【有声英语文学名著】不会发生在这里（35）

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It Can't Happen Here

by Sinclair Lewis

 

Chapter 35

In his two years of dictatorship, Berzelius Windrip daily became more a miser¹ of power. He continued to tell himself that his main ambition was to make all citizens healthy, in purse and mind, and that if he was brutal² it was only toward fools and reactionaries³ who wanted the old clumsy systems. But after eighteen months of Presidency⁴ he was angry that Mexico and Canada and South America (obviously his own property, by manifest destiny) should curtly⁶ answer his curt⁵ diplomatic notes and show no helpfulness about becoming part of his inevitable⁷ empire.

And daily he wanted louder, more convincing Yeses from everybody about him. How could he carry on his heartbreaking labor⁸ if nobody ever encouraged him? he demanded. Anyone, from Sarason to inter-office messenger, who did not play valet to his ego⁹ he suspected of plotting against him. He constantly increased his bodyguard¹⁰, and as constantly distrusted all his guards and discharged them, and once took a shot at a couple of them, so that in all the world he had no companion save his old aide Lee Sarason, and perhaps Hector Macgoblin, to whom he could talk easily.

He felt lonely in the hours when he wanted to shuck off the duties of despotism along with his shoes and his fine new coat. He no longer went out racketing. His cabinet begged him not to clown in barrooms and lodge¹² entertainments; it was not dignified¹³, and it was dangerous to be too near to strangers.

So he played poker¹⁴ with his bodyguard, late at night, and at such times drank too much, and he cursed them and glared with bulging¹⁵ eyes whenever he lost, which, for all the good-will of his guards about letting him win, had to be often, because he pinched their salaries badly and locked up the spoons. He had become as unbouncing and unbuzzing a Buzz as might be, and he did not know it.

All the while he loved the People just as much as he feared and detested¹⁶ Persons, and he planned to do something historic. Certainly! He would give each family that five thousand dollars a year just as soon now as he could arrange it.

And Lee Sarason, forever making his careful lists, as patient at his desk as he was pleasure-hungry on the couch at midnight parties, was beguiling¹⁷ officials to consider him their real lord and the master of Corpoism. He kept his promises to them, while Windrip always forgot. His office door became the door of ambition. In Washington, the reporters privily¹⁸ spoke¹⁹ of this assistant secretary and that general as "Sarason men." His clique²⁰ was not a government within a government; it was the government itself, minus the megaphones. He had the Secretary of Corporations (a former vice-president of the American Federation²¹ of Labor) coming to him secretly every evening, to report on labor politics and in especial on such proletarian leaders as were dissatisfied with Windrip as Chief--i.e., with their own share in the swag. He had from the Secretary of the Treasury²² (though this functionary²³, one Webster Skittle, was not a lieutenant²⁴ of Sarason but merely friendly) confidential²⁶ reports on the affairs of those large employers who, since under Corpoism it was usually possible for a millionaire to persuade the judges in the labor-arbitration courts to look at things reasonably, rejoiced that with strikes outlawed²⁷ and employers regarded as state officials, they would now be in secure power forever.

Sarason knew the quiet ways in which these reinforced industrial barons²⁸ used arrests by the M.M.'s to get rid of "trouble-makers," particularly of Jewish radicals--a Jewish radical²⁹ being a Jew with nobody working for him. (Some of the barons were themselves Jews; it is not to be expected that race-loyalty should be carried so insanely far as to weaken the pocketbook.)

The allegiance of all such Negroes as had the sense to be content with safety and good pay instead of ridiculous yearnings for personal integrity Sarason got by being photographed shaking hands with the celebrated³⁰ Negro Fundamentalist clergyman, the Reverend Dr. Alexander Nibbs, and through the highly publicized Sarason Prizes for the Negroes with the largest families, the fastest time in floor-scrubbing, and the longest periods of work without taking a vacation.

"No danger of our good friends, the Negroes, turning Red when they're encouraged like that," Sarason announced to the newspapers.

It was a satisfaction to Sarason that in Germany, all military bands were now playing his national song, "Buzz and Buzz" along with the Horst Wessel hymn³¹, for, though he had not exactly written the music as well as the words, the music was now being attributed to him abroad.

As a bank clerk might, quite rationally, worry equally over the whereabouts of a hundred million dollars' worth of the bank's bonds, and of ten cents of his own lunch money, so Buzz Windrip worried equally over the welfare--that is, the obedience³² to himself--of a hundred and thirty-odd million American citizens and the small matter of the moods of Lee Sarason, whose approval of him was the one real fame. (His wife Windrip did not see oftener than once a week, and anyway, what that rustic³³ wench thought was unimportant.)

The diabolic Hector Macgoblin frightened him; Secretary of War Luthorne and Vice-President Perley Beecroft he liked well enough, but they bored him; they smacked³⁴ too much of his own small-town boyhood, to escape which he was willing to take the responsibilities of a nation. It was the incalculable Lee Sarason on whom he depended, and the Lee with whom he had gone fishing and boozing and once, even, murdering, who had seemed his own self made more sure and articulate, had thoughts now which he could not penetrate³⁵. Lee's smile was a veil, not a revelation.

It was to discipline Lee, with the hope of bringing him back, that when Buzz replaced the amiable³⁶ but clumsy Colonel Luthorne as Secretary of War by Colonel Dewey Haik, Commissioner³⁷ of the Northeastern Province (Buzz's characteristic comment was that Luthorne was not "pulling his weight"), he also gave to Haik the position of High Marshal of the M.M.'s, which Lee had held along with a dozen other offices. From Lee he expected an explosion, then repentance³⁸ and a new friendship. But Lee only said, "Very well, if you wish," and said it coldly.

Just how could he get Lee to be a good boy and come play with him again? wistfully wondered the man who now and then planned to be emperor of the world.

He gave Lee a thousand-dollar television set. Even more coldly did Lee thank him, and never spoke afterward³⁹ of how well he might be receiving the still shaky television broadcasts on his beautiful new set.

As Dewey Haik took hold, doubling efficiency in both the regular army and the Minute Men (he was a demon⁴⁰ for all-night practice marches in heavy order, and the files could not complain, because he set the example), Buzz began to wonder whether Haik might not be his new confidant. . . . He really would hate to throw Lee into prison, but still, Lee was so thoughtless about hurting his feelings, when he'd gone and done so much for him and all!

Buzz was confused. He was the more confused when Perley Beecroft came in and briefly⁴¹ said that he was sick of all this bloodshed and was going home to the farm, and as for his lofty Vice-Presidential office, Buzz knew what he could do with it.

Were these vast national dissensions no different from squabbles in his father's drugstore? fretted⁴² Buzz. He couldn't very well have Beecroft shot: it might cause criticism. But it was indecent, it was sacrilegious to annoy an emperor, and in his irritation⁴³ he had an ex-Senator and twelve workmen who were in concentration camps taken out and shot on the charge that they had told irreverent stories about him.

Secretary of State Sarason was saying good-night to President Windrip in the hotel suite⁴⁴ where Windrip really lived.

No newspaper had dared mention it, but Buzz was both bothered by the stateliness of the White House and frightened by the number of Reds and cranks and anti-Corpos who, with the most commendable⁴⁵ patience and ingenuity⁴⁶, tried to sneak⁴⁷ into that historic mansion⁴⁸ and murder him. Buzz merely left his wife there, for show, and, except at great receptions, never entered any part of the White House save the office annex⁴⁹.

He liked this hotel suite; he was a sensible man, who preferred straight bourbon, codfish cakes, and deep leather chairs to Burgundy, trout⁵⁰ bleu, and Louis Quinze. In this twelve-room apartment, occupying the entire tenth floor of a small unnotorious hotel, he had for himself only a plain bedroom, a huge living room which looked like a combination of office and hotel lobby, a large liquor closet, another closet with thirty-seven suits of clothes, and a bathroom with jars and jars of the pine-flavored bath salts which were his only cosmetic⁵¹ luxury. Buzz might come home in a suit dazzling as a horse blanket, one considered in Alfalfa Center a triumph of London tailoring, but, once safe, he liked to put on his red morocco slippers⁵² that were down at the heel and display his red suspenders and baby-blue sleeve garters. To feel correct in those decorations, he preferred the hotel atmosphere that, for so many years before he had ever seen the White House, had been as familiar to him as his ancestral corn cribs and Main Streets.

The other ten rooms of the suite, entirely⁵³ shutting his own off from the corridors and elevators, were filled night and day with guards. To get through to Buzz in this intimate place of his own was very much like visiting a police station for the purpose of seeing a homicidal prisoner.

"Haik seems to me to be doing a fine job in the War Department, Lee," said the President. "Of course you know if you ever want the job of High Marshal back--"

"I'm quite satisfied," said the great Secretary of State.

"What do you think of having Colonel Luthorne back to help Haik out? He's pretty good on fool details."

Sarason looked as nearly embarrassed as the self-satisfied Lee Sarason ever could look.

"Why, uh--I supposed you knew it. Luthorne was liquidated⁵⁵ in the purge⁵⁶ ten days ago."

"Good God! Luthorne killed? Why didn't I know it?"

"It was thought better to keep it quiet. He was a pretty popular man. But dangerous. Always talking about Abraham Lincoln!"

"So I just never know anything about what's going on! Why, even the newspaper clippings are predigested, by God, before I see 'em!"

"It's thought better not to bother you with minor⁵⁷ details, boss. You know that! Of course, if you feel I haven't organized your staff correctly--"

"Aw now, don't fly off the handle, Lee! I just meant--Of course I know how hard you've tried to protect me so I could give all my brains to the higher problems of State. But Luthorne--I kind of liked him. He always had quite a funny line when we played poker." Buzz Windrip felt lonely, as once a certain Shad Ledue had felt, in a hotel suite that differed from Buzz's only in being smaller. To forget it he bawled⁵⁸, very brightly, "Lee, do you ever wonder what'll happen in the future?"

"Why, I think you and I may have mentioned it."

"But golly, just think of what might happen in the future, Lee! Think of it! Why, we may be able to pull off a North American kingdom!" Buzz half meant it seriously--or perhaps quarter meant it. "How'd you like to be Duke of Georgia--or Grand Duke, or whatever they call a Grand Exalted⁵⁹ Ruler of the Elks⁶⁰ in this peerage business? And then how about an Empire of North and South America after that? I might make you a king under me, then--say something like King of Mexico. Howjuh like that?"

"Be very amusing," said Lee mechanically--as Lee always did say the same thing mechanically whenever Buzz repeated this same nonsense.

"But you got to stick by me and not forget all I've done for you, Lee, don't forget that."

"I never forget anything! . . . By the way, we ought to liquidate⁵⁴, or at least imprison⁶¹, Perley Beecroft, too. He's still technically⁶² Vice-President of the United States, and if the lousy traitor⁶³ managed some skullduggery so as to get you killed or deposed⁶⁴, he might be regarded by some narrow-minded literalists as President!"

"No, no, no! He's my friend, no matter what he says about me . . . the dirty dog!" wailed⁶⁵ Buzz.

"All right. You're the boss. G'night," said Lee, and returned from this plumber's dream of paradise to his own gold-and-black and apricot-silk bower⁶⁶ in Georgetown, which he shared with several handsome young M.M. officers. They were savage⁶⁷ soldiers, yet apt at music and at poetry. With them, he was not in the least passionless, as he seemed now to Buzz Windrip. He was either angry with his young friends, and then he whipped them, or he was in a paroxysm of apology to them, and caressed⁶⁸ their wounds. Newspapermen who had once seemed to be his friends said that he had traded the green eyeshade for a wreath of violets.

At cabinet meeting, late in 1938, Secretary of State Sarason revealed to the heads of the government disturbing news. Vice-President Beecroft--and had he not told them the man should have been shot?--had fled to Canada, renounced⁶⁹ Corpoism, and joined Walt Trowbridge in plotting. There were bubbles from an almost boiling rebellion in the Middle West and Northwest, especially in Minnesota and the Dakotas, where agitators⁷⁰, some of them formerly⁷¹ of political influence, were demanding that their states secede⁷² from the Corpo Union and form a cooperative (indeed almost Socialistic) commonwealth⁷³ of their own.

"Rats! Just a lot of irresponsible wind bags!" jeered⁷⁴ President Windrip. "Why! I thought you were supposed to be the camera-eyed gink that kept up on everything that goes on, Lee! You forget that I myself, personally, made a special radio address to that particular section of the country last week! And I got a wonderful reaction. The Middle Westerners are absolutely loyal to me. They appreciate what I've been trying to do!"

Not answering him at all, Sarason demanded that, in order to bring and hold all elements in the country together by that useful Patriotism⁷⁵ which always appears upon threat of an outside attack, the government immediately arrange to be insulted and menaced in a well-planned series of deplorable "incidents" on the Mexican border, and declare war on Mexico as soon as America showed that it was getting hot and patriotic⁷⁶ enough.

Secretary of the Treasury Skittle and Attorney General Porkwood shook their heads, but Secretary of War Haik and Secretary of Education Macgoblin agreed with Sarason high-mindedly. Once, pointed⁷⁷ out the learned Macgoblin, governments had merely let themselves slide into a war, thanking Providence⁷⁸ for having provided a conflict as a febrifuge against internal discontent, but of course, in this age of deliberate, planned propaganda, a really modern government like theirs must figure out what brand of war they had to sell and plan the selling-campaign consciously. Now, as for him, he would be willing to leave the whole set-up to the advertising⁷⁹ genius of Brother Sarason.

"No, no, no!" cried Windrip. "We're not ready for a war! Of course, we'll take Mexico some day. It's our destiny to control it and Christianize it. But I'm scared that your darn scheme might work just opposite to what you say. You put arms into the hands of too many irresponsible folks, and they might use 'em and turn against you and start a revolution and throw the whole dern gang of us out! No, no! I've often wondered if the whole Minute Men business, with their arms and training, may not be a mistake. That was your idea, Lee, not mine!"

Sarason spoke evenly: "My dear Buzz, one day you thank me for originating that 'great crusade of citizen soldiers defending their homes'--as you love to call it on the radio--and the next day you almost ruin your clothes, you're so scared of them. Make up your mind one way or the other!"

Sarason walked out of the room, not bowing.

Windrip complained, "I'm not going to stand for Lee's talking to me like that! Why, the dirty double-crosser, I made him! One of these days, he'll find a new secretary of state around this joint⁸¹! I s'pose he thinks jobs like that grow on every tree! Maybe he'd like to be a bank president or something--I mean, maybe he'd like to be Emperor of England!"

President Windrip, in his hotel bedroom, was awakened⁸² late at night by the voice of a guard in the outer room: "Yuh, sure, let him pass--he's the Secretary of State." Nervously⁸³ the President clicked on his bedside lamp. . . . He had needed it lately, to read himself to sleep.

In that limited glow he saw Lee Sarason, Dewey Haik, and Dr. Hector Macgoblin march to the side of his bed. Lee's thin sharp face was like flour. His deep-buried eyes were those of a sleepwalker. His skinny right hand held a bowie knife which, as his hand deliberately⁸⁴ rose, was lost in the dimness. Windrip swiftly thought: Sure would be hard to know where to buy a dagger⁸⁵, in Washington; and Windrip thought: All this is the doggonedest foolishness--just like a movie or one of these old history books when you were a kid; and Windrip thought, all in that same flash: Good God, I'm going to be killed!

He cried out, "Lee! You couldn't do that to me!"

Lee grunted⁸⁶, like one who has detected a bad smell.

Then the Berzelius Windrip who could, incredibly, become President really awoke: "Lee! Do you remember the time when your old mother was so sick, and I gave you my last cent and loaned you my flivver so you could go see her, and I hitch-hiked to my next meeting? Lee!"

"Hell. I suppose so. General."

"Yes?" answered Dewey Haik, not very pleasantly.

"I think we'll stick him on a destroyer or something and let him sneak off to France or England. . . . The lousy coward seems afraid to die. . . . Of course, we'll kill him if he ever does dare to come back to the States. Take him out and phone the Secretary of the Navy for a boat and get him on it, will you?"

"Very well, sir," said Haik, even less pleasantly.

It had been easy. The troops, who obeyed Haik, as Secretary of War, had occupied all of Washington.

Ten days later Buzz Windrip was landed in Havre and went sighingly to Paris. It was his first view of Europe except for one twenty-one-day Cook's Tour. He was profoundly homesick for Chesterfield cigarettes, flapjacks, Moon Mullins, and the sound of some real human being saying "Yuh, what's bitin' you?" instead of this perpetual sappy "oui?"

In Paris he remained, though he became the sort of minor hero of tragedy, like the ex-King of Greece, Kerensky, the Russian Grand Dukes, Jimmy Walker, and a few ex-presidents from South America and Cuba, who is delighted to accept invitations to drawing rooms where the champagne⁸⁷ is good enough and one may have a chance of finding people, now and then, who will listen to one's story and say "sir."

At that, though, Buzz chuckled⁸⁸, he had kinda put it over on those crooks⁸⁹, for during his two sweet years of despotism he had sent four million dollars abroad, to secret, safe accounts. And so Buzz Windrip passed into wabbly paragraphs in recollections by ex-diplomatic gentlemen with monocles. In what remained of Ex-President Windrip's life, everything was ex. He was even so far forgotten that only four or five American students tried to shoot him.

The more dulcetly they had once advised and flattered Buzz, the more ardently⁹⁰ did most of his former followers⁹¹, Macgoblin and Senator Porkwood and Dr. Almeric Trout and the rest, turn in loud allegiance to the new President, the Hon. Lee Sarason.

He issued a proclamation that he had discovered that Windrip had been embezzling⁹² the people's money and plotting with Mexico to avoid war with that guilty country; and that he, Sarason, in quite alarming grief and reluctance⁹³, since he more than anyone else had been deceived by his supposed friend, Windrip, had yielded to the urging of the Cabinet and taken over the Presidency, instead of Vice-President Beecroft, the exiled traitor.

President Sarason immediately began appointing the fancier of his young officer friends to the most responsible offices in State and army. It amused him, seemingly, to shock people by making a pink-cheeked, moist-eyed boy of twenty-five Commissioner of the Federal District, which included Washington and Maryland. Was he not supreme⁹⁴, was he not semi-divine, like a Roman emperor? Could he not defy all the muddy mob that he (once a Socialist) had, for its weak shiftlessness, come to despise?

"Would that the American people had just one neck!" he plagiarized⁹⁵, among his laughing boys.

In the decorous White House of Coolidge and Harrison and Rutherford Birchard Hayes he had orgies (an old name for "parties") with weaving limbs and garlands and wine in pretty fair imitations of Roman beakers.

It was hard for imprisoned⁹⁶ men like Doremus Jessup to believe it, but there were some tens of thousands of Corpos, in the M.M.'s, in civil service, in the army, and just in private ways, to whom Sarason's flippant régime was tragic⁹⁷.

They were the Idealists of Corpoism, and there were plenty of them, along with the bullies⁹⁸ and swindlers; they were the men and women who, in 1935 and 1936, had turned to Windrip & Co., not as perfect, but as the most probable saviors of the country from, on one hand, domination by Moscow and, on the other hand, the slack indolence, the lack of decent pride of half the American youth, whose world (these idealists asserted) was composed of shiftless distaste for work and refusal to learn anything thoroughly⁹⁹, of blatting dance music on the radio, maniac¹⁰⁰ automobiles¹⁰¹, slobbering sexuality, the humor and art of comic strips--of a slave psychology¹⁰² which was making America a land for sterner men to loot.

General Emmanuel Coon was one of the Corpo Idealists.

Such men did not condone¹⁰³ the murders under the Corpo régime. But they insisted, "This is a revolution, and after all, when in all history has there been a revolution with so little bloodshed?"

They were aroused by the pageantry of Corpoism: enormous demonstrations¹⁰⁴, with the red-and-black flags a flaunting¹⁰⁵ magnificence like storm clouds. They were proud of new Corpo roads, hospitals, television stations, aeroplane lines; they were touched by processions of the Corpo Youth, whose faces were exalted with pride in the myths of Corpo heroism¹⁰⁶ and clean Spartan¹⁰⁷ strength and the semi-divinity of the all-protecting Father, President Windrip. They believed, they made themselves believe, that in Windrip had come alive again the virtues¹⁰⁸ of Andy Jackson and Farragut and Jeb Stuart, in place of the mob cheapness of the professional athletes who had been the only heroes of 1935.

They planned, these idealists, to correct, as quickly as might be, the errors of brutality¹⁰⁹ and crookedness¹¹⁰ among officials. They saw arising a Corpo art, a Corpo learning, profound and real, divested¹¹¹ of the traditional snobbishness¹¹² of the old-time universities, valiant¹¹³ with youth, and only the more beautiful in that it was "useful." They were convinced that Corpoism was Communism cleansed¹¹⁴ of foreign domination and the violence and indignity¹¹⁶ of mob dictatorship; Monarchism with the chosen hero of the people for monarch¹¹⁷; Fascism without grasping and selfish leaders; freedom with order and discipline; Traditional America without its waste and provincial¹¹⁸ cockiness.

Like all religious zealots, they had blessed capacity for blindness, and they were presently convinced that (since the only newspapers they ever read certainly said nothing about it) there were no more of blood-smeared cruelties in court and concentration camp; no restrictions¹¹⁹ of speech or thought. They believed that they never criticized the Corpo régime not because they were censored¹²⁰, but because "that sort of thing was, like obscenity, such awfully¹²¹ bad form."

And these idealists were as shocked and bewildered by Sarason's coup¹¹ d'état against Windrip as was Mr. Berzelius Windrip himself.

The grim Secretary of War, Haik, scolded at President Sarason for his influence on the nation, particularly on the troops. Lee laughed at him, but once he was sufficiently¹²² flattered by Haik's tribute to his artistic¹²³ powers to write a poem for him. It was a poem which was later to be sung by millions; it was, in fact, the most popular of the soldiers' ballads¹²⁴ which were to spring automatically from anonymous¹²⁵ soldier bards¹²⁷ during the war between the United States and Mexico. Only, being as pious¹²⁸ a believer in Modern Advertising as Sarason himself, the efficient Haik wanted to encourage the spontaneous generation of these patriotic folk ballads by providing the automatic springing and the anonymous bard¹²⁶. He had as much foresight¹²⁹, as much "prophetic engineering," as a motorcar manufacturer.

Sarason was as eager for war with Mexico (or Ethiopia or Siam or Greenland or any other country that would provide his pet young painters with a chance to portray¹³⁰ Sarason being heroic amid curious vegetation) as Haik; not only to give malcontents something outside the country to be cross about, but also to give himself a chance to be picturesque¹³¹. He answered Haik's request by writing a rollicking military chorus at a time while the country was still theoretically entirely friendly with Mexico. It went to the tune¹³² of "Mademoiselle from Armentières"--or "Armenteers." If the Spanish in it was a little shaky, still, millions were later to understand that "Habla oo?" stood for "¿Habla usted?" signifying "Parlez-vous?" It ran thus, as it came from Sarason's purple but smoking typewriter:

Señorita from Guadalupe,

Qui usted?

Señorita go roll your hoop¹³³,

Or come to bed!

Señorita from Guadalupe

If Padre sees us we're in the soup,

Hinky, dinky, habla oo?

Señorita from Monterey,

Savvy¹³⁴ Yank?

Señorita what's that you say?

You're Swede, Ay tank!

But Señorita from Monterey,

You won't hablar when we hit the hay,

Hinky, dinky, habla oo?

Señorita from Mazatlán,

Once we've met,

You'll smile all over your khaki pan,

You wont¹³⁵ forget!

For days you'll holler, "Oh, what a man!"

And you'll never marry a Mexican.

Hinky, dinky, habla oo?

If at times President Sarason seemed flippant, he was not at all so during his part in the scientific preparation for war which consisted in rehearsing M.M. choruses in trolling out this ditty with well-trained spontaneity.

His friend Hector Macgoblin, now Secretary of State, told Sarason that this manly¹³⁶ chorus was one of his greatest creations. Macgoblin, though personally he did not join in Sarason's somewhat unusual midnight diversions, was amused by them, and he often told Sarason that he was the only original creative genius among this whole bunch of stuffed shirts, including Haik.

"You want to watch that cuss Haik, Lee," said Macgoblin. "He's ambitious, he's a gorilla¹³⁷, and he's a pious Puritan, and that's a triple combination I'm scared of. The troops like him."

"Rats! He has no attraction for them. He's just an accurate military bookkeeper," said Sarason.

That night he had a party at which, for a novelty, rather shocking to his intimates, he actually had girls present, performing certain curious dances. The next morning Haik rebuked¹³⁸ him, and--Sarason had a hangover--was stormed at. That night, just a month after Sarason had usurped¹³⁹ the Presidency, Haik struck.

There was no melodramatic dagger-and-uplifted-arm business about it, this time--though Haik did traditionally come late, for all Fascists¹⁴⁰, like all drunkards, seem to function most vigorously at night. Haik marched into the White House with his picked storm troops, found President Sarason in violet silk pajamas¹⁴¹ among his friends, shot Sarason and most of his companions dead, and proclaimed himself President.

Hector Macgoblin fled by aeroplane to Cuba, then on. When last seen, he was living high up in the mountains of Haiti, wearing only a singlet, dirty white-drill trousers, grass sandals, and a long tan beard; very healthy and happy, occupying a one-room hut with a lovely native girl, practicing modern medicine and studying ancient voodoo.

When Dewey Haik became President, then America really did begin to suffer a little, and to long for the good old democratic, liberal days of Windrip.

Windrip and Sarason had not minded mirth and dancing in the street so long as they could be suitably taxed. Haik disliked such things on principle. Except, perhaps, that he was an atheist¹⁴² in theology, he was a strict orthodox Christian⁸⁰. He was the first to tell the populace that they were not going to get any five thousand dollars a year but, instead, "reap the profits of Discipline and of the Scientific Totalitarian State not in mere²⁵ paper figures but in vast dividends¹⁴³ of Pride, Patriotism, and Power." He kicked out of the army all officers who could not endure marching and going thirsty; and out of the civil branch all commissioners--including one Francis Tasbrough--who had garnered¹⁴⁴ riches too easily and too obviously.

He treated the entire nation like a well-run plantation¹⁴⁵, on which the slaves were better fed than formerly, less often cheated by their overseers, and kept so busy that they had time only for work and for sleep, and thus fell rarely into the debilitating¹⁴⁶ vices¹⁴⁷ of laughter, song (except war songs against Mexico), complaint, or thinking. Under Haik there were less floggings in M.M. posts and in concentration camps, for by his direction officers were not to waste time in the sport of beating persons, men, women, or children, who asserted that they didn't care to be slaves on even the best plantation, but just to shoot them out of hand.

Haik made such use of the clergy--Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and Liberal-Agnostic--as Windrip and Sarason never had. While there were plenty of ministers who, like Mr. Falck and Father Stephen Perefixe, like Cardinal¹⁴⁸ Faulhaber and Pastor¹⁴⁹ Niemoeller in Germany, considered it some part of Christian duty to resent the enslavement and torture of their appointed flocks, there were also plenty of reverend celebrities¹⁵⁰, particularly large-city pastors¹⁵¹ whose sermons were reported in the newspapers every Monday morning, to whom Corpoism had given a chance to be noisily and lucratively¹⁵² patriotic. These were the chaplains-at-heart, who, if there was no war in which they could humbly¹⁵³ help to purify and comfort the poor brave boys who were fighting, were glad to help provide such a war.

These more practical shepherds, since like doctors and lawyers they were able to steal secrets out of the heart, became valued spies during the difficult months after February, 1939, when Haik was working up war with Mexico. (Canada? Japan? Russia? They would come later.) For even with an army of slaves, it was necessary to persuade them that they were freemen and fighters for the principle of freedom, or otherwise the scoundrels might cross over and join the enemy!

So reigned¹⁵⁴ the good king Haik, and if there was anyone in all the land who was discontented, you never heard him speak--not twice.

And in the White House, where under Sarason shameless youths had danced, under the new reign¹¹⁵ of righteousness and the blackjack, Mrs. Haik, a lady with eyeglasses and a smile of resolute¹⁵⁵ cordiality, gave to the W.C.T.U., the Y.W.C.A., and the Ladies' League against Red Radicalism¹⁵⁶, and their inherently incidental husbands, a magnified and hand-colored Washington version of just such parties as she had once given in the Haik bungalow¹⁵⁷ in Eglantine, Oregon.

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