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Emil placed his faith in Germany's symbol of loyalty, Feldmarschall and now Prasident Paul

Ludwig Hans Anton von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg. The old commander had won the

battle of Tannenberg, the one complete victory the Germans had gained, with the result that

the people had idolized him all through the rest of the war. In every town they had set up

huge wooden statues of him, and it had been the supreme act of patriotism to buy nails and

drive them into this statue, the money going to the German Red Cross. The Hindenburg line

had been another name for national security, and now the Hindenburg presidency was the

same. But the stern old titan was now eighty-three years old, and his wits were growing dim; it

was hard for him to concentrate upon complex matters. The politicians swarmed about him,

they pulled him this way and that, and it was painful to him and tragic to those who saw it.

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 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

whose redness was notorious. On the other hand, an officer of the Reichswehr owed no you had

better not mention them if you wanted to have friends in the Fatherland!

III

Three evenings a week Freddi and Rahel went to the school which they helped to support.

Freddi taught a class in the history of economic theory and Rahel taught one in singing, both

subjects important for German workers. Lanny went along more than once, and when the

students old and young discovered that he lived in France and had helped with a school there,

they wanted to hear about conditions in that country and what the workers were thinking and

doing. Discussions arose, and 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.

Could the workers "take over" by peaceable processes? You could tell the answer by the very

words in which the speaker put the question. If he said "by parliamentary action," he was

some sort of Socialist; if he said "by electing politicians," he was some sort of Communist. The

former had the prestige of the greatest party of the Fatherland behind him, and quoted Marx,

Bebel, and Kautsky. His opponent in the controversy took the Soviet Union for his model, and

quoted Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. Between the two extremes were those who followed the

recently exiled Trotsky, or the martyred Karl Liebknecht and "Red Rosa" Luxemburg. There

were various "splinter groups" that Lanny hadn't heard of; indeed, it appeared that the nearer

the rebel workers came to danger, the more they fought among themselves. Lanny compared

them to people on a sinking ship trying to throw one another overboard.

At the school the "Sozis" were in a majority; and Lanny would explain to them his amiable

idea that all groups ought to unite against the threat of National Socialism. Since he was a

stranger, and Freddi's brother-in-law, they would be patient and explain that nobody could

co-operate with the Communists, because they wouldn't let you. 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. To Lanny that seemed a sort of

nightmare—not the idea that it might happen, but the fact that the Socialists should have got

themselves into such a state of hatred of another working-class party that they were willing to

believe such a deal might be made. Once more he had to sink back into the role of listener,

keep his thoughts to himself, and not tell Hansi and Bess what the friends of Freddi and Rahel

were teaching in their school.

IV

Once a week the institution gave a reception; the' Left intellectuals came, and drank coffee

and ate great quantities of Leberivurst and Schweizerkase sandwiches, and discussed the

policies of the school and the events of the time. Then indeed the forces of chaos and old night

were released. 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!

Lanny made the mistake of taking his wife to one of these gath erings, and she didn't enjoy

it. In the first place, most of the arguing was done in German, which is rarely a very

pleasant-sounding language unless it has been written by Heine; it appears to the outsider to

involve a great deal of coughing, spitting, and rumbling in the back of the throat. Of course

there were many who were able to speak English of a sort, and were willing to try it on

Lanny's wife; but they wished to talk about personalities, events, and doctrines which were for

the most part strange to her. Irma's great forte in social life was serenity, and somehow this

wasn't the place to show it off.

She commented on this to her husband, who said: "You must understand that most of these

people are having a hard time keeping alive. Many of them don't get enough to eat, and that is

disturbing to one's peace of mind."

He went on to explain what was called the "intellectual proletariat": a mass of persons who

had acquired education at heavy cost of both mind and body, but who now found no market

for what they had to offer to the world. They made a rather miserable livelihood by hack-

writing, or teaching—whatever odd jobs they could pick up. Naturally they were discontented,

and felt themselves in sympathy with the dispossessed workers.

"But why don't they go and get regular jobs, Lanny?"

"What sort of jobs, dear? Digging ditches, or clerking in a store, or waiting on table?"

"Anything, I should think, so long as they can earn an honest living."

"Many of them have to do it, but it's not so easy as it sounds.

There are four million unemployed in Germany right now, and a job usually goes to

somebody who has been trained for that kind of work."

Thus patiently Lanny would explain matters, as if to a child. The trouble was, he had to

explain it many times, for Irma appeared reluctant to believe it. He was trying to persuade her

that the time was cruelly out of joint, whereas she had been brought up to believe that

everything was for the best in the best of all possible worlds. If people didn't get jobs and keep

them, it must be because there was something wrong with those people; they didn't really

want to work; they wanted to criticize and sneer at others who had been successful, who had

worked hard, as Irma's father had done. He had left her secure. Who could blame her for

wanting to stay that way, and resenting people who pulled her about, clamored in her ears,

upset her mind with arguments?

It wasn't that she was hard of heart, not at all. Some pitiful beggar would come up to her on

the street, and tears would start into her eyes, and she would want to give him the contents of

her well-filled purse. But that was charity, and she learned that Lanny's friends all spurned

this; they wanted a thing they called "justice." They required you to agree that the social

system was fundamentally wrong, and that most of what Irma's parents and teachers and

friends had taught her was false. They demanded that the world be turned upside down and

that they, the rebels, be put in charge of making it over. Irma decided that she didn't trust