‘You must understand’, he explained, ‘for a dozen years the German people heard almost no truth about the Western world. This generation which I am teaching has never known what it is to live in a free society, where all facts are reported and all arguments are invited. They hardly know what to make of the idea of hearing both sides; it contradicts the basic principle of their training—to believe that what they are told must be true. The Americans and British have the better case, but the Reds are more expert in presenting theirs. They are tireless propagandists; they have nothing else to do but to spread the faith. The Americans can’t even seem to get started’.
Lanny explained, ‘It is against our traditions for the government to make propaganda or even to spread news. We take it for granted that that is a job for private interests’.
‘They will have to change their ideas if they hope to save East Germany from being dyed completely red. They seem to be making a start now; they have a little radio which they call D.I.A.S—Drahtfunk im amerikanischen Sektor, I believe it is’.
‘I have been told about it’, Lanny said. ‘It is a wired-radio system, using telephone lines. But they now have a thousand-watt transmitter mounted on an army truck; it will be RIAS, R for Rundfunk’.
‘It is beamed toward East Germany’, said Emil, ‘but we get it here, and people listen to it with an interest you can hardly imagine. They cannot afford books or even magazines from America, but any little radio set will do, and they get facts. That is what they want above anything else in the world, facts about what is going on’.
They talked a while about Kurt and what were Lanny’s chances with him. Emil said that his brother had a choice to make, a veritable Herculean choice: whether to join the free world or to become a Communist. ‘You know the old-time saying, “Extremes meet.” It was never more true than at present. Kurt hates the British and the Americans; the Reds have the same hate, and so they are drawn together. I see it here among my young people’.
‘But Kurt is a mature man, Emil. Surely he cannot help seeing that the Reds do not act according to their propaganda’.
‘Neither do the Christians, many of them, yet they make converts. Kurt’s home is in Poland, and he can hardly live there and go on hating the Communists. On the other hand, if he yields to their wiles, or pretends to, he can no doubt have honour and fame again. They will invite him to Moscow and welcome him as a distinguished artist. His name would have propaganda value among the Germans. I feel uneasy when I pick up a newspaper, fearing that I may find such an item of news’.
Lanny promised to do his best to avert that calamity, and to let the elder brother know what success he had. He persuaded Emil to accept the rest of his supply of food, and in the morning he motored back to Berlin, to report and prepare for the second and more difficult stage of his enterprise.
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About the Author
Upton Sinclair (1878–1968) was a Pulitzer Prize–winning author, activist, and politician whose novel The Jungle (1906) led to the passage of the Federal Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act. Born into an impoverished family in Baltimore, Maryland, Sinclair entered City College of New York five days before his fourteenth birthday. He wrote dime novels and articles for pulp magazines to pay for his tuition, and continued his writing career as a graduate student at Columbia University. To research The Jungle, he spent seven weeks working undercover in Chicago’s meatpacking plants. The book received great critical and commercial success, and Sinclair used the proceeds to start a utopian community in New Jersey. In 1915, he moved to California, where he founded the state’s ACLU chapter and became an influential political figure, running for governor as the Democratic nominee in 1934. Sinclair wrote close to one hundred books during his lifetime, including Oil! (1927), the inspiration for the 2007 movie There Will Be Blood; Boston (1928), a documentary novel revolving around the Sacco and Vanzetti case; The Brass Check, a muckraking exposé of American journalism, and the eleven novels in Pulitzer Prize–winning Lanny Budd series.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1944 by Upton Sinclair
Cover design by Kat JK Lee
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2649-9
This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Presidential Agent (The Lanny Budd Novels) Page 92
