round you and play you for suckers, they take your money to build what they call their
'movement.' You serve them by helping to undermine and destroy what you call capitalism.
They call you comrades for as long as they can use you, but the first day you dared to stand
in their way or interfere with their plans, they'd turn on you like wolves. Don't you know
that's true, Lanny?"
"It's true of many, I've no doubt."
"It would be true of every last one, when it came to a show down. You're their 'front,' their
stalking horse. You tell me what you heard from Göring's mouth—and I tell you what I've
heard from Uncle Jesse's mouth. Not once but a hundred times! He says it jokingly, but he
means it—it's his program. The Socialists will make their peaceable revolution, and then the
Communists will rise up and take it away from them. It'll be easy because the Socialists are so
gentle and so kind—they're idealists! You saw it happen in Russia, and then in Hungary—didn't I
hear Karolyi tell you about it?"
"Yes, dear—"
"With his own mouth he told you! But it didn't mean much to you, because it isn't what you
want to believe. Karolyi is a gentleman, a noble soul—I'm not mocking—I had a long talk with
him, and I'm sure he's one of the most high-minded men who ever lived. He was a nobleman
and he had estates, and when he saw the ruin and misery after the war he gave them to the
government. No man could do more. He became the Socialist Premier of Hungary, and tried to
bring a peaceful change, and the Communists rose up against his government—and what did
he do? He said to me in these very words: 'I couldn't shoot the workers.' So he let the
Communist-led mob seize the government, and there was the dreadful bloody regime of that
Jew—what was his name?"
"Bela Kun. Too bad he had to be a Jew!"
"Yes, I admit it's too bad. You just told me that you didn't invent
invent the Brownshirts. Well, I didn't invent Bela Kun and I didn't invent Liebknecht and that
Red Rosa Jewess who tried to do the same thing in Germany, nor Eisner who did it in
Bavaria, nor Trotsky who helped to do it in Russia. I suppose the Jews have an extra hard time
and that makes them revolutionary; they haven't any country and that keeps them from being
patriotic. I'm not blaming them, I'm just facing the facts, as you're all the time urging me to do."
"I've long ago faced the fact that you dislike the Jews, Irma."
"I dislike some of them intensely, and I dislike some things about them all. But I love Freddi,
and I'm fond of all the Robins, even though I am repelled by Hansi's ideas. I've met other
Jews that I like—"
"In short," put in Lanny, "you have accepted what Hitler calls 'honorary Aryans.'" He was
surprised by his own bitterness.
"That's a mean crack, Lanny, and I think we ought to talk kindly about this problem. It isn't a
simple one."
"I want very much to," he replied. "But one of the facts we have to face is that the things you
have been saying to me are all in
foundation stones upon which the Nazi movement is built. Hitler also likes some Jews, but he
dislikes most of them because he says they are revolutionary and not patriotic. Hitler also is
forced to put down the idealists and the liberals because they serve as a 'front' for the Reds,
But you see, darling, the capitalist system is breaking down, it is no longer able to produce goods
or to feed the people, and some other way must be found to get the job done. We want to do it
peaceably if possible; but surely the way to do it cannot be for all the men who want it done
peaceably to agree to shut up and say nothing, for fear of giving some benefit to the men of
violence!"
V
They argued for a while, but it didn't do any good; they had said it before, many times, and
neither had changed much. In the course of four years Irma had listened attentively while her
husband debated with many sorts of persons, and unless they were Communists she had nearly
always found herself in agreement with the other persons. It was as if the ghost of J. Paramount
Barnes were standing by her side telling her what to think. Saying: "I labored hard, and it
was not for nothing. I gave you a pleasant position, and surely you don't wish to throw it
away!" The ghost never said, in so many words: "What would you be without your money?" It
said: "Things aren't so bad as the calamity-howlers say; and anyhow, there are better
remedies." When Lanny, vastly irritated, would ask: "What are the remedies?" the ghost of the
utilities king would fall silent, and Irma would become vague, and talk about such things as
time, education, and spiritual enlightenment.
"It's no good going on with this, dear," said the husband. "The question is, what are we going
to do about Freddi?"
"If you would only tell me any definite thing that we can do!"
"But that isn't possible, dear. I have to go there and try this and that, look for new facts and
