Upton Sinclair - Dragons’s teeth

Lanny had been through this and had learned costly and painful lessons from the refugees of Fascism; but now it was worse, because Hitler was taking Mussolini’s arts and applying them with German thoroughness. Also, Lanny’s own position was worse because he had a rich wife, and no refugee could be made to understand how, if he lived with her, he couldn’t get money from her. He must be getting it, because look at his car, and how he dressed, and the places he went to! Was he a genuine sympathizer, or just a playboy seeking thrills? If the latter, then surely he was a fair mark; you could figure that if you didn’t get his money, the tailors and restaurateurs and what not would get it; so keep after him and don’t be troubled by false modesty.

Irma, like Beauty, had a "bourgeois mind," and wanted to say the things which bourgeois ladies say. But she had discovered by now what hurt her husband’s feelings and what, if persisted in, made him angry. They had so many ways of being happy together, and she did so desire to avoid quarreling, as so many other young couples were doing. She would repress her ideas on the subject of the class struggle, and try by various devices to keep her weak-minded partner out of the way of temptation. The servants were told that when dubious-looking strangers called, they were to say that Monsieur Budd was not at home, and that they didn’t know when he would return. Irma would invent subtle schemes to keep him occupied and out of the company of Red deputies and Pink editors.

But Lanny wasn’t altogether without understanding of subtleties. He had been brought up with bourgeois ladies, and knew their minds, and just when they were engaged in manipulating him, and what for. He tried to play fair about it, and not give too much of Irma’s money to the refugees, and not so much of his own that he would be caught without funds. This meant that he, too, had to do a lot of dodging and making of excuses to the unfortunates; and then he would feel ashamed of himself, and more sick at heart than ever, because the world wasn’t what he wanted it to be, nor was he the noble and generous soul he would have preferred to believe himself.

In spite of the best efforts in the world, Lanny found it impossible to keep out of arguments with the people he met. Political and economic affairs kept forcing themselves upon him. People who came to the house wanted to talk about what was happening in Germany, and to know what he thought—or perhaps they already knew, and were moved to challenge him. Nobody had been better trained in drawing-room manners than Beauty Budd’s son, but in these times even French urbanity would fail; people couldn’t listen to ideas which they considered outrageous without giving some signs of disapproval. Gone were the old days when it was a gossip tidbit that Mr. Irma Barnes was a Pink and that his wife was upset about it; now it was a serious matter, and quite insufferable.

"I thought you said you were not a Communist," remarked Madame de Cloisson, the banker’s wife, with acid in her tone.

"I am not, Madame. I am only defending those fundamental liberties which have been the glory of the French Republic."

"Liberties which the Communists repudiate, I am told!"

"Even so, Madame, we do not wish to make ourselves like them, or to surrender what we hold dear."

"That sounds very well, but it means that you are doing exactly what they would wish to have done."

That was all, but it was enough. Madame de Cloisson was a grande dame, and her influence might mean success or failure to an American woman with social ambitions. Irma didn’t hear this passage at arms, but some kind friend was at pains to tell her about it, and she knew that it might cancel the efforts she had been making during the past year. But still she didn’t say anything; she wanted to be fair, and she knew that Lanny had been fair—he had told her about his eccentricities before he asked for her, and she had taken him on his own terms. It was her hard luck that she hadn’t realized what it would mean to have a husband dyed a shade of Pink so deep that the bourgeois mind couldn’t tell it from scarlet.

The new Reichstag was summoned promptly. It met in Potsdam, home of the old glories of Prussia, and Hitler applied his genius to the invention of ceremonies to express his patriotic intentions and to arouse the hopes of the German Volk. All the land burst out with flags—the new Hakenkreuz flag, which the Cabinet had decreed should replace that of the dying Republic. Once more the beacons blazed on the hilltops, and there were torchlight parades of all the Nazi organizations, and of students and children. Hitler laid a wreath on the tomb of his dead comrades. Hindenburg opened the Reichstag, and the ceremonies were broadcast to all the schools. The "Bohemian corporal" delivered one of his inspired addresses, in which he told his former Field Marshal that by making him Chancellor he had "consummated the marriage between the symbols of ancient glory and of young might."

Hitler wanted two things: to get the mastery of Germany, and to be let alone by the outside world while he was doing it. When the Reichstag began its regular sessions, in the Kroll Opera House in Berlin, he delivered a carefully prepared address in which he declared that it was the Communists who had fired the Reichstag building, and that their treason was to be "blotted out with barbaric ruthlessness." He told the rich that "capital serves business, and business the people"; that there was to be "strongest support of private initiative and the recognition of property." The rich could have asked no more. To the German peasants he promised "rescue," and to the army of the unemployed "restoration to the productive process."

To enable him to carry out this program he asked for a grant of power in a trickily worded measure which he called a "law for the lifting of want from the people and empire." The purpose of the law was to permit the present Cabinet, and the present Cabinet alone, to make laws and spend money without consulting the Reichstag; but it didn’t say that; it merely repealed by number those articles in the Constitution which reserved these crucial powers to the Reichstag. The new grant was to come to an end in four years, and sooner if any other Cabinet came into office. Nobody but Adolf was ever to be the Führer of Germany!

This device was in accord with the new Chancellor’s "legality complex"; he would get the tools of power into his hands by what the great mass of the people would accept as due process of law. His speech in support of the measure was shrewdly contrived to meet the prejudices of all the different parties, except the Communists, who had been barred from their seats, and the Socialists, who were soon to share that fate. A mob of armed Nazis stood outside the building, shouting their demands that the act be passed, and it carried by a vote of 441 to 94, the dissenters being Socialists. Then Goring, President of the Reichstag, declared the session adjourned, and so a great people lost their liberties while rejoicing over gaining them.

During this period there were excitements in the United States as well as in Germany. Crises and failures became epidemic; in one state after another it was necessary for the governor to decree a closing of all the banks. Robbie Budd wrote that it was because the people of the country couldn’t contemplate the prospect of having their affairs managed by a Democrat. When the new President was inaugurated—which fell upon the day before the Hitler elections— his first action was to order the closing of all the banks in the United States—which to Robbie was about the same thing as the ending of the world. His letter on the subject was so pessimistic that his son was moved to send him a cablegram: "Cheer up you will still eat."