“Don’t you know what a girl means when she says, ‘everything’ in that way? She means—herself. Her life.”
“Enough Americans,” Jimmie mused, “had enough foresight and guts to pass the Lease-Lend Bill. That was Hitler’s first defeat. It’ll take dozens more—as big, as costly—to whip Hitler. But there are sure an awful lot of you people still doing Hitler’s work—sincere or not—just as advertised, predicted, and counted upon, by handsome Adolf and his general staff.”
She flushed brightly. “We’re not pro-German. You can’t say that.”
“No. And Pilate wasn’t procrucifixion. He just washed his hands.”
“You’re going to make me sore!”
“What about me? I came here only yesterday—bursting with love. With memories. With anticipations. I was never as happy in my life. And I was so darned proud of America. I knew my country had been laggard and doubtful and not wholly united. But I knew America had saved the sum of things twice—already. Once after Dunkirk. Once again in the battle of the Atlantic. And then, we drove up on the hill and we went into my house—and I found myself in a swarm of Benedict Arnolds. Not conscious ones. Not willful ones. Frightened ones, who were trying to betray all humanity just to save something that existed once, and still exists for the moment as a sort of echo here, but will not and cannot endure anywhere—much longer.”
“You’re so sure about the future!”
He nodded. “Sure it’ll be difficult. Dad wants to set the clock back. Spin the whole damned planet back. Nail it at a place in space and time known to him as 1929. The big year. The banner year. I remember it. I was sixteen, then. World trade, protective taxes, prohibition, stock market graphs like geysers! The great engineers were in the saddle. Business was king. I remember the bust. But it isn’t that, Audrey. Not that—which is coming to all of us. It’s something much worse. The world out of which we drew trade and profit and in which we invested in 1929 is gone. The plant is gone. The property is wrecked. The people are killed or scattered. The governments are smashed. Those who are still alive are weakened by hunger, misled by propaganda, full of dread and hate. Peace—any peace—is going to liberate a whole new set of revenges. Merciful God, can’t they see that? The industry of the earth has been rebuilt to make arms. How are we Americans going to thrive in that shambles? What’s your dad and my dad going to do to pay the national debt, and change back the factories here, and keep wages high enough so we can still have decent standards—and not a black 1932 raised to the hundredth power? The worst peace would mean slavery. The best peace will mean that the whole earth faces the most terrifying mess in the history of mankind.”
“Don’t you think we’ll be better off at that time if we, too, aren’t wholly devoted to making arms?”
“I, personally, don’t think we’ll exist at all if we aren’t wholly devoted to making arms—right now.”