Richard Gordon - THE INVISIBLE VICTORY

We arrived in the early hours. We saw a city street lit with lamps. We marvelled.

I had two days in which my stomach, enfeebled by British rations, collapsed under the weight of peacetime menus like an old lady in a crush. On the Monday morning I left in a Pan American flying boat for New York.

I found Jeff's name everywhere. _Beckerman Beer, Beautifully Brewed,_ said the hoardings and electric signs, the girl sipping her foaming glass with an ecstasy deserving more worthy stimulus. I was to spend two wonderful days in this Aladdin's Cave before travelling to Warsaw, Colorado. I telephoned Jeff's office.

I was greeted with an explosion of delight. That evening, Jeff appeared at my small hotel in a chauffeur-driven Cadillac with two girls, both of whom struck me as far prettier than the ecstatic one in the advertisement. The car was stuffed with presents-a case of bourbon, boxes of Spam and peanut butter, whole tinned hams, bars of chocolate, packets of chewing-gum. He seemed to think I needed feeding up. Jeff himself had grown much fatter in the eighteen months since I had seen him in the Savoy. He had also grown much richer.

'I'm turning out about a quarter the sulphonamides used in the United States. I got new plants opening every three-four months,' he declared proudly within a couple of minutes of our meeting. 'Chemicals, textiles, pharmaceuticals, I'm operating right across the country, even into California. That's apart from the old brewery at White Plains, here in New York State. I'm opening another brewery this fall in Wisconsin-you see, old man, everyone in America just forgot how to make real beer during Prohibition.' I asked about the Red Crown Brewery in Wuppertal. 'The Nazis grabbed it. But they paid for it!' he exclaimed triumphantly. 'I guess they didn't want to upset the neutrals.'

'I hope the RAF have now blown it to bits,' I suggested cordially.

'Well, it was still there last week despite the RAF. Wuppertal's a boom town, you know. German industry today is stronger than ever.'

'We're led to believe that German industry is on the point of collapse.'

'Then you can forget it.'

Jeff leant back in the corner of the limousine. We were driving along Fifth Avenue. He was dressed with commercial sobriety in a lightweight blue suit and white shirt. I reflected that he must have burst out of his Savile Row wardrobe, and noticed that he still wore handmade English shoes. He had given up Chesterfields, but lit a cigar. The two girls occupied the jump seats, dutifully providing him with an air of adoring incomprehension.

'The Nazi economy's in better shape than any time since Gцring offered Germany guns instead of butter,' Jeff reasserted, 'Hell, they're getting all the butter they want from France and Holland. A lot of Frenchmen and Dutchmen are going to starve to death before the first German feels hungry. But don't get me wrong, old man. Unlike almost all my countrymen, I've had the doubtful privilege of seeing the Nazis close to. I'm one hundred per cent for Britain. Any sane man last summer would have asked Hitler for the best terms he could get. Thank God that Churchill's insane, just like the Nazis say.'

'There'll always be an England,' said one of the girls.

'Even Joe Kennedy sang a different tune when he came home for the election last fall. That was after Roosevelt laid hands on him. I guess no one will hear of Kennedy again, once the war's over. Nor Lindbergh. I'm disappointed with Lindbergh.'

'Say, did you ever meet the Duchess?' asked the other girl eagerly. I looked blank. 'You know, Mrs Simpson.'

I apologized that our paths had not crossed.

'Have you got yourself married again?' Jeff asked. I nodded. 'So have I. But that didn't work out, either. Was it that pretty dark thing in uniform you brought along to the Savoy?'

'No. She married a friend of mine, who's been discharged from the Army with an ulcer and works for the Ministry of Information. He's one of the people who keep telling us that the German economy is finished.'

'Why aren't you in the British Army?' asked the first girl, I thought bluntly.

'Flat feet.'

'You must be hungry,' Jeff said to me. We arrived at a huge restaurant with a loud band, exuberant chorus girls and enormous steaks. Jeff began reminiscing about our night out in Cologne. Our two companions grew bored. Some time after midnight we shed them. I went back to Jeff's apartment-luxurious rooms, apparently unending, high above Park Avenue. 'Take anything you like from the closets,' he invited. 'Even your clothes are rationed now, I guess?'

I helped myself to a tie. A negro in a white jacket brought highballs. Through the big window I could look down on the feverish lights of New York. We talked about Wuppertal and the Schwebebahn. 'Hitler was crazy, shoving Domagk in jail,' Jeff commented. 'He should have let the Professor go ahead and receive his Nobel Prize, turn out the band when he got home, and have Goebbels proclaim the magnificent benefits to all mankind hatching from Nazi Germany. That's why nothing, nothing at all, will ever come out of Nazism,' he added in disgust. 'It's a nihilistic creed. When the Nazis have wiped out everything that's good and decent in the world, they'll have nothing to replace it, except more oppression. When there's no one left alive on earth for them to oppress, they'll start cutting one another's throats. For the simple reason that Nazism can't exist without aggression. Imagine Hitler snipping the tape to open a new hospital!'

His remark made me remember the test-tube in my jacket pocket. I had left Jeff mystified at the real reason for my mission to Colorado, and he had swallowed his inquisitiveness.

'What in hell's this?' He turned the test-tube in his fingers, sprawling in his chair, his heavy bar of eyebrow puckered.

'Ever heard of penicillin?'

'Never.'

'It's a drug produced by that mould.' Jeff did not find it an intriguing exhibit at that hour of the night. 'It hits staphylococci and gas gangrene and diphtheria, which aren't touched by your sulpha drugs. An extremely efficient Oxford professor called Florey started using penicillin on patients, only eighteen months after beginning his experiments to find exactly what it was. Imagine even Henry Ford achieving that with the automobile.'

Jeff grunted. He rolled the test-tube round, looking more interested. 'I guess Churchill knows all about this?'

'They've hardly enough to treat a couple of kids with blood-poisoning, let alone an Army. They have to grow the mould in bedpans, because they can't get anything else. They have to extract the penicillin juice with lemonade bottles and milk churns, fixed in a lovely bookcase from the Bodleian Library. Perhaps penicillin could be our secret weapon. But its production is strictly a cottage industry. I thought you'd be interested to look at it. The mould loves nothing better to grow on than brewer's yeast.'

'Brewer's yeast you can't get your hands on.' Jeff scratched his chin with his thumb. 'You could grow it on corn-steep liquor, I guess.' I had never heard of this. 'When you crack corn to get the starch,' Jeff explained, 'you steep the grain in sodium sulphate. You end up with thousands of gallons of stuff like molasses, which you can't even give away. Out West, they're trying it out for fermentation processes of various sorts. You could grow this mould on it, like any other mould.'

He fell silent, continuing to revolve the test-tube in his fingers. 'Supposing Mr Churchill came to me and said, "Jeff, old man, we want penicillin by the ton, and tomorrow". Do you know what I'd do? I'd buy a few loads of corn-steep liquor-I wouldn't need to buy it, they'd pay me for taking it away. Then I'd shut down a section of the brewery out at White Plains, and I'd grow penicillin in the vats. You know how these contaminating moulds _love _to grow in breweries.'