Dragon's Teeth

by Sinclair, Upton;

  “Don’t let either of them hear that!” chuckled the husband.

  XII

  It was a political campaign of frenzied hate, close to civil war. Troops of armed men marched, glaring at other troops when they passed, and ready to fly at the others’ throats; in the working class districts they did so, and bystanders had to flee for their lives. The conservatives, who called themselves Democrats and Nationalists, had their Stahlhelm and their Kampfring, the Nazis had their S.S.’s and S.A.’s, the Sozis had their Reichsbanner, and the Communists their Rotfront, although the last named were forbidden to wear uniforms. The posters and cartoons, the flags and banners, all had symbols and slogans expressive of hatred of other people, whether Germans of the wrong class, or Russians, French, Czechs, Poles, or Jews. Impossible to understand so many kinds of hatreds or the reasons for them. Irma said: “It’s horrible, Lanny. Let’s not have any more to do with it.”

  She had met charming people in Berlin, and now Johannes gave her a reception, and they all came; when they found that she didn’t like politics they said they didn’t blame her, and talked about the music festivals, the art exhibitions, the coming yacht regattas. The Jewish money-lord tried to keep friendly with everybody, and he knew that many who would not ordinarily darken his door were willing to come when a celebrated American heiress was his guest. According to his custom, he did not try to hide this, but on the contrary made a point of mentioning it and thanking her. She knew that this Jewish family had risen in the world with the help of the Budds; but so long as they showed a proper gratitude and didn’t develop a case of “swelled head,” it was all right for the help to continue.

  German big business men came, and their wives, still bigger as a rule. German aristocrats came, tall, stiff gentlemen wearing monocles, and their Damen who seemed built for the stage of Bayreuth. All had long titles, and left off none of the vons and zus; Irma had trouble in telling Herr vons from Herr Barons, Herr Grafen from Erlauchts, and Erlauchts from Durchlauchts.

  Graf Stubendorf came, reported on affairs at home, and cordially renewed his invitation for next Christmas, or for the shooting season earlier. The new Chancellor came; tall and thin-faced, the smartest of diplomats and most elegant of Catholic aristocrats, he lived entangled in a net of intrigue of his own weaving. A son of the Russian ghetto might have been overwhelmed by the honor of such a presence, but Johannes took it as the payment of a debt. The gentlemen of the fashionable Herren Klub hadn’t been able to raise enough money to save their party, so the Chancellor had had to come to the Jew for help.

  Irma found him charming, and told her husband, who remarked: “There is no greater rascal in all Europe. Franz von Papen was put out of the United States before we entered the war because he was financing explosions in munitions plants.”

  “Oh, darling!” she exclaimed. “You say such horrid things! You can’t really know that!”

  Said the young Pink: “He didn’t have sense enough to burn his check-stubs, and the British captured his ship on the way home and published all the data.”

  13

  Even to the Edge of Doom

  I

  The cruise of the Bessie Budd began. Not a long cruise, never more than a week at a time in these disturbed days. They stopped to fish and swim, and they sent out upon the North Sea breezes a great deal of romantic and delightful music. The seamen and the fishermen who glided by in the night must have been moved to wonder, and perhaps some young Heine among them took flight upon the wings of imagination. Far on the Scottish rock-coast, where the little gray castle towers above the raging sea, there, at the high-arched window, stands a beautiful frail woman, tender-pellucid and marble-pale, and she plays the harp and sings, and the wind sweeps through her long tresses and carries her dark song over the wide storming sea.

  Resting from such flights of fancy the solicitous Lanny Budd had quiet talks with his host, hoping by gentle and tactful intervention to lessen the strain of that family conflict which had been revealed to him. Johannes explained, in much the same words that Robbie Budd had used when Lanny was a small boy, that the business man did not think merely of the money he was making or might make; he acquired responsibilities to thousands of investors, not all of them greedy idlers, but many aged persons, widows, and orphans having no means of support but their shares of stock; also to workingmen whose families starved unless the weekly pay envelopes were filled. It was a libel upon business administrators to suppose that they had no sense of duties owed to other people, even though most of these people were strangers.

  “Moreover,” said Johannes, “when a man has spent his life learning to pursue a certain kind of activity, it is no easy matter to persuade him to drop it at the height of his powers. Difficulties, yes; but he has expected them, and takes them as a challenge, he enjoys coping with them and showing that he can master them. To give up and run away from them is an act of cowardice which would undermine his moral foundations; he would have no use for himself thereafter, but would spend his time brooding, like an admiral who veered about and deserted his fleet.

  “My children have their own moral code,” continued the money master, “and they have the task of convincing me that it applies to my case. They wish to build a new and better world, and I would be glad if they could succeed, and if I saw any hope of success I would join them. I ask for their plans, and they offer me vague dreams, in which as a man of affairs I see no practicality. It is like the end of Das Rheingold: there is Valhalla, very beautiful, but only a rainbow bridge on which to get to it, and while the gods may be able to walk on a rainbow, my investors and working people cannot. My children assure me that a firmer bridge will be constructed, and when I ask for the names of the engineers, they offer me party leaders and propagandists, speechmakers who cannot even agree among themselves; if it were not for what they call the capitalist police they would fall to fighting among themselves and we should have civil war instead of Utopia. How can my two boys expect me to agree with them until they have at least managed to agree between themselves?”

  Lanny was sad to have no answer to this question. He had already put it to his sister, and she could say only that she and her husband were right, while Freddi and Rahel were wrong. No use putting the question to the other pair, for their answer would be the same. Neither couple was going to give way—any more than Lanny himself was going to give up his conviction that it was the program of the Communists which had caused the development of Fascism and Nazism—or at any rate had made possible its spread in Italy and Germany. Only in the Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon lands, where democratic institutions were firmly rooted, had neither Reds nor anti-Reds been able to make headway.

  II

  So there wasn’t any chance of persuading Johannes Robin to retire to a monastery or even to a private yacht right now. He didn’t pretend to know what was going to happen in Germany, but he knew that these were stormy times and that he, the admiral, would stand by his fighting fleet. He would protect his properties and keep his factories running; and if, in order to get contracts and concessions it was necessary to make a present to some powerful politician, Johannes would bargain shrewdly and pay no more than he had to. That had been the way of the world since governments had first been invented, and a Jewish trader, an exile barely tolerated in a strange land, had to be satisfied with looking out for his own. His sons felt more at home in Germany and dreamed of trying to change it; but for the child of the ghetto it was enough that he obeyed the law. “Not very noble,” he admitted, sadly; “but when the nobler ones come to me for help, they get it.”

  The world was in a bad way and getting worse. Banks were failing all over the United States, and unemployment increasing steadily. A presidential election was due in November, and the political parties had held their conventions and made their nominations; the Republicans had endorsed the Great Engineer and all that he had done, while the Democrats nominated the Governor of New York, Franklin Roosevelt by name. Johannes asked if Lanny knew anything about t
his man, and Lanny said no; but when the yacht picked up some mail, there was Robbie’s weekly letter, a cross between a business man’s report and one of the lamentations of Jeremiah. Robbie said that the Democratic candidate was a man wholly without business experience, and moreover an invalid, his legs shriveled by infantile paralysis. Surely these times called for one at least physically sound; the presidency was a mankilling job, and this Roosevelt, if elected, couldn’t survive it for a year. But he wasn’t going to be elected, for Robbie and his friends were pulling off their coats, to say nothing of opening their purses.

  “I suppose Robbie will be asking you for a contribution!” chuckled the irreverent son, and the other replied: “I have many interests in America.” Lanny recalled the remark he had once heard Zaharoff make: “I am a citizen of every country where I have investments.”

  III

  They discussed conditions in Germany, living on borrowed capital and sliding deeper and deeper into the pit. The existing government had no popular support, but was run by the Herren Klub, an organization of big business men, aristocrats, and “office generals,” having some twenty branches throughout Germany. Its two most active politicians were Chancellor von Papen and General von Schleicher, and they were supposed to be colleagues, but neither could trust the other out of his sight. Now Papen was in office, and Schleicher was trading secretly with the Nazis for their support to turn him out. Nobody could trust anybody, except the eighty-five-year-old monument of the Junkerdom, General von Hindenburg. Poor alte Herr, when the burdens of state were dumped upon him he could only answer: “Ich will meine Ruhe haben!”—I must have my rest.

  Johannes judged it certain that the Nazis would make heavy gains at the coming elections, but he refused to worry about this. He had several of them on his payroll, but what he counted upon most was the fact that Hitler had gone to Düsseldorf and had a long session with Thyssen and other magnates of the Ruhr. They wanted the Red labor unions put down, and Hitler had satisfied them that he was ready to do the job. You might fool one or two of those tough steel-men, but not many; they knew politicians, and dealt with one crop after another; it was part of the game of conducting industry in a world full of parliaments and parties. A nuisance, but you learned to judge men and saw to it that none got into power who couldn’t be trusted. The same thing applied to the great landlords of Prussia; they wanted above all things a bulwark against Bolshevism, and were willing to pay a heavy price for that service. These two powers, the industrialists of the west and the landed gentry of the east, had governed Germany since the days of Bismarck and would go on doing so.

  “But aren’t you afraid of Hitler’s anti-Semitism?” asked Lanny.

  “Herrgott!” exclaimed the owner of the Bessie Budd. “I was brought up in the midst of pogroms, and what could I do then? It is said that there once lived a Jew called Jesus, and other Jews had him executed by the Romans; such things happened ten thousand times, no doubt; but because of this one time my poor people have to be spat upon and clubbed and stabbed to death. What can any of us do, except to pray that it will not break out in the street where we live?”

  “But they threaten it wholesale, Johannes!”

  “It is a means of getting power in a world where people are distracted and must have some one to blame. I can only hope that if ever the Nazis come into office they will have real problems to deal with, so that the spotlight will be turned away from my unfortunate people.”

  IV

  Irma had voted to keep out of German political affairs, but that couldn’t be arranged entirely. There was the workers’ school, in which Freddi was so deeply interested, and which had been more or less modeled upon Lanny’s own project. When they came back to Berlin Lanny’s wife played bridge while he went with Freddi and Rahel to a reception at which he met the teachers and friends of the enterprise, heard its problems discussed, and told them how things were going in the Midi.

  In his way of thinking Lanny was nearer to these young Socialists than to any other group; yet what a variety of opinion there was among them, and how difficult to get them together on any program of action! A few days before the election the von Papen government had effected a coup d’état in the state of Prussia, which includes Berlin; the premier and the principal officials, all Social-Democrats, were turned out of office and threatened with arrest if they attempted to resist—which they did so feebly that it amounted to submission. As a result, the Socialists were buzzing like a swarm of bees whose hive has been upset; but alas, they appeared to be bees which had lost their stingers! The Communists had proposed a general strike of the workers and called upon the Socialists to co-operate with them; but how could anybody cooperate with Communists? They would take advantage of an uprising to seize the reins themselves; they would turn upon their allies as they had done with Kerensky in Russia. The Socialists were more in fear of the Communists than of the reactionaries; they were afraid of acting like Communists, of looking like Communists, of being called Communists.

  So the Cabinet of the Barons seized control of the Berlin police and all the other powers of the local government. How different it had been twelve years ago during the “Kapp Putsch”! Then the workers hadn’t waited for their leaders, they had known instantly what to do—drop their tools and come into the streets and show their power. But now, apparently, they had lost interest in the Republic. What good had it done them these twelve years? It couldn’t prevent hard times and unemployment, it couldn’t even make promises any more! It was so chained by its own notions of legality that it couldn’t resist the illegality of others.

  Lanny listened to the discussions of these Berlin intellectuals. They came from all classes, brought together by community of ideas. They had the keenest realization of danger to the cause of freedom and social justice. They all wanted to do something; but first they had to agree what to do, and apparently they couldn’t; they talked and argued until they were exhausted. Lanny wondered, is this a disease which afflicts all intellectuals? Is it a paralysis which accompanies the life of the mind? If so, then it must be that the thinkers will be forever subject to the men of brute force, and Plato’s dream of a state ruled by philosophers will remain forever vain.

  Lanny thought: “Somebody ought to lead them!” He wanted to say: “My God, it may be settled this very night. Your republic will be dead! Let’s go now, and call the workers out!” But then he thought: “What sort of a figure would I cut, taking charge of a German revolution? I, an American!” He settled back and listened to more arguments, and thought: “I’m like all the others. I’m an intellectual, too! I happen to’ own some guns, and know how to use them—but I wouldn’t!”

  V

  There was a teacher of art at the school, by name Trudi Schultz, very young, herself a student at an art school, but two or three evenings a week she came to impart what she knew to the workers, most of them older than herself. She was married to a young commercial artist who worked on a small salary for an advertising concern and hated it. Both Trudi and Ludi Schultz were that perfect Aryan type which Adolf Hitler lauded but conspicuously was not; the girl had wavy fair hair, clear blue candid eyes, and sensitive features which gave an impression of frankness and sincerity. Lanny watched her making sketches on a blackboard for her class, and it seemed to him that she had an extraordinary gift of line; she drew something, then wiped it out casually, and he hated to see it go.

  She was pleased by his interest and invited him to come and see her work. So, on another evening while Irma played bridge, Lanny drove Freddi and Rahel to a working class quarter of the city where the young couple lived in a small apartment. Lanny inspected a mass of crayon drawings and a few water-colors, and became interested in what he believed was a real talent. This girl drew what she saw in Berlin; but she colored it with her personality. Like Jesse Blackless she loved the workers and regarded the rich with moral disapprobation; that made her work “propaganda,” and hard to sell. But Lanny thought it ought to appeal to the Socialist press and o
ffered to take some with him and show it to Léon Blum and Jean Longuet. Of course the Schultzes were much excited—for they had heard about Lanny’s having selected old masters for the palace of Johannes Robin, and looked upon the wealthy young American as a power in the art world.

  Lanny, for his part, was happy to meet vital personalities in the workers’ movement. More and more he was coming to think of art as a weapon in the social struggle, and here were young people who shared his point of view and understood instantly what he said. He had traveled to many far places, while they knew only Berlin and its suburbs and the countryside where they sometimes had walking trips; yet they had managed to get the same meaning out of life. More and more the modern world was becoming one; mass production was standardizing material things, while the class struggle was shaping the minds and souls of workers and masters. Lanny had watched Fascism spread from Italy to Germany, changing its name and the color of its shirts, but very little else; he heard exactly the same arguments about it here in Berlin as in Paris, the Midi, and the Rand School of Social Science in New York.

  These five young people, so much alike in their standards and desires, talked out of their hearts in a way that Lanny had not had a chance to do for some time. All of them were tormented by fears of what was coming in Europe, and groping to determine their own duty in the presence of a rising storm of reaction. What were the causes of the dreadful paralysis which seemed to have fallen upon the workers’ movement of the world?

  Trudi Schultz, artist-idealist, thought that it was a failure of moral forces. She had been brought up in a Marxist household, but was in a state of discontent with some of the dogmas she had formerly taken as gospel; she had observed that dialectical materialism didn’t keep people from quarreling, from being jealous, vindictive, and narrow-minded. Socialists talked comradeship, but too often they failed in the practice of it, and Trudi had decided that more than class consciousness was needed to weld human beings into a social unity.