LIKE a portent of stern events to come, The Guardian’s Lusitania
editorial laid hold on the collective mind of Fenchester. It was a hand
set against every man’s breast, bidding him stop as he went about his
occupations, and summon his own soul to ponder what a German war might
mean. “The Black Flag,” Jeremy had captioned it. Simple and grim words
were its medium, and the burden of its charge was plain murder.
The first effect was that of any profound and pervasive shock; the
community lay quiet, collecting and rallying its forces. Until now, no
newspaper in the State of Centralia had dared lift voice against
the cumulative outrages of the conquerors, fearful as all were of the
coordinated forces of German sentiment, ready and under arms for the
call. To what the initial outbreak might spread, no man could foretell.
It was not so much a high explosive as a fire-bomb that The Guardian had
cast.
The German press ravened. The dailies howled for the blood of the
dastardly and treacherous Robson. They called upon the authorities to
suppress The Guardian, without troubling to specify upon what ground.
They summoned the Governor to cut loose from a supporter so violent, so
vicious, so filled with the spirit of hatred and contention. The German
religious press backed up the attack, and even improved upon it.
It declared The Guardian and its owner enemies to an all-wise,
all-beneficent, and all-German Gott, and shrieked inquisitorially for a
holy ban upon it. All of which, combined, failed to keep Jeremy awake o’
nights. Indeed, it had quite the reverse effect. For the first time
in months he fell asleep at peace with his own soul, and awoke with
untainted, new-found courage to face whatever the day might bring.
One day brought Cassius Kimball, of The Bellair Journal. He was a slow,
cautious, weary, high-minded, and plucky man of forty-five who looked
sixty behind his lines and his glasses, and he eyed Jeremy, his devoted
admirer, with a benign but puzzled expression as he sat in the office
spare chair.
“I wish I’d said it first,” was his opening remark.
“I wish you had,” returned Jeremy, quite honestly.
“I never say anything first. That’s why I’m really not much good.”
Jeremy laughed. From the most independent and battle-scarred veteran of
Middle Western journalism, this was funny.
“It’s a fact, though,” continued the tired voice. “I always think too
slow. What are you going to do next?”
“Next?”
“About the Lusitania issue. You’ve started it in Centralia. Nothing
can put out that fire. It may die down and only smoulder. But the embers
will be there. And nobody can tell when they’ll reach a powder magazine.
Have you seen the recent Eastern papers?”
“Some of them.”
“A lot of them are yelling for war. It’s going to be put up to the
President pretty stiff. What are you going to do about that?”
The gravity of the tone, almost amounting to deference, made Jeremy
tingle. Here was the greatest journalistic power in Centralia, a man
whose clarity and courage of spirit had won for him an almost hierarchic
ascendency in his profession, ascribing such importance to the course
of The Guardian that he had taken the four-hour journey from Bellair to
consult its owner. To do Jeremy justice, his pride was for the paper,
semi-impersonal, rather than for himself. To the question he had no
ready answer.
“I had n’t thought it out yet. What’s your idea?” Kimball took off
his glasses and wiped them carefully. His eyes, without them, seemed
squinted and anxious. He drummed on the desk a moment before replying.
“There’s a man down in Washington,” he said in his gentle, reasonable
voice, “with a hard job on his hands. He has a lot of decisions to make
every day. We newspaper men have the same kind of decisions, but where
ours affect a few thousands, his affect a hundred millions. From now on
he’s going to have bigger decisions put up to him. He can lift his hand
and there’ll be war to-morrow, and six months from to-morrow there’ll
be thousands of us back home here in mourning. It’s a hard decision, Mr.
Robson. You and I did our best to beat the President for election.
We’ve differed from him in many things. But this is n’t politics. It’s
something else now. And, knowing what he’s got to face, I don’t feel
exactly like yelling in the President’s ears.” He resumed his glasses.
“Seen the Governor since your editorial?”
“No. He’s up at his home in Spencerville.”
“It’s going to be put up to him pretty hard, too. Your outbreak is
responsible.”
“How?”
“The German legislative outfit in Bellair,” said Kimball, who had an
uncanny knack of knowing things before they were ready to be known, “is
cooking up a bill to offset your editorial. They intend to put the State
on record. The bill will call on the President and Congress to declare
that any American sailing on a ship of a belligerent nation forfeits all
right to the protection of his own country.”
“What will The Journal do about that?”
“Fight it.”
“Can we beat it?”
“No. But the Governor can.”
“Will he?”
“Ah! What do you think? You’re closer to him than any one else.”
Jeremy shook his head. “Not on the war. I don’t even know what he’s
thinking, most of the time. Your paper has more influence with him
than The Guardian. If I could think of Martin Embree as being afraid of
anybody, I’d say he was a little afraid of The Journal.”
“Of course, he doesn’t want to lose us,” answered Kimball reflectively.
“He can’t afford to lose us. But there isn’t much danger of that.” He
rose. “I’ll send you a word before the bill is ready. They intend to
spring it suddenly.”
Jeremy thanked him, and after he had left, sat down to think out the
Governor’s situation. He could appreciate its perplexities. He
could foresee that Embree would blame him for stirring up dissension
unnecessarily, when he might have held his peace. Therefore he was
prepared for a difficult interview when, on the Governor’s return, he
was invited to lunch with him. But “Smiling Mart’s” smile was as open
and friendly as ever.
“You dipped your pen in earthquake and eclipse that time, my boy,” he
observed.
“I had to speak out or blow up, Martin.”
“Therefore you did both. Up in the Northern Tier you’re not precisely
popular.”
“No. The circulation reports show that. We’re getting two or three dozen
stop-the-paper orders from there per day.”
“I’ve done my best for you, there. But I can’t hold the more rabid
elements. There’s one saving grace, though.”
“That’s--?”
“You’ve gone no further than criticism. You didn’t even hint at war.”
“And I’m not going to. Not on this issue.”
Martin Embree drew a long, slow, luxurious breath. “Thank God for that!
At least they can’t identify us with the war-howlers in the East.”
Jeremy passed the “us.”
“What’s your view of the Lusitania sinking, Martin?”
“It’s damnable. But it’s war.”
“German war. They’re holding jollifications over it here. There’s to be
one to-night at the Deutscher Club.”
“Not a formal thing?” cried the Governor.
“Bausch and Henry Vogt, the florist, are engineering it, I understand.
It is n’t exactly a club affair.”
“Ah! That’s not so bad. You’re not going to print anything about it?”
“I’d print their remarks about The Guardian if I could get ’em,”
grinned Jeremy. “They’d be spicy. But of course they won’t admit
reporters.”
“What goes on at a private dinner is nobody’s business,” said the
relieved official. “So you don’t need to stir up any more trouble for
yourself on that score. Some of the smaller German organizations have
been passing resolutions about The Guardian. That will cut into your
circulation, won’t it?”
“To some extent. But we’re holding up.”
“Just keep your head, Jem, and we’ll be all right,” advised the Governor
anxiously. “Don’t forget that we’ve got measures to put through here
at home more important than a war four thousand miles away. Harvey
Rappelje, of the Economics Department of the University, is working on
the Corporation Control Bill now. I’m going to have him talk it over
with you when it’s ready.”
“Glad to see him. Speaking of bills, Martin, what do you know of a
bill drawn by a bunch of Bellair Germans, to keep Americans off British
passenger ships?”
“Nothing. And I don’t want to until I have to.”
“That’ll be soon,” prophesied Jeremy. “I’m going to fight that.”
“I don’t know about that,” doubted the other. “There are two sides to
all these questions, remember.”
“There are two sides to the war. Admitted. But there’s only one side to
Americanism. And this is a question of American rights.”
“But is it quite fair to our Cause, to endanger it now for an issue that
you are n’t called on to meet?”
“If our cause isn’t American, then The Guardian is going to quit it,”
retorted Jeremy heatedly. “What’s more, Martin, if I ever had to suspect
that when the issue comes you would n’t be for America against--”
“Stop right there!” the other adjured him, laughing. “When you hear me
speak an un-American word or see me do an un-American act, it will be
time enough to worry. But in the business now on hand we need those
German votes, and I’ll do just as much to hold them as you can to drive
them away.”
On his return trip to the office, Jeremy encountered Eli Wade, the Boot
& Shoe Surgeon, and Nick Milliken. Wade shook hands with him, and looked
at his feet.
“You’re standing solid now, Mr. Robson,” he said. “I went on my knees
and thanked God when I read your editorial.”
“Not me,” put in Milliken. “That ain’t my God. I don’t worship Mars.”
“Don’t heed him, Mr. Robson. He’ll fight, too, when the time comes.”
“In a capitalistic war? Do I look as soft a mark as that!” retorted the
Socialist disdainfully.
“In an American war,” said Eli Wade.
“Don’t you think it! Nine tenths of the people are dead against war.
There’s a bill coming up this session that’ll tell the war-birds where
they get off.”
“Where did you learn about it?” asked Jeremy.
“The Party is going to back it. It’ll carry without any trouble. The
yellow-bellies won’t dare kick for fear of the German vote.”
“Then they might as well raise the German flag over the Capitol,”
declared the Boot & Shoe Surgeon fiercely.
“German nothing! We’ll have the red flag of brotherhood there yet, Eli.”
Considerations of policy delayed the presentation of the bill. When it
was offered, Jeremy put it on record all over the State, in an editorial
of protest, dubbing it the “Surrender Bill.” But no leader could
be found in the Legislature who dared back this bold course. German
intimidation had done its work too well. The most that the opponents
of the bill ventured was to obstruct its passage by parliamentary
obstacles. Even that much brought down upon the offender the threats
of an organized Deutschtum. But the matter bumped and dawdled along the
legislative road all that spring and summer before the bill passed to a
final reading. Jeremy published his last editorial on the subject “Hands
Off the President,” solemnly warning the Legislature against interfering
in international matters of which they could know little or nothing. The
Record replied with a scathing “leader” denouncing The Guardian, under
the caption “An Insult to Our State,” the purport of which was that
Centralia possessed the patriotism, statesmanship, and wisdom embodied
in its Legislature to lay out the course for the ship of state through
the most perilous waters. It was the kind of claptrap which rallies
pseudo-patriotism and emboldens vacillating politicians.
The bill passed in the fall by a ratio of two to one. Deutschtum
rejoiced exuberantly.
Jeremy hurried to the Executive Mansion. “Governor, are you going to
veto that bill?”
“Is this for publication, Mr. Editor?” smiled the Governor.
“Yes.”
“Then I will say that the matter is still under advisement.”
“It’s a rank surrender, Martin.”
“It’s a silly bill, Jem. But where’s the harm? Let ’em blow off
steam.”
“Then you won’t veto it?”
“I certainly shall not. Does The Guardian propose to scarify me?”
“My Lord, Martin! A matter as serious as this--I don’t see how you can
take it so lightly.”
“Philosophy, my boy. With our Corporation Bill coming on soon I’m
certainly not going to compromise its chances by flying in the face of
the whole German-American vote.”
“But on a question of national honor--”
“National flapdoodle! Our national honor is safe enough as long as we
keep our heads. Will you see Rappelje to-morrow about the Corporation
Control Bill?”
“Yes. To-morrow afternoon.”
The lean and dry authority on economics, an ardent apostle of Embree’s
policies and his chief adviser on all corporation matters, spent an
hour in the editorial den of The Guardian. All points of the bill were
carefully discussed. Jeremy committed his unqualified editorial support
to it.
“Will you forward it to Mr. Kimball, of The Bellair Journal?” asked the
professor.
“Yes, if you wish.”
“We can be sure of his aid?”
“Probably. Though he will be very sore on Governor Embree if the
‘Surrender Bill’ is signed.”
“That has no bearing whatsoever upon this measure.”
“Only as a matter of political barter and trade. What do you think of
the ‘Surrender Bill’ yourself, Professor Rappelje?”
“I was requested to come here to discuss the Corporation Control Act,”
returned the economist austerely.
“Another dodger!” thought Jem disgustedly, as he bade his visitor a
somewhat curt good-day.
Such advisement as Governor Embree bestowed upon the “Surrender Bill”
was brief. Two days after its passage he signed it without comment.
Jeremy’s editorial on the final step in the enactment was dignified and
regretful, but carefully guarded against offense. It indicated plainly
that there would be no split between The Guardian and the Governor.
On the morning following the signature, as Jeremy was at his desk,
Andrew Galpin burst in upon him, his face vivid with emotions in which
unholy glee, such as might be evoked by some Satanic jest, seemed to
predominate.
“Come out here!” he gasped.
“What’s the matter?” demanded his Boss, struggling against a powerful
grip.
“Come out. I can’t tell it. You’ve got to see it.”
Galpin hurried him downstairs and out upon the sidewalk. The street
was full of people with faces turned upward and to the northeast where
Capitol Hill reared its height. The typical characteristic of the faces
was a staringly incredulous eye and a fallen jaw. Jeremy followed the
line of vision to the dome wherefrom projected the State’s official
flagstaff.
In place of the Stars and Stripes there blew, stiff in the brisk wind,
the banner of Imperial Germany.