her hard luck that she hadn't realized what it would mean to have a husband dyed a shade
of Pink so deep thatthe bourgeois mind couldn't tell it from scarlet.
IV
The new Reichstag was summoned promptly. It met in Potsdam, home of the old glories of
Prussia, and Hitler applied his genius to the invention of ceremonies to express his patriotic
intentions and to arouse the hopes of the German
new
Republic. Once more the beacons blazed on the hilltops, and there were torchlight parades of
all the Nazi organizations, and of students and children. Hitler laid a wreath on the tomb of his
dead comrades. Hindenburg opened the Reichstag, and the ceremonies were broadcast to all the
schools. The "Bohemian corporal" delivered one of his inspired addresses, in which he told his
former Field Marshal that by making him Chancellor he had "consummated the marriage
between the symbols of ancient glory and of young might."
Hitler wanted two things: to get the mastery of Germany, and to be let alone by the outside
world while he was doing it. When the Reichstag began its regular sessions, in the Kroll Opera
House in Berlin, he delivered a carefully prepared address in which he declared that it was the
Communists who had fired the Reichstag building, and that their treason was to be "blotted
out with barbaric ruthlessness." He told the rich that "capital serves business, and business the
people"; that there was to be "strongest support of private initiative and the recognition of
property." The rich could have asked no more. To the German peasants he promised "rescue," and
to the army of the unemployed "restoration to the productive process."
To enable him to carry out this program he asked for a grant of power in a trickily worded
measure which he called a "law for the lifting of want from the people and empire." The
purpose of the law was to permit the present Cabinet, and the present Cabinet alone, to
make laws and spend money without consulting the Reichstag; but it didn't say that; it
merely repealed by number those articles in the Constitution which reserved these crucial
powers to the Reichstag. The new grant was to come to an end in four years, and sooner if any
other Cabinet came into office. Nobody but Adolf was ever to be the Führer of Germany!
This device was in accord with the new Chancellor's "legality complex"; he would get the
tools of power into his hands by what the great mass of the people would accept as due process of
law. His speech in support of the measure was shrewdly contrived to meet the prejudices of all
the different parties, except the Communists, who had been barred from their seats, and the
Socialists, who were soon to share that fate. A mob of armed Nazis stood outside the building,
shouting their demands that the act be passed, and it carried by a vote of 441 to 94, the
dissenters being Socialists. Then Goring, President of the Reichstag, declared the session
adjourned, and so a great people lost their liberties while rejoicing over gaining them.
V
During this period there were excitements in the United States as well as in Germany. Crises
and failures became epidemic; in one state after another it was necessary for the governor to
decree a closing of all the banks. Robbie Budd wrote that it was because the people of the
country couldn't contemplate the prospect of having their affairs managed by a Democrat.
When the new President was inaugurated—which fell upon the day before the Hitler elections
— his first action was to order the closing of all the banks in the United States—which to
Robbie was about the same thing as the ending of the world. His letter on the subject was so
pessimistic that his son was moved to send him a cablegram: "Cheer up you will still eat."
Really it wasn't as bad as everybody had expected. People took it as a joke; the richest man in
the country might happen to have only a few dimes in his pocket, and that was all he had,
and his friends thought it was funny, and he had to laugh, too. But everybody trusted him, and
took his checks, so he could have whatever he wanted, the same as before. Robbie didn't miss a
meal, nor did any other Budd. Meanwhile they listened to a magnificent radio voice telling
them with calm confidence that the new government was going to act, and act quickly, and that
all the problems of the country were going to be solved. The New Deal was getting under way.
The first step was to join Britain and the other nations off the gold standard. To Robbie it
meant inflation, and that his country was going to see what Germany had seen. The next thing
was to sort out the banks, and decide which were sound and in position to open with
government backing. The effect of that was to move Wall Street to Washington; the
government became the center of power, and the bankers came hurrying with their lawyers
