Both Robbie and Johannes made it a practice to send Lanny carbon copies of their letters containing comments on public affairs. For the first time since the World War the Jewish trader was the optimist. He repeated his favorite culinary formula, that no soup is ever eaten as hot as it is cooked. He offered to prove his faith in the land of the pilgrims' pride by letting Robbie buy more Budd shares for him; but Robbie wrote in the strictest confidence—typing the letter himself—that Budd’s might soon be closing down entirely; only Hoover’s wise and merciful Reconstruction Finance Corporation had kept it from having to default on its bonds.
Under the American system, four months had to elapse between Roosevelt’s election and his taking of power. Robbie thought that would be a breathing-spell, but it proved to be one of paralysis; nothing could be done, and each side blamed the other. Herbert was sure that Franklin wanted to see the country go to wreck in order that he might have the glory of saving it. Anyhow, there it was, wave after wave of bank failures, and people hiding their money in mattresses, business men buying gold because of the expected inflation, and people in Europe who had shipped their money to America now calling it back. Seventeen million workers were said to be without jobs—a world record!
XII
Meanwhile the deadlock in Germany continued. The Socialists had lost another big chunk of votes to the Communists, and they hated each other more than ever. Hitler had another interview with Hindenburg, and demanded the chancellorship, but didn’t get it.
The Nazi extremists were infuriated by Hitler’s "legality complex," and clamored for him to seize power. There was another violent quarrel between the Führer and his Reich Organization Leader Number One, Gregor Strasser; the former threatened suicide again, and the latter threatened to resign from the party and set up a new one of his own.
Strasser began intriguing with the gentlemen of the Herren Klub, who were ready to make a deal with anybody who could deliver votes. General von Schleicher wanted to supplant von Papen, who was supposed to be his friend and ally; he had the bright idea of a cabinet which would combine the extreme Junkers with the extreme Nazis—they could browbeat Hitler, because his party was bankrupt, his paymasters had drawn the purse-strings, and he himself was in a state of distraction. Schleicher and Strasser combined would threaten another dissolution of the Reichstag and another election, with the certainty that without money the Nazi vote would be cut in half. Such was the X-ray picture of German politics which Johannes Robin sent to his trusted friends; he didn’t say in so many words that both the conspirators had come to him for funds, but he said that he hadn’t got the above information at second hand.
This deal apparently went through. When the members of the Budd family drove to Bienvenu to spend Christmas, the "office general" was Chancellor of the German Republic, Gregor Strasser had broken with Hitler and was being talked of for a cabinet post, and Hitler had been browbeaten into consenting to an adjournment of the Reichstag until January.
From Connecticut and from Long Island came Christmas letters in which you could see that the writers had labored hard to think of something cheerful to say. Irma, reading them, said to her husband: "Maybe we’d better close up the palace and save money, so that we can take care of my mother and your father if we have to."
"Bless your heart!" replied the prince consort. "You’ve hired that white elephant until April, so you might as well ride him that long."
"But suppose they get really stuck, Lanny!"
"Robbie isn’t playing the market, and I don’t suppose your mother is, so they can’t be broke entirely."
Irma thought for a while, then remarked: "You know, Lanny, it’s really wonderful the way you’ve turned out to be right about business affairs. All the important people have been wrong, while you’ve hit the nail on the head."
Said the young Pink: "It’s worth going through a depression to hear that from one’s wife!"
14. The Stormy Winds Do Blow
I
BACK in Paris during the month of January Lanny would receive every morning a copy of the Berlin Vorwärts, twenty-four hours late; he would find on the front page details of the political situation, displayed under scare headlines and accompanied by editorial exhortations. All from the Socialist point of view, of course; but Lanny could check it by taking a stroll up the Butte de Montmartre and hearing the comments of his deputy-uncle, based on the reading of L’Humanité, the paper which Jaures had founded but which now was in the hands of the Communists. This paper also had its Berlin news, set off with scare headlines and editorial exhortations. Because L’Humanité got its stories by wire, Lanny would sometimes swallow the antidote ahead of the poison.
"You see!" the Red uncle would exclaim. "The Social-Democrats haven’t a single constructive proposal. They only denounce what we propose!"
"But you do some denouncing also, Uncle Jesse."
"The workers know our program; and every time there’s an election, the Socialist bureaucrats lose half a million or a million votes, and we gain them."
"But suppose there aren’t any more elections, Uncle Jesse. Suppose Hitler takes power!"
"He can’t do any harm to our monolithic party. We have educated and disciplined our members and they will stand firm."
"But suppose he outlaws your organization!"
"You can’t destroy a party that has several hundred thousand members, and has polled four or five million votes."
"Don’t make the mistake of underestimating your enemy."
"Well, if necessary we’ll go underground. It has happened before, and you may be sure that we have made plans—in France as well as in Germany."
"I hope you’re not mistaken, Uncle Jesse." Lanny said it and meant it. He argued against the Communists, but was only halfhearted about it, because after all, they were a workers' party, and nobody could be sure they mightn’t be needed. The first Five Year Plan of the Soviet Union had been completed with success, and all the Reds were exulting over it; the Pinks couldn’t fail to be impressed, and many wavered and wondered if maybe the Russian way might be the only way. Anyhow, they had a right to be heard; Lanny did what he could to persuade both sides to stop quarreling, and he set them an example by refusing to let them quarrel with him.
II
Any time he was in doubt about what was really happening in Germany he had only to write to Johannes Robin. A letter from the Jewish money-master was like a gust of wind blowing away a fog and revealing the landscape. It disclosed the German nation traveling upon a perilous path, with yawning abysses on every side, earthquakes shaking the rocks loose and volcanoes hurling out clouds of fiery ashes. Assuredly neither of the Plinys, uncle or nephew, had confronted more terrifying natural phenomena than did the Weimar Republic at the beginning of this year 1933.
The ceaselessly aggressive Nazis were waging daily and nightly battles with the Communists all over the country. And meantime the two ruling groups, the industrialists of the west and the landlords of the east, were concentrating their attention upon getting higher tariffs to protect their interests; one hundred per cent wasn’t enough in these days of failing markets. The workers, who wanted lower prices for goods and for food, had refused time after time to vote for candidates of these groups; but with less than five per cent of the votes, the reactionary politicians still clung to power, playing one faction against another, using cajolements mixed with threats.