“Is there trouble?” Juliana asked Joe.
He grunted, keeping his eyes on the road.
“Tell me what happens,” she said. “I know I won’t get to finish it; we’ll be in Denver pretty soon. Do America and Britain get into a war, and one emerges as ruler of the world?”
Presently Joe said, “In some ways it’s not a bad book. He works all the details out; the U.S. has the Pacific, about like our East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. They divide Russia. It works for around ten years. Then there’s trouble—naturally.”
“Why naturally?”
“Human nature.” Joe added, “Nature of states. Suspicion, fear, greed. Churchill thinks the U.S.A. is undermining British rule in South Asia by appealing to the large Chinese populations, who naturally are pro-U.S.A., due to Chiang Kai-shek. The British start setting up”—he grinned at her briefly—”what are called ‘detention preserves.’ Concentration camps, in other words. For thousands of maybe disloyal Chinese. They’re accused of sabotage and propaganda. Churchill is so—”
“You mean he’s still in power? Wouldn’t he be around ninety?”
Joe said, “That’s where the British system has it over the American. Every eight years the U.S. boots out its leaders, no matter how qualified—but Churchill just stays on. The U.S. doesn’t have any leadership like him, after Tugwell. Just nonentities. And the older he gets, the more autocratic and rigid he gets—Churchill, I mean. Until by 1960, he’s like some old warlord out of Central Asia; nobody can cross him. He’s been in power twenty years.”
“Good God,” she said, leafing through the last part of the book, searching for verification of what Joe was saying.
“On that I agree,” Joe said. “Churchill was the one good leader the British had during the war; if they’d retained him they’d have been better off. I tell you; a state is no better than its leader. Fuhrerprinzip–Principle of Leadership, like the Nazis say. They’re right. Even this Abendsen has to face that. Sure, the U.S.A. expands economically after winning the war over Japan, because it’s got that huge market in Asia that it’s wrested from the Japs. But that’s not enough; that’s got no spirituality. Not that the British have. They’re both plutocracies, rule by the rich. If they had won, all they’d have thought about was making more money, that upper class. Abendsen, he’s wrong; there would be no social reform, no welfare public works plans—the Anglo-Saxon plutocrats wouldn’t have permitted it.”
Juliana thought, Spoken like a devout Fascist.
Evidently Joe perceived by her expression what she was thinking; he turned toward her, slowing the car, one eye on her, one on the cars ahead. “Listen, I’m not an intellectual. Fascism has no need of that. What is wanted is the deed. Theory derives from action. What our corporate state demands from us is comprehension of the social forces of history. You see? I tell you; I know, Juliana.” His tone was earnest, almost beseeching. “Those old rotten money-run empires, Britain and France and U.S.A., although the latter actually a sort of bastard sideshoot, not strictly empire, but money-oriented even so. They had no soul, so naturally no future. No growth. Nazis a bunch of street thugs; I agree. You agree? Right?”
She had to smile; his Italian mannerisms had overpowered him in his attempt to drive and make his speech simultaneously.