The radicals were fond of saying that France was governed by two hundred families, but Robbie knew that no country in the world had ever been governed by any such number of persons; there were always a few powerful ones whom the others trusted, and who had the final say. These were the men who signed documents or spoke words and caused French industry to move along this line or that; and Charles Prosper Eugène Schneider, in many ways the most powerful of them all, invited them to meet an American industrialist, solid and substantial like themselves, yet a man of vision, who had foreseen what was coming and prepared for it, and who now in this crisis might be able to turn the tide of history and save imperiled Marianne from a fate worse than death.
X
Robbie knew that this was an important occasion for him; in some ways the most important of his later years. It might mean not merely a big order for planes; it might mean new expansion, fresh capital—for these men had gold, all the gold of the Banque de France, hidden in the most marvelous vaults in the world, underneath the sidewalks of Paris. They didn’t own it, of course, but they could cause it to be expended by politicians whose careers had been financed by them and whose future was theirs to determine. If Robbie could really manage to frighten them—and he was an expert frightener, having been working at it four and forty years—there was no telling what might come of it. Budd-Erling plants in Quebec, in North Africa, even in France itself—who could guess?
For the first time since the Wall Street panic of ten years ago, Lanny saw his father nervous. Robbie wanted to talk about that dinner and everybody who was going to be there. He had met several of them, and done business with them in the old days; but the others—what were they like, and what questions would they ask? Robbie sent for a financial reference book and looked up impressive lists of directorships and connections. Would they want to see documents, or would they have a business meeting later? Would they understand English? Robbie had been speaking business French off and on for two-thirds of his life, and had got along, but he knew that his diction wasn’t elegant and wished he had been a scholar like his son.
When Robbie wanted to know about their personalities, Lanny said: “Don’t bother about that—there are too many complications and you’d find it hopeless. France has longer memories even than New England. For instance, de Wendel looks down upon Schneider, because Schneider’s ancestor was an employee and went off and set up a rival business.” When Robbie inquired what they would want to know about, the easy-going son smiled and replied: “Don’t worry, they’ll tell you. They pinned me down and questioned me as if I were in the witness box in a murder case.”
“Don’t talk too much,” the father cautioned, knowing that the youngster—so he still thought of him—had what is called “charm” and enjoyed exercising it.
“Bless your heart!” the youngster replied. “I won’t say a word unless they ask me. But don’t be surprised if they want to know about Hitler even more than they do about Budd-Erling.”
XI
Here they sat, the rulers of modern France, in a dining room lined with tapestries some five centuries old, representing the crusades, at a table made small so that a dozen men could be close for conversation. According to the French custom the host sat at the middle, not at the head; Robbie, as guest of honor, sat at his right and Lanny at his left. So that no feelings might be hurt, the others were ranged according to seniority, which put the youngest in the positions of least esteem, au bout de la table. Several were old men, partly bald, with white hair and closely trimmed beards or mustaches; others were the alert executive type of these modern days, wearing pince-nez, and one a monocle. All were formal, precise, quick-spoken in the French fashion; they had had military training in their time, and none lounged in his seat and took things easy as Americans would have done at a dinner party where there were no ladies. Several wore the rosace of an officier of the Légion d’Honneur, a tiny little red object no bigger than your fingernail, and which you would hardly have noticed unless you knew what it meant in this land of ancient culture.
They were served an elegant meal upon dishes of solid gold. There were several wine glasses of shining crystal at each place, and velvet-footed servitors in pink plush livery kept these filled with the proper wine in turn. When the meal was over these men withdrew, and the host arose and said briefly that he had invited them to meet an American business associate, a man who had had the foresight to know what was coming in the world and to prepare for it—“quelque chose que nous Français, hélas, ne pouvons pas dire.” He spoke French, which was Robbie’s cue to do the same.
The guest started to rise, but the host suggested that they all say what they had to say from their seats, and thus make the occasion less formal. This was a relief to Robbie, who was uneasy enough to feel it in his knees. But he soon got going; for, after all, what he had to tell them was what he had said a thousand times in the course of his life. He referred to Budd Gunmakers, which his family had founded and of which he had been the European representative for some thirty-five years. He told how, foreseeing that future wars would be fought and decided in the air, he had set out to build a plant on the Newcastle River, just above the Budd Gunmakers property. It was an exceptionally favorable location, the entrance to Long Island Sound being a part of the defenses of New York City, as strong as American skill could make them. He described the railroad and inland water connections, the Hudson River and many canals. He told about the young genius he had subsidized and trained, and the Typhoon engine which had developed more horsepower per pound of weight than any in the world so far—though of course their rivals were in close pursuit, including the French—very tactful of a speaker from overseas.
Robbie told of the present output of his plant, and of the records which the Budd-Erling P11 had made. He mentioned his efforts to interest the British and French aviation authorities—they had been slow, and he was sorry to say that the Americans had been equally so. Robbie was a businessman, and took the position that it was first come, first served with his product. General Göring—as he had been then—had made an advantageous offer for the sharing of manufacturing secrets; that agreement had run for two years and either party had the right of withdrawal; whether it would be continued depended in part upon what Marshal Göring—as he now was—had to offer, and in part upon whether the French were interested to make a bid for the co-operation of the Budd-Erling organization.
Robbie made all this brief; and by his son’s advice—since the French were inclined to be full of amour propre—he did not attempt to tell them anything about the European situation or the dangers confronting France. “Let them ask your opinion, if they want it,” Lanny had recommended; so the father contented himself with saying that he had had the pleasure of knowing the head of the German Luftwaffe very well, and had been shown all over Kladow and other of their secret bases. What he had seen had convinced him, just as it had convinced Colonel Lindbergh, that Germany was overwhelmingly strong in the air. He was at liberty to talk about it, by Göring’s express authorization. Germany had no secrets, so the Reichsmarschall had declared.
Robbie smiled slightly as he said this last, and his hearers smiled even more openly. “Germany wants peace,” he added; “at any rate, that is what the Marshal assures me. He wants other nations to respect Germany’s strength and concede to her what she considers her just dues.”
XII
The speaker stopped; and the host thanked him, and remarked: “We are all anxious to know, just what does Germany consider her just dues?”
“That is a political question,” Robbie evaded, “and outside my field as a businessman. Hitler has stated what he wants in numerous speeches.”
“Yes,” put in Sénateur de Wendel. “But does he mean what he says? He told us: ‘I do not want any Czechs’; but now it begins to appear that he wants Prague.”
“Well,” replied the American, “apparently he means to give his answer in action, and then we’ll both know.” The men at the table laughed, b
ut it was not a merry sort of laughter. “I have never met Herr Hitler,” Robbie added, “but my son knows him well.”
So the company turned to this son, who, having been reared in France, had behaved with propriety and let his parent do the talking. “Have you met Herr Hitler since you last talked with us?” asked Mercier, who controlled a good part of the electric power of his country.
Lanny answered that he had been in Munich at the time of the Four-Power Pact of last September, and not long afterwards had had a chat with the Fürer in the Braune Haus. He had seemed very cheerful, and pleased with the settlement; he had spoken highly of Chamberlain’s eloquent plea for peace. He called himself a man of peace.
“And do you consider that he means to confine his demands to the return to the Reich of those territories whose inhabitants are more than fifty per cent German?”
“I wish I could give you the sort of answer that would please you,” replied Lanny; “but I have learned that Herr Hitler is a person of temperament. I would say that he means what he says when he is saying it; but later some new circumstance arises and he means something else.” It was the answer of a man who expected to have his words repeated, and who was planning to go into Germany before long.
There began a discussion in which all had their say, and Lanny listened with close attention, turning his eyes from one speaker to the next, and thinking his own secret, unorthodox thoughts. These were the men of money, masters of the life of France. They told the workers where to live and what work to do; they told the editors what to publish, and thus told the French public what to believe; they told the politicians how to vote, which meant telling the police whom to arrest and the soldiers whom to shoot. They had so arranged the country’s economic life that you could not buy a pin for your wife’s dress or a nail for your horse’s shoe without paying tribute to them. Here they sat, enjoying their money as well as their troubles permitted, and considering how to protect it and to increase it—two things which were fundamentally the same, since in order to hold on to money you have to have more than the fellow who threatens to get it away from you.
That was what they were here for: trying to figure out how to get more money than the moneymasters of Germany, who were turning their money into the tools of war with the intention of conquering the moneymasters of France and depriving them of their money. At least, that was what the Frenchmen feared, and the reason they had assembled at the bidding of their money chief. They couldn’t be thinking about anything else, really, for they were money men; money made them and money kept them where they were. Money made all things possible and the lack of money made all things impossible. With their money they were all-powerful, and without their money they would be miserable, half-sick old derelicts, humiliated and neglected. Everybody who came near them, everybody they dealt with, was thinking about their money and wanted some of it. How could anybody think about anything but money in such a money world?
Lanny, watching them and listening to their discussions, found himself asking the old questions: “Are they stupid men? Are they wicked men?” And, as ever, the answer depended upon the standards of judgment. They were what the world had made them; they were part of an era, a stage of civilization; of a system which they called business and which Lanny called capitalism. They had the same saying as Americans: “Les affaires sont les affaires”—business is business. When you said that, you set moral considerations aside as irrelevant; the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God were idle dreams; liberty, equality, and fraternity were bait to catch votes; the only question was, did you have the price? The poet Racine had written: “Point d’argent, point de Suisse!”—no money, no Swiss, referring to Swiss guards. Soldiers were for hire, and if you wanted your life protected you had to pay cost plus a profit.
And that was the way matters stood at this dinner party. This elegance, this elaborate hereditary dignity, this long-established, minutely studied courtesy—all this was window-dressing. These men hadn’t come here for friendship, nor for a good dinner, nor for Robbie’s beautiful eyes; they had come because Robbie owned the most deadly killing machine in the world, the highest flying and fastest. Robbie himself had never killed anybody in his life, and it was probable that these French gentlemen had never done so either; they were members of the “two hundred families,” the rulers of France, who killed by writing their names on pieces of paper, and by speaking words over the telephone, and by asking questions and expressing opinions over the cigars and coffee and liqueurs. They did not kill at retail, only wholesale, and preferably by the million; they did not get blood on their hands, nor even guilt on their consciences; they killed with legality, courtesy, and dignity. If anyone had called them stupid, they would have known that the person was ill-bred, and if anyone had called them wicked, they would have known that he was a dangerous Bolshevik.
“It appears certain that we must have planes.” So Schneider summed up the discussion. “We cannot be sure whether we shall use them against Germany or against Russia—but in either case, it is advisable to have them.” He said it with a smile, but it was a serious matter indeed that the rulers of France couldn’t make up their minds which enemy they had chosen.
XIII
Somebody must have spoken a commanding word, for things began to happen immediately after this dinner. The president of Budd-Erling was invited to a conference with Guy la Chambre, the new Minister of Aviation; just one more politician, Robbie reported, without qualifications except the votes he could control in the Chamber of Deputies. That was the way in France; the Cabinet was changed every year or so, a grand shuffle, and everybody was expected to know everything, with the result that few knew anything. In whatever country Robbie Budd was visiting, he could be counted upon to pick a quarrel with the politicians and their ways.
But there were subordinates in the department who knew their business, and presently came army officers who knew more than even Robbie. There came also an invitation for father and son to the American embassy, just across the street from the hotel; the ambassador wanted to see them on an urgent matter. He was an old friend of Lanny’s; they had shared ideas and ideals in the days of the Peace Conference, twenty years in the past. William C. Bullitt, wealthy Philadelphian, had recently been ambassador to the Soviets, and had come to hate them most heartily. Now, as ambassador to France, he had been working ardently against the Franco-Russian alliance.
Had he had a sudden change of heart? Lanny had no chance to ask him. All he learned was, “Bill” wanted France to get American airplanes, and was moving heaven and earth to bring it about. He had learned that Budd-Erling had a contract to make planes for the American army, and was now working on that; he wanted Robbie’s consent to put the matter up to President Roosevelt and have the army release those planes to the French. He even wanted Robbie to take back some planes from the army and make changes which the French would require. Would Robbie send test-pilots here to France, and bring technical men to discuss these matters?
“O.K. by me,” said the president of Budd-Erling, “—if they’ll pay the costs.” He got busy on the transatlantic telephone and ordered two of his best men to come, together with a secretary who knew French. They were fortunate in catching a fast steamer, and a plane met them at Cherbourg; a taxi delivered them to the Crillon, and they went to work without even time to wash up.
Officials of various sorts came to the hotel; they kept Robbie busy all day, and social duties called him at night. It was as if somebody had said: “This American is important, and he and his son must be won away from the Germans.” Invitations came, more than Robbie could enjoy. When he grumbled, his son grinned and remarked: “La patrie est en danger”—the battlecry of the old French Revolution.
XIV
The women did not vote in France, but they intrigued. It was an art they had been practicing for hundreds of years, and in which they had perfected themselves. They knew how to flatter and cajole, to seek favors and to grant them; they knew how to worm out secrets,
and to drop subtle hints, or menaces on occasion; they knew how to detect weaknesses and to play upon them, to pick up scandal and repeat it by delicate innuendo, perhaps even to invent it. They understood men, and how to get what they wanted from them. As soon as some fervid young ami du peuple had garnered votes and attained political power, there would come an exquisite highborn lady, ready to attach herself to him and guide his career; out of this she got glory, and the thrill of exercising power, of getting the better of rivals who perhaps had snubbed her in the past. Incidentally, it was a service to her class, a way of keeping the French government conservative, of keeping politics stable.
So an American airplane manufacturer and his son were invited to a soirée at the establishment of the wealthy Marquise de Crussol, pretty blue-eyed young daughter of a sardine-canning family and wife of a French nobleman. Lanny, who knew his way about, said they must not miss this, as they would probably meet the Premier of France here. So they went and they did. Edouard Daladier was a man of the people, a baker’s son who had begun as a humble lycée teacher; his political start had been as a Radical Socialist, which meant in France that he was a Liberal and Anti-clerical of the old tradition. Now in his middle fifties he was a stoutish, heavy-set politician, who had learned that there was little honor and good faith in his country’s public life; instead of shouting about égalité, he was trying to keep his Cabinet together by finding out what policy the big business interests of France would support. He was a well-meaning man, but awed by the rich and aristocratic, and suffering from indecision, a disease epidemic in his country at the moment.