II
The only chance Jimmie had to talk about these matters was of a
Saturday night when he strolled up to the store at a near-by
cross-roads. The men he met here were of a new type to him--as
different from factory people as if they came from another planet.
Jimmie had been taught to laugh at them as "hayseeds";
intellectually he regarded them as relics of a vanished age so, of
course, he could not listen to their talk very long without "butting
in". He began with the declaration that the Allies were as bad as
the Germans. He got away with that, because they had all been taught
to hate the "Britishers" in their school-books, and they didn't know
very much about Frenchmen and "Eye-talians". But when Jimmie went on
to say that the American government was as bad as the German
government--that all governments were run by capitalists, and all
went to war for foreign markets and such plunder--then what a
hornet's nest he brought about his ears! "You mean to say American
armies would do what them Proosians done in Belgium?" And when
Jimmie answered "Yes," an indignant citizen rose from his seat on a
cracker-box, and tapped him on the shoulder and said: "Look here,
young feller, you better run along home. You'll git yerself a coat
of tar and feathers if you talk too much round these parts."
So Jimmie shut up for a while; and when he went out with his armful
of purchases, an aged, white-whiskered patriarch who had been
listening got up and followed him out. "I'm going your way," he
said. "Git in with me." Jimmie climbed into the buggy; and while the
bony old mare ambled along through the summer night the driver asked
questions about Jimmie's life. Where had he been brought up? How had
it been possible for a man to live all his life in America, and know
so little about his native land?
Peter Drew was this old farmer's name, and he had been in the first
battle of Bull Run, and had fought with the Army of Northern
Virginia all the way to Richmond. So he knew how American armies
behave; he could tell Jimmie about a million free men who had rushed
to arms to save their nation's integrity, and had made a clean job
of it, and then gone quietly back to their work at farm and forge.
Jimmie had heard Comrade Mary Allen, the Quaker, make the statement
that "Force never settled anything". He repeated this now, and the
other replied that an American ought to be the last person in the
world to make such a statement, for his country had provided the
best illustration in history of the importance of a good job of
spanking. It was force that had settled the slavery question--and
settled it so that now you might travel in the South and have a hard
time to find a man that would want to unsettle it.
But Jimmie knew nothing about all that; he knew nothing about
anything in America. The old man said it frightened him to realize
that the country had let a man grow up in it with so little
understanding of its soul. All that precious tradition, utterly dead
so far as Jimmie was concerned! All those heroes who had died to
make free the land in which he lived, and to keep it free--and he
did not know their names, he did not even know the names of the
great battles they had fought! The old man's voice trembled and he
laid his hand on Jimmie's knee.
The little Socialist tried to explain that he had dreams of his own.
He was fighting for international freedom--his patriotism was
higher and wider than any one country. And that was all right, said
the other, but why kick down the ladder by which you had
climbed--and especially when you had perhaps not entirely finished
climbing? Why not know the better side of your own country, and
appeal to it? Peter Drew went on to tell of a speech he had heard
Abraham Lincoln make, and to quote things Lincoln had said; could
Jimmie doubt that Lincoln would have opposed the rule of the country
by Wall Street? And when a country had been shaped and guided by
such men as Lincoln, why trample its face and besmirch its good
name--just because there were in it some evil men contending against
its ideals of freedom and democracy?
This old soldier lived about a mile from Jimmie, and asked his new
friend to come and see him. So the next afternoon, which was Sunday,
Lizzie put on a newly starched dress, and Jimmie packed the two
smallest infants in the double perambulator, and took Jimmie
Junior's chubby hand and they trudged down the road to the farmhouse
which the old man's father had built. Mrs. Drew was a sweet-faced,
rather tired looking old lady, but her pale eyes seemed to smile
with hospitality, and she brought out a basket of ripe peaches, and
sat and chatted sympathetically with Lizzie about the care of
babies, while Jimmie and the old man sat under the shade of an elm
tree by the kitchen-door and discussed American history. Jimmie
listened to stories of battle and imprisonment, of monster heroisms
and self-immolations. Up to this time he had been looking at war
from the outside, as it were; but now he got a glimpse of the soul
of it, he began to understand how a man might be willing to leave
his home and his loved ones, and march out to fight and suffer and
die to save his country in which he believed.
And here was another new idea: this old fellow had been a soldier,
had fought through four years of incessant battles, and yet he had
not lost his goodness. He was kind, gentle, generous; he gave
dignity to the phrases at which Jimmie had been taught to mock. It
was impossible not to respect such a man; and so little by little
Jimmie was made to reflect that there might be such a thing as the
soul of America, about which Peter Drew was all the time talking.
Perhaps there was really more to the country than Wall Street
speculators and grafting politicians, policemen with clubs and
militiamen with bayonets to stick into the bodies of working-men who
tried to improve their lot in life!
