These were young birds, and they do not acquire the power of talking until they are a year old. The official, Mr. Jerrold, was beginning to teach them words, but found it monotonous. Parsifal had had a bright idea—the records that had been prepared for treating sick people in their sleep! Could birds learn lessons as a victim of amnesia had done and as thousands of American airmen had done? If so, it would be something to tell the world about!
They had loaded the phonograph in the buggy and the old horse had carried it to Mr. Jerrold’s hotel. Every night thereafter, when the birds were put into their paper sacks, they heard the phonograph repeat, slowly and distinctly, “God is all and God is love.” After it had said that about a dozen times it said, “God is alive and God is real.” Next came, “God helps and God heals.” And then, “God sustains and God restores.”
Wonder of wonders, it worked! Now, when the birds were taken out of their sacks, and after they had stopped fussing and had gulped down their quota of Malaga grapes, they would sit on their perches and cry the formulas of the New Thought philosophy, New England Transcendentalism superimposed on Kantian Idealism. The only trouble was that the male bird would be speaking one formula while his mate would be speaking another. Their voices were not gentle and soothing, like their teacher’s, but harsh and cackly; even so, all who heard them agreed that the unpious French Riviera possessed the two most pious talking birds that had ever come out of the land of Buddha!
XI
There came another letter, this time with an American stamp and the postmark New York. It was from Bernhardt Monck, and the postmark meant that he had entrusted it to someone coming home to America. Monck was in the American sector of Berlin and wrote that his wife and children were with him after many years. He was well and serving as adviser to AMG. His letter revealed that he was a greatly worried German Social Democrat.
“The American Army is going to pieces,” he wrote; “the officers here are in despair, but there seems to be nothing they can do about it. Washington makes the decisions, and if you know people there who have influence, do try to make them understand what is going on. I know you have shared the hope that the Russians would settle down and content themselves with restoring their own country. God knows they have got enough out of this war, and if they were willing to stick by their agreements they could get American loans on easy terms and show the world what a planned economy might do. But you know, Lanny, they aren’t that sort of people. I have information that after a struggle inside the Politburo the decision has been taken for a hard policy. They think they have a chance for world revolution, and they are going to plunge for it.
“Do pull some wires and try to get the top people to understand Communist psychology. You must know that they respect only force, and that as you weaken yourselves you increase their aggressiveness. It is a serious thing for us Germans who have been pinning our faith on the Allies. It means concentration camp for us Socialists; the Russians have reopened the former Nazi camps in their zone of Germany and in Poland and are filling them with people of our sort. It is a hard decision to have to come to, but we have to make up our minds that the revolutionary idealism is dead, and that what we are facing is the old Russian imperialism wearing a proletarian camouflage. That may fool some Americans, but it cannot fool Germans, for we have lived next to the Russians for a long time and have seen them in action in Berlin. For a quarter of a century we watched National Socialism stealing our name and using it to cover naked aggression. Few of us are likely to be deceived a second time.
“I do not think the Reds want war; they are in no position to fight, and will not be for a long time. But they mean to take everything that can be taken without war; they will test you to the limit, and only pull back at the moment when they see it means an open break. Agreements mean nothing to them; their diplomats look you straight in the eye and say the opposite of the facts, even when they know that you know the facts. It is dreadful to think of the world having to stay armed, or to start rearming, but if you don’t it will be the Hitler story all over again. Every division you demobilize means new territory and new populations surrendered to the totalitarian world. Already I am sorry that I brought my family back, and I am thinking of sending them to some new place in South America—but we cannot be sure of any place. I myself mean to stay. As you know, I have dedicated my life to democratic Socialism, and I am going to stick by that cause, come what may.”
XII
When Lanny read that letter he phoned Professor Alston, took his wife in the car and went over and spent an evening with the old gentleman. It was the first time that Laurel and Alston had met, and it was an occasion for them both; but not an entirely happy occasion, they being conscientious persons; they were two admirers of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and had made sacrifices for his principles. Just now things looked dark indeed for those principles, and New Dealers when they got together could do nothing but mourn.
“There isn’t a thing in the world I can do,” the onetime “fixer” declared. “There is a new crowd in Washington, and we are out; they hate us and fear us, and our influence works in reverse—if we are known to favor something, that damns it. All controls are off and everybody is making money; the business lobbies are swarming into Washington and have unlimited funds to distribute—hospitality, gifts, salaries, everything. I went down there for a look around and it made me sick. I have never seen such drinking or such a riot of greed. Everybody takes it for granted that the Republicans are going to carry Congress this year and that taxes will be reduced—the excess profits tax dropped entirely. Senator Taft will be the new boss, and that means isolationism—let Europe go to hell if it wants to.”
“They are willing to let the Communists have it?” asked Lanny.
“Oh, they’ll hate the Communists all right, and call them lots of names, but it’ll be politics, meant for home consumption. Everybody is still fighting Roosevelt, trying to prove that he was wrong—Republicans and Southern Democrats alike. They damn the Yalta Agreement—because the Russians aren’t keeping it. As if that was anything against an agreement, that the other side breaks it! How could Roosevelt know they would break it, and what could he have done if he had known? Turned against Stalin and joined Hitler? Do they think Hitler would have kept agreements better?”
These were rhetorical questions—rhetoric being all the three peace lovers had at their command. They could sit and lament, and reactionary senators and congressmen could rave and scold—but the Russian armies stayed on in Northern Iran and threatened to take Teheran unless their oil demands were granted. They were demanding the northeastern provinces of Turkey and forcing America to send arms to that country. They were making no pretense of allowing a genuinely democratic government in Poland, according to the Yalta Agreement. They were gradually ejecting everybody but Communists from the governments of Rumania and Bulgaria and Hungary. Everywhere they were pushing to establish their dictatorships, according to the technique which Lenin had taught and which Stalin was modifying by the addition of more roughness.
“Here we are, planning to talk about peace!” exclaimed Laurel. “Are we going to have to face about and call for armaments?”
All that the old Professor could answer was, “There is nothing so hard as to steer a middle course when extremists are buffeting you from both sides.”
24
A New Song’s Measure
I
Mary Morrow, popular novelist and storywriter, made an appointment and took her friends, Sir Eric Vivian Pomeroy-Nielson and his lady, to call on the management of Station WYZ. The names of the visitors were impressive, and so were their personalities. Manifestly they were cultivated persons, acquainted with the world and the canons of good breeding; every word they spoke was carefully chosen, and soothing to the feelings of radio officials, who are always nervous concerning an “ad lib” program—fearing that someone may speak a word that cannot be recalled, the consequences of which might be grave.
Almost equally importan
t, the novelist laid on the desk of the program manager a check for nineteen hundred dollars, signed by the American Peace Foundation, Laurel Creston, treasurer. Mr. Archibald didn’t know who Laurel Creston was, but he would deposit the check and find that it didn’t bounce. It paid for ten periods, and a good slice would represent net profit to a prosperous radio establishment. Under such circumstances it is easy to have warm feelings, and the staff bubbled over and promised to telephone to various stations outside New York with which they had friendly relations, recommending that they make a recording of the broadcast and use it later. One such station was in Massachusetts, another in Pennsylvania, and Miss Morrow was inspired to say that her Foundation would be willing to pay for these additional broadcasts.
The well-satisfied trio went back to Edgemere and reported to their radio announcer, an amiable gentleman by the new name of Billy Burns. You might not at first have recognized him, and he would have preferred that you didn’t. For weeks he had been getting used to himself as Billy Budd, but at the last minute he had been seized by a qualm. He knew that his father would hate what he was doing, and that his two half-brothers and their snobbish wives would hate it even more. Also, Lanny had a kind of snobbery of his own; for a quarter of a century he had been making a name for himself as an art expert, and he wanted to be taken for that; he was bored and annoyed when people discovered that he was the son of Budd-Erling Airplanes and deferred to him on that account. Robbie had made the money, and let Robbie have it and use it, and not have anyone else trading on his eminence.
Laurel had taken a nom de plume, and innumerable people had taken stage names; if Lanny was going to become a radio announcer, let him start afresh and make what reputation he could. There was a Billie Burke on the stage, but there was no Billy Burns that he had heard of; so he would make his debut next Thursday evening, and if any of the Budd tribe recognized his voice, they would appreciate the delicacy of his feelings. So long as the sacred name of Budd wasn’t spoken over the radio or printed in the papers!
II
Time marched on, and the fateful hour arrived. Two microphones had been installed at the onetime fuse factory and duly tested. The telephone arrangements had been made, and at 6:55 the connection would be established, allowing time for voice testing and the giving or receiving of last-minute instructions. The studio was small—it was to be used as a file room in the daytime, and the cabinets along the walls left just room enough for the two microphones in the center of the room and half a dozen chairs for guests. The honored ones were Nina and Rick, Hansi, Rahel, and Freddi—and Zoltan, in return for his having donated the use of his lovely apartment for three months.
Inexperienced people are always in trepidation at the approach of the fateful moment when the signal is given and they go on the air. It is as if they were to find themselves in heaven, invited to exercise the powers of the seraphim. Will their voices work, or will they find themselves suddenly tongue-tied? What if they have to cough or sneeze? Even if they have written down what they are going to say, what if their hand shakes so that they cannot read it? Here was Lanny Budd, forty-five years old, yet he found himself quivery in the knees. It was his first time, and so much depended upon it.
Watches had been synchronized, and they counted the seconds. Rick sat at a telephone, connected with the studio in New York. He heard the announcer say, “This is Station WYZ. The following is a paid program, and this studio has no responsibility for what is said.” Rick had his hand raised, and now he dropped it.
Lanny, who had already cleared his throat several times, began in his most polished tone:
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is Billy Burns, announcer for the Peace Program. ‘Let us have peace’ is our slogan. We are a group of persons who have lived through two world wars and do not want to live through a third. We have set ourselves the task of trying to find out what causes these terrible wars, and what mankind can do to prevent them. All history as we know it is a record of wars, but those of the present century have been unique in their extent and their cost in both lives and property. Now the scientists, by the discovery of atomic fission, have made certain that the next war will be something so much worse that our imaginations are not equal to conceiving it. An atomic war may wipe out our great cities and kill millions of innocent people in a single night. Such a war may bring an end to civilization as we know it. And this is no fantasy, no nightmare; it is something which I personally have heard from the lips of one after another of the great physicists who brought this power into existence, knowing that it can be used either to destroy us or lift us to new heights of happiness and freedom.
“It is our purpose to call upon these scientists, and other leaders of thought, to help us in answering two questions: first, what causes world wars? and second, what can be done to prevent them? We have planned a series of broadcasts, and as our first speaker we have invited the well-known novelist, Mary Morrow, to tell us her views. Miss Morrow is in a special position to discuss this subject because of the firsthand study she has made of the recent war. She lived in Germany and saw it coming, and did what one woman writer could do to avert it. The war came and dragged America into its frightful whirlpool. More recently Miss Morrow has been following the American armies into Germany, and no doubt many of you have read her articles about the suffering and destruction which she saw.
“Knowing one war so intimately, and disliking it so heartily, she is making an early start in the hope of preventing another, many times worse. Ladies and gentlemen, I present Mary Morrow.”
III
That took nearly three of the precious minutes. Lanny would need another three at the end, for the “collection talk”; so that gave Laurel nine minutes in which to exercise whatever charms she might possess. She had refrained from preparing a script; she believed that the success of her trial had been due to human friendliness, and she was afraid that a written text would make her sound literary. To speak with feeling was natural; to read with feeling was acting, and she had no training in that art.
She had elected to have her microphone placed at a little table, on the chance that her knees might give out. Now she sat with the instrument in front of her and spoke quietly and simply, thinking of good old Sophie, thinking of thousands of Sophies, and of mothers and young wives. She had taught herself to speak slowly. She began:
“I have seen horrible things. I have seen things so cruel and wicked that I cannot rest for thinking about them; they haunt my mind. I have decided that what we need is not more emotion, but more thought. It is very hard to think; this is a new power that our race has acquired only a short time ago. We find it easy to weep or to rage, to shout for joy or scold in anger; but to think—just how do we begin? I have tried, and will tell you some of my thoughts.
“I believe that world wars do not come by accident; they have causes. They are made by men and women, by people like you and me. They take a long time in the making, and you can watch them being made. I watched the last war being made for years. I wrote about it, trying to warn people in Britain and America. These were years during which it could have been prevented; but then came the time when it was too late. The war began, and one country after another was dragged in, until there were seventy-two countries involved.
“The causes of that war were at work from 1918 to 1939. Twenty-one years, just time for a young woman to find a husband, marry him, bear him a son, and raise that son to fighting age. Then World War II took him. And now at the beginning of 1946 the process begins again. Don’t let anybody lull you with false hopes. The causes are at work; and how long will it be before they produce the same results? Shall we have time to raise a new generation? Some give us five years, some give us ten, some twenty or thirty. The atomic bomb is a more terrible weapon; our rivals are more afraid of it, and we are more afraid that our rivals may get it before we use it. That may bring things to a head more quickly.
“I am not going to tell you that the causes of war are simple, or that I know them all. I a
m groping for knowledge, as you are, or should be. All I tell you is that the world wars have causes, and that the possibility exists for the human mind to find out what these are. Having used my mind earnestly on the subject, and read the ideas of many others, I have listed about a dozen factors which may be contributing causes of wars; but it seems to me that they all boil down to one cause, that our society is not organized, and is not ruled by reason but by blind chance.
“In the old days that did not matter so much. Here in this New Jersey plain where I am standing, if two Indian tribes fought for possession of the ground, the rest of the world knew nothing about it and was not affected; but within the past hundred years or so we have created railroads and airplanes, telephones and radios, and now atomic bombs; so the world has become one, and when a Hitler invades Poland, seventy-two nations are dragged into war. That being a fact, it seems clear that we have to have a world organization, a world government, complete as we have learned to know governments: that is, a legislature to pass laws, an executive to enforce them, and a court to judge and settle disputes.
“If you and your neighbor disagree about a boundary line, you do not get out your shotguns and go to war; you go to law. That is because the law is there, and you have learned to respect and obey it. Now we have the United Nations meeting in London, and we are all hoping for the best; but we know that this organization has a fatal defect, that any one of the Big Three can veto anything the United Nations may decree. What would you think of our law if the three richest men in our country, or the three biggest corporations, had the right to annul any law that did not suit them?