They sat side by side in the autumn sunshine, reading of places
drenched with blood,--Liége, Louvain, Charleroi, Mons, Cambrai,
Namur. The battle of the Marne was over. The prolonged battle of
the Aisne was at its height. Rod had commandeered every paper in the
camp. Page by page, column by column, they conned that incredible
account, piecing it out by inference, filling the terrible gaps by
vivid conjecture. There remained the primal fact that all Europe was
in arms, that men perished by thousands daily, that their own
countrymen were crossing the seas to fight.
"Phil's gone," Rod broke a long silence. "Says so here. He left for
Valcartier the other day."
He looked out over the inlet's benign face.
"He'd do that," he said absently. "They'd give him a command at
once. He's trained--went to Kingston."
He sat with hands clasped over his knees, silent, absent-eyed. And
Mary looked at him with a catch in her throat, filled with intuitive
foreboding. Words, of which each had a better command than falls to
most, failed them. They sat there wandering in the maze of their own
thoughts until the shrill whistle of the approaching steamer woke an
echo in the hills.
A day and a night on this slow-footed vessel brought them to
Vancouver. They passed through the Narrows at dusk, cleared Brockton
Point and stood up to the dusky wharves ranged below a vast haze of
reflected light. Roof signs twinkled in all the colored extravagance
electrical sign experts could devise. Looming high on a square
office building stood Grove's heraldry:
THE NORQUAY TRUST
Rod's upper lip drew in a curl. He could not exactly say why. It
was involuntary, instinctive. That sign offended him. The taxi that
wheeled them to the Vancouver Hotel passed the place, and Rod's lip
curled again at sight of the chaste illumination upon richly polished
mahogany revealed through immense windows of plate glass. Again in
their room that curious distaste for his brother's works came over
him at an advertisement of the Norquay Trust Company in one of the
evening papers he bought. It ran thusly:
Your country calls you. Before you go overseas put your affairs in
the capable hands of
THE NORQUAY TRUST COMPANY
Then he turned to the war news.
Wherever he went in the city for the next two days the war topic
hovered on men's lips. The streets wore the panoply of war in the
recruiting aspect. Troops drilled in parks, on playgrounds. Bands
marched abroad to stir men's blood. There was an edge of expectancy
in the air, for the _Leipsig_, the _Dresden_, the _Nuremberg_, and
two unknown battleships were loose in the Pacific. No one knew what
truth lay in the rumor that any hour might see their shells dropping
in the downtown section. There was nothing to stop them. They
outsteamed and outgunned any British Squadron in those waters.
Amid this ferment Rod walked the streets, bodily restless, uneasy in
his mind. For he had somehow none of the illusions about war that
carried many a young man lightly along the line of least resistance
in those hectic days. There was no glamor for him in a purely
military adventure.
He loved his native country. He was proud of it. It had bestowed
upon him a splendid heritage. He did not question a matter of duty.
With his temperament and traditions such a questioning was
impossible. But he revolted against being a pawn in the European
game. He could not muster up an excited, voluble hate of the enemy.
He did not respond so readily as some to the propaganda already
loosed so effectively. He wondered a little at the execration and
exhortation and invective that poured from the press, the pulpit, the
fulminations from every public speaker, the vixenish resolutions of
the women's societies. It was as if they were urging each other on
to a task for which few had much stomach. It perplexed Rod. If
one's country was at war, one must fight. That was plain to him as
two plus two. Why should all these non-combatants lash themselves
into such a fury over a European frontier, over the ancient feud
between the Teuton and the Gaul? It amounted to this in his mind: we
must fight because our statesmen have committed us to the task; but
we will not whip the German by foaming at the mouth. That's childish.
He met Andy Hall the second day. Before the _Province_ office on
Hastings Street there was always a crowd reading the bulletins posted
from time to time, studying the war map on which the positions of the
opposing armies were kept up to date by little flag-headed pins. The
curbstone Boards of Strategy functioned there. Knots of men held
heated discussion, or stood silently digesting news. There was a
sprinkling of the indifferent, the merely curious.
A man at Rod's elbow broke out:
"I'll go. Damn right I'll go--in the ranks of a regiment made up of
bankers, bond owners, and politicians. But I don't see them breakin'
their necks to sign up. Why should I? I never had nothin' but a
job, and poor ones at that. I ain't goin' to fight just for a job."
"Maybe you'll fight for that?" a voice taunted,--and with the words
came the sound of a blow, and then a scuffle and oaths. Rod turned
to look. The bystanders were parting two struggling men. Andy
Hall's freckled face glowed genially beside him.
"Even in these times the dissenter is with us," Andy indicated the
brawlers. "How are you?"
"So, so," Rod shook hands with the high-rigger. "Still working for
us? How did the strike pan out?"
"Oh, they got what they asked. I got fired as soon as old Handy
thought things had settled down. About two weeks later. I guess he
was afraid I might rib them up to ask for something else," Andy
smiled amiably.
"Oh, that was rotten," Rod sympathized.
"Fortunes of war," Hall observed lightly. "Don't do to criticize
your master's methods; not if you make your criticism so effective
that it costs them money. Then they say you're an agitator and they
can you off the job. The working man is mostly a sheep. The bosses
know that. When a fellow like me--who isn't a sheep, but who
understands and pities the sheep--sets out to show 'em how to get
better pasture, he either gets taken into the fold and becomes a
minor boss or he gets outlawed. Perfectly simple. You must not
disorganize a profitable industry by demanding better pay. Industry
doesn't like that."
"What do you think of this fracas across the pond?" Rod changed the
subject to one that was for him personally, at that moment, much more
important.
"Come and have a drink, and I'll tell you," Andy suggested.
They walked west to the Strand bar. Rod looked at his companion as
they stood ordering their liquor. The Strand was a far cry from the
usual haunt of the logger. He flourished in what Andy called the
"slave market" down on Cordova Street, a region of Semitic clothing
stores, cheap hotels, employment agencies where the woodsmen flocked
in hundreds, gathered in groups along the sidewalk, rioted in the
bars, or sought a job with empty pockets.
And Andy Hall was a logger from his head to his heels. That was his
trade, the only means of livelihood he ever practiced. But he did
not look the typical logger now. Apparently he did not follow the
average logger's cycle of a red-hot time in town as a reaction from
intensive labor in the woods.
"This fracas interests me more than you'd think, maybe," Andy
proceeded over his glass. "In the first place it was inevitable as
the result of the constant extension of spheres of influence--which
is merely a euphemism for control of certain markets. The world's
getting too small for the competitive system. Commercial interests
are bound to clash. Armies are the policemen of trade."
Rod smiled. It was not a new nor in any way revolutionary statement.
He had heard the same interpretation of world affairs, more subtly
expressed, in university classrooms.
"What's the navy?"
"The water patrol," Andy bantered.
"'Oh, the liner she's a lady
An' she never looks nor 'eeds.
The man o' war's 'er 'usband--'
"Out of the mouth of the greatest drum-beater in English letters I
answer you."
"It's a wonder you aren't away," Hall changed his tone abruptly.
"Your brother's gone. Or have you got better sense?"
"Sense? Is there any sense in a war?" Rod countered. "But we're in
it. If fellows like me won't go, who will?"
"You've said something," Andy replied quietly. "Leaving aside the
sordid causes of war, war itself is the most senseless pastime any
nation can engage in. There's a confusion of sentiments, a queer
mixture of anger and defiance, vindictive cravings for retaliation,
and hatreds that civilized men should have outgrown. An ingrowing
fever to see your own side win. Once the first gun pops, it doesn't
seem to matter _why_--any more than it matters to two men scrapping
what the scrap started over. What each wants is to whip the other.
But this particular war--commerce is at the bottom of it. You know
it. You're too wise not to know. Struggle for commercial supremacy
has started every war since the Crusades, and a few of the dynastic
rumpuses. This is a row over property rights, real or potential.
And as a member of the propertied class you have a vital interest in
it. The bird who started that fuss in front of the _Province_ wasn't
so far wrong. He has nothing to fight for--nothing worth fighting
for. You have."
"From a purely material point of view, certainly," Rod answered.
"But can't you see any more in it than that?"
"Should I?" Andy asked musingly. "Can there be an obligation of
service to one's country without one's country assuming some
obligation in return? And does one's country assume any obligation
toward such men as me? If it does I don't know what it consists of.
The man with nothing but his hands has few rights and no privileges.
What does the casual worker, the completely propertyless man receive
from his country that he should gladly cross the seas to die for it
on foreign soil? Can you tell me? I don't think you can. In that
sense one doesn't mean one's country geographically. These mountains
we call ours will stand unchanged, the forests will grow, the rivers
run to the sea, the salmon go up to the spawning grounds, the birds
will mate and sing, whether we win or the Germans, or if both sides
fight to the last man and the two races expire. So that really one's
country means Bill Jones and Sam Smith and Jack Robinson--human
society--the national unit. If Sam Smith, by skilful exercise of the
acquisitive instinct, acquires ownership of the hills and the forest,
and permits me and Bill Jones and Jack Robinson to work for him
whenever he can profitably use our labor, and has no responsibility
for our welfare at such times as he can't employ and pay us wages,
why should we shoot and kill, and be ourselves shot and killed in
defense of his hills and forests?
"That," Andy went on in his low, deliberate voice, "is one way of
looking at it, one way of putting it. I'm what they call a common
worker. So far as I know, my people have never been anything else
but workers, tied to a job because they knew nothing else. I've
never had anything but a job myself. I've dug up quite a lot of
assorted facts and a variety of knowledge out of books between hours
on the job. I've done quite a bit of thinking about what I've seen,
and heard and read. Every dollar I've ever had, the food I've eaten,
the clothes on my back--since I was nine years old I've earned 'em
all by sweat and aching flesh. By way of illustration I'll cite the
fact--with no personal reflection, you understand--that the Norquay
estate employed last year on its timber operations upward of three
hundred men. The net profits for the year run over two hundred
thousand dollars. That's what your country means to you. But that
means nothing to me. I have only myself, my energy, the strength of
my arms and a certain skill to sell. And you don't employ me because
I'm hungry or need clothes, or because I'm ambitious to better my
condition. Oh, no. You don't recognize me as having the slightest
claim on you for subsistence. You will only hire me at a wage where
my labor can be transformed into cash at a profit to yourself. In
slack times I can starve. It doesn't make any difference to you.
That attitude and practice is typical of the industrial system of
every civilized nation. I present you with the case of the
intelligent worker, when he analyzes his situation in and relation to
society. I ask you if we, who are the have-nots, should be proud and
glad--as they tell us we should be--to die for the perpetuation of
this state of affairs?"
Rod had an uncomfortable impression of the perfectly ordered and
smoothly moving world he knew being critically examined and condemned
by a dispassionate, impartial, and very acute intelligence. As Andy
Hall put it, there seemed no bond of common interest, of sentiment,
even of common justice to bind them together. Andy did not ask on
behalf of his class, nor of himself as an individual, "What is there
in it for us?" He only asked in moody accents, "Why should we, who
have only the shadow, sacrifice ourselves for those who have the
substance?"
Only a sophist could make other than one reply. And Rod was no
sophist. He was only an earnest and troubled youngster reacting to
the day and hour, according to the best traditions of the best of his
class. He felt that there was more to be said on the subject than a
laconic answer to Andy's "why?" There must be, or his world was a
sham, thriving on social usury, and patriotism was a farce. It did
not seem to Rod this could be possible. But he could not voice the
thing that was in him. It was an emotional certainty, not a reasoned
conviction. And he knew that as an impulsion to act the first was by
far the greatest driving force in all men.
"I don't know. A man,--each man--must answer that for himself," he
spluttered. "It's like this. We're all in the same boat. If
everybody stands on his rights and demands a readjustment of a faulty
arrangement of things before he will make a single defensive
move--we'll be whipped out of hand. In fact, it looks as if the
Germans had us staggering now. And I daresay two thirds of their
armies are made up of the working class of Germany--who seem to be
quite in accord with their masters' policy of conquest, or they
wouldn't put up such a corking fight. If you fellows as a class
refuse to meet them at their own game----" he threw out his hands in
an eloquent gesture.
"Hell, you think I'm so thick-headed I can't see both sides of the
fence?" Andy grunted. "I wasn't speaking for my own class. It's
speaking for itself every day--to the recruiting sergeant. I'm
speaking to you as a thinking, feeling individual who sees himself
being sucked into a whirlpool. I'm trying to point out to you in the
most rational manner possible what the real situation is. You can't
deny it. It exists. Why, if the bulk, even a working majority of
the damn fools that call themselves men, had a few glimmerings of
social and economic wisdom there wouldn't be any German or French or
Russian or British armies in the field. Only a few handfuls of
atavistic adventurers. I'm not by nature a humble, peaceful toiler.
I'd just as soon as not fight for anything that's worth fighting
for--and all the hard fighting isn't done with guns, either. All my
life I've seen the show run by arrogant, power-proud people who
aren't nearly so clever as they seem to be. They make a mess of
things too often to be really clever. And the rest of us growl and
knuckle down to our jobs. We're slaves, not so much to our masters,
as to our own inertia, our own lack of intelligence, slaves to the
common, well-nourished illusion that to get something for nothing is
the solution for all our difficulties. We merit contempt. No one
among the well-fed and the cultured who have never soiled their hands
with common work has more impatience with the bovine mass than some
of us who are of the mass. We lose faith in ourselves and our own
kind--but our masters never lose faith in us--in our docility to
fetch and carry. They know how to use us without our knowing how
it's done. They tell us now that the Germans threaten our lives, our
freedom, our country and its cherished institutions. That's true
enough. But we risk our lives daily in industry with very much less
freedom of choice in the matter than even primitive man had in
pursuing his food, clothing, and shelter. What cherished
institutions of ours are threatened that we should go five thousand
miles to fight in a quarrel between Russians, Germans and French?
"And still," Andy drummed on the polished bar with his finger tips,
"in spite of my reasoned convictions I find myself as much of a herd
animal as the rest. Logic tells me this row is the same old thing on
a larger scale--an affair in which the have-nots will do the fighting
as they do the work. But logic doesn't help me where I live, inside
of me, when I see fellows I know, fellows I like, getting ready to
go. The old tribal instincts that are stronger and deeper than
civilization and industry keep stirring up in me, nagging at me. The
flag--it's only a symbol. Patriotism, patriotic duty has only a
hollow sound when I hear the phrase used. And still--something gets
me--I don't know quite what it is--but it's there.
"It's a queer pass for me to come to," he finished whimsically.
"Wouldn't it be? Me to go and fight for things and people that I
don't believe in? Why should a man find his rational conclusions
upset by an emotion he can't define? I stood looking at the Gulf the
other day, and I thought how easy it would be for those German
cruisers that are reported off the West Coast to start slinging
shells in here. And the picture of 'em potting at us made me sort of
swell up and get all hot and angry inside. It's illogical and absurd
for me to feel that way about what's going on in Europe. And
still--there it is. Some of these days I'll find myself in the army
headed overseas. And I'll be wondering how in hell I got there.
How, I ask you, can a man who thinks as I do, _feel_ the way I do,
about this?"
But that was as difficult of answer as Andy's other question,--and
Rod was too deeply involved in a personal problem of his own, a
conflict between two powerful sets of feelings, to consider Andy's
psychological _impasse_. They had another drink and went about their
separate affairs.
For another forty-eight hours Rod stirred uneasily about the town.
He met his father by chance, talked with him briefly. He spent a
little time each day in one or the other of two clubs in which he
held membership. He and Mary went once to dinner at the home of a
classmate, married now and frankly unsettled by the war cloud. He
met other young men he knew. He missed a great many others, but he
knew where they were. He heard the one thing discussed in clubs, in
hotels, on the streets. People lived the war in public and private.
Rod wondered if they dreamed about it in their sleep, as he sometimes
did.
Between himself and Mary a singular constraint had arisen. It was as
if some impalpable substance enfolded them, sealing their lips upon
things they both felt and feared but could not embody in speech.
Where the unspoken thought had scarcely needed words, so perfect an
accord of mind had they attained, now each was locked in a separate
chamber of his soul, brooding inscrutably, wordlessly even when they
sat knee to knee by their room window or lay wide-eyed in the night,
flesh touching flesh, mute in the face of an ache to speak and be
understood.
Rod came in one evening after dusk. Mary had begun to dress for
dinner. She sat on the edge of their bed, hair down, a silver
slipper hanging idly from one hand. She looked at Rod when he came
in, a silent question, almost an appeal, and then her eyes dropped to
the floor.
"Dorothy is over from Victoria," she said tonelessly. "She
telephoned half an hour ago. Charlie has been offered a commission.
She's planning to go east with him and later across to London."
Rod sat down beside her, put his arms about her. His fingers stroked
her thick, soft hair.
"I have to go," he said quietly. "I've hammered it out for myself.
I can't keep out of it."
She laid her face against his breast. Her arms pressed tightly about
him. A little shudder shook her.
"Oh, Rod, Rod," she whispered. "I can't bear it. I've seen it
coming. We've just begun to live. And I'm going to have a baby."
He sat holding her close. She did not cry. She clung to him
silently. The slow heave of her bosom, the occasional shiver, that
desperate struggle for calmness, made him ache.
And he thought, with a slowly rising tide of bewilderment, of the
wholly inadequate preparation that had been bestowed upon them for
such a bitter sip of life's cup. For her a lonely childhood, an
education frugally achieved, and marriage. For him eighteen years of
a sheltered, tutored existence, four years of college, twelve months
in a logging camp, three months of inconceivable happiness--and the
war.
The Great War--which in five years was to bestow upon his country, at
the price of many lives and out-poured treasure, such priceless
victories as a scramble for oil and a squabble over debts!