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about anything else."

"He was a very strict teetotaler, but his face was as red as a turkey- cock's wattles," added

Catledge.

"Hitler doesn't drink, either," said Lanny; but the others didn't appear to attach any

importance to that.

They went on to point out to Rick that the French imperialists were arrogant, and their

diplomats had made a lot of trouble in Syria, Iraq, and other places. French bankers had a

great store of gold, and made use of it in ways inconvenient to their rivals. Wickthorpe didn't

say that Hitler would serve to keep the French occupied, but his arguments made plain the

general idea that you couldn't entrust any one set of foreigners with too much power. It was

even possible to guess that he wasn't too heartbroken over what had happened in Wall Street

during the past four years; because a large part of Britain's prosperity depended upon her

service as clearinghouse for international transactions, and it had been highly embarrassing to

have the dollar prove more stable than the pound.

Wickthorpe and his cousin had it comfortably figured out what to be Hitler's role in world

affairs. Assuming that he was able to continue in power, he was going to fight Russia. He was

the logical one to do this, because of his geographical position; for Britain this factor made it

almost impossible. Lanny wanted to ask: "Why does anybody have to fight Russia?"—but he was

afraid that would be an improper question.

Here sat this tall young lord, smooth-skinned, pink-cheeked, with his fair hair and little toy

mustache; perfectly groomed, perfectly at ease; one couldn't say perfectly educated, for there

were many important things about which he knew nothing—science, for example, and the

economics of reality as opposed to those of classical theory. He knew ancient Greek and

Roman civilization, and Hebrew theology made over by the Church of England; he had recent

world affairs at his fingertips. He possessed perfect poise, charm of manner, and skill in keeping to

himself those thoughts which particular persons had no right to share. He was sure that he

was a gentleman and a Christian, yet he took it for granted that it was his duty to labor and

plan to bring about one of the most cruel and bloody of wars.

"You know, you might do quite a spot of trade with the Soviet Union," suggested Lanny,

mildly. "They have the raw materials and you have the machines."

"Yes, Budd, but one can't think merely about business; there are moral factors."

"But might not the Reds be toned down and acquire a sense of responsibility, just as well as

the Nazis?"

"We can't trust the blighters."

"I'm told that they meet their bills regularly. The Chase National gets along with them quite

well."

"I don't mean financially, I mean politically. They would start breaking into the Balkans, or

India, or China; their agents are trying to stir up revolution all the time."

Lanny persisted. "Have you thought of the possibility that if you won't trade with them, the

Nazis may? Their economies supplement each other."

"But their ideologies are at opposite poles!"

"They seem to be; but you yourself say how ideologies change when men get power. 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?'"

"I admit that would be a pretty bad day," said young Lord Wickthorpe. He said it with a

smile, not taking it seriously. When Rick pinned him down to it, he gave yet another reason

why it was impossible to consider a large-scale deal with the Soviet Union—the effect it would

have upon politics at home. "It would set up the Reds, and it might bring labor back into

power."

Said Rick to Lanny, when they were alone: "Class is more than country!"

VIII

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.

The Cabinet was having one of its customary rows over the question, so Johannes explained.

The business magnates who had financed Hitler's rise were coming down on him; how could

they pay taxes, how could the government be financed, if rowdies were to-be turned loose to

wreck business both at home and abroad? The result of this tug-of-war was a curious and

rather comical compromise; the boycott which the party fanatics had announced to begin on

the first day of April was to be carried on, but it was- to continue for only one business day of

eight hours; then Germany would wait for three days, to see if there was a proper response

from the foreign agents and Jewish vampires who had been so shamelessly lying about the

Fatherland. If they showed repentance and abandoned their insolent threats, then Germany

would in turn permit the Jewish businesses to continue in peace; otherwise they would be

sternly punished, perhaps exterminated, and the blame would rest upon the Jewish vampires

abroad.

This boycott was the idea of Dr. Goebbels—the Führer himself being busy with the

reorganizing of the various state governments. On the evening before the event the crippled

little dwarf with the huge wide mouth spoke to his party comrades at a meeting in a hall of the

West End, and all over Germany the Stormtroopers listened over the radio. The orator called

for a demonstration of "iron discipline"; there must be no violence, but all Jewish

establishments would be picketed, and no German man or woman would enter such a place.

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.

IX

There were curious outgrowths of this anti-Semitic frenzy. An "Association of German

National Jews" was formed, and issued a manifesto saying that the Jews were being fairly

treated and there was no truth in the stories of atrocities; some leading Jews signed this, and

the name of Johannes Robin was among them. Perhaps he really believed it, who could say?

He had to read German newspapers, like everybody else; those foreign papers which reported

the atrocities were banned. Perhaps he considered that the outside boycotts would really do

more harm than good, and that the six hundred thousand native Jews in the Fatherland were

not in position to offer resistance to a hundred times as many Germans. The Jews had

survived through the centuries by bending like the willow instead of standing like the oak.

Johannes didn't mention the subject in his letters, either signed or unsigned. Was he a little

ashamed of what he did?

It seemed to an American that a man could hardly be happy living under such conditions.

Lanny wrote a carefully guarded letter to the effect that Hansi was giving important concerts

and Irma various social events; they would be delighted to have the family present. Johannes

replied that some business matters kept him from leaving just now; he bade them not to worry

about the new decrees forbidding anyone to leave Germany without special passports, for he

could get them for himself and family whenever he wished. He added that Germany was their

home and they all loved the German people. That was the right sort of letter for a Jew, and

maybe the statements were true, with a few qualifications.

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