It was the second week of their stay at Camp Mills. Robert’s father had
returned to Corinth on the third day after the return of the troops.
He had come with the idea of bringing Robert home with him, having
forgotten in his enthusiasm that the troops would first have to be
discharged. Father and son had spent an evening in New York, dining
together at the hotel, strolling leisurely down Fifth Avenue, visiting
several cafés, principally talking. There were a thousand questions to
ask and a thousand answers to make.
Hamilton was packing things into a wooden box, when McCall came running
into the room.
“What’re you doing?” asked McCall. “Want a hand? Oh, I see, packing
away the relics of the World War to show your children and your
children’s children.”
“That’s right,” said Hamilton, wiping his brow with his sleeve. “Hand
me that gas mask! That’s it. Now for the books. Some I had with me. The
rest I picked up in Paris.”
“What’s the idea of packing now? You don’t expect to get out so soon,
do you?”
“Oh, I might as well do it now. Get it over with. All right, now give
me that hammer.”
“Have you seen the new order?” asked McCall. “What do you think of
applying for appointment to the regular army?”
“Do I look crazy?” He savagely hammered the last nail into position and
arose. “Now, that’s over.”
“But there are some fellows who have applied.” McCall stretched himself
on the bunk and hunched up his knees comfortably. “There’s McMasters
and Dowling. And I’ve been undecided about it.”
“What? I thought you were going to write a novel or something. Going to
get down to work.”
“Now that it’s so near I’m getting cold feet. I don’t know if I
can work. That is, do civilian work. Write any more. You know how
blamed thick competition is on a newspaper anyway. I don’t know if I
could hold a job. Oh, I suppose I could, but in the army there’s no
uncertainty. As long as the government lasts you draw your pay check.”
“Of all the idiots, McCall, you’re the biggest. You’ve been working too
hard on your service records. What do you say to breaking away tonight?
We can catch the five o’clock train and get to New York in time to look
up Levin. I’ve got his address you know, and the old bird will be glad
to see us.”
“All right. All right. We’ve got almost an hour yet. I’ll get dressed
and call for you and we can check out together.”
McCall lit a cigarette, puffed silently for a few minutes and left.
When a voice over the telephone announced that it was General Pershing
talking and wanting to know why the devil he hadn’t turned in all his
Hinkle pills and iodine, and wanting to know where the devil all the
spiritus frumenti had disappeared to, Dr. Levin immediately recognized
that it was McCall.
“All right, general,” he said, “as soon as I get through prescribing
some pills for Marshall Foch. Where are you? In the lobby? Hamilton
with you? Fine. Come right up, general.”
Hamilton and McCall burst into the room two minutes later and found a
changed Levin--a Levin in civilian clothes, surprisingly dignified and
taller than they had remembered.
“Don’t stare,” said Levin genially. “It’s just my clothes. I never
could wear a uniform. How in the world have you been?”
They shook hands warmly, exchanged greetings and then found seats on
the bed. There was a cheerful exchange of cigarettes and questions and
exclamations of how glad they were to be back.
“I wish you’d examine McCall’s cranium,” said Hamilton, blowing a smoke
wreath toward the ceiling, as he lay back on the bed. “He’s talking
about entering the regular army, pardon me, the regular establishment.”
“Oh, I was just thinking about it. Nothing certain,” said McCall.
“One would think,” remarked Dr. Levin, rubbing a thoughtful hand over
his chin. “One would think that your experiences in the World War would
be a sufficient antidote. But--”
His brows wrinkled. “How can you? I mean physically. You couldn’t pass
the examination.”
“I thought they’d let me in because I’d been wounded in the war. Give
me a staff job or something. I’ve got a pretty good record, you know.
Got the Croix de Guerre and the Distinguished Service Cross. But--oh,
well, I didn’t really intend to apply for a commission in the regular
army. Just putting off making a decision as to what I’m going to do
when I get out. If you apply, they keep you in longer.”
Dr. Levin chucked a pillow at McCall, and Hamilton, following the cue,
rumpled his hair.
“What are we going to do with this gloom?” Dr. Levin appealed. “Let’s
take him out and show him the city.”
McCall laughed. “I’m not gloomy. Just thirsty. Let’s go!”
“Just a minute,” laughed Dr. Levin. “I do things methodically. Let’s
draw up an itinerary. Where are we going?”
“What’s the difference where we go?” suggested McCall. “The main thing
is to go. We’ll charter a taxi and make the rounds.”
“I think,” said Levin aside to Hamilton, as they were pulling on their
coats, “that something’s worrying McCall. Has he a sweetheart in Paris?”
“Nonsense,” said Hamilton. “Wouldn’t he have told me?”
“Oh, of course, they always do, don’t they? Whenever a man falls in
love he runs around announcing the news. Most of the time the man
hasn’t any idea that he is in love.”
McCall, after flicking his shoes with a towel, joined them and they
started off together.
They began with the Little Club and champagne and ended with
Reisenwebers and gin fizzes.
With the first drink, McCall seemed to recover his spirits.
“On his third glass he usually begins to quote Walt Whitman,” said
Hamilton.
“Well, I’ve seen many worse effects of drink,” Dr. Levin’s eyes
twinkled.
“But not much worse, eh?” said McCall. “Well, anyway, I wish Whitman
could take a look at this,” McCall made a slight gesture with his hand.
“I wonder what he’d say about Manhattan and democracy.”
“I suppose we need a Whitman now,” said Dr. Levin. “We’ve just gone
through another Civil War--the Civil War of the white race. It needs a
poet, a Whitman to sing the new ideal of democracy.”
“I think the war has brought about a new appreciation of democracy,”
said Hamilton.
“You’re right,” added McCall. “The war has put an end to imperialism.
The Kaiser is crushed. Germany is a republic. The little countries of
middle Europe are independent. But especially to Russia do the real
democrats of the world turn their eyes. I think that even Great Britain
will have to give Ireland its freedom and relinquish its hold on the
oppressed brown races--the Hindus and the Persians.”
Dr. Levin shook his head. “You ought to be right, but you aren’t. The
war has set back democracy. Europe will be split into fifty little
states, all wrangling over boundary lines, over seaports, over tariffs,
over a hundred and one things. Politically, Europe will be back in the
middle ages, while economically it is in the twentieth century.”
The crowning heresy to McCall and Hamilton came when Levin proclaimed
Bismarck a greater statesman than Wilson, because he unified Europe,
while Wilson divided it.
“At any rate,” said Hamilton at length, “we three are united by a
common love of our country and by certain common ideals. We may not
agree as to whether the war has brought those ideals any closer to
humanity or not, although personally I think it has. But we do know
that these ideals are ours--America’s.”
“Yes,” said Levin, “and we are a little cross-section of
America--Catholic, Protestant and Jew--but an unusual cross-section.
Wait until you see the reaction in this country. The Italians are
crying for Italia Irredenta and Italy for the Italians. Poland is
crying Poland for the Poles. And the hundred per cent Americans have
already begun raising the same cry here. Of course, we’ve missed them
while we were in France; but the hundred per centers were the men back
home that kept the homefires of hatred burning--painting yellow signs
on German bakers who didn’t invest a certain quota of their savings
in Liberty bonds, boycotting Hungarian restaurants, refusing to eat
German fried potatoes or listen to Wagner--stupid things like that. But
there were more important things, too, deprivation of the right of free
speech and assembly, and suppression of newspapers.”
Hamilton remembered some of the letters Margaret had written.
“Well, wasn’t it necessary to protect the country at home from
disaffection?”
“In certain cases it was, certainly,” said Levin. “But in many
cases--I won’t say ‘most,’ it wasn’t. That sort of thing grows. It
becomes a passion, a religion, like Sadism, of inflicting punishment.
Psychopathically it has an interesting explanation. Politically it is
dangerous. There is no doubt that many persons derive keen pleasure in
hurting others. And the war has stirred them up.
“At first this intolerance is fairly reasonable--it makes powerless
the enemies of the government in the prosecution of war. Which is as
it should be. Then it becomes ingrown. Instead of imprisoning traitors
as they arise, people begin to stir them up so that they may satisfy
the pleasure of imprisoning. Men begin to watch their neighbor for
slips from the patriotic code. A patriot must do this thing and that
and refrain from the other. There may be five hundred different kinds
of patriots in actuality--just as we three represent three different
points of view and political philosophy. But the hundred per center can
understand only one kind--his own.
“He is a Republican--I am myself, by the way--so when he finds an
Anarchist he has him jugged. It makes no difference whether he be
a philosophic Anarchist, a follower of Kropotkin, a man who is a
vegetarian by principle and has a Brahministic horror of shedding of
blood--he is placed in the same cell with the brute who was caught
placing a bomb under the railroad bridge. Socialists, Communists, I. W.
W.’s, sympathizers with the present Russian government--all, in some
way different from the hundred per centers--are regarded as enemies of
America. Even liberals and progressives are viewed with suspicion.
“By January the country’s going dry. The same bigots who have been
denying the rights that the Constitution guarantees every citizen in
a misguided effort to protect that Constitution, will be denouncing
people who prefer to drink cocktails instead of grape juice, as
un-American. Next it will be people who don’t belong to their race and
then, to their church.”
“No, never!” Hamilton interrupted. “This isn’t Russia. America is too
sensible.”
“I’m Russian by parentage, you know,” said Dr. Levin. “The race riots
there, the pogroms, were also supposed to be patriotic. It was always
the hundred per cent Russians who incited the hooligans to riot.
Imagine that! The officials who were living corrupt lives, looting
the public treasury, depriving the soldiers and sailors of food and
ammunition to swell their own fortunes, those were the ones who always
cried Russia for the Russians. In the name of patriotism they not only
killed the Jews, but imprisoned, exiled and killed the real patriots,
who were working for a republic. You see it always starts with
patriotism. And in Russia the idea of religion was mixed in with it.
Those who don’t believe as you do are not only enemies of the state,
but also of Christ. The victims of the plunderers and murderers become
anti-Christs. It’s ironic.”
“I think that’s just a wild dream of yours. But whatever happens”--he
raised a glass of champagne--“here’s to our friendship, born of the war
to make the world safe for democracy.”
He proposed the toast jocularly, but it symbolized the moment and they
drank, almost seriously.