THE RETURN OF SENATOR JOSEPH BARTHOLDI MICHAEL FROM THE WORLD GOVERNMENT
TO SPRINGFIELD. HIS CONVERSE OF HIGH IMPORT WITH A JAPANESE ELDER
STATESMAN WHO IS A COMMISSIONER TO OUR WORLD’S FAIR.
July 14, 2018:—The regular session of the World Senate has ended, and
all the talk in the coffee houses is of the imminent return of Joseph
Bartholdi Michael, the Second, namesake of the high dandy of one hundred
years ago, himself a reversion to tribe still further, in that he is a
replica of the Iron Gentleman, except that he has a hotter temper in old
age, which makes him a most tigerish fighter in the World Senate.
Today, being the Iron Gentleman’s birthday, is a family festival with
the Michaels and, in the very early morning, before there are any
passers by, the leading representatives of the family are hand in hand
in silence around the original forge of the Iron Gentleman, for a little
while. The bellows is blowing and the fire is high and there is the
beginning of a blade in the flame, for they remember that he has said:
“I will return to you only in the leaping flame of the forge fire.” Then
they repeat the Lord’s Prayer and disperse, before the town is awake,
leaving, according to custom, one man to finish the blade, at his
leisure:—in this case Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the Third.
St. Friend, the Giver of Bread, has told me that the Michaels in general
have old fashioned Bible reading in their homes, with old hymns and
family prayers, every morning or evening no matter what pet heresies may
be running through the tribe. Not many of them accept the formally
designed altars of Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the Third, they have left
here hammering a blade, unless they are direct fanatical converts to the
Flower Religion.
This evening I find myself one of a party in the library of St. Friend.
We have been given an uplifting welcome by the saint, and the Thibetan
Boy. Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the Third, the non-entity whose fortunes
seem always thrust upon me, is of the party. Black Hawk Boone is there.
Our special guest is Sake Shioya, one of the Elder Statemen of Japan,
and in America because he is head of the Department of Asiatic Art in
the World’s Fair of the University of Springfield. At home, when not in
the Japanese Cabinet, he is professor Sake Shioya of the Doshisha
University of Japan, and brother of Nataro Shioya, the leading Japanese
representative in the Senate of the World Government.
For a lifetime the brothers have shouted through Japan: “We will strike
off the head of the Singapore Snake with the Sword of the Samurai.” St.
Friend passes round the cigars and, himself, sticks to his corncob pipe.
Perhaps it is because we are under the portrait of Alexander Campbell
our talk turns to religious controversy. St. Friend says: “The world
over, Jew, Catholic, Protestant, used to hate each other to the point of
slaughter, though all spoke the name of Abraham and several other
patriarchs with the same reverence, and invoked Abraham’s tribal God.
Now the Marxians of the world revere Marx and Hegel as these others did
Abraham and Jehovah, but the only way to keep them from cutting each
other’s throats is for the World Government to stand between them.”
“Indeed it is true,” confirms Shioya, “The Purple Flag Marxians of
Japan, the Yellow Flag Marxians of China, the White Flags of Thibet, the
Black Flags of Russia, the Red Flags of Central Europe, the Gray Flags
of America, all conspire against one another, with at least five times
five which is twenty-five hates, in all, to be mathematical. Yet they
all read the same Marx to tatters. When the Yellow Flag Marxians of
China agree among themselves sufficiently to fall upon the Purples of
Japan, a thing we are momently expecting, the World Government will have
a stern police duty, especially since both sides are being urged on by
Singapore.”
Samiri Shioya, that austere old man, continues, saying that which he can
more gracefully say than any of the rest of us: “Instead of a world of
three classes, special privileged, middle class, and peasantry, as these
Marxians think it to be, it is, from my brother’s standpoint and my own,
a globe whose seas and continents are spread with fifty to one hundred
antagonistic races, mutually repellent. These fifty to one hundred races
dye thoroughly, with the dye of race-mysticism, any economic teaching
they take up. So practical world statesmanship, from the Japanese
standpoint and I am glad to say, from the standpoint of the fiery
Michael also, has dealt with race. Our statesmen advocated the principle
of one vote to every main tribe in the world and fractional votes in due
proportion to the size of the small tribes, long before your Michael
entered the Senate, and every speech he has made there to strengthen
that doctrine has been cheered from end to end of Japan.”
July 15:—Senator Joseph Bartholdi Michael is here and has refused the
conspicuous first place in the great sunset parade and drill held in his
honor and has taken his place in the ranks with his son, and has
demanded that the whole ceremony be in honor of the Star Spangled Banner
and the International Flag. Those flags have been put up in special size
and splendor, all over the town, even more than is the custom. And the
borders of the parks around Camp Lincoln are one tremendous fleet of
these banners. I find myself on the drill ground near the aged Japanese
statesman. I am huddled on the side of the reviewing platform with the
newspaper men, and we watch those strange Japanese eyes, and are amazed
at his fiery enthusiasm for the International Flag. The reviewing
platform is by the famous wrought-iron gates, hammered out by the Iron
Gentleman and his three sons and three daughters.
Just as he named the sword “The Avanel Sword,” knowing not of the child
who was coming in one hundred years, he named these “The Avanel Gates,”
for the perhaps mythical Avanel of more than one hundred years ago.
These gates are massive and towering, yet a little distance away are
wonderfully trellised vines, seeming to be climbing the white wall from
which the gates are swung.
In the center of each design is a Golden Rain Tree. The blossoms of the
tree are most delicately wrought, and shining with gold foil against the
black. These trees were, in especial, the work of the hammers of the
three daughters.
But now, to the delight of the old Japanese, and the delight of us all,
the magnificent cavalcade of men and women sweeps in from their city
parade through these ancestral gates, to the Camp Lincoln grounds, in
order, yet in riot, after the manner of a great dance of gay and
inspired horses and horsemen. And they are all within the command of
Avanel, standing high in her stirrups, and as much beneath her eye and
as subject to her entranced fancy, as has been St. Friend, the Giver of
Bread, when she uttered his sermons for him, hardly knowing how she did
it, except that she spoke her mind.
The men on horseback are but the background of the girls in their Diana
mood. The huntress, and yet the Pallas Athena, seems roused in all these
girls in white. Most of them are in their first strength:—high school
girls when they are still a bit Tom boy; that which is with every girl
for a year or half a lifetime as a reminiscence of the primeval girlhood
of her far grandmothers, when they rode the two-toed and three-toed
horse in equestrian dance and revel.
High above all the other flags, on gigantic poles on either side of the
reviewing stand, are the official flags of the field. The poles are of
equal height and the flags are of identical size and importance in the
eyes of the paraders, as they salute them and salute the Japanese each
time round the field:—while the afterglow turns the air to crimson and
orange and grey pearl.
They go by screaming and screeching with delight, and sweep and cut the
air with their Avanel blades in a sunset sword-drill. When they pass
Avanel, whose horse is now near us, the salute in sign of submission to
her pride, is given with all a girl Amazon’s fantastic chivalry: the
Boone dagger, lifted high overhead. In her person at least, the Boones
of Springfield have put the Michaels of Springfield under their feet.
And certainly the whitest thing in the whole whirlwind of white is the
spirited head of old Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the Second. Whatever the
morrow between these clans, his submission is made as she sights him,
and he bows and salutes in the last afterglow, and she forces him to
lead the review beside her.
The Japanese watches and wonders and says to the press gallery that of
course no day can be women’s day and men’s day equally, and this is one
of the days of the women.
Now all the while I have been wondering about a certain device that is
the millinery and nonsense of this drill park, the globe that is the
mechanical toy of these laughing girls. Now the whole company are
whirling round and round that giant school-globe that looms like the
dome of the Taj Mahal in the center of the field. Upon the surface of
the sphere of hollow crystal, the map of the world now begins to blaze
out as darkness comes on, the continents in the conventional colors of
the school globes from the beginning of the log school house days. The
interior of the sphere is a vapor, the color of the sea, but becoming
iridescent as though the world were but a bubble blown by the fancy of
one of the powers of the universe. The changes of light are painted upon
the faces of the riders and the flanks of the horses.
July 17:—The Japanese is addressing the leaders of the Horseshoe
Brotherhood and the Amazons. He says in conclusion:—“Hardly a man on the
earth wanted the war to come that was waged against the World Government
thirty years ago, if we are to believe the professions then made. So far
as I can discover not one responsible statesman expected or intended it.
Such dynamite may be touched off again, and this time it will be with
more cause and more open anticipation. So though the responsible ones
like Michael and my brother, if I may say so, are doing their best to
prevent war, half the world is drilling and riding and marching, and
flying about in practice war planes, and even here where the Great
World’s Fair of the University of Springfield is going on, that seems in
itself an assurance of international brotherhood forever, you are
drilling more zealously every day.
“Pardon me, if for a moment I speak as an old man to his grandchildren.
I ask to be forgiven if I am jealous of the furious and romantic years
just coming on, jealous for the farther future, and for its vindication.
The immediate years, I know, will fill our cups with sorrow whether we
live or die. But I ask of you one Spartan thing, beyond fighting ten
years—if ten years be necessary to subdue mad Singapore. Remember not
only the virtues but the follies of your mothers, the Amazons, and your
fathers, the Horseshoe Brotherhood, who rode side by side and fought so
nobly thirty years ago. I can speak of this because I can say without
flinching that our Japanese men and women Samurai went through the same
glories and follies, with them in the same battle line. Forever after,
they have lived in that war on that battle line. Do not go on
perpetually climbing into office because you can recount military
history, as many of our Samurai have done, drowning out the man or woman
who wants to speak of matters thirty years ahead and plan such a thing
as your Fair or University. No war ushers in the perfect state. The
great wars are not all fought with the sword. To speak in the Christian
phrase, remember that every yesterday is but a box of costly spikenard
to be broken on the feet of Holy Tomorrow. Though you fight ten wars,
let yesterday be your enemy. Otherwise you fight but as the nations that
died before Confucius, and Mencius.”
July 18:—The same group as on the 14th of July are around the library
table of St. Friend with the addition of the gigantic Joseph Bartholdi
Michael, the Second, who is among us as though he were in his boyhood
again, being as he says, “Back home, after so long.” The idolizing
friendship of the Japanese and his private secretary but provoke him to
franker monologues and a greater disposition to sprawl about with his
hair mussed up and his head on one side like an eagle acting the robin.
He has his arm around his son, as though he would push him in amongst
us. As the evening progresses, in reply to some quite pointed questions
from the Japanese, on behalf of his brother and himself, who want to act
upon the information, discreetly but definitely, Joseph Bartholdi
Michael, the Second, bawls out a confession:—
“First, let me say that no man ever held office in the world, who was
actually capable of running more than a village of ten thousand
inhabitants. All men who have been higher in apparent rank than village
mayors, have simply made shift: rattled about in their big chairs as
they could. The courageous man, knowing this, respects, but does not
fear or revere the alleged great. They all get the respect from me due
to a good mayor, and no more. No man should run for a great office
without expecting to make a botch of his administration. I dream of
something definite and quite selfish. I want to have my turn as
President of the World Government. This proclamation may be too much
American style for the stomachs of my Japanese friends here present. But
no one was ever elected dog catcher, coroner, governor, senator, or
president, in this United States, who did not first nominate himself. As
a matter of fact I know of no American politician who was ever urged to
run by his most admiring friend. I must keep my American political
habits if I am to feel at home in this contest and to retain even the
American vote. All this is by the way. I hope it is not too mysterious
to a Japanese.
“To continue as to my views around and about this office. A man may
serve but one term at best. We Michaels are a long lived set, and I am
hoping at the end of this war to have strength for one term.
“It is a long journey to the nomination past all other possible national
or international ambitions; for instance, in my case, past an ambition
to forge a thousand Michael blades.
“I admit I am an old man, and I know the ironies, or at least some of
them, if I win. Whoever is President of the World or mayor of a small
town is predestined to be overthrown by the ten most envious and
vigorous young men who want his place.”
And now the eagle begins to flame in the face of Michael and he speaks
most earnestly: “I can only hope that some of the envious will be from
Springfield’s freshman chivalry. I love the hate of young men and young
women when it is high and keeps them driving forward to unseat the older
generation in tournaments over noble issues. And whoever replaces me at
the World Capitol, either in the legislature or the supreme chair, I
hope to have made my bungling record there of such a sort, my foe,
equally human, will be obliged to do his noblest to unseat me. But the
sword of the Michaels has not been called the Avanel sword by divine
accident alone, and at the end of my turn, ten years hence, or so, I am
willing to be driven out of the supreme-chair by a Boone, of
Springfield, particularly if it is a girl, and particularly if she is
named Avanel.” Which ending is of course but gallant nonsense. But I
venture, from my dark corner to interrupt severely:—“The world would
have a princess, not a president. It would simply be the reiteration of
monarchy and idolatry from of old time.”
But no one seems to hear me. My voice comes from too far away.
July 21:—Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the Second, is talking with the two
Japanese and myself in Tom Strong’s Lunch Room, and, with most elaborate
and knightly deference to the extremely contrasting race character of
our guests, and is giving his theory of what he calls:—“The New
Springfield Race.” And his tone of voice is most diplomatically
ingratiating, as he touches on matters alien to Japanese thought.
“Just as the sea is naturally the world’s buffer state, and in area far
greater than the total of all the continents, with the happy
circumstance that the World Government is supported by a sea revenue, in
this same way and no other way, institutions like the University Fair
lie between all great enemies and factions of Springfield, a sea of
separation, cooling, and reconciliation.
“Springfield, in other ways, affords so good a symbol of desirable world
conditions, toward which the World Government should be, perhaps,
constructed, that I would like to put the city before you in that light.
“What is the ultimate citizen of Springfield? Already the race strains
that have mixed, have made an elastic, resilient type, that is one with
the city’s suddenest moves.
“Of course, one event or festival pleases the Italians most, another
seems to be in the Scandinavian mood, though both events represent
Springfield. Every new song or event or new idea goes echoing through
the various temperaments, and has a resonance that a thought cannot have
when it is echoed in only one kind of a corridor.
“And Springfieldians, for all their marvelous intermarriages, are not
mongrel. They have a special Springfield sense of the sacred mystery of
race, that keeps the great pronounced race types like the Japanese and
others in honored separation, while within one general type or kindred
tradition, there is much intermarriage.
“We Michaelites say to each other, and you will forgive a family
allusion, that the Springfield soul, which is so elastic, is like the
sword evolved by the Iron Gentleman, which can be coiled like a ribbon
from the side but, when cutting straightforward, can go through granite
without losing edge anywhere.
“As for the versatility and elasticity, the Irish grandmother of my pet
enemy will keep him in city hall politics, and one Russian
great-grandmother keeps him in the music department of the University,
as one of the leading composers. Or so we are accustomed to tracing out
family lines in this town.
“Another man is quite sure that his Portuguese great-grandfather gives
him the voice to be one of the city’s principals in local opera, and his
Scotch great-grandfather, at least in his own eyes, explains the fact
that he is an expert accountant.
“The mystery of race is first of all a sex mystery, and with endless
subtleties settled by instinct, on which no man can dogmatize, though
they have caused jealous Othello to misunderstand and kill Desdemona,
and Jessica to understand and wed Lorenzo, from the beginning. If race
is first of all a sex mystery, it is next a religious mystery, which is
more easily expounded, from the standpoint of politics, and touches,
perhaps more clearly, our theory of World Government. The prayers at our
family altars differ in tone and accent. The races with a turn for
sectarianism, like the Scotch, are still working in our blood while
others are the mainstay of the Cathedral. All phases of the race—the
religious mystery, moving in harmony, cleanness, and self respect are
not only a part of Springfield’s total personality, but of Springfield’s
government, in the midst of apparent mob-law.
“For instance, the fact that the Catholics have remained for these one
hundred years worshipping in their incense-haunted Churches in the
Springfield atmosphere, means that Springfield people, married before
Springfield Catholic altars, have become a special kind of dreaming
Catholics. Therefore, they have given us miracle-working, vision-seeing
saints, like Saint Scribe of the Shrines, to help unify our mood. And we
all worship in season at the Cathedral, and half of us are followers of
St. Friend, the Giver of Bread, whatever our religious belief.
“I say the Christian Science Church of Springfield has a most noble
history. It is made up largely of heretic Jews and proselytes from the
old Congregational New Englanders. This would not be so if the doctrine
were a pure abstraction appealing to all men equally. It is mixed in
some incalculable way with the mystery of race and the mystery of the
past, or it would not appeal so definitely to these two race traditions,
and so little to all others.
“The side of it that appeals to me is its history of freedom and its
chronicle of subdivision, which mean life, at least I hold that they do
in this case. And so we find the local Mother Church growing at first
strong, and then new teachers rising in the body of the Church’s life to
make more vital the friendly and hostile pulpits of the town, and
stimulate everywhere debate.
“The teachings of Rabbi Ezekiel of the Oak Religion and Mother Grey of
the Flower Religion may be largely classified as coming from Christian
Science. The wave of its tide is still strong among us, and we know not
what Christian Science may bring forth for Springfield tomorrow.
“Our sects quarrel, of course, but whatever quarrels they have divide
families only, never the city.
“I wish this could always be true of the races in the World Government.
“We have seen adorers of the truth, like close followers of Mother Grey,
the Florist, going from Synagogue to Church and from Church to the Open
Forum, and it is generally deemed a mark of a good citizen, certainly
among the descendants of the Iron Gentleman, to understand all of these
movements, and to love many, though they appear to contradict one
another. Within the dominion of the Springfield mind, there is a
principle:—one sect, one vote: one race, one vote. As florist Mother
Grey is willing to say to her most devoted following ‘Our religions and
races may be looked upon by the wise as many flowers of opposite design,
yet all making glad the Springfield garden.’ Yet there is no place in
the world where people are more loyal to their clans. Boones are Boones
forever.
“You, as a Japanese, will be glad and comprehend when I say that even
the religious life from the far east, except the teaching of Singapore,
moves up into this common denominator in Springfield that we call
citizenship. There are a few Mohammedan Philippinos, and I happen to
know, they are good citizens and good Americans, though they are allowed
but one apparent wife in these states. There is a group of Thibetans, of
whom the Thibetan Boy is one socially, if not religiously, who do not
find a contradiction between their Springfield patriotism that has gone
on these three generations, and their reformed Buddhism. Of course, they
marry for the most part among themselves, or bring Thibetans from New
York or San Francisco to build up their colony. Whatever church a group
of our people finds in tune with their race and sex and love-tradition,
no matter how separate they keep their race strains, or how guarded
their family altars and holy family flags, they surely belong to the
Springfield race and the Springfield Civic Religion. They are loyal to
the city as a scholar is to his University. This is the mood I would
like to get into World-Government-Flag-Patriotism, which is now too
crude. With obvious Singaporian exceptions, this Springfield civic
religion is preached by every philosopher and every local atheist. Even
Sparrow Short, though he seems to hate me and the World Government,
would count it as great a hardship to be banished from Springfield, as
Dante counted it, to be banished from Florence. I wish his kind could
see the World Flag as they see the Springfield Flag.
“You have wanted to understand my politics, to make it clearer to your
brother in Japan. In most things the city is a symbol and pattern to me
of World Unity and World Government and if there has been any
consistency in my battles in the World Senate, it is because I had faith
in this pattern.
“Within the range from Jew to Greek we openly trust one another’s
priesthood, realizing we are all kings and priests before God. Above all
races and their sects are the stars, and beneath them is the rich earth,
and between these our city climbs heavenward. I am sure that before a
thousand years go by, yes, before a hundred years go by, some image of
Prince Siddartha will stand beside the image of Johnny Appleseed, whose
soul was so much like his own. Our image of Johnny Appleseed would have
been equally impossible in the church of St. Peter and St. Paul that
stood on the site of our cathedral one hundred years ago. With such
practical unity of the main forces that have quarrelled immemorially in
the old lands, I have the hope that similar forces of race and sect,
with the buffer state of the ocean between them, to keep them cool, may
come to practical reconciliation under the World Flag:—that those that
can unite under the Flag of Springfield with joy, can some day unite,
the world over, under the flag of all mankind.” And so, till midnight
Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the Second, talks on and on, possibly
recruiting a member of his possible cabinet, if his dream comes true, of
being for one term the President of the World. And the Japanese Samurai
nods his gray head keeping time to the eloquence, till the one remaining
waiter gets us out of the restaurant by turning down the lights, and
handing us our hats.