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pale forehead and had to be swept away. No fashion here, a plain man, just like you and me;

one whose hand you can shake, who smiles in a friendly way at those who greet him. A storm of

cheering arises, the Heils become like raindrops falling in a cloudburst—so many that you

cannot hear the individual ones, the sounds become a union like the National Socialist

German Workingmen's Party.

Lanny has never attended an old-fashioned American revival meeting, but his friend Jerry

Pendleton from Kansas has told him about one, and here is another. Has someone from the

American South or Middle West come over and taught these arts of stirring the souls of

primitive people, of letting them take part in what is being done to them? Or is it something

that rises out of the primitive soul in every part of the world? The speakers on this platform

ask questions, and twenty thousand throats shout the answers. Only they do not shout:

"Glory Hallelujah!" and "Bless the Lord!"; theirs are secular cries: "Down with Versailles!"

"Juda verrecke!" and "Deutschland erwache!"

IX

Seven years since Lanny watched Charlie Chaplin come out upon the stage of a great beerhall

in Munich; and here he is again, the same foolish little dark mustache, the same shy manner,

humble, deprecating. But now he is stouter, he gets better food. Now, also, there are a score of

spotlights centered upon him, telling everybody that appearances are deceptive, and that this

is a special One. Banners and symbols, slogans and rituals, hopes and resolves, all have come

out of his soul; he is the Messiah, the One appointed and sent to save the Fatherland in its

hour of greatest trial.

He begins to speak, and Lanny knows every tone. Quiet at first, and the vast hall as still as the

universe must have been before God created it. But soon the man of visions begins to warm up

to his theme. The slogans which he has taught to all Germany work upon himself as upon

others; they dominate his entire being; they are sparks from a white-hot flame which burns

day and night within him. The flame of "Adi's" hatred of his miserable and thwarted life! Hatred

of his father, the dumb petty bureaucrat who wanted to make his son like himself and

wouldn't let him become an artist; hatred of the critics and dealers who wouldn't recognize his

pitiful attempts at painting; hatred of the bums and wastrels in the flophouses who wouldn't

listen to his inspired ravings; hatred of the Russians and the French and the British and the

Americans who wouldn't let an obscure corporal win his war; hatred of Marxists who betrayed

Germany by a stab in the back; hatred of the Jews who made money out of her misery; hatred

of all who now stood in the way of her destiny, who opposed Adi's party which was to save her

from humiliation. All these hatreds had flamed forth from one thwarted soul and had set fire

to the tinder-box which Germany had become—and here it was, blazing, blazing!

The Führer possessed no gleam of humor, no trace of charm. He was an uneducated man,

and spoke with an Austrian country accent, not always grammatically. His voice was hoarse

from a thousand speeches, but he forced it without mercy. He raved and shrieked; he waved

his arms, he shook his clenched fists in the face of Germany's enemies. Perspiration poured

from his pasty and rather lumpy countenance; his heavy hair fell down over his eyes and had

to be flung back.

Lanny knew every gesture, every word. Adi hadn't learned a thing, hadn't changed a thing in

seven years; he had merely said the same things a million times. His two-part book which

Lanny had read with mingled dismay and laughter had become the bible of a new religion.

Millions of copies had been sold, and extracts from it and reiterations of it had been printed in

who could guess how many pamphlets, leaflets, and newspapers? Certainly well up in the billions;

for some of the Nazi newspapers had circulations of hundreds of thousands every day, and in

the course of years that mounts up. Heinrich told Lanny that they had held nearly thirty-five

thousand meetings in Germany during the present campaign and quantities of literature had

been sold at every one of them. Lanny, listening and watching the frenzied throng,

remembered some lines from his poetry anthology, lines which had sounded melodious and

exciting, but which he hadn't understood when he had read them as a boy:

One man with a dream, at pleasure, Shall go forth and conquer a crown;

And three with a new song's measure Can trample an empire down.

X

There had been an election to the Reichstag less than two and a half years before, and at

that election the Social-Democrats had polled more than nine million votes, the Communists

more than three million, and the Nazis less than one million. The two last-named parties had

been active since then, and everyone agreed that conditions favored the extremists. The business

collapse in America had made farm products unsalable there, and this had caused an immediate