Upton Sinclair - Dragons’s teeth

For ten years he had been organizing two private armies of young men, several hundred thousand fanatics imbued with that spirit: the Sturm Abteilung, or Storm Division, and the Schutz Staffel, or Defense Formation. They were the men who were going to carry out his will, and by now they knew it so well that they could act while he was eating, resting, sleeping—even while he was telling the world that he didn’t want them to do what they were doing. Even if he told them to stop they would go right ahead to crush the last foe of National Socialism inside the Fatherland, and make the streets free to the brown battalions—the promise of that Horst Wessel Lied which Hitler had taught them to sing.

A dreadful series of events to watch; and the fact that you were physically safe from them wasn’t enough for persons with any sensitiveness of soul. Hansi and Bess couldn’t eat, they couldn’t sleep, they couldn’t think about anything except what was happening to their friends and associates at home. The Stormtroopers came when they pleased and did what they pleased; the police had orders to co-operate with them. They came to people’s homes at night and took them away, and nothing more was heard of them. But gradually, through secret channels, word began to leak out concerning the dreadful happenings in the cellars of the Nazi headquarters in the Hedemannstrasse, in the Columbus-Haus, and in the old military prison in the General-Papen-Strasse.

Papa wrote brief notes, carefully guarded; he said: "Don’t worry about us, we have friends." But Hansi and Bess knew a hundred people to worry about, and they read all the papers they could get and tried to put this item of news together with that and guess about the fate of their "monolithic party." They wrote anxious letters and then worried because no replies came. What had become of this leader and of that? Surely some must have escaped, and it didn’t take long to get from Berlin to Paris.

Very difficult to practice music under such circumstances. What did the turn of a phrase matter, when madmen were loose in one’s homeland, when a great civilization was being strangled. But the young couple had made engagements and had to keep them. They had to let Lanny and Irma drive them to Juan, dress themselves properly, and go to Emily’s villa and play a program, not too mournful. When an encore was called for, Hansi played one of his favorites, Achron’s Jewish Prayer, and he put two thousand years of weeping and wailing into it; it was quite wonderful, and the fashionable audience was deeply moved. The tears ran down Hansi’s own cheeks, and he would have liked to say: "It is my people, weeping now in Germany."

But no, he couldn’t say anything, it wouldn’t have been good form; art must remain inside its ivory tower, and not descend onto that darkling plain where ignorant armies clash by night. Elegantly gowned ladies with sensitive souls enjoy mournful tones from the G-string of a fiddle, but do not care to weep over a bunch of Jews being beaten and kicked in the underground dungeons of old castles and prisons on the other side of the eastern border.

HANSI and Bess didn’t return to Germany. Papa and Mama forbade them to come, and Lanny forbade them to go; Robbie Budd cabled, forbidding Bess; and more important yet, Adolf Hitler forbade them both. He did it by hunting down and jailing all prominent Communists, and making it plain that they could no longer exert any influence or accomplish any purpose in Germany. The policy of Schrecklichkeit, made famous during the World War, hadn’t worked on the outside world, but could surely be made to work inside the Fatherland.

There was the Lodge at Bienvenu, and the young couple settled down in it. Beauty felt exactly as Irma did, she didn’t want Reds about her, or want her home to have such an atmosphere; but she, too, had been a guest on the Bessie Budd and at the Berlin home, and couldn’t fail to make a return; nor could she fail in kindness to Robbie’s daughter. A compromise was worked out without ever a word being said about it; Hansi and Bess didn’t invite their Red friends to the estate, but met them in Juan or Cannes. That helped a little, but not entirely, for the young couple couldn’t help bringing their troubles home with them in their thoughts and aspect.

It was the same thing Lanny had witnessed ten years ago, when Mussolini had seized power. Swarms of refugees fled from the terror, and naturally it wasn’t long before they found out where Hansi and Bess were staying. The young couple were supposed to be rich, and, compared to the status of most Communists, they were. They could hardly say no to anybody—for what did the word "comrade" mean if not to open your heart and your purse in a time of agony such as this? Papa would send money; they didn’t tell him what it was for—since it was to be assumed that letters both going and coming were liable to be opened; but Papa could guess, and no price was too high to keep his darlings from coming back into danger.

But he couldn’t send enough; not the purse of Fortunatus, not the touch of Midas, would suffice for the needs of all the Hitler victims, from this time on for years beyond any man’s guessing. Either you must have the hide of a rhinoceros, or you would have heartache for your portion. Fate would devise new ways to make you suffer—every day, every hour, if you would permit it. The most pitiful victims, the most tragic stories: people who had been tortured until they were physical and mental wrecks; people whose husbands or wives, sweethearts, children, parents, or what not, were being tortured, or might be tomorrow. People who had fled, leaving everything, and had not the price of a meal; people begging for railroad fare to bring this or that imperiled person out of the clutches of the fiends.

Hansi and Bess were having their own meals, with one of Leese’s relatives to work for them, and presently this girl began to report that they weren’t having enough to eat; they had given their last franc to some hungry comrade, and were even taking out of the house food which they had obtained on credit. Beauty would invite them over to a meal, and they would come; because, after all, you can’t play music if you don’t eat, and it wouldn’t do for Hansi to faint in the middle of concerts which they were giving for the benefit of refugees. Beauty broke down and wept, and Bess wept, and they had a grand emotional spree; but there wasn’t a word they could say to each other, literally not a word, without getting into an argument.

Beauty wanted to say: "My God, girl, don’t you know about Europe? I’ve lived here more years than I like to tell, and I can’t remember the time when there weren’t people fleeing from oppression somewhere. Even before the war, it was revolutionists from Russia, and Jews, and people from the Balkans, and from Spain, and from Armenia—I forget most of the places. Do you think you can solve all the problems of the world?"

Bess wanted to reply: "It is your bourgeois mind." But you can’t say that to your hostess, so she would content herself with the statement: "These are my comrades and this is my cause."

Lanny and Irma went back to Paris, and it was the same there. The refugees had Lanny’s address—the first arrivals got it from Uncle Jesse, and the rest from one another. It was an extremely fashionable address, and it was incomprehensible to any comrade in distress that a person who lived, even temporarily, in the palace of the Duc de Belleaumont could fail to be rolling in wealth, and be in position to help him, and all his comrades, and his sisters and his cousins and his aunts back in the homeland, and bring them all to Paris and put them up in one of the guest suites of the palace— or at least pay for the rent of a garret. It was a situation trying to the tempers and to the moral sense of many unfortunate persons. Not all of them were saints, by any means, and hunger is a powerful force, driving people to all sorts of expedients. There were Reds who were not above exaggerating their distress; there were common beggars and cheats who would pretend to be Reds, or anything whatever in order to get a handout. As time went on such problems would grow worse, because parasites increase and multiply like all other creatures, and are automatically driven to perfect the arts by which they survive.