XII
In these ticklish times, with so many people keeping watch, a presidential agent had to be careful whom he talked with. Lanny returned to London, and from there phoned to Rick, not giving his name, but saying “Bienvenu.” He asked Rick to meet him at a small hotel where neither of them was known, and there they shut themselves in a room and told their hopes and their fears. Lanny wouldn’t name Roosevelt, but could say: “I had a talk with my boss, and I’m not allowed to join your army. I’m to go on watching the appeasers and reporting.” He added, with a wry smile: “I’m never allowed to do anything that will make me uncomfortable.”
“The appeasers will make you uncomfortable before this war is over, damn their souls,” replied the Englishman.
He was in a state of acute anxiety concerning his country’s plight: the lack of preparedness, the lack of realization of the danger, the lack of spirit for the fight, in some cases amounting to downright treason. Rick wanted to make a clean sweep of the men who were directing the foreign policy of the Empire; he called the roll of them, and gave their records: what sort of fellow was this or that to be in charge of a war on Fascism! Lanny told of what he had heard at Wickthorpe, and the lame ex-aviator figuratively speaking wrung his hands. “You see! Absolutely putrid!”
However, they were able to find a few spots of silver in these dark clouds. There was the new First Lord of the Admiralty—or rather the old First Lord brought back. “Winnie is a fighting man,” Rick admitted; and Lanny smiled to himself, thinking what strange bedfellows this misery had made. For Winston Spencer Churchill was a Tory Imperialist pur sang, and one who did not feel it necessary to apologize for his creed. Lanny told of their talks by the swimming-pool of Maxine Elliott, where few things had been hidden, whether of the body or the mind. It would be a long time before “Winnie” would again be found lolling in Riviera sunshine, his pudgy form in a red bathrobe and his bald head protected by a floppy straw hat. “Good old Winnie” would stay in dark and smoky London, spilling cigar ashes over his weskit, and studying the wall charts on which the position of British men-of-war was marked. Already the enemy had torpedoed one of his best battlewagons, the Royal Oak, in Scapa Flow, a shelter north of Scotland where the main fleet had been wont to rest. Now the fleet had moved to a place which few knew and none told.
The blockade of the Nazi power had begun. It was a kind of warfare which operated in silence and secrecy; most of the time it was nothing you could see or measure, and it was very slow—Rick talked of five years, perhaps ten. All over the seven seas the German vessels would be hunted, and now and then one would be captured or sunk, until in the end not one would be left. It would be like a strangler’s hold, applied little by little, reducing the air and the blood supply of the victim and bringing his powers of resistance ever lower. The German submarines would be hunted, and the ships which brought them fuel, and the German raiders which would sneak out to prey on British commerce. Right now there was a cruiser reported operating off the coast of Africa; a few weeks later, off the coast of Uruguay, this Admiral Graf Spee would find her resting place on the sea’s bed.
XIII
Alfred Pomeroy-Nielson, grandson and namesake of the baronet, had joined the Royal Air Force. He was a trained flyer, and had what few Englishmen could claim, experience in actual combat. Men who had gone to the aid of the Spanish people’s government were looked upon with deep suspicion by the military men of all “capitalist” governments, and Alfy had a tragicomic story to tell of his efforts to have a part in the defense of his native land. He came to see his old friend Lanny Budd in the same way that his father had done, for he was one of those who shared Lanny’s secret. He considered that he owed his life to the help Lanny had given him in Spain, and while he did not talk about it, he would be on the watch for a chance to repay that debt.
Alfy was now twenty-two, and had got all the learning he wanted at Magdalen College, more than would ever be of use to him, so he said. He was tall and spare, with his father’s thin face, but with brown hair and eyes from his mother’s side. Serious and conscientious, he was in this war as a crusader on behalf of freedom; he said it was one of those decisive struggles, as when the Greeks had defeated the Persians at Marathon, and when the hordes of Attila had been defeated on the plains of Northern France. If these modern Huns who called themselves National Socialists were beaten, it would mean the greatest leap toward democracy yet achieved; on the other hand, if they should win, it might mean the end of the democratic dream for all time. In that spirit the baronet’s grandson was fighting the Fascist-minded inside the R.A.F.—and there were a lot of them, some high in authority. They paid him back by denying him the command to which his experience entitled him, and by sending him on the most dangerous missions, from which he was at liberty to return if he could.
So far it had been mostly scouting, all over the surrounding waters and the enemy’s land. Wilhelmshaven had been bombed, but mostly it was leaflets that were being dropped upon the enemy. A tragic thing to an airman, to have to watch the destruction of Poland, and to be helpless. Göring’s Luftwaffe had done what they considered a fine job there; but so far they hadn’t carried out their threats to bomb English cities. They had made several attempts on the fleet, but without much result, and they had lost more planes than they had shot down. Alfy said: “Here’s one thing to learn; they are going to lie, so don’t ever worry over their claims.”
“Perhaps their airmen are too optimistic,” suggested the other, with a smile.
“All airmen are,” was the reply. “It’s the business of HQ to pin them down and get the facts. We know what we’ve lost, so we realize that the Nazis have a system. Whatever they get, they claim double.”
Alfy wanted to know about the progress of Budd-Erling, and Lanny was free to tell him, and didn’t mind if Alfy passed it on to his superiors and got some kudos out of it. Alfy had flown one of last year’s Budd-Erling models, and reported that it was better than the Messerschmitt, but not so good as the Spitfire. “Thank God we had men in the force who were on their toes!” he said. Lanny could assure him that Robbie’s most recent model was both faster and more heavily armed; also, that it had a single-gear supercharger that was a whiz, though he couldn’t drop the smallest hint of how that marvel had been achieved. He could report that the plant was working day and night, and there was a good chance of its being enlarged.
Thus they talked “shop.” It was important to both of them, for Robbie would be glad to hear what a fighter pilot had learned of his own and other planes in actual combat, the one test that really counted. Alfy, for his part, could deliver to his superiors a set of facts. How many planes was Budd-Erling actually turning out at the present time? What was their actual top speed, and would they be able to carry heavier guns, as the British were already putting into their “Spits”?
Lanny wouldn’t ask what the British production was, but he knew that the Luftwaffe outnumbered the British and French’ air forces combined, and Alfy admitted that this was the fact. “But our men are better than theirs,” he declared, and stuck by this. “Nobody can tell me that a dictatorship can produce the same grade of men as a free land.”
“I assure you,” countered Lanny, “Göring’s men haven’t the slightest idea they aren’t free. They believe in Germany, just as you believe in England. They believe in their leaders, far more than you believe in yours. At this moment they are not troubled by such doubts and fears as you have revealed to me.”
“I know,” said the Englishman; “but we’re only at the beginning of this war. Already they are lying; and don’t you know that the knowledge of that is bound to spread, and to eat into their faith and their fighting spirit?”
“I hope you are right,” said the American. “But you will have to prove it to them.”
BOOK SEVEN
The Winds Blew and Beat upon That House
26
Time Ambles Withal
I
Travel between Britain and Fran
ce was not encouraged in wartime; but Lanny consulted his friend Ceddy, pointing out that he had brought worthwhile impressions of opinion in America and might do the same for France. He might travel into Switzerland, ostensibly on his father’s business, and contact some of the Germans who would be swarming there; he might even receive an invitation to Berchtesgaden, or to meet Hess in some inconspicuous place. The Deputy Führer had no more real stomach for this fight than Lanny or Ceddy; and who could say what concessions he might have to propose?
His lordship jumped at this suggestion, saying that he would not merely see the path made smooth for Lanny, but would tip off the French to do the same. However, Lanny said: “Better not, because I don’t want to acquire the status of an official person. Denis de Bruyne and Schneider are both interested in Budd-Erling, and will surely have the necessary influence. It will be much better for me to travel as my father’s son.”
“Righto!” said the Foreign Office man.
A plane sat Lanny down at Le Bourget airfield, as it was doing for others who had large quantities of goods to sell, or who spoke for men of that sort. Goods were needed in war, even more than in peace, and money which made the mare go did the same for the bombing plane and the tank. Lanny put up at the Crillon; and as soon as word spread that he was in town, important persons wanted to see him, and learn what was going on in Washington and New York, and even Newcastle, Connecticut.
Baron Schneider, first of all. He invited Lanny for lunch, and kept him most of the afternoon. How many planes was Robbie turning out now, and was he going to enlarge his plant? When Lanny said probably not, the Baron suggested that he might be able to find a way to assist. These big fellows would rarely say straight out: “I will put up the money.” It was a matter for circumlocution, something evasive and devious. Frenchmen who had had money for generations would prefer you to assume that it was all tied up, and that they would have to go to a lot of trouble to find someone to oblige you. When Lanny said that his father was unwilling to borrow more money, that, too, was taken as part of the game, and meant that he wouldn’t want to pay quite so much for it. No bonus of common stock from now on!
The munitions king was almost schizophrenic in this crisis, a man divided in his mind and unable to bring the two parts into harmony. He wanted France to be defended, but at the same time he didn’t want her to be attacked. To him this conflict was a nightmare dreamed by a homicidal maniac. There was bloody Stalin, sitting on his far-off throne and chortling with glee. He had got everything exactly as he wanted it—the prosperous, property-respecting nations tearing at one another’s throats, while he, the expropriator, armed himself and prepared to loot Europe, or to rouse its proletarian hordes to do the job for him.
The master of Le Creusot wanted fighter planes made, because these could be used for defense; he wanted the French government to buy such planes, and he wanted to arrange for Lanny to talk with General Gamelin and General Weygand and Admiral Darlan and tell them what miracles the Budd-Erling plane was now performing or about to perform. The Baron himself was growing more and more worried about the part which aviation was playing in this war. No polite, well-ordered war, like those in the past, but blind, indiscriminate destruction, with loads of high-explosive being dumped in the night upon cities, and not sparing the palaces of industrial magnates, or the headquarters of elderly, distinguished generals and admirals! Not sparing steel mills and coal mines and munitions factories and railroads—the enormous complicated structures to which the Baron and his father and his grandfather had devoted their labors, their thoughts, and their hard-won capital!
Somebody ought to stop it! And here was a man, young, energetic, persuasive, un homme de bonne volonté if ever there was one. A citizen of a neutral country, he was free to travel in Europe. Why couldn’t he go now to Berlin by way of Switzerland and make the Nazis realize what a mistake they were making, and persuade them to accept a compromise? Poland? What was the use of talking about Poland any more? There was no Poland; and did any man in his senses imagine that France and Britain could conquer Germany as she now was and set up Poland as she had been? Had not General Gamelin told them that the next war would be fought behind concrete, and that the first army which came out from behind the concrete would be annihilated?
Lanny said that he would be very happy to meet the French military men and talk fighter planes to them, that being his father’s business, and incidentally the Baron’s. But as to making proposals to Germany, that appeared to be a job for the diplomats. Schneider replied that he had tried the diplomats, the best he could find, and they had failed. Lanny replied: “It seems to me that before anybody approaches Hess or the Führer, Frenchmen ought to make up their minds what they are willing to concede. At present there appears to me a chaos of opinion in this country, and much the same in Britain.” The other admitted mournfully that such was the case; only the Nazis knew what they wanted, and they proceeded to take it, without any regard for the established courtesies and conventions of Europe.
II
The melancholy days had come, the days of cold and rain and little sunshine in France, of fear and uncertainty in the souls of Frenchmen. There was the blackout, though not so bad as in London; street lights were painted blue. You carried a gas mask wherever you went, and kept in mind the whereabouts of the nearest shelter; indoors, you were warned to stand with your face to a wall, on the theory that you would rather have glass splinters in your back than in your eyes. When the weeks passed, and the months, and no bombers came, you gradually relaxed these precautions; but you could not escape the inconveniences, the shortages, and worst of all the doubts and breakdown of spirit.
The average Frenchman didn’t want war, and could hardly believe that he had got into one; he could find so many reasons for not fighting, and lived in the hope that somehow “they,” the superior powers, would find a way to get him out of the mess. A great part of the newspapers which he read opposed the war, or at any rate put the blame for it upon the groups in control of the government. Even the Socialists couldn’t make up their minds how far they wanted to go, or in which direction; their paper, Le Populaire, solved the problem by dividing its editorial page in halves, one “hard” and the other “soft,” one for putting Hitler down and the other for making some sort of compromise with him.
The position of the Reds was even more unpromising for the future of France. The Communist Party had proclaimed that this was one more capitalist war, and that the fatherland of French workers was the Soviet Union. The government replied by outlawing the Party and throwing hundreds of its leaders into jail. The effect of this was to deprive Lanny of one of his sources of entertainment as well as information; for Uncle Jesse Blackless disappeared, together with his wife. The police raided his tenement rooms and seized his papers and put a seal on the door. His nephew might perhaps have found him if he had made inquiries in the right quarter, but he couldn’t afford to advertise his Red connection. He guessed that Jesse would make his way to Moscow—and this guess proved to be correct.
III
It was a matter of no slight importance to la patrie that its most important political party, with several million adherents, had gone “underground” and was opposing the national effort. The Reds were the most tireless propagandists, and wherever in the factories a worker grumbled at the 72-hour week, there would be a “comrade” to whisper: “This is one more capitalist war.” Wherever in the trenches a poilu complained of monotonous food and two-and-one-half cents a day compensation, there would be someone to direct his bitterness against those sales cochons—not the boches, but the politicians at home.
And of course the enemy agents were at work day and night. Those of German nationality had got out, but they had established an elaborate machine and put Frenchmen in charge. Lanny knew who many of these persons were, and he knew that the money was pouring in by way of Switzerland, Belgium, and other neutral countries, including Lanny’s own. The Bank of International Settlements in Zurich was still functi
oning, and the businessmen were still insisting that “business as usual” was an honorable motto. The French reptile press was still getting its “envelopes,” and there were even papers which had no circulation, but were printed in large editions and given away. Needless to say, these were all humanitarian in tone, emphasizing the fact that war is a very evil thing, and that mothers love their sons and do not like to have them slaughtered for the benefit of les bellicistes, the warmongers, mostly political adventurers and merchants of death.
In the early days of the attack on Poland the French troops had advanced toward the Saar valley, using the ingenious device of a herd of pigs driven before them to explode the mines. The Germans had fallen back without resistance; and after Poland had been cleaned up, the French had thought it over and realized that they were outnumbered, and that to attack the German fortifications would be very costly. General Gamelin was in command, and he remembered his own warning, and drew back into the security of his Maginot.
The Germans had called their sweep into Poland a Blitzkrieg, and now the public in France and Britain gave a name to their own kind of warfare; it was a Sitzkrieg. Half a year of it would fix firmly in the minds of soldiers the idea of resting comfortably and letting the enemy have the troubles and shed the blood. After all, there were worse things than sitting in a casement playing cards and smoking cigarettes, and arguing about who was to blame for the war and what was the best way to get out of it. The mail came, and the newspapers; also, a variety of other literature turned up, no one was sure just how, but it was passed from hand to hand and caused amusement and discussion. Lanny saw samples; for example, a leaflet with a picture of a British Tommy, and underneath him the question: “Where is your wife?” When you held the leaflet up to the light you got the answer, for you saw a naked woman in the Tommy’s arms. That might start uneasiness in a poilu’s mind, for it was well known that the British army had taken over a good chunk of Northern France. They hadn’t done any righting to speak of; and now and then there would be a leaflet asking, who was going to get the English out of France, and when? Had they not taken French ports in past wars and kept them? Who had not heard the phrase, perfide Albion?