Dennis Wheatley - The Black Baroness

They are not even content to sleep with one another openly, like dogs and bitches rutting in a field. Half of them are perverts, homosexuals, Lesbians, and they have so little shame that they proclaim their vices from the housetops. The other half are so degraded that they marry only as a matter of convenience, and their idea of amusement is to take their own wives to a brothel to witness every vile practice that the mind can conceive. A desire for children, the home, real love, have become things to snigger at. Dope, gambling, and the private cinema at which even bestiality is shown, have taken their place as the occupations of the rich. And what the rich do today the masses do tomorrow. That is why the ruling caste of France must die the death. It is to bring about their downfall that men like Weygand and Baudouin have striven with me. France must be purged for ever of this scum in order that the spirit of France which lives on in the common people may revivify her and make her once again a great nation.'

Hardly pausing for breath, she raced on: 'Communism could not do that; but National Socialism could.

And however much you English may hate Hitler, I know him to be a great man. For a year—two years, perhaps—France will be occupied by a conqueror, but what is such a period in the hundreds of years of her history? Hitler will know how to deal with the real traitors; the wealthy parasites who have battened on the resources of the nation and paved the way for her downfall by the vile example they have set to her other classes. He will know, too, how to deal with the Communists and dangerous visionaries who preach their unworkable theories that all men are equal, which is fundamentally untrue.

'Out of chaos will come order. Under National Socialism we shall re-establish the ideal of the Family and reorganise our industrial resources so that the greatest good comes to the greatest number. For a time France must know the weight of a captive's chains in order that she may know how to utilise her freedom when she regains it once more. The people may suffer bitterness, humiliation, misery, but these things will pass, and when the time is ripe a new France will arise, reborn from the ashes of the old—a France clean in mind, strong in spirit and conscious of her glorious destiny.

'It is for this that I have lied and tricked and soiled my hands with blood, but you know that I speak the truth and you dare not call me a traitor now.'

For a moment Gregory did not reply. Her torrent of words had come crashing on to his brain, revealing her to be an utterly different personality from what he had thought her. Right or wrong, according to her own lights this small dark woman was a great patriot.

He knew that what she had said of the Entente Cordiale being an unnatural alliance was true. He knew that what she had said of the degeneracy of French society was true. He knew that any German occupation of France could not last indefinitely; and, however appalling it might sound, the Baroness's plan was, perhaps, the one and only way of restoring health and a new vitality to the moribund French nation. Yet he also knew that she had made one vital miscalculation.

'Do you realise,' he asked, 'that your vision of a new France will remain only a vision unless Hitler can secure Peace? For without Peace it will be impossible for him to reorganise Europe,'

She shrugged. 'With Hitler as master of Europe from northern Norway to the Pyrenees, Britain will not be able to carry on the war alone.'

Gregory shook his head. 'You're wrong there. Every man, woman and child in Britain knows that we dare not make a patched-up peace. Now that the war is on we are determined to fight it to a finish, because if we gave Hitler even a few months' breathing-space we should be completely at his mercy later on. You're much too clever a woman, Baroness, not to realise the truth of that.'

She shrugged again. 'Yes. You may fight on for a little, but what chance have you got? With the whole coast of France in his hands Hitler will be able to wear you down with intensive bombings until you are so weak that you will not be able to resist an invasion.'

'No, Baroness; there you're wrong again. He can bomb our cities but we shall stand up to the bombing somehow, even if we have to live in holes in the ground; and as long as the British Navy is paramount upon the seas he will never be able to land an invading force of sufficient strength to quell us. No threats, no terror, will be great enough to break the heart of Britain. And the worse things get the more determined we shall become to see matters through.'

As she stared at him he went on, speaking out of an unshakable conviction that radiated from him. 'I do not seek to belittle the gallantry of your people when I remind you that great areas of France have been conquered many times by the English and the Spaniards as well as by the Germans, and this would not be the first time if France is now compelled to accept the humiliation of a complete surrender; but in all their long history my people have never been conquered and have never surrendered, We broke the might of Spain; we fought your own King, Louis XIV, to a standstill. A Dutch fleet once entered the Thames, but we threw the Dutch out of the New World and broke their Sea Power for ever. Even when Britain stood alone against Napoleon she did not despair; she fought on until a British frigate took the former master of Europe into lonely exile.'

For the first time he saw a shadow of doubt enter the Baroness's dark eyes even as she protested. 'But this time it will be different. The English are effete; they've been pampered too long. They ran at Dunkirk.

They'll give in—they'll give in.'

He smiled then, and he did not mean his smile to be patronising, but there was something in it which drives all foreigners into a frenzy.

'Oh, no, they won't,' he said quietly. 'As a race we haven't altered. You mustn't allow yourself to be misled by what happened in Norway and Belgium. We're born muddlers, and in every war it takes us a little time to find our feet. You see, we're not like Continental countries; we're not organised for war, so our peace-time leaders are never any good when it comes to a scrap. But sooner or later we sift out the people at the top and things begin to happen. Last time we had Asquith, but he was replaced by Lloyd George, who, whatever may be said against him, was a great war leader. This time we had Chamberlain, but now Churchill has taken his place, and later on among the younger men we'll find some real live Generals.'

'Churchill!' she cried bitterly. 'Yes; he would still wish to fight if London were in ruins. But the people are not of the same metal; they'll revolt, throw Churchill overboard and sue for peace.'

'Don't you believe it!' His smile became a pitying grin. 'Churchill is England. He typifies the spirit of the Empire more than any other living man. He is what all of us would like to be, and ninety-nine per cent of us are ready to fight with him to the last ditch. Yet even if a bomb or a bullet robbed us of him it would make no difference to the final outcome of the war, because other leaders would arise and we should fight on just the same. It was your own Napoleon who said that the British don't know when they're beaten; and that's the truth. It will be a long, hard road, but in the end the triumph of Britain is as certain as the rising of tomorrow's sun.'

'I don't believe it.' She nervously clasped and unclasped her hands, now openly doubting, but striving to resist any acceptance of the belief that he was forcing home on her.

'Oh, yes, you do,' he contradicted her. 'We've won the last battle in every war. That may be a cliche, but it's a fact; and it's going to be just the same this time. That is where you have made a terrible miscalculation, and, if you think for a moment, you will see how by Britain's refusal to accept a patched-up peace all your dreams must fall to pieces. Hitler may make himself lord of Europe; Goering may send his bombers to destroy our homes; Goebbels may lie and rage and threaten; but all the time the Blockade will go on, and sooner or later the Nazis will not know which way to turn for war materials and food. Then those who have aided Hitler, and millions of innocent people as well, must pay the price of his damnable ambitions,, And as long as France is Hitler's vassal she, too, must pay.'