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reaction in Germany; the peasants had their year's harvest to sell at a heavy loss. As for the

workers, there were four million unemployed, and fear in the hearts of all the rest. These

groups were sure to vote for a change—but of what sort?

Impossible to spend a week in a nation so wrought up and not come to share the excitement.

It became a sort of sporting proposition; you chose sides and made bets to back yourself. After

the fashion of humans, you believed what you hoped. Lanny became sure that the cautious,

phlegmatic German people would prefer the carefully thought-out program of the Socialists

and give them an actual majority so that they could put it into effect. But Johannes Robin, who

thrived on pessimism, expected the worst—by which he meant that the Communists would

come out on top. Red Berlin would become scarlet, or crimson, or whatever is the most glaring

of shades.

The results astounded them all—save possibly Hejnrich Jung and his party comrades. The

Social-Democrats lost more than half a million votes; the Communists gained more than a

million and a quarter; while the Nazis increased their vote from eight hundred thousand to

nearly six and a half million: a gain of seven hundred per cent in twenty-eight months! The

score in millions stood roughly, Social-Democrats eight and a half, Nazis six and a half, and

Communists four and a half.

The news hit the rest of the world like a high-explosive shell. The statesmen of the one-time

Allied lands who were so certain that they had Germany bound in chains; the international

bankers who had lent her five billion dollars; the negotiators who, early in this year of 1930,

had secured her signature to the Young Plan, whereby she bound herself to pay reparations over

a period of fifty-eight years—all these now suddenly discovered that they had driven six and a half

million of their victims crazy! War gains were to be confiscated, trusts nationalized, department

stores communalized, speculation in land prevented, and usurers and profiteers to suffer the

death penalty! Such was the Nazi program for theinside of Germany; while for the outside, the

Versailles treaty was to be denounced, the Young Plan abrogated, and Germany was to go to war,

if need be, in order to set her free from the "Jewish-dominated plutocracies" of France,

Britain, and America!

Lanny's host was unpleasantly surprised by these returns, but, after thinking matters over, he

decided not to worry too much. He said that no soup is ever eaten as hot as it is cooked. He said

that the wild talk of the Nazis was perhaps the only way to get votes just now. He had his

private sources of information, and knew that the responsible leaders were embarrassed by

the recklessness of their young followers. If you studied the Nazi program carefully you would

see that it was full of all sorts of "jokers" and escape clauses. The campaign orators of Berlin had

been promising the rabble "confiscation without compensation" of the great estates of the

Junkers; but meanwhile, in East Prussia, they had got the support of the Jun kers by pointing

to the wording of the program: the land to be confiscated must be "socially necessary." And

how easy to decide that the land of your friends and supporters didn't come within that

category!

But all the same Johannes decided to move some more funds to Amsterdam and London,

and to consult Robbie Budd about making more investments in America. Hundreds of other

German capitalists took similar steps; and of course the Nazis found it out, and their press

began to cry that these "traitor plutocrats" should be punished by the death penalty.

XI

The rich did not give up their pleasures on account of elections, nor yet of election results.

The fashionable dressmakers, the milliners, the jewelers came clamoring for appointments with

the famous Frau Lanny Budd, geborene Irma Barnes. They displayed their choicest wares, and

skilled workers sat up all night and labored with flying fingers to meet her whims. When she

was properly arrayed she sallied forth, and the contents of her trunks which Feathers had

brought from Juan, were placed at the disposal of the elder Frau Budd, who dived into them

with cries of delight, for they had barely been worn at all and had cost more than anything she

had ever been able to afford in her life. A few alterations, to allow for embonpoint attributable

to the too rich fare of the yacht, and a blond and blooming Beauty was ready to stand before

kings — whether of steel, coal, or chemicals, potash, potatoes, or Renten-marks.

She did not feel humiliated to play second fiddle in the family, for after all she was a

grandmother; also, she had not forgotten the lesson of the Wall Street collapse. Let Irma go on

paying the family bills and nursing the family infant, and her mother-in-law would do

everything in the power of a highly skilled social intriguer to promote her fortunes, put her in

a good light, see that she met the right people and made the right impressions. Beauty would