Upton Sinclair - Dragons’s teeth

"You do not feel that there is any possibility of trusting the German Republic?" inquired Irma, trying hard to perfect her political education.

"When one says Germany today, Madame, one means Prussia; and to these people good faith is a word of mockery. For such men as Thyssen and Hugenberg, and for the Jewish money-lenders, the name Republic is a form of camouflage. I speak frankly, because it is all in the family, as it were."

"Assuredly," said the hostess.

"Every concession that we make is met by further demands. We have withdrawn from the Rheinland, and no longer have any hold upon them, so they smile up their sleeves and go on with their rearming. They waited, as you have seen, until after our elections, so as not to alarm us; then, seeing the victory of the left, they overthrow their Catholic Chancellor, and we see a Cabinet of the Barons, as it is so well named. If there is a less trustworthy man in all Europe than Franz von Papen, I would not know where to seek him."

Irma perceived that you might invite a French Nationalist to the most magnificent of homes and serve him the best of dinners, but you would not thereby make him entirely happy. Practicing her new role of salonniere, she brought the young people into the conversation; but this succeeded no better, for it turned out that Charlot, the young engineer, had joined the Croix de Feu, one of the patriotic organizations which did not propose to surrender la patrie either to the Reds or to the Prussians. The Croix de Feu used the technique of banners and uniforms and marching and singing as did the Fascists of Italy and the Nazis of Germany; but Lanny said: "I’m afraid, Charlot, you won’t get so far, because you don’t make so many promises to the workers."

"They tell the people falsehoods," said the young Frenchman, haughtily; "but we are men of honor."

"Ah, yes," sighed his old friend; "but how far does that go in politics?"

"In this corrupt republic, no distance at all; but we have set out to make France a home for men who mean what they say".

Lanny spoke no more. It made him sad to see his two foster sons —they were supposed to be something like that—going the road of Fascism; but there was nothing he could do about it. He knew that their mother had shared these tendencies. They were French patriots, and he couldn’t make them internationalists, or what he called "good Europeans."

Having had such a dose of reaction, he had to have one of hope. He said to Irma: "I really ought to call on Leon Blum, and perhaps take him out to lunch. Would you care to come along?"

"But Lanny," she exclaimed, "what is this house for?"

"I didn’t suppose you’d want to have him here."

"But dear, what kind of home will it be if you can’t bring your friends?"

He saw that she was determined to be fair. He guessed that she had talked the matter out with the wise Emily, and was following the latter’s program. If one’s husband must have vices, let him have them at home, where they may be toned down and kept within limits. After all, Leon Blum was the leader of the second largest political party in France; he was a scholar and a poet, and had once had a fortune. In the old days, as a young aesthete, he had been a frequenter of Emily’s salon; now he had exchanged Marcel Proust for Karl Marx, but he remained a gentleman and a brilliant mind. Surely one might invite him to lunch, and even to dinner—if the company was carefully chosen. Emily herself would come; and Lanny knew from this that the matter had been discussed.

He took the good the gods had provided him. The Socialist leader sat in the same chair which Denis de Bruyne had filled, and maybe he felt some evil vibrations, for he spoke very sadly. In the midst of infinite corruption he was trying to believe in honesty; in the midst of wholesale cruelty he was trying to believe in kindness. The profit system, the blind competitive struggle for raw materials and markets, was wrecking civilization. No one nation could change this by itself; all must help, but someone must begin, and the voice of truth must be heard everywhere. Leon Blum spoke tirelessly in the Chamber, he wrote daily editorials for Le Populaire, he traveled here and there, pleading and explaining. He would do it at the luncheon table of a friend, and then stop and apologize, smiling and saying that politics ruined one’s manners as well as one’s character.

He was a tall slender man with the long slim hands of an artist; a thin, sensitive face, an abundant mustache which made him a joy to the caricaturists of the French press. He had been through campaigns of incredible bitterness; for to the partisans of the French right it was adding insult to injury when their foes put up a Jew as their spokesman. It made the whole movement of the workers a part of the international Jewish conspiracy, and lent venom to all Fascist attacks upon France. "Perhaps, after all, it is a mistake that I try to serve the cause," said the statesman.

He was ill content with the showing which his party had made at the polls. A gain of seventeen was not enough to save the day. He said that immediate and bold action was required if Europe was to be spared the horrors of another war. He said that the German Republic could not survive without generous help from France. He said that the "Cabinet of the Barons" was a natural answer to the cabinet of the bigot, Poincare, and to that of the cheat, Laval. Blum was standing for real disarmament of all the nations, including France, and he had been willing to split his party rather than to yield on that issue. Said Irma, after the luncheon: "We won’t ever invite him and the de Bruynes at the same time!"

From the time her decision was taken to rent the palace, Irma’s mind was occupied with the problem of a party which tout Paris would attend; a sort of housewarming—Lanny said that a building of that size, made of white marble, would require a lot of cordiality to affect its temperature. His wife wanted to think of something original. Parties were so much alike. People ate your food and drank your wine, often too much of it; they danced, or listened to a singer they had heard many times at the opera and been bored by. Lanny quoted an old saying: "Gabble, gobble, git."

Irma insisted that tout Paris would expect something streamlined and shiny from America. Couldn’t they think of something? The husband tried various suggestions: a performing elephant from the circus, a troop of Arabian acrobats he had seen in a cabaret—their black hair was two feet long and when they did several somersaults in one leap they brought down the house. "Don’t be silly, dear," said the wife.

He thought of an idea to end all ideas. "Offer a prize of a hundred thousand francs for the most original suggestion for a party. That will start them talking as nothing ever did." He meant it for burlesque, but to his amusement Irma was interested; she talked about it, speculating as to what sort of suggestions she would get, and so on; she wasn’t satisfied until she had asked Emily, and been assured that it might be a good idea for Chicago, but not for Paris. Even after Irma dropped it, she had a hankering, and said: "I believe my father would have done it. He didn’t let people frighten him away from things."

It would have to be a conventional soiree. The young Robins would come and play—a distinguished thing to furnish the talent from your own family, and have it the best. Fortunately the Paris newspapers did not report Communist doings—unless it was a riot or something—therefore few persons knew that Hansi had assisted in electing Zhess Block-less to the Chamber of Deputies. (Already that body had met, and the new member, refusing to be intimidated by the splendid surroundings, had put on his old phonograph record, this time with a loud-speaker attachment, so that his threats against the mur d’argent had been heard as far as Tunisia and Tahiti, French Indo-China and Guiana.)