One met here, not merely the fighting-men, but the forces of all the
complicated service behind the lines: gangs of lumbermen from the
far North-west, who were to fell the forests of France and make them
into railroad-ties and timber for trenches; railway-men, miners, and
construction-gangs, engineers and signalmen, bridge-builders and
road-makers, telephone-linemen and operators, the drivers of forty
thousand motor-cars and of five thousand locomotives; bakers and
cooks, menders of shoes and of clothing, farmers to till the soil of
France, and doctors and nurses to tend its sick and wounded. There
was nothing which the skill and knowledge of a nation of a hundred
million people had to offer that was not gathered into this vast
encampment. All the youngest and keenest were here, eager to do
their part, laughing at danger, tingling with excitement, on tip-toe
with curiosity and delight. Jimmie Higgins, watching them, found his
doubts melting like an April snow-storm. How could any man see this
activity and not be caught up in it? How could he be with these
laughing boys and not share their mood?

Jimmie himself had not had a merry childhood, he did not know the
youth of his own country--the breezy, slangy, rather shocking,
utterly irrepressible youth of this democratic world. If there was
anything they did not know--well, they did not know it; if there was
anything they could not do--their motto was: "Show me!" Jimmie, not
having been to school, found himself having a hard time with their
weird slang. When one of these fellows hailed you, "Hey, pimp!" it
did not necessarily mean that he did not like you: when he greeted
you, "Hey, sweetness!" it did not mean that he felt for you any
over-powering affection. If he referred to his officer as
"hard-boiled", he did not have in mind that this officer had been
exposed to the action of water at 212 degrees Fahrenheit; he merely
meant that the officer was a snob. When he remarked, "Good night!"
in broad daylight, he meant you to understand that he disagreed with
you.

He disagreed frequently and explosively with Jimmie Higgins, trying
to point out a difference between the German rulers and the German
people! Such subtleties had no interest for these all-knowing boys.
When Jimmie persisted, they called him a "nut", a "poor cheese";
they told him that he was "cuckoo", that his "trolley was twisted";
they made whirling motions with their hands to indicate that he had
"wheels in his head", they made flapping motions over him to signify
that there were "bats in his belfry". So Jimmie subsided, and let
them talk their own talk--imploring one another to "have a heart",
or to "get wise", or to "make it snappy", or to "cut out the rough
stuff". And he would sit and listen while they sang with zest a song
telling about what they were going to do when they got to France:

    Bring the good old bugle, boys, we'll sing another song,
    Sing it with a spirit that will move the world along,
    Sing it as we love to sing it, just two million strong--
           While we are canning the Kaiser.

        CHORUS:

    Oh, Bill! Oh, Bill! We're on the job to-day!
    Oh, Bill! Oh, Bill! We'll seal you so you'll stay!
    We'll put you up in ginger in the good old Yankee way--
           While we are canning the Kaiser.

    Hear the song we're singing on the shining roads of France;
    Hear the Tommies cheering, and see the Poilus prance;
    Africanders and Kanucks and Scots without their pants--
           While we are canning the Kaiser. (Chorus)

    Bring the guns from Bethlehem, by way of old New York;
    Bring the beans from Boston, and don't leave out the pork;
    Bring a load of soda-pop and pull the grape-juice cork--
           While we are canning the Kaiser. (Chorus)

    Come you men from Dixieland, you lumberjacks of Maine;
    Come you Texas cowboys, and you farmers of the plain;
    Florida to Oregon, we boast the Yankee strain--
           While we are canning the Kaiser. (Chorus)

    Now we've started on the job we mean to put it through;
    Ship the kings and kaisers all, and make the world anew;
    Clear the way for common folk, for men like me and you--
           While we are canning the Kaiser.

            CHORUS:

    Oh, Bill! Oh, Bill! We're on the job to-day!
    Oh, Bill! Oh, Bill! We'll seal you so you'll stay!
    We'll put you up in ginger in the good old Yankee way--
    While we are canning the Kaiser.






CHAPTER XX

JIMMIE HIGGINS TAKES A SWIM

I





You did not stop very long in the mobilization-camp, for the arrival
of your train was timed with the arrival of the ship on which you
were to sail. You had a meal, sometimes you slept a night, then you
marched to the docks. Nor was there much of the traditional "sweet
sorrow" about the departure of these great fleets; the weeping
mothers and sisters had not been notified to be present, and the
ladies of the canteen-service had given coffee and sandwiches,
cigarettes and chocolate, to so many tens of thousands that they had
forgotten about tears. It was like the emigration of a nation; the
part of America that was now on the other side was so large that
nobody would need to feel homesick.

Jimmie's embarking was done at night; on the long, covered piers,
lighted by arc-lights, the soldiers set down their kits and stood
about, munching food, singing songs, and keeping one another's wits
sharpened for battle. They filtered on board, and then without a
light or a sound the vessel stole down the long stretches of the
harbour, and out to sea. One never knew at what hour the enemy
submarines might attempt a raid on the American side, so the
entrance to the harbour was mined and blockaded, a narrow passage
being opened when the ships passed through.

When morning came the convoy was out at sea, amid glorious green
rollers, and Jimmie Higgins was lying in his narrow berth, cursing
the fates that had lured him, the monster of Militarism into whose
clutches he had been snared. The army medical service had a serum to
prevent small-pox and another to prevent typhoid, but they had
nothing for sea-sickness as yet; so for the first four days of the
trip Jimmie wished that a submarine would come and end his misery
once for all.

At last, however, he came on deck, an utterly humbled Socialist
agitator, asking only a corner to lie in the sunshine--preferably
where he could not see the Atlantic surges, the very thought of
which turned him inside out. But gradually he found his feet again,
and ate with permanence, and looked out over the water and saw the
other vessels of the convoy, weirdly painted with many-coloured
splotches, steaming in the shape of a gigantic V, with two cruisers
in front, and another on each side, and another bringing up the
rear. Day and night the look-outs kept watch, and the wigwag men and
the heliograph men were busy, and the wireless buzzed its warnings
of the movements of the underwater foe. The U-boats had not yet got
a transport, but they had made several tries, and everyone knew that
they would continue trying. Twice a day the clanging of bells
sounded from one end of the vessel to the other, and the crews
rushed to the boat-drill; each passenger had his number, and unless
he was ill in his berth he had to take his specified place, with his
life-preserver strapped about his waist.

The passengers played cards, and read and sang and skylarked about
the decks. Up on the top deck, to which Jimmie was not invited, were
officers, also a number of women and girls belonging to the hospital
and ambulance units. "Janes" was the term by which the soldier-boys
described these latter; you could see they were a good sort of
"Janes", serious and keen for their job, looking business-like and
impressive in their uniforms with many pockets. Among them were
suffragists, answering the taunt of the other sex, showing that in
war as well as in peace the world needed them; it had to find a
place for them on board the most badly crowded transport.

Never having been on an ocean-liner before, Jimmie did not know that
it was crowded; it did not trouble him that there was hardly room
for a walk on the decks. He watched the sea and the great white
gulls and the piebald ships; he watched the crew at work, and got
acquainted with his fellow-passengers. Before long he found a driver
of an ambulance who was a Socialist; also an I.W.W. from the Oregon
lumber-camps. Even the "wobblies", it appeared, had come to hate the
Kaiser; a bunch of them were in France, and more would have come, if
the government had not kept them cross by putting their leaders into
jail. An army officer with some sense had gone into the
spruce-country of the far North-west, and had appealed to the
patriotism of the men, giving them decent hours and wages, and
recognizing their unions; as a result, even the dreaded I.W.W.
organization had turned tame, and all the lumberjacks had pitched in
to help in "canning the Kaiser!"




II



The fleet was nearing the submarine-zone and it was time for the
convoying destroyers to arrive. Everybody was peering out ahead, and
at last a cry ran along the decks: "There they are!" Jimmie made out
a speck of smoke upon the horizon, and saw it turn into a group of
swiftly-flying vessels. He marvelled at the skill whereby they had
been able to find the transports on this vast and trackless sea; he
marvelled at the slender vessels with their four low, rakish stacks.
These sea-terriers were thin skins of steel, covering engines of
enormous power; they tore through the water, literally with the
speed of an express train, leaving a boiling white wake behind.
Seeing them rock and swing from side to side in the waves, hurled
this way and that, you marvelled that human beings could live in
them and not be jerked to pieces. Jimmie never tired of observing
them, nor did they tire of racing in and out between the vessels of
the convoy, weaving patterns of foam, the men on their decks
watching, watching for the secret foe.

Everyone on board the transports, of course, was on the alert.
Jimmie in his secret heart was scared stiff, but he did not reveal
it to these mocking soldier-boys, who made merry over German U-boats
as they did over sauerkraut and pretzels and Limburger and
"wienies", otherwise known as "hot dogs". Actually, Jimmie found,
they were hoping to encounter a submarine; not to be hit, of course,
but to have the torpedo pass within a foot or two, so that they
might have something thrilling to write to the folks at home.

There came storms, and blinding sheets of rain across the water, and
mists that hid everything from view; but still the little
sea-terriers dashed here and there, winding their foam wakes about
the fleet, by night as well as by day. How they managed to avoid
collisions in the dark was a mystery beyond imagining; Jimmie lay
awake, picturing one of them plunging like a sharp spear into the
rows of bunks in the steerage where he had been stowed. But when
morning dawned, his berth was unspeared, and the watch-dogs of the
sea were still weaving their patterns.

It was a day of high wind, with clouds and fitful bursts of sunshine
in which the waves shone white and sparkling. Jimmie was standing by
the fail with his "wobbly" friend, watching the white-caps, when his
companion called his attention to a sparkle that seemed to persist,
hitting one in the eye. They pointed it out to others, and as the
orders were strict to report anything out of the way, someone
shouted to the nearest look-out. A cry went over the ship, and there
was hasty wigwagging of the signalman, and three of the destroyers
leaped away like hounds on the chase.

There were some on board who had glasses, and they cried out that it
was a black object, and finally reported it a raft with people on
it. Later, when Jimmie reached port, he heard an explanation of the
sparkle which had caught his eye--a woman on the raft had a little
pocket-mirror, and had used this to flash the sun's rays upon the
vessel, until at last she had attracted attention.

Those who had glasses were mostly on the upper deck, so Jimmie did
not see anything of the rescue; the transports, of course, did not
swerve or delay, for their orders forbade all altruisms. Even the
little destroyers would not approach the raft until they had scoured
the sea for miles about, and then they did not stop entirely, but
slid by and tossed ropes to the people on the raft, dragging them
aboard one by one. A seaman standing near Jimmie explained this
procedure; it appeared that the submarines were accustomed to lurk
near rafts and life-boats, preying upon those vessels which came to
their rescue. Distressed castaways were bait--"live bait", explained
the seaman; the U-boats would lurk about for days, sometimes for a
week, watching the people in the life-boats struggle against the
waves, watching them die of exposure, and starvation and thirst,
watching them signal frantically, waving rags tied on to oars,
shouting and praying for help. One by one the castaways would
perish, and when the last of them was gone, the U-boat would steal
away. "Dead bait's no good," explained the seaman.




III



This mariner, Toms by name, came from Cornwall; for the transport
was British, and so also the convoying warships--Jimmie's fate had
been entrusted to "perfidious Albion"! Seven times this Toms had
been torpedoed and seven times rescued, and he had most amazing
tales to tell to landlubbers, and a new light to throw on a subject
which our Socialist landlubber had been debating for several
years--the torpedoing of passenger-vessels with women and children
on board. Somehow Jimmie found it a different proposition when he
heard of particular women and children, how they looked and what
they said, and what happened when they took to open boats in
midwinter, and the boats filled up with water, and the children
turned blue and then white, and were rescued with noses and ears and
hands and feet frozen off.

Jimmie was a working-man, and understood the language of
working-men, their standards and ways of looking at life. And here
was a working-man; not a conscious Socialist, to be sure, but a
union man, sharing the Socialist distrust of capitalists and rulers.
What this weather-bitten toiler of the sea told to Jimmie, Jimmie
was prepared to understand and believe; so he learned, what he had
refused to learn from prostitute newspapers, that there was a code
of sea-manners and sea-morals, a law of marine decency, which for
centuries had been unbroken save by pirates and savages. The men who
went down to the sea in ships were a class of their own, with
instincts born of the peculiar cruelties of the element they
defied--instincts which broke across all barriers of nations and
races, and even across the hatreds of war.

But now these sea-laws had been defied, and the Hun who had defied
them had placed himself outside the pale of the human race. In the
souls of seamen there had been generated against him a hatred of
peculiar and unique ferocity; they hunted him as men hunt vipers and
rattlesnakes. The union to which this Toms belonged had pledged
itself, not merely for the war, but for years afterwards, that its
members would not sail in German ships, nor in any ship in which a
German sailed, nor in any ship which sailed to a German port, nor
which carried German goods. It had refused to carry Socialist
delegates desiring to attend international conferences with German
Socialists; it had refused to carry for any purpose labour leaders
whom it considered too mercifully disposed towards Germany.

When Jimmie learned this, you can imagine the arguments, continuing
far into the night! Quite a crowd gathered about, and they gave it
to the little Socialist hot and heavy. The upshot of it was that
somebody reported him, and the officer in command of his
"motor-unit" read him a stern lecture. He was not here to settle
peace-terms, but to do his work and hold his tongue. Jimmie, awed by
the fangs and claws of the monster of Militarism, answered, "Yes,
sir," and went away and sulked by himself the whole day, wishing
that the submarines might get this transport, with everybody on
board except two Socialists and one "wobbly".




IV



It was the morning of the day they were due in port. Everybody wore
life-preservers, and stood at his station; when suddenly came a
yell, and a chorus of shouts from the side of the ship, and Jimmie
rushed to the rail, and saw a white wake coming like a swift fish
directly at the vessel. "Torpedo!" was the cry, and men stood rooted
to the spot. Far back, where the white streak started, you could see
a periscope, moving slowly; there was a volley of cracking sounds,
and the water all about it leaped high, and the little sea-terriers
rushed towards it, firing, and getting ready their deadly
depth-bombs. But of all that Jimmie got only a glimpse; there came a
roar like the opening of hell in front of him; he was thrown to the
deck, half-stunned, and a huge fragment of the rail of the vessel
whirled past his head, smashing into a stateroom behind him.

The ship was in an uproar; people rushing here and there, the
members of the crew leaping to get away the boats. Jimmie sat up and
stared about him, and the first thing he saw was his friend the
"wobbly", lying in a pool of blood, with a great gash in his head.

Suddenly somebody began to sing: "Oh, say, can you see by the dawn's
early light--" Jimmie had always hated that song, because jingoes
and patrioteers used it as an excuse to bully and humiliate radicals
who did not jump to their feet with sufficient alacrity. But now it
was wonderful to see the effect of the song; everybody joined and
the soldier-boys and working-men and nurses and lady
ambulance-drivers, no matter how badly scared, recalled that they
were part of an army on the way to war. Some helped the crews to get
the boats into the water; others bound up the wounds of the injured,
and carried them across the rapidly-slanting decks.

The great ship was going down. It was horrible to realize--this
mighty structure, this home for two weeks of several thousand
people, this moving hotel with its sleeping-berths, its
dining-saloons, its kitchens with lunch ready to be eaten, its
mighty engines and its cargo of every kind of necessity and comfort
for an army--all was about to plunge to the bottom of the sea!
Jimmie Higgins had read about the torpedoing of scores of
ocean-liners, but in all that reading he had learned less about the
matter than he learned in a few minutes while he clung half-dazed to
a stay rope, and watched the life-boats swing out over the sides and
disappear.




V



"Women first!" was the cry; but the women would not go until the
wounded had been taken, and this occasioned delay. Jimmie helped to
get his friend the "wobbly", and passed him on to be lowered with a
rope. By that time the deck had got such a slant that it was hard to
walk on it; the bow was settling, and the stern rearing up in the
air. Never could you have realized the size of an ocean-liner, until
you saw it rear itself up like a monstrous mountain, preparatory to
plunging beneath the waves! "Jump for it!" shouted voices. "They'll
pick you up from the other vessels. Jump and swim."

So Jimmie rushed to the rail. He saw a life-boat below, trying to
push away, and being beaten against the vessel by the heavy waves.
He heard a horrible scream, and saw a man slip between the boat and
the side of the liner. People on every side of him were jumping--so
many that he could not find a clear spot in the water. But at last
he saw one, and climbed upon the rail and took the plunge.

He struck the icy water and sank, and a wave rolled over him. He
came up quickly, owing to his life-preserver, and gasped for breath,
and was choked by another rushing wave and then pounded on the head
by an oar in the hands of a struggling sailor. He managed to get out
of the way, and struck out to get clear of the vessel. He knew how
to do this, thanks to many "swimmin'-holes"--including the one he
had visited with the Candidate. But he had never before swam in such
deadly cold as this; it was colder than he had dreamed when he had
talked about it with Comrade Meissner! Its icy hand seemed to smite
him, to smite the life out of him; he struggled desperately, as one
struggles against suffocation.

The waves beat him here and there; and then suddenly he was seized
as if by the falls of Niagara, drawn along and drawn under--down,
down. He thought it was the end, and when again he bobbed up to the
surface, his breath was all but gone. The great bulk of the vessel
was no longer in sight, and Jimmie was struggling in a whirlpool,
along with upset boats and oars and deck-chairs and miscellaneous
wreckage, and scores of people clinging to such objects, or swimming
frantically to reach them.

Jimmie was just about ready to roll over and let his face go under,
when suddenly there loomed above him on the top of a wave a boat
rowed swiftly by sailors. One in the boat flung a rope to him, and
he tried to catch it, but missed; the boat plunged towards him, and
an arm reached out, and caught him by the collar. It was a strong
and comforting arm, and Jimmie abandoned himself to it, and
remembered nothing more for a long time.




VI



When Jimmie opened his eyes again he was in a most extraordinary
position. At first he could not make it out, he was only aware of
endless bruises and blows, as if someone were shaking him about in a
gigantic pepper-cruet. As Nature protested desperately against such
treatment, Jimmie fought his way back to consciousness, and caught
hold of something, in his neighbourhood, which presently turned out
to be a brass railing; he struggled to ward off the blows of his
tormentors, which turned out to be the aforesaid railing, plus a
wall, plus two other men, one on each side of him, the three of them
being lashed to the brass railing with ropes. The wall and railing
and Jimmie and the other men were behaving in an incredible
fashion--swinging down, as if they were plunging into a bottomless
abyss, then swinging up, as if they were going to part altogether
from this mundane sphere; the total enormous swing, from bottom to
top, being mathematically calculated to occupy a period of five and
one-half seconds of time.

Jimmie discovered before long that there were a whole row of men,
lashed fast and subjected to this perplexing form of torture. They
made you think of a row of carcasses in a butcher-shop--only, who
could picture a butcher-shop whose floor careened to an angle of
forty-five degrees in one direction, and then, in a space of
precisely five and a half seconds, careened to an angle of
forty-five degrees in the opposite direction?

And they kept bringing more carcasses and hanging them in this
insane butcher-shop! Two sailors in uniforms would come staggering,
carrying a man between them, clinging to the railing, to Jimmie, to
the other men, to anything else they could grab. They would make a
desperate rush while the swing was right, and get to a new place on
the railing, where they would tie the new man with a bit of rope
about his waist, and leave him there to be mauled and pounded. One
side of the room was lined solid with carcasses, and then the other
side, and still they came. This was apparently a dining-saloon,
there being a table down the middle, and two rows of chairs; they
lashed people into these chairs, they brought others and lashed them
to the bottom of the chairs--any old place at all! There were some
who thought they could hold on for themselves; but after the sailors
were gone they discovered that it took more skill to hold on than
they realized, and they would come hurtling across the floor,
winding up with a crash on top of someone else.

It was not the first time in Jimmie's life that he had had to
scramble for himself in some uncomfortable situation; he got his
wits together quickly. He was shivering as if with ague, and he
managed to get out of his wet coat. There being a couple of ladies
strapped into chairs in front of him, he did not like to go further;
but presently came sailors with armfuls of blankets, and made him
perform the complicated feat of getting out of his dripping icy
uniform and getting the blanket wrapped around his middle, so that
the rope would not saw him into halves. Then came a steward with a
pot of hot coffee; being marvellously expert at holding this at all
angles of the ship, he poured it into cups with little funnels for
drinking, and thus got some down Jimmie's throat.

The little machinist felt better after that, and was able to devote
attention to the man on his right, who had hit his nose so many
times that it was bleeding in a stream, and had been tilted at so
many angles that the blood had run into his eyes and made him blind.
The man on the other side of him apparently could make no effort at
all to keep his face from being pounded, or his feet from being
thrown into the pit of Jimmie's stomach; after Jimmie made a number
of protests, an officer came along, and put his ear to the man's
chest and pronounced him dead. They brought another rope, and lashed
him tighter, so that he would behave himself.

For several hours Jimmie clung to that railing. The destroyer would
soon be in port, they kept telling him; meantime they brought him
hot soup to keep up his strength. Some people fainted, but there was
nothing that could be done for them. The first boat-loads of the
rescued had filled up the berths of both officers and crew; the rest
must hang on to the railings as best they could. They should be
thankful it was decent weather, said one of the sailors; the vessel
didn't roll any faster in bad weather, but it rolled much farther in
the same time--a distinction which struck Jimmie as over-subtle.

The poor fellow's arms were numb with exhaustion, he had lost hope
that anything in the world ever could be still, when the
announcement was made that the harbour was in sight, and everybody's
troubles would soon be over. And sure enough, the rolling gradually
became less. The little vessel still quivered from stem to stern
with the movement of her enormous engines, but Jimmie didn't mind
that--he was used to machinery; he got himself untied from the
railing, and lay down on the floor, right there where he was, and
fell asleep. Nor did he open his eyes when they came with a
stretcher, and carried him on to a pier and slid him into a
motor-truck and whisked him off to a hospital.






CHAPTER XXI

JIMMIE HIGGINS ENTERS SOCIETY

I





When Jimmie took an interest in life again he was lying in a bed: a
bed that actually was still, that did not rise with a leaping motion
to the ceiling, and then sink like a swift elevator into the
basement. Better yet was the fact that this bed had clean sheets,
and a lovely angel in spotless white hovering about it. You who read
of Jimmie Higgins's adventures have perhaps been blessed with some
of the good things of life, and may need to have it explained to you
that never before had Jimmie known what it was to sleep between
sheets--to say nothing of clean sheets; never had he known what it
was to sleep in a night-gown; never had he had hot broth fetched to
him by a snow-white angel with a bright smile and an aureole of
golden-brown hair. This marvellous creature waited on his slightest
nod, and when she was not busy running errands for him, she sat by
his bedside and chatted, asking him all sorts of questions about
himself and his life. She thought he was a soldier, and he,
shameless wretch, discovered what she thought, and delayed to tell
her that he was a common repairer of motor-cycles!

This was a war-hospital, and there were terrible sights to be seen
here, terrible sounds to be heard; but Jimmie for a long time missed
them almost entirely--he was so comfortable! He lay like a nice dozy
cat; he ate good things and drank good things, and then he fell
asleep, and then he opened his eyes in the sunshine of a golden
brown aureole. It was only gradually that he realized that somewhere
in the ward a man was choking and gasping all night, because the
inside of his lungs had been partly eaten out with poisonous acids.

Jimmie inquired and was told that more than a hundred people on the
transport had lost their lives, including several women; the nurse
brought a paper with a list of the casualties, among which he read
the name of Mike Angoni--his friend the "wobbly" from the far West!
Also the name of Peter Toms--the seaman from Cornwall, caught at the
eighth attempt! Jimmie read that the submarine which had sunk the
transport had been shattered by a depth-charge, and the sea all
strewn with the wreckage of it; and strange and terrible as it might
seem, Jimmie, the pacifist, the Socialist, experienced a thrill of
satisfaction! Not once did he stop to reflect that on board this
under-water craft might have been some German comrade, some poor,
enslaved, unhappy internationalist like himself! Jimmie wanted the
sneaking, treacherous terrors of the sea exterminated, regardless of
everything!

The nurse with the halo of golden-brown hair got interested in her
American patient, and would sit and talk with him every chance she
got. She learned about Eleeza Betooser and the babies who had been
blown to pieces in the explosion. Also she learned about Jimmie's
being a Socialist, and asked him questions about it. Wasn't he just
a little hard on the leisure classes? Might it not be that some of
the capitalists would be as glad as he to know about a better social
system? The young lady pronounced the word "capitalists" with the
accent on the "it", which puzzled Jimmie for a time; also she
assured him that "wage schedules" would never go back to what they
were before the war, and Jimmie had to ask what a "schedule" might
be. He did not have to ask what she meant by a "tart", because there
it was on his tray--a delicious little strawberry pie.




II



This meant that the destroyer had come to an English port; the nurse
was a Britisher. If Jimmie had had tact, he would have remembered
that Britishers have an outfit of earls and dukes and lords and
things, to which they are sentimentally attached. But tact is not
the leading virtue of Socialists; in fact, Jimmie made a boast of
scorning it--if people asked his opinion, he "gave it to 'em
straight". So now he caused this white angel to understand that he
regarded the effete aristocracies of the old world with abysmal
contempt; he meant to put them out of business right off the bat. In
vain the white angel pleaded that some of them might be useful
people, or at any rate well-meaning: Jimmie pronounced them a bunch
of parasites and grafters; the thing to do was to make a clean sweep
of them.

"You won't cut off their heads?" pleaded the nurse. "Surely they
ought to have a chance to reform!"

"Oh, sure!" answered Jimmie. "All I mean is, everybody's got to go
to work--the dooks an' aristercrats like the rest."

The nurse went off, carrying Jimmie's chamber to be emptied; and
while she was gone, the man in the next bed, a gun-pointer from an
American destroyer with his head bandaged up so that he looked like
a Hindu swami, turned his tired eyes upon Jimmie and drawled: "Say,
you guy, you better can that line o' talk!"

"Whaddyer mean?" demanded Jimmie, scenting controversy with some
militarist.

"I mean that there young lady belongs to the nobility herself."

"Go on!" said Jimmie.

"Straight!" said the other. "Her father's the earl of Skye-terrier,
or some such damn place."

"Aw, cut it out!" growled the little machinist--for you never knew
in dealing with these soldier-boys whether you were being "kidded"
or not.

"Did you ask her name?"

"She told me it was Miss Clendenning."

"Well, you ask her if she ain't the Honourable Beatrice Clendenning,
and see what she says."

But Jimmie could not get up the nerve to ask. When the young lady
came back, carrying his chamber washed clean, her pet patient was
lying still, but so red in the face that she suspected that he had
been trying to get out of bed without permission.




III



Nor was that the end of wonders. Next day there ran a murmur of
excitement through the ward, and everything was cleaned up fresh,
though there was really nothing that needed cleaning. Flowers were
brought in, and each nurse had a flower pinned on her waist. When
Jimmie asked what was "up", the Honourable Beatrice looked at him
with a quizzical smile. "We're going to have some distinguished
visitors," she said. "But you won't be interested--a class-conscious
proletarian like you."

And she would not tell him; but when she went out, the fellow in the
next bed told. "It's the king and queen that's comin'," said the
gun-pointer.

"Aw, ferget it!" said Jimmie--quite sure he was being "kidded" this
time.

"Comin' to see the submarine victims," said the gun-pointer. "You
cut out your Socialist rough stuff for to-day."

Jimmie asked the nurse when she came back; and sure enough it was
true--the king and queen were to visit the hospital, and pay their
respects to the victims of the U-boat. But that wouldn't interest
Jimmie Higgins. Would he not rather be carried away and put in a
private room somewhere, so that his revolutionary eyes would not be
offended? Or would he stay, and make a soap-boxer of His Majesty?

"Sure, he won't have no time to talk to a feller like me!" said
Jimmie.

"Don't you be too sure," replied the other. "He's got nothing to do
but talk, you know!"

Jimmie didn't venture any farther, because he knew that the
Honourable Beatrice was laughing at him, and he had never been
laughed at by a woman before, and didn't know quite how to take it.
He could not have been expected to understand that the Honourable
Beatrice was a suffragette, and laughed at all men on general
principles. Jimmie lay quietly in his bed and concealed the unworthy
excitement in his soul. Wasn't that the devil now? Him, a little
runt of a working man from nowhere in particular, that had been
brought up on a charity-farm, and spent a good part of his life as a
tramp--him to be meeting the king of England! Jimmie had a way of
disposing of kings that was complete and final; he called them
"kinks" and when he had called them that he had settled them, wiped
them clean out. "None o' them kinks for me!" he had said to the
Honourable Beatrice.

But now a "kink" was coming to the hospital! And what was Jimmie
going to do? How the devil did you talk to 'em? Did you have to say,
"Your Majesty"? Jimmie gripped his hands under the bed-covers. "I'll
be damned if I do!" He summoned his revolutionary fervour, he called
up the spirits of his "wobbly" friends, "Wild Bill" and "Strawberry"
Curran and "Flathead Joe" and "Chuck" Peterson. What would they do
under these circumstances? What would the Candidate do? Somehow,
Jimmie's revolutionary education had been neglected--nothing had
ever been said in any Socialist local as to how a comrade should
behave when a "kink" came to visit him!

Jimmy was naturally a kindly human being; he was ready to respond to
the kindness of other human beings. But was it in accord with
revolutionary ethics to be polite to a "kink"? Was it not his duty
to do something to show his contempt for "kinks"? Maybe his Royal
Nibs never had anybody to "stand up to him" in all his life before.
Well, let him have it to-day!




IV



A nurse rushed into the ward in great excitement, and whispered,
"They're coming!" And after that the nurses all stood round,
twisting their hands together nervously, and the patients lay with
their eyes glued on the door where the apparition was to appear.

At last there came in sight a man dressed in uniform, who Jimmie
would never have dreamed could be a king--except that he had seen
his picture in the illustrated papers. He was a medium-sized, rather
stoop-shouldered little gentleman, decidedly commonplace-looking,
with a closely-trimmed brown beard turning grey, and rosy cheeks
such as all Englishmen have. He was escorted by the head of the
hospital staff; and behind him came a lady, a severe-looking lady
dressed in black, with a couple more doctors escorting her, and
behind them several officers in uniform.

The king and queen stopped at the head of the room, and looked down
the rows of beds. Each of them wore a friendly smile, and nodded,
and said: "How do you do?" And, of course, everybody smiled back,
and the nurses curtsied and said, "How do you do, Your Majesties?"

And then His Majesty said: "I hope everybody is doing well?" And the
doctor called the head nurse in charge of the ward, who came up
smiling and bowing and answered that everybody was doing
beautifully, thank you; at which both His Majesty and Her Majesty
declared that they were so pleased. The queen looked about, and
seeing a man with many bandages, went to him and sat by his bedside
and began to ask him questions; the king moved down the centre of
the room, until suddenly his eye happened on the Honourable
Beatrice.

She had not moved; she stood at her place like the other nurses. But
Jimmie, watching, saw a smile come upon the king's face, and he
moved towards her saying: "Oh! how do you do?" The young lady went
to meet him, quite as if she were used to meeting kings every day.

"How are your patients doing?" inquired His Majesty.

"Beautifully," said she; and His Majesty said that he was
pleased--just as if he had not said the same words only a minute
before. He looked at the patients with benevolent but tired-looking
eyes; and the Honourable Beatrice, by those subtle methods known to
women, brought it about that he looked especially at her favourite.
She knew that he would wish to talk to some of the patients, and by
ever so slight a movement she brought it about that it was towards
Jimmie Higgins he advanced.

"What is your name?" he asked, and then, "Well, Higgins, how are you
feeling?"

"Sure, I'm all right," said Jimmie sturdily; "I wanner get up, only
she won't let me."

"Well," said His Majesty, "the time was when the king was the
tyrant, but now it's the nurse." He smiled at the Honourable lady.
"Are you an American soldier?"

"Naw," replied Jimmie, "I'm only a machinist."

"This is a war of machines," replied His Majesty, graciously.

"I'm a Socialist!" exclaimed Jimmie, right off the bat.

"Indeed!" said His Majesty.

"You bet!" was the reply.

"But you're not one of those Socialists who oppose their country, I
see."

"I done it for a long time," said Jimmie. "I didn't see we had no
business in this here war. But I been changin'--a bit."

"I'm glad to hear that," remarked His Majesty. "Doubtless your
recent experience has helped you to change."

"Sure," replied Jimmie. "But I'm still a Socialist, don't you make
no mistake about that, Mr. King."

"I won't," said His Majesty; and he looked at the Honourable
Beatrice, and between them there flashed one of those subtle
messages which highly sophisticated people know how to give and to
catch--entirely over the heads of Socialist machinists from
Leesville, U.S.A. To the Honourable Beatrice the message conveyed.
"How perfectly delicious!" To His Majesty it conveyed, "I knew you'd
enjoy it!"

Jimmie's mind was, of course, occupied entirely with the idea of
propaganda. He must make the most of this strange opportunity!
"Things is goin' to be changed after this here war!" said he. "Fer
the workin' people, I mean."

"They'll be changed for all of us," said His Majesty. "The dullest
of us know that."

"The workin' people got to get what they earn!" persisted Jimmie.
"Why, Mr. King--back home where I come from a feller could work
twelve hours a day all his life, an' not have enough saved up to
bury himself with. An' they say it was worse here in England."

"We have had terrible poverty," admitted His Majesty. "We shall have
to find some way of getting rid of it."

"There ain't no way but Socialism," cried Jimmie. "Look into it, an'
you'll see! We gotter get rid o' the profit-system. The feller that
does the work has gotter get what he produces."

"Well," said His Majesty, "you'll agree with me this far at
least--we must beat the Germans first." And then he turned to the
Honourable Beatrice. "We shall learn much from our American
visitors," he said, and flashed her another of those subtle
messages, which indicated that perhaps it was not a good thing for
patients in hospitals to become excited over Socialist propaganda!
So the Honourable Beatrice turned to the man in the other bed, and
His Majesty turned also; he ascertained that the man's name was
Deakin, and that he came from Cape Cod. His Majesty remarked how
badly England needed good Yankee gun-pointers, and how grateful he
was to those who came to help the British Navy. Jimmie listened,
just a tiny bit jealous--not for himself, of course, but because he
knew that Socialism was so much more important than gun-pointing!




V



At the foot of the bed there stood a military officer. He had been
there for some time, but Jimmie did not notice him till the king
rose and moved away. The officer was just the sort of hand-made
aristocrat that Jimmie imagined all officers to be; smooth-shaven,
except for a little toy moustache, with serene, impassive features,
a dapper and immaculate uniform, and a queer little fancy stick in
his hand, to show that he never did anything resembling work. He was
eyeing the machinist with what the machinist suspected to be a
superior air. "Well, my good man," said he, "you had a talk with the
king!"

That seemed obvious enough. "Sure!" said Jimmie.

"Generally," continued the officer, "when one talks with the king,
one addresses him as 'Your Majesty'--not as 'Mr. King'."

Jimmie was tired now, and not looking for controversy; so he did not
bridle as he might otherwise have done. "Nobody told me," said he.

"Also," continued the other, "one is not supposed to volunteer
opinions. One waits for the king to ask a question, and then one
answers."

Jimmie's eyes were closed, and he only half-opened them as he
answered. "They been tellin' me this here is a war for Democracy!"
said he.






CHAPTER XXII

JIMMIE HIGGINS WORKS FOR HIS UNCLE

I





They gave Jimmie Higgins a couple of days to lie about in the
grounds of the hospital, and make the acquaintance and hear the
experiences of men who had lost arms and legs in battle, or had been
burned by flame-throwers, or ruined for life by poison-gases.
Strange as it might seem, Jimmie found among these men not a few
with whom he could talk, whose point of view was close to his own.
These Britishers had been through the mill; they knew. None of the
glory stuff for them! Leave that for the newspaper scribblers, the
bloody rascals who stayed at home and beat on tomtoms, driving other
men to march in and die. You went and got yourself battered up,
ruined for life--and then what would they do for you? It was a hard
world to a man who was crippled and helpless. Yes, said Jimmie; the
same hard world that it was to a Socialist, a dreamer of justice.

But there was the old dilemma, from which he had never been able to
find escape, whether in Leesville, U.S.A., or on the high seas, or
here in old England. What were you going to do about the Huns? To
hold out your hand to them was like putting it into a tiger's cage.
No, by God, you had to fight them, you had to lick them, cost what
it might! And the speaker would go on and tell of things he had
seen: a Prussian officer who had shot a British surgeon in the back,
after this surgeon had bound up his wounds; a commandant of a
prison-camp who had withdrawn all medical aid in a typhus epidemic,
and allowed his charges to perish like rats.

So, hell though it was, you had to go through with it; if you were a
man, you had to set your teeth and grip your hands and take your
share of the horror, whatever it might be. And Jimmie, being
something of a little man in his way, would set his teeth and grip
his hands and take in imagination, the share of the particular human
wreck who happened to be talking to him. So Jimmie Higgins was
battered back and forth, like a tennis-ball, between the two forces
of Militarism and Revolution.

Just now was another crisis--the Huns had begun a furious drive in
Flanders, the third battle of Ypres, and the British were falling
back, not in rout, but in retreat which might become rout at any
hour. The bulletins came in several times a day, and people in the
streets would stop and read them, their faces full of fear. When the
wind was right you could hear the guns across the Channel; Jimmie
would lie at night and listen to the dull, incessant thunder--a
terrific, man-made storm, in which showers of steel were raining
down upon the heads of soldiers hiding in shell-holes and
hastily-dug trenches. The war seemed very near indeed when the wind
was right!




II



Still, a fellow has to live. Jimmie was in a foreign land for the
first time in his life, and when they turned him loose, he and a
couple of other American chaps went wandering about the streets,
staring at the sights of this town, which had been a small harbour
before the war, but now was a vast centre of the world's commerce,
one of the routes by which large sections of Britain were moved
across the Channel every day.

You saw in the streets no men out of uniform, except a few old ones;
you saw nobody at all idle, except the young children. The women
were driving the trucks, and operating the street-cars, which were
called "trams", and the elevators, which were called "lifts".
Everybody's face was sober and drawn, but they lightened up when
they saw the Americans, who had come so far to help them in their
trouble. In the cake-shops, and the queer little "pubs" where
rosy-cheeked girls sold very thin beer, they could not be polite
enough to the visitors from overseas; even the haughtiest-looking
"bobby" would stop to tell you the way about the streets. "First to
the roight, third to the left," he would say, very fast; and when
you looked bewildered, he would say it again, as fast as ever.

But they needed motor-cycles so badly in the new American armies
that they didn't give Jimmie much time to be a hero; he got his
orders and a new outfit, and bade farewell to the Honourable
Beatrice, promising to write to her now and then, and not to be too
hard on the aristocracy. He crossed the Channel, alive with boats
like the Hudson River with its ferries, and came to another and
still bigger port, which the Americans had taken and made over new
for the war. Long vistas of docks had been built since the fighting
began; Jimmie saw huge cranes that dipped down into the hold of a
ship, and pulled out whole locomotives, or maybe half a dozen
automobile trucks in one swoop.

Behind these docks was a tangle of railroad yards and tracks, and
miles upon miles of sheds, piled to the top with stores of every
sort you could imagine. A whole encampment-city covered the
surrounding hills, crowned by an old, creaking, moss-grown
windmill--the Middle Ages looking in dismay upon these modern times.

Nobody took the trouble to invite Jimmie to inspect these marvels,
but he got glimpses here and there, and men with whom he chatted
told him more. One man had been directing the unloading of canned
tomatoes; for six months he had seen nothing but crates upon crates
and car-loads upon car-loads of canned tomatoes, coming into one end
of a shed and going out at the other. Somewhere in the higher
regions dwelt a marvellous tomato-brain, which knew exactly how many
cans a division of dough-boys in a training-camp would consume each
day, how many would be needed by patients in hospitals, by lumbermen
in French forests, by revellers in Y.M.C.A. huts. Every now and then
a ship brought another supply, and the man who told Jimmie about it
bossed a gang of negroes who piled the crates on trucks.

And then Jimmie met a Frenchman, who had been a waiter in a Chicago
hotel, and now was bossing a gang of wire-haired Korean labourers.
Jimmie had thought he knew all the races of the earth in the shops
and mills and mines of America; but here he heard of new kinds of
men--Annamese and Siamese, Pathans and Sikhs, Madagascans and
Abyssinians and Algerians. All the British empire was here, and all
the French colonies. There were Portuguese and Brazilians and West
Indians, bushmen from Australia and Zulus from South Africa; and
these not having proven enough, America was now pouring out the
partly melted contents of her pot--Hawaiians and Porto Ricans,
Filipinos and "spiggoties", Eskimos from Alaska, Chinamen from San
Francisco, Sioux from Dakota, and plain black plantation niggers
from Louisiana and Alabama! Jimmie saw a gang of these latter
mending a track which had been blown out of place by a bomb from an
aeroplane; their black skins shining with sweat, their white teeth
shining with good-nature as they swung their heavy crow-bars, a long
row of them moving like a machine chanting to keep in unison,
"Altogether--heave!" the officer would call, and the line would
swing into motion--

    "Get a MULE!
     An' a JACK!
     No SLOW!
     No SLACK!
     Put the HUMP!
     In yo' BACK--"




III



For nearly four years Jimmie had been reading about France, and now
he was here, and could see the sights with his own eyes. People with
wooden shoes, for example! It was worth coming across the seas to
see women and kids going clatter, clatter along the cobbled streets.
And the funny little railroad-coaches, with rows of doors like
rabbit-pens. It was a satisfaction to notice that the train had a
real man-sized engine, with U.S.A. painted thereon. Jimmie owned a
share in that engine, and experienced Socialistic thrills as he rode
behind it.

He had got separated from his "unit", thanks to the submarine and
the sojourn in the hospital. They had given him a pass, with orders
to proceed to a certain town, travelling on a certain train. Now
Jimmie sat looking out of the window, as happy as a boy out of
school. A beautiful country, the fresh green glory of spring
everywhereupon it; broad, straight military highways lined with
poplars, and stone houses with queer steep roofs, and old men and
women and children toiling in the fields.