II
The plans for the Worker were delayed, for the reason that when
Comrade Mary Allen, the Quaker, went to look for Jerry Coleman the
day after the fire, that dispenser of ten dollar bills had
mysteriously disappeared. It was a week before he showed up again;
and meantime fresh events had taken place, both in the local and
outside. To begin with the latter, as presumably the more important,
an English passenger liner, the pride of the Atlantic fleet, loaded
to the last cabin with American millionaires, was torpedoed without
warning by a German submarine. More than a thousand men, women and
children went down, and the deed sent a shudder of horror through
the civilized world. At the meeting of Local Leesville, which
happened to take place the evening afterward, it proved a difficult
matter to get business started.
The members stood about and argued. What could you say about a
government that ordered a crime like that? What could you say about
a naval officer who would carry out such an order? Thus Comrade
Norwood, the young lawyer; and Schneider, the brewer, answered that
the German government had done everything that any reasonable man
could ask. It had published a notice in the New York papers, to the
effect that the vessel was subject to attack, and that anyone who
travelled on her would do so at his peril. If women and children
would ride on munition-ships--
"Munition-ships?" cried Norwood; and then Schneider pointed to a
news-dispatch, to the effect that the Lusitania had had on board a
shipment of cartridge-cases.
"A fine lot of munitions!" jeered the lawyer.
Well, was the reply, what were cartridge-cases for, if not to kill
Germans? The Germans had been attacked by the whole world, and they
had to defend themselves. When you looked at Comrade Schneider, you
saw a man who felt himself attacked by the whole world; his face was
red up to the roots of his hair, and he was ready to defend himself
with any weapon he could get hold of.
Comrade Koeln, a big glass-blower, broke into the discussion. The
German government was authority for the statement that the Lusitania
had been armed with guns. And when Norwood hooted at this, every
German in the room was up in arms. What did he have to disprove it?
The word of the British government! Was not "perfidious Albion" a
byword!
"The thing that beats me," declared the young lawyer, "is the way
you Germans stand up for the Kaiser now, when before the war you
couldn't find enough bad things to say about him."
"What beats me," countered Schneider, "is how you Americans stand up
for King George. Every newspaper in Wall Street howling for America
to go into the war--just because some millionaires got killed!"
"You don't seem to realize that the greater number of the men who
lost their lives on that ship were working men!"
"Ho! Ho!" hooted Comrade Stankewitz. "Vall Street loves so the
vorking men!"
Comrade Mary Allen, who loved all men, took up the argument. If
those working men had been killed in a mine disaster, caused by
criminal carelessness and greed for profits; if they had died of
some industrial disease which might easily have been prevented; if
they had been burned in a factory without fire-escapes--nobody in
Wall Street would have wanted to go to war. And, of course, every
Socialist considered this was true; every Socialist saw quite
clearly that the enormity of the Lusitania sinking lay in the fact
that it had reached and injured the privileged people, the people
who counted, who got their names in the papers and were not supposed
to be inconvenienced, even by war. So it was possible for Jimmie
Higgins, even though shocked by what the Germans had done, to be
irritated by the fuss which the Wall Street newspapers made.
Young Emil Forster spoke, and they listened to him, as they always
did. It was a quarrel, he said--and as usual in quarrels, both sides
had their rights and wrongs. You had to balance a few English and
American babies against the millions of German babies which the
British government intended to starve. It was British sea-power
maintaining itself--and of course controlling most of the channels
of publicity. It appealed to what it called "law"--that is to say,
the customs it had found convenient in the past. British cruisers
were able to visit and search vessels, and to take off their crews;
but submarines could not do that, so what the British clamour about
"law" amounted to was an attempt to keep Germany from using her only
weapon. After all, ask yourself honestly if it was any worse to
drown people quickly than to starve them slowly.
And then came "Wild Bill". This wrangling over German and British
gave him a pain in the guts. Couldn't they see, the big stiffs, that
they were playing the masters' game? Quarrelling among themselves,
when they ought to be waking up the workers, getting ready for the
real fight. And wizened-up little Stankewitz broke in again--that
vas vy he hated var, it divided the vorkers. There was nothing you
could say for var. But "Wild Bill" smiled his crooked smile. There
were several things you could say. War gave the workers guns, and
taught them to use them; how would it be if some day they turned
these guns about and fought their own battles?
