MY COUNTRY’S PART
[Illustration: General Pershing’s veterans direct from the trenches in
France marching to the City Hall, New York City]
MY COUNTRY’S PART
BY
MARY SYNON
ILLUSTRATED
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
CHICAGO NEW YORK SAN FRANCISCO
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
[Illustration]
TO
THOMAS S. ENRIGHT
JAMES B. GRESHAM
MARLE B. HAY
PRIVATES IN THE RANKS OF
THE AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES
WHO WERE THE FIRST TO DIE IN FRANCE
IN OUR WAR AGAINST GERMANY
THIS BOOK
IS DEDICATED
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. “MY GRANDMOTHER AND MYSELF” 1
II. THE UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD WAR 40
III. WHAT THE GREAT WAR REALLY MEANS 53
IV. HOW THE WAR CAME TO THE UNITED STATES 65
V. HOW THE UNITED STATES WENT INTO WAR 77
VI. WHAT THE UNITED STATES IS DOING IN THE WAR 85
VII. REAR-LINE TRENCHES 93
VIII. THE AMERICAN’S PART 110
IX. THE UNITED STATES AND INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM 121
X. THE UNITED STATES AND INTERNATIONAL PEACE 131
ILLUSTRATIONS
General Pershing’s veterans direct from the trenches
in France marching to the City Hall, New York City _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Belgium refugees between Malines and Brussels 66
President Wilson delivering his war message 80
Recruits of the National Army waiting at the booths
of a National Army cantonment 90
Children selling thrift stamps 104
Boys at work in their war garden 110
The launching of the U. S. S. _Accoma_ 118
An immigrant family qualified to enter the United States 128
CHAPTER I
“MY GRANDMOTHER AND MYSELF”
What can an American boy or an American girl do for our country?
The ways are many. Every man, woman, and child in the United States has
the duty of defending the nation. In time of war every American must be
in spirit, if he cannot be in actual duty, a soldier. A soldier’s part
is to guard his nation. An American’s part is to guard America. The
guarding may be done by saving the food that the government asks its
citizens to save, by buying War Thrift Stamps, by buying Liberty Bonds,
by working for the Red Cross, or for other patriotic organizations; but
it must be done with the idea that our country is our first concern,
our first care.
Every American must be watchful for his country’s welfare. How may
he do this duty? By remembering always that he is, first of all, an
American. No matter what country his father or mother, or grandfather
or grandmother came from, he is American, with the rights and
privileges and obligations of his citizenship. And he must have no
divided allegiance.
The story of what one American boy could do for his country is told in
the story that follows. Some people call this a fiction story. But the
root of it is truth. For every boy and every girl in the United States
can hold to the love of country that John Sutton’s grandmother put into
his soul through the incidents that make up the tale of
“MY GRANDMOTHER AND MYSELF”
My grandmother was at the basement window, peering into the street
as if she were watching for some one, when I came home from school.
“Is that you, John?” she asked me as I stood in the hall stamping the
snow from my boots. “Sure!” I called to her. “Who’d you think I was? A
spirit?”
She laughed a little as I went into the room and flung down my books.
My grandmother hasn’t seen any one in ten years, though she sits day
after day looking out on the street as if a parade were passing; but
she knows the thump of my books on the table as well as she knows the
turning of my father’s key in the lock of the door. “’Tis a lively
spirit you’d make, Shauneen,” she said, with that chuckle she saves for
me. “No, ’twas your father I thought was coming.”
“What’d he be doing home at this time?”
“These are queer days,” she said, “and there are queer doings in them.”
“There’s nothing queer that I can see,” I told her.
“I’m an old, blind woman,” she said, “but sometimes I see more than do
they who have the sight of their two eyes.” She said it so solemnly,
folding her hands one over the other as she drew herself up in her
chair, that I felt a little thrill creeping up my spine. “What do you
mean?” I asked her. “Time’ll tell you,” she said.
My mother came in from the kitchen then. “Norah forgot to order bacon
for the morning,” she said. “Will you go to the market, John, before
you do anything else?”
“Oh, I’m going skating,” I protested.
“It won’t take you five minutes,” said my mother. She seemed tired
and worried. The look in her eyes made me feel that there was trouble
hanging over the house. My mother isn’t like my grandmother. When
things go wrong, my grandmother stands up straight, and throws back her
shoulders, and fronts ahead as if she were a general giving orders for
attack; but my mother wilts like a hurt flower. She was drooping then
while she stood in the room, so I said, “All right, I’ll go,” though
I’d promised the fellows to come to the park before four o’clock.
“And look in at the shop as you go by,” my grandmother said, “and see
if your father’s there now.”
“Why shouldn’t he be?” my mother asked.
There was a queer sound in her voice that urged me around past my
father’s shop. My father was there in the little office, going over
blue-prints with Joe Krebs’s uncle and Mattie Kleiner’s father and a
big man I’d never seen before. I told my grandmother when I went home.
“I knew it,” she said. “I knew it. And I dreamed last night of my
cousin Michael who died trying to escape from Van Diemen’s Land.”
“You knew what?” I asked her, for again that strange way of hers sent
shivery cold over me.
“Go to your skating,” she bade me.
* * * * *
There wasn’t much skating at Tompkins Square, though, when I found
the crowd. The sun had come out strong in the afternoon and the ice
was melting. “Ground-hog must have seen his shadow last week,” Bennie
Curtis said. All the fellows--Joe Carey and Jim Dean and Frank Belden
and Joe Krebs and Mattie Kleiner and Fred Wendell and the rest of
them--had taken off their skates and were starting a tug of war in the
slush. Mattie Kleiner was the captain on one side and Frank Belden the
captain on the other. Mattie had chosen Joe Krebs and Jim Dean and Joe
Carey on his side. Just as I came along he shouted that he chose me.
Frank Belden yelled that it was his choice and that he’d take me. “He
don’t want to be on your side!” Mattie cried. “He’s with the Germans!”
“Well, I guess not,” I said, “any more than I’m with the English. I’m
an American.”
“You can’t be just an American in this battle,” Frank Belden said.
“Then I’ll stay out of it,” I told him.
They all started to yell “Neutral!” and “Fraid cat!” and “Oh, you dove
of peace!” at me. I got tired of it after a while, and I went after
Mattie hard. When I’d finished with him he bawled at me: “Wait till
your father knows, he’ll fix you!”
“What for?” I jeered.
“For going against his principles, that’s what,” Mattie Kleiner roared.
“I’d like to know what you know about my father’s principles.” I
laughed at him.
“Well, I ought to know,” he cried. “I heard him take the oath.”
“What oath?” we all demanded, but Mattie went off in surly silence. Joe
Krebs and Joe Carey trailed after him. I stayed with the other fellows
until it was dark. Then I started for home.
Joe Carey was waiting for me at the corner. “Do you believe him, John?”
he asked me. “Do you believe Mattie about the oath?”
“How’s that?” I parried. I seemed to remember having heard a man who’d
been at the house a fortnight before whispering something about an
oath, and I knew that I’d heard my mother say to my grandmother: “I
pray to God he’ll get in no trouble with any oaths or promises.” I kept
wondering if Mattie Kleiner’s father and Joe Krebs’s uncle and the big
man with the blue-prints who’d been in my father’s shop had anything to
do with it. “Oh, Mattie’s talking in his sleep,” I said.
“Well, maybe,” said Joe Carey; “but he wasn’t sleeping the night they
had the meeting in his house. He was on the stairs going up to the top
floor, and he kept the door open a little way and he heard everything
they said, and nobody at all knew he was there.”
Joe Carey’s eyes were almost popping out of his head, and so I knew
that Mattie had been telling him a long story. “I guess he didn’t hear
very much,” I said.
“You bet he did,” Joe declared. “He heard them reading the letters
telling people not to go on the ships because they were going to be
sunk, and he heard them talking about bombs and munition factories. He
says that he heard your father say that he’d gladly lay down his life
for the sake of Ireland.”
“But Ireland’s not in this war!”
“Sure it is! Mattie says the Germans are going to free Ireland if they
beat England. That’s why the Irish ought to be with the Germans. Mattie
says your father’ll be awful ashamed that you wouldn’t go on his side.
Mattie says your father----”
“I don’t give a whoop what Mattie says about my father,” I told him. “I
guess I can take my own part.”
“I guess you’ll have to,” said Joe.
As I went up the street toward our house I had that queer feeling that
comes sometimes after I’ve been away for a while, a fear that something
terrible has happened while I’ve been gone and that I’ll be blamed for
it. It was dark on the street, for people hadn’t lighted the lamps in
the basement dining-rooms, and I was hurrying along when suddenly a
man’s voice came over my shoulder. I hadn’t heard his step behind me at
all, and I jumped when he spoke. “Where does Mr. John Sutton live?” he
asked me.
“Right there.” I pointed to our house.
“Do you know him?” he asked. Through the dark I could see that he was
a tall man with sharp eyes. I knew that I had never seen him before,
and that he didn’t look like any of the men who came to my father’s
machine-shop. “Don’t you know Mr. Sutton?” he repeated.
“Yes, sir.”
“Know him well, sonny?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How well?”
“He’s my father.”
He whistled softly, then laughed, turned on his heel, and strode down
the street. I watched him to see if he’d take the turn toward the shop,
but he turned the other way at the corner. I thought that I’d tell my
grandmother about him but my mother was with her in the dark when I
went in. They were talking very low, as if some one were dead in the
house, but I heard my mother say, “If I only knew how far he’s gone in
this!” and my grandmother mutter: “Sure, the farther he goes in, the
farther back he’ll have to come.” I stumbled over a chair as I went
into the room with them, and they both stopped talking.
I could hear the little hissing whisper my grandmother always makes
while she says the rosary, but I could hear no sound from my mother at
all until she rose with a sigh and lighted the gas-lamp. She looked at
me as if she hadn’t known I’d been there. “Have you any home work to do
to-night, John?” she asked me.
“No, ma’am,” I said. “It’s Friday.”
“Then I want you to come to church with me after your dinner,” she said.
“Oh, I don’t want to go to church,” I’d said before my grandmother
spoke.
“’Twill be a queer thing to me as long as I live,” she said, “that
those who have don’t want what they have, and that those who haven’t
keep wanting.”
The telephone-bell rang just then up in the room that my father used
for an office, and I raced up to answer it. A man’s voice, younger than
that of the man who’d spoken to me, came over the wire. “Say, is this
John Sutton’s residence?” it asked. “And is he home? And, if he isn’t,
who are you?”
“What do you want?” I called.
“Information. This is _The World_. We hear that there’s to be a meeting
of the clans to-night, and we want to know where it’s to be held.”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Can you find out?”
“No,” I lied. “There’s nobody home.”
“Won’t your father be home for dinner?”
Even then I could hear his key turning in the lock, could hear him
passing on his way up to his bedroom, but a queer kind of caution was
being born in me. “No, sir,” I said.
“Who was that?” my grandmother asked me when I went down.
I told her of the call, told her, too, of the man who had stopped me on
the street. Her rosary slipped through her fingers. “I feared it,” she
said. Then the whisper of her praying began again.
At dinner my father was strangely silent. Usually he talks a great
deal, all about politics, and the newspapers, and the trouble with the
schools, and woman suffrage, and war. But he said nothing at all except
to ask me if the skating were good. My mother was just as quiet as he,
and I would have been afraid to open my mouth if my grandmother hadn’t
started in to tell about New York in the days she’d come here, more
than sixty-five years ago. She talked and talked about how different
everything had been then, with no tall buildings and no big bridges and
no subways and no elevateds. “Faith, you can be proud of your native
town, John,” she said to my father.
“I wish I’d been born in Ireland,” he said.
She laughed. “And if I’d stayed in Ireland I’d have starved,” she said,
“and little chance you’d have had of being born anywhere.”
“It might have been just as well,” he said bitterly.
“Oh, no,” she said; “there’s Shauneen.”
He rose from the table, flinging down his napkin. “I won’t be home till
very late,” he said to my mother.
She stood up beside him. “Do you have to go, John?” she asked him.
“Yes,” he said.
“Oh, John,” she said, “I’m afraid.”
“Of what?”
“Of what may happen you.”
“Nothing’ll happen me,” he said.
I wanted to tell him of the strange man who had halted me on the
street, and of the telephone call, but my father’s anger was rising and
I feared to fan it to flame. My grandmother said nothing until after my
father had gone. Then she spoke to my mother.
“Don’t you know better,” she asked her, “and you eighteen years married
to him, than to ask John not to do something you don’t want him to do?”
My mother began to cry as we heard the banging of the door after my
father. “Well, if you can do nothing else,” my grandmother said, “you’d
better be off to church. Keep your eyes open, Shauneen,” she warned me
while my mother was getting her hat and coat.
* * * * *
It was a grand night, with the evening star low in the sky, like a
lamp, and the big yellow moon just rising in the east. The wind blew
sharp and salt off the water, but there was a promise of spring in the
air, saying that it must be almost baseball time. We went over to the
Jesuit church, walking slowly all the way. There we knelt in the dark
until I was stiff. As we came out my mother stopped at the holy-water
font. “John,” she said, “will you promise me that if you ever marry
you’ll never set any cause but God’s above your wife?”
“No, ma’am, I won’t,” I said, vaguely understanding that my father had
hurt my mother by his refusal to stay at home, and wondering what cause
he had set above her. As we walked toward the car-line I remembered
what Joe Carey had told me of Mattie Kleiner’s speech about my father.
“Do you have to go to Ireland to die for Ireland?” I asked her. She
clutched my hand. “My grandfather died for Ireland,” she said, “and he
wasn’t the first of his line to die for her. But I pray God that he may
have been the last.” She said no more till we came into our own house.
My grandmother was still at the window of the dining-room. There was
no light, and my mother did not make one. “There was another telephone
call,” my grandmother said. “Norah answered it. ’Twas the newspaper
calling again for John to ask about the meeting. She said she knew
nothing about it and that no one was here to answer.”
“Do you suppose,” I said, “it was detectives?”
They said nothing, and I could feel a big lump coming up my throat. I
thought they might not have heard me until my grandmother said: “Do you
know, Kate, where the meeting is.”
“I don’t know, and I don’t want to know,” my mother cried. She turned
to me sharply. “Go to bed, John,” she said.
“I know where the meetings are,” I blurted out, eager enough for any
excuse to put off the hateful order. “They’re at Mattie Kleiner’s
house, because he hides on the stairs when they come, and he heard them
take the oath.”
“Is that Matthew Kleiner’s boy?” my grandmother asked, so quietly that
I thought she had not realized the importance of my news.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Go to bed, Shauneen.” She repeated my mother’s order.
I went up-stairs, leaving the two of them silent in the dark. I
whistled while I undressed, but I shivered after I had turned out the
light and jumped between the sheets. I was going to lie awake waiting
for my father’s return, but I must have dozed, for I thought that it
was in the middle of the night that something woke me. I knew, as soon
as I woke, that some one was in my room. I could feel him groping. I
tried to speak, but my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. Then I
heard a faint whisper. “Shauneen,” it said.
So far away it seemed that I thought it might be a ghost until my
grandmother spoke again. “Your mother’s in bed now,” she said. “Put on
your clothes as quick as you can.”
“What is it?” I whispered.
“We’re going to Matthew Kleiner’s, you and I,” she said. “I’d go alone
if I could see.”
“What time is it?”
“Between ten and eleven.”
I pulled my clothes on as fast as I could. Then stealthily as thieves
we crept out from my room and down the stairs. I held my grandmother’s
hand and wondered at its steadiness. When we had come outside the
basement door she halted me. “Look down the street for the tall man,”
she bade me. There was no one in sight, however, and we walked along
sturdily, turning corners until we came to Kleiner’s.
It was a red-brick house in a row, not a basement house like ours, but
with a cellar below and an attic above its two main floors. There was
no light on the first floor, but I thought that I saw a stream behind
the drawn curtains up-stairs. I found the bell and pushed on it hard.
No one came for a long time. I rang again. I could see shadows back
of the shades before Mattie Kleiner’s mother came. “What is it?” she
demanded before she opened the door.
“Tell her that your mother’s sick and that you’ve come for your
father,” my grandmother ordered me. I repeated what she’d said. Mrs.
Kleiner opened the door. “Oh,” she cried, “it is Mrs. Sutton and little
John. Oh, you did frighten me. Is the mother very sick? I shall call
the father.”
“Let me go to him,” my grandmother said. We were inside the hall then,
and I put her hand on the railing of the stairway. She had started up
before Mrs. Kleiner tried to stop her. “I’ve a message for him,” said
my grandmother. Mrs. Kleiner and I followed her. At the top of the
stairs I turned her toward the front room, for I could hear the murmur
of voices. I passed a door and wondered if Mattie Kleiner were hiding
behind it. “Oh, we must not go in,” Mrs. Kleiner pleaded. “The men will
not want us to go in.” She tried to stop us, but my grandmother turned,
looking at her as if she could see her. “I’ve always followed my own
conscience, ma’am,” she said, “not my husband’s, nor my son’s, nor any
other man’s.”
From within the front room came the sound of the voices, growing louder
and louder as we stood there, my grandmother alert, Mrs. Kleiner
appalled, I myself athrill. I could hear my father’s voice, short,
sharp. “It’s our great opportunity,” he was saying. “We have only to
strike the blow at England’s empire, and the empire itself will arise
to aid us. Twenty thousand men flung into Canada will turn the trick.
French Quebec is disaffected. What if soldiers are there? We can fight
them! We may die, but what if we do? We will have started the avalanche
that will destroy Carthage!”
There were cries of “Right!” to him. Then a man began to talk in
German. His voice rang out harshly. From the murmurs that came out to
us we knew that the men were applauding his words, but we had no idea
of what the words were. Mrs. Kleiner stood wringing her hands. “Who’s
in there?” my grandmother asked her.
“I do not know,” she insisted.
“Joe Krebs’s uncle is there,” I said. “I know his cough. And Mr.
Winngart who keeps the delicatessen-shop. And Frank Belden’s father;
and that’s Mr. Carey’s voice.”
“They just meet for fun,” groaned Mrs. Kleiner.
“Sure, I saw that kind of fun before,” said my grandmother, “when the
Fenians went after the Queen’s Own.”
My father’s voice rose again. “We are ready to fire the torch? We
are ready to send out the word to-night for the mobilization of our
sympathizers? We are ready to stand together to the bitter end?”
“We are ready!” came the shout.
Then my grandmother opened the door.
Through the haze of their tobacco smoke they looked up, the dozen
men crowded into the Kleiners’ front bedroom, to see my grandmother
standing before them, a bent old woman in her black dress and shawl,
her little jet bonnet nodding valiantly from its perch on her thin
white hair. She looked around as if she could see every one of them. My
father had sprung forward at her coming, and, as if to hold him off,
she put up one hand.
“_Is it yourself, John Sutton, who’s talking here of plots, and plans,
and war?_” she said. Her voice went up to a sharp edge. She flung back
her head as if she defied them to answer her. All of them, my father
and Joe Krebs’s uncle and Mattie Kleiner’s father and Mr. Carey and Mr.
Winngart and the big man who’d had the blue-prints in the shop, and the
others, stared at her as if she were a ghost. No one of them moved as
she spoke. “’Tis a fine lot you are to be sitting here thinking ways
to bring trouble on yourselves, and your wives, and your children,
and your country. Who are there here of you? Is it yourself, Benedict
Krebs, who’s going out to fight for Germany when your own father came
to this very street to get away from Prussia? Is it you, Matthew
Kleiner, who gives roof to them who plot against America, you, who
came here to earn a living that you couldn’t earn at home? Is it you,
Michael Carey, who’s helping them hurt the land that’s making you a
rich man? Shame on you; shame on you all!”
“Why shouldn’t we fight England?” Joe Carey’s father said with a growl.
“You’d be the last one, Mrs. Sutton, that I’d think’d set yourself
against that.”
“’Tis not England,” said my grandmother, “that you fight with your
plots. ’Tis America you strike when you strike here. And, as long as
you stay here, be Americans and not traitors!”
They began to murmur at that, and my father said: “You don’t know what
you’re talking about, mother. You’d better take John home. This is no
place for either of you.”
“No more than it’s a place for you,” she said. “Will you be coming home
with me now?”
“I will not,” my father said.
“Faith, and you’ll all be wishing you had,” she told them, “when the
jails’ll be holding you in the morning.”
“The jails!” The big man who had held the blue-prints came closer to
us. “What is it you say of jails? You have told the police, then?”
“I didn’t need to,” my grandmother said. “The government men have
been watching this long time. ’Twill be at midnight that they’ll come
here. But ’tis not myself they’ll be finding.” I saw the men’s glances
flash around the room through the smoky haze before she called: “Come,
Shauneen.” I took her hand again and led her out of the room. Just
before the door closed after us I saw that my father’s face had grown
very white, and that Mattie Kleiner’s father had dropped his pipe on
the floor.
Outside the house I spoke to my grandmother tremblingly. “Do the police
really know?” I asked her. She gave her dry little chuckle. “If they
don’t, they should,” she answered; “but I was born an O’Brien, and
I’ve never known one of them yet that ever told the police anything.
No, Shauneen,” she laughed, “’twas the high hill I shot at, but I’m
thinking that the shot struck. We’ll watch.”
We crossed the street and waited in the shadow of the house at the
corner. For a little while all was quiet at Kleiner’s. Then I saw the
tall man come out with Joe Krebs’s uncle. After a time my father came
out with Mr. Winngart and Mr. Carey. They walked to the other corner
and stood there a moment before they separated, “Shall we go home now?”
I asked my grandmother after I had told her what I had seen.
“Not yet,” she said. “I’ve one more errand to do this night.” I thought
it might have something to do with the tall man who’d spoken to me or
with the telephone call, and I wondered when she sighed. “I’m a very
old woman,” she seemed to be saying to herself. “I’ll be ninety-one
years come Michaelmas Day. Some of the world I’ve seen, and much of
life. Out of it all I’ve brought but a few things. I’d thought to give
these to my son. But--” She paused. “How old are you, Shauneen?” she
asked me.
“Fourteen,” I said.
“Old enough,” she nodded. She turned her head as if she were looking
for something or some one. Then: “Do you know your way to the Battery?”
she asked me.
“Sure,” I told her. “Are you going there?”
“We are.”
* * * * *
It had been quiet enough in our part of town. It was quieter yet when
we came to Bowling Green and walked across to the Battery. Down there,
past the high buildings and the warehouses, we seemed to have come into
the heart of a hush. To the north of us the sky was afire with the
golden glow from the up-town lights. In front of us ran the East River
and the North River. Out on Bedloe’s Island I could see the shining of
the Goddess of Liberty’s torch. Every little while a ferry-boat, all
yellow with lights, would shoot out on the water. A sailing-vessel
moved slowly after its puffing tug. The little oyster-boats were coming
in from the bay. A steamer glided along past it as I walked with my
grandmother out toward the old Castle Garden.
On the Saturday before Joe Carey and I had come down to the piers,
prowling all afternoon on the docks, watching the men bringing in the
queer crates and boxes and bags while we told each other of the places
from where the fruits and spices and coffee and wines had come. There
were thousands and thousands of ships out there in the dark, I knew,
and I began to tell my grandmother what some of the sailors had told
us of how the trade of the world was crowding into New York, with the
ships all pressing the docks for room. “If you could only see it!” I
said to her. “I can see more than that,” she said. Then: “Take me to
the edge of the waters,” she bade me.
Wondering and a little frightened, I obeyed her, trying to solve the
while the mystery of her whim to bring me to the deserted park in the
middle of the night. “Is Castle Garden over there?” she pointed. “Then
I’ve my bearings now.”
She stood alone, a little way off from me, staring seaward as if she
counted the shadowy ships. The wind blew her thin white hair from under
her bonnet and raised the folds of her shawl. There in the lateness of
the night, alone at the edge of the Battery, she didn’t seem to be my
grandmother at all, but some stranger. I remembered the story I’d read
somewhere of an old woman who’d brought a pile of books to a King of
Rome, books that she threw away, one by one, as he refused them, until
there was but one book left. When he’d bought that one from her he’d
found that it was the book of the future of the empire, and that he’d
lost all the rest through his folly. As I looked at my grandmother I
thought she must be like the old woman of the story. Even her voice
sounded strange and deep when she turned to me.
“It was sixty-five years ago the 7th of November that I first stood on
this soil,” she said. “’Tis a long lifetime, and, thank God, a useful
one I’ve had. Burdens I’ve had, but never did I lack the strength to
bear them. Looking back, I’m sorry for many a word and many a deed, but
I’ve never sorrowed that I came here.”
I would have thought that she had forgotten me if she hadn’t touched
my arm. “You’ve heard tell of the famine, Shauneen,” she went on, “the
great famine that fell on Ireland, blighting even the potatoes in
the ground? We’d a little place in Connaught then, a bit of land my
father was tilling. We hadn’t much, even for the place, but we were
happy enough, God knows, with our singing and dancing, and the fairs
and the patterns. Then little by little, we grew poorer and poorer. I
was the oldest of the seven of us. My mother and myself’d be planning
and scraping to find food for the rest of them. Every day we’d see
them growing thinner and thinner. Oh, _mavrone_, the pity of it! And
they looking at us betimes as if we were cheating them of their bit
of a sup! Sometimes now in the dark I see them come to my bed, with
their soft eyes begging for bread, and we having naught to give them.
Brigid--she was the youngest of them all--died. Then my father went.
“I used to go down to the sea and hunt the wrack for bits of food.
There by the shore I would look over here to America and pray, day
after day, that the Lord would send to us some help before my mother
should go. You don’t know what it is to pray, Shauneen. Your father
cannot teach you and your mother hopes you’ll never learn. For prayer
is born in agony, _avick_, and grief and loss and sorrow. But because
you are the son of my soul I pray for you that life may teach you
prayer. For when you come to the end of the road, Shauneen, you’ll know
that ’tis not the smoothness of the way, but the height of it and the
depth of it, that measures your travelling. Far, far down in the depths
I went when I prayed over there on the bleak coast of Connaught.
“God answered my prayer. There came from America food to us. There
came, too, the chance for me to come here with the promise of work
to do. ’Twas a drear day when I left home. How I cursed England as I
looked back on the hills of Cork harbor, all green and smiling as if
never a blight had cast its shadow behind them!
“’Twas a long, dreary sailing. Nine weeks we were in the crossing. A
lifetime I thought it was between the day I looked on the western sea
from the Connaught mountains and the day when I stood here looking back
toward home. Sure life is full of lifetimes like those.”
She paused a moment, but I felt as if I were under a spell that I must
not break by word of mine. A cloud came over the moon and all around us
grew shadowy. The big throb that the city always beats at night kept
sounding like the thrumming of an orchestra waiting for the violin solo
to start.
“I’d plenty of them before many years.” My grandmother’s voice came
like the sound for which the thrumming had waited. “Did you ever think
what it means to the poor souls who come here alone for their living?
When you’ve a house of your own, Shauneen, with men servants and maid
servants, don’t forget that your father’s mother worked out for some
one. They were kind people, too, who took me to their homes. Don’t
forget that either. For ’tis my first memory of America. Kind they
were, and just. They helped me save what I earned and they showed me
ways of helping my folks at home. I’d brought out Danny and James and
Ellen and Mary before the war. I met each one of them right here at
Castle Garden. That’s why I always think of this place as the gateway
through which the Irish have come to America. Sure Ellis Island’s been
for the Italians and the Jews and the Greeks. We didn’t wait outside
the door. We came straight in,” she chuckled.
“My mother wouldn’t come from the old place. Long I grieved over her
there in the little house where my father and Brigid had died, but
after a while I knew she was happier so. Sometimes, Shauneen, I think
of Ireland as an old woman, like my mother, sitting home alone in the
old places, grieving, mourning, with her children out over the world,
living the dreams of her nights by the fire. ’Twas here we found
the freedom the Irish had been fighting for. ’Twas here, away from
landlords and landholding, away from famine and persecution, that we
found that life need not be a thing of sorrow. ’Twas here I met your
grandfather.
“I’d nothing of my own, and your grandfather had but a trifle more when
we married. I suppose ’tis brave that people would call us now. We
didn’t think that we were. We were young and strong and we loved each
other. And we were getting along fairly well--we’d started the payments
on a bit of a house of our own after your father was born--when the war
came down on us.
“Your grandfather went with the brigade. Not twice did we think whether
or not he should go. We knew that he owed his first duty to the
country that had called him, and sheltered him, and given him work and
hope and freedom. For he was a boy from home as I was a girl from home.
I stood on the curbstone the day he marched by, with your father in my
arms, and I cheered for the flag. ‘Sure he’ll be walking to meet you
when you come back!’ I called, lifting up the child. Your grandfather
never came back. He fell at Marye’s Heights.”
When she spoke again her voice had changed more to her every-day tone.
“Well, I raised your father,” she said, “and I thought I was raising
him well. My arms were strong. I worked at the wash-tub morning, noon,
and night. It wasn’t long till I had a laundry of my own. I thought to
give my son all that I’d ever wanted for myself. Perhaps that was where
I made my mistake. I thought too much of the things that money can buy
in those years when money was so hard to earn. Perhaps ’twas myself and
no other who taught your father the cold, hard things of life, though,
God knows, I’d no thought to do it. He’s a good man in many ways, but
he’s not the man I want you to be. He’s a good hater but he’s not a
good lover. And, faith, what’s there in life but love?”
I moved a little then, and my grandmother swung me around, with her two
hands on my shoulders, and, blind as she is, stared at me as if she
were looking right down into my heart. “Shauneen,” she said, “I have
prayed, day and night, that your father might be to America the good
citizen his father was. I have prayed that if America should ever need
him he would stand ready for her call. I have prayed that he’d love
America as I have loved America. I love Ireland, _mavrone_. Always in
my heart do I see her hills as they looked on the morning I looked back
on them from the sea. But I love America, too, and I wanted my son to
love her even more than I do. I’ve wanted him to love this land as my
fathers and their fathers loved Ireland. ’Twas not that I wanted him
to forget my land; when he was a lad like you I’d tell him tales of
Ireland’s glory and of Ireland’s woe. How was I to know that all it
would do for him was to rouse the black hate for England? I taught him
love for Ireland, but never did I teach him to set my land above his
own.
“For ’twas America gave us our chance, Shauneen, when we’d no other
place on earth to seek. Hard days we’ve known here, too, days when
even the children jeered at us, but we’ve never felt the hand of the
oppressor upon us since we touched our feet on these shores. We’ve been
free and we’ve prospered. Fine houses we have and fine clothes; and
’tis a long day since I knew the pinch of hunger. This is our debt.
Tell me again, Shauneen, what you see out there?”
I told her of the shining lights, of the funnels of the steamers,
of the piled piers, of the little oyster-boats, of the great liners
waiting the word for their sailing.
“’Twould be a fine sight,” she sighed. “Do you think me a madwoman to
bring you here?” she went on, as if she had read my thought. “Perhaps
I am that. Perhaps I’m not. For you’ll remember this night when you’ve
forgotten many another time, just as I remember the day when my mother
took me to the shrine at Knock. For this is the shrine of your country,
Shauneen, this old Castle Garden, where your people set foot in the
land that’s given them liberty. Here it was that I told my brothers and
my sisters of the future before them. Here it is that I’m telling you
that your country will be the greatest nation of all the world if only
you lads stay true to her. That’s why I’ve brought you here to-night,
Shauneen. I’m an old, old woman. I’ve not long for this earth. But I’ve
this message for you; it’s yours; this duty that your father shirks
when he plots with black traitors who’d drag us into wars that are not
of our choosing. Raise your hand, Shauneen. Say after me: ‘_As long as
I live, God helping me, I shall keep my country first in my heart and,
after God, first in my soul!_’”
Through the misty moonlight there came to me the memory of my mother’s
plea at the door of the church, my mother’s cry: “Promise me that
you’ll set no cause but God’s before your wife!” Some battle of spirit
struggled within me. For an instant I was silent. Then, suddenly, as if
the moon had ridden above the cloud, I saw the right. “Since all true
causes come from God,” I said to myself, “it is right to set my own
country above anything else that may ever come.” And I said the words
after my grandmother.
She took my face between her hands and kissed me. “God keep you,
Shauneen,” she said, “for the woman who’ll love you, and the children
you’ll teach, and the land you’ll serve!”
Then through a sleeping city my grandmother and I went home.
* * * * *
Our country’s part is to keep the flame of freedom burning above the
darkness of the world. Our part is to feed that flame with the oil of
our love of our country. No matter what our duty may be, whether it be
great or small, let us do it as our country asks; that we may keep our
land the place where men may live in freedom, in justice, in peace.
We have come upon troubled times. We have enemies at home as well as
abroad. We have those who would cry “Peace at any price,” when our
country knows that the only enduring peace is one which is won with
honor. We have those who would barter American ideals for immediate
comfort, those who would sell the future for the present. It is our
part, the part of each and every American, to stand firm for those
principles which America has cherished and for which she fights to-day.
It is our part to be American, to think American, to pray American. It
is our duty to remember what America does for us. It is our privilege
to do what we can for America. Every man, woman, and child in the
United States, not in active war service in army or navy, is nothing
less than a licensed pilot, steering the ship of his patriotism
among rough waters. It is his part to steer it straight, and, as the
President said of the nation, “God helping him, he can do no other.”