Henry had to have rubber for automobile tires—five to each car. He was laying out an enormous plantation in Brazil, and for that he needed everything from steamships to lead pencils for the teachers who were going to teach the Indian children how to write. Also he was experimenting with artificial rubber, a complicated matter. At the same time, he was trying to persuade Americans to appreciate and love the ways of their forefathers, and to that end had constructed Greenfield Village, made of old-time buildings, and there he was teaching children to sing the old songs and dance the old square dances. Let no one say that the Flivver King preached only hatred; he knew for a surety that he preached hatred of everything that was evil and love of everything that was good.
V
After the elderly host had talked himself out, Forrest Quadratt remarked: “Mr. Budd is an intimate friend of the Führer’s, and has been a guest in his home many times.” So, of a sudden, Lanny became a personality—the Flivver King had apparently not got clear who he was, but just that he was one more person whom Harry thought he ought to receive. Now he asked about how things were going in Germany; not political affairs, which seldom interested him, but industry and its progress, and whether the people were satisfied and happy, whether they got enough to eat, and was there really going to be a Volkswagen, as the government had promised. In the meantime there were Ford cars available, and several large assembly plants, so that Ford was a German big businessman, well satisfied with labor conditions in that country.
“Mr. Budd’s father is Robert Budd, of Budd-Erling,” put in the tactful German-American, after a proper interval; and that was another opening for the host to expound his ideas. He had been forced to make military goods in the last war, but would never do it again, he declared. He was a man of peace, and believed that if all manufacturers would take the same stand, the warmakers would be forced out of business all over the world.
Lanny said: “I have had somewhat the same feeling, Mr. Ford. I have never had anything to do with my father’s business.”
“Mr. Budd is an internationally known art expert,” put in the ever-helpful Quadratt. “His stepfather was the famous French painter, Marcel Detaze.”
The richest man in the world didn’t consider it necessary to pretend that he had ever heard of a French painter; there were swarms of them, he knew, and their names were unpronounceable. What he said was: “My wife is interested in paintings and has quite a collection.”
There was Lanny’s chance, which he would not miss. “So I have heard, Mr. Ford. I would esteem it a privilege if some day I might be permitted to view it.”
Henry’s reaction was surprising; he popped up from his chair as if he had been a youth of sixteen instead of a great-grandfather. “I’ll take you now.” He didn’t say: “If it would be convenient.” It was Henry’s time for going home.
What had caused that?—the intimacy with the Führer, or the son-ship in Budd-Erling, or the art-expertness, or the combination of all three? Something had penetrated the tough shell of a suspicious elderly recluse and caused him to decide that this was no ordinary curiosity seeker, but a personality worth cultivating. “Tell Mrs. Ford I am bringing two guests for tea,” he said to one of his secretaries, and took his gray overcoat and gray Fedora hat and led the way to his car which, Lanny observed, was not a Ford but a Lincoln.
On the way the host told about his farm, and the wonders he had on it, including two thousand birdhouses, electrically heated and with water supply protected from freezing. It had interested him to find out how many birds could be tempted to change their habits and remain all winter in the severe climate of Michigan. He had turned loose in his garden three hundred and eighty pairs of English songbirds, and at another time seventy-five pairs of martens. He had lived a long time in this home, and twenty-two years ago a pair of linnets had nested over the door; this morning he had counted seven pairs of these birds and wondered if any of them were descendants of the early settlers.
VI
Lanny didn’t see much of the house, for they got out under a porte-cochère and went in quickly. There was a large and comfortable drawing-room, and a kindly old lady to welcome them. The small-town girl whom the young mechanic Henry Ford had married early had surely not expected to become an empress, and had never tried to learn the role. Lanny couldn’t help wondering, how much did she know about the dreadful things that were involved in the building of an empire—the thirty-six hundred private police, many of them with criminal records, and the tough gangsters whom somebody had hired to slug and murder labor unionists wherever they were seeking to organize Ford workers in various parts of the country?
Lanny Budd set out to charm an elderly lady, an art which he had been practicing since childhood. He had been invited to look at paintings, so he talked on that subject. His mother had been a painters’ model in Paris and he had lived among them ever since he could remember; his stepfather had sat all day happily painting scenes on the Cap, and had always been ready to explain the whys and wherefores of what he was doing. The story of Marcel Detaze, with his face burned off in the war, wearing a white silk mask and doing his best painting—that was a sure-fire hit with any audience. Lanny didn’t say a word about the supply of Detazes in his storeroom, for that might look like hinting; no, he told how the painter had gone into the second battle of the Marne and never come out; and then how an elderly Polish medium had brought Lanny messages purporting to come from the spirit world. Was that really Marcel, or was it only Lanny’s memories of him? Lanny had no idea what Mrs. Ford thought on this question, but there are few persons who are not interested to hear about it, especially those who know that they themselves are drawing near to that bourne from which they may or may not return.
Meanwhile they were drinking tea; and afterwards they looked at paintings, some of them good and some not so good—the sort of thing that people get when they are guided by the name of the painter rather than by the painting. For Lanny such an occasion was like a radio “quiz”; he had to be ready to speak quickly, and what he said had to be right; his professional success depended upon his ability to walk down a line and impress and even astound an art collector by the opulence of his information and the surety of his judgments. Mrs. Ford herself was hardly an authority; in the course of their talk she revealed that she was having a portrait painted by an artist celebrated in Detroit, and this artist had begun his work by taking a great many photographs of her; she was impressed by the number, and thought that was the way all great painters set about their work.
Lanny did not disillusion her. Instead, he praised what virtues he was able to find in her collection, and told interesting stories of the painters, and in what museums their greatest works were to be found. When Lanny Budd really chose to spread himself on the subject of art he could be quite dazzling; so much so that, when he suggested it was time for them to be leaving, the Flivver King’s wife inquired whether they had any other engagement, and if not, would they care to stay to dinner, taking pot luck. Lanny had no worries as to what he would find in the Ford pot, and said he would be happy to stay. Quadratt agreed; and when they had been escorted to a guest room to wash up, the ex-poet whispered: “You knocked them cold!” Lanny smiled, and put his finger to his lips. “I’ll give you a chance before long,” he said. They made a good team, working together like Machiavelli and his imaginary Prince.
VII
They had an enjoyable meal, old-fashioned American style—never anything foreign in the home of the Flivver King, except his wife’s paintings! Afterwards they sat in the drawing-room, and while Mrs. Ford did “fancy-work,” Lanny described life at the Berghof, and then at Karinhall, which was something like a fairy tale to the elderly couple. Giving his companion the promised chance, Lanny talked about Lindbergh in Germany, and how the vital ideas of the New Order were spreading in America; “the Wave of the Future,” Lindbergh’s wife had called it. Quadratt took the cue, and told what he had been doing to spread this wave, and of the various Senators and C
ongressmen who had been aiding him.
Henry, who had been silent and apparently indifferent while the talk was about painting, now came to life and asked questions; Lanny perceived that his knowledge of Ku Kluxers and Silvershirts and Crusader Whiteshirts was almost as extensive as his knowledge of soybean plastics. Nor did he assume that the propagandists of these new ideas worked for love only; he had paid money to circulate his own ideas, and realized that it would take a lot of money to re-educate a hundred million people. Quadratt declared that a great many of his friends thought Mr. Ford was the man who ought to enter the arena and defeat the New Deal in next year’s presidential election, but the Flivver King shook his head; he was far too old, and had sworn off on politics after his bitter experience in running for the U.S. Senate more than twenty years ago.
They talked about Lindbergh as a possible candidate, and then about General Moseley. Quadratt said it was too bad that Father Coughlin had been born in Canada, and Henry said it didn’t matter, because the case of Al Smith had shown that the Middle West would never take a Catholic. They mentioned the former preacher, Gerald Smith, as a future leader, and the host said: “He is speaking in Detroit tomorrow night; they asked me to pay for the meeting.” He didn’t say what his reply had been.
Lanny guessed that the old man kept peasant hours, so he excused himself early. Their car had been brought from the plant, and when they were safely ensconced in it, Quadratt exclaimed: “Budd, that was wonderful!” Praise from Sir Hubert, and Lanny replied, graciously: “I owe it to you.” He knew that whenever in Europe he came upon a suitable old master, he could send Mrs. Clara Bryant Ford a telegram about it and count upon receiving a reply.
VIII
Next morning they had a day to spend; and Lanny said: “I have heard there is an art museum.” Quadratt said: “I want to pay a call on Father Coughlin.” When Lanny asked: “Do you know him?” the reply was: “I count him a very good friend. Would you like to meet him?”
So Lanny didn’t see the Detroit Institute of Arts. His companion called a confidential telephone number and made an appointment for eleven o’clock, and Lanny drove him on the city’s most pretentious highway, Woodward Boulevard, twelve miles to a town called Royal Oak. On their right loomed up a large stucco church with a tall tower, the Shrine of the Little Flower. By an odd coincidence the mayor of New York City was named Fiorello, which means “Little Flower”; but he was part Jewish and strongly anti-Fascist, so this was not his shrine.
Its creator and presiding genius was one who called himself “America’s much-loved radio priest.” At the time of the great depression he had come forward with a remedy for the people’s ills, the abolition of the gold standard. This was no new idea to the midwest of America, having been handed down from the days of the old-time Populists. But Father Coughlin had given it a new lease on life. A radio orator with dulcet tones, he had started on one small station, begging for funds to increase his audience. Money had poured in, all in one-dollar bills, brought from the post office in motor trucks, and a hundred and fifty girls were employed in opening the envelopes.
Step by step the reverend orator had established a radio network; also he had bought a tract of land, and built this shrine, together with all the accessories—a garage to accommodate the pilgrims, an inn to lodge them, a restaurant and several hotdog stands to feed them, and souvenir shops where they could buy things to send home and prove that they had actually accomplished the pilgrimage. “We manage things better than they ever did at Mecca, or Canterbury, or Lourdes,” remarked Quadratt.
He didn’t say that he loathed the Catholics and all their doings; all the Nazis felt thus—but they needed the hierarchy in America, and Spanish Fascism was their creation, and Franco a devout servant of Holy Mother Church. So this registered Nazi agent contented himself with remarking that the Reverend Father was an excellent businessman; these various enterprises were owned by companies of which he and his secretaries were the directors, and it was a set-up which would have done credit to J. Paramount Barnes in his palmiest days. Quadratt knew that this “utilities king” of Chicago had been the father of Lanny’s ex-wife—indeed, it was through Irma that Quadratt had met Lanny Budd.
In his early days “Silver Charlie” had been fully equipped with a popular program, and had seemed on the way to taking Huey Long’s place as the American Führer. But sudden riches had had on him the same effect as on the “Kingfish,” and on “Buncombe Bob” and many other mass leaders; they began to understand the rich man’s point of view and could no longer bear to say anything that might hurt the feelings of those at whose dinner tables they sat. The ex-poet remarked with his sly smile: “I observe this even in myself. In my youth I was something of a Socialist, and might have made a very good rabble-rouser, but now I find I have been turned into a money raiser, and all that is left of my radicalism is that I charge the rich a good price for my services. I observe that the more I soak them the more they value me.”
“Of course,” agreed the son of Budd-Erling. “They value paintings in the same way, and like to pay a high price so that they can boast about it.”
“The worthy Father published some articles of mine last year,” added the Kaiser’s left-handed cousin. “The reason I can see him any time I wish is that I made him appreciate my value.”
IX
“Silver Charlie” received them in the fine home in which he lived with his mother; he led them into his study and shut the door. A well-built man under fifty, not stout, but with florid round cheeks, smooth-shaven as his priesthood required. He wore his clerical garb, black, with a white collar closed in front and fastened in the rear. Lanny had listened to him over the air—who hadn’t?—and knew his peculiar Canadian accent. His manner was positive and rather abrupt, but to these visitors extremely cordial. After Quadratt had explained that Lanny Budd spent a good part of his time in Germany and knew the Führer and his associates intimately, the new visitor was listened to with grave attention.
America’s much-loved radio priest was heard over the air every Sunday. His outspoken pro-Nazi and anti-democratic statements alarmed his clerical superiors, but ten million people listened to him gladly. Also, he had a weekly paper, Social Justice, for which he claimed a million circulation, and he had his “Christian Front,” made up of fanatical followers who sold the paper on the streets and held mass meetings at which the Hitler salute might be seen and counted the days to the great Day in which they would be turned loose upon their enemies. Lanny had attended more than one of these meetings, and had taken the trouble to join up and get one of the metal crosses which the Christian Fronters wore instead of swastikas.
It was going to be a strictly Christian revolution, but a new kind of Christianity, based exclusively upon hatred of its enemies, and never mentioning love, if it felt any. It was the product of social discontent, the blind revolt of the dispossessed in the presence of wealth in which they had no share or hope of sharing. Ignorance, eldest daughter of poverty, followed in her mother’s train, and this pair of harpies tormented their victims and left them a prey to any demagogue who came their way. For more than two decades the American proletariat had been besieged by the propaganda of Red revolution, and on top of that had come the renegade Mussolini and then the fanatical Adi Schicklgruber. For nearly three years the fires of civil war in Spain had kept this evil brew at boiling point; and here was one of the men who had been pumping oil into the flames. A man of hatred amounting almost to frenzy; a man who could build a church in the name of the gentle Jesus, and stand in the pulpit and rave for an hour, calling for the blood of those whose ideas he hated and feared. “Rest assured we will fight you in Franco’s way, if necessary. Call this inflammatory, if you will. It is inflammatory. But rest assured we will fight you and we will win.”
This orator was of Irish descent, and he therefore hated the British Empire; he hated it so that he probably did not even know that it had become the British Commonwealth. He hated the Jews, first because they ha
d killed the Son of God, and second because they made money too fast—though not so fast as “Silver Charlie,” who had bought the metal at the same time that he agitated to boost its price. He hated the international bankers and he hated the Bolsheviks, and like all the Nazis he had managed to persuade himself that the two groups were united in a conspiracy to rule the world. Goebbels told him this in a flood of propaganda, and somebody translated it for him and he put it into his paper every week, with the change of only a few words to make it sound right for Americans. This wasn’t Fascism and it wasn’t Nazism that Father Coughlin was going to bring into the sweet land of liberty; it was simon-pure American Nationalism, America First, America for Americans, and let us kick out Roosevelt and his Jew Deal and put an end to “the poppycock of democracy”—the holy father’s own phrase.
X
Lanny had watched this poison being peddled on the streets of New York, and had talked with some of its pitiful peddlers, heirs of misery who had been raised in “Hell’s Kitchen” and educated in parochial schools, and taught that the priest was God’s deputy and final authority on all truth. Now a priest told each poor wretch that his half-starved and precarious way of life in the midst of unimaginable luxury was due to the fact that the Jews had got all the gold in the world and were conspiring with the “Roossians” to make a slave of him. And what chance did he have to judge whether it was true or not? He went about screaming his hate and collecting his dimes—and occasionally seizing a chance to sneak up behind some Jew as poor and unhappy as himself, and trip him up or hit him over the head with a piece of lead pipe symbolically concealed in a copy of Social Justice.