In a kind and fatherly way the banker reminded the impetuous lad that the nation was at war. “Our boys are going overseas to die in a cause which may not be perfect — but how often do you meet absolute perfection in this world? There has never been a war in which some persons didn't profiteer at the expense of the government. The same thing happened in the Civil War, but that didn't keep it from being a war to preserve the Union.”
“I know,” said Lanny. “My father has told me about that also. He says that was how J. P. Morgan made the start of his fortune by selling condemned rifles to the Union government.”
So ended the questioning of Lanny Budd. He didn't realize what an awful thing he had said until later, when he told his father about it, and Robbie manifested surprise mixed with amusement. Mr. Tarell's great bank was known as a “Morgan bank,” and the House of Morgan was just then the apex of dignity and power in the financial world — it was handling the purchases of the Allied governments, expending about three thousand million dollars of their money in the United States!
Above the Battle
I
LANNY came home for Christmas. The war was not allowed to interfere with this festival; a big tree was set up in the home, and elaborate decorations were hung. Everybody spent a lot of time thinking what presents to give to relatives who obviously didn't need anything. Lanny, a stranger, sought the advice of his stepmother, and they went to the town's largest bookstore and tried to guess what sort of book each person might care for. By this method the well-to-do got reading matter enough to occupy their time for the rest of the year.
Lanny remembered his Christmas at Schloss Stubendorf, where people ate enormously, but were frugal in other spending. Here in New England it was the other way around — it wasn't quite good form to stuff your stomach, but Yankee ingenuity had been expended in devising toys to please the children of the rich, and adults were swamped under a flood of goods incredibly perfect in workmanship. On Christmas morning the base of the tree was piled with packages wrapped in multicolored paper and tied with ribbons. Pipes and cigars, bedroom slippers, silk dressing gowns, neckties — these were standard for the men — while ladies received jewels, wristwatches, silk stockings, veils and scarves, handbags and vanity cases, elaborately decorated boxes of chocolates and candied fruits — everyone had such quantities of these things that it was rather a bore opening parcels, and you could read in their faces the thought: “What on earth am I going to do with all this?”
Robert junior and Percy were two friendly and quite normal boys, living rather repressed lives at home. Esther considered all forms of extravagance as bad taste, and tried to teach this to her children; but she was fighting the current of her time, in which everything grew more elaborate and expensive, and a vast propaganda for spending was maintained by thousands of interested agencies. Here came this flood of goods, bearing the cards of uncles and aunts and cousins and school friends and even employees; the boys became surfeited, and couldn't really appreciate anything.
Lanny had his share of goods and of bewilderment. Good heavens, three sweaters — when already he had several hanging in his clothes closet! More neckties, more handkerchiefs, more hair brushes; an alligator-skin belt that was too heavy for comfort; newly published books that some clerk in a store had said would appeal to a youth. And in the midst of all that superfluity, a gift from Great-Great-Uncle Eli — a much worn copy of Thoreau's Walden, appearing as misplaced as its author would have been in this fashionable company. Henry David Thoreau, telling you how to live in a hut on a diet of cornmeal mush and beans, in order to have your spirit free and your time not in pawn to commercialism! Old New England and new New England met in the Budd family drawing room, and neither was much interested in the other.