And Max was wondering: Was he going to have to tell him?

Early afternoon. A weekday in June, in a fateful year.

From all over the world, athletes had already started making their way toward a new Olympic Games, to be held in Berlin, and hosted by Germany’s Nazi regime. Russia was not attending, but despite individual protests, other nations were.

In Spain, the election of a Popular Front of leftist parties had left the old conservative forces furious, and summer arrived, and left- and right-wing forces eyed each other tensely, there was danger in the air.

And in France …

On any normal day, there should have been cars in the Champs-Élysées, and people crowding the broad walkways under the small trees. But there were almost no cars, and few people. It was eerily quiet. As they gazed down toward the distant Louvre, it seemed that all Paris had fallen strangely silent.

Jacques Le Sourd turned to his son.

“I thought I wouldn’t live to see it,” he confessed.

Once before, he’d thought it had begun. There had been that moment during the war, when the army had mutinied. He’d thought it was starting then. But he’d been premature. France had not been ready.

Russia had been ready, though. The Russian Revolution had succeeded. And with that massive example before all Europe, it had seemed inevitable to Jacques Le Sourd that now it would spread. The question had been: Where next?

By the mid-twenties, all eyes had fallen on Britain. France might be the cradle of revolution, but Britain was also a logical choice. Wasn’t Britain the first home of capitalism, colonial empire and exploitation? Wasn’t London where Karl Marx had written Das Kapital?

The Zinoviev letter of 1924, forgery or not, might have frightened the British middle classes into electing a Conservative government, but the Labour Party and the unions were soon ready to show their power. And in 1926, a huge general strike had brought Britain to a standstill.

Was it the beginning of a revolution? All Europe had waited. If the British Empire fell to the workers, then the rest of the capitalist world could crumble.

But once again, the phlegmatic British had displayed their lack of interest in ideas, their endless capacity to muddle through and compromise. The British bourgeoisie had come out, manned the buses, taken over the essential union jobs. Professional people, students, retired army officers were found driving trains. And they’d been allowed to get away with it. Jacques had even heard stories of an opposing line of strikers and British policemen organizing a football game between each other. He sighed whenever he thought of it. What could you do with people like that?