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This is my answer to your question. I would like very much to know what the elder Schweeringen predicted that The Leader would accomplish!

My she-dog has died. We had a new attendant in the laboratory. He fed her to excess. She died of it. (Et cetera.)

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Letter from Professor Albrecht Aigen to Dr. Thurn.

My dear Karl:

I have resolved to dismiss psionic ability from my investigation into The Leader’s rise to power. This much I will concede: The Leader could enslave–englamour–enchant anyone who met him personally. He did. To a lesser degree, this irresistible persuasiveness is a characteristic of many successful swindlers. But he could not have englamoured the whole nation. He did not meet enough persons personally to make his regime possible, unless he could cause other persons to apply their own magnetism to further his ambitions, and they others and others and so on–like an endless series of magnets magnetized originally from one. This is not possible. I restrict myself to normal, plausible hypotheses–of which so far I have no faintest trace.

You agree with me, do you not–that it was impossible for The Leader to weave a web of enchantment over the whole nation by his own psi energies controlling the psi energies of others? I would welcome your assurance that it could not be.

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Letter from Professor Albrecht Aigen to Dr. Karl Thurn.

My dear Karl:

Did you receive my last letter? I am anxious to have your assurance that it was impossible that The Leader could englamour the whole nation by his psionic gifts.

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Telegram, Dr. Albrecht Aigen to Dr. Karl Thurn.

Karl, as you are my friend, answer me!

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Letter, Dr. Karl Thurn to Professor Albrecht Aigen.

… But what have you discovered, my friend, that you are afraid to face?

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Letter. Professor Albrecht Aigen to Dr. Karl Thurn.

My dear Karl:

I appeal to you because I have discovered how nearly our nation and the whole world escaped horrors beside which those of The Leader’s actual regime would seem trivial. Give me reasons, arguments, proofs beyond question, which I can put into my report on his career! I must demonstrate beyond question that psi ability did not cause his ascendancy! Help me to contrive a lie which will keep anyone, ever, from dreaming that psi ability can be used to seize a government and a nation. It could seize the world more terribly….

I cannot express the urgency of this need! There are others who possess The Leader’s powers in a lesser degree. They must remain only swindlers and such, without ambitions to rule, or they might study The Leader’s career as Napoleon studied Alexander’s. There must be no hint, anywhere, of the secret I have discovered. There must be nothing to lead to the least thought of it! The Leader could have multiplied his power ten-thousand-fold! Another like him must never learn how it could be done!

I beg your help, Karl! I am shaken. I am terrified. I wish that I had not undertaken this research. I wish it almost as desperately as I wish that The Leader had never been born!

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