Jimmie Higgins Part 22

Each afternoon when the automobile factory let out, Jimmie would get an evening paper and take it to Deror's tailor-shop and the two would spell out the news. By G.o.d, look at this! Did you ever hear the like? The man in charge of the Bolshevik foreign office was a Marxian Jew who had helped edit the Novy Mir, the revolutionary paper which Scholem had read to Jimmie! He had been a waiter in the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, and now he was giving out the secret treaties, and issuing propaganda manifestoes to the international proletariat.

The American capitalist press was full of lies about the new revolution, of course; but Jimmie could read pretty well between the lines of the capitalist press, and the few Socialist papers that were still in business, and which he read at the headquarters of the local, gave him the rest of what he wanted. To Jimmie, of course, everything the Bolsheviki did was right; if it wasn't right it was a lie. The little machinist knew that the Bolsheviki had repudiated the four-billion-dollar debt which the government of the Tsar had contracted with the bankers of France, and Jimmie knew perfectly well what was the lying power of four billion dollars.

The American papers were shocked because the Russian Socialists were deserting the cause of democracy, and giving Germany a chance to win the war. The American papers called them German agents, but Jimmie did not take any stock in such talk as this. Jimmie was familiar with the "frame-up" as it is operated against the workers in America. He saw that the first thing the Bolshevik leaders did was to make an appeal to the revolutionary workers of Germany. The Russian proletariat had shown the way--now let the German proletariat follow! Literature was printed and s.h.i.+pped wholesale into Germany, leaflets were dropped by aviators among the German troops; and when Jimmie and Deror read that the German generals had protested to the Russians against such practices, they laughed aloud with delight. Well might the war-lords squeal; they knew what was coming to them! And when in January Jimmie and Deror read of the revolting of a brigade of German troops, and a strike of several hundred thousand working men throughout Germany, they thought the end was at hand. The little tailor got up in local Ironton and made a motion that it take to itself the name "Bolshevik"--which motion was carried with a whoop. And these American Bolsheviki went on to consult with the labour-unions, suggesting that they should form "shop-committees", and prepare for the taking over of industry a la Russe!

III

But something went suddenly wrong with the newly built revolutionary steam-roller. The German military chiefs seized their strike-leaders at home and threw them into jail, or s.h.i.+pped them off to the front trenches to be slaughtered. By terrorism, shrewdly mixed with cajolery, they broke the strike, and sent the grumbling slaves back to their treadmill. And then the German armies began to march into Russia!

It was the crisis to which Jimmie Higgins had been looking forward ever since the war began. Tolstoi had taught that if one nation refused to fight, it would be impossible for another nation to invade it; and while Jimmie Higgins was no mystic or religious non-resistant, he agreed in this with the great Russian. No workers in an enemy army could possibly be brought to fire upon their peace-proclaiming brothers!

And here at last was the test of the theory; here were German Socialists ordered to march against Russian Socialists--ordered to fire upon the red flag! Would they do what their masters, the war-lords, commanded? Or would they listen to the clamorous appeals of the international proletariat, and turn their guns against their own officers?

All the world saw what happened; it saw the glorious revolutionary machine, in which Jimmie Higgins had put all his trust, run into a ditch and land its pa.s.sengers in the mud. The German armies marched, and the Socialists in the German armies did exactly what the non-Socialists did--they fired upon the red flag, as they would have fired upon the flag of the Tsar. They obeyed the orders of their officers, like true and loyal Germans; they drove back the Bolsheviki in confusion, taking their guns and supplies, and destroying their cities; they led off the Russian women and children into slavery, precisely as if they were Belgian or French women and children, destined by the German Gott as the legitimate prey of Kultur. They sacked Riga and Reval, they overran all the Eastern portions of Russia--Courland, Livonia, Esthonia; they moved into the rich grain country of Southern Russia, the Ukraine; they landed from their s.h.i.+ps and took Finland, wiping out the liberties of that splendid people. They were at the gates of Petrograd, and the Bolshevik government was forced to flee to Moscow. Of all which military feats the German Socialist papers spoke with stern pride!

IV

Poor Jimmie Higgins! It was like the blow of a mighty fist in the face; he was literally stunned--it was weeks before he could grasp the full meaning of what was happening, the debacle of all his hopes. And it was the same with Ironton's Bolshevik local; all the "pep" was gone out of its proceedings. To be sure, some noisy ones went on shouting for revolution the very next day--men, who had been talking formulas for twenty or thirty years, and had no more notion of a fact than they had of a pseudopodium. But the sensible men of the group knew that their "St. Louis resolution" was being shot to death over there in the trenches before Petrograd.

It was interesting especially to see Rabin. The common belief of Americans was that a Jew could not be induced to fight; they told a story about one who cried out to his son, asking why he was letting another boy pummel him, and the son whispered in reply, "Keep still, I got a nickel under my foot!" All through the war the Jewish Socialists in America had been, next to the Germans, the most ardent pacifists; but now here was a social revolution managed by Jews, here was a Russian government which gave the Jews their rights for the first time in history! So the little Jewish tailor stood up before these American Bolsheviki, and with tears running down his cheeks declared: "Comrades, I am already tru vit speeches; I am going into dis var! I vill put myself vit de Polish Socialists, vit de Bohemian Socialists--I fight de Kaiser to de death! So vill fight every Jewish Socialist in de vorld!" And this was no mere braggadocio--Comrade Rabin actually proceeded to shut up his tailor-shop, and went away to join the "red brigade", which was being organized by the Jewish revolutionists of New York!

If the German war-lords had set out deliberately to ham-string the American Socialists, to make it impossible for them to go on demanding peace, they could not have acted differently. They dragged the helpless Bolsheviki into a peace-conference at Brest-Litovsk, and forced them to cede away all the territories that Germany had taken, and on top of that to pay an enormous indemnity. They planned to compel the new Russian government to become a va.s.sal to the Central Powers, working to help them enslave the rest of the world.

The German armies went through the conquered territories, stripping them bare, robbing the peasants of every particle of food, beating them, shooting them, burning their homes if they resisted. They gave to the world such a demonstration of what a German peace would mean, that everywhere free men set their teeth and gripped their hands, and swore to root this infamous thing from out civilization. Even Jimmie Higgins!

V

Yes, even Jimmie! He made up his mind that he would work as hard as ever he could, and produce as many automobile-trucks as he could.

But alas, a man cannot be hounded and oppressed all his life, cannot have hatred and rebellion ground into the deeps of his soul, and then forget it over-night because of certain intellectual ideas, certain new items that he reads in his paper. What happened to Jimmie was that his mind was literally torn in half; he found himself, every twenty-four hours of his life, of two absolutely contradictory and diametrically opposite points of view. He would vow destruction to the hated German armies; and then he would turn about and vow destruction to the men at home who were managing the job of destroying the German armies!

For these men were Jimmie's life-long enemies, and were no more able to forget their prejudices over-night than was Jimmie. For example, the lying capitalist paper which Jimmie had to read every morning!

When Jimmie had read a patriotic editorial in the Ironton Daily Sun, it had become utterly impossible for him to help win the war that day! Or the politicians, seeking to use the war-cry of democracy abroad to crush all traces of democracy at home; to "get" the radicals whom they hated and feared, and by means of taxes on necessities and a bonded debt to put the costs of the war on to the poor! Or the capitalists, making fervid speeches about patriotism, but refusing to give up the whip-hand over their wage-slaves!

Jimmie Higgins was working in a factory, making automobile-trucks for the armies in France; and the owners of the factory would not let the men have a union, and so there was a strike. The bosses made an agreement to take everybody back and permit a union, and then proceeded treacherously to violate the agreement, getting rid of the most active organizers on this or that transparent pretext. Jimmie Higgins, trying to help with the skill of his hands to make the world safe for democracy, was turned out of his job and left to wander in the streets, because a big profit-seeking corporation did not believe in democracy, and refused to permit its workers any voice in determining the conditions of their labour! The Government was trying to deal with emergencies such as this, to put an end to the epidemic of strikes which was hindering the war-work everywhere; but the government had not yet got its machinery going, and meantime Jimmie's little feeble sprout of patriotism got a severe chill.

Jimmie got drunk and wasted a part of his money on a woman of the street. Then, being ashamed of himself, and still plagued by the memory of his dead wife and babies, he straightened up and resolved to start life anew. He found himself thinking about Leesville; it was the only place in the world where he had ever been really happy, and now since Deror Rabin had gone East, it was the only place where he had friends. How were the Meissners getting on? How was Comrade Mrs. Gerrity, nee Baskerville? What was Local Leesville thinking about Russia and about the war? Jimmie took a sudden resolve to go and find out. He priced a ticket, and found that he had enough money and to spare. He would take the journey--and take it in state, as a citizen and a war-worker, not as a tramp in a box-car!

CHAPTER XVI

JIMMIE HIGGINS MEETS THE TEMPTER

I

When Jimmie Higgins stepped off the train at Leesville, it was a bl.u.s.tery morning in early March, with snow still on the ground and flurries of it in the air. In front of the station was a public square, with a number of people gathered, and Jimmie strolled over to see what was going on. What he saw was a score of young men, some in khaki uniforms, some in ordinary trousers and sweaters, being drilled. Jimmie, being in the mood of a gentleman of leisure, stopped to watch the show.

It was the thing he had been talking and thinking about for nearly three years: this monstrous perversion of the human soul called Militarism, this force which seized hold of men and made them into automatons, moving machines which obeyed orders in a ma.s.s, and went out and did deeds of which none of them taken separately would have been capable, even in their dreams. Here was a bunch of average nice Leesville boys, employees of the shops near-by, "soda-jerkers" and "counter-jumpers", clerks who had deftly fitted shoes on to the feet of pretty ladies. Now they were submitting themselves to this deforming discipline, undergoing this devilish transmogrification.

Jimmie's eye ran down the line: there was a street-car conductor he knew, there was a machinist from the Empire, also there was a son of Ashton Chalmers, president of the First National Bank of Leesville.

And suddenly Jimmie gave a start. Impossible! It could not be!

But--it was! Young Emil Forster! Emil a Socialist, Emil a German, Emil a student and thinker, who had penetrated the hypocritical disguises of this capitalist war, and had fearlessly proclaimed the truth every Friday night at the local--here he was with a suit of khaki on his rather frail figure, a rifle in his hand and a look of grim resolve on his face, going through the evolutions of squad-drill: left, right, left, right, left, right--column left, march--one, two, three, four--left, right, left, right--squad right about, march--left, right, left, right--squad left oblique march--and so on. If you are to form any picture of the scene you must imagine the swift tramp of many feet in unison--thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump; you must imagine the marchers, with their solemnly set faces, and the orders thundered out by a red-faced young man of desperate aspect, the word MARCH coming each time with a punch that hit you over the heart. This red-faced young man was the very incarnation of the military despot as Jimmie had pictured him; watching with hawk-like eye, scolding, pounding, driving, with no slightest regard for the feelings of the slaves he commanded, or for any of the decencies of civilized intercourse.

"Hold those half-steps, Casey! Keep your eye on the end man--you'll have him splitting his legs if you don't wait for him. Column left, march--one, two, three, four--now you're all right--off with you--that's better! Put a little pep into your feet, Chalmers, for G.o.d's sake--if you go marching into Berlin like that they'll think it's the hospital squad! By the right flank, column fours, march--watch your distance there, end man! How many times do you want me to tell you that?"--and so on and on--tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp--while a small boy standing beside Jimmie, evidently a truant from school, chanted over and over: "Left--left--the soldier got drunk and he packed up his trunk and he left--left! And do you not think he was right--right?"

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!