Part 30 (1/2)
”Of course it is all forbidden,” spoke up the young Count, ”but now, if it were not, the Princess Marguerite's unique idea would certainly make capital picture material.”
”How clever!” cried the Countess, beaming on her intellectual son.
”Nothing is forbidden for plot material for the Royal Level. You shall make a picture showing those great beasts of labour again liberated for unrestricted love.”
”There is one difficulty,” Count Rudolph considered. ”How could we get actors for the parts? Our thoroughbred actors are all too light of bone, too delicate of motion, and our actresses bred for dainty beauty would hardly caste well for those great hulking round-faced labour mothers.”
”Then,” remarked the Admiral, ”if you must make picture plays why not one of the mating of German soldiers with the women of the inferior races?”
”Wonderful!” exclaimed the plot maker; ”and practical also. Our actresses are the exact counterpart of those pa.s.sionate French beauties.
I often study their portraits in the old galleries. They have had no Eugenics, hence they would be unchanged. Is it not so, Doctor?”
”Without Eugenics, a race changes with exceeding slowness,” answered Zimmern in a voice devoid of expression. ”I should say that the French women of today would much resemble their ancestral types.”
”But picturing such matings of military necessity would be very disgusting,” reprimanded the Countess.
”It will be a very necessary part of the coming day of German dominion,”
stated the Admiral. ”How else can we expect to rule the world? It is, indeed, part of the ordained plan.”
”But how,” I questioned, ”is such a plan to be executed? Would the men of the World State tolerate it?”
”We will oblige them to tolerate it; the children of the next generation of the inferior races must be born of German sires.”
”But the Germans are outnumbered ten to one,” I replied.
”Polygamy will take care of that, among the white races; the coloured races must be eliminated. All breeding of the coloured races must cease.
That, also, is part of the ordained plan.”
The conversation was getting on rather dangerous ground for me as I realized that I dare not show too great surprise at this talk, which of all things I had heard in Germany was the most preposterous.
But Marguerite made no effort to disguise her astonishment. ”I thought,”
she said, ”that the German rule of the world was only a plan for military victory and the conquering of the World Government. I supposed the people would be left free to live their personal lives as they desired.”
”That was the old idea,” replied the Admiral, ”in the days of open war, before the possibilities of eugenic science were fully realized. But the ordained plan revealed to His Majesty requires not only the military and political rule by the Germans, but the biologic conquest of the inferior races by German blood.”
”I think our German system of scientific breeding is very brutal,” spoke up Marguerite with an intensity of feeling quite out of keeping with the calloused manner in which the older members of the Royal House discussed the subject.
The Admiral turned to her with a gracious air. ”My lovely maiden,” he said, ”your youth quite excuses your idealistic sentiments. You need only to remember that you are a daughter of the House of Hohenzollern.
The women of this House are privileged always to cultivate and cherish the beautiful sentiments of romantic love and individual maternity. The protected seclusion of the Royal Level exists that such love may bloom untarnished by the grosser affairs of world necessity. It was so ordained.”
”It was so ordained by men,” replied Marguerite defiantly, ”and what are these privileges while the German women are prost.i.tuted on the Free Level or forced to bear children only to lose them--and while you plan to enforce other women of the world into polygamous union with a conquering race?”
”My dear child,” said the Countess, ”you must not speak in this wild fas.h.i.+on. We women of the Royal House must fully realize our privileges--and as for the Admiral's wonderful tale of world conquest--that is only his latest hobby. It is talked, of course, in military circles, but the defensive war is so dull, you know, especially for the Royal officers, that they must have something to occupy their minds.”
”When the day arrives,” snapped the Admiral, ”you will find the Royal officers leading the Germans to victory like Atilla and William the Great himself.”
”Then why,” twitted the Countess, ”do you not board one of your submarines and go forth to battle in the sea?”