Chapter V

I AM DRAFTED FOR PATERNITY AND MAKE EXTRAORDINARY PETITION TO THE CHIEF OF THE EUGENIC STAFF

~1~

My research was progressing nicely and I had discovered that in this field of chemistry also my knowledge of the outer world would give me tremendous advantages over all competitors. Eagerly I worked at the laboratory, spending most of my evenings in study. Occasionally I attended the educational pictures or dined on the Level of Free Women with my chemical associates and spent an hour or so at dancing or at cards. My life had settled into routine unbroken by adventure. Then I received a notice to report for the annual examination at the Physical Efficiency Laboratory. I went with some misgivings, but the ordeal proved uneventful. A week later I received a most disturbing communication, a bulky and official looking packet bearing the imprint of the Eugenic Office. I nervously slit the envelope and drew forth a letter:

“You are hereby notified that you have reached a stage of advancement in your professional work that marks you a man of superior gifts, and, having been reported as physically perfect you are hereby honoured with the high privilege and sacred duties of election to paternity. Full instructions for your conduct in this duty to the State will be found in the enclosed folder.”

In nervous haste I scanned the printed folder:

“Your first duty will be to visit the boys’ school for which passport is here enclosed. The purpose of this is to awaken the paternal instincts that you may better appreciate and feel the holy obligation and privilege conferred upon you. You will also find enclosed cards of introduction to three women whom the Eugenic Office finds to be fitted as mothers of your children. That natural selection may have a limited play you are permitted to select only one woman from each three assigned. Such selection must be made and reported within thirty days, after which a second trio will be assigned you. Until such final selection has been recorded you are expressly forbidden to conduct yourself toward these women in an amorous manner.”

Next followed a set of exacting rules for the proper deportment, in the carrying out of these duties to which the State had assigned me.

A crushing sense of revulsion, a feeling of loathing and uncleanliness overwhelmed me as I pushed aside the papers. Coming from a world where the right of the individual to freedom and privacy in the matrimonial and paternal relations was recognized as a fundamental right of man, I found this officious communication, with its detailed instruction, appalling and revolting.

A man cravenly clings to life and yet there are instincts in his soul which will cause him to sell life defiantly for a mere conception of a moral principle. To become by official mandate a father of a numerous German progeny was a thing to which I could not and would not submit. Many times that day as I automatically pursued my work, I resolved to go to some one in authority and give myself up to be sent to the mines as a prisoner of war, or more likely to be executed as a spy. Cold reason showed me the futility of neglecting or attempting to avoid an assigned duty. It was a military civilization and I had already seen enough of this ordered life of Berlin to know that there was no middle ground of choice between explicit obedience and open rebellion. Nor need I concern myself with what punishment might be provided for this particular disobedience for I saw that rebellion for me would mean an investigation that would result in complete tearing away of the protecting mask of my German identity.

But after my first tumultuous feeling subsided I realized that something more than my own life was at stake. Already possessed of much intimate knowledge of the life within Berlin I believed that I was in a way to come into possession of secrets of vast and vital importance to the world. To gain these secrets, to escape from the walls of Berlin, was a more than personal ambition; it was an ambition for mankind.

After a day or two of deliberation I therefore decided against any rash rebellion. Moreover, as nothing compromising was immediately required of me, I detached and mailed the four coupons provided, having duly filled in the time at which I should make the preliminary calls.

~2~

On the day and hour appointed I presented the school card to the elevator operator, who punched it after the manner of his kind, and duly deposited me on the level of schools for boys of the professional groups. A lad of about sixteen met me at the elevator and conducted me to the school designated.

The master greeted me with obsequious gravity, and waved me to the visitor’s seat on a raised platform. “You will be asked to speak,” he said, “and I beg that you will tell the boys of the wonderful chemical discoveries that won you the honours of election to paternity.”

“But,” I protested, as I glanced at the boys who were being put through their morning drill in the gymnasium, “I fear the boys of such age will not comprehend the nature of my work.”

“Certainly not,” he replied, “and I would rather you did not try to simplify it for their undeveloped minds, merely speak learnedly of your work as if you were addressing a body of your colleagues. The less the boys understand of it the more they will be impressed with its importance, and the more ambitious they will be to become great chemists.”

This strange philosophy of education annoyed me, but I did not have time to argue further for the bell had rung and the boys were filing in with strict military precision. There were about fifty of them, all in their twelfth year, and of remarkable uniformity in size and development. The blanched skin, which marked the adult faces of Berlin, was, in the pasty countenance of those German boys, a more horrifying spectacle. Yet they stood erect and, despite their lack of colour, were evidently a well nourished, well exercised group of youngsters.

As the last boy reached his place the master motioned with his hand and fifty arms moved in unison in a mechanical salute.

“We have with us this morning,” said the master, “a chemist who has won the honours of paternity with his original thought. He will tell you about his work which you cannot understand--you should therefore listen attentively.”

After a few more sentences of these paradoxical axioms on education, the master nodded, and, as I had been instructed, I proceeded to talk of the chemical lore of poison gases.

“And now,” said the master, when I resumed my seat, “we will have a review lesson. You will first recite in unison the creed of your caste.”

“We are youth of the super-race,” began the boys in a sing-song and well timed chorus. “We belong to the chemical group of the intellectual levels, being born of sires who were great chemists, born of great chemists for many generations. It is our duty to learn while we are yet young all that we may ever need to know, to keep our minds free from forbidden knowledge and to resist the temptation to think on unnecessary things. So we may be good Germans, loyal to the House of Hohenzollern and to the worship of the old German God and the divine blood of William the Great.”

The schoolmaster, who had nodded his head in unison with the rhythm of the recitation, now smiled in satisfaction. “That was very good,” he said. “I did not hear one faltering voice. Now you may recite individually in your alphabetical order.

“Anton, you may describe the stages in the evolution of the super-man.”

Anton, a flaxen-haired youngster, arose, saluted like a wooden soldier, and intoned the following monologue:

“Man is an animal in the process of evolving into a god. The method of this evolution is a struggle in which the weak perish and the strong survive. First in this process of man’s evolution came the savage, who lived with the lions and the apes. In the second stage came the dark races who built the so-called ancient civilizations, and fought among themselves to possess private property and women and children. Third came the barbarian Blond Brutes, who were destined to sire the super-race, but the day had not yet come, and they mixed with the dark races and produced the mongrel peoples, which make the fourth. The fifth stage is the pure bred Blond Brutes, uncontaminated by inferior races, which are the men, who under God’s direction, built the Armoured City of Berlin in which to breed the Supermen who are to conquer the mongrel peoples. The sixth, last and culminating stage of the evolution of man is the Divinity in human form which is our noble House of Hohenzollern, descended physically from William the Great, and spiritually from the soul of God Himself, whose statue stands with that of the Mighty William at the portals of the Emperor’s palace.”

It had been a noble effort for so young a memory and as the proud master looked at me expectantly I could do nothing less than nod my appreciation.

The master now gave Bruno the following cue:

“Name the four kinds of government and explain each.”

From the sad-eyed youth of twelve came this flow of wisdom:

“The first form of government is monarchy, in which the people are ruled by a man who calls himself a king but who has no divine authority so that the people sometimes failed to respect him and made revolutions and tried to govern themselves. The second form of government is a republic, sometimes called a democracy. It is usually co-existent with the lawyer, the priest, the family and the greed for gold. But in reality this government is by the rich men, who let the poor men vote and think they have a share in the government, thus to keep them contented with their poverty. The third form of government is proletariat socialism in which the people, having abolished kings and rich men, attempt to govern themselves; but this they cannot do for the same reason that a man cannot lift himself by his shoestraps--”

At this point Bruno faltered and his face went chalky white. The teacher being directly in front of the standing pupil did not see what had happened, while I, with fleeting memory of my own school days, suppressed my mirth behind a formal countenance, as the stoic Bruno resumed his seat.

The master marked zero on the roll and called upon Conrad, next in line, to finish the recitation.

“The fourth and last form of government,” recited Conrad, “is autocratic socialism, the perfect government that we Germans have evolved from proletariat socialism which had destroyed the greed for private property and private family life, so that the people ceased to struggle individually and were ready to accept the Royal House, divinely appointed by God to govern them perfectly and prepare them to make war for the conquest of the world.”

The recitations now turned to repetitions of the pedigree and ranking of the various branches of the Royal House. But it was a mere list of names like the begats of Genesis and I was not able to profit much by this opportunity to improve my own neglected education. As the morning wore on the parrot-like monologues shifted to elementary chemistry.

The master had gone entirely through the alphabet of names and now called again the apt Anton for a more brilliant demonstration of his system of teaching. “Since we have with us a chemist who has achieved powers of original thought, I will permit you, Anton, to demonstrate that even at the tender age of twelve you are capable of original thought.”

Anton rose gravely and stood at attention. “And what shall I think about?” he asked.

“About anything you like,” responded the liberal minded schoolmaster, “provided it is limited to your permitted field of psychic activity.”

Anton tilted back his head and gazed raptly at a portrait of the Mighty William. “I think,” he said, “that the water molecule is made of two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen.”

A number of the boys shook their heads in disapproval, evidently recognizing the thought as not being original, but the teacher waited in respectful silence for the founts of originality to burst forth in Anton’s mind.

“And I think,” continued Anton, “that if the water molecule were made of four atoms of nitrogen and one of oxygen, it would be a great economy, for after we had bathed in the water we could evaporate it and make air and breath it, and after we had breathed it we could condense it again and use it to drink--”

“But that would be unsanitary,” piped a voice from the back of the room.

To this interruption Anton, without taking his gaze from the face of William, replied, “Of course it would if we didn’t sterilize it, but I was coming to that. We would sterilize it each time.”

The master now designated two boys to take to the guardhouse of the school the lad who had spoken without permission. He then produced a red cardboard cross adorned with the imperial eagle and crossed test-tubes of the chemists’ insignia and I was honoured by being asked to decorate Anton for his brilliant exploit in original thought.

“Our intellectual work of the day is over,” resumed the master, “but in honour of our guest we will have, a day in advance, our weekly exercises in emotion. Heinrich, you may recite for us the category of emotions.”

“The permitted emotions,” said Heinrich, “are: First, anger, which we should feel when a weak enemy offends us. Second, hate, which is a higher form of anger, which we should feel when a powerful enemy offends us. Third, sadness, which we should feel when we suffer. Fourth, mirth, which we should feel when our enemy suffers. Fifth, courage, which we feel at all times because we believe in our strength. Sixth, humility, which we should feel only before our superiors. Seventh, and greatest, is pride, which we should feel at all times because we are Germans.

“The forbidden emotions are very numerous. The chief ones which we must guard against are: First, pity, which is a sadness when our enemy suffers; to feel this is exceedingly wicked. Second, envy, which is a feeling that some one else is better than we are, which we must not feel at all because it is destructive of pride. Third, fear, which is a lack of courage. Fourth, love, which is a confession of weakness, and is permissible only to women and dogs.”

“Very good,” said the master, “I will now grant you permission to feel some of the permitted emotions. We will first conduct a chemical experiment. I have in this bottle a dangerous explosive and as I drop in this pellet it may explode and kill us all, but you must show courage and not fear.” He held the pellet above the mouth of the bottle, but his eyes were on his pupils. As he dropped the pellet into the bottle, he knocked over with his foot a slab of concrete, which fell to the floor with a resounding crash. A few of the boys jumped in their seats, and the master gravely marked them as deficient in courage.

“You now imagine that you are adult chemists and that the enemy has produced a new form of gas bomb, a gas against which we have no protection. They are dropping the gas bombs into our ventilating shafts and are killing our soldiers in the mines. You hate the enemy--hate hard--make your faces black with hate and rage. Adolph, you are expressing mere anger. There, that is better. You never can be a good German until you learn to hate.

“And now we will have a permitted emotion that you all enjoy; the privilege to feel mirth is a thing for which you should be grateful.

“An enemy came flying over Berlin--and this is a true story. I can remember when it happened. The roof guard shot at him and winged his plane, and he came down in his parachute, which missed the roof of the city and fell to the earth outside the walls but within the first ring of the ray defences. He knew that he could not pass beyond this and he wandered about for many days within range of the glasses of the roof guards. When he was nearly starved he came near the wall and waved his white kerchief, which meant he wished to surrender and be taken into the city.”

At this point one of the boys tittered, and the master stopped his story long enough to mark a credit for this first laugh.

“As the enemy aviator continued to walk about waving his cowardly flag another enemy plane saw him and let down a line, but the roof guards shelled and destroyed the plane. Then other planes came and attempted to pick up the man with lines. In all seven planes were destroyed in attempting to rescue one man. It was very foolish and very comical. At last the eighth plane came and succeeded in reaching the man a line without being winged. The roof batteries shot at the plane in vain--then the roof gunners became filled with good German hate, and one of them aimed, not at the plane, but at the man swinging on the unstable wire line two thousand metres beneath. The shell exploded so near that the man disappeared as by magic, and the plane flew off with the empty dangling line.”

As the story was finished the boys who had listened with varying degrees of mechanical smiles now broke out into a chorus of raucous laughter. It was a forced unnatural laughter such as one hears from a bad actor attempting to express mirth he does not feel.

When the boys had ceased their crude guffaws the master asked, “Why did you laugh?”

“Because,” answered Conrad, “the enemy were so stupid as to waste seven planes trying to save one man.”

“That is fine,” said the master; “we should always laugh when our enemy is stupid, because then he suffers without knowing why he suffers. If the enemy were not stupid they would cease fighting and permit us to rule them and breed the stupidity out of them, as it has been bred out of the Germans by our good old God and the divine mind of the House of Hohenzollern.”

The boys were now dismissed for a recess and went into the gymnasium to play leap frog. But the sad-eyed Bruno promptly returned and saluted.

“You may speak,” said the master.

“I wish, Herr Teacher,” said Bruno, “to petition you for permission to fight with Conrad.”

“But you must not begin a fight,” admonished the master, “unless you can attach to your opponent the odium of causing the strife.”

“But he did cause the odium,” said Bruno; “he stuck it into my leg with a pin while I was reciting. The Herr Father saw him do it, “--and the boy turned his eyes towards me in sad and serious appeal.

The schoolmaster glanced at me inquiringly and I corroborated the lad’s accusation.

“Then,” said the master, “you have a casus belli that is actually true, and if you can make Conrad admit his guilt I will exchange your mark for his.”

Bruno saluted again and started to leave. Then he turned back and said, “But Conrad is two kilograms heavier than I am, and he may not admit it.”

“Then,” said the teacher, “you must know that I cannot exchange the marks, for victory in a fight compensates for the fault that caused it. But if you wish I will change the marks now, but then you cannot fight.”

“But I wish to fight,” said Bruno, “and so does Conrad. We arranged it before recitation that he was to stick me with the pin.”

“Such diplomacy!” exulted the master when the lad had gone, “and to think that they can only be chemists!”

~3~

As the evening hour drew near which I had set for my call on the first of the potential mothers assigned me by the Eugenic Staff, I re-read the rules for my conduct:

“On the occasion of this visit you must wear a full dress uniform, including all orders, decorations and badges of rank and service to which you are entitled. This is very important and you should call attention thereto and explain the full dignity and importance of your rank and decorations.

“When you call you will first present the card of authorization. You will then present your identification folder and extol the worth and character of your pedigree.

“Then you will ask to see the pedigree of the woman, and will not fail to comment favourably thereon. If she be already a mother you will inquire in regard to her children. If she be not a mother, you will supplicate her to speak of her potential children. You will extol the virtue of her offspring--or her visions thereof, --and will not fail to speak favourably of their promise of becoming great chemists whose service will redound to the honour of the German race and the Royal House.

“After the above mentioned matters have been properly spoken of, you may compliment the mother upon her own intelligence and fitness as a mother of scientists. But you will refrain from all reference to her beauty of person, lest her thoughts be diverted from her higher purpose to matters of personal amours.

“You will not prolong your call beyond the hours consistent with dignity and propriety, nor permit the mother to perceive your disposition toward her.”

Surely nothing in such formal procedure could be incompatible with my own ideals of propriety. Taking with me my card of authorization bearing the name “Frau Karoline, daughter of Ernest Pfeiffer, Director of the Perfume Works,” I now ventured to the Level of Maternity.

Countless women passed me as I walked along. They were erect of form and plain of feature, with expressions devoid of either intelligence or passion. Garbed in formless robes of sombre grey, like saints of song and story, they went their way with solemn resignation. Some of them led small children by the hand; others pushed perambulators containing white robed infants being taken to or from the nurseries for their scheduled stays in the mothers’ individual apartments.

The actions of the mothers were as methodical as well trained nurses. In their faces was the cold, pallid light of the mother love of the madonnas of art, uncontaminated by the fretful excitement of the mother love in a freer and more uncertain world.

Even the children seemed wooden cherubim. They were physically healthy beyond all blemish, but they cooed and smiled in a subdued manner. Already the ever present “verboten“ of an ordered life seemed to have crept into the small souls and repressed the instincts of anarchy and the aspirations of individualism. As I walked among these madonnas of science and their angelic offspring, I felt as I imagined a man of earthly passions would feel if suddenly loosed in a mediaeval and orthodox heaven; for everything about me breathed peace, goodness, and coldness.

At the door of her apartment Frau Karoline greeted me with formal gravity. She was a young woman of twenty years, with a high forehead and piercing eyes. Her face was mobile but her manner possessed the dignity of the matron assured of her importance in the world. Her only child was at the nursery at the time, in accordance with the rules of the level that forbids a man to see his step-children. But a large photograph, aided by Frau Karoline’s fulsome description and eulogies, gave me a very clear picture of the high order of the young chemist’s intelligence though that worthy had but recently passed his first birthday.

The necessary matters of the inspection of pedigrees and the signing of my card of authorization had been conducted by the young mother with the cool self-possession of a well disciplined school-mistress. Her attitude and manner revealed the thoroughness of her education and training for her duties and functions in life. And yet, though she relieved me so skilfully of what I feared would be an embarrassing situation, I conceived an intense dislike for this most exemplary young mother, for she made me feel that a man was a most useless and insignificant creature to be tolerated as a necessary evil in this maternal world.

“Surely,” said Frau Karoline, as I returned her pedigree, “you could not do better for your first born child than to honour me with his motherhood. Not only is my pedigree of the purest of chemical lines, reaching back to the establishment of the eugenic control, but I myself have taken the highest honours in the training for motherhood.”

“Yes,” I acknowledged, “you seem very well trained.”

“I am particularly well versed,” she continued, “in maternal psychology; and I have successfully cultivated calmness. In the final tests before my confirmation for maternity I was found to be entirely free from erotic and sentimental emotions.”

“But,” I ventured, “is not maternal love a sentimental emotion?”

“By no means,” replied Frau Karoline. “Maternal love of the highest order, such as I possess, is purely intellectual; it recognizes only the passions for the greatness of race and the glory of the Royal House. Such love must be born of the intellect; that is why we women of the scientific group are the best of all mothers. Thus, were I not wholly free from weak sentimentality, I might desire that my second child be sired by the father of my first, but the Eugenic Office has determined that I would bear a stronger child from a younger father, therefore I acquiesced to their change of assignment without emotion, as becomes a proper mother of our well bred race. My first child is extremely intellectual but he is not quite perfect physically, and a mother such as I should bear only perfect children. That alone is the supreme purpose of motherhood. Do you not see that I am fitted for perfect motherhood?”

“Yes,” I replied, as I recalled that my instructions were to pay compliments, “you seem to be a perfect mother.”

But the cold and logical perfection of Frau Karoline dampened my curiosity and oppressed my spirit of adventure, and I closed the interview with all possible speed and fled headlong to the nearest elevator that would carry me from the level.

~4~

In my first experience I had suffered nothing worse than an embarrassing half hour, so, with more confidence I pressed the bell the second evening, at the apartment of Frau Augusta, daughter of Gustave Schnorr, Authority on Synthetic Nicotine.

Frau Augusta was a woman of thirty-five. She was well-preserved, more handsome and less coldly inhuman than the younger woman.

“We will get the formalities over since you have been told they are necessary,” said Frau Augusta, as she reached for my card and folder and, at the same time, handing me her own pedigree.

Peering over the top of the chart that recorded the antecedents of Gustave Schnorr, I saw his daughter going through my own folder with the business-like dispatch of a society dowager examining the “character” of a new housemaid.

“Ah, yes,” she said, raising her brows. “I thought I knew the family. Your Uncle Otto was my second mate. He is the father of my third son and my twin girls. I have no more promising children. Have you ever met him? He is in the aluminum tempering laboratories.”

I could only stare stupidly, struck dumb with embarrassment.

“No, I suppose not,” went on Frau Augusta, “it is hardly to be expected since you have upwards of a hundred uncles.” She arose and, going toward a shelf where half a dozen pictures of half a dozen men reposed in an orderly row, took the second one of the group and handed it to me.

“He is a fine man,” she said, with a very full degree of pride for a past and partial possession. “I fear the Staff erred in transferring him, but then of course the twin girls were most unexpected and unfortunate since the Armstadt line is supposed to sire seventy-five per cent, male offspring.

“What do you think? Isn’t the Eugenic Office a little unfair at times? My fifth man thought so. He said it was a case of politics. I don’t know. I thought politics was something ancient that they had in old books like churches and families.”

“I am sure I do not know,” I murmured, as I fumbled the portrait of my putative uncle.

“Of course,” continued the voluble Fran Augusta, “you must not think I am criticizing the authorities. It is all very necessary. And for the most part I think they have done very well by me. My ten children have six fathers. All of them but the first were men of most gracious manner and superior intelligence. The first one had his paternity right revoked, so I feel satisfied on that score, even if his son is not gifted--and yet the boy has beautiful hair--I think he would make an excellent violinist. But then perhaps he wouldn’t have been able to play, so maybe it is all right, though I would think music would be more easily learned than chemistry. But then since I cannot read either I ought not to judge. I will show you his picture. I may as well show you all their pictures. I don’t see why you elected fathers should not see our children--but then I suppose it might produce quarrels. Some women are so foolish and insist on talking about the children they have already borne in a way that makes a man feel that his own children could never come up to them. Now I never do that. Why should one? The future is always more interesting than the past. I haven’t a single child that has not won the porcelain cross for obedience. Even my youngest--he is only fourteen months--obeys as if he were a full grown man. Some say mental and physical excellence are not correlated--but that is a prejudice because of those great labour beasts. There isn’t one of my children that has fallen below the minimum growth standards, except my third daughter, and her father was undersized, so it is no fault of mine.”

As the loquacious mother chattered on, she produced an album, through which I now turned, inspecting the annual photographs of her blond brood, each of which was labelled with the statistics of physical growth and the tests of psychic development.