Wilbur Cowen had hesitated in the matter of war. He wanted to be in a
battle--had glowed at the thought of fighting--but if the war was going
to be stopped in its beginning, what would be the use of starting? And
he was assured and more than half believed that it would be stopped.
Merle Whipple was his informant--Merle had found himself. The war was
to be stopped by the _New Dawn_, a magazine of which Merle had been
associate editor since shortly after his release from college.
Merle, on that afternoon of golf with Wilbur, had accurately forecast
his own future. Confessing then that he meant to become a great writer,
he was now not only a great writer but a thinker, in the true sense of
the word. He had taken up literature--"not muck like poetry, but serious
literature"--and Whipple money had lavishly provided a smart little
craft in which to embark. The money had not come without some bewildered
questioning on the part of those supplying it. As old Sharon said, the
Whipple chicken coop had hatched a gosling that wanted to swim in
strange waters; but it was eventually decided that goslings were meant
to swim and would one way or another find a pond. Indeed, Harvey Whipple
was prouder of his son by adoption than he cared to have known, and
listened to him with secret respect, covered with perfunctory business
hints. He felt that Merle was above and beyond him. The youth, indeed,
made him feel that he was a mere country banker.
In the city of New York, after his graduation, Merle had come
into his own, forming a staunch alliance with a small circle of
intellectuals--intelligentzia, Merle said--consecrated to the cause of
American culture. He had brought to Newbern and to the amazed Harvey
Whipple the strange news that America had no native culture; that it was
raw, spiritually impoverished, without national self-consciousness; with
but the faintest traces of art in any true sense of the word. Harvey
Whipple would have been less shocked by this disclosure, momentous
though it was, had not Merle betrayed a conviction that his life work
would now be to uphold the wavering touch of civilization.
This brought the thing home to Harvey D. Merle, heading his valiant
little band of thinkers, would light a pure white flame to flush
America's spiritual darkness. He would be a vital influence, teaching
men and women to cultivate life for its own sake. For the cheap and
tawdry extravagance of our national boasting he would substitute a
chastening knowledge of our spiritual inferiority to the older nations.
America was uncreative; he would release and nurse its raw creative
intelligence till it should be free to function, breaking new
intellectual paths, setting up lofty ideals, enriching our common life
with a new, self-conscious art. Much of this puzzled Harvey D. and his
father, old Gideon. It was new talk in their world. But it impressed
them. Their boy was earnest, with a fine intelligence; he left them
stirred.
Sharon Whipple was a silent, uneasy listener at many of these talks. He
declared, later and to others, for Merle was not his son, that the young
man was highly languageous and highly crazy; that his talk was the
crackling of thorns under a pot; that he was a vain canter--"forever
canting," said Sharon--"a buffle-headed fellow, talking, bragging." He
was equally intolerant of certain of Merle's little band of
forward-looking intellectuals who came to stay week-ends at the Whipple
New Place. There was Emmanuel Schilsky, who talked more pithily than
Merle and who would be the editor-in-chief of the projected _New Dawn_.
Emmanuel, too, had come from his far-off home to flush America's
spiritual darkness with a new light. He had written much about our
shortage of genuine spiritual values; about "the continual frustrations
and aridities of American life." He was a member of various groups--the
Imagist group, the Egoist group, the Sphericists, other groups piquantly
named; versed in the new psychology, playing upon the word "pragmatism"
as upon a violin.
Sharon Whipple, the Philistine, never quite knew whether pragmatism was
approved or condemned by Schilsky, and once he asked the dark-faced
young man what it meant. He was told that pragmatism was a method, and
felt obliged to pretend that this enlightened him. He felt a reluctant
respect for Schilsky, who could make him feel uncomfortable.
And there was the colourful, youngish widow, Mrs. Truesdale, who wrote
free verse about the larger intimacies of life, and dressed noticeably.
She would be a contributing editor of the _New Dawn_, having as her
special department the release of woman from her age-long slavery to
certain restraints that now made her talked unpleasantly about if she
dared give her soul free rein. This lady caused Sharon to wonder about
the departed Truesdale.
"Was he carried away by sorrowing friends," asked Sharon, "or did he get
tired one day and move off under his own power?" No one ever enlightened
him.
Others of the younger intelligentzia came under his biased notice. He
spoke of them as "a rabble rout," who lived in a mad world--"and God
bless us out of it."
But Sharon timed his criticism discreetly, and the _New Dawn_ lit its
pure white flame--a magazine to refresh the elect. Placed superbly
beyond the need of catering to advertisers, it would adhere to rigorous
standards of the true, the beautiful. It would tell the truth as no
other magazine founded on gross commercialism would dare to do. It said
so in well-arranged words. The commercial magazines full well knew the
hideous truth, but stifled it for hire. The _New Dawn_ would be honest.
The sinister truth about America as revealed in the initial number of
the brave new venture was that America was crude, blatant, boastful,
vulgar, and money-grubbing. We were without ideals beyond the dollar;
without desires save those to be glutted by material wealth. It was the
high aim of the _New Dawn_--said the associate editor, Merle Dalton
Whipple--to dethrone the dollar, to hasten and to celebrate the passing
of American greed.
Not until the second number was it revealed that the arch criminals were
to be found in the exploiting class, a sinister combination,
all-powerful, working to the detriment of the common people; an
industrial oligarchy under whose rule the cowed wage slave toiled for
his crust of bread. This number unflinchingly indicted the capitalistic
ruling class; fearlessly called upon the exploited masses to rise and
throw off the yoke put upon them by this nefarious plunderbund. The
worker's plight was depicted with no sparing of detail--"the slaves
groaning and wailing in the dark the song of mastered men, the sullen,
satanic music of lost and despairing humanity."
Succeeding numbers made it plain that the very republic itself had been
founded upon this infamy. Our Revolutionary War had marked the triumph
of the capitalistic state--the state that made property sovereign. The
Revolutionary fathers had first freed themselves from English creditors,
then bound down as their own debtors an increasing mass of the American
population. The document known as the Constitution of the United States
had been cunningly and knowingly contrived to that end, thus thrusting
upon us the commercial oligarchy which persisted to this day. It had
placed the moneyed classes securely in the saddle, though with fine
phrases that seemed not to mean this.
"A conscious minority of wealthy men and lawyers, guided by the genius
of Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, and Madison," had worked their full
design upon the small farmer and the nascent proletariat; we had since
been "under the cult and control of wealth."
After this ringing indictment it surprised no Whipple to read that we
had become intolerant, materialistic, unaesthetic. Nor was it any wonder
that we were "in no mood to brook religious or social dissension." With
such a Constitution fraudulently foisted upon us by the money-loving
fathers of the Revolution, it was presumably not to be expected that we
should exhibit the religious tolerance of contemporary Spain or Italy or
France.
"Immersed in a life of crass material endeavour," small wonder that the
American had remained in spiritual poverty of the most debasing sort
until the _New Dawn_ should come to enrich him, to topple in ruins an
exploiting social system.
Now the keen eyes of young America, by aid of the magnifying lens
supplied by Emmanuel Schilsky, would detect the land of the free to be
in fact a land of greedy and unscrupulous tyrants; the home of the brave
a home of economic serfs. Young America, which fights for the sanctity
of life, solid and alive with virile beauty, would revolt and destroy
the walls of the capitalistic state, sweeping away the foul laws that
held private property sacred. They would seek a cure for the falsehood
of modern life in a return to Nature, a return to the self where truth
ever is. They would war with the privilege and ascendancy of the group
over the individual conscience. Already the exploiting class, as it
neared the term of its depleted life, was but a mass of purulence.
Society was rotten, the state a pious criminal, the old truths tawdry
lies. Everywhere the impotence of senility--except in young America. We
faced the imminence of a vast breaking-up. The subtlest oligarchy of
modern times was about to crumble. The revolution was at hand.
* * * * *
A succeeding number of the _New Dawn_ let out the horrid truth about the
war, telling it in simple words that even Wilbur Cowan could understand.
Having sold munitions to the warring nations, we must go in to save our
money. In short, as the _New Dawn_ put it: "The capitalistic ruling
classes tricked the people into war." It was to be a war waged for
greed. Young America, not yet perusing in large enough numbers the _New
Dawn_, was to be sent to its death that capital might survive--the
dollar be still enthroned. But the _New Dawn_ was going to see about
that. Young America would be told the truth.
Two of the Whipples were vastly puzzled by these pronouncements, and
not a little disquieted. Old Gideon and Harvey D. began to wonder if by
any chance their boy, with his fine intellect, had not been misled.
Sharon was enraged by the scandalous assertions about George Washington,
whom he had always considered a high-minded patriot. He had never
suspected and could not now be persuaded that Washington had basely
tricked the soldiers of the Revolution into war so that the capitalistic
class might prevail in the new states. Nor would he believe that the
framers of the Constitution had consciously worded that document with a
view to enslaving the common people. He was a stubborn old man, and not
aware of his country's darkness. Perhaps it was too much to expect that
one of his years and mental habit should be hospitable to these newly
found truths.
He was not young America. He had thought too long the other way. Being
of a choleric cast, he would at times be warmed into regrettable
outbursts of opinion that were reactionary in the extreme. Thus when he
discussed with Gideon and Harvey D. the latest number of the
magazine--containing the fearless exposure of Washington's chicanery--he
spoke in terms most slighting of Emmanuel Schilsky. He meant his words
to lap over to Merle Whipple, but as the others were still proud--if in
a troubled way--of the boy's new eminence, he did not distinguish him
too pointedly. He pretended to take it all out on Emmanuel, whom he
declared to be no fair judge of American history. The other Whipples
were beginning to suspect this but were not prepared to admit it either
to Sharon or to each other. For the present they would defend Emmanuel
against the hot-headed aspersions of the other.
"You said yourself, not a month ago," expostulated Harvey D., "that he
was a smart little Jew."
Sharon considered briefly.
"Well," he replied, "I don't know as I'd change that--at least not much.
I'd still say the same thing, or words to that effect."
"Just how would you put it now?" demanded Gideon, suavely.
Sharon brightened. He had hoped to be asked that.
"The way I'd put it now--having read a lot more of his new-dawning--I'd
say he was a little Jew smarty."
The other Whipples had winced at this. The _New Dawn_ was assuredly not
the simple light-bringer to America's spiritual darkness that they had
supposed it would be; but they were not yet prepared to believe the
worst.
"If only they wouldn't be so extreme!" murmured the troubled Harvey D.
"If only they wouldn't say the country has been tricked into war by
capital."
"That's a short horse and soon curried," said Sharon. "They can't say it
if you quit paying for it."
"There you are!" said Harvey D. "Merle would say that that's an example
of capitalism suppressing the truth. Of course I don't know--maybe it
is."
"Sure! Anyway, it would be an example of capital suppressing something.
Depends on what you call the truth. If you think the truth is that
Germany ought to rule the earth you got it right. That's what all these
pacifists and anti-militaries are arguing, though they don't let on to
that. Me, I don't think Germany ought to rule the earth. I think she
ought to be soundly trounced, and my guess is she's goin' to be.
Something tells me this _New Dawn_ ain't goin' to save her from her
come-uppance. I tell you both plain out, I ain't goin' to have a
magazine under my roof that'll talk such stuff about George Washington,
the Father of his Country. It's too scandalous."
Thus the _New Dawn_ lost a subscriber, though not losing, it should be
said, a reader. For Sharon Whipple, having irately stopped his
subscription by a letter in which the editor was told he should be
ashamed of himself for calling George Washington a crook that way,
thereafter bought the magazine hurriedly at the Cut-Rate Pharmacy and
read every word of it in secret places not under his roof.
Wilbur Cowan, though proud of the _New Dawn_ because his brother's name
adorned it, had nevertheless failed to profit by its teachings. He was
prepared to admit that America groped in spiritual darkness which the
_New Dawn_ would flush with its pure white light; he could not have
contended with any authority that it was not a land of dollar hunters,
basely materialistic, without ideals, artistically impoverished, and
devoid of national self-consciousness, whatever that meant. These things
were choice words to him, nothing more; and he had no valid authority on
which to deny that the country was being tricked into war by the
Interests, something heinous that the _New Dawn_ spelled with a capital
letter. In a way he believed this, because his brother said so. His
brother had been educated. He even felt shame-faced and apologetic about
his resolve to enter the fight.
But this resolve was stanch; he wanted to fight, even if he had been
tricked by Wall Street into feeling that way. The _New Dawn_ said he had
been tricked, and he supposed it was true, even if he couldn't clearly
detect how Wall Street had made Germany pursue the course that made him
want to fight. So far as his direct mental processes could inform him,
the only trickery involved had been employed by Germany and Spike
Brennon. Germany's behaviour was more understandable than the _New
Dawn_, and Spike Brennon was much simpler in his words. Spike said it
was a dandy chance to get into a real scrap, and all husky lads should
be there in a split second at the first call. Perhaps Wall Street had
tricked Spike into tricking Wilbur Cowan. Anyway, Spike was determined.
Their decision was made one day after a brisk six rounds of mimic
battle. They soaped and bathed and dried their bodies. Then they
rested--sitting upon up-ended beer kegs in the storeroom of Pegleg
McCarron--and talked a little of life. Spike for a week had been
laconic, even for him, and had taken little trouble to pull his punches.
To-day he revealed that the Interests had triumphed over his simple
mind. He was going and going quick. He recovered a morsel of gum from
beneath the room's one chair, put it again into commission, and spoke
decisively.
"I'm goin' quick," he said.
"When do we leave?" demanded Wilbur.
"I'm leavin' in two days."
"We're leaving in two days."
They chewed gum for an interval.
"Way it is," said Spike at length, "I'm nothing but about a fourth-rater
in my game. I wasn't never a first-rater. I used to kid myself I was,
but handier guys took it out of me. Never was better than a third-rater,
I guess. But maybe in this other game I could git to be a first-rater.
You can't tell. I still got the use of myself, ain't I? And I wouldn't
be so much afraid as a guy who never fought no fights at all. It looks
good to me. Of course I don't know much about this here talk you
read--makin' the world safe for Democrats, and so forth, but they's
certain parts of it had ought to be made unsafe for Germans. I got that
much straight."
"Where do we go from here?" demanded Wilbur Cowan.
"N'York," said Spike. "Enlist there. I got a friend in Tamm'ny will see
we git treated right."
"Treated right--how?"
"Sent over quick--not kept here. This guy is high up; he can get us
sent."
"Good!"
"Only thing worries me," said Spike--"sleepin' out of doors. It ain't
healthy. They tell me you sleep any old place--on the ground or in a
chicken coop--makes no matter. I never did sleep out of doors, and I
hate to begin now; but I s'pose I got to. Mebbe, time we git there,
they'll have decent beds. I admit I'm afraid of sleepin' out on the
ground. It ain't no way to keep your health."
He ruminated busily with the gum.
"Another thing, kid, you got to remember. In the box-fightin' game
sometimes even second money is good. I pulled down a few nice purses in
my time. But this here gun-fightin' stuff, it's winner take all every
time. In a gun fight second money is mud. Remember that. And we ain't
got the education to be officers. We got to do plain fightin'."
"Plain fighting!" echoed Wilbur. "And I'll tell you another thing. From
what I hear they might put me to driving a car, but you bet I ain't
going to take that long trip and get seasick, probably, just to fool
round with automobiles. I'm going to be out where you are--plain
fighting. So remember this--I don't know a thing about cars or motors.
Never saw one till I come into the Army."
"You're on!" said Spike. "Now let's eat while we can. They tell me over
in the war your meals is often late."
They ate at T-bone Tommy's, consuming a vast quantity of red meat with
but a minor accompaniment of vegetables. They were already soldiers.
They fought during the meal several sharp engagements, from which they
emerged without a scratch.
"We'll be takin' a lot of long chances, kid," cautioned Spike. "First
thing we know--they might be saying it to us with flowers."
"Let 'em talk!" said the buoyant Wilbur. "Of course we'll get into
trouble sooner or later."
"Sure!" agreed Spike. "Way I look at it, I got about one good fight left
in me. All I hope is, it'll be a humdinger."
Later they wandered along River Street, surveying the little town with
new eyes. They were far off---"over where the war was taking place," as
Spike neatly put it--surveying at that long range the well-remembered
scene; revisiting it from some remote spot where perhaps it had been
said to them with flowers.
"We'd ought to tell Herman Vielhaber," said Spike. "Herman's a Heinie,
but he's a good scout at that."
"Sure!" agreed Wilbur.
They found Herman alone at one of his tables staring morosely at an
untouched glass of beer. The Vielhaber establishment was already
suffering under the stigma of pro-Germanism put upon it by certain of
the watchful towns-people. Judge Penniman, that hale old invalid, had
even declared that Herman was a spy, and signalled each night to other
spies by flapping a curtain of his lighted room above the saloon. The
judge had found believers, though it was difficult to explain just what
information Herman would be signalling and why he didn't go out and tell
it to his evil confederates by word of mouth. Herman often found trade
dull of an evening now, since many of his old clients would patronize
his rival, Pegleg McCarron; for Pegleg was a fervent patriot who
declared that all Germans ought to be in hell. Herman greeted the
newcomers with troubled cordiality.
"Sed down, you boys. What you have? Sasspriller? All right! Mamma, two
sassprillers for these young men."
Minna Vielhaber brought the drink from the bar. Minna had red eyes, and
performed her service in silence, after which she went moodily back to
her post.
They drank to Herman's health and to Minna's, and told of their
decision.
"Right!" said Herman. "I give you right." He stared long at his beer. "I
tell you, boys," he said at last, "mamma and me we got in a hard place,
yes. Me? I'm good American--true blue. I got my last papers twenty-two
years ago. I been good American since before that. Mamma, too. Both
good. Then war comes, and I remember the Fatherland--we don't never
furgit that, mind you, even so we are good Americans. But I guess mebbe
I talk a lot of foolishness about Germany whipping everybody she fight
with. I guess I was too proud of that country that used to be mine. You
know how it is, you boys; you remember your home and your people kind of
nice, mebbe."
"Sure!" said Spike. "Me? I was raised down back of the tracks in
Buffalo--one swell place fur a kid to grow up--but honest, sometimes I
git waked up in the night, and find m'self homesick fur that rotten
dump. Sure, I know how you feel, Herman."
Herman, cheered by this sympathy, drank of his beer. Putting down the
glass, he listened intently. Minna, at the bar, was heard to be weeping.
"Mamma," he called, gruffly, "you keep still once. None of that!"
Minna audibly achieved the commanded silence. Herman listened until
satisfied of this, then resumed:
"Well, so fur, so good. Then Germany don't act right, so my own country
got to fight her. She's got to fight her! I'd get me another country if
she didn't. But now people don't understand how I feel so. They say:
'Yes, he praise Germany to the sky; now I guess he talk the other side
of his mouth purty good.' They don't understand me. I want Germany
should be punished good, and my country she's goin' to do it good. That
is big in my heart. But shall I go out on the street and holler, 'To
hell with Germany?' Not! Because people would know I lied, and I would
know. I want Germany should be well whipped till all them sheep's heads
is out of high places, but I can't hate Germans. I could punish someone
good and not hate 'em. I'm a German in my blood, but you bet I ain't a
pro-German.
"Mamma, again I tell you keep still once--and now you boys goin' to
fight. That's good! Me, I would go if I was not too old; not a better
German fighter would they have than me. I kill 'em all what come till I
fall over myself. You boys remember and fight hard, so we make the world
nice again. I bet you fight good--strong, husky boys like you. And I
hope you come back strong and hearty and live a long time in a world you
helped to put it right. I hope some day you have children will be proud
because you was good Americans, like mine would be if we had a little
one. I hope you teach 'em to fight quick for their own good country.
Now--_prosit_!"
They drank, and in the stillness Minna Vielhaber was again heard to be
lamenting. Herman addressed her harshly:
"Mamma, now again I beg you shall keep still once."
Minna appeared from back of the bar and became coherent.
"I wassn't cryin' no tears for Germans--wass cryin' fur them!" She
waved a damp towel at Herman's guests. Herman soothed her.
"Now, now--them boys take care of themselves. Likely they have a little
trouble here and there or some place, but they come back sound--I tell
you that. Now you dry up--you make some other people feel that way. Hear
me?" Minna subsided.
"You bet," resumed Herman, "we're Americans good. Mebbe I can't tell
people so now, like they believe me; it's hard to believe I want Germans
whipped good if I don't hate 'em, but it's true--and lots others besides
me. They come in my place, Dagoes, Wops, Hunnyacks, Swedes, Jews, every
breed, and what you think--they keep talkin' about what us Americans had
ought to do to lick Germany. It's funny, yes? To hear 'em say us
Americans, but when you know them foreigners mean it so hard--well, it
ain't funny! It's good!
"And me? Say, I tell you something. If any one say I ain't good American
I tell you this: I stand by America like I was born here. I stand by her
if she fight Germany just as if she fight France. I stand by her in war,
and I do more than that. You listen! Now comes it they say the country's
goin' to be dry and put me out of business. What you think of that, hey?
So they will shut booze joints like that feller McCarron runs, and even
a nice place like this. So you can't buy a glass beer or a schoppen
Rhine wine. What you think? Mebbe it's all talk, mebbe not. But listen!
This is my country, no matter what she does; I stand by her if she
fights Germany to death; and by God, I stand by her if she goes dry!
Could I say more? _Prosit_!"