listened to the gossip and learned all she could about the eminent actors in the diplomatic
drama. Lanny had met several of the under-secretaries, and these realized that the wealthy young
couple were entitled to be introduced to the "higher ups." Irma was told that next winter
would probably see more negotiations in Paris, and it was her intention that these im portant
personages should find her home a place for relaxation and perhaps for private conferences.
Emily herself couldn't have done better.
Lanny observed his wife "falling for" the British ruling class. Many Americans did this; it was
a definite disease, known as "Anglomania." Upper-class Englishmen were tall and good-looking,
quiet and soft-spoken, cordial to their friends and reserved to others; Irma thought that was
the right way to be. There was Lord Wickthorpe, whom Lanny had once met on a tally-ho
coach driving to Ascot; they had both been youngsters, but now Wickthorpe was a grave
diplomat, carrying a brief-case full of responsibility— or so he looked, and so Irma imagined
him, though Lanny, who had been behind many scenes, assured her that the sons of great
families didn't as a rule do much hard work. Wickthorpe was divinely handsome, with a
tiny light brown mustache, and Irma said: "How do you suppose such a man could remain a
bachelor?"
"I don't know," said the husband. "Margy can probably tell you. Maybe he couldn't get the
girl he wanted."
"I should think any girl would have a hard time refusing what he has."
"It can happen," replied Lanny. "Maybe they quarrel, or something goes wrong. Even the rich
can't always get what they want." Lanny's old "Pink" idea!
X
The assembled statesmen signed a new treaty of Lausanne, in which they agreed to do a
number of things, now that it was too late. Having signed and sealed, they went their various
ways, and Irma and Lanny motored out of Switzerland by way of Basle, and before dinner-time
were in Stuttgart. A bitterly fought election campaign had covered the billboards with slogans
and battle-cries of the various parties. Lanny, who got hold of a newspaper as soon as he
arrived anywhere, read the announcement of a giant
that evening, the principal speaker being that Reich Organization Leader Number One who
had received such a dressing-down from his Führer in Lanny's presence some twenty months
ago. Lanny remarked: "I'd like to hear what he's saying now."
"Oh, dear!" exclaimed Irma. "Such a bore!" But she didn't want to be left in a hotel room
alone, so she said: "Let's not stay too late."
During those twenty months a Franco-American playboy had been skipping over the world
with the agility conferred by railroads and motor-cars, airplanes, steamships, and private
yachts. He had been over most of western Europe, England, and New England. He had read
books on many subjects, he had played thousands of musical compositions, looked at as many
paintings, been to many theaters, danced in many ball-rooms, and swum in many seas; he had
chatted with his friends and played with his baby, eaten the choicest of foods, drunk the best
wines, and enjoyed the love of a beautiful and fashionable wife. In short, he had had the most
delightful sort of life that the average man could imagine.
But meantime the people of Germany had been living an utterly different life; doing hard and
monotonous labor for long hours at low wages; finding the cost of necessities creeping upward
and insecurity increasing, so that no man could be sure that he and his family were going to
have their next day's bread. The causes of this state of affairs were complex and hopelessly
obscure to the average man, but there was a group which undertook to make them simple and
plain to the dullest. During the aforementioned twenty months the customs official's son from
Austria, Adi Schicklgruber, had been skipping about even more than Lanny Budd, using the
same facilities of railroad trains and motor-cars and airplanes. But he hadn't been seeking
pleasure; he had been living the life of an ascetic, vegetarian, and teetotaler, devoting his
fanatical energies to the task of convincing the German masses that their troubles were due to
the Versailles
filthy and degraded Jews, and to their allies the international bankers and international Reds.
Say the very simplest and most obvious things, say them as often as possible, and put into
the saying all the screaming passion which one human voice can carry—that was Adolf Hitler's
technique. He had been applying it for thirteen years, ever since the accursed treaty had been
signed, and now he was at the climax of his efforts. He and his lieutenants were holding
hundreds of meetings every night, all over Germany, and it was like one meeting; the same
speech, whether it was a newspaper print or cartoon or signboard or phonograph record. No
matter whether it was true or not—for Adi meant literally his maxim that the bigger the
