Confessions of Aleister Crowley

472 simplicity. I did not argue whether or no he came from Italian stock. Nietzsche was to me almost an avatar of Thoth, the god of wisdom; and, whether or no he was a Polish Jew, Germany had possessed sufficient intelligence to profit by the thwackings that he gave her. Yes, I was almost convinced that the German directorate had decided to allow British hypocrisy and stupidity to win their battles for them by making themselves absurd and obscene in the eyes of all sensible people. One day, I think early in 1915. I was seated on the top of what the American purists calls a stage, and we a bus. This vehicle was proceeding (or attempting to proceed) up Fifth Avenue, which is a sort of ditch lined with diamonds and over-rouged stenographers, all at a price totally disproportionate to the value of the article. I was not interested in these objects of merchandise; I was occupied by my own vanity. Somebody in England had sent me press cuttings which described me as the greatest poet, philosopher, blackguard, mountaineer, magician, degenerate and saint of all time; and I was thinking that, as in the case of the Queen of Sheba, when she visited King Solomon, the half had not been told. I was aroused from this mood of mingled gratification and disappointment by a tap on the shoulder. A voice asked me to excuse its intrusion. Its owner explained that, seeing me reading cuttings with the superscription of a London firm, he assumed me to be at least English-speaking, in a city where Yiddish was the language of romance. If so, was I in favour of a square deal for Germany and Austria? I replied that I was. I have often thought how much nicer Germans and Austrians would be if they were cut up into little squares and made into soup. {746} I did not reveal to my interlocutor this interpretation of my reply, for at my initiation I was taught to be cautious. He, with the frank bonhomie of the Irishman, told me that his name was O'Brien, that he had to get off at 37th Street, but that if I could accept his card, he would be pleased to hold further conversation with me at his office. Like Jurgen in the master piece of James Branch Cabel, I am willing to taste any drink once, and I may incidentally remind my admirers that, if the drink should be Courvoisier over fifty years old, I will go on till something breaks and do good work all the time. So I went to see Mr O'Brien. Mr O'Brien was not in. I think I never saw him again. But I discovered that his office was the office of a paper called The Fatherland, appearing weekly. To my surprise, the inmates seemed to know all about me; and, in the absence of Mr O'Brien, they produced the most extraordinary little amniote -- - half rat, half rabbit, if I am any zoologist at all --- whose name is Joseph Bernard Rethy. I looked at this specimen of the handiwork of the Creator with somewhat mixed feelings, gradually sagging towards a pessimistic atheism, especially when I learned that, like anyone in New York who can string together a dozen words without sound or sense, he was a shining light of the Poetry Society. (But he is quite a nice boy.) I must admit that I did not know how to talk to him. With all the quickness of his Jewish apprehension, he decided that I was meat for his master, for whom he sent by means of the complicated manual gestures which form the true language of Jews, and, pace Professor Garner, of the other anthropoids. To my surprise, this master of his recognized me and came forward with extend hands, bulging eyes and the kind of mouth which seems to have been an unfortunate afterthought. The name of this person was George Sylvester Viereck. I have a decided admiration of sorts for this individual. He has the extraordinary faculty of awakening an instructive repulsion in most people similar to that which many feel with regard to a toad. He is mean and cowardly to an extent psychologically almost unfathomable; but his cowardice is so protected by cunning that he is able to execute a desperate purpose. I may arouse a storm of excration for saying so, but I believe him to be fundamentally one of the bravest of brave men. He runs away all the time, but he never forgets to "fight another day". At one time he boasted that he was the grandson of the first German Emperor by an actress, Adele Viereck. The statement wounded America in its two worst places. It asserted superiority and defied propriety. Viereck has tried to live down his boast; but I believe that, in his heart of hearts, he fortifies himself in any crisis by saying secretly, "I am not of dregs like Americans." His manners are pleasant, too much so