V
Captain Briansky tapped upon a closed door, and a few seconds later it was opened and the host came in. Lanny rose to greet him, thinking that he looked much more than four years older; his hair and mustache were of a lighter gray, and his pockmarked face was heavily lined. The war had taken its toll of him, as of F.D.R. Lanny had read that recently, for the first time, painters had been permitted to represent their leader as gray-haired, and this had given a shock to the people, who presumably had thought that he would last forever.
Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili was a small man, four or five inches shorter than Lanny, who was five feet ten. He was stockily built but not fat. He wore a dark blue Russian blouse and trousers tucked into boots. His head was large and his complexion somewhat sallow; his left arm was slightly shrunken. His life had been a hard one—he had a record of eight times imprisoned, seven times exiled, and six times escaped. He was the son of a drunken cobbler in the capital city of Soviet Georgia, in Transcaucasia. His devout mother had destined him for the priesthood and had sent him to a theological seminary, but he had come into contact with Socialist ideas and had set out to change this world instead of waiting for another.
He was a man of simple tastes and no formalities; when he liked a person he could be agreeable, and he had given every sign of liking the son of Budd-Erling. They shook hands, and Stalin said in English, “Welcome, Mr. Budd.” He gave a nod to the captain, who excused himself and withdrew.
Lanny took out the letter Truman had given him and handed it to Stalin, who opened it, looked at it, then passed it to the interpreter. The letter had not been sealed, so Lanny knew what it said: that Mr. Lanning Prescott Budd had come at the President’s request, after a conference with the President. He had the President’s full confidence and would report faithfully what the Marshal had to say to him. He was not authorized to make specific proposals but to explain the President’s point of view, which was an intense desire for friendship and understanding between the two countries.
The Boss listened attentively and then said something which must have meant “repeat,” for the interpreter went through the letter a second time. Then he handed it back, and Stalin laid it on the desk. “Proceed, Mr. Budd,” he said. “One sentence at a time, please.” Lanny did not need this injunction; he was not one of those foolish persons who talk fast for a minute or two and expect an interpreter to cover it all in a sentence. He spoke slowly and carefully, weighing each word and waiting until each sentence had been translated.
“First,” he said, “I wish you to know about my relations with President Roosevelt. I served him as a secret agent from 1937. I posed as a Nazi sympathizer and went into Germany eleven times, sometimes staying for months. I brought out secrets of a scientific character, including rocket bombs and atomic fission. I was with the President on the night before his death, and he then told me of his worry over the worsening of relations with the Soviet Union. He planned to send me secretly for a conference with you, and he briefed me thoroughly for this mission. I believe you would be interested in knowing exactly what he told me.”
“By all means, Mr. Budd,” said the Marshal promptly.
Lanny told the events of that never-to-be-forgotten night. He described the President’s appearance and the conditions under which he was living. He impressed upon the Marshal the fact that he had made full and complete notes that same night, and he produced these notes, explaining that he had done the same for President Truman. Stalin took them and turned them over, page by page, while Lanny went on talking and the dark young man with eyeglasses went on repeating sentence by sentence. There was a prevalent idea that Stalin knew some English but preferred not to reveal the fact. Molotov knew the language well but rarely spoke it.
Lanny did not go into details concerning Roosevelt’s dissatisfaction, for all these details were controversial; Stalin would have a different point of view, he would give an answer, and an argument might start. Lanny’s strategy was to deal in generalities until he had made his main points. He said that Roosevelt had instructed him to express to the Soviet Marshal his profound distress over the decline of friendship between the two countries and to plead with him to accept the President’s assurances and pledge himself to a renewal of the former cordial relationship. Just recently President Truman had learned of what Roosevelt had planned and had summoned Lanny and heard the story; he had asked the P.A. to take this trip and report to the Marshal that he shared President Roosevelt’s fears, and also his desires; he wanted just as ardently as Roosevelt had done to get along with the Soviet Union on terms of friendship and mutual confidence, and to put an end to the continual bickering which had been going on during the thirteen months since Roosevelt’s death. “My mission is confidential,” added the P.A. “No one but President Truman knows that I have come, and no one but he will hear your reply.”
VI
Such was the story; and the man who specialized in inscrutability sat as motionless as the Sphinx, listening to every word but giving no sign. Only his eyes moved—and these in the same peculiar way which Lanny had observed four years ago. While Lanny was speaking the eyes were upon his face, as if they were reading secrets inside his skull; when the interpreter started speaking the eyes dropped to the vicinity of Lanny’s navel—though this was well covered by a well-knitted undersuit and an outer suit of brown English tweeds.
When the discourse came to an end the listener offered Lanny a cigarette; when the offer was declined he took up his pipe, filled and lit it, and thereafter puffed at intervals. “Mr. Budd,” he said, “there is no one who desires good relations with your country more than I.” He waited for that to be translated and then added another sentence, slowly and carefully. “But things which your country has done seem to us far from friendly, and we are unable to understand them. Do you wish me to go into those things?”
The envoy replied, “As you know, I am not authorized to make proposals, and with many of the details I am not as familiar as a negotiator would need to be. President Truman said to me, more than once, ‘If the will to friendship can be established, if the determination for friendship exists’”—Lanny said each of these phrases separately, to let them register—“‘then negotiations can be carried on and just settlements can he reached.’ One of the things that disturb the President most is the bitter hostility revealed by your press, and its continuing propaganda against our country.”
The Red Marshal took a puff or two and then replied, “Has it escaped your notice that the greater part of your American press and radio reveals hostility to the Soviet Union and the ideas for which it stands?”
“Unfortunately, sir, that press is privately owned, and our government has no control over it. But you must know that it does not represent the feelings of either our people or our government. Seventy per cent of our press opposed President Roosevelt at one election after another, and four times the American people repudiated it.”
“Yes, Mr. Budd; but don’t you see the practical result of such a situation? The newspapers of your country are free to point out the faults and errors of my country, whereas you expect the newspapers of my country to remain silent concerning what we think are the faults and errors of yours. Where is the fairness in that?”
Lanny sat forward in his chair. “Mr. Stalin,” he said, “I have been a Socialist since my boyhood—that is, more than thirty years. I distrust our capitalist press every bit as much as you do. I want to see Socialism come to America, and I am pleading with you from that point of view. We differ in our ideas of how to get it—that is all.”
“Does President Truman share your ideas on that subject, Mr. Budd?”
“I did not ask him, but I doubt very much if he has ever read a book on theoretical Socialism. Like millions of other Americans, he will have to get his education as he goes along, from current events. One reason he asked me to come to see you is that I gave him a quotation from, Karl Marx, to the effect that Marx did not deny that in countries like England and
America, and even Holland, the worker might attain his objective by peaceful means. I am sure you must be familiar with that quotation.”
“I am; but that was a long time ago, and I venture to doubt whether Marx would say the same thing today in the face of the enormous development of your trusts and the concentration of economic power in the hands of your capitalist class.”
“I do not know your sources of information, Marshal Stalin. I beg you to believe that our labor unions are rapidly coming to political consciousness and that vast changes are impending in my capitalist country.”
“Does your assurance include the ability of President Truman’s party to retain the control of Congress next fall?”
“Alas, no. It is quite possible that we are in for a period of reaction, and that our workers will have to get their education in that painful way.”
“And have you thought what is going to happen to the Soviet Union during that same period, Mr. Budd? What is going to happen to the friendship while the purse strings are controlled by men who carry out the will of Wall Street?”
“Let me tell you, sir, that the first or second time I met President Roosevelt he spoke these words: ‘I cannot go any faster than the people will let me.’ I assure you that if a Republican Congress should be elected, it would have the same check upon it. The people would not let it attack the Soviet Union, and if it attacked the new mass unions of labor, it would stir them to action and be kicked out of power again.”
The reply to that statement was, “You are asking me to have much more faith in your country’s institutions than seems reasonable to a foreigner.”
VII
Lanny perceived that he wasn’t getting where he wanted to get. He liked Senator Taft and Governor Dewey and the rest of the Republicans no more than Stalin did, and if there had been some way that Stalin could have made war on them and left the rest of America out of it Lanny would hardly have taken a ten-thousand-mile journey to make peace. He leaned toward his host and began very earnestly, “Marshal Stalin, I remind you once more that you are talking to a lifelong Socialist. I desire nothing on earth so much as a co-operative world, free from the exploitation of man by man. One of my reasons for coming here was the hope that you would permit me to tell you some of the things that I know about my own country and that you may not know.”
“Certainly, Mr. Budd; I could desire no better source of information.”
“First, our economic situation. Our history for a century and a half has been one unbroken cycle of boom and bust—that is, good times followed by bad. We both know the causes of this, and the one possible remedy. Our political history shows that every depression is followed by a burst of radicalism and social change. The last time our economy was saved by the New Deal’s enormous spending program, begun in 1933. After four years the effects of this had begun to wear off, and the only thing that saved us from another collapse was the coming of war. Now we are in the midst of a boom because we are making up for the war destruction and shortages. When that task has been done we shall be on the verge of another smash.”
“That is what our own economists tell us, Mr. Budd.”
“The next will surely be the worst in our history. We are producing something like two hundred and fifty billion dollars’ worth of goods, and our people do not receive money enough to purchase nearly that much. Our exports for the most part consist of gifts more or less disguised; that is, loans which can never be repaid, or lend-lease, or UNRRA. We shall be forced to devise other schemes to justify us in sending our goods to peoples that need them but have no dollars to buy them. This shrinking of markets will grow worse and worse, and in the end we shall be forced to socialize our basic industries and start producing for use instead of for profit.”
“The usual answer to that, Mr. Budd, is another capitalist war.”
“I know, Marshal, and that is the reason for my coming. I know that our people abhor war, and if we have no provocation our business masters will not be able to persuade us to rearm. I want to see the provocations removed.”
“There will be none from us, Mr. Budd. Our attitude has been, and will remain, strictly defensive.”
“You say that, sir, and I have no doubt that you mean it. What I am trying to do is to explain how matters look to Americans. Everywhere I turn I hear the statement that the aims of the Soviet Union appear to be identical with those of the old tsarist regime. They appear to threaten the democratic world; and, believing that, Americans will start to rearm, and they will be sure that their attitude is defensive. Two nations fear each other, they arm against each other, and never does either fail to be certain that its effort is defensive. The point I am trying to make is that to the extent that America rearms, the expected economic crash is postponed. We may spend ten billion a year, twenty billion, and it will constitute artificially created purchasing power. It may be just the amount that is needed to take up the slack, to keep down the inevitable glut, the overproduction of goods which is the cause of panics and hard times. Don’t you think—looking at the matter from your own point of view—that it would be safer and wiser to make some sort of deal with us, abolish the threat of war, and let our ship of private enterprise drive full steam ahead onto the rocks toward which it is headed?”
Lanny waited, to see how that argument was taking effect. The Soviet master sat looking at him for as long as half a dozen puffs of his pipe. Could it be that there was a trace of a smile on that inscrutable face? Was he by any chance seeing in his mind’s eye the pleasing vision of his dreaded foe dying in a self-induced convulsion? Lanny had no way to know.
VIII
When the host spoke again it was still soberly. “We have offered many times, Mr. Budd, to work out a program of general disarmament. Our offers have not been cordially received.”
“That brings up the other matter about which I hope to talk to you—the atomic bomb. Mr. Molotov has complained that we dangle the bomb over his head, and I hope that you will not take such an attitude to what I say.”
“I am not easily frightened, Mr. Budd.” Now there was surely a smile. “Proceed.”
“It happens that I learned a lot about the bomb. In preparation for my efforts as a presidential agent I was thoroughly briefed by Professor Einstein and an assistant, as early as the summer of 1941. Also I was present in New Mexico and witnessed the explosion of the first atomic bomb. I was ten miles away, lying flat on my stomach, with my eyes buried in the sleeve of my coat; even so I saw that terrifying light, and the shock would have knocked me off my feet if I had been standing. So I am afraid of that dreadful thing; and I am told that we have much worse ones now.
“I am not telling any secrets, Marshal, and am surely not asking for any of yours. I take it for granted that you are working to get the bomb, and that sooner or later you will succeed. I have tried to figure out what will be the situation then, and this is what I get: whichever side attacks first can destroy many of the other’s cities, but they will not be able to destroy the other’s supply of bombs, or fast planes to carry them. Common sense tells us that neither side will be keeping its store of bombs in great cities; they will be hidden in remote caves, in forests and other unlikely places, and they can be moved from time to time to balk the efforts of spies.
“So presently we have this situation: you have wiped out New York and Washington, Chicago and Detroit, and we in turn have wiped out Moscow and Leningrad, Magnitogorsk and other great industrial complexes. Meanwhile both sides are digging into caves and putting their industries under ground; it may go on until both sides are fighting with sticks and stones for lack of anything better. There may be revolutions of infuriated populations, but they may not be the social revolutions of which Marx and Lenin have written; they may be gangster revolutions—you may get another crop of Hitlers and Francos. I am sure that prospect will please you no more than it pleases me.”
IX
Again Lanny waited, to let his voice sink and see what would be the reaction to this carefully tho
ught-out discourse. “Puff, puff,” said Stalin’s pipe, and Stalin said nothing for a while. Then, “What you say is important, Mr. Budd, and I will tell President Truman that he has a persuasive messenger. What is your remedy for all this?”
“First, the settlement of the atomic question. The Atomic Energy Commission has, as you know, brought in a report, proposing effective international control of atomic fission, with the right of inspection and supervision by a UN authority.”
“Unfortunately, Mr. Budd, we cannot have the same confidence in the UN that you have. We and our friends are a small minority in the organization.”
“Yes, but you have the veto, and Mr. Gromyko is showing that you know how to use it. Let us be realistic, Marshal. You must know that, world antagonisms being what they are, no nation will surrender its weapons without being in a position to make certain that all other nations are doing the same. The memory of the last world disarmament program is too fresh in the minds of all statesmen.”
“And what comes after the bombs are all destroyed?”
“If I could have my way, sir, you would come forward with your hands held out and say, ‘We have had enough of this disputing. We have been allies in war and we mean to remain allies in peace. From now on we shall settle all our problems by impartial arbitration.’”
“Such a thing as impartiality is hard to find in this world, Mr. Budd. What, for example, would be your solution for the struggle of the Greek people for freedom?”