III
Jimmie Higgins went into the Socialist local now and then, to pay
his dues and to refresh his soul on pacifist speeches. Just before
Christmas the President of the United States wrote a letter to all
the warring nations pleading with them to end the strife; intimating
that all the belligerents were on a par as to badness, and stating
explicitly that America had nothing to do with their struggle. This,
of course, brought intense satisfaction to the members of Local
Leesville of the Socialist party; it was what they had been
proclaiming for two years and four months! They had never expected
to have a capitalist President in agreement with them, but when the
opportunity came, they made the most of it; clamouring that the
capitalist President should go farther--should back up his words by
actions. If the warring nations would not make peace, let America at
least clear her skirts by declaring an embargo, refusing to furnish
them with the means of self-destruction!
But for some reason incomprehensible to Jimmie Higgins, the
capitalist President would not take this further step; and time
moved on, and at the end of January fell a thunder-bolt, in the
shape of a declaration from the German government that beginning
next day it rescinded its agreement to visit and search steamers,
and declared war to the death against all vessels sailing in barred
zones. Jimmie went to a meeting of the local a few days after that,
and found the gathering seething with excitement. The President had
appeared before Congress that day and made a speech calling for war;
and the Germans and Austrians in the local were wild with
indignation, shaking their fists and clamouring against the
unthinkable outrage of an attack upon the Fatherland. There was a
new edition of the Worker just out, filled with bitter protests, and
the Germans and the pacifists wanted to pledge the local to a
movement for a general strike of labour throughout the country.
Street-meetings had been resumed--for, of course, since the strike
in the Empire had been settled, the police had had no pretext to
prevent them. The extremists now wanted anti-war speakers on every
corner, and anti-war leaflets shoved under every doorstep; they were
willing to put up the money and to pledge their time for these
activities.
Lawyer Norwood rose and revealed the split that was now full-grown
in the party. For the United States to lie down before that insolent
declaration of the German government would be to imperil everything
which a lover of liberty held dear. It would mean that Britain would
be starved out of the war, and British sea-power shattered--that
British sea-power upon which free government had based itself
throughout the world. Norwood was unable to get any further for the
tempest of jeering and ridicule that overwhelmed him. "Freedom in
Ireland!" shrieked Comrade Mary Allen. "And in India! And in Egypt!"
bellowed Comrade Koeln, the glass-blower, whose mighty lungs had
been twenty years preparing for this emergency.
It was hard to stop the laughter--it seemed so funny that a man who
called himself a Socialist should be defending British battleships!
But Comrade Gerrity, the chairman, pounded with his gavel, and
insisted that the meeting should give fair play, that every speaker
should be heard in his turn. So Norwood went on. He understood that
no government in this world was perfect, but some were better than
others, and it was a fact of history, whether or not they chose to
admit it, that such freedom as had already been secured in the
world--in Britain and Canada and Australia and New Zealand and the
United States--had rested under the protection of British
battleships. If those battleships went down, it would mean that
every one of those free communities would begin building up a
military force many times as strong as they had now. If the United
States did not maintain the established customs of sea-commerce in
the present crisis, it would mean one thing and one only--that
America would spend the next thirty years devoting her energies to
preparing for a life-and-death struggle with German Imperialism. If
we were not to fight later, we must fight now--
"All right, you fight!" shouted Comrade Schneider, the brewer, his
purple face more purple than ever before in the history of Local
Leesville.
"I'm going to fight all right," answered the young lawyer. "This is
my last speech here or anywhere else--I'm leaving for an officers'
training-camp to-morrow. I have come here to do my duty, to warn you
comrades--even though I know it will be in vain. The time for debate
has passed--the country is going into war--"
"I'm not going into war!" roared Schneider.
"Be careful," answered the other. "You may find yourself in before
you know it."
And the big brewer laughed to shake the plaster off the walls. "I'd
like to see them send me! To fight for the British sea-power! Ho!
Ho! Ho!"
