JIMMIE HIGGINS VOTES FOR DEMOCRACY
I
Another day had come--though Jimmie did not know it in his dungeon.
All he knew was that Sergeant Perkins returned, and stood looking at
him, picking his teeth with a quill. This little Bolshevik had stood
the water-cure longer than any man whom Perkins had ever known, and
he wondered vaguely what sort of damned fool he was, what he thought
he was accomplishing, anyhow.
But it was necessary to keep after him, for Perkins knew that his
career was at stake. He was supposed to have found out something,
and he hadn't! So he ordered Jimmie tied up by the thumbs, the poor
thumbs that were swollen to three times their normal size, and
nearly black in colour. But now Jimmie's good Mother Nature
interfered to stop the proceedings; the pain was so exquisite that
Jimmie fainted, and when the sergeant saw that he was being cheated,
he cut his victim down and left him lying on the damp stones.
So for three days Jimmie's life consisted of alternating swoons and
agony--the regular routine of the “third degree” in more obstinate
cases; and always, in his conscious moments, Jimmie called upon the
God in himself, and the God responded with his hosts, and trumpets
of triumph echoed in Jimmie's soul and he did not “come through”.
So on the fourth day the three torturers entered the cell, and
lifted him to his feet, and carried him up the stone stairs, and
wrapped him in a blanket and put him in an automobile.
“Listen now,” said Perkins, who sat by his side, “they're going to
try you by court-martial. Hear me?”
Jimmie made no response.
“And I'll explain this for your health--if you tell any lies about
what we done to you, I'll take you back to that dungeon and tear you
limb from limb. You get me?” Still Jimmie did not answer--the sullen
little devil, thought Perkins. But in Jimmie's soul there was a
faint flicker of hope. Might he not make appeal to the higher
authorities, and be saved from further torture? Jimmie had believed
in his country, and in his country's purpose to defend democracy; he
had read the wonderful speeches of President Wilson, and could not
bring himself to think that the President would permit any man to be
tortured in prison. But alas, it was a long way from the White House
to Archangel--and still longer if you measured it through the
ramifications of the army machine, a route more thoroughly
criss-crossed with red tape than any sector of the Hindenburg line
with barbed wire.
Jimmie was taken into a room where seven officers sat at a big
table, looking very stern and solemn. Perkins supported him under
the arm-pits, thus making it look as if he were walking. He was
placed in a chair, and took a glance about him--but without seeing
much hope in the faces which confronted him.
The president of the court-martial was Major Gaddis, who had been a
professor of economics in a great university before the war: that is
to say, he had been selected by a syndicate of bankers as a man who
believed in a ruling class, and could never by any possibility be
brought to believe in anything else. He was a man of strict honour,
a very gracious and cultivated gentleman if you happened to belong
in his social circle; but he was convinced that the duty of the
lower classes was to obey, and that the existence of civilized
society depended upon their being made to obey.
Next to him sat Colonel Nye, as different a type as could be
imagined. Nye had been a soldier of fortune in Mexico and Central
America, and had found prosperity as a captain of one of those
condottieri bands which were organized by the big corporations of
America before the war, for the purpose of crushing strikes. He had
commanded a private army of five thousand men, horse, foot and
artillery, known to the public as the Smithers Detective Agency.
During a great coal-strike he had been placed by a state government
in virtual charge of the militia, and had occupied himself in
turning loose machine-guns on tent-colonies filled with women and
children. He had been tried by a militia court-martial for murder
and acquitted--thus making it impossible for any civilian grand-jury
ever to indict him and have him hanged. And now he had been
automatically taken from the state militia into the national army,
where he made a most efficient officer, with a reputation as a
strict disciplinarian.
First-Lieutenant Olsen had been a dry goods clerk, who had gone into
an officers' training-camp. As he hoped to rise in the world, he
looked to his superiors always before he expressed an opinion. The
same was true of Captain Gushing, who was a good-natured young
bank-cashier with a pretty wife who spent his salary a couple of
months before he got it. The fifth officer, Lieutenant Gannet, did
most of the talking, because he was Jimmie's immediate superior, and
had conducted the investigations into the case. He had discussed the
matter with Major Prentice, the Judge-Advocate of the court, also
with Captain Ardner, the young military lawyer who went through the
form of defending Jimmie; the three had agreed that the case was a
most serious one. The propaganda of Bolshevism in this Archangel
expedition must certainly be nipped in the bud. The charge against
Jimmie was insubordination and incitement to mutiny, and the penalty
was death.
II
Jimmie sat in his chair, only partly aware of what was going on,
because of the agony in his swollen thumbs and his twisted arms. His
flicker of hope had died, and he had lost interest in the
proceedings--all his energy was needed to endure his pain. He would
not tell them where he had got the leaflets, and when they badgered
him, he just grunted with pain. He would not talk with Captain
Ardner, who tried in vain to persuade him that he was acting in
his--the prisoner's--interest. Only twice did Jimmie flare up; the
first time when Major Gaddis voiced his indignation that any citizen
of the great American democracy should ally himself with these
Bolshevik vermin, who were carrying on a reign of terror throughout
Russia, burning, slaying, torturing--
“Who talks about torturing?” shrieked Jimmie, half-starting from
his chair. “Ain't you been torturing me--regular tearin' me to
pieces?”
The court was shocked. “Torturing?” said Captain Gushing.
“Torturin' me for days--a week, maybe, I dunno, in that there
dungeon!”
Major Gaddis turned to Sergeant Perkins, who stood behind Jimmie's
chair, barely able to withhold his hands from the prisoner. “How
about that, Sergeant?”
“It is utterly false, sir.”
“Look at these thumbs!” cried Jimmie. “They strung me up by them!”
“The prisoner was violent,” said Perkins. “He nearly killed Private
Connor, one of the guards, so we had to use severe measures.”
“It's a lie!” shrieked Jimmie. But they shut him up, and the
dignified military machine ground on. Anybody could see that
discipline would go to pieces if the word of a jailer did not
prevail over that of a prisoner, the word of a loyal and tried
subordinate over that of a traitor and conspirator, an avowed
sympathizer with the enemy.
Presently the presiding officer inquired if the prisoner was aware
that he had incurred the death-penalty. Getting no reply, he went on
to inform the prisoner that the court would be apt to inflict this
extreme penalty, unless he would reconsider and name his accomplices
among the Bolsheviki, so that the army could protect itself against
the propaganda of these murderers. So Jimmie flared up again--but
not so violently, rather with a touch of fierce irony. “Murderers,
you say? Ain't you gettin' ready to murder me?”
“We are enforcing the law,” said the court.
“You make what you call law, an' they make what they call law. You
kill people that disobey, an' so do they. What's the difference?”
“They are killing all the educated and law-abiding people in
Russia,” declared Major Gaddis, severely.
“All the rich people, you mean,” said Jimmie. “They make the rich
obey their laws; they give them a chance, the same as everybody
else, then if they don't obey they kill them--just as many as they
have to kill to make them obey. An' don't you do the same with the
poor people? Ain't I seen you do it, every time there was a strike?
Ask Colonel Nye there! Didn't he say: 'To hell with habeas
corpus--we'll give them post-mortems?'”
Colonel Nye flushed; he did not know that his fame had followed him
all the way from Colorado to the Arctic Circle. The court made haste
to protect him: “We are not conducting a Socialist debate here. It
is evident that the prisoner is impenitent and defiant, and that
there is no reason for leniency.” So the court proceeded to find
Jimmie Higgins guilty as charged, and to sentence him to twenty
years' military confinement--really quite a mild sentence,
considering the circumstances. In New York City at this very time
they were trying five Russian Jews, all of them mere children, one a
girl, for exactly the same offence as Jimmie had
committed--distributing a plea that American troops should cease to
kill Russian Socialists; these children received twenty years, and
one of them died soon after his arrest--his fellows swore as a
result of torture inflicted by Federal secret service agents.
III
So Jimmie was taken back to prison. Major Gaddis, who was really a
just man, and made law and order his religion, gave the strictest
orders that the prisoner should not again be hung up by the thumbs.
It was, of course, desirable to find out who had printed the
Bolshevik leaflets, but in the effort to make the prisoner tell he
should receive only the punishments formally approved by the army
authorities.
So Jimmie went back to the underground dungeon, and for eight hours
every day a chain was fastened about his wrists, and the other end
run up into the iron ring, so that his feet barely touched the
floor; and there Jimmie hung, and tried out his conscience--this
being the test then being undergone by many men at the disciplinary
barracks at Fort Leavenworth. Jimmie's conscience really was nothing
like as strong as it ought to have been. Jimmie had moods of
shameless self-pity, moods of desperate and agonizing doubt. He did
not mean to let his dungeon-keepers know this, but they listened
behind the door through a slot which the Tsar had had contrived for
this purpose; it could be closed while the prisoner was screaming
under torture, and then opened by the jailer without the prisoner's
knowledge.
So Perkins heard Jimmie sobbing and wailing, talking to himself and
to other people--to someone called “Strawberry”, and to someone else
called “Wild Bill”, asking them if they had ever suffered anything
like this, and was it really worth while, would it help the
revolution? Perkins thought he had got some important information
here, and took it to Lieutenant Gannet, with the result that inquiry
was made through all the American Forces for men known as
“Strawberry” and “Wild Bill”. But these men could not be found; as
it happened, “Wild Bill” had taken refuge in a place to which not
even the army intelligence service can penetrate, and “Strawberry”
Curran was just then being tried with a bunch of other “wobblies” in
California and subjected to much the same kind of treatment as
Jimmie was receiving in Archangel.
It was a big advantage that Sergeant Perkins had in his struggle
with Jimmie, that the pitiful weakness of Jimmy's soul was exposed
to him, while the soul of Perkins was hidden from Jimmie. For the
truth was that Perkins was suffering from rage, mingled with not a
little fear. What the hell was this idea that could keep a little
runt of a working-man stronger than all in authority? And how was
this idea to be kept from spreading and wrecking the comfortable,
well-ordered world in which Perkins expected soon to receive an army
commission? The very day after the court-martial, which was supposed
to be a profound military secret, the army authorities were
astounded to discover, posted in several conspicuous places, a
placard in English, reading:
“American soldiers, do you know that an army sergeant is being
tortured and has been sentenced to twenty years in a dungeon for
having tried to tell you how the Bolsheviki are making propaganda
against the German Kaiser?
“Do you know the true reason your armies are here? Are you willing
to die to compel the Russian people to accept your ideas of
government? Are you willing to have your comrades tortured to keep
the facts from you?”
And of course the doughboys who read this placard wanted to know if
it told the truth. And quickly word spread that it did. Men who
still had copies of the leaflet which Jimmie had distributed now
found eager readers for it, and soon all the men knew its contents,
and were debating the question of the use of American armies to put
down social revolution in a foreign country. These same questions
were being asked in the halls of Congress back home. Senators were
questioning the right of sending troops into a country against which
war had never been declared, and other Senators were demanding that
they be immediately withdrawn. And this news also reached the men,
and increased the danger. Archangel was not a pleasant place to
stay, especially with winter coming on fast; men were disposed to
grumble--and now they had a pretext!
IV
The authorities who were handling this army laboured under one
grievous handicap, probably never before faced by any army in
history. The Commander-in-Chief of the army, who determined its
policies and tried to set its moral tone, kept coming now and then
before Congress and making speeches full of incendiary and reckless
utterances, calculated to set dangerous thoughts to buzzing in the
heads of soldiers, to break down discipline and undermine morale.
The President wrote a letter to a political convention in which he
declared that the workers of America were living in “economic
serfdom”; he declared again and again that every people had a right
to determine their own destinies and form of government without
outside interference. This while the army was trying to put down
those Russians who were in revolt against “economic serfdom” in
their own country!
An army, you see, is a machine built to fight; a man who goes into
it and takes part in its work, very quickly acquires its tone, which
is one of abysmal contempt for all politicians, particularly of the
talking and letter-writing variety, the “idealists” and “dreamers”
and “theorists”, who do not understand that the business of men is
to fight battles and win them. All the officers of the old army, the
West-Pointers, had been bred in the tradition of class-rule, they
had in their very bones the idea that they were a special breed,
that obedience to them was a law of God; while of the new officers,
the overwhelming majority came from the well-to-do, and were not
favourable to speech-making and letter-writing about the rights of
man. They were without enthusiasm for the idea of having a pacifist
secretary of war set over them by the “idealist” commander-in-chief.
They did not hesitate to vent their indignation; and when this
pacifist secretary gave orders about conscientious objectors which
were based upon sentimentalism and theory, the army machine took the
liberty of interpreting these orders and trimming the nonsense out
of them. And the farther away you got from the office of the
pacifist secretary, the more thorough the trimming inevitably
became; thus producing the phenomenon which poor Jimmie Higgins
found so bewildering--that policies laid down by sincere
humanitarians and liberals in Washington were carried out in
Archangel by an ex-detective trained in a school of corruption and
cruelty.
Jimmie Higgins couldn't understand that here in Archangel were
Americans taking their orders from British and French officers, who
wasted no breath on pacifism and sentiment, who had no fool ideas
about wars for democracy. Was one obscure little runt of a Socialist
machinist to be allowed to block their world-plans? Setting himself
up as an authority, presuming to accept literally the passages of
his President, in defiance of their authority in Archangel! Allying
himself with traitorous and criminal scoundrels, trying to poison
the minds of American soldiers and light the flame of mutiny among
them! Just as once Jimmie Higgins had found himself in a strategic
position where he had held up the whole Hun army and won the battle
of Chateau-Thierry, so now he found himself in a position of equal
strategic importance--on the line of communication of the Allied
armies attacking Russia, and threatening to cut the line and force
the armies into retreat!
V
It became more essential than ever to discover these Bolshevik
sympathizers and stamp out their propaganda. As hanging Jimmie up by
the wrists had not brought forth the desired information, Jimmie was
put in solitary confinement on a diet of bread and water, this being
another test of sincerity of conscience. For the conscience a diet
of white flour and water may be all right, but Jimmie soon found
that it is very bad indeed for the intestinal tract and the
blood-stream--being, in truth, far worse than a diet of water alone.
The man who lives on white flour and water for a few days suffers
either from complete stopping of the bowels, or else from dysentery;
his blood becomes clogged with starch poisons, his nerves
degenerate, he falls a quick victim to tuberculosis, or pernicious
anasmia, or some other disease which will prevent his ever being a
sound man again.
Also, Jimmie received the water-treatment, as included in the Fort
Leavenworth regiment. It was necessary that all prisoners should be
bathed; which was interpreted by some guards to mean that they
should have a stream of icy water turned on them, and be forced to
stand under it. Because Jimmie's arms were too badly injured for him
to scrub himself, Connor seized a rough brush and salt, and rubbed
off strips of his skin. When Jimmy wriggled away, they followed him
with the hose; when he screamed, they turned it into his mouth and
nose; when he fell down, they let the cold water run over him for
ten or fifteen minutes.
Jimmie had had a good deal of harsh treatment in the course of his
outcast life, but never so closely concentrated in point of time.
His spirit remained unbroken, but his body gave way, and then his
mind began to give also. He fell a victim to delusions; the
nightmares which haunted his sleep lay siege to his waking hours
also, and he thought he was being tortured at times when he was just
hanging by his chains. Until at last Perkins, listening through the
door, heard strange cries and grunts, beast-like noises, barkings,
and growlings. He called Connor and Grady, and the three of them
stood listening.
“By God!” said Grady. “He's dippy.”
“He's nutty,” said Connor.
“He's batty,” said Perkins.
But the idea occurred to all of them--perhaps he was shamming! What
was easier than for one of those emissaries of Satan to pretend to
have a devil inside him? So they waited a bit longer, until Connor,
coming to chain Jimmie up, found him gnawing off the ends of his
fingers. That was really serious, so they sent for the
prison-surgeon, who had to make but a brief inspection to convince
himself that Jimmie Higgins was a raving madman. Jimmie fancied
himself some kind of fur-bearing animal, and he was in a trap, and
was trying to gnaw off his foot so as to escape. He snapped his
teeth at everyone who came near him; he had to be knocked senseless
before a straight-jacket could be got on him.
VI
And so it was that Jimmie Higgins at last made his escape from his
tormentors. Jimmie doesn't know anything about the Russian Jew,
Kalenkin, any more; he could not tell the secret if he wanted to, so
they have given up testing his conscience, and they treat him
kindly, and have succeeded in persuading him that he is out of the
trap. Therefore he is a good beast--he crawls about on all fours,
and eats his food out of a tin platter without using his gnawed-off
fingers. He still has torturing pains in the arm-joints, but he does
not mind them so much, because, being a beast, he suffers only the
pain of the moment; he does not know that he is going to suffer
to-morrow, nor worry about it. He is no longer one of those who
“look before and after and pine for what is not”. He is a “good
doggie”, and when you pat him on the head he rubs against you and
whines affectionately.
Poor, mad Jimmie Higgins will never again trouble his country; but
Jimmie's friends and partisans, who know the story of his
experiences, cannot be thus lightly dismissed by Society. In the
industrial troubles which are threatening the great democracy of the
West, there will appear men and women animated by a fierce and
blazing bitterness; and the great democracy of the West will marvel
at their state of mind, unable to conceive what can have caused it.
These rebellious ones will be heard quoting to the great democracy
the words of its greatest democrat, spoken in solemn warning during
the slaughter and destruction of the Civil War: “If God will that it
continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and
fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop
of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the
sword, as it was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be
said, 'The judgements of the Lord are true and righteous
altogether.'”
THE END