This tired old man gave no indication that he would welcome any tests. He looked depressed, and remarked: “We have generally done badly at the beginning of our wars; we manage to do better later on.”
Lanny had on the tip of his tongue that in the case of air warfare, there might not be any “later on”; but that, too, was not to be voiced by an outsider. He contented himself with saying: “It is my father’s opinion that you will be strained to the uttermost; and the same with France.”
The P.M. wanted to know about those Frenchmen with whom his caller had talked. He could, of course, have called Daladier on the telephone, and no doubt had done so in the course of this critical day; but what the Premier had said informally might be more revealing. Lanny said: “I think, sir, the Premier feels just as you do about not having this war on his conscience; but he fully intends to stand by his pledge to Poland—as I am sure that you do also.”
Was that a gentle suggestion? Or was it a delicately phrased inquiry? The P.M. apparently did not care; he responded promptly: “We shall have to do that, unquestionably.”
That was what Lanny was here to learn, and as soon as he had heard the words he wanted to get away and put them on paper and get them into the airmail, which had recently been established by Clipper across the ocean. Every minute was precious, because if war came, censorship of mail would go into effect and secret communications might no longer be possible. He talked for a while about Bonnet and Reynaud and Schneider; then, at a pause, he said, gently: “You look tired, Mr. Prime Minister; am I keeping you from your rest?”
“It will be hard for any of us to sleep tonight,” was the reply.
“I can tell you this with some assurance,” replied the friend of the great; “there is very little chance that anything will happen until dawn. I have heard some of the Führer’s aides discuss the subject, and they agree that the bombing planes will fly according to the almanac; they will leave their fields so as to arrive over their targets at the first moment of visibility.”
“Poor Warsaw! Poor Warsaw!” exclaimed the sad old man.
VI
Lanny drove to his hotel and wrote his report and dropped it into an outside mailbox. Then he took a chance and called the hotel where Rick always stayed when he came to town. Lanny had wired from Paris saying that he was coming, and now he found that his guess was correct: Rick couldn’t stay in the country at a time like this, and he couldn’t sleep on such a night. He had just mailed a letter to one of the afternoon newspapers, urging the British people to be on the alert to see that an appeasing government didn’t force Poland into another “Munich,” and that they didn’t welsh on their agreement in the event that Poland stood firm.
Lanny said: “Let’s take a drive, and listen to the radio in the car.” So they drove out Hampstead way and into the country. A year ago in all the parks of London rows of trenches had been dug to serve as emergency bomb shelters, and these had been allowed to stay till the next “Munich,” so dreaded by all the popular forces. Now on the undulating stretches of Hampstead Heath they found gangs of men working by torchlight, digging foundations for anti-aircraft guns. “That doesn’t look like appeasement,” opined the American, and told his friend what he had just heard from Chamberlain’s own lips.
But Rick was not to be comforted; he insisted that he wouldn’t trust Neville and his gang as far as a lame ex-aviator “could throw a bull by the horns.” Right now the appeasers would be working like eager beavers to break down the nation’s will and betray the nation’s honor. “Don’t you see, Lanny, if we fight Hitler we shall be helping Stalin? That is the way Stalin has willed it, and not to let him have his way is the first thing our reactionaries think about.”
They listened to the radio, on which they could get Paris and Brussels and Amsterdam, and Berlin when there wasn’t too much static. Even in these early morning hours the war of news and opinion was going on with furious energy, each side telling its story and arguing its case. The sixteen points were read and discussed, and the question whether or not they had ever been submitted to Britain and to Poland, and whether there had been an ultimatum, and who was to decide what constituted one, and who was to blame for its rejection. How many Germans had been murdered by Poles in the Corridor and how many Poles by Nazis in Danzig? How many Germans had been castrated—the Nazis talked incessantly about this crime, for they were racial fanatics, and the glory of every Nazi was his power to bring more Nazis into the world. Correspondents and commentators who had not slept for a couple of days and nights told what they had seen and heard, and what they thought it meant. Everything turned upon the all-important question: Did it mean war? What were the German intentions and how were they going to be made known, and when, and where? The Germans, if they struck, would surely bomb Warsaw. Would they also bomb Paris and London?
VII
“What are you going to do?” Rick wanted to know. “I mean if it’s war.”
“I haven’t made up my mind,” replied his friend. “I am supposed to help Zoltan run a Detaze show in Baltimore and other cities. I could get out of that, but have another obligation in America, which I have to attend to and to get released from for the future. Then I believe I’ll volunteer in the British army, if they’ll take me.”
“You mean, as a private?”
“I’m not fit for anything else, with no training.”
“That’s a pretty rugged job, Lanny.”
“I know; but I’m fairly fit, and I could toughen up if I had to. What is the age limit?”
“I don’t know what it’ll be now—well over forty, I’m sure. But it would be a great waste of your talents.”
“What else could I do?”
“Good God! Put the proposition up to Ceddy, and he’ll arrange for Intelligence to take you on in no time. A man who speaks French and German like a native, and can go into Germany by way of Switzerland—he could have anything he asked for.”
“Well, I’m not so sure the Nazis will welcome me any longer. However, we’ll see. I’ll have to have an argument with Robbie, I know, for he’ll want me to help him, and he’ll argue that airplanes are important.”
“He’ll be jolly right, too. But come back here before you decide, and by that time we’ll know more.”
“And you, Rick?” inquired the American.
“What can I do, with a game leg? I’d like to help in the Ministry of Information or some other propaganda work; but I doubt if they’ll be taking on any Leftists.”
“Surely, Rick, they’ll want national unity now!”
“No doubt; but it’ll be unity for their Britain, not for ours. I fancy I’ll have to go on free-lancing it. We have wild men on our side who’ll need some whipping into line, and maybe I can help with that. This tight little island is in for a tough time, old man. What do you think are the chances of our getting any help from your side?”
“That’s one of the things I hope to find out. In general, I’d say, the worse things get, the more help you can expect. We’ll do what we absolutely have to, no more. Tell me, what is Alfy doing?”
“Alfy has joined up with the Air Force, and if it’s war, he’ll be in one of the first flights.”
Lanny had an impulse to say: “Poor Nina!”—but he knew that wasn’t English. Chamberlain would say: “Poor Warsaw!” but never: “Poor London!” You were sorry for other people, but for yourselves you said: “Carry on!” or “Never say die!”—or, shortest and therefore best of all: “Cheerio!”
VIII
At four o’clock in the morning the Nazi Gauleiter of Danzig issued a proclamation announcing that his city was a part of the German Reich. At a quarter to five o’clock a German cruiser opened fire upon the Polish port of Gdynia, near Danzig, and one hour later German troops all around the German borders of Poland started their march—some seventy divisions altogether, more than a million men. At the same time the Luftwaffe took off from its carefully prepared bases, and showers of bombs fell upon Polish airports, oil depots, and commu
nication centers. The German espionage had been so perfect that they knew exactly where to strike, and the greater part of the small Polish Air Force was destroyed on the ground. The German Panzer divisions swept forward with such speed that the Poles never got a chance to complete their mobilization. It was like a swarm of stinging wasps swooping down upon some large slow animal, blinding it, paralyzing its nerve centers, and leaving it a mass of helpless flesh. From the Nazi point of view it was glorious, and from the point of view of military science it was something new in the world.
Needless to say, Adi Schicklgruber wouldn’t do a thing like that without issuing a manifesto; and of course he would say that he was attacked. He told his Reichswehr: “The Polish state has refused the peaceful settlement of relations which I desired, and has appealed to arms. Germans in Poland are persecuted with bloody terror and driven from their houses.… In order to put an end to this lunacy, I have no other choice than to meet force with force from now on.” He appointed a Ministerial Council for Defense, and put Göring at the head of it, with five other members, including Hess and General Keitel. Then he summoned his tame Reichstag, and once more the world heard his bellowing voice, proclaiming his own innocence and the wickedness of his foes. Said Adi:
“I desire nothing other than to be the first soldier of the German Reich. In evidence of this I have again put on that old coat which was the most sacred and the most dear to me of all. I will not take it off until the victory is ours or—I shall not live to see the end. If anything should happen to me in this struggle, my first successor will be Party Member Göring. Should anything happen to Party Member Göring, his successor is Party Member Hess. It will be your duty to follow these men as Führer with the same blind loyalty and obedience as you follow me.”
In Mein Kampf this master orator and statesman had laid down the rule that when you told a lie it should be a big one, as that was easier to believe. So now he told “his” deputies—“meine Herren,” he called them: “Last night for the first time Poland opened fire on our own territory, this time with regular troops. From five forty-five this morning this fire has been returned”—and so on. He told them, truthfully—since falsehood must always be mixed with some truth—that he had spent more than six years in building up the German armed forces, and that “during this time more than ninety billion marks have been devoted to this purpose.” The statesmen of the democracy must have shuddered as they heard that figure, equal to more than thirty-five billion dollars, or, as the British would have said, nine thousand million pounds. Where was the statesman who would have dared to ask any parliament, congress, or other legislative body to vote such a sum for armaments?
It was going to be real war—that is, if the democracies saw fit to take up the gauge. Said the one-time sub-corporal: “As a National Socialist and a German soldier I enter this struggle with a stout heart. My whole life has been nothing but a constant struggle for my people and its resurrection and for Germany. This contest was inspired by one single doctrine of faith—the belief in this people. There is one word that I have never learned—capitulation.”
IX
What were Britain and France going to do about it? The world waited for the answer; and a lame playwright-propagandist who distrusted his government spent his day stumping about Fleet Street, visiting editors whom he knew and begging them to be uncompromising in their demands that Britain should honor its pledges. This wasn’t a job for an American, a man whose government had only fine words to offer. Lanny decided that he had done his part, and would visit his little daughter and make up for lost sleep until the decision was made known. In the hotel he had met a woman official of the A.R.P.—that is, Air Raid Precautions—who told him about the evacuation of children from London. He had the thought to do his bit, and was put in touch with the Fulham district. The whole matter was handled through the school system, and Lanny loaded his car with a teacher and two little tykes in the seat beside him, and half a dozen more tykes packed into the rear.
They were children of the slums, and their best clothing was none too good. Later the vermin would show up and fill the country people of Britain with horror, and with a realization of how their “other half” lived. But the youngsters were full of energy and Cockney conversation, and to the son of Budd-Erling a, source of education as well as amusement. Most of them had never seen a cow, and as they gazed out at the countryside they exclaimed with wonder at these immense and alarming creatures. When Lanny inquired how they had thought milk came into the world, their answers varied; some said: “Out of bottles!” and others said: “Out of tins!” He delivered them safely to the Wickthorpe village schoolhouse, as per instructions, and then he stopped at a “chemist’s shop” to buy disinfectants for his car. In memory he was carried back three years to the time when he had evacuated a family of Spanish peasants from a fighting zone.
He had telephoned Irma to make sure that he would be welcome; so here was Frances, playing on the smooth green lawn in front of the castle and keeping watch for him. What a contrast of life on one little island! His daughter wanted to rush into his arms, but he had to bid her wait until he had had a bath. He explained that there had been some very dirty people in his car; and of course that was a novel idea to a poor little rich girl, and aroused her curiosity. He was pledged never to trouble her mind with any of his Pink ideas, but how could he explain this episode without some trace of “class-angling”? He thought it wiser to have Irma present when he told the story, and let her be the one to explain why there had to be such very poor children, and why they couldn’t at least keep clean!
X
The itinerant father had a lot of sleep to make up for; and in between times he read the papers and listened to the air waves. Chamberlain had made a statement in the House, telling of his long struggle to preserve the peace of Europe, and how little encouragement he had got. Even now the poor man couldn’t give up his hopes; he had sent a communication to Hitler, proposing that he should cease his attacks on Poland and withdraw his troops from the country as a preliminary to negotiations. That might have seemed an absurdity—until you learned that Bonnet was busy in Paris, and that he had got Mussolini helping him! Musso didn’t want war; he was afraid his Axis partner might ask for help, and Musso alone knew how wretched his army was.
It was another Munich in the making, long after the twelfth hour had passed. They were going to persuade Hitler to stop his armies where they were, and keep the western parts of Poland which he had seized, and persuade the unhappy Poles that they were already licked and that there was no such thing as honor in the world, because there wasn’t any in the hearts of Bonnet and Laval and Musso and the rest of the conspirators. They were laboring frenziedly in Paris and Rome and Warsaw and Berlin—and also in London; Lanny needed only one or two hints over the radio to guess what was going on. He had to be careful with his tongue, for Wickthorpe Castle was a center of appeasement activity, and its mistress, his former wife, remarked: “Surely the Poles cannot be held entirely blameless! They are the most unreasonable people I have ever tried to deal with.”
Lanny remained the art expert, who had seen and heard a great deal but wasn’t especially interested in it and didn’t consider himself competent to express opinions. Also, he was the devoted father, who liked to play the piano for his little daughter, and dance with her, and ride horseback while she rode a pony, followed by a groom. “Why don’t you come to see me oftener, Papa?”—and then: “Why do you have to go so soon?” He tried to make the picture business real to her, telling about great artists and their work, and explaining the paintings in the castle, mostly the ancestors of her stepfather.
Also he had to meet and be polite to Fanny Barnes, his former mother-in-law. Residence in the shadow of an ancient castle had made this large majestic lady more English than any Englishwoman; she regarded Hitler as an ill-bred person, and couldn’t understand how Lanny could desire to associate with him. Weren’t there enough people of good breeding willing to buy paintings? A
lso, there was Fanny’s brother, “Uncle” Horace Vandringham, derelict stock-market manipulator and pensioner of his sister. Horace was developing bags under his eyes, and his shoulders were bowed, but he couldn’t give up his ambitions; he whispered confidentially to the son of Budd-Erling that a hint of what was really going to happen in Europe would be deeply appreciated, and that anybody who had some ready money could make a killing on the New York market right now. Lanny explained that what little money he had was invested in his father’s business; whereupon Horace smacked his lips and exclaimed: “Your father must be a happy man right now!”
XI
The efforts of the appeasers failed, because of the psychological fact that when a lion has tasted blood he cannot be persuaded to withdraw from his prey. It was on Friday that the invasion of Poland began and it was Sunday when Prime Minister Chamberlain announced in the House that his proposals to Hitler had been left unanswered, and that Britain therefore must fulfill her pledges to Poland. Daladier made the same announcement as to France; and Lanny, with a heart full of relief which he must not show, joined the guests, the servants, and the tenants of the Wickthorpe estate in listening to a radio address by the King, delivered in that phrase-by-phrase, almost word-by-word enunciation which was made necessary by his impediment. “In this grave hour, perhaps the most fateful in our history, I send to every household of my people, both at home and overseas, this message, spoken with the same depth of feeling for each and every one of you as if I were able to cross your threshold and speak to you myself.”
The address was a solemn committing of the British cause to God; and after that, the die having been cast, it was proper for Lanny to say to his ex-wife: “I am going up to town the first thing in the morning and arrange for passage to New York. I have promised to attend a Detaze show in Baltimore, and then I have in mind to come back and enlist in the King’s forces.”