the House of Commons for his convictions had now become the hero and darling of those who
had unseated him. The entire capitalist press had rallied behind him, praising his action as the
greatest of public services. "He will find that he is their prisoner," wrote Rick. "He can do
nothing but what they permit; he can have no career except by serving them."
Rick mailed this letter; but before the steamer reached New York, the cables brought word
that the prisoner of the Tories had failed. Britain was off the gold standard, and the pound
sterling had lost about twenty per cent of its value! It happened to be the twenty-first of
September, a notable day in Wall Street history, for it marked two years from the high point of
the big bull market. In those two years American securities had lost sixty per cent of their value;
and now came this staggering news, causing another drop! "Look where steel is
Lanny Budd to his father over the telephone.
XII
In the midst of this world chaos Pierre Laval, innkeeper's son, paid a visit to Germany to see
what could be done for that frantic government. The boy driver had grown up into a short,
stocky man with black hair always awry, with somber, rather piratical features and a thick
black mustache. He had made a lot of money, a tremendous aid to a political career. Of his
Socialist days he kept one souvenir: he always wore the little four-in-hand wash ties which
had been the fashion in his youth, and had been cheap because he could wash them himself. In
France it was well for a statesman to retain some proletarian eccentricity; that he sold out his
convictions mattered less, for the people had become so cynical about public men that they
hoped only to find the least dishonest.
With Laval traveled Aristide Briand, his Foreign Minister, another innkeeper's son and
another Socialist who had changed his mind. He had been a member of twenty-one cabinets—
which had required not a little flexibility. But he had labored with genuine conviction to make
peace between France and Germany. Now he was an old man, bowed and gray; the glorious
organ voice was broken and the strong heart was soon to break. He was still pleading for
peace, but he was the prisoner of Laval; and anyhow it was too late. Ancient hatreds and fears
had prevailed, and now Germany was in a desperate plight, and France in a worse one, but
couldn't realize it.
A curious whim of history: Briand meeting with Hindenburg! The washerwoman's child and
the East Prussian aristocrat; old-time enemies, now both nearing their graves; each thinking
about his country's safety, and helpless to secure it.
revolution in Germany; not the respectable kind which would put the Kaiser's sons on the
throne, but a dangerous gutter-revolution, an upsurge of the
one-time odd-job man, the painter of picture postcards, the "Bohemian corporal" named
Schicklgruber. Briand demanding the dropping of the Austro-German customs-union project,
while Hindenburg pleaded for a chance for his country to sell goods.
Briand denouncing the Stahlhelm and the new pocket-battleships, while Hindenburg
complained that France was not keeping her promise to disarm. Hindenburg begging for
loans, while Briand explained that France had to keep her gold reserve as the last bulwark of
financial security in Europe. No, there wasn't much chance of their getting together; the only
one who could hope to profit by the visit was the aforesaid "Bohemian corporal," whose papers
were raving alike at the French visitors and at the German politicians who licked their boots to
no purpose.
Adolf Hitler Schicklgruber wouldn't attack Hindenburg, for Hindenburg was a monument, a
tradition, a living legend. The Nazi press would concentrate its venom upon the Chancellor, a
Catholic and leader of the Center party, guilty of the crime of signing the Young Plan which
sought to keep Germany in slavery until the year 1988. Now Hoover had granted a
moratorium, but there was no moratorium for Brüning, no let-up in the furious Nazi
campaign.
Lanny Budd knew about it, because Heinrich Jung had got his address, presumably from
Kurt, and continued to keep him supplied with literature. There was no one at Shore Acres who
could read it but Lanny himself; however, one didn't need to know German, one had only to
look at the headlines to know that it was sensational, and at the cartoons to know that it was a
propaganda of cruel and murderous hate. Cartoons of Jews as monsters with swollen noses
and bellies, of John Bull as a fat banker sucking the blood of German children, of Marianne as
a devouring harpy, of the Russian bear with a knife in his teeth and a bomb in each paw, of
Uncle Sam as a lean and sneering Shylock. Better to throw such stuff into the trash-basket
without taking off the wrappers.
But that wouldn't keep the evil flood from engulfing Germany, it wouldn't keep millions of
