THE UNIVERSITY
I
Southern Pacific University had been launched by a California land baron
as a Methodist Sunday-school; its professors were all required to be
Methodists, and it featured scores of religious courses. It had grown
enormous upon the money of an oil king who had bribed half a dozen
successive governments in Mexico and the United States, and being
therefore in doubt as to the safety of his soul gave large sums to
professional soul-savers. Apparently uncertain which group had the right
“dope,” he gave equally to both Catholics and Protestants, and they used
the money to denounce and undermine each other.
If Dad had known that his son was to be educated by the donations of
Pete O’Reilly, he would have been at once amused and reassured. Not
knowing about it, he paid a visit to the place, to see at least the
outside of Bunny’s future environment. The university had started far
out in the suburbs of Angel City, but now the community had grown around
it—which meant another large endowment, contributed by all the
rent-payers of the city. Its buildings were elaborate, which impressed
Dad; the fact that they were crowded with five thousand young men and
women impressed him still more, for when Dad saw a great number of
people doing the same thing, he concluded it was something normal and
safe.
Still more reassuring was his meeting with President Alonzo T. Cowper,
D.D., Ph.D., LL.D. For Dr. Cowper was in the business of interviewing
dads; he had been selected by his millionaire trustees because of his
skill in interviewing trustees. Dr. Cowper knew how a scholar could be
at the same time dignified and deferential. Our Dad, being thoroughly
money-conscious, read the doctor’s mind as completely as if he had been
inside it: if this founder of Ross Consolidated is pleased with the
education his son receives, he may some day donate a building for
teaching oil chemistry, or at least endow a chair of research in oil
geology. And that seemed to Dad exactly the proper attitude for a
clergyman-educator to take; everybody in the world was in the business
of getting money, and this was a very high-toned way.
Both Dad and Bunny took the university with the seriousness it expected.
Neither of them doubted that money which had been gained by subsidizing
political parties, and bribing legislators and executive officials and
judges and juries—that such money could be turned at once into the
highest type of culture, wholesale, by executive order. Bunny plunged
into the excitements of courses and credits, he raced from English 5A to
Spanish 2, and from there to Sociology 7 and Modern History 14, and
accumulated a stack of textbooks, and listened to lectures, and wrote
notes, and stowed in his mind a mass of dates and other details.
It took him a long time to realize that the “English” was cruelly dull,
and that the young man who taught it was bored to tears by what he was
doing; that the “Spanish” had a French accent, and that the professor
was secretly patronizing bootleggers to console himself for having to
live in what he considered a land of barbarians; that the “Sociology”
was an elaborate structure of classifications, wholly artificial,
devised by learned gentlemen in search of something to be learned about;
and that the Modern History was taught from textbooks which had
undergone the scrutiny of thousands of sharp eyes, in order to spare the
sensibilities of Mr. Pete O’Reilly, and avoid giving to any student the
slightest hint concerning the forces which control the modern world.
II
With equal seriousness Bunny took the social life of this enormous
institution. It was the far-off wonderful goal to which all high school
students had looked; a few lucky ones had got there, and he was among
them. His sister’s chum had a brother who was a senior, and belonged to
the best possible fraternity; so the word was spoken, and Bunny was
snapped up. They were a fast, free-spending crowd, aggressive,
self-confident, slangy, voluble over the prospects of this year’s track
team. Bunny was a runner, so they had a reason for welcoming him that
was more presentable than his old man’s oil.
Like all Western universities, Southern Pacific was co-educational; so
Bunny was exposed to the impact of a mass of femininity, the distilled
and concentrated essence of allurement. Such swarms of graceful figures,
trim ankles, dimpled white and brown arms, costumes the color of
Brazilian butterflies; a kaleidescope of smiles and flashing eyes, a
perpetual zephyr of soft scents, blown from lilac-bushes and jasmine
vines and miles upon miles of California orange and lemon-orchards.
Something was bound to happen to a young idealist in such an
environment—especially when he had just spent the summer in a
training-camp for men only!
Not all these bundles of feminine charm were accustomed to follow the
market reports upon Ross Consolidated; yet somehow they managed to learn
about the discoverer and heir-apparent of the Paradise oil field. Many
sets of quick wits were concentrated upon him, he was invited to scores
of dances and hundreds of fudge parties and thousands of motor-rides.
Then a strange rumor spread; here was an unimaginable phenomenon, a
young millionaire who would not “pet”! One by one the champion
spell-weavers of Southern Pacific wove in vain; before long there were
odds posted, and quite a trade in bets as to who would be the first girl
that Bunny Ross would kiss! Researches were conducted in the Beach City
High School, and word came that the young oil prince carried in his
bosom a broken heart; which, of course, made him a romantic figure, and
added enormously to his prestige.
These things go by contraries, and the girl who landed Bunny did so
because she did not try. The family of Henrietta Ashleigh had had money
for generations, and so could afford to look down upon it, and all those
who sought it. This was the way to impress Bunny, who was aware that his
money was painfully new. Never would he attain to the aggressive
self-assurance of his sister; he was looking for something better than
himself, and for a while he found it in the Ashleighs, with their
perfect manners and well trained servants and mansion full of the debris
of culture.
Henrietta was tall and slender, gentle, soft of voice, and reserved to
the point of primness. Her mother had just died, and for a year she wore
black, which of course was very conspicuous. She was high church
Episcopal, and on Sunday mornings wore long kid gloves and carried a
little prayer-book and hymnal joined together, bound in black leather
with a gold border. She took Bunny to church and he learned that one
does not have to take ancient Hebrew mythology with vulgar literalness,
but may have its symbolic meaning explained by a white-haired old
gentleman with a trace of English accent.
What Henrietta meant to Bunny was a refuge from the anguish and tumult
of illegitimate desire. He fled to her as to a saint, a madonna alive
and visible upon a college campus. She was so far above the glaring
crudeness of the smart set; she did not use paint nor powder—nothing so
common as perspiration would presume to appear on her delicately
chiseled nose. You might dream of kissing her, but it would remain a
dream; she would call you “Mr. Ross” during the first six months of your
acquaintance, and after that she would call you “Arnold,” finding it
dignified, perhaps because of Matthew. So long as you knew and truly
appreciated her, you would make the highest grades in class, and, as the
little black and gold prayer-book phrased it, “honour and obey the civil
authority, and submit yourself to all your governors, teachers,
spiritual pastors and masters.”
III
Bunny went up to Paradise for his Christmas holidays, and there was the
first word from Paul; a plain card, bearing the stamp of the American
Expeditionary Force, but no place; no picture post-card with “Scenes in
Irkutsk” or “Camel-sleigh on the Volga,” or anything like that! “Dear
Ruth,” it said: “Just a line to let you know that I am well and
everything is all right. I have received three letters from you. Please
write often. We are busy and I am having an interesting time. Give my
love to all the family and to Bunny and Mr. Ross. Affectionately, Paul.”
Ruth had had this treasure for several days, and there was no telling
how many times she had read it, and studied every mark on both sides. It
seemed to Bunny a cold and unsatisfactory note, but he did not say so to
Ruth; he asked Dad about it, and Dad said there would necessarily be a
great deal of censoring of soldier’s mail, and Paul had probably written
this bare message to make sure it got through. Why did there have to be
so much censoring? Bunny asked; and Dad answered that these were
ticklish times, and the army had to protect itself against enemy
propaganda.
Dad had been reading a magazine article which explained what was
happening in the world. The German and Austrian empires had come down
with a crash, and that was a great triumph for democracy. But now the
friends of democracy had a second big job to do, which was to crush the
wild beast of Bolshevism. They were starving it by a blockade on every
front, and wherever the well-behaved and respectable Russians had set up
a government on the borders, the allies were helping them with money and
supplies. General Denikin had taken possession of south Russia; on the
west a lot of new states had been set up; on the north, at Archangel, an
anti-Bolshevik group was making headway under British and American
protection. As to Siberia, there had been a Socialist government,
holding over from the Kerensky days; but these Socialists were a lot of
talkers, and now they had been kicked out and replaced by a real
fighting man, Admiral Kolchak, who had once commanded the Tsar’s fleet.
It was this he-admiral the allies were backing to run Siberia, and our
troops were there to keep the railroad open for him. Of course the
Bolsheviks, and their sympathizers in this country, were making a fuss
about it, and telling all the lies they could; that was why we had to
have a censorship, said Dad.
Bunny accepted this explanation without question. He had been in a
training-camp for seven months, and had acquired the military point of
view. He was keenly alert to the danger of Bolshevik propaganda, and
determined that if ever he ran into any of it, he would hasten to
denounce it. So innocent was he, and so little aware of the subtlety of
the enemy—he never dreamed that he was at this time absorbing the
poison; and—of all places in the world—in one of the class-rooms of
his most Christian and conservative university!
It was hard on a poor overworked university president. Dr. Cowper’s most
trusted dean had engaged this young instructor, upon recommendation of
high-up Y. M. C. A. authorities. The young man had been doing relief
work in Saloniki, and was the son of a prominent Methodist pastor; he
bore the name of Daniel Webster Irving, and how was anyone to imagine
that a man with such a name might be suffering from political
shell-shock?
This young instructor was subtle in his method; he did not say anything
that could be pinned down on him, but would sow his seeds of doubt by
asking questions, and advising students to “think for themselves.” There
are always in every college class one or more “soreheads,” the sons of
unorthodox parents; one in Bunny’s class was an avowed “rationalist,”
and another had a Russian name. All that a teacher had to do was to let
these fellows ask questions, and quickly the whole group would be
wandering in a maze, demoralized by what the Japanese government in its
control of education describes as “dangerous thoughts.”
President Wilson had gone to Europe, in order to bring about the reign
of justice he had promised. He was having a triumphal progress through
England and France, and our newspapers were full of the wonders of what
he was about to achieve. But in Mr. Irving’s class Bunny heard it
pointed out that the President had dropped from mention the most
important of his “fourteen points,” the demand for “freedom of the
seas.” Could it be that this had been the price of British support for
his program? And then, more startling yet, Bunny learned that the secret
treaties which the allies had signed among themselves at the outset of
the war were now laid on the peace table, and made the basis of jealous
bickerings. Bunny had never forgotten about those treaties, how Dad had
assured Paul that they would turn out to be Bolshevik forgeries. But
here the allies were admitting them to be genuine, and furthermore, were
setting out to enforce them, regardless of any promises of fair play
which President Wilson had made to the Germans!
Bunny took this amazing news home with him to Dad; apparently Paul had
been right, and the wicked Bolsheviks had been telling the truth! What
did Dad make of it? Dad didn’t know what to make of it; he was much
disturbed, and could only say we couldn’t judge, we’d jist have to wait.
But the trouble was, the longer we waited, the worse things seemed to
get; the more evident it became that our President had done the very
thing that Dad had been sure he would never do—he had let himself be
“jockeyed.” Like water seeping underneath a dike, a subtle current of
skepticism was creeping through those freshman classes in Southern
Pacific University which were taking “Modern History 14.”
Mr. Irving wasn’t supposed to be discussing the peace conference at all;
he was supposed to be seeing to it that his students memorized the names
of battles and commanding generals in the Franco-Prussian war. But one
theme led so easily to the other, and it was so difficult to keep the
“soreheads” quiet! This same thing was happening in other class-rooms,
and in other parts of the United States where men encountered their
fellows, and thus became exposed to “dangerous thoughts.” Before long
the forbidden ideas were being voiced in Congress, and after that they
could not be kept out of the newspapers. It was like a storm that burst
over the whole country. A million idealists like Bunny woke up all at
once to the cruel fact that their dolly was stuffed with sawdust.
IV
Yes, it was a trying time to be alive in the world. All those golden
promises that had been made to us, those bright hopes we had cherished!
All the blood of the young men that had been shed, three hundred
thousand of them dead or wounded in France—and here were the allied
statesmen, grim, cruel old men, sitting at the council-table and putting
the world right back where it had been before! Perpetuating all the old
hatreds, all the old injustices—with a thousand new ones to torment the
future! Tearing Germans away from their own land and giving them to
Frenchmen, giving Austrians to Italians, Russians to Poles—so on
through a long list of blunders; condemning millions of people to live
under governments which they feared and despised, and thus making
certain they would revolt, and throw Europe into uproar again!
Men could not realize these things all at once; they got them little by
little, as details of the negotiations leaked out. Every country in the
world was carrying on its own propaganda, thinking about its own selfish
interests; and President Wilson was in the midst of the mess, being
pulled and hauled about, this way and that, quite powerless for the good
aims he had proclaimed. As the picture of this got back to America,
there spread over the land such a wave of disgust as had never been
known before.
And then the President himself came home, to declare that he had
achieved a complete victory. In the name of “self-determination of all
peoples” he was giving the German Rhineland to France, and German Africa
to Britain, and the German Tyrol to Italy, and a Chinese province to
Japan, and to the United States a mandate over Armenia! Also he had made
a perpetual alliance with France and Britain, whereby we bound ourselves
to maintain this brand of self-determination forever! When this program
had been thoroughly realized, a tone of hilarious cynicism became the
correct thing among the young intellectuals of America; fashionable
young matrons took to deceiving their husbands in the name of chastity,
and college boys began toting hip-pocket flasks out of loyalty to
prohibition.
The thing was particularly hard upon Bunny, because he had to go to
Paradise every once in a while, and come face to face with Ruth, and
explain how self-determination for the people of Siberia meant that her
brother must stay there in peace time and hold a bayonet at their necks.
In elucidating this singular situation, Bunny became almost as skillful
a trickster as if he had had a regular diplomatic job with
extra-territorial immunity. For a month or two he managed it, while the
Germans were dragged to Versailles and made to sign an agreement to pay
an indemnity so vast that it could not be named.
Then one day came a letter that made his task all but impossible. It was
an innocent-looking letter, written in a crude hand on some sheets of
cheap paper, postmarked Seattle, and addressed to “Mr. Bunny Ross,
Paridise, California.” It said:
“Dear Mr. Bunny: You dont know me but I am a returned soldier that used
to punch cattle in Salinas valley. Paul Watkins said I should write you
because he cant get no news by the censors. I am invalidded back, have
had the Asiatic dissenterry, am bleeding at the bowls three months and
you should wash your hands good when you have read this letter, because
it is an easy dissease to catch. I am in issolation and this will be
smuggled, for God’s sake dont let on I have wrote it they would sure put
me in the can. But Paul said your father might do something to get us
boys out if he knew what a hell it was. Mr. Bunny what are we doing in
that place and why do we have to stay? It is forty below zero most of
the winter and big storms a lot of the time and you have to do sentry
duty and in summer the muskeetoes is big as flies and where they bite
the blood runs. And the Japs take shots at us, they are suppose to be
our allies but they are sure grabbing that country there is suppose to
be only seven thousand but there is seventy and why did we take them in
there? Our boys is not allowed to have no side arms and the Japs have
got bayonets and we have only fists. We have zones that we are supposed
to control but the Japs will not keep out of them and I have saw them
put out with machine guns lined up, and if we have to have a war with
them over Siberia there will sure be a lot of our boys massacreed at the
startoff. And them Russian refugees and officers that we have orders to
help I heard our colonel say, you give them money to start a government
and they go on a bust and that night you have to pull them out of a
sporting house. They have got one idea which is to shoot all the
workingmen they can get hands on and the women too and they torture
them, Mr. Bunny I seen things that it would make you sick to read them.
From General Graves down our army is sore on this job and some of them
is gone crazy, there has been more than twenty in our regiment and some
has been sent home in a strait jacket. But the people at home is not
allowed to know nothing, there is boys in our regiment that is not had
one line from their folks in half a year and they are crazy with worry.
Why do we have to be there when the war is over, if you know I wish you
would tell me. But Paul said not to tell his sister, because it is not
so bad for himself, they move him a lot and he is always busy it is easy
when you have a lot of carpenter work but for some fellers I seen them
carry a stack of railway ties a hundred yards and then move them back to
the old place just to keep us working. Please send me some cigarettes
that will be a way to say that you have got this letter and if you send
two packages I will know that you want me to write some more. Yours
respectfully, Jeff Korbitty.”
V
Bunny took this letter to Dad, and it worried him very much, of course,
but what could Dad do about it? He had three wells to bring in that
week, and one of them broke loose and smeared up a couple of hundred
acres of rocks. Also he and Mr. Roscoe had to deal with the amazing
gyrations of the oil market. It seemed as if all the nations in the
world had suddenly set themselves to buying up gasoline; perhaps they
were making up for the shortage of the war, or perhaps they were getting
ready for another war—anyhow, the price was up sky-high, and Southern
California was being drained. It was truly amazing, the gas-stations
were refusing to sell to any but their regular customers, and then only
five gallons at a time; other stations were clean empty, and cars were
stalled for days. Dad and Mr. Roscoe were making a tremendous killing;
they were getting real money too, Dad said with a laugh, none of these
foreign bonds for them!
Bunny shipped a dozen cartons of cigarettes to Jeff Korbitty; and day
and night he worried over the problem of Paul. Somehow the putting down
of Bolshevism took on quite a different aspect when it meant keeping
Paul in Siberia! Also, Bolshevik propaganda seemed a different thing
when it came from the pen of an ex-cowpuncher from Salinas valley! Bunny
simply had to do something, and finally in desperation he sat himself
down and composed a letter to his Congressman, Mr. Leathers, telling
what he had heard about conditions in Siberia, and requesting that
functionary to ascertain the War Department’s reasons for censorship of
soldiers’ mail in peace time, also to urge an investigation by Congress
of the reasons for keeping American troops in Siberia.
That letter was due to reach the Congressman five days later. Seven days
after Bunny had posted it, a well-dressed and affable gentleman called
at the Ross home in Angel City, stating that he was the owner of an oil
concession in Siberia and wanted to interest Mr. Ross in it. Dad was up
at Paradise, so Bunny talked with the gentleman, and finding him humane
and catholic in his interests, told him all about Paul, and showed him
Jeff Korbitty’s letter. They discussed the situation in Siberia, and the
gentleman said there had been no declaration of war against the
Russians, so what right did we have fighting them? Bunny said it seemed
the same way to him; and then the gentleman went away, and no more was
heard about the oil concession, but a couple of weeks later Bunny
received a second letter from the ex-cowboy soldier, bitterly
reproaching him for having’ “throwed me down,” as he must have done,
because Jeff hadn’t wrote to nobody else, but the army had got onto him,
and they had throwed him into the can just like he had said, and he was
smuggling out this letter to tell Bunny that he could go to hell and
stay there. Which was one stage more in the education of a little
idealist!
Bunny simply had to talk to somebody about this episode. Next day, as he
was driving away from the university in his sporty new car, he noticed a
young man walking with a slight limp, and it struck him as impolite for
a student of the university to drive in a sporty new car, while an
instructor of the university had to walk with a slight limp. Bunny
slowed up, and inquired, “Will you ride with me, Mr. Irving?”
“If you’re going my way,” said the other.
“Whatever way you wish,” was Bunny’s reply. “As a matter of fact, I’ve
been hoping for a chance to talk with you, and it would be a favor to
me.”
The young man got in, and stated the address to which he wished to go;
then he said, “What is on your mind?”
“I want to ask you why you think it is that we are keeping an army in
Siberia.”
Mr. Daniel Webster Irving was a peculiar-looking person; his head came
up a long way out of his collar, and with its quick alert movements it
made you think of a quail sitting in a tree and looking out for you and
your gun. He had a brown moustache, rather bristly and rebellious, and
grey eyes which he fixed upon you sharply when you said something stupid
in class. He fixed them now upon Bunny, demanding, “What makes you
interested in that?”
“I have a friend with the troops there, nearly a year, and I’ve had some
news that worries me. I don’t understand what’s going on.”
Said Mr. Irving: “Are you asking me as a student, or as a friend?”
“Why,” replied Bunny, a little puzzled, “I’d be glad to be a friend, if
I might. What is the difference?”
“The difference,” said the other, “might be the loss of my position in
the university.”
Bunny flushed, embarrassed. “I hadn’t thought of anything like that, Mr.
Irving.”
“I’ll put it to you bluntly, Ross. I spent all I had saved on relief
work in Europe and came home broke. Now I am educating a young sister,
and they are paying me the munificent salary of thirteen hundred a year.
I am due to get a rise of two hundred next year, and the matter of
contracts comes up this month. If it is reported that I am defending
Bolshevism to my students, I won’t get a contract, either here or
anywhere else.”
“Oh, but Mr. Irving, I wouldn’t dream of reporting you!”
“You wouldn’t need to. You’d only need to tell your parents or your
friends what I think is the reason our troops are in Siberia, and they
would consider it their moral duty to report me.”
“Is it as bad as that?” said Bunny.
“It’s so bad that I don’t see how it could be worse,” said Mr. Irving.
“I will answer your question provided you agree that I am talking as a
friend, and that you won’t mention the conversation to anyone else.” And
you can see how deeply Bunny had fallen into the toils of Bolshevism,
when he was willing to agree to a proposition such as that!
VI
What Mr. Irving said was that our troops were in Siberia because
American bankers and big business men had loaned enormous sums of money
to the government of the Tsar, both before the war and during it; the
Bolshevik government had repudiated these debts, and therefore our
bankers and business men were determined to destroy it. It was not
merely the amount of the money, but the precedent involved; if the
government of any country could repudiate the obligations of a previous
government, what would become of international loans? The creditor
nations—that is to say America, Britain and France—maintained that a
government debt was a lien, not against the government, but against the
country and its resources. The total amount of international loans was
one or two hundred billions of dollars, and the creditor nations meant
to make an example of Soviet Russia, and establish the rule that a
government which repudiated its debts would be put out of business.
Bunny found this a novel point of view, and asked many questions. Mr.
Irving said that in Washington was a Russian who had been the war-time
ambassador to our country, and in that capacity had had the handling of
the money loaned by our government, and used for buying guns and shells
for Russia. At the time of the Bolshevik revolution, this ambassador had
just got something like a hundred million dollars, and our government
was allowing him to use it to set up a propaganda machine against the
Soviet government, with a spy system as elaborate as the Tsar had ever
known. Newspapers and newspaper men, government officials and
legislators, all were on this ambassador’s pay-roll. Moreover, there
were in our state department officials who had married Russian wives of
the old nobility, and these wives had lost everything in the revolution,
and it was natural they should hate the new regime. One official was a
member of the banking-house which had handled the loans and stood to
lose a fortune; others were tied up with banks and business concerns
which had vast sums at stake. So it came about that America was at war
with Soviet Russia, on the entire circumference of that vast republic;
and so it came about that an instructor in an American university could
not discuss the matter with one of his students, even outside the
class-room, without fear of losing his position.
Mr. Daniel Webster Irving denied that he had any sympathy with
Bolshevism, or wished to teach such doctrines in America; and Bunny, in
his innocence of soul, accepted this statement—not knowing that all
Bolshevik agents say that, until they have got the minds of their
victims thoroughly poisoned. Mr. Irving expressed the view that what was
happening in Russia was a great social experiment. Could a government of
the working-class succeed? Was democracy in industry a possibility, or
only a fanatic’s dream? We ought to send disinterested people, experts
of all sorts into Russia, to watch what was happening and report it.
Instead of that, we were helping France and Britain to starve the
Russians out; we were compelling them to spend all their energies
resisting our armies, and those which we subsidized; we were making it
impossible for the experiment to succeed, and so, of course, its failure
would prove nothing.
Bunny, poor little propaganda victim, said that he was beginning to
change his mind about these matters. Yes, the Russians surely had a
right to work out their own problem in their own way; and certainly we
ought to know the truth about what was happening—he wished there was
some way to get it. Thereupon Mr. Irving gave him the names of two
weekly magazines, which as it happened, had just been excluded from the
library of the university, and from all the high schools of Angel City,
for “dangerous thoughts.”
You can imagine what happened then. When you tell a high-spirited lad
that he must not read certain publications, he becomes immediately
filled with curiosity to know what they contain. Bunny went home and
sent in his subscription to these papers; quite openly, in his own name.
So there was another entry in the card-indexes of the Military
Intelligence Department and the Naval Intelligence Department and the
Secret Service Department; to say nothing of many organizations which
were using these card-indexes as their own—several patriotic societies,
and several militant newspapers, and several big private detective
agencies, including, of course, the information service of the
once-upon-a-time ambassador from a no-longer-existing Russian
government.
Bunny, groping about for some way to help Paul, was next moved to write
a letter to the Southern Pacific “Stude,” telling what he had come to
think about the Siberian situation; being careful, of course, not to
refer to Mr. Irving, nor to name either Paul or Jeff Korbitty. His
letter was returned to him by the student editor, with a note protesting
against a man of his prominence in the university giving such aid to the
enemies of his country. The news of this incident spread, and the
wildest rumors took wing; Bunny was besieged by friends and others, who
wanted to read the letter, and then to argue with him.
One member of the senior class declared that he agreed with
Bunny—certainly the Russians had a right to run their own country.
Billy George was this man’s name, and his father was a wealthy
manufacturer of iron pipe. Needless to say, Bunny was glad to have a
little sympathy, and let his new friend read his letter to the “Stude,”
and Jeff Korbitty’s letter to him, and told all his ideas and troubles;
and thus the card-indexes in Angel City, New York and Washington were
further enriched. Inasmuch as so many other people were allowed to
inspect these indexes, it will surely not be unpatriotic for us to take
a glimpse into the file. The cards were six by eight in size, neatly
typed on both sides; and when one was full, another was started. Our
young idealist’s now stood as follows:
“Ross, James Arnold, junior, alias Bunny: 679 S. Mendocino Ave., Angel
City, Calif., also Paradise, San Elido Co., Calif. Age 20, height 5′
9½″, hair brown, eyes brown, features regular; photo attached. Son of J.
Arnold Ross, v-pres. Ross Consolidated Oil Co., Vernon Roscoe Bldg.,
Angel City, also indept. oil interests, estimated worth $25,000,000.
Graduate 1918 Beach City (Calif.) High School, school records good,
reported sex susceptibility, report agent 11497 attached. Active
sympathizer Paradise oil strike 1916-17, intimate friend of Paul
Watkins, strike leader, file 1272W17. Suspected intimate with Rose
Watkins, sister of Paul. Training at Camp Arthur, 1917-18, record
satisfactory. Wrote to Hon. H. G. Leathers, 49th California district,
prompted by returned soldier Jeff. Korbitty, file 9678K30; see letter
attached, also report agent 23,672 attached. Class of 1923, Southern
Pac. Univ., member Kappa Gamma Tau fraternity, trackrunner, pupil of
Daniel Washington Irving, file 327118. Sentimental sympathizer Bolsh.
Subscriber Nation, New Republic. Further reports from agent 11497,
fellow student; also 9621, intimate with subject’s sister, known as
Birdie Ross.”
VII
The elder Ross had another source of information as to world affairs,
besides his morning and afternoon newspapers, and his idealist son. His
associates in the oil-game were thinking vigorously on the subject, and
they held long conferences and studied elaborate reports. They also were
dissatisfied with the diplomacy of President Wilson—not because he
wasn’t making the world safe for democracy, but because he wasn’t making
it safe for oil operators. In the territories being taken from the
enemies were petroleum regions of wealth untold; and here, in the
imbecile name of idealism, we were permitting France and Britain to grab
this treasure, while all we got was the job of keeping the Turks off the
Armenians!
So far as Dad personally was concerned, his interests were at home. It
was Excelsior Pete and Victor Oil and the rest of the “Big Five” which
were reaching out for foreign concessions, and if they got the prizes,
the price of oil at home might drop, and cost Dad a good chunk of money.
Nevertheless, he took the patriotic attitude; the country needed oil,
and it was our business to get it. So you see, Dad also was an idealist;
and it vexed him that his kind of idealism was so little appreciated by
his son.
He was becoming convinced that the university was to blame. No matter
what Bunny might say, it was this “education business” that was
unsettling his mind, and spoiling him to deal with practical affairs.
Several times Bunny realized that the shrewd old man was probing his
mind; there must be some older person influencing Bunny’s thought, and
the most suspicious fact was Bunny’s failure to mention such a person.
Bunny realized that sooner or later the name of Daniel Webster Irving,
alias Daniel Washington Irving, was bound to come into the open; so he
hit on a shrewd idea—he would get Dad to meet his instructor-friend! It
would never be possible for Dad to report a man whom he had received in
his home!
“Dad, I want to bring one of my teachers up to see the field.” And of
course Dad was delighted; it would bring a bit of culture into his
world, and give him a share in his boy’s mental life. One fear which
haunted Dad was that this “education business” might cause Bunny to
become ashamed of his ignorant old father. Dad knew that there were
“high-brow fellers,” crazy enough to look down upon twenty-five million
dollars—or at any rate to pretend to!
Mr. Irving was to teach in summer school, but he had ten days in
between, and Bunny suggested that he might like to motor up to Paradise
for a week-end, and the young instructor accepted with pleased surprise.
So they set out, one morning in June, in that sunshiny weather which is
so common in Southern California that you forget all about it. On the
way they talked about events in Russia and Siberia; the progress being
made by General Denikin and Admiral Kolchak, the desperate efforts of
the Bolsheviks to organize a “red army,” and the hope of the German
ruling class to win back to respectability by serving the allies against
the Russian revolution. Also Bunny told Mr. Irving his idea about this
visit; Dad must be allowed to do most of the talking, and Mr. Irving
should voice only such opinions as were proper for an elderly oil man to
hear.
VIII
They arrived at Paradise, and the instructor was duly installed in the
fine new Spanish “ranch-house” which Dad had erected on the tract for
the use of himself and his guests. It was built around the four sides of
a court, with a fountain splashing in the center, and date-palms and
banana plants and big shoots from the bougainvillea vine starting to
climb the stucco walls. There was a Japanese who served the double
function of butler and cook, and a boy who combined gardening with
dish-washing, while Ruth had been promoted to be housekeeper and general
boss. There were six guest-rooms, and when the executives and directors
and geologists and engineers of Ross Consolidated came up to the tract,
they were always Dad’s guests, and it was one big happy family. They
would settle around a green baize table in the living-room right after
supper and start playing poker; they would pull off their coats and
unhitch their suspenders, and ring for the Jap to bring more cigars and
whiskey and soda, and they would fill the room with blue smoke and never
move from their seats until the small hours of the morning. It was an
amusing illustration of the double standard of morals, that Dad was glad
his son preferred to stay in his own room and read, and not hear the
stories which the oil men would tell when they broke loose.
But there was no gambling this time—this was to be a high-brow
week-end, in honor of “the professor,” as Dad persisted in referring to
his guest. The elder Ross was naively proud to have a “professor”
visiting him, and to show him the well that was spudding in, and the one
that was bailing, and the score that were drilling. They inspected the
new refinery, something really special, that had been exploited in the
newspapers as the latest miracle in petroleum engineering; incidentally
it was a work of art, buildings of concrete and shining, newly-painted
metal, set in a regular pleasure park. Oil wells are black and greasy,
incurably so, but a refinery is different; the stuff comes in
underground pipes, and most of it is taken away in the same fashion, so
a refinery can be laid out according to the taste of a young idealist,
with neat fences of steel mesh covered with rose vines, and plots of
grass with gravelled roads winding between. The Ross refinery was as big
as a good-sized village, only most of its houses were tanks; big tanks
and little tanks, high tanks and squat tanks, round tanks, oblong tanks
and square tanks, black tanks, red tanks, and tanks with an infinite
variety of colors inside where they did not show.
The main feature was an enormous battery of stills, set in a row and
joined together with a tangle of pipes; each still big enough to have
served the purposes of all the bootleggers of the United States. In the
first still the crude oil was heated to a certain temperature, and it
gave off one of its products; this was the “cracking” process. The
remainder went on to the next still, where it got a little hotter, and
gave off something else. So it went from still to still—the process
known as “continuous” distillation. The product from each still was run
into a big condenser, and from there into its own tank; so you got
gasoline of several qualities, and kerosene and benzine and naphtha, and
a dozen different grades of lubricating oil, and petrolatum, and thick,
black lovely tar, and endless pans of smooth white paraffin wax.
You can see how in these processes there was room for no end of
management, and the discovery of new methods. Dad had a chemist that he
never tired of telling about—say, that fellow was a wonder! Dad paid
him six thousand a year, and owned everything he discovered, and he had
saved the company several millions since it had started. That McEnnis
jist lived on carbon rings and chains—he would draw you diagrams on the
blackboard, and it would be a purple dye, and then he would add another
C-unit, and by golly, it was some green stuff that would cure
tape-worms, and the name of it was longer than any tape-worm ever
measured.
They must meet this wizard; so they went over to the laboratory, which
was on a little hill-top away off by itself, so that the inmate might be
free to blow himself up as many times as he wanted. McEnnis was pale,
stoop-shouldered and partly bald, and peered at you through big
spectacles. Dad was proud to introduce “Professor” Irving, and the
chemist showed them a row of test-tubes and retorts, and explained that
he was trying to ascertain why normal hexane and the more stable methyl
cyclopentane are so much less stable to heat than saturated hydrocarbons
of the same molecular weight. There was a chance here to effect the
biggest saving in refining history, but the trouble was, the maximum
percent of defines demanded by the simple general equation—and here the
chemist began to write on the
blackboard—RCH₂—CH₂—CH₂R₁➳RCH₃+CH₂=CH.R₁—was seldom attained owing
to polymerization of the olefines and the formation of naphthenes.
After learning which, they went back to the “ranch-house” for a supper
of fried chicken, with fresh green corn and honeydew melons from
Imperial valley, and then they settled down for a chat. Mr. Irving
behaved beautifully; they talked till midnight, and he answered a
hundred of Dad’s questions about world affairs, and told what he had
seen of relief work in Greece and of diplomacy in France.
The young instructor had some relatives in high positions, so he knew
things on the inside; they fitted in with what Dad knew—yes, it was
awful, the way things were being bungled. My God, here were we jist
telling the Japs to help themselves to Saghalien, that had more oil
perhaps than all the rest of the world; and the British of course were
getting to work to repair the pipe-lines at Baku, and at Mosul they had
the whole field, and the French were getting into Persia with the
British, and the same in Syria, and where was your Uncle Sam? Vernon
Roscoe was jist raising hell, because he had had some contracts at Baku,
and what was the use of kicking out the Bolshevikis and putting in the
Anglo-Dutch? Roscoe said this country needed a practical man for
president and not a college professor—
Dad stopped, afraid that he had made a “break”; but Mr. Irving laughed,
and said, “Don’t worry, Mr. Ross, I am not entitled to that high honor,
and don’t expect ever to make it.” So Dad went on with Roscoe’s tirade;
the oil men by golly had had their lesson, and were going to get
together and have something to say about the next election—they were
going to have a business man for president. Bunny and his Bolshevik
instructor exchanged the faintest trace of a glance, but Dad suspected
nothing. Afterwards, when he was alone with Bunny, he remarked, “Son,
that’s a bright young fellow. It’s a pleasure to talk with a man that
understands affairs like him.” You see how the Bolshevik propaganda was
spreading!
IX
Bunny spent that summer “playing about,” as the phrase ran; he read a
few books on the international situation, he studied some of the
confidential reports of Vernon Roscoe’s foreign agents, and watched the
derricks climb over a couple more hills of the Ross Junior tract. Bertie
telephoned, insisting that he should make his debut into society and
meet some “eligible” girls; so he went with her to spend a week at the
camp of the ultra-fashionable Woodbridge Rileys, located high in the
mountains, in a “club” to which only the elect might attain. Here people
boated and swam, but otherwise lived as complicated lives as in the
city, tangled in the same web of social duties and engagements, and
dressing several times a day. They drank a great deal at dinner, and
danced to the music of a Negro jazz orchestra until daybreak, after
which the young people would go horseback riding, and have a late
breakfast, and sleep a couple of hours before keeping a luncheon
engagement.
Here Bunny got to know Eldon Burdick, who had been his sister’s favored
suitor for a couple of years. Just what was their relationship Bunny was
not sure. Dad had ventured a jest about an approaching wedding, but
Bertie froze him; she would attend to her own engagements, with no
parental meddling. Now Bunny discovered that the pair were quarreling;
he could not help overhearing them, and seeing tears in his sister’s
eyes. She was angry because Eldon would only spend a week-end at the
camp, and he was angry because she punished him by dancing too often
with some other man. But neither of the pair offered any confidences to
Bunny, and he did not seek them.
Eldon Burdick was the youngest son of a family of old California
land-owners. Their holdings lay on the outskirts of Angel City, and
every ten years or so they would sell off a chunk for “subdivisions,”
and this development would so increase the value of the remainder that
the family grew richer all the time, despite the fact that forty people,
young and old, spent money for everything they could think of. Eldon was
a handsome, dashing sportsman with a tiny black moustache, after the
fashion of a British army officer; he held himself erect and stiff, and
Bunny discovered that he had a military mind. Bertie must have mentioned
her brother’s dangerous ideas, for Eldon invited the younger man for a
horseback ride, and proceeded to sound him out. Eldon himself was an
amateur patriot, in the proper sense of the abused word amateur; he was
letting his string of polo-ponies stay idle all summer, while he did his
part to save society.
It did not take long for him to uncover the deeps of Bunny’s peril. The
boy had got by heart every one of the Bolshevik formulas: that the
people of Russia had a right to run their own country in their own way;
that our troops had no business shooting and killing them without a
declaration of war by Congress; that people in this country had a right
to express the above convictions without being beaten or tarred and
feathered or sent to prison or deported. Eldon pointed out that all this
was merely camouflage, the convenient formulas whereby criminal
conspirators sought to cover themselves with a mantle of legality, “free
speech” and “civil rights” and all the rest. The Soviet savages had
repudiated all these principles, and it was our business to fight them
with their own weapons.
Bunny listened politely while his companion explained the ramifications
of the Bolshevik plot. Not merely had these traitors sought to give the
victory to Germany, they were now organizing a propaganda machine to
overthrow civilized government all over the world; they were stirring up
Negroes, Hindoos, Chinese and Mohammedans to rise and exterminate the
white race. They had secret organizations with hundreds of thousands of
followers in this country, they published or subsidized some eight
hundred papers, all preaching class hatred. How could any man of decent
instincts make a truce with this monstrosity?
It was indeed terrifying, and difficult to answer; nevertheless, Bunny
stuck it out, we had no right in Russia or Siberia, and if we would let
the Bolsheviks alone, they couldn’t hurt us. When we suppressed people’s
ideas, we made it seem that we couldn’t answer them; when we smashed up
meetings and threw hundreds of people into jail for trying to attend
meetings, we simply advertised the ideas we were trying to suppress, we
made lots of other people sympathize with the victims. Look at those
Russian Jewish boys and girls that had been arrested in New York, all of
them under twenty; they had done nothing but distribute a leaflet
appealing to the American people not to make war on Russia, yet they had
been tortured in jail until one of them died, and the rest had got
sentences of twenty years! When Eldon Burdick discovered that Bunny was
defending vermin such as these, he first became hot, and then he became
cold; and soon Bunny noticed that others of the guests were cold, and
his sister came to him with flashing eyes, declaring that he had ruined
her social career.
X
So Bunny went to visit Henrietta Ashleigh, at the beach-home of her
family; located on a beautiful blue lagoon, with little white sail-boats
dotted over it, and yellow and gray cliffs covered with Spanish
bungalows of many-tinted plaster. Here, gliding about in a canoe, Bunny
tried to justify his ideas, but met no better success. Henrietta had an
invincible prejudice against Bolsheviks, and Bunny suspected the
reason—she had heard about the nationalization of women. He would have
liked to hint to her that he doubted the truth of these stories; but if
it had been possible to mention such a subject to Henrietta, she would
not have been his ideal of feminine purity.
So Bunny had to motor up to Angel City and take Mr. Irving out to lunch,
in order to have some one to tell his troubles to. But Mr. Irving made
matters worse by giving him an article from a Socialist paper, written
by an English journalist who had just come out of Russia, telling of the
desperate efforts the Communists were making to defend their cause. The
party had conscripted fifty percent of its members to go to the front
and die—that was what it amounted to, for even a slight wound was often
fatal—there were no antiseptics anywhere in a country of more than a
hundred million people. On twenty-six fronts the Russian workers were
waging battle against a host of enemies. In Finland alone the
counter-revolutionary general Mannerheim had slaughtered a hundred
thousand people suspected of sympathy with Bolshevism; he had done it
with American guns and American ammunition, and his troops many of them
wearing American uniforms. In cases where the troops had been beaten by
the Bolsheviks and forced to retreat, the American Red Cross had burned
millions of dollars worth of medical supplies, for fear that they might
be used to save wounded Bolshevik soldiers and Bolshevik women in
child-birth. Somehow, when you knew that things like this were happening
in the world, you did not enjoy drifting about in a canoe on a beautiful
blue lagoon!
Bunny went back to Paradise, and studied and thought and waited. There
came another post-card from Paul—just like the former one, cold and
matter-of-fact; Paul was well and busy, and was being taken good care
of; he had had another letter from Ruth; he hoped that the family was
well, and also the Rosses. Bunny now knew the world-situation
sufficiently to understand why Paul wrote such a card, and even to
imagine the bitterness that Paul must feel to be compelled to write it.
Bunny thought that he also would try his hand at card-writing. He got a
plain postal, and told Paul that they were all well and busy, and
producing a lot of oil to help defeat America’s enemies. “I am doing a
lot of thinking,” Bunny added; but then it occurred to him that this
might suggest a forbidden procedure to troops, so he got another card
and told how happy everybody was and how well things were going, and
then added, “I am coming to agree with Tom Axton in everything.” Bunny
figured that the censor would hardly know, way out there in Siberia, how
Tom Axton had organized the oil workers in the Paradise field!
All this time Bunny was torn between two sets of emotions, both strong
within him, and absolutely contradictory. He had been in the army as a
prospective officer and had burned with patriotic loyalty; but now, only
seven months later, here he was with a desire to “root” for the enemies
of his country, and to cheer when the flag had to retreat! Yes, he was
actually tempted to be glad when he read that the American troops at
Archangel were checked, and their British commanders foiled in their
objectives! He remembered the thrills that had stirred his soul in the
training-camp, when he had leaped from his tent at reveille, and seen
“Old Glory” floating in the breeze of dawn; if in those days he could
have seen himself as he was now, he would have called himself a
black-hearted traitor!
XI
There were very few people in the world who thought the Russians would
be able to defend themselves against the hosts of all the world. Yet
somehow they were managing it. There was a peculiar thing to be noticed
in the newspaper despatches from the various anti-Bolshevik fronts. The
allied troops would win great victories; they would take Perm, or Ufa,
or whatever city it might be, and capture vast thousands of the enemy. A
month or two later they would win another victory, and again the
patriots would be cheered up—until it occurred to them to get the map,
and compare the location of the two places, and discover that the second
place was one or two hundred miles farther back than the first one!
Later on Bunny found out what this meant. The peasants had a way of
staying quiet while the allied forces advanced, and then rising up
behind their lines and forcing them to retreat. So mighty was Bolshevik
propaganda—it was working thus at Archangel, and all along the western
front from the Baltic to the Crimea, and all over Siberia; no victory
ever lasted. Admiral Kolchak got all the way across Siberia, General
Denikin, in the Ukraine, got within a hundred and twenty-five miles of
Moscow; but it all came to nothing.
Then, as summer turned into fall, and fall into winter, a still more
terrifying thing began to happen. The armies of the great powers began
to show signs of succumbing to the deadly propaganda poison! They were
now in the second winter since the armistice, and the soldiers thought
the war was over, and why couldn’t they go home? The very worst of the
prophesies of Eldon Burdick began suddenly to come true. The sailors of
the French fleet in the Black Sea rose up and overthrew their officers
and captured several battleships! German troops declined to win their
way back to respectability by putting down Bolshevism for the allies!
British soldiers at Folkestone refused to go onto the ships that were to
take them to Archangel!
And most appalling of all, a mutiny in the American army! The first
mutiny in the whole history of “Old Glory”! Michigan lumbermen and
farmer-boys, shipped up there under the Arctic circle, put under the
command of British officers, and ordered out to shoot half-starved and
ragged Russian workingmen at fifty degrees below zero—these boys laid
down their arms! The facts were hushed up in the newspapers—but not in
the higher circles of the army and of world diplomacy, nor yet in the
office-buildings where the gentlemen and lady-patriots planned the
future of the world!
In the month of October the allies made their last military effort. They
sent in the tsarist General Yudenich to take Petrograd; they gave him
all the supplies he could use, and troops of many nations, and he got
within a few miles of the city, so that the Soviets had to move their
capital to Moscow. But the half-starved and ragged Communists drove back
their foes, and Bolshevik propaganda proceeded to cause a revolution in
Hungary and another in Bavaria!
Also at home there were portents. In spite of all the raids and jailings
and deportations, great numbers of people could not be prevented from
saying publicly and loudly that we had no business making war upon a
friendly people. More and more there was discontent with the program of
keeping our soldiers abroad after the war was over. “Radical” newspapers
and magazines continued to be circulated, and in the big cities at any
rate it was not possible to prevent mass-meetings.
It was a little difficult to make any protest effective, because of the
peculiar condition into which the government had fallen. The President
had set out on a tour, to convince the people that they should be
satisfied with the peace settlement. He had come to Angel City, and Dad
and Bunny had gone to hear him—in a vast hall where ten thousand people
were marshalled, and taught to stand up and sit down again, and cheer at
signal, all very reverently, quite like royalty. The great man’s voice
was strained, and his face had an unwholesome flush, and his arguments
were as broken as his appearance. A few days later came word that his
health had collapsed, and he was hurried back to Washington, where he
had an apoplectic stroke. Now he lay, a helpless, half-conscious
invalid, and the country was governed by a strange triumvirate—a
Catholic private secretary, an army doctor, and one of the most
fashionably dressed of Washington society ladies.
But somewhere, in the cabinet, perhaps, there was left a trace of
intelligence, with which to realize the mounting dangers abroad and at
home. At Christmas time, while Bunny was up at Paradise, hunting quail
and watching the progress of Ross Consolidated, he went out one morning
to meet the Ford car which brought the mail to the tract. He got his
morning paper and opened it, and there on the front page was a despatch
from Washington, announcing that the army authorities had decided it was
no longer necessary for them to police the Trans-Siberian Railway; we
were going to leave the Japanese in charge, and come home. Bunny gave a
shout, and rushed into the house, calling for Ruth. “Paul is coming
back! Paul is coming back!” And then he had to run quick and catch her
by the arm and help her to a chair!