"Darling," he answered, "Wickthorpe is a member of the British aristocracy, and is here to fight for the Empire. He’s got pretty much of everything he wants, so naturally he can take things easy."
"Haven’t you got what you want, Lanny?"
"Not by a darn sight! I want a better life for masses of people who aren’t in the British Empire, and for many in the Empire whom Wickthorpe leaves out of his calculations."
"But, Lanny, you heard him say: We’re all Socialists now."
"I know, dear; it’s a formula. But they write their definition of the word, and it means that Wickthorpe will do the governing, and decide what the workers are to get. The slum-dwellers in the East End will go on paying tribute to the landlords, and the ryots in India and the niggers in South Africa will be sweated to make luxury for British bondholders."
"Oh, dear!" exclaimed the would-be salonnière. "Who will want to come to see us if you talk like that?"
VII
Lanny was interested in the point of view of these official persons, and sat in the splendid library of his wife’s rented home and listened to Rick discussing the Nazi movement with Wickthorpe and his secretary, Reggie Catledge, who was also his cousin. It was a point of view in no way novel to Lanny, his father having explained it when he was a very small boy. The governing classes of Britain made it a fixed policy never to permit one nation to become strong enough to dominate the Continent; regardless of which nation it might be, they would set themselves the task of raising some rival as a counterweight.
Wickthorpe disliked the Nazis and what they were doing, but he didn’t rave at them; he just said they were a set of bounders. He took it for granted that their fantastic promises had been made as a means of getting power. "Just politics," he said, and refused to be disturbed by the possibility that the bounders might mean what they said. The two Englishmen listened with interest to what Lanny had to tell about his meeting with Hitler, and asked him some questions, but at the end they were of the same opinion still.
"We’ve had so many wild men in our public life," said his lordship. "You and I are too young to remember how old John Burns used to rave in his speeches at Trafalgar Square, but my parents got up slumming parties to go and listen. Long afterward you could meet the old boy in the New Reform Club and hear him talk about it—in fact you could hardly get him to talk about anything else."
"He was a very strict teetotaler, but his face was as red as a turkey-cock’s wattles," added Catledge.
"Hitler doesn’t drink, either," said Lanny; but the others didn’t appear to attach any importance to that.
They went on to point out to Rick that the French imperialists were arrogant, and their diplomats had made a lot of trouble in Syria, Iraq, and other places. French bankers had a great store of gold, and made use of it in ways inconvenient to their rivals. Wickthorpe didn’t say that Hitler would serve to keep the French occupied, but his arguments made plain the general idea that you couldn’t entrust any one set of foreigners with too much power. It was even possible to guess that he wasn’t too heartbroken over what had happened in Wall Street during the past four years; because a large part of Britain’s prosperity depended upon her service as clearinghouse for international transactions, and it had been highly embarrassing to have the dollar prove more stable than the pound.
Wickthorpe and his cousin had it comfortably figured out what to be Hitler’s role in world affairs. Assuming that he was able to continue in power, he was going to fight Russia. He was the logical one to do this, because of his geographical position; for Britain this factor made it almost impossible. Lanny wanted to ask: "Why does anybody have to fight Russia?"—but he was afraid that would be an improper question.
Here sat this tall young lord, smooth-skinned, pink-cheeked, with his fair hair and little toy mustache; perfectly groomed, perfectly at ease; one couldn’t say perfectly educated, for there were many important things about which he knew nothing—science, for example, and the economics of reality as opposed to those of classical theory. He knew ancient Greek and Roman civilization, and Hebrew theology made over by the Church of England; he had recent world affairs at his fingertips. He possessed perfect poise, charm of manner, and skill in keeping to himself those thoughts which particular persons had no right to share. He was sure that he was a gentleman and a Christian, yet he took it for granted that it was his duty to labor and plan to bring about one of the most cruel and bloody of wars.
"You know, you might do quite a spot of trade with the Soviet Union," suggested Lanny, mildly. "They have the raw materials and you have the machines."
"Yes, Budd, but one can’t think merely about business; there are moral factors."
"But might not the Reds be toned down and acquire a sense of responsibility, just as well as the Nazis?"
"We can’t trust the blighters."
"I’m told that they meet their bills regularly. The Chase National gets along with them quite well."
"I don’t mean financially, I mean politically. They would start breaking into the Balkans, or India, or China; their agents are trying to stir up revolution all the time."
Lanny persisted. "Have you thought of the possibility that if you won’t trade with them, the Nazis may? Their economies supplement each other."
"But their ideologies are at opposite poles!"
"They seem to be; but you yourself say how ideologies change when men get power. It seems to me that Stalin and Hitler are self-made men, and might be able to understand each other. Suppose one day Stalin should say to Hitler, or Hitler to Stalin: See here, old top, the British have got it fixed up for us to ruin ourselves fighting. Why should we oblige them?"
"I admit that would be a pretty bad day," said young Lord Wickthorpe. He said it with a smile, not taking it seriously. When Rick pinned him down to it, he gave yet another reason why it was impossible to consider a large-scale deal with the Soviet Union—the effect it would have upon politics at home. "It would set up the Reds, and it might bring labor back into power."
Said Rick to Lanny, when they were alone: "Class is more than country!"
VIII
The Nazi program of repression of the Jews was being carried out step by step, which was going to be the Nazi fashion. Civil servants of Jewish blood were being turned out of their jobs and good Aryans of the right party affiliations put in their place. Jewish lawyers were forbidden to practice in the courts. "Jew signs" were being pasted or painted on places of business which belonged to the despised race. Beatings and terrorism were being secretly encouraged, for the purpose of driving the Jews out and depriving them of jobs and property. When such incidents were mentioned in the press they would be blamed upon "persons unknown masquerading as Stormtroopers."
But refugees escaping to the outside world would report the truth, and there was a ferment of indignation among the Jews of all countries; they and their sympathizers held meetings of protest, and a movement was started to boycott trade with Germany. The reaction in the Fatherland was immediate, and Johannes wrote about it—very significantly he wrote only to Lanny, never to his son, and mailed the letters unsigned and with no mark to identify them. It had been made a prison offense to give information to foreigners, and in his letters Johannes addressed Lanny as a German, and warned him not to tell anyone in Paris!