II
So Jimmie had his way for a bit--he went into Leesville and helped
distribute literature, and held the torch at street-meetings, where
some people hooted at them and others defended them, and the police
had to interfere to prevent a riot. It was at this time that a
militant majority was trying to drive through the Senate a
declaration of war against Germany, and a handful of pacifists
blocked the way in the closing hours of the session, thus causing a
delay of several weeks. How you regarded this action depended upon
your point of view. The President denounced them as "wilful men",
and the Wall Street newspapers apparently wanted them lynched;
whereas Jimmie and his fellows in the local hailed them as heroes
and friends of mankind. The Socialists argued that the President had
been re-elected, only four months before, by pacifist votes, and
upon a pacifist platform; and now he was sweeping the country into
war, and denouncing those who stood upon his former convictions!
On top of this came another event which set Jimmie almost beside
himself with excitement. For three days all news from Petrograd was
cut off; and then came a report, electrifying the world--the Tsar
had been overthrown, the Russian people were free! Jimmie could
hardly believe his eyes; he went in to the meeting of the local
three nights later, to find his comrades celebrating as if the world
was theirs. Here was the thing they had been preaching, day in and
day out, all these weary years, amid ridicule, hatred and
persecution; here was the Social Revolution, knocking at the gates
of the world! It would spread to Austria and Germany, to Italy,
France, England--and so to Leesville! Everywhere the people would
come into their own, and war and tyranny would vanish like a hateful
nightmare!
Speaker after speaker got up to proclaim this glorious future; they
sang the Marseillaise and the Internationale, and the Russians who
were present clasped one another in their arms, with tears running
down their cheeks. It was voted that they must hold a mass-meeting
immediately, to explain this epoch-making event to the people of the
city; also they must stand more firmly than ever by their programme
of opposition to war. Now, with Social Revolution knocking at the
gates of the world, what was the use of America's going in for
militarism?
So Jimmie set to work with redoubled fervour, giving all his time to
agitation. He had apparently no chance of getting a job, and for the
moment he gave up trying. The keeper of the cross-roads store, being
down on him because of his ideas, refused him any more credit; and
so poor Lizzie was driven to do what she had vowed never to do--take
off the stocking from her right leg, and unsew the bandage from her
ankle, and extract one of the ten precious twenty-dollar bills.
Their bright yellow was considerably faded now, their beautiful
crispness gone entirely; but the store-keeper made no kick on that
account--he returned the change, and incidentally took occasion to
give her a friendly warning concerning her husband's reckless talk.
There was trouble coming to him, and his wife had better shut him up
before it was too late. So poor Lizzie ceased being a pacifist, and
went home to have more hysterics on her husband's bosom.
