CHAPTER XII
JIMMIE HIGGINS MEETS A PATRIOT
I
The country, it seemed, was hell-bent for war; and Jimmie Higgins
was hell-bent for martyrdom. If the great madness were to take
possession of America, it would not be without his having done what
he could to prevent it. He would stand in the path of the war
chariot, he would throw himself beneath the hoofs of the cavalry;
and block the road with his dead body. To which vivid programme
there was only one obstacle--or, to be precise, four obstacles, one
large and three small, the large one being Eleeza Betooser.
Poor Lizzie of course had no real comprehension of the world-forces
against which her husband was contending; to Lizzie, life consisted
of three babies, whom it was her duty to feed and protect, and a
husband, who was her instrument for carrying out this duty. The
world outside of these was to her a vague and shadowy place, full of
vague and shadowy terrors. Somewhere up in the sky was a Holy Virgin
who would help when properly appealed to, but Lizzie was handicapped
in appealing to this Virgin by the fact that her husband despised
the Holy One, and would cast insulting doubts upon her virtue.
Now the shadowy terrors of this vast outside world were moving to
ends of their own, and her poor, puny husband persisted in putting
himself in their way. He had got turned out of his job, for the
fourth or fifth time since Lizzie had known him, and he was in
imminent danger of getting into jail, or into a coat of tar and
feathers. As the controversy grew hotter and the peril greater,
Lizzie came to a condition which might have been diagnosed as
chronic impending hysteria. Her eyes were red from secret weeping,
and at the slightest provocation she would burst into floods of
tears and throw herself into her husband's arms. This would start
off Jimmie Junior and the little ones, who always took their cue
from him. And Jimmie Senior would stand perplexed and helpless. Here
was a new aspect of the heroic life, not dealt with in the books. He
wondered--had there ever in history been such a thing as a married
martyr? If so, what had this martyr done with his family?
Jimmie would try to explain this to his distressed spouse. It was a
question of saving a hundred million people from the horrors of war;
what did one man matter, in comparison with that? But alas, the
argument did not carry at all, the simple truth being that the one
man mattered more to Lizzie than all the other ninety-nine million,
nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine.
And besides, what could the one man do? One poor, obscure, helpless
working-man out of a job--
"But it's the organization!" he cried. "It's all of us
together--it's the party! We promised to stand together, so we got
to do it! If I drop out, I'm a coward, a traitor! We must make the
workers understand--"
"But you can't!" cried Lizzie.
"But we're doin' it! Come see!"
"And what can they do?"
Which of course started Jimmy off on a propaganda speech. What could
the workers do? Say rather, what could they not do! How could any
war be fought without the workers? If only they would stand
together, if they would rise against their capitalist oppressors--
"But they won't!" sobbed the woman. "They got no use for you at all!
You go an' get fired--or you get your face beat in, like poor Bill
Murray--"
"But is that any worse than goin' to war?"
"You ain't got to go to war!"
"Who says I ain't? I got to go, if the country goes. They'll drag me
off and make me! If I refuse they'll shoot me! Ain't they doin' that
in England and France an' Roosia an' all them countries?"
"But will they do it here?" cried Lizzie, aghast.
"Sure they will! That's exactly what they're gettin' ready for--what
we're fightin' to stop them from! You don't know what's goin' on in
this country--listen here!"
And Jimmie hauled out the last issue of the Worker, which quoted
speeches made in Congress, calling for conscription, declaring that
such a measure was an essential war-step. "Don't you see what
they're up to? An' if we're goin' to stop them, we gotta act now,
before it's too late. Hadn't I just as good go to jail here in
Leesville as be shipped over to Europe to be shot--or maybe drowned
by a submarine on the way?"
And thus a new terror was introduced into Lizzie's life--robbing
her of sleep for many a night thereafter, planting in her
mother-heart for the first time the idea that she might be concerned
in the world-war. "What'd become of the babies?" she wailed; and
Jimmie answered: Whose business was it to bother about working-class
babies, under the hellish capitalist system?
