The document which Captain Murray handed to McCormack to read comprised
the charges and specifications that had been filed against the first
lieutenant. It had apparently been drawn with much skill and care, and
it read as follows:
“To CAPTAIN ROBERT J. MURRAY,
_Commanding Company E, ----th Regiment Infantry N. G. P._
“SIR:
“The undersigned citizens of Fairweather in the county of
Benson beg leave to file with you the following charges and
specifications against First Lieutenant Halpert McCormack of
your company, and request you to formulate said charges and
specifications, and, through intermediate headquarters, present
them to the proper military authority, and request a hearing
upon them by court martial.
“CHARGE I. Using contemptuous and disrespectful words against
the President and the Congress of the United States, in
violation of the 19th Article of War.
“_Specification._ In that the said First Lieutenant Halpert
McCormack, did on or about the 20th day of April, 1916, declare
publicly, in the presence and hearing of numerous persons, that
the President and the Congress of the United States were but
the tools of organized wealth, and deserved neither the respect
nor obedience of honest and right-thinking men.
“CHARGE II. ‘Conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman,’ in
violation of the 61st and 62nd Articles of War.
“_Specification 1._ In that the said First Lieutenant Halpert
McCormack, by principle, declaration and practice, is a
socialist, a syndicalist, an anarchist, and a sympathizer with
and believer in the principles and methods of an organization
known as ‘The Industrial Workers of the World,’ which
organization is inimical to law, order and public safety.
“_Specification 2._ In that the said First Lieutenant Halpert
McCormack has declared himself opposed to the suppression of
mobs and riots by military force.
“_Specification 3._ In that the said First Lieutenant Halpert
McCormack has declared that the rights of property are not
sacred as against the efforts of wage-earners who desire to
take possession of such property by force.
“_Specification 4._ In that the said First Lieutenant Halpert
McCormack has declared that his loyalty to the red flag of
anarchism takes precedence of his loyalty to the Stars and
Stripes.
“In further explanation of Charge II and the specifications
thereunder, the undersigned desire to add that they represent
the ownership of certain manufacturing plants in this
community, from which many of the workmen have voluntarily
withdrawn on strike; that many of such workmen, together with
a large number of irresponsible and disorderly persons, urged
on and inflamed by anarchistic leaders, have threatened to take
possession of these plants by force, or to damage or destroy
them, and it may be necessary for the owners to call on the
militia of the State for the protection of their property and
the safeguarding of the lives of their loyal employees.
“_Signed_,
THE BARRISCALE MANUFACTURING CO.,
by Benj. Barriscale, Sr., _President_.
THE FAIRWEATHER MACHINE CO.,
by Don. G. Albertson, _President_.
THE BENSON COUNTY IRON WORKS,
by Rufus Ingersoll, _Vice-President_.”
Lieutenant McCormack looked up from the reading of the charges with
eyes that were dazed and incredulous.
“Well,” said Captain Murray, “what do you think of it?”
“Why,” replied Hal, “it’s not true; not any of it.”
“Probably not,” replied the captain, “but you’ll have to meet it all
the same. I’ve got to forward the complaint to headquarters. I’ve no
discretion in the matter.”
“I suppose that’s true.”
Hal was still staring almost stupidly at his commander. The sweeping
nature of the charges, their bluntness and brutality, had given him
a shock from which he did not at once recover. For years he had been
inviting just such a calamity as this, but now that it had come, in
this direct and drastic form, the suddenness of it had quite taken away
his breath.
Captain Murray handed Hal’s resignation back to him.
“You won’t want to file this now,” he said.
“No,” replied Hal, taking it, “I guess not. I think--I think I’ll deny
those charges.”
“Of course you will. And let me tell you, you’ve got a very pretty
fight on your hands. It’ll be no boy’s play. The Barriscales are
determined. You know you’ve got yourself into this predicament
by flirting with economic vagaries, and associating with radical
charlatans. I’m willing to do what I can to help you out provided
you’ll put up a vigorous defense on your own account. I want to keep
you in the Guard.”
“Thank you, Captain! What would you suggest?”
“I think you’d better go and get Brownell to take up your case, and
defend you. He’s a good lawyer and a good friend of yours. If anybody
can save you he can.”
“Very well, I’ll speak to him. In the meantime I suppose I may be
considered as being under arrest?”
“No; I’ve thought about that. These charges are still in the nature
of a complaint from private citizens. They will not become official
until I have acted on them. But I feel that I cannot afford to ignore
them. The Army Regulations provide that the commanding officer with
whom any charges are filed shall state, in forwarding them, whether
the charges can be sustained. I cannot say that these charges will not
be sustained, but I can and will say that I do not think the filing of
them warrants your immediate arrest. You will therefore continue to
perform your usual duties until the court itself shall order otherwise.”
“Thank you, Captain Murray! You are very generous.”
“And, McCormack, if you get out of this thing safely--and let me tell
you frankly that the chances are against you, for you’ve been skating
on mighty thin ice,--but if you should pull through all right, for
heaven’s sake let go of all these visionary schemes! Come back to solid
earth, and be a plain American citizen along with the rest of us!”
Hal did go to see Brownell. And although Brownell gave him a severe
dressing-down for what he termed his crass foolishness, he agreed,
nevertheless, to take up his case, and he did so with vigor and
avidity, for he was fond of the first lieutenant and would have
gone through fire and water for him. But when it came to the actual
preparation for the defense Hal could give his counsel little
assistance. The accused man knew of no specific circumstances on which
the charges could have been based, nor of any witnesses whom he could
call to disprove them. And while he was obliged to admit that he had
undoubtedly said things that might give color to the complaint, he was
nevertheless certain that the specifications as they were drawn were
untrue.
So Brownell, with a listless client and a weak case before him, had
a man’s task on hand to make up a defense. But he plunged into the
work bravely. He cross-examined and badgered McCormack by the hour.
He interviewed Donatello, General Chick, Miss Halpert, any one and
every one who might by any possibility be able to throw light on the
situation. He studied the law of the matter and exhausted the logic of
his fertile mind in the preparation of arguments and briefs. And after
he had done everything that legal knowledge and human ingenuity could
help him to do to make ready his defense, he admitted confidentially
to Captain Murray that the case was hopeless, and, incidentally, he
brought down severe maledictions on the head of the first lieutenant,
who, by his ridiculous vagaries and indiscretions, had wrought his own
destruction.
One day General Chick came to Brownell’s office with flushed face and
staring eyes.
“They’ve put me through the third degree,” he said.
“What do you mean?” asked Brownell; “talk!”
“Why, they suspœnaed me into Jim Hooper’s place an’ made me tell
everything Lieutenant ’Cormack said that night he met them strike
leaders in Donatello’s shop.”
“For the love of Pete! I didn’t know he met them.”
“Sure he met ’em. I was there.”
“What did you say he told them?”
“Why, now, I said he told ’em he believed them men o’ Barriscale’s had
a right to their jobs, and if Barriscale didn’t give ’em back to ’em
they had a right to take ’em anyway.”
“Yes; go on!”
Brownell was gripping the arms of his chair in grim despair.
“An’ he said--he said ’at he wouldn’t never give no orders to no
soldiers to shoot workin’ men tryin’ to git their places back.”
“Oh, gosh!” The second lieutenant released his grips on the arms of
the chair and clasped his head with both his hands. “The jig’s up!” he
continued. “You’ve done it, Chick!”
“Done what, Mr. Brownell?”
“Given the enemy enough ammunition to blow Lieutenant McCormack into
the middle of next week.”
“Will--will what I told ’em hurt ’im?”
“Hurt him! Thunder and Mars! It’ll send him to a military prison for
life.”
Stunned, dazed, almost unseeing, Chick stumbled out of Brownell’s
office into the street. Had the lieutenant for one minute realized
what a staggering blow he had given to the boy, he would have dropped
everything and hurried after him and disabused his simple mind of
its belief in the enormity of his offense. As it was, the wretched
hunchback, with an awful, self-accusing finger, piercing into his very
vitals, hot and ice-cold by turns, slunk back to hide himself in his
dingy corner in the printing-shop of Donatello. For if there was one
thing on earth that he would have lost his right hand rather than to
have done, it was a thing that might in any way have been injurious to
Halpert McCormack. And if there was one person on earth for whom he
would willingly have laid down his life and thought it a joy to do so,
that person was his beloved first lieutenant.
The strike at the Barriscale plant, and at other smaller plants
throughout the city, dragged on through the spring, unsettled and
unbroken. But in May, just before starvation on the one side and
insolvency on the other became an acute possibility, the union men,
through an intermediate committee of interested citizens, came to terms
with the companies.
The employers on the one hand made certain concessions, the employees
on the other hand waived certain demands, and a settlement was reached.
But the leaders of the radicals would have none of it. Their men would
not go back, they declared, until every original demand had been fully
met, nor would they permit the union employees to resume work without
them. Moreover, when they did return it would not be as wage-slaves,
under a humiliating agreement, but as proprietors, having at least
an equal voice with their former employers in the management of the
business and the distribution of its profits. For was it not one of the
chief tenets of their organization that:
“There is but one bargain which industrial workers will make
with the employing class, complete surrender of all control of
industry to the Organized Workers.”
So the companies were ground between the upper millstone of unionism
and the nether millstone of syndicalism. But, when the shops were
opened, the union men, under the protection of the police, disregarding
the threats of their former companions in idleness, went back to work.
The effort to prevent them by force from doing so was unsuccessful.
There were some broken heads and bruised bodies, and the Industrialists
retired from the conflict defeated, but sullen and revengeful. Then
they picketed the plants, they waylaid workmen, they threatened
destruction of property. Under the leadership of Gabriel and Kranich,
they kept the laboring element of the community in a turmoil, the
proprietors of the mills in a state of constant apprehension, the
peaceful citizens of the community fearful lest at any moment the
volcano rumbling and grumbling under the feet of industry should break
out in violent eruption.
Such was the situation on the day that the court martial convened
at Fairweather to try the charges against First Lieutenant Halpert
McCormack.
The session was held in the large company room which was crowded to
the doors with both Guardsmen and civilians.
The court consisted of five commissioned officers and a judge advocate,
none of them under the grade of captain. The commissioned officers were
in full dress, wearing their swords; the judge advocate was in undress
uniform without his sword. It was his business to protect both the
organized militia and the rights of the accused. The ranking officer
present was Colonel Wagstaff, who presided.
The accused man, with his counsel, Lieutenant Brownell, sat at a
side table, and the Barriscales, father and son, representing the
complainants, sat with their counsel, Captain Flower of Company A, at
another table. The scene was impressive, the atmosphere of the place
was tense with suppressed excitement.
After the order convening the court had been read, and the members of
the court had been duly sworn, the defendant was arraigned and the
charges and specifications were read to him. He was, necessarily, the
center of interest. Standing there in full dress uniform without his
sword, pale, and somewhat haggard from loss of sleep, he nevertheless
looked the soldier that he was. He knew that his case was hopeless.
Brownell had told him so at the last. All that he expected now to do
was to try to justify himself, so far as possible, in the eyes of the
community. Beyond that he was ready to submit to the judgment of the
court. So, when the time came for him to plead, he answered in a voice
firm with the consciousness of innocence of the charges as drawn and
brought against him:
“Not guilty.”
Then began the calling of witnesses. There were plenty of them indeed
who had heard the defendant say that in his opinion the wage system
was all wrong, that wealth obtained from the product of labor should
be fairly divided between the capitalist and the workman, and that his
sympathies in the present industrial conflict were entirely with the
men, all of whom should be permitted to resume their old places on
their own terms. There was more evidence to the effect that McCormack
had declared that the President and the Congress were but pawns in
the hands of wealth, and that the present political system was but
an instrument for the exploitation of labor. It was all very crude,
sophomoric and harmless, but it had about it an air of disloyalty that
was distinctly damaging to the chances of the young defendant.
Then First Sergeant Ben Barriscale was called to the stand as a witness
for the prosecution. He could do little more than to repeat, in
substance, the evidence already given, but he made it stronger, more
direct, more convincing. He laid especial stress on the attitude of the
defendant toward the parties in the existing strike, his criticism of
the owners of the mills, his sympathy with the idle workmen who were
threatening revenge and disorder. While the animus of the witness was
plain, his testimony was not to be lightly considered.
Brownell took him in hand for cross-examination.
“You and the defendant were rival candidates last year for the office
of first lieutenant, were you not?”
“I was a candidate,” replied the witness sharply. “I believe the
defendant was one also.”
“And the defendant won out?”
“By one vote, yes.”
“And you felt pretty sore about it?”
“I felt humiliated and outraged because his rank was inferior to mine,
and, holding the opinions he did and does, he had no right to the
office.”
“And you declared, at the time of the election, in the presence of the
entire company, that either McCormack would be dismissed from the Guard
or you would get out of it; that you would refuse to serve in the same
company with him; you said that, did you not?”
“I did, and I repeat it now. He’s not a fit man for any loyal Guardsman
to serve with or under.”
Barriscale’s voice, resonant with wrath, reached to every corner of
the room. The members of the court glanced at one another in apparent
surprise and apprehension.
Brownell waved his hand to the witness and said smilingly:
“That is all.”
When Ben left the stand the elder Barriscale was called to it to tell
of existing industrial conditions in the city, and of the danger of
violent interference with peaceful workmen and the rights of property;
such interference as might, and probably would, in the absence of the
state police, call for protection at the hands of the National Guard.
He gave it as his judgment, although the admission of his declaration
was strenuously objected to by Brownell as being but opinion evidence,
that it would be utterly unsafe to entrust the protection of property
and the lives of workmen to a body of troops in command of an officer
with the record of Lieutenant McCormack.
“Mr. Barriscale,” asked Brownell, on cross-examination, “are you aware
that when Lieutenant McCormack received his commission, he swore to
defend the constitution of the United States and of this State, against
all enemies, foreign and domestic?”
“I presume he did,” was the curt reply.
“And you believe that he now stands ready to violate that oath?”
“I believe that the oath means nothing to him as against the red-flag
and red-hand policy that he advocates, and the traitorous class whose
cause he has taken up.”
“You share with your son a certain resentment and bitterness against
the defendant on account of his success in the election to the first
lieutenancy?”
“I thought and still think, sir, that that election was an outrage
against decency. No self-respecting man should be content to serve
under an officer so elected, and so identified with the worst elements
in the community.”
The witness’s face was red with rage, and he pounded the table in front
of him with his clenched fist as he spoke.
“That is all, Mr. Barriscale.”
Suave and smiling, Brownell waved the manufacturer from the stand.
To draw from a witness an admission of hatred for the person against
whom he is testifying is to give a body blow to the value of his
testimony, and in this respect Brownell was well satisfied with his
cross-examination of the Barriscales, both father and son.
Then came the star witness for the prosecution in the person of Chick
Dalloway. Poor Chick! For two hours he had been waiting outside the
court-room in abject misery. Since the day when Brownell revealed
to him the probable result of having given certain information to
McCormack’s enemies, he had scarcely eaten or slept. Once he had
gone to McCormack himself, to bewail his unfortunate revelations. It
was pitiful to see him. Hal tried to cheer and comfort him, but he
would not be comforted. Now, at the trial, under the badgering of
Barriscale’s lawyer he was about to clinch the fate of the best friend
he had on earth. He knew it. He knew that after he had said what he
would be compelled to say, Halpert McCormack would be discredited as a
citizen and disgraced as a soldier; and he, Chick Dalloway, would be
absolutely powerless to prevent it.
He walked up between the rows of chairs, moving from side to side as he
went. His knees were strangely weak. His face was pale and drawn, and
his eyes seemed to be looking into some far distance.
He took the oath and dropped into the witness-chair by the table, and
waited for the torture that he knew would be his, and for the tragedy
that was bound to swallow up his beloved lieutenant.