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Two actors enter from opposite sides, and meet mid-stage.
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First Actor:
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How fares it with the National Socialists?
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Second Actor:
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Like to a swollen sea, whose glutted maw,
Plucking unwary workers to the pit,
Belches their bones to heav’n. The Führer now,
Crazed with the blood of fourteen million votes
Rages, an insatiate vampire, through the realm.
Stormtroopers, boys whose side-nicked helmets hang
Ill-fitting round their blunt and flaxen brows
Burst wide the doors of workers’ hovels, rip
Infants from dugs they doubt of Marxist milk.
The proletariat is quite undone,
Its several strengths like straw stamped into earth,
Its leaders hung like dried flesh in the wind,
Speared on the swastika’s thick-venomed points.
Stranger and Jew, whose outer shapes are guessed
Mere figments to belie a brutish soul
Stand stripped at history’s stark extremity
To perish in a little puff of gas.
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First actor:
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But by what curse or calumny of Jove
Was this ill-fated thunderbolt unleashed
To rout the concorde of our bleeding land?
What festering vice, loathsome in heaven’s sight,
Provoked this sudden and most doleful fate?
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Second actor:
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No fate, nor work of Jove, but men’s own hands.
Thou know’st when capital is grievous sick,
Racked and inflated by the plundered fare
Its straining bowels can no longer void,
Its flesh gross-swollen while its bones decay,
It seeks a remedy to heal itself
And eyes with fear its proper lusty heir,
Like to a dying man whose glazed eye
Glowers upon his hot rebellious son
And seeks device to disinherit him.
The bourgeoisie, their factories all spent,
Idle and aimless as a rusty toy,
Must needs make prey on fear to quench their fear
And bring a wrathful working class to heel.
Accordingly they summon to their sleek
And baubled chambers men whose swinish breath
Appals their piled carpets and fair wives.
Attend, and you shall see the spectacle.
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Enter two capitalists, with serving maid.
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First capitalist:
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Stands Master H without?
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Maid:
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He does, my lord.
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First capitalist:
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Bid him attend us presently.
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Maid:
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I will. (Exit)
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First capitalist:
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This lower middle class soliciting
Cannot be ill; cannot be good. If ill,
Why does it give us earnest of success,
Beginning with the Youth? My thought’s diseased.
If good, why do I yield to this gross swain (indicates off)
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs
Against the use of nature?
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Second capitalist:
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Bid it peace.
Regard him as you would a willing ass
Whose tawdry ends may for a while serve ours
Until we cast him off to shake his ears
And graze in commons. Or as some lowly tongs
Wherewith we grasp the glowing coal of strife
And pluck it from the charred flesh of our land,
But being thus themselves inflamed with heat
Do instantly consign unto the dust.
He knows the people—cons their flighty ways,
Plays on each contradiction, fathers myths
To busy rancorous minds with racial strife
And like a well-trained actor can assume
A thousand masks to maze the populace.
For one he’s Red; another, demi-god,
Now worker, now old Bismarck disinterred,
Shopkeeper, soldier, all: the Fatherland
Pressed and distilled into one puny frame.
What though his loutish followers break wind
And skulls throughout the alleys of Berlin?
Those clubs and staves cleave heads which dream our deaths,
While we sit here pure-handed.
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First capitalist:
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Be it so.
And yet I fear the very clubs they wield
May fall upon our heads. (Enter Hitler and maid)
But here he comes.
Good Master Hitler, welcome to our house.
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Hitler:
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(looking after woman as she exits): Marry, an’ I had that serving wench over a table I’d show those foul-mouthed historians I can do the trick as prime as another, i’ faith I would! (looks around) Here’s a fair piece of bricks and mortar. Now masters, what’s your will?
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First capitalist:
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Good Master Hitler, thou know’st with what dear love
Thy name is bruited ’midst the populace.
Old men, remembrous of those fabled years
Before the canker of these discontents
When but the name of Germany would rout
An envious foe, fetch spirits from the deep,
Mumble scant-winded blessings at thy sight,
And smooth-cheeked boys scarce out of swaddling clouts
Strut proud before their glass to imitate
The very art and motion of thy frame.
Housewives hold babes aloft to glimpse in thee
The living figure of the Fatherland,
And our best manhood, wroth to see their soil
Shackled and parcelled out by foreign powers
Clamour for you to venge their grievous shame.
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Hitler:
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Ay, ’tis true I can dabble i’ the hearts of the people, so I can keep my nose above their stink. What of that?
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First capitalist:
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In no less honour do ourselves hold thee,
On whom the grave and leaden burden falls
Of economic governance of this realm.
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Hitler:
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Handy-dandy, here’s a new tune! Since when hast thou grown so tender to that which but yesterday ye spurned like a mangy cur? Then you spat me and my lusty knaves out like sour wine, and hast thou now returned to eat up they dead vomit?
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First capitalist:
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Fair housepainter, thou know’st the ship of state
Tosses, a sore-wracked vessel, in the flood.
The workers cry for bread and occupation,
Stirred by the Communists, whose envious thoughts
Seek to annex our realm to Moscow’s rule.
The Government is sick and impotent,
A chamberful of feeble, snappish knaves;
Our profits plummet like a wounded bird,
Pierced by the arrow of plebian greed.
What, can we keep each working man and wife
Clothed and fed like foppish courtiers?
Is it our doing that their hands hang slack?
Their unions brew thick quarrels like strong wine,
Drive all to chaos, rend the harmony
Of this our kingdom, threaten to usurp
Our proper wisdom with their own thin wit,
And bring this vexed land of Germany
Fast to the brink of ruin. But in thee,
The very fount and image of our strength,
The pearl, the non-pareil, the paradigm
The parson’s nose, the prime, the pinnacle
We gaze upon heaven’s own bright emissary
Who with one blow of thy soft-feathered wings
Will dash the dolts of hell. Is it not so?
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Second capitalist:
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Truly we look here on our ancestry
Frederick the Great peeps from this visage plain
Bismarck and Nietzsche, Marx (Hitler startled) – forgive my tongue:
It rides too loose in my prophetic mouth.
But I protest that in this single frame (takes Hitler’s arm)
So seeming puny (Hitler protests mutely), in appearance squat,
Dwarfish and mean, and in this very voice
So seeming raucous, spittle-clogged and rough,
Yea, in this man, whom fuddled brains might think
No greater than a stagey short-arsed runt
We contemplate the future of our land:
Our Father, Mother, Brother, Son and Spouse,
Our Blood, our Soil, our Life, our Destiny!
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He has raised Hitler’s arm to the Nazi salute position.
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Hitler:
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Nay, an’ ye speak blank verse I’ll match thee.
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(Clears throat: he accompanies the following speech with characteristic Hitler gestures, rising to a frenzied crescendo in the middle.)
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Kind Bankers both, I thank you for these few
Kind words, which I find gratificatory
In the extreme, and likewise friends to you.
I am indeed a man which Nature chose
To lead the people, all the people fair,
Like to a mighty whale in the great ocean
Who is so very strong and huge and can
Do wondrous feats, like smashing up of ships
And suchlike, in the ocean’s wondrous deep
So very very very very strong
Or like to the mighty hot sun right up in the sky
Who sits up there like a great big bloody face
And sends down all his rays and heat and stuff
Down into the faces of all the people underneath
Or like to an eagle or a monarch-arch
Or something such as that. Kind bankers both,
I thank you for these few kind kind kind words.
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First capitalist:
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These noble words confirm thy soul’s expanse,
In which the unity of all our land
Stands fast assured.
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Hitler:
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Except, squire, for the yids. Why, if they be true men I’m nought but a crackpated windbag. Marry, an’ we allow those scurvy moneybags to be true Germans we had lief allow stoats and toads to our company. If you prick them, do they bleed? Out upon’t, nerry a drop?
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First capitalist:
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We know they zeal for purity of blood,
And do concur. For in our mutual strife
Against these vile and most malignant curs
Shall not we Germans find our truest bonds,
Yea, banker, proletariat, peasant, all
Oblivious of these petty squabblings
Which now do rive us, find a common goal
And re-create a heavenly harmony?
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Hitler (aside):
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Now, squire, I have thee on the hip. (To capitalist) Master Banker, my merry rascals stand restless for some sport. Our party is lusty, creeps on apace, e’en now shakes the poxy pillars of the republic. But your Excellencies, it takes more than sound limbs and a true heart to crack a Jew’s pate (rubs finger and thumb together).
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First capitalist:
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Tall housepainter, our aid lies not in base
And tarnished metal, but in our soul’s dear pledge.
What weighs a bag of paltry jingling coins
When here we yield to you our very hearts?
What victory is nourished by gold,
Rather than by stern mettle and high thoughts?
However, mindful of your lower needs,
Of those more base and animal but yet
Essential and coadjutory parts,
We have set by one million marks for you.
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Hitler (aside):
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’Sblood, that should buy us a mouldy crust at the current rate of inflation. (To capitalist Master) I am right thankful, and I’ll round with thee. Thou knows’t my policies, which I have ever set forth from my heart. An end to anarchy, whether of masters or men, market or mischief. We ha’ need of a mighty state set fair above all classes, to shake by the ears rich loungers as well as cankered communists. But I have ever looked with favour upon such men as thee, the very bulwark of our commonweal. And I tell thee (comes closer, confidentially), if we were to take by the throat a naughty banker (closes fingers around one capitalist’s throat), and likewise a scurvy red (closes fingers round other’s throat), who knows whether by some mishap we mightn’t squeeze the one a mite harder than the other?
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He chuckles. The others join in, at first uneasily, then wholeheartedly.
Hitler to audience:
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I’ll mark these rogues. They play with fire, but their gloves are gold-plated.
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First capitalist:
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Mark the runt well. He’s pliable as silk,
But all as slippery.
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Second capitalist:
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I warrant thee.
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