CHAPTER III
JIMMIE HIGGINS DEBATES THE ISSUE
I
The grey flood of frightfulness rolled over Belgium; and every
morning, and again in the afternoon, the front page of the Leesville
newspaper was like the explosion of a bomb. Twenty-five thousand
Germans killed in one assault on Liege; a quarter of a million
Russians massacred or drowned in the swamps of the Masurian Lakes;
so it went, until the minds of men reeled. They saw empires and
civilizations crumbling before their eyes, all those certainties
upon which their lives had been built vanishing as a mist at
sunrise.
Hitherto, Jimmie Higgins had always refused to take a daily paper.
No capitalist lies for him; he would save his pennies for the
Socialist weeklies! But now he had to have the news, and tired as he
was after the day's work, he would sit on his front porch with his
ragged feet against a post, spelling out the despatches. Then he
would stroll down to the cigar-stand of Comrade Stankewitz, a
wizened-up little Roumanian Jew who had lived in Europe, and had a
map, and would show Jimmie which was Russia, and why Germany marched
across Belgium, and why England had to interfere. It was good to
have a friend who was a man of travel and a linguist--especially
when the fighting became centred about places such as Przemysl and
Przasnyaz!
Then every Friday night would be the meeting of the local. Jimmie
would be the first to arrive, eager to hear every word the better
informed comrades had to say, and thus to complete the education
which Society had so cruelly neglected.
Before the war was many weeks old, Jimmie's head was in a state of
utter bewilderment; never would he have thought it possible for men
to hold so many conflicting opinions, and to hold them with such
passionate intensity! It seemed as if the world-conflict were being
fought out in miniature in Leesville.
At the third meeting after the war began, the prosperous Dr. Service
arose, and in his impressive oratorical voice moved that the local
should send a telegram to the National Executive Committee of the
party, requesting it to protest against the invasion of Belgium;
also a telegram to the President of the United States, requesting
him to take the same action. And then what pandemonium broke loose!
Comrade Schneider, the brewery-worker, demanded to know whether
Local Leesville had ever requested the National Executive Committee
to protest against the invasion of Ireland. Had the Socialist party
ever requested the President of the United States to protect Egypt
and India from oppression?
Comrade Dr. Service, who had remained on his feet, began a
passionate denunciation of the outrages perpetrated by the German
army in Belgium; at which Comrade Schneider's florid face turned
purple. He demanded whether all men did not know that France had
first invaded Belgium, and that the Belgians had welcomed the
French? Weren't all the Belgian forts turned toward Germany? Of
course! answered the doctor. But what of that? Was it a crime for a
man to know who was going to attack him?
The purple-faced brewer, without heeding this question, demanded:
Did not all the world know that the French had begun the war with an
aeroplane bombardment of the German cities? The Comrade Doctor, his
face also purpling, replied that all the world knew this for a tale
sent out by the German propaganda machine. HOW did all the world
know it? roared Schneider. By a cable-censorship controlled by
British gold?
Jimmie was much exicted by this dispute. The only trouble was that
he found himself in agreement with both sides, and with an impulse
to applaud both sides. And also he applauded the next speaker, young
Emil Forster, a pale, slender, and fair-haired youth, a designer in
the carpet-factory. Emil was one who seldom raised his voice in the
meetings, but when he did, he was heard with attention, for he was a
student and a thinker; he played the flute, and his father, also a
member of the local, played the clarinet, so the pair were
invaluable on "social evenings". In his gentle, dispassionate voice
he explained how it was not easy for people in America to understand
the dilemma of the German Socialists in the present crisis. We must
remember that the Germans were fighting, not merely England and
France, but Russia; and Russia was a huge, half-civilized land,
under perhaps the most cruel government in the world. How would
Americans feel if up in Canada there were three hundred millions of
people, ignorant, enslaved, and being drilled in huge armies?
All right, retorted Dr. Service. But then why did not the Germans
fight Russia, and let France and Belgium alone?
Because, answered Emil, the French would not permit that. We in
America thought of France as a republic, but we must remember that
it was a capitalist republic, a nation ruled by bankers; and these
bankers had formed an alliance with Russia, the sole possible aim of
which was the destruction of Germany. France had loaned something
like four billions of dollars to Russia.
And then Schneider leaped up. Yes, and it was that money which had
provided the cannon and shells that were now being used in laying
waste East Prussia, the land of Schneider's birth!
