Пользователь - o 3b3e7475144cf77c

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 кill 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!

XI

So here was another huge mass meeting, such crowds that you could hardly get in, and two

rich Americans having to climb to distant seats in a gallery. But it was all right, for there were

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.

Once more Lanny observed the application of the art of moving the mass mind. Adolf Hitler

taught that the masses did not think with their brains but with their blood; that is to say, they

did not reason but were driven by instincts. The most basic instinct was the desire to survive

and the fear of not surviving; therefore Adolf Hitler told them that their enemies desired to

destroy them and that he alone could and would save them; he told them that they were the

Herrenvolk, the master race, designed by nature to survive and to rule all other races of the

earth. The second basic instinct was hunger, and they had suffered it, and he promised them

that under his leadership Germany would break into the storehouses of the world's plenty;

the Fatherland would have Lebensraum, the space in which to expand and grow. The third

basic instinct is sex, and he told them that they were destined to populate the earth, and that

every pure-blooded Aryan Mädchen was the predestined mother of blond heroes; that was

what she was created for, and no permission was needed for her to begin; a wise Fatherland

would provide for her care and give all honor to her and her offspring.

All these instincts added up into pride and victory over the foes of Germany. "Sieg Heil!"

they shouted; and the party had invented an elaborate ritual to embody these concepts and to

thrill the dullest soul. At the futile Beerhall Putsch which Lanny had witnessed in Munich

there had been carried banners, and these banners had been riddled with bullets and stained

with the blood of martyrs; that made them holy, and Adolf Hitler had carried them all over

Germany, and upon public platforms had performed the ceremony of touching the new

banners with the old; that made all the Nazi banners holy, and worthy of being stained with

the blood of martyrs. So now when they were carried all hearts beat high, and all good party

members longed for a chance to become martyrs and have a new Horst Wessel Lied sung

about them. Shrill trumpets proclaimed the entry of these banners, drums beat and fifes

shrilled and a bodyguard of heroes marched into the hall with faces solemn and grim.

To the speakers' platform ascended large, heavy Gregor Strasser; not humbled and

browbeaten as Lanny had last seen him, but bursting with assurance of power. He was one

of the original party leaders, and had helped Adolf to keep alive in the early days. He had

believed in the early program with all its promises for the overthrow of the rich and the setting

up of the disinherited. Did he believe in them still, when he knew that the Führer no longer

meant them? You could never have guessed it from listening to his speech, for he seemed to have

but one rule: to think of everything that ten thousand Wurttembergers could possibly want,

and promise it to them, to be delivered on the day when they would elect the candidates of the

N.S.D.A.P.

Lanny said: "That's surely the way to get out the vote!" Irma, who didn't understand what

the orator was promising, and had to judge by gestures and tones, remarked: "It is surprising

how much like Uncle Jesse he sounds."

"Don't let either of them hear that!" chuckled the husband.

XII

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."

She had met charming people in Berlin, and now Johannes gave her a reception, and they all

came; when they found that she didn't like politics they said they didn't blame her, and talked

about the music festivals, the art exhibitions, the coming yacht regattas. The Jewish money-lord

tried to keep friendly with everybody, and he knew that many who would not ordinarily darken

his door were willing to come when a celebrated American heiress was his guest. According to his

custom, he did not try to hide this, but on the contrary made a point of mentioning it and

thanking her. She knew that this Jewish family had risen in the world with the help of the

Budds; but so long as they showed a proper gratitude and didn't develop a case of "swelled

head," it was all right for the help to continue.

German big business men came, and their wives, still bigger as a rule. German aristocrats

came, tall, stiff gentlemen wearing monocles, and their Damen who seemed built for the stage

of Bayreuth. All had long titles, and left off none of the vons and zus; Irma had trouble in telling

Herr vons from Herr Barons, Herr Grafen from Erlauchts, and Erlauchts from Durchlauchts.

Graf Stubendorf came, reported on affairs at home, and cordially renewed his invitation for

next Christmas, or for the shooting season earlier. 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."

13

Even to the Edge of Doom

I

THE cruise of the Bessie Budd began. Not a long cruise, never more than a week at a time in

these disturbed days. They stopped to fish and swim, and they sent out upon the North Sea

breezes a great deal of romantic and delightful music. The seamen and the fishermen who

glided by in the night must have been moved to wonder, and perhaps some young Heine

among them took flight upon the wings of imagination. Far on the Scottish rock-coast, where

the little gray castle towers above the raging sea, there, at the high-arched window, stands a

beautiful frail woman, tender-pellucid and marble-pale, and she plays the harp and sings, and

the wind sweeps through her long tresses and carries her dark song over the wide storming

sea.

Resting from such flights of fancy the solicitous Lanny Budd had quiet talks with his host,

hoping by gentle and tactful intervention to lessen the strain of that family conflict which had

been revealed to him. Johannes explained, in much the same words that Robbie Budd had