Curtain of Fear (31 page)

“That's right.” Mr. Smutný gave a quick nod. “To boggle at conventions is stupid when so much hangs on people like ourselves keeping fit to continue the fight. Come with me, both of you.”

He fetched salt from the kitchen, then led them to the bathroom, made up the bath, and produced a pot of ointment from a cupboard. As he left them Fedora gave a wicked little smile, and said to Nicholas:

“From your gallant offer, it seems that you have grown up quite a lot since this morning, Nicky.”

He grinned. “That's true in more ways than one. But, anyhow,
this part of my enforced vacation course may come in useful when I'm married.”

They made no more jokes during the next few minutes. Fedora's frock came off easily enough, but her chemise was blood-stained where it had rubbed against the angry weals; so while she set her teeth Nicholas very gently eased it off her. To save her the pain of stooping he took off her shoes, and her stockings, which had stuck to the red slashes across her calves; then, leaving her to get into the bath, he turned away to the basin and began to prepare to have a thorough wash himself.

He spun the process out as long as possible, then killed another five minutes in experimenting with a lotion of Mr. Smutný's as a means of flattening his unruly red hair. By the time he had done he thought it probable that Fedora's bath was beginning to cool off, so he asked her if she was ready to get out. She told him to wait a minute; there was some splashing, and when she called to him again he turned to find that she was sitting on the edge of the bath with a towel round her middle. With another he gently patted her back dry, then anointed her wounds with the ointment and helped to get her clothes on again.

The warmth of the water had relaxed the stiffening tissues of her flesh, so she found that dressing was not such an ordeal as undressing had been, and when she thanked Nicholas for maiding her she said that her bath had not only made her feel much more comfortable, but had also refreshed her mentally.

Back in the sitting-room they found Mr. Smutný waiting for them. He at once took them into a small dining-room, where he had already laid two places at the table, then disappeared into his kitchen. A few moments later he opened a hatch in the wall and pushed through it a big ham omelette flanked by masses of chipped potatoes. As Nicholas took the dish the sight and smell of its tempting contents made him realise how desperately hungry he really was; so he lost no time in obeying his host's injunction to help Fedora and himself. Mr. Smutný then came round and sat down at the table so that he could talk with them while they ate.

At first he asked them many questions of a general nature
about the state of things in Western Europe, America and Southern Asia, as all news entering Czechoslovakia was very heavily censored before being put out in an almost unrecognisably distorted form; and it was by no means easy, even for members of the underground, to keep abreast with the truth about events on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

By the time they had finished the omelette his most pressing questions had been answered; and having brought them cheese, biscuits, and half a currant cake to round off with, he asked Nicholas:

“In what way do you earn your living, Pan Novák?”

“He is a Professor of Political Economics,” Fedora answered for him with a slightly malicious smile.

“Then he occupies a highly responsible position,” commented Mr. Smutný.

“I can hardly claim to do that,” Nicholas replied modestly. “I am only a member of the junior faculty at my University.”

“It was not your grade but your profession that I had in mind. All teachers, from the young woman who takes a class at a kindergarten to the most gifted academicians, by the very nature of their work are given power for good or ill, and in a far greater degree than that enjoyed by any other caste. Most unfortunately the financial rewards of teachers are generally far below what men and women of their standard of intelligence would receive in other walks of life, and that makes great numbers of them discontented. For that, a terrible price is being paid by the world to-day. Comparatively few of the most prominent Communist leaders have been professional teachers, but it is beyond question that teachers in the mass have been responsible for the strangle-hold that Communism has now secured on some seven hundred and fifty million helpless people.”

“Do you really believe that?” Nicholas asked.

“Indeed I do. Forty years ago, even in most of the backward countries, people enjoyed certain rights and liberties. Why did they give them up? They could practise their own religions without fear; follow any occupation they preferred; read, write,
print and publicly discuss whatever they chose; travel without restriction; emigrate with their families to other countries which they thought would offer them better prospects; and if accused of any crime expect a fair deal by their fellows. Why did they surrender all these freedoms that their forefathers had won for them?”

“It was because they believed that the sacrifice of individual liberty would bring an end to age-old abuses, and secure better living conditions for all mankind,” Nicholas replied quickly.

“That is not true,” said Mr. Smutný. “It was because they were taught to believe that there was a short cut to universal prosperity. By the end of the last century the majority of those in whose hands lay the moulding of the minds of the next generation had ceased to believe in God, and the wisdom of his Ten Commandments. Many of them had already imbibed the doctrines of Karl Marx and were setting up a graven image of ‘The People's State' for their pupils to worship. A far greater number were merely embittered by their own lot and blindly groping for a means to overturn the old order. They rejected the healthy discipline which for so many centuries had held society together, and instead fostered resistance to authority. They taught that Monarchy was synonymous with tyranny, and that the Commandment to honour one's parents was a sly trick invented by Moses to enable the old to suppress and batten on the young. They taught that to confiscate the wealth of the rich for the benefit of the community was not stealing, and that to covet the possessions of those who were better off was not wrong.”

“Even granted that there is something in what you say,” protested Nicholas. “I cannot agree that the teaching profession can be held responsible for the Communist revolution in Russia, or for Communism having since become the form of government in numerous other countries. That was the work of politicians.”

“In the event, yes. But even the most fanatical politicians are powerless to enforce any form of government without the initial support of a considerable proportion of their fellow countrymen.
It was the teachers of the preceding generation who had provoked universal discontent. It was they who had led thousands of young people to believe that, merely from the fact of being human beings, they were entitled to be fed, clothed, housed and generally cared for by the State, irrespective of how much they contributed to its wealth; and that if the government had not sufficient funds to keep everybody in comfort, then the State must steal the property of individuals and deprive those who worked hard of their just rewards, in order to support those who were lazy. It was the teachers who had conditioned the minds of the masses to accept the blandishments and arguments of the Communist politicians, and sell their birthrights for a mess of pottage.”

“You must admit, though, that under the old systems the poor had little chance of bettering their lot.”

“Nonsense, my friend. In every age men of humble beginnings have found it possible to rise to the very top by hard work and intelligent endeavour. Pope Pius X was the son of a swineherd. Colbert, the greatest minister of France's greatest age, that of Louis XIV, began as an ill-paid clerk in the Treasury. Cardinal Wolsey started life as a butcher's boy in Ipswich.”

“Oh, there were exceptions, of course; but it was next to impossible to get to the top in the professions reserved for the privileged.”

“You are quite wrong there. Admiral Nelson was the fifth son of a village parson with little money and no influence; and General Robertson, the British Chief of the Imperial General Staff for the greater part of the First World War, rose from the ranks. In the fields of law, medicine, and science, one could quote innumerable examples. As for commerce and industry, think of the founders of the great fortunes in the United States. Every township there has its own story of its poor boy who became a millionaire. In a more modest way the same thing applied all over Europe, when men still enjoyed the right to work at what they liked for as long as they liked and keep the rewards of their labours. Most of them too, far from hoarding their gains, gave lavishly to bettering the lot of the less fortunate.
In England, for example, take your Lord Nuffield. He has given away over ten million pounds, and he started only with a little bicycle shop. Under Communism such men are killed or put into concentration camps; the inspiration they give to others and the good they do is lost; and the masses, deprived of God, ambition, hope or future, are reduced to a dead level of poverty-stricken uniformity.”

“All the same, the Marxist ideal still has a great hold on the imagination of many honest and intelligent people,” Nicholas remarked.

Mr. Smutný frowned. “It may have in the West. If so, it is for you teachers to counteract it before your pupils become the tools of unscrupulous politicians. The bait they hold out is the transformation of all countries into Welfare States, but that can be achieved only by dissipating the wealth of their nations. Wherever that happened a collapse would inevitably follow; and it is in taking such a risk, to achieve their own ends, that the Socialists play the Communists' game for them. A national collapse drives people to desperation, and it is then that in their despair they are only too apt to surrender their liberties to the soap-box orators who promise to save them. If their minds have been conditioned by Left-wing thinkers beforehand, they accept a Communist dictatorship without a struggle.”

“The Socialists are certainly not playing the Communists' game in England.”

“Less so perhaps than in many other countries; but they are playing it all the same. England cannot be altogether an exception to the rule that all over the world many Socialist leaders are crypto-Communists. That is, Party members who are under orders not to divulge the fact that they are Communists, because they can do much more valuable work for the Party by keeping it secret. It is such men who ferment unjustifiable strikes and go slow movements, and, where they are Trade Union Officials, press for exorbitant wage increases; so that by these means industry is disrupted and the ability to keep up exports reduced. It is others of the same kidney in the parliamentary sphere who persuade or bully their innocent colleagues into adopting policies
which will gain Socialist votes but can only be carried out to the detriment of Britain's financial stability. That is the danger of Socialism. Everywhere the Communists are using it as a lever to impoverish the countries of the West, in the hope of eventually creating chaotic conditions which will enable them to take those countries over, by a skilfully managed series of
coups d'etat
that will have all the appearance of being ‘by the will of the people'.”

“And what do you think of their chances, Mr. Smutný?” Nicholas enquired.

“Nothing like as good as they were a few years ago,” the little man replied. “For one thing, nearly every country your side of the Iron Curtain which tried a Socialist Government has now thrown it out; so, in spite of the terrible drain of the rearmament drive that the Soviets force on them, they have become more stable. For another, I think those crypto-Communists disguised as Socialists, of whom I spoke just now, are themselves beginning to see the red light. They can hardly have failed to observe the Kremlin's method. It is to use such men for the furtherance of Communist aims in their own countries, then when Communist governments take over they are appointed to run them. But for how long? Only for the few years needed by the Kremlin thoroughly to purge the armed services of that country, suppress its church and liquidate all survivors of its old ruling caste, so that there is no longer any great risk of a counter-revolution. Then those men who sold their country to the Soviets are accused of deviation, and liquidated themselves, to be replaced with the Kremlin's own nominees. All the world has seen that happen not once but many times in the Soviet satellite countries. The trial of the fourteen Czech Communist leaders here, headed by the infamous Rudolf Slánský, was typical. Therefore, I think that while the crypto-Communists of the West are perfectly happy to go on accepting money from Moscow to create every sort of trouble, most of them would now think twice before taking the plunge, if they had the chance to carry their task to its logical conclusion.”

“Since you are opposed to Socialism, Mr. Smutný, what form
of government do you suggest? Surely not a continuance of the old reactionary systems?”

“Why not? Although I take exception to the word reactionary. All over the world, and not excepting Russia, there had been a steady improvement in the people's lot for many decades preceding the outbreak of the First World War. You may argue that it was slow, but surely that is better than upheavals in which millions of people lose their lives and the survivors are reduced to permanent slavery.”

“You cannot be serious! You would not have kept the Czarist rule in Russia?”

“Her people would have been infinitely better off than they have become under Comrade Stalin. No one suggests that all the old Monarchies were perfect—far from it. But Monarchy, at its best, is the most sensible form of government so far devised by man, because it gives continuity and stability. To appreciate its virtues you have only to consider the Queen of England, and her predecessors. For many generations they have ruled through governments chosen by their people, without power to oppress but retaining the power to bring the leaders of opposing political factions together in times of crisis—as was done by King George V when the
£
threatened to collapse and he initiated the formation of a National Government. They seek nothing for themselves, devote their lives to the well-being of their subjects, are above all Party strife, and fulfil the burdensome functions of Heads of State far better than any elderly harassed President could do. By comparison, consider how wasteful and inefficient is the constitution of the United States, where for one year in every four the whole country is disrupted by electioneering gone mad.”