Dick was coming in from a five days' walking trip. He had fled from
town on Monday, seeking what the road and the sweet early May air and
greenery would do for his jumping nerves and tormented mind. "Forget
the war," counseled Ralph, when he telephoned he was off. He had done
it fairly well. Spring is a lovely thing in the highlands around
Sabinsport. It covers the earth with delicate blossoms, turns the brown
tracery of the trees to soft yellows and reds and greens, peoples the
air with songsters. It was early this year, and had opened the doors of
the farmhouses--started gardens, set men to plowing fields, women to
sewing on the porches, children to wandering in the woods. Dick walked
without other compass than his own experienced sense of direction and
distance, shunning highways, following lanes and little-used roads,
stopping only when the day grew dusky and sleeping by preference in
friendly farmhouses.
It was Saturday morning, warm, brilliant, fragrant. He would be in
Sabinsport by noon, he calculated. How changed he was! How rested! How
bright things seemed again! It would be good to get back. He believed
he could preach to-morrow. It should be of the healing of the air and
the sun.
It was ten o'clock when he struck Jo's Mills, as it was called--a tiny
settlement slightly up a hill from the point where a gray old mill
stood on the edge of a stream which took a long tumble here. There were
a half dozen, comfortable, old-time, white houses on the street, with
apple-trees and lilacs and gardens. There was a big general
store--relic of early days when things were busy--only half occupied
now--a church--a school--a post-office in the wing of Miss Sally
Black's house--a neat, prim post-office where nobody warmed his back
long--though Miss Sally was not above keeping everybody long enough to
feel out the news. There was a public telephone in the post-office, and
over this it was the custom of the Sabinsport operators to communicate
to Miss Sally anything particularly important. It was evident to Dick
as he approached that Miss Sally must have received something that the
neighbors were interested in, for there was a little group standing
around, looking rather glum. He stopped and quite instinctively
inquired, "What's the news?"
"Well," said one of the men--"it don't sound good to me--mebbe 'tain't
so--they say the Germans have sunk a ship--a big one with a lot of
Americans and women and children--didn't give no notice--nothing--just
sunk 'em."
"Well--what I say is," said another, "that ain't likely. How could a
submarine do that--sink a ship like that?--she'd have to blow up inside
to sink so quickly. Likely her engine exploded."
Dick didn't stop to debate the power of the submarine, but quickly
stepped in and called Ralph at the _Argus_ office in Sabinsport.
"Hello, Ralph," he said. "I've just walked into Jo's Mills. There's an
ugly report here of the sinking of a vessel with big loss of
Americans--anything in it?"
"Everything in it, the _Lusitania_ was torpedoed yesterday--she sank in
a few minutes. There is a loss of twelve hundred lives reported, one
hundred of them Americans."
"My God!" exclaimed Dick.
"Yes," replied Ralph, savagely, "my God!" and both men hung up.
It was but five miles into Sabinsport, but Dick always thought of it as
the longest and blackest five miles he ever walked. As one drew nearer
the town, the valley and the river unfolded, giving glimpses of rare
loveliness, but they were lost on him now, though he had been looking
forward to them all the morning as a delightful finish to his tramp.
The tormented world was again on his back--his mind was grappling with
the awful possibilities in the news. This was no ordinary casualty of
war--not a battle lost or won. This was not war, as war was understood.
It was a new factor in the awful problem. It was something quite
outside the code--a deliberate effort to scare the neutral world into
giving up the sea code it had been working out with such pain through
the ages--scaring them into admitting that atrocities it thought it had
done away with were legitimate if you invented an engine of destruction
which couldn't be used unless you abandoned the laws. It was a defiance
not only of all codes, but a most impudent defiance of the stern
warning of the United States. Dick's blood ran hot and furious as he
thought of it. "It can't be passed. It means action. They'll have to
retreat--or we'll have to fight--and they'll never retreat. It would be
giving up half of what they think their strength," he said, with the
conviction of one who knew his Germany--its confidence in itself, its
contempt for non-military peoples, its sneering at all laws or
practices that stood in the way of its will.
"But who, who in Sabinsport sees this as it is? How are they to be made
to see it? Half the town will treat the _Lusitania_ as a tragedy like
the _Titanic_. Captain Billy will rave and say, 'If we had
protested--if we hadn't a Democratic administration.' But that isn't
seeing the issue--his kind of fury against the Germans misses the
point--the inner meaning which the country must see if it ever goes
whole-heartedly in. Wanton piracy--as savage and unmerciful as the
Wotan they worship. God! if I could get into it. But here I stay. I
will go home--bathe--dress--read my mail--prepare for services
to-morrow--go through them. I'll sleep and eat and write and smile and
talk as if this fearful thing was not on the earth--as if I didn't know
that every day brought it closer to Sabinsport--and she doesn't know
it. Ralph's right--it's closing in on us. And what will Ralph say, I
wonder."
What Ralph said was in that evening's _Argus_. It was brief.
"When men go to war the appeal is to violence, destruction, death.
He who can destroy most, kill most, is the superior. You take what
comes in your path. To talk of laws of war is nonsense. To talk of
mercy in war is to talk hypocrisy. You're out to kill. You kill
what's in your way. To debate your right to do what will injure an
enemy is not the way of war. It is the way of peace. The
destruction of the _Lusitania_ was an act of war--that hideous,
senseless thing to which Europe has appealed. It is a tragedy that
Americans should have been destroyed. It is a greater tragedy that
they should have put themselves deliberately in the path of death.
If they had as deliberately walked between the firing lines in
battle, would we have condemned the combatants if they lost their
lives?"
Dick bowed his head at the merciless logic of the paragraph, its
contempt for humanity as it is, its lofty and reckless egotism. He was
encouraged, however, when he learned afterwards that when Otto had
congratulated Ralph on the editorial, Ralph had said: "But you miss
_my_ point, Otto. I'm not defending your infernal country. It was
cowardly business, but it was logical. You Germans are in a fair way to
demonstrate the silliness of trying to insist on honor in war. Laws of
war are about as reasonable as laws against tornadoes. The only hope I
have is that you'll reduce the beastly business to its absurdity."
The effect of the _Lusitania_ on Sabinsport was much deeper and more
general than Dick had dared dream. For the first time since the war
began he sensed a feeling of personal responsibility abroad--in the
banks, at the grocery, on the street, around the dinner tables. There
was a growing consciousness that this was something which did concern
her, something that she must see through. There were a few, but only a
few in the town, who insisted that we should plunge in immediately and
avenge the outrage. Sabinsport was not ready to do that. The world was
full of wrongs calling for vengeance, was the _Lusitania_ the one out
of all these many where Sabinsport must act? The town reeked with
discussion. Dick found indignation, however, qualified strongly by the
suspicion that the _Lusitania_ was armed. The doubt was a hang-over
from her inherited mistrust of English ways and English dealings.
"Probably was carrying munitions," men would say. "Probably did have
guns."
Then, too, Sabinsport found it hard to believe that it was necessary,
and therefore right, for Americans to go to Europe during the war,
unless they went to enlist or on errands of mercy. You see,
Sabinsport's idea of business was limited, provincial. She had never
quite grasped the fact that men ran back and forth to London and Paris
and Berlin now-a-days on legitimate business quite as freely as a few
of her own citizens ran back and forth to New York. Going to Europe was
still an adventure. There had been a time when Sabinsport numbered so
few people that had been to Europe that she had formed a society, "The
Social Club of Those Who Have Been to Europe." It had not lasted long,
for she had a sense of humor which saved her from keeping alive that
which savored of snobbery, and the Social Club of Those Who Have Been
to Europe died a quiet and early death. Going abroad was now common
enough, but it had not yet assumed the proportions of legitimate
business.
In spite of all this, however, there was not from the first a doubt in
Sabinsport's mind, if you got down to the bottom of it, that whatever
laws there were must be observed; whatever rights we had must be
defended. Here she followed Captain Billy, who said, "By the Jumping
Jehosophat, we'll go where we have a right to." One would have thought,
to hear Captain Billy, that he made at least two trips across the ocean
a year, though, as a matter of fact, he had never laid his eyes on that
water.
"Do you suppose, if my business calls me to London," said he, "and that
the laws allow me, an American citizen, to travel on an English vessel
that I'm going to keep off that ship? It has a legal right to carry me.
Of course they can come aboard and see if that ship has contraband and
guns, and if they find them they can take me off; but they can't blow
her up until they have me safe. That's all they can do under the law,
and that they have got to do. I'm going to travel wherever the law says
I may."
Thus Captain Billy put it at the War Board, in his grocery, and even at
home, where Mrs. Captain Billy, who always took him literally, said,
with a flutter, "William, you must keep off those ships, even if you
have the right to go on them. You will only make trouble if you insist
on going to London now."
And in this insistence there were others in Sabinsport who agreed with
Mrs. Captain Billy. There was the Rev. Mr. Pepper, as I have already
explained. There was the dwindling Peace Party. There was a small
number of Socialists in the mills. But they made only a ripple on the
surface of that staid, settled conviction in Sabinsport's mind--"where
we have a right to go, we're going to go, and Germany shall not stop
us."
It was this conviction, so strong in Sabinsport, that made her pick out
of the President's diplomatic correspondence two words, and all through
the discussion cling to them. He had said "strict accountability" at
the start, Sabinsport agreed, and she was willing to wait and stand on
that. "Fine"--"Just right"--"Don't give 'em a loophole," was the
average opinion. Of course there were those in Sabinsport, though they
were very few, that were, like Mr. Kinney, the pillar in Dick's church,
who had found Belgium's resistance "impractical," and who now argued
that the trouble with the President's correspondence was that it did
not give us "a leg to run on." "We don't want war," said Vestryman
Kinney. "Diplomacy consists in so framing your notes that you have a
way out. Suppose Germany won't agree, we must back down. It looks bad
to me. He ought to have been more skillful."
In all this discussion, however, Dick saw that ingrained deeply in
Sabinsport was the idea that keeping peace was a preëminent national
duty. He found in the heart of the town a solemn conviction that a
country ought to have a machinery that would keep its people out of
war, that when things went wrong with other nations there ought to be a
way to settle them without fighting. Although he felt that anger over
the _Lusitania_--and perhaps something more serious for Germany than
anger, that was contempt for the act--stayed and increased in the town,
he knew that she clung to the conviction that there ought to be a
better way than force to settle it. Sabinsport felt and argued very
much as she felt and argued about the attempts in a neighboring State
where lynchings sometimes occurred--that the punishment should be left
to the law and not to a mob. To rush in now, as Captain Billy demanded,
seemed to Sabinsport a little bit like mob action. She wanted a
government that had a machinery to take care of such a task as this
without forcing her to leave her honest business of earning a living to
take up the abominable business of destroying men. She had an idea that
we had a machinery for just this purpose. The question was, Would it
work?
And so the town waited on events. She went about her business of
feeding and clothing herself, but her ears were open, and if her mouth
was shut her mind was at work, turning over the mighty and unaccustomed
problems. Sabinsport was learning new words, struggling with strange
ideas, trying to grasp their relation to herself. Did these things
concern her and her business? If so, all right; but if not, well, she'd
been trained not to interfere; and, above all, not to interfere in wars
across the seas.
Of all the 20,000 people in Sabinsport, only one was aroused to
immediate action by the _Lusitania_. A week from the morning that he
had heard the dire news at Jo's Mills, Dick came down to his breakfast
to find his husky, cheerful, Irish Katie with swollen eyes and tragic
mien.
"Why, Katie!" he exclaimed. "What's the matter? What's Mikey been doing
now?" He took it for granted it was Mikey. He had never known anything
else to reduce Katie to tears.
"Oh, my God!" wailed the woman, "he's gone--gone to the war--says he's
gone for _you_. You never sent him away from me, Mr. Dick, and never
said a word to me. You haven't a heart that hard. You couldn't do a
thing like that."
"I certainly wouldn't do such a thing, Katie. I haven't sent Mikey
away. I don't understand it. Tell me what's happened--that's a good
soul." But all that Katie could find words to say was: "Read that--and
that to me, his own mother."
Dick took the crumpled, tear-stained letter and read:
"Dear Mother:
"I'm going to war. They'll take me in Canada. You tell Mr. Dick to
stop worrying because he can't fight. I'll do his fightin' and
don't you go off your head. I can't stick around Sabinsport any
longer with such things doin' in the world. The Dutchmen are off
their bases--they've got to get back where they belong.
"I'd said good-by but I knew you'd make a row.
"Your loving son,
"MIKEY FLAHERTY."
"I didn't know this, Katie. Mikey never had dropped a word to me that
would make me suspect he was thinking of this. I don't understand what
he means by going for me."
"I knew it, the spalpeen. I knew you'd never treat poor old Katie like
this. I understand it well enough, now. It's him spilin' for the fight.
It's my own fault. Didn't I tell him you was eatin' your heart out
because you can't go, and he has been talkin' a lot of late about what
you had been sayin' at the Club. Every night when he came home, it was
Mr. Dick said this, and Mr. Dick said that. Silly old fool, I am. And
him that would rather fight than eat and that sets the world by you,
Mr. Dick."
"But, Katie, what put that nonsense into your head?"
"Oh," said the woman, sagely, "I know. I know it like I wuz your
mother. You don't have to tell me things. I know you like I do the
weather. You ain't been the same since the dirty Germans did up poor
little Belgium. I know the only reason you don't go is that you
wouldn't live a day."
"Nonsense, Katie. Where'd you get that?"
"Mikey told me. He was that cut up because you couldn't go, but he
needn't have run away from his poor old mother like this. I'd let him
go for you. I'm no coward. It ain't his goin'; it's his thinkin' I
wouldn't let him. He's always beatin' up somebody--might as well be
Germans. God pity 'em when Mikey gets there. He'll wipe up the road
with 'em. And don't you be worryin', Mr. Dick. I'll stand it. He can
write me, can't he?"
"Katie, I won't allow this. Mikey must come back. I'll go to Canada and
have a search made for him. I have friends who'll find him."
"Indade and you won't do anything of the kind. Would you break the by's
heart--and me that proud of him? Where's the other by in Sabinsport
that had the right to get up and go? Let him fight. I'll live to see
him with the stripe on his sleeve--as grand as the grandest. You'll not
raise a finger. Drink your coffee now, and don't mind me, old fool that
I am to be makin' you worry for a little thing like that."
And so Dick, with one eye on Katie's furtive wiping of her eyes, drank
his coffee, wondering as he did it at the amazing intuition that
affection gives. Katie and Mikey had discerned--so he told
himself--what nobody in Sabinsport but Ralph knew, and he had said
enough to Ralph to explain his understanding. What was it that ran from
soul to soul and opened to the unlettered what was closed to the most
highly trained, he asked himself. But they are Irish, and the Irish
have a sixth sense--one that looks into hearts.
But it was not divination, it was simply the keen and affectionate eye
of Katie on him through all those terrible August and September days at
the beginning. She saw what Dick did not realize, the beaten stoop to
his shoulder, the despairing look in his eye when he came back from his
effort to enlist. Many was the night during the days of that first
approach to Paris that Katie had gone home to tell Mikey, "He's dyin'
of grief, he is. He looks at his paper in the morning and drops his
head in his hands and groans. He don't eat and he don't talk. The big
battle is killin' him. I peeps in now and then to his study and he is
sittin' lifeless like, thinkin' and thinkin'. Mikey, he's dyin' for
love of France, could you beat it?"
And Mikey, much perplexed, watched his hero and took excruciating pains
to keep the brakes on himself, not to do anything to worry Mr. Dick.
When the battle was over and the Germans turned back, Dick's joy was so
great that Katie herself began to rejoice. For Katie Flaherty, the war
dated from that first week of September, 1914. Also from then dated
what was to become the dominating passion of her life--her hatred of
Germany.
Mikey's sudden departure was quickly known in Sabinsport, and Katie did
not hesitate to make the most of the fact that he had gone for love of
Mr. Dick. It had its romantic value, that runaway. It made Katie a town
heroine. Certain well-to-do gentlemen in the banks, Cowder and Mulligan
among them, sent her a purse. There was much talking to her in the
streets as she did Dick's marketing, and nightly on the porch of the
little house on the south bank of the river where she lived a group of
friendly neighbors came in to cry or to exult according to Katie's
humor.
Dick was not long in sensing that Mikey's action was making opinion in
Sabinsport, much as Patsy's adventures in Belgium had done. The very
children caught it, and Richard Cowder stopped more than once in his
favorite South Side Alley to discuss with the "gang" what the runaway
was probably doing at the moment. In reporting his conversations, he
sometimes would shake his head, saying, "You know these youngsters are
getting a new idea about running away--that it may be a glorious deed."
The point at which the effect was most significant, in Dick's judgment,
was the wire mill. Practically all of the boys in the South Side Club
belonged there. They were friends and companions of Mikey. His going
away had sobered them and made them far and away more interested in the
war. The most significant effect was the way in which they cooled
toward a movement which had begun to make strong headway in the
factories and mills, a movement in which Ralph was taking keen interest
as he saw in it a possibility of reviving the opposition to munition
making which had been destroyed by Cowder's and Mulligan's appeal to
the mill. This movement was already beginning to crystallize into a new
party, made up of workmen and farmers. It was called Labor's National
Peace Council. Nobody could tell just who started it in the mill, but
Ralph had seized the idea and was working seriously for it.
"Where in hell did it come from?" Cowder asked Dick. "Not out of this
town, I tell you, Ingraham. I know this town like a book. There's no
Labor Peace Council in it when there's plenty of work. This scheme's
been sneaked in from outside, and it's being fed on the sly. What I
can't make out is, Who's doing it? It's the same crowd that kept up the
battle against munitions. I don't believe it's Otto. I'm watching him.
It's somebody in the plants."
Dick had his notions. They were connected with an investigation he had
been making on the quiet. His curiosity about where the boys in his
club got the arguments they presented against munition making and
selling had led him to look into the journals they read, particularly
the foreign journals--Slovak, Bohemian, Italian, Polish. He discovered
that they were all carrying a surprisingly similar series of articles,
protesting on the highest moral grounds against the dragging of the
workmen into such a business--making munition, forcing them to earn
their bread by preparing destruction for their fellows, or going
without it. He didn't like it and spoke to Ralph, translating to him
the selections that he had put his hands on.
"It's the same hand that does this, Ralph; what do you think?"
"Why," said Ralph, "I've had that stuff offered me. I know all about
it. There's a bunch of peacemakers in the East who are syndicating it,
in the domestic as well as the foreign press, paying all the expenses.
They say it's their contribution to the cause. The agent offered it to
me here. They would not give me the names of the philanthropists. I
told the agent that I didn't advertise justice, I advocated it. But,
Dick, it's all right. They're just silly, mistaken in their way of
getting at it. You cannot carry on advertising of this kind in this
country but people get onto the source of it very soon, just as you
have; and that puts an end to it. I told the man that offered me that
stuff that would be the way of it."
"Did Otto ever mention this to you, Ralph?"
Ralph studied. "I believe he did once--asked me if I had ever heard of
the scheme--if it had ever been offered to me. He said a newspaper
friend of his in New York spoke to him about it. I told him what I've
told you: that people who believed in these notions and wanted to get
them over should come into the open with them. I don't take any stock
in pacifists that don't work in the open."
Dick told Cowder all he knew.
"Proves nothing," he said, "but I don't like it."
"Nor I," said Dick.
When Labor's National Peace Council began to flourish, Dick couldn't
get it out of his head that there was a connection between the two,
that the humanitarian advertisers were the backers of the movement. He
went to Ralph with the suggestion. That young man had thrown himself
boldly into the campaign and he resented Dick's idea that there was
something suspicious behind it.
"I don't believe it," he declared hotly. "It's the natural thing for
people who work, and only want to do useful, honest work, to revolt
against this kind of thing. This is a spontaneous labor movement, I
tell you, Dick. Our working people and our farmers don't believe in
playing with fire--when the fire means war. They know this selling to
the Allies what the Allies wouldn't otherwise have is going to
exasperate Germany and may drag us in. I tell you it's perfectly
natural they should rise and protest and prepare to fight it out at the
elections."
"But, Ralph, who started this thing here? Where did it come from? The
shops?"
"Hanged if I know--started itself, I tell you. I don't care--it's the
ideas. They're sound. I'm for them."
"But if these ideas were being scattered and watered by the paid agents
of Germany, how would you feel about it? You must know by this time
that Germany has no sympathy for peace; that she believes in war. You
must realize that she has no objection to selling munitions herself.
Why, half the world gets its big guns from her. It's because she hopes
to trap us into being unneutral--refusing for an illogical sentiment to
sell her enemies munitions that she's working this thing up. It's part
of her war program. Can't you see it, Ralph?"
"I tell you there's nothing in your suspicion. Look at the men who've
been here to speak for the party--as good labor men as the Federation
has. You can't suspect them of pro-Germanism; they're for peace, I tell
you, and putting an end to this infernal shell and powder making."
Nor was it until Ralph had been in Washington to the famous August,
1915, meeting of the council and had himself heard the cynical reply of
the precious rascal that was managing affairs, to the demand of honest
working men for an explanation of the source of the funds that were
being so lavishly used, "What if it is German money?"--that he yielded.
"I've been a fool," he said to Dick quite frankly when he came back,
and quite as frankly he told the story of his own connection with the
party in the _Argus_.
"The editor of this paper has never concealed his opinion of war.
He considers it a senseless and brutal method of trying to settle
human differences. He considers the present war in Europe an
unnecessary crime in which all the nations concerned are partners.
This war has nothing to do with the United States, and the efforts
to involve us, whether they come from within or without, are works
of the devil. Nobody who reads the _Argus_ can doubt that this has
been our opinion from the start. Thinking this, we could only look
on munition making in this country as deliberate trading with the
devil. Big Business never stops to consider humanity when there's
money to be made. The _Argus_ has consistently fought the making
and the selling of munitions. When a party arose which had this
end, the _Argus_ welcomed it, supported it. The _Argus_ was a fool
in doing this. Closer contact with the leaders of the party proved
to the editor that a bunch of grafting Americans had persuaded a
thick-headed German agent that if he'd give them money enough
they'd swing this country away from England, via peace and
brotherly love. This came out last week in Washington. We shook the
dust of the town from our feet, as did every self-respecting farmer
and laborer there, when we discovered it. The _Argus_ is for peace,
but it is not interested in pulling German chestnuts out of the
fire. For whatever assistance it has given heretofore in that
operation it apologizes to its readers and it assures them it was
ignorance and not pro-Germanism which was behind its activities."
There was much discussion of the editorial over Sabinsport supper
tables that evening.
Dick was still in his study when the telephone rang: "Is it you, Dick?"
an excited voice called. "Have you seen Ralph's editorial? Isn't it
splendid? Isn't it just like him, the honestest thing in the world.
Just can't be dishonest--oh, Dick, do you think I might call him up and
tell him so? He despises me so. But to know he isn't pro-German makes
me so happy."
"Call him up, by all means, Patsy,"--for it was Patsy, though she
hadn't announced herself. "He'll be mighty pleased, I know."
And Patsy called, but Ralph was not to be found, and an hour later her
courage waned. "Maybe Dick will tell him," and Dick did two or three
days later, but Ralph only grumbled, "She evidently didn't think enough
of it to tell me so herself."
The editorial brought out an unusually full meeting of the War Board.
Ralph came in and told them all about it, and Brutus, who had "known it
all the time," hinted at revelations he'd soon be able to make.
According to Brutus, this was a very insignificant activity of the
German agents. He knew it to be a fact that they had vast stores of
arms in New York, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago, and Omaha, and that
if the United States wasn't mighty careful what she did there would be
an army of thousands of Germans shutting us in our houses while German
fleets bombarded the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and Zeppelins rained
fire on our roofs. To which Captain Billy swore agreement.
While the discussion went on at the War Board, another went on in a
speeding car, driven by Otto Littman. Otto had gone out for a spin in
his little roadster--a thing he often did on hot summer nights. Across
the river on the hill at a dark corner he had slowed up a bit, just
enough for a man to step on the running board and into the car. Katie
Flaherty, going home from Dick's, said to herself: "The reckless
creature! How did he know he was wanted? It's a queer thing he didn't
stop. It's Otto Littman, I'm thinkin'."
It was indeed, and the lithe figure that had entered the running car
was Max Dalberg, the "wonder of the laboratory," whom Reuben Cowder had
mentioned to Dick in his first confidence of weeks before.
"Well, Littman," the newcomer said, with something like a sneer, "your
young man on the _Argus_ is mighty high in his tone to-night. What's
up? Didn't they divvy in Washington?"
"None of that, Max. Ralph Gardner's not that kind. I don't know where
you people get the idea that all Americans can be bought. They can't
be, and yet this whole business has been based on money. You know I
never believed in this. I have been willing to put your case whenever I
had the chance. I believe it's right. I'll work for Germany in any way
I think honest, but I won't lie and I won't bribe."
"You can't put Germany's case fully in this country, young man, and you
know it. The Americans are a set of sentimental fools. They're
hypocrites, too. Talk about neutrality! The whole bunch is like Cowder.
Pitch you out if you suggest selling munitions to even another neutral
country. There isn't a score of manufacturers in this country that
wouldn't rather close their plants than sell to us. Do you call that
neutrality?"
"I tell you, Max, it's the people. You don't see things as they are at
all--it's not the Government. The Government is not preventing the
munition makers from selling to Germany. The trouble is these munition
makers here won't sell to Germany."
"But what kind of a government is it that cannot control its people? Do
you suppose our Kaiser would tolerate that kind of weakness? For the
sake of the United States, Otto, you ought to help teach this people
what a strong nation really is. If this country expects to live she
must learn to obey--learn that masters are necessary. What's she doing
now?--taking the bit in her teeth--thinking and doing what she pleases.
She's elected a President to do her thinking and she won't follow
him--forces him to do what his judgment is against."
"What do you mean?"
"Why, those notes. Wilson would never have written them if he hadn't
been afraid of the people. He's too wise."
"You're wrong, Max. Wilson thinks just as Sabinsport does and he's
doing a thing the country will back up."
"They won't have a chance long. Germany's patience is failing. We'll
attend to that. If they insist, they'll get--Otto, you know as well as
I do that there won't be a plant left in this country soon to make
munitions if they insist, and there won't be a vessel on the seas to
carry them. We'll take care of that. You know we can do it. Why,
there's not a factory in the States that our people are not in, and
there's not a vessel out that we can't split. We're giving them a
chance--appealing to their own fool sentiments. 'Love peace?' Well,
take peace--don't love peace and talk hatred of Germany. 'Hate money
made from munitions?' Well, that's easy; don't make 'em. We're only
giving them their own dope, Otto, and they refuse to stand by their own
faith. Hypocrites! English! If they won't take a Labor's Peace Council,
you can be sure they'll get a first-class explosion party--and that
right soon."
"See here, Max, I can't follow anything like that. I'm willing to
educate my country, but I won't revenge her because she refuses my
teaching. Cut it out."
The ruddy blond face of Otto Littman's companion wore usually the
gentlest of smiles--the few who had ever met him in Sabinsport thought
him a harmless man, devoted to his laboratory--talking little, playing
his piano often late after a busy day's hard work, friendly to little
children, troubling nobody. "Never had a better man," said Cowder, who
almost daily visited the laboratory and listened to his explanations of
difficulties both physical and chemical and how they could be
overcome--watched his ingenious experiments, discussed long with him
future developments.
"German parentage--born here," he had told Cowder. He never talked of
the war more than to say sadly, "It's bad business."
Cowder and the children who ran to him on the street at night would not
have recognized him now as he leaned over Otto Littman--his blue eyes
glittering like steel points, his lips drawn back until two full rows
of white teeth showed--they would not have known the voice with its
hateful sneer.
"Too late, Otto. You're in. You can't get out. Do you suppose we are
going to let as good and prosperous an agent as you are, with a father
above all suspicion, go when we've got him? We've got you, Otto
Littman, and you'll do what the High Command orders. Come, come, boy,
don't be an ass. And remember where your interests are. This country is
doomed if she doesn't soon see where her advantage lies. You're made,
whatever happens, for His Majesty never forgets. Your name is on his
books."
Otto Littman made no reply, but, swinging his car around sharply, drove
rapidly back, only slowing up as he approached the dusky turn where his
passenger had stepped in. He stepped out now as skillfully, and the car
went on. One hearing it pass would have been quite willing to swear
that it had not stopped.
"Poor fool," Max said to himself. "Thought he could mix in great
affairs and pull out at will. That's your American education for
you--willing to blurt into anything that's new and promises excitement,
pulling out the instant it gets dangerous or pinches their cheap little
notions of morality. _Gott in Himmel!_ what does he expect?--that
Germany will tolerate such nonsense from any country on the globe? Our
time has come and they must learn to understand what valor and power
mean in the world."
He took out his pipe and lit it and strolled, softly humming, into
the rooms he occupied; they made up the second story at Katie
Flaherty's. It was a convenient arrangement for a single man who
liked to come and go according "to things at the plant." The little
frame house was built like many on the South Side, into the hill; its
first story opened on one level, its second on another a street
above. Max had this second floor to himself now that Mikey had flown.
He had said to Mrs. Flaherty that he'd be glad to take both rooms,
his books and papers having outgrown the one. He had made it very
pleasant and convenient--wonderfully convenient for a gentleman who
occasionally had late callers and preferred they should not be seen
coming or going.
Poor Otto reached home in a very different state of mind. The exciting
game he had been playing for months now with a proud conviction that he
was indeed on the inside, an actor in world affairs, a man trusted by
great diplomats and certain one day to be recognized as one of those
that had helped hold the United States when she was on the verge of
losing herself to England--the game had taken a new turn. It was out of
his hands. He was no longer the player--he was the puppet. What could
he do? Was it true they "had" him?
Otto Littman was one of not a few prosperous young German-Americans who
were caught in 1914, 1915, and 1916 in the coarse and rather clumsy web
that German intrigue spun over spots in this land. Otto's trapping had
begun at least half a dozen years before, when he had made his first
visit to Germany. He was then twenty-four, a handsome, rather arrogant,
excellently educated young man. Rupert Littman had done his best for
his only son. He himself was the best of men. He had come here in the
early fifties--a lad of ten or twelve, with his father, a refugee of
the revolution of 1848. They had found their way to Cincinnati and
finally to a farm near Sabinsport. The land had thrived under the elder
Littman's intelligent and friendly touch. He was a prosperous man when
the opening of the coal vein under his farm made him rich. He came into
Sabinsport and with others, made rich like himself, started a farmers'
bank. This bank Rupert had inherited, and it was to carry it on that he
had educated Otto, sending him to Germany to the family he had not seen
since childhood but with which he had always had a formal relation,
with the understanding that he was to spend at least two years in
studying German banking and commercial methods.
The two years had lengthened to six, for Otto had been well received by
his relatives. An opening had been found for him in Berlin where he had
been given the opportunities his father sought for him. He had been
cultivated by serious and older people, and always his relatives had
lost no opportunity of impressing upon him the honors that were done
him, of telling him that he was being taken in even as they were not.
Otto had been flattered, though not so deeply as his relatives felt
that he should have been. He had not taken the attentions and
opportunities with an especial seriousness. There was a considerable
percentage of inner conviction that they were his due, that there must
be qualities in him that the attentive had detected which were not in
others. Being an American meant something in Germany, he saw; also he
soon discovered that there were two classes of his compatriots that
Berlin cultivated--the millionaires and the professors. It is doubtful
if Otto realized how very cunning this was on the part of Berlin. She
had chosen the two classes of the United States most susceptible to
flattery, and best placed to serve her purpose. And, how our
millionaires and our professors had played her game!
It was not so much what was done for him and for other Americans in
Berlin that impressed Otto. It was the country itself--the brightness
and neatness of things captivated him. He liked its little gardens with
every inch under immaculate cultivation--its tidy forests where the
very twigs were saved--its people fitted into their particular niches
like so many well-arranged books on a shelf. He liked the sense of men
and women being looked after, kept in health, kept in employment, the
utmost made out of them--no more letting a bit of human material go to
waste than a bit of iron.
Their ways of doing things in business pleased him. There was always
somebody that knew everything to be known about a particular thing.
There were experts for every feature of the banking business. It was
not an inherited rule-of-thumb way of carrying on things, such as he
was familiar with at home; it was a thoroughly considered, scientific
practice. To be sure, it seemed ponderous to him, but he felt as if it
were sure. It had been thought out. Science--science in
everything--nothing left to chance--no reliance on luck. He began to
take the banking business very seriously indeed, to feel that he could
carry home something important and serve not only Sabinsport but the
country at large, which at that moment was wallowing in a terrible
banking muddle over which his German friends held up their hands in
shocked amazement.
As time went on, Otto began to take other things more seriously, and
gradually there crept over him a sense of something stupendous going on
in men's thoughts and souls. People were not living for the present in
Germany as at home; they were not accepting their place in the world as
something fixed; they seemed always to have before them the future, and
that future on which their eyes were fixed was something of magnificent
if dim proportions. It was something that he finally discovered stirred
them to the depths of their being.
"What ails them?" he asked himself, at first. "It is as if they saw
things. It isn't natural." Slowly he began to understand what they saw,
what they felt. It wasn't a dream; it was a faith that absorbed them--a
faith in their own greatness and a conviction that they were soon to be
called to prove it to the world, to take their proper place at the head
of nations. "They're crazy," he told himself at first, "or I am." But
later he began to see with them. Was it not the truth? What nation on
earth equaled them--in effective action, in restraint, in fidelity, in
valor, in bigness of vision? What other nation was worthy to rule the
earth? Certainly not England--she was soft, vain, selfish--her lands in
the hands of a few, her people neglected, her government rent by
dissensions, her colonies self-governing or ready for revolt. England
certainly had lost her sense and her genius for empire.
Not France. France had no dream of empire, no genius for empire; she
was content to stay at home. She preferred making things with her hands
to making them with machines. She let her people think what they would,
say what they would. France had every fault of that futile, impossible
thing men called democracy. Certainly not France.
He saw it clearly, finally, as a thing writ on the walls of heaven. The
destiny of Germany was to rule the earth. It was right and inevitable
that she should do it because she was superior. It was part of her
greatness that she saw her destiny, did not shrink from it, dared
openly to prepare for it, to educate her people for it.
Her daring thrilled Otto to the very soul. He read Treitschke finally.
Her text book. He saw in it a notice to the earth that her master was
here, to prepare to receive him. It was an open notice to England, to
France, to make way. The conqueror was coming. He did not come in the
night. He taught in the open of his approach--marshaled his armies in
the open--built his ships in the open.
Otto began to feel an overwhelming contempt for the rest of
Europe--that it should not understand what was writ so large before its
eyes, that it should touch shoulders with a nation that for years had
carried in its heart so wondrous and magnificent an ambition, that had
so consistently and frankly prepared to make it real. Time they were
put in their place--particularly the two, France and England, that
called themselves the best the world has done so far. They were at the
end of their string.
His conversion was no half-hearted affair. Like alien converts the
world over, he outdid the Germans in the ardor of his faith, in his
contempt of opposition, and he felt all this without an instant of
waning in loyalty to his own country. As a matter of fact the relations
of the United States never entered his mind. The United States had
nothing to do with this. Germany had no thought of her. Germany
admitted our claim to the Western Hemisphere so far as Otto's
experience went. Germany in South America, Germany in Mexico--of that
he saw and knew nothing. His whole mind was aflame with the discovery
he had made. It seemed to him like a return to the age of heroes, when
men walked grandly and rose to place by great deeds of valor alone.
He had come back to the United States in 1912, but two years were not
long enough even to dim the great conception he had caught. Indeed,
everything in the country threw into higher relief the superiority of
German methods and justified her faith in her destiny.
Sabinsport, after any one of the German towns of corresponding size,
seemed ugly, unfinished, disorderly. To their trim, solid, spotless
exterior was opposed a straggling, temporary, half-cleaned condition in
at least the greater part of the town. Instead of a careful business
management of town affairs, by men trained as they would have been for
bank or factory, was an absurd political system of choosing men for
offices. It was not the good of the town that was at issue, although
both sides loudly claimed that it alone considered Sabinsport; it was
always the party, with the result that clever men, like Mulligan and
Cowder, practically controlled affairs.
Otto might, six years before, have laughed at this ridiculous method of
running a town, but not now. Germany had taught him to be serious--oh,
very serious, particularly in public matters. It shamed him that his
home, the place where he must live and do business, should conduct
itself in this crude and wasteful fashion.
He found it difficult in the bank. His "reforms" were disliked--his
father, the directors, the men at the books and the windows, clung to
their ways, and their ways were not, in his judgment, "scientific." His
father laughed at his impatience. "You must go slow, Otto. What people
won't willingly do because they see it is the better, cannot succeed.
Perhaps we're not so bad as you think. Admit our results are good."
But Otto was convinced it was chance, the luck of the American, not any
sound practice that had brought the bank where it stood. Then
constantly there was an irritation in business, a resentment that they
would not see and admit the superiority of the practices he would
introduce.
The social life bored him, or rather the lack of it. There was no
provision for daily natural mixing with one's friends--no coffee hour,
no beer garden, no music. He resented the indifference to the friendly
side of life. He criticized resentfully the habit of regarding pleasure
as something to be bought with money--the inability to get it without
spending. Indeed, Otto felt a thorough and rather bitter disgust at the
place money held in Sabinsport. She regarded it, he felt, as an end.
Getting it was the chief thing with which men's minds were occupied.
They seemed never to think of public affairs except in terms of
business, and of very personal business, too.
But, in spite of this preoccupation with money-getting, they did not,
after all, respect money. They flung it about, toyed with it, used it
for uncertain schemes, wild ventures, took it for their costly and
reckless pleasures. Rarely would you find a German treating money
with such carelessness, such contempt. It would seem as if the thing
everybody sought was not worth keeping when won. Otto hated this. A
German knew the value of money--his countrymen did not. And the few
who did and hoarded it, refused to risk it--they seemed to receive no
such respect from the people as the open-handed. It was
incomprehensible--the American and his money.
But that which combined to make life in Sabinsport most barren and flat
to Otto was his feeling that there was no greatness, no sense of a
magnificent and mysterious future coming to the country. The people
were not working toward a definite national thing. Men and women seemed
to think of nothing more magnificent than to gather and spend wealth.
The idea of subordinating a personal aim for a national aim, the thing
which so dignified German earning, saving and spending, was unheard of
here. Here you lived for yourself, not for your nation.
"America is not a nation," he told his father; "it's a place where
great numbers of people, largely because of a happy chance which
probably can never happen again in the world's history, exercise just
enough control of themselves to enable them to live completely selfish
lives and they save themselves any slight remorse they might feel for
this selfishness by somehow convincing themselves that they are
demonstrating the superiority of individual liberty. And what you are
getting in America is an undisciplined, self-satisfied people, more and
more incapable of thinking itself wrong, more and more incapable of
wanting anything but to be let alone in smug comfort. It is not a
nation, I tell you, Father," Otto would say. "A nation must have a
single, glorious aim."
And the old man would wring his hands and say, "You don't understand,
Otto." And sometimes, walking up and down, would repeat the story of
the incident which had led Otto's grandfather to join the Revolution of
1848 and had brought the family finally to America.
It was not an unusual incident. He was a soldier in training, and one
morning in drilling his gun slipped and came down as they stood at
"Attention." The officer in charge sprang at him with a savage oath and
cut him with his sword across the face so that the blood ran in streams
over his uniform. Rupert Littman finished the drill and that evening
joined the party of young revolutionists, suffered with them defeat,
was imprisoned, escaped, and, as has been told, in 1850 came to this
country.
"You don't understand, Otto. You look only at the outside. It's empire
they think of over there; it's liberty here. An empire with an autocrat
at the head, even a half-way one, may be orderly. Liberty is apt to
look pretty untidy and mixed up in comparison, I know, Otto. But don't
make any mistake; a country that has set out like this one of ours to
show that all men that come to its shores are free, that never for a
moment has dreamed of ruling other peoples, asks nothing of newcomers
but that they don't interfere with other people's freedom. Oh, that
country may not look as trim on the outside as Germany, its people may
not spend their money as sensibly--probably they don't; and I know we
think a good deal more about our own affairs than about public affairs;
but don't you get it into your head that we're not a nation and have no
central enthusiasm. If it came to the test I imagine you would find
that the right of every man to mind his own business and of every
nation to do the same, would make a pretty strong tie in the United
States. You would see, if it came to a test, that we have a core over
here."
"Words, Father, words; you've talked this democratic patter so long you
think it means something. A nation must have a visible expression of
power to be great and feel great. She must have an army, a navy--that
is what makes a nation feel great."
But Rupert Littman shook his head. "You don't understand, Otto, you
don't understand." And Otto didn't understand, and Sabinsport continued
to irritate and humiliate him.
The war coming when he was still in this mood aroused his enthusiasm.
Now the world would have a demonstration of what greatness in a nation
meant. They would see again on earth a real empire rise. So filled was
Otto with this sense of the magnificence of German destiny, he felt no
criticism for anything that Germany could do, no doubt of anything she
said. If she invaded Belgium it was because France was already about to
do so, and she beat her to it. If she burned Louvain, it was for the
unanswerable reasons that the Emperor himself condescended to give to
the American people.
His exultation, naturally enough, made him resent the almost universal
sympathy for heroic little Belgium. He resented the something like
contempt for forcing the war--for all Sabinsport seemed to take it for
granted that Germany had started it. What right, he asked himself
hotly, have a lot of yokels like these--people who know
nothing--nothing of the aspirations of a great nation, a nation with a
genius for empire--people who can hardly name the countries of Europe
and couldn't, for the life of them, tell where the Balkans are--what
right have they to an opinion? He was outraged at the fact that
everybody had an opinion and had no hesitation in giving it. The very
barber and bootblack cursed at the Kaiser. Nothing better showed the
way Otto had gone than the impulse he felt to have them both arrested.
His only consolation in the town was Ralph, who did appreciate the
social efficiency of Germany though he flatly denied any comprehension
of what Otto meant when he talked of German destiny.
It was natural enough that Otto should have eagerly welcomed the
opportunity to help turn public opinion in America against England and
toward Germany, which came to him early in the fall of 1914. Germany
was unquestionably troubled by the judgment against her. She saw that
the United States held her responsible for starting the war and was
horrified by her first stroke. This would never do. Agents were at once
sent out to take advantage of every conceivable opportunity to make the
American think as he ought about these things--that is, to think as
Germany thought.
The country filled up with them. One who traveled much in the fall and
winter of 1914 and 1915 met them on the trains, in hotels--big, blond,
mustached persons with the air of the superman. One of their objects
was to enlist quietly the aid of German-American citizens of position
and education who had seen enough of Germany to understand and
sympathize with her aspirations. There were many of the second or third
generations who had had experiences similar to Otto's, who felt as he
did and who believed that in interpreting Germany to the United States
they were serving their country.
Otto was one of the first of these young men approached. His vanity was
deeply flattered. To be invited into great affairs, to be asked to help
with a campaign important to the Empire, to serve his own land at the
same time by helping to set her right--what an opening! He promised his
full and loyal service. He asked only to be used.
The first service asked of him was to secure full information about the
munition making in the district of which Sabinsport was an important
point, and to place in every plant as many of the men which would be
sent to him as he could without attracting attention. He easily and
naturally enough carried out the commission, and he did it without
compunction. It seemed plausible and proper enough to him that Germany
should inform herself about the chances of the Allies supplying
themselves with munitions, and he admired the care she took to get
accurate information. So far as Otto was concerned, this was all there
was in the matter.
The campaign against selling munitions, which was started in the winter
and spring of 1915, tickled him enormously. Clever--what could be more
clever than using this absurd obsession of a few pacifists to prevent
her enemy from getting shells and shrapnel! _Germany_ stirring up
sentiment against war-weapons to weaken her opponent! That was
humor--great humor. And Otto went into the campaign with gusto, working
quietly through the men he had placed in the plant at Sabinsport,
particularly Max Dalberg; working through unseeing Ralph, working in a
dozen towns where he had business and social relations. His attitude
was strictly correct. We were neutral. Why should we preach neutrality
and make for one antagonist what circumstances made it impossible to
make for another? We must treat all alike. The campaign took hold. The
workingmen favored it. Otto was greatly pleased. That much money was
being used in sending around speakers, in circulating documents, in
advertising, in establishing newspaper and periodical organs, he
vaguely knew. It was all right. You must get the ear of the public. Why
not?
The only serious rebuff Otto had in the early months of his propaganda
was when he attempted to contract with Cowder and with other
manufacturers for their output. He was amazed and incensed at their
attitude. They treated the suggestion that they sell to "Sweden" as an
insult. It was this attitude, so hostile to Germany, that had made him
completely lose his control with Cowder. It had been unbearable; this
contempt, this resentment at the suggestion. He had felt that he was
defending Germany when he raised his hand. His controlled and adroit
companion had criticized him severely, "You'll give the game away,
Littman, if you lose your temper like that."
But Otto had replied hotly, "Give it away! It's a fair game. I believe
in what I'm doing. It's war and fair enough. What I can't tolerate is
the hypocrisy of the American attitude. To pretend to be neutral and
act as if you were insulted when it is suggested to you that you sell
something so it will get to Germany as well as to England. To pretend
to be neutral and to be concerned only with their rights, and yet
tolerate with indifference England's violations and rage against
Germany's."
"Well, they mustn't complain if we use stronger arguments. If they
can't make good the neutrality they preach, we'll have to see what a
little force will do."
"What do you mean?" asked Otto, sharply. "You can't force the United
States."
"The hell we can't," was all his chief answered.
The reply had made no deep impression on Otto then. He remembered it
now. He remembered how this hint had recurred as he talked with the
German agents in the different places where he had met them. After the
Washington fiasco, bursting completely the party for which he had
labored so faithfully, this threat came back to him more often. It made
him anxious. It was in the back of his mind when he flared at Max and
brought upon his head the taunt that humiliated and alarmed him. What
if they carried it out--these explosions that they threatened--how
could he escape complicity? He could refuse to help, but what good
would that do if he was accused. It was a very unhappy young diplomat
that laid his head on the pillow that night--one thoroughly
disillusioned with great affairs.
The succeeding months made him more unhappy. Sabinsport mistrusted him,
and he was made to feel it. In the business life of the town where he
had been treated with deference there was a withdrawal, hard to define
but very real to Otto. Again and again when he entered an office or
room men stopped talking. There was a restraint at the War Board--the
one group in the town which had always listened with eagerness, whether
to outlandish theories and gossip or to sensible argument and
unquestioned fact. Why should the War Board harbor suspicions of him?
Did the War Board _care_?
Ralph, who had been his willing listener, was changed, it seemed to
him. After the downfall of Labor's National Peace Council, he put the
question bluntly to Otto: "Did you know that it was German money that
was backing up the munition and pacifist campaign?" Otto hesitated.
"Never mind," said Ralph, convinced, "but you must see that is a kind
of thing not done, Otto. Embroiling us with England when we're trying
to keep out of the scrap is the work of a sneak. You know why I threw
the _Argus_ to the party. It was because I believed it an honest
American effort to combat militarism in the United States, to stop the
making and selling of munitions. Do you suppose I would have taken any
stock in a German effort to stop munition making here? It's a
scream--Germany spending money in such a cause while she's using
Belgium's guns and running her factories night and day making
munitions! I'm with you in any frank effort to make people understand
Germany better. I begin to think, Otto, that this business makes me
understand Germany better than anything that has happened. You may be
sure I'll look twice hereafter at things made-in-Germany, particularly
ideas. I don't like this business, Otto, and I have to say so."
And Otto could find few words to defend the campaign--though he had
been able to do it so volubly and confidently to himself.
But it was with his father that the great strain came--his father who
was watching him with eyes in which love, agony and anger disputed
place, and neither of them could speak. He might try, as he did, to cut
off gradually all relations with the plotters, for now he called them
so to himself. He might, as he did, see more and more clearly that
Germany was trying to embroil the United States with Mexico. He might
feel that he could put his finger on the human cause of half the
explosions in the country, but he dared not speak, for to speak would,
he felt, throw him into the hands of the secret service with
documentary evidence enough at least to cause his imprisonment--these
letters of his, so full of admiration for the country which he realized
every day now was steadily marching into war with his own country.
The war had brought to no one in Sabinsport so far as great humiliation
and wretchedness as to this dabbler in world politics. No small part of
his misery was due to his fear that the suspicion abroad in Sabinsport
would find its way overseas to the one girl in the world for whom he
had ever really cared. Would the intangible thing which followed him in
the street find Nancy Cowder in Serbia and poison her loyal and honest
mind against him? He had many reasons for knowing how candidly she
weighed things. Would she be misled by gossip and the letters he'd been
sending her, so full of his own importance in the great work of making
America understand Germany? Would Nancy say, like Ralph, "All this does
make me understand Germany better, Otto"? He had an awful fear of it.
The only consolation was his certainty that she had no other Sabinsport
correspondent but her father, and it was unthinkable that her father
would write of their quarrel over the munitions contract.