologetic, and willing to let him have the best of all the arguments. So it was that both Lanny and Rick dealt with their German friend; the Englishman talked as if it was really quite embarrassing to have won a war, and of course what he wrote about British bungling pleased Kurt entirely—only he found it difficult to understand how British editors were willing to pay money for it!"

"Rick took a couple of newspapers and half a dozen weeklies, and would lie propped up in bed reading and making notes. The war, however many bad things it had done, had brought it about that British politics were French politics and German politics and Russian politics and American politics. All the nations of the earth had been thrown into one stew-pot, there to simmer slowly. Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble!

"The Turks were still slaughtering Armenian peasants. Civil war was still raging in Russia, the Whites now being driven in rout to all points of the compass. In Siberia a freight-train loaded with Reds was wandering aimlessly upon an eight-thousand-mile track, the locked-in prisoners perishing of starvation and disease. The Polish armies, invading Russia, were still dreaming of world empire. The White Finns were killing tens of thousands of Red Finns. The Rumanians were killing Red Hungarians. There were insurrections and mass strikes in Germany, a plague of labor revolts in France and Britain, millions unemployed in every great nation, famine everywhere in Europe, flu in the western half and typhus in the eastern.

"When, in the middle of 1919, President Wilson and his staff had left the Peace Conference, that body had stayed on to settle the destinies of Austria and Hungary and Bulgaria and Turkey. It was still holding sessions, with despairing peoples waiting upon its decisions; when these were announced they were generally out of date, because events had moved beyond them. The British and French statesmen were agreed that Italy should not have Fiume, but an Italian poet with a glory complex had raised a revolt and seized the city. All Statesmen agreed that the Bolshevik madness must be put down, but meanwhile it throve and spread, and mountains of supplies which the Allies had furnished to the White generals were being captured and used by the Reds. The statesmen decided that Turkey should lose most of her empire, but the Turks dissented and retired into their mountains, and who had an army to go after them? The French had seized the land of poor Emir Feisal—all but those parts which had oil; the British had these, and there was a bitter wrangle, and it looked as if the alliance which had won the war would break up before it finished dividing the spoils."

Robbie visited.

"You could see Kurt’s musical stature growing, Lanny said; and Robbie listened politely, but without much enthusiasm. Robbie had been to Yale, and had got vaccinated with culture, but it hadn’t “taken”; he knew a lot of college songs and popular stuff, but left highbrow music to those who pretended to understand it. Maybe Lanny did; in any case, his father was satisfied if it kept him happy and out of mischief.

"One important question: Was Kurt having much to do with Germans? Lanny answered: “No. What could he do, anyhow?” The father didn’t know, but he said there would be war of one sort or another between France and Germany so long as those two nations existed. And certainly Bienvenu must not become a secret headquarters of the Germans."

"Robbie, who had seen Rick in Paris just before he went out to his near-death, had admired his grit then and admired it now. He told Lanny that was one fellow who must have help whenever he needed it."

"On the center table lay newspapers telling with shocked headlines that the French and British armies had occupied Constantinople, which was threatened with revolution and might plunge the world into another war. When one said “another war” one didn’t count the dozen or so small wars which were going on all the time, and which one had come to take for granted; one meant another war involving one’s own land; one meant—horror of horrors—a war in which the late Allies might be fighting against each other!"

"The old Turkish Empire had collapsed, and a new Turkey was going to be born, with all the benefits of modern civilization, such as oil wells and tanks and pipelines, not to mention copper mines in Armenia and potash works on the Dead Sea. The only question was, which benevolent nation was going to have the pleasure of conferring these blessings upon the Turks? (This wasn’t Robbie’s phrase; it was Rick’s rephrasing.) The British had got hold of all the oil, but the French had got Syria and the Hejaz and were trying to control the routes of the pipelines; behind the scenes there was a furious quarrel going on, with screaming and calling of names in the nasal French language.

"Now suddenly came this coup d’état in Constantinople. The benighted Turks didn’t want to accept benefits from either Britain or France, but wanted to dig their own oil wells and keep the oil; so the quarreling friends were obliged to act together in spite of their wishes. Lloyd George was talking about a holy war, in which the Christian Greeks would put down the heathen Turks; but what effect would that have upon the several hundred millions of Moslems who lived under the union Jack or near it?

"Robbie pointed out that a certain Greek trader by the name of Basil Zaharoff had just been made Knight Commander of the Bath in England, a high honor rarely extended to aliens; Zaharoff controlled Vickers, the great munitions industry of Britain, and had saved the Empire at a net profit which people said was a quarter of a billion dollars—though Robbie Budd considered the figure exaggerated. Zaharoff was a friend of Lloyd George, and was reported to be one of his financial backers, which was only natural, considering how much money a politician had to have and how much governmental backing an international financier had to have. Zaharoff’s hatred of the Turks was one passion of his life that he didn’t have to hide."

Robbie now had Zaharoff as a partner in his oil venture in Arabia, and he took Lanny along for a meeting at Monte Carlo.

"He defended the right of the Greek peoples to recover the lands taken long ago by the Turks, and said that he was insisting that the Allies should put the Turks out of Europe for good and all. Once more Lanny sat behind the scenes of the world puppet-show and saw where the strings led and who pulled them.

"He learned that the strings reached even to that far-off land of liberty which he had been taught to consider his own. The munitions king wanted to know about the prospects of the election of a Republican president of the United States; he knew the names of the prominent aspirants, and listened attentively while Robbie described their personalities and connections. When Zaharoff heard that the Budd clan expected to have a voice in selecting a dependable man, he remarked: “You will be needing funds and may call on me for my share. Robbie hadn’t expected that, and said so, whereupon the master of Europe replied: “When I invest my money in an American company, I become an American, don’t I?” It was a remark that Lanny would never forget.”

Robbie discussed Lanny's need of a match as he departed.

"Budding females were trained for the marriage market, they were dressed for it, they learned to walk and talk and dance and flirt for it. In the presence of their highly developed arts the unhappy male creature was as helpless as a moth in a candle-flame. “You’re going to have a hard time finding one who will please Beauty,” said Robbie, with a smile; “but all the same, don’t fail to have her advice, because that’s her department.”

"“What I want,” said Lanny, “is to learn something worth while, and meet some woman who is interested in the same things.”

"“It can happen,” said Robbie. “But most of the time what the woman is thinking about is making you think she’s interested. And if you’re fooled it can play the devil with your life.”"

"The Duchesse de Meuse-Montigny was giving a very grand garden-party; and since Beauty’s costumes were all hopelessly out of date she went in to Nice and had M. Claire fit her with something worthy of the occasion. Lanny was supplied with a light worsted suit of that spring’s cut. ....  It was just after a devastating war, when young males were scarce and young females ravenous. Inside the white marble palace a colored band was thumping, and Lanny would take the would-be brides in his arms one by one, sampling their charms symbolically, and Beauty would watch out of the corner of her eye and ask questions about the one in pink organdy or the one in white tulle with yellow shoulder-bows, and seldom be satisfied with what she learned.

"What did she expect? Well, obviously, any woman who aspired to marry Lanny Budd had to be beautiful. How could he endure to have her about the house otherwise? She had to be rich—not just comfortably, but something super and solid, no fly-by-night fortune based on speculation. There were heiresses all over the place, and why not cultivate them? Lanny had told Beauty of Tennyson’s Northern Farmer, and she endorsed his formula: “Doänt thou marry fur munny, but goä wheer munny is!” Also, it would be safer if the chosen one belonged to an established family, and could prove it by Debrett. Finally, she would have to be clever, almost a bluestocking, otherwise how could she keep from boring Lanny? Even his own mother couldn’t do that!"

Emily Chattersworth invited him to lunch with a partner of her late husband and his wife, accompanied by a pretty and young niece rich in her own right.

"She was a pleasant enough girl, and Lanny could imagine himself pitching in and making himself agreeable and perhaps winning her; then he would be fixed for life, he wouldn’t ever have to work. But it didn’t seem to him like much fun, and the girl was entitled to better luck, though she would probably not have it. How many men were there who could come that close to several million dollars in one lump and not think it was cheap at the price? Such things subjected human nature to too great a strain!"

There was another friend of the hostess at lunch, Marie. 

"Madame de Bruyne said that she was sorry to have to bother her friend to send her home. So of course it was Lanny’s duty to offer to drive her.

"“Oh, but I live far to the west of Cannes,” said the French lady with the sad brown eyes.

"“I like to drive,” Lanny replied. It was kind of him, and Mrs. Emily knew that he was always kind—it explained why she was taking the trouble to find him a rich wife."

They connected on levels of mind and spirit.

"He had met society ladies who would pretend to have read any book you mentioned; but when this one didn’t know something she asked about it and listened to what you said."

"It seemed that he had never met anyone with whom he shared such quick understandings; their ideas fitted together like mortised joints in a well-built house. When he played happy music she forgot her grief, and their spirits danced together over flower-strewn meadows. When he played MacDowell’s An Old Trysting Place, her eyes were misty, and she did not have to talk. Lanny thought: “I have found a friend!”"

Beauty asked about the heiress and wasn't pleased about Marie being there.

"“She doesn’t talk much. She’s one of the saddest-looking women I ever saw. She’s grieving over a brother that she lost in the war.”

"“She has more than that to worry about,” remarked Beauty.

"“What else?”

"“Emily says her husband is one of those elderly men who have to have virgins.”

"“Oh!” exclaimed Lanny, shocked.

"“And she isn’t a virgin,” added Beauty, with unnecessary emphasis."

"“You had a talk with her?”

"“I drove her home, and played the piano for her. I met her aunt, Madame Scelles.”

"“She’s the widow of a professor at the Sorbonne.”

"“I knew they were cultivated people,” said Lanny. “They have very refined manners.”

"“For heaven’s sake be careful!” exclaimed the mother. “There’s nothing more dangerous than an unhappily married woman. Remember, she’s as old as your mother.”

"Lanny chuckled. “As old as my mother admits!”"

Beauty confronted Lanny and asked if he was in love with Marie, which put the thought in his head - so strangely enough, or perhaps it's common, the older generation points out what they consider danger and the younger, not having noticed it till then, promptly dives in. Lanny discovered that he was in fact in love and convinced Marie that her feelings need not cause shame.
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Rick was asked by an editor to go to San Remo and write about a conference, and Lanny drove him.

"It was all so familiar to Lanny Budd, it was as if he had had an elaborate nightmare and now was starting it all over again. When he made this remark to a journalist from America, the man advised him to get used to this nightmare, because he would be riding it several times every year for how long nobody could say. The nations would be wrangling and arguing over the Versailles treaty until they were at war again. Newspaper men are notoriously cynical.

"The Senate of the United States having refused to ratify the treaty or to join the League of Nations, Lanny’s country had no representative at San Remo, not even an unofficial observer. But of course the American press had a large delegation, and among these were men whom Lanny had come to know in Paris, where he had served as a sort of secret pipeline through which news was permitted to leak. These men were under obligations to him, and greeted him cordially and took him and his aviator friend into their confidence. Lanny had advised Rick to say nothing about his proposed article, but to make his way with Americans on his war record, and with his compatriots on the basis of being the son of Sir Alfred Pomeroy-Nielson, Bart. Rick wouldn’t be violating any confidences, because these correspondents were cabling “spot news” for various deadlines, and by the time a magazine article could appear they would be off on some other assignment."

They met the other secretaries Lanny knew.

"Rick remarked what a pleasant place the statesmen had picked out for themselves; whereupon Fessenden chimed in: “Did you hear what Lloyd George said to the premiers? A red-hot one! ‘Well, gentlemen, we are in the Garden of Eden, and I wonder who will play the snake!’”

"The San Remo conference had assembled amid direful forebodings. Many bitter disputes had arisen among the former Allies: over the remains of the Turkish Empire—Constantinople and Armenia, Syria and Palestine, the Hejaz, and especially Mesopotamia with its treasure of oil, vital alike to British, French, and Italian navies; over Russia and its Bolshevik government, and the war against it which had collapsed; over the cordon sanitaire, and Poland invading Russia and most of her neighbors at the same time; over German reparations and how they were to be shared; above all, over the new French invasion of the Rhineland, and the risk that France was taking of dragging Europe into another war.

"There had recently been an attempted revolt of German reactionaries, known as the “Kapp Putsch.” It had been put down by a general strike of the German workers, and there had followed a Communist revolt in the Ruhr, and the Socialist government of Germany had sent in troops to put that down. The move was a technical violation of the treaty of Versailles, and the French army had promptly seized a couple of German towns on the far side of the Rhine. Were they going to conquer their ancient enemy all over again, and were they expecting to get British sanction? This was the question these budding diplomats discussed with solemn faces. They told of the firm resolve of their chiefs that the French must be made to back down, and allow trade to be resumed and the German people to be saved from starvation and chaos.

"To Lanny it seemed an odd thing to hear these official persons saying the very things for which the liberals on the American staff had been called “Pinkos” and troublemakers. So rapidly had opinion changed under the pressure of events! The British were now giving all their efforts to trying to get blockades lifted and trade started. But the French still lived under the shadow of a dreadful fear. Was German militarism to be allowed to come back? And if it did, would France again have Britain’s help? With the French it was dominate or be dominated—and the moment they took to dominating, the British would begin giving help to the Germans, raising them up as a counter-force to France."

Interesting detail:-

"While Rick lay propped up on the bed making notes of what he had heard, Lanny would go out and wander through the narrow streets where old pirates from Africa had charged up the hills, slaughtering the inhabitants or dragging them off in chains."

Thus the earliest known records of Arab slavers using human detergent to whitewash their future generations. For these pirates could only be from coastal North Africa, and Arabs.

Lanny liked to know opinions from the other side, and drove Rick to a trattoria where workers dined.

"It might have been difficult for a stiff young Englishman, brought up in the public school tradition, to get into the confidence of such a person; but Lanny made it easy for him. He bought an extra bottle, and when others perceived that free wine and free conversation were available, they moved over to listen and take part. Horny dark fists were clenched and raucous voices proclaimed that a change was coming in Italy, and soon; what the workers had done in Russia was not so bad as le gazzette capitaliste had made it seem. Already many of the factories in Milan and Turin and other cities were in the hands of the workers, who would be running them for themselves and not for the padroni."

Lanny recognises Barbara Pugliese, whose companion has deliberately insulted a heavy set man at the table next to them, and Rick wanting to meet her, they go find them in another eatery close by; Barbara informs them about the goon whom her companion insulted, someone poor whom her comrades had taken pity on.

"Lanny mentioned that they had been witnesses of the recent fracas, and Barbara’s face lost all its gentleness. “That is the most abominable little wretch that I have met upon this earth!” she told them. “When I first knew him in Milan, where I was an official of the party, he was a poor waif who came to meetings, a sick beggar who haunted our headquarters to sponge upon the kindness of members. Now and then someone would give him food—just because it is impossible to eat with any satisfaction while a starving dog is cringing by the table. You cannot imagine the misery of this ragged and homeless one, lamenting the hopelessness of his fate, the worthlessness of himself, the pains he suffered from syphilis—this, I imagine, would not be considered quite good taste in England?”

"“Rather not,” said Rick, to whom the question was addressed.

"“We of the party of course have to allow for the degradation of the workers. It is our duty to lift them up and teach them, and so we aided this poor Benito—the name is Spanish and means ‘Blessed One’ and is freely bestowed by pious mothers. So we taught the favorite of heaven the philosophy of brotherhood and solidarity, and he proved to be quick at learning phrases and using them in speeches. It was not long before he was addressing the workers, denouncing all capitalists and clamoring that their throats should be cut. There was only one person in the world to whom he could not give courage, and that was his mournful self. There is a pun I used to make upon his name, which is Mussolini. I would leave out one of the s’s. The Italian word muso means—I cannot recall the French word, but it is when a child has his feelings hurt, and he will not play, but makes a face very ugly—”

"“Boudant,” supplied Lanny, and added for Rick’s benefit: “Pouting.”

"“That is it,” said Barbara. “And so Benito Musolini means Blessed Little Pouter. In that way I would try to tease him out of his self-pity—and you see how in the end I succeeded. His poor thin cheeks have filled out, he wears well-tailored clothes and orates in the trattoire.”

"“How does he manage this?” inquired Rick, thinking of his “human interest.”

"“He became the editor of the Socialist paper in Milan; and when the British agents or French came to him he took their gold. The paper changed its tone overnight; and when the party kicked him out, he got more gold to start a paper of his own and to denounce his former comrades as traitors to la patria. Now he is here getting material for articles about the conference. He is all for the sacro egoismo; he preaches to the starving workers the glory of holding Fiume and seizing the Dalmatian coast, and that it is their sublime destiny to help fill a sea of blood upon which the Italian navy may sail to world empire. Never has there been such a transformation in a man—you should see him on the platform, how he has learned to thrust out his chin and swell up his chest—our Blessed Little Pouter.”

"“You are making a better pun than you know,” put in Lanny. “There is a kind of pigeon which swells up its chest in such a way, and by a strange chance is called a pouter.”

"The woman was delighted, and told her friend about it—uno Colombo! He laughed with glee, and learned to say it in English—Benito Musolini—Blessed Little Pouter Pigeon!"

Rick talked to Barbara about what she thought of current situation, and she elucidated about need of coal that British woukdnt supply, so trade with Russia was essential.

"They discussed the theories of syndicalism, or labor-union control of industry. Barbara hated every form of government; She would trust no politicians, whatever label they gave themselves. Rick pointed out that in Russia the workers had a strong government; syndicalism appeared to have merged with Bolshevism, which put everything into the hands of the state. Barbara attributed this to the civil war, which was really an invasion of Russia by the capitalist nations. Government control of industry might be a temporary necessity, but she didn’t like it. Rick ventured the guess that if she were to go to Russia she mightn’t find what she expected.

"The woman rebel had one argument to which she would return. Could the workers make a worse mess of the world than their masters had done? Look at what they had made of Europe! One more such holocaust and the Continent would be a wilderness inhabited by savages wearing skins and hiding in caves. “Capitalism is war,” declared Barbara Pugliese; “its peace is nothing but a truce. If once the workers own the tools of production, they do not produce for profit, but for their own use, and trade becomes free exchange and not a war for markets.”

"“I have to admit,” said the interviewer, “that our British labor movement seems to have the sanest program at present.” Lanny found that a startling opinion to come from a baronet’s son. Was Eric Vivian Pomeroy-Nielson turning into a Pink? And if he did, what would Robbie make of it?"

Rick wrote his article while Lanny played tennis with Fessenden and others.

"When Rick worked, he worked like one possessed, and Lanny read the manuscript page by page and kept his friend cheered by extravagant praises.

"Really it was a first-class article, written by a man who had been behind the scenes and hadn’t been fooled by official propaganda. Rick described the loveliness of the background of the conference; was it the region referred to by the hymn-writer, where “every prospect pleases, and only man is vile”? Here were flower-covered hills, roads lined with palm trees, hedges of roses and oleanders, cactus gardens and towering aloes; and here were elderly politicians whose minds were labyrinths full of snares for the feet of even their friends and allies. Rick cited official statements which had gone all over the earth and which were at a variance with facts. He showed how the old men used words to take the place of realities, until for their peace of mind they had to force themselves to believe their own propaganda.

"The French wanted to weaken Germany, while the British wanted to raise Germany so that they could trade with her: that in one sentence was what all the conferring was about. They had effected a compromise by which they were going to do both at the same time. Privately they admitted that the Versailles treaty was unenforceable, but they solemnly told the world that it was not to be revised; they would “interpret” it—which was another word. They would bluff, and overlook the fact that no one heeded their bluffs. They had announced that they would not discuss the question of Russia, and the next day they proceeded to discuss it. They denounced Germany for not having delivered coal to France, but at the same time they pledged France to take no action about it. The French were helping to drive the Turks from Constantinople, but at the same time they were arming the Turks against the British; gun-running and smuggling were going on all along the Arabian coasts, and wherever else any traders saw a chance for profit."
................................................................................................    


Rick's two articles were praised by the editor, published, and were paid for, ten pounds each.

"This happy outcome gave the American a fresh understanding of the English people and their peculiar ways. It just hadn’t seemed possible to him that an English magazine would publish such an indictment of English policy and procedure. That they paid for it, and held out the promise of a career to the man who wrote it, was something to be graven in one’s memory. You might paint the crimes of the British Empire as black as you pleased, but you would never say anything worse than Britons themselves would never say any-proclaiming in public meetings; and little by little the opinions of that “saving remnant,” the agitation which they maintained, would penetrate the case-hardened minds of elder statesmen, and British policy would be brought into line with the conscience of humanity."

Another conference, at Spa. Lanny and Rick went, dropping Nina and Alfy at channel crossing.

"A new stage of world reconstruction was beginning at this ancient center of healing, for here came representatives of the new Socialist government of Germany. It must be admitted that they looked much like the old-time Prussians, and from their buccal cavities emerged the same guttural sounds; but they were speaking for a republic, and declaring their desire to serve the whole German people, not just a military caste. They expected no cordiality, and their expectations were fulfilled; ... The main grievance was that the Allies could not be persuaded to fix the amount of the indemnities, and thus the Germans could not know where they stood in any business affairs. Rick was prepared to concede that, but the official answerer of questions went on to contend that the treaty of Versailles was so bad that it justified the Germans in refusing to comply with any of the terms that did not seem fair to them. The young Englishman’s patience gave out, and he asked: “What do you want the Allies to do—fight the war over again?” It seemed to Lanny that the method of “conference” didn’t always work as the liberals expected!"

"Another subject which was causing embittered controversy was the failure of the Germans to surrender war materials to the Allies as the treaty had provided. Concerning this there could be no argument—at least from the Allies’ point of view. Unless the war was to be fought over again, for what did Germany need heavy guns and bombing planes? In vain would suave confidential agents whisper into the ears of Allied staff members that German armies might be needed to put down the subhuman Bolshevist conspiracy that was establishing itself in eastern Europe. The French wanted this done, but by their own allies, the Poles and other border peoples; they wouldn’t let any Russian territories be occupied by Germans—their cordon sanitaire was double-fronted, to keep Germans from going east as well as to keep Russians from coming west."

Lanny went west, and drove with Marie to Brittany and Loire, the honeymoon being first happiness for Marie. They brought their families into know, planning meeting when her son's returned to school. Kurt was happy being a composer, Beauty and Marceline in his discipline. Kurt read from the library bequeathed by Eli Budd to Lanny.

"Kurt said that Americans pursued metaphysical activities in the same way that they hunted wild Indians in their forests, each man picking out his own tree or rock and aiming his own gun. Said Lanny: “I suppose the German philosophers march in well-ordered ranks, thinking in unison and armed with government subsidies.” Kurt laughed, but all the same he thought that was the way to set about any undertaking, military or metaphysical."

"He received letters from his family that would leave him in a state of depression for days. The situation in Germany was appalling; there appeared to be an almost complete absence of necessities, and no way to get industry or trade started. The government could exist only by printing paper money, and as a result retail prices were six or eight times what they had been before the war. In Stubendorf it wasn’t so bad, because this was an agricultural district, and crops were in the ground, and some harvested; so the Meissners had food. But the workers in the towns were starving, and there was chaos in most of Upper Silesia, which didn’t know whether it was Polish or German, so people who should have been at work were arguing and fighting over the forthcoming plebiscite. There were “polling police,” half German and half Polish, supposed to be keeping order, but much of the time they were fighting among themselves. There was that terrible Korfanty, half patriot and half gangster, who was inciting the Poles; in August he tried to seize the whole of Upper Silesia by force, and there was a state of disorder for several weeks. To Herr Meissner, comptroller-general of Schloss Stubendorf, order was the breath of life, and to Herr Meissner’s son it was gall in the mouth to read of indignities which his father and family were suffering at the hands of a people whom they regarded as sub-human."

Johannes Robin called from Cannes and was invited to visit and lunch.

"Kurt said he had no prejudice against Jews when they were great moral philosophers like Spinoza or joyous musicians like Mendelssohn, but he didn’t care for those who coined money out of the needs of his people. However, it was necessary to take the visitor into the secret of Kurt’s identity, for of course he would remember the name, and could hardly fail to penetrate the disguise of a Swiss music-teacher."

"They sat down to a lunch upon which Leese had expended her talents, and the guest started in right away to say what happiness his elder son had derived from a short violin composition of Kurt’s which Lanny had taken the trouble to copy out and send to Rotterdam. Hansi had played it at a recital at the conservatory, where many had inquired concerning its author. Then Kurt knew that he was dealing with no ordinary money-grubber, and he listened while Mr. Robin told about his wonderful first-born, who was now sixteen, and possessed such fire and temperament that he was able to draw out of pieces of dead wood and strips of pig’s intestines the intensest expressions of the soul of man.

"That darling Hansi, about whom Lanny had been hearing for seven years, had grown tall but very thin, because he worked so hard that it was difficult to bring him to meals; he had large soulful eyes and wavy black hair, in short, the very picture of an inspired young musician. “Oh, M. Dalcroze”—so Kurt was addressed in the household—“I wish that you might hear him and play with him! And you, Lanny—he talks about nothing so often as when shall he meet Lanny Budd, and do I think that Lanny Budd will like him, even though he is Jewish and so many people have prejudices against his race.”

"“Listen, Mr. Robin,” the long-talked-of Lanny Budd remarked, on the impulse of the moment, “why don’t you let those two boys come to see us?”

"“Oh, but I would be delighted!” replied the father.

"“What are they doing now?”

"“Now they are in the country, where we have a lovely place. But Hansi will practice every day. In September they go back to school.”

"“In September I have an engagement too,” said Lanny.

"“But why not let them come now and spend a week or two with us?”

"“Would you really like to have them?” The Jewish gentleman looked from Lanny to Lanny’s mother, and each could see the gratification in his dark eyes.

"“I am sure it would give us all great pleasure,” said Beauty, to whom “company” was as a summer shower to a thirsty garden.

"“We have a lot of violin music that we should like to know better,” put in Kurt. “I make a stab at it, but it is not like really hearing it.”

"“If I would telegraph to them, they would be starting tomorrow.”

"“The sooner the better,” said Lanny. “Tell them to fly.”

"The father turned pale at the thought. “Never would I take such a chance with the two most precious of beings to me! I cannot tell you, Madame Budd, what those two lads mean to me and my wife. For whatever I do in this world I make the excuse that Hansi and Freddi will make it worth while that I have lived.” Beauty smiled gently and told him that she knew the feeling well. He was a very nice man, she decided, in spite of that one trouble for which he couldn’t be blamed."

Lanny talked with him later about business.

"“You cannot imagine how many unlikely things are required by an army,” explained Johannes Robin. “Can you suggest to me any patriotic organization which might be wishing to purchase an edition of twenty-five thousand lives of the one-time President, William McKinley?”

"“I regret that I cannot think of one at the moment,” replied Lanny, gravely."

"Your father is troubled that I persist in selling German marks; in America he gets the propaganda which the Germans are putting out—you understand the situation?”

"“I haven’t been watching the money-market, Mr. Robin.”

"“You would not, being an art lover, and for that I honor you. But I explain that all over the world are people of German race who have money, and love the Fatherland, and the Fatherland needs help, but how can the help be given? If these Germans can be persuaded to invest in the Fatherland’s paper money, life may continue at home. So the government gives out news to the effect that prosperity is beginning, that Germany is coming back with a rush, that there will be no more paper marks, that the mark has reached its lowest point—and so they sell plenty more marks. But they do not sell them to Johannes Robin—on the contrary, I sell millions and millions to Germans for delivery in three months, and when the time comes I buy them for half what I am due to receive. This troubles your father, because he considers it a risk. Tell him to trust me and I will make him a really rich man, not just one of the medium fellows!”

"“I’ll tell him what you say, Mr. Robin,” said Lanny; “but I know that my father always prefers to invest in real things.”

"“He is wise in that he keeps his money in dollars, and when the mark is really down we will go into Germany and buy great manufacturing concerns for a few thousands each.’ I will take you, Lanny, and we will buy old masterpieces of painting for the price of a good dinner.”

"“I wouldn’t know what to do with them,” said Lanny. “I have a storeroom full of the paintings of Marcel Detaze which we ought to sell.”

"“Oh, take my advice and do nothing yet!” exclaimed the shrewd man of business. “Now everything is in a slump, but in a short time things will get started again, and there will be such a boom as no man has ever dreamed of. Then your father and I will be riding on top of the wave.”"

Lanny received the Robin boys Hansi and Freddi.

"Lanny remembered how thrilled he had been, how the whole earth had taken on hues of enchantment, when he had traveled to Kurt Meissner’s home and seen a great castle with its snow-covered turrets gleaming in the early morning sun. Now came little Freddi Robin, at that same age of fourteen. He and his brother were seeing the Côte d’Azur for the first time, and semi-tropical landscapes were as magical to them as snow had been to Lanny. Trees laden with oranges and lemons, bowers of roses and cascades of purple bougainvillaea, rocky shores with blue water turning green in the shallows—all these sights brought cries of wonder, and then anxiety as to whether one was being too demonstrative in the presence of Anglo-Saxon reticence. Everybody at Bienvenu liked them at once; impossible not to, they were so gentle, so sweet-tempered and anxious to please. They spoke acceptable English, French, and German, as well as their native Dutch. Their eager conscientiousness was evident, and persons who knew the harsh world were touched by the thought of what these boys might be made to suffer."

Lanny played a duet with Hansi.

"“I am sorry to be so nervous. I have wanted so much to do this. Now I am afraid I may stumble.”

"“You are less likely to stumble than I,” said Lanny, comfortingly. “I have heard this sonata, but I have never seen the score. Let us agree to pardon each other.”

"Little Freddi had his hands clenched tightly and also his lips, and could give no comfort to anybody. But Kurt and Beauty, who were sitting by, said reassuring things, and presently Hansi got himself together; he raised his bow and nodded, and Lanny began. When the violin came in, a tender and questioning melody floated onto the air, and Kurt, the real musician of the family, started inwardly, for he knew tone when he heard it, he knew feeling and élan. This music was restless and swiftly changing, it pleased and then became vehement; its fleeting forms were the perpetual miracle of life, something new unfolding itself, discoveries being made, vistas of experience being opened. The frail lad forgot his anxieties and played as if he and his violin were one being. When the sonata came to its climax in a long and well-executed trill, Kurt exclaimed: “Oh, good!” which meant a tremendous lot, coming from him. Lanny, who had been raised in France, jumped up and grabbed Hansi and gave him a hug. The lad had tears in his eyes; it was such a moment as doesn’t come often, even to the emotional tribe of the music-makers.

"Kurt asked for something else, and Hansi brought out a violin and piano arrangement of Wieniawski’s Second Concerto. Lanny knew that Kurt disliked the Poles above all the other tribes of men; but the artist is above prejudice, and Hansi executed these fireworks with great éclat. The Romance wept and wailed, and when they came to the allegro con fuoco and the molto appassionato, then indeed Lanny had to get a hump on him, as the saying is. He missed some of the notes, but never failed to get the first in every bar, and he was there at the finish. An exhilarating race, and they wound up with a grand flourish, red in the face and proud of themselves.

"Politeness required that they should hear Freddi also. He insisted that he wasn’t anything compared to his brother, but they wanted him to play his clarinet, and Hansi produced the score of Haydn’s Gypsy Rondo, part of a trio. Kurt took the piano this time, and Lanny listened to gaily tripping music out of the eighteenth century, when it seemed easier to be contented with one’s lot in life. Lanny was proud of these two charming lads, and certain that they would be loved by all good people. He saw that his mother was pleased with them. Some day she would be taking them to play for Mrs. Emily, and they would be invited to give a recital at Sept Chênes, where all the rich and famous persons on the Riviera would hear them. Such is the pathway to fame."

Barbara Pugliese visited, and the boys were transported hearing her during tea after they had played music.

"“Then you don’t think the Bolsheviks are wicked?” exclaimed Hansi Robin. “The Bolsheviks are trying to end poverty and war, the two greatest curses of mankind. Can that be wicked?”

"“But they kill so many people!”

"“Always through history you find slaves revolting, and they are put down with dreadful slaughter. You find that any killing done by the slaves is small compared with what the masters do. The capitalist system, which is the cause of modern war, has destroyed thirty million people by battle, starvation, and disease; what moral claims can it have after that?”

"“But can’t people be persuaded to be kind to one another?” This from the gentle Freddi.

"“No one can say that we of the working people haven’t tried. We have pleaded and explained, we have tried to educate the whole people; we have built a great system of cooperatives and workers’ schools, paid for with our very life-blood. But the masters, who fear us and hate us, are doing their best to destroy all these things.”

"So it went, until Lanny thought: “Mr. Robin wouldn’t like this any better than my father!”"

Jesse was in Cannes and unwell, Barbara said, so Lanny drove Beauty to meet her brother, but Jesse came and they missed him. He met Kurt and Robin boys.

"Jesse wasn’t sure what Kurt’s political views were, but to look at him he was a German aristocrat. So the painter explained that Germany was now listed among the down-and-outs; the British and French empires had her there and meant to keep her there. For a long time to come, the international workers would be the natural allies of the Fatherland; in left-wing labor throughout Europe lay the one hope of freedom for the German people. Jesse explained to the lads what the Versailles peace treaty meant to its victims, and why the Reparations Commission was still refusing to fix the amount of the indemnities. That must mean, and was meant to mean, bankruptcy for Germany, loss of her foreign trade, and slow, inevitable starvation for the masses.

"At the outset of the talk Kurt had the belief that Jesse didn’t know who had brought him the money. But everything the painter said was so directly to the point that finally Kurt decided he must have made a clever guess. Kurt had heard a lot about this Red sheep of his lady-love’s family, and was glad to hear what he had to say. It wasn’t even necessary to ask questions to help the conversation along; the two eager lads provided all the cues. They drank in the speaker’s every word, and what he was doing to them was a matter he had no time to consider. Jesse set forth the grim facts which were making revolutions in many parts of Europe, and he explained them according to the system of thought which he called “dialectical materialism.”"
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At this point, the stage is mostly set, with key characters in place front stage, and world events about to take place where story proceeds by some of them being involved. A few more major characters come in later, as the story proceeds, but the key personae that come in hereafter are historical, and those are all here, interacting with Lanny Budd directly or otherwise. 

Lanny's love life, for example, isn't finalised with Marie de Bruyne, and his mother's friend Emily Chattersworth does get to succeed as matchmaker.

Wonder if the first volume, World's End, was written as a single book, and the idea of continuing the same characters for the events thereafter came later.
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Lanny is established as part of a menage-a-trois with Marie and can take her to Geneva when invited by Rick to attend the League congerence, and speaks to George D. Herron.

"Lanny mentioned the problem of Upper Silesia, and how it weighed upon him because of his German friend. That led Herron to talk about the experiences he had had with the Germans all through the war. It had been known that he was in touch with President Wilson, and was sending reports through the State Department, so the Germans assumed that he was authorized to negotiate with them—which wasn’t so. First the Socialists and the pacifists, and later on, as Germany’s situation became worse, the representatives of the government, came to Le Retour in an unceasing stream.

"“They constituted,” said Herron, “a veritable clinic for the observation of the German mind; and my conclusion was that there is something inherently amiss in its make-up. The German, in his present stage of development, cannot think directly and therefore morally. He still moves, he still has his psychic being, collectively speaking, in what seems like prehuman nature. The German commonly reasons that whatever accomplishes his ends as an agent or citizen of the State is both mystically and scientifically justifiable. No matter how reprehensible the means, there is no responsibility higher than these ends that can claim his confidence.”

"“Do you mean that this is the creed that every German has thought out?” It was Rick questioning.

"“I mean it is the mental stuff of his motivation, whether conscious or unconscious. The sheer might that achieves the thing in view becomes his supreme good. You understand that I am speaking of a stream of visitors continuing over a period of three or four years. Each discussion, without regard to the messenger’s intellectual repute, or his high or low official degree, began with his assumption that Germany was misunderstood and wronged, even to the extent of a piteous martyrdom. If ever there was any grudging admission that Germany might have been remiss, it was because of deception practiced by jealous neighbors upon this too trustful, too childlike people. And always Germany must be preserved from discovering that the responsibility was hers. As an instance, an eminent and official German of high intellectual quality—a German whom I had long held in affectionate admiration—continually sought to show me that the war must be so ended as to save Germany from the humiliation of a confession. The preservation of Germany’s national pride, rather than the revelation of righteousness to her people, was basic in all this good man’s quest for a better German future. Well aware as he was of the historical abnormality of his race, admitting it candidly enough in our discussions, yet so thoroughly German was he that he could conceive no peace except one that would save Germany from self-accusation.”"

Afterwards, walking on lakefront with Lanny,

"“For fifty years,” said Marie, “we French have had the fear of German invasion, and who is going to rid us of it? How shall we be protected? Dr. Herron wants us to forgive, and let everything be as if there hadn’t been any war; but how can we be sure how that will work? Suppose the Germans take it as a sign of weakness? Suppose they see it as credulity? There are things for which they went to war, and which they’d still like to have. Suppose they take them?”"
................................................................................................    


Denis de Bruyne invited Lanny to bring his father for a visit when he was in Paris. They got along.

"Denis explained the situation. Britain had her vast overseas empire and her world trade; she would soon grow rich again, and that was what she was thinking about. But France lay with her most productive provinces in ruins, her people unemployed, and her hereditary enemy refusing to give up her arms, saying, in effect: “Come and get them!” Refusing to meet the reparations bill, deliberately destroying her financial system in order to ruin her rival, and repeating that offer which drove French businessmen frantic—to pay in goods, while French workers stayed idle and French businessmen got no profits!

"Time after time, France would be invited to conferences, where the “Welsh wizard” would turn loose his oratorical blandishments; he would take the side of the Germans and persuade the French to give up this and give up that; to let history’s greatest robber get away unscathed, with most of his loot safely stowed away in his fastnesses. “Honteux!” exclaimed Denis de Bruyne, and pounded his fist on the arm of his chair as he called the roll of these conferences of dishonor—San Remo, Hythe, Spa, Brussels, Paris, London. “Il faut en finir!” cried the “Nationalist.”

"While Robbie was there, early in August, another conference was called in Paris; an emergency one, as they were all coming to be. Imagine, if you could, the rosy little cherub with the lion’s mane ensconced with all his staff in the Hotel Crillon, wining and dining the innkeeper’s son, treating him as a social equal—and persuading him that the only way to settle the question of Upper Silesia was to refer it to the League of Nations! Playing upon those sentiments politely called “humanitarian,” though to Denis de Bruyne they were the cheapest and most disgusting of a demagogue’s stocks in trade. Talking about German “rights” to territory which every historian knew had been seized by the Prussian Frederick and which now was absolutely vital to Poland—and to France, if she was to have an ally on the eastern front to hold the ruthless Prussians in check. But of course England didn’t want France to be strong on the Continent; she was setting Germany up as a rival—the “balance of power” policy!"
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Robbie is getting richer through Johannes Robin who has moved to Berlin.

"“I had a letter from the boys,” remarked Lanny. “They are happy about being in Berlin, it’s such a wonderful city, and Hansi will have great teachers at the Conservatory.”

"“If things work out the way that doggone Jew says, he’s going to own half the town before he’s through.”

"“I’m afraid the Germans won’t like him for it,” remarked Lanny, dubiously. “They call such people Schieber.”

"“Well, if properties are for sale, he surely has a right to buy them. And of course if things get too hot, he can move back to Holland.”"

And thus the stage is set.
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Lanny accompanies Kurt on a visit to his home in Silesia and pays for it, and visits Robin family in Berlin on the way while Kurt visits his brother Emil. Unlike the previous trip that was fairy tale, this one is fraught with poverty visible. Lanny is invited by Robbie's fraternity brother, who is charge de affairs in Berlin, for dinner at the club where important men come, and they meet Rathenau.

"“An extraordinary personality,” said the American, after Rathenau had left the table. “He really understands the present situation, and it would be well if his advice were taken. The propertied classes of Germany are called upon to make sacrifices which hurt, and the fact that Rathenau is a Jew makes them even less willing to be ruled by him.”

"“He doesn’t look like a Jew,” commented Lanny.

"“That happens with many of that race. But the Junkers know him, and will never forgive him because he is working with the Social-Democrats—even though it’s in an effort to save them and their country.”"

They cross border, Stubendorf is now in Poland.

"Afterward Kurt quoted to his friend a saying that when you went east from Germany you were in half-Asia. The signs of it were rutted roads, dilapidated houses, vermin, and superstition."

At Stubendorf

"Already in Berlin Lanny had discovered a peculiar fact, and here he found it confirmed—the Germans didn’t seem to blame the Americans, they liked and admired them, and were sure that they had come into the war through a misunderstanding due to the subtlety of British propaganda. Now the Americans realized their mistake and were trying to atone for it, and the Germans would help them by explaining how right they had been."

Author's prejudices show, in the protagonist or his close associates - parents, friends, ... - despite his, The author's, scrupulous attempts at being fair, especially when he is not aware of them as prejudices. 
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The next conference is in Cannes, and Lanny finds Barbara Pugliese near his home, driven out of Cannes along with her host family who thereby lost work, by police. She is told by friends to delay return to Italy. 

"“Have you not heard what is going on in Italy? The employers are hiring gangs of ruffians to beat the friends of the people’s cause, and often to murder them. Hundreds of our devoted workers have fallen victims to these bravi."

Thus the author reintroduces rise of fascism, and of course of its progenitor, in Italy. He is at Cannes too and Rick sees a story, so he and Lanny go meet him. 

"The founder of Fascismo was launched upon one of his orations. He had been delivering them once a week in his paper, ever since the war. He had been delivering them to his squadristi, the young men of Italy who had been trained in war and had been promised wealth and glory but had not got them, and were now organizing to help themselves. Their leader’s ideas were a strange mixture of the revolutionary syndicalist anarchism whose formulas had been the mental pabulum of his youth, and the new nationalism which he had learned from the poet-aviator d’Annunzio and his Fiume raiders. If you could believe Barbara, the blacksmith’s son had collected large sums of money for the support of the poet and had used them for his own movement. The ego of Benito Mussolini would bear no rival near the throne." 

"He explained his belief that violence is a sign of virility, and that any society in which it does not have its way is bound to degenerate. “I see that you have been reading Sorel,” ventured Rick. 

"“I do not have to go to Sorel for knowledge,” replied Mussolini, with a thrust of his jaw. “I was a pupil of Pareto, in Lausanne.” 

"Rick asked him about the application of violence in the daily affairs of the Italian workers, and the leader made no bones about admitting that he and his fasci di combattimento were using it in abundance. “Italy has been kept in chaos by the Reds for three years, and we are giving them doses of their own medicine.”"

"“To be sure,” countered the other. “But that is what the Russians say also. You have different ends, but your means are the same. To us Englishmen it appears that your means will determine your ends in the long run.” 

"“You watch us,” said the founder of Fascismo. “We will show you something about a long run. My successor has not been born yet.”"

The author has interwoven delicately the intricacies of politics in the personal lives and relationships of Lanny and other forefront stage characters, with historic figures standing and moving as looming shadows or lights. A conference, a meeting, a humanitarian act threatens the relationship structures as it can in life. 

Now, Marie excused herself from taking part in efforts by Beauty on behalf of Germany; they understood perfectly, Beauty deciding Marie is a French nationalist. Later along in the story, perhaps in the next volume, Lanny is divorced by a heiress he married, because he saved life of a poor German hunted by nazis. 

"Rick was the only one who got anything real out of Cannes. He wrote a coldly ironical article about the conference, and it was published. He wrote also an account of Fascismo and the interview with its founder, but this Rick’s editor rejected; the article was well written, he reported, but that Italian bounder didn’t seem of enough importance to justify the space." 

Next conference, Genoa, and Robbie was present too, it was about oil, and Russians were involved as well. Lanny helped Robbie with arranging a meeting with Russians via Lincoln Steffens. 

"Walter Rathenau had become the Foreign Minister of the German republic. He had a difficult problem in Genoa, for a huge reparations payment was falling due at the end of May, and no moratorium had been granted; on the contrary, Poincaré was declaring that “sanctions” were going to be applied without fail. The Germans were trying to induce the British to intercede, but couldn’t even get at them, everybody being occupied with the squabble over Baku and Batum. The Russians couldn’t accomplish anything either, so of course it was natural that the two outcasts of the conference should combine forces. On the sixth day a bombshell was exploded under all Genoa, and the report of it was heard wherever cables or wireless reached. The Germans and Russians had got together at the near-by town of Rapallo and signed a treaty of amity; they agreed to drop all reparations claims against each other, and to settle all future disputes by arbitration. 

"This treaty seemed harmless enough on its face, but then nobody at Genoa took anything as meaning what it was said to mean. The general belief was that there must be secret military clauses to the agreement, and this enraged the Allied diplomats. Russia had the natural resources and Germany the manufacturing power, and if these two were combined they could dominate Europe. It was the thing the German diplomats were always dropping hints about, and the German general staff was believed to be plotting it. Hadn’t the German government brought Lenin and the rest of the Red agents into Russia in a sealed train, and turned them loose to wreck the Tsar’s government and take Russia out of the war? By that maneuver the Kaiser had almost won, and here was another trick of the same sort!"

Robbie met Russian officials. 

"He watched with amusement his father’s growing surprise at the qualities he kept discovering in Bolshevik leaders. Remarkable men, Robbie was forced to admit; their wits had been sharpened in a school of bitter struggle and suffering. The American hadn’t expected to find genuine idealism combined with worldly cunning—in fact he hadn’t considered it possible for such a combination to exist in human beings. Least of all had he expected to meet scholarly persons, with whom he was interested to engage in theoretical discussions. 

"Chicherin, Soviet Foreign Commissar, was a former aristocrat who had been trained for diplomacy in the Tsar’s school. He had many of the characteristics which one found in Englishmen of that class; he was tall and stoop-shouldered, sensitive and shy, careless in his dress and absent-minded like some funny old college professor. He lived in his work, hating to trouble anybody, and trying to do all the work, even to the sharpening of his lead-pencils. He turned night into day, and appointments with him were apt to be for two or three o’clock in the morning; even so, he would be unavoidably late and would apologize profusely. 

"In the meantime Robbie and his son would chat with Rakovsky, Bulgarian-born revolutionist, and his wife, who had been a Russian princess and was now a Communist who used a lorgnette! Both of these were clever talkers, and Robbie said he didn’t see how Russia could ever be industrialized while she had so many of these. Rakovsky, discovering the fog of ignorance concerning the Soviet Union which en shrouded Genoa, went to the university and obtained the use of a large lecture hall, and there every afternoon he explained Bolshevik ideas of history to whoever might wish to come. He spoke perfect French, being a graduate of a Paris medical school and having written a book on French culture. The journalists of that country were annoyed to hear him discuss their history, and they would rise and heckle him, but quickly discovered that he knew things about the French Revolution which they hadn’t heard before. It was one of those European halls in which the lecturer is down in a pit, and the seats for the audience are in tiers in front and on both sides of him; it wasn’t long before the place was packed to the doors—the journalists of all nations were deserting the conference and coming to listen to Rakovsky." 

They met the U.S. ambassador, Child. 

"The ambassador went on to tell a story which he thought would amuse Mr. Budd, who came from New England. A couple of Italian anarchists in Massachusetts had recently been convicted of a payroll hold-up and murder, and sentenced to death. Mr. Child searched his memory and recalled the names, Sacco and Vanzetti."

Upton Sinclair's later work, titled Boston, is about this. He is elaborate about the complete lack of fair trial and more. 

"Mr. Child confirmed Mussolini’s claims as to the character of the movement. “Everywhere I see these young blackshirts marching I get the feeling of clean-cut, vigorous youth, conscious of its reforming mission.” 

"“Aren’t they sometimes rather violent?” asked Lanny. 

"“Well, but you have to consider the provocation. It seems to me we’re going to need a movement like that at home, if the Reds go on extending their activities as they are doing.""

Therein the complete turnabout by U.S., especially by some such as Dulles, post WWII in saving all but top few of war criminals and generally other nazis and fascists of most of Europe, despite a detailed, thorough and shocking beyond all imagination information regarding their inhuman acts. 
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Lanny had written to Barbara Pugliese and found an urchin in his hotel lobby holding the letter, saying she was very unwell.  Lanny found her alive, very badly beaten up by fascists, and drove her to France, informing Robbie who sent his man Bub Smith to protect him. They got her in a private hospital across border, fortunately with a doctor not sympathetic with fascists, and Lanny informed people, and waited. 

"He slept, and then walked for a while, thinking about his life and what this new crisis meant to him. He had made certain that there were forces in the world which he hated with all his heart and wanted to fight; but just what they were, and how he could recognize them—that would take a bit of study.

"He decided that he wanted to talk to Rick, and telephoned his friend, who said that he had had all he needed of Genoa, and came by train and joined Lanny that evening. Uncle Jesse arrived from the other direction, so there were three social philosophers, with nothing to do but argue—for the poor gray-haired old woman still lay unconscious, and it would do no good to her or them to sit and look at her smashed face."

"Two days passed, and they were in the midst of an argument in Lanny’s hotel room when a message came from the hospital: Barbara Pugliese was dead. They had to arrange for a funeral; a conspicuous and public one, as a matter of propaganda, a demonstration of working-class protest. The news of Barbara’s fate had been published in labor papers, and several journalists and labor leaders came; they took the body to Nice, and the coffin was placed on a truck draped with flowers, and thousands of workingmen and women marched behind it, carrying banners and signs denouncing the vicious Fascismo. Uncle Jesse had managed to keep his nephew’s name out of the affair, and nobody paid any attention to a well-dressed young American and an English journalist, the latter limping painfully with the procession. 

"At the grave the throng stood with bared heads and listened to eloquent tributes. A bald-headed American painter told the story of a life consecrated to the cause of the humble and oppressed. Never had this heroic woman flinched from any duty or sacrifice; she had the courage of a lion with the sweetness of a child. Tears came into the orator’s eyes as he told of their long friendship, and then rage shook his voice as he denounced the Italian blackshirts. His nephew listened, and agreed with every word he said—and at the same time was ill at ease to find himself in such a company and in such a mood. He looked at these dark, somber people, unfashionably dressed, their faces distorted by violent passions; they were not his kind of people, and he was afraid of them—yet something drew him to them!"

Thus the course of his future.  He was disgusted with politics, and kept away from the next conference, which was at Hague, not a little due to women around him being as afraid as Robbie that he'd go left, and instead went with Marie to Paris.

"Settled in the comfortable menage of the Chateau de Bruyne, reading, practicing the piano, playing tennis with two happy youths, enjoying the society of a lovely and devoted woman, Lanny knew that he was among the most fortunate of men. He tried to keep himself in a mood of gratitude, but on the twenty-fifty of June of that year 1922 he picked up a morning newspaper and read that Walther Rathenau, Foreign Minister of the German Republic, being driven to his office in a large open car, had been startled by a smaller car rushing up beside him, with two men in it wearing leather jackets and helmets; one of them had produced a repeating-gun and fired five bullets into the minister’s body, and immediately afterward the other had thrown a hand-grenade into the car.

"They had done that because he was a Jew, and was presuming to manage the affairs of Germany and to seek appeasement with both France and Russia. They had done it because it was a violent and cruel world, in which men would rather hate than understand one another, would rather do murder than fail to have their own way. To Lanny it seemed the most dreadful thing that had happened yet, and he bowed his face in his arms to hide his tears. He would never forget his memories of that kind and gentle man, the wisest he had found among the statesmen, the best heart and the best brain that Germany had had in this crisis. To Lanny it was as if he heard the tolling of a bell of doom; the best were going down and the worst were coming to the top in this corrupt and unhappy civilization.

"Jesse Blackless had taken up his painting again, perhaps in despair concerning the human race. He had come to Paris and set up housekeeping with a young woman who worked on the Communist newspaper L’Humanité.

"Lanny had declared his independence, and the form it took was to visit his Communist uncle and meet some of these dangerous and yet fascinating personalities. It was Lanny’s form of a “spree”; vicious or not, according to your point of view—but he told himself that he wanted to understand the world he lived in, and to hear all opinions about it. Maybe he was fooling himself, and it was just a seeking of sensation, a playing with fire, with what the Japanese police authorities call “dangerous thoughts.” Certainly it was a mistake if he wished to remain an ivory-tower dweller, for a bull in a china shop can do no greater damage than one idea inside a human psyche."

"The Russian thesis was that there was no way this change could be brought about except by the overthrow and destruction of that bourgeois state which was the policeman of the exploiting classes. This thesis apparently applied to a land like Russia, whose people had never known free institutions; but did it apply equally to France and Britain and America, which had enjoyed the use of the ballot for long periods? This was an important question, because if you were applying the Russian technique to countries where it didn’t fit, you might be making a costly blunder.

"When Lanny suggested this to Uncle Jesse’s friends, they laughed at him and said he had a bourgeois mind; but he wanted to hear all sides, and took to reading Le Populaire, the organ of the Socialists. These disagreed violently with the Communists, and each called the other bad names, which seemed to Lanny the great tragedy of the workers’ movement; he thought they had enemies enough among the capitalist class, without dividing among themselves. Yet he was forced to realize that if you believed revolutionary violence to be necessary, you were apt to be violent in advocating it; while if you believed in peaceable methods—well, apparently the men of violence would force you to be violent against them!"

"Robbie Budd didn’t get the concessions upon which he had expended such efforts. All the oil men were vexed, and all the governments; the dream of the bourgeois world, to solve its problems at the expense of Russia, wasn’t working out. The Bolsheviks were in danger of losing their temporary status of genial conversationalists and resuming that of diabolical monsters. Robbie went back home without seeing his son again, and without giving him any further warning about his conduct. Could it be that the father had thought it over, and was really going to try to let him have his freedom, as Lincoln Steffens had suggested?

"In the month of August the Greek army in the heart of the Anatolian hills sustained a terrible defeat, and fled in rout to Smyrna on the coast, where the Turkish cavalry followed them, driving them into the sea and slaughtering tens of thousands. “Our friend on the Avenue Hoche has lost his concessions,” wrote Robbie, and explained that Standard would probably get them from the Turks. “Also the stock of his Banque de la Seine has fallen from 500 to 225.” Rick, at home in England, reported an underground convulsion in politics. For the first time it was being asked publicly what was the connection between the Prime Minister and the mysterious Greek trader who had become Europe’s armament king. Presently it was asked in the House of Commons—which meant that the newspapers could repeat it. This was like taking Sir Basil by the scruff of his crimson velvet robe and dragging him into the glare of a spotlight, something which Lanny knew would cause him intense distress."

"In this autumn there came an event whose importance in the history of Europe was realized only gradually. The workers of Italy called a general strike in protest against the permitted cruelties of the blackshirts; the strike failed because the workers had no arms and were powerless against unlimited violence. In this hour of confusion the Fascisti took their opportunity and began to assemble; their editor, that Blessed Little Pouter Pigeon at whom Lanny and Rick had laughed, sounded his slogans of glory and summoned his youth to the building of a new Roman Empire.

"The American ambassador, “Cradle,” played an important part in these events, and was so proud of it that he came home and boasted about it in print. Mussolini came to the embassy and had tea with him, and charmed him so greatly that he defended the dictator and everything he did from that time on. A new government, to have any success, has to have funds, and the editor was seeking support for a movement to restore law and order to his strike-ridden land. Surely an Italy without labor unions, without the co-operatives which deprived businessmen of their profits, ought to be a sound investment! The ambassador thought so, and persuaded the great House of Morgan to promise a loan of two hundred million dollars to the government which Mussolini was planning. Let no one say that America wasn’t doing its part in building defenses against the Reds!

"There were said to be a hundred and sixty thousand former army officers in Italy, most of them out of jobs and in need of funds. Many had joined the Fascisti, and they now led the “March on Rome” which skilled propaganda would make into a heroic episode. Their founder did not walk with them, but traveled more quickly and safely in a sleeping-car. Eight thousand dusty and bedraggled youths could, of course, have accomplished nothing without the acquiescence of police and army. The pint-sized king with the democratic sympathies was told that his cousin had joined the Fascisti and was ready to take his throne unless he obeyed orders; therefore he refused to sign the order declaring a state of seige, and the blackshirts entered the capital unopposed.

"That “cheap actor” whom Lanny and Rick had interviewed in Cannes now made his appearance before his sovereign, wearing a black shirt, a Sam Browne belt, and a sash of the Fiume colors, and was invited to form a government; later he appeared before the Parlamento and told them that he was the master. No longer was it difficult for him to play the pouter pigeon, for he had had several years’ practice in thrusting out his jaw and expanding his chest. The name of Benito Mussolini was flashed around the world, and that interview which Rick had peddled in vain among British editors now suddenly became “spot news.” Rick dug it out and rewrote it with fresh trimmings, and his editor paid for it gladly."

"The Socialists, the pacifists, and even the harmless co-operators were shot in their beds or hunted in the mountains; and meanwhile the new ruler in whose honor this Roman holiday was celebrated would stand before the Chamber of Deputies and solemnly ordain: “There shall be no reprisals.”

"Lanny knew what was happening in Italy, because he was continually meeting victims of it. That was the heritage which his friend Barbara Pugliese had left him; she had told some of her friends about this generous-hearted American youth, and now they had his address. Lanny remembered what his father had said about the practice of hobos in the United States; he had got a mark on his gatepost, and there would be no way ever to get it rubbed out!"

"Lanny had been able to hide his Red literature, but he tried in vain to hide his Red refugees. It got so that Beauty and Marie worried every time he went to Cannes, for fear that he was meeting some evil companions; it could hardly have been worse if he had been suspected of having another mistress! The people in the village were talking about it, and Beauty was afraid the police authorities might take cognizance. France was a free republic, and proud of its reputation as a home for the oppressed of other lands; all the same, no police like to have swarms of Reds pouring into a country over all the mountain passes and even in rowboats. Beauty could never forget that she herself was a suspected person, living with a German whose past would not bear investigation."

Next conference, Lausanne.

"In order to punish the French for having aided the Turks, the British had recognized the Emir Feisal as ruler of Syria; at long last a promise was partly kept, and that dark brown replica of Christ whom Lanny had met and admired during the Peace Conference would come into a part of his own—but not the part with the oil! Tom Lawrence, the blue-eyed, sandy-haired young British agent, had changed his name and was Aircraftsman Shaw, blacking the boots of some minor officer at home.

"Lanny hadn’t planned to go to Lausanne; but the conference adjourned for the Christmas holidays, and there were Robbie and Rick available. The former had business in Berlin; also, Kurt was planning to spend another Christmas at Stubendorf, and Marie was going north to be with her boys. So Lanny, with the Fortunatus purse of his father, laid out a journey for himself and his friends. He and Kurt would escort Marie to Paris, and then go to Lausanne and pick up Robbie and Rick and take them to Berlin, where Lanny and Rick would visit the Robins, and Kurt his brother; then Kurt and Lanny and Rick would go to Stubendorf—Rick’s first visit to that place. They would come back to Lausanne and leave Rick for the second stage of the conference, while Lanny and Kurt proceeded to Paris to pick up Marie again.

"A jolly thing to plan journeys with the help of a selfrenewing purse! You and your friends would be transported from country to country, would talk to the people, gather the news, visit operas and theaters and art-shows; ride on fast and comfortable trains, stop at de luxe hotels, eat food novelties in the most elegant restaurants, have all your burdens carried for you, and by the magic of a pocketful of paper money see everybody smiling, obsequious, and delighted. But pay no attention to the signs of bitter poverty on the way; half-starved children begging for bread, women selling their bodies for it—and now and then a Red being hanged or beaten into insensibility!"

"The Russians were there, still trying for their loan, and dangling an empty oilcan in front of the noses of Robbie Budd and others. Deterding and the rest of the big fellows had agreed upon a boycott; they had formed an organization called the Groupement, pledging themselves to buy no Russian oil, and now they were waiting to see who would break it first. Robbie predicted that it would be Deterding himself; and sure enough, within two or three months he had bought seventy thousand tons of kerosene and taken an option for another hundred thousand. He had thought, so naively, that the agreement applied only to crude!

"Berlin would have a poor Christmas this year. The mark stood at nearly one thousand to the dollar, and all but the very rich were poor. Everybody was fear-stricken, for the quarrel with France had come to a crisis; the reparations payments were long since overdue, the coal deliveries in arrears, and there was that round, pasty-faced Poincaré with his jaws clenched, determined to move in and seize the Ruhr, industrial heart of the Reich, without which half the Germans would starve. Rick, eager journalist, wanted to interview people of all classes and write an article after he came out; he found them glad to talk to him, for the hymn of hate had been forgotten and they thought of Britons as friends and protectors against French avarice.

"Lanny and Rick went to stay with the Robins. Comfort and safety in that warm nest, and Papa Robin a mine of information about everything that was going on, political and economic. Trust a Schieber to know! The hard-working man of affairs was troubled by the bad name which people gave him, and defended himself with vigor. It wasn’t he who was going to invade the Ruhr and drive the mark still lower; all he did was to know it was going to happen. People who believed that it wouldn’t happen were eager to buy marks for future delivery; if Johannes didn’t sell them, others would, and what difference would it make?"

Hansi and Freddi Robin had grown, and excelled in music.

"Lanny had written to the boys about Barbara, and now he told them details of that dreadful story, and saw horror in their faces and the tears in their eyes. Their abhorrence of the blackshirts was instinctive, and their sympathy with the rebel refugees complete; they had none of that inner conflict which Lanny perceived in himself. Was it because they were members of a persecuted race, with ancient memories of exile deeply buried in their souls? Or was it that they were more completely artists than Lanny? The artist is by nature, one might say by definition, an anarchist. He lives in the freedom of his own imagination, and represents the experimental element of life. If “authority” should intervene and tell him what to think or to feel, the experiment would not be tried, the brain-child would be born dead.

"To the sons of Johannes Robin it seemed the most natural thing in the world to accept those ideas which so greatly troubled the son of Robbie Budd. Of course it was wrong that some should be born to privilege while others did not have enough to eat. Of course it was right that the disinherited should protest and try to change the ancient evils of the world. Who would not demand food when he was starving? Who would not fight for liberty when he was oppressed? Who could fail to hate cruelty and injustice, and cry out for it to be ended? So asked Hansi, and Freddi knew that his adored elder brother must be right."

Emil went to Stubendorf with them, and spoke, Rick questioned him.

"Emil’s fear of what the French would do was conditioned by what he himself had been taught to do under similar circumstances.

"They talked about Italy, and the Prussian officer’s viewpoint of events there provoked a lively argument. Emil spoke of the Fascist “revolution,” and when Rick objected to that term he said: “Call it a ‘counter-revolution’ if you choose, but names don’t alter the fact that it’s a natural reaction against the futilities of so-called democracy. The people attempt a task which is beyond their powers, the governing of a modern state, and they are brought to a plight where they are glad to have a strong man get them out of it. The strong man studies the people, understands them better than they understand themselves, and promises them everything they want; he constructs a program with an appeal which they are powerless to resist. Say that he’s ‘fooling them,’ if you wish, but even so, he gets control, and having once got it, he keeps it—because modern weapons are so efficient that those who have them are masters, provided they are not afraid to use them. The machine gun and the airplane bomb with poison gas promise mankind a long era of firm government.”

"Such was Emil Meissner’s interpretation of Fascism; and he revealed the interesting fact that a movement not unlike it had been under way in Germany ever since the end of the war. It was a native product—never would you hear a Prussian staff officer admit that virile and scientific Germans might learn anything from degenerate and soft Italians! The movement called itself the National Socialist German Workingmen’s Party, and its center was in Munich; one of its leaders was General Ludendorff, who next to Hindenburg was regarded as the nation’s greatest war leader. This new party promised the German people deliverance from humiliation, and it was spreading with great rapidity. If it took the form of fresh opposition to France and Britain, these nations would have only the stupidity of their own statesmen to blame. So declared this stiff yet passionate Prussian officer."

Here on, we know the major events. The beauty of the author's work here is portraying them.
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"Among Kurt’s friends in the village was a lad named Heinrich Jung, son of that Oberforster who provided them with an escort whenever they wished to go hunting. Heinrich, it appeared, was studying forestry in Munich, and had joined the National Socialist German Workingmen’s Party about which Emil had told. Since Rick was so interested, Kurt brought the lad up to the house and had him talk—something that was not difficult, for his movement was a proselytizing one, and he knew its formulas by heart. He was nineteen, and sturdily built; war and famine hadn’t hurt him, for he had got both food and schooling in Stubendorf. He had extraordinarily bright blue eyes, rosy cheeks, and pale hair over which the barber ran the clippers once a month. Heinrich performed conscientiously all his duties to the Fatherland, which included explaining the new creed to two visitors of Aryan blood like himself. He and his partisans were known as “Nazis,” because that was the German pronunciation of the first two syllables of the word “National.”"

"Usurers and profiteers were to suffer the death penalty, a paid army was to be abolished, and lying newspapers suppressed; on the other hand, there was to be higher education for all good Germans, and for youth every benefit and advantage they could imagine. The blue eyes of Heinrich Jung shone like those of a young archangel as he invited the two Aryan strangers to give their support to this redemptive enterprise.”

"“This looks like the seed of a new revolution,” said the impressionable Lanny to his English friend, when they were alone in their room.

"“Maybe so,” replied the more critical journalist, “but to me it sounds like the old Pan-Germanism dressed up in a new stage costume.”

"“But, Rick, can they get the young people wrought up as Heinrich is, and then not do any of the things they have promised?”

"“Political slogans are like grain scattered to draw birds into a snare. Find out who’s putting up the money for a political party, and then you know what it will do.”

"Lanny, enthusiastic himself, couldn’t take a cynical view of the enthusiasms of other young persons. “They really have inspired that lad with a lot of high ideals, Rick; I mean loyalty, self-sacrifice, devotion to duty.”

"“But isn’t that what every master wants of his servants? The Kaiser preached it long before the war. What you have to do, Lanny, is to look into Pan-Germanism. They talk about the superiority of the Aryan race, the making over of the world, and all that, but at bottom it’s no more than the Berlin-to-Baghdad railroad, so that Germany can get the oil of Mosul; it means colonies in Africa, which aren’t of any economic use to Germany, but have harbors which can be fortified and serve as hiding-places for submarines to cut the life-lines of Britain.”

"“Maybe you’re right,” admitted Lanny, “but don’t say any of that before Kurt, for he wouldn’t take it very well.” Lanny, still working at his self-appointed task of keeping Britain and Germany reconciled!"

Heinrich accompanied them since they were returning via Munich, and offered to introduce them to people.

"The place was called the Braunhaus, for everything of the Nazis had to be brown, as that of the Fascists was black; let no one say the Germans were imitating anyone!"

"The visitors were fortunate in having arrived in Munich on the day of a great meeting in the Burgerbraukeller, and if they would attend they would learn all about the movement, and would hear a speech by “Adi.” This was short for Adolf, the great orator of the party; his last name was Schicklgruber, but this was rarely mentioned, it not being considered a very dignified name."

They heard the speech.

"These enemies were many, and the orator hated and cursed them in turn and in combination. They were Britain and France and Poland; they were the Reds inside and outside of Germany; they were the international bankers; they were the Jews, that accursed race which was poisoning the blood of all Aryan peoples, infecting the German soul with pessimism, cynicism, and unfaith in its own destiny. Adi seemed to have got his enemies all mixed up together, for the Reds were Jews and the international bankers were Jews, and it was the Jews who controlled Wall Street and the London City and the Paris bourse; apparently he thought that the same Jews had brought Bolshevism to Russia; they were in control of the world’s finances and at the same time were starving the German, people for the purpose of forcing them into the clutches of the Reds!"

"When they came out, and were safe in their taxi, Lanny said: “Well, is that the German Mussolini?”

"Rick replied: “No; I don’t think I’ll ever have to write about Herr Schicklgruber!”

"He talked along that line, but when he finished, Kurt said, quietly: “You are making a mistake. You could write a very important article about that man and that speech. He is confused, but so are the German people. Also he is desperate—and they are that, too. Believe me, he is not to be overlooked.”"
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Lanny was in charge of Marcel's paintings and to help him sell, Emily Chattersworth introduced Lanny to an art expert, Zoltan Kertezsi, and thus began his introduction to art profession as connoisseur, expert, etc., with an auction of a selected work by Marcel at Christie's, London.  He happens to meet Harry Murchison who had pursued Beauty to marry her, now with a sensible wife, and Gracyn Phillips who is now appearing in London, and they were interested, but Marcel's work gets an even more flying start to fame. Meanwhile Adella Murchison asked Lanny to acquire an El Greco for them, and insisted he be paid. 

"“Perhaps,” said Zoltan, “you never stopped to figure out the effect of the war upon this business. Europe has had to turn over most of its gold to America, and still owes it God only knows how many billions. One way that debt is being paid is with old masters. American millionaires are coming over here in droves to buy art, and there are literally thousands of rascals and parasites working day and night to persuade them to accept trash. Don’t you see that here is a useful career for a man who has instinctive taste, and also the tact, or social prestige, or whatever you wish to call it, so that he knows how to convince others that he is honest?”" 
................................................................................................  


Rick's play was critical success.

"The French had moved into the Ruhr and a new war had begun, a strange and puzzling kind, never before tried; blockade and slow strangulation applied to one of the greatest industrial districts in the world. The Germans, helpless as regards military force, were trying a policy of non-co-operation. The workers simply laid down their tools and did nothing; and what could the enemy do? They couldn’t bring in French labor and work the coal mines, because the machinery was complicated, and, moreover, the mines were among the most dangerous, the control of firedamp being a special technique which the Germans had been learning for centuries.

"So everything just remained in a state of paralysis; the Germans shipped in food, barely enough to keep their workers alive, and printed mountains of paper money to pay for it. Robbie Budd had learned from his partner in Berlin that the government was permitting Stinnes and the other Ruhr magnates to print money to pay their own workers, an absolutely unprecedented action. Of course it could have only one effect: the mark was now tumbling in an avalanche; the firm of “R and R,” which had foreseen this, was making money faster than if they owned the printing-presses themselves.

"British statesmanship, the most conservative in the world, looked upon all this with horror. Downing Street had explicitly disapproved the French invasion, and the alliance seemed about at its last gasp. France was isolated on the Continent—unless you chose to count Poland, which Sir Alfred Pomeroy-Nielson and his friends mostly didn’t. They thought that Poincare was leading the country straight to ruin. France simply didn’t have the numbers or the resources to dominate Europe; the old trouble against which Clemenceau had railed—the fact that there were twenty million too many Germans—was still unremedied, and the seizure of the Ruhr wasn’t going to alter that. Not even the most rabid French patriot would propose to starve all those workers to death, and putting Krupp and his directors into jail, as the French had done, wasn’t going to kill even one German."

"Lanny held his peace to the best of his ability. But Denis knew that his young visitor had recently been in Germany, and couldn’t resist questioning him. Wasn’t it true that the Germans had hidden great quantities of arms, and that they were insulting and sometimes even abusing the Allied commissioners who were supposed to find and destroy them? Yes, Lanny had to admit that this was true; he had heard about thousands of rifles walled up in vaults in the monasteries of Catholic Munich; but he was forced to add that he didn’t see how the French could ever get these except by invading the country, and did forty million people have the military force to garrison and hold down sixty million? If they tried it, could they stand the expense, or would they bankrupt themselves? Was it possible to run modern industry by force, in the Ruhr or anywhere else?"

"Lanny, motoring his sweetheart to Juan, carried with him the uncomfortable certainty that she too was a Nationalist; she believed all those things which her husband had told her about France and the outside world. She considered Kurt Meissner one of the few good members of a cruel race which was bent upon the subjection of la patrie; she considered Eric Vivian Pomeroy-Nielson one of the few cultured members of a nation of shopkeepers which was willing to set the Prussian monster on its feet again as a counterforce to keep France from becoming prosperous and powerful. She believed these things because they had been taught to her from childhood, and because they were in all the newspapers she saw.

"There was no use trying to change her mind about any such matters; Lanny had tried it and discovered that he caused her distress. She considered that her lover was credulous, because of his generous temperament, his impulse to believe that other people were as good as himself. She considered that he was being misled by German and British propaganda, and by his faith in his friends. Worse yet, his sympathy for the poor and afflicted led him into the trap of the Reds, and that was something which filled Marie with terror. She tried not to voice it, but kept it locked in her heart; she would watch her lover, and note the little signs of what he was feeling and thinking, and often the image of him which she constructed in her mind was more alarming than the reality."

"The war of the Ruhr continued; a war of starvation, of slow decay; a war carried on within the countless cells of millions of human bodies. How long could they endure the steady weakening, the fading away of their powers? There comes a time when an underfed man can no longer labor, a time when he can no longer walk, no longer stand up, no longer move his arms, his tongue. The women bear their children dead, and those already born acquire distended stomachs and crooked bones; they cease to run and play, but sit listlessly staring ahead, or crawl away into some dark corner where their wailing will not be punished. Nature, more merciful than statesmen, usually steps in at one of these stages, and sends the victim some germs of pneumonia or of flu, and puts an end to his misery.

"It was a war also of ideas, of propaganda; cries of anguish mixed with those of hate. To the fastidious Lanny Budd it seemed like a fight between two fishwives in the marketplace, screaming, cursing, tearing each other’s hair. It was something hardly to be dignified by the name of politics; just a squabble over great sums of money and the means of making more. Lanny, by right of birth, was privileged to know about it, and his father explained that on the one side were Stinnes and Thyssen and Krupp, the great Ruhr magnates, and on the other side the de Wendels and other French steel men, who had got the iron ore of Lorraine and now wanted the coal and coke of the Ruhr so as to work it cheaply.

"Robbie Budd was in Lausanne again; or back and forth between there and London and New York. The great conference was still going on—and that was another squabble over property, the oil and other natural resources hidden in the Turkish land. ... The Russians were attending the conference, for they had rights to defend in the Black Sea, and were still hoping for loans. One of their delegates was Vorovsky, with whom Lanny and his father had talked at Genoa, and whom Lanny remembered vividly; a thin, ascetic intellectual with wistful gray eyes, a soft brown beard, and the delicate, sensitive hands of a lover of art like Lanny himself. Now an assassin shot him dead in a cafe; and in due course a jury of moral businessmen would acquit the killer, thus informing the other Whites in Switzerland that it was open season for Bolshevik diplomats."

Ruhr problem continued, even as Lanny had a flying start to his career as art expert.

"“France can starve Germany into bankruptcy,” said Robbie, “but France will get nothing out of it, and will only cripple both countries. The plain truth is that France hasn’t the economic resources to support the military role that her pride forces her to play. The part of wisdom would be to accept her position as a second-class power and tie her fortunes to those of the British Empire; but she may put off doing this until it’s too late, and the British offer of an alliance may not be renewed.”"

And while everyone else was happy about Lanny's flying start in his new profession, Kurt was discontented.

"Beauty’s lover and Lanny’s amie had come to the point where they could manage it only by never opening their mouths in each other’s presence. They respected each other, and didn’t want to quarrel; but they were France and Germany, and one was at the other’s throat."

"The thing that Beauty and Marie and all Lanny’s friends were so happy about, the wonderful new easy-money profession that he had discovered—that failed to satisfy the ethical sense of his mother’s beloved; it was the commercializing of art, which to the austere German artist was the profanation of a sanctuary. Very certainly Kurt wasn’t commercializing his art; he couldn’t, if he wanted to—for how could any music publisher continue to put a price on musical works and, when he had sold them, discover that the proceeds wouldn’t buy food for his employees, to say nothing of buying more paper? The fact that Kurt, who was producing original work, stood no chance of getting any reward for it, while Lanny, who produced nothing, was having fantastic sums of money dumped into his lap—that situation mirrored the economic and moral decay of Europe at the end of the year 1923.

"Nor was the trouble remedied by the fact that Lanny, out of the kindness of his heart, kept clamoring to be allowed to put up money for the publishing of his friend’s work. That was charity, and Kurt was thinking about justice. To him the situation was a symbol of the oppression of the Fatherland, the crushing of the spiritual impulses of a great people by the three plutocratic empires which called themselves democracies and which had obtained the mastery of the modern world. Lanny and his mother and father represented one of these empires, Rick represented another, and Marie the third, and Kurt didn’t want to live by the charity of any of them; he didn’t want to talk about it with any of them, and did so only when Lanny questioned him, and tried to console him or to argue with him. Lanny insisted that this was only a temporary condition, and that time would remedy it; but Kurt didn’t believe in time, he believed in human effort, and he said: “If the German soul is ever set free, it will be because Germans set it free.”"
...............................................................................................    


The Robin boys had their father ask Lanny's help in his business, and they all set out for a trip to Bavaria where he was to see art collection of Prince Hohenstauffen zu Zinzenberg who was in debt to Johannes Robin. 

"All during that year Kurt had been receiving literature of the National Socialist German Workingmen’s Party, sent by Heinrich Jung, son of the Oberförster of Schloss Stubendorf. This young enthusiast had the dream of making a convert out of one who was looked upon in his home community, as a future musical genius. And right at this juncture Heinrich wrote a letter full of portentous hints: “Great events are due in a few days. I am not allowed to tell about it, but history will be made. You will learn from your newspapers that our labors have not been in vain.” 

"Of course both Lanny and Kurt could guess what that meant—the Nazis were going to attempt their long-planned uprising. Could they succeed, as Mussolini had done, or would they fail, like Kapp? Kurt decided that he would like to be on hand; and Beauty decided at once that she would go along to keep him out of mischief. Marie came to the same decision. Was it just to watch Lanny, or was she making a genuine effort to be interested in his ideas? Could she endure the sight of Germans? Could she feel sorry for them in their dreadful plight? The human heart is a complex of motives, and Marie de Bruyne, torn between passionate love and passionate hatred, could perhaps not have sorted out the different forces which took her to the land of her hereditary foe."

"Lanny sent an airmail letter to Rick, telling him of the program and inviting him to help spend some of the money that grew so abundantly on trees. Lanny quoted the words of Heinrich, and interpreted them; surely if a coup d’état was going to be attempted, it ought to be good for an article. The one which Rick had written, “Upper Silesia after the Settlement,” had made a good impression, especially at Stubendorf, where it had been translated and published locally. Lanny wrote: “Come and help us to hold Kurt down. Those Nazis will be swarming about him, and Beauty will want to scalp every last one of them.”" 

"On the day that Lanny and his friend arrived in Munich one dollar would buy 625,000,000 marks, and the next day it would buy a billion and a half. On no day did it go backward, and when they left, a dollar was worth seven trillion marks.

"Impossible not to pity the distracted people who had to live in the midst of such a cyclone. Employers paid their workers for a half-day at noon, so that they could rush out and buy some food before it was out of their reach. People bought whatever they could find in the shops, regardless of whether they had any use for it; so long as it had value it could be sold later on. In the midst of such confusion a foreigner moved like an enchanted being; his status was that upon which the fancy of all races and times has been exercised—he had the lamp of Aladdin, the purse of Fortunatus, the touch of Midas, the Tarnhelm which rendered him invisible so that he could walk into any shop and take whatever he wanted. Omnipotence places a heavy strain upon human character, and not all visitors to the Fatherland made wise use of their magic. To put it briefly, many proved themselves to be the vultures which the Germans called them behind their backs."

"Meanwhile Rick had arrived, and he and Kurt set forth to investigate the activities of the National Socialist German Workingmen’s Party. They found quickly that Heinrich Jung hadn’t exaggerated the situation, for all Bavaria was in turmoil. .... In one nation after another, first Russia, then Hungary and Greece and Turkey and Italy, it had been shown that vigorous, determined men might seize power, and the followers of these men might become officials, persons of importance and of fame. It had been shown right here in Munich by the Reds; and now a new group was going to try it, with the newest of slogans, the most timely and potent: Deutschland erwache! Germany awake! 

"That was how it appeared to the visiting British journalist; but of course to twenty-year-old Heinrich Jung it meant the deliverance of Germany from the heel of the oppressor, the casting out of the money-changers from the temple, the setting free of honest German labor—the young Nazi’s doctrines seemed as pink as his cheeks, and Rick laughed and said that the longer he talked the redder both became."

"That evening there was a mass meeting in the same Burger-braukeller where they had heard Adi speak in January. This time it was a meeting of the Bavarian monarchists, who were also planning a revolt against Berlin. Heinrich Jung was very insistent that the visitors should attend this meeting—he practically told them that the Nazis meant to attempt some sort of coup; so the four friends went, and they saw plenty of history. Promptly on the second of eighty-thirty, Adolf Hitler burst into the hall, followed by steel-helmeted men, some of them pushing Maxim guns. Hitler rushed to the platform and took possession of it, delivering one of his wild tirades and telling the audience that the National Socialist regime had begun. At the point of his revolver he forced the monarchist leaders to pledge their allegiance to his kind of revolution, and to order their troops to obey him."

This was the meeting where hell broke loose. Next morning they marched with Heinrich Jung and his selected nazis, with Beauty insisting on joining to keep kurt safe. 

"There wasn’t much cheering, for apparently the working people on the streets at that hour didn’t know what it was all about. The troop marched to the Capuchin convent, under whose five-foot walls great stores of rifles had been buried. All night the monks had held torches while the arms were being carried out and distributed to the storm troopers. Ammunition had been stored in the vaults of one of the city’s great banks; a peculiar circumstance, in view of the party program concerning the money-changers. But nobody stopped to think about that, save only the skeptical Britisher; the eager young Nazis were busy getting their share of cartridges from the truck which suddenly put in appearance. Their guns were loaded, and then it was real war."

They marched, and stopped at a bridge. Visitor's party retired to a cafe for breakfast. 

"Kurt insisted that for a people beaten and depressed as the Germans were it was important to have their courage and hopes restored, to be made to believe that they were a race with a world destiny. Rick replied that all this talk about racial superiority was “the bunk”; a half-cracked Englishman by the name of H. S. Chamberlain had put that bug into the Kaiser’s ear—the Kaiser, half cracked himself, had circulated the book all over Germany, and it had spawned a whole library of rubbish, some of which this poor Schicklgruber creature had picked up.

"Rick insisted that he knew just the type: you could hear a score of them ranting in Hyde Park any Sunday afternoon. One shouted that Britain was being bankrupted by the upkeep of the royal family, the next clamored that it was belief in God which was wrecking civilization; one would tell you that money must be abolished, and the next that Esperanto offered the only way of understanding among the peoples. Many of these poor devils slept in flophouses and old men’s homes, exactly as Adi had done, wearing out their own vocal cords and the eardrums of their fellow inmates."

Then comes the rest of Beerhall Putsch. As people were shot, Beauty screamed, dragged Kurt to the taxi with Rick and Marie, and they sped. 
...............................................................................................  

Lanny did well professionally on the trip, they returned via Vienna, and his fame grew in Cote d'Azur, with more experiences. Easter at Chateau de Bruyne, Robbie was visiting Paris.

"Denis de Bruyne pointed out something which Lanny had heard in Germany, but of which the significance had not been made clear to him. All during the “mark swindle” the great German industries had been required to keep their workers employed and had received government credits for that purpose. They had set the workers to rebuilding and expanding plants; so now, having wiped out her debts both internal and external, the Germans were starting afresh with the most modern productive machinery in the world. What chance would the French stand in international trade, with their still-ruined factories, mills, and mines? It really seemed that the Germans were more capable than their foes. You could say, as Denis did, that it was because they were without moral or business scruples; that made you hate them more—but it didn’t make your peril any less! 

"Denis had the idea that the United States ought to recognize this situation and put her moral and financial power behind France. But Robbie had to tell him the painful fact that this was out of the question; any American statesman who advocated it would be quickly retired to private life. This was a world in which you had to look out for yourself, and the very word “idealism” now gave Americans what they crudely called “a pain in the neck.” Europe would have to find a method of paying her debts to America before she asked for any more favors."

U.S. had a new president. 

"“Cautious Cal” was the name of the new President, and by the easy method of saying nothing he made it possible for the newspapers to build him into a “strong silent statesman.” In reality, Robbie said, he liked to go down into the basement of the White House and keep track of the groceries that were being used. This suited Robbie and his big business friends, for he let them run the country and didn’t meddle with what he didn’t understand."

"All through the post-war depression Robbie had argued with his father against the entire making over of the Budd plants; Robbie’s oldest brother, Lawford, had wanted to drop arms-making, but now, as usual, Robbie was proved to be right! Already he was picking up small orders for various sorts of arms; Dutch traders were buying them and smuggling them into Germany by the network of canals which ran into that country. Also France was making new armament loans to Poland, and to the Little Entente, a new coalition to hold off the Russians on the east and to attack Germany if she should attack France. “Just as soon as business picks up there’s bound to be a boom,” said Robbie; “and we shall get our share, believe me.” 

"“But,” argued the son, “what about those huge stocks that were left over after the war?” 

"The father smiled. “We have had engineers and technicians at work for five years, and so have Vickers, Schneider, everybody. We have a new machine gun that fires two hundred more rounds per minute than the old one, and reaches a thousand yards farther. The old guns will be all right for South America or China, but not for a modern war. The same thing will apply to grenades, fuses, bombsights; everything that America is going to use in the next war will have to be made new—and not far ahead of the war, either!”"
...............................................................................................


Zoltan Kertezsi sent Lanny to Italy on business, and Lanny drove Marie to Paris first before they set out to Italy. He met an American journalist in Paris and was invited to a party where he met Leon Blum again, and Jean Longuet who was a grandson of Karl Marx.  

"Longuet had written an article on the recent Italian elections, which the Fascists had carried by a reign of terror; this was to appear in Le Populaire next morning, and Lanny promised to read it. The Socialist deputies of Italy were in a desperate struggle against the increasing tyranny, and Longuet said that Daniel in the lions’ den was nothing for courage compared to them, because Daniel had the Lord to trust in, while Matteotti and his comrades had only the moral sentiments of their half-strangled people. Said the lawyer-editor: “There is something in each of us which makes us willing to die rather than consent to evil. Whatever that is, it lifts us above the brutes and makes it possible to have hope for the human race.” Lanny said that if that was Socialism, he was ready to enroll his name."

Lanny got letters of introduction from friends at home to various old families of Italy, and drove with Marie to Rome. 

"The last time Lanny had made that journey had been ten years earlier, in company with old Mr. Hackabury, creator and proprietor of Bluebird Soap. So now this highly original character traveled along with them, and his amusing remarks were repeated to Marie. At San Remo they stopped off for a call on Lincoln Steffens, who now had a young wife and a baby, and was very proud of both. Stef had retired from politics for a while, in somewhat the same mood as Lanny. He had tried to change the world, and couldn’t, so let’s wait and see what the stubborn critter was going to do for itself! 

"When they came to the valley of the river Arno, they traveled up it to Florence and paid another call—this time on George D. Herron. He had moved to Italy because he couldn’t endure to meet all the people who came to see him in Geneva—especially Germans—to ask how he had come to be so cruelly deceived about Woodrow Wilson! The father of the League of Nations had just died, broken in both body and spirit, and poor Herron was in much the same state; the two visitors agreed that he couldn’t last much longer. A saddening thing to see what the world did to those idealistic souls who tried to improve it. A warning to Lanny, which his companion hinted at tactfully." 
................................................................................................    


"Lanny ought to have presented his various letters at once, before people went away to the seashore or the mountain lakes. But he had been deeply impressed by his talk with Longuet and the article he had read about the Italian Socialists; he knew that the new Parliament had just opened, and he could read enough Italian to learn from the newspapers that the country was in a political fever at the moment. Ever since the days of the Paris Peace Conference, Lanny had had a hankering to observe history from the inside, and he bethought himself who there was in Rome that might take him behind the scenes of this political show. The first thing he did after getting himself and his friend settled comfortably was to telephone to a newspaperman; taking the precaution to do this from the lobby of the hotel, so as not to worry his amie—so he told himself. She wanted to rest after the trip, and would wait until the cool of the evening before going out.  

"The man was Pietro Corsatti, American-born Italian correspondent of one of the New York newspapers; Lanny had met him at San Remo, and again at Genoa, and knew that he was open-minded and free-spoken."

They launched at a trattoria frequented by foreign newspapermen. 

"It appeared that the American newspapermen were divided about fifty-fifty on the subject of Mussolini; some thought he was a man of destiny, and others were equally sure that he was a “four-flusher,” a “flat tire.” Discussing him in a public place like this, you didn’t use either his name or title; he was “Mr. Smith”—perhaps because that had been his father’s occupation. Lanny’s companion warned him that in this aged town there were as many spies as there were statues of saints, and one did not speak freely even in bed with one’s mistress." 

"There had been a general election for members of Parliament in the previous month, and Mr. Smith’s followers had won a majority. They had got it, Corsatti declared, by the most vicious repression; the opposition leaders had been beaten, and many of their followers killed; the police and the Fascist Militia, some of whom called themselves “Savages,” had turned the election campaign into a farce. Mr. Smith had just made his appearance before the new Parliament, clad in a costume which the journalist said was suited to “a Gilbert and Sullivan Admiral of the Queen’s Navee.” In his speech he had remarked: “You of the opposition complain that you were restrained from holding free electoral meetings. What of that? Such meetings are of no avail, anyway.” 

"The program was to have the Parliament validate these frauds, three hundred and twenty of them all in one lump. The “Verification Committee on Mandates” had put such a proposal before the Chamber, and it was to be debated that afternoon. 

"“Longuet urged me to hear Matteotti,” said the visitor. “Do you suppose he will speak?” 

"“He will unless they prevent him,” replied the journalist, and Lanny asked: “Do you suppose I could get in?” 

"“I’ll see if I can take you into the press gallery with me. Can you call yourself the correspondent of any paper?”" 

"“I imagine Longuet would be glad if I’d send him a story.” 

"“That wouldn’t be so good—a Socialist paper. You don’t want to put a label on yourself. But five lire will do a lot in Rome.”"

And this following, remembered four decades after reading, such was the shock of the aftermath.  
................................................................................................    


"They took a taxi to the Palazzo di Montecitorio with the obelisk in front of it, where the Chamber of Deputies meets. At the door the correspondent took his young friend by the arm, and said to the doorman: “Il mio assistente.” At the same time he slipped him five lire, and they went in, as Corsatti phrased it, “on a greased skidway.” Lanny had a front seat to watch the making of history in a scene of bitter and furious strife. 

"Giacomo Matteotti was the Socialist party secretary and leader of its forces in the Parliament. He was then close to forty, but slender and youthful in appearance, with a sensitive, rather mournful face. Corsatti said that frequently he wore a frank, boyish smile, but he had no chance to show it that day. Lanny agreed with Longuet’s remark that Daniel’s stunt in the lions’ den was easy compared to what this Italian idealist was doing. He didn’t rave, or call names, but spoke in a quiet, firm voice, giving his people the facts as to what had been happening in their country during the past two years. Every promise to labor had been broken, while the inheritance taxes had been abolished at the behest of the rich. The financial statements of the nation had been deliberately falsified; there had been no reduction of expenditures, but on the contrary an orgy of stealing. The intimate associates of the head of the state were smuggling arms into Yugoslavia, they were oil corruptionists, they were terrorists who had stolen an election by vicious cruelty and now presented themselves in the Chamber to have their crimes officially sanctified. 

"Such was the substance of Matteotti’s speech. He was not content with vague charges; every time he made an assertion he went into details as to places, dates, and sums of money. Evidently he had been delving deeply, and he had a mass of papers before him, indicating that he was in position to go on for hours. The alleged criminals sat before him, and their reaction was the most appalling demonstration of mass fury that Lanny had ever heard. The Fascist deputies, about two-thirds of the Chamber, would leap to their feet, shake their clenched fists, and literally shriek with rage. Murder was in their aspect and murder in their cries; the frail orator blanched before this blast, but he did not yield, and as soon as he could be heard he went on with his implacable arraignment. What was spoken in this Chamber would become a matter of record, and sooner or later could be got to the people. 

"This continued for two hours—until it seemed that the Fascist regime was crumbling there before everyone’s eyes. Mussolini’s followers shouted insults and imprecations, and one of their orators rushed to the opposition side and bellowed into their faces: “Masnada!”—that is, band of scoundrels. Somehow—Lanny’s eye wasn’t quick enough to follow the events—a fight started, and in a twinkling it was a free-for-all, in which everybody jumped on anybody of whom he disapproved. That was the last that Lanny saw of the Italian Parlamento, for his friend whispered: “I have to get this story off!” and he went, his assistente following."

Lanny met Matteotti, who was of landowning caste and a lawyer, and editor of a newspaper, at his office, and they talked. 

"Lanny mentioned his experience with Barbara Pugliese. “Poor soul!” exclaimed the Socialist. “I knew her well; we had many a conflict in party gatherings. One cannot help sympathizing with people who are driven to desperation by their sufferings, but it is a tragic blunder to brandish an empty gun. Now we face the consequences of the unwise tactics of these extremists; I have the agonizing task of urging our people to keep their hands down, to take their beatings, to die without resistance, if and whenever it pleases our foes to kill them. Such has been the destiny of the wage-slaves throughout the centuries, and the roll of our martyrs is far from complete.”"

Matteotti invited Lanny to visit his home and meet his family. 

"“You understand,” continued the other, “in the next few days I have to complete my unfinished speech. If they prevent my doing so, we must try to find some other way to get the facts to the outside world.” He put into the visitor’s hands a book which he had published, A Year of Fascist Domination, in which he had listed more than two thousand murders and other crimes of violence which Mussolini’s partisans had committed. “We shall be glad of any help which you can give us in making these things known,” said Matteotti, and Lanny promised to do what he could. 

"“Remember this, whatever happens,” continued the other; “they cannot kill our cause. The workers will learn what we have tried to teach them, and there will be a new generation with more wisdom and courage than ours.” 

"“Surely not more courage!” exclaimed Lanny, and added: “God help you!” He hadn’t been able to make up his mind on the subject of God, but he had to say some word to this sorely tried soul."

"In Mussolini’s paper, the Popolo d’Italia, which Mussolini couldn’t get the people of Italy to read in spite of being their Prime Minister, Lanny observed pretty broad hints of violence against the opposition. Said the head of the state: “Matteotti made a speech of an outrageously provocative nature which should deserve some more concrete reply than the epithet of masnada which Signor Giunta flung at him.” Corsatti said that this was Mussolini’s way. He would call for violence, he would give secret instructions for violence, and then when violence resulted, he would be shocked, and would say that he couldn’t control the ardor of his followers. 

"The Socialist secretary spoke again in the Chamber, and came into direct conflict with the Prime Minister. Day after day this went on. Said the Socialist Gennari: “We are just out of prison, and we are ready to go back there for the sake of what we believe.” Said Mussolini, amid shouts and uproar: “You would have got a charge of lead in your backs. We do not lack courage, as we will show you. There is still time and we shall show you sooner than you think.”
................................................................................................    


Lanny was called to telephone, tenth of June, as he launched with Marie, with wife of Matteotti asking him to help, he was kidnapped publicly.  He rushed to the trattoria.  

"They asked him a score of questions, most of which he couldn’t answer; but one thing they got: Dumini! Oh, yes, they knew about him; one of the most notorious of Mussolini’s associates. In the days before the March on Rome he had boxed the ears of a girl who wore a red carnation, the Socialist symbol, and when her mother and brother protested he had shot them both dead. “And it was he who kidnaped Mazzolani!” exclaimed Corsatti. “Carried him off in a car and forced him to drink castor oil.” 

"“And Forni!” put in the others. That was a crime of the recent electoral campaign, the victim being a candidate for Parliament. It was what Mussolini had meant when he admitted that free electoral meetings had been prevented. 

"“What can we do?” asked Lanny, in anguish. 

"“Not much,” replied Corsatti. “I’m afraid it’s all up with your friend.” “What we have to do is to get the story,” said one of the others. 

"“If we let the outside world know, there will be repercussions, and that may do some good.” 

"“But then it will be too late!” 

"“Probably so. It doesn’t take long to club a man to death—especially if you shoot him first.”"

Lanny talked to Longuet, but was kidnapped before his telegram to Rick was sent, and taken to fascist militia head office. He was questioned and threatened. 

"What was actually happening Lanny found out later on. Marie hadn’t stopped to telephone to the Prince, but had taken a taxi to the American Embassy. The ambassador wasn’t in, but she had talked with the chargé d’affaires, who didn’t need to be told that there was a munitions firm known as Budd Gunmakers in Connecticut, or that Robert Budd was a backer of the Republican party. Being a woman of the world, Marie knew how to present the case of an overemotional young art lover who had listened to an eloquent orator and been moved by an impulse of hero-worship. The chargé smiled and said that once upon a time he had been young himself. He promised that if Lanny got into any trouble owing to his too sympathetic nature, the Embassy would assure the Italian government that he was both well connected and harmless. The chargé hadn’t heard the news about Matteotti; he said that it was unfortunate, but of course as a diplomatic official he was compelled to preserve an attitude of aloofness from Italian affairs. 

"So when Lanny was brought back into the office of Generalissimo Balbo there was no more “rough stuff.” The official contented himself with saying: “Mr. Budd, the Italian government is under the necessity of requesting you to remove yourself from this country at once.” 

"Said Lanny: “I am entirely willing to comply with that request.” 

"“Where do you wish to go?” 

"“To my home on the French Riviera.” 

"“There is a train this evening, and you will take it.” 

"“You have perhaps overlooked the fact that I am motoring.” 

"“Oh, you have a car?” 

"“I have. Also I have a friend with me.” 

"“A lady friend, I believe?” 

"“Si.” Lanny wondered if he was going to have to refuse to answer questions about Marie; but he didn’t. Said the Generalissimo of the National Militia: “You and your lady friend will start this afternoon. What is the size of your car?” 

"“It carries five passengers.” 

"“These two militi will ride in the rear seat and see you over the border. You will not be permitted out of their sight until you are across.” 

"“It is going to be rather crowded, because we have considerable luggage.” 

"“You will have to find some way to strap the luggage on, or else have it forwarded. The men will ride with you.” 

"“It wouldn’t be possible for them to follow in a separate car?” 

"“I see no reason why the Italian government should be put to that expense.” 

"“If that is the difficulty, you might permit me to pay the cost of an extra car.” 

"The Generalissimo thought for a moment. Was he afraid that a fast driver might leave the militi behind? Anyhow, he answered, coldly: “The arrangement would not be satisfactory. You will take the men to the border in your car. And you will leave at once.”

They were verbally tortured on the way, with abuses, and threats to Marie, until they didn't stop for dinner before the goons pleaded. Lanny drove through night, and managed to arrive earlier than expected by reporters, giving him time to send off telegrams to Rick and to Zoltan, and Beauty, and talk to Longuet. But this scandal was what the French drew the line at, and Marie left him. Clandestine meetings in Paris were ok, but appearing together in society, meeting people, no. 
................................................................................................    


Fascist newspapers were claiming Matteotti had escaped to Vienna.  

"The story of Giacomo Matteotti proved to be a long-drawn-out serial. The unfortunate deputy was never seen alive, and cries were heard in the Parlamento: “The government is an accomplice!” Mussolini had to drop his tale that his opponent had fled to Vienna, and stated in the Chamber that Matteotti had evidently been abducted, but that no one knew where he was. However, the car was traced by its license number, and the names of Dumini and four other criminals became known. Public clamor forced their arrest, and they were supposed to take their punishment like gentlemen, but they weren’t that; three confessed that they had committed the crime at the order of Mussolini. Shivers of terror ran through the regime, and the uproar in the Chamber was such that for a few days it seemed possible that Fascismo might fall. 

"The five ruffians had taken their victim to a dense wood a few miles from Rome. They said that they might have spared his life if he had pleaded for it, but he had been “fresh.” What he had said was: “You cannot kill my cause. My children will be proud of their father. The proletariat will bless my cause.” So they had beaten him to death, mutilated his corpse, and left it unburied. His dying words had been: “Long live Socialism!” 

"Such were the stories which came out of Rome during the next couple of weeks. Later on the murderers escaped, except Dumini, who was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment. He served about two years and then they let him out. He was heard to remark: “If they gave me seven years they ought to have given the President thirty.” So they arrested him again. He denied that by “the President” he had meant Mussolini, but the judges wouldn’t believe him, and sentenced his bold tongue to fourteen months and twenty days additional."

"“Take it easy, son!” wrote Robbie, patiently. “The world is a tough old nut, and uncounted millions of men have broken their teeth upon it.” The father went on to point out that despotisms had existed upon the continent of Europe farther back than any archaeologist had been able to trace; and doubtless there had never yet been a tyrant who hadn’t been able to provide moral sanctions satisfactory to himself." 
................................................................................................    


Lanny went with Rick to Geneva for the next conference and met the crowd. 

"Lanny found that his adventure in Rome had turned him into a personality; he had made the headlines, and was no longer a playboy. Men didn’t have to agree with his ideas, they might tell him he was a “D.F.” to imagine he could buck the Fascists, but all the same he had ideas and had stood up for them, so they respected him." 

"The statesmen were working over a thing which was to be called the “Geneva Protocol.” The real initiator of it was France, and its purpose was to enable her to back out of the Ruhr without too great admission of failure. Robbie wrote to his son that Marianne had got hold of a bull by the tail, a trying position for a lady; she wanted guarantees that the bull wouldn’t turn around too quickly when she let go. According to the Protocol all the nations would agree to apply “sanctions” against any nation which attacked a neighbor; it was another effort to remedy the condition of which Clemenceau had complained, those twenty million too many Germans in Europe."

"The Versailles treaty had set up a row of little states between Russia and Germany, made out of territories taken from both those countries. So long as the little states endured, France was comparatively safe; but who was going to protect them? France couldn’t do it alone, and the British navy couldn’t get there. But British money could arm them, and Zaharoff had the plants to make the arms. Of course Robbie Budd didn’t fail to point that out to his son, and Lanny showed the letter to Rick. Was that what Herriot meant when he clamored for “security” as well as “arbitration”? MacDonald insisted that arbitration was enough, and he drew a picture of “the League of Nations looked up to, not because its arm is great but because its mind is calm and its nature just.” Were those samples of the phrases which the Prime Minister of Labor used because they brought applause, but which he didn’t know how to relate to reality? Suppose somebody came along who wasn’t either calm or just, and didn’t respect those qualities?"
...............................................................................................    


Zoltan Kertezsi proposed, and set up, an exhibition of Marcel's work, and it was a success. Budd family from Connecticut visited Paris while it was on, and Robin boys were in Paris, too, and Hansi played. Hansi and Bess fell in love, and this was a strong pairing for life, not a flight of fancy. Hansi confessed to to Lanny, and Lanny spoke to Bess, in confidence - Esther Budd could see the pair in love, but couldn't object, since neither gave any ground for objection! 

Upton Sinclair's romance is total and complete in the classical sense, involving not merely love affairs, but far wider and deeper. Paradoxically that is precisely and in this case very conveniently why his protagonist doesn't have the classical romantic love story, but every other kind of involvement. He can appreciate every good quality in any person, and doesn't limit his view of opposite gender to physical and utilitarian qualities, but is a noble soul and wouldn't hurt anyone. On the other hand if such a young man found a perfect and complete romance early in life, his circle would possibly be limited, or risk a tragic outcome, since he is to be involved in much to come.

So while Lanny has a series of involvements where he is perfectly involved and faithful while it goes on, despite other options (as every man always has), they end sooner or later with a good reason that isn't his fault, or the other people's either. Until, that is, the author has him ready to settle for good, and finds a partner appropriate enough, despite risks.

And almost as if to counterbalance Lanny finding happiness in a perfect match, that is where the traditional exotic rose garden romance of this couple, Hansi and Bess, has a turn. But that is a long way off, come cold war era.
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"The new Tory government of England rejected the Geneva Protocol, which had been planned to bring peace to Europe by the method of boycotting aggressor states. The British gave several reasons, the most important being that the United States refused to pledge its support to the program. If the aggressor could buy all he needed from one great country, the other countries would be depriving their businessmen of profitable trade to no purpose. That statement set everybody in the States to debating; the Wilsonites, of whom there were many, insisted that their country was betraying the hopes of mankind. The crippled champion of internationalism had been in his grave more than a year, but his arguments lived on, and Lanny listened and as usual saw both sides of a complicated question. 

"Robbie Budd came over on some of his many affairs. He was the plumed knight of isolationism, riding at the head of the procession with a pennon on his lance. He said that both Britain and France were stumbling in the march of history, and might soon fall out. They were adhering “to antiquated methods in industry and refusing to modernize their plants. America, on the other hand, renewed its machinery every decade, and could turn out goods faster and better than any other nation. All we had to do was to arm ourselves and be ready to meet all comers, but keep out of other people’s quarrels. Let them destroy themselves if they wanted to; on that basis the world would be ours. 

"Robbie worshiped a deity known as laissez faire. Let manufacturers everywhere produce what goods they pleased and offer them in whatever market they could find; let government keep its hands off, and the intelligent men of the United States would make prosperity permanent. In the old days there had been crises and panics, but Robbie said that modern technology had solved that problem; mass production of goods at ever-cheapening prices was the answer to everything. Employers could afford to pay high wages, money would buy more and more, the workers would attain an ever-higher standard of living. The solution of this problem was America’s; no other nation could approach her, and the one thing she had to fear was political demagogues throwing monkey-wrenches into the machinery. Robbie said he didn’t know why that name had been given to a useful tool, but it fitted the politicians who presumed to meddle with the production and distribution of goods. 

"Fortunately, the country had that most admirable of presidents, that strong silent statesman who never interfered with anything, but was happy to stroll through the power-plant and listen to the rich humming of the dynamos. Nobody was going to get Cautious Cal into any sort of foreign entanglement, no one was going to get him to stop any American oil man or munitions man from selling his products wherever in the world he could find a customer with the cash. The Vermont country storekeeper’s son was going to sit tight in the comfortable mansion which the government provided him and save all he could of the $6125 per month which would fall due to him, up to and including the fourth day of March 1929. To Robbie Budd that was equivalent to saying that God was in His heaven and all was right with the world." 

"A delightful thing to have such a father—and a temptation to agree with him on matters of business and finance. Very certainly the system of laissez faire was vindicating itself so far as it concerned Lanny Budd’s own affairs. That system was pouring thousands of rich people into the playground of Europe, their pockets bulging with more money than they knew how to spend; quite literally bulging, for Lanny met men who thought nothing of carrying a hundred thousand-franc notes in a billfold, and when he asked one of them why he did it, the answer was: “Well, I might want to invite you to lunch.” If these people had any culture at all—and many of them did—it was the easiest thing in the world to seduce them with the prestige of great paintings. Lanny’s position became that of the fisherman on the rivers of Oregon during the latter part of the month of July; catching salmon becomes a labor, not a sport, and one never wants to see or smell or taste another fish."

Demand for Marcel's work went up, no matter how much prices were raised. 

"Lanny had so much money that he didn’t know what to do with it, and had to ask his father’s advice. To Robbie that was a delightful experience; to have this playboy, of whose future on its practical side he had begun to despair, come of his own free will and ask how to invest a hundred thousand dollars that he had earned without a stroke of help from his father—well, that was something to go home and tell to the old man of the Budd tribe! Robbie sat down and made out a schedule of what he called a “portfolio,” a list of gilt-edged stocks and bonds which his son was to acquire. Robbie took as much interest in it as if it had been one of those crossword puzzles which had become the rage. He wanted to explain it to Lanny item by item—A. & P., A. T. & T., A. T. & S. F.—as if Lanny could ever remember all those initials! The son wrote a check on his bank in Cannes, the father sent a cablegram, and, by the magic which American businessmen had contrived, all those valuable pieces of paper were in a vault in Lanny’s name before he had gone to sleep that evening. Robbie estimated that his son would enjoy an income of more than seven hundred dollars a month for the rest of his days, and without ever doing anything but signing his name. How could anybody question the soundness of a world in which such a miracle could be wrought? 

"Yet Lanny couldn’t keep himself from performing that unreasonable mental action. No longer an innocent child, he looked about him at the idlers of this Côte d’Azur and they had ceased to appear glamorous. He saw gambling and drinking and assorted vice, and what seemed to him an orgy of foolish and profitless activity. He saw swarms of parasites preying upon the rich, getting their money by a thousand devices, few of them so harmless as persuading them to purchase old masters. He saw, too, the signs of poverty and strain; when he went into the great cities he was made sick by the spectacle of human degradation, and he had too much brains to be able to salve his conscience by giving a coin to a beggar now and then, as some of his kind-hearted friends would do. 

"The spacious drawing-room of Bienvenu was cool on hot days, and a generous open fire kept it warm on cold nights. In it were courtesy, kindness, love, and every kind of beauty that the skills of men had been able to create: oriental rugs of rich harmonious colors on the floor, inspired paintings on the walls, long shelves full of masterpieces of literature old and new, the music of a piano, a phonograph, and the newly devised radio at command. But outside, waves of human misery beat against the foundations and winds of social rage howled about the eaves. The ladies of this house cried to Lanny: “Why have we worked so hard to make safety and comfort for you, only to see you go out into the midst of storm and danger? Is it because we haven’t done our duty? Is it lack of devotion or of charm on our part that you wish to throw yourself into a chaos of clamoring greeds and hates?”"

Thus now the stage is complete with the his profession that gives him reason to travel, meet people of wealth and access to power, and the dilemma Lanny must deal with, on many levels. 
...............................................................................................  

  
"Cannes was thought of as a playground for the rich; a city of lovely villas and gardens, a paradise of fashionable elegance. Few stopped to realize what a mass of labor was required to maintain that cleanliness and charm: not merely the servants who dwelt on the estates, but porters and truckdrivers, scrubwomen and chambermaids, kitchen-workers, food-handlers; and scores of obscure occupations which the rich never heard about. These people were housed in slum warrens, that “cabbage patch” where Lanny’s Red uncle had taken him to meet Barbara Pugliese. The ladies and gentlemen of fashion didn’t know that such places existed; they could hardly believe you when you told them—and they wouldn’t thank you for having told them.

"If the slums of the Riviera were ever to be razed and decent housing provided, it could only be through the action of the workers themselves; the rich wouldn’t make any move unless they were forced: The question was whether it was to be done by the method which the world had seen in Russia and didn’t like so well, or whether it could be carried out by orderly democratic process, such as the workers of Vienna and other Socialist cities were proceeding to apply. Which way you chose determined whether you called yourself a Communist or a Socialist; whether your opponents named you Red or Pink. Raoul Palma, idealist and something of a saint, persisted in advocating the patient and peaceful way. His hobby was what he called “workers’ education”; he wanted to get the tired laborers to come to school at night and learn the rudiments of modern economic theory: just how their labor was exploited and just what they could do about it. He wanted a Socialist Sunday school, to which the workers’ children might come and learn those facts which were not taught in schools conducted by their masters."

Here hidden in plain sight is a prejudice the author shares with not only his nation but most of the West. They forget, and are unable to see, subjects or vanquished  of colonial conquered lands as humans not only on par but possibly, often, superior in everything other than brutal killing weaponry. And they are unable to see that Russian revolution, or the French for that matter, differ from American revolution or U.S. war of independence only in not involving such colonising of another land and vanquished original residents forgotten as humans on par.

Caste systems of Europe including Britain thus survived in their original lands despite the revolutionary systems of equality and opportunities for all men - that is, those of European ancestry; others didn't get recognition till much later, often but not always before women - precisely because the two systems were parallel in lands separated by the big pond.

In asia, of course, there was no pretense of equality. Churchill was honoured with Nobel prize despite his deliberately starving millions of farmers and other rural people to death, and not only writing in favour thereof but turning away the ships filled with grain that FDR sent for aid to India, when they arrived at Australia. U.S. wasn't seen with horror when the explicit written policy instructing "let India go" (starve to death, all of them) was public knowledge, yet false propaganda against India continues almost on par with that against Jews by church, despite theft of knowledge from India every day for decades in applications for patents in U.S. to things known to India for millennia and used commonly in most homes. 
................................................................................................


The author has gone on and on about starving children and poor of Germany, and unfair demands for war reparation by France, along with similar and much worse problems in Russia merely making allied powers refrain from helping since they won't deal with Bolsheviks. Here are two contradictory quotes not too far separated:- 

"Germany did really feed her children, and care for her aged, and build decent homes for the workers, all of which practices Beauty praised ardently—never dreaming that they had anything to do with the dreaded Socialism." 

And, apart from the constant references to Kurt despising Johannes Robin because he made money while post WWI German starvation was going on,  

"Thus in one way or another Kurt was meeting Germans. They had been coming back to the Riviera, and now with the new spirit of peace there arrived German steamers, brand-new and beautiful models of what a steamer should be, full of large and well-fed passengers desiring to put on bathing-suits and expose their fat ruddy necks and shaven bullet-heads to the semi-tropical sun. They brought with them rolls of money which had mysteriously become more stable and desirable than the franc; with it they could eat French food and drink French wines and put up at the best hotels; French waiters would serve them, and French couturiers would labor diligently but for the most part vainly to make their women chic."

Now those tourist from Germany on Cote d'Azur were definitely not Jewish! So most of that not paying reparations was as much fraud as refusing to give up armaments by hiding them in Catholic monasteries and claiming France was unreasonable! As for the previous quote, Germany has had policies actively, financially supporting large scale reproduction by German people, while the same people look at France and talk of Germany needing the land that France has - although they no longer use the term 'lebensraum' when speaking to non Germans in English on a train through France to Paris in 2001! 
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Lanny accompanied Kurt to Berlin and visited Robin family, where Johannes Robin gave him carte blanche to buy art for his home. Hansi hadn't informed his parents about Bess, though, for caution. 

"While Lanny was there a cablegram arrived from New York with thrilling tidings: Hansi was engaged to make an appearance in Carnegie Hall during the month of April; they would pay him five hundred dollars, the first money he had ever earned in his life. When they were alone, Hansi looked at his friend with a frightened expression and said: “Bess will be eighteen!” 

"“All right,” smiled the other; “why not?” 

"“What shall I do, Lanny?” 

"“Stand up to them. Get it clear in your head that they’re just human beings like yourself; they’re only great because they think they are.” 

"“How I wish you’d come with me!” exclaimed the young virtuoso. 

"“Don’t let them bluff you, Hansi. You’ll find their bark is a lot worse than their bite!”"

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 Here on the narrative takes a turn to Lanny getting personal introductions to people within Nazi hierarchy, swiftly right to the top from Heinrich Jung right up to Hitler. 

"The truth was that Lanny had found the first portion of Adi’s book extremely hard reading. It was called Mein Kampf—that is to say, My Fight, or if you wished to take it symbolically, My Struggle. But its author had no idea of taking it that way; his book was a declaration of implacable and unceasing war upon the world as at present organized and run. Mein Hass would have been a better title, it seemed to Lanny, or perhaps Meine Hassen, for Hitler had so many hates that if you read off the list of them it became a joke. Lanny saw him as Rick had explained him: the poor odd-jobs man, the artist manqué, the dweller in flophouses who craved ideas and read all sorts of stuff; it was jumbled up in his head, the true and the false hopelessly confused, but everything believed with a fury of passion that came close to the borderline of insanity. Lanny was no psychiatrist, but it seemed to him that here was an indivisible combination of genius and crackpot. Lanny had never before encountered such a mind, but he accepted Rick’s statement that you could find them in every refuge for the derelict, or hear them by the dozens in Hyde Park, London, on any Sunday afternoon.

"The author of Mein Kampf had a dream of a tall, long-headed, long-limbed, vigorous man with blond hair and blue eyes whom he called “the Aryan.” This seemed funny, because Hitler himself was an average-sized dark man of the round-headed Alpine type. His dream Aryans didn’t exist in Europe; for the Germans, like all the other tribes, were mixed as thoroughly as a broth which has been stewing on a hot fire for a thousand years. Hitler had got his emotions out of Wagner’s Siegfried mythology, plus a bit of Nietzsche, who had gone insane, and of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who didn’t have to go. This provided him with reasons for hating all the other varieties of mankind. He hated the yellow ones as a kind of evil gnomes; he hated the Russians, calling them sub-human; he hated the French because they were lewd and decadent; he hated the British because they ruled the seas and blockaded Germany; he hated the Americans because they believed in democracy. Most of all he reviled the Jews, obscene caricatures of human beings who had crept into Germany and corrupted her heart and brain, and had got so much of her property away from her, and filled so large a share of the professions, crowding out the noble blond Aryans.

"The Jews must be driven from the Fatherland and ultimately from the world. The Jews were the international bankers who had a stranglehold upon the poor; the Jews were Marxist revolutionists who wanted to destroy all Aryan institutions. That they could be both these things at the same time didn’t surprise Adi because he himself could believe and be all sorts of opposite and incompatible things. He loathed the Marxists because they laughed at his Aryan myth and all others. He hated the people with money because he had never had any. He hated the department stores because they took the trade away from the little merchants, his kind of people. He hated the Catholics because they were internationalists and not German; he hated the Protestants because they taught the Christian ideals of brotherhood and mercy instead of the noble Aryan ideals of racial supremacy and world domination."

And Upton Sinclair's missing the obvious is due to disdain for India, where both the term "Aryan" and the symbol Swastika were borrowed from, but given completely false meanings and connotations that had nothing to do with the real meanings of the names, terms, symbol. Aarya is a Sanskrit word just as Swastika is; the former literally has to do with Light, and is used as epithet for the civilised, righteous, regardless of any physical colours of skin or eyes or hair; the latter, used in India routinely for home protection and welcome, literally means "well-being symbol" and is one of the several occult symbols (such as the six-pointed star), and may not be used inappropriately as nazis used it without the disaster they wrought turning on the perpetrators.

This mistake of borrowing from an ancient culture while maintaining disdain for the said culture due to having colonised the land and people by brute force is as common a stupidity as the disdain bestowed on women, especially rape victims, by cultures of West that are mainly abrahmic in thinking; but the shame belongs to the brute, not the victim, and this is still not understood in cultures that either consider women fair game for any male, or worship bullies and right to weapons whether of mass destruction, or used exclusively for murder of humans; that covers unfortunately the two chief later abrahmic religions and U.S..
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Kurt was converted by the book, or had never needed it. Pan-Germanism was older than kaiser Wilhelm and had roots older than Germany turning to east instead of Jerusalem, massacring everyone up to Russian borders, wiping out Prussian people and language, homesteading and repopulating until Europe and the world almost completely all but forgot Prussia was once another nation, different people.  

"Lanny retired into himself and faced some painful facts. Kurt hated Jews; no use trying to deny that any longer. Lanny had observed that Kurt always found some other reason for disapproving of Jews, but it was always about Jews that he gave these reasons. Year after year Kurt had refused to go to the home of a Schieber who was profiting out of the sufferings of the German people. All right, Lanny could understand that feeling; but what about his cousin of the Meissners who showed up for the Weihnachtsfest and mentioned casually in the course of the meal that he had had the forethought to sell marks all through the inflation? “Foreigners were losing money,” he said, “and why shouldn’t a German get some?” Kurt didn’t leave the table or show any diminution of cordiality to this blond Nordic Schieber. Lanny said nothing; he was a guest and not a censor of Nordic morality."

"“Aren’t you afraid of the government officials?” asked Lanny. 

"“What can they do?” challenged Heinrich. “We aren’t breaking any laws.” 

"“You’re getting ready to break them, aren’t you?” 

"The other smiled. “How are they going to prove that?” 

"“But it’s all here in the book,” argued Lanny, pointing to Heinrich’s copy. “They don’t read books; and anyhow they wouldn’t believe it.” 

"“You expect the movement to grow, and if it does, people will certainly read the book. Does Hitler expect to convert the masses with a book in which he explains his contempt for them and shows how easy it is to fool them? He says it’s all right to tell them a lie if it’s a big enough one, for they will think you wouldn’t have nerve enough for that. To me it just doesn’t make sense.” 

"“That’s because you’re intelligent,” replied Heinrich. “You’re an Aryan, and you ought to join our movement and become one of our leaders.”"

Lanny went via Dresden and Munich with Zoltan Kertezsi and Kurt. 

"Almost impossible to resist him when he became inspired; he was simple and unaffected, but then something would rise up and take possession of him and he would become the very soul of the Fatherland. “At least that’s the way it seems to a German,” Kurt added, in an effort to be fair. 

"Lanny said: “Yes; but we’re all trying to get peace right now, and surely Hitler isn’t going to make it any easier.” 

"“It’s no good fooling ourselves,” replied his friend. “If they really want peace with Germany, they’ll have to make it possible for our people outside the Fatherland to get back in.” 

"It made Lanny a little sick to hear that. He knew the answers, having heard every possible point of view threshed out during six months of the Peace Conference. If you returned Stubendorf to Germany, what about the Poles who lived in that district? For the most part these were poor, so they didn’t count for very much, at least not in the estimation of the Germans. But if you made the transfer, then right away the Polish agitators would start working among them, and you would have the same old fight in reverse; it would be Hitler versus Korfanty to the end of time. 

"Lanny had definitely made up his mind not to argue. He said: “I don’t know the solution, Kurt. But let’s try to approach it in the spirit of open-mindedness, not of fanaticism.” He wanted to add “like Adi,” but he withheld the words. 

"In his heart Lanny was thinking: “Kurt is turning into a Nazi! And what is that going to mean?” The American remembered how vigorously his father had warned him, after their misadventure in Paris, that Kurt couldn’t stay in Bienvenu and go on with his activities as a German agent. For years Kurt hadn’t met any of his countrymen in France, but now he was beginning again, and would they be trying to use him as they had done before? Maybe it was snobbery on Lanny’s part, but it seemed to him that agents of Hitler would be far worse than agents of the Kaiser!"
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Marie had cancer, and the two parts of her life promptly closed ranks around her at this juncture, so Lanny was together with her family till the end and had promised her to watch over her sons, who it turned out had known about them for years.

Hansi gave his concert in N.Y. and was a great success, and Bess argued successfully with her mother, making her invite the Robin boys home if she had to wait to marry. But Esther found that this changed the balance, Hansi became celebrity of every strata in her hometown and his eight to ten hour practice sessions an informal continuous concert that people were stopping on her patio, lawn or steps to listen to. She had to give in to Bess and let them marry, with a proper wedding at home, and they arrived by invitation from Lanny to spend honeymoon at Juan Les-Pins, which became a musical session with Kurt and lanny. Bess was taught by Kurt so she could accompany Hansi.
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"Less than forty miles from Juan was the Italian border, and within it a new form of society was being brought to birth. You might love it or you might hate it, but you couldn’t be indifferent to it. Benito Mussolini, that Blessed Little Pouter Pigeon, had been proclaimed il Duce di Fascismo, and was making it necessary that you either adored him or wanted to overthrow him. His government was following in the path which all one-man governments are forced by their nature to tread. Having procured the murder of Matteotti, he was threatened by the vengeance of Matteotti’s friends and followers, so he had to put these out of the way. He could not permit the agitation, the discussion of this notorious case in his realm, so he was driven to outlaw the opposition, and have its leaders slugged and shot, or seized and immured on barren sunbaked islands of the Mediterranean. 

"There was one continuous reign of terror, with thousands of people seeking safety in flight, trying to get into France by climbing through wild mountain passes or by rowing in little boats at night. They would arrive destitute, having had to flee with no more than the clothes they had on their backs, and sometimes these would have been torn to rags; many refugees had been beaten bloody, or mutilated, or wounded by bullets. They were pitiable objects, pleading for help in the name of that cause to which they had consecrated their lives: the cause of justice, of truth, of human decency. They appealed to Lanny Budd because he had been the friend of Barbara Pugliese and a public defender of Matteotti; they appealed to Raoul Palma as a leader of Socialist workers’ groups, a conspicuous comrade; and of course Raoul would call up Lanny and tell him—for what could a few poverty-stricken toilers do in the face of such mass need? Lanny lived in a rich home, he was known to be making large sums of money, and how could he shut his ears to the cries of these heroes and martyrs, saints of the new religion of humanity? “For I was an hungered, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not!” 

"The balance of opinion in Bienvenu had shifted on this issue; Marie, who had been Beauty’s chief ally, was heard no more; instead there were Hansi and Bess, who were worse even than Lanny. Two sensitive, emotional young things, without any discretion whatever, without knowledge of the world, of the devices whereby charlatans and parasites prey upon the rich. If Hansi and Bess could have had their way they would have thrown open the gates of the villa and turned it into a refugee camp for the victims of Fascism; they would have had former Socialist editors and members of the Parlamento sleeping on cots in the drawing-room, and a continuous breadline at the kitchen door. Being guests, they couldn’t do those things; but they gave away all their money, and wrote or telegraphed their parents for more, telling the most dreadful stories about the deeds of this black reaction. Such stories were hard for the parents to believe or understand, for the newspapers and magazines which they read were portraying Mussolini as a great modern statesman, builder of magnificent new morale in Italy, the man who was showing the whole world the way of deliverance from the dreadful Red Menace. 

"The worst of the matter was the moral support which the young idealists gave to the always pliable Lanny. They dinned their convictions into his ears, they swept him away with their fervor. To these exalted souls the thing called “social justice” was axiomatic, something beyond dispute; they took it for granted that all good people must agree with them about the wickedness of what was going on in Italy. Bess had come from a new land, where cruelty wasn’t practiced; at any rate, if it was, nobody had ever let her know about it. Beauty saw that she had to step carefully in her opposition, lest she forfeit all that regard which she had been so happy to gain. 

"Nor could she expect much help from Kurt. To be sure, he disliked and distrusted the Reds and Pinks; the movement of National Socialism which he favored was pledged to exterminate them just as ruthlessly as Fascism was doing. But the Nazis were Germans, and Kurt was interested in German problems; he took no part in French politics, and concerning Italian politics he followed the advice of a distinguished personality by the name of Dante Alighieri—to do his work and let the people talk. Kurt and Lanny had an old understanding, that the Idea precedes the Thing, and now Kurt would remind his friend of it. He would say to Bess: “You remember that you weren’t going to let anything interfere with your piano practice.” He would say to Hansi: “The violin is an extremely complicated instrument, and if you expect to master it you will have to keep not merely your fingers but also your mind on it.” 

"Quiet rebukes such as these would bring the young people to their senses for a time; but they did not diminish the disturbances in the world outside or the knocking at the gates of Bienvenu. Poor Beauty found herself back in the position of the early settlers of her New England homeland, with hordes of a new and more dangerous kind of Red Indian lurking outside her little fort and shooting arrows of poisoned propaganda into the minds and souls of her loved ones."

................................................................................................  


Emily Chattersworth invited him to Paris, Hansi and Bess had left for Berlin. She was trying to help him find a suitable match.

"Mrs. Emily had been fishing also. Lanny found a telegram at his hotel summoning him to lunch next day. “I have a catch for you,” it read, and Lanny replied that he would be on hand. At Christie’s, and at the Vente Drouot in Paris, they set up pictures on an easel; at an auction of horses they trotted them out into the ring; while in the marriage market, the practice was that they came to lunch and you looked at them across the table and sampled their conversation. Always with decorum, pretending that it was a casual affair and that your mind was entirely absorbed in the conversation. Lanny was appreciative of the kindness of an old friend, and would do anything he could to oblige her—except marry some girl whom he didn’t especially care about!"

Emily did find someone young, beautiful and very wealthy, very innocent and almost made a match, but just before Lanny met Olivie Hellstein again he heard from Rosemary and Robbie both, so he left for England. Affair with Rosemary was resumed.

"Lanny was pleased to serve as informant for this solid and vigorous father, reporting on the various capitals which he visited. What did Denis de Bruyne think about the prospects in France? Lanny reported that Denis was greatly distressed over the situation. Poincaré had been brought back, in an effort to save the franc, but Denis said that the prestige of the country was greatly impaired. Here too the ideas of disarmament had made inroads; they took the form of a line of defensive works all the way from the Swiss to the Belgian borders, in the hope of keeping the Germans out. That would be cheaper than a first-class army; but it wouldn’t get France any coking coal for the Lorraine iron ore!

"Then Robbie asked what Kurt’s friends were saying. He didn’t want Kurt using Bienvenu as a center of espionage, but he didn’t mind if Lanny used it as a center of counterespionage! Robbie reported that the Nazis were smuggling in more and more small arms to be used in their street-fighting against the Communists. The significant fact was that these fellows had so much money. Cash on the barrelhead! Bub Smith was directly in touch with their agents in Holland and had made several deals, which helped to keep up the courage of Budd’s at home.

"This gave the watchful father an opportunity for a little sermon, likely to be of use to a young man playing about with Reds and Pinks. Obviously, these National Socialists were taking somebody’s money; and what did it mean? The situation was the same with each and every one of the demagogues and agitators: no matter what fancy labels they gave themselves, no matter how freely their hearts bled for the poor, the time arrived when they couldn’t pay the rent for their headquarters, and they came cap in hand to some great industrialist, banker, or politician having access to the public till, and said: “I have some power; what’s it worth to you?” They made a deal, and from that time on the movement became a trap for the millions of poor boobs who came to meetings, shouted and sang, put on uniforms and marched, and let themselves be used to bring a new set of rascals into power."

"Robbie was to fly from London all the way to Aden below the Red Sea. He was going to have a look at that oil property which had been doing so well, but now wasn’t. He and his associates suspected that some of his rivals might be interfering with production; no end to the tricks in this highly competitive game! He wanted to meet some of the desert sheiks who were the neighbors of his property, and make up his mind how best to deal with them; their prices for “protection” were going rather high. Robbie said it was like Chicago, where a fellow named Al Capone had to be seen if you wanted to do any sort of business.

"All this promised to be interesting, and Lanny was invited to go along. Ten years ago he would have jumped at the chance; now he was tied up with Rosemary, and had engagements in Berlin and other places. He wasn’t a playboy any more, but a man with affairs of his own, and Robbie was glad for that to be so, and didn’t urge him. Lanny said he’d go if his father really needed him—but Robbie answered no, Bub Smith was going and he would be well protected. Lanny eased his conscience by promising to ask questions while in Germany, and report all he could learn about the Nazis.

"Robbie said: “What I’d like to know is whose money they are spending for Budd automatics and daggers.”

"“Daggers?” echoed Lanny, much surprised.

"“Yes,” replied the other. “They tell us they are most useful in street-fighting.”"
................................................................................................    


Lanny visited The Reaches, Rick's home, and met other guests.

"Mr. Cunnyngham learned that Lanny had come from France, and so took him into the conversation. What was the matter with those Nationalists? Lanny explained their neurosis on the subject of Germany. And did the plain people of France feel like that? Lanny said no, but they felt that they had been let down by the war. The average Frenchman had an urgent desire to re-establish the foyer. Also he wanted real disarmament—a peace that could be trusted. He was provoked by the idea that the English used the Germans as a counter-weight against the French. He felt contempt for the Americans, who had come into the war so late, yet thought that they had won it; who wanted their money back—as if it hadn’t been America’s war, too!

"The talk moved on to Germany. Lanny told his new friend about the Nazis, but found that no member of the British governing class could be persuaded to concern himself with people of that sort. There would always be fanatics, and they would always be yellin’ and makin’ speeches; let the blighters blow their heads off. Mr. Cunnyngham told of troubles he had experienced in India. Cows were sacred, even though they blocked the streets and made them filthy; crocodiles were sacred, even though they ate the babies. The Hindu fanatics insisted on breakin’ up the sacred processions of the Mohammedans, and vice versa—they were always havin’ shindies in the streets, and the British had to bring up native soldiers armed with long sticks called lathis and beat them over the heads. In India these things were centuries old and you couldn’t change them; but this fellow Hitler with his notions couldn’t get anywhere in a country as enlightened as Germany. Let him fight the Reds—that was all to the good.""

Thus the prejudice based in racism that almost allowed Germany to annihilate human civilisation, because West disdained India and ascribed enlightenment to Germany.

"Here on one of the fashionable shopping-streets of this fabulously rich capital—on Regent Street, where the great ladies descended from their limousines to enter jewelers’ and couturiers’—here you saw war veterans still grinding hand-organs or rattling collection boxes. England had just had a coal strike that had become a general strike and had looked desperately menacing; it had been starved out, and so bitterness and hate were in the faces of the people, and misery and depression could not be hid. All that a rich man needed to be happy was to have no heart. If he had one, then all the gifts which fortune showered upon him might turn to dust and ashes in his hands."
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Lanny visited Robin home, with Beauty who was visiting too. 

"Hansi had made his first public appearance in Berlin with success, and Lanny thought he had never seen two human beings so happy as his half-sister and her bridegroom. Apparently Bess was never going to tire of listening to the music of the violin, clarinet, and piano, and had been working loyally at her own job—she had a teacher who came every day, and a study of her own in which to pound away to her heart’s content. She wished that Kurt might see how much progress she had made. Lanny didn’t tell her the true reason, but said that when Kurt came to Berlin he was occupied with his business affairs and with his brother and friends. 

"For how long would it be possible to keep hidden from a keen-eyed girl the painful facts about this Europe which she had adopted as her home? Not long, Lanny feared, for she was determined to know all about it; she read the incendiary pamphlets of which her husband had a supply, and Lanny saw Socialist and Communist magazines and newspapers in her study. It couldn’t have escaped her attention that the Jews were the objects of bitter dislike among large sections of German people. Would she discover how the fashionable ones whom Beauty brought to the house despised the Schieber, their host, and resented the fact that he was able to live in a palace and to decorate it with masterpieces of art? Sooner or later Bess would have to learn that Lanny’s friend and Beauty’s lover tolerated Hansi only because he was a genius, and refused to tolerate Hansi’s father on any terms."

Here the stage is set for the holocaust about to begin.

"Where had they got the money for all this? If you asked them, they would say that the German people were contributing their pfennigs, out of devotion to the Fatherland and the Fuhrer; but Johannes Robin said that it was well known in financial circles that Thyssen and his associates of the steel cartel had taken over the financing of the movement."

Krupp did so, enough to be avoided in U.S. post WWII by those that cared. 
................................................................................................  


Kurt finally left to settle down at Stubendorf with a bride selected by his parents. Beauty had friends surround her. Johannes Robin had bought a yacht and she joined the party travelling to fjords. Lanny once again met Isadora Duncan who was visiting the French Riviera.

"Lanny joined them and listened to an account of what had happened in France one night while Lanny had been on board the yacht in the North Sea—the night of August 22, 1927, when Sacco and Vanzetti had died. Lanny recalled the first time this case had been mentioned in his hearing, by Ambassador “Cradle” during the Genoa conference. Since then it had become an international scandal, and when the Italians were executed there had been mobs marching in all the cities of Europe, and many American embassies and consulates had had their windows smashed."

She died within a couple of days after this meeting.

"Since Kurt Meissner had passed out of Beauty’s life she had taken her position as a perfectly respectable Franco-American lady, widow of a painter whose work was winning the esteem of the most distinguished critics. There was no longer any blot upon her escutcheon; she could even be a chaperon! Rosemary invited her to visit at Sandhaven Manor, and she came for a week-end, arriving conspicuously with her son and her pretty little daughter, and being conspicuously driven away again. After that the most prudish Victorian could have cherished no doubts concerning the relationship between the mistress of the manor and the handsome young American who was conducting her education in the arts."
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Upton Sinclair here reintroduced something that was brought in in World's End , when Lanny saw Rick at foot of his bed in Connecticut and knew there was something not well, and later found that this was when Rick had crashed. The educated, fashionable and upper strata of West at this time were not as much in grip of religion as before, before and were consequently rediscovering things that had been barred - extra sensory perception (ESP), seances and mediums, spirit and more. 

He introduces all this for the general purpose of Lanny Budd with his open mind and spirit of inquiry, but it's very useful in later volumes, and pertinent since the German leader of this era indulged - and more - in much. 

Here it is brought in in form of Parsifal Dingle, a pensioner from Iowa settled in Cannes, whom the family meets because an ex tutor of Lanny is married to the daughter of the pension owner.  He had healed Marceline's governess Miss Addington and Rosemary's daughter, and said it was done by God. 

"Here on the Riviera were a number of well-trained professional gentlemen engaged in God’s service, and she had met several of them, both Catholic and Protestant, and found them agreeable men of the world, good conversationalists and judges of food and wine. It had been tacitly understood that they kept God for those special occasions when they performed His rites in church, and you were free to attend if you cared to, but no priest or clergyman had ever been heard to mention the name of God on any social occasion; everyone whom Beauty knew would have considered it something in the nature of a faux pas. 

"So this idea of a God whom you carried around with you was something entirely new and decidedly startling."

Beauty tries matchmaking, but he wasn't interested in the governess, and when asked, told Beauty it was her. 

"Beauty had to tell someone about that most embarrassing episode, and she chose her son. First he said: “Well, I’ll be damned!” Then he thought it over and added: “But, darling, you can’t blame him; it’s the price you pay for being irresistible.” 

"“It’s really most painful,” complained the mother. “How am I going to meet the man after this?” 

"“Oh, you don’t need to make so much out of it. You have had plenty of broken-hearted suitors around you.” 

"“But, Lanny, a man of that class!” 

"“Class?” inquired the young Pink. 

"“He’s about the same class as my maternal grandfather, I’d imagine.” 

"“But, I mean—a man of no culture.” 

"“He’s got a lot of culture, it seems to me; only it’s different from ours; not so smart, but a lot cleaner, if I’m any judge.” 

"“I didn’t know you thought so highly of him, Lanny.” 

"“Well, I think he’s earned our respect. We don’t have to agree with his ideas, but we can admit that he’s honest and kind—and that’s more than I can say for some of the men you have been stepping out with.”"

"“Lanny, I just couldn’t face the idea of being known as Mrs. Dingle!” 

"“Let it be a sort of morganatic marriage; take him as a prince consort. Your friends will go on calling you Beauty Budd, and the servants and tradespeople calling you Madame Detaze. Why should anyone change?”"

So Beauty, begun as a rebel against her father the preacher, having been a model, and a consort to three very different men - Robbie with rich inheritance of Budd gunmakers and Connecticut society and business career, Marcel Detaze who left a wealthy family to be a painter and a soldier and has given her official status with fame and wealth to come, and Kurt who brought music with discipline to the home but left to be German and serve Nazi regime - now has finally met a match in an informal man of god who has as much friendly goodness as her. 

Rosemary left, circumstances entailed the family move to serve the empire. The author had most likely brought this sweetheart of early teens back in Lanny's life to smooth over transition, from the love lost to death but unforgettable, to a suitable marriage that will ease him with one career onto another. Lanny went to teach workers. 

"Beauty had managed to get into her head the distinction between Red and Pink, and which was worse. It was just before Christmas, and she wrote to Nina, begging her and Rick to come immediately after New Year’s, so that Lanny might have somebody to tell his troubles to. Also she wrote to Emily, telling her what had happened, and asking about her plans. Now was the time to put an end to this business of Lanny’s living with other men’s wives and raising other men’s children! Out of the kindness of her heart Emily had forgiven the playboy’s rejection of her last effort; she wrote that she was coming, and that Irma Barnes also was coming, and what would Beauty say to her as a possible daughter-in-law? 

"What Beauty would say would have taken a whole mail-pouch to carry it. She started saying it viva voce, first to Sophie and then to Margy, who arrived to occupy the “cottage” as soon as Rosemary’s children had been sent to England. These three knew that they had to move with caution, owing to Lanny’s peculiar Pink attitude; the moment he heard that anyone had a great deal of money he began finding fault with that person and shying away from him or her. So there must not be the faintest hint that anybody was thinking that he might fall in love with Irma Barnes, or even that he might meet her; he must just begin hearing about her charms, about the sensation she had made in New York, about her interest in intellectual things—in short, everything except that she was the legally established possessor of twenty-three million dollars in her own right!" 

"In her letter Emily Chattersworth explained, among other details, that the maternal grandmother of this matrimonial prize had belonged to one of the old New York families, and had been at school with Emily; she had been a guest at Les Forêts on various occasions. So now it had been arranged that Irma was to visit Sept Chênes for a week or two, until she had a chance to look about and judge where and how she wished to live. If during that period a fastidious young art expert saw fit to call and pay his respects, he would have the inside track over the other suitors. If his sense of dignity forbade him to do so, perhaps he might condescend to be at home when Emily brought the young lady to call upon his mother."

Emily Chattersworth had a talk with Lanny. 

"“You come to lunch and meet Irma and her mother, and I’ll let them know that you’re one caller who isn’t interested in her fortune.” 

"“I wonder,” said the young man, promptly. “I have been quite entertained, thinking what I’d do if I had a fortune like that. I’ve decided that I’d set up a foundation to study the effects of stockmarket speculation upon wages and the cost of living!”"
................................................................................................  

Kurt wrote to congratulate Beauty and sent a photograph of his firstborn, a son.

"Rick looked at the photo of the bald little Aryan, and said: “I suppose they’ll be having one every year for the glory of the Fatherland.” He added: “Birth control is an important discovery, but it may prove a trap for the more progressive nations if the backward ones refuse to adopt it.”

"“Is Germany a backward nation?” inquired Lanny, with a grin.

"“It’ll be one very soon if those Nazis have their way. Women become brood-mares, and babies become soldiers to march out and conquer those decadent peoples who dream of being let alone.”"
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The courtship of Irma Barnes by Lanny, despite the obvious obstacles for Lanny,  and for the author because he doesn't fit in the fortune hunter crowd that surrounds her, takes quite an author to make it as real and yet so very engaging. And the engaging quality keeps on through the unusual wedding, post wedding and honeymoon trip across Atlantic, and well into Irma deciding about her own home and more. 
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The wedding and honeymoon were spring and summer of 1929. With their respective new spouses, Lanny and Beauty arrived in N.Y. where Zoltan Kertezsi had now acquired a larger, more prestigious place for exhibition of Marcel's works. 

"Also a letter from Lincoln Steffens, who was in San Francisco, writing his autobiography. Stef wrote notes to his friends in a tight little script that was as good as a crossword puzzle; if you once got going you might have quite a run of luck, but if you stopped for any single word you were lost. Stef said he had just met his little boy after quite an interval and found it exciting. He advised Lanny to have a boy as soon as possible. He said that he had known J.P. very well in the old days, and was indebted to him for taking him on the inside of the “merger racket.” He concluded by saying: “If you are in the market, take my advice and get out, for the tower is now so high and leaning so far that one more stone may send it toppling. You are too young to remember the panic of 1907, but after it was over a friend of mine explained it by saying: ‘Somebody asked for a dollar.’ Wall Street is in a condition now where it would break if somebody asked for a dime.” 

"Lanny wasn’t “in the market”; he was in pictures and matrimony, and that was enough. He forwarded this letter to his father, with a transcription written on the back. Robbie’s reply was: “Just to show how much I think of your Red friend’s judgment, I have purchased another thousand shares of telephone stock. It was up to 304 and I got it at 287 and a half, which looks mighty good to me!” 

"That was the way they all felt, and the way they were acting; it was a phenomenon currently known as the “Great Bull Market,” and people laughed at you if you tried to restrain them. Everywhere you went they were talking about stocks; everywhere they told about profits they had made, or were going to make next week. There was a “Translux,” a device by which the ticker figures were shown on a translucent screen, in nearly every branch broker’s office; such an office was to be found in most of the hotels where the rich gathered, and you would see crowds of men and women watching the figures. If it were during market hours, one after another would hurry off to a telephone to give an order to his broker. It was the same in every city and town; hardly one without a broker’s office, and market quotations were given over the radio at frequent intervals. Farmers and ranchers were phoning their buying and selling orders; doctors and lawyers and merchants, their secretaries and errand boys, their chauffeurs and bootblacks—all were following the market reports, reading what the newspapers told them, eavesdropping for “tips” or following their “hunches.” The country had got used to hearing about “five-million-share days” on the stock exchange, and took that for “prosperity.”"

Lanny went for a walk in Manhattan, N.Y. - the description by the author, lovely! - and found the school set up by George D. Herron, and talked to people. 

"The day after Lanny’s slumming expedition was Saturday, the nineteenth of October. The Detaze exhibition had been running for ten days, and was such a success that they were continuing it for another full week." 

Lanny found the stock market slumping and called Robbie to suggest he get out, but to no avail. Here the author introduces another character who will become important as the series proceeds. 

"Irma and Mrs. Fanny were going to a musical comedy matinee, so Lanny had a “bite” with his mother and Mr. Dingle, who dropped in now and then at the show, but carefully kept out of everybody’s way. If the man of God knew that a stock market existed, he never let on; he told them that he had found what he believed was an extraordinary medium: another of the poor and lowly, a Polish woman who sat in a dingy little parlor upstairs over a Sixth Avenue delicatessen shop, and charged you only two dollars for a seance, no matter how long it lasted. She wore a dingy Mother Hubbard wrapper, and her voice was frequently made inaudible by elevated trains roaring madly past the window; but her “control,” an Iroquois Indian speaking with a powerful man’s voice, declared that all the spirits of Parsifal Dingle’s deceased relatives and friends were standing by, and Parsifal declared that they told him things which he himself had forgotten. If spirits were really there, it was important; possibly even more so than the question of whether the agent representing the Taft family would purchase two of the highest-priced Detaze seascapes." 
................................................................................................    


"Parsifal Dingle had his own ideas of the difference between what was imaginary and what was real in this world. Mr. Dingle had made up his mind that his spirit was eternal, and on that basis the importance of what happened to it here and now could be mathematically determined. What was the relation of twenty-four hours to eternity? Or of threescore years and ten to eternity?"

"To his wife he said gently: “I have learned through Madame Zyszynski that Marcel is waiting for you.” 

She was convinced enough by her visit to tell Lanny to go, but he instead got a message from Marie in French, which no one there spoke, so it wasn't written correctly. Lanny sounded it out, and it was a private joke he shared with Marie and her family. 

October 24th, 1929 Lanny was taken by Joseph Barnes, Irma's uncle and manager trustee to her fortune appointed by her father, to wall street. 

"The floor was crowded; every eye was on the great clock; you could see the hand slowly moving, and when it neared the moment, people seemed to hold their breath. Suddenly there was the crash of a gong; then—Lanny had read many times about “pandemonium breaking loose,” but the first time he ever saw it was at ten o’clock on the morning of the twenty-fourth of October in the year 1929. More than twelve hundred men leaped into action at the same instant, all yelling at the top of their lungs. The sound of it shot up to the visitors’ gallery, hit the high ceiling and bounced back, and from that time on there were millions of sound waves, clashing, mingling, beating one another to pieces. It was like no other volume of sound in the world; it couldn’t be compared to a stormy ocean, because there are different waves and you hear each one, but you never heard any particular shout, no matter how loud it might be. The medley did not diminish while Lanny stayed in the gallery, and when he went out into the street he heard it there, though all doors and windows of the building were closed, the ventilation being from the roof."

"Twenty thousand shares of some “blue-chip” stock which is selling at 400 is eight million dollars, and that is big business on any trading-floor in the world. It couldn’t be the bootblacks and messenger boys, the maidservants and farmers’ wives who traded through the “odd lot” houses; it could only be the great banks seeking to protect their position, the operators who had got a fright, the investment trusts, of which there were five hundred, grown overnight like mushrooms, all assuring the public that their function was to “stabilize the market” and protect investors by spreading their holdings among the best stocks. Now they were dumping their stocks, and it was a panic."

Lanny helped Robbie by giving all his own money, and visited him with Irma. She had insisted her uncle Horace Vandringham get out and stay out of stock market gamble of playing margins, and Fannie said the same to Robbie, which Robbie agreed. Irma's business manager Slemmer vanished with her cash, and she was safe only due to strict rules of her father followed by her uncle Joseph Barnes. They decided to return to Juan Les-Pins and bring along Madame Zyszynski. Lanny visited Newcastle. 

"Lanny went to say good-by to his grandfather, who was failing, and who said: “My boy, you will probably not see me again in this world.” Lanny would have liked to tell him about his research into the next one, but he knew that it wasn’t entirely orthodox, and so wouldn’t please the president of Budd Gunmakers. And anyhow, it might be only telepathy! But Lanny thought, what a funny thing; the good Christians were all taught to believe that your soul survived, and yet they ridiculed the suggestion that after a soul had got settled in the beyond, it might have a desire to get in touch with those whom it had left behind. Didn’t they really believe what their church taught them? Or did they think that the souls would forget everything? If a soul did forget, what would be left of it?"

Tuesday 29th was the worst, and Wednesday Lanny left with his entourage. Robbie had driven to town with Esther. 

"When the time came for the partings, those who were sailing threw down rolls of colored paper tape, holding one end, so that they made lines connecting them with the friends on shore. When the steamer was warped from the pier these lines were broken, and all felt sad. You stood waving and shouting, but mostly you couldn’t make the right person hear you. The Budds all had tears in their eyes, for they had been through strenuous hours. Beauty had rarely been so happy, for at the last moment Esther had pressed her hand and said: “I have misunderstood you all my life, and I am sorry.”"
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Dragon's Teeth

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On the world stage, this is where beginning of third Reich, and Lanny getting close to key people via a chain of acquaintances beginning with Kurt, happens. In his private life, there is a match with an heiress from U.S., introduced by circle of friends of Beauty, and his life As a husband and a father to his baby daughter, in U.S. and in Europe. Connecting the two, his personal development of work and career, to begin with as an art expert, and more, comes in.

Dragon's Teeth begins with birth of Lanny's firstborn in Cannes in spring of 1930. It's a daughter, named Frances Barnes Budd. Robin family invites them for a yacht trip, and they travel along coast to Greece. At one point early on, even as Lanny is telling the young set about Ezra Hackabury, Madame Zyszynski has a message from him, and lanny sends him a letter mailed in Genoa. This dabbling in spirit and questioning if it's only telepathy is indulged in by author until something definitive kicks in, later.

Also during this trip begins emergence of differences in the marriage that was based on love but not a meeting of minds or personae - Irma belongs to set of friends of Beauty, rather than those of Lanny.
................................................................................................    


Lanny is talking late at night with Johannes Robin or rather hearing him.

"Jascha Rabinowich had changed his name but had remained a Jew; which meant that he was race-conscious; he was kept that way by contempt and persecution. Part of the time he blustered and part of the time he cringed, but he tried to hide both moods. What he wanted was to be a man like other men, and to be judged according to his merits. But he had had to flee from a pogrom in Russia, and he lived in Germany knowing that great numbers of people despised and hated him; he knew that even in America, which he considered the most enlightened of countries, the people in the slums would call him a “sheeny” and a Christ-killer, while the “best” people would exclude him from their country clubs.

"He talked about all this with Lanny, who had fought hard for his sister’s right to marry Hansi. People accused the Jews of loving money abnormally. “We are traders,” said Johannes. “We have been traders for a couple of thousand years, because we have been driven from our land. We have had to hide in whatever holes we could find in one of these Mediterranean ports, and subsist by buying something at a low price and selling it at a higher price. The penalty of failure being death has sharpened our wits. In a port it often happens that we buy from a person we shall never see again, and sell to some other person under the same conditions; they do not worry much about our welfare, nor we about theirs. That may be a limitation in our morality, but it is easy to understand.”

"Lanny admitted that he understood it, and his host continued:

"“My ancestors were master-traders all the way from Smyrna to Gibraltar while yours were barbarians in the dark northern forests, killing the aurochs with clubs and spears. Naturally our view of life was different from yours. But when you take to commerce, the differences disappear quickly. I have heard that in your ancestral state of Connecticut the Yankee does not have his feelings hurt when you call him slick. You have heard, perhaps, of David Harum, who traded horses.”

"“I have heard also of Potash and Perlmutter,” said Lanny, with a smile.

"“It is the same here, all around the shores of this ancient sea which once was the civilized world. The Greeks are considered skillful traders; take Zaharoff, for example. The Turks are not easy to deceive, and I am told that the Armenians can get the better of any race in the world. Always, of course, I am referring to the professional traders, those who live or die by it. The peasant is a different proposition; the primary producer is the predestined victim, whether he is in Connecticut buying wooden nutmegs or in Anatolia receiving coins made of base metal which he will not be clever enough to pass on.”"

"To the Jewish couple out of the ghetto the marriage of Hansi to Robbie Budd’s daughter had appeared a great triumph, but in the course of time they had discovered there was a cloud to this silver lining. Bess had caught the Red contagion from Hansi, and brought to the ancient Jewish idealism a practicality which Johannes recognized as Yankee, a sternness derived from her ancestral Puritanism. Bess was the reddest of them all, and the most uncompromising. Her expression would be full of pity and tenderness, but it was all for those whom she chose to regard as the victims of social injustice. For those others who held them down and garnered the fruits of their toil she had a dedicated antagonism; when she talked about capitalism and its crimes her face became set, and you knew her for the daughter of one of Cromwell’s Ironsides."

Robbie was in Paris as the yacht returned to Cannes, and lanny went to meet him, promising to fly to Lisbon as the yacht arrived. He shared Robbie's suite and they talked.

"Having had long talks with the financier on board the yacht, Lanny could tell what was in his mind. He considered that Germany was approaching the end of her rope; she couldn’t make any more reparations payments, even if she wished. Taxation had about reached its limits, foreign credit was drying up, and Johannes couldn’t see any chance of Germany’s escaping another bout of inflation. The government was incompetent, also very costly to deal with; that, of course, was a money-man’s polite way of intimating that it was corrupt and that he was helping to keep it so. Elections were scheduled for the end of the summer, and there would be a bitter campaign; sooner or later the various factions would fall to fighting, and that wouldn’t help the financial situation any. Johannes was trimming his sails and getting ready for rough weather. He was taking some of his investments out of the country. Those he kept in Germany were mostly in industries which produced goods for export."

They met Zaharoff For Robbie's business, and Lanny told him that his late wife had appeared in a seance of Madame Zyszynski and mentioned specific tulips she had shown Lanny, which affected Zaharoff and he asked for a meeting as soon as possible. Lanny met his uncle Jesse Blackless.

"Lanny had come upon a quotation of Karl Marx, admitting that a gradual change might be brought about in the Anglo-Saxon countries, which had had parliamentary institutions for a long time. Most Reds didn’t know that their master had said that, and wouldn’t believe it when you told them; it seemed to give the whole Bolshevik case away. Jesse said that quoting Marx was like quoting the Bible: you could find anything you wanted."

Lanny visited De Bruyne family, and talked with the widower, Denis.

"Denis de Bruyne was worried about the state of his country, which was in a bad way financially, having counted upon German reparations and been cheated out of most of her expectations. A French Nationalist blamed the British business men and statesmen; Britain was no true ally of France, but a rival; Britain used Germany to keep France from growing strong. Why did American business men further this policy, helping Germany to get on her feet, which meant making her a danger to France? Foreign investors had lent Germany close to five billion dollars since the end of the war: why did they take such risks?

"Lanny replied: “Well, if they hadn’t, how would Germany have paid France any reparations at all?”

"“She would have paid if she had been made to,” replied Denis. He didn’t say how, and Lanny knew better than to pin him down. The men who governed France hadn’t learned much by their invasion of the Ruhr and its failure; they still thought that you could produce goods by force, that you could get money with bayonets. It was useless to argue with them; their fear of Germany was an obsession. And maybe they were right—how could Lanny be sure? Certainly there were plenty of men in Germany who believed in force and meant to use it if they could get enough of it. Lanny had met them also."

The family respected his marrying an heiress.

"The French, along with most other Europeans, were fond of saying that the Americans worshiped the dollar; a remark upon which Zoltan Kertezsi had commented in a pithy sentence: “The Americans worship the dollar and the French worship the sou.”"

Lanny joined the cruise and invited Rick with family after they had arrived at Cowes. Alfy and Marceline were very different, trying to work out the match made by families when they were born.

"Rick had talked with editors and journalists in London, with statesmen, writers, and all sorts of people in his father’s home. He knew about the upsurge of the Nazi movement in the harassed Fatherland. Not long ago he had had a letter from Kurt, who was always hoping to explain his country to the outside world; he sent newspaper clippings and pamphlets. The Germans, frantic with a sense of persecution, were tireless propagandists, and would preach to whoever might be persuaded to listen. But you rarely heard one of them set forth both sides of the case or admit the slightest wrong on his country’s side."

Zaharoff finally had an anonymous session with Madame Zyszynski in a small hotel in Dieppe, with sensational results.

"Zaharoff had attended the Armistice Day ceremonies and laid a wreath on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. He had thought about that soldier, and now Lanny knew what he had thought! Had he guessed that the national hero of France might be a Jew? Or was it that the national hero really had been a Jew? Was Zaharoff himself a Jew, or part Jew? Lanny didn’t know, and wasn’t especially interested. There were few people in Europe who didn’t have Jewish blood, even those who despised the outcast race. For two thousand years the Jews had been scattered over the old Continent like thistledown in the wind; and the most carefully tended family trees don’t always show what pollen has fallen upon them."

At Bremerhaven Johannes Robin and Freddi joined the cruise. Freddi now had a doctorate in economics.

"He lacked Hansi’s drive—he was never going to be a famous man, only an earnest student and teacher, a devoted husband and father. Not so Red as Hansi and Bess, but nearer to Lanny’s shade; he still had hopes of the German Social-Democrats, in spite of the timidity and lack of competence they were displaying. Freddi had said that he was studying bourgeois economics in order to be able to teach the workers what was wrong with it. Already he and a couple of his young friends had set up a night school along the lines of Lanny’s project in the Midi. A non-party affair, both the Socialists and the Communists took potshots at it, greatly to Freddi’s disappointment. The workers were being lined up for class war, and there was no room for stragglers between the trenches."

Lanny had written to Rick to check a detail or two from seance with Zaharoff,  and got mail from Rick.

"Included was a letter from Rick to Lanny, as follows:

"With regard to your request concerning the Old Bailey, these records are not available, so I had a search made of the criminal reports in the Times. Under the date of January 13, 1873, appears an entry numbered 61: “Zacharoff, Zacharia Basilius, agent pledging goods intrusted to him for sale.” In the Times of January 17 appears a column headed “Criminal Court,” beginning as follows: “Zacharia Basilius Zacharoff, 22, was indicted for that he, being an agent intrusted by one Manuel Hiphentides of Constantinople, merchant, for the purpose of sale with possession, among other goods, 25 cases of gum and 169 sacks of gall of the value together of £1000, did unlawfully and without any authority from his principal, for his own use make a deposit of the said goods as and by way of pledge.” Rick’s letter gave a summary of the entire account, including the statement: “Subsequently, by advice of his counsel, the prisoner withdrew his plea of ‘Not Guilty’ and entered a plea of ‘Guilty.’”

"Rick added: “This is interesting, and I am wondering what use you intend making of it. Let me add: Why don’t your spirits give you things like this? If they would do so, I would begin to take them seriously!”"

They visited the Robins in Berlin.

"The great city of Berlin, capital of the shattered Prussian dream. Triumphal arches, huge marble statues of Hohenzollern heroes, palaces of old-time princes and new-time money-lords; sumptuous hotels, banks that were temples of Mammon, department stores filled with every sort of luxury goods—and wandering about the streets, hiding in stone caves and cellars, or camping out in tents in vacant spaces, uncounted hordes of hungry, ill-clothed, fear-driven, and hate-crazed human beings. Out of a population of four million it might be doubted if there were half a million really contented. There was no street where you could escape the sight of pinched and haggard faces; none without beggars, in spite of the law; none where a well-dressed man could avoid the importunities of women and half-grown children, male or female, seeking to sell their bodies for the price of a meal.

"Shut your eyes to these sights and your mind to these thoughts. The city was proud and splendid, lighted at night like the Great White Way in New York. The shop windows were filled with displays of elegance, and there were swarms of people gazing, and some buying. Tell yourself that the stories of distress were exaggerated; that the flesh of boys and girls had been for sale in Nineveh and Baghdad, and was now for sale in London and New York, though perhaps they used a bit more Anglo-Saxon hypocrisy. Prostitution has been the curse of great cities ever since they began; swarms of people come piling into them, lured by the hope of easy wealth, or driven from the land by economic forces which men have never learned to control.

"This was something about which Freddi Robin should have been able to speak, he being now a duly certified Herr Doktor in the science of economics. He reported that the great university had left it still a mystery to students. The proper academic procedure was to accumulate masses of facts, but to consider explanations only historically. You learned that the three-stage pattern of primitive economic progress as taught by Friedrich List had been abandoned after the criticisms of anthropologists, and that Roscher’s theory of national economics as a historical category had been replaced by the new historical school of Schmoller. It was all right for you to know that in ancient Rome the great estates, the latifundia, had been worked with slave labor, thus driving independent farmers to the city and herding them into ramshackle five-story tenements which often burned down. But if in the class you pointed out that similar tendencies were apparent in Berlin, you would be looked at askance by a professor whose future depended upon his avoidance of political controversy.

"To be sure, they were supposed to enjoy academic freedom in Germany, and you might listen to a Catholic professor in one lecture hall and to a Socialist in the next; but when it came to promotions, somebody had to decide, and you could hardly expect the authorities to give preference to men whose teachings fostered that proletarian discontent which was threatening to rend the country apart. At any rate, that is the way Freddi Robin reported the situation in the great University of Berlin.
................................................................................................  


Lanny visited various political events in Berlin, communists, socialist democrats, and through Heinrich Jung, nsdap, or in english, "National Socialist German Workingmen’s Party.". 

"This Hitler movement was a revolt of the lower middle classes, whose savings had been wiped out by the inflation and who saw themselves being reduced to the status of proletarians. 

"To Irma they seemed much nicer-looking people than those she had seen at the other two meetings. The black-and-silver uniforms of the Schutzstaffel, who acted as ushers and guards, were new and quite elegant; these young men showed alertness and efficiency. Twenty or thirty thousand people singing with fervor were impressive, and Irma didn’t know that the songs were full of hatred for Frenchmen and Poles. She knew that the Nazis hated the Jews, and this she deplored. She had learned to be very fond of one Jewish family, but she feared there must be something wrong with the others—so many people said it. In any case, the Germans had to decide about their own country."

The author describes, accurately, the atmosphere and the speech and effect now familiar to the world through documentary footage. They aren't yet in power, but getting there, and hence the title of this third volume. The elections change the balance this time. 

"Lanny became sure that the cautious, phlegmatic German people would prefer the carefully thought-out program of the Socialists and give them an actual majority so that they could put it into effect. But Johannes Robin, who thrived on pessimism, expected the worst—by which he meant that the Communists would come out on top. Red Berlin would become scarlet, or crimson, or whatever is the most glaring of shades. 

"The results astounded them all—save possibly Heinrich Jung and his party comrades. The Social-Democrats lost more than half a million votes; the Communists gained more than a million and a quarter; while the Nazis increased their vote from eight hundred thousand to nearly six and a half million: a gain of seven hundred per cent in twenty-eight months! The score in millions stood roughly, Social-Democrats eight and a half, Nazis six and a half, and Communists four and a half. 

"The news hit the rest of the world like a high-explosive shell. The statesmen of the one-time Allied lands who were so certain that they had Germany bound in chains; the international bankers who had lent her five billion dollars; the negotiators who, early in this year of 1930, had secured her signature to the Young Plan, whereby she bound herself to pay reparations over a period of fifty-eight years—all these now suddenly discovered that they had driven six and a half million of their victims crazy! War gains were to be confiscated, trusts nationalized, department stores communalized, speculation in land prevented, and usurers and profiteers to suffer the death penalty! Such was the Nazi program for the inside of Germany; while for the outside, the Versailles treaty was to be denounced, the Young Plan abrogated, and Germany was to go to war, if need be, in order to set her free from the “Jewish-dominated plutocracies” of France, Britain, and America!"

"The campaign orators of Berlin had been promising the rabble “confiscation without compensation” of the great estates of the Junkers; but meanwhile, in East Prussia, they had got the support of the Junkers by pointing to the wording of the program: the land to be confiscated must be “socially necessary.” And how easy to decide that the land of your friends and supporters didn’t come within that category! 

"But all the same Johannes decided to move some more funds to Amsterdam and London, and to consult Robbie Budd about making more investments in America. Hundreds of other German capitalists took similar steps; and of course the Nazis found it out, and their press began to cry that these “traitor plutocrats” should be punished by the death penalty."

Johannes Robin gave a party for the Budd visitors, and Graf Stubendorf invited Lanny to visit the Schloss Stubendorf instead of his friend Kurt. Irma was pleased. 

"The results of the election had set Heinrich Jung in a seat of authority. He called Lanny on the telephone and poured out his exultation. There was no party but the N.S.D.A.P., and Heinrich was its prophet! Therefore, would Lanny come to his home some evening and meet his wife and one of his friends? Lanny said he would be happy to do so; he had just received a letter from Rick, saying that the German vote had made a great impression in England, and if Lanny would send a bunch of literature and some of his own notes as to the state of mind of the country, Rick could write an article for one of the weeklies. Lanny wanted to help his friend, and thought the English people ought to understand what the new movement signified. This, of course, was right down Heinrich’s alley; he volunteered to assemble a load of literature—and even to have the article written and save Rick the bother!"

Lanny visited Heinrich Jung and saw the blue eyed, blond family. 

"There was a peculiarity of the Nazi doctrine which Lanny had observed already among the Italian Fascists. Out of one side of their mouths they said that the nation had to expand in order to have room for its growing population, while out of the other side they said that their population must be increased in order that they might be able to expand."

"There was a joke going the rounds among Berlin’s smart intellectuals that the ideal “Aryan” was required to be as blond as Hitler, as tall as Goebbels, as slender as Göring, and so on, as far as your malicious memory would carry you."

Lanny met Emil Meissner after the trial of some army officers for conducting Nazi propaganda in the military.

"Emil Meissner had been on the old field marshal’s staff during part of the war, and knew his present plight; but Emil was reserved in the presence of a foreigner, especially one who consorted with Jews and had a sister and a brother-in-law whose redness was notorious. On the other hand, an officer of the Reichswehr owed no love to Adolf Hitler, and reported that the President refused to recognize this upstart even as an Austrian, but persisted in referring to him as “the Bohemian corporal,” and using the name of his father, which was Schicklgruber, a plebeian and humiliating name. Der alte Herr had steadily refused to meet Corporal Schicklgruber, because he talked too much, and in the army it was customary for a non-commissioned officer to wait for his superior to speak first.

"Emil expressed his ideas concerning the disorders which prevailed in the cities of the Republic, amounting to a civil war between the two sets of extremists. The Reds had begun it, without doubt, and the Brownshirts were the answer they had got; but Emil called it an atrocious thing that anybody should be permitted to organize a private army as Hitler had done. Hardly a night passed that the rival groups didn’t clash in the streets, and Emil longed for a courageous Chancellor who would order the Reichswehr to disarm both sides. The Nazi Führer pretended to deplore what his followers did, but of course that was nonsense; every speech he made was an incitement to more violence—like that insane talk about heads rolling in the sand.

"So far two cultivated and modern men could agree over their coffee-cups. But Emil went on to reveal that he was a German like the others. He said that fundamentally the situation was due to the Allies and their monstrous treaty of Versailles; Germany had been stripped of everything by the reparations demands, deprived of her ships, colonies, and trade—and no people ever would starve gladly. Lanny had done his share of protesting against Versailles, and had argued for helping Germany to get on her feet again; but somehow, when he listened to Germans, he found himself shifting to the other side and wishing to remind them that they had lost the war. After all, it hadn’t been a game of ping-pong, and somebody had to pay for it. Also, Germany had had her program of what she meant to do if she had won; she had revealed it clearly in the terms she had forced upon Russia at Brest-Litovsk. Also, there had been a Franco-Prussian War, and Germany had taken Alsace-Lorraine; there had been Frederick the Great and the partition of Poland; there had been a whole string of Prussian conquests—but you had better not mention them if you wanted to have friends in the Fatherland!"

Visiting the workers school with Freddi and Rahel,

"Lanny discovered that the disciplined and orderly working people of Germany were not so different from the independent and free-spoken bunch in the Midi. The same problems vexed them, the same splits turned every discussion into a miniature war."

"Nobody talked more about co-operating than the Communists, but when you tried it you found that what they meant was undermining your organization and poisoning the minds of your followers, the process known as “boring from within.” Any Socialist you talked to was ready with a score of illustrations—and also with citations from Lenin, to prove that it was no accident, but a policy.

"Members of the Social-Democratic party went even further; they charged that the Communists were co-operating with the Nazis against the coalition government in which the Social-Democrats were participating. That too was a policy; the Bolsheviks believed in making chaos, because they hoped to profit from it; chaos had given them their chance to seize power in Russia, and the fact that it hadn’t in Italy did not cause them to revise the theory. It was easy for them to co-operate with Nazis, because both believed in force, in dictatorship; the one great danger that the friends of peaceful change confronted was a deal, more or less open, between the second and third largest parties of Germany."

"Lanny decided that every Berlin intellectual was a new political party, and every two Berlin intellectuals were a political conflict. Some of them wore long hair because it looked picturesque, and others because they didn’t own a pair of scissors. Some came because they wanted an audience, and others because it was a chance to get a meal. But whatever their reason, nothing could keep them quiet, and nothing could get them to agree. Lanny had always thought that loud voices and vehement gestures marked the Latin races, but now he decided that it wasn’t a matter of race at all, but of economic determinism. The nearer a country came to a crisis, the more noise its intellectuals made in drawing-rooms!"

"The daughter of J. Paramount Barnes was forced to admit that there was something wrong, because her dividends were beginning to fall off. ... There came a letter from Irma’s uncle Joseph, one of the trustees who managed her estate. He warned her about what was happening, and explained matters as well as he could; during the past year her blue-chip stocks had lost another thirty points, below the lowest mark of the great panic when she had been in New York. It appeared to be a vicious circle: the slump caused fear, and fear caused another slump. The elections in Germany had had a bad reaction in Wall Street; everybody decided there wouldn’t be any more reparations payments. Mr. Joseph Barnes added that there hadn’t really been any for a long time, and perhaps never had been, since the Germans first borrowed in Wall Street whatever they wished to pay. Irma didn’t understand this very well, but gave the letter to Lanny, who explained it to her—of course from his Pink point of view.

"One thing Uncle Joseph made plain: Irma must be careful how she spent money! Her answer was obvious: she had been living on the Robins for half a year, and when she went back to Bienvenu they would resume that ridiculously simple life. You just couldn’t spend money when you lived in a small villa; you had no place to put things, and no way to entertain on a large scale. Lanny and his mother had lived on thirteen hundred dollars a month, whereas Irma had been accustomed to spend fifty times that. So she had no trouble in assuring her conscientious uncle that she would give heed to his advice. Her mother had decided not to come to Europe that winter; she was busy cutting down the expenses of the Long Island estate. Lanny read the letter and experienced the normal feelings of a man who learns that his mother-in-law is not coming to visit him."
................................................................................................


Lanny met Hitler through Heinrich Jung who was personally close to him, and thus begins the crucial part of this whole series, Lanny's association with nazis and their top leaders. "“It’s all right if you just listen. He is very kind about explaining his ideas to people.”"

"The Partei- und oberster S.A. Führer, Vorsitzender der N.S.D.A.P., lived in one of those elegant apartment houses having a uniformed doorkeeper. The Führer was a vegetarian, and an abstainer from alcohol and tobacco, but not an ascetic as to interior decoration; on the contrary, he thought himself an artist and enjoyed fixing up his surroundings. With the money of Fritz Thyssen and other magnates he had bought a palace in Munich and made it over into a showplace, the Nazi Braune Haus; also for the apartment in Berlin he had got modernistic furniture of the utmost elegance. He lived with a married couple to take care of him, South Germans and friends of his earlier days. They had two children, and Adi was playing some sort of parlor game with them when the visitors were brought in. He kept the little ones for a while, talking to them and about them part of the time; his fondness for children was his better side, and Lanny would have been pleased if he had not had to see any other. 

"The Führer wore a plain business suit, and presented the aspect of a simple, unassuming person. He shook hands with his Franco-American guest, patted Heinrich on the back, and called for fruit juice and cookies for all of them. He asked Lanny about his boyhood on the Riviera, and the children listened with open eyes to stories about hauling the seine and bringing in cuttlefish and small sharks; about digging in one’s garden and finding ancient Roman coins; about the “little Septentrion child” who had danced and pleased in the arena of Antibes a couple of thousand years ago. Adi Schicklgruber’s own childhood had been unhappy and he didn’t talk about it. 

"Presently he asked where Lanny had met Kurt Meissner, and the visitor told about the Dalcroze school at Hellerau. His host took this as a manifestation of German culture, and Lanny forbore to mention that Jaques-Dalcroze was a Swiss of French descent. It was true that the school had been built and endowed by a German patron. Said Hitler: “That kind of thing will be the glory of our National Socialist administration; there will be such an outburst of artistic and musical genius as will astound the world.” Lanny noted that in all the conversation he took it for granted that the N.S.D.A.P. would soon be in control of Germany; he never said “if,” he said “when”—and this was one of the subjects on which the visitor was surely not going to contradict him. 

"They talked about Kurt and his music, which was pure “Aryan,” so the Führer declared; nothing meretricious, no corrupt foreign influences; life in France for so many years had apparently not affected the composer in the slightest. Lanny explained that Kurt had kept almost entirely to himself, and had seldom gone out unless one dragged him. He told about his life at Bienvenu, and the Führer agreed that it was the ideal way for an artist. “It is the sort of life I would have chosen; but, alas, I was born under a different star.” Lanny had heard that he believed in astrology, and hoped he wouldn’t get onto that subject.

"What the Führer of all the Nazis planned was for this elegant and extremely wealthy young foreigner to go out to the world as a convert to the National Socialist ideas. To that end he laid himself out to be charming, for which he had no small endowment. He had evidently inquired as to Lanny’s point of view, for everything he said was subtly directed to meeting that. Lanny was a Socialist, and Hitler, too, was a Socialist, the only true, practical kind of Socialist. Out of the chaos of competitive capitalism a new order was about to arise; an order that would endure, because it would be founded upon real understanding and guided by scientists. Not the evil, degenerate Socialism of the Marxists, which repudiated all that was most precious in human beings; not a Socialism poisoned with the delusion of internationalism, but one founded upon recognition of the great racial qualities which alone made such a task conceivable. 

"Patiently and kindly the Führer explained that his ideas of race were not German in the narrow sense. Lanny, too, was an “Aryan,” and so were the cultured classes in America; theirs was a truly “Aryan” civilization, and so was the British. “I want nothing in the world so much as understanding and peace between my country and Britain, and I think there has been no tragedy in modern times so great as the war they fought. Why can we not understand one another and get together in friendship for our common task? The world is big enough, and it is full of mongrel tribes whom we dare not permit to gain power, because they are incapable of making any intelligent use of it.”

"Hitler talked for a while about these mongrels. He felt quite safe in telling a young Franco-American what he thought about the Japanese, a sort of hairless yellow monkeys. Then he came to the Russians, who were by nature lazy, incompetent, and bloodthirsty, and had fallen into the hands of gutter-rats and degenerates. He talked about the French, and was careful of what he said; he wanted no enmity between France and Germany; they could make a treaty of peace that would last for a thousand years, if only the French would give up their imbecile idea of encircling Germany and keeping her ringed with foes. “It is the Polish alliance and the Little Entente which keep enmity between our peoples; for we do not intend to let those peoples go on ruling Germans, and we have an iron determination to right the wrongs which were committed at Versailles. You must know something about that, Mr. Budd, for you have been to Stubendorf, and doubtless have seen with your own eyes what it means for Germans to be governed by Poles.” 

"Lanny answered: “I was one of many Americans at the Peace Conference who pleaded against that mistake.” 

"So the Führer warmed to his visitor. “The shallow-minded call my attitude imperialism; but that is an abuse of language. It is not imperialism to recognize the plain evidence of history that certain peoples have the capacity to build a culture while others are lacking in it entirely. It is not imperialism to say that a vigorous and great-souled people like the Germans shall not be surrounded and penned in by jealous and greedy rivals. It is not imperialism to say that these little children shall not suffer all their lives the deprivations which they have suffered so far.” 

"The speaker was running his hand over the closely cropped blond head of the little boy. “This Bübchen was born in the year of the great shame, that wicked Versailles Diktat. You can see that he is thin and undersized, because of the starvation blockade. But I have told him that his children will be as sturdy as his father was, because I intend to deliver the Fatherland from the possibility of blockades—and I shall not worry if my enemies call me an imperialist. I have written that every man becomes an imperialist when he begets a child, for he obligates himself to see to it that that child has the means of life provided.” 

"Lanny, a Socialist not untainted with internationalism, could have thought of many things to answer; but he had no desire to spoil this most amiable of interviews. So long as a tiger was willing to purr, Lanny was pleased to study tigers. He might have been influenced by the many gracious words which had been spoken to him, if it had not been for having read Mein Kampf. How could the author of that book imagine that he could claim, for example, to have no enmity against France? Or had he changed his mind in five years? Apparently not, for he had formed a publishing-house which was selling his bible to all the loyal followers of the National Socialist German Workingmen’s Party, and at the price of twelve marks per copy somebody was making a fortune."

"The Führer retold the wrongs which had been done to his country; and as he went on he became more and more aroused, his voice swelled and he became the orator. Lanny remembered having read somewhere of Queen Victoria’s complaining about her audiences with Gladstone: “He treats me as if I were a public meeting.” Lanny found it somewhat embarrassing to be shouted at from a distance of six feet. He thought: “Good Lord, with this much energy the man could address all Germany!” But apparently Adolf Hitler had enough energy for all Germany and for a foreign visitor also; it was for him to decide how much to expend, and for the visitor to sit and gaze at him like a fascinated rabbit at a hissing snake."

Gregor Stressed entered, and was taken aback at the abusive tirade he was treated to. 

"Here in North Germany many of the Nazis took the “Socialist” part of their label seriously; they insisted upon talking about the communizing of department stores, the confiscation of landed estates, the ending of interest slavery, common wealth before private wealth, and so on. It had caused a regular civil war in the party earlier in the year. The two Strasser brothers, Gregor and Otto, had fought for the old program and had been beaten. Gregor had submitted, but Otto had quit the party and organized a revolutionary group of his own, which the Hitlerites called the “Black Front” and which they were fighting with bludgeons and revolvers, just as they fought the Communists. Later on, immediately before the elections, there had been another attempt at internal revolution; the rebels had seized the offices of the Berlin party paper, Der Angriff, holding it by force of arms and publishing the paper for three days. A tremendous scandal, and one which the enemies of the movement had not failed to exploit. 

"So here was Gregor Strasser, Reich Organization Leader Number 1. A lieutenant in the World War, he had become an apothecary, but had given up his business in order to oppose the Reds and then to help Adi prepare for the Beerhall Putsch. He was perhaps the most competent organizer the party had, and had come to Berlin and built the Sturmabteilung by his efforts. Hitler, distrusting him as too far to the left, had formed a new personal guard, the Schutzstaffel, or S.S. So there were two rival armies inside the Nazi party of all Germany; which was going to prevail? Lanny wondered, had Hitler really lost his temper or was this merely a policy? Was this the way Germans enforced obedience—the drill-sergeant technique? Apparently it was working, for the big man’s bull voice dropped low; he stood meekly and took his licking like a schoolboy ordered to let down his pants. 

"Lanny wondered also: why did the Führer permit a foreigner to witness such a demonstration? Did he think it would impress an American? Did he love power so much that it pleased him to exhibit it in the presence of strangers? Or did he feel so secure in his mastery that he didn’t care what anybody thought of him? This last appeared to be in character with his procedure of putting his whole defiant program into a book and selling it to anybody in the world who had twelve marks."

"So Lanny received a demonstration of what it meant to be a master of men. Perhaps that was what the Führer intended; for not until he had received the submission of his Reich Organization Leader Number 1 and had dismissed him did he turn again to his guest. “Well, Mr. Budd,” he said, “you see what it takes to put people to work for a cause. Wouldn’t you like to come and help me?” 

"Said Lanny: “I am afraid I am without any competence for such a task.” If there was a trace of dryness in his tone the Führer missed it, for he smiled amiably, and seemed to be of the opinion that he had done a very good afternoon’s work. 

"Long afterward Lanny learned from Kurt Meissner what the Führer thought about that meeting. He said that young Mr. Budd was a perfect type of the American privileged classes: good-looking, easy-going, and perfectly worthless. It would be a very simple task to cause that nation to split itself to pieces, and the National Socialist movement would take it in charge."
................................................................................................




"The General Graf Stubendorf’s invitation to Lanny and Irma had been renewed, and Kurt had written that they should by all means accept; not only would it be more pleasant for Irma at the Schloss, but it would advantage the Meissners to have an old friend return as a guest of Seine Hochgeboren. Lanny noted this with interest and explained it to his wife; what would have been snobbery in America was loyalty in Silesia. The armies of Napoleon having never reached that land, the feudal system still prevailed and rank was a reality.

"Stubendorf being in Poland, the train had to stop, and luggage and passports to be examined. The village itself was German, and only the poorer part of the peasantry was Polish. This made a situation full of tension, and no German thought of it as anything but a truce. What the Poles thought, Lanny didn’t know, for he couldn’t talk with them. In Berlin he had shown his wife a comic paper and a cartoon portraying Poland as an enormous fat hog, being ridden by a French army officer who was twisting the creature’s tail to make it gallop and waving a saber to show why he was in a hurry. Not exactly the Christmas spirit!"

"Among the guests they had met at the Schloss was an uncle of their host, the Graf Oldenburg of Vienna." They were invited to visit, with hints of art treasures. Lanny picked one for an heiress in Long Island, friend of Irma who had wanted him to do so.

They returned to Juan Les-Pins.

"At least an hour every day Mr. Dingle spent with Madame Zyszynski, and often Beauty was with him. The spirits possessed the minds of this pair, and the influence of the other world spread through the little community. Beauty began asking the spirits’ advice, and taking it in all sorts of matters. They told her that these were dangerous times, and to be careful of her money. The spirit of Marcel told her this, and so did the spirit of the Reverend Blackless—so he referred to himself. Beauty had never taken his advice while he was living, but assumed he would be ultra-wise in the beyond. As economy was what Lanny wanted her to practice, he felt indebted to the shades. Being a talkative person, Beauty told her friends about her “guides,” and Bienvenu acquired a queerer reputation than it had ever had, even when it was a haunt of painters, munitions buyers, and extra-marital couples."

Zaharoff visited, anonymously, for another session with Madame Zyszynski, and was impressed. Duqesa came through.

They took a steamer to N.Y..

"Among the conveniences on board this movable city was a broker’s office where you could get quotations and gamble in your favorite stocks; also a daily newspaper which reported what was happening in Wall Street and the rest of the world. Shortly before the vessel reached New York it was learned that the troubles in Vienna had come to a climax; there was a failure of the Creditanstalt, biggest bank in the city. Next day the panic was spreading to Germany. Lanny heard people say: “All right. It’s time they had some troubles.” But others understood that if Germany couldn’t pay reparations, Britain and France would soon be unable to pay their debts to the United States. These financial difficulties traveled like waves of sound; they met some obstruction and came rolling back. The world had become a vast sounding-board, filled with clashing echoes hurled this way and that. Impossible to guess what was coming next!"

Lanny and Irma back at Shore Acres, Long Island.

"Life at Shore Acres was taken up where it had been left off. The question of Baby Frances was settled quickly, for the head nurse came to Irma, who had employed her; she didn’t say that Irma had been raised wrong, or that grandmothers were passées, but simply that modern science had made new discoveries and that she had been trained to put them into practice. Irma couldn’t dream of losing that most conscientious of persons, so she laid down the law to her mother, who took it with surprising meekness. Likewise, Uncle Horace made only the feeblest of tentatives in the direction of Wall Street. Lanny perceived that they had had family consultations; the haughty Fanny was going to be the ideal mother-in-law, her brother was going to make himself agreeable at all costs, and everybody in the house was to do the same—in the hope that a prince consort might be persuaded to settle down in his palace and enjoy that state of life to which it had pleased God to call him.

"All that Lanny and his royal spouse had to do was to be happy, and they had the most expensive toys in the world to play with. The estate had been created for that purpose, and thousands of skilled workers had applied their labor and hundreds of technicians had applied their brains to its perfection. If the young couple wanted to ride there were horses, if they wanted to drive there were cars, if they wanted to go out on the water there were sailboats and launches. There were two swimming-pools, one indoors and one out, besides the whole Atlantic Ocean. There were servants to wait upon them and clean up after them; there were pensioners and courtiers to flatter and entertain them. The world had been so contrived that it was extremely difficult for the pair to do any sort of useful thing.

"Playmates came in swarms: boys and girls of Irma’s set who were “lousy with money”—their own phrase. Irma had romped and danced with them from childhood, and now they were in their twenties, but lived and felt and thought as if still in their teens. The depression had hit many of them, and a few had had to drop out, but most were still keeping up the pace. They drove fast cars, and thought nothing of dining in one place and dancing fifty miles away; they would come racing home at dawn—one of them would be assigned to drive and would make it a point of honor not to get drunk. The boys had been to college and the girls to finishing-schools, where they had acquired fashionable manners, but no ideas that troubled them. Their conversation was that of a secret society: they had their own slang and private jokes, so that if you didn’t “belong,” you had to ask what they were talking about.

"It was evident to all that Irma had picked up an odd fish, but they were willing enough to adopt him; all he had to do was to take them as they were, do what they did, and not try to force any ideas upon them. He found it interesting for a while; the country was at its springtime best, the estates of Long Island were elaborate and some of them elegant, and anybody who is young and healthy enjoys tennis and swimming and eating good food. But Lanny would pick up the newspaper and read about troubles all over the world; he would go into the swarming city where millions had no chance to play and not even enough to eat; he would look at the apple-sellers, and the breadlines of haggard, fear-driven men—many with clothes still retaining traces of decency. Millions wandering over the land seeking in vain for work; families being driven from their farms because they couldn’t pay the taxes. Lanny wasn’t content to read the regular newspapers, but had to seek out the Pink and Red ones, and then tell his wealthy friends what he had found there. Not many would believe him, and not one had any idea what to do about it.

"Nobody seemed to have such ideas. The ruling classes of the various nations watched the breakdown of their economy like spectators in the neighborhood of a volcano, seeing fiery lava pour out of the crater and dense clouds of ashes roll down the slopes, engulfing vineyards and fields and cottages. So it had been when the younger Pliny had stood near Mt. Vesuvius some nineteen hundred years back, and had written to the historian Tacitus about his experience:

"“I looked behind me; gross darkness pressed upon our rear, and came rolling over the land after us like a torrent. We had scarce sat down, when darkness overspread us, not like that of a moonless or cloudy night, but of a room when it is shut up, and the lamp put out. You could hear the shrieks of women, the crying of children, and the shouts of men; some were seeking their children, others their parents, others their wives or husbands, and only distinguishing them by their voices; one lamenting his own fate, another that of his family; some praying to die, from the very fear of dying; many lifting their hands to the gods; but the great part imagining that there were no gods left anywhere, and that the last and eternal night was come upon the world.”

"By way of the automobile ferry from Long Island to New London, Connecticut, Lanny drove his wife to his father’s home, and they spent a week with the family. The town of Newcastle had been hard hit by the depression: the arms plant was shut down entirely; the hardware and elevator and other plants were running only three days a week. The workers were living on their savings if they had any; they were mortgaging their homes, and losing their cars and radio sets because they couldn’t meet installment payments. There were a couple of thousand families entirely destitute, and most of them were Budd workers, so it was a strain upon the consciences and pocketbooks of all members of the ruling family. Esther was working harder than even during the World War; she was chairman of the finance committee of the town’s soup kitchens and children’s aid, and went about among the women’s clubs and churches telling harrowing stories and making the women weep, so that private charity might not break down entirely.

"That was a crucial issue, as her husband told her. If America was forced to adopt the British system of the dole, it would be the end of individual initiative and private enterprise. Robbie seemed to his son like the anchor-man of a tug-of-war team, his heels dug into the ground, his teeth set, the veins standing out purple in his forehead with the effort he was making to keep his country from moving the wrong way. Robbie had been down to Washington to see President Hoover, his hero and the captain of his team. The Great Engineer was literally besieged; all the forces of disorder and destruction—so he considered them and so did Robbie—were trying to pry him from his stand that the budget must be balanced, the value of the dollar maintained, and business allowed to “come back” in due and regular course.

"Esther, of course, had to believe her husband; she told all the club ladies and church ladies that they were saving civilization, and they put in their dimes or their dollars, and gathered together and knitted sweaters or cooked and served hot soup. But every slump in Wall Street threw more men out of work in Newcastle, and the ladies were at their wit’s end. When Irma wrote a check for five thousand dollars for the children, tears of gratitude ran down the cheeks of Lanny’s stepmother. He had given her great sorrow in years past, but now his credit rating was triple-A. Even his Pinkness had been made respectable by the crimson hues of Bess, concerning whom the mother inquired with deepest anxiety.

"The Newcastle Country Club was giving a costume dance for charity. You paid twenty-five dollars for a ticket, and if you weren’t there you were nobody. Irma and Lanny had to drive to a near-by city, since everybody who knew how to sew in Newcastle was already at work on costumes. But it was all right, for that city likewise had its smokeless factory chimneys. Several women worked day and night, and as a result the visiting pair appeared as a very grand Beatrice and Benedick in red-and-purple velvet with gold linings. A delightful occasion, and when it was over, Irma and Lanny presented the costumes to the country club’s dramatics committee, for Irma said that if you folded them and carried them in the car they’d be full of creases and not fit to use again.

"The business situation in Germany went from bad to worse. Robbie received a letter from Johannes, saying that it looked like the end of everything. Foreign loans were no more, and Germany couldn’t go on without them. Johannes was taking more money out of the country, and asking Robbie’s help in investing it. Robbie told his son in strict confidence—not even Irma was allowed to know—that President Hoover had prepared a declaration of a moratorium on international debts; he was still hesitating about this grave step; would it help or would it cause more alarm? The French, who had not been consulted, would probably be furious.

"The declaration was issued soon after the young couple had returned to Shore Acres, and the French were furious, but the Germans were not much helped. In the middle of July the great Danat Bank failed in Berlin, and there was terror such as Lanny had witnessed in New York. Chancellor Brüning went to Paris to beg for help, and Premier Laval refused it; France was now the strongest European power financially, and was sitting on her heap of gold, lending it only for the arming of Poland and her other eastern allies—which were blackmailing her without mercy. Britain had made the mistake of trying to buttress German finances, and now her own were shaky as a result. “We’re not that sort of fools,” wrote young Denis de Bruyne to Lanny, who replied: “If you let the German Republic fall and you get Hitler, will that help you?” Young Denis did not reply.

"Such were the problems faced by the statesmen while two darlings of fortune were having fun all over the northeastern states. Invitations would come, and they would order their bags packed, step into their car in the morning, drive several hours or perhaps all day, and step out onto an estate in Bar Harbor or Newport, the Berkshires or the Ramapo Hills, the Adirondacks or the Thousand Islands. Wherever it was, there would be a palace—even though it was called a “cottage” or a “camp.” The way you knew a “camp” was that it was built of “slabs,” and you wore sport clothes and didn’t dress for dinner; but the meal would be just as elaborate, for nobody stayed anywhere without sending a staff of servants ahead and having all modern conveniences, including a dependable bootlegger. Radios and phonographs provided music for dancing, and if you didn’t have the right number for games, you called people on the long-distance telephone and they motored a hundred miles or more, and when they arrived they bragged about their speed. Once more Lanny thought of the English poet Clough, and his song attributed to the devil in one of his many incarnations: “How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho! How pleasant it is to have money!”

"These young people still had it, though the streams were drying up. The worst of the embarrassments of a depression, as it presented itself to the daughter of J. Paramount Barnes, was that so many of her friends kept getting into trouble and telling her about it. A truly excruciating situation: in the midst of a bridge game at Tuxedo Park the hostess received a telephone call from her broker in New York, and came in white-faced, saying that unless she could raise fifty thousand dollars in cash by next morning she was “sunk.” Not everybody had that much money in the bank, and especially not in times when rumors were spreading about this bank and that. Irma saw the eyes of the hostess fixed upon her, and was most uncomfortable, because she couldn’t remedy the depression all by herself and had to draw the line somewhere.

"The first of July was a time for dividends, and many of the biggest and most important corporations “passed” them. This gave a shock to Wall Street, and to those who lived by it; Irma’s income was cut still more, and the shrinkage seemed likely to continue. The news from abroad was as bad as possible. Rick, who knew what was going on behind the scenes, wrote it to his friend. The German Chancellor was in London, begging for funds, but nobody dared help him any further; France was obdurate, because the Germans had committed the crime of attempting to set up a customs union with Austria. But how could either of these countries survive if they couldn’t trade?

"All Lanny’s life it had been his habit to sit and listen to older people talking about the state of the world. Now he knew more about it than most of the people he met, even the older ones. While Irma played bridge, or table tennis with her young friends who had acquired amazing skill at that fast game, Lanny would be telling the president of one of the great Wall Street banks just why he had blundered in advising his clients to purchase the bonds of Fascist Italy, or trying to convince one of the richest old ladies of America that she wasn’t really helping to fight Bolshevism when she gave money for the activities of the Nazis in the United States. Such a charming, cultivated young German had been introduced to her, and had explained this holy crusade to preserve Western civilization from the menace of Asiatic barbarism!

"It was a highly complicated world for a devout Episcopalian and member of the D.A.R. to be groping about in. A great banking fortune gave her enormous power, and she desired earnestly to use it wisely. Lanny told her the various radical planks of the Nazi program, and the old lady was struck with dismay. He told her how Hitler had been dropping these planks one by one, and she took heart again. But he assured her that Hitler didn’t mean the dropping any more than he had meant the planks; what he wanted was to get power, and then he would do whatever was necessary to keep it and increase it. Lanny found it impossible to make this attitude real to gentle, well-bred, conscientious American ladies; it was just too awful. When you persisted in talking about it, you only succeeded in persuading them that there must be something wrong with your cynical self."

Lanny's mother in law adapted.

"For Lanny as a prince consort there was really quite a lot to be said. His manners were distinguished and his conversation even more so. He didn’t get drunk, and he had to be urged to spend his wife’s money. The uncertainty about his mother’s marriage ceremony hadn’t broken into the newspapers, and he was received by his father’s very old family. So the large and majestic Queen Mother of Shore Acres set out to butter him with flattery and get from him the two things she ardently desired: first, that he should help Irma to produce a grandson to be named Vandringham; and second, that they should leave Baby Frances at Shore Acres to be reared in the Vandringham tradition."

Rick wrote to Lanny.

"The echoes of calamity came rolling from Germany to England. Trade was falling off, factories closing, unemployment increasing; doubts were spreading as to the soundness of the pound sterling, for a century the standard of value for all the world; investors were taking refuge in the dollar, the Dutch florin, the Swiss franc. Rick told about the situation in his country; boldness was needed, he said—a capital levy, a move to socialize credit; but no political party had the courage or the vision. The Tories clamored to balance the budget at any cost, to cut the dole, and the pay of the schoolteachers, even of the navy. It was the same story as Hoover with his “rugged individualism.” Anything to save the gold standard and the power of the creditor class.

"At the beginning of September the labor government fell. An amazing series of events—the labor Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, and several of his colleagues in the old Cabinet went over to the Tories and formed what he called a “National” government to carry out the anti-labor program. It had happened before in Socialist history, but never quite so dramatically, so openly; Rick, writing about it for one of the leftist papers, said that those who betrayed the hopes of the toiling masses usually managed to veil their sell-out with decorous phrases, they didn’t come out on the public highway to strip themselves of their old work-clothes and put on the livery of their masters.

"Rick was a philosopher, and tried to understand the actions of men. He said that the ruling classes couldn’t supply their own quota of ability, but were forced continually to invade the other classes for brains. It had become the function of the Socialist movement to train and equip lightning-change artists of politics, men who understood the workers and how to fool them with glittering promises and then climb to power upon their shoulders. In Italy it had been Mussolini, who had learned his trade editing the principal Socialist paper of the country. In France no fewer than four premiers had begun their careers as ardent revolutionaries; the newest of them was Pierre Laval, an innkeeper’s son who had driven a one-horse omnibus for his father, and while driving had read Socialist literature and learned how to get himself elected mayor of his town.

"Rick mailed this letter; but before the steamer reached New York, the cables brought word that the prisoner of the Tories had failed. Britain was off the gold standard, and the pound sterling had lost about twenty per cent of its value! It happened to be the twenty-first of September, a notable day in Wall Street history, for it marked two years from the high point of the big bull market. In those two years American securities had lost sixty per cent of their value; and now came this staggering news, causing another drop! “Look where steel is now!” said Lanny Budd to his father over the telephone."

Laval traveled with Aristide Briand to meet Hindenburg, with little effect.

"Briand meeting with Hindenburg! The washerwoman’s child and the East Prussian aristocrat; old-time enemies, now both nearing their graves; each thinking about his country’s safety, and helpless to secure it. Der alte Herr talking about the menace of revolution in Germany; not the respectable kind which would put the Kaiser’s sons on the throne, but a dangerous gutter-revolution, an upsurge of the Lumpenproletariat, led by the one-time odd-job man, the painter of picture postcards, the “Bohemian corporal” named Schicklgruber. Briand demanding the dropping of the Austro-German customs-union project, while Hindenburg pleaded for a chance for his country to sell goods. Briand denouncing the Stahlhelm and the new pocket-battleships, while Hindenburg complained that France was not keeping her promise to disarm. Hindenburg begging for loans, while Briand explained that France had to keep her gold reserve as the last bulwark of financial security in Europe. No, there wasn’t much chance of their getting together; the only one who could hope to profit by the visit was the aforesaid “Bohemian corporal,” whose papers were raving alike at the French visitors and at the German politicians who licked their boots to no purpose.

"Adolf Hitler Schicklgruber wouldn’t attack Hindenburg, for Hindenburg was a monument, a tradition, a living legend. The Nazi press would concentrate its venom upon the Chancellor, a Catholic and leader of the Center party, guilty of the crime of signing the Young Plan which sought to keep Germany in slavery until the year 1988. Now Hoover had granted a moratorium, but there was no moratorium for Brüning, no let-up in the furious Nazi campaign.

Lanny Budd knew about it, because Heinrich Jung had got his address, presumably from Kurt, and continued to keep him supplied with literature. There was no one at Shore Acres who could read it but Lanny himself; however, one didn’t need to know German, one had only to look at the headlines to know that it was sensational, and at the cartoons to know that it was a propaganda of cruel and murderous hate. Cartoons of Jews as monsters with swollen noses and bellies, of John Bull as a fat banker sucking the blood of German children, of Marianne as a devouring harpy, of the Russian bear with a knife in his teeth and a bomb in each paw, of Uncle Sam as a lean and sneering Shylock. Better to throw such stuff into the trash-basket without taking off the wrappers.

"But that wouldn’t keep the evil flood from engulfing Germany, it wouldn’t keep millions of young people from absorbing a psychopath’s view of the world. Lanny Budd, approaching his thirty-second birthday, wondered if the time hadn’t come to stop playing and find some job to do. But he kept putting it off, because jobs were so scarce, and if you took one, you deprived somebody else of it—someone who needed it much more than you!"

Lanny and Irma took a German steamer back to Marseille.

"You might not like Germans, but if you wanted to cross the ocean, you liked a new and shiny boat with officers and stewards in new uniforms, and the cleanest and best table-service. They were so polite, and at the same time so determined; Lanny was interested in talking with them and speculating as to what made them so admirable as individuals and so dangerous as a race.

"Right now, of course, they were in trouble, like everybody else. They had the industrial plant, but couldn’t find customers; they had the steamships, but it was hard to get passengers! The other peoples blamed fate or Providence, economic law, the capitalist system, the gold standard, the war, the Reds—but Germans everywhere blamed but one thing, the Versailles Diktat and the reparations it had imposed. Every German was firmly set in the conviction that the Allies were deliberately keeping the Fatherland from getting on its feet again, and that all their trouble was a direct consequence of this. Lanny would point out that now there was a moratorium on all their debts, not only reparations but post-war borrowings, so it ought to be possible for them to recover soon. But he never knew that argument to have the slightest effect; there was a national persecution complex which operated subconsciously, as in an individual.

"Irma couldn’t understand Lanny’s being interested to talk to such people, and for so long a time. He explained that it was a sociological inquiry; if Rick had been along he would have written an article: “The Floating Fatherland.” It was a question of the whole future of Germany. How deeply was the propaganda of Dr. Joseph Goebbels taking effect? What were the oilers thinking? What did the scullerymen talk about before they dropped into their bunks? There were dyed-in-the-wool Reds, of course, who followed the Moscow line and were not to be swerved; but others had become convinced that Hitler was a genuine friend of the people and would help them to get shorter hours and a living wage. Arguments were going on day and night, an unceasing war of words all over the ship. Which way was the balance swinging?"

Back home at Bienvenu.

"When Irma and Beauty Budd emerged from the hands of modistes and friseurs, all ready for a party, they were very fancy showpieces; Lanny was proud to escort them and to see the attention they attracted. He kept himself clad according to their standards, did the honors as he had been taught, and for a while was happy as a young man à la mode. His wife was deeply impressed by Emily Chattersworth, that serene and gracious hostess, and was taking her as a model. Irma would remark: “If we had a larger house, we could entertain as Emily does.” She would try experiments, inviting this eminent person and that, and when they came she would say to her husband: “I believe you and I could have a salon if we went about it seriously.”

"Lanny came to recognize that she was considering this as a career. Emily was growing feeble, and couldn’t go on forever; there would have to be someone to take her place, to bring the fashionable French and the fashionable Americans together and let them meet intellectuals, writers and musicians and statesmen who had made names for themselves in the proper dignified way. As a rule such persons didn’t have the money or time to entertain, nor were their wives up to it; if you rendered that free service, it made you “somebody” in your own right.

"Each of the great men had his “line,” something he did better than anybody else. Lanny assumed that you had to read his book, listen to his speeches, or whatever it was; but Irma made up her mind that this was her husband’s naïveté. He would have had to, but a woman didn’t. A woman observed that a man wanted to talk about himself, and a woman who was good at listening to that was good enough for anything. She had to express admiration, but not too extravagantly; that was a mistake the gushy woman made, and the man decided that she was a fool. But the still, deep woman, the Mona Lisa woman, the one who said in a dignified way: “I have wanted very much to know about that—please tell me more,” she was the one who warmed a celebrity’s heart.

"The problem, Irma decided, was not to get them to talk, but to get them to stop! The function of a salonnière was to apportion the time, to watch the audience and perceive when it wanted a change and bring about the change so tactfully that nobody noticed it. Irma watched the technique of her hostess, and began asking questions; and this was by no means displeasing to Emily, for she too was not above being flattered and liked the idea of taking on an understudy. She showed Irma her address-book, full of secret marks which only her confidential secretary understood. Some meant good things and some bad."

Rick wrote a political play and Lanny along with Irma and friends of Beauty funded it, with Gracyn playing a part. They stopped at Paris on the way to England, where Jesse Blackless won an election and was now a member of the chamber, the French parliament. Hansi and Bess were there, and in conversations in cafe Hansi spoke about Nazi violence in Germany. Irma spoke with Emily about Lanny, and decided to encourage his art career, and learn. They visited Zaharoff and another palace, and Irma decided to rent the latter for a year so they could live there and combine the lifestyles of the couple, he would conduct art career while she would learn from Emily Chattersworth about being a salonniere. She hired Jerry Pendleton to manage the place and they moved in. Beauty, Emily and Frances, all came to help.

"The election results had given a tremendous jolt to the conservative elements in France. The party of Jesse Blackless had gained only two seats, but the party of Léon Blum had gained seventeen, while the “Radicals” had gained forty-eight. To be sure that word didn’t mean what it meant in the United States; it was the party of the peasants and the small business men, but it was expected to combine with the Socialists, and France would have a government of the left, badly tainted with pacifism, and likely to make dangerous concessions to the Germans. The groups which had been governing France, the representatives of big industry and finance capital, popularly known as the mur d’argent, the “wall of money,” were in a state of great alarm."

Lanny invited De Bruyne family,

"Said the proprietor of a great fleet of taxicabs, speaking with some hesitation to a hostess from overseas: “I am afraid that the people of your country do not have a clear realization of the position in which they have placed my country.”

"“Do feel at liberty to speak freely, Monsieur,” replied Irma, in her most formal French.

"“There is a natural barrier which alone can preserve this land from the invasion of barbarians, and that is the River Rhein. It was our intention to hold and fortify it, but your President Veelson”—so they called him, ending with their sharp nasal “n”—“your President Veelson forced us back from that boundary, onto ground which is almost indefensible, no matter how hard we may try with our Maginot line. We made that concession because of your President’s pledge of a protective agreement against Germany; but your Congress ignored that agreement, and so today we stand well-nigh defenseless. Now your President Oovay has declared a moratorium on reparations, so that chapter is at an end—and we have received almost nothing.”"

"“When one says Germany today, Madame, one means Prussia; and to these people good faith is a word of mockery. For such men as Thyssen and Hugenberg, and for the Jewish money-lenders, the name ‘Republic’ is a form of camouflage. I speak frankly, because it is all in the family, as it were.”

"“Assuredly,” said the hostess.

"“Every concession that we make is met by further demands. We have withdrawn from the Rheinland, and no longer have any hold upon them, so they smile up their sleeves and go on with their rearming. They waited, as you have seen, until after our elections, so as not to alarm us; then, seeing the victory of the left, they overthrow their Catholic Chancellor, and we see a Cabinet of the Barons, as it is so well named. If there is a less trustworthy man in all Europe than Franz von Papen, I would not know where to seek him.”"

"Charlot, the young engineer, had joined the Croix de Feu, one of the patriotic organizations which did not propose to surrender la patrie either to the Reds or to the Prussians. The Croix de Feu used the technique of banners and uniforms and marching and singing as did the Fascists of Italy and the Nazis of Germany; but Lanny said: “I’m afraid, Charlot, you won’t get so far, because you don’t make so many promises to the workers.”

"“They tell the people falsehoods,” said the young Frenchman, haughtily; “but we are men of honor.”

"“Ah, yes,” sighed his old friend; “but how far does that go in politics?”

"“In this corrupt republic, no distance at all; but we have set out to make France a home for men who mean what they say.”

"Lanny spoke no more. It made him sad to see his two foster sons—they were supposed to be something like that—going the road of Fascism; but there was nothing he could do about it. He knew that their mother had shared these tendencies. They were French patriots, and he couldn’t make them internationalists, or what he called “good Europeans.”"

Lanny wanted to go visit Leon Blum and Irma asked him to invite him home.

"After all, Leon Blum was the leader of the second largest political party in France; he was a scholar and a poet, and had once had a fortune. In the old days, as a young aesthete, he had been a frequenter of Emily’s salon; now he had exchanged Marcel Proust for Karl Marx, but he remained a gentleman and a brilliant mind. Surely one might invite him to lunch, and even to dinner—if the company was carefully chosen. Emily herself would come; and Lanny knew from this that the matter had been discussed."

"The Socialist leader sat in the same chair which Denis de Bruyne had filled, and maybe he felt some evil vibrations, for he spoke very sadly. In the midst of infinite corruption he was trying to believe in honesty; in the midst of wholesale cruelty he was trying to believe in kindness. The profit system, the blind competitive struggle for raw materials and markets, was wrecking civilization. No one nation could change this by itself; all must help, but someone must begin, and the voice of truth must be heard everywhere. Léon Blum spoke tirelessly in the Chamber, he wrote daily editorials for Le Populaire, he traveled here and there, pleading and explaining. He would do it at the luncheon table of a friend, and then stop and apologize, smiling and saying that politics ruined one’s manners as well as one’s character.

"He was a tall slender man with the long slim hands of an artist; a thin, sensitive face, an abundant mustache which made him a joy to the caricaturists of the French press. He had been through campaigns of incredible bitterness; for to the partisans of the French right it was adding insult to injury when their foes put up a Jew as their spokesman. It made the whole movement of the workers a part of the international Jewish conspiracy, and lent venom to all Fascist attacks upon France. “Perhaps, after all, it is a mistake that I try to serve the cause,” said the statesman.

"He was ill content with the showing which his party had made at the polls. A gain of seventeen was not enough to save the day. He said that immediate and bold action was required if Europe was to be spared the horrors of another war. He said that the German Republic could not survive without generous help from France. He said that the “Cabinet of the Barons” was a natural answer to the cabinet of the bigot, Poincaré, and to that of the cheat, Laval. Blum was standing for real disarmament of all the nations, including France, and he had been willing to split his party rather than to yield on that issue. Said Irma, after the luncheon: “We won’t ever invite him and the de Bruynes at the same time!”"

Irma gave her first soiree for house warming, managed everything, and was a success, and happy. Hansi and Bess gave a recital, after which Rahel, Freddi and Lanny did.

"Lanny, thirty-two and world weary, thought: “How hard they all try to keep up a front and to be what they pretend!” He thought: “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players”—these being among the first words of Shakespeare he had learned.

"He knew much more about these players than his wife did. He had been hearing stories from his father and his business friends, from his mother and her smart friends, from his Red uncle, from Blum and Longuet and other Pinks. This lawyer for the Comité des Forges who had all the secrets of la haute finance hidden in his skull; this financier, paymaster for the big banks, who had half the members of the Radical party on his list; this publisher who had taken the Tsar’s gold before the war and now was a director of Skoda and Schneider-Creusot!"
................................................................................................



Lindbergh tragedy happened. 

"It happened that this ghastly discovery fell in the same week that the President of the French republic was shot down by an assassin who called himself a “Russian Fascist.” The papers were full of the details and pictures of both these tragedies. A violent and dreadful world to be living in, and the rich and mighty ones shuddered and lost their sleep."

"Fanny wanted to take her tiny namesake to Shore Acres and keep her in a fifth-story room, beyond reach of any ladders. But Beauty said: “What about fire?” The two grandmothers were close to their first quarrel.


"Lanny cabled his father, inquiring about Bub Smith, most dependable of bodyguards and confidential agents. He was working for the company in Newcastle, but could be spared, and Robbie sent him by the first steamer. So every night the grounds of Bienvenu would be patrolled by an ex-cowboy from Texas who could throw a silver dollar into the air and hit it with a Budd automatic. Bub had been all over France, doing one or another kind of secret work for the head salesman of Budd Gunmakers, so he knew the language of the people. He hired a couple of ex-poilus to serve as daytime guards, and from that time on the precious mite of life which was to inherit the Barnes fortune was seldom out of sight of an armed man. Lanny wasn’t sure if it was a good idea, for of course all the Cap knew what these men were there for, and it served as much to advertise the baby as to protect her. But no use telling that to the ladies!"

Bub told Lanny he'd become a socialist, and attended classes of Raoul Palma, it took Lanny a year to find out that was Robbie's way of finding out about the left.

"Also Bub told about conditions in Newcastle, where some kind of social change seemed impossible to postpone. There wasn’t enough activity in those great mills to pay for the taxes and upkeep, and there was actual hunger among the workers. The people had mortgaged their homes, sold their cars, pawned their belongings; families had moved together to save rent; half a dozen people lived on the earnings of a single employed person. So many New Englanders were proud and wouldn’t ask for charity; they just withdrew into a corner and starved. Impossible not to be moved by such distress, or to realize that something must be done to get that great manufacturing plant to work again."

They drove to Bienvenu to see baby Frances and then to see Rick's play in London.

"The house divided horizontally; from the stalls came frozen silence and from the galleries storms of applause. The critics divided in the same way; those with a pinkish tinge hailed the play as an authentic picture of the part which fashionable society was playing in politics, an indictment of that variety of corruption peculiar to Britain, where privileges which would have to be paid for in cash in France or with office in America, go as a matter of hereditary right or of social prestige. In any case it was power adding to itself, “strength aiding still the strong.”

Lanny and his friends helped, and

"In one way or another they kept the play going. Gracyn, to whom it gave such a “fat” part, offered to postpone taking her salary for two weeks. Lanny wrote articles for the labor papers, pointing out what the production meant to the workers, and so they continued to attend and cheer. The affair grew into a scandal, which forced the privileged classes to talk about it, and then to want to know what they were talking about. In the end it turned out that Eric Vivian Pomeroy-Nielson had a “hit”—something he had been aiming at for more than ten years. He insisted on paying back all his friends, and after that he paid off some of the mortgages of “the Pater,” who had been staking him for a long time. The main thing was that Rick had managed to say something to the British people, and had won a name so that he would be able to say more."

They drove to Berlin to visit the Robins, via Lausanne where Pietro Corsatti was attending the next conference, and were told next would be Paris, so Irma looked forward to her home being where all the important personages met. Meanwhile,

"Lanny observed his wife “falling for” the British ruling class. Many Americans did this; it was a definite disease, known as “Anglomania.” Upper-class Englishmen were tall and good-looking, quiet and soft-spoken, cordial to their friends and reserved to others; Irma thought that was the right way to be. There was Lord Wickthorpe, whom Lanny had once met on a tally-ho coach driving to Ascot; they had both been youngsters, but now Wickthorpe was a grave diplomat, carrying a brief-case full of responsibility—or so he looked, and so Irma imagined him, though Lanny, who had been behind many scenes, assured her that the sons of great families didn’t as a rule do much hard work. Wickthorpe was divinely handsome, with a tiny light brown mustache, and Irma said: “How do you suppose such a man could remain a bachelor?”

"“I don’t know,” said the husband. “Margy can probably tell you. Maybe he couldn’t get the girl he wanted.”

"“I should think any girl would have a hard time refusing what he has.”"
................................................................................................    


They stopped on the way in Stuttgart at night and Lanny wanted to hear Gregor Strasser speak at supposedly a huge rally to be.

"During those twenty months a Franco-American playboy had been skipping over the world with the agility conferred by railroads and motor-cars, airplanes, steamships, and private yachts. He had been over most of western Europe, England, and New England. ....

"But meantime the people of Germany had been living an utterly different life; doing hard and monotonous labor for long hours at low wages; finding the cost of necessities creeping upward and insecurity increasing, so that no man could be sure that he and his family were going to have their next day’s bread. The causes of this state of affairs were complex and hopelessly obscure to the average man, but there was a group which undertook to make them simple and plain to the dullest. During the aforementioned twenty months the customs official’s son from Austria, Adi Schicklgruber, had been skipping about even more than Lanny Budd, using the same facilities of railroad trains and motor-cars and airplanes. But he hadn’t been seeking pleasure; he had been living the life of an ascetic, vegetarian, and teetotaler, devoting his fanatical energies to the task of convincing the German masses that their troubles were due to the Versailles Diktat, to the envious foreigners who were strangling the Fatherland, to the filthy and degraded Jews, and to their allies the international bankers and international Reds.

"Say the very simplest and most obvious things, say them as often as possible, and put into the saying all the screaming passion which one human voice can carry—that was Adolf Hitler’s technique. He had been applying it for thirteen years, ever since the accursed treaty had been signed, and now he was at the climax of his efforts. He and his lieutenants were holding hundreds of meetings every night, all over Germany, and it was like one meeting; the same speech, whether it was a newspaper print or cartoon or signboard or phonograph record. No matter whether it was true or not—for Adi meant literally his maxim that the bigger the falsehood, the easier to get it believed; people would say you wouldn’t dare make up a thing like that. Imagine the worst possible about your enemies and then swear that you knew it, you had seen it, it was God’s truth and you were ready to stake your life upon it—shout this, bellow this, over and over, day after day, night after night. If one person states it, it is nonsense, but if ten thousand join in it becomes an indictment, and when ten million join in it becomes history. The Jews kill Christian children and use their blood as a part of their religious ritual! You refuse to believe it? But it is a well-known fact; it is called “ritual murder.” The Jews are in a conspiracy to destroy Christian civilization and rule the whole world. It has all been completely exposed in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion; the party has printed these, the Führer has guaranteed their authenticity, the great American millionaire Henry Ford has circulated them all over America. Everybody there knows that the charges are true, the whole world knows it—save only the Jew-lovers, the Jew-kissers, the filthy Jew-hirelings. Nieder mit den Juden!"

Funny, how relevant it is almost a century later, when a so called young leader descended half from axis lineage, from both mafia Sicilian and fascist, and nazi, ends of the axis, applies that technique of blatant huge lies to not only people of poorer families who haven't deposited stolen money banked in Swiss accounts, stolen from a poor nation, but abuses and lies to and about the very people, culture, and country he claims a right to rule due to the other half of his lineage of bushes of their country. Will this ancient culture prove smarter than Germany of a century ago, despite appearances to the contrary? Which did happen to his grandma's great shock, within two years of a dictatorship when she was assured nobody would vote against her if she went to polls. If the people are still that smart, this scion shall be kept out from now on, and his other half axis DNA clan too.
................................................................................................  



The author perhaps here provides a key to the unexpected success of nazis. 

"... loudspeakers, a wonderful device whereby one small figure on a platform could have the voice of a score of giants, while a dissenter became a pigmy, uttering a squeak like a mouse. The radio was a still more marvelous invention; that feeble little “crystal set” with earphones which Robbie Budd had brought to Bienvenu ten years ago had become the most dominating of psychological forces, whereby one man could indoctrinate a hundred million. Learned technicians of the mind had evolved methods of awakening curiosity, so that the millions would listen; and no matter how much anyone disagreed, he was powerless to answer back. The dream of every dictator was to get exclusive control of that colossal instrument, so that never again in all history would it be possible to answer back. Then what you said would become the truth and the only truth—no matter how false it might have been previously! He who could get and hold the radio became God."

And the confusion of political spectrum then in Germany

"It was a political campaign of frenzied hate, close to civil war. Troops of armed men marched, glaring at other troops when they passed, and ready to fly at the others’ throats; in the working class districts they did so, and bystanders had to flee for their lives. The conservatives, who called themselves Democrats and Nationalists, had their Stahlhelm and their Kampfring, the Nazis had their S.S.’s and S.A.’s, the Sozis had their Reichsbanner, and the Communists their Rotfront, although the last named were forbidden to wear uniforms. The posters and cartoons, the flags and banners, all had symbols and slogans expressive of hatred of other people, whether Germans of the wrong class, or Russians, French, Czechs, Poles, or Jews. Impossible to understand so many kinds of hatreds or the reasons for them. Irma said: “It’s horrible, Lanny. Let’s not have any more to do with it.”"

Johannes Robin gave a party in honour of their visit. 

"The new Chancellor came; tall and thin-faced, the smartest of diplomats and most elegant of Catholic aristocrats, he lived entangled in a net of intrigue of his own weaving. A son of the Russian ghetto might have been overwhelmed by the honor of such a presence, but Johannes took it as the payment of a debt. The gentlemen of the fashionable Herren Klub hadn’t been able to raise enough money to save their party, so the Chancellor had had to come to the Jew for help. 

"Irma found him charming, and told her husband, who remarked: “There is no greater rascal in all Europe. Franz von Papen was put out of the United States before we entered the war because he was financing explosions in munitions plants.” 

"“Oh, darling!” she exclaimed. “You say such horrid things! You can’t really know that!” 

"Said the young Pink: “He didn’t have sense enough to burn his check-stubs, and the British captured his ship on the way home and published all the data.”"

They went on a week long cruise with the Robins, whose political differences within family were strong.

"Neither couple was going to give way—any more than Lanny himself was going to give up his conviction that it was the program of the Communists which had caused the development of Fascism and Nazism—or at any rate had made possible its spread in Italy and Germany. Only in the Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon lands, where democratic institutions were firmly rooted, had neither Reds nor anti-Reds been able to make headway."

"A presidential election was due in November, and the political parties had held their conventions and made their nominations; the Republicans had endorsed the Great Engineer and all that he had done, while the Democrats nominated the Governor of New York, Franklin Roosevelt by name."

"Johannes judged it certain that the Nazis would make heavy gains at the coming elections, but he refused to worry about this. He had several of them on his payroll, but what he counted upon most was the fact that Hitler had gone to Düsseldorf and had a long session with Thyssen and other magnates of the Ruhr. They wanted the Red labor unions put down, and Hitler had satisfied them that he was ready to do the job."

Back in Berlin, Lanny visited the worker's school Freddi and Rahel worked for. 

"There was a teacher of art at the school, by name Trudi Schultz, very young, herself a student at an art school, but two or three evenings a week she came to impart what she knew to the workers, most of them older than herself. She was married to a young commercial artist who worked on a small salary for an advertising concern and hated it. Both Trudi and Ludi Schultz were that perfect Aryan type which Adolf Hitler lauded but conspicuously was not; the girl had wavy fair hair, clear blue candid eyes, and sensitive features which gave an impression of frankness and sincerity. Lanny watched her making sketches on a blackboard for her class, and it seemed to him that she had an extraordinary gift of line; she drew something, then wiped it out casually, and he hated to see it go."

Trudi invited Lanny to see her work, and he drove Freddi and Rahel to her home. He found her work worthy of publication, and her conversation interesting and congenial. 
................................................................................................


The German elections at end of July brought enough nazis to power that there could only be a non Nazi government if the left factions cooperated, which they wouldn't; Hindenburg refused to give chancellorship to Hitler and the offered  vice-chancellorship wasn't accepted.


"There began a new wave of terrorism; attacks upon Reds of all shades by the Nazi Stormtroopers in and out of uniform. Irma heard about it and began begging Lanny to cease his visits among these people; she tried to enlist Robbie’s help, and when that failed she wanted to leave Berlin. What was this obscure tropism which drove her husband to the companionship of persons who at the least wanted to get his money from him, and frequently were conspiring to involve him in dangerous intrigues? What had they ever done for him? What could he possibly owe them? 

"Lanny insisted that he had to hear all sides. He invited Emil Meissner to lunch—not in the Robin home, for Emil wouldn’t come there. Kurt’s oldest brother was now a colonel, and Lanny wanted to know what a Prussian officer thought about the political deadlock. Emil said it was deplorable, and agreed with Lanny that the Nazis were wholly unfitted to govern Germany. He said that if von Papen had been a really strong man he would never have permitted that election to be held; if the Field Marshal had been the man of the old days he would have taken the reins in his hands and governed the country until the economic crisis had passed and the people could settle into a normal state of mind. 

"“But wouldn’t that mean the end of the Republic?” asked Lanny. 

"“Republics come and go, but nations endure,” said Oberst Meissner.""
................................................................................................


"Kurt had written, begging Irma and Lanny to come for a visit. Lanny had never been to Stubendorf except at Christmas time, and he thought it would be pleasant to see the country in midsummer. They drove with a speed greater than the wind over the splendid level roads of Prussia, past fields where gangs of Polish immigrant women labored on the potato crops. The roads were lined with well-tended fruit trees, and Irma said: “We couldn’t do that in America. People would steal all the fruit.” She had never seen vast fields so perfectly cultivated: every inch of ground put to use, no such thing as a weed existing, and forests with trees planted in rows like orchards. She renewed her admiration for the German Volk."

"Just now there was wrangling over religious questions; the old problem of the relations of church and state was being fought over with bitterness inherited through six centuries or more. There were Polish Lutherans and German Lutherans who couldn’t and wouldn’t say the Lord’s prayer together. There were Polish Catholics trying to polonize German Catholics. There was the Volhynian Russian church, and the Uniat church which was half-way between Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic—they accepted the Pope, but their priests married and had large families. Superimposed upon all this was a new Polish ecclesiastical system, which subjected all the churches to the government. Herr Meissner, soon to depart from this earth, found the making of a proper exit as complicated a problem as had ever confronted him while staying on.

"Lanny had been looking forward to having a frank talk with his old chum. He wanted to tell Kurt what he had learned about the Nazi political machine, and make one last effort to get him out of it. But he realized that it would be a waste of effort. Kurt was in a state of exultation over the election results, for which he had been hoping for ten years and working for five. He considered that Germany was being redeemed, and he was composing a Victory March to end all marches. Lanny decided sadly that it was better to play piano duets and consider politics as beneath the notice of inspired musicians."
................................................................................................


In U.S. 


"The ex-service men who had gone overseas to fight for their country had come back to find the jobs and the money in the hands of others. Now they were unemployed, many of them starving, and they gathered in Washington demanding relief; some brought their destitute families and swarmed upon the steps of the Capitol or camped in vacant lots beside the Potomac. The Great Engineer fell into a panic and could think of nothing to do but turn the army loose on them, kill four, and burn the tents and pitiful belongings of all. The “bonus men” were driven out, a helpless rabble, no one caring where they went, so long as they stopped bothering politicians occupied with getting re-elected." 

Lanny and Irma spent autumn in Paris with family and friends, and Irma was a success as a hostess, even Graf Stubendorf accepted their return invitation and came. After Xmas with family at Bienvenu 

"Back in Paris during the month of January Lanny would receive every morning a copy of the Berlin Vorwärts, twenty-four hours late; he would find on the front page details of the political situation, displayed under scare headlines and accompanied by editorial exhortations. All from the Socialist point of view, of course; but Lanny could check it by taking a stroll up the Butte de Montmartre and hearing the comments of his deputy-uncle, based on the reading of L’Humanité, the paper which Jaurès had founded but which now was in the hands of the Communists."

"“But suppose there aren’t any more elections, Uncle Jesse. Suppose Hitler takes power!”"


"“Well, if necessary we’ll go underground. It has happened before, and you may be sure that we have made plans—in France as well as in Germany.”"

"Any time he was in doubt about what was really happening in Germany he had only to write to Johannes Robin. A letter from the Jewish money-master was like a gust of wind blowing away a fog and revealing the landscape. It disclosed the German nation traveling upon a perilous path, with yawning abysses on every side, earthquakes shaking the rocks loose and volcanoes hurling out clouds of fiery ashes. Assuredly neither of the Plinys, uncle or nephew, had confronted more terrifying natural phenomena than did the Weimar Republic at the beginning of this year 1933.


"The ceaselessly aggressive Nazis were waging daily and nightly battles with the Communists all over the country."

"“Papen has had a meeting with Hitler at the home of Thyssen’s friend, Baron von Schroeder,” wrote Johannes, and Lanny didn’t need to ask what that meant. “I am told that Papen and Hugenberg have got together;”—that, too, was not obscure. Hugenberg, the “silver fox,” had come to one of the Robin soirées; a big man with a walrus mustache, brutal but clever; leader of the Pan-German group and owner of the most powerful propaganda machine in the world, practically all of the big capitalist newspapers of Germany, plus U.F.A., the film monopoly. “Papen is raising funds for Hitler among the industrialists,” wrote Johannes. “I hear that the Führer has more than two million marks in notes which he cannot meet. It is a question whether he will go crazy before he becomes chancellor!”"

"On the thirtieth of January the news went out to a startled world that President von Hindenburg had appointed Adolf Hitler Chancellor of the German Republic. Even the Nazis were taken by surprise; they hadn’t been invited to the intrigues, and couldn’t imagine by what magic it had been brought about that their Führer’s enemies suddenly put him into office. Franz von Papen was Vice-Chancellor, and Hugenberg was in the Cabinet; in all there were nine reactionaries against three Nazis, and what could that mean? The newspapers outside Germany were certain that it meant the surrender of Hitler; he was going to be controlled, he was going to be another Ramsay MacDonald. They chose not to heed the proclamation which the Führer himself issued, telling his followers that the struggle was only beginning. But the Stormtroopers heeded, and turned out, exultant, parading with torchlights through Unter den Linden; seven hundred thousand persons marched past the Chancellery, with Hindenburg greeting them from one window and Hitler from another. The Communist call for a general strike went unheeded. 

"So it had come: the thing which Lanny had been fearing for the past three or four years. The Nazis had got Germany! Most of his friends had thought it unlikely; and now that it had happened, they preferred to believe that it hadn’t. Hitler wasn’t really in power, they said, and could last but a week or two. The German people had too much sense, the governing classes were too able and well trained; they would tone the fanatic down, and the soup would be eaten cool. 

"But Adolf Hitler had got, and Adolf Hitler would keep, the power which was most important to him—that of propaganda. He was executive head of the German government, and whatever manifesto he chose to issue took the front page of all the newspapers. Hermann Göring was Prussian Minister of the Interior and could say to the world over the radio: “Bread and work for our countrymen, freedom and honor for the nation!” Dwarfish little Jupp Goebbels, President of the Propaganda Committee of the Party, found himself Minister of Propaganda and Popular Enlightenment of the German Republic. The Nazi movement had been made out of propaganda, and now it would cover Germany like an explosion. 


"Hitler refused to make any concessions to the other parties, and thus forced Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag and order a new election. This meant that for a month the country would be in the turmoil of a campaign. But what a different campaign! No trouble about lack of funds, because Hitler had the funds of the nation, and his tirades were state documents. Goebbels could say anything he pleased about his enemies and suppress their replies. Göring, having control of the Berlin police, could throw his political opponents into jail and nobody could even find out where they were. These were the things of which Adi Schicklgruber had been dreaming ever since the end of the World War; and where else but in the Arabian Nights had it happened that a man awoke and found such dreams come true?"

From here on, the story of the world events is known, and how the author weaves it beautifully into the lives of his protagonist and the family, friends et al is the delight of those readers that know the bigger story in the background. For those not as aware of history it's a wonderful way to find out, akin to a safe cruise rather than a journey involving travails, as it was for me four decades ago. One doesn't escape knowledge of the travails, horrors, and too the heartbreaks the world went through, but it's from a point of view that's the safe cocoon of Lanny Budd's world and persona. And yet, the horrors aren't distant, they involve several characters close.  
................................................................................................


Lanny was worried about the Robin family, especially about Hansi and Bess. He managed to arrange a concert in Paris for him. Hansi finally agreed. 

"“I’m scheduled to give a concert at Cologne, and that is half way.” 


"Lanny said: “For God’s sake, keep off the streets at night, and don’t go out alone!”"

"Lanny missed his inside news about Germany, because the government forbade the publication of Vorwärts for three days, as a punishment for having published a campaign appeal of the Social-Democratic Party. Communist meetings were forbidden throughout the whole nation, and many Communist and Socialist papers were permanently suspended. “In ten years there will be no Marxism in Germany,” proclaimed the Führer. All over Prussia Göring was replacing police chiefs with Nazis, and the Stormtroopers were now attending political meetings in force, stopping those in which the government was criticized. Next, all meetings of the Centrists, the Catholic party, were banned; the Catholic paper, Germania, of which Papen was the principal stockholder, was suppressed, and then Rote Fahne, the Communist paper of Berlin. These events were reported in L’Humanité under the biggest of headlines, and Uncle Jesse denounced them furiously in the Chamber of Deputies; but that didn’t appear to have much effect upon Hitler. 

"What the Nazis were determined to do was to win those elections on the fifth of March. If they could get a majority in the Reichstag, they would be masters of the country; the Nationalists and aristocrats would be expelled from the cabinet and the revolution would be complete. Papen, Hugenberg, and their backers knew it well, and were in a state of distress, according to Johannes’s reports. A curious state of affairs—the gentlemen of the Herren Klub defending the Reds, because they knew that Hitler was using the Red bogy to frighten the people into voting for him! Goebbels was demanding the head of the Berlin police chief because he wouldn’t produce evidence of treasonable actions on the part of the Communists. “The history of Germany is becoming a melodrama,” wrote the Jewish financier. “In times to come people will refuse to believe it.” 

"He was now beginning to be worried about the possibility of attacks upon his boys; those gentle, idealistic boys who had been playing with fire without realizing how hot it could get. Being now twenty-eight and twenty-six respectively, they ought to have had some sense. Johannes didn’t say it was Lanny’s half-sister who led them into the worst extremes, but Lanny knew the father thought this, and not without reason. Anyhow, he had got a trusted bodyguard in the palace—a well-established and indubitable Aryan bodyguard. Freddi’s school had been closed; such a simple operation—a group of Stormtroopers appeared one evening and ordered the people out. Nothing you could do, for they had arms and appeared eager to use them. Everybody went, not even being allowed to get their hats and coats in February. The building was closed, and all the papers had been carted away in a truck. 


"The Nazis wouldn’t find any treason in those documents; only receipted bills, and examination papers in Marxist theory. But maybe that was treason now! Or maybe the Nazis would prepare other documents and put them into the files. Orders to the students to blow up Nazi headquarters, or perhaps the Chancellery? Such forgeries had been prepared more than once, and not alone in Germany. Hadn’t an election been won in Britain on the basis of an alleged “Zinoviev letter”?"

"The thing that worried Lanny was the possibility that some Nazi agent might produce letters proving that Hansi Robin had been carrying dynamite in his violin case, or Freddi in his clarinet case. They must have had spies in the school, and known everything that both boys had been doing and saying. Lanny said: “Johannes, why don’t you and the whole family come visit us for a while?” 

"“Maybe we’ll all take a yachting trip,” replied the man of money, with a chuckle. “When the weather gets a little better.” 


"“The weather is going to get worse,” insisted the Paris end of the line."

Lanny proposed to Irma that they drive to Cologne and bring out hansi and Bess.

"Among the music-lovers Hansi would be all right, for these were “good Europeans,” who for a couple of centuries had been building up a tradition of internationalism. A large percentage of Europe’s favorite musicians had been Jews, and there would have been gaps in concert programs if their works had been omitted. 

"Was the audience trying to say this by the storms of applause with which they greeted the performance of Mendelssohn’s gracious concerto by a young Jewish virtuoso? Did Hansi have such a message in his mind when he played Bruch’s Kol Nidrei as one of his encores? When the audience leaped to its feet and shouted, “Bravo!” were they really meaning to say: “We are not Nazis! We shall never be Nazis!” Lanny chose to believe this, and was heartened; he was sure that many of the adoring Rheinlanders had a purpose in waiting at the stage door and escorting the four young people to their car. But out in the dark street, with a cold rain falling, doubts began to assail him, and he wondered if the amiable Rhinelanders had guns for their protection. 


"However, no Nazi cars followed, and no Stormtroopers were waiting at the Hotel Monopol. Next morning they drove to the border, and nobody searched Hansi’s two violin cases for dynamite. They went through the routine performance of declaring what money they were taking out of the country, and were then passed over to the Belgian customs men. Lanny remembered the day when he had been ordered out of Italy, and with what relief he had seen French uniforms and heard French voices. Eight years had passed, and Benito, the “Blessed Little Pouter Pigeon,” was still haughtily declaring that his successor had not yet been born. Now his feat was being duplicated in another and far more powerful land, and rumors had it that he was giving advice. In how many more countries would Lanny Budd see that pattern followed? How many more transformations would it undergo? Would the Japanese conquerors of Manchuria adopt some new-colored shirts or kimonos? Or would it be the Croix de Feu in France? Or Mosley’s group in England? And if so, to what part of the world would the lovers of freedom move?"

The Paris concert description is beautiful. 

"Hansi always wanted to be taken straight home after a performance; he was exhausted, and didn’t care for sitting around in cafés. He entered the palace and was about to go to his room, when the telephone rang; Berlin calling, and Hansi said: “That will be Papa, wanting to know how the concert went.” 


"He was right, and told his father that everything had gone well. Johannes didn’t ask for particulars; instead he had tidings to impart. “The Reichstag building is burning.”

"What happened in the Reichstag building on that night of February 27 would be a subject of controversy inside and outside of Germany for years to come; but there could be no doubt about what happened elsewhere. Even while the four young people were talking in Paris, the leader of the Berlin S.A., Count Helldorf, was giving orders for the arrest of prominent Communists and Socialists. The list of victims had been prepared in advance, and warrants, each with a photograph of the victim in question. The Count knew that the Marxists were the criminals, he said; and Göring announced that the demented Dutchman who was found in the building with matches and fire-lighters had a Communist party membership card on him. The statement turned out to be untrue, but it served for the moment. 

"Next day Hitler persuaded Hindenburg to sign a decree “for the safeguarding of the state from the Communist menace,” and after that the Nazis had everything their own way. The prisons were filled with suspects, and the setting up of concentration camps began with a rush. The Prussian government, of which Göring was the head, issued a statement concerning the documents found in the raid on Karl Liebknecht Haus three days before the fire. The Communists had been plotting to burn down public buildings throughout Germany, and to start civil war and revolution on the Russian model; looting had been planned to begin right after the fire and terrorist acts were to be committed against persons and property. The publication of these documents was promised, but no one ever saw them, and the story was dropped as soon as it had served its purpose—which was to justify the abolishing of civil liberties throughout what had been the German Republic."
................................................................................................



Lanny and Irma took Hansi and Bess back to Bienvenu with them, and everyone was worried about the Robin family and others in Berlin, in Germany, while Lanny worried about more. Lanny and Irma returned to Paris, and Rick came over to stay for a visit. 

"Irma decided more and more that she liked the English attitude to life. Englishmen felt intensely, as you soon found out, but they were content to state their position quietly, and even to understate it; they didn’t raise their voices like so many Americans, or gesticulate like the French, or bluster like the Germans. They had been in the business of governing for a long time, and rather took it for granted; but at the same time they were willing to consider the other fellow’s point of view, and to work out some sort of compromise. Especially did that seem to be the case with continental affairs, where they were trying so hard to mediate between the French and the Germans. Denis de Bruyne said: “Vraiment, how generous they can be when they are disposing of French interests!”

"There was a lot of private conferring between the British and the French, and British officials were continually coming and going in Paris. Rick brought several of them to the palace for tea and for dancing, and this was the sort of thing for which Irma had wanted the palace; she felt that she was getting her money’s worth—though of course she didn’t use any such crude phrase. Among those who came was that Lord Wickthorpe whom she had met in Geneva last year. He had a post of some responsibility, and talked among insiders, as he counted Rick and the Budds. Irma listened attentively, because, as a hostess, she had to say something and wanted it to be right. Afterward she talked with Lanny, getting him to explain what she hadn’t understood. Incidentally she remarked: “I wish you could take a balanced view of things, the way Wickthorpe does.” 

"“Darling,” he answered, “Wickthorpe is a member of the British aristocracy, and is here to fight for the Empire. He’s got pretty much of everything he wants, so naturally he can take things easy.”

"“But, Lanny, you heard him say: ‘We’re all Socialists now.’” 

"“I know, dear; it’s a formula. But they write their definition of the word, and it means that Wickthorpe will do the governing, and decide what the workers are to get. The slum-dwellers in the East End will go on paying tribute to the landlords, and the ryots in India and the niggers in South Africa will be sweated to make luxury for British bondholders.” 

"“Oh, dear!” exclaimed the would-be salonnière. “Who will want to come to see us if you talk like that?”"

Lanny spoke to Wickthorpe. 

"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?’”

"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."

They decided on a one day eight hour long session against Jewish businesses. 

"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."

Lanny kept trying to persuade the Robins in Berlin to come for a holiday. 

"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!"

""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 ...

"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."
................................................................................................


Upton Sinclair discusses the nature of world conquistadores, from Alexander and Chingis Khan to Napoleon, and the common factors, in a chapter titled "Root of All Evil". He's one of the few who gets it!

"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." 

While several followers couldn't stand one another,

"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."

"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.”"

Heinrich Jung invited Lanny to watch the celebrations. 


"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."

The celebrations were grand enough to impress the foreign journalists. 

"At any rate, on the following morning the labor unions of Germany, representing four million workers and having annual incomes of nearly two hundred million marks, were wiped out at one single stroke. The agents of the job were so-called “action committees” of the Shop-Cell Organization, the Nazi group which had carried on their propaganda in the unions. Armed gangs appeared at the headquarters of all the unions, arrested officials and threw them into concentration camps. Their funds were confiscated, their newspapers suppressed, their editors jailed, their banks closed; and there was no resistance. The Socialists had insisted upon waiting until the Nazis did something “illegal”; and here it was.” 

"“What can we do?” wrote Freddi to Lanny, in an unsigned letter written on a typewriter—for such a letter might well have cost him his life. “Our friends hold little meetings in their homes, but they have no arms, and the rank and file are demoralized by the cowardice of their leaders. The rumor is that the co-operatives are to be confiscated also. There is to be a new organization called the ‘German Labor Front,’ to be directed by Robert Ley, the drunken braggart who ordered these raids. I suppose the papers in Paris will have published his manifesto, in which he says: ‘No, workers, your institutions are sacred and inviolable to us National Socialists.’ Can anyone imagine such hypocrisy? Have words lost all meaning? 

"“Do not answer this letter and write us nothing but harmless things, for our mail is pretty certain to be watched. We have to ask our relatives abroad not to attend any political meetings for the present. The reason for this is clear.” 


"An agonizing thing to Hansi and Bess, to have to sit with folded hands while this horror was going on. But the Nazis had made plain that they were going to revive the ancient barbarian custom of punishing innocent members of a family in order to intimidate the guilty ones. A man doesn’t make quite such a good anti-Nazi fighter when he knows that he may be causing his wife and children, his parents, his brothers and sisters, to be thrown into concentration camps and tortured. Hansi had no choice but to cancel engagements he had made to play at concerts for the benefit of refugees."

"Adolf Hitler was the man who was having his own way, more than any who had lived in modern times. He was going ahead to get the mastery of everything in Germany, government, institutions, even cultural and social life. Every organization which stood in his way he proceeded to break, one after another, with such speed and ruthlessness that it left the opposition dizzy. The Nationalist party, which had fondly imagined it could control him, found itself helpless. Papen, Vice-Chancellor, was reduced to a figurehead; Göring took his place in control of the Prussian state. Hugenberg had several of his papers suppressed, and when he threatened to resign from the Cabinet, no one appeared to care. One by one the Nationalist members were forced out and Nazis replaced them. Subordinates were arrested, charged with defalcation or what not—the Minister of Information was in position to charge anybody with anything, and it was dangerous to answer. 

"On the tenth day of May there were ceremonies throughout Germany which riveted the attention of the civilized world. Quantities of books were collected from the great library of Berlin University, including most of the worthwhile books which had been written during the past hundred years: everything that touched even remotely upon political, social, or sexual problems. Some forty thousand volumes were heaped into a pile in the square between the University and the Opera House and drenched with gasoline. The students paraded, wearing their bright society caps and singing patriotic and Nazi songs. They solemnly lighted the pyre and a crowd stood in a drizzling rain to watch it burn. Thus modern thought was symbolically destroyed in the Fatherland, and a nation which had stood at the forefront of the intellectual life would learn to do its thinking with its “blood.” 

"On that same tenth of May the schools of Germany were ordered to begin teaching the Nazi doctrines of “race.” On that day the government confiscated all the funds belonging to the Socialist party and turned them over to the new Nazi-controlled unions. On that day Chancellor Hitler spoke to a Labor Congress, telling it that his own humble origin and upbringing fitted him to understand the needs of the workers and attend to them. On that day the correspondent of the New York Times was forbidden to cable news of the suicide of the daughter of Scheidemann, the Socialist leader, and of a woman tennis champion who had brought honor to Germany but who objected to the process of “co-ordinating” German sport with Nazi propaganda. Finally, on that day there was a parade of a hundred thousand persons down Broadway in New York, protesting against the treatment of German Jews."
................................................................................................


The Budd, Robin, Dingle and Detaze entourage arrived and waited at Calais for the yacht carrying the rest of Robin family, until night. Lanny called the yacht, and the Robin palace in Berlin, with the same result - nazis were in control of both with information forbidden. He decided he should go and try to save them, bring them out, and asked Irma. 

"She didn’t know what to say; she could only sit staring at him. She had never thought that life could play such a trick upon her and her chosen playmate. It was outrageous, insane! Lanny saw her lips trembling; he had never seen her that way before, and perhaps she had never been that way before."


She consented to accompany him instead of taking the baby to a safer home, but wasn't pleased she and Lanny were obliged to endanger themselves. Lanny arranged for the Mercedes to be brought from Paris. 

"Lanny sent cables to his father and to Rick, telling them what had happened. He guessed that in times such as these a foreign journalist might prove a powerful person, more so than an industrialist or an heiress. Lanny saw himself in a campaign to arouse the civilized world on behalf of a Jewish Schieber and his family. His head was boiling with letters and telegrams, manifestoes and appeals. Robbie would arouse the businessmen, Uncle Jesse the Communists, Longuet and Blum the Socialists, Hansi and Bess the musical world, Zoltan the art lovers, Parsifal the religious, Beauty and Emily and Sophie and Margy the fashionable, Rick the English press, Corsatti the American—what a clamor there would be when they all got going! 

"Taking a leaf from his father’s notebook, Lanny arranged a code so that he could communicate with his mother confidentially. His letters and telegrams would be addressed to Mrs. Dingle, that being an inconspicuous name. Papa Robin would be “money” and Mama “corsets”—she wore them. Freddi would be “clarinet,” and Rahel “mezzo.” Lanny said it was to be assumed that all letters and telegrams addressed to him might be read by the Nazis, and all phone calls listened to; later he might arrange a secret way of communication, but nothing of the sort could come to the Hotel Adlon. If he had anything private to impart, he would type it on his little portable machine and mail it without signature in some out-of-the-way part of Berlin. Beauty would open all mail that came addressed to Lanny, and forward nothing that was compromising. All signed letters, both going and coming, would contain phrases expressing admiration for the achievements of National Socialism.

"“Don’t be surprised if you hear that they have converted me,” said the playboy turned serious. 

"“Don’t go too far,” warned his mother. “You could never fool Kurt, and he’s bound to hear about it.” 

"“I can let him convert me, little by little.” 

"Beauty shook her lovely blond head. She had done no little deceiving in her own time, and had no faith in Lanny’s ability along that line. “Kurt will know exactly what you’re there for,” she declared. “Your best chance is to put it to him frankly. You saved his life in Paris, and you have a right to ask his help now.” 

"“Kurt is a Nazi,” said Lanny. “He will help no one but his party.” 

"Irma listened to this conversation, and thought: “This can’t be real; this is a melodrama!” She was frightened, but at the same time began to experience strange thrills. She wondered: “Could I pretend to be a Nazi? Could I fool them?” Her mind went on even bolder flights. “Could I be a vamp, like those I’ve seen on the screen? How would I set about it? And what would I find out?”"

In the morning they found a letter from Mrs. Robin addressed to Lanny. 


"“Oh, Lanny, the Nazis have seized the boat. They have arrested Papa. They would not tell us a word what they will do. They will arrest us if we go near them, but they will not arrest you. We are going to Berlin. We will try to stay there and wait for you. Come to the Adlon, and put it in the papers, we will watch there. We are so frightened. Dear Lanny, do not fail poor Papa. What will they do to him? I am alone. I made the children go. They must not find us all together. God help us all. Mama.”"

They were most affected. 

"Somebody had to take command of that situation, and Lanny thought it was up to him. “At least we know the worst,” he said, “and we have something to act on. As soon as the car comes, Irma and I will drive to Berlin, not stopping for anything.” 

"“Don’t you think you ought to fly?” broke in Bess. 

"“It will make only a few hours’ difference, and we shall need the car; it’s the right sort, and will impress the Nazis. This job is not going to be one of a few hours, I’m afraid.”

"...he has a great many friends at home and abroad, and the Nazis know it, and I don’t believe they want any needless scandals. It’s up to Irma and me to serve as mediators, as friends to both sides; to meet the right people and find out what it’s going to cost.” 

"“You’ll be exhausted when you arrive,” objected Beauty, struggling with tears. She wanted him to take the chauffeur. 


"“No,” said Lanny. “We’ll take turns sleeping on the back seat, and all we’ll need when we get there is a bath, a shave for me and some make-up for Irma. If we drive ourselves we can talk freely, without fear of spies, and I wouldn’t want to trust any servant, whether German or French. That goes for all the time we’re in Naziland.”"

"There was a phone call for Lanny: Jerry Pendleton calling from Paris, to report that a letter from Germany had arrived. It bore no sender’s name, but Jerry had guessed that it might have some bearing on the situation. Lanny told him to open and read it. It proved to be an unsigned letter from Freddi, who had reached Berlin. He wrote in English, telling the same news, but adding that he and his wife were in hiding; they were not free to give the address, and were not sure how long they could stay. If Lanny would come to the Adlon, they would hear of it and arrange to meet him. 

"To Jerry, Lanny said: “My family is coming to Paris at once. Do what you can to help them. I am telling them to trust you completely. You are to trust nobody but them.” 

"“I get you.” 


"“You are still Contrôleur-Général, and your salary goes on. Whatever expenses you incur will be refunded."

"Lanny reported all this to the family, and his mother said: “You ought to get some sleep before you start driving.”

"“I have too many things on my mind,” he replied. “You go and sleep, Irma, and you can do the first spell of driving.”

"Irma liked this new husband who seemed to know exactly what to do and spoke with so much decisiveness. She had once had a father like that. Incidentally, she was extremely tired, and glad to get away from demonstrative Jewish grief. Lanny said “Sleep,” and she was a healthy young animal, to whom it came easily. She had been half-hypnotized watching Parsifal Dingle, who would sit for a long time in a chair with his eyes closed; if you didn’t know him well you would think he was asleep, but he was meditating. Was he asking God to save Johannes Robin? Was he asking God to soften the hearts of the Nazis? God could do such things, no doubt; but it was hard to think out the problem, because, why had God made the Nazis in the beginning? If you said that the devil had made them, why had God made the devil?

"Meanwhile Hansi and Bess and Lanny discussed the best way of getting Papa’s misfortune made known to the outside world. That would be an important means of help—perhaps the most important of all. Lanny’s first impulse was to call up the office of Le Populaire; but he checked himself, realizing that if he was going to turn into a Nazi sympathizer, he oughtn’t to be furnishing explosive news items to a Socialist paper. Besides, this was not a Socialist or Communist story; it had to do with a leading financier and belonged in the bourgeois press; it ought to come from the victim’s son, a distinguished person in his own right. Hansi and his wife should go to the Hotel Crillon, and there summon the newspaper men, both French and foreign, and tell them the news, and appeal for world sympathy. Lanny had met several of the American correspondents in Paris, and now he gave Hansi their names.

"“The Nazis lie freely,” said the budding intriguer, “and they compel you to do the same. Don’t mention the rest of your family, and if the reporters ask, say that you have not heard from them and have no idea where they are. Say that you got your information by telephoning to the yacht and to the palace. Put the burden of responsibility off on Reichsbetriebszellenabteilung Gruppenführerstellvertreter Pressmann, and let his Hauptgruppenführer take him down into the cellar and shoot him for it. Don’t ever drop a hint that you are getting information from your family, or from Irma or me. Make that clear to Jerry also. We must learn to watch our step from this moment on, because the Nazis want one thing and we want another, and if they win, we lose!”"

................................................................................................


Lanny and Irma arrived at Adlon in Berlin. 


"Tourist traffic, so vital to the German economy, had fallen off to a mere trickle as a result of the Jew-baiting, and the insulting of foreigners who had failed to give the Nazi salute on the proper occasions. The papers must make the most of what few visitors came to them."

They got a call, and drove around, picking up Freddi. Rest were with servants and family, hiding.

"“I slept in the Tiergarten last night.” 

"“Oh, Freddi!” It was Irma’s cry of dismay. 

"“It was all right—not cold.” 

"“You don’t know anyone who would shelter you?” 

"“Plenty of people—but I might get them into trouble as well as myself. The fact that a Jew appears in a new place may suggest that he’s wanted—and you can’t imagine the way it is, there are spies everywhere—servants, house-wardens, all sorts of people seeking to curry favor with the Nazis. I couldn’t afford to let them catch me before I had a talk with you.” 

"“Nor afterward,” said Lanny. “We’re going to get all of you out of the country. It might be wiser for you and the others to go at once—because it’s plain that you can’t do anything to help Papa.” 

"“We couldn’t go even if we were willing,” replied the unhappy young man. “Papa had our exit permits, and now the Nazis have them.” 


"He told briefly what had happened. The family with several servants had gone to Bremerhaven by the night train and to the yacht by taxis. Just as they reached the dock a group of Brown-shirts stopped them and told Papa that he was under arrest. Papa asked, very politely, if he might know why, and the leader of the troop spat directly in his face and called him a Jew-pig. They pushed him into a car and took him away, leaving the others standing aghast. They didn’t dare go on board the yacht, but wandered along the docks, carrying their bags. They talked it over and decided that they could do no good to Papa by getting themselves arrested. Both Freddi and Rahel were liable to be sent to concentration camps on account of their Socialist activities; so they decided to travel separately to Berlin and stay in hiding until they could get word to their friends."
................................................................................................


Having by this time read over a dozen memoirs and other historical, biographical works on the holocaust era, plunging into this series again after a gap of over forty years is, first and foremost, an indulgence of a need for respite, and one goes back into the mindset and being that one was then, while still retaining the interim decades and essence thereof, so one looks at it in a different way, with several points of view and telescopes and binoculars of varying powers from various angles, so to speak. 

It's a marvel how the author manages to create various characters centre stage so as to interact with characters and dive into events that are historic. Lanny is the rare angel that one would like oneself and ones near and dear to be, although it's his wife Irma who is named angel, but is all too human. 

Most of all though, the wonder that seizes one is just how well Upton Sinclair managed to bring the horrors and tragedy of holocaust victims suffering through a handful of centre stage characters, chiefly the Robin family and the Shultz couple, and Lanny thereby since he is close. 


Reading of other books on the era, seeing films, fills in details, always bringing home more that one was not quite aware of. And yet, this series had then with the few strokes given the whole picture as far as the horror, the suffering, the tragedies, and much more, went. 

................................................................................................


Heinrich Jung called and was invited to dine with the couple at Adlon, thus establishing credentials and more. Lanny opened his campaign of inquiry and attempt to save Robin family and bring them out, using Heinrich's connections, and phrasing it in terms of avoiding unpleasant publicity outside Germany. 

"Lanny called for his car, and while he drove to the Reichstagplatz, Heinrich told them about the beauty, the charm, the warmth of heart of the lady they were soon to meet. One point which should be in their favor, she had been the adopted child of a Jewish family. She had been married to Herr Quandt, one of the richest men in Germany, much older than herself; she had divorced him and now had a comfortable alimony—while the man who paid it stayed in a concentration camp! She had become a convert to National Socialism and had gone to work for the party; a short time ago she had become the bride of Dr. Goebbels, with Hitler as best man, a great event in the Nazi world. Now she was “Frau Reichsminister,” and ran a sort of salon—for it appeared that men cannot get along without feminine influence, even while they preach the doctrine of Küche, Kinder, Kirche to the masses."

They visited her at home and talked with her, and then later with her husband. The temptation to quote the whole conversation, if indulged, would then give free rein to much more quoting of similar encounters galore, but one wonders how this author did it. Was he Lanny? Or knew one?

They began to get results - an assurance from office of Goebbels, the reichsminister, and an SS officer with a car from that of Göring to bring Lanny to him personally. Irma had been invited by a friend, the Fürstin Donnerstein, for lunch, and Lannythought it was better she accepted, so society angle of reaction to disappearance of Johannes Robin might be understood. 

"A short drive up Unter den Linden and through the Brandenburger Tor to the Minister-Präsident’s official residence, just across the way from the Reichstag building with its burned-out dome. Lanny had heard no end of discussion of the three-hundred-foot tunnel which ran under the street, through which the S.A. men were said to have come on the night when they filled the building with incendiary materials and touched them off with torches. All the non-Nazi world believed that Hermann Wilhelm Göring had ordered and directed that job. Certainly no one could question that it was he who had ordered and directed the hunting down and killing, the jailing and torturing, of tens of thousands of Communists and Socialists, democrats and pacifists, during the past three and a half months. In his capacity of Minister without Portfolio of the German Reich he had issued an official decree instructing the police to co-operate with the Nazi forces, and in a speech at Dortmund he had defended his decree: 

"“In future there will be only one man who will wield power and bear responsibility in Prussia—that is myself. A bullet fired from the barrel of a police pistol is my bullet. If you say that is murder, then I am a murderer. I know only two sorts of law because I know only two sorts of men: those who are with us and those who are against us.” 

"With such a host anything was possible, and it was futile for Lanny to try to guess what was coming. How much would the Commandant of the Prussian Police and founder of the “Gestapo,” the Secret State Police, have been able to find out about a Franco-American Pink in the course of a few hours? Lanny had been so indiscreet as to mention to Goebbels that he had met Mussolini. Would they have phoned to Rome and learned how the son of Budd’s had been expelled from that city for trying to spread news of the killing of Giacomo Matteotti? Would they have phoned to Cannes and found out about the labor school? To Paris and learned about the Red uncle, and the campaign contributions of Irma Barnes which had made him a Deputy of France? Lanny could pose as a Nazi sympathizer before Heinrich Jung—but hardly before the Führer’s head triggerman! 

"It was all mystifying in the extreme. Lanny thought: “Has Goebbels turned the matter over to Göring, or has Göring grabbed it away from Goebbels?” Everybody knew that the pair were the bitterest of rivals; but since they had become Cabinet Ministers their two offices must be compelled to collaborate on all sorts of matters. Did they have jurisdictional disputes? Would they come to a fight over the possession of a wealthy Jew and the ransom which might be extorted from him? Göring gave orders to the Berlin police, while Goebbels, as Gauleiter of Berlin, commanded the party machinery, and presumably the Brownshirts. Would the cowering Johannes Robin become a cause of civil war? 


"And then, still more curious speculations: How had Göring managed to get wind of the Johannes Robin affair? Did he have a spy in the Goebbels household? Or in the Goebbels office? Or had Goebbels made the mistake of calling upon one of Göring’s many departments for information? Lanny imagined a spiderweb of intrigue being spun about the Robin case. It doesn’t take long, when the spinning is done with telephone wires."

He met Göring.

"“It happens that this matter was started by other persons, but now I have taken charge of it. Whatever you have heard to the contrary you are to disregard. Johannes Robin is my prisoner, and I am willing to turn him loose on certain terms. They are Nazi terms, and you won’t like them, and certainly he won’t. You may take them to him, and advise him to accept them or not. I put no pressure upon you, and make only the condition I have specified: the matter will be under the seal of confidence. You will agree never to reveal the facts to anyone, and Johannes will make the same agreement.” 

"“Suppose that Johannes does not wish to accept your terms, Exzellenz?” 

"“You will be bound by your pledge whether he accepts or rejects. He will be bound if he accepts. If he rejects, it won’t matter, because he will never speak to anyone again.” 

"“That is clear enough, so far as regards him. But I don’t understand why you have brought me in.” 


"“You are in Berlin, and you know about the case. I am offering you an opportunity to save your friend from the worst fate which you or he can imagine. A part of the price is your silence as well as his. If you reject the offer, you will be free to go out to the world and say what you please, but you will be condemning your Jew to a death which I will make as painful as possible.”"

He made his demands clear. 


"“I intend to go about these matters with all proper formality,” said Göring, still with the twinkle. “Our Führer is a stickler for legality. The papers will be prepared by our Staatsanwalt, and the Schieber will sign them before a notary. For the sum of one mark his yacht, for another his palace, and for yet other marks his shares in our leading industrial enterprises and banks. In payment for my services in the above matters, he will give me checks for the amount of his bank deposits—and be sure that I shall cash them before he gets away.”"

"“Each business transaction shall be for the sum of one mark, and those marks will be his inalienable personal property. For the rest—naked came he into Germany, and naked will he go out.” 

"“Pardon me if I correct you, sir. I happen to know that Johannes was a rich man when he came into Germany. He and my father had been business associates for several years, so I know pretty well what he had.” 

"“He made his money trading with the German government, I am informed.” 

"“In part, yes. He sold things which the government was glad to have in wartime; magnetos which you doubtless used in the planes in which you performed such astounding feats of gallantry.” 

"“You are a shrewd young man, Mr. Budd, and after this deal is over, you and I may be good friends and perhaps do a profitable business. But for the moment you are the devil’s advocate, predestined to lose your case. I could never understand why our magnetos so often failed at the critical moment, but now I know that they were sold to us by filthy Jewish swine who probably sabotaged them so that we would have to buy more.” The great man said this with a broad grin; he was a large and powerful cat playing with a lively but entirely helpless mouse. On the rug in front of his chair lay a half-grown lion-cub, which yawned and then licked his chops as he watched his master preparing for a kill. Lanny thought: “I am back among the Assyrians!”

"The head of the Prussian government continued: “I observe that you avoid mentioning the money which this Schieber has already shipped out and hidden in other countries. If you know the history of Europe you know that every now and then some monarch in need of funds would send one of the richest of his Hebrews to a dungeon and have him tortured until he revealed the hiding-places of his gold and jewels.” 

"“I have read history, Exzellenz.” 

"“Fortunately nothing of the sort will be needed here. We have all this scoundrel’s bank statements, deposit slips, and what not. We have photostat copies of documents he thought were safe from all eyes. We will present checks for him to sign, so that those funds may be turned over to me; when my agents have collected the last dollar and pound and franc, then your Jew relative will have become to me a piece of rotten pork of which I dislike the smell. I will be glad to have you cart him away.” 

"“And his family, Exzellenz?” 

"“They, too, will stink in our nostrils. We will take them to the border and give each of them a kick in the tail, to make certain they get across with no delay.” 

"Lanny wanted to say: “That will be agreeable to them”; but he was afraid it might sound like irony, so he just kept smiling. The great man did the same, for he enjoyed the exercise of power; he had been fighting all his life to get it, and had succeeded beyond anything he could have dared expect. His lion-cub yawned and stretched his legs. It was time to go hunting. 

"“Finally,” said Göring, “let me make plain what will happen to this Dreck-Jude if he ventures to defy my will. You know that German science has won high rank in the world. We have experts in every department of knowledge, and for years we have had them at work devising means of breaking the will of those who stand in our path. We know all about the human body, the human mind, and what you are pleased to call the human soul; we know how to handle each. We will put this pig-carcass in a specially constructed cell, of such size and shape that it will be impossible for him to stand or sit or lie without acute discomfort. A bright light will glare into his eyes day and night, and a guard will watch him and prod him if he falls asleep. The temperature of the cell will be at exactly the right degree of coldness, so that he will not die, but will become mentally a lump of putty in our hands. He will not be permitted to commit suicide. If he does not break quickly enough we will put camphor in his Harnröhre—you understand our medical terms?” 

"“I can guess, Exzellenz.” 

"“He will writhe and scream in pain all day and night. He will wish a million times to die, but he will not even have a mark on him. There are many other methods which I will not reveal to you, because they are our secrets, gained during the past thirteen years while we were supposed to be lying helpless, having the blood drained out of our veins by filthy, stinking Jewish-Bolshevik vampires. The German people are going to get free, Mr. Budd, and the money of these parasites will help us. Are there any other questions you wish to ask me?” “I just want to be sure that I understand you correctly. If Johannes accepts your terms and signs the papers which you put before him, you will permit me to take him and his family out of Germany without further delay?” 

"“That is the bargain. You, for your part agree that neither you nor the Jew nor any member of his family will say anything to anybody about this interview, or about the terms of his leaving.” 

"“I understand, Exzellenz. I shall advise Johannes that in my opinion he has no alternative but to comply with your demands.” 

"“Tell him this, as my last word: if you, or he, or any member of his family breaks the agreement, I shall compile a list of a hundred of his Jewish relatives and friends, seize them all and make them pay the price for him. Is that clear?” 

"“Quite so.” 

"“My enemies in Germany are making the discovery that I am the master, and I break those who get in my way. When this affair has been settled and I have a little more leisure, come and see me again, and I will show you how you can make your fortune and have an amusing life.” 

"“Thank you, sir. As it happens, what I like to do is to play the works of Beethoven on the piano.” 

"“Come and play them for the Führer,” said the second in command, with a loud laugh which somewhat startled his visitor. Lanny wondered: Did the eagle-man take a patronizing attitude toward his Führer’s fondness for music? Was he perchance watching for the time when he could take control of affairs out of the hands of a sentimentalist and Schwärmer, an orator with a gift for rabble-rousing but no capacity to govern? Had the Minister-Präsident’s Gestapo reported to him that Lanny had once had tea with the Führer? Or that he had spent part of the previous evening in the Führer’s favorite haunt? 

"When Lanny rose to leave, the lion-cub stretched himself and growled. The great man remarked: “He is getting too big, and everybody but me is afraid of him.”"

Lanny saw Johannes Robin and gave him clear information; he had suddenly aged in four days, and charged falsely. 

"Irma and I will wait here, and take you and the others out with us.” 

"“I will never be able to express my gratitude, Lanny.” 

"“Don’t waste any energy on that. All we want is to have the family with us on the Riviera. We can have a good time without so much money. Are you being treated reasonably well?” 

"“I have no complaint.” 

"“Is there anything I could send you—assuming I can get permission?” 

"“I have everything I need—everything unless perhaps some red ink.” 

"Johannes said this without the flicker of an eyelash; and Lanny answered, without change of tone or expression: “I will see if it is possible to get some.” 

"Rote Tinte! “Oh, the clever rascal!” Lanny thought. “His mind works like greased lightning.” Johannes could sit there in the presence of a Schutzstaffel officer and two privates, and with all this pressure of terror and grief upon him—in the midst of having to make the most fateful decision of his life—he could think up a way to tell Lanny what he wished him to know, and without the slightest chance of his enemies’ guessing what he had said! 

"For fifteen years Lanny and his old friend had been watching the experiment in the Soviet Union and arguing about it. Johannes, taking the negative, had delighted himself by collecting ironical stories, to be repeated to the credulous Lanny, and over Lanny’s shoulder to Johannes’s two misguided sons. One such story had to do with two German business men, one of whom was going to make a trip into the proletarian paradise, and promised his friend to write a full account of what he found there. “But,” objected the friend, “you won’t dare to write the truth if it’s unfavorable.” The other replied: “We’ll fix it this way. I’ll write you everything is fine, and if I write it in black ink it’s true, and if in red ink the opposite is true.” So he went, and in due course his friend received a letter in black ink, detailing the wonders of the proletarian paradise. “Everybody is happy, everybody is free, the markets are full of food, the shops well stocked with goods—in fact there is only one thing I cannot find, and that is red ink.” 

"While Lanny and the Oberleutnant were driving to the hotel, the latter inquired: “What does he want red ink for?” 

"Lanny, who wasn’t slow-minded himself, explained: “He keeps a diary, and writes it in red ink to keep it separate from his other papers.” 

"The officer replied: “One cannot keep a diary in prison. They will surely take it away from him.”"

Having sent short cables to Robbie,Beauty and Rick, Lanny told Irma as he took her on a drive after she returned from her lunch. She was horrified. 

"“What perfect agony it must be to Johannes to turn all that money loose! My father would have died first!” 


"“Your father wouldn’t have got into this position. Johannes was too trusting. He thought he could handle matters by diplomacy; but these fellows have knocked over the conference table. They have the advantage that nobody can realize how bad they are. If you and I were to go to Paris or London tomorrow and tell this story, the Nazis would call us liars and nine people out of ten would believe them.”"

They met Emil Meissner for lunch, and were invited by Graf Stubendorf for dinner, with similar talks. But they were worried, for Freddi had been expected to call and hadn't. They attended the function, and had a disagreement on the way back - Irma couldn't believe nazis were bad, they were so well behaved. Lanny agonised over Freddi, finally went to look for the Shultz couple and they were not to be found. They heard from Mama Robin, and met her. 

"The good soul, usually so sensible, so well adjusted to her routine of caring for those she loved, was now in a state of near distraction; her mind was as if in a nightmare, obsessed by all the horror stories which were being whispered among the Jews in the holes where they were hiding, apart from the rest of Germany. Stories of bodies found every day in the woods or dragged out of the lakes and canals of Berlin; suicides or murdered people whose fates would never be known, whose names were not mentioned in the press. Stories of the abandoned factory in the Friedrichstrasse which the Nazis had taken over, and where they now brought their victims to beat and torture them. The walls inside that building were soaked with human blood; you could walk by it and hear the screams—but you had best walk quickly! Stories of the concentration camps, where Jews, Communists, and Socialists were being made to dig their own graves in preparation for pretended executions; where they underwent every form of degradation which brutes and degenerates were able to devise—forced to roll about in the mud, to stick their faces into their own excrement, to lash and beat one another insensible, thus saving labor for the guards. “Oi, oi!” wailed the poor mother, and begged the Herrgott to let her son be dead."
................................................................................................


Lanny got a letter from Beauty about a message in a seance. 

"Tecumseh said: ‘There is a man who speaks German. Does anyone know German?’ Sir Basil said: ‘I know a little,’ and the control said: ‘Clarinet ist verstimmt.’ That was all. Madame began to moan, and when she came out of the trance she was greatly depressed and could do no more that day. I didn’t get the idea for a while. Now I wonder, can there be anything the matter with your Clarinet? I shall say nothing to anybody else until I hear from you.”"

He had agreed with Mama Robin it was best not telling people about Freddi, so he wrote vaguely and decided to try a seance in Berlin. 

"Like Paris and London, Berlin was full of mediums and fortune tellers of all varieties; it was reported that the Führer himself consulted an astrologer—oddly enough, a Jew. Here was Lanny, obliged to sit around indefinitely, and with no heart for social life, for music or books. Why not take a chance, and see if he could get any further hints from that underworld which had surprised him so many times? 

"Irma was interested, and they agreed to go separately to different mediums, thus doubling their chances. Maybe not all the spirits had been Nazified, and the young couple could get ahead of Göring in that shadowy realm!"

He went to one and had Samuel Budd come through, admonishing about sin of birth control. Irma got the other half of bible quote from one of the mediums she went to, and 

" ..a day or two later came a letter from Robbie, telling what the old gentleman would do if they obeyed him. He had established in his will a trust fund for Frances Barnes Budd to the amount of fifty thousand dollars, and had provided the same amount for any other child or children Irma Barnes Budd might bear within two years after his death. The old realist had taken no chances, but added: “Lanny Budd being the father.”"

Hugo Behr visited and talked about ideological struggle of socialists in the party, 


" ... he added he did not approve the persecution of individual Jews who had broken no law, and he thought the recent one-day boycott had been silly. It represented an effort on the part of reactionary elements in the party to keep the people from remembering the radical promises which had been made to them. “It’s a lot cheaper and easier to beat up a few poor Jews than to oust some of the great Junker landlords.”"

Lanny was able to persuade him to find out information about Freddi, keeping his part secret. 

"Minister-Präsident Hermann Wilhelm Göring flew to Rome unexpectedly. He had been there once before and hadn’t got along very well with his mentor, the Blessed Little Pouter Pigeon; they were quarreling bitterly over the question of which was to control Austria. But they patched it up somehow, and the newspapers of the world blazed forth a momentous event: the four great European nations had signed a peace pact, agreeing that for a period of ten years they would refrain from aggressive action against one another and would settle all problems by negotiation. Mussolini signed for Italy, Göring for Germany, and the British and French ambassadors to Vienna signed for their governments. Such a relief to the war-weary peoples of the Continent! Göring came home in triumph; and Irma said: “You see, things aren’t nearly as bad as you’ve been thinking.” 


"The couple went to a reception at the home of the Frau Reichsminister Goebbels, where they met many of the Nazi great ones. Lanny, who had read history, remembered the Visigoths, who had conquered ancient Rome with astonishing ease, and wandered about the splendid city, dazed by the discovery of what they had at their disposal; he remembered Clive, who had been similarly stunned by the treasures of Bengal, and had said afterward that when he considered what his opportunities had been, he was astonished at his own moderation."

Robbie wrote about the struggle between brothers at Budd and Irma decided to invest herself. 

"A letter from Kurt, begging them to drive to Stubendorf in this very lovely season of the year. Kurt had no car, and couldn’t afford the luxury of hopping about; but Seine Hochgeboren had told him that any time Irma and Lanny would come, the Schloss was at their disposal."


They were discussing, but phone rang and Furtwaengler informed Lanny they were releasing Johannes Robin. He knew nothing about Freddi, and said they will release him if they had him, Lanny didn't have to return unless he wished. Lanny called Rahel and asked her to come with Mama Robin and her baby, and collected Johannes, telling him about Freddi on the way. They assumed he was being held hostage. 

"It wasn’t exactly a fashionable autoload which departed from under the marquee of the Adlon Hotel. The magnificent uniformed personage who opened the car doors was used to seeing independent young Americans driving themselves, but rarely had he seen three dark-eyed Jews and a child crowded into the back seat of a Mercédès limousine about to depart for foreign lands. Both Lanny and Irma were determined to finish this job, and not let their periled friends out of sight until they were safe. In the breast pocket of Lanny’s tan linen suit were stowed not merely the passports of himself and wife, but a packet of documents which had been delivered by messenger from the headquarters of Minister-Präsident Göring, including four passports and four exit permits, each with a photograph of the person concerned. Lanny realized that the government had had possession of all the papers in the Robin yacht and palace. He remembered Göring’s promise of a “kick in the tail,” but hoped it was just the barrack-room exuberance of a Hauptmann of the German Air Force.

"Irma and Lanny meant to go as they had come, straight through. Lanny would buy food ready prepared and they would eat it in the car while driving; they would take no chance of entering a restaurant, and having some Brownshirt peddling Nazi literature stop in front of them and exhibit a copy of Der Stürmer with an obscene cartoon showing a Jew as a hog with a bulbous nose; if they declined to purchase it, likely as not the ruffian would spit into their food and walk away jeering. Such things had happened in Berlin, and much worse; for until a few days ago these peddlers of literature had gone armed with the regulation automatic revolver and hard rubber club, and in one café where Jewish merchants had been accustomed to eat, a crowd of the S.A. men had fallen upon them and forced them to run the gantlet, kicking and clubbing them insensible."
................................................................................................


They drove out to Belgium via Hanover and Cologne, and went on to Bienvenu, where Robin family was established in the lodge. Johannes returned with Lanny and Irma and they visited England where Beauty was a guest of Lady Caillard with Zaharoff and Madame Zyszynski. Lanny and Irma visited The Reaches where Marceline was visiting, and Lanny spoke to Rick out in the woods. 

"“Listen, Rick,” he said; “there have to be spies in every war, don’t there?” 

"“I suppose so.” 

"“What if I were to go into Germany and become a friend of those higher-ups, and get all the dope and send it out to you?” 

"“They would soon get onto it, Lanny.” 

"“Mightn’t it be possible to be as clever as they?” 

"“A darned disagreeable job, I should think.” 

"“I know; but Kurt did it in Paris, and got away with it.” 

"“You’re a very different man from Kurt. For one thing, you’d have to fool him; and do you think you could?” 

"“Beauty insists that I couldn’t; but I believe that if I took enough time, and put my mind to it, I could at least keep him uncertain. I’d have to let him argue with me and convince me. You know I have a rare good excuse for going; I’m an art expert, and Germany has a lot to sell. That makes it easy for me to meet all sorts of people. I could collect evidence as to Nazi outrages, and you could make it into a book.” “That’s already been done, you’ll be glad to hear.” 

"Rick revealed that a group of liberal Englishmen had been busy assembling the data, and a work called The Brown Book of the Hitler Terror was now in press and shortly to be published. It gave the details of two or three hundred murders of prominent intellectuals and political opponents of the Nazi Regierung. 


"Lanny said: “There’ll be other things worth reporting. If I go back to Germany on account of Freddi, I’ll get what facts I can and it’ll be up to you to figure out what use to make of them.”"

Thus the course of the centre stage is set for the series, weaving in the historic characters and events here on. 
................................................................................................


Lanny and Irma were invited by Lord Wickthorpe and visited his castle. 

"The Dowager Lady Wickthorpe kept house for her bachelor son. There was a younger brother whom Lanny had met at Rick’s, and he had married an American girl whom Irma had known in café society; so it was like a family party, easy and informal, yet dignified and impressive. It was much easier to run an estate and a household in England, where everything was like a grandfather’s clock which you wound up and it ran, not for eight days but for eight years or eight decades. There was no such thing as a servant problem, for your attendants were born, not made; the oldest son of your shepherd learned to tend your sheep and the oldest son of your butler learned to buttle. All masters were kind and all servants devoted and respectful; at least, that was how it was supposed to be, and if anything was short of perfection it was carefully hidden."

And yet they perpetrate the fraud of identifying the very word "caste" with the very colony they looted so much it was The Jewel In The Crown.  

"Irma thought it was marvelous—until she discovered that she was expected to bathe her priceless self in a painted tin tub which was brought in by one maid, followed by two others bearing large pitchers of hot and cold water. 

"After the completion of this ceremony, she inquired: “Lanny, what do you suppose it would cost to put modern plumbing into a place like this?” 

"He answered with a grin: “In the style of Shore Acres?”—referring to his own bathroom with solid silver fixtures, and to Irma’s of solid gold. “I mean just ordinary Park Avenue.” 

"“Are you thinking of buying this castle?” Irma countered with another question. 

"“Do you suppose you would be happy in England?” 


"“I’m afraid you couldn’t get it, darling,” he evaded in turn. “It’s bound to be entailed.” He assured her with a grave face that everything had to be handed down intact—not merely towers and oaks and lawns, but servants and sheep and bathing facilities."

"Neighbors dropped in from time to time, and Lanny listened to upper-class Englishmen discussing the problems of their world and his. They were not to be persuaded to take Adolf Hitler and his party too seriously; in spite of his triumph he was still the clown, the pasty-faced, hysterical tub-thumper, such as you could hear in Hyde Park any Sunday afternoon; “a jumped-up house-painter,” one of the country squires called him. They were not sorry to have some effective opposition to France on the continent, for it irked them greatly to see that rather shoddy republic of politicians riding on the gold standard while Britain had been ignominiously thrown off. They were interested in Lanny’s account of Adolf, but even more interested in Göring, who was a kind of man they could understand. In his capacity as Reichsminister, he had come to Geneva and laid down the law as to Germany’s claim to arms equality. Wickthorpe had been impressed by his forceful personality, and now was amused to hear about the lion cub from the Berlin zoo and the new gold velvet curtains in the reception room of the Minister-Präsident’s official residence. 

"Lanny said: “The important thing for you gentlemen to remember is that Göring is an air commander, and that rearmament for him is going to mean fleets of planes. They will all be new and of perfected models.” Eric Vivian Pomeroy-Nielson, ex-aviator, had laid great stress upon this, but Lanny found it impossible to interest a representative of the British Foreign Office. To him airplanes were like Adolf Hitler; that is to say, something “jumped-up,” something cheap, presumptuous, and altogether bad form. Britannia ruled the waves, and did it with dignified and solid “ships of the line,” weighing thirty-five thousand tons each and costing ten or twenty million pounds. An American admiral had written about the influence of sea power upon history, and the British Admiralty had read it, one of the few compliments they had ever paid to their jumped-up cousins across the seas. Now their world strategy was based upon it, and when anyone tried to argue with them it was as if they all burst into song: “Britannia needs no bulwarks, no towers along the steep!”" 

Beauty warned Lanny when she discovered Irma was more in agreement with the Wickthorpe set.   
................................................................................................


Lanny, Irma and Johannes Robin went to U.S.; Irma proceeded to invest in Budd so Robbie could win, and Robbie intended to have Johannes be the European sales representative if so. Lanny avoided meeting leftists and Irma was happier with her playmates. 

"It worked for nearly a month; until one morning in Shore Acres, just as they were getting ready for a motor-trip to a “camp” in the Thousand Islands, Lanny was called to the telephone to receive a cablegram from Cannes, signed Hansi, and reading: “Unsigned unidentifiable letter postmarked Berlin text Freddi ist in Dachau.”"

"“Do you suppose that letter is from Hugo?” 

"“I had a clear understanding with him that he was to sign the name Boecklin. I think the letter must be from one of Freddi’s comrades, some one who has learned that we helped Johannes. Or perhaps some one who has got out of Dachau.” 

"“You don’t think it might be a hoax?” 

"“Who would waste a stamp to play such a trick upon us?” 

"She couldn’t think of any answer. “You’re still convinced that Freddi is Göring’s prisoner?” 

"“Certainly, if he’s in the concentration camp, Göring knows he’s there, and he knew it when he had Furtwaengler tell me that he couldn’t find him. He had him sent a long way from Berlin, so as to make it harder for us to find out.” 

"“Do you think you can get him away from Göring if Göring doesn’t want to let him go?” 

"“What I think is, there may be a thousand things to think of before we can be sure of the best course of action.” 

"“It’s an awfully nasty job to take on, Lanny.” 

"“I know, darling—but what else can we do? We can’t go and enjoy ourselves, play around, and refuse to think about our friend. Dachau is a place of horror—I doubt if there’s any so dreadful in the world today, unless it’s some other of the Nazi camps. It’s an old dilapidated barracks, utterly unfit for habitation, and they’ve got two or three thousand men jammed in there. They’re not just holding them prisoners—they’re doing what Göring told me with his own mouth, applying modern science to destroying them, body, mind, and soul. They’re the best brains and the finest spirits in Germany, and they’re going to be so broken that they can never do anything against the Nazi regime.” 

"“You really believe that, Lanny?” 

"“I am as certain of it as I am of anything in human affairs. I’ve been studying Hitler and his movement for twelve years, and I really do know something about it.” “There’s such an awful lot of lying, Lanny. People go into politics, and they hate their enemies, and exaggerate and invent things.” 

"“I didn’t invent Mein Kampf, nor the Brownshirts, nor the murders they are committing night after night. They break into people’s homes and stab them or shoot them in their beds, before the eyes of their wives and children; or they drag them off to their barracks and beat them insensible.” 

"“I’ve heard those stories until I’ve been made sick. But there are just as many violent men of the other side, and there have been provocations over the years. The Reds did the same thing in Russia, and they tried to do it in Germany—” 

"“It’s not only the Communists who are being tortured, darling; it’s pacifists and liberals, even church people; it’s gentle idealists, like Freddi—and surely you know that Freddi wouldn’t have harmed any living creature.”"
................................................................................................


Irma had been getting used to wielding power since the stock market crash, and while she knew she didn't have power other than love over Lanny, she decided to put her foot down. They had a talk, she was veering right for the simple reason she had money and wanted it protected from reds, and fascists and nazis were so far not seeming dangerous to her, they were even charming. 

The discussion in this scene is important, not only because it has consequences in the relationship and marriage of Lanny with Irma, and just as much of echoing reverberations in the story, but also that its the discussion of dilemmas in human history. 

"She began: “You might as well take the time to understand me, Lanny. If you intend to plunge into a thing like this, you ought to know how your wife feels about it.” 

"“Of course, dear,” he answered, gently. He could pretty well guess what was coming. 

"“Sit down.” And when he obeyed she turned to face him. 

"“Freddi’s an idealist, and you’re an idealist. It’s a word you’re fond of, a very nice word, and you’re both lovely fellows, and you wouldn’t hurt anybody or anything on earth. You believe what you want to believe about the world—which is that other people are like you, good and kind and unselfish—idealists, in short. But they’re not that; they’re full of jealousy and hatred and greed and longing for revenge. They want to overthrow the people who own property, and punish them for the crime of having had life too easy. That’s what’s in their hearts, and they’re looking for chances to carry out their schemes, and when they come on you idealists, they say: ‘Here’s my meat!’ They get round you and play you for suckers, they take your money to build what they call their ‘movement.’ You serve them by helping to undermine and destroy what you call capitalism. They call you comrades for as long as they can use you, but the first day you dared to stand in their way or interfere with their plans, they’d turn on you like wolves. Don’t you know that’s true, Lanny?” 

"“It’s true of many, I’ve no doubt.” 

"“It would be true of every last one, when it came to a showdown. You’re their ‘front,’ their stalking horse. You tell me what you heard from Göring’s mouth—and I tell you what I’ve heard from Uncle Jesse’s mouth. Not once but a hundred times! He says it jokingly, but he means it—it’s his program. The Socialists will make their peaceable revolution, and then the Communists will rise up and take it away from them. It’ll be easy because the Socialists are so gentle and so kind—they’re idealists! You saw it happen in Russia, and then in Hungary—didn’t I hear Károlyi tell you about it?” 

"“Yes, dear—” 

"“With his own mouth he told you! But it didn’t mean much to you, because it isn’t what you want to believe. Károlyi is a gentleman, a noble soul—I’m not mocking—I had a long talk with him, and I’m sure he’s one of the most high-minded men who ever lived. He was a nobleman and he had estates, and when he saw the ruin and misery after the war he gave them to the government. No man could do more. He became the Socialist Premier of Hungary, and tried to bring a peaceful change, and the Communists rose up against his government—and what did he do? He said to me in these very words: ‘I couldn’t shoot the workers.’ So he let the Communist-led mob seize the government, and there was the dreadful bloody regime of that Jew—what was his name?” 

"“Béla Kun. Too bad he had to be a Jew!” 

"“Yes, I admit it’s too bad. You just told me that you didn’t invent Mein Kampf and you didn’t invent the Brownshirts. Well, I didn’t invent Béla Kun and I didn’t invent Liebknecht and that Red Rosa Jewess who tried to do the same thing in Germany, nor Eisner who did it in Bavaria, nor Trotsky who helped to do it in Russia. I suppose the Jews have an extra hard time and that makes them revolutionary; they haven’t any country and that keeps them from being patriotic. I’m not blaming them, I’m just facing the facts, as you’re all the time urging me to do.” 

"“I’ve long ago faced the fact that you dislike the Jews, Irma.” 

"“I dislike some of them intensely, and I dislike some things about them all. But I love Freddi, and I’m fond of all the Robins, even though I am repelled by Hansi’s ideas. I’ve met other Jews that I like—” 


"“In short,” put in Lanny, “you have accepted what Hitler calls ‘honorary Aryans.’” He was surprised by his own bitterness.

"“That’s a mean crack, Lanny, and I think we ought to talk kindly about this problem. It isn’t a simple one.” 



"“I want very much to,” he replied. “But one of the facts we have to face is that the things you have been saying to me are all in Mein Kampf, and the arguments you have been using are the foundation stones upon which the Nazi movement is built. Hitler also likes some Jews, but he dislikes most of them because he says they are revolutionary and not patriotic. Hitler also is forced to put down the idealists and the liberals because they serve as a ‘front’ for the Reds."

Irma reminded him of his obligations to his wife and daughter, and decided to accompany him with her rights to disagree and express it, understood. 
................................................................................................


Lanny and Irma met Johannes and Robbie in N.Y. and discussed. They decided hat whereabouts of Freddi must have been known to authorities, and it might be hostage situation, knowing Irma's fortune. 

"“I have a business,” replied Lanny. “My idea is to work at it seriously and use it as a cover. I’ll cable Zoltan and find out if he’d be interested to give a Detaze show in Berlin this autumn. That would make a lot of publicity, and enable me to meet people; also it would tip off Freddi’s friends as to where and how to get in touch with me. All this will take time, but it’s the only way I can think of to work in Hitler Germany.”"

Lanny contacted clients in U.S. and they visited them in Berkshire and so on. They set forth via England so Lanny could meet Rick, and they could collect the car. They drove to Bienvenu first. They went driving via Vienna where Lanny managed some business, which impressed Irma, and then Stubendorf where Irma convinced Kurt to convert Lanny out of his leftist sympathy.


"On the day that Irma and Lanny arrived at the Hotel Adlon, another guest, an elderly American, was severely beaten by a group of Brownshirts because he failed to notice that a parade was passing and to give the Nazi salute. When he went to the Polizeiwache to complain about it, the police offered to show him how to give the Nazi salute. Episodes such as this, frequently repeated, had had the effect of causing the trickle of tourists to stop; and this was fortunate for an art expert and his wife, because it made them important, and caused space to be given to Detaze and his work."

Lanny met Magda Goebbels and showed her some of Marcel's work; she suggested a show for the top leader. He met Furtwaengler who denied any possibility that they had Freddi, and Heinrich Jung who waxed poetic about the Nuremberg rally. He met Hugo Behr who said that he had tried but found no evidence they had Freddi. Lanny suggested Dachau, saying it had been a voice telling him so, after telling him about the time he saw Rick appear at dawn. Hugo said he'd try; he said the second revolution must come, and looked to Ernest Röhm to do so. 

"Their conference was a long one, and their drive took them into the country; beautiful level country, every square foot of it tended like somebody’s parlor. No room for a weed in the whole of the Fatherland, and the forests planted in rows like orchards and tended the same way."

Germany is still exactly like that. Beautiful when one sees it, and one falls in love with the beauty, but then if one is there for any length the regimen and its lack of natural quality makes escaping across border not merely delightful but necessary for breathing, and when the border is Swiss the beauty across isn't trivial, nor is cleanliness or convenience or order, but the forests aren't tended like a shop's front window.

"Another way in which Hugo resembled the Social-Democrats rather than the Nazis—he hated militarism. He said: “There are two ways the Führer can solve the problem of unemployment; one is to put the idle to work and make plenty for all, including themselves; the other is to turn them over to the army, to be drilled and sent out to take the land and resources of other peoples. That is the question which is being decided in the inner circles right now.”

"“Too bad you can’t be there!” remarked Lanny; and his young friend revealed what was in the depths of his mind. “Maybe I will be some day.”"

"Seine Exzellenz, Minister-Präsident General Göring, was pleased to invite Mr. and Mrs. Lanny Budd to lunch at his official residence. ... Commander of the German Air Force was having his own art made to his own order—a nude statue of his deceased wife, made from photographs and cast in solid gold!

"At least that was what the Fürstin Donnerstein had told Irma. There was no stopping the tongues of these fashionable ladies; the Fürstin had poured out the “dirt,” and Irma had collected it and brought it home. The good-looking blond aviator named Göring, after being wounded in the Beerhall Putsch, had fled abroad and married a Swedish baroness; the lady was an epileptic and her spouse a morphia addict. There could be no doubt about either of these facts, for they had been proved in court when the baroness was refused custody of her son by a former marriage. Later on, the lady had died of tuberculosis, and Göring, returning to Germany, had chosen Thyssen and the former Crown Prince for his cronies, and the steel king’s sister for his “secretary”; the quotation marks were indicated by the Fürstin’s tone as she said the last word. It had been assumed that he would marry this Anita Thyssen, but it hadn’t come off; perhaps he had become too great—or too fat! At the moment Anita was “out,” and the “in” was Emmy Sonnemann, a blond Nordic Valkyrie who acted at the State Theater and could have any role she chose. “But that doesn’t exclude other Damen,” added the serpent’s tongue of Fürstin Donnerstein. “Vorsicht, Frau Budd!”

"So Irma learned a new German word."
................................................................................................


"Herr Reichsminister Joseph Goebbels was so gracious as to indicate his opinion that the work of Marcel Detaze was suitable for showing in Germany; quite harmless, although not especially distinguished. Lanny understood that he could expect no more for a painter from a nation which the Führer had described as “Negroid.” It was enough, and he wired Zoltan to come to Berlin."

Lanny agreed to pay for the publicity services offered by an agent who came, and the show was a success. 

"The Detaze show coincided in time with one of the strangest public spectacles ever staged in history. The Nazis had laid the attempt to burn the Reichstag upon the Communists, while the enemies of Nazism were charging that the fire had been a plot of the Hitlerites to enable them to seize power. The controversy was brought to a head by the publication in London of the Brown Book of the Hitler Terror, which charged that the Nazi Chief of Police of Breslau, one of the worst of their terrorists, had led a group of S.A. men through the tunnel from Göring’s residence into the Reichstag building; they had scattered loads of incendiary materials all over the place, while another group had brought a half-witted Dutch tramp into the building by a window and put him to work starting fires with a domestic gas-lighter. This was what the whole world was coming to believe, and the Nazis couldn’t very well dodge the issue. For six or seven months they had been preparing evidence, and in September they began a great public trial. They charged the Dutchman with the crime, and three Bulgarian Communists and a German with being his accessories. The issue thus became a three-months’ propaganda battle, not merely in Germany but wherever news was read and public questions discussed. Ten thousand pages of testimony were taken, and seven thousand electrical transcriptions made of portions of the testimony for broadcasting.

"The trial body was the Fourth Criminal Senate of the German Supreme Court in Leipzig; oddly enough, the same tribunal before which, three years previously, Adolf Hitler had proclaimed that “heads will roll in the sand.” Now he was going to make good his threat. Unfortunately he had neglected to “co-ordinate” all five of the court judges; perhaps he didn’t dare, because of world opinion. There was some conformity to established legal procedure, and the result was such a fiasco that the Nazis learned a lesson, and never again would political suspects have a chance to appear in public and cross-question their accusers. 

"In October and November the court came to Berlin, and it was a free show for persons who had leisure; particularly for those who in their secret hearts were pleased to see the Nazis humiliated. The five defendants had been kept in chains for seven months and wore chains in the courtroom during the entire trial. The tragedy of the show was provided by the Dutchman, van der Lubbe, half-blind as well as half-witted; mucus drooled from his mouth and nose, he giggled and grinned, made vague answers, sat in a stupor when let alone. The melodrama was supplied by the Bulgarian Dimitroff, who “stole the show”; a scholar as well as a man of the world, witty, alert, and with the courage of a lion, he turned the trial into anti-Nazi propaganda; defying his persecutors, mocking them, driving them into frenzies of rage. Three times they put him out of the room, but they had to bring him back, and again there was sarcasm, defiance, and exposition of revolutionary aims. 


"It soon became clear that neither Dimitroff nor the other defendants had ever known van der Lubbe or had anything to do with the Reichstag fire. The mistake had arisen because there was a parliamentary archivist in the Reichstag building who happened to resemble the half-witted Dutchman, and it was with him that the Communist Torgler had been seen in conversation. The proceedings gradually turned into a trial of the Brown Book, with the unseen British committee as prosecutors and the Nazis as defendants. Goebbels appeared and denounced the volume, and Dimitroff mocked him and made him into a spectacle. Then came the corpulent head of the Prussian state; it was a serious matter for him, because the incendiaries had operated from his residence and it was difficult indeed to imagine that he hadn’t known what was going on. Under the Bulgarian’s stinging accusations Göring lost his temper completely and had to be saved by the presiding judge, who ordered Dimitroff dragged out, while Göring screamed after him: “I am not afraid of you, you scoundrel. I am not here to be questioned by you … You crook, you belong to the gallows! You’ll be sorry yet, if I catch you when you come out of prison!” Not very dignified conduct for a Minister-Präsident of Prussia and Reichsminister of all Germany!"
................................................................................................


Lanny got two communications, one from Robbie to say his brother had brought in Wall Street to avoid Robbie heading Budd.


"he other communication was very different; a letter addressed to Lanny in his own handwriting, and his heart gave a thump when he saw it, for he had given that envelope to Hugo Behr. It was postmarked Munich and Lanny tore it open quickly, and saw that Hugo had cut six letters out of a newspaper and pasted them onto a sheet of paper—a method of avoiding identification well known to kidnapers and other conspirators. “Jawohl” can be one word or two. With space after the first two letters, as Hugo had pasted them, it told Lanny that Freddi Robin was in Dachau and that he was well."

Lanny told Irma about possibility of getting Freddi out of Dachau without telling Göring, but meanwhile Furtwaengler arrived to convey an invitation from Göring for a stag affair, and he accepted. After the shooting, he made clear his intentions to recruit Lanny.

"“I am sure you understand that we Nazis are playing for no small stakes. You are one of the few who possess imagination enough to know that if you become my friend you will be able to have anything you care to ask for. I am going to become one of the richest men in the world—not because I am greedy for money, but because I have a job to do, and that is one of the tools. We are going to build a colossal industry, which will become the heritage of the future, and most certainly we are not going to leave it in the hands of Jews or other. Bolshevist agencies. Sooner or later we shall take over the industry of Russia and bring it into line with modern practices. For all that we need brains and ability. I personally need men who see eye to eye with me, and I am prepared to pay on a royal scale. There is no limit to what I would do for a man who would be a real associate and  partner.”

"“No German can do what I am suggesting to you—an American, who is assumed to be above the battle. You can go into France or England and meet anybody you wish, and execute commissions of the most delicate sort without waste of time or sacrifice of your own or your wife’s enjoyment. Be assured that I would never ask you to do anything dishonorable, or to betray any trust. If, for example, you were to meet certain persons in those countries and talk politics with them, and report on their true attitudes, so that I could know which of them really want to have the Reds put down and which would rather see those devils entrench themselves than to see Germany get upon her feet—that would be information almost priceless to me, and believe me, you would have to do no more than hint your desires. If you would come now and then on an art-buying expedition to Berlin and visit me in some quiet retreat like this, the information would be used without any label upon it, and I would pledge you my word never to name you to anyone.”"

Lanny expressed appreciation of of the honour but declined any rewards or remuneration of any size in any form, insisting he'd prefer freedom. When Göring insisted on asking what he wanted, he understood, and asked about Freddi. 


"“All right,” said the Minister-Präsident; “if that is your heart’s desire, I will try to grant it. But remember, it may be beyond my power. I cannot bring back the dead.”"

Lanny told Irma after his return taking her on a drive, and she questioned if Freddi wasn't guilty of a serious crime against the government such as criminal conspiracy. 

"“The Nazis don’t have to have any excuses, Irma; they arrest people wholesale.” 

"“I’m talking about the possibility that there might be some real guilt, or at any rate a charge against Freddi. Some reason why Göring would consider him dangerous and hold onto him.” 

"“The people who are in the concentration camps aren’t those against whom they have criminal charges. The latter are in the prisons, and the Nazis torture them to make them betray their associates; then they shoot them in the back of the neck and cremate them. The men who are in Dachau are Socialist politicians and editors and labor leaders—intellectuals of all the groups that stand for freedom and justice and peace.” 

"“You mean they’re there without any charge against them?” 

"“Exactly that. They’ve had no trial, and they don’t know what they’re there for or how long they’re going to stay. Two or three thousand of the finest persons in Bavaria—and my guess is that Freddi has done no more than any of the others.” 


"Irma didn’t say any more, and her husband knew the reason—she couldn’t believe what he said. It was too terrible to be true. All over the world people were saying that, and would go on saying it, to Lanny’s great exasperation."

"Rahel had given him addresses, and in his spare hours he had dropped in at place after place, always taking the precaution to park his car some distance away and to make sure that he was not followed. In no single case had he been able to find the persons, or to find anyone who would admit knowing their whereabouts. In most cases people wouldn’t even admit having heard of them. They had vanished off the face of the Fatherland. Was he to assume that they were all in prisons or concentration camps? Or had some of them “gone underground”? Once more he debated how he might find his way to that nether region—always being able to get back to the Hotel Adlon in time to receive a message from the second in command of the Nazi government! ... Ludwig and Gertrude Schultz ...He could be fairly sure they would be living among the workers; for they had never had much money, and without jobs would probably be dependent upon worker comrades."


Lanny found her, by asking a child in her building and waiting. She was wary and denied knowing him until he told about Freddi being in Dachau, and told him Ludi and Freddi had been taken together. He said he'd try to find Ludi, and gave money before parting. 

"The period of the Detaze show in Berlin corresponded with an election campaign throughout the German Reich; assuredly the strangest election campaign since that contrivance had been born of the human brain. Hitler had wiped out all other political parties and all the legislative bodies of the twenty-two German states; by his methods of murder and imprisonment he had destroyed democracy and representative government, religious toleration and all civil rights; but being still the victim of a “legality complex,” he insisted upon having the German people endorse what he had done. A vote to say that votes had no meaning! A Reichstag to declare that a Reichstag was without power! ... there wasn’t a single German from whom he could hear a sane word. Even Hugo Behr and his friends who were planning the “Second Revolution” were all loyal Hitlerites, co-operating in what they considered a sublime demonstration of patriotic fervor. Even the members of smart society dared give no greater sign of rationality than a slight smile, or the flicker of an eyelash so faint that you couldn’t be sure if you had seen it. The danger was real, even to important persons. Only a few days later they would see Herzog Philip Albert of Württemberg imprisoned for failing to cast his vote in this sublime national referendum.

"In addition, there was to be a new Reichstag election, with only one slate of candidates, 686 of them, all selected by the Führer, and headed by the leading Nazis: Hitler, Göring, Goebbels, Hess, Röhm, and so on. One party, one list—and one circle in which you could mark your cross to indicate “yes.” There was no place for you to vote “no,” and blank ballots were declared invalid." 

Irma was impressed with the show and record voting. 


"When she read that the internees of Dachau had voted twenty to one for the man who had shut them up there, she said: “That seems to show that things can’t he so very bad.”"
................................................................................................


"A pleasant thing to leave the flat windy plain of Prussia at the beginning of winter and motor into the forests and snug valleys of South Germany. Pleasant to arrive in a beautiful and comparatively modern city and to find a warm welcome awaiting you in an establishment called the “Four Seasons of the Year” so as to let you know that it was always ready. Munich was a “Four Seasons of the Year” city; its life was a series of festivals, and the drinking of beer out of Masskrügen was a civic duty. 

"The devoted Zoltan had come in advance and made all arrangements for the show. The Herr Privatdozent Doktor der Philosophie Aloysius Winckler zu Sturmschatten had applied his arts, and the intellectuals of Munich were informed as to the merits of the new school of representational painting; also the social brilliance of the young couple who were conferring this bounty upon them. 

"In the morning came the reporters by appointment. They had been provided with extracts from what the Berlin press had said about Detaze, and with information as to the Barnes fortune and the importance of Budd Gunmakers; also the fact that Lanny had been on a shooting trip with General Göring and had once had tea with the Führer. The young couple exhibited that affability which is expected from the land of cowboys and movies. Lanny said yes, he knew Munich very well; he had purchased several old masters here—he named them, and told in what new world collections they had found havens. He had happened to be in the city on a certain historic day ten years ago and had witnessed scenes which would make the name of Munich forever famous. Flashlight bulbs went off while he talked, reminding him of those scenes on the Marienplatz when the Nazi martyrs had been shot down. 

"The interviews appeared in due course, and when the exhibition opened on the following afternoon the crowds came. An old story now, but the people were new, and those who love greatness and glory never tire of meeting Herzog und Herzogin Überall und Prinz und Prinzessin Undsoweiter. A great thing for art when ladies of the highest social position take their stand in a public gallery to pay tribute to genius, even though dead. While Parsifal Dingle went off to ask the spirit of the dead painter if he was pleased with the show, and while Lanny went to inspect older masters and dicker over prices, Beauty Budd and her incomparable daughter-in-law were introduced to important personages, accepted invitations to lunches and dinners, and collected anecdotes which they would retail to their spouses and later to their relatives and friends. 

"There was only one thing wrong between this pair; the fact that Marcel Detaze had died when Irma was a child and had never had an opportunity to paint a picture of her. Thus Beauty got more than her proper share of glory, and there was no way to redistribute it. The mother-in-law would be humble, and try not to talk about herself and her portraits while Irma was standing by; but others would insist upon doing so, and it was a dangerous situation. Beauty said to her son: “Who is the best portrait painter living?” 

“Why?” he asked, surprised. 

"“Because, you ought to have him do Irma right away. It would be a sensation, and help to keep her interested in art.” 

"“Too bad that Sargent is gone!” chuckled Lanny. 

"“Don’t make a joke of it,” insisted the mother. “It’s quite inexcusable that the crowds should come and look at pictures of a faded old woman who doesn’t matter, instead of one in the prime of her beauty.” 


"“Art is long and complexions are fleeting,” said the incorrigible one."
................................................................................................


"A far greater event than the Detaze exhibition came to Munich, causing the city to break out with flags. The Reichskanzler, the Führer of the N.S.D.A.P., had been motoring and flying all over his land making campaign speeches. After his overwhelming triumph he had sought his mountain retreat, to brood and ponder new policies; and now, refreshed and reinspired, he came to his favorite city, the one in which his movement had been built and his crown of martyrdom won. Here he had been a poor Schlawiner, as they called a man whose means of subsistence they did not know, a Wand- und Landstreicher, who made wild, half-crazy speeches, and people went to hear him because it was a Gaudi, or what you would call in English a “lark.” Munich had seen him wandering about town looking very depressed, uncouth in his rusty worn raincoat, carrying an oversize dogwhip because of his fear of enemies, who, however, paid no attention to him. But now he had triumphed over them all. 

"Now he was the master of Germany, and Munich celebrated his arrival with banners. Here in the Braune Haus he had the main headquarters of the party; a splendid building which Adolf himself had remodeled and decorated according to his own taste. He, the frustrated architect, had made something so fine that his followers were exalted when they entered the place, and took fresh vows of loyalty to their leader and his all-conquering dream. 

"Mabel Blackless, alias Beauty Budd, alias Madame Detaze, had done some conquering in her time, and was still capable of dreams. “Oh, Lanny!” she exclaimed. “Do you suppose you could get him to come to the exhibition? It would be worth a million dollars to us!” 

"“It’s certainly worth thinking about,” conceded the son. 

"“Don’t delay! Telephone Heinrich Jung and ask him to come. Pay him whatever he wants, and we’ll all stand our share.” 

"“He won’t want much. He’s not a greedy person.” 

"The young Nazi official was staggered by the proposal. He feared it was something far, far beyond his powers. But Lanny urged him to rise to a great occasion. He had worked hard through the electoral campaign and surely was entitled to a few days’ vacation. What better way to spend it than to pay his compliments to his Führer, and take him to see some paintings of the special sort which he approved? 

"“You can bring them to him if he prefers,” said Lanny. “We’ll close the show for a day and pick out the best and take them wherever he wishes.” He spoke with eagerness, having another scheme up his sleeve; he wasn’t thinking merely about enhancing the prices of his family property. “If you can get off right away, take a plane. There’s no time to be lost.” 

"“Herrgott!” exclaimed the ex-forester. He was in heaven. 

"Then Lanny put in a long distance call to Kurt Meissner in Stubendorf. Kurt had refused an invitation to Berlin because he couldn’t afford the luxury and wasn’t willing to be put under obligations. But now Lanny could say: “This is a business matter. You will be doing us a service, and also one for the Führer. You can play your new compositions for him, and that will surely be important for your career. Heinrich is coming, and we’ll paint the town brown.” He supposed that was the proper National Socialist formula! 


"Irma took the phone and added: “Come on, Kurt. It will be so good for Lanny. I want him to understand your movement and learn to behave himself.” Impossible for an apostle and propagandist to resist such a call. Irma added: “Take a plane from Breslau if that’s quicker. We’ll have a room reserved for you.”"

Irma spoke privately to Kurt asking him to impress Lanny about not mentioning Freddi to Hitler, which he did, and thus it became Kurt's job to do so. They were called, and went for the appointment, with a hotel employee assigned to carry the portrait of Beauty by Marcel. He remembered Lanny . 

"Looking at him, Lanny thought once more that here was the world’s greatest mystery. You might have searched all Europe and not found a more commonplace-appearing man; this Führer of the Fatherland had everything it took to make mediocrity. He was smaller than any of his three guests, and as he was now in a plain business suit with a white collar and black tie, he might have been a grocery assistant or traveling salesman for a hair tonic. He took no exercise, and his figure was soft, his shoulders narrow and hips wide like a woman’s. The exponent of Aryan purity was a mongrel if ever there was one; he had straight thick dark hair and wore one lock of it long, as Lanny had done when a boy. Apparently the only thing he tended carefully was that absurd little Charlie Chaplin mustache."

He noticed the painting and inspected it. 

"A Frenchman, you say? You may be sure that he had German forefathers. Who is the woman?”"

Lanny explained it was his mother, and there was more diatribe about race. 

""Here in this room we have three of the world’s great nationalities represented: the German, the French, the American. What a gain if these nations would unite to guard their Aryan purity and guarantee the reign of law throughout the world! Do you see any hope for that in our time?” 

"“It is a goal to aim at, Herr Reichskanzler. Each must do what he can.” 

"“You may be sure that I will, Herr Budd. Tell it to everyone you know.”"

Kurt took the opportunity to introduce the topic of Freddi, which turned into a full fledged racist rant hurled at them, from telling Lanny they must get Bess divorced to explicit description about her defilement by such marriage - all material stated in his autobiography, sans reference to Bess, of course. 


"The master of all Germany had got started on one of his two favorite topics, the other being Bolshevism. Again Lanny observed the phenomenon that an audience of three was as good as three million. The sleepy look went out of the speaker’s eyes and they became fixed upon the unfortunate transgressor in a hypnotic stare. The quiet voice rose to a shrill falsetto. Something new appeared in the man, demonic and truly terrifying; the thrust-out finger struck as it were hammer blows upon Lanny’s mind. A young American playboy must be made to realize the monstrous nature of the treason he was committing in condoning his sister’s defilement of the sacred Aryan blood. Somehow, at once, the evil must be averted; the man who had been commissioned by destiny to save the world must prove his power here and now, by bringing this strayed sheep back into the Nordic fold. “Gift!” cried the Führer of the Nazis. “Poison! Poison!”"

"Back in New England, Lanny’s Great-Great-Uncle Eli Budd had told him the story of the witch-hunt in early Massachusetts. “Fanaticism is a destroyer of mind,” he had said. Here it was in another form—the terrors, the fantasies born of soul torment, the vision of supernatural evil powers plotting the downfall of all that was good and fair in human life. Adi really loved the Germans: their Gemütlichkeit, their Treue und Ehre, their beautiful songs and noble symphonies, their science and art, their culture in its thousand forms. But here was this satanic power, plotting, scheming day and night to destroy it all. Die Juden sind schuld! 

"Yes, literally, the Jews were to blame for everything; Hitler called the roll of their crimes for the ten thousandth time. They had taught revolt to Germany, they had undermined her patriotism and discipline, and in her hour of greatest peril they had stabbed her in the back. The Jews had helped to shackle her by the cruel Diktat of Versailles, and then had proceeded to rivet the chains of poverty upon her limbs. They had made the inflation, they had contrived the Dawes Plan, the Young Plan, the systems of interest and reparations slavery; the Jewish bankers in alliance with the Jewish Bolsheviks! They had seduced all German culture—theater, literature, music, journalism. They had sneaked into the professions, the sciences, the schools, and universities—and, as always, they had defiled and degraded whatever they touched. Die Juden sind unser Unglück! 

"This went on for at least half an hour; and never once did anybody else get in a word. The man’s tirade poured out so fast that his sentences stumbled over one another; he forgot to finish them, he forgot his grammar, he forgot common decency and used the words of the gutters of Vienna, where he had picked up his ideas. The perspiration stood out on his forehead and his clean white collar began to wilt. In short, he gave the same performance which Lanny had witnessed in the Bürgerbräukeller of Munich more than a decade ago. But that had been a huge beerhall with two or three thousand people, while here it was like being shut up in a small chamber with a hundred-piece orchestra including eight trombones and four bass tubas playing the overture to The Flying Dutchman. 

"Suddenly the orator stopped. He didn’t say: “Have I convinced you?” That would have been expressing a doubt, which no heaven-sent evangelist ever admits. He said: “Now, Herr Budd, go and do your duty. Make one simple rule that I have maintained ever since I founded this movement—never to speak to a Jew, even over the telephone.” Then, abruptly: “I have other engagements and have to be excused.”" 

"When he was back in the hotel with his wife and mother, he exclaimed: “Well, I know now why Göring is keeping Freddi.” 

"“Why?” they asked, with much excitement. 


"Lanny answered, in a cold fury: “He is going to breed him with a female ape!”"

Lanny drove to Dachau and asked to see the commander, introducing himself as a sympathetic foreigner who wished to tell the world they were misinformed. His newspaper clippings helped. 

"A drab and distressing spectacle the prisoners presented. They had close-cropped heads. They wore the clothes in which they had been arrested; but that had been months ago, in many cases nearly a year, and doubtless they were sleeping in their clothes on these near-winter nights. The intellectuals of Bavaria had evidently not been fond of outdoor sports; some were lean and stoop-shouldered, others were paunched and flabby. Many had white hair, and might have been the grandfathers of their guards, but that earned them no consideration. Ill health and depression were written all over them. They did not know what they were here for, or how long they would have to stay—they who had been free men, free thinkers, the best of the land’s intellectuals. They had dreamed of a happier and more ordered world, and this was the punishment which fitted their crime. “We are not running a health resort,” remarked the Kommandant."

But he didn't see Freddi, Jews were kept separate. 
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Dresden museum wished to keep Detaze show for a while,and Zoltan Kertezsi would keep track; Beauty and Parsifal Dingle were invited by Lady Caillard, staying in Germany was accomplishing nothing, and Irma and Lanny must see baby for Xmas. 


"The museum in Dresden was attending to the pictures, so Jerry Pendleton was free. Irma and Lanny took him with them through a pass in those snow-covered mountains which make for Munich a setting like a drop curtain. They crossed the narrow belt which the Versailles Diktat had left to Austria, and through the Brenner pass which had been included in Italy’s share of the loot. There Mussolini’s Blackshirts were busily engaged in making Aryans into Mediterraneans by the agency of rubber truncheons and dogwhips. It made bad blood between Fascismo and its newborn offspring in the north. Dr. Goebbels’s well-subsidized agitators were working everywhere in Austria, and not a few of them were in Italian dungeons. Optimistic young Pinks looked forward to seeing the Fascists and the Nazis devour each other like the two Kilkenny cats."

They came home to Bienvenu and were thrilled to see their four year old. 

"Hansi and Bess are in the Middle West, giving concerts several times every week. They have cabled money after the first concert, so Mama and Rahel no longer have to use Irma’s money to buy their food. They have offered to rent a little place for themselves, but Beauty has said No, why should they—it would be very unkind. Irma says the same; but in her heart she cannot stifle the thought that she would like it better if they did. She feels a thunder-cloud hanging over the place, and wants so much to get Lanny from under it. She is worried about what is going on in his mind, and doesn’t see why she should give up all social life because of a tragedy they are powerless to avert. Irma wants to give parties, real parties, of the sort which make a social impression; she will put up the money and Beauty and Feathers will do the work—both of them happy to do so, because they believe in parties, because parties are what set you apart from the common herd which cannot give them, at least not with elegance and chic. 

"Then, too, there is the question of two little tots. They are together nearly all the time, and this cannot be prevented; they clamor for it, take it for granted, and the science of child study is on their side. Impossible to bring up any child properly alone, because the child is a gregarious creature; so the textbooks agree. If little Johannes were not available it would be necessary to go out and get some fisherboy, Provençal, or Ligurian or what not. There isn’t the slightest fault that Irma can find with the tiny Robin; he is a dream of brunette loveliness, he is gentle and sweet like his father, but he is a Jew, and Irma cannot be reconciled to the idea that her darling Frances should be more interested in him than in any other human being, not excepting herself. Of course, they are such tiny things, it seems absurd to worry; but the books and the experts agree that this is the age when indelible impressions are made, and is it wise to let an Aryan girl-child get fixed in her mind that the Semitic type is the most romantic, the most fascinating in the world? Irma imagines some blind and tragic compulsion developing out of that, later on in life."

"With the proceeds of their dramatic success Nina and Rick had got a small car. Rick couldn’t drive, on account of his knee, but his wife drove, and now they brought the Dingles to the Riviera, and stayed for a while as guests in the villa. Rick used Kurt’s old studio to work on an anti-Nazi play, based on the Brown Book, the stories Lanny had told him, and the literature Kurt and Heinrich had been sending him through the years. It would be called a melodrama, Rick said—because the average Englishman refused to believe that there could be such people as the Nazis, or that such things could be happening in Europe in the beginning of the year 1934. Rick said furthermore that when the play was produced, Lanny would no longer be able to pose as a fellow-traveler of the Hitlerites, for they would certainly find out where the play had been written."

Lanny was thinking of offering all his own money in exchange for Freddi, and Rick spoke against it, to him and to the Robin women. 


"The Nazis want foreign exchange so they can buy weapons and the means to make weapons. They want it so they can pay their agents and carry on their propaganda in foreign lands. And in the end it adds up to more power for Nazism, and more suffering for Jews and Socialists. These Hitlerites aren’t through; they never can be through so long as they live, because theirs is a predatory system; it thrives on violence, and would perish otherwise. It has to have more and more victims, and if it gets money from you it uses the money to get more money from the next lot. So whatever resources we have or can get, have to go to fighting them, to making other people understand what Nazism is, what a menace it represents to everything that you and I and Freddi stand for.”"

Robbie came, and they drove to Crillon to see him. 


"One thing Robbie said he was unable to understand: the fact that they had never received a single line of writing from Freddi in more than eight months. Surely any prisoner would be permitted to communicate with his relatives at some time! Lanny told what he had learned from the Kommandant of Dachau, that the inmates were permitted to write a few lines once a week to their nearest relatives; but this privilege was withheld in certain cases. Robbie said: “Even so, there are ways of smuggling out letters; and certainly there must be prisoners released now and then. You’d think some one of them would have your address, and drop a note to report the situation. It suggests to me that Freddi may be dead; but I don’t say it to the Robins.”"

"It was the “Stavisky case,” centering about a swindler of Russian-Jewish descent. “Too bad he had to be a Jew!” said Irma, and Lanny wasn’t sure whether she was being sympathetic or sarcastic. ... Stavisky had gone into hiding with his mistress, and when the police came for him he shot himself; at least, so the police said, but evidence began to indicate that the police had hushed him up.

"Lanny couldn’t afford to visit his Red uncle, but he invited Denis de Bruyne to dinner, and the three Budds listened to the story from the point of view of a French Nationalist.

"Denis belonged to a respectable law-and-order party, and was distressed because his younger son had joined the Croix de Feu, most active of the French Fascist groups. ... Lanny observed that the individuals who awakened the anger and disgust of Denis de Bruyne were the climbers, those struggling for wealth and power to which they had no valid claim. He rarely had any serious fault to find with the mur d’argent, the members of the “two hundred families” who had had wealth and power for a long time. They had to pay large sums of money in these evil days, and the basis of Denis’s complaint was not the corruption but the increasing cost."

Lanny and Irma met Olivie Hellstein whose father was about to get into business with Robbie. She consulted Lanny about a family concern, her uncle Solomon had been arrested in Germany where he was a banker. Lanny tried to see Charlot, but it wasn't possible, there was to be a demonstration, they watched it from the hotel balcony. The Place de la Concorde had a crowd over a hundred thousand strong, police barricading them from the bridge leading to deputies chamber. The fascists used stones they tore from pavement, railings torn from garden of Tuilleries, and walking sticks fitted with razor blades, wounding police and horses. Shooting began, and they retreated from balconies. "Bloody Tuesday" became worse next day, and they went home. But this was spreading and midi wasn't immune. 

Austria was jailing hitlerites but had its own fascists, Dollfuss had Heimwehr fire on worker's apartments in Vienna killing a thousand including women and children, razing the workers' homes. 
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Lanny and Irma chose to summer in England due to Irma's fear of kidnappers since Lindbergh, and Wickthorpe was able to let them rent a house of his aunt, near his castle. The Bienvenu family was to join them in London at home of Margy, Dowager Lady Eversham-Watson, for the season. But Lanny got a letter from Freddi from Dachau forwarded by Rahel, which brought Irma and Lanny into another argument, both serious about their differences. Lanny had to try and help Freddi, and Irma thought it was irresponsible behaviour to do so instead of taking care of his wife and child.  

Lanny set out driving via Metz and Strasbourg and arrived in Munich, staying in a small hotel and conducting some art business, and invited Hugo Behr. Hugo was unhappy about the party going reactionary. Lanny made arrangements with him to get Freddi out, and had Jerry Pendleton arrive from Cannes for help, but as he was picking Hugo up, three SS men stopped Hugo and shot him in face, and took Lanny to Stradelheim. He was there over three to four nights, incommunicado and in foul conditions, and it was only when being driven out that a fellow prisoner told him in Morse code "“Röhm shot"! Also in Morse code, he was told "Heines, followed again by the dread word “erschossen.” Lanny knew that this was the police chief of Breslau, who had led the gang which had burned the Reichstag; he was one of the most notorious of the Nazi killers, ... And then the name of Strasser! Lanny put his hand on top of the little Jew’s and spelled the name “Otto”; but the other wiggled away and spelled “Gr—” so Lanny understood that it was Gregor Strasser". 

In Munich it was regular prison with cellmates - who were either manufacturing tycoons being forced to give up to nazis or Hungarian counts who were inconvenient members of a marriage for a nazi - and exercise time in yard, and possibilities of paying for a shave etc. Information flowed despite strictures, and Lanny learned about the "Blood Purge", despite official lies. After ten days he was driven in handcuffs in his own car to be imprisoned in Berlin, again single. After a few days he was brought to the torture cell and witnessed what brutal torture was inflicted on others, including Simon Hellstein. Lanny spoke, enraged, telling them they were dirty dogs and shame to humanity, and he was returned to the cell. 

Next, Furtwaengler came and took him out with apologies. He was taken, after half an hour at Adlon to make himself presentable, to residence of Göring, who tried to make a joke of it, but it was clear to Lanny that Göring had known about his imprisonment all along and had done it deliberately. Göring had an offer, Freddi would be freed as soon as Lanny told the world, and Hellstein family, about what he saw. Göring wanted Hellstein  money. 

"Lanny wanted to wake up Europe to the meaning of this moral insanity which had broken out in its midst."

Lanny drove through to Belgium and talked with Jerry, having already cabled family. He asked Irma to come to Paris and met her in Crillon. She insisted he pledge to never do anything like this, never go into Germany, and was very upset he made an appointment with Hellstein family without taking her along. She wanted to know how he could know about Solomon Hellstein, and Lanny couldn't tell her about what he'd gone through. She'd made up her mind, and he had to make up his, quickly. 

Lanny told Hellstein family everything, sparing nothing, about what he'd witnessed, and what nazis wanted. He found their grief cathartic, and had tears streaming down. Olivie thanked him profusely with tears, and said he was the kindest, the bravest man she knew. Lanny was tempted to wish his wife had witnessed it, but thought better of it. Nothing would help in his marriage except his behaving like a man of fashion, and he was finding it increasingly difficult to play that role.

................................................................................................


Furtwaengler called and said he'd bring Freddi when and where Lanny said, so Lanny decided ten next morning at the bridge over Rhine between Kehl and Strasbourg, and called Jerry to bring Rahel. Lanny drove to Strasbourg, and at ten a car drove up. 


Freddi couldn't stand, had to be carried, and said they'd kicked his kidneys loose. Lanny drove back with him laid in the rear seat, and hotel helped lay him in bed. His hands were broken with iron bars. 

Jerry arrived with Rahel, who nearly fainted to see Freddi turned old and broken in a year. Lanny encouraged her, he was planning to have an ambulance drive him to Paris where Marcel had been treated. 

Presently he sat alone, in tears streaming  down. Tears for Freddi, for the family, for Jews of Europe, for "German people who were being led into a deadly trap and would pay with frightful suffering. Tears for this unhappy continent on which he'd been born and lived all his life. He'd traveled here and there over its surface, and everywhere seen men plough the earth and sow dragon's teeth from which, as the old legend has it, armed men would someday spring." 
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