It was easy enough for him to evade Fred Mitchell's rallyings these
days; the sprig's mood was truculent, not toward his roommate but toward
Congress, which was less in fiery haste than he to be definitely at war
with Germany. All through the university the change had come: athletics,
in other years spotlighted at the centre of the stage, languished
suddenly, threatened with abandonment; students working for senior
honours forgot them; everything was forgotten except that growing
thunder in the soil. Several weeks elapsed after Dora's bitter dismissal
of Ramsey before she was mentioned between the comrades. Then, one
evening, Fred asked, as he restlessly paced their study floor:
“Have you seen your pacifist friend lately?”
“No. Not exactly. Why?”
“Well, for my part, I think she ought to be locked up,” Fred said,
angrily. “Have you heard what she did this afternoon?”
“No.”
“It's all over college. She got up in the class in jurisprudence and
made a speech. It's a big class, you know, over two hundred, under Dean
Burney. He's a great lecturer, but he's a pacifist--the only one on the
faculty--and a friend of Dora's. They say he encouraged her to make this
break and led the subject around so she could do it, and then called on
her for an opinion, as the highest-stand student in the class. She got up
and claimed there wasn't any such thing as a legitimate cause for war,
either legally or morally, and said it was a sign of weakness in a
nation for it to believe that it did have cause for war.
“Well, it was too much for that little, spunky Joe Stansbury, and he
jumped up and argued with her. He made her admit all the Germans have
done to us, the sea murders and the land murders, the blowing up of the
factories, the propaganda, the strikes, trying to turn the United States
into a German settlement, trying to get Japan and Mexico to make war on
us, and all the rest. He even made her admit there was proof they mean
to conquer us when they get through with the others, and that they've
set out to rule the world for their own benefit, and make whoever else
they kindly allow to live, to work for them.
“She said it might be true, but since nothing at all could be a right
cause for war, than all this couldn't be a cause of war. Of course she
had her regular pacifist 'logic' working; she said that since war is
the worst thing there is, why, all other evils were lesser, and a lesser
evil can't be a just cause for a greater. She got terribly excited,
they say, but kept right on, anyway. She said war was murder and there
couldn't be any other way to look at it; and she'd heard there was
already talk in the university of students thinking about enlisting,
and whoever did such a thing was virtually enlisting to return murder for
murder. Then Joe Stansbury asked her if she meant that she'd feel toward
any student that enlisted the way she would toward a murderer, and she
said, yes, she'd have a horror of any student that enlisted.
“Well, that broke up the class; Joe turned from her to the platform and
told old Burney that he was responsible for allowing such talk in his
lecture-room, and Joe said so far as _he_ was concerned, he resigned
from Burney's classes right there. That started it, and practically the
whole class got up and walked out with Joe. They said Burney streaked
off home, and Dora was left alone in there, with her head down on her
desk--and I guess she certainly deserves it. A good many have already
stopped speaking to her.”
Ramsey fidgeted with a pen on the table by which he sat. “Well, I don't
know,” he said, slowly; “I don't know if they ought to do that exactly.”
“Why oughtn't they?” Fred demanded, sharply.
“Well, it looks to me as if she was only fightin' for her principles.
She believes in 'em. The more it costs a person to stick to their
principles, why, the more I believe the person must have something
pretty fine about 'em likely.”
“Yes!” said the hot-headed Fred. “That may be in ordinary times, but not
when a person's principles are liable to betray their country! We won't
stand that kind of principles, I tell you, and we oughtn't to. Dora
Yocum's finding that out, all right. She had the biggest position of
any girl in this place, or any boy either, up to the last few weeks, and
there wasn't any student or hardly even a member of the faculty that had
the influence or was more admired and looked up to. She had the whole
show! But now, since she's just the same as called any student a
murderer if he enlists to fight for his country and his flag--well, now
she hasn't got anything at all, and if she keeps on she'll have even
less!”
He paused in his walking to and fro and came to a halt behind his
friend's chair, looking down compassionately upon the back of Ramsey's
motionless head. His tone changed. “I guess it isn't just the ticket--me
to be talking this way to you, is it?” he said, with a trace of
huskiness.
“Oh--it's all right,” Ramsey murmured, not altering his position.
“I can't help blowing up,” Fred went on. “I want to say, though, I know
I'm not very considerate to blow up about her to you this way. I've been
playing horse with you about her ever since freshman year, but--well,
you must have understood, Ram, I never meant anything that would really
bother you much, and I thought--well, I _really_ thought it was a good
thing, you--your--well, I mean about her, you know. I'm on, all right. I
know it's pretty serious with you.” He paused.
Ramsey did not move, except that his right hand still fidgeted with the
pen upon the table.
“Oh--well--” he said.
“It's--it's kind of tough luck!” his friend contrived to say; and he
began to pace the floor again.
“Oh--well--”
“See here, ole stick-in-the-mud,” Fred broke out abruptly. “After her
saying what she did-- Well, it's none o' my business, but--but--”
“Well, what?” Ramsey murmured. “I don't care what you say, if you want
to say anything.”
“Well, I _got_ to say it,” Fred half groaned and half blurted. “After
she said _that_--and she meant it--why, if I were in your place I'd be
darned if I'd be seen out walking with her again.”
“I'm not going to be,” Ramsey said, quietly.
“By George!” And now Fred halted in front of him, both being huskily
solemn. “I think I understand a little of what that means to you, old
Ramsey; I think I do. I think I know something of what it costs you to
make that resolution for your country's sake.” Impulsively he extended
his hand. “It's a pretty big thing for you to do. Will you shake hands?”
But Ramsey shook his head. “I didn't do it. I wouldn't ever have done
anything just on account of her talkin' that way. She shut the door on
me--it was a good while ago.”
“She did! What for?”
“Well, I'm not much of a talker, you know, Fred,” said Ramsey, staring
at the pen he played with. “I'm not much of anything, for that matter,
prob'ly, but I--well--I--”
“You what?”
“Well, I had to tell her I didn't feel about things the way she did.
She'd thought I had, all along, I guess. Anyway, it made her hate me
or something, I guess; and she called it all off. I expect there wasn't
much to call off, so far as she was concerned, anyhow.” He laughed
feebly. “She told me I better go and enlist.”
“Pleasant of her!” Fred muttered. “Especially as we know what she thinks
enlisting means.” He raised his voice cheerfully. “Well, that's settled;
and, thank God, old Mr. Bernstorff's on his way to his sweet little
vine-clad cottage home! They're getting guns on the ships, and the big
show's liable to commence any day. We can hold up our heads now, and
we're going to see some great times, old Ramsey boy! It's hard on the
home folks--Gosh! I don't like to think of that! And I guess it's going
to be hard on a lot of boys that haven't understood what it's all about,
and hard on some that their family affairs, and business, and so on,
have got 'em tied up so it's hard to go--and of course there's plenty
that just can't, and some that aren't husky enough--but the rest of
us are going to have the big time in our lives. We got an awful lot to
learn; it scares me to think of what I don't know about being any
sort of a rear-rank private. Why, it's a regular _profession_, like
practising law, or selling for a drug house on the road. Golly! Do you
remember how we talked about that, 'way back in freshman year, what
we were going to do when we got out of college? You were going to
be practising law, for instance, and I--well, f'r instance, remember
Colburn; he was going to be a doctor, and he did go to some medical
school for one year. Now he's in the Red Cross, somewhere in _Persia_.
Golly!”
He paused to digest this impossibility, then chattered briskly on.
“Well, there's _one_ good old boy was with our class for a while, back
in freshman year; I bet we won't see him in any good old army! Old
rough-neck Linski that you put the knob on his nose for. Tommie Hopper
says he saw him last summer in Chicago soapboxin', yellin' his head off
cussin' every government under the sun, but mostly ours and the Allies',
you bet, and going to run the earth by revolution and representatives
of unskilled labour immigrants, nobody that can read or write allowed
to vote, except Linski. Tommie Hopper says he knows all about Linski;
he never did a day's work in his life--too busy trying to get the
workingmen stirred up against the people that exploit 'em! Tommie says
he had a big crowd to hear him, though, and took up quite a little money
for a 'cause' or something. Well, let him holler! I guess we can attend
to him when we get back from over yonder. By George, old Ram, I'm
gettin' kind of floppy in the gills!” He administered a resounding slap
to his comrade's shoulder. “It certainly looks as if our big days were
walking toward us!”
He was right. The portentous days came on apace, and each one brought a
new and greater portent. The faces of men lost a driven look besetting
them in the days of badgered waiting, and instead of that heavy
apprehension one saw the look men's faces must have worn in 1776 and
1861, and the history of the old days grew clearer in the new. The
President went to the Congress, and the true indictment he made there
reached scoffing Potsdam with an unspoken prophecy somewhat chilling even
to Potsdam, one guesses--and then through an April night went almost
quietly the steady work: we were at war with Germany.
The bugles sounded across the continent; drums and fifes played up and
down the city streets and in town and village squares and through the
countrysides. Faintly in all ears there was multitudinous noise like
distant, hoarse cheering... and a sound like that was what Dora Yocum
heard, one night, as she sat lonely in her room. The bugles and fifes
and drums had been heard about the streets of the college town, that
day, and she thought she must die of them, they hurt her so, and now to
be haunted by this imaginary cheering--
She started. Was it imaginary?
She went downstairs and stood upon the steps of the dormitory in the
open air. No; the cheering was real and loud. It came from the direction
of the railway station, and the night air surged and beat with it.
Below her stood the aged janitor of the building, listening. “What's the
cheering for?” she asked, remembering grimly that the janitor was one of
her acquaintances who had not yet stopped “speaking” to her. “What's the
matter?”
“It's a good matter,” the old man answered. “I guess there must be a
big crowd of 'em down there. One of our students enlisted to-day, and
they're givin' him a send-off. Listen to 'em, how they _do_ cheer. He's
the first one to go.”
She went back to her room, shivering, and spent the next day in bed with
an aching head. She rose in the evening, however--a handbill had been
slid under her door at five o'clock, calling a “Mass Meeting” of the
university at eight, and she felt it her duty to go; but when she got to
the great hall she found a seat in the dimmest corner, farthest from the
rostrum.
The president of the university addressed the tumultuous many hundreds
before him, for tumultuous they were until he quieted them. He talked to
them soberly of patriotism, and called upon them for “deliberation and
a little patience.” There was danger of a stampede, he said, and he and
the rest of the faculty were in a measure responsible to their fathers
and mothers for them.
“You must keep your heads,” he said. “God knows, I do not seek to judge
your duty in this gravest moment of your lives, nor assume to tell you
what you must or must not do. But by hurrying into service now, without
careful thought or consideration, you may impair the extent of your
possible usefulness to the very cause you are so anxious to serve.
Hundreds of you are taking technical courses which should be
completed--at least to the end of the term in June. Instructors from the
United States Army are already on the way here, and military training
will be begun at once for all who are physically eligible and of
acceptable age. A special course will be given in preparation for
flying, and those who wish to become aviators may enroll themselves for
the course at once.
“I speak to you in a crisis of the university's life, as well as that of
the nation, and the warning I utter has been made necessary by what took
place yesterday and to-day. Yesterday morning, a student in the junior
class enlisted as a private in the United States Regular Army. Far be it
from me to deplore his course in so doing; he spoke to me about it, and
in such a way that I felt I had no right to dissuade him. I told him
that it would be preferable for college men to wait until they could
go as officers, and, aside from the fact of a greater prestige, I urged
that men of education could perhaps be more useful in that capacity. He
replied that if he were useful enough as a private a commission might in
time come his way, and, as I say, I did not feel at liberty to attempt
dissuasion. He left to join a regiment to which he had been assigned,
and many of you were at the station to bid him farewell.
“But enthusiasm may be too contagious; even a great and inspiring motive
may work for harm, and the university must not become a desert. In the
twenty-four hours since that young man went to join the army last night,
one hundred and eleven of our young men students have left our walls;
eighty-four of them went off together at three o'clock to catch an
east-bound train at the junction and enlist for the Navy at Newport. We
are, I say, in danger of a stampede.”
He spoke on, but Dora was not listening; she had become obsessed by the
idea which seemed to be carrying her to the border of tragedy. When the
crowd poured forth from the building she went with it mechanically, and
paused in the dark outside. She spoke to a girl whom she did not know.
“I beg your pardon--”
“Yes?”
“I wanted to ask: Do you know who was the student Doctor Corvis spoke
of? I mean the one that was the first to enlist, and that they were
cheering last night when he went away to be a private in the United
States Army. Did you happen to hear his name?”
“Yes, he was a junior.”
“Who was it?”
“Ramsey Milholland.”