Page:Storm Over Paris.pdf/32

bespectacled eyes. "Vote, citizens: Go and vote!" he was shouting in a chirping, high voice. "Vote and your steaks will be thicker, your soup better and your wine will have more body. Your children will play at the seashore in the hot summer months. Long live the forty-hour work-week; down with unemployment!"

"Don't listen to him!" This came from a youth perched on a lamp-post. His coat was unbuttoned and his chest half bare; his voice was hoarse, and there was a prominent Adam's apple on his long, gaunt neck. "Don't let all that fine talk seduce you. It's not for thicker steaks or better wine we're fighting. A solid wall against Fascism-that's what we're after!"

"Death to Fascism! Death!" echoed the inflamed crowd. Far overhead the moon smiled its sardonic smile.

Climbing the subway steps on his way home from work, Morris Berger caught the mood in the air. At once he forgot his hunger and fatigue after the ride in the crowded train all the way from the factory. He managed to push his rounded shoulders through the crowd. The new speaker on the platform was tall and thin, neatly dressed, and with long, sensitive hands. He spoke quietly and in a disciplined voice, halting after every sentence, as though in imagination he was inspecting and controlling the impact of the words after they had left his lips. The crowd huddled closer, eager to catch the phrases that came like cool drops of water to parched throats.

"Forget your bickerings and your personal ambitions, your quarrels and your differences," he said calmly, confidentially as if he were lecturing to a class of students at the Sorbonne. "Form a common defense. Let the people unite. That is our goal. Let us build on the basis of understanding, not of hate. We have developed industrial techniques that can spare us