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By Root 3629 0

and he suspected that most of what was commendable in the United States stemmed from its non-English immigrants. So he would be quite content to see a German victoryexcept for the fact that no Christian could remain blind to the awful excesses of Hitlerism. The Nazis had perpetrated crimes against the family, the church, the youth of the nation, and certainly against the Jews. Sitting alone in his study, his tall body hunched over at times, at other times thrown far back as he propped his legs on his desk, he wrestled with this problem: Nazism, using the most exalted impulses of the human race, seems to release the lowest urges of the human animal. Leave Germany out of it. There must be millions of people in America who would gladly staff a Nazi prison. God knows we could find them here in South Africa. And one of the ugliest, I am afraid, is my good friend Piet Krause. Like a dog, he grabs hold of one idea, gnaws at it, worries it, and allows it to obsess him.

He felt that in common decency, but also for the good name of the Broederbond, which did not sponsor such behavior, he must talk with Piet, but when he tried to reason with him, he found the former schoolteacher glassy-eyed with dreams, and in the end he dismissed him as hopeless. But after the disappointing session he did consult with Frykenius, who was still Piet's superior in the brotherhood, and implored him to summon Krause back to Venloo, where together they might knock some sense into him. This Frykenius agreed to do, because he, too, was worried by the excesses Piet was engineering.

Krause, as an obedient member of the Broederbond, came down from Johannesburg, but as soon as he saw that Reverend Brongersma was with Frykenius he bristled: 'Dominee, we do not seek your counsel.'

'Piet,' Frykenius said, 'sit down.'

But even after the two older men had spread before him their analysis of the harm he was doing, he refused to accept their rebuke: 'Have you two any idea of the great forces set in motion by the ox wagons? This country is seething with patriotism.'

'Don't use anything as precious as patriotism for a wrong purpose,' Brongersma cautioned.

'Dominee, there's to be a great uprising!'

When he heard these words the predikant sat back, his hands folded in his lap. He knew that what Piet had just said was true: there was going to be a tremendous uprising of the Afrikaner spirit, so vast that it would sweep Jan Christian Smuts and his English ways right out of office and keep them out forever, so vast that every aspect of life in the country would be modified. Because of the spirit generated by the ox wagons, the Afrikaner was on the verge of victories which only the idealist had dreamed of. South Africa would quit the empire. No more would bands play 'God Save the King,' no more would Englishmen sit in the cabinet. The Afrikaner nation would be free to solve its racial difficulties in its own just way. And strife would end.

'Piet,' the predikant said softly, 'you've won your victory. Don't contaminate it with violence.'

'Dominee, the real victory is just beginning! Herr Hitler is about to sweep the English from the seas. America can do nothing, he'll sink their ships. His principles will rule this land.'

When Frykenius tried to soften this tirade, Piet cried, 'You men have a choice you must make in a hurry. Are you for the revolution that's breaking, or against it?'

'Piet,' Frykenius reasoned, 'you know what the aims of the Broederbond have always been. Of course we're for an Afrikaner triumph. But not on your violent terms. The rioting in the streets, that's got to stop.'

Piet drew back as if dissociating himself from the timid approach of the Bond. 'You men in the Broederbond. I see your kind in Pretoria and Johannesburg all the time. You're like a pretty girl who gives a boy a kiss, three kisses, a dozen, then runs away when he wants to get down to business. Well, I'm getting down to business. I have work to do, and I doubt that we'll be meeting any more.'

In a frenzy he dashed out and went to Vrymeer, burst into the kitchen and presented Detleef