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Title: Keeping Up with William
In which the Honorable Socrates Potter Talks of the Relative
Merits of Sense Common and Preferred
Author: Irving Bacheller
Illustrator: Gaar Williams
Release Date: September 30, 2015 [EBook #50093]
Last Updated: March 12, 2018
Language: English
Character set encoding: UTF-8
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KEEPING UP WITH WILLIAM ***
Produced by David Widger from page images generously
provided by the Internet Archive
TO THE CHILDREN OF FRANCE AND BELGIUM—MADE FATHERLESS BY WILLIAMISM—WHOSE WRONGS HAVE ENLISTED THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN AGAINST THE MISLED HOSTS OF GERMANY, I DEDICATE THIS BOOK AND THE PROCEEDS OF ITS SALE.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.—WHICH OPENS FIRE ON THE EXACTING INDUSTRY OF SUPERING
CHAPTER II.—WHICH TEACHES THAT ONE SHOULD NEVER HITCH HIS CONSCIENCE TO
CHAPTER III.—WHICH PRESENTS THE STORY OF THE SMOTHERED SON
CHAPTER IV.—WHICH HANDS OUT SOME SOME COMMON TO THE SUPERERS IN AMERICA
CHAPTER V. WHICH DROPS A FEW ROUNDS OF SHRAPNEL ON THE HUNS IN AMERICA
CHAPTER VI.—WHICH IS MOSTLY FOR THE BOYS OF OUR ARMY
The new year of 1918 was not a month old the day I went up to Connecticut to see the Honorable Socrates Potter. I found the famous country lawyer sitting in the very same chair from which, seven years ago, he had told me the story of keeping up with Lizzie. His feet rested peacefully on a table in front of him as he sat reading a law book. Logs were burning in the fireplace. A spaniel dog lay dozing on a rug in front of it. What a delightful flavor of old times and good tobacco was in that inner office of his—with its portraits of Lincoln and his war cabinet, of Silas Wright and Daniel Webster and Rufus Choate and Charles Sumner, with its old rifle and powder horn hanging above the modest mantel and its cases of worn law books! Beyond the closed door were busy clerks and clicking typewriters, for Mr. Potter's business had grown to large proportions, but here was peace and the atmosphere of deliberation. There was never any haste in this small factory of opinions.
“Hello! Have you come for another book?” he asked.
“Always looking for another book,” I answered. “It's about time that you got into this big fight between Democracy and—”
“Deviltry,” he interrupted with a stern look. “By thunder I've offered to take up the sword but they say I'm too old to fight. I don't believe it. My great grandfather fought at Lexington when he was sixty-four.”
“You can do more good with some conversation than you could with a sword or a gun,” I urged. “I've come up here to touch the button and now you're expected to say something for the boys at the front and the folks at home. Just turn your search-light on the general situation.”
“Well, I have quite a stock of shrapnel and liquid fire for the rear line of the Germans,” he began. “My searchlight is a modest kind of a lantern but we'll see what we can do with it.
“This time we'll talk on the subject of keeping up with William.
“The other day, in the rooms of the Connecticut Historical Society, I was reading the diary of one Abigail Foote written in 1775. This, as I remember it, was an average day in her life: Mended mother's hood, set a red dye, hetchelled flax with Hannah, spun four pounds of whole wool, spun thread for harness twine, worked on a cheese basket, read a sermon of Doddridge's, scoured the pewter, milked the cows, carded wool, got supper ready, went to bed at nine.
“I wish you to note that she went to bed at nine. Do you think that a modern girl would knock off at nine? Not at all. She sticks to her task until midnight and even longer. Abigail had only to be an ordinary human being with nothing to do but work. The modern girl must have the beauty of a goddess, the grace of a gazelle, the digestion of an ostrich, the endurance of a horse and the remorse of a human being. It is a large contract. “We are all familiar with the diary of a modern girl. Its average day would be about as follows: Got up. Neck felt like a string on a toy balloon. Had some toast and coffee. Had my hair dressed and nails manicured. Put a new ribbon on my dog and walked him around the block. Went to meeting of the charity committee. Learned that there were many people out of work. Went to see the doctor who warned me about overeating and late hours. Same old chestnut! Lunched with Mabel. Ate half a pound of chocolates and so much cake that the butler had a frightened look. Home again. Dressed. Went with mama to a lecture on the insane. Mama woke me at five. It was all over. Went to Gladys's tea. Danced half an hour. Home again. Dressed. Spent fifteen minutes with papa and my dog. Went with Harry and mama to Gwendolyn's party. Danced until midnight. Home at one. Nearly frozen. Talk about long hours and poor pay and insufficient clothing; this reminds one of the story of Washington's army in the worst winter of the revolution.
“Now, both of these girls toiled.
“The one in productive work with the wool and the flax. It was done mostly for the comfort of others. The modern girl wears herself out supering. Do you know what it means to super? It is to follow the exacting industry of being superior.”
“Superior to what?” I asked.
“To productive work,” he went on. “Their toil is all in the service of themselves and in pursuit of their own pleasure.
“That's what's the matter with this old earth. For many years more than half its people have been supering—wasting their time in busy idleness—on the high road to deviltry. You don't have to think twice to decide that it is about the most dangerous of all crimes, my friend, because it is the straight way to all crime. It leads direct to deceit, theft, adultery and murder. It kills the sense of brotherhood in the heart of man. It kills the spirit of Democracy. The world is being strafed for it, in my opinion.
“Now the center and headquarters of all supering is Prussia—the home of the superman—and Bill Hohenzollern, the Godful, is the head and front of the whole push.
“There are two kinds of superiority—real and assumed. Real superiority is largely unconscious of itself. It can never be inherited—there's the important fact about it. You will recall that there are only three cases on record of a great father begetting a great son. The son is apt to have a sense of inherited superiority. It destroys everything worth while in him.
“Of all the defects that flesh is heir to, a sense of inherited superiority is the most deplorable. It is worse than insanity or idiocy or curvature of the spine. There are millions of acres of land in Europe occupied by nothing but a sense of inherited superiority; there are millions of hands and intellects in Europe occupied by nothing but a sense of inherited superiority, while billions of wealth have been devoted to its service and embellishment. A man who has even a small amount of it needs a force of porters and footmen to help him tote it around, and a guard to keep watch for fear that some one will grab his superiority and run off with it when his back is turned.
“A full equipment of inherited superiority, decorated with a title, a special dialect, a lot of old armor and university junk, stuck out so that there wasn't room for more than one outfit in a township. Most of the bloodshed has been caused by the blunders or the hoggishness of inherited superiority. It is the nursing bottle of insanity and the Mellin's Food of crime.
“Now hot air has been the favorite dissipation of kings. James the First was one of the world's greatest consumers of hot air; enough to put him into business with the Almighty. To be sure, it was not a full partnership. It was no absolute Hohenzollern monopoly of mortal participation.
“There are two kinds of sense in men—common and preferred, plain and fancy. The common has become the great asset of mankind; the preferred its great liability. Our forefathers had large holdings of the common, certain kings and their favorites of the preferred. The preferred represented an immense bulk of inherited superiority and an alleged pipe line leading from the king's throne to Paradise, and connected with the fount of every blessing by the best religious plumbers. It always drew dividends, whether the common got anything or not. The preferred holders ran the plant and insisted that they held a first mortgage on it. When they tried to foreclose with military power to back them, some of our forefathers got out.
“We, their sons, are now crossing the seas to take up that ancient issue between sense common and preferred and to determine the rights of each. We are fighting for the foundations of Democracy—the dictates of common sense.
“For the sake of saving time, I hope you will grant me license to resort to the economy of slang. A man might do worse these days. There is one great destroyer of common sense. It is hot air. I remember how scared of it the Yankees used to be. They were most economical with their praise. I never heard a word of it in my youth. It came to me after some travel now and then—never to my face. They knew the deadly power of it—those Yankees.
“Now hot air has been the favorite dissipation of kings. James the First was one of the world's' great consumers of hot air. He and his family and friends took all that Great Britain could produce—never, I am glad to say, a large amount, but enough to put James into business with the Almighty. To be sure, it was not a full partnership. It was no absolute Hohenzollern monopoly of mortal participation. It was comparatively modest, but it was enough to outrage the common sense of the English. After all, divine partnerships were not for the land of Fielding and Smollett and Swift and Dickens and Thackeray. Too much humor there. Too much liberty of the tongue and pen. Too great a gift for ridicule. Where there is ridicule there can be no self-appointed counselors of God, and handmade halos of divinity find their way to the garbage heap.
“Now, if we are to have sound common sense, we must have humor, and if we are to have humor we must have liberty. There can be no crowned or mitered knave, no sacred, fawning idiot, who is immune from ridicule; no little tin deities who can safely slash you with a sword unless you give them the whole of the sidewalk. Humor would take care of them; not the exuberance that is born in the wine-press or the beer-vat—humor is no by-product of the brewery—-but the merriment that comes when common sense has been vindicated by ridicule.
“Solemnity is often wedded to Conceit, and their children have committed all the crimes on record. You may always look for the devil in the neighborhood of some solemn and conceited ass who has inherited power and who, like the one that Balaam rode, speaks for the Almighty. So, when the devil came back, he steered for the most solemn and perfect ass on the face of the earth—Bill Hohenzollern.
“In his soul the devil began to destroy the common sense of a race with the atmosphere of hell—hot air. We have seen its effect. It inflates the intellect. It produces the pneumatic, rubber brain—the brain that keeps its friends busy with the pump of adulation; the brain stretched to hold its conceit, out of which we can hear the hot air leaking in streams of boastfulness. The divine afflatus of an emperor is apt to make as much disturbance as a leaky steam-pipe. When the pumpers cease because they are weary, it becomes irritated. Then all hands to the pumps again. Soon there is no illusion of grandeur too absurd to be real, no indictment of idiotic presumption which it is unwilling to admit.
“By and by it breaks into the realm of the infinite and hastens to the succor of God, for, to the pneumatic brain, God is slow and old-fashioned. Thereafter it infests the heavenly throne and seeks to turn it into a plant for the manufacture of improved morals, and, so as to insure their popularity, every agent for these morals is to carry a sword and a gun and a license to use them. The alleged improvement consists in taking all the nots out of the ten commandments. Nots are irritating to certain people who have plans for murder, rape, arson, and piracy.
“Hohenzollern and Krupp had taken the Lord into partnership and begun to give Him lessons in efficiency. Moreover, they were not to be free lessons. The lessons were to be paid for, but they were willing to give Him easy terms, for which they were to show Him how to hasten the slow process of evolution. Evolution was hindered and delayed by sentiment and emotion.
“Sentiment and emotion were a needless inheritance. Hohenzollern and Krupp proposed to cut them out of life and abolish tears. Tears consumed the time and strength of the people. They were factors of inefficiency. What was the use of crying over spilled milk and dead people? Tears were in the nature of a luxury. The poor could not afford them. Life was not going to be lived any longer—it was to be conducted. It was to be a kind of a hurried Cook's tour. Nobody would have to think or feel. All that would be attended to by the proper official. Life was to be reduced to a merciless iron plan like that of the beehive—the most perfect example of efficiency in nature, with its two purposes of storage and race perpetuation.
“No one ever saw a bee shedding tears or worrying about the murder of a drone.
“The ideal of Germany was to be that of the insect. To the bee there is nothing in the world but bees, enemies, and the nectar in flowers; to the German there was to be nothing in the world but Germans, enemies, and loot With no wall of pity and sentiment between them and other races they could rain showers of bursting lyddite on the unsuspecting, and after that the will of the Kaiser and God would be respected. The firm would prosper. It is not the first time that conceit and Kultur have hitched their wagon to infinity. It is the old scheme of Nero and Caligula—-the ancient dream of the pneumatic prince. He can rule a great nation, but first he must fool it. First he must induce his people to part with their common sense and take some preferred—a dangerous quality of preferred. This he can do in a generation by the systematic use of hot air.
“You may think that this endangered the national morals, but do not be hasty. The morals were being looked after.
“Every school, every pulpit, every newspaper, every book, became a pumping-station for hot air impregnated with the new morals. Poets, philosophers, orators, teachers, statesmen, romancers, were summoned to the pumps: Rivers of beer and wine flowed into the national abdomen and were converted into mental and moral flatulency.
“For thirty years Germany had been on a steady dream diet. Every school, every pulpit, every newspaper, every book, became a pumping-station for hot air impregnated with the new morals. Poets, philosophers, orators, teachers, states' men, romancers, were summoned to the pumps.
“Morning hate with its coffee and prayers, its hourly self-contentment with its toil, its evening superiority with its beer and frankfurters. History was falsified, philosophy bribed, religion coerced and corrupted, conscience silenced—at first by sophistry, then by the iron hand. Hot air was blowing from all sides. It was no gentle breeze. It was a simoom, a tornado. No one could stand before it—not even a sturdy Liebknecht or an unsullied Harden.
“Germany was inebriated with a sense of its mental grandeur and moral pulchritude. Now moral pulchritude is like a forest flower. It can not stand the fierce glare of publicity; you can not handle it as you would handle sausages and dye and fertilizer. Observe how the German military party is advertising its moral pulchritude—one hundred per cent, pure, blue ribbon, spurlos versenkt, honest-to-God morality!—the kind that made hell famous.
“I don't blame than at all. How would any one know that they had it if they did not advertise it?
“It is easy to accept the hot-air treatment for common sense—easy even for sober-minded men. The cocaine habit is not more swiftly acquired and brings a like sense of comfort and exhilaration. Slowly the Germans yielded to its sweet inducement. They began to believe that they were supermen—the chosen people; they thanked God that they were not like other men. Their first crime was that of grabbing everything in the heaven of holy promise. It would appear that those clever Prussians had arranged with St. Peter for all the reserved seats—nothing but standing room left Heaven was to be a place exclusively for the lovers of frankfurters and sauerkraut and Limburger cheese.
“God was altogether their God. Of course! Was He not a member of the firm of Hohenzollern & Krupp? And, being so, other races were a bore and an embarrassment. Would He not gladly be rid of them? Certainly. Other races were God's enemies, and therefore German enemies. So it became the right and duty of the Germans to reach out and possess the earth and its fulness. The day had arrived. There was nothing in the world but Germans and enemies and loot.
“Their great leader, in their name, had claimed a swinish monopoly of God's favor. His was not the contention of James the First, that all true kings enjoy divine-right—oh, not at all! Bill had grown rather husky and had got his feet in the trough, and was going to crowd the others out of it. He was the one and only. And as he crowded, he began to pray, and his prayers came out of lips which had confessed robbery and violated good faith and inspired deeds of inhuman frightfulness. His prayers were therefore nothing more nor less than hot air aimed at the ear of the Almighty and carrying with them the flavor of the swine-yard. In all this Church and people stood by him. It would seem that the devil had taken both unto a high mountain and showed them the kingdoms of the earth and their glory, and that they had yielded to his blandishments.
“Now the thing that has happened to the criminal is this. In one way or another, he loses his common sense. He ceases to see things in their just relations and proportions. The difference between right and wrong dwindles and disappears from his vision. He convinces himself that he has a right to at least a part of the property of other people. Often he acquires a comic sense of righteousness.
“I have lately been in the devastated regions of northern France. I have seen whole cities of no strategic value which the German armies had destroyed by dynamite before leaving them to a silence like that of the grave—the slow-wrought walls of old cathedrals and public buildings tumbled into hopeless ruin; the châteaux, the villas, the little houses of the poor, shaken into heaps of moldering rubbish. And I see in it a sign of that greater devastation which covers the land of William II—the devastation of the spirit of the German people; for where is that moral grandeur of which Heine and Goethe and Schiller and Luther were the far-heard compelling voices? I tell you it has all been leveled into heaps of moldering rubbish—a thousand times more melancholy than any in France.
“Behold the common sense of Germany become the sense that is common only among criminals! The sooner we recognize that, the better. They are really burglars in this great house of God we inhabit, seeking to rob it of its best possessions—Hindenburglars! In this war we must give them the consideration due a burglar, and only that. We must hit them how and where we may. We are bound by no nice regard for fair play. We must kill the burglar or the burglar will kill us.
“When I went away to the battle-front, a friend said to me:
“'Try to learn how this incredible thing came about and why it continues. That is what every one wishes to know.'
“Well, hot air was the cause of it. Now why does it continue? My answer is, bone-head—mostly plumed bone-head.
“Think of those diplomats who were twenty years in Germany and yet knew nothing of what was going on around them and of its implications! You say that they did know, and that they warned their peoples? Well, then, you may shift the bone-heads on to other shoulders. Think of the diplomatic failures that have followed!
“I bow my head to the people of England and to the incomparable valor of her armies and fleets. My friendly criticism is aimed at the one and only point in which she could be said to resemble Germany, viz., in a certain limited encouragement of supermen.
“Now, if the last three years have taught us anything, it is this: the superman is going to be unsupered. Considering the high cost of up-keep and continuous adulation, he does not pay. He is in the nature of a needless tax upon human life and security. His mistakes, even, to use no harsher word, have slaughtered more human beings than there are in the world. The born gentleman and professional aristocrat, with a hot-air receiver on his name, who lives in a tower of inherited superiority and looks down at life through hazy distance with a telescope, has and can have no common sense. He is a good soldier, he knows the habits of the grouse and the stag, he can give an admirable dinner, he understands the principles of international law, but when international law turns into international anarchy he is not big enough to find the way of common sense through the emergency. He has not that intimate knowledge of human nature which comes only of a long and close contact with human, beings. Without that knowledge he will know no more of what is in the other fellow's mind and the bluff that covers it in a critical clash of wits than a baby sucking its bottle in a perambulator. He fails, and the cost of his failure no man can estimate. He stands discredited. As a public servant he is going into disuse and his going vindicates the judgment of our forefathers as to like holders of sense preferred.
“Now is the time when all men must choose between two ideals: Behold the common sense of Germany become the sense that is common only among criminals! The sooner we recognize that, the better. They are really burglars in this great house of God we inhabit, seeking to rob it of its best possessions—Hindenburglars! the proud and merciless heart on the one hand, that of the humble and contrite heart on the other; between the Hun and the Anglo-Saxon, between evil and good. Faced by such an issue I declare myself ready to lay all that I have or may have on the old altar of our common faith.
“My friend, be of good cheer. The God of our Fathers has not been Kaisered or Krupped or hurried in the least. There is no danger that Heaven will be Teutonized.
“The shouting and the tumult dies—The captains and the kings depart—! Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice.
“An humble and a contrite heart Lord God of hosts, be with us yet.
“Lest we forget—lest we forget
“Lest we forget the innumerable dead who have nobly died, and the host of the living who with a just and common sense and love of honor have sent them forth to die. Lest we forget that we and our allies have not been above reproach; that there were signs of decadence among us—in the growing love of ease and idleness, in the tango dance of literature and lust, in the exaltation of pleasure, in a very definite degeneration of our moral fiber.
“Lest we forget that our spirit is being purified in the furnace of war and the shadow of death. Do you remember the protest of those poilus when some unclean plays were sent to the battle front for their entertainment?
“'We are not pigs'—that was the message they sent back.
“Lest we forget that the spirit of man has been lifted up out of the mud and dust of the battle lines, out of the body tortured with pain and weariness and vermin, out of the close companionship of the dead into high association on the bloody altar of liberty and sacrifice.
“Lest we forget that the spirit of our own boys shall be thus lifted up, and our duty to put our house in order and make it a fit place for them to live in when they shall have returned to it from battle-fields swept, as a soldier has written, by the cleansing winds of God.”
Truth is a great teacher but she often quarrels with the cook,” said Mr. Potter, while looking at his watch.
He went to the telephone and called his home and presently began to address his wife as follows:
“Hello, Betsy! Say, don't expect me 'till I come. I'm in trouble. A feller came in here and started the war all over again and there's no tellin' when it'll end. I do not want an inconclusive peace.”
As he hung up the telephone his stenographer came in to say good night. Mr. Potter took his old rifle off the wall, dusted It with a desk cloth and said:
“My great grandfather used that in the battle of Lexington.”
He squinted down its long barrel while he gave these instructions to his helper.
“Joe, send down to The Sign of the Flapjack, née Child's, and order corned beef hash and poached eggs and apple pie and coffee for two.”
He turned to me and asked:
“Any amendments to propose to that ticket?”
“None,” I answered.
“Then we will consider it elected. Have the table spread here by the fire, if you please.”
He filled and lighted his pipe, settled down in an easy chair and began again, with his gun resting across his knees: “The superors try to square themselves by giving to the poor. It doesn't work. Often we do more harm than good by giving to the poor. Kindness, sympathy, loving counsel and the brotherly hand can accomplish much. But the charily of cold cash is a questionable thing. The girl who knits a pair of socks accomplishes a larger net result to the good than the one that gives ten pairs to charity. The girl who did the knitting really produced something. She had made the world better off by one pair of socks. There is no doubt about that. The girl who has bought and given away ten pairs has produced nothing. She has made the world in general no better off. She is a slacker. She is trying to make her money do her work for her.
“The time has come when the world in general has to be considered by each of us. Civilized humanity has been compacted into a unit. It is threatened by famine and tyranny. All the money there is can not save us from these perils unless a lot of people get busy who are now doing nothing but eat and play. Money has become a very cheap and vulgar thing—almost every one has money these days.
“The time of the great assessment has come and the Lord God is taking His inventory. Everything is being measured and valued; even your usefulness, my friend. What are you producing? Is it enough to feed and clothe yourself and family, even? Corn and potatoes and wheat and wool are more than money these days. If you don't help to produce them, you are, more or less, a dead weight.
“The idle lands in America ought to get busy. How? The rich men should begin to cultivate them. I know one such man who is growing two hundred and fifty acres of potatoes in Florida where nothing has grown before, and it is estimated his yield will be at least fifty thousand bushels. Now, that man is doing a real service to Democracy.
“When the monster of war is devouring the fruitfulness of the earth and stopping the labor of those who produce it, there is only one remedy. We must increase that fruitfulness so that there shall be enough to feed the monster and the people at home. If this is to be done, every one must work. In such a situation, the idleness of the able-bodied becomes a disgrace, and his dinner the food of remorse.
“Get busy. I do not mean that we should never play. I do mean that every day we should do a fair day's work with our hands and brain for the good of the world at large.
“The war has established two brotherhoods, my friend—that's the big thing about it. A brotherhood of democracy and a brotherhood of slaves.
“This brotherhood of slaves has been created by the leprous soul of Bill Hohenzollern. He has broken down the will of the average man in Germany and established his own in place of it. He has yoked his people with the slaves of Turkey and Bulgaria, and with them has overawed the will of the Austro-Hungarians, mostly a decent people. The will of the Kaiser has spread over middle Europe like a plague. The name of the plague is Williamism. We have caught it in America.”
“In America!” I exclaimed.
“In America,” Mr. Potter went on. “The quarantine officer has been bribed. He has left the door open and the plague has come in. The name of that officer is Human Conscience. Williamism can make no progress save through the carelessness or neglect of the human conscience.
“Long ago the German people turned over their consciences to the Kaiser and the Bundesrath with a license to use them as they thought best. The people said to themselves: 'The Kaiser enjoys the special protection and favor of the Lord. He is an intimate friend with a pull. He ought to be able to make a more expert use of our consciences than we could ourselves. Therefore, we will appoint him our representative and proxy at the Court of Heaven. If he and his friends decide, after due consultation with God, that we had better violate good faith and break our treaties and seize the property of other races and indulge in murder, rape, arson and piracy, we will do it. To be sure such action would seem to be wrong, but that is only because we are common cattle. We are the best herd of common cattle there is, but we are not supermen. The Bundesrath, the Kaiser and God ought to know what is right.
“Now that, in effect, is exactly what they said to themselves. A people may prosper and come to no violent trouble under such a plan. But the fact is, they are living around the crater of a moral Vesuvius.
“For two generations all seemed to be going well with the Germans. William I was a fairly decent-minded man. Bismarck was unscrupulous but careful. He stepped softly after he had bitten a chunk out of France. He held the throne in restraint until William, the Godful, jumped upon it with a wild yell of heavenly inspiration that startled the world. He was going to take no advice from Mr. Bismarck—not a bit! Right away he appointed himself secretary of war and attorney general of the Almighty. No such astonishing familiarity with omnipotence had been seen since the time of Moses.
“There is an ancient legend which says that, when Cæsar invaded Gaul, an old bowman of the north, having been captured and brought to the headquarters of the great Consul, said:
“'Hello, Julius! I am with you.'
“It was like Bill Hohenzollern, only Bill didn't say 'Hello, Julius!' The whole world stood aghast.
“Bismarck stepped down and out. He must have seen what was coming.
“Now this young lunatic should have been examined and condemned and sent to an asylum as a paranoiac. Instead of that, he was given full power and allowed to endow and develop a school of bribed historians and lunatic philosophers to justify his plans—-Treitschke, Nietzsche, Bernhardi, backed by the throne and all the supermaniacs that surrounded it. They created the new morality of Williamism in which all human decency was disemboweled and God and the devil exchanged crowns. Gosh almighty! It seems incredible now that we look back upon it.
“From the beginning there has been a flavor of the little tin god about these Hohenzollern fellers. Frederick the Great had a menacing rattle of self-assertion, like that of a Ford car going to a country picnic. His favorite dissipation was kicking soldiers. It was a way he had of advertising his superiority.
“Macaulay tells us that he needed proximity and not provocation to kick a soldier. What a brave Captain he was! Funny, isn't it, how the great Captains have managed to take care of themselves. Died on hair mattresses, every one of them except two, Gustavus Adolphus and Stonewall Jackson.
“The only man who ever insulted me by just shaking my hand was a mule-eared Hohenzollern chap known as Prince Heinrich of Prussia. I can never forget that you-to-hell air of his as he took my hand as if it was a clod of dirt, without even a look at me. I have always been sorry that I didn't invite him to the sidewalk.
“William II began to strut in the military and hot-air game as soon as he ascended the throne, and lost no opportunity to tighten his hold upon the consciences of his people.
“Let me tell you the story of
“I used to know a feller here of the name of Sam Hopkins. He worked for a client of mine who ran a lock factory. Sam had been a poor lad—sold newspapers on the street night and morning. My client liked him and took him over to the big shop and taught him the trade of making locks and paid his board until he was able to earn it. Sam became an expert mechanic and shoved money into his coffers every Saturday night. By and by he had a wife and three children and a comfortable home and a goodly amount of spondoolix earning interest. Now for the chance to accomplish all that he was indebted to my friend and client.
“By and by Sam joined the Trade Union. Nobody could find any fault with Sam for uniting with his fellow workers to accomplish any fair and reasonable purpose. But Sam had given to the Trade Union exactly what the Germans had given to the Kaiser and the Bundesrath. He had, in effect, turned his conscience over to the Union, which had full authority to do as it thought best with this sacred piece of property. Sam didn't realize what he had done until the Union ordered him to strike.
“To be sure it was a limited proprietorship over his conscience which Sam had given to the Union. He could keep and use it until the Union called for it. He had given a kind of note payable in the use of his conscience on demand.
“Sam had no quarrel with the works—no more quarrel than the Germans had with the Belgians—not a bit. He was more than satisfied with his wages and his hours and his general treatment His conscience told him that his duty was to keep at work. But he discovered suddenly that he had no right to the use of his own conscience. He had deeded it, on demand, to the Union—lock, stock and barrel. Sam had become a kind of German soldier.
“War was declared. Some of the faithful servants of the big shop were slain. Others were injured; a part of the properly was wrecked. Sam tried to do the right thing, but couldn't. He went with the German army.
“Now, a man's conscience is given to him for his own use—exclusively for his own use. There's nothing truer than this: A man's conscience is like his tooth-brush—it should have but one proprietor. You can not leave it lying around like an old pair of shoes. Your umbrella is not as easily lost. It is like your right hand. You can not lay it away—you can not lend it, and the more you use it the better it is and the less you use it the weaker it is. Either disuse or misuse will injure it and possibly deprive you of its service.
“Now, Sam's conscience got mislaid in the shuffle. He suddenly discovered that he hadn't any. I guess it was rather small at best. It was through this loss that I came to know about him. He was out of work for seven months and got to drinking. Idleness and regret and the loss of friends turned him toward the downward path of women, wine and song. He is now in a Federal prison for counterfeiting—the victim of Williamism.
“Now just what had happened to Sam had happened to every man in the German army. In that deal with the Kaiser his conscience had got mislaid. He was ready to cut off the hands of a child or torture a wounded man or shoot an inoffensive civilian. His officers encouraged him to do it and his conscience was not on duty. It had been turned over to the Kaiser and the Bundesrath. It had got lost in the shuffle.
“I have told you that William had made the ideal of Germany that of the insect. Let me be sure that you get my meaning.
“Have you watched a hive of bees in bright summer weather? Well, you will find that the workers wear out their wings in two weeks and die. The hive has only two purposes—storage and race perpetuation.
These purposes are carried out with ruthless and perfect efficiency.
The drones are stung to death as soon as they are discovered. The worker will starve and die for the queen. The welfare of the hive is the main thing—that of the individual of no account whatever. The ants live and die on the same general plan.
“So I say that the ideal of Williamism is that of the insect. The hive is the empire. Its main purposes are storage and race perpetuation. Its chief aim is efficiency. The nation is everything; the individual nothing. The individual is to work and store and is not even to take the time to cry if he feels like it.
“The hive has only two purposes—storage and race perpetuation. These purposes are carried out with ruthless and perfect efficiency. The drones are stung to death as soon as they are discovered.
“In Berlin fifty-three per cent, of the workers live with their families in two rooms.
“Now I deny that the main purposes of human life are storage and race perpetuation and efficiency. If that were true, the man that had the most cash and wives and children would be the greatest man in the world.
“A few years ago a man died in England. He had only a few books and about five hundred dollars in money. Yet he was called one of the greatest men in the world. Every one took off his hat to that man because he had Character, He was Cardinal Newman.
“Lincoln died poor and he was about the homeliest, awkwardest man in America, and yet the whole world mourned for him because he had accumulated Character.
“That is the great thing, and the main purpose of life is to develop character in individuals. That development comes mostly through failure. Success is the worst of teachers.
“If one were to estimate the greatness of a people he would disregard its armies and navies and the splendor of its cities and the deposits in its banks, and go out to that people and appraise the character of its average man,—his respect for honor and decency and especially his respect for that great, world embracing unit known as human rights.
“Right here I must tell you the story of
“There was once a man who was born successful. He inherited success and for many years kept it coming his way. Did you ever hear of a man of the name of Shote? Of course not. Neither did I. That's one reason why I am going to call him Shote—John Shote, if you please. My story is strictly true, but I would ask no one to believe the name of its leading character.
“John was a great success. Some people called him a great man. Indeed, everybody took off his hat and said: 'How do you do, Mr. Shote?' or words to that effect when he came along.
“I suppose you will think that Mr. Shote only nodded and passed on, but he was not so bad as that. No, he answered: 'Very well, thank you,' and went about his business. He failed to return your solicitude but did not wonder at it.
“He lived in a neighboring town—let us call it Shoteville—and was soon, indeed, the principal Shote of Shoteville. The business was there. It had always prospered. When his father died, John took the crown and became a swearing, rantankerous tyrant.
“He inaugurated a system of efficiency. He trusted nobody. There was an indicator at the entrance of the big building and every worker great and small had to touch a button on this indicator when he left or entered the place. He had a kind of guillotine in the office and every day heads fell into the basket. But when a man left Mr. Shote it was a point to his credit in Shoteville. It showed that he was above being sworn at. It was a kind of recommendation—a thing to boast of. Every one in the shop was sooner or later called by Mr. Shote “a damn leather head.” It was a kind of initiation. If he accepted the classification and remained Mr. Shote decided that he was amenable to discipline and thought him a promising man. Outsiders looked down upon him. The men who stayed year after year and endured the insults of Mr. Shote were known in that community as 'the damn leatherheads.'
“Every worker was a wheel or a shaft or a lever in the big machine. When, worn or broken, he was cast aside.
“It will be seen that Mr. Shote was one of the followers of William. In his office were busts of Julius and Augustus Caesar and portraits of Napoleon and Frederick the Great. He worshiped power and kicked the common soldier.
“While he was in America, I am glad to say he was not an American—not really. To be sure he was born here and voted here, but he was really a Prussian and his shop was a little kingdom in the midst of a democracy.
“Mr. Shote really thought himself one of the noblest men that ever lived. He was a great success even as a thinker. A man can think himself into anything he pleases from a lobster to a saint. Just where he got off I leave the reader to judge.
“Unfortunately, Mr. Shote believed his own thoughts—all of them. It is a dangerous habit to acquire—that of believing oneself—believe me. If there's any one that requires careful corroboration it's yourself. Mr. Shote could not help believing his own thoughts—they were so commanding and imperious.
“Whatever else we may say of him he was honest, as men go. He paid his debts promptly and kept his credit high and even gave large sums to charity.
“His great lack was common sense; his great failing an uncontrolled temper. When you become the pivot around which the whole world revolves you are apt to get hot and noisy. The world bears down rather hard. So Mr. Shote squeaked and roared with anger every day of his life.
“His great vice was too much efficiency. No man in the plant had any power of initiative, due to the fact that Mr. Shote had no faith in any one but himself. The plant proceeded on an iron plan.
“Now, every big thing that was ever accomplished has been the work of some individual who at a critical moment has broken away from plans and made his own orders and acted on them—the kind of thing that Grant did at Appomattox; the kind of thing that Lincoln did in his great proclamation. Bill Hohenzollern would have called it inefficiency.
“Just that kind of thing would have saved Mr. Shote in the critical moment of his career. That moment fell upon him like a thunderbolt out of a dear sky one day.
“If you sow Williamism you are bound to reap it Mr. Shote's lavish crop ripened suddenly.
“The 'Leatherheads' decided one day to meet efficiency with efficiency. They were right Mr. Shote had been running a little kingdom in America and the 'Leatherheads' founded one of their own. They had started a union and appointed an emperor and told him to go ahead and outkaiser the king. They struck for higher wages and fewer hours. Mr. Shote was away at one of his palaces in the South.
“Now all the trouble might have ended in a decent compromise that day if the boss of the 'Leatherheads' on duty at the time had had the power and courage to act on his own judgment and do a really big thing for once in his life. He didn't have it. The wheels stopped.
“The king returned. His irritation was heard in distant places. He would never yield. His men were no longer 'Leatherheads.' They were inversely promoted. It was a critical time in the business. The plant went into default on its contracts. The king stood firm; so did the workers.
“The plant was idle for months. It was the beginning of the end of Mr. Shote's prosperity. His rivals captured his best men and his customers and most of the good will he had enjoyed. The business went down like a house of cards.
“We often say that business is business here in America. It isn't so. Business is more, much more than mere business here in America. It is friendship, it is personality, it is credit—the credit for good sense and square dealing and high character—a character that is shared in some measure by every servant of the enterprise, be he manager or errand boy.
“That cohesive power that flows out of a great personality into the whole structure of a business was not in the warp and woof of Mr. Shote's commercial ramifications. They came to grief. So did Mr. Shote.
“Then we discovered suddenly that Mr. Shote had two wives and two families. As a husband and a father he had enjoyed a success at once unusual and unsuspected. A superman is generally super married. He had acquired imperial morals. The second wife appealed to the courts in a wild yell for her stopped allowance and the result was that, in a short time, Mr. Shote stood alone and universally despised between two family fires. His efficiency had gone too far.
“Again I say, success is the worst of teachers—save to those who sit in the grand stand while it is working out its failure. Unfortunately, it gave the laboring men of this country a lesson in Williamism which has spread over America. I wish the workers all success in getting their just share of the fruits of commerce, but let it be done by fair, democratic methods and not through Williamism.
“Above all no man should hitch his conscience to a post as if it were a mule or a nanny-goat and go off and leave it.
“It is to be hoped that the patriotic Samuel Gompers will not abandon his pursuit of Williamism even after the war ends.
“The big point of the whole thing is this: One day the Leatherhead Monarch, came into this office, closed the door behind him, sat down beside me and said:
“'Mr. Potter, I see that I have the intellect of an idiot. What shall I do to be saved?'
“At last he had learned something—a really serviceable and important fact—and he had learned it not by success but by failure.”
As he approached his climax, Mr. Potter had shown a little annoyance at the arrival of the waiter and the hash and the eggs and the pie. Mr. Potter rose, stood his rifle in a corner and said:
“I regret that my climax and this wandering Ganymede with his load of hash should have arrived at the same moment.”
The waiter spread the table in front of the fireplace. Mr. Potter put a coin in his hand and pointing at the door said:
“Go hence and come not back until to-morrow.”
He placed chairs by the table and we sat down.
“Is this pie, apple, that I see before me the handle toward my hand?” he playfully remarked, as he lifted a firm built piece of pie in his hand and began to eat it in the old fashion. “Bread may be the staff of life, but pie is the light in its windows. I don't want to be hurried by its invitation, so I guess I'll get it out of the way.”
Our dinner over, Mr. Potter put a new log on the fire. Then we set the table aside and lighted our cigars.
“There is another sector in the line of the Williamites that is pretty thoroughly dug in,” said the Honorable Socrates, as he put his feet upon the fender and leaned back comfortably in his chair. “Let me tell you the story of
“She was a Williamistic widow—the relict of the late Samuel Butters.
“She was also a Shrimpstone, of Kalamazoo. My friend, why do you sit there in cold indifference when I mention a fact so inspiring?”
“Who were the Shrimpstones?” I inquired.
“The Shrimpstones! Jiminy crickets! Is it possible that you are not familiar with the fame of Joshua Shrimpstone?”
“I have to plead guilty,” was my answer.
“To tell you the truth, so do I,” he went on, “but my own ignorance never surprises me. There is so much of it that a little more or less does not matter. It is the ignorance of so many of my fellow countrymen regarding this important subject that fills me with pity and astonishment. I have never met a man who could give me the slightest information regarding the Shrimpstones.
“It would seem that Mrs. Butters enjoys an arrogant and heartless monopoly of all knowledge about them. One does not feel like asking her to dispel his ignorance when she speaks the word 'Shrimpstone' as if it opened vistas of incomparable splendor and inspiration. No, there are things which even a lawyer can not do. There is a special look in her eye and a lyrical note in her voice when she says 'my grandfather, the late Joshua Shrimpstone.' I imagine that Bill Hohenzollern looks like that when he says: 'My grandfather, Frederick the Great' But I imagine, too, that Bill's manner is a bit more casual.
“I had done some business for Mrs. Butters now and then, and one day she came to get my advice on a strictly personal matter. Her son, John Shrimpstone Butters, was just out of college. She had expected Butters & Bronson, of the great corset factory, in which she had a considerable interest, to take him into the firm and give him a commanding position in the office. As they had not come forward with an invitation, she had asked them for that favor. They had refused—actually and firmly refused—and what do you think they had offered John—a great grandson of Joshua Shrimpstone? Why, they had offered him a place as errand boy at five dollars a week. They actually expected him to begin at the bottom of the ladder and work his way up as if he were nothing more than the ambitious son of a ditch digger. Mrs. Butters lost her self-control and sobbed as she confided the distressing fact to me.
“I told her that I would have a talk with Bill Bronson, the head of the firm, and see what could be done about it, and she left me.
“In my talk with him, Bill said:
“'We should like to do anything we can for Mrs. Butters's boy but all we can do is to give him a chance—the same chance that my own boy will have. He can begin at the bottom and we will push him along from one department to another as rapidly as he can master its details. He must learn every process from the making to the delivery of the goods. Above all, he must learn to be a good salesman. After a few years he might become the Butters of Butters & Bronson if he were willing to work hard.'
“I wired Mrs. Butters to call again at my office. She called. I told her what Bill Bronson had said to me.
“'What!' she exclaimed. 'He expects my son to become a common drummer and travel around selling goods to little shopkeepers! Impossible!'
“'Why?' I asked.
“'Because he does not have to. My grandfather, the late Joshua Shrimp-stone, left us enough so that we do not have to do that kind of thing. Besides. I do not think it is necessary. My son has intelligence enough to learn those menial pursuits without having to do them.'
“'You are wrong,' I said. 'The American way is to begin at the bottom. It's a very good way—the only way by which one may be thoroughly prepared for management. In that way he gets hold of the sense that is common in the rank and file of his army, and knowing that, he will know what to do in every emergency.'
“'If that is true, John might as well have been born poor. Does his position and the fact that I have five thousand shares of stock count for nothing?'
“'Well, you get dividends on the stock. If you expect to get dividends also on the position that you got from your grandfather you are wrong. In this country we have no crown princes who begin at the top. Inherited superiority is an amusing thing to look at but a poor foundation for credit. In this country we bank on demonstrated superiority.'
“Mrs. Butters rose and haughtily withdrew from my office with the pride of the Shrimpstones glittering in her eye.
“Now, John Butters was a good fellow. He was over-mothered. Indeed, the word for it is smothered. He was like a man cast into the sea with a Shrimpstone tied around his neck. He would have done well with half a chance. I never saw a man so badly in need of poverty, so damned with affectionate, gilded, comfortable female despotism. She bought one business after another for him and put him in at the top. He has failed in all these undertakings. His way is littered with broken crowns and the wreckage of little kingdoms.
“Now his youth is gone and he is the same useless, ineffective good fellow that he was in the beginning. For years he and his mother have been sitting on that high horse of hers and galloping around to the amusement of all beholders. He has got tired of it and jumped off and settled down as the clerk of a wife who takes him lightly.
“He is the victim of assumed superiority which is nothing more or less than Williamism.”
The Honorable Socrates Potter went to the typewriter and got some oil and a cloth and began to clean the gun of his great grandfather as he talked.
“You see, William says: To hell with the common man. Let him do the work and the fighting. We'll take the product of toil and the loot of war and enjoy ourselves. We will not have a thing to do but super. If we glut the officers of the army and our leading citizens with, the product and the loot, they'll stand by us.
“Is it not significant that the number of plutocrats in Germany has doubled since the war began? William proposes to make human slaughter a business. He is running a giant butcher shop.
“Every idler, every superer is an ally of William and an enemy of Democracy.”
“But they seem to get the best of it—these superers,” I suggested. “They have a lot of fun.”
“They seem to, but, soon or late, they learn it hasn't paid. They come to grief or insanity—these slackers in the game of life. Let me tell you the little story of
“She had the most curious and painful brainful of sense preferred in the whole show.
“When I was a small boy my pocket was one day dispossessed of some green apples, a quantity of horse nails and lead sinkers, a squirt gun, a bird's nest; a piece of beeswax and a hawk's wing. This collection would rank high as an exhibit of eccentric assets, but the contents of this lady's mind belongs in the same alcove.
“It is to be credited to Alabama where she was born about sixty years before I met her in Paris last summer. She had a charming southern accent. It was the best thing she had. I liked it. I like all those little provincialisms which have the flavor of their native air and soil. Why shouldn't the manner of decent men and women grow in the way of nature out of their environment? I love the drawl that is the natural product of New England, the quaint, indolent slur of Dixieland, the breezy dialect of the Far West. If they all talked alike what a dull country we should have!
“Certain of the schools are trying to force a common method of speech. It is the dialect of Mayfair and Fifth Avenue. It would seem that they wish to turn us into human bricks of the same size, grade and color. Under the encouragement of Mr. Henry James, whose slender Americanism perished at last in formal expatriation, our New York and New England girls have begun to talk like Duchesses. But among women of the South and the Far West, you may still hear the real, genuine American talk. To me it is refreshing.
“At least this may be said for The Wedding Tourist—she was no school-made, rococo Duchess. She was as real and unaffected as a bale of hay.
“Sometimes I call her The Grasshopper Widow because she was always on the move. She had hopped twice around the world and back. When she needed a husband she reached out and grabbed one and hastened away on another wedding tour as if nothing had happened.
“To her, life was a series of wedding tours. She had jumped from one honeymoon to another in the most casual and engaging fashion. She was, indeed, a kind of professional honey-mooner who from the beginning of her matrimonial career had enjoyed the pseudonym of Baby. Inns, table d'hôtes, ruins, art galleries, theaters, scenery and honey-fuglement had filled her life.
“She had explored the capitals of the world with real feminine curiosity. She had loved their music and doted upon their art and tasted their religion and rustled in their silks and generally beat the bushes to see what would run out.
“When we first met, a remark of hers suggested my query:
“'Was your husband a Yale man?'
“'Which one? I've had two an' a half.'
“'Two and a half I I never heard of a fractional husband before.'
“'My first husband was only half a man, suh. I married my guardian when I was sixteen. He nevah would do a thing between trips but sit around an' eat an' drink mint juleps. We went on our wedding tour and I kept him going for two years, but it was hard work. Nearly wore me out. He was like one of those toys that you have to wind up before it will go. Always had a pain in his feet—nevah could dance or do a thing but just sit, or ride on the cars or in a spring wagon. Lordy, girls! don't evah marry a man 'til you've tried his feet an' have confidence in 'em. Now, you hear me! He nevah did do a thing to please me but call me “Baby.”
“The next man I married had a sistuh with a weak mind by the name of Peggy. I had to look after her an' she'd take out her mind, like, an' open it an' show it to everybody that came into the house, an' turn it inside out as if she was right proud of it. Honestly, it reminded me of my boy when he got his first watch—how he'd open it an' show you the works an' then hold it up to your ear so you could hear it tick. That's what Peggy was always doing with her mind, recitin' poetry or showin' you pearls of thought taken out of the clam beds of her intellect. It certainly was awful!
“Tercy Higginbottom had a wooden leg an' limped some, but the worst thing about him was Peggy. I have erected a monument a mile high to that man in the graveyard of my memory. He was right good to me. He would stump around all day lookin' at sights and take me to the theater in the evening and to supper afterwards and nevah murmured. Sometimes his leg got sore but he kept up.
“'I married him in Paris. We started off on our weddin' tour an' it lasted about fifteen years. We traveled an' traveled all that time. We played we was just married and on our honeymoon.
“'He used to say: “Baby, what a wonderful time we are having on this wedding tour.”'
“'We had two children—a boy and a girl. Once a year we'd come back to Paris and spend two or three months with them.'
“'You didn't take them with you?'
“'We left them with Mr. Higginbottom's mothah an' a nurse an' governess. Peggy, the sistuh with a weak mind, went with us—she was all the care we needed. She knew enough to hook an' button my dresses an' help me pack. She was the only black spot in all those happy years.
“'Percy took care o' my jewels. It was all he had to do.'
“'A tender husband and a watch dog of the jewels!' I remarked.
“'And there were hours when it kept him mighty busy—you hear me. I can't help laughin' whenever I think of it.
“'Once we missed one of my rings. We thought it had been stolen. The hotel manager had every maid and bell boy brought into our room and searched. Suddenly Percy found it in a waistcoat pocket.
“'One evening we were gettin' off a steamer. Suddenly I slapped my hand on my breast and yelled:
“'"My sunburst! Lord o' mercy! it's gone!”'
“'I was suah that I had put it on. We ran back up the gangway. We had only five minutes. Peggy fainted away—she was that weak-minded. You didn't dare sneeze for fear she would faint away. Percy grabbed her. I ran for the stateroom an' found the sunburst where I had left it under my pillow. We were all in, believe me—it nearly killed us. When we moved Percy always called the roll like: “The ruby ring,” an' I answered, “Here.”'
“The jade necklace.”
“Here.” Like that, until we knew that we had them all. That evening we didn't have time.
“'But we certainly did see the world until we lost something better than all the jewels. Lordy! Lordy! what a world it is!'
“'The boy died when he was eight. We were in Cairo. We hurried back to Paris. Mr. Higginbottom was nevah the same after that. I nevah could get him out of Paris again. He died there.
“'My next husband was the dearest and best man that evah did live. I met him here in Paris. His name was Horton. Weighed three hundred and fifty pounds. Some man! I says to myself: Now here's a man that'll las' me as long as I live. He drank too much, but I soon cured him o' that. He gave it up entirely an' our weddin' tour lasted 'til he died.'
“'Perhaps it wore him out,' I suggested.
“'No, he liked it and we were just as happy as two turtle doves. When I asked him to do anything, he would always say: “Well, Baby, you know best.”'
“'But he couldn't walk much. Weight was his great weakness. If you were jus' to think of him as a husband he was a little heavy; but no man is perfect.'
“'We had a big limousine an' he toted me around in that an' hired a maid to climb stairs an' go to the churches an' theaters an' art galleries with me.'
“'My daughtah had married an' settled in Chicago. One Decembah we thought it would be nice to go and spend Christmas with her. I just thought I'd stop beating around and get acquainted with my own family. We left Paris on the tenth and reached Chicago on the twenty-second. I called my daughtah on the telephone from our hotel.'
“'"My goodness! Is that you?” she said.
“'"Yes,” I said, “we have come all the way from Paris to spend Christmas with you.”
“'I'm awfully sorry, mothah,” she says. “The house will be full Christmas Day, but we'll have you for New Yeah's.”
“She stopped and wiped the tears from her eyes.
“'Say, I felt as if I had been hit with an axe. My husband said:
“'Well, Baby, I guess they don't want us. Don't you mind. We'll have a good Christinas dinner here at the hotel and then we'll go and spend a month in New York.”
“'I stopped traveling and went to thinking. Poor Mr. Horton didn't live long. Now he's gone an' I haven't anybody. No, my daughtah does not care for me. Her ol' nurse lives with her—an ignorant French woman. I offered to work hard if she would send that nurse away an' take me to live with her. She wouldn't do it—no, suh! She loves that nurse an' doesn't care for me—not the snap of her fingah. I have been trying to get a chance to work for the Red Cross. My money is about gone. They say money talks but all it evah says to me is “good-by.” My daughtah's husband has offered me a small allowance, but I will not take their money—no, suh! One wants affection from her daughtah—not charily! Lordy! what a world it is an' what fools we are!'
“'You've been playing ever since you were a little girl, and you're tired.'
“'Yes, I'm tired. I remember how my big brother used to come an' plague me an' break my toys. That is what Death has been doing to me. Wouldn't let me alone. I reckon he saw how foolish I was. I've seen about everything but I think the grandest sight in the world would be some one who was glad to see me. You can't make friends an' be always on the move.'
“I suppose she had come back to Paris to comb the beach for another wreck. But her beauty was gone—so was her occupation of Baby.
“Often, I wonder just how the story is to end—the story of that pathetic woman who was reaping what she had sown—the harvest of the childless mother.
“Well, anyhow, at last, common sense had landed in her intellect. She had never given it a chance before. Hadn't stood still long enough.”
Mr. Potter had got through with the gun. He rose and went to the wash basin as if intending to wash his hands. He turned suddenly as if he thought Germany were more in need of a washing. He strode toward me with a new idea gleaming in his eye and said:
“Darn it, I ain't got time to wash now. These Germans claim that they are the freest people in the world, and they are right.”
He thumped the table with a shut fist as he resumed his talk.
“One kind of liberty thrives under the Hohenzollerns: license is the precise word for it—not liberty—license to eat and drink and be sorry- -to satisfy the appetites of the flesh. The great crowd will stand a lot of tampering with its rights if you give it a good time—a broad privilege of self-indulgence. The Germans were a great people when Bill Hohenzollern took the reins of power—good-natured, industrious, God- fearing. The young men were encouraged to found their happiness on the sands of women, wine and song.
“The wine press and the beer vat are the indispensable adjuncts of Hohenzollerism. Alcohol is the balm of the mislaid conscience, the nourishment of the big-head and the pneumatic brain. These things lead to worse things. Swinish indulgence leads to the morals of the swine-yard.
“The church began to lose its power. The clergy were treated as Frederick treated the common soldier. They were kicked into servility. At first this kicking was politely done. Often the sore part was salved by the gift of a hundred marks. They were treated like hired men. They were to understand that they were just humble servants and that the Kaiser needed none of their advice. He knew all about the plans of God. Of course, in a little while, no man of brains and character would go near a pulpit. The priests of God became servile sycophants. The people ceased to respect them. The church had lost its power. To Germany it was an immeasurable loss.
“In France I found good evidence of the utter depravity of the German soldier. God knows I would not have thought it possible—the raping, the maiming of children, the daughters of whole communities carried into bondage. I would have thought that the decency common among dogs, even, in a Christian country, these days, would have shielded the helpless from such cruelty. It is evident that the officers gave countenance and encouragement to these crimes, or they could not have been accomplished. At the knowledge of these things, a cry of shame for their brothers in Germany has risen from the lips of all civilized men the world over.
“The infamy goes back to the men higher up—to Bill Hohenzollern and his gang of pirates and highwaymen. They have slain the soul of Germany.
“I am told by men who have lived there that in certain provinces a chaste woman is a thing unknown. Let us hope this exaggerates the truth. As to that I have no knowledge. But that the land of the Kaiser has lost its chivalry I have no doubt whatever. The loss of chivalry stands for the loss of conscience—for moral degradation. A man's value as a man may be accurately measured by his respect for women. A man who has no respect for women will have respect for your rights only because he has to. He would steal your purse if he dared. He is rotten to the core. Moreover, unless women are pure there can be no purity because they have the tender soul of childhood in their keeping.
“We ought to establish a moral quarantine here and save ourselves from the peril of German leprosy. It has arrived. It is spreading. You will find its symptoms in our theaters, now largely in the hands of the Germans.
“I have traveled much these late years and have failed to find an American city in which there was not one or more plays or moving pictures which reflected the morals of the swine-yard. There I have found girls and boys and children who are to make the life of America, drinking at the fountain of pollution, cleverly designed by the sex maniacs who live in the white lights of Broadway. On every sort of specious pretext—mostly that of warning the young—spaniel youths and porcelain-faced daughters of iniquity are paraded in libidinous enterprises. The cabarets and brothels of New York, with their fist fights between young women, their desperate, bull-dog encounters between sex maniacs, their ogling, besotted degenerates, sometimes with a lame pretense of a moral and sometimes without it, are shown for the entertainment of young America.
“The Huns have already invaded America, my friend. They are armed with things more deadly than guns and bullets. Their gun is the camera, their ammunition, the moving picture. That picture penetrates to the heart and soul of the young and no surgery can remove it. To them, seeing is believing.
“A man is mostly the sum of his memories. Think back and tell me what you remember of your childhood. It's the pictures you saw. I think the first thing I remember is the picture of a cat which my mother drew on a slate for me—a highly benevolent cat it was. The one I have remembered best is that of my mother standing in the morning sunlight among the hollyhocks by the open door and waving her handkerchief to me the day I went away to school. How often it has flashed out of my memory in these last forty years. There is no power like that of a picture for good or evil in the life of a child. Pictures are, indeed, the universal language of childhood.
“Now what is there in this special claim of the sex mongers that the truth about life—however hideous and revolting it may be—would best be known of all? Just this—it should be made known but not publicly in books and theaters. It should not be made a familiar thing—sitting at meat and lying down in bed with the sensitive imagination of the young. That will be sure to make it the one great truth of life. I prefer the privacy of home and the loving caution of a mother, taking care to impart the whole truth with its setting of perils and with no glamour of romance about it. I would as soon have my daughter's feet enter a brothel as her brain. She might shake the dust from her feet.
“What were the fruits of this home method in old New England? I would remind these European Americans who provide our amusements for us that the world has never seen a civilization like that of old New England. I am not saying that it had no faults, but its human product has justly excited the wonder and admiration of the world. There was not much of it. You could pick up those six little states and set them down within the boundaries of Minnesota and have 19,200 square miles to spare. Yet they gave to the world in the space of forty years, men of the stamp of Daniel Webster, Silas Wright, Charles Sumner, William Lloyd Garrison, William M. Evarts, George F. Edmunds, James G. Blaine, E. J. Phelps, Rufus Choate, Henry Ward Beecher, Dr. Channing, Lyman Abbott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry W. Longfellow, John G. Whittier, James Russell Lowell, Edmund C. Stedman, the Dwights, the Washburns.
“Wouldn't that seem to be doing fairly well?
“Now the fact is, men and women long for inspiration to a nobler life. There are those who will tell you that the crowds who go to hear Billy Sunday, do it simply to be amused. It is not true. It is a deeper thing. They go, driven by soul hunger. They long for wholesome food for the spirit. They wish to be stirred to nobler action and feel the inspiration of better ideals. They come by tens of thousands.
“There never was a clean, uplifting, noble work of fiction that did not number its readers by the million. There never was a strong inspiring play—like Peter Pan or Shore Acres—that failed to play to the full capacity of the house in which it was presented for years.
“Why then, ask us to wallow in all uncleanness—in the swine-yard of humanity?
“It is because uncleanness is cheaper and easier to get and is sure of an audience equally large and less discriminating; it is because these Huns care only for their own pockets and not a fig for the public good.
“Now, here is a work for the women of America. Here is a battle front on which they can fight the Huns. Men can help and will help, but they are busy with the more obvious and commonplace problems. This is a job of housecleaning. It is primarily a woman's job—that of setting in order the great house of America and looking after the welfare of its children. There is no greater work to be done than that of regenerating the theater. They can do it if they will.”
The Honorable Socrates Potter hung up the old rifle and washed his hands. There was a very gentle look in his eyes as he began pacing the floor. I saw: that another mood was coming.
“We must learn that wealth is no excuse for idleness or pride,” he went on. “Every one must find his work and do it, or come to grief—that is the conclusion of the whole matter. We have our European Americans—our Mislaid Consciences, our Leatherhead Monarchs, our Smothered Sons, our Shrimpstones, our Wedding Tourists. We must use the slipper with a firm but kindly hand, and remind them that they are of the Hohenzollern breed and request them to fall in line and get the pace and spirit of Democracy.
“With all our faults we are, in the main, sound and healthy. Our average man can be relied upon. He is our heart and sinew. We need not boast of him. He is willing to give all rather than see the spirit of man yield an inch of the progress it has made. That is enough to say of him. If any European country can match him, we are glad and he is glad—not envious.
“Our average man would enjoy a drink now and then, but in many of our states he has said: 'If the good of humanity demands it, let there be prohibition—anyhow we will give it a trial.'
“The trouble with Russia lies in the fact that among its people there are no individuals—no men trained in the use of the intellect and the conscience. Its people are like bricks, all of the same shape, size and color—all two inches wide and six inches long. They have a common denominator of material and a common numerator of ignorance. Between them and their rulers there has been no average man to speak for them, so the people are helpless. They know not what to say or do. They have been Kerenskyed and Trotskyfied and driven about like cattle.
“The Germans have an average man, but he has suffered himself to be Williamized. His conscience has been mislaid.
“Since 1860 this average man of ours has given of his blood and substance for the ideals of Democracy and with not the remotest hope of gain. His God is the father of the whole human family—a God of progress whose aim is not the selfish enjoyment of a favored few, but the welfare of all men the world over. His aim is, in short, common sense—a common sense of honor and decency and brotherhood in the great family.
“Again we fight for this ideal—driven to it by the hateful conduct of our brothers in Germany.
“I wish you would say for me to the folks at home that there is a great opportunity in this big common purpose of ours—an opportunity to drop all outworn and unessential differences of creed and get together. Let us inaugurate the Ismless Sunday and cut out the waste—the waste of rent and interest and coal and light and energy. Let us cut out the empty seats and the empty preachers and the quarrelsome brothers and sisters and get together in the biggest meeting-house in town on a basis of common sense—the common sense of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man with Christ as the great example. Let us not worry and quarrel as to whether Christ was God or man. He was the first and greatest Democrat and would have us work together in peace for Democracy. That is the important thing.
“Tell those ladies who sit around the fireplace knitting sweaters and indulging in delicious chills of pessimism, to quit. There should be an asylum for the misery lovers who sit in snug security and dream of misfortunes—Zeppelin raids, submarine bombardments and the end of the world. They grab at every straw of pessimism. Nothing pleases them so much as to find fault with the Government, which is doing its best with a difficult problem, and mighty well at that.
“Tell them to stop shooting at the pianist. He is the only one we have. All faces to the front! The spirit of Democracy is confidence in the justice and the success of its cause. Let there be no discordant voices in our chorus.
“That reminds me of the story of
“In the town of my birth there lived a hen-pecked farmer of the name of Amos Swope. He was a peaceful and contented soul without any good excuse for it. His wife, Ann Maria, was a scold and a fault finder. She had pecked upon Amos for years. When she got tired her sister came and helped her. My father used to say that they reminded him of Philo Scott's pet crane. Philo used to lead him around with a big cork stuck on the end of his bill.
“'What is that cork on his bill for?' my father asked.
“'So's 't he can't peck,' said Philo.
“'Can he peck?'
“'Tolerable severe, an' when he hits anything he calcallates to put a hole in it, an' he ain't often disapp'inted. One day my dog, Christmas, tackled him and the old crane fetched Christmas a peck on the forward an' I ain't seen that dog since. He's just naturally mean an' he ain't never learnt how to control himself.'
“So it was with Ann Maria and her sister. But Amos used to sit as quiet and unconcerned as an old tree with a pair of wood-peckers knockin' away at it. He never pecked back but once.
“They had gone up to the St. Lawrence to camp out an' fish for a week or so—Amos and his boy, Bill, and Ann Maria and her sister. One day when they were landing a big fish they got into the stiff current above the Long Sault. Something had to be done right away. Amos dropped his tackle and began pulling on the oars. Bill went to work with his paddle. The women began to complain an' move around and rock the boat. They knew they were going to be drowned. They insisted upon it with loud cries. Amos, in the midst of heroic efforts, tried to quiet them. They continued to cry out and when the boat shipped water they dodged. It was a bad situation.
“Amos fetched Ann Maria a cuff and told her to dry up an' sit still. The women obeyed him. When they were out of danger he said:
“'It ain't fair to expect a man to rassle with a strong current an' run an insane asylum all in the same minute. If ye can't help, don't hinder. You two have been rockin' the boat for years an' I guess it's about time ye quit.'
“People used to say that Ann Maria turned over a new leaf and behaved herself proper after that.
“There's some folks that are pecking at the country these days. We're in the current of the Long Sault and Uncle Sam has the oars. We should remember that if we can't help we mustn't hinder. We can help William a lot by just yelling and rocking the boat.
“I wish you would say to the boys in camp on both sides of the ocean that I should like to go and share their work and perils. Last autumn I crossed the French and British lines where hostile shells were bursting—sometimes uncomfortably near me—and went within ninety feet of the German trenches. I have tried the perils which our boys will have to suffer, but, unfortunately, I am too old to fight with them.
“It is a great privilege they enjoy—that of going out to battle for honor and decency and the good of the world. They have entered the great university of common sense. There is no other like it. What a school is that comradeship of the camp and the trenches! For the first time in history the whole civilized world stands shoulder to shoulder.”
“Do you think our boys are likely to profit by their experience?” I asked.
“It all depends on the boy.
“Let me tell you a story just as I heard it from the lips of an American soldier lad. I would call it:
“He was a big, broad shouldered, brawny man with a rugged manner of speech. He described himself very well when he said to me: I can think as pure white as anybody but I want to talk like a he man.'
“He had been wounded by a burst of shrapnel and was not badly hurt, although one side of his face looked as if it had been raked by the claws of a leopard. He had told me that for a day after the accident he had heard a sound in his head 'like two skeletons rassling on a tin roof.'
“Who but an American soldier in France would talk like that? Indeed I found that he was from Kansas City and had the mixed dialect of the midcountry.
“'Do you think it makes ye better or worse—this game of war?' I asked.
“'Well, sir, I'd say better,' he answered. 'Ye get things measured up right, over here. Ye learn how to use yer thinker. Nobody knows what peace and home and friends are worth 'til they're gone and ye don't know whether you're ever going to see 'em again or not It ain't a bad thing to live the all he life a while and see the family in dreams. They look so gol durnably different. I reckon it's helped me. Maybe I better tell ye a little story and you'll see what I mean. It'll be a Christmas story.
“'We were in the ruined city of Peronne that Christmas Day. My friend and I were homesick and had tramped across country from the camp of our engineering corps to send a message to our wives in Kansas City, and to blow ourselves to a good dinner with a bottle of wine and cigars if money could buy 'em. We were a little over beaned and tea!—gosh! we were soaked in it, and that French tobacco reminded me of my father's cure for the epizootic. We had been gander-dancing on a new railroad for weeks. We were shovel tired and kind o' man weary. By thunder! we hadn't seen a woman in three months.
“'You who see women every day don't realize that they're a pretty necessary part of the scenery. Oh, you don't miss 'em for a week or so, but by and by you begin to find out there's something wrong. Things don't look right. The hole in the doughnut is too big. You'd be kind o' glad to hear what somebody said at the Woman's Club, and all about Betsey Baker's new pink silk, and how shabby that one old dress of your wife's was getting to be. You'd like to see a set o' skirts come along—I guess. It would kind o' comfort you. If you didn't have pretty good self-control you'd get up and wave your hat and holler.
“'Then—children—that's another thing you miss. We don't see 'em on the battle front—ne'er a one! What a hole they make in the world when you take 'em out of it!—especially if you've got some of your own. They come to me in my dreams—the wife and babies! I'll bet ye there's more'n a thousand of 'em crowding into that big camp every night, about dream-time, and looking for theirs.
“'Oh, I wouldn't have ye get the idea that we set and sob and talk mush and look sorrowful there. If you just grabbed a look at us and went on you'd say we were no Hamlets. Gosh, no! We play cards and joke and laugh and tell stories a plenty. You wouldn't get what's down under it all unless some feller kind o' confessed and turned state's evidence. No, sir—I don't believe you would.
“'I'm just telling ye enough to make ye understand why We went out to Peronne that Christmas Day and what happened to us there. I speak French pretty glib—that's another reason why we went. My mother was a Louisiana French woman. I got it from her when I was a little chap—never forgot it—and I bossed a gang of Frenchmen for two years.
“'We found a man who ran a little grocery shop and restaurant down in one of the old cellars. He had had a fine big café up-stairs before the German army swatted the town with dynamite. He was a sad little man who lived down there in the lamplight with his wife. The Huns had carried their two daughters away with them. He had cleaned the litter out of his cellars and repaired their walls and so they had a home and something to do.
“'I asked him if he could get up a good dinner for us.
“'"Oui, Monsieur,” he answered promptly. “I can get you a fine duck and celery and preserved strawberries, and I could make a little pastry.”
“'"How much for the dinner?”
“'"Thirty francs—I can not make it less.”
“'"Make it forty and we'll call it a bargain,” I urged.
“'You should have seen the smile on his face then.
“'"Les Americans! They always talk like that—God be with them!” he said. “Trust me, Monsieur. I will make you happy.”
“'Dinner would be ready in two hours and we went out for a walk and a look at the waste of ruins. It seemed as if there were miles of them—honestly! You see they loaded every basement with dynamite and wired the whole place and then touched the button. Down it came. There isn't a roof standing. We tramped about looking for relics. It was a pretty day and warm in the sunlight.
“'Suddenly a woman, dressed in black, with a little girl about six years old—spick and span and pretty as a picture—came along. They looked like angels to us. Didn't seem so they was exactly human. We stood watching 'em.
“'I reckon I'd have give about a year o' my life for a day's use o' that kid—honestly. I'd just like to have got down on the ground and rolled and hollered and tickled and tossed her just as I used to play with my own kids. My hands itched to get hold of her. We followed along behind 'em kind o' hankerin' and a wishin'. She was a pretty little thing as ye ever looked at, with curly hair hanging down on her shoulders and shiny, silver buckled slippers and white stockin's. I just wanted to frame up some kind of excuse to speak to 'em, but I suppose they wouldn't have understood me.
“'They stopped and looked around a minute and then the woman opened an iron gate and they went into one of the old dooryards. When we came along we saw that the woman was sitting amongst the rubbish and crying.
“'"It's her home—dummed if it ain't,” I whispered.
“'I reckon 'twas natural for 'em to come back to it on Christmas Day—plumb natural to come back to where they had been happy once with all the family around. What a place! You'd think that an earthquake and a cyclone had gone into partnership for about a minute and done a smashing business. About half the back wall was standing and there hung a little corner of the attic floor and the wind had blown the dirt up there and some flowers and grass all withered by the cold had sprung up in it, and beyond that was an old baby carriage with a ragged top and a spinning-wheel.
“'The little girl didn't seem to notice her mother. She was running around on the ruins and picking up broken dishes. I reckon that kid had got used to the crying of men and women. The sight of grief didn't worry her any more—not a bit. She was flying around like a bird on the ruins.
“'We sat down behind some bushes by the iron fence just to see what happened.
“'By and by I heard the little girl call in a voice that kind o' made me swaller—honest it was as sweet as the first bird song in the spring.
“'"Mother! Mother!” she called.
“'"What is it—little one!” the mother answered.
“'"Dinner's ready.”
“Talk about silver bells! Say, mister, never again! Honest, I never heard a sound like the voice of that kid. It kind o' floored me—sure thing! Up there at the front we just hear the growling of cannon and the whinnying of horses and the swearing of men day and night. Maybe that's why the kid's voice took hold of us that way. I don't know. After I had heard it I felt as if I could walk to Kansas City. Honest Injun!
“'We peeked through the bushes and saw that the little girl had dragged a board between her and her mother and covered it with broken dishes. Then she began to chitter-chatter.
“'Here's some lovely soup and there's a fine goose and a great bowl full of the best jelly that ever was and potatoes and celery and spinach and everything that you like, mother. It's a Christmas dinner you know. Papa will sit here and Henri will sit there and we are going to have the grandest time.”
“'So the little chatter-box went on—good deal like a fine lady—and her mother said:
“'"Papa! Henri! They are not here! They will eat no more with? us.”
“'"Why?”
“'“Mort pour la patrie—both of them! my child!”
“'"No, mother, they are here. I can see them just as plain! Come, mother, they are waiting!”
“'Oh, by thunder! If I only had a mind like that I said to myself—a mind that hadn't got so kind of stiff and sore and muscle bound—a mind that was so clean and supple and that hadn't forgotten how to believe in the things I do not see. Or do ye suppose that the clear eyes of a kid can realty see things that we can't?
“'"God bless you—nay little saviour! You know how to make me happy—don't ye?” said the mother with her handkerchief at her eyes.
“Then they both sat down there and began to eat that ghostly dinner with the ghosts of the dead.
“'Gosh all hemlock! I just shut my eyes and heard a sound like a wind blowing in my head. I turned and whispered to my pal.'
“'"You stay here. I'll be back right away.”'
“Then I sloped on my tiptoes. Went to the cellar and found that man and brought him with me. I told him to invite them to dinner and that I would pay for it. I didn't care if it took the last sous marquee in my breeches.
“When we got back they were both singing The Marseillaise, that my mother taught me when I was a kid, as they sat at their Christmas dinner:=
````Amour sacré de la patrie
````Conduis soutiens nos bras vengeurs
````Liberté Liberté cherie,
````Combats avec tes défenseurs!=
“They heard us coming and stopped. Can ye beat it? Say, mister, the boches might as well try to conquer the birds of the air.
“The man knew them. They had been well off and respectable folks in Peronne before the war. Now they were refugees living on charity in a distant village.
“'We gave them a part of our dinner but I do not think they were as happy in the cellar as they had been with the ghosts. They were very glum but we—well, ye know, sir, I reckon they helped our Christmas a lot. You bet I do.
“'Ye know I had him put three extra plates at oar table—one for Mary and one for little Kate and one for my roguish boy Bill. Say, I had learned something from that kid—you bet. It isn't necessary for me to fall asleep to have 'em with me now.
“The eats! Say, Fred Harvey wouldn't be deuce high with that little Frenchman.
“'We had some dinner, don't you doubt it, my friend, and forgot that there was a war.
“'And ye know the funny part of it is this: Mary wrote me of her dream that she and the kids had dinner with me on Christmas Day.'
“I have told you this story because it gives you a day in the life of an American soldier, with its psychological background and a glimpse of the fatherless children. If you were one of the boys in khaki I would remind you that, after all, there is only one great thing in the world—man. What an extension of human sympathy and understanding is coming to you, my bright young soldier lad! As it comes it will go out in some measure to the duller fellows who share your thought and meat and perils.
“You will have a wiser brain, a nobler spirit and a stronger body. This digging and marching and sweating in the open is the best thing that can happen to you. I often thought that no wiser thing could be done for our college boys than mobilize them every summer and send them to camp in the wheat-fields for two or three months of hard work.
“What's the matter with an army of peace, with its companies, regiments and divisions, doing, under military discipline, constructive instead of destructive work—doing the things that need most to be done, getting in the harvests or building roads? It might give a part of its time each day to military training, especially to rifle practise. It would be a school of Democracy. Its best product would be spirit, its next best brawn, and last of all the work done.
“You will encounter perils in France, my brave lad, and the least of them will be those of the battle-field. It is when you go to Paris on leave that I would have you look out for yourself.
“I'm not much of a preacher. I am not so foolish as to think that all wisdom is in the Bible. To speak honestly, I am inclined to think that there are many things in the Bible which oughtn't to be there. The Kaiser seems to me to be imitating the sanctified slayers of the Old Testament. You will find chapters there which read like a report of the German General Staff after a successful drive. It is there that crazy Bill finds his warrant for disemboweling so many people and mistreating his prisoners. That kind of history should be summarily deprived of the odor of sanctity, in my humble opinion.
“But there is one sentence of Scripture that I would have you remember—my brave, fine fellows who are to fight under this flag of ours. Having lived some fifty years and been a somewhat careful observer, I would call it the most impressive sentence ever written. It is full of vital truth. Every young man ought to read it once a day and think of it as often as he is tempted. It is from the book of Job and it says:
“'His bones are full of the sin of his youth, which shall lie down with him in the dust.'
“Think it over, boys. Think of that word 'bones' which indicates how deeply it lays hold of you, and of the clause 'which shall lie down with him in the dust,' which indicates that only death can break its hold.
“Don't let the optimistic young doctors fool you. It is a serious matter. You can get along with the mud and vermin of the trenches. They will only afflict the outside of you. The main thing is to keep clean inside. Don't allow your life currents to be polluted. See that you bring bade to your home a clean body.
“You will do this, unless, when you go to Paris or to some other city, on leave, you fall for that French wine and lose your head in the process. Let it alone, I beg of you, and remember that your greatest peril is not on the battle-field.
“Do not for a moment lose faith in the issue. 'The cause of Liberty bequeathed from sire to son, though baffled oft is ever won.'
“I have seen how eagerly, how cheerfully the young men at the front give their lives for something greater than they. It has filled me with wonder.
“I have a little farm out here on the hills. It has helped me to understand the world I live in and especially these boys. How often I have seen the winds of autumn strip the grove and garden of their loveliness until nothing was left but dead stalks and bare branches. The captains and the kings had departed. I have seen them returning—the delicate green of the new leaves in spring, the grass, the violets, and here are the familiar sprouts of the poison ivy. I thought that I had tom the last of it out of the ground last summer, but here it is.
“Everything passes away but it returns, and the noxious ivy is the most persistent returner of all. I am busy fighting it every spring and summer.
“So it is with this world of men. Caesar dies, despotism is uprooted, as we thought, and we discover that they have returned and are busy growing and spreading their roots. Everything returns if you give it a chance. Herod has returned and is slaying the male children. Pilate has returned and is sitting in judgment.
“Do you tell me that Jesus Christ will return? Nay, I tell you He has already returned. He is in the camps and on the battle-fields of France and Belgium. He is in the hearts of the young men who are dying as He died to make men free.
“So, my young soldier lads of Great Britain, France, Italy and the United States, I take off my hat and bare my gray head when you march by me, for I know why you are so brave.”
It was near midnight when the country lawyer and I left his office and headed up the main street of the village toward his home. After a moment of silence we reached the public square and then he directed my eyes toward the glowing lamp of Jupiter in the sky.
“When you get to wondering at God's neglect of His duty, it's a good idea to go out and take a look at the stars riding up there in the sunlight,” he said. “I guess this little world of ours has got to take care of itself. Kind o' looks to me as if God had enough of His own work to do, especially when so many of us are loafing. I don't see how we can complain if we do have to 'tend to our own business. We've been depending a long time on prayer an' indolence an' good luck while we let the weeds grow in the garden. I rather guess we'll have to do our own hoein'. Every man to his hoe! And let's take care that the weeds don't get too far ahead of us again.
“If this planet is to be a safe and decent place to live upon, there should be an International School Commission agreed as to one main purpose—that of cultivating good will between the races which inhabit it. Of course, no power could remove all the lies from history, but I hope that the lies and also the truth of it could be so put as to rob them of the seed of bitterness, even against the Germans.”
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