Пользователь - o 3b3e7475144cf77c

an American!" He settled back and listened to more arguments, and thought: "I'm like all the

others. I'm an intellectual, too! I happen to own some guns, and know how to use them—but I

wouldn't!"

V

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.

She was pleased by his interest and invited him to come and see her work. So, on another

evening while Irma played bridge, Lanny drove Freddi and Rahel to a working class quarter

of the city where the young couple lived in a small apartment. Lanny inspected a mass of

crayon drawings and a few water-colors, and became interested in what he believed was a real

talent. This girl drew what she saw in Berlin; but she colored it with her personality. Like Jesse

Blackless she loved the workers and regarded the rich with moral disapprobation; that made

her work "propaganda," and hard to sell. But Lanny thought it ought to appeal to the Socialist

press and offered to take some with him and show it to Leon Blum and Jean Longuet. Of

course the Schultzes were much excited— for they had heard about Lanny's having selected

old masters for the palace of Johannes Robin, and looked upon the wealthy young American

as a power in the art world.

Lanny, for his part, was happy to meet vital personalities in the workers' movement. More

and more he was coming to think of art as a weapon in the social struggle, and here were

young people who shared his point of view and understood instantly what he said.

He had traveled to many far places, while they knew only Berlin and its suburbs and the

countryside where they sometimes had walking trips; yet they had managed to get the same

meaning out of life. More and more the modern world was becoming one; mass production was

standardizing material things, while the class struggle was shaping the minds and souls of workers

and masters. Lanny had watched Fascism spread from Italy to Germany, changing its name

and the color of its shirts, but very little else; he heard exactly the same arguments about it

here in Berlin as in Paris, the Midi, and the Rand School of Social Science in New York.

These five young people, so much alike in their standards and desires, talked out of their

hearts in a way that Lanny had not had a chance to do for some time. All of them were

tormented by fears of what was coming in Europe, and groping to determine their own duty

in the presence of a rising storm of reaction. What were the causes of the dreadful paralysis

which seemed to have fallen upon the workers' movement of the world?

Trudi Schultz, artist-idealist, thought that it was a failure of moral forces. She had been

brought up in a Marxist household, but was in a state of discontent with some of the dogmas

she had formerly taken as gospel; she had observed that dialectical materialism didn't keep

people from quarreling, from being jealous, vindictive, and narrow-minded. Socialists talked

comradeship, but too often they failed in the practice of it, and Trudi had decided that more

than class consciousness was needed to weld human beings into a social unity.

Freddi Robin, who had a scholar's learning in these matters, ventured the opinion that the

identification of Social-Democracy with philosophic materialism was purely accidental, due to

the fact that both had originated in nineteenth-century Germany. There was no basic

connection between the two, and now that modern science had moved away from the old

dogmatic notion of a physical atom as the building material of all existence, it was time for the

Socialists to find themselves a philosophy which justified creative effort and moral purpose.

The eager girl student was glad to hear someone say that, in the long philosophical terms

which made it sound right to a German. She said that she had observed this error working in

everyday life. Men who preached that matter and force were the bases of life, the sole

reality, were tempted to apply this dogma in their own lives; when they got a little power

they thought about keeping it, and forgot their solidarity with the humble toilers. People had

to believe in moral force, they had to let love count in the world, they had to be willing to

make sacrifices of their own comfort, their own jobs and salaries, yes, even their lives, if need

be. It was lack of that living spirit of brotherhood and solidarity which had made it possible for

Otto Braun, Social-Democratic Premier of the Prussian state, and Karl Severing, Minister of

the Interior, to bow to the threats of monocled aristocrats, and slink off to their villas without

making the least effort to rouse the people to defend their republic and the liberties it

guaranteed them.

Lanny thought: "Here, at last, is a German who understands what freedom means!"

VI

On a Sunday, the last day of July, more than thirty-seven million citizens of the German

Republic, both men and women, went to the polls and registered their choice for deputies to

represent them in the Reichstag. As compared with the elections of two years previ ously, the

Socialists lost some six hundred thousand votes, the Communists gained as many, while the

Nazis increased their vote from six and a half million to fourteen million. They elected two

hundred and thirty deputies out of a total of six hundred and eight-outnumbering the

Socialists and Communists, even if combined, which they wouldn't. So from then on it became

impossible for anyone to govern Germany without Adolf Hitler's consent.

There began a long series of intrigues and pulling of wires behind the scenes. Johannes

would report events to Lanny, and also to Lanny's father, who had come over for a

conference with his associate and went for a short cruise on the Bessie Budd. The politicians

of the right, who had polled less than five per cent of the vote, nevertheless hung on to power,

trying to persuade Hitler to come into their cabinet, so that they might flatter him and smooth

him down as had been done with MacDonald in England. They would offer him this post and

that; they would try to win his followers away from him—and Adi would summon the

waverers to his presence and scream at them hysterically. When he couldn't get his way he

would threaten suicide, and his followers never knew whether he meant it or not.

A great event in Berlin life when the haughty old Field Marshal consented to receive the

"Bohemian corporal." Hitler was driven to the Wilhelmstrasse, with crowds cheering him on

the way. He had lunch with von Papen, the Chancellor whose post he was demanding, and

when he was escorted into the presence of Hindenburg he was so nervous that he stumbled

over a rug; he started one of his orations, just like Gladstone before Queen Victoria, and had to

be stopped by his old commander. Hindenburg told him that he would not turn over the

chancellorship to a man whose followers practiced terrorism and systematic violations of the

law; he thought the vice-chancellorship was enough for such a man. But Hitler refused it,

demanding full power. The aged Junker stormed, but the ex-corporal had been brought up on

that, and all he would reply was: "Opposition to the last ditch." Said Hindenburg: "Ich will

meine Ruhe haben!"

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 dead-lock. 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.

VII

Heinrich Jung called up, bursting with pride over the triumph of his party. He offered to tell

Lanny the inside story, and Lanny said: "But I am consorting with your enemies." The other

laughed and replied: "Then you can tell me the inside story!" He seemed to take the view that

Lanny, an American, was above the battle. Was it that a young Nazi craved the admiration of a

foreigner? Was there in his secret heart some pleasure in free discussion, the ex pression of

unbiased opinion which he did not get from his party press? Or was it that Lanny was so rich,

and looked like a figure out of a Hollywood movie?

The Jung family had been increased again. "More Junkers," said Lanny, with what seemed a

pun to him. Heinrich's salary had been increased and he had moved into a larger home. He

had invited Hugo Behr, and the three of them sat for a couple of hours sipping light beer and

settling the destiny of Germany and its neighbors. Lanny was interested to observe that there

were disagreements among Nazi intellectuals, as elsewhere; the two names of Hitler's party

covered widely different and inconsistent points of view. Heinrich was the National and Hugo

was the Socialist, and while they agreed in workingclass consciousness and the program of

socialization; whereas Heinrich, son of one of Graf Stubendorf's employees, had the mentality of

a Prussian state servant to whom Ordnung und Zucht were the breath of being.

Lanny thought there was drama in this, and that it might pay an English playwright to

come to Berlin and study what was going on. He had suggested the idea to Rick, who hadn't

thought the Nazi movement important enough; but maybe the recent vote would change his

mind! Anyhow, Lanny was interested to listen to two young zealots, setting out to make the

world over in the image of their inspired leader; it pleased him to take a mental crow bar and

insert it in the crack between their minds and make it wider and deeper. Just how deep