THE CHALLENGE.
I.
It was nearly noon next day before Selwyn woke from a heavy, dreamless
sleep. Both in mind and in body there was the listlessness which follows
the passing of a crisis, but for the first time in many days he felt the
impulse to face life again, to accept its bludgeonings, unflinching.
He was almost fully dressed, when a messenger arrived with a letter. It
was from Edgerton Forbes.
'MY DEAR AUSTIN,--I have been trying to get hold of you for the past
week, but you are as elusive as a hundred-dollar bill. Douglas Watson
has returned from the front, minus an arm, and he has asked as many
ex-Harvard men as possible to meet him at the University Club. We are
having dinner there to-night in one of the smaller rooms, and I want you
to come with me. I'll pick you up at your hotel at seven, and we can
walk over. If it is all right, send word by the messenger.--As ever,
FORBES.'
Selwyn's first instinct was to refuse. He had no desire to meet Watson
again just yet, nor did he want to face men with whom he had lived at
Harvard. But the thought of another lonely night arose--night, with its
germs of madness.
'Tell Mr. Forbes,' he said, 'that I shall expect him at seven.'
A few minutes before the time arranged the clergyman called, and they
started for the club. The air was raw and chilling, and people were
hurrying through the streets, taking no heed of the illuminated shop
windows, tempting the eye of woman and the purse of man. In almost every
towering building the lights of offices were gleaming, as tired,
routine-chained staffs worked on into the night tabulating and recording
the ever-increasing prosperity of the times.
The times!
Ordinary forms of greeting had changed to mutual congratulations on
affluence. Anecdotes of business men were no longer of struggle and
privation, but of record outputs and maximum prices. Theatres, cafés,
cinema palaces, churches, hotels--they had never seen such times.
Success was in the very dampness of the air as thousands of people looked
at it from the cosy interior of limousines, people who had never aspired
higher than an occasional taxi-cab. The times! Dollars multiplied and
begat great families of dollars--and Broadway glittered as never before.
It is difficult to state what trend of thought made conversation between
the friends difficult, but after two or three desultory attempts they
walked on without speaking. As they were entering the majestic portals
of the club, Selwyn was reminded of a question he had intended all day to
ask.
'Edge,' he said, 'have you heard anything of Marjory Shoreham?'
'She sailed two weeks ago for France,' answered the clergyman.
They were directed to an upper floor, where they found a hundred or so
guests who claimed Harvard as their _alma mater_. Although most of his
old acquaintances were quite cordial, Selwyn felt oddly self-conscious.
He caught sight of Gerard Van Derwater with his impassive courtliness
dominating a group of active but less impressive men; and behind them he
saw Douglas Watson of Cambridge surrounded by a dozen guests; but he
pleaded a headache to Forbes, and sought a secluded corner, where he
remained until dinner was announced.
Like all affairs where men are alone and the charming artifices of
femininity are missing, there was a severity and a formality which did
not disappear until the ministrations of wine and food had engendered a
glow which did away with shyness. The table was arranged in the form of
the letter U, with Watson beside the chairman at the head.
Towards the end of the dinner conversation and hilarity were growing
apace. Men were forgetting the scramble of existence in the recollection
of old college days, when their blood was like wine and the world a thing
of adventure. Mellowed by retrospect, they laughed over incidents that
had caused heart-burnings at the time; and as they laughed more than one
felt a swelling of the throat. It was, perhaps, just an odd streak of
sentiment (and the man who is without such is a sorry spectacle); or it
may have been the memory of ideals, aspirations, dreams--left behind the
college gates.
'Gentlemen.' The chairman had risen to his feet. Cigars were lit; and
he was greeted with the usual applause. 'Gentlemen, we have gathered
here at short notice to welcome an old boy of Harvard--Douglas Watson.
He has a message which he wants to deliver to us, and not only because he
is one with us in tradition would we listen, but his empty sleeve is a
mute testimony that he has fought in a cause which--though not our
own--is one which I know has the sympathy of every man in this room. I
shall not detain you, gentlemen, but ask your most attentive hearing for
Mr. Watson.'
As the guest of the evening rose to speak he was greeted with prolonged
applause, which broke into 'For he's a jolly good fellow,' and ended in a
college football yell. During it Selwyn sat motionless, his alert mind
trying to decipher the difference between Watson's face and the others.
It was not only that they were, almost without exception, clean-shaven,
and that Watson wore a small military moustache; the dissimilarity went
beyond that. Although he was obviously nervous, Watson's eyes looked
steadily ahead as those of a man who has faced death and looked on things
that never were intended for human vision. It had left him aged--not
aged as with years, but by an experience which made all the keen-faced
men about him seem clever precocities whose mentalities had outstripped
the growth of their souls.
And studying this phenomenon, Selwyn became conscious of the American
business face.
Although differing in colouring and shape, practically every face showed
lips thin and straight, eyes narrowing and restlessly on the _qui vive_,
the nervous, muscular tension from the battle for supremacy in feverish
competition, the dull, leaden complexion of those who disregard the
sunshine--these combined in a clear impression of extraordinary abilities
and capacities with which to meet the affairs of the day. What one
missed in all their faces was a sense of the centuries.
No--not in all. At the table opposite to Selwyn was Gerard Van Derwater,
whose self-composure and air of formal courtliness made him, as always, a
man of distinctive, almost lonely, personality.
'Thank you very much,' said Watson, as the applause and singing died
away. His fingers pressed nervously on the table, and his first words
were uneven and jerky. 'I needn't tell you I am not a speaker. I have a
great message for you chaps, but I may not be able to express it. That
was my reason for asking to speak to ex-Harvard men. I did it because I
knew I should have men who thought as I did--men who looked on things in
the same way as myself. I knew you would be patient with me, and I was
certain you would give an answer to the question which I bring from
France.'
He paused momentarily, and shifted his position, but his face had gained
in determination. A few of his listeners encouraged him audibly, but the
remainder waited to see what lay behind the intensity of his manner.
'I don't want pity for my wound,' he resumed. 'The soldier who comes out
of this war with only the loss of an arm is lucky. Put that aside. I
want you to listen to me as an American who loves his country just as you
do, and who once was proud to be an American.'
He raised his head defiantly, and when he spoke again, the indecision and
the faltering had vanished.
'Gentlemen, the question I bring is from France to America. It is more
than a question; it is a challenge. It is not sent from one Government
to another Government, but from the heart of France to the conscience of
America. They don't understand. Month after month the women there are
seeing their sons and husbands killed, their homes destroyed, and no end
in sight. And every day they are asking, "Will America never come?" My
God! I've seen that question on a thousand faces of women who have lost
everything but their hope in this country. I used to tell them to
wait--it would come. I said it had to come. When the Hun sank the
_Lusitania_ I was glad, for at last, I told them, America would act. Do
you know what the British Tommies were saying about you as we took our
turn in the line and read in the papers how Wilson was _conversing_ with
Germany about that outrage? I could have killed some of them for what
they said, for I was still proud of my nationality; but time went on and
the French people asked "When?" and the British Tommy laughed.
'If I'm hurting any of you chaps, think of what I felt. One night behind
the lines a soldiers' concert-party gave a show. Two of the comedians
were gagging, and one asked the other if he knew what the French flag
stood for, and he said, "Yes--liberty." His companion then asked him if
he knew what the British flag stood for, and he replied, "Yes--freedom."
"Then," said the first comedian, "what does the American flag stand for?"
"I can't just say," said the other one, "but I know that it has stood a
hell of a lot for two years." The crowd roared--officers and men alike.
I wanted to get up and fight the whole outfit; but what could I have said
in defence of this nation? America--our country here--has become a
vulgar joke in men's mouths.'
He stopped abruptly, and poured himself out a glass of water. No one
made a sound. There was hot resentment on nearly every face, but they
would hear him out without interruption.
'The educated classes of England,' he went on, 'are different in their
methods, but they mean the same thing. They say it is America's business
to decide for herself, but the Englishman conveys what he means in his
voice, not in his words. When I was hit, I swore I would come back here
and find out what had changed the nation I knew in the old days into a
thing too yellow to hit hack. Mr. Chairman, you said I had fought in a
cause that is not yours. I beg to differ. There are hundreds of
Americans fighting to-night in France. They're with the
Canadians--they're with the French--they're with the British. Ask them
if this cause isn't ours. I lay beside a Princeton grad. in hospital.
He had been hit, serving with the Durhams. "I'm never going back to
America," he said. "I couldn't stand it." As a matter of fact, he
died--but I don't think you like that picture any more than I do.'
Bringing his fist down on the table with a crash, Watson leaned forward,
and with flashing eyes poured out a stream of words in which reproach,
taunts, accusations, and pleading were weirdly mixed. He told them they
should remove the statue of Liberty and substitute one of Pontius Pilate.
In a voice choking with emotion, he asked what they had done with the
soul left them by the Fathers of the Republic. He pictured the British
troops holding on with nothing but their indomitable cheeriness, and
dying as if it were the greatest of jokes. In one sentence he visualised
Arras with refugees fleeing from it, and New York glittering with
prosperity. With no relevancy other than that born of his tempestuous
sincerity, he thrust his words at them with a ring and an incision as
though he were in the midst of an engagement.
'That is all,' he said when he had spoken for twenty minutes. 'In the
name of those Americans who have died with the Allies, in the name of the
_Lusitania's_ murdered, in the name of civilisation, I ask, _What have
you done with America's soul?_'
He sat down amidst a strained silence. Everywhere men's faces were
twitching with repressed fury. Some were livid, and others bit their
lips to keep back the hot words that clamoured for utterance. The
chairman made no attempt to rise, but by a subconscious unanimity of
thought every eye was turned to the one man whose appearance had
undergone no change. As if he had been listening to the legal
presentation of an impersonal case, Gerard Van Derwater leaned back in
his chair with the same courtly detachment he had shown from the
beginning of the affair.
II.
'Mr. Van Derwater,' said the chairman hoarsely; and a murmur indicated
that he had voiced the wish of the gathering.
Slowly, almost ponderously, the diplomat rose, bowing to the chairman and
then to Watson, who was looking straight ahead, his face flushed crimson.
'Mr. Chairman--Mr. Watson--Gentlemen,' said Van Derwater. He stroked his
chin meditatively, and looked calmly about as though leisurely recalling
a titbit of anecdote or quotation. 'Our friend from overseas has not
erred on the side of subterfuge. He has been frank--excellently frank.
He has told us that this Republic has become a jest, and that we are
responsible. I assume from several of your faces that you are not
pleased with the truth. Surely you did not need Mr. Watson to tell you
what they are saying in England and France. That has been
obvious--unpleasantly obvious--and, I suppose, obviously unpleasant.'
He smiled with a little touch of irony, and leaning forward, flicked the
ash from his cigar on to a plate.
'Mr. Watson,' he resumed, 'has asked what we have done with America's
soul. That is a telling phrase, and I should like to meet it with an
equally telling one; but this is not a matter of phraseology, but of the
deepest thought. Gentlemen, if you will, look back with me over the
brief history of this Republic. There are great truths hidden in the
Past.
'In 1778 Monsieur Turgot wrote that America was the hope of the human
race--that the earth could see consolation in the thought of the asylum
at last open to the down-trodden of all nations. Three years later the
Abbé Taynals, writing of the American Revolution, said: "At the sound of
the snapping chains our own fetters seem to grow lighter, and we imagine
for a moment that the air we breathe grows purer at the news that the
universe counts some tyrants the less." Ten years after that the editor
Prudhomme declared: "Philosophy and America have brought about the French
Revolution."
'I will not weary you, gentlemen, with further extracts, but I ask you to
note--_and this is something which many of our public men have forgotten
to-day_--that at the very commencement of our career we were inextricably
involved with European affairs. Entangling alliances--no! But
segregation--impossible!'
For an instant his cold, academic manner was galvanised into emphasis.
His listeners, who were still smarting under Watson's words, and had been
restless at the unimpassioned tone of Van Derwater's reply, began to feel
the grip of his slowly developing logic.
'Thus,' the speaker went on, 'at the commencement, our national destiny
became a thing dominated by the philosophy of humanitarianism. When we
had shed our swaddling-clothes and taken form as a people, the issue of
the North and the South began to rise. Because of his realisation of the
part America had to play in human affairs, Lincoln, the great-hearted
Lincoln, said we must have war. Against the counsel of his Cabinet,
loathing everything that had to do with bloodshed, this man of the people
declared that there could be no North or South, but only America. And to
secure that he plunged this country into a four years' war--four years of
untold suffering and terrible bravery. When, during the struggle,
Lincoln was informed that peace could be had by dropping the question of
the slaves' emancipation, his answer was the proclamation that all men
were free. With his great heart bleeding, he said, "The war must go on."
Philosophy and America brought on the French Revolution. Philosophy and
humanitarianism brought on the war of North and South.
'The psychology of America, which had been hidden beneath the physical
side of our rebellion, took definite form as a result. The gates of the
country were open to the entire world. The down-trodden, the persecuted,
the discouraged, the helpless, no matter of what creed or nationality,
saw the rainbow of hope. By hundreds of thousands they poured into this
country. Slav and Teuton, Galician, Italian, Belgian, Jew, in an endless
stream they came to America, and, true to Washington and Lincoln, she
received them with the words, "Welcome--free men." And so we shouldered
the burdens of the Past, and men who had been slaves--white as well as
black--drank of freedom.'
There was no applause, but men were leaning forward, afraid they might
miss a single word. Van Derwater's depth of human understanding, his
lack of passion, his solitariness that had been likened to an air of
impending tragedy, held his listeners with a magic no one could have
explained. He might have come as a spirit of times that had passed, so
charged with the ages was his strange, powerful personality.
'From an open sky,' he continued, 'came the present war. The older
nations, knit by tradition and startled by its imminence, flew to arms at
a word from their leaders. France, who had been our friend, looked to
us; but what was our position? In fifty tongues our citizens cried out
that it was to escape war that they had come to America. Could we tell
the Jew that Russia, which had persecuted him to the point of madness,
was on the side of mercy? Could we convince the Teuton that his
Fatherland had become suddenly peopled with savages? Could we say to the
Irishman, bitterly antagonistic to England, that Britain was fighting for
the liberation of small nations? Could we ask the Greek, the Pole, the
Galician, to go back to the continent from which they had come, and give
their blood that the old order of things might go on?
'But, you ask, what of the real American, descended from the men who
fought in the War of Independence and the Civil War. Yes--what of him?
From earliest boyhood he has been taught that Britain is our traditional
enemy. To secure existence we had to fight her. To maintain existence
we fought her again in 1812. When we were locked in a death-struggle
with the rebellious South, she tried to hurt our cause--although history
will show that the real heart of Britain was solidly with the North. In
our short life as a people we find that, always, the enemy is Britain.
In one day could we change the teaching of a lifetime? The soul of
America was not dead, but it was buried beneath the conflicting elements
in which lay her ultimate strength, but her present weakness.
'What, then, was the situation? Events had outridden our national
development. Whether it could have been avoided or not I do not know.
Whether our education was at fault, or whether materialism had made us
blind--these things I cannot tell you. I only know that this war found
us potentially a nation, but actually a babel of tongues. Without
philosophy and humanitarianism this nation could not go to war--and in
those two things we were not ready.
'I do not belittle the many gallant men who have left these shores to
fight with the Allies, but I say that in a world-crisis the voices of
individuals cannot be heard unless they speak through the medium of their
nationality. The question from France is not "Will Americans never
come?" but "Will America never come?" When the war found the
Americanisation of our people unfinished, it became the duty of every
loyal man in the Republic to give his very life-blood to achieve
solidarity. Do you think we could not see that the Allies were fighting
our battle? It was impossible for this nation that had shouldered the
problems of the Old World not to see it; so we began the education of all
our people. We could have hurled this nation into war at almost any hour
by an appeal to national dignity, but our destiny was imperative in its
demands. Not in heat, which would be bound to cool; not in revenge,
which would soon be forgotten; but by philosophy and humanitarianism
alone could this great Republic go to war.
'Yet, when this Administration looked for help, what did it find? The
two races that come to this country and never help its Americanisation
are the Germans and the English. They remain true to their former
citizenship, and they die true to them. Gentlemen, that must not be
again. America will always be open to the world, but he who passes
within these gates to live must accept responsibilities as well as
privileges.
'I am almost finished. For two years and a half we have fought against
the disintegrating forces within our country. We have endured the sneers
of belligerents, the insults of Germany, and the tolerance of
Britain--and still we have fought on. Literally we were struggling, as
did our forefathers, for nationhood. But let me ask Mr. Watson if our
psychological unpreparedness was entirely our fault. When Britain allied
herself with Russia, did she give a thought to the effect it would have
on the American mind? To us, Russia was the last stronghold of barbaric
despotism, and yet Britain made that alliance, identifying herself with
the forces of reaction. I do not say that we would have entered into a
similar or any agreement with Britain, but there are alliances of the
spirit far more binding than the most solemn treaties. I accuse Britain
of failing to make the advances toward a spiritual covenant with the
United States, in which lay--and still lies--the hope of this world.'
A messenger had entered the room and handed a note to the chairman. It
was passed along to Van Derwater's place and left in front of him. He
took it up without opening it, and fingered it idly as he spoke.
'A nation does not need to be at war,' he went on, 'to find that traitors
are in her midst. The struggle of this Administration for unity of
thought has been thwarted right and left by men of no vision, men drunk
with greed, men blinded with education and so-called idealism. Mr.
Watson, you ask what we have done with America's soul. I will tell you
what we have done _for_ it. There are many of us in this room who have
given everything we have--our time, our friends, and things which we
valued more than life--because we have respected the trust imposed on us
of maintaining America's destiny. I am sorry for your empty sleeve. But
let me assure you that we, also, have known suffering. Because we
believe in America--_first, last, and always in America_--we have stayed
here, enduring sneers and contumely, in order that when America speaks it
will be like the sound of a rushing cataract--one voice, one heart, but
the voice and heart of Humanity. In no other way can America go to war.
. . . And until that moment arrives I shall wear this garb of neutrality
as proudly as any soldier his uniform of honour.'
He sat down, and in an instant the whole crowd was on its feet. Men
cheered and shouted, and, unashamed, tears ran down many faces. With his
heart pounding and his eyes blinded with emotion, Selwyn did not make a
move. He could only watch, through the mist, the figure of Gerard Van
Derwater with its cloak of loneliness. He saw him look down at the
message and break the seal of the envelope. He saw a flush of colour
sweep into the pallid cheeks and then recede again. Still with the air
of calmness and self-control, Van Derwater rose again to his feet.
'Gentlemen,' he said. The room was hushed instantly and every face was
turned towards him. 'Gentlemen, I have received a message from my
headquarters. Germany has announced the resumption of unrestricted
submarine warfare.'
For a moment the room swam before Selwyn's eyes. The shouts and
exclamations of the others seemed to come from a distance. And suddenly
he found that he was on his feet. His eyes were like brilliants and his
voice rang out above all the other sounds.
'Van!' he cried, 'does this mean war--at last?'
With steady, unchanging demeanour his former friend looked at him.
'Yes,' he said. 'At last.'
And as they watched they saw Van Derwater's hands contract, and for a
moment that passed as quickly as it came his whole being shook in a
convulsive tremor of feeling. Then, in a silence that was poignant, he
sank slowly into his chair, his shoulders drooping, listless and weary.
With eyes that were seeing into some secret world of their own he gazed
dreamily across the room, and a smile crept into his face--a smile of one
who sees the dawn after a long, bitter night.
'Thank God,' he said, with lips that trembled oddly. 'Thank God.'