DUMBA had gone. Von Bernstorff was preparing for departure. The
atmosphere which they had created under the cloak of diplomatic
privilege was malodorous with the taint of plottings, corruption, and
chicanery. Grain elevators were developing extraordinary tendencies
toward spontaneous combustion. Munitions plants were dissolving into
fiery fragments, in numbers beyond the reckoning of insurance-risk
experts. Strikes were materializing in the most unexpected places
and for the most unexplained reasons. An informal morning call upon a
peaceful and businessless “advertising agency” office in lower New
York had laid bare to the heads of Government the extent of Germany’s
official treachery, and inklings of it were beginning to leak out to
the public. Strident politicians were filling the atmosphere with
irresponsible clamor. The American representatives of Deutschtum were
frantically explaining, denying, palliating, sulking, or plotting. No
corner of the horizon but bristled with imminent lightnings. The earth
underfoot trembled with the rumble of coming events. So the old year
of 1916 which saw civilization fighting with its back to the wall,
the great bubble of Russian might and Russian nationalism already
dissipating, France staggering though still resolute, England facing
terror and herself the more terrible in that grim confrontation, the
lesser nations opponent to Germany crushed to a mere welter of blood,
the Hun savagely certain of his triumph, and on this side of the ocean,
the United States being slowly, steadily, unwittingly, powerfully drawn
and bound by the gossamer threads of a nation’s psychology to the great
purposes before it--so 1916 passed into 1917.
With it passed United States Senator Eugene Harter, of the State of
Centralia. Time was when Senator Harter had been a useful figure in the
Senate, rather by the possession of a vote than for any other and
more forceful reason. But even his vote had been lost of late, for the
exigencies of war-complications had terrified him and a nervous and
overfed stomach had opportunely collapsed. The Senator fled to the
tropics for surcease from troublous national questions and in search
of health, and there encountered a mosquito in search of dinner. The
mosquito being infected with one of the regional fevers, his victim
passed, six weeks later, to that country where politics have been
unknown since Lucifer’s insurgents met their historical downfall. Thus
was left as heritage to the Senator’s already sufficiently bemuddled
State a legacy of further complications, in that his successor must
be elected in the early fall. Here was benign Fate moving to meet the
welcoming smile of Martin Embree, well ahead of schedule. As soon
as official decency permitted, he announced his candidacy for the
senatorship. With his German following nothing, he believed, could
defeat him. The path of glory extended, broad and unobstructed, before
his eager feet to the Capitol at Washington; and thence--who could tell?
His campaign prospered from the first.
Imagination could picture nothing less like a lion in Martin Embree’s
path of progress than the old man who, on a harsh March night of 1917,
sat in a scholar’s book-lined study, painfully writing. A bust of Goethe
looked benignly down upon him. There were pictures on the walls of
Schiller, of Lessing, of Beethoven, of Wagner, and the table was strewn
with German publications. By every bond of the old man’s lonely life, he
should have been at the Deutscher Club, for good news of the great war
had come through private channels, and the _brüdern_ were meeting that
evening to celebrate, in good German drink, and hearty German song, and
sturdy German sentiment, the promised triumph. Though an American
since early boyhood, Professor George Brender had grown old in these
associations. He was a lover of sound Rhenish wine and of the noble
literature of the mighty German poets, and of that tenderest and
loveliest and simplest of all music, the _Lieder_ of the Fatherland, and
above all, of the close comradeship of the German-American clan. Tonight
he was giving them all up. He had been forced to the sternest decision
of his life. Quite simply he wished that he might have died before his
seventieth year had set a sword in his hand wherewith he must now sever
himself from past loyalties and fellowships. It amounted to that. For,
torn to small fragments in his waste-basket, was a letter upon which he
had pondered for a week; a letter from another German-American, a man
wise and informed and clear of vision and of spirit, and that letter
summoned him, in the name of a lifelong friendship, now to declare
himself. From the first reading, he had known how the decision must
fall. The Germany of world-domination, of the “will to victory,” of the
torn and dishonored “scrap of paper,” of terrorism and the slaughter
of the helpless, and violation of humanity’s laws--that was not his
Germany. To it he owed no real allegiance. As between it and his
adoptive country he could no longer hesitate. He was an American. And
as the first step toward justifying himself to his own soul, George
Brender, Doctor of many degrees from Universities German and
American, head of the German Department of Old Central, feared of its
undergraduates for his caustic tongue, loved of its graduates for
his leal and generous heart, had resigned from the Deutscher Club of
Fenches-ter, with all that the action implies.
The gravest events of the cumulative international crisis did not more
deeply stir Fenchester than the resignation of Professor Brender.
Of such import to us human toads are the giant ripples upon the tiny
puddles wherein we mightily splash! Rumors of the most violent and
inspiring nature were passing from mouth to mouth before his letter
was formally announced but verification of his intent had been wanting.
Neither local paper had touched it, therefore. So the story grew and
took on strange embellishments. Professor Brender had torn down the
German flag from over the Deutscher Club door and resigned rather than
be expelled. Professor Brender had called upon the Deutscher Club to
rise and sing the “Star-Spangled Banner,” and had resigned in fury when
they refused. Professor Brender had denounced the Club as traitors and
been thrown out bodily by President Bausch. Professor Brender was going
to sue the Deutscher Club. The Deutscher Club was going to sue Professor
Brender. Gossip, untrammeled by the responsible restraints of print, was
having a gala day over the affair. Yet all that the old German
scholar had done was to resign, on the ground that his sympathies must
henceforth be American and not German.
Now he sat in his study, sorrowful and lonely, seeking to stem the tide
of rumor by a plain statement to the press. He wrote in German, for
thus his deeper feelings best expressed themselves, then translated
into simple and gracious English. This is the letter of Professor
George Brender, as offered to and refused (for reasons of policy) by The
Record, but published conspicuously by The Guardian:
_I have grown old and gray in the service of the German tongue and
German letters in America. One of the most vivid recollections of my
childhood is the positive declaration of the German elders that I was
not a German but an_ Amerikaner. _On the other hand, the Americans were
just as emphatic in their declaration that I was a German. Then the
“hyphen” came to the rescue and I blossomed out into a German-American
with a_ dicken Bind-estrich _(thick hyphen). Later I heard that the
Kaiser had given it as his opinion that there were only Germans and
Americans. The true Americans of my own country endorsed this point of
view. So I concluded that I would have to make a place in the sun for
myself.
And now, with the snow gathering on my hair, I am an American only:
nothing more (if there be such) and surely nothing less.
In my American heart there is and always will be a shrine dedicated to
that which came into my life from the soul of my father and mother. But
they have long ago gone into the land from which no traveler returns and
they have left a son who can love but one flag, although he has often
nailed the Star-Spangled Banner to a staff of good solid German oak.
I am now an old man, whose work is almost done. I cherish but one more
great hope--that on the stars and stripes of my country’s flag there
shall ultimately be written the gospel which will redeem the world--the
fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man._
When he had finished reading that letter, Jeremy Robson dropped his
head between his doubled fists and lost himself in thought. It was not
pleasant thought. Self-reproach was a burning element in it. Here was a
man German-born, German-bred, German by every tie of life except
the profounder bonds of conscience and patriotism, saying to the
German-Americans of Centralia, in no uncertain tones, that which he,
the editor of The Guardian, had had in mind to say--when the time should
come. And, behold, the time had come! Any hour in which a man great
of soul and clear of vision to meet the issue would speak out, was the
appointed hour. He, Jeremy Robson, despite all his good intentions
and brave promises, had procrastinated and paltered and dallied, while
another, with far more to lose, had lifted the banner and set it up for
a challenge to the disloyal, the unloyal, and the half-loyal. A sorry
enough champion Jeremy Robson seemed in his own eyes! Doubt of his
own courage, smothered under the pressing emergencies of the past few
months, lifted up a strident and whimpering voice. And that was a doubt
with which young Mr. Robson could not live on any terms.
When the threat of war had loomed, with the dismissal of the German
Ambassador, The Guardian had broached the project of a State Council of
Defense in a plain-spoken but moderate editorial. Further, it had urged
it upon the Governor who, with unaccustomed vacillation, had evaded and
procrastinated, arguing that the time was not yet ripe, and that the
plan would needlessly complicate matters. Naturally the more rabid
German press fell foul of it with their accustomed shrillness. Rather
than embarrass Embree at the time, Jeremy had refrained from following
up his first editorial, but had pressed the scheme upon the Governor by
private persuasions. Now, in the stir caused by Dr. Brender’s call to
the flag, he would bring it out again. If necessary he would force it
upon Embree, who could not well withstand a direct challenge to his
patriotism. He sketched out three leaders on the topic; then put them
aside and wrote the opening sentence of that editorial which was to
declare unequivocally the status of The Guardian. Thus to declare was to
declare war.
“The hyphen has two ends but no middle.”
Mild to the verge of banality, in wording. Yet the writer well
appreciated the high-explosive potency of that aphorism. Even without
what followed, it would be taken up as a defiance, the first open
defiance since Magnus Laurens’s speech, to the German-Americans of the
State. It would be the first step toward putting them on record. No
one knew better than the owner of The Guardian that upon the editor
who should first demand of the Centralia hyphenates that they declare
themselves as for or against the United States, who should assume the
initial responsibility for making the polyglot Commonwealth a house
divided against itself in treacherous and deadly enmities, the united
and deliberate vengeance of Deutschtum would fall in every practicable
form of reprisal. Sharp as was the offense he had heretofore given, it
was upon issues of minor import as compared to this. This was final.
When the emotions are deeply engaged, a practiced pen follows the
thought of the writer almost without interruption. At the conclusion of
his work, Jeremy read it over, altered a word or two, not in the way
of modification as is the tendency of re-casting, but from weaker to
stronger; then, after a moment’s thought, resumed his pencil and with
extreme care and neatness--as a young officer going into desperate
action might meticulously brush and set his uniform--inscribed the
caption, “Under Which Flag?”
He then did an unaccustomed thing. He made a complete tour of The
Guardian plant. Why, he could not have said, at the time. Afterward he
realized. It was the pride and satisfaction of proprietorship feeding
itself. Beneath it lay the unvoiced monition, warning him that it
might not be for long. Nevertheless, Jeremy was happy. He had been in a
defensive fight for a weary length of time. Now, at last, he had hit out
from the shoulder.
Transferred into typewriting at the hands (two-fingered at the exercise)
of Mr. Burton Higman, the editorial had gone upstairs. It returned,
galley-proof, in the hands of Nicholas Milliken.
“This yours?” he asked of the editor.
“Yes. Why?”
“Did n’t carry any O.K. For to-day?”
“Yes.”
Milliken lingered.
“Well?” said Jeremy sharply.
“Pretty hot stuff,” observed the Socialist. “It’ll start something.”
“It probably will.”
“Somebody pulled a couple of extra proofs on me.”
“Somebody? Who?”
“Dunno. Only I don’t want to be held responsible if they get out of the
office in advance.”
The proofs were already out of the office and on their way to the
Deutscher Club, a fact concerning which Mr. Milliken probably had his
shrewd suspicions, had he cared to voice them. But the hyphen editorial
was not destined to burst upon the German-American world of Fenchester
that day. For, at noon, Max Verrall entered the editor’s den, his brisk
eyes alight.
“Did the Governor get you?” he asked.
“No. What’s up?”
“State Council of Defense. He’s going to put it through. I’ve just seen
him.”
“Good business!”
“Better call him up. He’ll tell you more.”
Jeremy did not get the Governor, but his private secretary verified
Verrall’s report. “Yes. I’ve been trying to get you. The preliminary
conference is set for to-morrow at ten.”
“Short notice,” said Jeremy, surprised.
“Call’s gone out over the wires. Will you come to the Capitol this
evening to talk it over with the Governor?”
Jeremy assented. He imparted the good news to Andrew Galpin, whom he had
sent for to run over the hyphen editorial. “The State Council of Defense
is going through, Andy.”
“‘Smiling Mart’ has climbed off the fence, has he? Or did we push him
off?”
Jeremy frowned. “Nobody pushes Martin Embree.”
“All right, Boss,” conceded the other good-humoredly. “He can certainly
push himself ably when the occasion arises. I reckon this is part of his
push for the senator-ship.”
“Anyway, Andy, you’ll admit that this State Council move proves where he
stands on Americanism.”
“I’ll admit that,” said the cautious Galpin, “when I see it--in The
Guardian.”
“He’ll be all right,” said his supporter with conviction, “now that the
issue is getting clear.”
“What about your editorial, now?”
“Well, what about it?”
“Had n’t that better wait a day or two? You don’t want to muddy up the
water unnecessarily. If the State Council move is on the level, your
hyphen stuff will only make hard sledding for Embree.”
“That’s right, too. I’ll put it on the hold-over hook.” Arriving at the
Executive Office at seven-thirty, Jeremy was conscious of effort in the
Embreean smile, conscientiously directed upon him. That fine wave of the
gubernatorial hair, too, so suggestive of uplift in its stressful rise
from the broad, even forehead, seemed to droop a bit. Smiling Mart
Embree looked like a man who has passed the night in a sleepless torment
of the mind. “Any late news on the wires?” he asked anxiously.
“A little. All of one kind.”
“Pointing toward war?”
“War,” said the editor gravely.
“There must be some way out!” The Governor lost himself in a maze of
thought. “This is a terrible thing!” he muttered bitterly.
“It was bound to come.”
“A terrible thing,” repeated Embree, “for me.”
“For you?” Jem stared, startled at the out-cropping of egotism.
“For all of us,” hastily amended the other. “For the Nation.”
“I’m not so sure. It may be that we needed it, to save us from
ourselves.”
“What is one to do? How is a man to tell what course he can safely
take?” said the Governor, pursuing his own line of thought.
“It is n’t exactly a time for Safety First, is it? There’s only one
course for a decent American.”
“That’s so like you,” fretted the other. “You see your own side and
nothing else.”
“What else do you see?”
“I see this great State of Centralia which has chosen me for its chief
official,” retorted Embree with a touch of that exaltation which, his
enemies sneered, invariably crept into his speech when it dealt with his
political self. “I see it torn and racked from end to end, and aflame
with hatreds, dissension, and distrust. I see all the long fight that
I’ve made--that we have made--against corporation control of the State
gone for nothing in the new political issues. Have you thought of that?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
“It does n’t matter.”
“Not matter!”
“Not if we go to war. Nothing else matters then but ourselves and
Germany. We’ve got to think of the country as a whole and of ourselves
just as a part of it.”
“Oh, I’m for the country!” proclaimed Embree. “Of course! But I’m not
for this war if it can be avoided.”
“It can’t be.”
“Not by any such hot-headed, reckless course as The Guardian is laying.
You’re doing everything but yell for war and the blood of your own
neighbors.”
Jeremy’s lip protruded obstinately. “Is that the view you take of it?
We’ll do more to-morrow.”
“For God’s sake, Jem! What has got into you? How can you commit yourself
to such a policy of savagery?”
“This is n’t going to be a polite war, Martin. But if I’m a savage, at
least I’ll be an American savage; not a German savage. That’s all we’re
committed to in The Guardian.”
“That’s too much. It is n’t the time for it.”
“Not when every national right has been violated?”
“Forget your newspaper rhetoric and listen to common sense. Jem, will
you be discreet for once in your editorial life?”
“I doubt it.”
“This is deadly serious. Listen: Congress is going to hear from the
country. Appeals are going to be made--”
“Which country?” asked Jeremy with intent.
“Try to be reasonable about this,” pleaded his friend. “These appeals
are going to pour in on Washington, to stop while there’s time.”
“More German propaganda. You’ve answered my question.”
“The demand of a peaceable people for peace,” controverted the Governor
heatedly. “At the same time the newspapers all over the country will
be urged to use their influence toward keeping us out of a war that can
mean nothing but injury to their business. We’ll show that blundering
fool in Washington--”
His visitor stiffened perceptibly in the chair. “Are you speaking of the
President of the United States?” he demanded.
“Oh, between four walls,” Embree deprecated. “Since when did you swing
around to the Schoolmaster?”
“Since he gave the word to close ranks.”
“He’s never given it. His whole attitude is a big bluff. The only danger
is that the hot-heads will make capital of it. He does n’t intend to go
through with it.”
“You’re wrong there.”
“If he does, he can’t do it. Congress has the final word. And Congress
is responsive to the newspapers. Now, Jem, when the arguments from the
other side come to The Guardian--”
“We’re being swamped with ’em already; machine-made letters to the
editor, fresh every hour from the Deutschtum factory.”
“Give them a fair show. Publish them.”
“I’ll see them damned first!”
“Neutrality!” commented the Governor acidly.
“War!” retorted the owner of The Guardian.
With an obvious effort “Smiling Mart” summoned his beam from out the
gloom and set it on guard again.
“When it comes to the pinch you’ll find me as ready to fight as
anybody,” he asserted. “The only difference between your position and
mine is that I want to be perfectly sure it’s right and inevitable.”
“The State Council of Defense is a long step in the right direction.”
“It must n’t be too long a step, though,” the Governor pointed out.
“It’s defense, not offense, that’s our purpose. By the way, do you know
that there is an old act of the Legislature empowering the Governor to
appoint such a body?”
“Fine!” said Jeremy heartily. “Then you can do the whole business at
to-morrow’s meeting.”
“Yes; but I thought it advisable to have the formal approval of a
State-wide representative body, such as I’ve called together, for the
moral effect--and the political,” he added.
“You’ve made it non-partisan?” asked Jeremy.
“Yes, yes! Of course! And representative; representative of all classes.
To make it so I’ve been obliged to include some of the German element.”
“Certainly. That’s all right, as long as they are n’t the ‘Deutschland
über Alles’ lot.”
“Some of them, I’m afraid, don’t like you much; or you them. Now, Jem,
don’t go off at half-cock,” he added persuasively as the other looked up
at him with a gleam of discomposure. “I can’t ignore my best political
friends and supporters, can I? And you know we have no sol-ider, more
influential citizens than our Germans.”
“But what about their loyalty?”
“Don’t expect too much of them right now. They’ll be all right when the
test comes.”
The editor thought it over.
“Yes; I get your point. If you go back on ’em now they’ll slaughter
you for the senatorship.” In spite of himself, “Smiling Mart” Embree
winced. “Well, a few of ’em in the conference, or even on the council,
can’t do any harm; in fact, it may serve to bring ’em around, unless
they’re too far gone. A lot depends on whom you appoint chairman.”
“What’s your idea on that?”
“Magnus Laurens.”
“Why a corporation grafter?” challenged the other, eyeing him narrowly;
“and one that’s always fought us and may fight us again for the
senatorship?”
“He is n’t a grafter.”
“He’s an associate of grafters.”
“And if he has fought us, he’s fought fair. Also, he’s one hundred per
cent American. That’s the big consideration in this matter. But if you
won’t stand for him, how about Corliess, of the Lake Belt Line. Cassius
Kimball vouches for him.”
Governor Embree stared. “First a water-power baron and then a
public-utilities manipulator,” he commented. “You’re chumming up with
some queer friends, for a radical, Jem.”
“They’re no friends of mine,” retorted the editor. “You know that. But
they’re men we can trust to be right on this war question. However,
any one will do, provided he’s big enough, loyal to the bone, and
representative.”
“Leave it to me, Jem,” said the Governor with his warmest smile.
Returning to his den for the purpose of preparing an editorial boosting
the new project as an accomplished fact, Jeremy saw a light in the
business office. Amid ledgers and files of The Guardian sat Andy Galpin,
figuring profusely upon sheets of paper.
“Hello, Boss!” was his greeting. “I’m trying to find out where we stand
now.”
“What do you make of it?”
“Hard sledding; but we’ll pull through. Always supposing that the dam’
Botches’--thus, now, did the general manager at once anathematize
and Americanize that element whose solidity and good citizenship all
political parties so warmly and officially endorsed--‘don’t lift too
much of our advertising, in return for your few well-chosen remarks upon
the hyphen. They’ll be after us hot-foot, sure.” After a pause he added:
“They’ve been working on ‘Smiling Mart.’”
“It has n’t done them much good so far.”
“On Verrall, too. He’s so far up in the air that his nose is turning
blue. And something’s up in the press-room. I think it’s that big
gorilla, Girdner. He’s a Botch; belongs to their club. Milliken; he’s
another trouble-hunter. The Socialist. Wish I could pin something on
him and fire him. Well, you’ve got troubles enough without that. Sorry I
spoke.... Have a pleasant evening with the Governor?”
“Pleasant enough.”
“Hope the morning will be as good,” retorted Galpin, and hunched himself
back into his calculations.