and Beauty would look into it sometimes, thinking that it was her duty to keep track of her
brother's doings; it made her quail, for she knew what fury it would arouse in the Hitlerites,
and she knew how many rich and important persons in France sympathized with them. The
Croix de Feu, the Jeunesse Française and other groups were preparing to meet force with
force; the great banks and other vested interests would surely not permit their power to be
destroyed without a fight, and it would be far more bloody and terrible than what had
happened in Germany. "Let's get away from it," pleaded Beauty. "Stay until the storm blows
over, and we can judge whether it's safe to return."
Irma was persuaded, and they sat down and composed between them a letter to Nina,
tactfully contrived to be read by Rick without giving him offense. There wasn't any danger in
England—at least, none that Rick would admit—and the word "escapist" was one of his
strongest terms of contempt. To Rick the cruise was presented as an ideal opportunity to
concentrate upon the writing of a new play. On Nina's part it would be an act of friendship to
come and make a fourth hand at bridge. To Alfy it would offer lessons in geography and
history, plus a chance to fight out his temperamental differences with Marceline. If the
parents didn't want to take the youngster from school so early, he could cross to New York
by steamer and spend the summer with the party.
They read this letter to Lanny, who said it was all right, but he could do better as concerned
his chum. Lanny was cooking up in his head a marvelous scheme. He was guessing the
psychology of a Jewish money-master who had just witnessed the seizing of his country by a
bunch of gangsters. It was bound to have made a dent in his mind, and dispose him to realize
that he and the other capitalists were living and operating inside the crater of a volcano. Lanny
was planning to lay a subtle and well-disguised siege to one of the wealthiest of Jews, to
persuade him that some form of social change was inevitable, and to get his help to bring it
about in orderly fashion. It was the plan which Lanny had already discussed with Rick, to start
a weekly paper of free discussion, not pledged to any party or doctrine, but to the general
tendency towards co-operative industry conducted under the democratic process.
"We can have him to ourselves for several months, maybe for a year; and if we can persuade
him to back us, we can do the job on a big scale and make a real go of it. Won't you come and
help? You can answer his questions so much better than I, and I believe you could put it
through."
This was a greater temptation than any Utopian dreamer could resist. Rick said, "All right,"
and Lanny telegraphed the decision to Johannes. He was tempted to repeat the quotation from
Tennyson's
holds to sail beyond the sunset and the baths of all the western stars, until I die." But he
reminded himself that the Fatherland was now Hitlerland, and a sense of humor has never
been a prominent German characteristic. What might not a Nazi party censor make out of eight
or ten lines of English blank verse telegraphed from the French Riviera!
BOOK FOUR
As on a Darkling Plain
16
I
A WORLD conqueror had appeared in modern times. Alexander, Caesar, Attila, Genghis
Khan, Napoleon—another such as these, appearing in the age of electricity, of rotary presses
and radio, when nine men out of ten would have said it was impossible. A world conqueror has
to be a man of few ideas, and those fixed; a peculiar combination of exactly the right qualities,
both good and bad—iron determination, irresistible energy, and no scruples of any sort. He
has to know what he wants, and permit no obstacle to stand in the way of his getting it. He has
to understand the minds of other men, both foes and friends, and what greeds, fears, hates,
jealousies will move them to action. He must understand the mass mind, the ideals or
delusions which sway it; he must be enough of a fanatic to talk their language, though not
enough to be controlled by it. He must believe in nothing but his own destiny, the glorified
image of himself on the screen of history; whole races of mankind made over in his own image
and according to his will. To accomplish that purpose he must be liar, thief, and murderer
upon a world-wide scale; he must be ready without hesitation to commit every crime his own
interest commands, whether upon individuals or nations. He must pave the highway for his
legions with the bones of his enemies, he must float his battleships upon oceans of human
blood, he must compose his songs of glory out of the groans and curses of mankind.
The singular advantage enjoyed by Adolf Hitler was that his own people believed what he
said, while other peoples couldn't and wouldn't. The attitude of the outside world to him was
that of the farmer who stared at a giraffe in the circus and exclaimed: "There ain't no sich
