- Shute, Nevil.
Kindling.
New York: Vintage Books, [1938, 1951] 2010.
ISBN 978-0-307-47417-9.
-
It is the depth of the great depression, and yet business
is booming at Warren Sons and Mortimer, merchant bankers,
in the City of London. Henry Warren, descendant of the founder
of the bank in 1750 and managing director, has never been
busier. Despite the general contraction in the economy,
firms failing, unemployment hitting record after record, and
a collapse in international trade, his bank, which specialises
in floating securities in London for foreign governments,
has more deals pending than he can handle as those governments
seek to raise funds to bolster their tottering economies. A
typical week might see him in Holland, Sweden, Finland, Estonia,
Germany, Holland again, and back to England in time for a Friday
entirely on the telephone and in conferences at his office. It
is an exhausting routine and, truth be told, he was sufficiently
wealthy not to have to work if he didn't wish to, but it was
the Warren and Mortimer bank and he was this generation's
Warren in charge, and that's what Warrens did.
But in the few moments he had to reflect upon his life, there
was little joy in it. He worked so hard he rarely saw others
outside work except for his wife Elise's social engagements,
which he found tedious and her circle of friends annoying and
superficial, but endured out of a sense of duty. He suspected
Elise might be cheating on him with the suave but thoroughly
distasteful Prince Ali Said, and he wasn't the only one: there
were whispers and snickers behind his back in the City. He had
no real friends; only business associates, and with no
children, no legacy to work for other than the firm. Sleep came
only with sleeping pills. He knew his health was declining from
stress, sleep deprivation, and lack of exercise.
After confirming his wife's affair, he offers her an ultimatum:
move away from London to a quiet life in the country or put
an end to the marriage. Independently wealthy, she immediately
opts for the latter and leaves him to work out the
details. What is he now to do with his life? He informs the
servants he is closing the house and offers them generous
severance, tells the bank he is taking an indefinite leave to
travel and recuperate, and tells his chauffeur to prepare for
a long trip, details to come. They depart in the car, northbound.
He vows to walk twenty miles a day, every day, until he recovers
his health, mental equilibrium, and ability to sleep.
After a few days walking, eating and sleeping at inns and
guest houses in the northlands, he collapses in excruciating
pain by the side of the road. A passing lorry driver takes him
to a small hospital in the town of Sharples. Barely conscious,
a surgeon diagnoses him with an intestinal obstruction and
says an operation will be necessary. He is wheeled to the
operating theatre. The hospital staff speculates on who he
might be: he has no wallet or other identification. “Probably
one of the men on the road, seeking work in the South”,
they guess.
As he begins his recovery in the hospital Warren decides
not to complicate matters with regard to his identity: “He
had no desire to be a merchant banker in a ward of labourers.”
He confirmed their assumption, adding that he was a bank clerk
recently returned from America where there was no work at all,
in hopes of finding something in the home country. He
recalls that Sharples had been known for the Barlow shipyard, once
a prosperous enterprise, which closed five years ago, taking down
the plate mill and other enterprises it and its workers supported.
There was little work in Sharples, and most of the population was
on relief. He begins to notice that patients in the ward seem
to be dying at an inordinate rate, of maladies not normally
thought life-threatening. He asks Miss McMahon, the hospital's
Almoner, who tells him it's the poor nutrition affordable on
relief, plus the lack of hope and sense of purpose in life due
to long unemployment that's responsible. As he recovers and begins
to take walks in the vicinity, he sees the boarded up stores,
and the derelict shipyard and rolling mill. Curious, he
arranges to tour them. When people speak to him of their hope
the economy will recover and the yard re-open, he is grimly
realistic and candid: with the equipment sold off or in ruins
and the skilled workforce dispersed, how would it win an order
even if there were any orders to be had?
As he is heading back to London to pick up his old life, feeling
better mentally and physically than he had for years, ideas and
numbers begin to swim in his mind.
It was impossible. Nobody, in this time of depression,
could find an order for a single ship…—let
alone a flock of them.
There was the staff. … He could probably get them
together again at a twenty per cent rise in salary—if they
were any good. But how was he to judge of that?
The whole thing was impossible, sheer madness to attempt.
He must be sensible, and put it from his mind.
It would be damn good fun…
Three weeks later, acting through a solicitor to conceal
his identity, Mr. Henry Warren, merchant banker of the City,
became the owner of Barlows' Yard, purchasing it outright
for the sum of £5500. Thus begins one of the most
entertaining, realistic, and heartwarming tales of
entrepreneurship (or perhaps “rentrepreneurship”)
I have ever read. The fact that the author was himself founder
and director of an aircraft manufacturing company during the
depression, and well aware of the need to make payroll every
week, get orders to keep the doors open even if they didn't make
much business sense, and do whatever it takes so that the
business can survive and meet its obligations to its customers,
investors, employees, suppliers, and creditors, contributes
to the authenticity of the tale. (See his autobiography,
Slide Rule [July 2011], for
details of his career.)
Back in his office at the bank, there is the matter of the
oil deal in Laevatia. After defaulting on their last loan, the
Balkan country is viewed as a laughingstock and pariah in the
City, but Warren has an idea. If they are to develop oil
in the country, they will need to ship it, and how better to
ship it than in their own ships, built in Britain on advantageous
terms? Before long, he's off to the Balkans to do a deal in the
Balkan manner (involving bejewelled umbrellas, cases of
Worcestershire sauce, losing to the Treasury minister in the local
card game at a dive in the capital, and working out a deal
where the dividends on the joint stock oil company will be secured
by profits from the national railway. And, there's the matter
of the ships, which will be contracted for by Warren's bank.
Then it's back to London to pitch the deal. Warren's reputation
counts for a great deal in the City, and the preference
shares are placed. That done, the Hawside Ship and Engineering
Company Ltd. is registered with cut-out directors, and
the process of awarding the contract for the tankers to
it is undertaken. As Warren explains to Miss McMahon, who he
has begun to see more frequently, once the order is in hand,
it can be used to float shares in the company to fund the
equipment and staff to build the ships. At least if the
prospectus is sufficiently optimistic—perhaps too
optimistic….
Order in hand, life begins to return to Sharples. First a
few workers, then dozens, then hundreds. The welcome sound
of riveting and welding begins to issue from the yard. A
few boarded-up shops re-open, and then more. Then another order
for a ship came in, thanks to arm-twisting by one of the
yard's directors. With talk of Britain re-arming, there was
the prospect of Admiralty business. There was still only one
newspaper a week in Sharples, brought in from Newcastle and sold
to readers interested in the football news. On one of his
more frequent visits to the town, yard, and Miss McMahon, Warren
sees the headline:
“Revolution in
Laevatia”. “This is a very bad one,”
Warren says. “I don't know what this is going to
mean.”
But, one suspects, he did. As anybody who has been in the
senior management of a publicly-traded company is well aware,
what happens next is well-scripted: the shareholder suit by a
small investor, the press pile-on, the back-turning by the
financial community, the securities investigation, the indictment,
and, eventually, the slammer. Warren understands this, and
works diligently to ensure the Yard survives. There is a
deep mine of wisdom here for anybody facing a bad patch.
“You must make this first year's accounts as bad
as they ever can be,” he said. “You've got a
marvellous opportunity to do so now, one that you'll never have
again. You must examine every contract that you've got, with Jennings,
and Grierson must tell the auditors that every contract will
be carried out at a loss. He'll probably be right, of course—but he
must pile it on. You've got to make reserves this year against every
possible contingency, probable or improbable.”
…
“Pile everything into this year's loss, including a lot that
really ought not to be there. If you do that, next year you'll be
bound to show a profit, and the year after, if you've done it properly
this year. Then as soon as you're showing profits and a decent
show of orders in hand, get rid of this year's losses by writing
down your capital, pay a dividend, and make another issue to replace
the capital.”
Sage advice—I've
been there. We had cash in the till, so we
were able to do a stock buy-back at the bottom, but the principle is
the same.
Having been brought back to life by almost dying in small town
hospital, Warren is rejuvenated by his time in gaol. In
November 1937, he is released and returns to Sharples where,
amidst evidence of prosperity everywhere he approaches the Yard,
to see a plaque on the wall with his face in profile:
“HENRY WARREN — 1934 — HE GAVE US
WORK”. Then he was off to see Miss McMahon.
The only print edition currently available new is a
very expensive hardcover. Used paperbacks
are readily available: check under both Kindling and
the original British title, Ruined City. I have
linked to the Kindle edition above.
- Ringo, John.
Into the Looking Glass.
Riverdale, NY: Baen Publishing, 2005.
ISBN 978-1-4165-2105-1.
-
Without warning, on a fine spring day in central Florida,
an enormous explosion destroys the campus of the
University of Central Florida and the surrounding region.
The flash, heat pulse, and mushroom cloud are observed
far from the site of the detonation. It is clear that
casualties will be massive. First responders, fearing the
worst, break out their equipment to respond to what seems
likely to be nuclear terrorism. The yield of the explosion
is estimated at 60 kilotons of TNT.
But upon closer examination, things seem distinctly odd. There
is none of the residual radiation one would expect from a
nuclear detonation, nor evidence of the prompt radiation nor
electromagnetic pulse expected from a nuclear blast. A
university campus seems an odd target for nuclear terrorism,
in any case. What else could cause such a blast of such
magnitude? Well, an asteroid strike could do it, but the
odds against such an event are very long, and there was no
evidence of ejecta falling back as you'd expect from an
impact.
Faced with a catastrophic yet seemingly inexplicable event,
senior government officials turn to a person with the background
and security clearances to investigate further: Dr. Bill Weaver,
a “redneck physicist” from Huntsville who works as a
consultant to one of the “Beltway bandit”
contractors who orbit the Pentagon. Weaver recalls that a
physicist at the university, Ray Chen, was working on shortcut
to produce a Higgs boson, bypassing the need for an enormous
particle collider. Weaver's guess is that Chen's idea worked
better than he imagined, releasing a pulse of energy which
caused the detonation.
If things so far seemed curious, now they began to get weird.
Approaching the site of the detonation, teams observed a black
globe, seemingly absorbing all light, where Dr. Chen's laboratory
used to be. Then one, and another, giant bug emerge
from the globe. Floridians become accustomed to large, ugly-looking
bugs, but nothing like this—these are creatures from another
world, or maybe universe. A little girl, unharmed, wanders into the
camp, giving her home address as in an area completely obliterated
by the explosion. She is clutching a furry alien with ten legs:
“Tuffy”, who she says speaks to her. Scientists try to
examine the creature and quickly learn the wisdom of the girl's
counsel to not mess with Tuffy.
Police respond to a home invasion call some distance from the
site of the detonation: a report that demons are attacking
their house. Investigating, another portal is discovered in
the woods behind the house, from which monsters begin to issue,
quickly overpowering the light military force summoned to
oppose them. It takes a redneck militia to reinforce a
perimeter around the gateway, while waiting for the Army to
respond.
Apparently, whatever happened on the campus not only opened a
gateway there, but is spawning gateways further removed. Some
connect to worlds seemingly filled with biologically-engineered
monsters bent upon conquest, while others connect to barren
planets, a race of sentient felines, and other aliens who may
be allies or enemies. Weaver has to puzzle all of this out, while
participating in the desperate effort to prevent the invaders,
“T!Ch!R!” or “Titcher”, from establishing
a beachhead on Earth. And the stakes may be much greater than
the fate of the Earth.
This is an action-filled romp, combining the initiation of
humans into a much larger universe worthy of Golden Age science
fiction with military action fiction. I doubt that in the real
world Weaver, the leading expert on the phenomenon and chief
investigator into it, would be allowed to participate in what
amounts to commando missions in which his special skills are not
required but, hey, it makes the story more exciting, and if a
thriller doesn't thrill, it has failed in its mission.
I loved one aspect of the conclusion: never let an alien invasion
go to waste. You'll understand what I'm alluding to when you get
there. And, in the Golden Age tradition, the story sets up for
further adventures. While John Ringo wrote this book by himself,
the remaining three novels in the Looking Glass series are
co-authored with Travis S. Taylor, upon whom the character of
Bill Weaver was modeled.
- Haffner, Sebastian [Raimund Pretzel].
Defying Hitler.
New York: Picador, [2000] 2003.
ISBN 978-0-312-42113-7.
-
In 1933, the author was pursuing his ambition to follow his
father into a career in the Prussian civil service. While
completing his law degree, he had obtained a post as a
Referendar, the lowest rank in the
civil service, performing what amounted to paralegal work for higher
ranking clerks and judges. He enjoyed the work, especially
doing research in the law library and drafting opinions,
and was proud to be a part of the Prussian tradition of
an independent judiciary. He had no strong political views nor
much interest in politics. But, as he says, “I have
a fairly well developed figurative sense of smell, or to put
it differently, a sense of the worth (or worthlessness!) of human,
moral, political views and attitudes. Most Germans unfortunately
lack this sense almost completely.”
When Hitler came to power in January 1933, “As for the
Nazis, my nose left me with no doubts. … How it stank!
That the Nazis were enemies, my enemies and the enemies of all
I held dear, was crystal clear to me from the outset. What was
not at all clear to me was what terrible enemies they would turn
out to be.” Initially, little changed: it was a “matter
for the press”. The new chancellor might rant to enthralled
masses about the Jews, but in the court where Haffner clerked, a
Jewish judge continued to sit on the bench and work continued
as before. He hoped that the political storm on the surface
would leave the depths of the civil service unperturbed. This was
not to be the case.
Haffner was a boy during the First World War, and, like many of
his schoolmates, saw the war as a great adventure which unified
the country. Coming of age in the Weimar Republic, he experienced
the great inflation of 1921–1924 as up-ending the
society: “Amid all the misery, despair, and poverty there
was an air of light-headed youthfulness, licentiousness, and carnival.
Now, for once, the young had money and the old did not. Its
value lasted only a few hours. It was spent as never before or
since; and not on the things old people spend their money on.”
A whole generation whose ancestors had grown up in a highly
structured society where most decisions were made for them now
were faced with the freedom to make whatever they wished of their
private lives. But they had never learned to cope with such
freedom.
After the
Reichstag fire
and the Nazi-organised
boycott
of Jewish businesses (enforced by SA street brawlers
standing in doors and intimidating anybody who tried to enter),
the fundamental transformation of the society accelerated.
Working in the library at the court building, Haffner is shocked
to see this sanctum of jurisprudence defiled by the SA, who had
come to eject all Jews from the building. A Jewish colleague is
expelled from university, fired from the civil service, and opts
to emigrate.
The chaos of the early days of the Nazi ascendency gives way to
Gleichschaltung,
the systematic takeover of all institutions by placing Nazis
in key decision-making positions within them. Haffner sees
the Prussian courts, which famously stood up to Frederick the
Great a century and a half before, meekly toe the line.
Haffner begins to consider emigrating from Germany, but his father
urges him to complete his law degree before leaving. His close
friends among the Referendars
run the gamut from Communist sympathisers to ardent Nazis. As
he is preparing for the Assessor
examination (the next rank in the civil service, and the final
step for a law student), he is called up for mandatory
political and military indoctrination now required for the rank.
The barrier between the personal, professional, and political had
completely fallen. “Four weeks later I was wearing jackboots
and a uniform with a swastika armband, and spent many hours each
day marching in a column in the vicinity of Jüterbog.”
He discovers that, despite his viewing the Nazis as essentially
absurd, there is something about order, regimentation, discipline,
and forced camaraderie that resonates in his German soul.
Finally, there was a typically German aspiration that
began to influence us strongly, although we hardly noticed
it. This was the idolization of proficiency for its own
sake, the desire to do whatever you are assigned to do as well
as it can possibly be done. However senseless, meaningless, or
downright humiliating it may be, it should be done as efficiently,
thoroughly, and faultlessly as could be imagined. So we should
clean lockers, sing, and march? Well, we would clean them better
than any professional cleaner, we would march like campaign
veterans, and we would sing so ruggedly that the trees bent over.
This idolization of proficiency for its own sake is a German
vice; the Germans think it is a German virtue.
…
That was our weakest point—whether we were Nazis or
not. That was the point they attacked with remarkable
psychological and strategic insight.
And here the memoir comes to an end; the author put it aside.
He moved to Paris, but failed to become established there and
returned to Berlin in 1934. He wrote apolitical articles for
art magazines, but as the circle began to close around him and
his new Jewish wife, in 1938 he obtained a visa for the U.K.
and left Germany. He began a writing career, using the
nom de plume Sebastian Haffner
instead of his real name, Raimund Pretzel, to reduce the
risk of reprisals against his family in Germany. With the
outbreak of war, he was deemed an enemy alien and interned on
the Isle of Man. His first book written since emigration,
Germany: Jekyll and Hyde,
was a success in Britain and questions were raised in Parliament
why the author of such an anti-Nazi work was interned: he was
released in August, 1940, and went on to a distinguished career
in journalism in the U.K. He never prepared the manuscript of this
work for publication—he may have been embarrassed at the
youthful naïveté in evidence throughout. After his
death in 1999, his son, Oliver Pretzel (who had taken the original
family name), prepared the manuscript for publication. It went
straight to the top of the German bestseller list, where it
remained for forty-two weeks. Why? Oliver Pretzel says, “Now
I think it was because the book offers direct answers to two questions
that Germans of my generation had been asking their parents since
the war: ‘How were the Nazis possible?’ and
‘Why didn't you stop them?’ ”.
This is a period piece, not a work of history. Set aside by
the author in 1939, it provides a look through the eyes of a
young man who sees his country becoming something which repels
him and the madness that ensues when the collective is exalted
above the individual. The title is somewhat odd—there is
precious little defying of Hitler here—the ultimate defiance
is simply making the decision to emigrate rather than give tacit
support to the madness by remaining. I can appreciate that.
This edition was translated from the original German and
annotated by the author's son, Oliver Pretzel, who wrote the
introduction and afterword which place the work in the
context of the author's career and describe why it was
never published in his lifetime.
A Kindle edition is available.
Thanks to Glenn Beck for recommending this book.