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due to the Allies and their monstrous treaty of Versailles; Germany had been stripped of

everything by the reparations demands, deprived of her ships, colonies, and trade—and no

people ever would starve gladly. Lanny had done his share of protesting against Versailles, and

had argued for helping Germany to get on her feet again; but somehow, when he listened to

Germans, he found himself shifting to the other side and wishing to remind them that they had

lost the war. After all, it hadn't been a game of ping-pong, and somebody had to pay for it.

Also, Germany had had her program of what she meant to do if she had won; she had

revealed it clearly in the terms she had forced upon Russia at Brest-Litovsk. Also, there had been

a Franco-Prussian War, and Germany had taken Alsace-Lorraine; there had been Frederick the

Great and the partition of Poland; there had been a whole string of Prussian conquests—but

whose redness was notorious. On the other hand, an officer of the Reichswehr owed no you had

better not mention them if you wanted to have friends in the Fatherland!

III

Three evenings a week Freddi and Rahel went to the school which they helped to support.

Freddi taught a class in the history of economic theory and Rahel taught one in singing, both

subjects important for German workers. Lanny went along more than once, and when the

students old and young discovered that he lived in France and had helped with a school there,

they wanted to hear about conditions in that country and what the workers were thinking and

doing. Discussions arose, and Lanny discovered that the disciplined and orderly working people

of Germany were not so different from the independent and free-spoken bunch in the Midi.

The same problems vexed them, the same splits turned every discussion into a miniature war.

Could the workers "take over" by peaceable processes? You could tell the answer by the very

words in which the speaker put the question. If he said "by parliamentary action," he was

some sort of Socialist; if he said "by electing politicians," he was some sort of Communist. The

former had the prestige of the greatest party of the Fatherland behind him, and quoted Marx,

Bebel, and Kautsky. His opponent in the controversy took the Soviet Union for his model, and

quoted Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. Between the two extremes were those who followed the

recently exiled Trotsky, or the martyred Karl Liebknecht and "Red Rosa" Luxemburg. There

were various "splinter groups" that Lanny hadn't heard of; indeed, it appeared that the nearer

the rebel workers came to danger, the more they fought among themselves. Lanny compared

them to people on a sinking ship trying to throw one another overboard.

At the school the "Sozis" were in a majority; and Lanny would explain to them his amiable

idea that all groups ought to unite against the threat of National Socialism. Since he was a

stranger, and Freddi's brother-in-law, they would be patient and explain that nobody could

co-operate with the Communists, because they wouldn't let you. Nobody talked more about

co-operating than the Communists, but when you tried it you found that what they meant was

undermining your organization and poisoning the minds of your followers, the process

known as "boring from within." Any Socialist you talked to was ready with a score of

illustrations— and also with citations from Lenin, to prove that it was no accident, but a policy.

Members of the Social-Democratic party went even further; they charged that the

Communists were co-operating with the Nazis against the coalition government in which the

Social-Democrats were participating. That too was a policy; the Bolsheviks believed in making

chaos, because they hoped to profit from it; chaos had given them their chance to seize power

in Russia, and the fact that it hadn't in Italy did not cause them to revise the theory. It was

easy for them to co-operate with Nazis, because both believed in force, in dictatorship; the one

great danger that the friends of peaceful change confronted was a deal, more or less open,

between the second and third largest parties of Germany. To Lanny that seemed a sort of

nightmare—not the idea that it might happen, but the fact that the Socialists should have got

themselves into such a state of hatred of another working-class party that they were willing to

believe such a deal might be made. Once more he had to sink back into the role of listener,

keep his thoughts to himself, and not tell Hansi and Bess what the friends of Freddi and Rahel

were teaching in their school.

IV

Once a week the institution gave a reception; the' Left intellectuals came, and drank coffee

and ate great quantities of Leberivurst and Schweizerkase sandwiches, and discussed the

policies of the school and the events of the time. Then indeed the forces of chaos and old night

were released. Lanny decided that every Berlin intellectual was a new political party, and every

two Berlin intellectuals were a political conflict. Some of them wore long hair because it