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quiet and soft-spoken, cordial to their friends and reserved to others; Irma thought that was

the right way to be. There was Lord Wickthorpe, whom Lanny had once met on a tally-ho

coach driving to Ascot; they had both been youngsters, but now Wickthorpe was a grave

diplomat, carrying a brief-case full of responsibility— or so he looked, and so Irma imagined

him, though Lanny, who had been behind many scenes, assured her that the sons of great

families didn't as a rule do much hard work. Wickthorpe was divinely handsome, with a

tiny light brown mustache, and Irma said: "How do you suppose such a man could remain a

bachelor?"

"I don't know," said the husband. "Margy can probably tell you. Maybe he couldn't get the

girl he wanted."

"I should think any girl would have a hard time refusing what he has."

"It can happen," replied Lanny. "Maybe they quarrel, or something goes wrong. Even the rich

can't always get what they want." Lanny's old "Pink" idea!

X

The assembled statesmen signed a new treaty of Lausanne, in which they agreed to do a

number of things, now that it was too late. Having signed and sealed, they went their various

ways, and Irma and Lanny motored out of Switzerland by way of Basle, and before dinner-time

were in Stuttgart. A bitterly fought election campaign had covered the billboards with slogans

and battle-cries of the various parties. Lanny, who got hold of a newspaper as soon as he

arrived anywhere, read the announcement of a giant Versammlung of the Nazis to be held

that evening, the principal speaker being that Reich Organization Leader Number One who

had received such a dressing-down from his Führer in Lanny's presence some twenty months

ago. Lanny remarked: "I'd like to hear what he's saying now."

"Oh, dear!" exclaimed Irma. "Such a bore!" But she didn't want to be left in a hotel room

alone, so she said: "Let's not stay too late."

During those twenty months a Franco-American playboy had been skipping over the world

with the agility conferred by railroads and motor-cars, airplanes, steamships, and private

yachts. He had been over most of western Europe, England, and New England. He had read

books on many subjects, he had played thousands of musical compositions, looked at as many

paintings, been to many theaters, danced in many ball-rooms, and swum in many seas; he had

chatted with his friends and played with his baby, eaten the choicest of foods, drunk the best

wines, and enjoyed the love of a beautiful and fashionable wife. In short, he had had the most

delightful sort of life that the average man could imagine.

But meantime the people of Germany had been living an utterly different life; doing hard and

monotonous labor for long hours at low wages; finding the cost of necessities creeping upward

and insecurity increasing, so that no man could be sure that he and his family were going to

have their next day's bread. The causes of this state of affairs were complex and hopelessly

obscure to the average man, but there was a group which undertook to make them simple and

plain to the dullest. During the aforementioned twenty months the customs official's son from

Austria, Adi Schicklgruber, had been skipping about even more than Lanny Budd, using the

same facilities of railroad trains and motor-cars and airplanes. But he hadn't been seeking

pleasure; he had been living the life of an ascetic, vegetarian, and teetotaler, devoting his

fanatical energies to the task of convincing the German masses that their troubles were due to

the Versailles Diktat, to the envious foreigners who were strangling the Fatherland, to the

filthy and degraded Jews, and to their allies the international bankers and international Reds.

Say the very simplest and most obvious things, say them as often as possible, and put into

the saying all the screaming passion which one human voice can carry—that was Adolf Hitler's

technique. He had been applying it for thirteen years, ever since the accursed treaty had been

signed, and now he was at the climax of his efforts. He and his lieutenants were holding

hundreds of meetings every night, all over Germany, and it was like one meeting; the same

speech, whether it was a newspaper print or cartoon or signboard or phonograph record. No

matter whether it was true or not—for Adi meant literally his maxim that the bigger the

falsehood, the easier to get it believed; people would say you wouldn't dare make up a thing

like that. Imagine the worst possible about your enemies and then swear that you knew it, you

had seen it, it was God's truth and you were ready to stake your life upon it—shout this, bellow

this, over and over, day after day, night after night. If one person states it, it is nonsense, but if

ten thousand join in it becomes an indictment, and when ten million join in it becomes

history. The Jews кill Christian children and use their blood as a part of their religious ritual!

You refuse to believe it? But it is a well-known fact; it is called "ritual murder." The Jews are in

a conspiracy to destroy Christian civilization and rule the whole world. It has all been

completely exposed in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion; the party has printed these, the

Führer has guaranteed their authenticity, the great American millionaire Henry Ford has

circulated them all over America. Everybody there knows that the charges are true, the whole

world knows it—save only the Jew-lovers, the Jew-kissers, the filthy Jew-hirelings. Nieder mit

den Juden!

XI

So here was another huge mass meeting, such crowds that you could hardly get in, and two

rich Americans having to climb to distant seats in a gallery. But it was all right, for there were

loudspeakers, a wonderful device whereby one small figure on a platform could have the voice

of a score of giants, while a dissenter became a pigmy, uttering a squeak like a mouse. The

radio was a still more marvelous invention; that feeble little "crystal set" with earphones which

Robbie Budd had brought to Bienvenu ten years ago had become the most dominating of

psychological forces, whereby one man could indoctrinate a hundred million. Learned

technicians of the mind had evolved methods of awakening curiosity, so that the millions

would listen; and no matter how much anyone disagreed, he was powerless to answer back.

The dream of every dictator was to get exclusive control of that colossal instrument, so that

never again in all history would it be possible to answer back. Then what you said would

become the truth and the only truth—no matter how false it might have been previously! He

who could get and hold the radio became God.

Once more Lanny observed the application of the art of moving the mass mind. Adolf Hitler

taught that the masses did not think with their brains but with their blood; that is to say, they

did not reason but were driven by instincts. The most basic instinct was the desire to survive

and the fear of not surviving; therefore Adolf Hitler told them that their enemies desired to

destroy them and that he alone could and would save them; he told them that they were the

Herrenvolk, the master race, designed by nature to survive and to rule all other races of the

earth. The second basic instinct was hunger, and they had suffered it, and he promised them

that under his leadership Germany would break into the storehouses of the world's plenty;

the Fatherland would have Lebensraum, the space in which to expand and grow. The third