Resting from such flights of fancy the solicitous Lanny Budd had quiet talks with his host, hoping by gentle and tactful intervention to lessen the strain of that family conflict which had been revealed to him. Johannes explained, in much the same words that Robbie Budd had used when Lanny was a small boy, that the business man did not think merely of the money he was making or might make; he acquired responsibilities to thousands of investors, not all of them greedy idlers, but many aged persons, widows, and orphans having no means of support but their shares of stock; also to workingmen whose families starved unless the weekly pay envelopes were filled. It was a libel upon business administrators to suppose that they had no sense of duties owed to other people, even though most of these people were strangers.
"Moreover," said Johannes, "when a man has spent his life learning to pursue a certain kind of activity, it is no easy matter to persuade him to drop it at the height of his powers. Difficulties, yes; but he has expected them, and takes them as a challenge, he enjoys coping with them and showing that he can master them. To give up and run away from them is an act of cowardice which would undermine his moral foundations; he would have no use for himself thereafter, but would spend his time brooding, like an admiral who veered about and deserted his fleet.
"My children have their own moral code," continued the money master, "and they have the task of convincing me that it applies to my case. They wish to build a new and better world, and I would be glad if they could succeed, and if I saw any hope of success I would join them. I ask for their plans, and they offer me vague dreams, in which as a man of affairs I see no practicality. It is like the end of Das Rheingold: there is Valhalla, very beautiful, but only a rainbow bridge on which to get to it, and while the gods may be able to walk on a rainbow, my investors and working people cannot. My children assure me that a firmer bridge will be constructed, and when I ask for the names of the engineers, they offer me party leaders and propagandists, speechmakers who cannot even agree among themselves; if it were not for what they call the capitalist police they would fall to fighting among themselves and we should have civil war instead of Utopia. How can my two boys expect me to agree with them until they have at least managed to agree between themselves?"
Lanny was sad to have no answer to this question. He had already put it to his sister, and she could say only that she and her husband were right, while Freddi and Rahel were wrong. No use putting the question to the other pair, for their answer would be the same. Neither couple was going to give way—any more than Lanny himself was going to give up his conviction that it was the program of the Communists which had caused the development of Fascism and Nazism—or at any rate had made possible its spread in Italy and Germany. Only in the Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon lands, where democratic institutions were firmly rooted, had neither Reds nor anti-Reds been able to make headway.
II
So there wasn’t any chance of persuading Johannes Robin to retire to a monastery or even to a private yacht right now. He didn’t pretend to know what was going to happen in Germany, but he knew that these were stormy times and that he, the admiral, would stand by his righting fleet. He would protect his properties and keep his factories running; and if, in order to get contracts and concessions it was necessary to make a present to some powerful politician, Johannes would bargain shrewdly and pay no more than he had to. That had been the way of the world since governments had first been invented, and a Jewish trader, an exile barely tolerated in a strange land, had to be satisfied with looking out for his own. His sons felt more at home in Germany and dreamed of trying to change it; but for the child of the ghetto it was enough that he obeyed the law. "Not very noble," he admitted, sadly; "but when the nobler ones come to me for help, they get it."
The world was in a bad way and getting worse. Banks were failing all over the United States, and unemployment increasing steadily. A presidential election was due in November, and the political parties had held their conventions and made their nominations; the Republicans had endorsed the Great Engineer and all that he had done, while the Democrats nominated the Governor of New York, Franklin Roosevelt by name. Johannes asked if Lanny knew anything about this man, and Lanny said no; but when the yacht picked up some mail, there was Robbie’s weekly letter, a cross between a business man’s report and one of the lamentations of Jeremiah. Robbie said that the Democratic candidate was a man wholly without business experience, and moreover an invalid, his legs shriveled by infantile paralysis. Surely these times called for one at least physically sound; the presidency was a mankilling job, and this Roosevelt, if elected, couldn’t survive it for a year. But he wasn’t going to be elected, for Robbie and his friends were pulling off their coats, to say nothing of opening their purses.
"I suppose Robbie will be asking you for a contribution!" chuckled the irreverent son, and the other replied: "I have many interests in America." Lanny recalled the remark he had once heard Zaharoff make: "I am a citizen of every country where I have investments."
III
They discussed conditions in Germany, living on borrowed capital and sliding deeper and deeper into the pit. The existing government had no popular support, but was run by the Herren Klub, an organization of big business men, aristocrats, and "office generals," having some twenty branches throughout Germany. Its two most active politicians were Chancellor von Papen and General von Schleicher, and they were supposed to be colleagues, but neither could trust the other out of his sight. Now Papen was in office, and Schleicher was trading secretly with the Nazis for their support to turn him out. Nobody could trust anybody, except the eighty-five-year-old monument of the Junkerdom, General von Hindenburg. Poor alte Herr, when the burdens of state were dumped upon him he could only answer: "Ich will meine Ruhe haben!"— I must have my rest.
Johannes judged it certain that the Nazis would make heavy gains at the coming elections, but he refused to worry about this. He had several of them on his payroll, but what he counted upon most was the fact that Hitler had gone to Dusseldorf and had a long session with Thyssen and other magnates of the Ruhr. They wanted the Red labor unions put down, and Hitler had satisfied them that he was ready to do the job. You might fool one or two of those tough steelmen, but not many; they knew politicians, and dealt with one crop after another; it was part of the game of conducting industry in a world full of parliaments and parties. A nuisance, but you learned to judge men and saw to it that none got into power who couldn’t be trusted. The same thing applied to the great landlords of Prussia; they wanted above all things a bulwark against Bolshevism, and were willing to pay a heavy price for that service. These two powers, the industrialists of the west and the landed gentry of the east, had governed Germany since the days of Bismarck and would go on doing so.
"But aren’t you afraid of Hitler’s anti-Semitism?" asked Lanny.
"Herrgott!" exclaimed the owner of the Bessie Budd. "I was brought up in the midst of pogroms, and what could I do then? It is said that there once lived a Jew called Jesus, and other Jews had him executed by the Romans; such things happened ten thousand times, no doubt; but because of this one time my poor people have to be spat upon and clubbed and stabbed to death. What can any of us do, except to pray that it will not break out in the street where we live?"