Dragon's Teeth

by Sinclair, Upton;

  How long this would have continued no one could say. The housekeeper opened the door and said: “Verzeihung, mein Führer. Herr Strasser.” Behind her came, without delay, a large man in S.A. uniform. He had large, rather coarse features, a somewhat bulbous nose, a drooping mouth with deep lines at the sides. According to the practice with which Lanny was familiar he should have halted in the doorway, clicked his heels, given the Nazi salute, and said: “Heil Hitler!” Instead he came forward, remarking in a nonchalant way: “Grüss Gott, Adolf.” This meant that he was an old friend, and also that he came from Bavaria.

  The visitors were greatly startled by the Führer’s response, delivered with the force of a blow: “You have not been conducting yourself as a friend, and therefore you have not been summoned as a friend!” The speaker rose to his feet and, pointing an accusing finger at the new arrival, went on: “Learn once for all, I have had enough of your insubordination! You continue at your peril!” It set the big man back on his heels, and his large mouth dropped open.

  Would the Führer of the Nazis have attacked his subordinate in that abrupt and violent way if he had not already got steamed up? Impossible to say; but the astonishment and dismay of Herr Strasser were apparent. He opened his mouth as if to ask what was the matter, but then he closed it again, for he got no chance. Hitler was launched upon a tirade; he rushed at the man—not to strike him, but to thrust the accusing finger within a couple of inches of the big nose and shriek:

  “Your intrigues are known! Your insolence is resented! Your public utterances are incitements to treason, and if you do not mend your ways you will be driven out. Go and join your brother’s Schwarze Front, and the other disguised Communists and scoundrels! I—I, Adolf Hitler, am the Führer of the N.S.D.A.P., and it is for me to determine policies. I will not have opposition, I will not have argument, I will have obedience. We are in the midst of a war, and I demand loyalty, I demand discipline. Zucht! Zucht! Zucht!” It is one of those many German words which require a clearing of the throat, and the unfortunate Strasser flinched as if from a rain of small particles of moisture.

  “Adolf, who has been telling you stories about me?” He forced the sentence in while the Führer caught his breath.

  “I make it my business to know what is going on in my movement. Do you imagine that you can go about expressing contempt for my policies without word of it coming to me?”

  “Somebody has been lying, Adolf. I have said only what I have said to you: that now is the time for action, and that our foes desire nothing but delay, so that they can weaken us by their intrigues—”

  “They weaken us because of arrogance and self-will in my own party officials; because these presumptuous ones dare to set themselves up as authorities and thinkers. I think for the National Socialists, I—and I have ordered you to hold your tongue—Maul halten—and obey my orders, follow my policies and not your own stupid notions. Your brother has turned himself into a criminal and an outlaw because of that same arrogance—”

  “Leave Otto out of it, Adolf. You know that I have broken with him. I do not see him and have no dealings with him.”

  “Ich geb’ ’n Dreck d’rum!” cried Adolf; he spoke that kind of German. Talking to a Bavarian, he added: “Das ist mir Sau-wurscht!”

  He rushed on: “You stay in the party and carry on Otto’s agitation in favor of discarded policies. I am the captain of this ship, and it is not for the crew to tell me what to do, but to do what I tell them. Once more, I demand unity in the face of our foes. Understand me, I command it! I speak as your Führer!”

  Lanny thought he had never seen a man so beside himself with excitement. Adolf Hitler’s face had become purple, he danced about as he talked, and every word was emphasized as with a hammer blow of his finger. Lanny thought the two men would surely fight; but no, presently he saw that the other was going to take it. Perhaps he had seen the same thing happen before, and had learned to deal with it. He stopped arguing, stopped trying to protest; he simply stood there and let his Führer rave, let the storm blow itself out—if it ever would blow itself out. Would the ocean ever be the same after such a hurricane?

  X

  Lanny had learned much about the internal affairs of the Nazi party from the conversation of Kurt and Heinrich. Also, during the summer he had been getting the German papers, and these had been full of a furious party conflict over the question of the old program, which Hitler had been paring down until now there was nothing left of it. Here in North Germany many of the Nazis took the “Socialist” part of their label seriously; they insisted upon talking about the communizing of department stores, the confiscation of landed estates, the ending of interest slavery, common wealth before private wealth, and so on. It had caused a regular civil war in the party earlier in the year. The two Strasser brothers, Gregor and Otto, had fought for the old program and had been beaten. Gregor had submitted, but Otto had quit the party and organized a revolutionary group of his own, which the Hitlerites called the “Black Front” and which they were fighting with bludgeons and revolvers, just as they fought the Communists. Later on, immediately before the elections, there had been another attempt at internal revolution; the rebels had seized the offices of the Berlin party paper, Der Angriff, holding it by force of arms and publishing the paper for three days. A tremendous scandal, and one which the enemies of the movement had not failed to exploit.

  So here was Gregor Strasser, Reich Organization Leader Number 1. A lieutenant in the World War, he had become an apothecary, but had given up his business in order to oppose the Reds and then to help Adi prepare for the Beerhall Putsch. He was perhaps the most competent organizer the party had, and had come to Berlin and built the Sturmabteilung by his efforts. Hitler, distrusting him as too far to the left, had formed a new personal guard, the Schutzstaffel, or S.S. So there were two rival armies inside the Nazi party of all Germany; which was going to prevail?

  Lanny wondered, had Hitler really lost his temper or was this merely a policy? Was this the way Germans enforced obedience—the drill-sergeant technique? Apparently it was working, for the big man’s bull voice dropped low; he stood meekly and took his licking like a schoolboy ordered to let down his pants. Lanny wondered also: why did the Führer permit a foreigner to witness such a demonstration? Did he think it would impress an American? Did he love power so much that it pleased him to exhibit it in the presence of strangers? Or did he feel so secure in his mastery that he didn’t care what anybody thought of him? This last appeared to be in character with his procedure of putting his whole defiant program into a book and selling it to anybody in the world who had twelve marks.

  Lanny listened again to the whole story of Mein Kampf. He learned that Adolf Hitler meant to outwit the world, but in his own good time and in his own way. He meant to suppress his land program to please the Junkers and his industrial program to please the steel kings, and so get their money and use it to buy arms for his S.A. and his S.S. He meant to promise everything to everybody and so get their votes—everybody except the abscheulichen Bolschewisten and the verfluchten Juden. He meant to get power and take office, and nobody was going to block him from his goal. If any Dummkopf tried it he would crush him like a louse, and he told him so.

  When Strasser ventured to point out that Dr. Joseph Goebbels, the Führer’s favorite propagandist, had said that he was developing a “legality complex,” the Führer replied that he would deal with “Juppchen” at his own convenience; he was dealing now with Gregor Strasser, and telling him that he was not to utter another word of criticism of his Führer’s policies, but to devote his energies to putting down the Reds and teaching discipline to his organization, which lacked it so shamefully. Adolf Hitler would do his own dickering with the politicians, playing them one against another, worming his way closer and closer to the chancellorship which was his goal—and in due course he would show them all, and his own friends would be ashamed of their blindness and presumption in having doubted their inspired leader.

&nb
sp; So Lanny received a demonstration of what it meant to be a master of men. Perhaps that was what the Führer intended; for not until he had received the submission of his Reich Organization Leader Number 1 and had dismissed him did he turn again to his guest. “Well, Mr. Budd,” he said, “you see what it takes to put people to work for a cause. Wouldn’t you like to come and help me?”

  Said Lanny: “I am afraid I am without any competence for such a task.” If there was a trace of dryness in his tone the Führer missed it, for he smiled amiably, and seemed to be of the opinion that he had done a very good afternoon’s work.

  Long afterward Lanny learned from Kurt Meissner what the Führer thought about that meeting. He said that young Mr. Budd was a perfect type of the American privileged classes: good-looking, easy-going, and perfectly worthless. It would be a very simple task to cause that nation to split itself to pieces, and the National Socialist movement would take it in charge.

  8

  To Give and to Share

  I

  In the month of December Irma and Rahel completed the tremendous feat they had undertaken; having kept the pact they had made with each other and with their families, they were now physically and morally free. The condition of two lusty infants appeared to indicate that Rousseau and Lanny had been right. Little by little the greedy sucklings learned to take the milk of real cows instead of imitation ones; they acquired a taste for fruit juices and for prune pulp with the skins carefully removed. At last the young mothers could go to a bridge party without having to leave in the middle of it.

  Marceline with her governess had returned to Juan at the end of the yacht cruise, and her mother had promised to join her for Christmas. Farewells were said to the Robin family, and Beauty and her husband went by train, taking the baby, Miss Severne, the nursemaid, and Madame. The General Graf Stubendorf’s invitation to Lanny and Irma had been renewed, and Kurt had written that they should by all means accept; not only would it be more pleasant for Irma at the Schloss, but it would advantage the Meissners to have an old friend return as a guest of Seine Hochgeboren. Lanny noted this with interest and explained it to his wife; what would have been snobbery in America was loyalty in Silesia. The armies of Napoleon having never reached that land, the feudal system still prevailed and rank was a reality.

  Stubendorf being in Poland, the train had to stop, and luggage and passports to be examined. The village itself was German, and only the poorer part of the peasantry was Polish. This made a situation full of tension, and no German thought of it as anything but a truce. What the Poles thought, Lanny didn’t know, for he couldn’t talk with them. In Berlin he had shown his wife a comic paper and a cartoon portraying Poland as an enormous fat hog, being ridden by a French army officer who was twisting the creature’s tail to make it gallop and waving a saber to show why he was in a hurry. Not exactly the Christmas spirit!

  Irma Barnes Budd explored the feudal system, and found it not so different from the South Shore of Long Island. She was met at the train by a limousine, which would have happened at home. A five-story castle didn’t awe her, for she had been living in one that was taller and twice as broad. The lady who welcomed her was certainly no taller or broader than Mrs. Fanny Barnes, and couldn’t be more proud of her blood. The principal differences were, first, that the sons and daughters of this Prussian family worked harder than any young people Irma had ever known; and, second, there were uniforms and ceremonies expressive of rank and station. Irma gave close attention to these, and her husband wondered if she was planning to introduce them into the New World.

  Visiting his father’s home in Connecticut, Lanny had discovered that being married to a great heiress had raised his social status; and now he observed the same phenomenon here. Persons who through the years had paid no particular attention to him suddenly recognized that he was a man of brilliant parts; even the Meissner family, whom he had known and loved since he was a small boy, appeared to be seized with awe. Whereas formerly he had shared a bed in Kurt’s small room, he was now lodged in a sumptuous suite in the castle; the retainers and tenants all took off their hats to him, and he no longer had to hear the gräflichen ideas explained second-hand by Herr Meissner, but got them from the horse’s mouth, as the saying is.

  It was unfortunate that the ideas no longer impressed him as they did in the earlier years. The General Graf was a typical Junker, active in the Nationalist party; his policies were limited by the interests of his class. He did not let himself be influenced by the fact that his estate was now in Poland; that was a temporary matter, soon to be remedied. He supported a tariff on foodstuffs so that the German people would pay higher prices to landowners. He wanted his coal mined, but he didn’t want to pay the miners enough so that they could buy his food. He wanted steel and chemicals and other products of industry, which required swarms of workers, but he blamed them for trying to have a say as to the conditions of their lives, or indeed whether they should live at all.

  II

  Fortunately it wasn’t necessary to spend much time discussing politics. There was a great deal of company, with music, dancing, and feasting. If the country products couldn’t be sold at a profit they might as well be eaten at home, so everyone did his best, and it was astounding how they succeeded. Modern ideas of dietetics, like Napoleon, hadn’t penetrated the feudalism of Upper Silesia. It was the same regimen which had startled Lanny as a boy: a preliminary breakfast with Dresdener Christstollen, a sort of bun with raisins inside and sugar on top; then at half-past ten the “fork breakfast,” when several kinds of meat were eaten—but without interfering with anybody’s appetite for lunch. An afternoon tea, only it was coffee, and then an enormous dinner of eight or ten courses, served with the utmost formality by footmen in satin uniforms. Finally, after cards, or music and dancing, it was unthinkable that one should go to bed on an empty stomach. That meant six meals a day, and it produced vigorous and sturdy young men, but when they came to middle age they had necks like bulls’ and cheeks like pelicans’ and eyes almost closed by fat in the lids.

  One discovery Lanny made very quickly: this was the life for which his wife had been created. Nobody shouted at her, nobody confused her mind with strange ideas; everybody treated her as a person of distinction and found her charming, even brilliant. A world in which serenity and poise counted; a world which didn’t have to be changed! The Gräfin became a second mother to her, and she was invited to visit so many distinguished families, she might have been carried through the entire winter without spending any of her money. One aspect of the feudal system appeared to be that most of its ruling members were bored on their estates, and eager for visitors, provided they were of proper station. They all had bursting larders, with a host of servants trained to put meals on tables. Do come and enjoy your share!

  III

  What Lanny really wanted was to spend the time with his boyhood chum. Kurt now lived with his own family in a stone cottage on the outskirts of the village of Stubendorf, all of which belonged to Seine Hochgeboren. Lanny met for the first time Kurt’s gentle and devoted young wife, and three little blond “Aryans” produced according to the Schicklgruber prescription. Irma went along on the first visit as a matter of courtesy, and also of curiosity, for she had heard how this wonderful Komponist had been Beauty Budd’s lover for some eight years; also, she had heard enough about Kurt’s adventures in Paris during the Peace Conference to make him a romantic figure.

  Kurt hadn’t changed much in the four years since Lanny had seen him. The war had aged him prematurely, but from then on he seemed to stay the same: a grave and rather silent man, who chose to speak to the world through his art. He worshiped the classic German composers, especially the “three B’s.” Each of these had written a few four-hand piano compositions, and in the course of the years others of their works had been arranged in this form, so now there were more than a hundred such available. Lanny had ordered a complete collection from one of the dealers in Berlin; not often can one make a Christmas pr
esent which will give so much pleasure to a friend! The two of them wanted to sit right down and not get up even for meals. Irma couldn’t see how it was possible for human fingers to stand the strain of so much pounding; she couldn’t see how human ears could take in so many notes. She had to remind them of an engagement at the Schloss; whereupon Kurt leaped up at once, for Seine Hochgeboren must not be kept waiting, even for Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms.

  In return for his pension and his home it was Kurt’s duty to play for his patron, and to assemble, rehearse, and conduct a small orchestra for special occasions such as this Christmas visit. He did this with scrupulous fidelity, as the young Haydn had done for the great Prince Esterhazy of Vienna. It wasn’t an onerous job, for of late years Seine Hochgeboren came only rarely. To his people living under the Poles he made a formal address, full of Christmas cheer, but also of quiet unbending faith that God would somehow restore them to their Fatherland. Deutsche Treue und Ehre acquired a special meaning when used by those living in exile.