II
Now if you have ever stood about and watched outdoor exercise or
games, on a day in March with snow on the ground and a keen wind
blowing, you know how it is--you have to stamp your feet to keep
warm; and if in your neighbourhood there are twenty left feet
smiting the ground in unison, and then twenty right feet smiting the
ground in unison, it is absolutely inevitable that your stamping
should keep time to the smiting; also the rhythm of your stamping
will be communicated upwards into your body--your thoughts will
keep time with the marching squad--tramp, tramp, tramp,
tramp--left, right, left, right! The psychologists tell us that one
who goes through the actions appropriate to an emotion will begin to
feel that emotion; and so it was with Jimmie Higgins. By a process
so subtle that he never suspected it Jimmie was being made into a
militarist! Jimmie's hands were clenched, Jimmie's jaw was set,
Jimmie's feet were tramping, tramping on the road to Berlin, to
teach the Prussian war-lords what it meant to defy the free men of a
great republic!
But then something would happen to blast these budding excitements
in Jimmie's soul. The red-faced fellow would break into the rhythm
of the march. "For the love of Mike, Pete Casey, can't you remember
those half-steps? Squad, halt! Now look here, what's the matter with
you? Step out and let me show you once more." And poor Casey, a
meek-faced little man with sloping shoulders, who had been running
the elevator in the Chalmers Building up to a week ago, would
patiently practise marching without moving, so that the rest of the
line could wheel round him as a pivot. The petty tyrant who scolded
at him was determined to have his own way; and Jimmie, who had had
to do with many such tyrants in his long years of industrial
servitude, was glad when this particular one got mixed up in his
orders, and ran his squad into the fountain in the middle of the
drill-ground, and some of them marched over the parapet, sliding
down into the ice-covered basin below. The spectators roared, and so
did the marchers, and the red-faced man young had to join in, and to
come down off his high horse.
The conflict of impulses went on in Jimmie's soul. These marching
men were the "fools" at whom he had been mocking for something over
two years. They did not look like "fools" he had to admit; on the
contrary, they looked, quite capable of deciding what they wanted to
do. And they had decided; they had quit their jobs several weeks in
advance of the time when they would be called for the draft, and had
set to work to learn the rudiments of the military art, in the hope
of thus getting more quickly to France. Among them were bankers and
merchants and real estate dealers, side by side with soda-jerkers
and counter-jumpers and elevator-men--and all taking their orders
from an ex-blacksmith's helper, who had run away to fight in the
Philippines.
Jimmie got this last bit of information from a fellow who stood
watching; so he realized that here was the thing he had been reading
about in the papers--the new army of the people, that was going
forth to make the world safe for democracy! Jimmy had read such
words, and thought them just camouflage, a trap for the "fools". But
here, a sight of wonder before his eyes, a son of Ashton Chalmers,
president of the First National Bank of Leesville, being ordered
about and hauled over the coals by an ex-blacksmith's helper, who
happened to know how to shout with the accents of a pile-driver:
"Shoulder HUMPS! Order HUMPS! Present HUMPS!"
The squad spread itself out for exercise--grasping their heavy
rifles and swinging them this way and that with desperate violence.
"Swing over head and return, ready, exercise--one, two, three, four,
five, six, seven, eight--eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two,
one." It was no joke making those swings in such quick time; the
poor little elevator-man Casey was left hopelessly behind, he could
only make half the swing, and then couldn't get back to place on the
count; he would look about, grinning sheepishly, and then fall into
time and try again. Everybody's face was set, everybody's breath was
coming harder and harder, everybody's complexion was becoming
apoplectic.
"Swing to the right!" shouted the blacksmith-tyrant. "Ready,
exercise--one, two"--and so on. And then he would yell: "No,
Chalmers, don't punch out with your arms--swing up your gun! Swing
it up from the bottom! That's the way! Poke 'em! Poke 'em! Put the
punch into 'em!" And over Jimmie stole a cold horror. There was
nothing on the end of those guns but a little black hole, but Jimmie
knew what was supposed to be there--what would some day be there;
the exercise meant that these affable young Leesville store-clerks
were getting ready to drive a sharp, gleaming blade into the bowels
of human beings! "Poke 'em! Poke 'em!" shouted the ex-blacksmith,
and with desperate force they swung the heavy rifles, throwing their
bodies to one side and leaping out with one foot. Horrible!
Horrible!
