IV
Next day was to be the great mass-meeting in celebration of the
Russian revolution; and would you believe it, Lizzie was hoping to
persuade Jimmie to stay away; she had brought Mr. Drew to help
persuade him! Poor Lizzie had visions of everybody in the hall being
carted off to jail, of Jimmie getting up and shouting something,
causing the police to fall on him and beat in his skull with their
clubs. It was in vain he declared that he was going to do nothing
more romantic than sell literature and act as usher. She clasped him
in her arms, weeping copiously, and when he was still obdurate, she
declared that she would go with him. She would try to persuade Mrs.
Drew to take care of the babies for one night.
Old Peter Drew answered that he would be interested to attend the
meeting himself. How would it do for him to come for Lizzie and the
little ones, and leave the latter at his home, and then drive with
Lizzie to the meeting? They could meet Jimmie at the Opera-house,
where he would be spending the day decorating. Then after the
meeting they could all drive back together. "Fine!" said Jimmie, who
had visions of the old soldier becoming infected with revolutionary
fever.
But alas, it did not work out that way. To Jimmie's consternation
the old man turned up at the Opera-house in a faded blue uniform
with brass buttons all over it! Everybody stared, of course; and
they stared all the harder because they saw this military personage
in company with Comrade Higgins. The old boy gazed about at the
swarms of people, many of them with red buttons, the women with red
ribbons or sashes; he gazed at the decorations--the huge flag and
the long red streamers, the banner of the Karl Marx Verein, and the
banner of the Ypsels, or Young Peoples' Socialist League of
Leesville, and the banner of the Machinists' Union, Local 4717, and
of the Carpenters' Union, District 529, and of the Workers'
Co-operative Society. He turned to Jimmie and said, "Where's the
American flag?"
The Liederkranz sang the Marseillaise, and after the audience had
cheered and waved red handkerchiefs and shouted itself hoarse,
Comrade Gerrity, the chairman, made a little speech. For many years
all Socialists had been accustomed to employ a metaphor by which to
describe conditions in their country, and now they would no longer
be able to use it, for Russia was free, and America would follow her
example when she had the sense. He introduced Comrade Pavel
Michaelovitch, who had come all the way from New York to tell them
the meaning of the greatest event of history. Comrade Pavel, a
slender, frail, scholarly-looking man with a black beard and
black-rimmed spectacles, said a few words in Russian, and then he
talked for an hour in broken English, explaining how the Russians
had won their way to freedom, and now would use it to set free the
rest of the proletariat. And then came Comrade Schultze, of the
Carpet Weavers' Union, assuring them that there was no need to go to
war with Germany, because the German workers had been shown the way
to freedom, and would follow very soon; Schultze knew, because his
brother was editor of a Socialist paper in Leipzig, and he had
inside information as to what was going on in the Fatherland.
Then Comrade Smith, the editor of the Worker, was introduced, and
the trouble began. The young editor wasted no time in preliminaries;
he was an international revolutionist, and no capitalist government
was going to draft him for its bloody knaveries. Never would he be
led out to murder his fellow-workers, whether in Germany, Austria,
Bulgaria or Turkey; the masters of Wall Street would find that when
they set out to drive American free men to the slaughter-pen, they
had made the mistake of their greedy lives. "Understand me,"
declared Comrade Smith--though there seemed so far to have been
nothing in which anyone could possibly have misunderstood
him--"understand me, I am no pacifist, I am not opposed to war--it
is merely that I purpose to choose the war in which I fight. If they
try to put a gun into my hands, I shall not refuse to take it--not
much, for I and my fellow wage-slaves have long wished for guns! But
I shall use my own judgement as to where I aim that gun--whether at
enemies in front of me, or at enemies behind me--whether at my
brothers, the working-men of Germany, or at my oppressors, the
exploiters of Wall Street, their newspaper lackeys and military
martinets!"
The sentences of this speech came like the blows of a hammer, and
they struck forth a clamour of applause from the audience. But
suddenly the cheering crowd became aware that something out of the
ordinary was happening. An aged, white-whiskered man clad in a faded
blue uniform had risen from his seat in the middle of the hall and
was shouting and waving his arms. People near him were trying to
pull him down into his seat, but he would not be squelched, he went
on shouting; and the audience in part fell silent out of curiosity.
"Shame! Shame!" they heard him cry. "Shame upon you!" And he pointed
a trembling finger at the orator, declaring, "You are talking
treason, young man!"
"Sit down!" shrieked the crowd. "Shut up!"
But the old man turned upon them. "Are there no Americans at all in
this audience? Will you listen to this shameless traitor without one
word?"
People caught him by the coat-tails, men shook their fists at him;
at the other side of the hall "Wild Bill" leaped upon a chair,
shrieking: "Cut his throat, the old geezer!"
Two policemen came running down the aisle, and the "old geezer"
appealed to them: "What are you here for, if not to protect the flag
and the honour of America?" But the policemen insisted that he stop
interrupting the meeting, and so the old man turned and stalked out
from the hall. But he did not go until he had turned once more and
shaken his fist at the crowd, yelling in his cracked voice,
"Traitors! Traitors!"
