War and Remembrance (102 page)

“Some of them are pretty bad and pretty stupid.”

She held up a protesting hand. “The Germans, the Germans are the killers. And you can’t even blame them, exactly. They’ve turned into wild animals driven by a maniac. It’s all too hopeless and horrible. I’m sorry we spent our whole lunch discussing it. I’ll have nightmares tonight.” She put both hands to her temples, and forced a smile. “What’s happened to the girl who looked like me? And her baby?”

Her expression hardened at his reply. “Lourdes! My God! Isn’t she in terrible danger?”

“She’s as safe as our own consular people are.”

“Even though she’s Jewish?”

Slote shrugged. “I believe so.”

“I’ll dream about her. I dream all the time that I’m back in Germany, that we never got out. I can’t tell you what awful, awful dreams I have. My father is dead, my mother’s sick, and here I am in a strange country. I dread the nights.” She looked around the restaurant in a stunned way, and gathered up bag and gloves in some agitation. “But it’s a sin to be ungrateful. I’m alive. I’d better get my shopping done. Will you accept Julius’s invitation to come to dinner in Baltimore?”

“Of course,” Slote said too politely.

Her look was skeptical and resigned. On the sidewalk outside she said, “Your idea about refugees is not bad. You should push it. The Germans are losing the war. Soon they’ll start worrying about saving their individual necks. Germans are very good at that. If America and twenty other countries would really take in a hundred thousand Jews now, that could worry those SS monsters. They might start looking for excuses to save Jews, so they could show good records. It’s very sensible, Leslie.”

“If you think so, I’m encouraged.”

“Is there any chance of it happening?”

“I’m going to find out.”

“God bless you.” She held out her hand. “Is it cold?”

“Ice.”

“You see? America hasn’t changed me so much. Good-bye. I hope that your friend and her baby will be saved.”

Walking back to the State Department under a clearing blue sky, leaning into a frigid wind, Slote paused and stared through the White House fence across the snowy lawn, trying to imagine Franklin Roosevelt at work somewhere inside that big edifice. For all the fireside chats, speeches, newsreels, and millions of newspaper words about him, Franklin Roosevelt remained for Slote an elusive man. Wasn’t there a trace of fraud about a politician who could seem to Europeans a great humanitarian deliverer, yet whose policies, if Foxy was right, were fully as cold and inhumane as Napoleon’s?

Tolstoy’s grand theme in
War and Peace
— so Slote thought, as he hurried on — was the sinking of Napoleon in Pierre Bezukhov’s mind from liberal deliverer of Europe to bloodthirsty invader of Russia. In Tolstoy’s dubious theory of war, Napoleon was a mere monkey riding an elephant; an impotent egomaniac swept along by time and history, mouthing orders he couldn’t help giving, winning battles that were bound to be won, because of small battlefield events that he didn’t know about and couldn’t control; then later losing wars with the same “strokes of genius” that had brought him “victories,” because the stream of history had changed course away from him, stranding him in failure.

If Foxy was accurately reflecting Roosevelt’s policy on the Jews, if he wouldn’t even risk a clash with Congress to halt this vast crime, then wasn’t the President Tolstoy’s monkey after all — an inconsequential man, inflated by history’s strong breath into a grandiose figure, seeming to be winning the war only because the tides of industrial prowess were moving that way; time’s puppet, less free in confronting the Hitler horror than a single frightened Jew escaping over the Pyrenees, because that Jew at least was lowering the toll of murder by one?

Slote did not want to believe any of that.

The sunlight streaming through the tall windows of Breckinridge Long’s office was no more pleasant to the eye, or more warm and cheery, than the Assistant Secretary himself, as he strode across the room like a young man to shake hands. Long’s patrician face, thinly chiselled mouth, neat curling iron-gray hair, and short athletic figure went with a well-tailored dark gray suit, manicured nails, gray silk tie, and white kerchief in breast pocket. He was the very model of an Assistant Secretary of State; and far from appearing harried, or bitter, or in any way on a hot seat, Breckinridge Long might have been welcoming an old friend to his country home.

“Well, Leslie Slote! We should have met long ago. How’s your father?”

Slote blinked. “Why, he’s very well, sir.” This was a disconcerting start.
Slote did not remember his father’s ever mentioning Breckinridge Long.

“Haven’t seen him since God knows when. Dear me! He and I just about ran Ivy Club, played tennis almost every day, sailed, got in hot water with the girls —” With a melancholy charming smile, he waved at a sofa. “Ah, well! You know, you look more like Timmy Slote than he himself does now, I daresay. Ha-ha.”

With an embarrassed smile, Slote sat down, searching his memory. At Harvard Law School the father had developed a scornful regret for his “wasted” years at Princeton: a country club, he would say, for rich feather-heads trying to avoid an education. He had strongly advised his son to go elsewhere, and had spoken little of his college experiences. But how strange not to mention to a son in the Foreign Service that he knew an ambassador, an Assistant Secretary of State!

Long offered him a cigarette from a silver case, and leaning back on the sofa, fingering the handkerchief in his breast pocket, he said jocularly, “How did you ever happen to go to a tinpot school like Yale? Why didn’t Timmy put his foot down?” He chuckled, regarding Slote with a fatherly eye. “Still, despite that handicap, you’ve made an admirable Foreign Service officer. I know your record.”

Was this heavy sarcasm?

“Well, sir, I’ve tried. I feel pretty helpless sometimes.”

“How well I know the feeling! How’s Bill Tuttle?”

“Thriving, sir.”

“Bill’s a sound man. I’ve had some distressing communications from him. He’s in a sensitive spot there in Bern.” Breckinridge Long’s eyes drooped half-shut. “You’ve both handled matters prudently there. If we’d had a couple of these radical boys out in that mission, the stuff” you’ve been turning up might have been smeared all over the world press.”

“Mr. Assistant Secretary —”

“Great day, young fellow, you’re Tim Slote’s son. Call me Breck.”

In a memory flash Slote now recalled his father’s talking of a “Breck,” in conversations with his mother long, long ago; a shadowy figure from his racketing youth. “Well, then, Breck — I consider that material I’ve brought authentic and appalling.”

“Yes, so does Bill. He made that clear. All the more credit to both of you for sensing where your duty lies.” Long fingered his breast-pocket handkerchief and smoothed his tie. “I wish some of these wild-eyed types we’re getting in Washington were more like you, Leslie. At least you know that a man who eats the government’s bread shouldn’t embarrass his country. You learned that lesson from that little episode in Moscow. Quite understandable and forgivable. The Nazi oppression of the Jews horrifies me, too. It’s repulsive and barbaric. I was condemning that policy back in 1935. My memoranda
from those days are right here in the files. Now then, young fellow. Let me tell you what I have in mind for you.”

It was a while before Slote found out. Long first spoke of the nineteen divisions he headed. Cordell Hull actually had him drawing up a plan for the new postwar League of Nations.
There
was a challenge! He was working nights and Sundays, his health was suffering, but that didn’t matter. He had seen Woodrow Wilson destroyed by Congress’s rejection of the League in 1919. That must not happen to his great old friend, Franklin Roosevelt, and his grand visions for world peace.

Also, Congress had to be kept in line, and the Secretary had delegated to him most dealings with the Hill.
There
was a backbreaker! If Congress balked at Lend-Lease aid to Russia, Stalin might make a treacherous separate peace overnight. This war would be touch and go till the last shot was fired. The British could not be trusted, either. They were already intriguing to put de Gaulle into North Africa, so that they could control the Mediterranean after the war. They were in this war strictly for themselves; the British never changed much.

After this global rambling, Breckinridge Long came to the point at last. Somebody in the Division of European Affairs should be disposing of Jewish matters, he said, not passing them up to him — all these delegations, petitions, correspondence, important individuals who had to be treated with kid gloves, and the like. The situation required just the right man to keep it on an even keel, and he thought Leslie was that man. Leslie’s reputation as a sympathizer with the Jews was a wonderful asset. His discretion in Bern had demonstrated his soundness. He came from good stock, and he had bred true. He had a shining future in the Department. Here was a chance to take on a really prickly job, show his stuff, and earn brilliant advancement.

Slote was appalled by all this. Taking over as a buffer for Breckinridge Long,
“saying no, no, no, in polite doubletalk”
to Jewish petitioners, was a disgusting prospect. The end of his career seemed now no farther off than the door of Long’s office, and he hardly cared.

“Sir —”

“Breck.”

“Breck, I don’t want to be placed in such a spot unless I can help the people who come to me.”

“But that’s exactly what I want you to do.”

“But what do I do besides turn them down? Say ‘No,’ every devious way I can think of?”

Breckinridge Long sat up straight, giving Slote a stern righteous stare. “Why, when you can possibly help somebody, you’re to say yes, not no.”

“But the existing regulations make that almost impossible.”

“How? Tell me.” Breckinridge Long inquired, his manner very kindly. A muscle in his jaw worked, and he fingered first his handkerchief, then his tie.

Slote started to explain the preposterousness of requiring Jews to produce exit permits and good conduct certificates from the police of their native lands. Long interrupted, his brow wrinkled in puzzlement, “But, Leslie, those are standard rules devised to keep out criminals, illegal fugitives, and other riffraff. How can we bypass them? Nobody has a God-given right to enter the United States. People have to show evidence that if we let them in they’ll become good Americans.”

“Breck, Jews have to get such papers from the Gestapo. That’s obviously an absurd and cruel requirement.”

“Oh, the New York bleeding hearts have made that a scare word.
Gestapo
simply means federal Secret Service,
Geheime Staatspolizei.
I’ve had dealings with the Gestapo. They’re Germans like any others. I’m sure their methods are mighty tough, but we have a mighty tough Secret Service ourselves. Every country does. Besides, not all Jews come from Germany.”

Battling a ragged-nerve impulse to walk out and seek another livelihood — because he did sense in Long a peculiar streak of honest if perverse reasonableness — Slote said, “Wherever the Jews come from, they’ve fled for their lives. How could they have stopped to apply for official documents?”

“But if we drop these regulations,” said Long patiently, “what’s to prevent saboteurs, spies, dynamiters, and all sorts of undesirables in the thousands from getting into the country, posing as poor refugees? Just answer me that. If I were in German intelligence, I wouldn’t miss that bet.”

“Require other evidence of good character. Investigation by the Quakers. Affidavits of personal histories. Endorsements by the local U.S. consul. Or by some reliable relief agency, like the Joint. There are ways, if we’ll look for them.”

Breckinridge Long sat with his hands clasped under his chin, thoughtfully regarding Slote. His reply was slow and cautious. “Yes. Yes, I can see merit in that. The regulations can be onerous for deserving individuals. I’ve had other things on my mind, like the structure of the postwar world. I’m not pigheaded and” — his smile now was rather harried — “I’m not an anti-Semite, despite all the smears in the press. I’m a servant of the government and of its laws. I try to be a good one. Would you prepare a memorandum on your ideas for me to give the visa division?”

Slote could scarcely believe he was moving Breckinridge Long, but the man spoke with warm sincerity. Emboldened, he asked, “May I offer another idea?”

“Go ahead, Leslie. I find this talk refreshing.”

Slote described his plan for the admission of a hundred thousand Jews to twenty countries. Breckinridge Long listened carefully, fingers moving from his tie to his handkerchief, and back to his tie.

“Leslie, you’re talking about a second Evian, a major international conference on refugees.”

“I hope not. Evian was an exercise in futility. Another conference like that will consume a lot of time while people are being slaughtered.”

“But the political refugees are a more acute problem now, Leslie, and there’s no other way to get such a thing going. A major policy can’t be developed on the departmental level.” Long’s eyes were narrowed almost shut. “No,
that
is an imaginative and substantial suggestion. Will you let me have a confidential paper on it? For my eyes only, now. Put in all the practical detail that occurs to you.”

“Breck, are you really interested?”