The lady who whispered was charming and soft, golden-haired and blue-eyed like a doll; she was Jeanne, Marquise de Crussol, who had been “Dala’s” lady friend since the death of his wife some years ago. The lady seemed amiable and harmless, but Lanny knew that the Premier’s old-time friends deplored the attachment, saying that the lovely marquise was the means of introducing him into reactionary circles and modifying his thought without his realizing it. “If a woman of delicate rearing takes up with a ‘Bull of Vaucluse,’ it is because she is in love with power, and if she does not make use of it, be sure that her friends do.” Thus had spoken Jesse Blackless, implacable friend of the proletariat, who for many years had been baiting that bull in the arena known as the Chambre des Députés, and had many times made the public declaration that it was the influence of these “aristocratic harlots” which made it all but impossible for a man of the people to remain faithful to the creed and the cause of his early years.
BOOK SIX
Let Slip the Dogs of War
22
Mournful Midnight Hours
I
It was on Thursday, the last day of August, that Lanny Budd set out from Paris to Calais. One of his friends pointed out that if he was in France when the war broke out, there would be a good chance of his car’s being commandeered. Evidently others had the same idea, for the Channel boat was so crowded that he had to line up and wait for a third boat. Meantime he ran his radio, picking up fresh items of news, and people gathered to listen—he had quite a congregation, both on the quay and on board the tightly packed boat. Everybody’s fate was involved, and everybody knew it; English reticence broke under the strain, and strangers discussed what they had heard and what they feared.
Lanny’s first action in the town of Dover was to telephone to Wickthorpe at the Foreign Office; his lordship was certain to be there, day and night, in this crisis. Lanny spoke the words which had been a passport everywhere in Paris: “I was with Hitler last Saturday; and yesterday morning I talked with Daladier.” Ceddy’s reply was: “Oh, good! Will you come and tell us about it?”
A couple of hours later the P.A. was sitting in one of the commodious rooms of the big gray smokestained building in Downing Street, with Ceddy, Gerald, and another of the staff. All the Englishmen were haggard and exhausted, having had nothing but catnaps for the past three nights; even so, they were polite Englishmen, and now and then while they plied Lanny with questions they would ask: “Do you mind?” The questions were the same as Schneider’s; in London as in Paris, people were trying to understand that madman in Berchtesgaden: what was the matter with him, what did he want, what would satisfy him—if anything!
Lanny talked freely, having about decided that he had paid his last visit to the Berghof, and wishing to help England if he could. His friends had heard Sir Nevile Henderson’s detailed account of the Führer’s behavior in the Berghof; and now to hear that Lanny had been in the building at the time and to have him repeat many of the Führer’s wild phrases was definitely convincing. That very morning, in the “wee small hours,” Sir Nevile had had another rumpus of the same sort—only this time it had been with Ribbentrop, and the place had been the Chancellery in Berlin. The ambassador’s report on the affair, telegraphed in code and now typed out in English, lay on the table while Lanny talked, and Gerald Albany picked it up and read a few sentences aloud.
Propositions and counter-propositions had been going back and forth between London and Berlin for more than a week, and this morning the ambassador had gone to the Chancellery, taking Chamberlain’s reply to Hitler’s reply to Chamberlain’s reply to Hitler’s reply—so on to the fifth or perhaps the tenth power. He had found the champagne salesman in a fury, for the Führer had demanded that the Poles should produce a plenipotentiary in Berlin by midnight, and no such personage had appeared. Ribbentrop seemed to have the idea that Henderson had deliberately delayed his own appearance until after midnight, despite the fact that the polite Englishman had telephoned, explaining that his government’s reply had come in code, and that he was waiting to have it decoded. Evidently the champagne salesman had decided to imitate the manners of his master, for he had used language which the Englishman had felt it necessary to rebuke. They had wrangled over the question as to who was to blame for the Polish mobilization, and whether Germany could have expected to mobilize without having Poland do the same.
II
The Foreign Office men admitted themselves completely “stumped,” and were reduced to asking an American visitor what he thought this behavior could mean. Ribbentrop had produced what he said were the final terms for a German settlement with Poland. They consisted of sixteen points, elaborately and precisely set forth, and the champagne salesman had proceeded to read them aloud as fast as his lips and tongue could move—which was faster than the mind of an Englishman could take in German words and sort them out from the oddly inverted German arrangement. Henderson had protested, whereupon Ribbentrop had thrown the document onto the table, declaring impatiently that it was all out of date anyhow, the Poles had failed to send the plenipotentiary as required.
The demands, as published later that day in the Berlin newspapers, were not unreasonable, and there might have been a possibility of persuading the Poles to accept them. But what was the purpose of presenting them in that extraordinarily, rude and self-defeating way? Could it be that Hitler, with his bombing planes ready to fly and his tanks ready to roll, had devised a trick, so that he could say to the world: “You see what reasonable plans I suggested, but the Poles would not consider them and the English would not even transmit them?” Here sat three honorable gentlemen, public-school men carefully trained to the public service, and they contemplated such a possibility with blank dismay. “What do you think, Lanny?”
The answer was: “Nobody may ever know. It may be a stupid plot, and it may be just that the Chancellery is a madhouse, with factions pulling and hauling, and going to any length to have their own way. Göring and Hess and perhaps Weizsäcker want a rational settlement; they prepare sixteen points and persuade the Führer to approve them—and then in comes Goebbels raving, with another story of some Germans being castrated in the Corridor. Ribbentrop comes and insists that the terms are nonsense, the Poles are being egged on by the British, and wouldn’t keep any agreement. ‘Let me present them,’ he says, ‘and see what Henderson’s reaction is.’ He comes back to Hitler and says: ‘I presented them, and Henderson pretended that he couldn’t understand them. He came late on purpose because he wanted to defy you by waiting until after the deadline you had, set.’ Something of the sort would be my guess.”
The proper and reticent Gerald Albany surprised Lanny greatly by his response to that explanation. “What a louse!” said he.
Lanny didn’t say anything about the spirits of Bismarck and Hindenburg, Heinzelmann and Eckart and the other old companions. But in his secret soul was the whisper: “Adi came out from under their influence, and Ribbentrop got him again!” He could not repress the thought: “Oh, God! Should we have stayed, even at the risk of our lives?”
It was too late, and no use to worry over it. He could only wait and see what happened; and likewise his friends of the Foreign Office sat there, paralyzed, helpless. The whole British government, the whole British Empire, was in the same condition; they had lost what the military men call the initiative, and could only wait for a one-time inmate of a home for the shelterless to tell them what was going to happen to them next. Polish reports came in that German patrols had already crossed the border at several points. Was it true? Nobody could know what to believe any more!
III
The officials talked about the efforts they had been making all that day, first to get the text of the sixteen points through a friend of Göring’s, and second to persuade the Poles to get in touch with Berlin and indicate their willingness to negotiate on the basis of the German demands. The Polish ambassador had been to see Ribbentrop, and Ribbentrop had asked, what had he come for and
did he have full powers to negotiate? Lipski, the Pole, had replied No. Did his government accept the sixteen points? Lipski’s reply was that the text had never been submitted to him or to his government; he had just seen it, published in extra editions of the Berlin papers. What sort of way was that to carry on diplomatic negotiations?
While Lanny sat talking with this unhappy trio—diplomatists reluctant to turn their business over to the military men—there came a messenger with a despatch from Sir Nevile in Berlin, reporting that Lipski had again seen Weizsäcker at nine-fifteen that evening and had been told that the Führer had been waiting two days for the arrival of a Polish plenipotentiary, and now he could only assume that his proposals had been once more rejected. The Englishmen looked at one another blankly. “That means he is going to war!”
They talked for a while about the German army. Who had been at the Berghof while Lanny was there? General Keitel, the Chief of Staff? Lanny said: “Yes. He is one of the Nazi favorites, and I didn’t cultivate him.” And Brauchitsch? “Yes. He is an old-line Junker, and a pal of my friend, Emil Meissner. Reichenau was there, and gave me a military pass to come into Switzerland.”
Did Lanny know what was the attitude of these men to the question of war? He knew they were divided in their counsels, but agreed that it was now or never. They had a couple of meteorologists with them—one of them an elderly professor who had known Bismarck and talked about him. Military strategy was decided by the weather men these days, and they warned the Führer that this sunshine and dryness on the flat Polish plains would not last forever.
And then the question of France, and the attitude of the French politicians. Lanny said that France was in the same plight as Germany—she had a louse as Foreign Minister; there was no appeaser in Paris more tricky and more probably corrupt than the sallow and long-nosed Bonnet. The three Englishmen didn’t say Yes, nor did they say No. They asked about Daladier, who had just written to Hitler that la patrie would stand by her pledge to Poland. Had he said a single word to Lanny which might indicate a weakening on this point? Lanny repeated carefully every word he could recall of the Premier’s utterance. He saw Ceddy look at Gerald significantly and then turn to the third man. “Don’t you think it might be worth while for the P.M. to hear this?”
They all agreed, and Lanny said: “Naturally, I’d be very glad to meet the P.M., if you are sure I wouldn’t bore him, and if it isn’t too late.” It was just after midnight, and the date was the 1st of September. The Englishmen were sure that nobody would go to bed that night; they might doze for a bit on a sofa, but all would be “on call.”
IV
His lordship left the room to telephone, and came back to report that the head of the government would be happy to hear Mr. Budd’s story. It was just across the street and the evening was pleasant; Ceddy and Gerald walked with him—they were glad to get outdoors, and away from the radio and a hailstorm of despatches for a bit. Downing Street is a dead-end street, only one block long. At Number 10, the Prime Minister’s official residence, the two policemen on guard knew them and admitted them with a “Good evening, sirs.” Quite a contrast with the Berghof!
Lanny was escorted into the “Cabinet room,” which was on the ground floor, at the rear, with windows looking out onto the park. A long green baize table pretty nearly filled it, and at the head of this table sat the “man with the black umbrella,” whom Lanny had met only casually but had seen in a hundred cartoons in newspapers of a score of cities. There had just been a Cabinet meeting, and apparently the head of the government had remained sitting in his chair, brooding over his tragic impotence and the failure of his career.
Gerald Albany waited outside the door. Wickthorpe, who had known Lanny longer and had made the suggestion, escorted him into the room and introduced him. Being a man of perfect tact, he did not linger, but withdrew promptly. The Prime Minister rose politely and shook hands with his visitor, then said: “Come with me into the small sitting-room, where we can be cozier.”
Neville Chamberlain, tall and lanky, was more powerfully built than would have been guessed from his photographs. He was in his early seventies, but his hair was still dark, except for a striking white lock in front. His most impressive feature was a pair of large dark piercing eyes. He wore an old-fashioned wing collar and a large black tie, and had no pretension to social graces; he was a plain businessman, and it was over a businessmen’s Britain that he presided. They had chosen him because he was exactly their type and they could be sure of his every reaction and word. No nonsense, no imagination, no extravagance of hopes or fears. There had always been an England and always would be, and its motto: “Carry on!” There had been difficulties, and would be more, but nothing that sensible businessmen couldn’t settle by talking things over and making concessions—but of course never any more than necessary.
Just now he had come to the most trying moment of his life. He had had little sleep, and his face was lined and haggard. Lord Wickthorpe had said to him over the phone: “The son of Robert Budd, of Budd-Erling Aircraft. I have known him since we were boys.” That was enough, and the P.M. wanted to hear every word of Lanny’s many-times-told tale of the mountain home of the wild witch Berchta. Chamberlain had been taken there a year ago, on his first trip which had initiated “Munich”; later, at Godesberg, the Führer had expressed a wish to take him again and show him the retreat on the top of the Kehlstein. “Extraordinary man!” said the Prime Minister. “He had told me with great emphasis that the settlement of the Sudeten problem could not wait another day; then, an hour later, he wanted to drop everything and fly me two or three hundred miles in order to see a tunnel in the interior of a mountain!”
“He is a man of impulses,” replied Lanny Budd; “and some of them are of hospitality.”
“He actually succeeded in making me think that he liked me,” said the Prime Minister. “Do you suppose that is possible?”
“Shall I tell you what he called you?” inquired the other.
“By all means.”
“He referred to you as ‘that good old man.’”
“Incredible!”
“At that time you had given him what he wanted.”
“So now, I suppose, I am a bad old man.”
“I fear that you are, sir.”
“I will tell you, Mr. Budd, I am an unhappy old man. I confront tonight—or shall I say this morning—the failure of my dearest hopes. I am expecting word that the German armies have invaded Poland in force.”
“I think that you should get it about dawn, sir.”
“Well, I am not given to extravagant language, but I really can see no limits to the calamity; it may mean the end of our civilization, and I cannot imagine what will come after it.”
V
This was the old man whom the young Leftists had been damning up and down and all around. But it was usually hard for Lanny to dislike anybody whom he knew personally, and he found Neville Chamberlain a warmer and kindlier person than he had imagined. Perhaps it was the special circumstances of their meeting, when everything had been done and there was nothing to do but wait; when no word could any longer have any effect, and so it was permitted to speak frankly, as a man might speak before the Judgment Throne. This American, who had been to all the places and knew all the persons involved, might well serve as posterity; the Prime Minister of Great Britain entered his claim: “No one will ever be able to say that I did not do everything in my power to avert this calamity.”
“Assuredly not,” Lanny replied. “If they have any fault to find, it will be that you tried too hard.”
“I would rather it stood that way, Mr. Budd. This war, if it comes, will be such a ghastly thing. I was resolved not to have it on my conscience.”
Lanny’s thought was that it might be a ghastly thing to have on one’s conscience the downfall of the Spanish democracy and the Czechoslovak republic, both of which would have been stanch allies of Britain now. Still worse would it be to have the defeat of Britain in this w
ar laid to one’s account. But these were not words which could be spoken by a foreigner. It would be for the British themselves to decide the proper mood in which to wage this war, and the proper statesman to voice it. That Chamberlain himself was not without his uneasiness as to the outcome was made plain by his questions concerning the strength of the Luftwaffe. How much had the visitor managed to learn about it?
“They talk about it freely, as you doubtless know,” Lanny replied. “They have talked to Lindbergh, to Lothian, to Beaverbrook. In my case I have found that they are not always consistent. I have suspected some of trying to keep the facts from me, and others of trying to frighten me—or rather to have me go out and frighten influential friends in Britain and France. My father has made it his business to know, and he is convinced that they have a stronger air force than Britain and France combined. That refers to matériel; the quality of the personnel can only be determined in the tests.”