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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
either their capacity or their motives. She watched them, and announced her decision to her
too credulous husband: "They are jealous, and want what we've got, and if we gave it to them
they wouldn't even say thank you!"
"Maybe so," replied the husband, who had suffered not a few disillusionments himself. "It's no
use expecting human beings to be better than they are. Some are true idealists, like Hansi and
Freddi."
"Yes, but they work; they would succeed in any world. But those politicians, and intellectuals
who want to be politicians but don't know how — Lanny laughed; he saw that she was
beginning to use her own head. "What you have to do," he cautioned, "is to consider
principles and not individuals. We want a system that will give every body a chance at honest
and constructive labor, and then, see that nobody lives without working."
V
The daughter of J. Paramount Barnes was forced to admit that there was something wrong,
because her dividends were beginning to fall off. In the spring she had been hearing about the
little bull market, which had sounded fine; but during the summer and fall had come a series
of slumps, no less than four, one after another. Nobody understood these events, nobody could
predict them. You would hear people say: "The bottom has been reached now; things are
bound to take a turn." They would bet their money on it— and then, next day or next week,
stocks would be tumbling and everybody terrified.
There came a letter from Irma's uncle Joseph, one of the trustees who managed her estate. He
warned her about what was happening, and explained matters as well as he could; during the past
year her blue-chip stocks had lost another thirty points, below the lowest mark of the great
panic when she had been in New York. It appeared to be a vicious circle: the slump caused fear,
and fear caused another slump. The elections in Germany had had a bad reaction in Wall
Street; everybody decided there wouldn't be any more reparations payments. Mr. Joseph
Barnes added that there hadn't really been any for a long time, and perhaps never had been,
since the Germans first borrowed in Wall Street whatever they wished to pay. Irma didn't
understand this very well, but gave the letter to Lanny, who explained it to her—of course
from his Pink point of view.
One thing Uncle Joseph made plain: Irma must be careful how she spent money! Her answer
was obvious: she had been living on the Robins for half a year, and when she went back to
Bienvenu they would resume that ridiculously simple life. You just couldn't spend money
when you lived in a small villa; you had no place to put things, and no way to entertain on a
large scale. Lanny and his mother had lived on thirteen hundred dollars a month, whereas
Irma had been accustomed to spend fifty times that. So she had no trouble in assuring her
conscientious uncle that she would give heed to his advice. Her mother had decided not to come
to Europe that winter; she was busy cutting down the expenses of the Long Island estate. Lanny
read the letter and experienced the normal feelings of a man who learns that his mother-in-
law is not coming to visit him.
VI
Heinrich Jung called Lanny on the telephone. "Would you like to meet the Führer?" he
inquired.
"Oh, my gosh!" exclaimed Lanny, taken aback. "He wouldn't be interested in me."
"He says he would."
"What did you tell him about me?"
"I said that you were an old friend, and the patron of Kurt Meissner."
Lanny thought for a moment. "Did you tell him that I don't agree with his ideas?"
"Of course. Do you suppose he's only interested in meeting people who agree with him?"
Lanny had supposed something of the sort, but he was too polite to answer directly. Instead
he asked: "Did you say that I might become a convert?"
"I said it might be worth while to try."
"But really, Heinrich, it isn't." "You might take a chance, if he's willing."
Lanny laughed. "Of course he's an interesting man, and I'll enjoy meeting him."
"All right, come ahead."
"You're sure it won't injure your standing?"
"My standing? I went three times to visit him while he was a prisoner in the Landsberg
fortress, and he is a man who never forgets a friend."
"All right, then, when shall we go?"
"The sooner the better. He's in Berlin now, but he jumps about a lot."
"You set the time."
"Are you free this afternoon?"
"I can get free."
Heinrich called again, saying that the appointment was for four o'clock, and he would be
waiting for Lanny in front of the headquarters at three-thirty. When he was in the car and had
given the address, he began, with some signs of hesitation: "You know, American manners are not
quite the same as German. The Führer, of course, understands that you are an American—"
"I hope he won't expect me to say 'Heil Hitler!"
"Oh, no, of course not. You will shake hands with him."
"Shall I address him as 'Er'?" Lanny had read a recent announcement of the introduction of this
custom, previously reserved for royalty. It meant speaking in the third person.
"That will not be expected of a foreigner. But it is better if one doesn't contradict him. You
know that he is under heavy pressure these days—"
"I understand." From many sources Lanny had heard that Adi was a highly excitable person;
some even called him psychopathic.
"I don't mean that you have to agree with him," the other hastened to add. "It's all right if you
just listen. He is very kind about explaining his ideas to people."
"Sure thing." Lanny kept a perfectly straight face. "I have read Mein Kampf, and this will be a
sort of postscript. Five years have passed, and a lot has happened."
"Isn't it marvelous how much has come true!" exclaimed the faithful young "Aryan."
VII
The Partei- und oberster S.A. Führer, Vorsitzender der N.S.D.A.P., lived in one of those
elegant apartment houses having a uniformed doorkeeper. The Führer was a vegetarian, and
an abstainer from alcohol and tobacco, but not an ascetic as to interior decoration; on the
contrary, he thought himself an artist and enjoyed fixing up his surroundings. With the money
of Fritz Thyssen and other magnates he had bought a palace in Munich and made it over into
a showplace, the Nazi Braune Haus; also for the apartment in Berlin he had got modernistic
furniture of the utmost elegance. He lived with a married couple to take care of him, South
Germans and friends of his earlier days. They had two children, and Adi was playing some
sort of parlor game with them when the visitors were brought in. He kept the little ones for a
while, talking to them and about them part of the time; his fondness for children was his
better side, and Lanny would have been pleased if he had not had to see any other.
The Führer wore a plain business suit, and presented the aspect of a simple, unassuming
person. He shook hands with his Franco-American guest, patted Heinrich on the back, and
called for fruit juice and cookies for all of them. He asked Lanny about his boyhood on the
Riviera, and the children listened with open eyes to stories about hauling the seine and bringing
in cuttlefish and small sharks; about digging in one's garden and finding ancient Roman coins;
about the "little Septentrion child" who had danced and pleased in the arena of Antibes a
couple of thousand years ago. Adi Schicklgruber's own childhood had been unhappy and he
didn't talk about it.
Presently he asked where Lanny had met Kurt Meissner, and the visitor told about the Dalcroze
school at Hellerau. His host took this as a manifestation of German culture, and Lanny forbore
to mention that Jaques-Dalcroze was a Swiss of French descent. It was true that the school
had been built and endowed by a German patron. Said Hitler: "That kind of thing will be the
glory of our National Socialist administration; there will be such an outburst of artistic and
musical genius as will astound the world." Lanny noted that in all the conversation he took it
for granted that the N.S.D.A.P. would soon be in control of Germany; he never said "if," he said
"when"—and this was one of the subjects on which the visitor was surely not going to contradict
him.
They talked about Kurt and his music, which was pure "Aryan," so the Führer declared;
nothing meretricious, no corrupt foreign influences; life in France for so many years had
apparently not affected the composer in the slightest. Lanny explained that Kurt had kept
almost entirely to himself, and had seldom gone out unless one dragged him. He told about his life
at Bienvenu, and the Führer agreed that it was the ideal way for an artist. "It is the sort of life I
would have chosen; but, alas, I was born under a different star." Lanny had heard that he
believed in astrology, and hoped he wouldn't get onto that subject.
VIII
What the Führer of all the Nazis planned was for this elegant and extremely wealthy young
foreigner to go out to the world as a convert to the National Socialist ideas. To that end he laid
himself out to be charming, for which he had no small endowment. He had evidently inquired
as to Lanny's point of view, for everything he said was subtly directed to meeting that. Lanny
was a Socialist, and Hitler, too, was a Socialist, the only true, practical kind of Socialist. Out of
the chaos of competitive capitalism a new order was about to arise; an order that would
endure, because it would be founded upon real understanding and guided by scientists. Not the
evil, degenerate Socialism of the Marxists, which repudiated all that was most precious in human
beings; not a Socialism poisoned with the delusion of internationalism, but one founded upon
recognition of the great racial qualities which alone made such a task conceivable.
Patiently and kindly the Führer explained that his ideas of race were not German in the
narrow sense. Lanny, too, was an "Aryan," and so were the cultured classes in America; theirs
was a truly "Aryan" civilization, and so was the British. "I want nothing in the world so much
as understanding and peace between my country and Britain, and I think there has been no
tragedy in modern times so great as the war they fought. Why can we not understand one
another and get together in friendship for our common task? The world is big enough, and it is
full of mongrel tribes whom we dare not permit to gain power, because they are incapable of
making any intelligent use of it."
Hitler talked for a while about these mongrels. He felt quite safe in telling a young Franco-
American what he thought about the Japanese, a sort of hairless yellow monkeys. Then he came
to the Russians, who were by nature lazy, incompetent, and bloodthirsty, and had fallen into
the hands of gutter-rats and degenerates. He talked about the French, and was careful of what
