the reins in his hands and governed the country until the economic crisis had passed and the
people could settle into a normal state of mind.
"But wouldn't that mean the end of the Republic?" asked Lanny.
"Republics come and go, but nations endure," said Oberst Meissner.
VII
Heinrich Jung called up, bursting with pride over the triumph of his party. He offered to tell
Lanny the inside story, and Lanny said: "But I am consorting with your enemies." The other
laughed and replied: "Then you can tell
Lanny, an American, was above the battle. Was it that a young Nazi craved the admiration of a
foreigner? Was there in his secret heart some pleasure in free discussion, the ex pression of
unbiased opinion which he did not get from his party press? Or was it that Lanny was so rich,
and looked like a figure out of a Hollywood movie?
The Jung family had been increased again. "More Junkers," said Lanny, with what seemed a
pun to him. Heinrich's salary had been increased and he had moved into a larger home. He
had invited Hugo Behr, and the three of them sat for a couple of hours sipping light beer and
settling the destiny of Germany and its neighbors. Lanny was interested to observe that there
were disagreements among Nazi intellectuals, as elsewhere; the two names of Hitler's party
covered widely different and inconsistent points of view. Heinrich was the National and Hugo
was the Socialist, and while they agreed in workingclass consciousness and the program of
socialization; whereas Heinrich, son of one of Graf Stubendorf's employees, had the mentality of
a Prussian state servant to whom
Lanny thought there was drama in this, and that it might pay an English playwright to
come to Berlin and study what was going on. He had suggested the idea to Rick, who hadn't
thought the Nazi movement important enough; but maybe the recent vote would change his
mind! Anyhow, Lanny was interested to listen to two young zealots, setting out to make the
world over in the image of their inspired leader; it pleased him to take a mental crow bar and
insert it in the crack between their minds and make it wider and deeper. Just how deep
would it go before they became aware of it themselves?
Lanny couldn't tell them what he knew. He couldn't say to Hugo: "Your Führer is in the
thick of negotiations with Thyssen, and Krupp von Bohlen, and Karl von Siemens, and others
of the greediest industrialists of your country. He is making fresh promises of conservatism
and legality. He will do anything to get power, and anything to keep it. You and your friends
are just so many pawns that he moves here and there and will sacrifice when his game requires
it." No, for they would ask: "How do you know this?" And he couldn't reply: "Fritz Thyssen
told my father yesterday." They would assume that he had got the stories from Johannes
Robin, a Jew, which would mean to them two things: first, that the stories were lies, and
second, that some Nazi patriots ought to visit the Robin palace by night and smash all its
windows and paint
No, among Catholics one did not question the purity of the Holy Virgin, and among Nazis
one didn't question the honor of the Führer. When he said in his book that he would have no
honor, he meant as regards his foes; but for his
be followed after the manner of sheep. All that Lanny could do was to ask impersonal
questions. "How can the Führer get commercial credits, if Germany defaults in payments on
her bonds? I don't mean reparations, but the bonds of private investors." Hugo Behr, naive
young Socialist, didn't even know that there were such bonds. Lanny said: "I have several of
them in a safe-deposit box in Newcastle, Connecticut. I bought them because I wanted to help
your Socialist republic."
"It is a bourgeois fraud!" said the ex-Marxist; and that settled all Lanny's claims.
VIII
Kurt had written, begging Irma and Lanny to come for a visit. Lanny had never been to
Stubendorf except at Christmas time, and he thought it would be pleasant to see the country in
midsummer. They drove with a speed greater than the wind over the splendid level roads of
Prussia, past fields where gangs of Polish immigrant women labored on the potato crops. The
roads were lined with well-tended fruit trees, and Irma said: "We couldn't do that in America.
People would steal all the fruit." She had never seen vast fields so perfectly cultivated:
every inch of ground put to use, no such thing as a weed existing, and forests with trees
planted in rows like orchards. She renewed her admiration for the German
They stayed at the Schloss, even though the Graf was not at home. Kurt had a new "Junker,"
and so had his brother's family and his sister's. Herr Meissner was feeble, but able to talk
politics; he renewed his complaints of corruption and incompetence of the Polish government
