The Winds of War

him warning glances.

“Alistair Tudsbury said to Pug one evening, as they sat on a couch in the main saloon watching the dancing, “You’ve been fraternizing with Jerry.”

“In the line of business. I doubt Grobke’s a Nazi.”

“Oh, those U-boat fellows are all right, as much as any Germans are.”

“You don’t like the Germans.”

“Well, let’s talk about that after you’ve been there a month. Assuming I haven’t been booted out.”

“Of course I don’t blame you. They gave your people hell.”

“No worse than we gave them. We won, you know.” After a pause he said, “My eyes were spoiled at Amiens, when we broke through with the tanks. I commanded a tank battalion, and was gassed. It was worth it, all in all, to see Jerry on the run. It was a long time coming.”

The captain of the Bremen, at the moment, was dancing with Rhoda. He had long capering legs, strange in a stout man. Rhoda was radiating enjoyment. Pug was glad of this. Night after night she had been dancing with a very tall officer, a blond-eagle type, all clicking bows and glittering blue eyes, who held her a bit too close. Pug had said something about it, and Rhoda had countered with a brief snarl about his spending the trip with his nose in books, and he had let it drop. She was being so complaisant, on the whole, that he only wanted to keep things so.

The captain brought her back. Pamela Tudsbury returned from a listless effort to follow the flailing prances of an American college boy. She said, “I shall get myself a cane and a white wig. They look so shattered if I refuse, but I really can hardly dance, and as for the Lindy Hop—”

The music struck up again, and Rhoda’s tall young officer approached in spotless white and gold. An irritated look crossed Pug’s face. The captain saw it, and under the loud music, as the officer drew near, he muttered half a dozen words. The young man stopped, faded back, and darted out of the saloon. Pug never saw him again.

Rhoda, smiling and about to rise, was baffled by the young German’s peculiar exit.

“Dance, Rhoda?” Pug got to his feet. “What?” she said crossly. “No, thanks.”

Pug extended a hand to the Tudsbury girl. “Pamela?”

She hesitated. “You don’t do the Lindy Hop?” Pug burst out laughing. “Well, one never knows with Americans.”

She danced in a heavy, inexperienced way. Pug liked her gentle manner, her helpless smile when she trod on his foot. “You can’t be enjoying this,” she said.

“I am. Do you think you’ll be going back to the United States?

“If Father gets thrown out of Germany, which seems inevitable, I suppose we will. Why?”

“I have a son about your age with quite a fine record, and unlike me, tall and very handsome.”

Pamela made a face. “A Navy man? Never. A girl in every port.”

At the captain’s table, on the last night, there were white orchids at every lady’s place; and under these, white gold compacts. Champagne went round, and the topic of international politics finally surfaced. Everybody agreed that in this day and age war was a silly, wasteful way of settling differences, especially among advanced nations like England, France, and Germany. “We’re all of the same stock, all north Europeans,” Tudsbury said. “It’s a sad thing when brothers fall out.”

The captain nodded happily. “Exactly what I say. If we could only stick together, there would never be another war. The Bolsheviks would never move against so much power. And who else wants war?” All through the saloon people were wearing paper hats and tossing streamers, and Pug observed that the four Jews, whose table was not far away, were having as gay a time as everybody else, under the polite ministrations of smiling German waiters. The captain followed Henry’s glance, and a genial superior grin relaxed his stern fat face. “You see, Commander? They are as welcome aboard the Bremen as anybody else, and get the same service. The exaggerations on that subject are fantastic.” He turned to Tudsbury. “Between us, aren’t you journalists a wee bit responsible for making matters worse?”

“Well, Captain,” Tudsbury said, “journalism always looks for a theme, you know. One of the novel things about your government, to people outside Germany, is its policy toward the Jews. And so it keeps turning up.”

Tudsbury is not entirely wrong, Captain,” Grobke broke in, draining his wineglass. “Outsiders think of nothing but the Jews nowadays when Germany is mentioned. That policy has been mishandled. I’ve said so many times. That and plenty of other things.” He turned to Henry. “Still, they’re so unimportant, Victor, compared to what the Fuhrer has achieved: Germany has come back to life. That’s God’s truth. The people have work, they have food and houses, and they have spirit. What Hitler has done for our youth alone is just incredible.” (The captain’s eyes lit up and he emphatically nodded, exclaiming, “Ja, Ja!”) Under the Weimar they were rioting, they were becoming Communists, they were going in for sex perversions and drugs, it was just horrible. Now they’re working, or training, or serving, all of them. They’re happy! My crews are happy. You can’t imagine what navy morale was like under the Republic — I tell you what,” He struck the table. “You come visit our squadron, at the sub base in Swinemunde. You do that! You’re a man that can look at a navy yard or a ship’s crew and see what’s going on! It’ll open your eyes. Will you?”

Henry took a moment to reply, with everybody at the table turning expectantly to him. An invitation like this, if accepted, made mandatory a similar offer to the German naval attache in Washington. Did the Navy want to trade glimpses of submarine bases with the Nazi regime? The decision was beyond Pug’s power. He had to report the invitation to Washington and act on the dictated answer.

He said, “I’d like that. Perhaps we can work it out.”

“Say yes. Forget the formalities!” Grobke waved both arms in the air. “It’s a personal invitation from me to you, from one seaman to another. The U-boat command gets damn small budgets, and we’re pretty independent chaps. You can visit us with no strings. I’ll see to that.”

“This invitation wouldn’t include me, would it?” Tudsbury said.

Grobke hesitated, then laughed. “Why not? Come along, Tudsbury. The more the British know about what we’ve got, the less likely anybody is to make a hasty mistake.”

“Well, here may be an important little step for peace,” said the captain, “transacted at my table! I feel honored, and we will have more champagne on it at once.”

And so the diners at the captain’s table on the Bremen all drank to peace a few minutes before midnight, as the great liner slowed, approaching the shore lights of Nazi Germany.

* * *

In bright sunshine, the Bremen moved like a train between low green banks of a wide river. Pug was at the rail of the sun deck, taking his old pleasure in the sight of land after a voyage. Rhoda was below in her usual fit of the snarls and the snaps. When they travelled together, Rhoda in deep martyrdom did the packing. Pug was an old hand at packing for himself, but Rhoda claimed she could never find anything he put away.

“Oh, yes, the country is charming to look at,” said Tudsbury, who had sauntered up and commenced a discourse on the scenery. “You’ll see many a pretty north German town between Bremerhaven and Berlin. The heavy half-timbered kind of thing, that looks so much like English Tudor. The fact is Germany and England have strong resemblances and links. You know of course that the Kaiser was Queen Victoria’s grandson, that our royal family for a long time spoke only German? And yet on the whole the Jerries are stranger to us than Eskimos.” He boomed a laugh and went on, sweeping a fat hand toward the shore: “Yes, here the Germans sit at the heart of Europe, Henry, these perplexing first cousins of ours simmering and grumbling away, and every now and then they spill over in all directions, with a hideous roar. Out they pour from these lovely little towns, these fairy-tale landscapes, these clean handsome cities — wait till you see Cologne, Nuremberg, Munich, even Berlin and Hamburg — out they bubble, I say, these polite blue-eyed music lovers, ravening for blood. It gets a bit unnerving. And now here’s Hitler, bringing them to a boil again. You Americans may have to lend more of a hand than you did last time. We’re fairly worn out with them, you know, we and the French.”

It had not escaped Henry that Tudsbury’s talk, one way or another, usually came back to the theme of the United States fighting Germany.

“That might not be in the cards, Tudsbury. We’ve got the Japanese on our hands. They’re carving up China and they’ve got a first-class fighting navy, growing every month. If they make the Pacific a Japanese lake and