All this time the country had been going to war. The huge military
machine was getting under way, the storm of public feeling was
rising. Congress had voted a huge loan, a country-wide machine of
propaganda was being organized, and the oratory of Four Minute Men
was echoing from Maine to California. Peter read the American City
“Times” every morning, and here were speeches of statesmen and
sermons of clergymen, here were cartoons and editorials, all burning
with the fervor’s of patriotism. Peter absorbed these, and his soul
became transfigured. Hitherto Peter had been living for himself; but
there comes a time in the life of every man who can use his brain at
all when he realizes that he is not the one thing of importance in
the universe, the one end to be served. Peter very often suffered
from qualms of conscience, waves of doubt as to his own
righteousness. Peter, like every other soul that ever lived, needed
a religion, an ideal.
The Reds had a religion, as you might call it; but this religion had
failed to attract Peter. In the first place it was low; its devotees
were wholly lacking in the graces of life, in prestige, and that
ease which comes with assurance of power. They were noisy in their
fervors, and repelled Peter as much as the Holy Rollers. Also, they
were always harping upon the sordid and painful facts of life; who
but a pervert would listen to “sob stories,” when he might have all
the things that are glorious and shining and splendid in the world?
But now here was the religion Peter wanted. These clergymen in their
robes of snow white linen, preaching in churches with golden altars
and stained-glass windows; these statesmen who wore the halo of
fame, and went about with the cheering of thousands in their ears;
these mighty captains of industry whose very names were magic--with
power, when written on pieces of paper, to cause cities to rise in
the desert, and then to fall again beneath a rain of shells and
poison gas; these editors and cartoonists of the American City
“Times,” with all their wit and learning--these people all combined
to construct for Peter a religion and an ideal, and to hand it out
to him, ready-made and precisely fitted to his understanding. Peter
would go right on doing the things he had been doing before; but he
would no longer do them in the name of Peter Gudge, the ant, he
would do them in the name of a mighty nation of a hundred and ten
million people, with all its priceless memories of the past and its
infinite hopes for the future; he would do them in the sacred name
of patriotism, and the still more sacred name of democracy.
And--most convenient of circumstances--the big business men of
American City, who had established a secret service bureau with
Guffey in charge of it, would go right on putting up their funds,
and paying Peter fifty dollars a week and expenses while he served
the holy cause!
It was the fashion these days for orators and public men to vie with
one another in expressing the extremes of patriotism, and Peter
would read these phrases, and cherish them; they came to seem a part
of him, he felt as if he had invented them. He became greedy for
more and yet more of this soul-food; and there was always more to be
had--until Peter’s soul was become swollen, puffed up as with a
bellows. Peter became a patriot of patriots, a super-patriot; Peter
was a red-blooded American and no mollycoddle; Peter was a
“he-American,” a 100% American--and if there could have been such a
thing as a 101% American, Peter would have been that. Peter was so
much of an American that the very sight of a foreigner filled him
with a fighting impulse. As for the Reds--well, Peter groped for
quite a time before he finally came upon a formula which expressed
his feelings. It was a famous clergyman who achieved it for
him--saying that if he could have his way he would take all the
Reds, and put them in a ship of stone with sails of lead, and send
them forth with hell for their destination.
So Peter chafed more and more at his inability to get action. How
much more evidence did the secret service of the Traction Trust
require? Peter would ask this question of McGivney again and again,
and McGivney would answer: “Keep your shirt on. You’re getting your
pay every week. What’s the matter with you?”
“The matter is, I’m tired of listening to these fellows ranting,”
Peter would say. “I want to stop their mouths.”
Yes, Peter had come to take it as a personal affront that these
radicals should go on denouncing the cause which Peter had espoused.
They all thought of Peter as a comrade, they were most friendly to
him; but Peter had the knowledge of how they would regard him when
they knew the real truth, and this imagined contempt burned him like
an acid. Sometimes there would be talk about spies and informers,
and then these people would exhaust their vocabulary of abuse, and
Peter, of course, would apply every word of it to himself and become
wild with anger. He would long to answer back; he was waiting for
the day when he might vindicate himself and his cause by smashing
these Reds in the mouth.