"Meaning that I must leave you for a bit. I intend to muster all forces that the Central Power owns that can, in any way, be used to combat the common enemy that is striking at France. I invite you officially to join and observe."
"I may take that invitation," said Jim.
"The Central Power will enter that plague area to take relief and aid—even though we may ourselves suffer greatly. It is things like this, James Franklen, that endears us to our immediate neighbors. You may watch one half of the population of my country turn from their own problems, and bravely enter France to aid the stricken. Jenks! A message to Le Presidente Jacques La Croix. 'We stand ready to aid in every way if your need increases. You have but to request, and we will answer in the name of humanity! Signed Edvard Hohmann, Commissario of the Central Power.'"
Jim Franklen faced Winter wearily in the latter's office. It was two weeks later, and Jim was glad to be back, even though his mission was but half accomplished.
"I don't know how to stop him," he told the president of the Weapon Council. "He's like a stock market operator that doles out quarters to the beggar on the corner and then enters the Curb to squeeze some small operator out of his life savings. It is admitted—almost—that he is running a carpetbagging program over there. Then comes this plague in France. Like a first-class humanitarian, he musters his forces and they go into that area and take control for two solid weeks while practically every person in France is flat on his back with this devil's disease. It would have been easy for him to take over, Winter. But he sent in doctors and aides, and the like, and the only armed men he sent were merely small-arm troops. He sent just barely enough of them to maintain order, which they did and no more. I doubt if there was a store-window broken or a bottle of milk stolen over and above any normal interval. Then as the people of France recovered, he gracefully turned everything back, gave them a written report on his actions, apologized for whatever minor expenses his aid might have cost—his men did live off of the country, and that costs, you know—and then marched out with the bands playing and the people cheering.
"It gives me to wonder," continued Franklen. "Remember the 'Union—Now' cries between the United States and Great Britain during the last fracas? Well, solidarity between France and the Central Power was never so great before. Hohmann could ask them for the moon, and they'd present him with a gold tablet, suitably engraved, giving him clear and unrestricted title. Watch for a first-class alliance, Winter."
Winter nodded. "I've been watching," he said. "Regardless of how he does it, and he is a supreme opportunist, it is oppression."
Franklen grunted. "Even anarchy is oppression for some classes of people."
"But you and I both know that he rode into his office initially on a program of oppressing the minority groups. He's made no great mass-murder of them as his predecessor did, nor has he collected them in concentration camps. Yet they are oppressed, for they have little free life. They are permitted to work only as their superiors dictate, and for a subsistence wage. They do the rough jobs; they work in Hohmann's separation plants, do the mining, and the dirty work. Each is given a card entitling him to secure employment in certain lines. All of these lines are poorly paid and quite dangerous or dirty. The wage is so low that the children are forced to forgo schooling in order to help pay for the family. Regardless of his outward act of humanitarianism, Hohmann is none the less a tyrant with ideas of aggrandization. That he is able to take a catastrophe and turn it into a blessing for himself is deplorable, but it seems to be one of those unfair tricks of fate to favor the ill-minded, for some unknown reason. I never knew a stinker that didn't get everything his own way for far too long for the other's comfort. Eventually, of course, the deal evens out, but the waiting is often maddeningly long."