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mates."

"And what is the result? You have a mongrel race, where every vile and debasing influence

operates freely, and every form of degradation, physical, intellectual, and moral, flourishes

unhindered. Travel that highway into hell, if you please, but be sure that we Germans are going

to preserve our purity of blood, and we are not going to let ourselves be seduced by tricky words

about freedom and toleration and humanitarianism and brotherly love and the rest. No Jew-

monster is a brother of mine, and if I find one of them attempting to cohabit with an Aryan

woman I will crush his skull, even as our Stormtrooper song demands: 'Crush the skulls of the

Jewish pack!' Pardon me if I speak plainly, but that has been my life's habit, it is the duty which

I have been sent to perform in this world. Have you read Mein Kampf?"

"Yes, Herr Reichskanzler."

"You know what I have taught in it: 'The Jew is the great instigator of the destruction of

Germany.' They are, as I have called them, 'true devils, with the brain of a monster and not that

of a man.' They are the veritable Untermenschen. There is a textbook of Hermann Gauch,

called Neue Grundlage der Rassenforschung, which is now standard in our schools and

universities, and which tells with scientific authority the truths about this odious race. Our

eminent scientist classifies the mammals into two groups, first the Aryans, and second, non-

Aryans, including the rest of the animal kingdom.

You have seen that book, by chance?"

"I have heard it discussed, Herr Reichskanzler."

"You do not accept its authority?"

"I am not a scientist, and my acceptance or rejection would carry no weight. I have heard the

point raised that Jews must be human beings because they can mate with Aryans and Nordics,

but not with non-human animals."

"Dr. Gauch says it has by no means been proved that Jews cannot mate with apes and other

simian creatures. I suggest this as an important contribution which German science can make

—to mate both male and female Jews with apes, and so demonstrate to the world the facts

which we National Socialists have been proclaiming for so many years."

VIII

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 Ungluck!

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 Bürgerbraukeller 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."

The three quickly said their adieus; and when they were outside, Lanny, in his role of secret

agent, remarked: "No one can wonder that he stirs his audiences."

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!"

IX

Lanny had to play out the game according to the rules. He must not let either of these friends

discover that he had brought them here solely in the hope of persuading Hitler to release a

Jewish prisoner. It was for friendship, for sociability, for music and art. Lanny and Kurt must

play piano duets as in the old days. Zoltan must take them through the two Pinakotheks and

give them the benefit of his art knowledge. Beauty and Irma must put on their best togs and

accompany them to the Hof-und-National Theater for Die Meistersinger, and to the Prinz-

Regenten Theater for Goethe's Egmont. There must be a dinner at which distinguished

personalities in the musical world were invited to meet a leading Komponist. After a symphony

concert in the Tonhalle, Lanny listened to Kurt's highly technical comments on the

conductor and the sounds produced. The tone was hard, cold, and brilliant; it lacked "body,"

by which Kurt explained that he meant a just proportion of low and middle to high registers.

He accused the too-ardent Kapellmeister of exaggerating his nuances, of expanding and

contracting his volume unduly, fussing over his orchestra like an old hen with a too-large

brood of chicks—certainly an undignified procedure, and by no means suitable to the rendition

of Beethoven's Eroica.

But to Lanny it seemed more important to try to understand what the composer of that noble

symphony was trying to tell him than to worry about details of somebody's rendition. The last

time Lanny had heard this work had been with the Robin family in Berlin, and he recalled

Freddi's gentle raptures. Freddi wasn't one of those musicians who have heard so much music

that they have got tired of it, and can think about nothing but technicalities and personalities and

other extraneous matters. Freddi loved Beethoven as if he had been the composer's son; but

now father and son had been torn apart. Freddi wasn't fit to play Beethoven, by Heinrich's

decree, because he was a Jew; and certainly he wasn't having any chance to hear Beethoven in

Dachau. Lanny could think of little else, and the symphony became an appeal to the great

master for a verdict against those who were usurping his influence and his name.

In Beethoven's works there is generally a forceful theme that tramples and thunders, and a

gentle theme that lilts and pleads. You may take it as pleading for mercy and love against the

cruelties and oppressions of the world. You may take it that the grim, dominating theme

represents these cruelties, or perhaps it represents that which rises in your own soul to oppose

them. Anyhow, to Lanny the opening melody of the Eroica became the "Freddi theme," and

Beethoven was defending it against the hateful Nazis. The great democrat of old Vienna came

into the Tonhalle of Munich and laid his hand on Lanny's burning forehead, and told him

that he was right, and that he and his Jewish friend were free to march with Beethoven on

the battlefields of the soul and to dance with him on the happy meadows.

Was it conceivable that Beethoven would have failed to despise the Nazis, and to defy them?

He had dedicated his symphony to Napoleon because he believed that Napoleon represented the

liberating forces of the French revolution, and he had torn up the title page of his score when

he learned that Napoleon had got himself crowned Emperor of France. He had adopted

Schiller's Hymn to Joy, sending a kiss to the whole world and proclaiming that all men

became brothers where the gentle wing of joy came to rest. Very certainly he had not meant

to exclude the Jews from the human race, and would have spurned those who built their

movement out of hate.

That was what this urgent music was about; that was what gave it drive and intensity. The

soul of Beethoven was defending itself, it was defending all things German from those who

would defile them. The "Freddi theme" pleaded, it stormed and raged, heaving itself in mighty

efforts as the kettledrums thundered. The young idealist had told his friends that he wasn't

sure if he had within him the moral strength to withstand his foes; but here in this symphony

he was finding it; here he would prevail, and rejoice-but then would come the rushing hordes

and bowl him over and trample him. When the first movement came to its tremendous climax

Lanny's hands were tightly clenched and perspiration stood on his forehead.

The poignant, majestic march was Beethoven walking through the Nazi concentration camps

—as Lanny had walked so many times in imagination. It was the grief and suffering of fifty or a

hundred thousand of the finest and best-trained minds of Germany. It was Beethoven mourning

with them, telling them that the blackest tragedy can be turned to beauty by the infinite powers

of the soul. The finale of the symphony was a victory—but that was a long way off, and Lanny

couldn't imagine how it would come; he could only cling to the hand of the great master like a