"I admit that would be a pretty bad day," said young Lord Wickthorpe. He said it with a
smile, not taking it seriously. When Rick pinned him down to it, he gave yet another reason
why it was impossible to consider a large-scale deal with the Soviet Union—the effect it would
have upon politics at home. "It would set up the Reds, and it might bring labor back into
power."
Said Rick to Lanny, when they were alone: "Class is more than country!"
VIII
The Nazi program of repression of the Jews was being carried out step by step, which was
going to be the Nazi fashion. Civil servants of Jewish blood were being turned out of their jobs
and good Aryans of the right party affiliations put in their place. Jewish lawyers were
forbidden to practice in the courts. "Jew signs" were being pasted or painted on places of
business which belonged to the despised race. Beatings and terrorism were being secretly
encouraged, for the purpose of driving the Jews out and depriving them of jobs and property.
When such incidents were mentioned in the press they would be blamed upon "persons
unknown masquerading as Stormtroopers."
But refugees escaping to the outside world would report the truth, and there was a ferment
of indignation among the Jews of all countries; they and their sympathizers held meetings of
protest, and a movement was started to boycott trade with Germany. The reaction in the
Fatherland was immediate, and Johannes wrote about it—very significantly he wrote only to
Lanny, never to his son, and mailed the letters unsigned and with no mark to identify them. It
had been made a prison offense to give information to foreigners, and in his letters Johannes
addressed Lanny as a German, and warned him not to tell anyone in Paris!
The boycott was worrying the business men of the country, and at the same time enraging
the party leaders, and it was a question which point of view would prevail. Jupp Goebbels was
calling for a boycott of Jewish businesses in Germany, and the result was a panic on the stock
exchange—for some of the principal enterprises of the Fatherland were Jewish-owned,
including the big department stores of Berlin. These were the concerns which the original
party program had promised to "socialize," and now the ardent young S.A.'s and S.S.'s were on
tiptoe to go in and do the job.
The Cabinet was having one of its customary rows over the question, so Johannes explained.
The business magnates who had financed Hitler's rise were coming down on him; how could
they pay taxes, how could the government be financed, if rowdies were to-be turned loose to
wreck business both at home and abroad? The result of this tug-of-war was a curious and
rather comical compromise; the boycott which the party fanatics had announced to begin on
the first day of April was to be carried on, but it was- to continue for only one business day of
eight hours; then Germany would wait for three days, to see if there was a proper response
from the foreign agents and Jewish vampires who had been so shamelessly lying about the
Fatherland. If they showed repentance and abandoned their insolent threats, then Germany
would in turn permit the Jewish businesses to continue in peace; otherwise they would be
sternly punished, perhaps exterminated, and the blame would rest upon the Jewish vampires
abroad.
This boycott was the idea of Dr. Goebbels—the Führer himself being busy with the
reorganizing of the various state governments. On the evening before the event the crippled
little dwarf with the huge wide mouth spoke to his party comrades at a meeting in a hall of the
West End, and all over Germany the Stormtroopers listened over the radio. The orator called
for a demonstration of "iron discipline"; there must be no violence, but all Jewish
establishments would be picketed, and no German man or woman would enter such a place.
The day was made into a Nazi holiday. The Jews stayed at home, and the Brownshirts
marched through all the cities and towns of the Fatherland, singing their song to the effect that
Jewish blood must spurt from the knife. They posted "Jew signs" wherever there was a
merchant who couldn't prove that he had four Aryan grandparents. They did the same for
doctors and hospitals, using a poster consisting of a circular blob of yellow on a black
background, the recognized sign of quarantine throughout Europe; thus they told the world
that a Jewish doctor was as bad as the smallpox or scarlet fever, typhus or leprosy he
attempted to cure.
These orders were followed pretty well in the fashionable districts, but in poorer
neighborhoods and the smaller towns the ardent Stormtroopers pasted signs on the foreheads
of shoppers in Jewish stores, and they stripped and beat a woman who insisted on entering.
That evening there was a giant meeting in the Tempelhof Airdrome, and Goebbels exulted in
the demonstration which had been given to the world. The insolent foreigners would be awed
and brought to their knees, he declared; and since most of the newspapers had by now been
