III



Somewhere in the vast spaces of chaos was a snore. Then ages
afterwards, out of the void there arose a mysterious forgotten
effort to get something out of a choking throat. After several such
unaccountable manifestations, the feeble flame of consciousness that
called itself Jimmie Higgins flickered up, and he realized that it
was he who was trying desperately not to be choked. Also he realized
that he was become one horrible pain; somebody had driven a nail
through his arm, and fastened him tight to the ground by it; also
they had blown up his stomach, so that it was threatening to burst,
and when he choked, it was an agony. He gasped for help, but no one
paid any attention to him; he was all alone in the dungeon-house of
pain, buried and forgotten for ever.

Gradually he emerged from the misty regions of anaesthesia, and
realized that he was on a stretcher, and being carried. He moaned
for water, but no one would give it to him. He pleaded that there
was something dreadful wrong with him, he was going to burst inside;
but they told him that was only ether gas, and not to worry, he
would soon be all right. They laid him on a cot in a room, one of a
long row, and left him to wrestle with demons all alone. This was
war, and a man who had only a shattered arm might count himself
among the lucky.

So through a night and a day Jimmie lay and made the best of a bad
situation. There were two nurses in this tent, and Jimmie, having
nothing to do but watch them, conceived a bitter rage at them both.
One was lean and angular and sallow; she went about her duties
grimly, with no nonsense, and Jimmie did not realize that she was
ready to drop with exhaustion. The other was pretty, with fluffy
yellow hair, and was flirting shamelessly with a young doctor.
Perhaps Jimmy should have reflected that men were being killed
rapidly these days, and it was necessary that some should concern
themselves with supplying the future generations; but Jimmie was in
no mood to probe the philosophy of flirtation--he remembered the
Honourable Beatrice Clendenning, and wished he was back in Merrie
England. Also he remembered his pacifist principles, and wished he
had kept out of this hellish war!

But his pain became somewhat less, and they loaded him into an
ambulance and took him farther back, to a big base hospital. Here,
before long, he was able to sit up, and to be wheeled out into the
sunshine, and to discover the unguessed raptures of
convalescence--the amazing continuous appetite, the amazing
continuous supply of good things to eat and drink; the bliss of
looking at trees and flowers, and listening to the singing of birds,
and telling other people how you rode out on a motor-cycle to look
for "Botteree Normb Cott"--what the hell was that, anyhow?--and ran
into the whole Hun army, and held it up for a couple of hours, and
won the battle of Chatty Terry all alone!




IV



One of the first persons Jimmie saw was Lacey Granitch, and Lacey
took him off to a corner of the park and said, "You haven't told
anyone?"

"No, Mr. Granitch," said Jimmie.

"My name is Peterson," said Lacey.

"Yes, Mr. Peterson," said Jimmie.

It was a strange acquaintance between these two, chosen from the
opposite poles of social life, and brought together in the democracy
of pain. Jimmie had the young lord of Leesville down, and might have
walked on his face; but strange as it might seem, Jimmie took
towards him an attitude of timid humility. Jimmie felt that he had
betrayed him to a cruel and hideous vengeance; moreover, in spite of
all his revolutionary fervours, Jimmie could not forget that he was
talking to one of the masters of the world. You might hate with all
your soul the prestige and power that went with the Granitch
millions, but you couldn't be indifferent to it, you could never
feel natural in the presence of it.

As for Lacey, he was no longer the proud, free, rich young
aristocrat; he had suffered, and learned respect for his fellowmen,
regardless of money. He heard how this little Socialist machinist,
whom once he had cursed in a herd of strikers, had ridden into the
jaws of death and helped to nail the Beast through the snout. So he
wanted to know about him, and these two sat conversing for hours,
each of them discovering a new world.

Just now all Europe and America were engaged in furious argument on
the subject of the Bolsheviki. Had they betrayed democracy to the
Hun, or were they, as they claimed, leading the way for mankind to a
newer and broader kind of democracy? Lacey, of course, believed the
former--everyone in the American army believed it, and in fact
everybody in France, except a few dyed-in-the-wool reds. When Lacey
found that Jimmie was one of these reds, he questioned him, and they
had it hot and heavy for days. How could men have done what Lenin
and Trotzky had done, unless they were paid German agents? So Jimmie
had to set forth the theory of internationalism; the Bolsheviki were
making propaganda in Germany, they were doing more to break the
power of the Kaiser than even the Allied armies. How did Jimmie know
that? He didn't know the details, of course, but he knew the soul of
internationalism; he could tell what Lenin and Trotzky were doing,
because he knew what he would be doing, were he in their place!

They talked on and on, and the young lord of Leesville, who would
some day fall heir to an enormous fortune, and had been trained to
think of it as his by every right, human and divine, heard a little
runt of a machinist from the shops explain how he was going to seize
that mass of property--he and the rest of his fellows combined into
one big union--and how they were going to run it, not for Lacey's
benefit, but for the benefit of all society. Jimmie forgot all
respect for persons when he got on this theme; this was his dream,
this was the proletariat expropriating the expropriators, and he
told about it with shining eyes. In time past the young lord of
Leesville would have answered him with insolent serenity, perhaps
with a threat of machine-guns; but now he said hesitatingly that it
was a large programme, and he feared it couldn't be made to work.




V



He was moved to question Jimmie about his past life, so as to
understand how such fanaticism had come to be. So Jimmie told about
starvation and neglect, about overwork and unemployment, about
strikes and jails and manifold oppressions. The other listened,
nodding his head. "Yes, of course, that was enough to drive any man
to extremes." And then, thinking further, "I wonder", said he,
"which of us two got the worse deal from life."

Jimmie was without means of understanding that remark, Lacey had had
everything, hadn't he? To which Lacey answered, "I had too much, and
you had too little; and which is worse for a man?"

By way of making clear what was in his mind, he told Jimmie a little
about his own life. He pictured a big household, with a father beset
by business cares, and turning over the managing of his home to
employees. "My mother was a fool," said Lacey. "I suppose it sounds
bad for a man to say that, but I've known it all my life. Maybe the
old man was too busy to look up a woman with sense--or maybe he
didn't believe there were any. Anyhow, my mother's idea was to be
seen spending more money than any other woman in town; that was her
'position', and her children were part of the show--we must wear
more clothes and bully more servants than anybody else's children.
I've thought it all out--I've had lots of opportunity for thinking
of late. I can't remember when I didn't hit my nurse in the face if
she tried to take away a toy from me. I never had to ask for
anything twice--if I did, I went into a tantrum and got it. I
learned to smoke and to drink wine, and then came the women--the
women finished me, as you know."

He paused; and Jimmie nodded sympathetically, remembering the story
of the eight chorus-girls about whom "Wild Bill" had read out in the
local.

"It's hell for a boy to have a lot of money," said Lacey, "and to be
preyed on by women. You have your human emotions, of course--you're
absolutely compelled to believe in some women; and they're all
perfectly cold-blooded--at least the kinds that a rich boy meets. I
don't mean only adventuresses--I mean the society-girls, the ones
you're supposed to marry. Their damned old harpies of mothers are
pushing behind them, of course--laying out everything they own for
clothes, and not knowing how they can pay the bills for last season.
They set out to catch you, they're mad with the determination, they
don't care about reputation, they'll do any damned thing. You take
them out in your car, and then they want to get out and pick
flowers, and they draw you into the woods, and presently you've got
hold of their hands, and then you're hugging and kissing them, and
then you go the limit. But then you've got to marry them; and when
they find you won't, they have hysterics, and say they're going to
shoot their heads off; only they don't shoot their heads off, they
kiss you some more, and borrow your diamond scarf-pin and forget to
return it."

The young lord of Leesville fell silent. Sombre memories possessed
him, and Jimmie, darting a swift glance at him, saw the look of
weary age on his face. "I've never talked with anybody about what
happened at the end," said he, "and I never mean to; but I'll say
this much--the time I loved a married woman was the only honest love
I ever had, because she was the only woman who wasn't looking to
marry me!"

That was, of course, too subtle for a man like Jimmie Higgins. But
this much the little Socialist got--that the heir of the Granitch
fortune had been in truth a miserably unhappy mortal. And this was
an extraordinary revelation to Jimmie, who had taken it for granted
that the rich were the lucky ones of earth. He had hated them on the
supposition that they were without care; they were the Lotus-eaters,
of whom the poet wrote that they

                                              "live and lie reclined
    On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind,
    For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl'd
    Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl'd
    Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world:

    Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,
    Blight of famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery
           sands,
    Clanging fights and flaming towns, and sinking ships and pray-
           ing hands.
    But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song
    Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong.
    Like a tale of little meaning tho' the words are strong;
    Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,
    Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil,
    Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil.

But now Jimmie had crossed the social chasm, he had seen the other
side of the problem of riches and poverty. After that revelation, he
would be more merciful in his judgements of his fellow-mortals; he
would understand that the system in which we are trapped makes true
happiness impossible--for those who have too much as well as for
those who have too little.






CHAPTER XXV

JIMMIE HIGGINS ENTERS INTO DANGER

I





While Jimmie wandered through the streets of this French town,
letting his broken arm get strong again, the death-grapple of the
war continued. In mid-July the Germans made a last desperate lunge
at the Marne; they were stopped dead in a couple of days by the
French and Americans combined; and then the Allied
commander-in-chief struck back, smashing in the side of the German
salient, and driving the enemy, still fighting furiously, but moving
back from the soil of France. All France caught its breath with
excitement, with relief mingled with dread. So many times they had
hoped, through these four weary, hideous years, and so many times
their hopes had been dashed! But this time there was no mistake--it
was really the turning of the tide. The enemy resisted at every
step, but he went on moving out of the salient, and the Allies went
on lunging--now here, now there, see--sawing back and forth, and
keeping their opponents bewildered.

Jimmie read about it in the army paper, the Stars and Stripes; and
now, for the first time in four years, Jimmie's mind was one mind on
the war. Jimmie was on the field of every battle, his teeth set, his
hands clenched, his whole soul helping at the job. He had got over
the disorders of anaesthesia, and was forgetting the shock of his
wound; he had realized that wounds, and even death, were something a
man could bear--not cheerfully, of course, not lightly, but you
could bear them, if only you knew that the Beast was being put out
of business.

In the old days the word German had meant to Jimmie fellows like
Meissner and Forster and Schneider; but now it meant a huge grey
form looming over the edge of a shell-hole, its face distorted with
hate, its bayonet poised to plunge. Perhaps the most vivid
impression of Jimmie's whole life was the relief he had felt when he
realized that some doughboy had shot a bullet into that looming
figure. Let there be more doughboys, more and more, until the last
figure had been shot! Jimmie knew, of course, that the policy he had
been advocating in America had not tended to that end; if Jimmie in
Leesville had had his way, there would have been no doughboys to
rescue Jimmy at Chatty Terry! Jimmie was quite clear on that point
now, and for the time being the pacifist was dead in him.

He listened to the talk of the men in this hospital. They had all
been through the mill, they had got their wounds, light or severe,
but it had not broken their spirit--not a bit of it; there was
hardly one among them who was not hoping to get cured and to get
back into the game before it was over. That was how they took it--a
game, the most sensational, the most thrilling that a man would ever
play. These boys had been brought up on football, the principal
training and only real interest in life of some hundreds of
thousands of young Americans every year. They had brought the spirit
and the method of football with them into the army, and communicated
it to those less fortunate millions who had been neither to college
nor to high school: the team-work, the speed, the incessant,
gruelling drill, the utter, unquestioning loyalty, the persistent
searching of eager young minds for new combinations, new tricks; and
above all the complete indifference to the possibility of a broken
collar-bone or a damaged heart-valve, provided only that the game
should be won!

This army was attacking a foe who relied on machine-guns to break
formations and give time to withdraw stores and big guns to safety;
so the life of young America for the moment had become a study of
the arts of rushing machine-guns. Jimmie listened to the
conversation of the new men, and saw the technique being worked out
before his eyes. Tanks were all right, aeroplanes were all right,
when you had them; but mostly you did not have them, in time, so the
doughboy was learning to take machine-guns with the bayonet. You had
a little squad, trained like a football team, with its own system of
signals, its formations worked out by young heads put together at
night. It was a costly game--you would be lucky if a third of the
players came out alive; but if you could get one man to the
machine-gun with a bayonet, you had won the game--because he would
take the gun and turn it about on the retreating Germans, and could
kill enough of them in a minute to make up for the losses of his
squad.




II



Lacey Granitch's shoulder healed, and he went back to his job. He
told Jimmie what it had meant to him to meet a Socialist; if he
could believe what Jimmie believed, he wouldn't mind living, even
with his shame. Jimmie gave him the names of books to read, and
Lacey promised to read them; of course, Jimmie was proud and happy--
seeing a vision of the Empire Machine Shops turned over to the
control of the workers, the capitalist system committing hari-kari
in one American industry.

Jimmie got a letter from one of the working-men in the repair
station where he had last worked, telling him that the Americans had
taken over this sector, and now there was a big shop established,
and when was he coming back? But Jimmie was not so eager to come
back; working on motor-cycles did not seem a thrilling prospect to
one who had held up the whole Hun army and won the battle of Chatty
Terry. Having proven his mettle as a fighting man, Jimmie wondered
if there mightn't be some way for him to get into the real army, and
do a real man's work.

He wrote a letter to the officer in command of his motor-unit,
telling what had happened to him, and couldn't it be arranged? In
reply the officer said that he would have an investigation made, and
if Jimmie's story could be verified, he would have honourable
mention, and promotion of some sort. And sure enough, a month later,
when Jimmie was ready to leave the hospital, came official notice
that he was promoted to be a sergeant of motor-transport, and
ordered to report to headquarters in a certain harbour on the
English Channel for assignment. Sergeant Jimmie Higgins!

Jimmie reported, of course, and was put in charge of a dozen
cyclists and repair men, newly arrived on a transport. These men
looked up to Jimmie as a veteran and hero, and Jimmie, who had never
enjoyed authority in his life before--except you count Jimmie Junior
and the two kids--may have had his head turned just a little bit.
But there was real work to be done, and no time for strutting. There
was excitement in the air, wild rumour and speculation; this little
unit of Jimmie's, composed of specially fit men, was going somewhere
on a special errand--an expedition, evidently by sea. Nobody was
told where--that wasn't the way in the army; but presently there
were issued sheepskin-lined coats and heavy wool-lined boots--in the
middle of August! So they knew that they were bound for the Far
North, and for some time. Could it be a surprise attack in the
Baltic? Either that, said the wiseheads, or else Archangel. Jimmie
had never heard of this latter place, and had to ask about it. It
appeared that the Allies had landed enormous masses of stores at
this port in far Northern Russia; and now that the Russians had
dropped out of the war, the Germans were threatening to take
possession.

Jimmie was thrilled to the soles of his new wool-lined boots. He was
going to Russia, going to see the revolution! Jimmie had but a vague
idea of world-conditions now, for during the past three or four
months he had been reading only official papers, which confined
their attention to the job, and carefully omitted mention of
difficulties and complications. The people with whom he talked
insisted that it was necessary for the Allies to do something to
counter the Brest-Litovsk treaty; if the Germans were allowed to
take possession of helpless Russia and use it for their purposes,
they might hold out for another hundred years. The Russian people
themselves must realize this, and welcome Allied help! Jimmie wasn't
sure on this latter point, but he remembered the Rabin brothers and
their enthusiasm for the Allied cause, so he put his doubts to
sleep, and helped get his motor-unit stowed on board a transport.




III



There came a passage across the North Sea and up the coast of
Norway; a region of fogs and restless winds, and incessant deadly
peril of submarine and mine. There were three transports in the
expedition, and a couple of warships convoying them, and half a
dozen destroyers weaving their foam patterns in and out. Every day
the air grew colder, and the period of daylight shorter; they were
entering the Land of the Midnight Sun, but at the time of year when
midnight noons were approaching. The men had plenty of time for
reading and talk; so Jimmie discussed the war from the Socialist
point of view, defending the Russian revolutionists; and so, as
usual, he made somebody angry, and got himself and his seditious
opinions reported.

Lieutenant Gannet was the name of Jimmie's superior officer. He had
been a clerk in a cotton-mill before the war, and had never had the
exercise of authority. Now he had to learn suddenly to give orders,
and his idea of doing it was to be extremely sharp and imperative.
He was a deeply conscientious young man, keen on the war, and
willing to face any hardship or peril in fulfilment of his duty; but
Jimmie could not have been expected to appreciate that--all Jimmie
knew was that his superior had a way of glaring from behind his
spectacles as if he was sure that someone was lying to him.

Lieutenant Gannet didn't ask what Jimmie had said; he told Jimmie
what he had said, and informed him that that kind of talk wasn't
going on in the army while he was in hearing. Jimmie's business was
to keep some motor-cycles in repair, and some cyclists on their job;
about other matters let him hold his tongue, and not try to run the
affairs of the nation. Jimmie ventured the remark that he had said
nothing but what President Wilson was saying all along. To which the
lieutenant replied that he was not interested in Sergeant Higgins's
opinions of President Wilson's opinions--Sergeant Higgins was to
keep his opinions to himself, or he would get into serious trouble,
So Jimmie went away, seething with indignation, as much of a rebel
as he had ever been in Local Leesville.

What were the rights of a soldier, anyway? Was he privileged to
discuss political issues, and to agree with the utterances of the
President of his country? Might he believe, as the President
believed, in a just peace and the right of all peoples to freedom
and self-determination, even though many of the officers of the army
hated and despised such ideas? Jimmie didn't know, and there was
nobody to tell him; but Jimmie knew that he hadn't meant to give up
his rights as a citizen when he enlisted to fight for democracy, and
if these rights were taken away from him, it would not be without a
struggle.




IV



The transports came into the region of icebergs, and low-hanging
mists, and rocky cliffs covered with snow, and flocks of seagulls
flying over them. For days and nights on end they steamed in those
Arctic waters, and came at last into the White Sea, and the harbour
of Archangel.

The Allies had been here since the beginning of the war, building
docks and sheds and railway yards; but they had never been able to
build enough, and the transport department of the corrupt Russian
government having gone to pieces, here were mountains of supplies of
every sort you could think of for an army, piled high on the shores.
At least, that was what Jimmie had been told; he had read in the
newspapers that the statement was made officially in answer to
questions in the British Parliament. Jimmie had understood that he
was here to save those mountains of supplies from the Germans, and
he was surprised when he looked about the harbour and saw no
mountains of any sort.

Back in the interior were vast trackless forests of fir-trees, and
moss-covered swamps in which in summertime a man would sink up to
his neck. Now, in September, they were already frozen solid, and you
travelled over them with a sledge and a team of reindeer, bundled up
in furs and looking, except for the whiskers, like the pictures of
Santa Claus you had seen when you were a kid. But most of the
traffic of the army was upon the rivers which cut the forests and
swamps, and the single railroad, which was being put back into
commission.

This country had, of course, no roads on which motor-cycles could be
used, even in summer. Jimmie found that his job would be confined to
the city and the encampments near about. A few streets would be kept
clear of snow, and the little band of messengers would scoot about
them, now and then taking a slide into a snow-bank and smashing
things up. That would have been all right, and Jimmie would have
bossed the job and been happy as he knew how to be--had only his
mind been at peace.

For the first few days, of course, he had no time to think, he was
as busy as an ant, getting himself and his men ashore, and setting
up their benches and tools in an iron shed, with a roaring stove at
each end, and heaps of firewood which the peasants brought on
heavy flat sledges dragged by reindeer. Jimmie and his unit worked,
not merely during the hours of daylight, but most of the hours of
darkness, not stopping for Sundays. There were five thousand men to
be got ashore with their supplies--and in a desperate rush, as if
the Germans were expected at any hour. It was some while before
Jimmie found time to go about the city, to meet the "Tommies", who
had been here a month before him, and to hear what they had done,
and what they were expecting to do.

Jimmie had understood that this expedition was to fight the Germans;
but now he became suspicious; apparently it was to fight the
Bolsheviki! The social revolution had accomplished itself in
Archangel, and a council of working-men and peasants had been in
full control, when the British troops and sailors had made a
surprise attack and seized the port, driving the revolutionists in
confusion before them. Now they were sending an expedition up the
railroad, and another on steamers up the North Dwina river, pursuing
Russian Socialists and driving them back into frozen swamps! And
here were American troops, being hurried ashore, and outfitted and
made ready to join in what seemed to Jimmie to be warfare upon
organized working-men!

Jimmie was almost beside himself with bewilderment. It was all so
new and strange to him--and he had nobody to advise him. At home, if
there were a Socialist problem to settle, he would take it to
Meissner or Stankewitz, or Comrade Gerrity the organizer, or Comrade
Mabel Smith, the chairman of the Literature Committee. But now, in
all this expedition Jimmie did not know a single man who had any
idea of radicalism; they looked upon the Bolsheviki as mad dogs, as
traitors, criminals, lunatics, any word that seemed worst to you.
The Bolsheviki had deserted the cause of the Allies, they had gone
into league with Germany to betray Democracy; so now the Americans
had come to teach them the lesson of law and order. The Americans
looked upon themselves as an advance guard of a vast expedition
which was to march to Petrograd and Moscow, and wipe the idea of
Bolshevism off the map. And Jimmie Higgins was to help! Jimmie
Higgins, bound and gagged, lashed to the chariot of Militarism, was
to take part in destroying the first proletarian government in
history!

The more Jimmie thought of it, the more indignant he became; he took
it as a personal outrage--a scurvy trick that had been played upon
him. He had swallowed their propaganda, he had filled himself up
with their patriotism, he had dropped everything to come and fight
for Democracy. He had gone into battle, had risked his life, had
suffered wounds and agony for them. And now they had broken their
bargain with him, they had brought him here and ordered him to fight
working-men--just as if he had been a militiaman at home! Democracy
indeed! Here they were marching in, glorying in their purpose to
conquer the Russian Revolutionists!

And Jimmie Higgins, under martial law, must obey and hold his
tongue! Jimmie thought of all his friends at home who had denounced
the military machine; he thought of Comrade Mary Allen, of Comrade
Mabel Smith, and Comrade Evelyn Baskerville and Comrade Gerrity; he
had rejected their advice, and now, if they could see what he was
doing, how they would spurn him! Jimmie writhed at the very thought;
nor was he consoled when one of the men in his company gave him an
"inside" story of what was happening here--that in order to persuade
the British to submit their armies to the control of a French
general, and thus to save the situation in France, the Americans had
been forced to submit their own armies also; and now they found
themselves ordered to march in and fight a revolutionary government
which had repudiated its debt to France, and so had given offence to
a naturally frugal people.




V



Jimmie met a man whom he might almost have taken for Deror Rabin, so
much did he resemble the little Jewish tailor. A big,
black-whiskered peasant brought a load of wood for the fires; and
there was a Jew helping him--a chap with a sharp face and keen
black eyes, his cheeks sunken as if he had not had enough to eat for
years, and his chest racked by a cough. He had wrapped his feet and
his hands in rags, because he had neither boots nor gloves; but he
seemed cheerful, and presently, as he dumped down a load, he nodded
and said, "Hello!"

"Hello yourself!" replied Jimmie.

"I speak English," said the fellow.

It didn't surprise Jimmie that anybody should speak English; he was
only surprised when they didn't. So he smiled and said, "Sure!"

"I been in America," went on the other. "I vork by sveat-shop in
Grand Street."

You could see that he preferred gossiping to carrying wood; he stood
about and questioned, "Vere you vork in America?" When the peasant
grumbled at him in Russian, he went back at his job; but as he went
away, he said, "I talk vit you some time about America." To which,
of course, Jimmie answered with a friendly assent.

A couple of hours later, when he went out from his work, he found
the little Jew waiting for him in the darkness. "I git lonesome some
time for America," he said; and walked down the street with Jimmie,
beating his thin arms to keep warm.

"Why did you come back?" Jimmie inquired.

"I read about revolution. I tink maybe I git rich."

"Huh!" said Jimmie, and grinned. "What did you get?"

"You belong to union in America?" countered the other.

"You bet I do!" said Jimmie.

"Vat sort of union?"

"Machinists."

"You been on strike, maybe?"

"You bet I have!"

"You got licked, maybe?"

"You bet!"

"You don't never scab, hey?"

"Not much!"

"You vat you call class-conscious?"

"You bet! I'm a Socialist!"

The other turned upon him, his voice trembling with sudden
excitement. "You got a red card?"

"You bet!" said Jimmie. "Right inside my coat."

"My God!" cried the other. "A comrade!" He stretched out his hands,
which were bundled up with old gunny-sacking, to Jimmie. "Tovarish!"
cried he. And standing there in the freezing darkness, these two
felt their hearts leap into a hot glow. Here, under the Arctic
Circle, in this wilderness of ice and desolation, even here the
spirit of international fraternity was working its miracles!

But then, shaking with excitement, the little Jew pawed at Jimmie
with his bundled hands. "If you are Socialist, vy you fight de
Russian vorkers?"

"I'm not fighting them!"

"You vear de uniform."

"I'm only a motor-cycle man."

"But you help! You kill de Russian people! You destroy de Soviets!
Vy?"

"I didn't know about it," pleaded Jimmie. "I wanted to fight the
Kaiser, and they brought me here without telling me."

"Ah! So it iss vit militarism, vit capitalism! Ve are slaves! But we
vill be free! And you vill help, you vill not kill de Russian
vorkers!"

"I will not!" cried Jimmie, quickly.

And the little stranger put his arm through Jimmie's "You come vit
me, quick! I show you someting, tovarish!"




VI



They threaded the dark streets till they came to a row of
working-men's hovels, made of logs, the cracks stuffed with mud and
straw--places in which an American farmer would not have thought it
proper to keep his cattle. "So live de vorkers," said the stranger,
and he knocked on the door of one of the hovels. It was unbarred by
a woman with several children about her skirts, and the men entered
a cabin lighted by a feeble, smoky lamp. There was a huge oven at
one side, with a kettle in which cabbage was cooking. The man said
nothing to the woman, but signed Jimmie to a seat before the oven,
and fixed his sharp black eyes on his face.

"You show me de red card?" he said, suddenly.

Jimmie took off his sheepskin-lined overcoat, and unbuttoned his
sweater underneath, and from an inside pocket of his jacket took out
the precious card with the due-stamps initialled by the secretaries
of Local Leesville and Local Hopeland and Local Ironton. The
stranger studied it, then nodded. "Good! I trust you." As he handed
back the card he remarked, "My name is Kalenkin. I am Bolshevik."

Jimmie's heart bounded--though he had guessed as much, of course.
"We called our local in Ironton Bolshevik," said he.

"Dey drive us out from here," continued the Jew, "but I stay behind
for propaganda. I look for comrades among de Americans, de British.
I say, 'Do not fight de vorkers, fight de masters, de capitalists.'
You understand?"

"Sure!" said Jimmie.

"If de masters find me, dey kill me. But I trust you."

"I'll not tell!" said Jimmie quickly.

"You help me," went on the other. "You go to de American soldiers,
you say, 'De Russian people have been slaves so many years; now dey
get free, and you come to kill dem and made dem slaves again!' Vy
iss it? Vat vill dey say, tovarish?"

Jimmie answered: "They say they want to lick the Kaiser."

"But we help to lick de Kaiser! Ve fight him!"

"They say you've made peace with him!"

"Ve fight vit propaganda--de vay de Kaiser fear most of all. Ve
spend millions of roubles, we print papers, leaflets--you know,
comrade, vat Socialists do. Ve send dem into Germany, we drop dem by
aeroplanes, we have printing-presses in--vat you call it, de Suisse,
de Nederland--everyvere. De Germans read, dey tink, dey say. Vy do
we fight for de Kaiser, vy do we not be free like de Russians? I
know it, tovarish, I have talked vit many German soldiers. It goes
like a fire in Germany. Maybe it take time--a year--two years--but
some day people see de Bolsheviki vere right, dey know de vorkers,
de heart of de vorkers--dey have de life, de fire dat cannot be put
out in de heart!"

"Sure," said Jimmie. "But you can't tell things like that to the
doughboys."

"My God!" said Kalenkin. "Don't I know! I vas in America! Dey tink
dey are de people vat de good God made! Dey know everyting--you
cannot teach dem. Dey are democracy; dey have no classes;
vage-slaves--dat iss just foreign--vat you call it--scum, hey? Dey
vill shoot us--I have seen how dey beat de vorkers ven dey strike on
Grand Street."

"I've been through it all," said Jimmie. "What can we do?"

"Propaganda!" cried Kalenkin. "For de first time we have plenty
money for propaganda--all de money in Russia for propaganda!
Ever'vere in de vorld we reach de vorkers--everyvere we cry to dem:
Rise! Rise and break your chains! You tink dey vill not hear us,
tovarish! De capitalists know dey vill hear us, dey tremble, so dey
send armies to beat us. Dey tink de armies vill obey--always--is it
not so?"

"They think the Russian people will rise against you."

At which the little man laughed, a wild hilarious laugh. "Ve have
got our own government! For de first time in Russia, de first time
in de vorld, de vorkers rule; and dey tink we rise against
ourselves! Dey put up--vat you call it--puppets, vat dey call
Socialists, dey make a government here in Archangel, vat dey call
Russian! Dey fool demselves, but dey don't fool de Russians!"

"They think this government will spread," said Jimmie.

"It vill spread just so far as de armies go--just so far. But in
Russia, all de people come together--all are Bolsheviki, ven dey see
de foreign armies coming. And vy, tovarish? Because dey know vat it
means ven capitalists come to make new governments for Russia. It
means bonds--de French, de British debt! You know?"

"Sure, I know," said Jimmie.

"It is billions, fifteen billions of roubles to France alone. De
Bolsheviki have said, 'Ve do not pay dem so quick.' And for vy? Vat
did dey do vit dat money! Dey loaned it to de Tsar, and for vat? To
make slaves out of de Russian people, to put dem in armies and make
dem fight de Japanese, to make police-force and send hundert
thousand Russian Socialists to Siberia! Is it not so? And Russian
Socialists pay such debts? Not so quick! Ve say, 'Ve had nothing to
do vit such money! You loaned it to de Tsar, now you collect it from
de Tsar! But dey say, 'You must pay!' And dey send armies, to take
de land of Russia, to take de oil and de coal and de gold. So,
tovarish! Dey vill put down de Soviets! But if so, dey must take
ever' town, ever' village in Russia--and all de time we make
propaganda vit de soldiers, we make it vit Frenchmen and Englishmen
and Americans, just like we make it vit Germans!"




VII



The little man had made a long speech, and was exhausted; the
coughing seized him, and he pressed his hands to his chest, and his
white face flushed red in the firelight. The woman brought him water
to drink, and stood by him with a hand on his shoulder; her broad
peasant's face, deeply lined with care, quivered at every spasm of
the man's. Jimmie quivered, too, sitting there watching, and facing
in his own soul a mighty destiny. He knew the situation now, he knew
his own duty. It was perfectly plain, perfectly simple--his whole
life had been one long training for it. Something cried out in him,
in the words of another proletarian martyr, "Let this cup pass from
Me!" But he stilled the voice of his weakness, and after a while he
said: "Tell me what to do, comrade."

Kalenkin asked, "You have made propaganda in America?"

"Sure," said Jimmie. "I went to jail once for makin' a speech on the
street."

And the other went to a corner of the cabin, and dug under half a
dozen cabbages, and brought out a packet. It contained leaflets, a
couple of hundred perhaps, and the Jew handed one to Jimmie,
explaining, "Dey ask me, 'How shall we make de Americans
understand?' I say, 'Dey must know how ve make propaganda vit de
Germans.' I say, 'Print de proclamations vat we give to de German
troops, and make English translation, so de Americans and de
Englishmen can read.' You tink dat help?"

Jimmie took the leaflet and moved the lamp a bit nearer and read:

"Proclamation of the Army Committee of the Russian Twelfth Army
(Bolshevik), posted throughout the city of Riga during its
evacuation by the Russians:

"German Soldiers!

"The Russian soldiers of the Twelfth Army draw your attention to the
fact that you are carrying on a war for autocracy against
Revolution, freedom and justice. The victory of Wilhelm will be
death to democracy and freedom. We withdraw from Riga, but we know
that the forces of the Revolution will ultimately prove themselves
more powerful than the force of cannons. We know that in the long
run your conscience will overcome everything, and that the German
soldiers, with the Russian Revolutionary Army, will march to the
victory of freedom. You are at present stronger than we are, but
yours is only the victory of brute force. The moral force is on our
side. History will tell that the German proletarians went against
their revolutionary brothers, and that they forgot international
working-class solidarity. This crime you can expiate only by one
means. You must understand your own and at the same time the
universal interests, and strain all your immense power against
imperialism, and go hand-in-hand with us--toward life and liberty!"

Jimmie looked up.

"Vat you tink of it?" cried Kalenkin, eagerly.

"Fine!" cried Jimmie. "The very thing they need! Nobody can object
to that. It's a fact, it's what the Bolsheviki are doing."

The other smiled grimly. "Tovarish, if dey find you vit dat paper,
dey shoot you like a dog! Dey shoot us all!"

"But why?"

"Because it is Bolshevik."

Jimmie wanted to say. "But it's true!" However, he realized how
naive that would sound. So he waited, while Kalenkin went on:

"You show it only to men you can trust. You hide de copies, you take
vun and make it dirty, so you say, 'I find it in de street.' See,
iss it so de Bolsheviki fight de Kaiser? If it iss so, vy do we need
to fight dem? So you give dese; and some day I come vit someting
new."

Jimmie agreed that that was the way to set about it. He folded up a
score of the leaflets and stowed them in an inside pocket of his
jacket, and put on his heavy overcoat and gloves, which he wished he
could give to the sick, half-starved and half-frozen Bolshevik. He
patted him reassuringly on the back, and said: "You trust me,
comrade; I'll hand them out, and they'll bring results, too, I'll
bet."

"You don't tell about me!" exclaimed Kalenkin with fierce intensity.

To which Jimmie answered. "Not if they boil me alive."






CHAPTER XXVI

JIMMIE HIGGINS DISCOVERS HIS SOUL

I





Jimmie went to supper in the mess-hall; but the piles of steaming
hot food choked him--he was thinking of the half-starved little Jew.
The thirty pieces of silver in the pocket of his army jacket burned
each a separate hole. Like the Judas of old, he wanted to hang
himself, and he took a quick method of doing it.

Next to him at the table sat a motor-cyclist who had been a union
plumber before the war, and had agreed with Jimmie that working-men
were going to get their jobs back or would make the politicians
sweat for it. On the way out from the meal, Jimmie edged this fellow
off and remarked, "Say, I've got somethin' interestin'."

Now interesting things were rare here under the Arctic Circle.
"What's that?" asked the plumber.

"I was walkin' on the street," said Jimmie, "an' I seen a printed
paper in the gutter. It's a copy of the proclamation the Bolsheviki
have made to the German soldiers, an' that they're givin' out in the
German trenches."

"By heck!" said the plumber. "What's in it?"

"Why, it calls on them to rise against the Kaiser--to do what the
Russians have done."

"Can you read German?" asked the other.

"Naw," said Jimmie. "This is in English."

"But what's it doin' in English?"

"I'm sure I dunno."

"What's it doin' in Archangel?"

"Dunno that either."

"Holy Christ!" cried the plumber. "I bet them fellers are trying
their stunts on us!"

"I hadn't thought of that," said Jimmie, subtly. "Maybe it's so."

"They won't get very far with the Yanks, I bet," predicted the
other.

"No, I suppose not. But, anyhow, it's interesting, what they say."

"Lemme see it," said the plumber.

"But say," said Jimmie, "don't you tell nobody. I don't want to get
into trouble."

"Mum's the word, old man." And the plumber took the dirty scrap of
paper and read. "By God!" said he. "That's kind o' funny."

"How do you mean?"

"Why, that don't sound like them fellers were backing the Kaiser,
does it?" And the plumber scratched his head. "Say, that sounds all
right to me!"

"Me too!" said Jimmie. "Didn't know they had that much sense."

"It's just what the German people ought to have, by God," said the
plumber. "Seems to me we ought to hire fellows to give out things
like that."

"I think so, too," said Jimmie, enraptured.

The plumber reflected again. "I suppose," said he, "the trouble is
they wouldn't give it to the Germans only; they'd want to give it to
both sides."

"Exactly!" said Jimmie, enraptured still more.

"And, of course, that wouldn't do," said the plumber; "that would
interfere with discipline." So Jimmie's hopes were dashed.

But the upshot of the interview was that the plumber said he would
like to keep the paper and show it to a couple of other fellows. He
promised again that he wouldn't mention Jimmie, so Jimmie said all
right, and went his way, feeling one seed was lodged in good soil.




II



The "Y" had come to Archangel along with the rest of the expedition,
and had set up a hut, in which the men played checkers and read, and
bought chocolate and cigarettes at prices which they considered too
high. Jimmie strolled in, and there was a doughboy with whom he had
had some chat on the transport. This doughboy had been a printer at
home, and he had agreed with Jimmie that maybe a whole lot of
politicians and newspaper editors didn't really understand President
Wilson's radical thought, and so far as they did understand it,
hated and feared it. This printer was reading one of the popular
magazines, full of the intellectual pap which a syndicate of big
bankers considered safe for the common people. He looked bored, so
Jimmie strolled up and lured him away, and repeated his play-acting
as with the plumber--and with the same result.

Then he strolled in to see one of the picture-shows which had been
brought along to beguile the long Arctic nights for the expedition.
The picture showed a million-dollar-a-year girl doll-baby in her
habitual role, a poor little child-waif dressed in the newest
fashion and with a row of ringlets just out of a band-box, sharing
those terrible fates which the poor take as an everyday affair, and
being rewarded at the end by the love of a rich and noble and
devoted youth who solves the social problem by setting her up in a
palace. This also had met with the approval of a syndicate of
bankers before it reached the common people; and in the very midst
of it, while the child-waif with the ringlets was being shown in a
"close-up" with large drops of water running down her cheeks, the
doughboy in the seat next to Jimmie remarked, "Aw, hell! Why do they
keep on giving us this bunk?"

So Jimmie suggested that they "cut it", and they went out, and
Jimmie played his little game a third time, and again was asked to
leave the leaflet he had picked out of the gutter.

So on for two days until Jimmie had got rid of the last of the
manifestoes which Kalenkin had entrusted to him. And on the evening
of the last day, as the subtle propagandist was about to turn into
his bunk for the night, there suddenly appeared a sergeant with a
file of half a dozen men and announced, "Higgins, you are under
arrest."

Jimmie stared at him. "What for?"

"Orders--that's all I know."

"Well, wait--" began Jimmie; but the other said there was no wait
about it, and he took Jimmie by the arm, and one of the other men
took him by the other arm, and marched him away. A third man slung
Jimmie's kit-bag on to his shoulder, while the rest began to search
the place, ripping open the mattress and looking for loose boards in
the floor.




III



It didn't take Jimmie very long to figure out the situation. By that
time he had come into the presence of Lieutenant Gannet, he had made
up his mind what had happened, and what he would do about it.

The lieutenant sat at a table, erect and stiff, with a terrible
frown behind his glasses. He had his sword on the table and also his
automatic--as if he intended to execute Jimmie, and had only to
decide which method to use.

"Higgins," he thundered, "where did you get that leaflet?"

"I found it in the gutter."

"You lie!" said the lieutenant.

"No, sir," said Jimmie.

"How many did you find."

Jimmie had imagined this emergency, and decided to play safe.
"Three, sir," said he; and added, "I think."

"You lie!" thundered the lieutenant again.

"No, sir," said Jimmie, meekly.

"Whom did you give them to?"

Jimmie hadn't thought of that question. It stumped him. "I--I'd
rather not say," said he.

"I command you to say," said the lieutenant.

"I'm sorry, sir, but I couldn't."

"You'll have to say before you get through," said the other. "You
might as well understand that now. You say you found three?"

"It might have been four," said Jimmie, playing still safer. "I
didn't pay any particular attention to them."

"You sympathize with these doctrines," said the lieutenant. "Do you
deny it?"

"Why, no sir--not exactly. I sympathize with part of them."

"And you found these leaflets in the gutter, and you didn't take the
trouble to count whether there were three or four?"

"No, sir."

"There couldn't have been five?"

"I don't know, sir--I don't think so."

"Certainly not six?"

"No, sir," said Jimmie, feeling quite safe now. "I'm sure there
weren't six."

So the lieutenant opened a drawer in the table before him, and took
out a bunch of the leaflets, folded, wrinkled and dirt-stained, and
spread them before Jimmie's eyes, one, two, three, four, five, six,
seven. "You lie!" said the lieutenant.

"I was mistaken, sir," said Jimmie.

"Have you searched this man?" the officer demanded of the other
soldiers.

"Not yet, sir."

"Do it now."

They made certain that Jimmie had no weapons, and then they made him
strip to the skin. They searched everything, even prying loose the
soles of his boots; and, of course, one of the first things they
found was the red card in the inside jacket-pocket. "Aha!" cried the
lieutenant.

"That's a card of the Socialist party," said Jimmie.

"Don't you know that back home men who carry that card are being
sent to jail for twenty years?"

"It ain't fer carryin' the card," said Jimmie, sturdily.

There was a pause, while Jimmie got his clothes on again. "Now,
Higgins," said the lieutenant, "you have been caught red-handed in
treason against your country and its flag. The penalty is death.
There is just one way you can escape--by making a clean breast of
everything. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then tell me who gave you those leaflets?"

"I'm sorry, sir, I found them in the gutter."

"You intend to stick to that silly tale?"

"It's the truth, sir."

"You will protect your fellow-conspirators with your life?"

"I have told you all I know, sir."

"All right," said the lieutenant. He took a pair of handcuffs from
the drawer and saw them put on Jimmie. He picked up his sword and
his automatic--and Jimmie, who did not understand military
procedure, stared with fright. But the lieutenant was merely
intending to strap the weapons on to his belt; then he got into his
overcoat and his big fur gloves and his fur hat that covered
everything but his eyes and nose, and ordered Jimmie brought along.
Outside an automobile was waiting, and the officer and the prisoner
and two guards rode to the military jail.




IV



There was terror in the soul of the prisoner, but he did not let
anyone see it. And in the same way Lieutenant Gannet did not let
anyone see the perplexity that was in his soul. He was a military
officer, he had his stern military duty to do, and he was doing it;
but he had never put anybody in handcuffs before, and had never
taken anybody to jail before, and he was almost as much upset about
it as the prisoner.