had the firm conviction that bearers of this blood couldn't do anything seriously wrong, and
she found ways to persuade herself that they hadn't. She had made up her mind to make the
best of this son-in-law whom fate had assigned to her, and presently she was finding excuses
for him. Did someone call him a Socialist? Well, he had been reared in Europe, where such
ideas didn't mean what they did in America. Hadn't some distinguished Englishman —Fanny
couldn't recall who it was—declared: "We are all Socialists now"?
For Lanny as a prince consort there was really quite a lot to be said. His manners were
distinguished and his conversation even more so. He didn't get drunk, and he had to be urged
to spend his wife's money. The uncertainty about his mother's marriage ceremony hadn't
broken into the newspapers, and he was received by his father's very old family. So the large and
majestic Queen Mother of Shore Acres set out to butter him with flattery and get from him
the two things she ardently desired: first, that he should help Irma to produce a grandson to be
named Vandringham; and second, that they should leave Baby Frances at Shore Acres to be
reared in the Vandringham tradition.
Uncle Horace, that pachyderm of a man who moved with such astonishing energy, proved to be
an equally complaisant relative. He had a sense of humor, with more than a trace of mischief in
it. He was amused to hear Lanny "razz" the American plutocracy, and especially those
representatives of it who came to the Barnes estate. The fact that he himself had been knocked
down and out had diminished his admiration for the system and increased his pleasure in
seeing others "get theirs." He chuckled at Lanny's Pinkish jokes, and took the role of an
elderly courtier "playing up" to a newly crowned king. Did he hope that Lanny might some
day persuade Irma to let him have another fling in the market? Or was he merely making sure
of holding onto the comfortable pension which she allowed him? Anyhow, he was good
company.
XI
The echoes of calamity came rolling from Germany to England. Trade was falling off,
factories closing, unemployment increasing; doubts were spreading as to the soundness of the
pound sterling, for a century the standard of value for all the world; investors were taking
refuge in the dollar, the Dutch florin, the Swiss franc. Rick told about the situation in his
country; boldness was needed, he said—a capital levy, a move to socialize credit; but no political
party had the courage or the vision. The Tories clamored to balance the budget at any cost, to
cut the dole, and the pay of the schoolteachers, even of the navy. It was the same story as
Hoover with his "rugged individualism." Anything to save the gold standard and the power of
the creditor class.
At the beginning of September the labor government fell. An amazing series of events—the
labor Prime Minister, Ramsay Mac-Donald, and several of his colleagues in the old Cabinet went
over to the Tories and formed what he called a "National" government to carry out the anti-
labor program. It had happened before in Socialist history, but never quite so dramatically, so
openly; Rick, writing about it for one of the leftist papers, said that those who betrayed the
hopes of the toiling masses usually managed to veil their sell-out with decorous phrases, they
didn't come out on the public highway to strip themselves of their old work-clothes and put on
the livery of their masters.
Rick was a philosopher, and tried to understand the actions of men. He said that the ruling
classes couldn't supply their own quota of ability, but were forced continually to invade the
other classes for brains. It had become the function of the Socialist movement to train and
equip lightning-change artists of politics, men who understood the workers and how to fool
them with glittering promises and then climb to power upon their shoulders. In Italy it had
been Mussolini, who had learned his trade editing the principal Socialist paper of the country. In
France no fewer than four premiers had begun their careers as ardent revolutionaries; the
newest of them was Pierre Laval, an innkeeper's son who had driven a one-horse omnibus for his
father, and while driving had read Socialist literature and learned how to get himself elected
mayor of his town.
For what had these men sold out their party and their cause? For cash? That played a part, of
course; a premier or prime minister got considerably more than a Socialist editor, and learned
to live on a more generous scale. But more important yet was power: the opportunity to
expand the personality, to impress the world, to be pictured and reported in the newspapers, to
hold the reins and guide the national omnibus. A thousand flatterers gather round the statesman,
to persuade him that he is indispensable to the country's welfare, that danger lies just ahead,
and that he alone can ride in the whirlwind and direct the storm.
Rick sent his friend a bunch of clippings, showing how the man who had once lost his seat in
