II
The new Congress had met, and declared a state of war with Germany,
and the whole country was rushing into arms. Men were enlisting by
hundreds of thousands; but that was not enough for the
militarists--they wanted a conscription-law, so that every man might
be compelled to go. If they were so sure of themselves and their
wonderful war, why weren't they satisfied to let those fight it who
wanted to? So argued the rebellious Jimmie and his anti-militarist
associates. But no! the militarists knew perfectly well that the
bulk of the people did not want to fight, so they proposed to make
them fight. Every energy of the Socialist movement was now
concentrated on the blocking of this conscription scheme.
Local Leesville hired the Opera-house again, organizing a
mass-meeting of protest, and the capitalist papers of the city began
clamouring against this meeting. Was the patriotism and loyalty of
Leesville to be affronted by another gathering of sedition and
treason? The Herald told all over again the story of the gallant old
Civil War veteran who had risen in his seat and shouted his protest
against the incitements of "Jack" Smith, the notorious "red" editor.
The Herald printed a second time the picture of the gallant old
veteran in his faded blue uniform, and the list of battles in which
he had fought, from the first Bull Run to the last siege of
Richmond. Some farmer passing by handed a copy of this paper to
Lizzie, adding that if there was any more treason-talk in this
locality there was going to be a lynching bee. So Jimmie found his
wife in tears again. She was absolutely determined that he should
not go to that meeting. For three days she wept and argued with him,
and for a part of three nights.
It would have been comical if it had not been so tragic. Jimmie
would use the old argument, that if he did not succeed in stopping
the war, he would be dragged into the trenches and killed. So, of
course, Lizzie would become a pacifist at once. What right had the
war to take Jimmie from her? The little Jimmies had a right to their
father! All children had a right to their fathers! But then, after
Lizzie had expressed these tearful convictions, Jimmie would say,
"All right, then, he must go to that meeting, he must do what he
could to prevent the war." And poor Lizzie would find herself
suddenly confronting the terrors of the police with their clubs and
the patriots with their buckets of tar and bags of feathers! No,
Jimmie must not carry on any propaganda, Jimmie must not go to the
meeting! Poor Jimmie would try to pin her down; which way did she
want him killed, by the Germans, or by the police and the mobs? But
Lizzie did not want him killed either way! She wanted him to go on
living!
Jimmie would try to arrange a compromise for the present. He would
go to the meeting, but he would promise not to say a word. But that
did not console Lizzie--she knew that if anything happened, her man
would get into it. No, if he were determined to go, she would go,
too,--even if they had to load the three babies into the
perambulator, and push them two or three miles to the trolley! If
Jimmie tried to make a speech, she would hang on to his coat-tails,
she would clasp her hands over his mouth, she would throw herself
between him and the clubs of the policemen!
So matters stood, when on the afternoon before the meeting there
came a heavy rain, and the road to the trolley was rendered
impossible for a triple-loaded baby-carriage. So there were more
hysterics in the family; Jimmie took his wife's hand in his and
solemnly swore to her that she might trust him to go to this
meeting, he would not do anything that could by any possibility get
him into trouble. He would not try to make a speech, he would not
get up and shout--no matter what happened, he would not say a word!
He would merely sell pamphlets, and show people to their seats, as
he had done at a hundred meetings before. To make sure of his
immunity, he would even leave off the red badge which he was
accustomed to display on Socialist occasions! By these pledges
repeated over and over, he finally succeeded in pacifying his
weeping spouse, and gently removed her clutch on his coat-tails, and
departed, waving his hand to her and the kids.
The last thing he saw through the rain was Jimmie Junior,
flourishing a red handkerchief which Lizzie at the last moment had
extracted from her husband's pocket. The last sound he heard was
Jimmie Junior's voice, shouting:
"You be good now! You shut up!" Jimmie went off, thinking about this
little tike; he was five years old, and growing so that you could
notice the difference overnight. He had big black eyes like his
mother, and a grin full of all the mischief in the world. The things
he knew and the questions he asked! Jimmie and Lizzie never got
tired of talking about them; Jimmie recalled them one by one, as he
trudged through the mud--and, as always, he set his lips and
clenched his hands, and took up anew the task of making the world a
fit place for a working-man's child to grow up in!
