Emil laughed. "Don't you suppose I want to learn?"

"But does he need to call you names?"

"That's part of the game--nobody minds that. He's putting the pep
into us--and we want it in."

Jimmie found that such a new point of view that he didn't know what
to reply.

"You see," the other went on, "if you really want to fight, you go
in for it; it's quite remarkable how your feelings change. You
imagine yourself in the presence of the enemy, and you know your
success depends on discipline; if there's a leader, and especially
if you feel that he knows his business, you're glad to have him to
teach you, to make the whole machine do what you want it to. I know
it sounds funny from me, but I've learnt to love discipline." And
Emil laughed, a nervous laugh. "This army means business, let me
tell you; and it's got right down to it. They've been fighting three
and a half years over in Europe, and they send their best men over
to show us, and we dig in and learn--I tell you, we work as if the
devil was after us!"




V



It sounded so strange to hear things like this from the lips of Emil
Forster! Jimmie could hardly make them real to himself--the world
was slipping from under his feet. The Socialist movement was being
seduced--won over by the militarists! He didn't quite dare to say
this; but he hinted, cautiously, "Ain't you afraid maybe we'll get
used to fightin'--to discipline and all that? Maybe they'll trick
us--the plutes."

"I know," said the other. "I've thought of that, and I've no doubt
they'll try it--they want universal training for that very purpose.
We have to fight them, that's all; we have to fight right now--to
make clear why we're going into this war. We have to hold it before
the people--that this is a war to bring democracy to the whole
world. If we can fix that in people's minds, the imperialists won't
have a look in."

"If you could do it, of course--" began Jimmie, hesitatingly.

"But we ARE doing it!" cried Emil. "We're doing it day by day. Look
at this strike here in Leesville."

"What strike?"

"Didn't you know there'd been another walk-out in the Empire Shops?"

"No, I didn't."

"The men went out, and the government sent an arbitration
commission, and forced both sides to accept an award. They broke old
Granitch down--made him recognize the union and grant the basic
eight-hour day."

"My God!" exclaimed Jimmie. It was the thing for which he had stood
up in the Empire yards and been cursed by young Lacey Granitch; it
was the thing for which he had been sent to jail and devoured by
lice! And now the government had helped the men to win their demand!
It was the first time--literally the first in Jimmie's whole
life--that he had been led to think of the government as something
else than an enemy and a slave-driver.

"How did Granitch take it?" he asked.

"Oh, awful! He threatened to quit, and let the government run his
plant; but when he found the government was perfectly willing, he
dropped his bluff. And look here--here's something else." Emil
reached into an inside pocket of his overcoat and pulled out a
newspaper clipping. "Ashton Chalmers went to a banquet at some
bankers' convention the other day and made a speech to them. Read
this."

Jimmie, walking along, read some words that Emil had underlined in
pencil: "Whether we will or no, we have to recognize that the old
order is dead. We face a new era, when labour is coming into its
own. If we do not want to be left behind as derelicts, we shall have
to get busy and do our part to bring in this new era, which
otherwise will come with bloodshed and destruction."

"For the love of Mike!" said Jimmie.

"It's just about knocked Leesville out," said Emil. "You ought to
have seen the papers that reported the speech! It was as if God in
his Heaven had gone crazy, and the clergymen in the churches had to
tell the news!"

To the little machinist there flashed a sudden idea. He caught his
friend by the arm. "Emil!" he exclaimed. "Do you remember that time
when Ashton Chalmers and old Granitch came to our meeting at the
Opera-house?"

"Sure thing!" said Emil.

"Maybe that done it!"

"Nothing more likely."

"And it was me that sold him the tickets!"

Jimmie was thrilled to the bottom of his shoes. Such is the reward
that comes now and then to the soul of a propagandist; he struggles
on amid ridicule and despair--and then suddenly, like a gleam of
light, comes evidence that somewhere, somehow, he has reached
another mind, he has made a real impression. Ashton Chalmers had
listened to the Socialist orator, and he had gone away and read and
investigated; he had realized the force of this great world movement
for economic justice, he had broken the bonds and barriers of his
class, and told the truth about what he saw coming. When Jimmie read
the wonderful words which the bank president had spoken, he was
nearer to an impulse to fight Germany than at any previous moment of
his life!






CHAPTER XVII

JIMMIE HIGGINS WRESTLES WITH THE TEMPTER

I





Of course, not all the Socialists of Leesville had got the "military
bug" like Emil Forster. Late in the afternoon, Jimmie ran into
Comrade Schneider, on his way home from work at the brewery, and he
was the same old Schneider--the same florid Teuton countenance, the
same solid Teuton voice, the same indignant Teuton point of view.
All Jimmie had to do was to mention the name of Emil, and Schneider
was off. A hell of a Socialist he was! Couldn't even wait for the
drill-sergeant to come after him, but had to run and hunt for him,
had to go and put himself out in the public square, where the
town-loafers could watch him playing the monkey!

No, said Schneider, with abundant profanity, he had not moved one
inch from his position; they could send him to jail any time they
got ready, they could stand him up before a firing-squad, but they'd
never get any militarism into him. Pressed for an answer, the big
brewer admitted that he had registered; but he wasn't going to be
drafted, not on his life! Jimmie suggested that this might be
because he had a wife and six children; but the other was too much
absorbed in his tirade to notice Jimmie's grin. He blustered on, in
a tone so loud that several times people on the street overheard,
and gave him a black look. Jimmie, being less in the mood of
martyrdom, parted from him and went to see the Meissners.

The little bottle-packer was living in the same place, having rented
the upper part of his house to a Polish family to help meet his
constantly-rising expenses. He welcomed Jimmie with open
arms--patted him on the back with delight, and opened a bottle of
beer to treat him. He asked a hundred questions about Jimmie's
adventures, and told in turn about events in Leesville. The local as
a whole had stood firm against the war, and was still carrying on
propaganda, in the face of ferocious opposition. The working-classes
were pumped so full of "patriotic dope", you could hardly get them
to listen; as for the radicals, they were marked men--their mail was
intercepted, their meetings were attended by almost as many
detectives as spectators. A number had been drafted--which Meissner
considered deliberate conspiracy on the part of the draft-boards.

Who had been taken? Jimmie asked. The other answered: Comrade
Claudel, the jeweller--he wanted to go, of course; and Comrade
Koeln, the glass-blower--he was a German, but had been naturalized,
so they had taken him, in spite of his protests; and Comrade
Stankewitz--

"Stankewitz!" cried Jimmie, in dismay.

"Sure, he's gone."

"Was he willing?"

"They didn't ask if he was willing. They just told him to report."

Somehow that seemed to bring the war nearer to Jimmie's
consciousness than anything that had happened so far. The little
Roumanian Jew had given him the greater part of his education on
this world-conflict; it was over the counter of the cigar-store that
Jimmie had got the first geography lessons of his life. He had
learned that Russia was the yellow country, and Germany the green,
and Belgium the pale blue, and France the light pink; he had seen
how the railroads from the green to the pink ran through the pale
blue, and how the big fortresses in the pale blue all faced towards
the green--something which Meissner and Schneider and the rest of
the green people considered a mortal affront, a confession of guilt
on the part of the pale blue people. Comrade Stankewitz's
wizened-up, eager little face rose before Jimmie; he heard the
shrill voice, trying to compose the disputes in the local.
"Comrades, all this vill not get us anyvere! There is but vun
question we have to answer, are we internationalists, or are we
not?"

"My God!" cried Jimmie. "Ain't that awful?"

He had got to the point where he was willing to admit that perhaps
the Kaiser had got to be licked, and maybe it was all right for a
fellow that felt like Emil Forster to go and lick him. But to lay
hold of a man who hated war with all his heart and soul, to drag him
away from the little business he had painfully built up, and compel
him to put on a uniform and obey other men's orders--well, when you
saw a thing like that, you knew about the atrocities of war!




II



Comrade Meissner went on. Worse than that---they had taken Comrade
Gerrity. And Jimmie stared. "But he's married!"

"I know," explained Meissner, "but that ain't what counts. What you
got to have is a dependent wife. An' the Gerritys didn't know
that--Comrade Evelyn held on to her job as stenographer, and
somebody must have told on them, for the board jacked him up and
cancelled his exemption. Of course, it was only because he was
organizer of the local; they want to put us out of business any way
they can."

"What did Gerrity do?"

"He refused to serve, and they sent a squad of men after him and
dragged him away. They took him to Camp Sheridan, and tried to put
him in uniform, and he refused--he wouldn't work, he wouldn't have
anything to do with war. So they tried him and sentenced him to
twenty-five years in jail; they put him in solitary confinement, and
he gets nothin' but bread and water--they keep him chained up by his
wrists a part of the time--"

"Oh! OH!" cried Jimmie.

"Comrade Evelyn's most crazy about it. She broke down and cried in
the local, and she went around to the churches--they have women's
sewing-circles, you know, and things for the Red Cross, and her and
Comrade Mary Allen gets up and makes speeches an' drives the women
crazy. They arrested 'em once, but they turned 'em loose--they
didn't want it to get in the papers."

Comrade Meissner could not have foreseen how this particular news
would affect Jimmie; Meissner knew nothing about the strange
adventure which had befallen his friend, the amatory convulsion
which had shaken his soul. Before Jimmie's mind now rose the lovely
face with the pert little dimples and the halo of fluffy brown hair;
the thought of Comrade Evelyn Baskerville in distress was simply not
to be endured. "Where is she?" he cried. He had a vision of himself
rushing forthwith to take up the agitation; to raid the church
sewing-circles and brave the wrath of the she-patriots; to go to
jail with Comrade Evelyn; or perhaps--who could say?--to put about
her, gently and reverently, a pair of fraternal and comforting arms.

Jimmie had the temperament of the dreamer, the idealist, to whom it
is enough to want a thing to see that thing forthwith come into
being. His imagination, stimulated by the image of the charming
stenographer, rushed forth on the wildest of flights. He realized
for the first time that he was a free man; while, as for Comrade
Evelyn, suppose the worst were to happen, suppose Comrade Gerrity
were to perish of the diet of bread and water, or to be dragged into
the trenches and killed--then the sorrowing widow would be in need
of someone to uphold her, to put fraternal and comforting arms about
her--

"Where is she?" Jimmie asked again; and Comrade Meissner dissipated
his dream by replying that she had gone off to work for an
organization in New York which was agitating for humane treatment
for "conscientious objectors". Meissner hunted up the pamphlet
published by this organization, telling most hideous stories of the
abusing of such victims of the military frenzy; they had been
beaten, tortured and starved, subjected to ridicule and humiliation,
in many cases dragged before courts-martial and sentenced to
imprisonment for twenty or thirty years. Jimmie sat up a part of the
night reading these stories--with the result that once more the
feeble sprout of patriotism was squashed flat in his soul!




III



Jimmie went to the next meeting of the local. It was a slender
affair now, for some of the members were in jail, and some in the
training camps, and some afraid to come for fear of their jobs, and
some discouraged by incessant persecution. But the old war-horses
were there--Comrade Schneider, and gentle old Hermann Forster, and
Comrade Mabel Smith, with an account of her brother's mistreatment
in the county jail, and Comrade Mary Allen, the Quaker lady. This
last was still taking it as a personal affront that America should
be going into the bloody mess, in spite of all her denunciations and
protests; she was even paler and thinner than when Jimmie had seen
her last--her hands trembled and her thin lips quivered as she
spoke, you could see that she was burning up with excitement over
the monstrous wickedness of the world's events. She read to the
local a harrowing story of a boy who had registered as a
conscientious objector in New York, and had been taken out to a
training-camp and subjected to such indignities that he had shot
himself. Comrade Mary had no children of her own, so she had adopted
these conscientious objectors, and as she read of their experiences,
her soul was convulsed with a mingling of grief and rage.

Jimmie went back to the Empire Shops and applied for a job. They
needed thousands of men, so the Herald declared--but they did not
need a single one like Jimmie! The man to whom he applied recognized
him at once, and said, "Nothin' doin'." For the sake of being nasty,
Jimmie went to the headquarters of the newly-formed union, and asked
them to force old Abel Granitch to give him work, according to the
terms of the agreement with the government. But the union secretary,
after thinking the matter over, decided that the provision against
black-listing applied only to men who had been out on the last
strike, not to the strikers of a couple of years before. "There was
no use going out of one's way to look for trouble," said this
secretary. Jimmie went away jeering at the union, and damning the
war as heartily as ever.

He was in no hurry to get work, having still some money in his
pocket, and being able to live cheaply with the Meissners. He went
again to watch young Forster drilling, and went home with him and
heard an argument with old Hermann. You could see how this family
had been split wide open; the old man ordered his traitorous son out
several times, but the mother had flung herself into the breach,
pleading that the boy was going away in a few days, and perhaps
would never return. The evening that Jimmie was there, the paper
printed a speech of the President, outlining his purposes in the
war, the terms of justice for all peoples, a league of nations and
universal disarmament. Emil read this triumphantly, finding in it a
justification of his support of the war. Wasn't it a great part of
what the Socialists wanted?

Hermann answered grudgingly that the words were all right, but how
about the deeds? Also, how about the other Allies--did the President
imagime he could boss them? No--to the imperialists of England and
France and Italy those fine words were just bait for gudgeons; they
would serve to keep the workers quiet till the war was won, and then
the militarists would kick out the American President and pick the
bones of the carcass of Germany. If they really meant to abide by
the President's terms, why didn't they come out squarely and say so?
Why didn't they repudiate the secret treaties? Why didn't England
begin her career in democracy by setting free Ireland and India?

So it went; and Jimmie listened to both speakers, and agreed with
both alternately, experiencing more and more that distressing
condition of mental chaos, in which he found himself of two
absolutely contradictory and diametrically opposite points of view.




IV



All winter long the papers had been full of talk about a mighty
German offensive that was coming in the spring. The German people
were being told all about it, and how it was to end the war with a
glorious triumph. In America nobody was sure about the matter; the
fact that the attack was boldly announced seemed good reason for
looking elsewhere. Perhaps the enemy was preparing to overwhelm
Italy, and wished to keep France and England from sending troops to
the weakened Italian line!

But now suddenly, in the third week of March, the Germans made a
mighty rush at the British line in front of Cambrai; army upon army
they came, and overwhelmed the defenders, and poured through the
breach. The British forces fell back--every hour it seemed that
their retreat must be turned into a rout. Day by day, as the
dispatches came in, Jimmie watched the map in front of the Herald
office, and saw a huge gap opening in the British line, a spear-head
pointing straight into the heart of France. Three days, four days,
five days, this ghastly splitting apart went on, and the whole world
held its breath. Even Jimmie Higgins was shaken by the news--he had
got enough into the war by this time to realize what a German
triumph would mean. It took a strong pacifist stomach indeed to
contemplate such an issue of events without flinching.

Comrade Mary Allen had such a stomach; to her religious fervour it
made no difference whatever which set of robbers ruled the world.
Comrade Schneider had it also; he knew that Germany was the
birth-place and cradle of Socialism, and believed that the best fate
that could befall the world was for the Germans to conquer it, and
let the German Socialists make it into a co-operative commonwealth
by and by. Comrade Schneider was now openly gloating over this new
proof of German supermanity, the invincibility of German discipline.
But most of the other members of the local were awed--realizing in
spite of themselves the seriousness of the plight which confronted
civilization.

Jimmie would inspect the bulletin board, and go over to watch the
drilling, and then to Tom's "Buffeteria" with Emil Forster. He had
always had an intense admiration for Emil, and now the young
designer, distressed by the strife at home, was glad of someone to
pour out his soul to. He would help Jimmie to realize the meaning of
the British defeat, the enormous losses of guns and supplies, the
burden it would put upon America. For America would have to make up
these losses, America would have to drive the Germans out of every
foot of this newly-conquered territory.

Jimmie would listen and study the matter out on the map; and so
gradually he learned to be interested in a new science, that of
military strategy. When once you have fallen under the spell of that
game, your soul is lost. You think of men, no longer as human
creatures, suffering, starving, bleeding, dying in agony; you think
of them as chess-pawns; you dispose of them as a gambler of his
chips, a merchant of his wares; you classify them into brigades and
divisions and corps, moving them here and there, counting off your
losses against the losses of the enemy, putting in your reserves at
critical moments, paying this price for that objective, wiping out
thousands and tens of thousands of men with a sweep of your hand, a
mark of your pencil, a pressure on an electric button! Once you have
learnt to take that view of life, you are no longer a human heart,
to be appealed to by pacifists and humanitarians; you are a machine,
grinding out destruction, you are a ripe apple, ready to fall into
the lap of the god of war, you are an autumn leaf, ready to be
seized by the gales of patriotism and blown to destruction and
death.






CHAPTER XVIII

JIMMIE HIGGINS TAKES THE PLUNGE

I





Jimmie went home one evening to the Meissners, and there got a piece
of news that delighted him. Comrade Stankewitz had come back from
Camp Sheridan! The man to whom he had sold his tobacco-store having
failed to pay up, Stankewitz had got a three days' furlough to
settle his business affairs. "Say, he looks fine!" exclaimed
Meissner; and so after supper Jimmie hurried off to the little store
on the corner.

Never had Jimmie been so startled by the change in a man; he would
literally not have known his Roumanian Jewish friend. The wrinkles
which had made him look old had filled out; his shoulders were
straight--he seemed to have been lifted a couple of inches; he was
brown, his cheeks full of colour--he was just a new man! Jimmie and
he had been wont to skylark a bit in the old days, as young male
creatures do, putting up their fists, giving one another a punch or
two, making as if they were going to batter in one another's noses.
They would grip hands and squeeze, to see which could hold out
longest. But now, when they tried it, there was "nothing to it"--
Jimmie got one squeeze and hollered quits.

"Vat you tink?" cried Stankewitz. "I veigh tventy pounds more
already--tventy pounds! They vork you like hell in that army, but
they treat you good. You don't never have such good grub before, not
anyvere you vork."

"You like it?" demanded Jimmy, in amazement.

"Sure I like it, you bet your money! I learn lots of things vat I
didn't know before. I get myself straight on this var, don't you
ferget it."

"You believe in the war?"

"Sure I believe in it, you bet your money!" Comrade Stankewitz, as
he spoke, pounded with an excited fist on the counter. "Ve got to
vin this var, see? Ve got to beat them Yunkers! I vould have made up
my mind to that, even if I don't go in the army--I vould have make
it up ven I see vat they do vit Russia."

"But the revolution--"

"The revolution kin vait--maybe vun year, maybe two years already.
It don't do us no good to have a revolution if the Yunkers walk over
it! No, sir--I vant them Germans put out of Roumania und out of
Russia und out of Poland--und, I tell you, in this American army you
got plenty Roumanian Socialists, plenty Polish Socialists, und the
Kaiser vill be sorry ven he meets them in France, you bet your
money!"

So Jimmie got another dose of patriotism, a heavy dose this time;
for Stankewitz was all on fire with his new conviction, as full of
the propaganda impulse as he had been when he called himself an
"anti-nationalist". He could not permit you to differ with
him--became irritated at the bare mention of those formula-ridden
members of the local who were still against the war. They were
fools--or else they were Germans; and Comrade Stankewitz was as
ready to right the Germans in Leesville as in France. He got so
excited arguing that he almost forgot the cigars and the show-cases
which he had to get rid of in two days. To Jimmie it was an amazing
thing to see this transformation--not merely the new uniform and the
new muscles of his Roumanian Jewish friend, but his sense of
certainty about the war, his loyalty to the President for the bold
deed he had done in pledging the good faith of America to securing
the freedom and the peaceful future of the harrassed and tormented
subject-races of Eastern Europe.




II



Jimmie got a sheet of letter paper, and borrowed a scratchy pen and
a little bottle of ink from Mrs. Meissner, and wrote a painfully
mis-spelled letter to Comrade Evelyn Gerrity, nee Baskerville, to
assure her of his sympathy and undying friendship. He did not tell
her that he was beginning to wobble on the war; in fact, when he
thought of Jack Gerrity, chained up to the bars of a cell window, he
unwobbled--he wanted the social revolution right away. But then as
he went to drop the letter into the post office, so that it might go
more quickly, he bought a paper and read the story of what was
happening in France. And again the war-fervour tempted him.

By desperate, frenzied fighting the British had succeeded in holding
up for a few days the colossal German drive. But help was
needed--instant help, if civilization was to be saved. The cry came
across the seas--America must send assistance--guns, shells, food,
and above all else men. Jimmie's blood was stirred; he had an
impulse to answer the call, to rush to the rescue of those desperate
men, crouching in shell-holes and fighting day and night for a week
without rest. If only Jimmie could have gone right to them! If only
it had not been necessary for him to go to a training-camp and
submit himself to a military martinet! If only it had not been for
war-profiteers, and crooked politicians, and lying, predatory
newspapers, and all the other enemies of democracy at home!

Jimmie dropped his letter in the slot, and turned to leave the post
office, when his eye was caught by a sign on the wall-a large sign,
in bold, black letters: "YOUR COUNTRY NEEDS YOU!" Jimmie thought it
was more "Liberty Bond" business; they had been after him several
times, trying to separate him from his earnings, but needless to say
they hadn't succeeded. However, he stopped out of curiosity, and
read that men were needed to go to France--skilled men of all sorts.
There was a long list of the trades, everything you could think of--
carpenters, plumbers, electricians, lumbermen, stevedores,
railwaymen, laundrymen, cooks, warehousemen--so on for several
columns. Jimmie came to "machinists", and gave a guilty start; then
he came to "motor-cycle drivers" and "motor-cycle repairers"--and
suddenly he clenched his hands. A wild idea flashed over him,
causing such excitement that he could hardly read on. Why should he
not go to France--he, Jimmy Higgins! He was a man without a tie in
the world--as free as the winds that blow across the ocean! And he
was looking for a job--why not take one of these?

It was a way he might share all the adventures, see the marvellous
sights of which he had been reading and hearing and without the long
delay in a training-camp, without waiting to be bossed about by a
military martinet! Jimmie looked to see what pay was offered;
fifty-one dollars a month and an "allowance" for board and expenses.
At the bottom of the sign he read the words: "Why not work for your
Uncle Sam?" Jimmie as it happened was in a fairly friendly mood
towards his Uncle Sam at that moment; so he thought, why not give
him a chance as a boss? After all, wasn't that what every Socialist
was aiming at--to be an employe of the community, a servant of the
public, rather than of some private profiteer?




III



Jimmie went to the window to inquire, and the clerk told him that
the "war-labour recruiting office" was at the corner of Main and
Jefferson. He came to the corner designated, and there in a vacant
store was a big recruiting sign, "War Labour Wanted", and a soldier
in khaki walking up and down. A week ago Jimmie could not have been
bribed to enter a place presided over by a soldier; but he had
learned from Emil and Stankewitz that a soldier might be a human
being, so he went up and said, "Hello."

"Hello, yourself," said the soldier, looking him over with an
appraising eye.

"If I was to hire here, when would I start for France?"

"To-night," said the soldier.

"You kiddin' me?"

"They ain't payin' me to kid people," said the other; and then,
"What's your hurry?"

"Well, I don't want to be stalled in a trainin'-camp."

"You won't be stalled if you know your business. What are you?"

"I'm a machinist; I've repaired bicycles, an' I know a bit about
motor-cycles."

"Walk in," said the soldier, and led the way, and presented Jimmie
to a sergeant at the desk. "Here's a machinist," he said, "and he's
in a hurry to get to work. Runnin' away from his wife, maybe."

"There's a bunch of men starting for the training-camp to-night,"
said the sergeant.

"Trainin'-camp?" echoed Jimmie. "I want to go to France."

The other smiled. "You wouldn't expect us to send you till we'd
tried you out, would you?"

"No, I suppose not," replied Jimmie, dubiously. He was on his guard
against tricks. Suppose they were to enlist him as a worker, and
then make him fight!

The other went on. "If you're competent, you'll get to France all
right. We need men over there in a hurry, and we won't waste your
time."

"Well, now," said Jimmie, "I dunno's you'll want me at all when you
hear about me. I'm a Socialist."

"Thought you were a machinist," countered the sergeant.

"I'm a Socialist, too. I was in the strike at the Empire a couple of
years ago, and they blacklisted me. I can't get no work in the big
places here."

"Well," said the sergeant, "it's a good town for you to quit, I
should say."

"You want a man like that?" persisted Jimmie.

"What we want is men that know machinery, and'll dig in and work
like hell to beat the Kaiser. If you're that sort we don't ask your
religion. We've got a bunch that start to-night."

"Holy smoke!" said Jimmie. He had thought he would have time to ask
questions and to think matters over, time to see his friends and say
good-bye. But the sergeant was so efficient and business-like; he
took it so completely for granted that any man who was worth his
salt must be anxious to help wallop the Hun! Jimmie, who had come in
full of hurry, was now ashamed to back water, to hem and haw, to
say, "I dunno; I ain't so sure." And so the trap snapped on him--the
monster of Militarism grabbed him!




IV



"Sit down," said the sergeant, and the anxious little Socialist took
the chair beside the desk,

"What's your name?"

"James Higgins."

"Your address?"

"I'm just stayin' with a friend."

"The friend's address?" and so on: where had Jimmie worked last,
what work had he done, what references had he to offer. Jimmie could
not help grinning as he realized how his record must sound to a
military martinet. He had been discharged and blacklisted at the
motor-truck factory in Ironton, his last job; he had been discharged
and black-listed at the Empire Shops; he had been arrested and sent
to jail for "soap-boxing" on the streets of Leesville; he had been
arrested in the bomb-conspiracy of Kumme and Heinrich von Holst. The
sergeant entered each of these items without comment, but when he
come to the last, he stared up at the applicant.

"I didn't have nothin' to do with it," declared Jimmie.

"You got to prove that to me," said the sergeant.

"I proved it once," replied Jimmie.

"Who to?"

"Mr. Harrod, the agent of the Department of Justice here."

The other took up the telephone and called the post office building.
Jimmie listened to one-half of the conversation--would Mr. Harrod
look up the record of James Higgins, who was applying for enlistment
in the Mechanical Department of the Motor Corps? There was some
delay--Mr. Harrod was talking--while Jimmie sat, decidedly nervous;
but it was all right apparently--the sergeant hung up the receiver,
and remarked reassuringly, "He says you're just a dub. He told me to
congratulate you on having got some sense."

Jimmie made the most of this more than dubious statement, and
proceeded to answer questions as to his competence. Was there
anybody at the Empire who could certify as to this? The sergeant was
about to call up the Empire Shops, but reconsidered; if Jimmie had
actually worked in a machine-shop and in a bicycle-shop, they would
surely be able to find something for him in the army. In an hour of
such desperate need they took most everyone. "How tall are you?"
demanded the sergeant, and added, "Weight don't matter so much,
because we'll feed you."

The office of the medical examiner was upstairs in the same
building, and Jimmie was escorted upstairs, and invited to remove
his coat and shirt, and have his chest measured, and his heart and
lungs listened to, and his teeth counted, and his nose peered into,
and a score of such-like stunts. He had things wrong with him, of
course, but not too many for army purposes, it appeared. The doctor
jotted down the figures on a sheet and signed it, after which Jimmie
and the soldier went back to the recruiting-office.

And now suddenly the little Socialist found himself with an
enlistment paper before him, and a wet pen in his hand. He had never
once been asked: "Is your mind made up? Do you really mean to take
this irrevocable step?" No, the sergeant had taken it for granted
that Jimmie meant business. He had done all this inquiring and
writing down of information, this weighing and measuring and what
not, and now he sat with a stern, compelling eye fixed on his
victim, as much as to say: "Do you mean to tell me that I've done
all that for nothing?" If Jimmie had actually refused to sign his
name, what a blast of scorn would have withered him!

So Jimmie did not even stop to read all the paper; he signed. "And
now," said the sergeant, "the train leaves at nine-seventeen this
evening. I'll be there to give you your ticket. Don't fail to be on
hand. You understand, you're under military discipline now." There
was a new tone in these last words, and Jimmie quaked inwardly, and
went out with a sort of hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach.




V



He rushed away to tell Comrade Stankewitz, who hugged him with
delight and shouted that they would meet in France! Then he went to
tell Emil Forster, who was equally glad. He found himself with an
impulse to hunt up Comrade Schneider and tell him. Jimmie discovered
in himself a sudden and curious antagonism to Schneider; he wanted
to have matters out with him, to say to him: "Wake up, you
mutt--forget that fool dream of yours that the Kaiser's goin' to win
the war!"

There were others Jimmie thought of, upon whom he would not call.
Comrade Mary Allen, for example--he would let her get the news after
he was out of the reach of her sharp tongue! Also he thought of
Comrade Evelyn; he might never see her again; if he did see her, she
might refuse to speak to him! But Jimmie repressed the pang of
dismay which this realization brought him. He was going to war, and
the longings and delights of love must be put to one side!

He went to the Meissners for supper, and broke the news to them. He
had expected protests and arguments, and was surprised by the lack
of them. Had the little bottle-packer been impressed by the
experiences of Comrade Stankewitz? Or could it be that he was afraid
to voice his full mind to Jimmie--just as Jimmie had been afraid in
the case of Emil Forster?

Jimmie had some commissions to entrust to the Meissners; he would
leave with them the diary of "Wild Bill", which he had hung on to,
but which seemed hardly the sort of literature to take on a
transport.

"Sure," assented Meissner. "Besides, the subs might get it."

And Jimmie gave a sudden start. By heck! It was the first time the
idea had occurred to him. He would have to pass through the barred
zone! He might be in some fighting after all! He might never get to
France! "Say!" he exclaimed. "That ocean must be cold this time of
year!"

For a moment he wavered. Surely it would have been more sensible to
wait till later in the season, when the consequences of a plunge
overboard would be less distressing! But Jimmie remembered the
armies, locked in their grip of death; never would despatch-riders
need their motor-cycles more urgently than now! Also Jimmie
remembered the sergeant at the recruiting-office. "You understand,
you're under military discipline now!" He set his jaw in a grim
resolve. The "subs" be damned, he would go and do his part! Already
he felt the thrill of his responsibility in this mighty hour of
history; he was a military man, with a stern duty to do, with the
destinies of nations depending upon his behaviour!






CHAPTER XIX

JIMMIE HIGGINS PUTS ON KHAKI

I





There were seven fellows who boarded the train that evening, under
the temporary charge of a blacksmith from the near by country. At
seven o'clock next morning they presented their papers at the
entrance-gate of the training-camp, and under the escort of a
soldier were marched down the main street, hanging on to their
bundles and suit-cases, and staring about them at the sights.

It was a city inhabited by some forty thousand men, on a site which
a year ago had been waste scrub-land. Long rows of wooden buildings
stretched in every direction--barracks, dining-rooms, study-rooms,
offices, store-houses--with great stretches of exercise and
training-grounds between. Just to see this city, with its swarming
population of young men, all in uniform, erect, eager, well-set-up
and vivid with health, every man of them busy, and every man
seemingly absorbed in his job--that alone was a worth-while
experience. It was a new kind of city--a city without a loafer,
without a drunkard, without a parasite. The seven working-men from
Leesville felt suddenly slouchy and disgraced, with their
ill-fitting civilian clothes and their miscellaneous bundles and
suitcases.

The first thing they did with the new arrivals was to make them
clean, to fumigate and vaccinate them. In a Socialist local one
meets all sorts of eccentrics, the lunatic-fringe of the movement,
and so it happened that Jimmie had listened to a tirade against the
diabolical practice of inoculation, which caused more deadly
diseases than it was supposed to prevent. But the medical officers
of this camp did not stop to ask Jimmie's conclusions on that vital
subject; they just told him to roll up the sleeve of his left arm,
and proceeded to wipe his skin clean and scratch it with a needle.

And then came the tailor, to do him up in khaki. This also was
something the little machinist had not bargained for; he had taken
it as a matter of course that he would be allowed to work for Uncle
Sam in any old clothes, just as he had done for Abel Granitch. But
no--he must have an outfit, complete even to a tooth-brush, which
they would show him how to use. Having been done up neat and tight
in khaki, with a motor-wheel on his sleeve to show his branch of the
service, he stood and looked at himself in the glass, experiencing a
demoralizing and unworthy excitement. He was every bit as handsome
as Comrade Stankewitz! When he walked down the street would the
girls giggle, and turn to look at him, as they did at the sedate and
proper Comrade Emil? So the meshes of Militarism were being woven
about the soul of Jimmie Higgins.




II



Jimmie was in quarantine, not allowed to go out of camp on account
of his typhoid and other vaccinations, There was enough about the
place to have interested him; but, alas, he became suddenly very
sick, and was terrified to realize that the opponent of inoculation
must have been right. His health had been undermined for ever, he
would suffer from a dozen obscure diseases! He went to the hospital,
miserable in body and still more miserable in mind; but in a couple
of days he began to feel better, and listened to the nurses, who
told him cheerfully that everybody felt that way for a bit. Then he
got up, and had several free days in which to complete his
recovery--days which he spent in wandering about the camp, watching
the fascinating sights.

It was like a circus with hundreds of rings. The drilling and
marching he had seen in the Leesville square were here going on
wholesale. Hundreds of groups were being put through squad-drill and
the manual, while other groups were having special kinds of
exercises--climbing up walls, digging trenches, making roads,
shooting at targets. It rained every other day, and the ground was a
morass, but no one paid the least attention to that; the men came in
plastered with mud, and steaming like lard-vats. They seemed to
enjoy it; nothing ever interfered with their bantering and jokes.

Jimmie watched them with alternating moods of curiosity and horror;
for the things that were done here brought the war, with its
infinite and multiform wickedness, before his very eyes. Here was a
group of men being taught to advance under fire; crawling on their
bellies on the ground, jumping from one hummock to another, flinging
themselves down and pretending to fire. A man in front, supposed to
have a machine-gun, was shouting when he had "got" them. Now they
unslung their little trenching-tools, and began to burrow themselves
like wood-chucks into the ground. "Dig, you sons o' guns, dig!" the
officer would shout. "Keep your head down, Smith! Make the dirt fly!
Put the jazz into it! That's the stuff!"

Jimmie had never watched football practice, so he had no conception
of the efforts to which men could be goaded by "coaching". It was
abhorrent--yet also it was fascinating, the spell of it got hold of
him. He saw what these men were doing; they were learning to act in
masses, to act with paralyzing and terrific force. Whatever it was
they did, they did with the smash of a battering-ram. You saw the
fire in their eyes, the grim, set look on their faces; you knew that
they were not going to war with any hesitations or divided minds.

You would move over a rise in the ground, and come upon a bunch of
them at bayonet-practice. You didn't require imagination to get the
hang of this; they had dummies made of leather, and they rushed at
these figures, hacking, stabbing--and here was the most amazing part
of it, shouting with rage. Actually the officers taught them to
yell, to snarl, to work up their feelings to a fury! It was
blood-curdling--Jimmie turned away from it sick. It was just what he
had been arguing for three years and a half--you had to make
yourself into a wild beast in order to go to war!

Also Jimmie watched the target-ranges, from which came all day a
rattle of shots, like the whirr of many typewriters. Companies of
men came marching, and spread themselves out along the firing-steps,
and under the direction of instructors proceeded to contribute their
quota to the noise. Over by the targets were others who kept score
and telephoned the results; so all day long, winter or summer, rain
or shine, men were learning to kill their fellows, mechanically, as
if it were a matter of factory routine. At other ranges were moving
targets, where sharp-shooters were acquiring skill; you noticed that
their targets were never birds and deer, as at the shooting-
galleries which Jimmie had seen at the beaches and at Socialist
picnics. No, they were the heads or bodies of men, and each body
painted a greenish grey, matching the uniforms of the enemy.




III



So day by day Jimmie lived with the idea of killing, confronting the
grim and ferocious face of war. He had thought that repairing
motor-cycles would be pretty much the same anywhere you did it; but
he found that it was one thing to repair motor-cycles to be ridden
by errand-boys and working-men out for a holiday with their
sweethearts, and another and entirely different thing to repair them
for fighting-men and dispatch-couriers. Jimmie was driven more
insistently than ever to make up his mind about this war. It was
every day less easy for him to hold two contradictory sets of
opinions.

All the men he now met were of one opinion, and by no possibility to
be persuaded to consider any other. Jimmie found that he could get
them to agree that after this war for democracy there would be vast
changes in this world, the people would never more let themselves be
hoodwinked and exploited as they had; he found that he could
interest them in the idea of having the government run the great
industries, producing food and clothing for the people as it was now
producing them for the troops. But when he tried to give this
programme the name of Socialism, then the trouble began. Weren't
Socialists the lunatics who wanted to have America "lay down" like
Russia? The premise from which all discussion started with these men
was that America was going to win the war; if you tried to hint that
this matter could so much as be hesitated over, you met, first sharp
mockery, and then angry looks, and advice to go and take a pill and
get the Hun poison out of your system.

Nor was there any use trying to talk about the dangers of
militarism. These men knew all about the dangers of militarism--for
the Kaiser. The man who is at the buttend of a gun, and knows how to
aim it so as to pick off a cat at six hundred yards--that man will
let the cat do the worrying. So, at any rate, the matter seemed to
these husky young recruits, who were learning to march in the mud
and sleep in the rain and chew up carpet-tacks and grind Huns into
leber-wurst. They were putting through the job--with a fierce and
terrifying gaiety; they exulted in their toughness, they called
themselves "grizzlies" and "mountain cats" and what not; they sang
wild songs about their irritability, their motto was "Treat 'em
rough!" It was a scary atmosphere for a dreamer and utopian; Jimmie
Higgins shrank into himself, afraid even to reach about for some
fellow-Socialist with whom he might exchange opinions about the
events of the outside world.




IV



In the evening there were picture-shows, concerts, lectures-nearly
all dealing with the war, of course. They were held in big halls
built by the Y.M.C.A., an organization for which Jimmie had a hearty
contempt. He regarded it as a device of the exploiting classes to
teach submission to their white-collar slaves. But nobody could live
in a training-camp without being aware of the "Y". Jimmie was
invited to a lecture, and out of boredom he went.

It was Sergeant Ebenezer Collins, imported from Flanders to tell the
"doughboys" about the wiles of the Hun. Sergeant Collins spoke a
weird language which Jimmie had never heard before, and not all of
which he could understand; it served, however, to convince him that
the sergeant was genuine--for nobody could possibly have faked such
a form of utterance! "When yer gow inter Wipers naow," said the
orator, "yer see owld, grye-headed lydies an' bybies like little
wite gowsts, an' yer sye ter them, 'Gow-a-wye, the 'Un may be 'ere
ter-dye,' but they wown't gow, they got now 'omes ter gow ter!"

But in spite of the difficulties of a foreign language, you realized
that this Cockney sergeant was a man. For one thing he had a sense
of humour; he had kept it in the midst of terror and death--kept it
standing all night in trenches full of icy-cold water, with icy-cold
water pouring down his collar. Also the sergeant had a sense of
honour--there were things he could not do to a 'Un, even though the
'Un might do them to him. Jimmie had listened to excited debates in
Local Leesville, as to whether the Allies were really any better
than the Germans; whether, for example, the Allies would have sunk
passenger-liners with women and babies on board, if it had been
necessary in order to win the war. Sergeant Collins did not debate
this question, he just revealed himself as a fighting man. "It's
because we plye gymes, an' they down't," he remarked. "If yer plye
gymes, yer now 'ow to plye fair."

For three years and eight months Jimmie had been hearing stories
about atrocities, and for three years and eight months he had been
refusing to believe them. But now the Cockney sergeant told about a
pal who had been wounded in a night attack by the 'Uns, and the
sergeant had tried to carry him back and had had to leave him;
towards dawn they made a counter-attack, and retook the village, and
there they found the sergeant's pal, still alive, in spite of the
fact that he was spiked to a barn-door with bayonets through his
hands and feet. When that story was told, you heard a low murmur run
through the room and saw a couple of thousand young men clenching
their hands and setting their jaws, getting ready for their big job
in France.

"Just now," said the sergeant, "the Germans were making the most
desperate attack of the war. The British were at bay, with their
backs against the wall. It was upon the men in the training-camps of
America that the decision rested; there was no one but them to save
the day, to save the rest of the world from falling under the hoofs
of the Hun monster. Would they do their part?" Jimmie Higgins heard
the answer from those two thousand young throats, and the pacifist
in him shrunk deeper out of sight.

But the pacifist was never entirely silent. War was wrong! War was
wrong! It was a wicked and brutal way for human beings to settle
their disagreements. If human beings were not yet intelligent enough
to listen to reason--well, even so, that didn't make war right! A
man had to have principles, and to stand by them--how else could he
make the world come his way? Yes, war was wrong! But, meantime, war
was here; and calling it wrong did not put a stop to it! What the
devil was a fellow to do?




V



As soon as Jimmie was able to work, they took him to the part of the
camp where a motor-cycle division was training. Here was a big
repair-shop, with plenty of damaged machines upon which he might
display his skill. He did not know the particular engine they used
here, but he soon learned the secrets of it, and satisfied the
officers in charge that he knew how to take one apart and put it
together again, to replace and mend tyres, to clean ball-bearings
and true crooked rims. "You're all right," they said. "And you're
needed like the devil over there. You won't have to wait long."

There was a platform where the trains came into the camp, and every
few hours now there came a long train to be loaded with men. Jimmie
got his notice, and packed his kit and answered roll call and took
his place; at sundown of the next day he was detrained at a
"mobilization-camp"--another huge city, described in the cautious
military fashion as "Somewhere in New Jersey", though everybody
within a hundred miles knew its exact location. Here was a port,
created for the purposes of war, with docks and wharves where the
fleets of transports were loaded with supplies and troops. The
vessels sailed in fleets, carrying thirty or forty thousand men at
once. From the port of New York alone there was going out a fleet
like this every week--the answer of America to the new drive of the
Hun.