This was something about which Freddi Robin should have been able to speak, he being now a duly certified Herr Doktpr in the science of economics. He reported that the great university had left it still a mystery to students. The proper academic procedure was to accumulate masses of facts, but to consider explanations only historically. You learned that the three-stage pattern of primitive economic progress as taught by Friedrich List had been abandoned after the criticisms of anthropologists, and that Roscher’s theory of national economics as a historical category had been replaced by the new historical school of Schmoller. It was all right for you to know that in ancient Rome the great estates, the latifundia, had been worked with slave labor, thus driving independent farmers to the city and herding them into ramshackle five-story tenements which often burned down. But if in the class you pointed out that similar tendencies were apparent in Berlin, you would be looked at askance by a professor whose future depended upon his avoidance of political controversy.
To be sure, they were supposed to enjoy academic freedom in Germany, and you might listen to a Catholic professor in one lecture hall and to a Socialist in the next; but when it came to promotions, somebody had to decide, and you could hardly expect the authorities to give preference to men whose teachings fostered that proletarian discontent which was threatening to rend the country apart. At any rate, that is the way Freddi Robin reported the situation in the great University of Berlin.
IV
The Budds arrived a week or so before the national elections in September 1930. The city was in an uproar, with posters and placards everywhere, hundreds of meetings each night, parades with bands and banners, crowds shouting and often fighting. The tension was beyond anything that Lanny had ever witnessed; under the pressure of the economic collapse events in Germany were coming to a crisis, and everybody was being compelled to take sides.
The young people wanted to see these sights. Hansi and Bess must attend a big Communist gathering the very night of their arrival, and the others went along out of curiosity. The great hall in the Moabit district was draped with red streamers and banners having the hammer and sickle in black. Also there were red carnations or rosettes in people’s buttonholes. The crowd was almost entirely proletarian: pitiful pinched faces of women, haggard grim faces of men; clothing dingy, generally clean but so patched that the original cloth was a matter of uncertainty, many a man had had no new suit since the war.
The speakers raved and shouted, and worked the crowd into a frenzy; the singing made you think of an army marching into battle. A quartet sang chants with hammering rhythms, the repetition of simple words, like lessons repeated by children in school. Lanny translated for his wife: "Be ready to take over! Be ready to take over!"
Irma had learned a lot about this subject during her sojourn in these two strange families; she had listened to Uncle Jesse, and to Hansi and Bess arguing with Lanny, and now and then with Hansi’s father. They didn’t want to kill anybody—not unless somebody resisted. All they wanted was to reproduce in Germany what they had done in Russia; to confiscate the property of the rich and reduce them to their own slum level. Johannes had smiled and said they would make a museum out of his palace, and that would be all right with him, he would buy another in London, and then one in New York, and then one in Tahiti—by which time Russia would have restored capitalism, and he would return to that region and make his fortune all over again.
The financier made a joke of it, but it was no joke at this Versammlung. Not one single laugh in a whole evening; the nearest to it was mocking jeers, hardly to be distinguished from cries of rage. This was what they called the "proletariat," the creatures of the slums, threatening to burst out, overcome the police, and raid the homes of those whom they called "exploiters." The speakers were seeking election to the Reichstag, where they would pour out the same kind of tirades. Irma looked about her uneasily, and was glad she had had the sense not to wear any of her jewels to this place. It wasn’t safe anyhow, for the National Socialists often raided the crowds coming out from Red meetings, and there were rights and sometimes shootings.
V
The Social-Democrats also were holding great meetings. They were by far the largest party in the Republic, but had never had an outright majority, either of votes or of representation; therefore they had not been able to have their way. If they had, would they have known what to do? Would they have dared trying to bring Socialism to the Fatherland? Hansi and Bess declared that they were paralyzed by their notions of legality; it was a party of officeholders, of bureaucrats warming swivel-chairs and thinking how to keep their jobs and salaries. They continued to call themselves Socialist and to repeat the party shibboleths, but that was simply bait for the voters. How to get Socialism they had no idea, and they didn’t consider it necessary to find out.
Lanny, yearning after the orderly methods of democracy, considered that it was up to him to help this party. In days past he had brought letters of introduction from Longuet, and now he went to renew old acquaintanceships, and to prove his sincerity by making a contribution to the party’s campaign chest. He took his family to one of the mass meetings, and certainly, if there was any tiredness or deadness, it didn’t show on this public occasion. The hall was packed to the doors, banners and streamers were everywhere, and when the party’s favorite orators made their appearance volumes of cheering rolled to the roof and back. These men didn’t rave and threaten as the Communists did; they discussed the practical problems confronting the German workers, and denounced both groups of extremists for leading the people astray with false promises. It was a dignified meeting, and Irma felt more comfortable; there didn’t seem to be anything to start a fight about.
On their way home the young people discussed what they had heard. Bess, who used the same phonograph records as Uncle Jesse, said that the party was old—a grandfather party—so it had the machinery for getting out the crowds. "But," she added, "those municipal councilors repeating their formulas make one think of stout, well-fed parrots dressed up in frock-coats."
"The Communists don’t have any formulas, of course!" countered Lanny, not without a touch of malice. These two loved each other, but couldn’t discuss politics without fighting.
Bess was referring to officials who had reported on their efforts to increase the city’s milk supply and reduce its price. Lanny had found the Socialists discussing the same subject in New York; it was no unimportant matter to the women of the poor. "Of course it’s dull and prosy," he admitted; "not so exciting as calling for the revolution next week—"
"I know," broke in the sister; "but while you’re discussing milk prices, the Nazis are getting arms caches and making their plans to bring about the counter-revolution next week."
"And the reactionary princes conspiring with them, and the great capitalists putting up money to pay for the arms!" Thus Hansi, stepping onto dangerous ground, since his father was one of those capitalists. How much longer was that secret going to be kept in the Robin family?
VI
Lanny wanted to hear all sides; he wanted to know what the Nazis were doing and saying, if only so as to send Rick an account of it. Among his acquaintances in Berlin was Heinrich Jung, blue-eyed "Aryan" enthusiast from Upper Silesia. Heinrich had spent three years training himself to succeed his father as head forester of Graf Stubendorf’s domain; but now all that had been set aside, and Heinrich was an official of the National Socialist German Workingmen’s Party, high up in what they called the Hitler Youth. For seven or eight years he had been mailing propaganda to Lanny Budd in Bienvenu, having never given up hope that a pure-blooded "Aryan" would feel the pull of his racial ties.