Twilight at the World of Tomorrow

by James Mauro

  Whether or not he included himself in that majority, there was no doubt that his views on the matter were changing drastically. Fascism, he was coming to believe, had to be stopped; even pacifists could no longer ignore Hitler. He had already begun urging the United States to abandon its firm stance on isolationism;21 now he went a step further, convinced that the only way to abolish war was the development of an international military force. He went so far as to suggest that conscientious objectors should be given special dispensation to fight the Nazis.

  These remarks earned him banishment from the pacifist circles of Henri Barbusse, head of the World Committee Against War and Fascism.

  Although he ordinarily enjoyed any free time, the three-day delay at the Waldorf made him restless, impatient, and angry. He sought comfort by playing the violin, but in his frustration he improvised ugly melodies22 to vent his feelings of betrayal.

  Finally, on March 18, he and Elsa boarded the Belgenland, where he found a crowd of approximately one hundred female admirers waiting for him. Einstein was horrified; he rushed past the throng and locked himself in his cabin, ordering the master-at-arms to guard the corridors and prevent anyone from disturbing his privacy. He refused to come out until someone informed him that the ladies-in-wait represented the Women’s Peace Society. Reluctantly, he brushed down his windswept hair and agreed to make a few statements to the gathering—one of which was astounding in light of the devastation that would be attributed to that great mind of his.

  “A conflict between23 the United States and Japan should not be thought of seriously,” he said presciently. “I doubt very much whether it really is.”

  With that he left the group and locked himself in again, this time in his bedroom, and refused to appear until the ship had sailed. Then he climbed back up to the deck and stood at the rail, waving at the crowd of admirers who cheered him and, looking up, at the skyline of Manhattan as it drifted slowly from view. He remained there, his smile gently collapsing into a frown of thought, waving as though in a halfhearted salute at the country to which he knew he would return, perhaps for good, after one last voyage to his beloved Europe.

  He stayed there, in silent contemplation, until the Belgenland had straightened out into the Hudson River and headed for the Atlantic.

  The question of what was to become of his homes and property began to be answered after only two days at sea. On March 20, members of the Nazi “brownshirt” brigade raided Einstein’s summer home in Caputh under the stated pretense that the scientist had stored a quantity of arms and ammunition there. The charge was as ridiculous as what the search yielded: nothing more dangerous than a bread knife. From the radio room of the Belgenland, Einstein issued a statement:

  “The raid on the home24 of my wife and myself in Caputh by an armed crowd is but one example of the arbitrary acts of violence now taking place throughout Germany … by a raw and rabid mob of the Nazi militia.”

  His concerns about family members were eased when news came that both of Einstein’s stepdaughters had fled Germany in secret; Elsa learned of their departure only when she telephoned Margot and was informed by a weeping servant that “her mistress had fled for the frontier.”

  At the end of the month they arrived in Antwerp, welcomed by a cheering crowd shouting, “Long live Einstein!”25 His plan was to spend the summer in the seaside resort village of Le Coq sur Mer. Any hope of quiet contemplation with his assistant, Walther Mayer, quickly dissipated, however. Two days after26 raiding his country home, the Nazis seized his bank accounts, appropriating the 30,000 marks (about $9,600) “to prevent their use for treasonable purposes.” Perhaps most stinging of all, they would later confiscate his beloved sailboat, as well as a motorboat that had in better times been a gift to him from the city of Berlin.

  In response, Einstein promptly resigned from the Prussian Academy of Science, a centuries-old establishment of which he had been a member since 1914, and renounced his Prussian citizenship, effectively ending his official designation as a German national. He described the current situation as “a psychic malady of the masses” and “a mass psychosis27 which had manifested itself in Germany in so dreadful a way.”

  The academy, in turn, accused him of “participation in atrocity propaganda in America” and demanded an explanation of his anti-German statements. Einstein was aghast at the betrayal shown at the hands of his former country. The very idea that Germany could now consider him a traitor left a gaping, emotional wound in his enduring native spirit, one he hoped would be rectified in the years to come.

  “Surely there will come a time28 when decent Germans will be ashamed of the ignominious way in which I have been treated,” he wrote his friend, the German physicist Max Planck.

  From his villa on the Belgian coast, Einstein stated, “All I ask29 is a little peace and quiet.”

  The next few months would offer anything but. At first, he began speaking of the formation of an “international police force” to secure peace. Gradually, this grew into a virtual renunciation of the practice of pacifism altogether.

  “What I shall tell you30 will greatly surprise you,” he wrote to Belgian pacifist Alfred Nahon in July. “Were I a Belgian, I should not, in the present circumstances, refuse military service.”

  This was in direct conflict with his earlier assertion that he would “unconditionally refuse to do war service” regardless of the cause. The repercussions resounded worldwide. A Dutch newspaper editorial stated that Einstein “now thinks he can save European civilization by means of fire bombs, poison gas and bacteria.” The International League of Fighters for Peace were stunned, and questioned whether Einstein had in fact even made the statements.

  Einstein did what he could, assuring his critics that his views had not changed but the situation in Europe had. “It is beyond me31 why the entire civilized world has failed to join in a unified effort to make an end to this modern barbarism,” he said in a July interview. “Can it be that the world does not see that Hitler is dragging us into war?”

  That no one else, it seemed, was taking the Führer seriously was completely baffling to him. Lord Arthur Ponsonby, a former member of Parliament and one of England’s foremost pacifists, wrote to him in August and affirmed his belief that “Hitler’s methods may be insane32 and criminal, but I am firmly convinced he is not such a fool as to think he could gain anything for Germany by waging war against another country.”

  Einstein’s response was incredulous. “Can you possibly be unaware33 of the fact that Germany is feverishly rearming and that the whole population is being indoctrinated with nationalism and drilled for war?” he wrote back. “What protection, other than organized power, would you suggest?”

  To avoid the firestorms of protest, Einstein agreed to a number of obligations in order to keep busy. He accepted a chair at the Sorbonne in Paris and gave a lecture at the University of Madrid. Wherever he went, whichever country he visited, he listed his address as34 “ohne” (“without”) in the official guestbooks.

  His desire to live as freely as the gulls was now an unfortunate reality.

  One happy coincidence of his stay in Belgium was the opportunity to visit with his good friend and fellow German, Queen Elisabeth of Belgium. The papers had a field day with it, reporting that both he and Elsa had ignored the official welcoming party and had instead trudged to the royal home on foot, carrying their own luggage.* But when word quickly came that the Fehme, a Nazi organization, had sent a team of assassins to kill him, Einstein was forced to endure the company of twenty-four-hour bodyguards for the remainder of his stay. Again, he decided to see the humor in it. When he read that a $5,000 bounty had been placed on his head, Einstein remained unfazed.

  “I didn’t know my head was worth so much,” he said.†

  Elsa was not quite as nonplussed. She especially worried since her husband refused to give up his morning walks in the Belgian countryside. He pooh-poohed her concerns. “When a bandit35 is going to commit a crime,” he told her, �
�he keeps it secret.”

  Every morning he went on his way, effortlessly pondering whatever problem attacked his brain without a thought of Nazi bullets. Nevertheless, the situation grew dangerous enough for him and Elsa to leave Belgium and seclude themselves in a log cabin in Roughton Heath, in England’s low-lying county of Norfolk, the exact location of which was kept secret. Yet despite the fact that police were under orders to shoot any unauthorized persons, Einstein insisted on tempting fate by driving around the countryside, hatless, in an open car and walking for hours on end, “talking to the goats.”

  On the eve of his return to the United States in the fall of 1933, Einstein gave a speech in front of an audience of ten thousand at the Royal Albert Hall in London. It was his first major public appearance in months, and the atmosphere was filled with tension. That afternoon, Scotland Yard had received a message stating, “Be on your guard36—there’s a plot to assassinate Einstein tonight.”

  He was closely watched by police and plainclothesmen, but to the audience and news reporters he looked as nonplussed and casual as ever, speaking “as if he were lecturing in a classroom.” In a statement that would echo throughout the world, he issued a challenge to his listeners:

  “We must realize37 how much we owe to that freedom which our forefathers won through bitter struggle. Without this freedom there would be no … decent homes for the mass of people, no railways or radios, no protection against epidemics, no low-priced books, no culture, no general enjoyment of the arts. There would be no machines to relieve people of the drudgery required to produce the necessities of life….

  “One can only hope that the present crisis will lead to a better world.”

  In a few short years, Grover Whalen would echo those sentiments in laying out the basic premise for his World of Tomorrow.

  “I do not know where my future lies,” Einstein told a London reporter. “I am European by instinct38 and inclination. I shall want to return here.”

  A few days later, Einstein, along with Elsa and Walther Mayer, boarded yet another aptly named ship, the Westernland, and set sail from England for New York. For most of the journey he remained in his cabin,39 often leaving the dining room mid-meal after complaining of illness. No doubt he was sick in his heart. At one of his rare appearances on deck, the scientist and celebrity was asked if he would submit to even a single question. Dejectedly, he shook his head no. Not even that.

  On October 17, 1933, the Einsteins arrived in America and immediately released a public statement that from then on, he would give no further interviews. His one desire, he stated, was to be left alone.

  “He and Mrs. Einstein40 have been upset for several months over recent events,” said Abraham Flexner.

  Wearing a black, broad-brimmed hat and a dark suit and overcoat, Einstein arrived by special tugboat at the Battery. Reporters crowded around, taking pictures and shouting questions at them. Elsa, shaken, appealed for them to leave their little party in peace. Einstein held up his violin case to shield his face from their cameras. Without a word, they hurried into a waiting limousine and sped off for Princeton.

  It would be Einstein’s home for the rest of his life. Elsa would enjoy one last trip to Europe to visit her ailing daughter in France, but Einstein, despite his instincts and inclinations, would never return.

  * As with many of Einstein’s quotes, there exist several variations of this statement, as American newspapers translated his German using different sources. “Never before has any attempt of mine at an approach to the beautiful sex met with such an energetic rebuff; even should perchance such have ever been the case, then certainly, not by so many all at once,” wrote The New York Times, which must have consulted a high school textbook for that one. The above seems less literal, certainly more in agreement with Einstein’s conversational intention, and undoubtedly funnier.

  * Elsa, apparently, was no stranger to peculiarity herself. The New Yorker once reported that at a dinner in Cleveland, “Mrs. Einstein, shrugging her shoulders at what appeared to be an elegant American eccentricity, ate a bouquet of orchids which she found on what seemed to be a salad plate.”

  † Again, the quote here has been translated into various incarnations, as was the actual size of the bounty. Some reports put it at 20,000 German marks (around $6,800). The London Daily Herald reduced it to England’s more familiar currency of 1,000 pounds (about $4,550). In the New York Times account of his statement, Einstein is quoted as saying, “I didn’t know my head was worth 20,000 marks.” Clearly he thought the higher sum was more suitable.

  Detective Joseph J. Lynch

  4

  THE GARDENIA OF THE LAW

  Joe Lynch had never wanted to be a cop in the first place. For one thing, he had grown up in a municipal family and had spent countless evening hours listening to the elder Lynch men grumbling about their jobs as New York City patrolmen. His father, John J. Lynch, had entered the force at a time when most New Yorkers hated cops or, at the very least, distrusted them intensely.

  In 1915, a police lieutenant named Charles Becker was sent to the electric chair for his supposed role in the murder of Herman “Beansy” Rosenthal, a Manhattan gangster. Although Becker had gone to his death proclaiming his innocence, he did admit to accepting large amounts of graft from Rosenthal and a number of other criminals throughout his career. The tabloid newspapers denounced not only Becker, but also the entire police department and the city government as being under the control of Tammany Hall and its various rackets. They weren’t entirely wrong.1

  In the early stages of his career, a pall hung around John Lynch and the force in general. What had once been a noble and respected career now infected him with the suspicion that he, too, must be corrupt. Never mind that the Lynches lived in a modest home in the Bronx or that the family’s only known luxury was the quality of their children’s education. John Lynch struggled to instill in his sons the belief that public service still stood for something.

  Although his eldest boy, John junior, eagerly followed in his father’s footsteps and became a police officer, Joe would have none of it. In fact, his brother’s induction was marred by an eerie replay of the scandal that had plagued his father. In 1928, another notorious gangster, a gambler named Arnold Rothstein who was famous for having supposedly fixed the 1919 World Series, had been shot in a Manhattan hotel and died the next day. And while this time the murder wasn’t ascribed to any particular officer, once again allegations of graft and corruption erupted after weeks went by without an arrest.

  Up for reelection2 the following year and therefore desperate to turn attention away from Rothstein’s murder, Mayor Jimmy Walker fired his police commissioner, Joseph Warren, and turned to a bombastic public relations genius who he hoped could take the pressure off. His name was Grover Whalen, and his chief qualification for the job was that Walker knew if anyone’s name made the headlines in the coming weeks, it would be Whalen’s and not Rothstein’s or any one of his suspected killers.

  By 1928, Grover had earned the title of New York City’s “official greeter,” succeeding Rodman Wanamaker, who had become gravely ill. After resigning from the Hylan administration, Whalen had organized a spectacular series of parades and receptions for visiting dignitaries and returning heroes, including Admiral Richard Byrd, Queen Marie of Romania, and, most famously, Charles Lindbergh. Nevertheless, despite his lack of experience in any form of law enforcement, Whalen was considered the best man for the job. In December of that year, Walker paid a visit to his office at Wanamaker’s and offered it to him.

  “Grover,” the mayor said, “I’ve got to make a change3 of police commissioners. This Rothstein murder has raised hell. I’m afraid Joe Warren must go. Police morale is shot to pieces and a change has to be made—and soon! So, Grover, I’m here this afternoon to ask you to be the ‘top cop.’”

  John Lynch Jr. and Sr. would agree with that statement, but when they heard the name of his replacement, they could hardly believe their ears. To add insult to
injury, now they had a window dresser as boss. They weren’t alone in their skepticism.

  “It takes more than a silk hat and a pair of spats to make an efficient police commissioner in the city of New York,” noted then congressman Fiorello La Guardia.

  Whalen took office4 in late December, just in time for his supposed “investigation” into Rothstein’s murder to have a positive effect on Walker’s bid for reelection. Well-known as a dandy, Whalen had taken the oath of office in semiformal morning clothes; and displaying one of his more fastidious quirks, he installed his own personal chair in the barbershop at headquarters, “the best on the market,5 in which he was shaved every morning and in which nobody else was ever shaved at all.”

  On his first morning as commissioner, Whalen walked into his office carrying an antique inkwell and a parchment-shaded lamp—fancy-pants carryovers from his decorative suite at Wanamaker’s. Scowling at the room’s appearance, he fussily ordered that a brass cuspidor be removed: “I’ll have no use for that;6 take it out!” A bronze statue of Napoleon, another of his trademarks, was delivered shortly thereafter, along with the ornate mahogany desk upon which it stood. Within two hours, Whalen found the written resignations of seven deputy police commissioners piled neatly next to Napoleon.

  By the end of his third day in office, magistrate David Hirshfield summed up the popular opinion of him: “The city is in for7 a reign of terror by a snobbish, self-centered, would-be society Police Commissioner in high hat, long-tail coat, striped trousers and light spats. God help the plain people of our city.”

  A newspaper cartoon8 pictured Whalen greeting a well-dressed criminal with familiar pomp and circumstance at the entrance to City Hall. In the public’s eye, it seemed, he had made the entire department a joke. No one in John Lynch’s family thought it was funny.