O Shepherd, Speak!

Upton Sinclair

• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781504026543
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Classics
• Index: Literature

As Presidential Agent 103, Lanny Budd witnesses the collapse of the Nazis, the bombing of Hiroshima, and the Nuremberg Trials in this novel in the Pulitzer Prize–winning saga.  
As a spy for President Franklin Roosevelt, Lanny Budd was able to infiltrate the inner circle of the Nazi high command and glean essential information on behalf of the Allied cause. Now, as the terrible global conflict approaches its long-awaited conclusion, the newly commissioned Captain Budd of the US Army is on hand to witness the final collapse of the Third Reich in the aftermath of the Battle of the Bulge.
 
The nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki brings World War II to an end, but not even the death of Franklin Roosevelt can release Lanny from his obligations as Presidential Agent 103. A devastated Europe needs to be rebuilt, and there is a necessary reckoning still to come in the heart of defeated Germany, where the fanatics who murdered countless millions will stand trial for their crimes.
 
O Shepherd, Speak! is the penultimate volume of Upton Sinclair's Pulitzer Prize–winning dramatization of twentieth-century world history. An astonishing mix of adventure, romance, and political intrigue, the Lanny Budd Novels are a testament to the breathtaking scope of the author's vision and his singular talents as a storyteller.

BOOK SEVEN

Thy Friends Are Exaltations

19

Powers That Will Work for Thee

I

Lanny drove back to the town of Budd and reported to his wife that he had seen something important which he was not permitted to disclose; he thought it wouldn’t be long before the story was released, and then she would have an eyewitness account to write up. In return, she told him that she had taken up the idea of writing a story about Robbie’s number-one test pilot, a daring fellow who flew everything that was made and was still alive in spite of having been doing it for twenty years. When he had flown a plane for an hour he knew more about it than its makers. His job was to get what he called “the numbers”: how fast the plane flew at level flight and how fast when rising; how fast at sea level and at twenty thousand feet; its engine temperatures, its gallons of fuel consumed per hour, and many other details. After he had got them, the Army came and made the tests all over again before accepting the plane. No wonder Budd was a busy field!

It amused Lanny to hear his wife telling him things which he had been hearing from Robbie for a couple of decades. Did Lanny know what it meant for a plane to “snake”? Yes, he had heard the expression. This pilot had a new model that snaked so that it almost yawed, and he had decided it was the fuel sloshing in the tank; they were putting in baffles, which they hoped would stop the trouble. Laurel went on to describe the man’s pathetic little wife, who had never become reconciled to his dangerous job, not even at fifty dollars a day. Laurel said, “I wanted to tell her how sorry I was for her, but I thought I’d better not.” Lanny answered with a smile, “Robbie wouldn’t have liked it.”

He teased her for inconsistency; she, a hater of war, and preparing to start out on a crusade against it, was a Budd-Erling stockholder; she was making blood money out of these engines of destruction. She had inherited the stock from her uncle, so it wasn’t of her own choice; and if she sold the stock, somebody else would get the profits, but it wouldn’t stop the making of the engines. “Thou shalt not kill,” said the Commandment; the Episcopalians had softened it to read “Thou shalt do no murder.” This illustrates the fact that moral problems are complicated, and not even God has been able to make them plain and simple.

II

President Truman had gone to Germany, to sit down with Churchill and Stalin and try to solve those problems which had been troubling Franklin Roosevelt on the night before his death. Lanny had been free to tell his wife about this interview, and now, driving their little aluminum house back to New York, they listened to broadcasts speculating as to what might be going on at the Potsdam Conference. The fate of the world for many years to come might be decided over there in the large quadrangular palace full of relics of Frederick the Great. Certainly it would have a great deal to do with what the Budd couple would be thinking and doing in course of the next five years.

The conference lasted two weeks and two days, and that gave the newspapers and radio commentators plenty of time to speculate, and gave the couple time to get their affairs in order. They took the trailer back to Newcastle, duly thanked its owner, and reported what they had seen at his town. They talked about the trip and about jets, but not a word about bombs. A dutiful son did feel free to say this much to his father, “Don’t quote me, but I think you can make your plans on the basis of the Japs giving up very soon.” The wise father looked at this man of mystery whom he knew so very well and saw a steady look in his eyes and a grave expression on his face. “You really mean that, Lanny?”

“I mean it positively. I can’t say more.”

They found Frances in a state of excitement because her mother and stepfather were coming to pay a visit and take her on a trip across the continent. Ceddy had bought a big ranch in Western Canada—with Irma’s money, of course. It was raising wheat for England, a worthy purpose, and now harvest time was at hand, a great sight. They were going to make a grand tour, through the Canadian Rockies, and returning by way of California and Budd, in which Irma too was a stockholder.

In the course of that trip the girl would make up her mind whether she preferred going back to England to school or staying in Newcastle. Lanny didn’t want to influence her decision. He was aware that the elder Budds were extremely sensitive on the subject of divorces and would consider it a theme for gossip if Irma and Laurel were to be in the same town or if Lanny were to meet his former wife there; he needed no hint, but remarked that he and Laurel had to go back to New York in the next day or two. He knew without being told that the arrival of a genuine English earl and countess would constitute a colossal social event, adding to the prestige of the Budd tribe. He looked with distaste upon such snobbery and had no desire for a close-up view of it.

He took his eager young daughter for a sail on the river and listened to the outpouring of her small adventures and her hopes. He told her that she was to make up her own mind about her future. There was an agreement between her mother and himself that neither would ever do anything to influence her against the other, and this meant that Lanny couldn’t tell Frances his opinion about titles of nobility or about the false glories of inherited fortune. She would have to live in Irma’s world. She would see all the excitement over the almost-royal pilgrimage, be kowtowed to and admired and photographed, and must make what she could of it. He did feel free to tell her that he hated war and was going to do what he could to end it. She, of course, could have no idea that hereditary privilege such as her own was among the causes of social and national strife.

They left the baby in the care of Agnes, the skilled trained nurse who had been a second mother to him from his birth. It was summer, and cool breezes blew off the Sound; also Laurel wanted to write an article about test pilots of jet planes—of which she disapproved. Lanny said she would have to leave her disapproval out of the story, for jet planes might have given the victory to Germany if Britain hadn’t been able to build them faster and better. Jet planes were now knocking the Japs out of the skies, and so the American reading public thought them very excellent indeed.

III

Back in the great city, Lanny went on a hunt for an apartment for Nina and Rick, and thereby extended his distrust of the profit system into a new field. Owing to the housing shortage, Congress had passed a law fixing rents of houses, apartments, and even hotel rooms at the prices which prevailed before the war. The effect of this had been to direct the mental energies of landlords and agents to originating devices to get money from would-be tenants for something that couldn’t be classified as rent. The landlord had just installed a fine piano in the apartment, and would Lanny’s friends be willing to pay fifty dollars a month extra for the use of this piano? In another case, would they be willing to pay the agent a hundred dollars a month extra for his services in finding them a competent cleaning woman—this above what they would pay to the woman?

Lanny didn’t mind paying a high price so much as he minded being forced to connive at breaking the law. After answering several ads and running into various forms of trickery, he decided that he would make use of that snobbery which he had discovered to be so powerful in Newcastle. He inserted in the most highly regarded newspapers an advertisement with a box number, reading: “English baronet (genuine), a well-known playwright visiting city with his wife, desires to rent comfortably furnished, centrally located apartment two months. Middle-aged couple, no children, no pets.”

Two days later there was a reply, offering him just what he wanted, not far from his own apartment. A telephone number was given, and he called it; a pleasant woman’s voice answered and asked for the name of the prospective English tenants. Lanny replied that he didn’t care to give the name of the tenants until he had seen the apartment and been told the price. They sparred for a while over this, and he was asked for his own name and gave a part of it, Mr. Lanning.

The lady consented to meet him and take him to the apartment, and he met her in the lobby of a near-by hotel. She was young, well dressed, and smart, and devoted her smartness to trying to get him to name the baronet; he in turn devoted his to an effort to persuade her to show the apartment, which could be had for only three hundred dollars a month, a price he was willing to pay. The effort was of no avail, and in the end she laughed and told him she didn’t think he had any baronet, and she didn’t have any apartment. She was a newspaperwoman who had smelled a good story in the coming of a titled Englishman who was a well-known playwright!

The problem was solved by accident when Lanny mentioned his trouble to Zoltan Kertezsi. The art expert said, “They can have my apartment. I am going to be away.” Zoltan had been invited to study and prepare a descriptive catalogue of the art collection of a wealthy retired banker in Princeton—none other than that Mr. Curtice who had given Lanny a hiding place while he was boning up on atomic fission. Mr. Curtice was going to the Adirondacks, and Zoltan would have his lovely old mansion with the smooth green lawns and white peacocks on them—all to himself except for some of the servants. “Come and see me,” Zoltan said. “Mr. Curtice will agree that our two heads are better than my one.”

IV

In the midst of these small affairs came an event of electrifying import to the two rich friends of the poor: polling day in Britain, and the Potsdam Conference adjourned for three days to enable Winston Churchill and his large staff to fly back home to vote. Winston went—and he didn’t come back. The most amazing thing, a parliamentary upset the like of which had never been known in British history. The common people of that land of hope and glory adored their war leader, but they didn’t want him as a peace leader—a distinction that was clear to them but must have been confusing to Winnie. The Labour party obtained a majority of almost two to one; they got it upon the basis of a definite program calling for the nationalization of the five most important of the nation’s industries: coal, steel, transportation, communications, and finance.

It was the program to which Nina and Rick had devoted the labors of their youth and maturity. The same thing was true of Lanny; and while Laurel was a later convert, she was none the less ardent. Their jubilation was unbounded, and they held a brief celebration over the transatlantic telephone. Alfy was “in,” and by a large enough vote so that he could speak with authority. And Winnie was “out”—and immediately, by the marvelous system which they have on that tight little island, where statesmen can get to London quickly. There was a new man flying to Potsdam to help decide the fate of Europe, a man by the name of Attlee, of whom few outside of Britain had heard; a quiet, rather frail-looking man, with no booming voice and no polished periods; but he knew what he wanted and had most of the British working class and a good part of the middle class behind him.

So now it was possible to go ahead with the ending of war, and not merely in Potsdam but in London and New York. Nina and Rick had procured their passports and made application for visas; they were coming as visitors, which gave them six months, and then, if they wanted more time, they would make a new application. The land of the free and the home of the brave had become rather choosy in these later years. Lanny had to fly down to Washington to stir up the cookie-pushers in the State Department, assuring them that a British baronet was really a Socialist and not a Communist, and that he wasn’t going to advocate the overthrow of the United States government by force and violence.

V

A tense and exciting time in the world’s history, and nobody in his right mind could complain of being bored. The B-29S were keeping up their milk runs over Japanese cities, and the Navy’s task forces kept coming closer to Tokyo, shooting down the enemy’s suicide pilots and sending swarms of divebombers against ships and other targets. That was supposed to go on for a long time yet, perhaps a year or two; but Lanny kept waiting for the big news that was due any day. His imagination pictured those terrific new bombs being transported to a base on some island near Japan. Would they go by plane or by ship, and how long would it take? Only a few persons knew, and none of these had given Lanny a hint.

He developed the habit of turning on the radio every hour on the hour and looking at newspaper headlines whenever he passed a stand. He couldn’t give up the habit because, obviously, with each day that passed, A-day must be one day nearer. Everybody who knew anything about the A-bomb agreed that there wasn’t going to be any hesitation; the enemy was going to learn about the bomb in action. Of course after that there would be no keeping the secret—the enemy would tell even if we didn’t.

The Potsdam Conference came to an end on the 2nd of August and a summary of its results was released. Japan was called on to surrender, and warned of dreadful things to come. Germany was to be divided into four zones, each to be governed by one of the four nations, America, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. To anyone who really wanted peace this arrangement was ominous, for it could mean only that the Big Four distrusted their ability to agree and had agreed upon a series of arguments and squabbles for an indefinite time. Each of the four would have its own idea of what Germany and the Germans ought to be and would proceed to make them over in its image: a Communist East Germany, a Socialist North-central Germany, a Big-Business, Private-Enterprise South-central Germany, and a Bourgeois Southwest Germany, hated, feared, and kept as poor as possible.

President Truman came back to Washington and put the best face possible on what he had done. Most people thought he had been hoodwinked, and this wouldn’t have been surprising, since he had had no previous experience with international affairs. America had the strange practice of putting its possible substitute President away on a shelf, as it were; he had no special way to learn what was going on, and when his Chief suffered a massive brain hemorrhage, all he could do was to wring his hands and say, “Look what’s fallen on me!”

VI

On the 6th of August, a day never to be forgotten, Lanny turned on his radio. It meant having to listen to odious commercials, and he loathed them, but in times like these he had no choice. His heart gave a leap as he heard the announcer say, “Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt the program to give you a statement which has just been issued from the White House, signed by the President of the United States. Give it your close attention. The statement follows.”

He called to Laurel, who was pounding the typewriter in her room. She came running, and they listened to these portentous words: “Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base. That bomb had more power than twenty thousand tons of TNT. It had more than two thousand times the blast power of the British ‘Grand Slam,’ which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare. The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid manyfold. And the end is not yet. With this bomb we have now added a new and revolutionary increase in destruction to supplement the growing power of our Armed Forces. In their present form these bombs are now in production, and even more powerful forms are in development. It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its powers has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.”

So at last the secret was out, the secret that Lanny had been keeping from his family and friends for four years, the secret that had come near to burning a hole through his brain. Now at last he could tell Laurel where he had been in New Mexico and what he had seen there; why he had set out on a plane four years ago and come near to losing his life; what he had been doing in Germany, both before the war’s end and more recently. “Oh, what an awful thing!” she exclaimed. “What an awful thing we have done!” As usual, she thought about human beings and failed to take the military attitude. “It makes our task more urgent,” she said, and Lanny answered, “It also makes it more possible, perhaps.”

He telephoned his father. “Have you heard the news?”

“Someone in the office just told me,” was the reply. “So that’s what you’ve been doing all this time!”

“Don’t mention it to anyone else,” he said. “There are reasons.”

“This finishes Budd-Erling,” said the father. “They won’t need us any more.” He never failed to take the business point of view; but he would tell you it was the human point of view as well, for what was going to happen to those thousands of men and women he employed?

Laurel was so shocked it was hard for her to think. A paralyzing thing to know that such a horror was loose in the world, and that she had been living with it for the whole of her married life! Of course Lanny hadn’t been allowed to tell her; but what about those psychic gifts she thought she had discovered? They had failed her so utterly just when they had the most important material to work on.

Lanny brought her back to earth. “Don’t forget that you have an eyewitness story,” he remarked, and her writer’s instinct began to stir. She went in and sat by her typewriter, and Lanny stretched out on the bed and started to talk, sentence by sentence, while her fingers flew over the keys. They agreed that the way to handle this thing was as a straight reporting job, with no attempt to elaborate or philosophize. Said Mary Morrow, “This is an account of what happened at the first atomic-bomb test at Alamogordo, New Mexico, as told to me by a friend who was present.” Then came the story, and instead of what Mary Morrow thought about it, or what her friend thought, there was what the different scientists and military men had said.

When the job was done she wasn’t willing to entrust it to anybody else; she stayed up part of the night to make a set of clean copies, and in the morning she took one to a newspaper syndicate. At the same time Lanny took a plane to Washington to carry out his prom...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Book One: The Mighty Scourge of War
• Book Two: Love, and Man’s Unconquerable Mind
• Book Three: Come the Three Corners of the World in Arms
• Book Four: Tears from the Depth of Some Divine Despair
• Book Five: Appeal from Tyranny to God
• Book Six: ’Tis Excellent to Have a Giant’s Strength
• Book Seven: Thy Friends Are Exaltations
• Book Eight: Tell Truth and Shame the Devil
• Book Nine: Truth Crushed to Earth Shall Rise
• Book Ten: He Shall Stand before Kings
• Appendix
• World’s End Impending
• Preview: The Return of Lanny Budd
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Copyright Page