AND $TRI PES ^PORTER EMERSON BROWNE Class E_0 3 5 o 3 Book 5:44^ S^f GopyrigktK? \3^7 COPYRIGHT DEPOSKR * SCARS AND STRIPES PORTER EMERSON BROWNE i AND THERE YOU HAVE THE POOR OLD MAN SHAKING HIS FIST ONE MINUTE AND HIS FINGER THE NEXT ! SCARS AND STRIPES BY PORTER EMERSON BROWNE FRONTISPIECE BY PETER NEWELL NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY r ~ C 6^ COPYRIGHT, igi 7, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 4i *° 3 !S ! 7 COPYRIGHT, IQl6, BY THE MCCLURE PUBLICATIONS, INCORPORATED PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ©C 133 TO THEODORE ROOSEVELT CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE One Scars and Stripes ..."••. 13 Two The Neutral 57 Three "For God and King!" 85 Four "Somewhere in " 99 Five Mary and Marie 123 Six "Uncle Sham" 145 Seven "We'll Dally 'Round the Flag, Boys !" 171 CHAPTER ONE SCARS AND STRIPES SCARS AND STRIPES CHAPTER ONE SCARS AND STRIPES WELL," I said, "it looks as though the old man is beginning to wake up at last." "Uncle Sam?" queried my friend. I nodded. "Don't you think so?" I asked. He considered, thoughtfully. "Perhaps," he answered. "If he isn't, at least he's beginning to toss in his sleep and pick at the covers." He paused. "But what I'm waiting 1 for," he went on, "is to get a peep at his face when finally he sits up in bed and props his eyes open and gets a good look at things. He'll certainly wish that he hadn't waked up — or that he'd never gone to sleep in the first place. The trusted employes that he left in charge of things when he undertook his present Rip Van Winkle have certainly messed things up about as perfectly as they could have done had they had 13 14 SCARS AND STRIPES their hearts and souls, instead of their hands and feet, in the work." My friend shook his head. "I've sat for hours," he observed, "trying to think of something they could have done worse. But so far, I've got to compliment them at least upon the multiplicity of their mistakes ; for, while I can find scores of errors that they needn't have made, I can't find a single one that they've overlooked. When it comes to doing the wrong thing at the right time, their batting average is a thousand. And the par- ticularly beautiful and naive part of it is the way they stand around and pat themselves on the back about it! " 'America's spirit is reawakened,' they say. 'Our honour and integrity cannot be tampered with.' And this when for two hell-born, bleeding years our honour and integrity have been at will burned and bombed and blown up, torn and trampled and tor- tured ! . . . But at that you must admit that a na- tional honour that can stand such treatment as ours has borne and still be on its feet, is, in the crude vernacular of the proletariat, some honour. So we can console ourselves with the thought that, if noth- ing else, our national honour at least holds all record for endurance. It's bullet-proof, and blood-proof, and insult-proof. It recks but little of women and SCARS AND STRIPES 15 babies ruthlessly slain. Its flag dishonoured, its rights relinquished, its citizens crying with dying lips for succour that does not come, our national honour still goes teetering along, as supinely helpless as a baby hippopotamus, the while trying to conceal its dead and dying by belching forth oratorical gas- clouds anent the 'higher rights of humanity' and 'the world once more thrilled to hear the new world asserting the standards of justice and liberty/ "Germany must be worried sick — to say nothing of Mexico. The first thing they know, the New World will slam a dictionary at 'em, or something. "For heaven's sake, isn't it ever going to pene- trate into the dank and w r ord-tangled jungles of phraseology in which these men think they do their thinking that it is one thing to assert and another to act? You can assert until you're black in the face and all covered with lather; but that doesn't affect the assertee except to excite his wonder, amusement and pity. "'What's the matter with the old lad now?' queries Germany, watching Uncle Sam all worked up and breaking out into an oratorical rash. " 'Oh,' says Austria, 'he's only . asserting his rights again.' " 'He'll bust a blood-vessel, the first thing he knows,' says Germany, 'getting all het up like that.' 16 SCARS AND STRIPES " 'We should worry/ says Austria. 'It's his blood-vessel, ain't it? Come on. Let's go down to the bulletin-board and see what the score at Ver- dun is/ "And off they go, leaving Uncle Sam asserting his rights to the circumambient ether, while Mexico, hiding behind a cactus, stimulates him to further assertion by occasionally chunking him with a rock. "Elihu Root said it. You can't shake your fist at a man and then shake your finger. You can shake your finger, if you want to; but before you start in shaking your fist, you'd better be sure there's a brick in it. Also you'd better be ready morally, physically, and financially to fight, and fight to the limit. The man who shakes his fist and isn't pre- pared to back it up with a fight, is a fool. He gains nothing; and he loses everything. For the minute he doesn't back it up, his adversary knows right off that he's only a bluff; and then is gone even the respect that his adversary thought was due him. "If you want proof of this, you needn't go any further than Mexico. Why are we in all that mess down there? — a mess that it will take at least ten, and maybe even twenty or thirty, years ; and a hun- dred thousand, or even more, men to clean up. Why has all that come to plague us now? Because we tried to put over a cheap bluff. Because we shook SCARS AND STRIPES 17 our fist when we weren't ready, and didn't intend to fight. That's why. "And because we've been caught, because our bluff has been called, because the Mexicans found out that we didn't mean what we said, and that back of all our resounding phrases lay nothing but wind; because experience had taught them that, once con- fronted, we would stop shaking our fist and start in shaking our finger again, the Mexicans have lost all respect for us — yes, even all fear of us — and we've got to start in with them all over from the beginning. "To-day, in Mexico, the words gringo (meaning American) and coward are synonymous. Go to Mexico to-day, if you will. But don't admit that you are an American. Say that you are English, German, French, Italian, even a Chinaman or a Mor- mon. But don't admit that you are an American. If you do, in all sections will you be insulted; in some will you be killed. And why not? Haven't Americans time and again been murdered without reprisal ? Haven't American soldiers been sent into Mexico only to be driven out again? Hasn't the American government repeatedly shaken its fist at them only, on the first show of resistance, to shake its finger? Hasn't the American government re- peatedly answered the cries for help of its dying citi- 18 SCARS AND STRIPES zens by advising them to get out of the country if they could, and if not, to do the next best thing? What wonder, then, that American men and women are not safe in Mexico ? What wonder that Mexico neither fears nor respects us, but only despises and mocks us ? "And it is a fact, impossible, incomprehensible even as it may seem, that the Mexicans think the United States is afraid of them! Yet, when you come to analyse, it is neither impossible nor incom- prehensible. Virtually all the population of Mexico is illiterate, vastly ignorant and very vain. The belief of the Mexicans in their own prowess, and in the cowardice of Americans, has been carefully fos- tered by their own leaders, and even more sedulously cultivated by the government of the United States. It is an opinion founded upon fact, and supported by a proof but too ample. Hence why should they not believe it ? "It all comes within the policy of our government of borrowing big troubles to pay off little ones. "During all the chaos in Mexico that followed the withdrawal of Diaz, and the succession of Madero, we kept out ; that is, officially we did. Unofficially — but that's too long a story to tell here. "Then came Huerta, personally and politically unappealing perhaps, to our government, but at the SCARS AND STRIPES 19 same time the one man who had it in his power to rule Mexico as Mexico must be ruled if ruled she must be by Mexicans. For, be it known, the Mex- icans are not too proud to fight. They are a hardy lot and, when it comes to pacificism, they are sadly practical. They believe in Peace at Any Price, and stand always ready to pay the price. The only thing they insist on is that the other lad shall furnish the peace ; and to see that he be not derelict therein, they are perfectly willing, and even a bit pleased, to convert him into a facsimile of a colander, or a pin- cushion, or similar article of household use. Which accounts for the vividness and uncertainty of life in that country. "However, as I say, Huerta, not coming up to our more cultivated northern standards, him we refused to recognise. The further fact that, when it came to diplomacy, he made our most cultivated lights look like a lot of children playing T Spy!' around a flat rock, did not increase our cordiality. Hence we used our moral influence, the hollowness of which had not then been exposed, to have him bounced. "Once we had him and his family rounded up and corral counted on Long Island, with the over- flow picketed in New York, we looked around to see whom we could recognise the easiest. It seemed to be Villa. So we gave him a lot of guns and cart- 20 SCARS AND STRIPES ridges and boosts in the newspapers, and support, both moral and immoral, and turned him loose. "Villa starts forth, full of optimism and marital happiness. But he doesn't get far when, to our pained amazement, an old party wearing spectacles comes out from where he's been hiding behind his whiskers and bushwhacks our more or less White Hope and, as they say, bushwhacks him good. "As Villa lies there, feeling of his bumps, while his devoted wives administer First Aid to the All Bunged Up, we turn to the old party in surprise. " 'Hello V we say. ' Where'd you come from ?' "'Me?' says the old party. 'Why, I be'n here right along/ " 'But who are you, anyhow ?' we inquire. " 'Carranza's my name,' says the old party. 'Though mother always calls me Venustiano for short.' " Oh/ we say. 'But what are you doing around here anyway?' I'm president,' he says. 'You are !' we cry, in amazement. I sure are,' he says. 'Didn't you see me just elect myself?' But Villa is our recognised candidate,' we in- sist. 'What qualifications have you got for so great and august a job?' it r a r it f SCARS AND STRIPES 21 " 'Well/ says Carranza, complacently removing a Gila monster and a couple of stinging lizards from his facial sage brush, 'I just licked Villa. What more do you want?' ''It seems sufficient. Also again it seems the easiest way out of it. Accordingly we recognise Carranza; and, with a sigh of relief at having so thoroughly and so conscientiously performed our duties to mankind and the higher laws of humanity, we go back home to look over the political situation in Pennsylvania, leaving our erstwhile presidential choice, Villa, hiding in a prairie dog hole, as full of venom as a rattlesnake. He isn't used to being recog- nised and then unrecognised in such a hurry, and it leaves him as peevish as a badger. And so he scut- tles off into the scenery, taking for his motto, 'Shoot Americans First.' "And he does. The very first crack out of the box, he stops a train. Allowing all the other passengers to go free, he takes therefrom seventeen American mining men that were going back to their work un- der the protection of the Carranza government (and, remember, that is the government we had then rec- ognised, and behind which we then stood) and, giv- ing them a running start, he shoots them in the back. "Unarmed they were. They offered no resist- ance. Deliberately, cold-bloodedly, they were mur- 22 SCARS AND STRIPES dered. And then, their blood-hunger but half glut- ted, did Villa and his men shoot bullet after bullet into their dead bodies; and even then still insatiate, did they jab the mangled corpses with bayonet and with knife! . . . Truly, the government of the United States did well when it gave its recognition to so noble a humanitarian as Francisco Villa! Huerta, whom on moral grounds we could not rec- ognise, may have been, and probably was, all that has been said. But at that he makes some of the Mexican presidents we have recognised look like new-hatched angels with two harps and four sets of pinions. "And then what happens.' Do we take imme- diate and drastic action to punish the murderers? to gain atonement for past crimes and protection against future? You bet we do! "Glancing up from the presidential situation in the Middle West, we ask Carranza what he means by it. " 'How dare you permit Villa to murder Ameri- can citizens?' we demand. 'Don't you know that the nobler duties of mankind and the higher laws of humanity, and that American lives shall be held inviolable and inviolate wherever the hand of men has ever trod?' we demand. "'Sure, / know it/ says Carranza. 'I know it; SCARS AND STRIPES 23 and you know it; but I'm afraid it's a fact that Villa's overlooked. He's an ignorant cuss that don't scarcely know nothing. Why, would you believe it, that feller can hardly write his own name. He never even went to night school !' " 'Never mind about that,' we say. 'We demand the punishment of the offenders.' " 'Don't you worry,' says Carranza. 'I'll appre- hend them malefactors or know the reason why. You just give me a week, or a couple of years, or something, and I'll catch every last son-of-a-gun of 'em — if they don't die of old age. And when I do catch 'em, I'll fill 'em so full of holes they won't be worth skinning. You just leave it to me. And pray God no harm comes to 'em in the mean- time.' "At which, again being thoroughly satisfied that we have done our duty to humanity and the higher laws of mankind, we go back to the political situa- tion in Michigan. And there's a state for you! Though since they've put up Henry Ford for pres- ident, it could scarcely be called a state. It's more like a condition. "Carranza, meanwhile, realising that he's got to throw a bluff at making good, calls in his military leaders. He knows, and they know, that they've got about as much chance of catching Villa as you 24 SCARS AND STRIPES have of taking dinner with Christopher Columbus. "However, they rustle out into the hinterland ; and in a few days they come back with a couple of fresh-laid corpses. "These they tie on stretchers and prop up against the place where the curb-stone ought to be in the heart of the city of Juarez. "Inasmuch as they are two of the most complete and thorough corpses that have been seen in some time, they at once become the cynosure of all eyes. Women stop to gaze upon them happily on their way home from market. Men with whom corpses are a hobby stop to accord them a dignified and envious glance. Corpse parties of children fore- gather there of sunny afternoons, little Pancho and Panchita calling shrilly to less fortunate adolescents whose irksome tasks of grinding flour and keeping the flies off father while he takes his daily siesta have combined to constrain them to the less allur- ing atmosphere of their homes; the while the au- thorities, trying not to show the glow of gratifica- tion that subtly fills their inner beings, stroll non- chalantly about pretending a modesty that they cannot really feel. For as an exhibition, it's quite the most successful affair that's been pulled off in Juarez since the Occupation. "In the meanwhile, Carranza sends us a letter. SCARS AND STRIPES 25 M 'Department of the Exterior, 'Washington, D. C, 'U. S. A. "'Gents: " 'In re your recent request to capture and exe- cute and otherwise punish the recent perpetrators of the murder of American citizens, taken from train number 36 and killed by the bandit, Francisco Villa, who I don't like any better than you do, will say that I have captured two of his generals which I have had entirely shot. If you don't believe it, you can find their bodies lying in the plaza at Juarez. You can find 'em any time. The weather is good, so we don't bother to take 'em inside. And besides, corpses lasts better outdoors anyway. One is Pablo Gomez. That's the skinny one. The other is some- body else. 'Hoping that you are the same, I remain, Y'rs truly, f V. Carranza, Primo Jefe. P. S. — 'If this ain't satisfactory, let me know and I'll shoot a few more. What's a few corpses more or less between friends?' "And is it satisfactory? Why not? We got what we asked for, didn't we? We demanded the punishment and execution of the offenders. Well, there they are. Two dead bodies, lying in the pub- lic square; lying there while the populace stands around admiring them; while photographers take 'nopmg mat yuu arc a t" 26 SCARS AND STRIPES pictures, full face, profile, what not; while little children play around. . . . "And this within a mile of American soil! This in the name of humanity and the higher laws of mankind ! "And does it end there? Hardly. Again we are but borrowing big troubles to pay little ones. Villa is still free. Villa is still sore. Villa still has men, and guns, and munitions; munitions that we gave him! "And with these men, and guns, and the muni- tions that we gave him, he crosses the border one night and slaughters the men and women of Colum- bus, New Mexico; American men, American women, and on American soil! Yes, he kills on American soil American men and American wom- en; and he kills them with American guns and American powder and American bullets given him by the American government! If you can find a cuter little idea than this anywhere in history, I'd like to hear it. "And what do we do then? Again do we take immediate and drastic action? Of a surety. Don't you know us by this time? "We write Carranza a nice chatty note. We tell him that we are afraid he isn't able to cope with the SCARS AND STRIPES 27 situation and ask his consent to send troops into Mexico. "It takes him a week or so to find out, or not find out, that he will, or won't, or something. Mean- while, of course, we wait. You see, far be it from us to offend anybody! "But coincidentally popular anger is rising. Hence, with a fine show of indignation, we an- nounce to the waiting newspaper correspondents that we have decided to follow our usual firm and drastic course in upholding the nobler laws of man- kind and the higher duties of humanity and demand Villa's body, dead or alive; or, if they can't find the body, the head will do. "Which, when it comes to humanity, is also rather a unique idea, don't you think? Although at that, it's by way of being what is technically known as old stuff. Old man Herodius's daughter, What's-Her-Name, pulled it with a lad named John the Baptist. "Then, still in a fine frenzy of righteous indigna- tion, we call in the Secretary of War and ask him where the army is. He says he doesn't know ex- actly; but the last time he saw it, it was sitting in the parade ground at Fort Ethan Allen smoking a pipe. But he says he'll write it a letter, and if 28 SCARS AND STRIPES it gets it all right, it will probably show up in a week or ten days. "Thanking the efficient secretary, we leave orders to have the field wireless dusted off, and to see that the eight flyless aeroplanes are in their accus- tomed state of creeping paralysis. Then we look up in the geography and find out where Mexico is. Then we get out a time-table and find that the 7 :20 train leaves at 7 :2c Then we buy some automobile trucks from Detroit, and take the hospital mules from a fort in California, and tell Carranza that we are going into Mexico anyway. Just like that! "Carranza says is that so? " That is, if you don't mind/ we say, smiling engagingly. For, it occurs to us that Carranza, being a rude soul, may not appreciate a fine frenzy, being more accustomed himself to the rough, com- mon-or-garden frenzy, such as is commonly found in, and indigenous to, his native habitat. 'You don't mind, do you?' we ask. " 'No,' he says. T mean yes/ Then you don't!' we cry, hopefully. Yes,' he says. T mean no.' c Quite so, quite so,' we return, gently, remem- bering that a soft answer turneth away wrath, and at the same time wishing that Carranza didn't look SCARS AND STRIPES 29 quite so much like a Rocky Mountain goat hiding in a cosy corner. We think a minute. " 'But, you see, old man/ we say (thus diplo- matically spreading on the apple butter), 'we've got to go. The people are demanding the punishment of Villa; and if we don't at least show a little speed, they're going to snow us under so deep in November that compared to us a submarine will look like an aeroplane; I don't mean one of ours,' you hasten to correct; 'I mean a regular one that will fly. u 'It's going to be terrible,' you insist. 'We'll be buried so far down they'll have to deliver our mail with an oyster rake. We won't be able to write notes or anything. You've simply got to let us go in. That's all.' " 'Well/ says Carranza, while we listen with eager hands clasped as the syllables sift through his whiskers, 'you can go into Mexico on four condi- tions/ " 'Yes ?' we cry, breathlessly. " 'The first,' says Carranza, 'is that you don't ride on any of my railroads.' " 'Oh, we'll walk,' we assure him. 'We just love to walk! We've got new shoes, and everything!' " 'The second,' says Carranza, 'is that you don't go anywhere where anything is liable to happen/ 30 SCARS AND STRIPES " 'Certainly not !' we expostulate. " 'The third/ says Carranza, 'is that you behave yourself nice and don't act rough. My countrymen don't like you in the first place. They think you're a poor piece of cheese; and I've got trouble enough fooling 'em about myself without having to. bunco 'em about you, as well. . . . Well?' he says. " 'We agree to that, of course,' we assure him. " ' You don't mean you accept those conditions ?' says Carranza. " 'Why, of course we do,' we answer, gratefully. 'Thank you. Thank you so much.' "Carranza looks at us, helplessly. "'And the fourth condition?' we ask. "Carranza shakes his head. " Tf you accept the other three,' he says, 'the fourth don't matter. I've forgot it. And anyway, them three's the worst I could think of all by myself/ "He looks at us and waggles his whiskers, weakly. " 'One thing,' he says, eyeing us, thoughtfully, Til bet eleven million pesos, which is seven dollars in regular money, that his nurse sure dropped him on his head when he was a baby.' And, still wag- gling his whiskers, he goes off to his presidential bomb-proof to offer up his usual evening prayer SCARS AND STRIPES 31 that the next time Obregon crosses a river on horse- back, there'll be a quicksand in the bottom. "And thus we send our troops into Mexico; send them on foot, on horseback, transporting their supplies by wagon and automobile; send them into a waste of barren, blazing sand, hot during the day as a furnace bed, cold at night as a murderer's heart; send them in, as fine a body of men as ever put shoe on foot, or threw saddle on horse, to suffer of thirst and hunger, and the blindness of the desert glare; send them in with aeroplanes that will not fly, and wireless that will not work, with lines of communication that are a farce, and against conditions that are a tragedy ; send them in, twelve thousand men, to catch one! And that one in a friendly country, a country that he knows as well as the palms of his hands, a country where horse and man and food are found ever at his will. . . . "It would be tragic if it weren't so funny. As well send a steam roller into the Dismal Swamp to catch a typhoid-fever microbe! "These men at Washington ! What can they say in their own defence, these men at Washington that sent our troops into Mexico to a foredoomed fiasco ? What excuse have they to offer, these men who planned and forced to execution probably the most asinine and inept military movement ever conceived 32 SCARS AND STRIPES outside of a nursery jingle? Condemned, and abso- lutely, they stand between two alternatives. For either they did not know the kind of country and conditions with which the troops would be forced to contend; in which case are they condemned of their ignorance; or they sent them in for the purely political purpose of satisfying public sentiment; in which case are they condemned of their ambition. Could either be more ineluctably damning? For men of so vast an ignorance are unfit for high posi- tion. Even as men of an ambition so overweening as to sacrifice for its political gratification the lives of their fellows, are unfit to be known as men. . . . "And then what? Doomed to certain failure, as of course was the expedition from the first, our troops, inadequate in number, helpless in communi- cation, could but penetrate so far into a country that we ourselves have taught to hate, and despise and belittle us. And so, failing ignominiously in our avowed purpose, to the accompaniment of a lot of windy explanations that mean nothing, do we start taking our troops out again! Talk about military strategy! Compared to us, that well- known king of France who marched his twenty thousand men up a hill and then marched them down again was a nascent Napoleon. SCARS AND STRIPES 33 "And why do we start taking our troops out again ? "Because Carranza says that we must! "And who is Carranza? "A vain and purblind old gentleman that we our- selves helped put in power and to whom we have furnished arms and ammunition that again have been used to kill us with! A pompous and bom- bastic old party with whom we fuss and fiddle and write letters and make protocols even while the sand foundations of his political fortunes slip and slide beneath his feet ; just as we fussed and fiddled and wrote letters with Villa; just as we fussed and fiddled and wrote letters with Huerta; just as, ap- parently, it is our intention to fuss and fiddle and write letters with Obregon when Carranza is gone, and with Cabrera when Obregon is gone, and with Somebody Else when Cabrera is gone, and with Some One Else when Somebody Else is gone, and so on, ad infinitum and ad nauseam. "For Mexico is but a bleeding and prostrate wreck of a nation, around and over which ride murderer and marauder and bandit. She cannot help herself; too near to death she is. Ravished and ravaged she lies, at the absolute mercy of her matricides, the matricides that we have stood aloof to watch pursue their bloody work unchecked. 34 SCARS AND STRIPES "To recognise one of her sons against the other is but to court that one's downfall; for the rest will fall upon him and trample him beneath their feet. The might of blood in Mexico carries its own punishment. "So it is that to write letters to a president of Mexico is like writing letters on the water with a rod of glass. "But letter-writing, while sufficiently absurd, yet in a way is harmless. What hurts is the sending in of a handful of our soldiers to face the thousands of blood-hungry, life-despising descendants of Aztec Indians and Spanish buccaneers; sending them in against certain failure, only to take them out against a failure more certain still. The Mexi- cans all along have known us to be cowards. Now they know us to be fools as well. "And so confident are they now in this oft- proven belief that this time they don't even wait for us to get our soldiers out before they make another raid across the border and use their American arms and American ammunition to kill more Americans on American soil! "And why should they not? Haven't Americans been raided and murdered along the border for the past three years or more, to the military glory and financial aggrandisement of the raider and mur- SCARS AND STRIPES 35 derer? Haven't American soldiers been fired on with impunity; because, forsooth, they were under orders from Washington not to return the fire? What wonder, then, that they consider an Ameri- can citizen successful prey; and an American sol- dier but a moving target ? "No wonder the game laws are off ! No wonder it's an open season for Americans along the Mexi- can border ! Haven't they shot them sitting, or on the wing? Haven't they shot them in the breeding season, and even on the nest? And all with little said and less done! "We provide game wardens for our deer, our duck and our partridge. For our citizens we pro- vide nothing. "And the laws are going to stay off; the open season will remain open; more Americans will be killed, American men, American women, American children, and on American soil ; and no twelve thou- sand men are going to stop it, no matter how brave; nor are they going to stop it in twelve months, no matter how efficient ; and no amount of purblind palaver with provisional presidents is going to put an end to it, for a Mexican president is as evanescent as inspiration, and as transitory as style. Nor is the matter to be corrected by any amount of nice, typewritten notes, no matter how 36 SCARS AND STRIPES full of resounding phraseology anent the nobler duties of mankind and the higher laws of humanity. The one conception of humanity of the average Mexican is that it's something to be raped, robbed and ravished. The only thing they understand is physical force, and plenty of it. And, until we pre- pare ourselves both physically and mentally to ad- minister that force, we can make up our minds, and make 'em up now, that just so long will Ameri- can men, American women and American children be slaughtered, and on American soil. Pray God it won't be done any longer with American guns and American ammunition. That much, at least, we can prevent. "So much for Mexico. For Germany what? "They have answered our latest note; number 67,706 or whatever it is. They have taken their own good time to answer it; and they have an- swered it in the tone and spirit that best suited them. But the note is meant only in the slightest degree for us; for the Germans feel toward us a good deal as the Mexicans do. To the Germans we are something to which to write notes for the rest of the world to read ; and when Germany feels that it is not to her interest to bother with us any further, then she'll ignore us, as we deserve. Just SCARS AND STRIPES 37 at present Germany feels like using us for a sound- ing-board to talk peace under, and as a means of embarrassing England. If, later, she decides to use us for something else, she'll use us; if not, she won't. If, later, she finds out it's to her advantage to refrain from the further murder of American citizens, she'll refrain; if not, she'll continue. But whatever she does, or does not, do, we can be sure, and very sure, of one thing: that the course she will pursue will be taken only because it is to her interest to take it, and not from any respect or consideration of us. "For under our present leaders and in our now state of helplessness, Germany does not fear us any more than she respects us; nor does she respect us any more than she fears us. And why should she ? Haven't we been a playground for her propaganda ever since the war began? Don't her spies and secret agents know more about our country than do we ourselves? We have answered her insults with notes; we have met her abuses with more notes; and we have greeted the murder of our citizens with wind backed up by nothing but more wind. Why should she respect us? Why should she consider us? As well respect a typewriter and consider a fountain-pen! "And of one other thing can we be sure: That 38 SCARS AND STRIPES when this war is over, and the nations of Europe all get together to rearrange international affairs, we'll enter into things about as vividly as a one- legged man at a dance. While they are sitting around dividing up all the plums of shipping and trade and finance, we'll be pestering around on the outside trying to plead past acquaintance as an excuse to get in to the festivities. " 'Who's the old guy with the chin piece that's trying to horn in?' says England. " 'You mean the stringy old lad with the striped pants and the plug hat?' says Russia. 'Seems to me I've seen him somewhere/ "'Oh,' says Italy, 'that's only old Uncle Sam. Don't pay no attention to him/ " 'Used to be quite a lad, didn't he ?' says Russia. " 'Yes,' says France, 'but he don't amount to any- thing now/ "'No?' says little Sylvester J. Serbia, shoving Bulgaria into his pants pocket. 'I thought he was quite some pumpkins/ " 'He was once,' says France. 'I helped him out one time when he was a young feller. I thought then he'd turn out to be a regular man/ "'Didn't he?' says little Albert Belgium, inter- estedly. SCARS AND STRIPES 39 "The other nations all look at each other and have a good laugh. " 'Why/ says one, 'that poor old lady ain't got as much manhood as a setting hen. He stayed home and hid under a feather-bed while the trouble was going on. Now it's over, he wants to be in/ " 'He's making so much noise I can hardly think/ says another. 'Set the dog on him !' " 'I would/ says a third, 'only I don't want to insult the dog. I'll set a mouse instead.' "So they chase the poor old man off home, and he swims across the ocean, having a terrible battle with a jellyfish on the way over, and then he buys himself five hundred sheets of writing-paper, and a box of carbons, and a new typewriter ribbon, and sits down to play the only kind of a game he knows how; and thereafter, when it comes to a conference on international affairs, they don't even ask him what he thinks he thinks about it. And at state dinners, where in other days he used to be right up among the face-cards, he now finds himself sitting just to the left of China, betw r een Patagonia and Iceland. "And that's what these men at Washington have done to your Uncle Sam, to my Uncle Sam, to the Uncle Sam of a hundred million more of us; to the Uncle Sam that through all these years of blood 40 SCARS AND STRIPES and iron, of peace and happiness, of toil and moil and joy and sorrow we've worked for, and strug- gled for, and loved and honoured and respected; to the Uncle Sam of our fathers and our fathers' fathers before them; to the Uncle Sam with the face and heart of a Lincoln, the mind and strength of a Jefferson, the soul and faith of a Washington! So low as this they've dragged him. . . . Poor, poor Uncle Sam! "And for all their misrepresentation, for all their emasculation, for the white robes of cowardice in which they have wound him, for all the meaning- less, bombastic phraseology they have placed be- tween his fine, firm lips, do these men at Washing- ton have but one excuse to offer : that they keep us out of war! "Certainly we keep out of war. So does a steer in a slaughter-house. "There are lots of things that keep out of war, keep out consistently, persistently, congenitally. Woolly lambs keep out of war. So do angle- worms. So do jellyfish. So do sunflowers, and Stilton cheeses and hard-boiled eggs. To boast that you have kept out of war is like boasting that you have never had scarlet fever. It means either that you have never been exposed to its influence, or that, exposed, you were sufficiently strong to throw SCARS AND STRIPES 41 it off. But for a man to stand around and boast that he's never had scarlet fever when his wife and children are dying with it, that is certainly a whole lot too many for me! "It's on a par with the conversation of these people who talk against preparedness. "Preparedness, and I mean military and naval preparedness, has always been as much a part of the lives of Americans as the air they breathed, or the food they ate. "When the Colonists landed in Virginia, they carried gun and powder, bullet and sword. When the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, they were armed; yet they too were godly men, and good. The fact that they carried arms did not make them kill Indians. It was the fact that they carried guns that prevented the Indians from killing them. "Preparedness, to our ancestors, was the very germ of life. Without it they would never have lived long enough to give birth to descendants who in turn gave birth to us. "At Concord and Lexington it was the same, and throughout the war that wrung us full-born from the womb of England to become a people great and free to enjoy the liberty that is now ours to use, and to abuse. . . . "And in the Civil War. Suppose, when this coun- 42 SCARS AND STRIPES try had that to face, that the people of the North, instead of preparing (belatedly, to be sure, as they did, and suffering from that belatedness as they needs must), had sat back fatly and complacently and written notes about it? Why, had the North acted as these pacificists want us to act now, all that the South would have had to do would have been to put an advertisement in the New York papers warning all Northerners that the South was in a state of war, and that if they didn't want to get killed, they'd better stay at home. That would have settled the whole thing right there. Of course the country would have been busted wide open in the middle. But what's a little thing like that to a pacifist? "Why, preparedness has been the one thing that conceived this country, that carried it, and that gave it birth. To preparedness we owe everything we have and everything we are. To the armed protec- tion that our ancestors gave us to do we owe the peace that has given us the opportunity to grow and expand and develop. To it we owe our freedom of speech and religion. To it we owe our national wealth and prosperity. All that we have come to be, all that we have come to own, we owe to mili- tary preparedness and naval; to the fact that we were too strong physically to be attacked with im- SCARS AND STRIPES 43 punity. Preparedness and this country's history have always been as inseparable as a man and his heart's blood. And yet at this time, when more than ever in our country's history is it needed, there are people who talk about cutting it off as though it were a vermiform appendix or a couple of ade- noids. "I tell you, it's got me going. It's unbelievable. It's so unbelievable as to be incomprehensible ! "It's like knowing a lot of folks well all your life, finding them reasonable and sane on every topic, and then suddenly having them start a loud and noisy argument with you on the contention that the human race is better off without food. "To be sure, they've always eaten food. Their ancestors ate it before them. There's always been food for them ^ver since they were born. Food has been as much a part of their lives as air, or water. Nevertheless, all of a sudden, they begin this outcry against it. "You're sitting down to a modest meal of scram- bled eggs and lima beans, topped off with a hunk of huckleberry pie, when in hop your friends. "On seeing you thus draped against the festive board, they stand aghast. " 'What !' they cry, in accents horrified. 'You aren't eating!' 44 SCARS AND STRIPES " 'A modicum/ you reply. Won't you sit down and ' "But they all have thrown up their hands in helpless anguish. "'What's the matter?' you ask. For a minute, they can't speak. ; Don't you know/ they gasp at length, 'that eating is the Most Terrible Thing in the World?' " 'Is it?' you ask, dropping your fork. 'In what way?' In the first place/ they answer, 'it costs money/ Well/ you answer brightly, 'I can afford it. And since it makes for the protection of my health and strength, as well as putting me in shape to perform my arduous duties in the potato patch ' tt c ti r But look at them people across the pond/ they interrupt, excitedly, 'that Hohenzollern family!' What about 'em?' you ask. Why, haven't you heard ?' they cry. 'They've got gout and indigestion and cirrhosis of the liver and everything, and they're having the rottenest time! And it's all from over-eating!' " 'That isn't the fault of the food,' you argue. 'It's the fault of the individual. You can't blame the food for making them sick any more than when a man cuts himself with a razor you can blame the razor/ SCARS AND STRIPES 45 "But will they listen to you? Hardly! They leave you flat as being too hopelessly feeble-minded to argue with, and go out on the street, telling how Food is a Terrible Thing because it costs money, and the fact that you've got a barrel of molasses in the house makes you try to gulp it all up at once instead of saving it up to put on flapjacks, and how poor Mr. So-and-So like to eat himself to death the other night because his son brought home eight cab- bages and a wagon load of pumpkins, and about old Mrs. What's-Her-Name that foundered herself be- cause it rained and filled up the cistern and she hadn't the moral courage to resist seeing that much water around without trying to drink it all. "The question of preparedness has always seemed so clear and simple to me that I can't under- stand everybody not seeing it. What is life any- way but preparedness? What is preparedness but life? Why, without preparedness, you and I and everybody else would be dead in a week. "Look at your own daily life. What do you do the first thing when you get up in the morning? You put on your clothes. And if that isn't pre- paredness, what is it? "And suppose you should decide on being un- prepared and go out without them? You'd catch pneumonia, get arrested and die in a police station ; 46 SCARS AND STRIPES though if you didn't believe in preparedness, there wouldn't be any police station ; for what is a police station but preparedness? So you'd die in the street. . . . No. Wrong again. There wouldn't be any street; for streets are preparedness, too; preparedness to make travel easy; so you'd die in a field somewhere. No, there wouldn't be any fields; for fields are preparedness against raising crops; and so Wait a minute. If you didn't believe in preparedness, you wouldn't have had any clothes in the first place; neither would your an- cestors; and you wouldn't have had any schools, for schools are preparedness against ignorance; nor churches, for churches are preparedness for moral and religious betterment ; so you wouldn't have had any religion or morals. So you see, if you really begin to chase the idea of unpreparedness back to its origin, you'd be covered with hair, and living in a cave and eating raw meat and mangel wurzels. "And if, even in those days, you were still con- sistent and refused firmly and irreligiously to equip yourself with a stone hatchet, or a club with knobs on the end, along would come a dinosaur, or an ichthyosaurus, or similar faunal monstrosity, and you wouldn't have been at all in the first place. And there you are! "But admitting, which I don't, that you reached SCARS AND STRIPES 4*7 your present state in spite of preparedness, what then? "We'll suppose that, on arising, it's your custom to take a bath. Why? Preparedness. Prepared- ness against disease. You dress. Preparedness against taking cold, or outraging the sensibilities of the community. You eat breakfast. Preparedness against hunger and for efficiency. Then you ask your wife for a nickel. Preparedness against hav- ing to walk down town. Then you go to work. Preparedness against earning money to pay your bills and buy yourself the food and clothes that prepare your body against privation. Then you eat lunch. Preparedness against more hunger. Then you work some more. Preparedness against losing your job. Then you eat dinner. Prepared- ness so that you can enjoy your evenings rest or pleasure. Then you go to the theatre, or play cards, or dance. Preparedness against all work and no play making Jack a dull boy. Then you go home and go to bed. Preparedness so that you'll be strong enough to go to work the next day, or fish- ing if it happens to be Sunday. You exercise to prepare your body for its duties. You rest for the same reason. You read and go to school for the purpose of preparing your brain to cope with other brains. 48 SCARS AND STRIPES "You have a house to prepare against exposure. You buy an umbrella to prepare against rain. You pay taxes to pay for the police force, which is pre- paredness against crime, and the fire department, which is preparedness against fire. And you have doctors who are preparedness against death, and undertakers who are preparedness for it. "And then the main argument of the pacifists is that having arms makes you want to fight ! "Does having clothes make you never want to undress? Does having a bath-tub make you never want to get out of it? Does having a job make you want to work all the time? Does having an umbrella make you pray for rain? "You might as well say that having doctors makes you want to be sick, and having undertakers makes you want to die! "And it is primarily in this question of prepared- ness that we are so wrong, so horribly, so pitifully, so dangerously wrong. "We are unprepared. And how unprepared, God only knows. For not only are we unprepared in an army and a navy; we are unprepared as well physically, mentally, morally. That is why we have shirked and dodged and sidestepped our responsi- bilities. That is why we have shifted and turned and twisted every new obligation that has come to SCARS A^D STRIPES 49 meet us. That is why we have borrowed big troubles to pay little ones. Anything to avoid doing our duty ! Anything to avoid fulfilling our obligations ! Anything, no matter how shameful, to avoid facing our responsibilities! "We, with all our talk of the higher rights of humanity, and the nobler duties of mankind ! Who in heaven's name are we? Let God look after the higher rights of humanity. Let God take care of the nobler duties of mankind. If we can only help Him by helping ourselves, we'll be doing a whole lot more in the future than we have in the past. For the sum total of all that we have accomplished under our present leaders (God save the mark!) in two long years is to borrow big troubles to pay off little ones! Not one solitary thing have we settled. Not one issue that does not remain to be faced, and not one of these issues that has not grown an hundredfold in menace, in danger and in potential ruin. For the little fire becomes a holo- caust. The lion cub becomes full grown. Murder, unchecked, becomes massacre. And the cancer of the body politic, no less than of the body physical, if let alone will rot the vitals that carry it. . . . " 'But what course is open to them,' you ask, 'these men at Washington? What should they do?' What should any man do whose employer fails a 50 SCARS AND STRIPES to give him the tools with which to work? He should go to his employer and ask him for those tools. He should say, 'I have a task to do, but I have nothing with which to do it. Give me tools, and I will work; else will it be your fault if the task remains undone; for botch it I will not/ "And then, if the work be not done, it is clear who is to blame. "But these men at Washington, is that what they do? Not exactly. Instead, they fill the air with vain and futile words! They rush in with a nut- pick when they need a crow-bar, and then come out to get a nail-file! They hop in here, only to hop out there! They belch forth words one minute only to eat them the next ! They talk about protect- ing humanity when they can't protect even the smallest of their own villages; and they talk about the nobler duties of mankind when they haven't performed even the smallest and meanest of their own. And the heavens ring with their resounding rhetoric when you could write a complete list of their achievements on a gnat's eyelid. "What should these men at Washington do? They should put up, or shut up. Inelegant it may be; but it is the truth. "And meanwhile, fat, flamboyant and futile we sit here while our dead call to us from unmarked SCARS AND STRIPES 51 graves; while suffering and torture and horrors unnameable lie upon every side. With Mexico we have intruded and then evaded until she lies a bleed- ing pulp. With Germany we have quibbled and squabbled while our men, our women and our little babies have been flung into the blood-red maw of her god of war. From right, from wrong, from truth, from falsehood, from justice, from injustice, from humanity, from inhumanity, have we stood alike aloof. And, after two long years, still have we no means of any kind to fight for the one, or against the other; still have we no means to pro- tect our women from rape or our children from murder. Still have these men at Washington left us so supine, so abject, so pitiful, that a Mexican bandit can come on American soil, murder Ameri- can men, American women, American children and, going Scot-free, turn to laugh at us in our pitiable helplessness. "Is there any answer to that, save one? Truly I cannot see it. The people of Columbus were law- abiding, and had set a high moral example. It did not prevent them from being killed. Also some of them were armed. But it had not made them aggressive. But they were inadequately armed. Hence were they dragged from their beds and slain, murdered in cold blood, while a nation of one hun- 52 SCARS AND STRIPES dred million people stood powerless to save them; as it now stands powerless to prevent others like them from being murdered even as were these. Even as that nation has stood helpless to see Ger- many murder its citizens at sea, and still stands helpless against other murders that yet may well be. "You're an American. I'm an American. And there are a hundred million more of us, as proud and glad to be Americans as you and I ; loving the word as much; as proud of our country and as jealous of her honour and good name; willing to fight for her, and die for her, to protect and guard the freedom and liberty for which our fathers fought and died ; glorying in her patience and her power, her gentleness and her dignity, her kindness and her strength. "How long, then, can we endure to be so help- less? How long can we endure to be so abject? How long can we endure to be so supine? "God knows we do not want war. War is some- thing to be dreaded as disease is dreaded, to be feared as wild beasts are feared. All we want is to be strong, and to be brave; strong enough to help the weak that need us, brave enough to defy the tyrannical that would outrage us. That is what we want, and all. Just that, and no more. "This country that is ours was left us by our SCARS AND STRIPES 53 fathers, watered of their blood, freshened of their hearts, flowered of their souls. They left this trust for men to use, not for cowards to abuse. And if we are deserving of the name American; if we stand for what they stood; if we love what they loved, honour what they honoured and are true to what they were true; if life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness mean but half as much to us as they did to them, then is it now for us to bow our heads to God and ask His help to be the men they would wish us to be. He knows it is in us to do if we but will!" CHAPTER TWO THE NEUTRAL CHAPTER TWO THE NEUTRAL IT was at the club. Gray was talking ; Drake and I listening. "I," said Gray, "am neutral." I said nothing. What was the use? "Here we are," said Gray, "the richest country in the world ; contented ; prosperous ; and at peace. And if it so happens that, on the other side of the world, are a lot of crazy people shooting one an- other, and blowing one another up, what business is it of ours? Why should we take sides?" Drake took up the futile challenge. "There's always a right and wrong to every side — to every cause," he asserted. "And a man who won't fight for the right and fight against the wrong, isn't a man ; he's a fish, and a mighty poor fish at that." "Bah!" said Gray. "Do you bah Belgium?" queried Drake. "That crime of barbarism against civilisation, that slaugh- ter of right by might, that ravaging of humanity by bestiality — yes, and worse! for beasts only kill. It takes human beings to torture." 57 58 SCARS AND STRIPES "War is war/' returned Gray. "I suppose the aggressors were doing only what they thought was for their best ad vantage/ ' "Doubtless," returned Drake. "I imagine Cap- tain Kidd had much the same excuse." He turned directly to Gray. "How about the Lusitania" he asked, "and all the other submarine massacres? And the Zeppelins? The murder from the air of sleeping women and children! What extenuation have you for those? Any, except the one you've already advanced?" Gray crossed his legs. "You talk like a magazine article," he said, im- patiently. "All we know is that there are a lot of nations fighting their heads off, and it's up to us to keep out of it, and stay out." "Is that all we know?" asked Drake. "Well, isn't it?" demanded Gray. Drake shook his head. "Not quite," he said. "We know that there are in Europe a lot of nations that, in modern times and under modern conditions, were doing the best they could in the best way they could. We know that among these nations was another that coupled with a national efficiency higher than any the world has ever seen, an Idea that was older than murder. And that nation, combining as no THE NEUTRAL 59 nation ever has or probably ever will again, the brain of an Edison with the soul of an Atilla, has gone forth into other lands to ravage and to ravish and to rape, with its magnificent equipment of the twentieth century — and its brutal ruthlessness of the tenth. What is it up to the rest of the world to do?" "Go to bed and wait for it to get over," returned Gray. He rose, impatiently. "For heaven's sake," he said, "cut out all this jingo talk. You're one of these Americans that are going to help get us mixed up in this thing. What business is it of ours what they do in Europe? We're out of it, and if only we behave like sensible people instead of like a lot of darned fools, we can keep out. "Here we are," he continued, "three thousand miles away. The country was never so pros- perous; business never in better shape; everybody making plenty of money; everything going along great. And now you, and a lot of people like you, want to gum up the whole thing by horning in and taking sides and hollering your heads off for armies and navies and things! "What do you mean, you folks that yell for pre- paredness, for a big army, and a big navy? Haven't you got sense (enough to know that big armies and big navies cost a lot of money? Do you want to 60 SCARS AND STRIPES go and get your taxes increased, and the price of everything raised? Do you want to give up your business, and leave your home, and go and serve in the army?" Drake nodded. "If necessary," he said, quietly, "Well, I don't," said Gray. "And these people that aren't satisfied to let well enough alone; that aren't satisfied to stay at home and attend to their own business and let the rest of the world attend to its, make me sore. And the ones that make me particularly sore are those fool Americans that go abroad knowing that war exists and that they're liable to be blown up, and then put up a holler when it happens to 'em. If they don't want to get tor- pedoed, why don't they stay at home, the darned fools?" He grunted, disgustedly. "They couldn't get me over there, you can bet your sweet life," he said. "No, sir! I'm neutral," he went on, "and I'm going to stay neutral. And furthermore, I'm going to stay at home and mind my own business. I should worry about Europe! They got themselves into all this mess. Let them get themselves out." A boy came in. "Cable for you, Mr. Gray," he said. THE NEUTRAL 61 Gray took the envelope; tore it open; unfolded the single sheet it contained, and read. . . . His eyes squinted. .He took a short breath. "Well, my Lord!" he muttered, feebly. "Well, for the love of — now what do you know about — well, I'm a— well, 111 be dad-blamed!" And without a word he rose and walked out of the room. I met my friend at the dock. He came down the gangplank tastefully gowned in a rain coat, a pair of carpet-slippers three sizes too big for him, a little boy's cap of white canvas around which was a blue band bearing in gold the words, La Provence, a middy blouse, and a pair of overalls. I stared in startled wonderment. Usually he was sartorially effulgent. He explained as we shook hands. "Von Tirpitz," he said. "Good heavens!" I cried. "You weren't on the America?" He nodded. "On and off," he said. "When they torpedoed her?" Again he nodded. "Come to my rooms," he said, "and I'll tell you about it while I change my clothes. I've been hav- 62 SCARS AND STRIPES ing a terrible time with these things. I can't re- member whether I'm a stoker or a look-out. Still, blown-ups can't be choosers; and it was very nice of the steward, the stewardess, the mess-boy — mess being correct — and the crew of the captain's g% to give me these things. Otherwise I'd have had to stay in bed or run the risk of disorganising the morals of the entire ship. . . . "Hey! Taxi!" he called; and, casting a cursory glance down at his heterogeneous habiliments, he remarked, "For once, at least, I feel that I am about to enjoy going through the customs." At his rooms, bathed, shaven, in fresh and im- peccable raiment, he told me what had happened. This is how he told it: It was just curiosity, I suppose. I wanted to go to Europe to see what made it tick. They don't pull off a war like this every year, thank God ; and I wanted to see what it was doing to the people; how they were taking it; and I had a few letters that I thought might get me to the fighting. But I'll tell you about that some other time. Nothing happened on the way over until we got about a hundred and fifty miles off the Irish coast. It was a nice day. Three of us were playing ship golf ; a chap named Henderson, a little lad with eye- THE NEUTRAL 63 glasses and a tummy ; I forgot his name ; and myself. I was just squaring away from my drive at the fifth hole, which lay between the bitts, with a cap- stan for a hazard, when the Little Lad let out a yell. "A submarine !" he hollers. "What!" I asked, slicing my drive into a flock of stokers that had come up for air. "Look!" he says, pointing about three degrees abaft the lee quarter. Henderson and I looked. And sure enough, there was a periscope sticking up out of the water and not over half a mile or so — anyhow, it was a whole lot too near. "Tell the captain!" yells the Little Lad. And then, without waiting, he piles up the companion- way. He knocks over an old lady and steps entirely on a valuable Pekinese and nails the captain just as he is coming out of the pilot-house. All he can say is, "Look, Cap!" It's enough. The Cap looks. "Good God!" he says, and busts into the pilot- house and, pushing aside the officer in charge, be- gins to pull at ropes and handles and gongs and things until he looks like a Family of Swiss Bell Ringers. In about seven seconds there was the most alarm- ing alacrity, to say nothing of the most unprece- dented celerity, that you ever saw. Looking over 64 SCARS AND STRIPES the rail, I see the flock of stokers disappear down a deckhole as one man. It's like chuting coal into a cellar. And in another minute, clouds of smoke begin to pour out of the funnels; white water is whipped up by the screws, and, taking a zig-zag course, the ship starts off like a frightened fish. And the passengers ! . . . It's funny how danger affects different people. Some it makes grim and silent; others noisy and abusive ; others weak and pitiable ; and still others absent-minded and helpless. The Old Lady, whose dog the Little Lad had stepped on, took a pillow in her arms, and carefully placing the Pekinese beneath her, sat down on it and began to cry. Henderson, who was beside me, said something that you couldn't print and stood silent, watching tensely, like a spectator at a race. . . . A dignified old party who had been taking a siesta when the alarm was pulled, came out on deck dressed in a silk hat and a union suit. His daughter came after him, carrying his pants. He put his arms into the legs thereof; and they both thought he was dressed. But it was the Little Lad with the tummy that furnished most of the excitement. He stood by the rail, shaking his fist and howling curses, while THE NEUTRAL 65 a female missionary who was returning from her vacation, stood beside him and encouraged him eagerly to further profanities. "You swine!" he yowls, shaking his fist at the submarine, now awash and ripping through the water behind us. "You double-dashed, triple- asterisked, exclamation-point swine! Attack a peaceful ship full of non-combatants, would you? Why, blankety, blinkety, blunkety blank your triply- qualified souls to noun ! You just let me get to land and I'll fight you with anything from a lead pipe to a supreme court !" My, but he was a wonderful cusser! With him, it was not a science. It was an art. The ship was tearing through the water now, a mile this way, a mile that, the bow wave piling in huge, white masses that slithered along her sides. . . . And back of her was the submarine, dull, sul- len, threatening, his back awash in the seas. . . . Even as we looked, a little port on top opened. . . . Men came out. ... A gun rose from some- where ; and a shell came whining over us. . . . The Old Lady got up from the dog; but its hope- ful expression promptly vanished when she sat right down on it again. Henderson muttered an- other something. The Dignified Old Party climbed into a lifeboat and his daughter followed. 66 SCARS AND STRIPES But it was again the Little Lad by the rail that shone. The cussing that he had done before was but an amateur tryout to the splendid and truly artistic achievements that he now attained. And the Female Missionary got behind him and boosted hard. She seemed a firm believer in the theory that words constitute force. If such had been the case, the red hot missiles that the Little Lad was dis- charging would have sunk the Queen Elizabeth in ten seconds. Another shell whined above our heads. It tore a hole in the forward funnel and buried itself far beyond in the sea. ... And then another. . . . I can't tell you how long the chase kept up. An hour, perhaps; perhaps two; or maybe three. . . . On and on we zigzagged. . . . After us came the submarine, firing shell after shell. . . . Three times we were hit, but in no vital spot. . . . And every time a shell screamed by, the Old Lady would get up from the dog and sit down on it again, Hender- son would mutter, the Little Lad would boil over, and the Dignified Old Party in the plug hat would shove his head under a seat of the lifeboat and promise his daughter that if she ever wanted to go nursing again it would have to be within the three- mile limit of South Bend. THE NEUTRAL 67 And then somebody said, "Look !" and this time pointed forward. It was a British destroyer. She had got our wireless and was shooting towards us like a tor- pedo, smoke lying flat behind her, spray shooting over her tiny stacks. . . . I have seen many beautiful sights in my time—* the Alps, sunset in the Sahara, the Grand Canon, Rio Janeiro harbour and the Bank of England. But I want to tell you, my son, that the sight of that low, lean, hungry-looking destroyer made all the rest of 'em look like a wet afternoon in Lincoln, Nebraska. I wanted to have her picture taken and wear it in a locket ! The submarine saw it, too. With a parting shot, she turned and wallowed away, slowly sinking be- neath the water. . . . The Little Lad sent it on its journey with a parting volley of curse-words, husky but deeply sincere. Henderson threw back his head, straightening tense shoulders. The Old Lady looked at the pillow she was hugging; gazed about her perplexedly; got up; picked up her flattened pet; and started in to readjust it into its former spherical shape. The Dignified Old Party climbed down out of the life-boat. His daughter got a peep at him; said, "Ah!" shrilly, and both stepped hastily into the en$ine-roc*ti. 68 SCARS AND STRIPES The Little Lad asked the first officer if the cap- tain of the destroyer was coming aboard. He said he wanted to kiss him. . . . It was while we were warping into the dock. The Little Lad with the Tummy was standing be- side me, his travelling-bag in his hand. "Know anybody over here?" he asked me. "I mean, anybody of any account ?" I told him that I had some letters to people that rawthah mattahed. "I've got a tough job ahead of me/ 5 he said; "good and tough." He paused. "It's my daughter," he went on. "She was in a motor smash-up a little over a year ago. When help came all the others were there, but she was gone. The only explana- tion that any one has ever been able to give is that she was hit on the head and lost her memory. "A week ago I got word that she was in a hos- pital, in Switzerland — Geneva. She had been found wandering about in the streets in a dazed condition, and they had taken her in. The message said that while she was still far from well, she had got back her memory enough to tell them who she was. . . . That's my reason for coming over. . . . And now the thing is to find a way for me to get to Geneva and bring her back with me." "I think I can fix it," I said. I told him where THE NEUTRAL 69 I was to stay. "Come around to-morrow evening, about nine." He wrung my hand. "You won't be sorry," he said. "She's a wonder- ful girl, that daughter of mine. . . . Like her mother. . . . You must come to see us, when we all get back home again." I said Td be glad to go. And we joined in the stream of debarking passengers. . . . I had a lot to attend to next day. But I managed to arrange so that he should get a pass to Geneva, and to get a letter that would enable him to bring his daughter back to England when she got well enough to make the trip. The next night, at about nine, I was sitting in the lobby of the hotel, waiting for him, when all of a sudden I heard a gun go off. Bang! And then another; and almost immediately a whole flock of 'em. At which the bell-boys, the porters, a covey of chambermaids, a couple of clerks and all the cus- tomers poured out of the lobby and into the street. I detained a uniformed menial long enough to ask him the cause of the noise and the ensuing exodus. "Zeps !" he yells, and off he goes. "Zeps?" I says. And then a light breaks in upon me. 70 SCARS AND STRIPES "Oh," I think. "He means Zeppelins!" And then, as if to corroborate my discovery, "WHANG!!" A bomb! The whole sky was lit up with a flash like a million bolts of lightning. And the noise that accompanied sounded like the explosion that would result if you poured the At- lantic ocean into hell. . . . You could hear glass crashing, and pieces of pavement. ... A dull rum- bling as the fronts of houses caved in. I rushed out into the street. It was crowded with people, half-stunned, dazed. Just down the block it had happened. There was a hole in the pavement that you could have buried a whale in. The fronts were torn from four or five houses. . . . It had killed a couple of children asleep in bed. . . . The mangled body of one was lying shattered against the jagged wall, blown against it so hard that it stuck there. . . . Bright blood was oozing from beneath yellow curls, to run down a sun- kissed little cheek. . . . We saw it in the light of the burning house next door, from which came first screams, then groans — then silence. . . . And an old woman had been killed while alight- ing from an omnibus. . . . And in the morning would come the report: THE NEUTRAL 71 Last night our air craft again attacked the forti- fied city of London, with the usual completely satis- factory results. Two fortified children asleep in a fortified bed! A fortified old lady alighting from a fortified omnibus ! And that's what they call war! We helped bring down the children — dead little bodies still warm with the little lives that so swiftly, so terribly, had been taken from them. . . . We laid them on the sidewalk, before the torn front of what had been their home. . . . Their mother and their father, stunned to unconsciousness, came to their senses. . . . They saw their dead. . . . Little dead hands limp. . . . Little dead eyes star- ing sightlessly straight up at the monster that slug- gishly wheeled, and turned, and made ready for more murder — more, and more, and more. . . . The father stood there, his fingers twitching. . . . God mercifully took again the mother's senses. . . ,., The policeman beside me was cursing thickly. I looked at him. He was crying. . . . He saw me looking. He blinked, apologetically. f Tve two of me own," he mumbled. "Little tykes, too — like them." 72 SCARS AND STRIPES He needn't have apologised for crying. . . . He was not alone. Came from behind us, somewhere in the firelight gloom, a man's voice. It sounded strangely famil- iar. "For the love of heaven/' it howled, "take this triply-qualified, quadruply-adjectived blinkety- blankety blunk thing off me so's I can get at 'em. First the doubly blanked dashes try to blow me up ; and then they try to blow me down, double-dash 'em. I only wish to blank I was an angel! I'd show 'em a few tricks about flying around and dropping things on people!" Yes, it was the Little Lad. He had been coming along in a cab. And the manner in which the cataclysm had distributed things had left the cab on top of him and the horse on top of that. But I'll give him credit. When we rolled the debris off him, he came to his feet with a spoke in each hand. And, drawing back, he slammed first one, and then the other, at the great, sluggish monster there in the air, a mile above him ! . . . And everything he called it, and everything he said about the men that conceived, and made, and operated it, was true! I took him to my rooms and straightened him out, told him what I had done for him, and, with THE NEUTRAL 73 thanks in which curses were strangely mingled, he departed. I was so busy the next few weeks, that I plumb forgot all about the Little Lad. Imagine my sur- prise then, when, on mounting the gang-plank of the America for the return /trip, I bumped right into him. "Now what the " he began. Then he saw who it was and let out a whoop. "I got her all right !" he yells, excitedly. "Look !" He brought her beside him — his daughter. In- terestedly, I did as he bade. He had said that she was pretty. It was a cal- umny. For she was more than pretty — much more. Grey eyes, she had, clear and soft, with the frank- ness of a child's — and the gentleness of a woman's. And the hand that she laid in mine was little and warm and firm. . . . Dogs and horses and children would have loved her — which means far more than the love of men and women. Children and animals love with their hearts ; men and women confuse that love with brains. She was about twenty, I suppose. I'm telling you all this about her because — because — well, I'm a tough old bachelor; but it's not from choice, and when I saw her . . . There are women, and women. Some you never know. Others, the minute you see 74 SCARS AND STRIPES them, you feel as though you'd come home; that you could tell them the things that lie in every man untold; that in them lie Rest, and Peace and Hap- piness, and all the things that make life worth liv- ing. . . . That was the kind she was. . r . . The only one in all the world I've ever met . . . I don't know how long I stood looking into her eyes. Hers did not turn. We moved to the deck. The Little Lad was fuss- ing around. He had a steward bring a chair for me, and put it next to theirs. "And I'll fix you at our table/' he said to me, over his shoulder, as he passed ; "that is, if you're alone. If it hadn't been for you, God knows how I'd ever have got her here." He pinched her cheek. "Love the old man?" he asked. His voice broke a little. She looked up, eyes brimming. "Daddy!" she said, softly; and she kissed him. ... A child she was — and yet a woman. . . . We sat up late that night, talking, in the moon- light. . . . God knows all I said to her. . . . Little thoughts that I had held hidden in the storehouse of my soul since time began I took down from their shelves and laid before her. . . . Because I knew that no matter how poor they might be, she THE NEUTEAL 75 would not despise, nor laugh, nor criticise, but would Understand. ... In every man's soul they lie, these thoughts ; in most they die, unborn. . . . The Little Lad fell asleep. . . . We talked on. . . . She let me look a little into her soul, too. . . . It made me ashamed of the smallness of my own. ... And she was very beautiful. ... The next day, while we were at lunch, it hap- pened. There was no warning — nothing! . . . Peaceful men and women, in a great ship, on the great sea that God has given alike to all His people. r . • . . And then the devil with his hell . . . An explosion that shook the ship to its heart. -. . -. Flame, smoke, and flying bits of metal and wood and human flesh. ... A maelstrom of piti- ful, frightened women, horror-bitten men, and help- less, whimpering children that did not understand. . . -. God? How could they understand? When you can't, nor can I! ... To kill in the heat of battle, yes. . . . But deliberately, thinkingly, calmly to set about in cold blood to murder peaceful, unarmed men, helpless, gentle women, and little children fresh from the arms of the God that sent them through love and pain to live upon His earth. . . . To slaughter these as mercilessly as one would stick a pig! And without even that excuse for 76 SCARS AND STRIPES ■ ■ ■ ■■■ i i i slaughter. For pigs are killed to be eaten. But why do they slaughter children? I don't know. Nor do you. . . . But perhaps God knows. Per- haps they have told him. They seem much in His confidence. Through all the awful inferno, we rushed to the deck, the father and I, the daughter between us., . . . The ship was listing heavily. . . . People rushed about screaming, wailing, begging for mercy, praying to God to save them from the awful death that had come so swiftly, so fiendishly upon them. ... I#J . And there, across the sunlit waters, lay that death; a dull, sullen, unclean monster, wallowing swinishly. . . . There were men upon its slimy back. . . . Men that stood calmly watching while fear-tortured women threw their babies into the sea and flung themselves in after. . . . The lifeboats on the port side could not be used ; the list was so great that it had swung them inboard. . . . The number one boat on the star- board side had filled with swarming, terror-stricken souls. ... It began to descend. . . . The block on one of the davits jammed. . . . The human con- tents, struggling, slipping, screaming, fell in little clusters into the sea. . . . You have shaken cater- pillars from a limb? ... It was like that. Only THE NEUTRAL 77 these were human beings, like you and me. Re- member that. Another boat, half-filled, had lowered and put aw r ay. . . . People threw themselves after it; to miss and disappear in the tortured waters. ... A third was loading. We fought to reach it; but those about us were too many, and too mad. She looked up at me, the girl by my side. "It's no use," she said. "And I am not afraid to die." The ship gave a lurch. We seized the rail, to keep our feet. The father, jaw set, eyes narrowed, looked swiftly about. "She's going," he said, grimly. "Jump!" There came a rush of waters, like a thousand Niagaras. I tried my best to hold her. She was torn from my hands as one might tear a feather from a child's. . . . Down I went, down and down. . . . My lungs were bursting. ... I came once again to the surface where was God's sunlight — and the bodies of men and women. There were pieces of her sleeves in each of my hands. I tried to find her. There were bodies every- where. A man's, torn in two parts, floating in a circle of red-blue water. ... A woman's, with a baby tight against its breast, her dead arms about 78 SCARS AND STRIPES its dead body, its little dead fingers clasped about her neck. . . . Bubbling, horrid screams! Low, bubbling wails. . . . I saw Her. She was clinging, twenty feet away, to a bit of wreckage. But bodies lay between. I fought them. If you have never fought the dead, don't long to. . . . Hell has nothing new to show me now. I was almost at her side. . . . Her hands slipped from the bit of wreckage to which she clung; she had been long ill, you know. . . . Her head sunk beneath the water. Three bodies lay between us. I remember the first. It's dead face came full against my own as I fought it away. It was very like my mother's. . . . The same kind eyes, the same gentle lips, the same loving-kindness that had lived within before — before this awful cataclysm of war came. . . . But I fought even that, too. I fought that, and the next. And but one lay between as Her face came again to the sunlight. . . . Her dark hair floated about her in the water, like some strange, silken seaweed. . . . God, how I fought to reach her ! . . . She saw me. . . . Grey, clear eyes looked into my own, the eyes that were of a woman-child. She saw me. She smiled, a little. . . . Again THE NEUTRAL 79 the water crept above her lips. But the eyes still looked. The lips beneath the water still smiled. I think I struck the body that lay between us. ... I was quite mad, now. ... I fought it as though it were alive, some brutal, unclean Thing that held me from my own while it did murder. At length I won. I flung tny self past it. But she was gone. Where she had been, was only water. . . • That's all I remember. They told me afterward that I was picked up by one of the boats which drifted about until La Provence came. My friend finished. He sat, looking out the win- dow into the gathering dusk. "Good God!" I exclaimed. He said nothing. "And what?" I asked, at length, thinking to turn his mind, "became of the girl's father? the Little Lad?" He shook his head. "Drowned, I suppose," he answered. "Drowned like all the other Americans that the Beast has mur- dered to show us how cultured it is." Of a sudden there came from without the sound of men fighting. My friend leaned out the window. "A row?" I asked. 80 SCARS AND STRIPES ■ My friend nodded. "Let's go down and look it over," he said. "I'd even go to a peace meeting to get my mind off what it's seen." We descended. In the middle of the street a little man with nose glasses and running to embonpoint, was seated on the back of another man who was lying face down on the asphalt. The little man had the other by the ears and was addressing him copiously, em- phasising his remarks from time to time by bring- ing the other's head up and then slamming it, nose down, against the pavement. It was a ceremonial at once picturesque and remorseless. "Why, you double-dashed, triple-asterisked ex- clamation point blank!" the little man howled. "Why, blinkety, blankety, blunkety blink! I'll show you whether " My friend gasped. "Good heavens!" he cried. "If it isn't the Little Lad with the Tummy!" I, too, had gasped. For it was also Gray ! Gray, of the club ! Gray the pacifist ! Gray the Neutral ! Gray, who didn't believe in fighting! We rushed to his side. "Here, here!" cried my friend. "What do you want to do? Kill him? Let the man up ! Let him up, I say!" THE NEUTRAL 81 Gray looked at us over his shoulder. "Not until the son-of-a-gun gives three cheers for Uncle Sam !" he howled. He turned again to his victim. "D'jer hear that?" he demanded. "Three rous- ing cheers now! Three cheers, I say! Cm' on, now. One- two-three ! Hip, hip, hooray!" The cheers were given. Gray rose to his feet. His victim stood not on the order of his going. He disappeared even before we had had a good look at him. Gray dusted off his clothes. "I rather think," he said, complacently, "that I taught that poor boob something about prepared- ness that he won't forget in a hurry." "But for goodness' sake," I asked. "What's it all about? What were you fighting for, anyway?" Gray breathed hard, like an old war horse. "Why," he explained, "that triple-blanked pin- head was making a speech against preparedness, and bawling out Uncle Sam. And I was getting hotter and hotter. And then when he came to the place where he said that if Americans didn't have sense enough to stay at home, they deserved to be killed, I boiled over and hopped him." Even then I didn't fully understand. It had come too suddenly. 82 SCARS AND STRIPES "But," I protested, "I thought you were neu- tral?" "Neutral be hanged !" he howled. "Wait until I can get a steamer back to France! I'll show you how neutral I am! To-night I'm forty-four. But the first recruiting office I hit will see me swearing off years as though they were taxes ! Those triple- dashed, quadruply-asterisked blinkety, blankety, blunks can't do what they did to me and get away with it!" His voice changed; changed with a suddenness that was almost startling. He brushed the back of his hand across his eyes. "And I kind of hope they get me at that," he said; his voice was so low that it was with diffi- culty that I heard. "God knows I haven't much to live for now. . . ." Still a bit perplexed, I looked at my friend. "Why, don't you see?" my friend queried, softly. "It was his daughter. ..." And then I understood. CHAPTER THREE "FOR GOD AND KING!" ■\ CHAPTER THREE "for god and king!" A CERTAIN latter-day sage, from beneath the humour of Celtic pseudonym, has as- serted that, when reference be made as to service for God and king, he would wish to be assured that the Senior Member of the firm has been consulted. Connection lies between this and that bombastic bellow of the Dark Ages that the King can do no wrong. Perhaps, in the days when first this cry came crashing from the hairy mouths of men whose only respect was for a hand more heavy and a heart more foul than their own, this was so. Then it was that might made right — only the weak of body and the meek of soul were w r rong. However, antedating by a little the coming of the Bible with gold edges, appeared Wrong as we know it. But the panoplied phrase persists — as absurdly incongruous and as abjectly ridiculous as a knight in full armour tilting against a twelve-pound pro- jectile; eventually to be as futile. But that is not yet; for the human race is young, slothful of mind and very ignorant. So the Divine Right that is of 85 86 SCARS AND STRIPES might still rules to bathe the world in blood. But it will pass. However — ■— « Once upon a time there was a king. He himself believed not in Divine Right. It is doubtful if there is a king who does. However, his people did believe ; and that, to the king, was all that mattered. The king did not believe that he could do no wrong ; for he had occasional gleams from an atro- phying intelligence ; and his conscience, though fast dying from the undue burdens it was forced to bear, yet was not quite dead, and sometimes called to him in the night when he was not too drunk to listen. However, as the king's subjects believed that he could do no wrong (or, at least, were content not to argue the matter) what booted the personal be- liefs of the king, who was wise enough to keep those beliefs to himself? Any man, even a Di- vinely Righted king, were a fool, and worse, to question his pleasures. Like all kings, this king had a queen. This was (for the queen, at least) unfortunate; but it was unavoidable; for kings, like stallions, are supposed to live mainly for posterity; and queens are only queens when nature has blessed them of her func- tions. It is but a short step from the royal palace "FOR GOD AND KING!" 87 to the breeding-stables; and even a shorter step back again. The king loved the queen as much as the stal- lion loves the mare; no more. And the queen But what difference does it make? She was merely a queen. The king was with the queen only at times when his presence was demanded — levees, and the open- ing of bazaars, at celebrations, and at reviews, and when little potential kings and queens were born into the world. At all other times he did much as he chose — always taking excellent care not to upset in the minds of his people their theories anent Di- vine Right, and the regal incapacity for wrongdo- ing. At times, that which the king did caused the queen to spend long, wet-eyed, sleepless nights. But as she was a queen first and a woman after- ward, again it did not matter. How could it ? She had been fortunate enough to give birth to seven children in seven years. What more ought a queen to expect? But while the king did not love the queen, there was a woman that he did love. He knew that he loved her. He knew because he had loved half a hundred other women before. And if he loved those half hundred, why not this? Could one ask for better proof of love than that? 88 SCARS AND STRIPES She was young, this woman; young and very beautiful; beautiful of face, beautiful of body. Her husband thought that, too, she was beautiful of soul. . . . But, like many husbands, he did not know his wife very well. He made of her what he wanted her to be; and that he loved and wor- shipped. The king had known many women; he had known many husbands. Some were satisfied with gold; some with preferment. But this one seemed different. His eye was grey and clean; his jaw square and set. . . . The king was troubled. . . . And then the Great War came. And with it, we come to our story. They had been rushed to the front. The officer in command had received his orders only that morning. . . . He had kissed his wife good-bye, the while buckling on his revolver. She was very beautiful, this wife of his; he loved her as it is given few men to love, and few women to be loved ; and his grey, clean eyes grew misty as he kissed her. . . . Then a confused rushing of armed men, marching swiftly through crowded streets, clamber- ing into, and on, and over long trains of jammed coaches. . . . At length their train stopped. There were other "for god and king!" 89 trains, like theirs, many of them. They formed, in companies. . . . From God knew where, in all the confusion, came orders. And they began to advance. They met the wounded first, sunken-eyed, wan- cheeked, in bloody bandages. . . . Ambulances whose floors dripped red upon the bitten road- way. . . . There was a far mutter, like distant thunder. . . . And now the enemy hundreds of them, thousands, tens of thousands. . . . Like great, grey snakes they were winding their way across the stricken country- side, stopping now and then to coil — and then to loose those coils and leave the Thing broken, bleed- ing, while on they crawled, on, and on, and on Wild rumors reeled through the trembling air. Could it be stopped — this sullen, relentless, onward movement? If not His country, for which his fathers had fought, and fought, and died, to become a conquered province! The liberties of its people to be taken from them! Its men slaugh- tered; its women violated! . . . The officer's lean, bronzed hand closed over the butt of his automatic; his grey eyes gleamed. . . . And then the battle! One may not tell much of fighting. It is at once so incomprehensibly big, and so absurdly little. . . . 90 SCARS AND STRIPES A countryside aflame with the fire and smoke and torment of a hundred hells. . . . The buttons on a man's uniform. . . . The Officer found himself on a little hill with the command to dig himself in. . . . Already the enemy had the range of his position; and even as the men set frantically to work with their entrench- ing tools, came a shell. ... It exploded fair among them. ... It seemed unreal; horribly unreal. . . . Where but a moment before had been men, swear- ing, sweating, digging, was now only **, vast hole. There was blood, to be sure; there were pieces of flesh — an arm, a leg, a head torn from its quivering trunk. . . . And there were wounded, screaming, muttering. . . . The Officer grew sick. . . . He tried to see who it was that was gone. . . . But there was no time for that. They must dig and fight — dig and fight. . . . That was what war was, digging and fighting. . . . There came another shell. And more men were gone. . . . And now the enemy were charging. Little men, they looked, in dull, dusty uniforms. . . . Even as he watched, his own troops, on either side of the hill began to fall back. ... A retreat ! . . . His jaw set. . . . "for god and king!" 91 His Second in Command saw, too. . . . Sweat running from his forefread, he looked up. . . . The Officer's eyes half closed. . . . "Dig," he said. And that was all. Another shell came. . . . More men were gone. ... A flying fragment killed the horse of an orderly, from headquarters, pitching him off on his head. . . . He came up to the Offcer, spitting dirt and blood. Cursing the enemy that had killed his horse, he screamed his orders to the Officer. They were to hold the position at all cost; to enfilade the ad- vancing enemy when they tried to pass, so that those on either side of the hill might effect a safe retreat. The orderly started off, cursing, stumbling over the corpses. He had gone seventy yards, perhaps eighty, when it happened. ... A sheet of flame. . . . The Orderly's field glasses fell at the Officer's feet. The Officer picked them up and stood looking at them, vacantly. . . . He felt a little stinging swish across his fore- head. And his eyes were filled with blood. . . . He drew his hand across them. . . . The enemy were nearer. . . . He looked for his Second in Command. . . . The Second in Command was holding his hand where his jaw had been; over it ran a cataract of blood. . . . 92 SCARS AND STRIPES The Officer remembered his orders. So that was it! They were a sop — a sop to be thrown to the great grey snake to make him pause in his crawling long enough that others might escape. His jaw set a bit tighter. ... If there must be a sop, there must be. All men can't be heroes ; as all men can't live and love and be happy. . . . And if it must be he that is to die that others may live — war is war, and life is life, even as death is but death. . . . There came to him dimly in all the hell- hurled tumult that it didn't matter much, after all — that it wouldn't matter much if only it weren't for Her. . . . And if his going would save her from the Thing so horribly worse than death that conquer- ing men do to conquered women God ! They were few now, his men, pitifully few. . . . Even as he looked more were down. . . . His own orderly was among them ; hardly more than a boy he was, a boy who loved all men and whom all men loved. . . . They couldn't kill him ! It was unfair, horribly unfair! The boy whom children loved, to whose feet every stray dog came friendily. . . . The machine-guns had been smashed or silenced save one. . . . Two men were operating this, one firing, the other feeding. . . . And now the enemy were upon them. . . . Like grey waves, they foamed up the hillside, surging \ "for god and king!' 93 along on either side of the base. . . . He emptied his automatic blindly a( the surging grey torrent. . . . He heard some one calling to him. He looked. One of the men at the gun was down; a bullet through his head, striking as fair between the eyes as you could place your finger. . . . The Officer threw down his empty gun. Drag- ging the fallen body to one side, he took his place, firing, firing, firing at the surging grey waves that came rolling on endlessly, remorselessly. . . . His finger pressing the trigger, he took a swift look about him. . . . All were down now. . . . All gone. , . . All dead or dying, all save only the man beside him and — himself. . . . His gun had ceased firing ; he pressed the trigger savagely. . . . But it wasn't the gun ; it was the man beside him. . . . He had slipped to the ground ; there was a red foam flecking his lips. . . . He thrust out his hand. . . . The Officer grasped it with his own, then slipped in a fresh belt of cartridges. . . . Then It came. It was as though some one had hit him on the chest with a stick — a fierce, quick, savage thrust. ... It didn't hurt much. . . . He felt dizzy and weak. . . . That was funny. He looked down at the breast of his uniform. There was a great, wet, red splotch. His breath bubbled in his throat. He slipped to the ground. . . . 94 SCARS AND STEIPES The grey seas engulfed him. Countless grey forms were all about him. It was the End. . . . And so he died. But before the soul had left his body, came to blood-streaked lips six words. The first was the name of his wife. And the other four : "For God and King!" The king sat smoking. Through half-shut eyes he watched the woman before him. She was very beautiful, this woman; kings usually know what is beautiful of woman; kings usually have what is beautiful of woman; for, being kings, they have much money and much power; and money and power bring beautiful things. I could not describe this woman if I would; nor would I if I could. But you have seen beautiful women. This woman was probably more beautiful than any you ever saw. And the king looked at her through half -shut eyes. . . . They did not speak. There was no reason why they should. They both knew that her husband had been removed from the board of strategy, where he would have been of great value to his country, and sent to the front, where he could be of but little. And they both knew why he had been sent, and who had sent him. Therefore the Beautiful Woman re- "for god and king!" 95 clined before the king; while the king watched her through half -shut eyes. And they both knew, too, the thought within their minds. So she said nothing. She was a very beau- tiful woman and she had chosen what she had chosen. And he? Well, was he not a king by di- vine right? And a king, you know, can do no wrong. CHAPTER FOUR "SOMEWHERE IN " CHAPTER FOUR "somewhere in — *—>" IT was springtime in France. Before the door of his cottage, sat Pierre Le- blanc. The soft, sweet scent of the awakening earth came to him; the humming of bees. Before him, the fair countryside, vari-coloured squares, lush green, dun, dull brown, stretched far away to meet the deep blue of the sky. From the foot of the gently sloping hillside, where the little stream sang ever softly to itself, came the lowing of fat kine. All this Pierre Leblanc felt, and saw, and heard. And he was content ; nay, happy. To himself and his good wife God had, indeed, been kind. He had given them another child, this time a boy. He had given them a wondrous crop. He had given them health and wealth. Eighty francs were still due him for goods shipped to the great markets of the city. And Gervase, the apothecary, owed him yet another forty. And so Pierre Leblanc, sitting by the doorway of his home, was content with alf the world. 99 / 100 SCARS AND STRIPES A little child, a girl of four, came to his side, thrusting a sun-browned little hand within his own. A pretty child she was, dark-haired, dark-eyed, cheeks flushed with play. She leaned against his knee, crossing her sturdy little legs as children stand. Pierre Leblanc looked down at her. His smile met her own. "Est tu fatigue, p'titef he asked softly. She sighed. "Un pen/' she replied. And she sighed again, happily. It is good to be a child and tired. A voice hailed him from the gate. It was Petit- jean, whose cottage lay next door; Petit jean, young and tall and good to look upon, in smock and huge, baggy trousers. "I have come from the village/' he said. "Yes ?" queried Pierre Leblanc, stroking the tan- gled hair of the child at his knee. "There is strange talk," said Petitjean, "there, in the village." "Talk?" asked Pierre Leblanc. "Talk of what?" Petitjean waited a moment. His gaze drifted slowly over the sun-filled fields. ... It was absurd, of course ; impossible. Pierre Leblanc would think him fon. . . . Nevertheless, he answered. "The talk," he said, at length, "is of war." "somewhere in " 101 There fell a pause. The wife of Pierre Leblanc, young, comely, with the dark hair and eyes of the little girl, and the full bust of the nursing mother, came into the doorway. She carried the baby, their man-child, in her arms. "War!" she said. . . . Then, "War?" Petit jean nodded. "It is the Germans/' he said. Pierre Leblanc had looked first surprised ; then in- credulous; then amused. Now he lifted his head and laughed aloud. Petit jean watched him. "You laugh," he said, at length. Pierre Leblanc turned to him, still smiling. "And why not?" he queried. "War with Germany?" he continued. "Zutl It is absurd ! We are at peace. The whole world is at peace. Crops are good. There is money for all. Then why should there be war ?" Petit jean shook his head. "I do not know," he said. "But it is the talk." Pierre Leblanc eyed him with kindly scorn. "Pouf !" he said. "You are young, mon vieux. When you shall be as old as I, you will not permit to affect you the idle fancies of the scatter-brained." But Petit jean again shook his head. It is the talk," he reiterated. (c 102 SCARS AND STRIPES Pierre Leblanc shifted, impatiently. "Then the talk," he asserted, "is absurd. We know that perhaps Germany wants more territory for her people, more seaports for her commerce. But to go to war for these things? Mais non! We are a civilised people. The Germans are a civilised people. We have been at peace these many years. And in those years, we have both learned much. Men fly no longer, like animals, at one another's throats. Differences nowadays are left to arbitra- tion. Have we not treaties? Have we not The Hague? Have we not honour, and decency, and mercy, and brotherly love? We are no longer beasts. Civilisation has taught us to be humane." He waved his hand. "Listen no more to idle talk. Go home and sleep in peace. War is gone from the world for- ever!" A fortnight later Petit jean again stood at the gate. It was sunset; the sky was of red and gold and the colours of opals. "The talk of war," said Petitjean, "goes on." Pierre Leblanc this time did not laugh. He did not believe. But he did not laugh. "Yes," he said, "the talk goes on. But what of that? Talk does not make facts. There can be no < c SOMEWHERE IN ' 103 war. Weapons are too terrible nowadays. No man, no nation, could stand against them. And the good God would not permit a thing so terrible to come upon His earth. Fear not. The talk will cease. . . ." But the talk did not cease. And again, at the cottage gate, Petit jean stopped, on his way home. "The talk of war is more/' he said. Pierre Leblanc nodded. "I have heard/' he replied. "The talk is of nothing else/' "And you now believe ?" queried Petit jean. Leblanc shook his head. "I do not know," he answered. "I am confused. A month ago I would not have believed. But where there is so much talk And in the papers. . . . The Germans are a strange people ; that is, the Prus- sians. We do not understand them; nor do they understand us. And it may be that they think " His wife, baby in arms, came into the doorway. Petit jean spoke slowly, as one dreading to voice his thought. "You think," he queried, "that if war comes, it will come here — to us?" Pierre Leblanc's expression changed. It changed 104 SCARS AND STRIPES from seriousness to amusement. And once again he laughed. He looked up at his wife, still laugh- ing. But she did not laugh. Women are different from men. Leblanc turned back to Petitjean. "Come here?" he cried. "War come here?" He chuckled. "It is a very werewolf of a war of which you dream! How," he asked, "could war come here? Have we not a great and gallant army? Have we not forts and guns? Have we not treat- ies that protect us from invasion ? How, then, can war come to us?" Petitjean thought. "Perhaps," he suggested at length, "through Bel- gium." Again Pierre Leblanc laughed in kindly scorn. "That," he asserted, "is precisely what the Ger- mans have agreed that they would not do. And even should they try, the Belgians are no fools; neither are they cowards. They have an army amply big for defence. And their forts are mag- nifiqiie! Not all the men in Germany could carry them!" He shrugged his shoulders. "Should the Germans try to violate Belgium," he asserted, "the war would be over before it had be- gun. Men cannot stand against the weapons of to- day. Cannon which kill at twenty-five kilometres! i i SOMEWHERE IN ' 105 Aeroplanes which drop bombs of fire! Machine- guns which mow men down as you cut grain with a sickle ! Should war come to-day, one battle would be all. Thousands and tens of thousand of soldiers killed. The world sick with horror. . . . And then a settlement. . . . We are generations from slaugh- ter. We could not stand it. "Fear not," he said. "War may come. But we and those we love are safe." So thought Pierre Leblanc. So thought count- less thousands that were as he. But he, and they, were wrong. And while God's head was turned away, the devil let loose upon the earth a Monster that no man dreamed could be! Pierre Leblanc stood at the door of his cottage. His little girl stood beside him, her little hand in his. Beside him stood his wife, their man-child at her breast. Side by side they stood, watching the sol- diers as they marched by. Pierre Leblanc had seen many pictures of soldiers. He had listened to the gallant tales of the ancients — - the veterans of other wars. Of troops going to war there had been always in his mind a clear and vivid picture: Flags flying; drums rolling; music; gallant officers, with flashing swords and shining helmets on great steeds that curvetted and caracoled ; 106 SCARS AND STRIPES men that marched brilliantly in brilliant uniforms. That had been the picture in his mind. How vastly different the picture that his eyes now saw ! A crawling, grey dust-snake was writhing its sul- len way across the fair land. Its head had long since passed the first house of their village. Its tail was somewhere over the shimmering blue hills beyond the next. In the distance, it was that, nothing more — just a crawling, grey snake. But nearer it broke up into its component entities. Men that walked wearily, carrying heavy guns and heavier packs, while the sweat cut tiny rivulets in their dust-plastered faces; dust-covered guns drawn by dust-covered horses ridden by dust-cov- ered riders; supply wagons, dust-covered like all else . . . more men . . . more wagons . . . more guns . . : men, and guns, and wagons; wagons, and guns, and men, emerging vaguely from the great grey snake, only to merge back again into its writh- ing coils. And there stood watching, in the summer sun, Pierre Leblanc and his wife, their daughter, and the man-child that le bon Dieu had been so good as to send them ; watched while the bees hummed and a bird, hidden in the green leaves above them, sang, and sang, and sang. . . . Pierre Leblanc heard his name called. He looked, "somewhere in " 107 trying to pierce the dust with his gaze. He heard his name again. An arm waved. A figure, dust- grey, like all the rest, stood out from among the countless others. It was Petitjean; Petitjean, tall, young, so good to look upon. Petitjean who, when came the call of France to her sons, laid down his tools and quietly went forth to offer his life for hers. He was no man of phrases. He had said only, "I am going to the war." And he had gone. And now he waved to Pierre Leblanc, who was older, and whom his country did not yet need, waved from the grey snake of men, sons of France, like him, going to war so quietly, their souls too full for words, their hearts too great for bombast. And now Petitjean was gone. The dust again swallowed him, even as it had spewed him forth. . . . And on the grey snake writhed — men, and guns, and wagons ; wagons, and guns, and men. And Pierre Leblanc and his wife stood watching, in the summer sun, while the bees hummed and above them, hidden amid the green of the leaves, a bird sang, and sang, and sang. Suddenly it came upon them. So suddenly that it was hard, very hard, to credit. Man is but man 108 SCARS AND STRIPES And that which through many years he has learned to believe lies close against his skull. Belgium had been invaded. But how could that be ? Her fortresses were im- pregnable. Of steel and cement, and the brains of the best engineers of the world ! And was there not the treaty — the treaty which Germany had signed against this very thing? That treaty only a scrap of paper? It could not be possible. Treaties were made, like promises, of the honour and honesty of men and nations. And if honour and honesty were gone from the world, what would be left? Any man could repudiate his word or his debts. There could be no business, no society, no religion, no morals, no ethics. The rami- fications were inconceivable. It split civilisation wide open at its base ! No ! No ! It could not be ! Wild rumours came to the village. Pierre Le- blanc, puzzled, amazed, helpless, listened. It was too much for any man to grasp. He shook his head, weakly. He listened while others talked, in the little shop that Gervase, the apothecary, had kept these many years. While others talked, he lis- tened. Gervase listened, too. From time to time Gervase smiled a little, quietly, when he thought no one was looking. Pierre Leblanc saw. This, too, he thought was strange. Why should Gervase (. i SOMEWHERE IN " 109 smile? — Gervase, whose friend he had been these many years. While others talked, volubly, excitedly, he left, to go home to his cottage, to his little daughter, to his wife and their man-child. At home there were only bees, the singing of the brook, the lowing of fat kine, and the bird that sang hidden in the leaves. There he could sit quietly and think, that he might try to gain even a tiny glint of the great change that had come over all the world — a change that left him helpless, weak, dreadful. He was crossing the little bridge, just above the mill, when he heard a rumble, as of distant thunder. He stopped, listening. He looked up at the sky. It was a bowl of blue, no cloud upon its surface. Pierre Leblanc scratched his head. Thunder, with no cloud in sight; thunder in the azure brilliance of a summer's day ? The world was mad indeed ! Again the rumble. Again Pierre Leblanc scratched his head, in deep perplexity. Again he looked in the direction whence came the incongru- ous sound. Hello ! What was that ? Some one was coming, there over the hill beyond the village — a man on a bicycle, a tiny dot against the bald whiteness of the road. He travelled fast. Another raised the brow of the hill. Another, and another ; then a group. 110 SCARS AND STRIPES Again Pierre Leblanc scratched his head. Who could they be, these men? Not tourists. There were no tourists in France now. Couriers, perhaps, from the front ! That was it ! Couriers from the front, with news of victory! A great victory, a glorious victory, for France! He turned. He would go back to the village, to welcome them! But even as he turned, he saw coming over the distant hill-brow other men — men on horses, this time ! On horses that galloped fran- tically. . . . He stopped. . . . That was puzzling. Surely, one man, or two, could bear news of vic- tory. Why, then, all these ? . . . And then it came to him, why couriers at all ? Was there not the tele- graph, the telephone, even the wireless? It struck him sickeningly that couriers belonged to other days — distant days — the days of the pictures that he had seen and imagined — the days of Napoleon — not to times like these. He tried to think, but his brain refused to give; his imagination to conceive. It did not matter. They would be here soon, these hurrying figures of which now there were so many. An aeroplane, like some great bird, came out of the nothingness of the sky, high above him, to sail swiftly across the blue toward Paris. The men on the cycles were lost now, hidden by "somewhere in " 111 the houses of the village. But ever the road over the hill gave birth to more — horses, now, and wagons, and men on foot. And, during all, the dull rumble of the thunder that he could not understand — the thunder that came of a sunlit summer day. Suddenly, from the village, came the wheel- men. . . . Soldiers they were; their uniforms dirty and torn. Bending over low handlebars, they ped- alled fiercely. Nearer and nearer they came . . . nearer — near- er Pierre Leblanc watched them come. He walked almost to the middle of the road, waiting to hail them. On they came. He could see their faces — drawn faces, and dirty, with bloodshot eyes and lips pulled back from teeth in agony of effort. As he spoke, they flew past. They did not answer. It was as though they did not see him. There was something in their eyes that Pierre Leblanc had never seen. Startled, almost stunned, he watched them wheel away over the sunlit road. Then something within him broke; something nameless; something awful! Turning, he ran with all the strength that was in him to his cottage, to his little girl, to his good wife and the man-child that God had given them. . . . 112 SCARS AND STRIPES From the windows of their cottage they watched. Pierre Leblanc watched with eyes dull and nar- rowed, like one whose vision asks his brain to be- lieve too much. ... It is often so ; when one must suddenly face that which one has always believed never could be. The good wife's eyes were round in horror. She knew. Women are different from men. The little girl whimpered, frightenedly. Hell had broken upon them ; but she was only just from heaven. So she could not understand. The man- child nursed his mother's breast. God's warm breath was still upon his little body. So what knew he of fear? The fair white road before the cottage was a ruck of frightened, cursing men; of plunging, screaming horses; of ploughing motors, like Juggernauts, tear- ing their shrieking way through the tossed and toss- ing masses of men and animals. . . . Cries and mut- terings, the crashing of metal against metal. . . . Discarded guns and equipment to catch the fright- ened feet of those who fled. ... A hopeless, heav- ing, pitiful mass of God's creatures turning from a horror so great as to kill reason and slaughter san- ity — a mass that began where human vision began and ended where human vision ended. . . . And Pierre Leblanc watched, dull eyes unbeliev- i i SOMEWHERE IN " 113 ing, like a well man thrust suddenly into the middle of hell. . . . And his good wife, who was woman, watched with the horror that she knew. . . . Their daughter whimpered. . . . The man-child, that was fresh from God, nursed its mother's breast. The sun lay in the west. The ruck was thinning now. The able-bodied had gone. Only the wounded were left, and the weak, hobbling, helping one another, fleeing blindly from the million horrors behind them. A man, his leg hanging, foot dangling sickeningly, using two rifles for crutches. . . . Another, twisting a bloody rag around a bloody, empty sleeve . . . others . . . more, and more, and more. . . . And Pierre Leblanc at length believed. Opening the cottage door, he stepped forth into the dying day. His little girl followed, clinging frightenedly to his smock. The good wife laid the baby in his crib. She took her place at the side of her man. They went to the one with the dangling leg. He cursed them, strangely, and hobbled on. They found another unconscious. Him they half- carried, half-dragged, into the cottage. They gave him water. With deft fingers, the good wife bound N » 114 SCARS AND STRIPES up his wound. He was too near death to speak his gratitude. He could but look it. And then they went forth into the blood-smeared roadway to look for more. . . . They found them. They found them in plenty. Some they took into their cottage and cared for. Others they left, cov- ering their faces. ... It did not occur to them to flee. They were God's creatures, caring for others of His creatures. That was all. And in all the world no soldier ever makes war except on soldiers. Those who were not sol- diers were ever safe in the sanctuary of their help- lessness. Unarmed men, women, and little children, these War spared. Such has been the law of civi- lised warfare these half thousand of years. These things Pierre Leblanc and his good wife knew. Hence, fearless for themselves, they stayed to do their pitiful little to aid the tortured and the suffer- ing. Busy with their work, they did not look up until there came to their ears a sharp, biting rattle ... a machine-gun! . . . Across the dun meadow, where long shadows lay, men were running; men with childish red trousers and little red caps that made them fair marks against anything but a field of blood. . . . Three fell, as they ran, almost to- i 6 SOMEWHERE IN ' 115 gether . . . another . . . two more. . . . The rest fell face down beside the little brook that sang ever to itself, there at the foot of the hill . . . There were willows there. They hid among the roots, their rifles spitting flame. He could scarcely see the men that pursued. Their uniforms blended strangely with the ground. And ever came the ripping fire of the machine-gun. And Pierre Leblanc, now very wise of the world, and of the shameless, nameless things that mankind can do to man, knew that these men with the red trousers and caps were what was left of a detach- ment of the rear-guard — the few that in all retreats must die that the many may live. The tat-tat-tat of the machine-gun kept on. He could see the figures by the willows start, half erect, only to drop again. A gun fell from the hands that held it; the body rolled half upon its side. A man lay with head raised. The head fell forward into the little stream, the water above the ears. . . . That was all. Little figures so hard to see against the fallow field rose. They ran forward, carrying with them a gun mounted qn a tripod. Three fell. The rest threw themselves flat. The ripping of the machine- gun came louder, its flashes plainly visible. 116 SCARS AND STRIPES Suddenly the men by the willows leaped to their feet. Four fell, face down. The rest ran. They ran toward the cottage of Pierre Leblanc. Perhaps twenty started. Five reached the door, to which Pierre Leblanc had already retreated. And the first of these was Petitjean; Petitjean, so young, so strong; Petitjean that had been so good to look upon. Had been, because that was no more. Part of his nose was gone, torn from his face by a bullet. A bloody rag bound his head, from lips to eyes. Blood flowed over his mouth as he tried to speak. Yet he was neither excited nor afraid. And Pierre Leblanc took them into his cottage, and closed the door. They would be prisoners, of course. Petitjean a prisoner! Petitjean, his neighbour, to be taken away, somewhere in Germany, to be held until the war should end, his farm to run to weeds, his stock confiscated by the enemy! Petitjean mumbled thickly his words. "Dieu!" he cried thickly. "To send men armed only with guns against giant artillery ! It was that ! Not fear. Not cowardice. France knows neither ! But to be slaughtered like sheep by the butcher with no way to defend oneself ! They are not to blame, the men that fled. Nor is France to blame ! It was that in her own innocence and loving kindness she "somewhere in " 117 did not dream of war. Hence she lay all unpre- pared, and her sons must die! To be unprepared for war, has ever meant, will ever mean, but one thing. And that one thing is death! He who is prepared kills. He who is unprepared is killed. Cest tout!" The men with the dull grey uniforms were at the door now. Defence was at an end. With car- tridges gone, the five men within the cottage knew that they had done all that lay in their power to do. . . . And there were the many wounded that Pierre Leblanc and his good wife had taken inside their home. Pierre Leblanc looked at them. They looked at him, and at each other. Petitjean it was who spoke. "Cest fini" he said quietly. "It is the end." The other four nodded. And so Pierre Leblanc opened the door. One bullet would have been enough. It entered his smock fair over the heart. . . . They pierce well, these modern bullets, and that which killed Pierre Leblanc struck the head from the plaster Christ above the mantel. There were four more bullets. But since Pierre Leblanc lay dead, what matters where they struck? The good wife, baby at breast, started a moment, 118 SCARS AND STRIPES dully. She said no word. She made no sound. She reeled a little. Then, suddenly, swiftly, surely, she flung herself full upon the bayonets before her. And on one of these, she gasped out her life. And from this shining steel, dulled of her blood, whit- ened of her mother milk, God took her. . . . He took her man-child with her. The little girl, dark-haired, dark-eyed, flew frightenedly to Petitjean; Petitjean, the big, the strong; Petitjean that told her stories of the fairies. . . . One bullet served them both. More shots. Perhaps a dozen. For there were still the wounded, you know. There came the sound of the striking of a match. A little flame crept up the white curtains that the good wife had fashioned as she sang, there in the long, happy days that fell after God had whispered of the child that He was to send to her — to her and Pierre Leblanc. And Gervase, who kept the little apothecary, and who had been the friend of Pierre Leblanc these many years, looked up at the officer beside him. "Cest bien!" he murmured softly. He saw the officer looking at him; quickly he corrected himself. What he said was, "Das 1st gut." But then, he had been long in France. One could not blame him that he forgot. C i SOMEWHERE IN " 119 The wife of Petitjean, hiding with other dry- eyed women and helpless children, whimpering of hunger, from the distant copse in which she lay saw the flames of the cottage of Pierre Leblanc, a finger of fire pointing toward the sky. And, whispering to God, she crossed herself. For she thought it was her own. II It was springtime in America. Before the door of his cottage, sat Peter White. The soft scent of the awakening earth came to him; the humming of bees. Before him, the fair coun- tryside, vari-coloured squares, lush-green, dun, dull brown, stretched far away to meet the deep blue of the sky. A little child, a girl of four, came to his side, thrusting a sun-browned hand within his own. . . . Peter White looked down at her. His smile met her own. A voice hailed him from the gate. It was Little- John, whose cottage lay next door; Little John, young and tall and good to look upon, in flannel shirt and corduroys. "I have come from the village/' he said. "Yes?" queried Peter White, stroking the tan- gled hair of the child at his knee. 120 SCARS AND STRIPES There's queer talk going on," said Littlejohn, there in the village." "Talk?" asked Peter White. "Talk of what?" "The talk," Littlejohn said, "is of war." Peter White looked first surprised ; then incredu- lous; then amused. Now he lifted his head and laughed aloud. "War !" he exclaimed. "Bah ! We're in no dan- ger of war! And even if war should come, how could it hurt us, here in America? Ridiculous! Why, we " So spoke Peter White. For was not he wise; wise even as you and I; wise even as had been Pierre Leblanc? CHAPTER FIVE MARY AND MARIE CHAPTER FIVE MARY AND MARIE THIS is not much of a story. It doesn't start anywhere in particular; nor does it end any- where in particular. It has no love interest ; it will not amuse, and it has an unhappy ending. So, if you are like most of us here in America (which means that you don't believe in doing anything you don't want to do) perhaps you had better not read it. However The name of the Virgin was Mary; and the French for Mary is Marie. Time, place and asso- ciation change all things and in all ways. The dif- ference between What Might Have Been and What Is is ofttimes only so much as the gentle sunlight of a whim, or the darkling shadow of a mood. Moreover, the sunlight and the shadow may not be even of our own, but reflected upon ourselves from that which falls upon the lives of others. Whereby it were well to remember that it is not for us too much to praise Marie, too much to blame Mary. For life is as deep as it is devious, and as devious as it is deep. For had it been Mary that had been Marie, 123 124 SCARS AND STRIPES and Marie that had been Mary, who of us shall say where would rise the praise, where fall the blame? For, as you shall see Marie lived in Belgium — in northern Belgium amid the gentle hills which, lace-coiffed in shining filaments of river and of brook, sat ever like good housewives amid the ordered products of their kindly lives — sat ever thus until, one day of summer, soft and still and smiling, came hordes of strange, unhuman men to rouse them to awful, biting terror, to sear their hearts with tears, and drown their souls in blood. There lived Marie. Mary lived in America — in the United States, a country broad and raw and young, a country that, even as Belgium went to war to save her gentle soul from dishonour, and stayed at war to save her clean, frail body from red and ravishing hands, sat idly by, selfish, self-satisfied, coddling her full young figure of the liberties and riches left her by the toil and moil and struggle of generations of strong, self-sacrificing forebears — squandering vac- uously in self-pander all the riches of honour and courage and dignity that they had left her. Fatly and fatuously she stifled all in her that was fine, all that was noble, under the plea of the selfishly in- dolent that that which didn't happen to her was none MARY AND MARIE 125 of her business. ... So might Christ have thought. Only He didn't. . . . And there lived Mary. So that now, if you have come with me thus far, we may go further. Marie lived in a tiny auberge kept by her people. It was called the Hotel des Couronnes. But it wasn't like that a bit. In France, little things run to great names — even as in America great names run to little things. Perhaps it is Nature's plan of bal- ance. Who knows? The Hotel des Couronnes means the hotel of the funeral wreaths. And in the name lay perhaps, perhaps not, the spirit of prophecy. It was not a large hotel; on the contrary, it was a very small hotel. It had four guest-rooms with very high and very old and very soft beds. It had a tiny cafe with marble-topped tables. It had great stables and a courtyard floored of cobbles, wherein all day long plump pigeons fluttered and strutted, strutted and fluttered. And when one walked across this courtyard, one's sabots made upon the cobbles a great and mighty sound. . . . Such was the God- given peace that lay like His cupped hands about the Hotel des Couronnes. . . . For the rest, it was a quaint old place, long and low and rambling. To its red-tiled roofs and grey 126 SCABS AND STRIPES walls fashioned by hands long since gone back to the earth-mother that gave them of her life and in the end gathered them once again unto her breast, clung, lizzard-flke, the sprays of dull-green ivy. One grey wall — the one caressed by the warm rays of the setting sun — was quite close to a river. It was a little river, this of which I tell you. A tiny river, but friendly and sociable and unbelievably talkative! Where it came from, nobody seemed to know. Those asked would shrug their shoulders uninterestedly, and say, "Oh, qa vien du loin" which means somewhere a long way off. And, apparently, it went to the same place — at any rate such was the similar answer to similar queries. . . . As near as one could see, standing on the hill where wound the white road with its tall sentinels of green poplars, the river came from up the valley just beyond the fertile fields of the farm of Papa Michard. Then, after hiding from one playfully for a space, it came in sight again just above the tiny bridge where crossed the motors on their way to the capital. Thence, after leaping lightly from ripple to ripple, it would come to a singing halt in the little pool near the old grey wall. And there, resting gently beneath the soft shadows of the wil- lows, it would linger to chat with one, while the willows nodded softly as they listened. MARY AND MARIE 127 And there, while the river lay resting in its little pool, Marie would come to chat with it, while the friendly willows gathered all about her to listen. They whispered sometimes, too; but willows have not much to say, since they spend all their lives in one place. But rivers, now, they travel vastly ! . . . It must be wonderful to be a river and to see of all the world so much! But since one may not be a river, then the next best thing is to have one for a friend. Thus it was with Marie. They knew each other well, the river and Marie ; knew and loved. In all its moods she knew it: in the springtime, when it hurried past on its never-ending journey, too busy save for a passing friendly word. . . . And in the winter when the ice lay over it like a prison window ; though even then one could peer through and see it smiling at one from beneath. . . . But in the soft spring and the gentle summer she would lie by its side, listening ( for, you must know, it was the river that did most of the talking ; Marie liked best to listen) flat upon the ground, young limbs full sprawled, while it told her of its travels — of the broad sea of which Marie knew only in pictures — of huge ships of steel that carried in their black wombs more men than lay in all the country- side — of great cities where people dwelt like bees 128 SCARS AND STRIPES in a hive — where sought the skies chimneys more numerous than the stalks of corn before the har- vest. . . . It told her of the men that built the little auberge — the red roofs and the grey, stained walls — the men long since gone to their fathers. It told her of those before them — men in silk and cloth-of-gold, with hooded hawks upon their wrists. . . . Even of the men before these it told her — great men in shining armour that rode huge, thundering charg- ers covered with steel and silk and the white foam of their champing jaws. . . . You see, it was a very old river, this river that Marie knew, very old and very wise, as old as it was gentle, as kind as it was wise. . • . And by its side Marie, full lips parted, dark eyes wide in wonder, would lie and listen until, of a sud- den, soft shadows came stalking past upon the grey, stained wall — came the sound of kine splash- ing in the lush grass below, and the voice of her mother calling her to the white-floored kitchen with its pots and pans of flashing copper. . . . Marie would sigh softly, and go, sorry and yet infinitely glad; sorry that she must leave, even for a time, the friendly old river that knew so much, and glad because she knew it at all. . . . Ma foil It is good to know a river like that ! Such a travelled river ! MARY AND MARIE 129 Such a very old river ! A river that could tell you of a thousand kilometres and half a thousand years ! Such then was Marie. . . . You know her now a little, don't you ? Well, then, let us leave her for a — Pardon? . . . May she not go back to the little pool and listen to the river while we are away ? . . . Why, surely! . . . What? . . . Yes. I see. . . . Oh, but she is only a little girl. . . . Nineteen. But not as girls you know are nineteen. She has lived with the birds, the flowers, the trees, and, yes, to be sure, the river. She has lived with them and loved them. Sunshine has been father to her, Nature her mother. Years neither bless nor curse her. Hence I repeat, she is but a little girl. So what of it if, as she lies sprawled there by the little river, her skirt does happen to be a few inches above her shoe- top? I shan't tell her. Nor shall I permit you. It would only make her ashamed. And it is not well to make ashamed those to whom shame is not due. Remember that. And let us go. As I have told you, Mary lived in America. She lived in a large city. It was not a pretty city. It was just large. Consequently America was very proud of it, and boasted extensively of the height of its buildings and the number of miles of its subways and how many millionaires it had. 130 SCARS AND STRIPES In this large city Mary lived in a large house. There were many servants in Mary's house; I can't tell you how many because, in Mary's house, nobody went into the kitchen except the servants. Mary's mother used to have her breakfast in bed in her twin room, and Mary's father always left for the office before she was up — left wearing a gardenia and a worried look. He w r as junior partner in a brokerage concern and had almost as many enemies as Germany. But he had as many friends as Ger- many, and of much the same kind. For he was highly efficient; and when it came to business you had to get up mighty early to put anything over on him, you bet ! Mary didn't care much for Nature. She was will- ing to look at it from a limousine or a yacht, if she didn't have to look too long. And then she was even more willing to pass it up for something in- teresting. She preferred, with other Marys, to stay up late at night dancing, eating and flirting with well-groomed, slender and wealthy young men the insides of whose heads Nature profoundly abhorred. But they were perfectly corking dancers. Which, after all, seems to be the main thing nowadays. At the mature age of five Mary became cognisant of true facts in the case of Santa Claus, and was surprised that she had been fooled so long. At MARY AND MARIE 131 seven she gave up dolls as things being all right for children, perhaps, but At twelve she was strolling with an academic interest through the pri- mary mysteries of sex; and at fourteen she knew the meaning of the word mistress as governed by modern usage, and was tolerably familiar with the duties and social status of the physical exemplifica- tions thereof. For the rest, she motored a bit and she yachted a bit, and she played bridge fairly well, though she could never remember what had been bid, and she went to the opera in clothes that would have been barred if worn on the stage, and she went to the theatre always making it a point to get in during the middle of the second act. She had read a few books that she shouldn't and almost none that she should, and she thought that Schopenhauer kept a road-house on Long Island. And she knew a lot of perfectly charming people. I forgot to mention that she had been to boarding-school and to a fashionable finishing-school where she learned a lot of things that didn't do her any harm, and a lot more that did. I also forgot to say that one night when she was forced to discharge a frightfully neglectful maid, she ran the ribbons in her lingerie herself and thought she had done a big day's work. I further forgot to tell you that she is now just 132 SCARS AND STRIPES nineteen and, as ere this you undoubtedly must have observed, very, very beautiful. . . . And now you know Mary; at least, I hope you do. . . . So let us leave her and — Pardon? . . ... That dance at the Splendide ? Why, surely she may go. Why not? All the other Marys are going, aren't they ? She never goes to bed till two or three or four, anyway. . . . What? . . . Why, yes, cer- tainly. ... I see. . . . It's really very beautifully shaped, isn't it? . . . Tell her! . . . Um! ... I beg your pardon for smiling, but really — don't you suppose she knows it just as well as you do ? . . . Yes, of course I know that she ought to be ashamed. But what are you going to do with people who are so frightfully poor that they have nothing but money? It all came very suddenly. One day God smiled down through His sunshine upon the gentle hills. The next and His face was turned away, His ear grown deaf. . . . But how the devil chuckled ! Who till then had realised all the reeking horrors that mankind can do to man ? Not you, nor I. And not the people of the gentle hills. . . . But they learned. God! How they learned! Across the bridge over the little river they came, strange men in loose, dust-coloured uniforms and MARY AND MARIE 133 queer helmets. . . . Before the auberge stood the old grey horse of Papa Michard, gentle of kind- ness to whose old grey flanks the touch of whip was yet unknown. As the soldiers passed he turned his head a little. A little it was; but it was enough. Of so small a thing as this may men be killed and women ravished. For as the horse turned his head, it struck one of these invading men. He turned. Muttering a guttural oath, he kicked the horse savagely in the belly. Papa Michard raised his hand in protest. ... A bright point of steel showed through the back of his coat, just between the shoulders. There was blood upon it. . . . Marie, standing just behind,, saw. But she did not understand at first. Even when Papa Michard fell sideways to the ground she did not understand. For she had lived her nineteen years among gentle people, and she had been taught to believe that God would protect the good. And kindly old Papa Michard was loved through all the countryside. . . . Papa Michard's son came through the door of the auberge. He saw. He understood. He leaped for- ward. There was a sound as of some one snapping a whip. He fell across the body of his father. . . . And so it was that the commanding officer de- cided that the town should be taught a lesson. I 134 SCARS AND STRIPES shall not tell you what this lesson was. But it is a lesson that the town learned, and well; a lesson that it will never forget as long as its people and their children and their children's children shall live within their land. ... It was a lesson that it were better to learn than to teach; that is, if you believe in Christ. . . . A part of this lesson Marie saw. Then some- thing within her broke. She turned and fled. Through the kitchen she passed, through the gar- den, blindly, eyes staring wide, soul seared to the core. She knew not where she fled ; it was to get away from the ghastly Horror that had sunk its talons in her brain. But something guided her. It took her to the little pool by the stained grey wall. And there she flung herself upon the bank, hidden by the willows that had not seen, as had she, the tumbled bodies of murdered men through the windows of whose dead eyes gazed nothing; peace- ful homes ablaze around the corpses of their own- ers; men and women and children mangled and tortured and slaughtered — the whole hell-pot of sav- agery, of cruelty and of lust. . . . Gripped of horror, gone of reason, so she lay for a time, wide of eye, lips parted, her face the colour of the whitewashed wall of the stable of Papa Michard through the roof of which long, licking MARY AND MARIE 135 _______ _________________ _— — — — ____________ ____________ _____ _ ___________ _____ _____ _ tongues of flame were now beginning to eat their way. She heard the screams of women, the groans of men, the frightened whimpering of children. . . . The little river called to her. But she did not hear. Only she lay there while her brain burned and her soul cried out to God. As Mary's maid was slipping on Mary's sheer silk stocking, the door opened and her father en- tered. Mary took her eyes from the surface of a gold-chased mirror long enough to favour him with a look. He appeared exhilarated. From his inside pocket he took an envelope. This he threw carelessly on the table. "For me?" asked Mary. He nodded. "What is it?" she queried. "A war bride," he answered. He smiled, with infinite satisfaction. "I made a little killing to-day," he went on. "That," and he indicated the envelope on the table, "is your bit. I thought maybe you might like to give a party or something on your birthday. How about it?" Mary conceded that it was an excellent sugges- tion. She thanked him. And inasmuch as the en- 136 SCARS AND STRIPES velope held stocks equivalent in value to five thou- sand dollars, she thanked him again. "But what did you say it was?" she queried. "A war what?" "War bride," he explained. "One of the stocks that those darned fools over in Europe are boosting by killing one another. This is United Cartridge, preferred. I've got a line on another that's going to be a peach. And if only the war keeps on a few months longer, we'll have that place at Newport that your mother's had her eye on so long." The whirling horror that tore her soul grew less. Reason, unseated by the drenching terror of blood and torture, crept weakly, pitifully to her brain. Marie opened drawn, fear-bitten eyes. Naked walls, red, glowing. . . . Corpses. . . . Vague thoughts, aching, awful, came to her but to lose themselves ere they could be grasped. It was like trying to find bodies in a sea of blood. Her father. . . . She remembered. . . . Him they had killed. . . . Again the sea of blood. Her mother. . . . Again she remembered. . . . That scream. ... It was her mother's voice. . . . And once again her reason, gripping with agon- MARY AND MARIE 137 ised fingers of effort, slid back into the blood-red sea of vagueness. And so for a thousand thousand years she lay while all the ghouls of hell pounded at her brain and tore her soul. The river called softly, the old river, the friendly river. . . . But for all the noise, she could not hear. . . . The willows whispered, too. . . . But the voices of willows are so very soft, so very gentle. And perhaps they, too, were soul-stricken, for willows do not travel, and see so little. . . . Came Reason again, thrusting its battered head above the blood sea. ... It spoke to her. . . . Again, vaguely, she heard. . . . It was trying to tell her something. She clenched her hands; she shook the pounding ghouls from brain and soul. . . . She tried to listen. . . . There were other villages, Reason was saying, other villages like her own. There were other vil- lages, gentle villages, lying beneath God's cupped hands, as hers had lain. Other villages there were, and in these were other people, gentle people, people such as had been those that now lay dead and dying amid the red pyres of their homes. Gentle people like these there were, who did not yet realise all the reeking horrors that mankind can do to man. And if the invaders had not gone too fast, there might yet be time for some one to find these gentle people 138 SCARS AND STRIPES and tell them of the reeking horrors so that, at least, they might save their lives in flight. This it was that Reason told her through all the tumult of the tearing, pounding ghouls. And this it was that she heard. And, hearing, she tried to rise to her feet. . . . Her arms were weak, like a baby's. . . . Her legs trembled beneath her. . . . She looked down at them, strangely. . . . And as she looked, wide of eye, drawn of lip, Reason again spoke. It told her that that of which she thought might well mean death — and worse. It told her that where she was, she was safe. Hid- den, she was, and secure. No one would come to the little pool where rested the river, where leaned the willows. There was no reason why any one should. So that, as long as she stayed there, she was safe. It told her that, their blood lust sated, the invaders might pass on ; that then she might find a place of permanent safety. Surely, there must be some place that w r as safe; so that, by staying where she was for perhaps a day and a night, she might at least save life, and that which is more precious than life. . . . So Reason told her. . . . She heard, and plainly. . . . She sank to her trembling knees. . . . And now another voice was calling. ... It was that of the MARY AND MARIE 139 old river. It called softly, and unbelievably gently. ... She listened. . . . Bye and bye, after a very long while, she rose again to her feet. . . . Her knees were stronger. . . . She stood as stood Joan of Arc who, too, heard voices. . . . And Marie lis- tened now not alone to Reason, not alone to the river, but, as well, to the voices of all the people of the gentle hills, the vast land-spread murmur of a happy people lying all unsuspecting beneath the peace of God's cupped hands — the peace the devil was so soon to ruin, to ravish and to wreck. All these she heard. And above all, the voice of God, Himself. . . . It is not always that those who try succeed. It is not always that those who succeed try. But to try, and not succeed is, to the one who tries, success; for that circumstances are against, or beyond, one in no way lessens the praise that one deserves. So it is that to try and not to succeed is so infinitely better than to succeed without trying. Marie was innocent. But she was not ignorant. When she left the shadows of the willows beside the little pool where the old river lay at rest, she knew full well what was in store for her if caught. She knew that women are born to be mothers. She knew that unbridled men are born to be beasts. . . . 140 SCARS AND STRIPES These things she knew. But the voices of Reason and of the river, the land-spread murmur of the peo- ple of the gentle hills, and the voice of God Him- self were in her ears. . . . And so she went. I wish that the God who spoke would let me tell you that she went in safety. I wish He would. . t . But it was not so to be. He called in vain, as did the voices of Reason and the river, as did the land- spread murmur of the people of the gentle hills. . . . Morning came. Bruised and torn and naked, fouled of body by all the filth of earth, she crawled weakly on hands and knees back to the little pool where lay the river beneath the willows. . . . Crooning softly, as to a frightened child, the old river took her to his breast, the gentle old river that was so kindly and so wise. And in his kindness and his wisdom came to her torn, racked body and tortured brain, at length, the God-sent peace that passeth all understanding. . . . The willows shivered a little, in the morning mist. . . . Yet willows, you know, understand but little. . . . For, you see, her soul was so very clean. That night it was that Mary gave her party. It was a most brilliantly successful affair. There were MARY AND MARIE 141 ♦ eighty covers ; and, following the dinner, the guests danced until four in the morning. It was broad daylight when Mary went to bed, very happy, very beautiful, and — very drunk. All of which is, of course, quite as it should be. . . . Or is it? CHAPTER SIX 'UNCLE SHAM" CHAPTER SIX "uncle sham" MY friend was wroth. "I may be a coward/' he said. "We may be a nation of cowards. But if we're not, I'm get- ting sick and tired of being held up to the rest of the world as a nation of cowards when, as a matter of fact, we're only a nation of fools." He gazed out into the gathering dusk. It was spring, warm and pulsing. "Fools?" I repeated. "Fools," he said. He turned. "If you pick certain men to represent you; if there comes a crisis; if you find that these men that you have placed in high position to protect and further your interests are weak and incompetent; if you find that because they themselves are without brain or bowels, they are leading other nations to believe that you yourself are equally as supine and pitiable; and if these other nations, finding that the men who represent you won't resent injury; that they won't protect their own rights, to say noth- ing of yours; that they are without courage, with- 145 146 SCARS AND STRIPES out vision, without strength, without the instinct of self-preservation that even a clam has, naturally begin to take advantage of your abjectness to blow up your factories, murder your fellow-men, women and babies — if, as I say, all these things happen, what are you if you allow these men to remain in power without even raising your voice in protest ?" I had no answer. "Half the nations of the world hate us/' he went on. "The other half despise us. And when a little, carbon-copy country like Mexico can make us a laughing-stock, can you blame 'em?" He tossed his cigar into the grate. "And this," he muttered, "is the nation that went to war over a tax on tea!" There fell a silence. . . . These are bitter, bitter days. . . • "I'd be ashamed that I am an American," he went on, at length, slowly, "if it weren't for one thing." "And that?" I queried. "That I know that the American spirit is not dead, but only dormant. They won't bear it for- ever, these men whose ancestors stood at Concord, and Lexington, at Gettysburg and the Alamo. . . . "God!" he exclaimed. "It would be laughable if only it weren't so ghastly. Take Mexico first. The Madero assassination. Chaos. American men it .,_>> UNCLE SHAM 147 robbed ; American women ravished ; American chil- dren murdered. A good strong man could have jumped into the situation and saved all the horrible, bloody mess that followed. The vulture-souled bands that formed to prey on the torn corpse of their country could have been subdued even before they had gathered. The thing could have been strangled at birth. But what did we do? Watch- fully waited ! Armed them with guns and ammuni- tion, let them arm themselves, coyote-brained, coy- ote-hearted, for slaughter piled on slaughter, rape piled on rape, pillage and torture and horrors un- namable ! "Then Huerta! " 'Salute the flag V we say. " The devil I will !' says Huerta, or the Mexican equivalent thereof. " 'All right, then, don't salute it,' we say. 'We will be obeyed.' "And back home we come, carrying our dead. "Then Carranza. We will never recognise that man !' say we. 1 should worry/ says Carranza, in the original tongue, knowing that Washington is a long way off and doesn't mean it anyway. 'You stop writing sassy letters to me, or I'll break your typewriter.' "Then along comes Villa. 148 SCARS AND STRIPES " 'How about me?' he says to Washington. " 'You're the boy,' says Washington. 'Hop to it.' "And firmly believing in peace, we load him up the machine guns, and knives, and bricks in stock- ings, and chile con carne, and mescal, and all the other deadly weapons of Mexico. " 'And by the way,' we say, as Villa is sharpening his teeth and mobilising his wives and otherwise preparing to carry the banner of Christian virtue into the dark places, 'don't worry about that be- whiskered old trouble-maker, Carranza. We've eliminated him from the situation entirely.' How'd you do that?' asks Villa. Why,' we say, 'with an ink eraser.' And as Villa starts ofif, with a machine-gun under each arm and a knife between his teeth, we call after him. 'And remember,' we say, 'that God is always on the side of the biggest typewriter.' "Villa begins. Inasmuch as he doesn't own an ink eraser and couldn't tell a typewriter from a cash-register, he is reduced to the more primitive methods of of- and de-fence, such as automatic re- volvers, and fingers, which he employs with success for a time. But finally Carranza, who has been say- ing nothing, but sawing wood, sneaks up behind him and gives him the bum's rush. Villa beats him to the border by a nose. < c „ _„„__»> UNCLE SHAM 149 U ( : Hey!' he yells. 'Take that man offa me!' "We look up from our typewriter on which we are composing the opening chorus of the Pan- American Conference. " 'How dare you/ we say to Carranza. 'Don't you know that Villa is our recognised candidate for president of Mexico?' u 'Not by me he ain't recognised,' says Carranza. 'I don't even know that Mexican Mormon by sight. Though I must admit/ he goes on, 'that I've seen pictures of him; and if I observe a small man, dressed principally in cartridges, coming down the plaza, I'm surely due to take a crack at him, and/ he adds, Til chew the bullet a little first. I'm the only little Mexican president I see around here/ he says, 'and I wear spectacles.' You won't let Villa be president ?' we say. I will not,' says Carranza. 'All right, then,' we answer, 'you be president. We will be obeyed.' "And Villa, to show his disapproval, bulges out into the suburbs and begins to burn up ranches and murder the inhabitants, taking for his motto : 'Shoot Americans First.' "Then came the Lusitania. . . . When you think of that ! . . . God ! . . . Human beings, like you or me, on a peaceful ship. . , . Two o'clock of an 150 SCARS AND STRIPES afternoon, in May. . . . And then — Trampled bodies, gasping in the agonies of death. . . . Torn flesh — gaping wounds. . . . Mothers with their babies. . . . The screams of tortured souls, choked into bubbling gasps beneath the waters. . . . Long wails, quivering, shivering. . . . Then silence. . . . Bodies. ... A man's, its head torn from its neck, the raw edges flopping with the waves. ... A woman's, with dead arms still holding to dead breast the dead flesh of her flesh, the dead blood of her blood. . . . Tens of them. . . . Hundreds of them. . . . The sea a vast charnel house. ... A million hells in one! "And we write a note. . . . We ask for a dis- avowal . . . and for reparation. . . . Good Lord in heaven ! "A disavowal! . . . Why didn't Becker think of that? "And reparation! ... A thousand dollars for your wife, five hundred apiece for your children, pro rated. . . . Maybe five per cent off, thirty days net. Steerage wives and children half price. "What is the market value of a human life?, Mine may not amount to much to the rest of the world. But it's all there is to me. ... A price upon my wife — my children? ... A joke for the devil in hell to laugh at! < < — ^ ~ r ^ « -r T . ^ » > UNCLE SHAM 151 "The Liisitania! "It was as though there were two men fighting in the public street. Your wife has left her baby on the other side. She crosses to get it. One of the men kills her, deliberately, in cold, cold blood. "And what do you do ? Does the manhood in you come screaming to the surface at this awful thing? Not at all. You shake your finger at the murderer. 'Now just for that/ you say, 'I'll hold you to strict accountability.' "You wait until the murderer takes his own good time to answer you. " 'She had no business to be there in the first place,' says the murderer. 'And besides, we told her we'd kill her if she didn't stay at home. And furthermore,' he says, 'she was armed,' he says. 'She had a hat-pin.' " 'Ah-ha !' says you, 'that makes a difference. We will investigate the matter. I'll write you a note about it, which I shall expect you to answer by June 17th, or the Fourth of July, either date being appropriate, and if I find that she didn't have a hat-pin, but was holding on her hat with an elastic, or wearing a tam-o'-shanter, I shall at once expect a complete disavowal.' "And you go home, where you're expecting grandma for Christmas dinner. 152 SCARS AND STRIPES "Just as the turkey is put on the table, the door- bell rings. You go to the door to admit grandma. But instead, it's the postman. He hands you a letter. It's from the German government. " 'Dear sir/ it reads, 'we regret to state that last Thursday we were forced to blow up your grand- mother. She was on a ship. She had no business to be on it because we said she had no business to be on it. No American has any business to be any- where except where we say he has any business to be. Enclosed please find money order for $81.75. She didn't have long to live, anyway. Kindly sign and return enclosed receipt form E. If you want a disavowal, we don't mind. Our voice is strong, and our supply of stationery practically unlimited. In fact, in spite of the English blockade, we have so much of everything that we scarcely know where to put it. Hoping that this will prove satisfactory, we remain. . . / "All of which is calculated to make a chap feel fine, and especially be of benefit to grandma. "Well, to go back, we start an investigation of the Lusitania. "Then the Germans blow up the Arabic. "We stop investigating the Lusitania and start investigating the Arabic. "The Germans blow up the Hesperian. < C _. 9 9 UNCLE SHAM 153 "We stop investigating the Lusitania and Arabic and start investigating the Hesperian. 'The Germans blow up the Ancona. "We stop investigating the Lusitania, the Arabic and the Hesperian and start investigating the An- cona. "The Germans blow up the Persia. "We stop investigating the Lusitania, the Arabic, the Hesperian and the Ancona and start investigat- ing the Persia. "It's a great little game. It sounds like The House That Jack Built. Twenty can play as well as one. And there's no end to it as long as there's a ship left to blow up. "In the meanwhile, we're busy writing notes. You see, we have to write one every time they blow up a ship. Then we have to write another to tell them what we meant by the first one. Then we have to write another to tell them that we meant it. And even then, they don't believe us. We can run a typewriter now with each hand, and we're learning to operate a third with our feet. "Take, for example, our latest note, in protest of the torpedoing of the Persia, murdering more help- less souls, and killing an American consul. It's a masterpiece. 154 SCARS AND STRIPES M 'His Imperial Majesty's Imperial Chancel- lor, " 'Imperial Berlin, " 'Imperial Germany. " 'Imperial Dear Sir : " 'In reply to your note re the Persia, would say that the American government will not be satisfied with anything less than what it has already not been satisfied with in the cases of the Lusitania, the Arabic, the Hesperian, the Ancona, etc. The Amer- ican government stands for something higher than the sanctity of human life. I'll explain just what that is later. Nevertheless, we stand. We've been standing quite a while, it's true; but we shall con- tinue to stand with the same unswerving fidelity to the higher laws of humanity, and the nobler pre- cepts of mankind.' "It's a good note. It sounds like something. It could almost be set to music and sung by a female quartette, between Bryan and the trained seals. "The German reply goes something like this : "'Lansing (and that is certainly what they're doing to us), " 'Washington. " 'Dear Sir : " 'Your note No. 5,706 (and that's funny enough as it is) rec'd and contents noted. In reply would state that we don't know anything about the matter at all. Anyhow, it wasn't we that did it. It was <■ < — -^ ^ ^ -^ O. -T^ A * - > ' UNCLE SHAM 155 probably Austria. If it wasn't Austria, it might have been Bulgaria. Or Turkey or somebody. Or spontaneous combustion or something. However, if a disavowal will make you stop writing letters to us and begin writing them to England, you're wel- come. What is one disavowal between friends? And besides, we have more of everything now than we want, including notes. The report that the Eng- lish have made it impossible for us to use our sub- marines in the English Channel is a vile and mali- cious lie. We quit because we just got tired. Our Mediterranean ones aren't tired yet, but they may be soon. When they are, I'll send you a Mediter- ranean disavowal. I might add that we have so many supplies in Germany that we haven't room to sit down. Kind regards to William Jennings Bryan and Hank Ford. Hoping you are the same (yes, we do!), 'Von Jagow.' a r "And there you are. Another triumph for us ! " 'But,' says the Pork Barrel Politician from Medicine Hat, 'we keep out of the war. You gotter admit that.' "I do. That's true enough. We do keep out of the war. . . . But how ? By allowing other nations to massacre our citizens; by relinquishing one by one our inalienable rights — noisily and pompously relinquishing, but relinquishing none the less surely and certainly. We keep out of a fight because every 156 SCARS AND STRIPES time our adversary advances, we back up. They've backed us out of Mexico; they've backed us off the ocean. Already in fact, if not in word, they've taken away the inalienable rights of Americans to travel on the high seas. If they wanted to take away their inalienable rights to the Atlantic seaboard, it would be the same thing. We'd retreat, holding our type- writer in one hand and writing notes on it with the other. If they wanted the inalienable Middle West, it would again be the same. And we'd finally wind up in an inalienable cyclone cellar in Sacramento; and if they wanted that, we'd pack up our type- writer and start swimming across the Pacific, the while writing a note about the inalienable rights of Americans to swim in the Pacific Ocean. We'd be safe in Japan. Unpopular, perhaps, but safe. The Japs aren't too proud to fight. They're too proud not to. That's what's putting silver threads among the gold in the whiskers of California. " My friend gazed into the fire. "Our triumphs," he went on, "remind me of the man that got into a fight and then wrote home about it to his folks. "'This vile person,' he wrote, 'insulted me; whereat I properly resented it. He struck at me. I warded off the blow with my nose, at the same time placing my left shin against his right foot. i i _ __ . 55 UNCLE SHAM 157 He swung at me again, at which I stopped the blow with my stomach, and at the same time catching his other fist with my left eye. I thereupon lay down upon the ground, pulling him over on top of me. I don't remember much about the rest, but they tell me that I successfully warded off his repeated blows with various parts of my person. I am writ- ing this in the presence of two doctors and a trained nurse, who are at my bedside congratulating me on my glorious victory, while my despicable and thor- oughly beaten adversary is downstairs in the bar, buying alcoholic refreshment and trying to explain his humiliating defeat at my hands to a party of pitying friends/ "The trouble with America is that it has tried to substitute oratory for action. At the start of the war, it looked as though America were something to be reckoned with. It had fought and won some good, hard battles. It looked like an immovable object. And Germany, which considered itself an irresistible force, lined up for the prospective im- pact. But when the irresistible force launched itself, it didn't encounter an immovable object. It met in- stead a weak and windy old cripple full of phrase- ology and fear. "At which the other nations all sat down and had a good laugh. it ( it ( 158 SCARS AND STRIPES " 'Who's the old guy with the plug hat and the striped pants sitting over there counting his money V asks Austria. r Oh, only Uncle Sham/ says Germany. 'Will he stand up for his rights?' asks Austria. r Stand up for his rights P says Germany. 'Why, only last week I blew up a bunch of his folks and all he did was holler. Stand up for his rights P says Germany scornfully. 'He's got about as much spirit as an angleworm. Alongside of him, a jellyfish looks like a Numidian lion. He's been sitting around on the edge of this free-for-all for a year and a half now, and he hasn't had sense enough to buy himself even a bean-shooter. "'Hello,' says Germany, turning around, 'here comes a ship with some Americans on it. Let's blow it up so he'll write me another note. I haven't had any fun in a week.' "And the other nations, seeing Germany getting away with it, say to themselves, 'Why in Sam Hill should we pay any attention to the McGuffey Third Reader stuff that this old bird with the chin piece is pulling? If he gets in the way slam him one. All he'll do will be to go home and write somebody a letter about it.' "And there's the poor old man to-day. Nobody likes him. Nobody respects him. Even a little na- C( .„. . _ -^ . - - * * UNCLE SHAM 159 tion like Mexico sits in the corner thumbing its nose, and every once in a while shying a brick at him. "And the reason is that he showed himself up as a verbose old four-flusher right at the jump. Watch- ful Waiting! Is that anything but a synonym for Ignominious Inaction? Or Contemptible Cow- ardice? First Mexico bluffed him to a standstill. Huerta is dead — but he never saluted the flag. "And Germany, seeing our mighty policy of Supine Shamelessness, blows up the Lusitania. . . . After that, why worry? All the old incompetent will do is to holler his head off for a disavowal. And if the German treaty with Belgium was only a scrap of paper, what in blazes is a disavowal? "No man is afraid of anybody he can lick. And when anybody starts in to make it a point to take a licking every day before breakfast; when a man lets even ten-year-old children and cripples wallop him ; when he hasn't enough sand to resent even the slaughter of his children in cold blood and the rape of his women in colder, how can he expect anything but contempt, scorn, hatred and abuse? "These people that say that if Roosevelt had been president, we would long ago have been plunged into the war make me sick. We would have taken a definite and determined stand at the outset, and 160 SCARS AND STRIPES there would never have been begun this miserable chain of circumstances that has kept us twisting and turning and shifting and sidestepping like an old maid in a mud puddle. . . . It's the present policy of Be Sure You're Right and Then Back Up that's done that. . . . You don't start anything with a strong man. You don't dare to. You don't tell Jack Johnson what you think of him. You know mighty well that if you do, you'll review the pro- ceedings from the third astral plane. But your Uncle Henry, who is old and feeble, you can maul around as you choose. If Roosevelt had been president, things would never have started to begin to commence. "If he had told Huerta to salute the flag, you bet your life Huerta would have saluted it, or they'd have gone to the mat. And it wouldn't have been the old Indian that was on his feet, dusting off his clothes, at the finish. "And the Lusitania "One bright, May morning, that benevolent old humanitarian, von Tirpitz, pirouettes up to the Im- perial Palace where the Kaiser is sitting on the front stoop, sharpening his moustaches and waiting for the postman to bring him his bread ticket. " 'Good morning, Von/ says the Kaiser. " 'Good morning, Kais/ says von Tirpitz. t i .„. „ ^ ^ « «. A ^, > J UNCLE SHAM 161 " 'Well, what's on your mind ?' says the Kaiser. " 'I've got an idea that it would be a good scheme to blow up the Lusitania/ says von Tirpitz, gently shooing a meadowlark out of his whiskers. 'It'll show the world that we mean business.' " 'I don't know about that,' says the Kaiser. 'There'll be a lot of Americans on board.' " 'What difference does that make ?' says von Tirpitz. 'Though if you feel like that about it, we can tell 'em to keep off.' " 'Tell 'em to keep off !' says the Kaiser. 'Tell Americans to keep off the high seas?' he says. 'You've got a corpulent chance. I guess you don't know who's president of the United States, do you?' " 'Why, no,' says von Tirpitz, 'a lot of unim- portant details escape me from time to time.' " 'Then I'll tell you,' says the Kaiser. 'It's my old pal Theodore. And, believe me, he's a tough guy. You tell Americans to keep off the high seas, and he's liable to hop over here and help himself to a handful of your whiskers, to say nothing of put- ting both front feet in the middle of my dining- room.' " 'But he's got nothing to hop with,' says von Tirpitz. T could lick his whole army with one hand without missing a meal.' " 'He's got a navy,' says the Kaiser. 'And if 162 SCARS AND STRIPES you pull anything like that, he'll just send a convoy of about six torpedo-boat destroyers, and then where'll we be?' " 'But/ says von Tirpitz " 'Shut up/ says the Kaiser. 'I know that lad well. And besides, look what he did to Huerta. He's a bad hombre. You try that thing you just suggested, and he'll be over here if it's only with his teeth/ "And then, as von Tirpitz starts to continue, he pushes him off the front porch. " That idea is cold/ says the Kaiser. 'Goose- step yourself home and think of something else. And when you come poking around here again with an idea, it had better be good. I'm taking no chances of antagonising a nation of a hundred mil- lion people with a rough lad like Roosevelt running it. I've got trouble enough now. If you feel that you must have exercise,' he adds, 'go down and slam a few shells into that bum cathedral at Rheims. I've been wanting to get rid of that eyesore for years.' "And the Lusitania would still be sailing regu- larly. "And would Roosevelt, do you think, standing in the middle of a war-mad world, have allowed eight- een months to elapse, as the present administration c « .._ .^ ^ „ . , , > > UNCLE SHAM 163 has done, without accomplishing as much as the executive committee of the Village Improvement Association could do in two meetings? Would it have taken him a year and a half to decide whether he wanted fourteen battleships with fifteen-inch guns, or fifteen battleships with fourteen-inch guns? And trying to settle whether he wanted a national guard or a constitutional reserve? Would he have called in all the naval and military experts for their opinion and then have let that opinion be all gummed up by a Josephus Daniels ? Josephus Daniels ! Look at him ! . . . That's long enough. YouVe seen it all. "Would Roosevelt have done these things? Not he ! He'd have said, 'I want a lot of good soldiers and I want 'em quick. And I want the best navy I can get, and a flock of munitions. And if they aren't here by a week from Thursday, somebody'll be busy putting ads. in the Situations Wanted column.' And if the peanut-headed pacifists and politicians who habitually have come to regard our Congressional halls as a combination pork barrel and dormitory, had opposed him, he'd have gone over their heads to appeal to the American people. And you know what they'd have said, don't you? If they were willing to stand for Wilson's Policies, can't you see how God-awful joyful they would be to stand by Roosevelt's ? 164 SCARS AND STRIPES "Many people in this country seem to have an idea in their, so to speak, intellects that all these wondrous blessings of peace, prosperity, health, wealth and happiness that we have been enjoying for the past half-hundred years came to them from the all-loving beneficence of a sort of apotheosised Santa Claus, who wafted down the national chim- ney, bearing them on his back. "But is such the case? Hardly! The blessings that we possess to-day were won for us by our ancestors, and won by the sweat of their brows, the toil of their bodies and the blood of their hearts. That there are nine million, or whatever it is, auto- mobiles owned in the United States to-day is because our ancestors walked nine million miles behind prai- rie schooners; cleared the land with an axe in one hand and a gun in the other ; were massacred by the Indians and the British ; died of heat and cold and exposure; but, nevertheless, with chins firm and heads up, fought on, and on, and on, watering with their blood and fertilising with their bones the rich and running land that is ours to-day. They defied tyranny. And laid down their lives for the liberty we now enjoy. Enjoy, did I say? I mean, abuse! "And we, their descendants, wallowing supinely in the wondrous wealth of this heritage that has come down to us, fat, spoiled, peevish and prosper- 6 C ^ ,, ^^„.,_>> UNCLE SHAM 165 ous, the Rich Man's Sons of the world, confronted for the first time in fifty years with an unpleasant duty, shirk and whine and snivel and evade ! What we need is a darned good spanking. "Suppose our forebears had done as we are doing now; Pocahontas, and George Washington, and Patrick Henry, and Abraham Lincoln, and U. S. Grant and Nathan Hale ? "Can you picture Pocahontas, as she watched her father getting ready to make a souffle of the head of Captain John Smith, with a stone hatchet, saying, 'Aw, I should worry! Let father bean him if he wants to. He had no business to be here in the first place.' "Can you see George Washington, under the elm in Cambridge, refusing to take command of the Continental army because he was too proud to fight ? "And Lincoln demanding of the South that they free the slaves, and the South refusing, and then Lincoln saying, 'All right, then. Don't free them. I'll show you who's boss around here.' "And Patrick Henry, rising in the assembly at Williamstown, Virginia, and making his famous speech, 'And as for me, give me liberty or I'll write 'em a letter about it.' How long would that speech have remained in the school readers? "And U. S. Grant, declaring to his generals, Til 166 SCARS AND STRIPES fight it out on this line if I use up all my stationery/ "And Nathan Hale, emitting the valiant words that have rung down the corridors of time, 'My only regret is that I have but one typewriter to lay down for my country.' "And Marion, the Swamp Fox, living for seven years in a hollow tree, subsisting on Spanish moss and cold potatoes. . . . "Did these men, and the thousands like them, do the things that they did because they enjoyed it? Did they leave comfortable homes, their wives, their children, their means of livelihood, and go and sleep in the mud and live on dog biscuit with worms in it; and fall forward with bloody gashes in their bodies made by Hessian-chewed bullets; finally to be dumped into a long trench on a barren hillside where their bones should rot unnamed, unknown, because they were tired of the monotony of peace? "They did not. They did these things because they were Men. Because to them there was one thing more horrible even than the horrors of war; and that was the kind of peace that makes of men slaves, and of women concubines. . . . "And it is because of these splendid Men from whose loins we sprang — of these glorious women that gave us birth, that I say there's yet hope for your old Uncle Sham. He may have been a poor t < . _ •._..«_>> UNCLE SHAM 167 old fool; but he's all right at heart. Already he's changed from a pacifist to a weakling. Soon, pray God, he'll be a man again. And when he does, when finally he cleans out his brain and his capitol, look out for him ! "Don't forget that he's the same old lad that licked the Indians ; that, with nothing but a muzzle- loading flintlock and one suspender, walloped the English at Bunker Hill ; that bathed himself in blood at Gettysburg ; that freed Cuba and the Philippines ; and that, because of wrong to American citizens, sailed half across the world to Tripoli to hang the murderers to their own yard-arms. He's stood up for his own, and for other people's, rights for a good long time now. He's fought the fight of God and man for a good big handful of generations. Don't blame him too harshly that he's wrong now ; it's that he's weakly listened to the bad advice of a lot of bad advisers; and even they, perhaps, have meant well. But 'He Meant Well/ is a weakling's excuse, and a fool's epitaph." My friend rose and looked out into the dying day. "I'm proud that I'm an American of course," he said, slowly. "Only, I wish to God we'd wake up !" CHAPTER SEVEN "WE'LL DALLY 'ROUND THE FLAG, BOYS!" CHAPTER SEVEN "we'll dally 'round the flag, boys!" WE were discussing Latest Developments. It was my friend who spoke. "When, in the year nineteen fifty-something, His- tory shall sit back in his chair, light a good free- burning five-cent cigar, and look over the notes he made contemporaneously as to what your Uncle Samuel was doing during the first two years of the great war in Europe, he'll certainly have a hard time believing what he then jotted down was really so. And the more he reads, the more the actions of your dignified Uncle will remind him of the old lady that went to sleep and dreamed she was awake and then woke up to find she was asleep. And when at length History puts down his notes and sharpens his lead pencil, he'll heave a sigh and murmur sadly, 'I can't write any such stuff as that. Nobody'll believe it in the first place, and they'll think I'm crazy besides. And if all Uncle Sam's grandchildren don't come around and beat me up, they'll sure sue me for libel a whole lot.' But, being hired by the year, History'll have to write it; and, what is worse, our children and our children's chil- 171 172 SCARS AND STRIPES dren will have to read it. At which they're going to get red in the face and stutter and try to explain to the rest of the world that they're really very sorry and if they'd had any idea of what actually was going on, they'd have called in a couple of good alienists and had the old man examined and put in some nice place where he could have imagined he was Napoleon without annoying anybody. "Look at the old chap now. He's sitting back with his chest all puffed out because he thinks he's told Germany where to head in at, gosh ding it, while even before we can finish this conversation Germany may have decided that it's to her interest to change her mind, as she threatened, and blow up a lot more of our ships and citizens and thereby force him to begin writing notes again ; for, if any- thing has been adduced to show that Germany is any the less willing, and any the less able, to blow up our ships now than she was two years ago, it hasn't been revealed to an anxious public. If the treaty with Belgium was only a scrap of paper, what in heaven's name is a note more or less to the United States? And yet here the old man is sitting back as though he'd really done something, without even sense enough to save himself work by having the old notes mimeographed, leaving blank places for the proper names and improper actions, in case i I DALLY 'ROUND THE FLAG!'' 173 he shall have to start in with a new series, numbers 6,701 to 9,407, inclusive. "And, having thus attained no solution at all of anything with Germany, he thereupon keeps on writ- ing notes to Mexico in pursuit, apparently, of the same valueless objective, at the same time sending into that stricken, chaotic country a punitive expedi- tion that does nothing but make Mexico sore and himself ridiculous; and then to further complicate proceedings, he calls out an ill-equipped, untrained and unacclimated National Guard, fine in spirit and in patriotism to be sure, but wofully helpless in potential accomplishment. "If writing notes can settle anything, why do we call out soldiers? If writing notes can't settle anything, why have we been writ- ing them for three years? And if writing notes fails to accomplish anything in Mexico, why should it be expected to accomplish anything with Germany, or England, or any other power? And if we need soldiers to defend ourselves against Mexico, or to defend Mexico against her- self, why don't we need ten times as many to de- fend ourselves against nations ten times as large? And when it comes to that, what are we trying to do in the first place? We are either attempt- ing to do things by notes, or by force. We are 174 SCARS AND STRIPES either in danger of war, or we aren't. We either need soldiers, or we don't. If we do need them, we need enough. If we don't need them, we don't need any. All of which is so obvious that if a six- year-old adolescent can't see it, he should be put back making paper-mats in the kindergarten. And yet your Uncle Sam, confronted with these ques- tions in elementary intelligence, says one day that we are in no danger of being involved in trouble, and the next day sits back on his haunches and howls like a wolf for the biggest navy in the world. One day he is too proud to fight, and the next he feels himself in a fighting mood. One day he wants this kind of an army, the next he wants that kind, the third some other kind, and the fourth he doesn't want any at all ! One day he says that all the Eu- ropean nations are mad and not to be held account- able to the mental processes of the sane. The next day he wants to arbitrate, according to his own statement, among lunatics in a mad-house. It must please a nation like France, spirited, spiritual, de- fending its very hearthstone against rape, rapine and slaughter, to be compared to the nation that committed the Belgian atrocities and sunk the Lasi- tania. It would be like seeing a fine earnest citizen trying to protect his women, his children and his home against a red-handed maniac, and then have a c c DALLY 'ROUND THE FLAG!" 175 nice old gentleman with whiskers stand across the street with his hands in his pockets and say, 'Look at those two poor nuts ! After I get through count- ing the petty cash and getting the deliveries off, I'll go over and arbitrate 'em a whole lot/ And what makes it all more startlingly grotesque, he first says they're crazy, and then that he's willing to arbitrate ! If they're crazy, how can he arbitrate? And if he can arbitrate, then they can't be crazy; so why did he say so in the first place? One day he says, forgetting that Mexico is a nation of Indians crossed with bad Spanish, that that stricken and helpless country has the same right to work out its own sal- vation that had the educated and able citizens of Colonial America; and even while he is saying it with one hand, with the other he is chasing the in- habitants of Haiti and San Domingo so far back in the hills that they haven't seen the custom house in weeks. If Mexico has that right, why hasn't Haiti? If Haiti hasn't, why has Mexico? "One day he accuses Carranza of being a treach- erous accomplice of murderers in the committing of outrages, atrocities and mutilations and the next day he writes him notes as though he were a civilised being, neglecting to explain why, if Carranza is a treacherous accomplice of murderers, he is any more deserving of notes than a Gyp the Blood. And 176 SCARS AND STRIPES the third day he says that what he wrote about Carranza wasn't so but said only to arouse the United States and to frighten Carranza. One day he sends soldiers into Mexico, and the next day he takes 'em out. Then he sends 'em in again. Then he takes those out. Then he calls out some more, but not a third enough to accomplish anything. Then he tells some of these they needn't go. Then he writes some more notes. Then he doesn't write some more notes. And the higher the fewer. And why is a mouse when it spins? "And there you have the poor old man horning in one day on matters that are none of his business; horning out the next on matters that are ; butting in here, butting out there; half at peace, half at war and half in the hearts of his countrymen, entirely unready to make war yet entirely helpless to make peace, shaking his fist one minute and his finger the next. And what his idea is, if he has any, which he hasn't, goodness knows; for when you pin him down to facts, he rises and maunders something about America first and the higher laws of humanity and the nobler duties of mankind and sits down amid the ladylike applause of a few people with pear-shaped heads and no chins who have come to listen to him because mother was housecleaning and they didn't have anywhere else to go. "dally 'round the flag!" 177 "Poor, poor old Uncle Sam ! That fine, splendid, wonderful old man ! To have let himself be dragged so far to folly, so deep in deceit, by these few men he has placed in power to think for him and to act for him, and who have failed him so utterly ! . . . And how ache the hearts of his children! "What must think Abraham Lincoln, and U. S. Grant, and Sherman, and Sheridan of their country to-day; what must think all those splendid men in blue that went to war in '61 for an ideal; even as what must think Lee, and Jackson and Beauregard and the splendid men in grey who fought so bravely with them for an ideal? "Can't you see them now, grim and bronzed, grouped around the fires of night, singing their bat- tle songs ? Td like to make a little side bet that for one thing they've got the songs rewritten for us, starting with, a i We'll dally 'round the flag, boys, we'll dally once again, Writing more notes about our freedom.' "And the next, a t John Brown's body keeps a-turning in its grave, John Brown's body keeps a-turning in its grave, John Brown's body keeps a-turning in its grave As we go maund'ring on.' 178 SCARS AND STRIPES a And following that with, " 'We shall meet, but we'll do nothing, There will be one vacant stare. We will linger to write letters, And we'll lick our foes with prayer/ "And, " Tut another ribbon in, we'll w r rite another note, This will be the nicest one that we have ever wrote, One that sure will bring to us the Pacifistic vote, While we all wait for election !' "Can you appreciate their feelings as they read over our latest correspondence with Carranza — a correspondence which, while the first forty or fifty letters were models of formality, courtesy and dic- tion and as good as any correspondence school in the country could teach you in five lessons, later grew sassier and sassier. It went something like this! V. Carranza, Esq., Mexico City. Dear Sir: Inasmuch as the bandit, Francisco Villa, has en- tered United States territory and ruthlessly slaugh- tered United States citizens, it is the desire of the i. < DALLY 'ROUND THE FLAG!" 179 United States government to send in troops to ap- prehend said bandit. Therefore I respectfully re- quest permission of the Mexican defective — I mean de facto — -government to send United States troops into Mexico. Hoping you are well and with kind regards, Uncle Sam. "To which the answer: Uncle Sam, Washington. Dear Sir: You may or may not send in troops. If you do, or do not, it is under three conditions. The first is that you don't let them use the roads or the rail- roads. The second is that they go home when we say so. The third is that they don't come in in the first place. Carranza. a And in reply to this: V. Carranza, Mexico City. Dear Sir: Thank you for your kind letter of last month, or some time. We were quite sure of your whole- souled and generous cooperation in this matter and are heartily glad to make our soldiers walk, and as soon as we can find out where they're manufactured ♦ 180 SCARS AND STRIPES we're going to send them a motor-truck which will be very nice, don't you think so? Uncle Sam. "Then, after going in to catch Villa with about as much chance of accomplishing said feat as a blind man has of catching a bat in the Mammoth Cave, comes the following: Uncle Sam, . Washington, D. C. I must immediately request that you remove your soldiers, as I find that their present presence is mak- ing the Mexican people sore at me, and if you don't know what a Mexican is like when he's sore, come down some time and pay me a little visit and I'd admire to show you, and bring your friends with you. The more the merrier. Don't make any plans though as to when you'll be back home as your folks are liable to be disappointed. Hence, in pursuance of the second clause of our recent agreement, I must respectfully urge that you take your soldiers out quick. I must also call to your attention the third condition, which was that you wasn't to send 'em in in the first place. Carranza. "And the reply; the most amazing epistolatory national confession since the German chancellor declared the treaty with Belgium a scrap of paper, since it admits that for three years we have allowed i i DALLY 'ROUND THE FLAG!" 181 our citizens to be murdered in Mexico and have done nothing about it except to write notes : Carranza, Mexico City. In pursuance to your recent note, we cannot take our soldiers out, as to do so would put us in Dutch ourselves. For three years now, American lives have been sacrificed, American enterprises de- stroyed, there have been committed on American citizens outrage after outrage, atrocity after atroc- ity; and this with your full knowledge while you stood by powerless or unwilling to prevent. We have tried to be nice about the matter of the taking of American lives. All we have done about it in three years is to write you notes — an I for an eye, and a note for a life, so to speak — and as far as we are concerned, we'd keep on until you died of old age or something; because we are a great and hu- mane country and we don't believe in making war on weak and helpless nations, not even when they are licking us. But we beg to advise you that we are going to leave our soldiers stay where they are, and what do you know about that ? Uncle Sam. "To which amazing epistle, Carranze replies: Uncle Sam, Washington, D. C. Your nasty letter received. If you think you're going to beat me by talking me to death, you've got 182 SCARS AND STRIPES another guess coming. I may raise whiskers but I've been off the farm a long time. Furthermore, I'm sick of setting up all night reading your letters. My bills for having them translated is running up into hundreds; and after they're translated, they ain't worth anything anyhow except as samples of what not to do in diplomacy. So all I've got to say is you pack up your soldiers and get out of my coun- try. Don't think you can bluff me, you great big piece of cheese. Respectfully, V. Carranza. a To which the response V. Carranza, Esq., Mexico City. Is that so ? Well, we feel in a fighting mood this morning and we don't believe in words that aren't translated into deeds. Uncle Sam. a And to this Uncle Sam, Washington, D. C. Don't make me laugh. If you don't believe in words that aren't translated into deeds, why haven't you translated some? If you don't understand the language, you can find a dictionary in any book store. In closing I have only to remark, you get i i DALLY 'ROUND THE FLAG!' 183 your soldiers out of here; if you don't, you won't know 'em next time you see 'em. I've already issued orders to General Trevino, that gallant patriot and humanitarian, that if he catches 'em marching any way except backwards, to cut loose at 'em a whole lot. And as he loves 'em about as much as I do, he's due to put his whole, earnest soul into the en- deavour. Carranza. "And after making good his threat and slaughter- ing a number of the Tenth Cavalry and taking a number of others as prisoners, comes this : V. Carranza, Esq., Mexico City. How dare you kill our soldiers, you nasty horrid old thing ? You give us back our prisoners, or we'll declare war on you. We've already called out our National Guard, and as soon as they can find the shoes we haven't provided them with, they'll walk down there ; and then you better look out ! "And from Carranza, as he surrenders his cap- tives — and I want to stop right here to say that my hat's off to these men of the Tenth. If we'd had a little of their spirit at Washington the last three years, things would have been a whole lot different to-day : 184 SCARS AND STRIPES Uncle Sam, Washington. Take your darned old soldiers. I don't want 'em anyhow. "And to this: Carranza, Mexico City. Thank you for returning the soldiers you didn't kill. It was very nice of you, but it doesn't quite settle the matter. If you will be so good, we would like to know what are your plans for the future ? "And the reply: Uncle Sam, Washington. None of your darn business. a And to this: Carranza, Mexico City. We would like further information or we will be forced to take definite and determined action. Just what action we will take when we haven't got any- thing to act with, would require too long to explain. Nevertheless, we are prepared in mind and in soul, at least ; therefore, we must demand a more explicit answer. "dally 'round the flag!" 185 "To which: Uncle Sam, Washington. Aw, shut up ! You make me tired. Carranza. * a And to this : Carranza, Mexico City. Shut up yourselfl Uncle Sam. "And then what ? Did they come to blows ? Not these two lads. Seeing that for once in his life your Uncle had risen above the control of his mean advisers and was about to take things in his own hands, Carranza climbs right down off his Perch- eron. "And what does your Uncle Samuel do? Does he, finding that the first concrete action he's taken in three years is productive of immediate result, decide to pursue further that successful course? Not he! Thinking that because once Carranza has spoken civilly to him he's won another great victory; and that because he's still got plenty of typewriting paper he's again fully prepared for any contingency, he slides back easily and gently into his former vicious 186 SCARS AND STRIPES habits and becomes once again a poor old word- drunkard, fuddling his brains with language and laxing his will with verbiage the while he embarks on another pitiable orgy of phraseology and another shameless debauch of words. "And what has he really accomplished ? Not one single solitary thing — except delay. What have all his incursions and excursions from and to Mexico amounted to? Mexico under Diaz was like our own south under slavery. There were two classes; the grossly rich, and the pitiably poor. Mexico City under these conditions was one of the most beauti- ful cities of the world, replete of magnificence and munificence, of jewels and Paris gowns, and import- ed limousines and having a twenty-six-million-dollar opera-house. Then, in contradistinction to our own south where we freed the slaves/the slaves freed themselves. The rich lost control ; some were killed, the rest fled the country leaving it in control of vari- ous bands of roving marauders, ignorant, savage, cruel, treacherous, but having leaders of sufficient intelligence to read and write notes, pillaging, loot- ing, raping and robbing in the name of Liberty but under the mantle of License. And that is where stands the Mexico of to-day. "To those that urge that Mexico have the right to work out her own salvation it is but to say that "dally 'round the flag!" 187 if she had that right why did we not recognise it when she had the chance ? She had Huerta. Huerta was a strong man. Huerta had eighty thousand sol- diers. Mexico could have worked out her own sal- vation through Huerta. To be sure, she would have wallowed in blood from Chiapas to Chihuahua. But she could have done it. But when she had the power, we didn't recognise her right. And now that we have taken away the power, we would give her back the right ! After having taken away Mexico's only chance to work out her so to speak salvation, we talk about giving it back to her when it's too late for her to use it. And if that isn't a darned fool idea, then I don't know what is. "Having then deprived Mexico of her only chance to work out her own salvation ; having thus directly and deliberately rendered a country, which, if un- civilized and ignorant, was at least rich and com- paratively peaceful, a chaos of blood and murder and pillage and arson and rape, how have we met the responsibility that we thus assumed? Have we tried to bring order out of chaos, safety out of murder, peace out of war? Oh, my yes! We've tried to bring order out of chaos by putting in more chaos; safety out of murder by adding more mur- der; and peace out of war by helping everybody further to wage war. In our efforts to bring about 188 SCARS AND STRIPES peace we have given Maderistas guns to kill Huer- tistas, and Carranzistas guns to kill Villistas, and Villistas guns to kill Carranzistas, and we've given 'em all guns with which to kill us. For, you must know, we're the cutest little peacemakers in the world and we don't believe in fighting ! "Hence it is that after directly plunging Mexico into the bloodiest mess possible, all that your Uncle Samuel has done to atone for his meddling is to sit himself down and write notes! Mexicans are being massacred? All right, we'll write 'em a note. . . . Americans are being slaughtered ? Oh, to be sure ! Boy, another sheet of carbon. . . . There are being committed outrage after outrage, atrocity after atrocity! . . . We'll write 'em again. Hee, hi, hum! For another little note won't do us any harm. . . . They're over the border killing United States citizens on United States soil? . . . Well, well, now what do you think of that? We'll tell 'em a few lies this time. Boy, a new ribbon. "And that's what the old gentleman's been doing for three years. Nor even yet has he found out the fatuousness, the futility, the disgrace, the dis- honour and the shame of it all. Drunk with words, sodden and stupid in the coma of conversation, he keeps dodderingly, besottedly, slamming away on his typewriter. And it looks as though the only "dally 'round the flag!" 189 thing that will stop him is that people will get sick of answering him, or else somebody'll get sore and bust his typewriter — or maybe sneak up behind him while he's in the middle of a paragraph and hit him on the head with a piece of lead pipe. "But one thing he has done ; for, even if he hasn't learned anything himself, he's given the rest of the world the best possible concrete and absolute illustration of the futility of our national policy. And he's proven beyond a peradventure of a doubt the uses of notes are limited to the discussion of honourable matters with honourable people who will abide by the rules. You and I can write notes to leach other because we are fairly intelligent white men who don't enjoy killing or being killed, and who view with distinct disfavour the black eye and the bloody nose. Hence notes are of use to us. "But when you meet a mad dog, you don't sit right down and write him a long letter about the higher laws of mankind and that you don't approve of hydrophobia as a practice and he must desist at once, or you'll write him another note, this time harsher. You might as well try to tame a Nubian lion with a McGuffey Third Reader, or restrain a drunken murderer by reading him Emerson's Es- says. "At the start of the great war, Germany candidly 190 SCARS AND STRIPES and openly announced to the world that she had thrown away the book of rules that civilisation had written, and adopted in its place the policy of Force. Hence, any efforts to cope with Germany have had to be, still have to be, in kind. A nice polite note is no reply against a forty-two centimetre gun. If you don't believe me, ask the blood-raw corpse of Belgium. She tried writing notes. Also she did the best she could to meet force with force. But her force was the weaker. Hence over her beaten body rolls the Juggernaut of Force. One of the main curses that your Uncle Sam has had to contend with, is that he has been surrounded in the high places by half thinkers. By this I mean men who get a small piece of an idea and let it go at that. Take Bryan, emitting his ponderous plati- tudes. "Says Bryan, 'Might doesn't make right.' Quite true. Might doesn't make right. But, if you carry the idea along, neither does right make might. Christ was right. But it didn't save Him from crucifixion. Countless thousands of gentle, kindly, loving women, of innocent little children that were not old enough to be anything but right have been slaughtered in the world during the last two hell-born years. They were right. But it didn't prevent their being raped, mutilated and slaughtered. "dally 'round the flag!' 191 "Again we have the head of our nation asserting that no lasting thing has ever been created by war. Td like to hear him tell that to George Washington, or Patrick Henry, or Abraham Lincoln, or U. S. Grant. The United States of America was created by war. It's lasted pretty well so far. Slavery was abolished in the South by war. The freedom of the slaves has lasted pretty well, too. "And France. From the bleeding spasm of the Revolution she came, from a tyrant-ruled country of slavery, to be a nation great and strong. And from the purging fire of the present war is she emerging clean of soul, fine of courage, mighty of honour. "To say that no lasting thing has ever been cre- ated by war is to make a statement strange and incomprehensible. For the truth of it is that very few lasting things have been made except by war, or in the safe protection given of war and kept by the force that war has made. Civilisation has been made by war. Few people, or peoples, have ever become civilised from choice. Civilisation has been rammed down their throats with a gun bar- rel. Look at the Cubans. Look at the Filipinos. Look at our own Indians. A few years ago they were bounding over the boundless plains with a bow and arrow in one hand and a human scalp in the 192 SCARS AND STRIPES other, playfully stopping now and again to massacre a few whites or to roll them up in green cowhides that, in the sun's heat, shrunk to the size of a foot- ball with the crushed corpse inside. And then we went out there with Force and War and now the Indians go to school and wear pants and everything. And there's another thing that war has done; and that, too, is going to last, at least as long as the Indians themselves last, or as long as we last to make war on 'em if they budge off the reservation. "When you come to a final analysis, everything that has really come to this world since its begin- ning has been born of war or of the force that would be war if needs must. The instinct of man is toward destruction. His brain is toward construction. But until his brain is developed, his instinct governs. Children prove that. Why do children love to break windows, and tear up flowers, and throw stones at dogs, and pull cats' tails, and step on toads? It's because their brains are not developed and their in- stincts rule them. And unless you said, 'Don't do that,' to them ; unless you trained them and educated them and taught them and worked over them they would grow up bad ; that is, unless, as they grew up, their brains developed so that they could do all these things for themselves. And this contention is proven by the head hunters. They have been hunt- "dally 'round the flag!' 193 ing heads for generations ; they still hunt heads, and no humble bungalow in all their country is happy without a few human heads reposing on the mantel- piece, or hung up among the wistaria on the front porch. And why? Because nobody has ever come among them to slam 'em down and sit on them while they educated them to the fact that a human head is really of no practical value except when it's on human shoulders, and that as an ornament, it's far outclassed by a globe full of wax flowers, or a por- ous motto with God Bless Our Home done on it in blue worsted. "There are two major forces in the world that make for progress, for development and for civ- ilisation — religion and education. And throughout all history you will find these two riding to their kingdoms on the conquering back of the Force that is war if needs must. Sometimes Force can work successfully without the aid of war, which happens where people are naturally peaceable. We have done in this way what we could for the freed slaves of the South, forcing them without the aid of war to go to school, to abide by the law, and sending them missionaries who, in reality, are but warriors though they carry Bibles instead of rifles. But it was only that the negroes were willing to listen to the Bibles that kept us from using the rifles. On 194 SCARS AND STRIPES the other hand you have the Filipinos. The only- argument they understood was a bolo or a bullet. Hence we had to argue with them with bolos and bullets until those that were left were in a mood receptive of Bibles. And now over there in the Philippines they don't celebrate the capture of a prisoner by staking him out on an ant hill, or tear- ing him to pieces with a bent bamboo. They go to school, and read the Bible, and have become, if not good, at least peaceable citizens. But it was done by War first ; and by other things afterward. "No, when you come to think it out, war seems like some gigantic form of childbirth. . . . And of the childbirth of war, even as the childbirth of woman, comes Something. . . . Sometimes this Something is malformed ; sometimes it is still-born, and sometimes it is good and fine and wonderful in its perfect beauty. . . . But always, of war as of woman, is it born of suffering, of torture and of pain. . . . And why? It would seem to us that childbirth ought to be the most gloriously beautiful, the most sublimely perfect, of all of earth that can come to woman. ... In spirit it is so. In spirit- uality it is so. And yet, in fact, it is tearing, rack- ing, cruel. . . . Why ? That it is given only to God to know. . . . And so, I think, it is with war. . . . For it is given us of earth only to understand finite C i DALLY 'ROUND THE FLAG 1 ." 195 things with a finite mind. . . . All else, for us, is as hidden as the heart of heaven from a cannibal. "And to the finite mind is the world revealed only as a struggle that began when the world began, that will end only when the world shall end. Who lives the longest in this world? He who fights hardest for his health and well being. Who makes the most converts to God? The church that fights hardest to that end. The forces of evil fight even as fight the forces for good. Prohibitionists fight against alcohol even as men who make money by alcohol fight for it. Clergymen fight to fill their churches even as saloon keepers and moving-picture theatres and baseball magnates fight to empty them. Even pacifists who do not believe in fighting fight to pre- vent fighting. According to his own doctrine, ac- cording to everything he preaches, a pacifist ought only to stay at home and set a noble example. Yet you find them organising Peace Leagues and Anti- War Societies, which in themselves are armies; electing officers which are in themselves precisely analogous to the officers of an army; and holding great meetings ; which are in themselves battles. "And it isn't because they're wrong in fighting. It's just because they don't understand. They fight as all the world fights, as all the world has ever fought; as all the world will ever fight. Because 196 SCARS AND STRIPES they themselves are nothing but battlefields. Science has shown that every pacifist, like everybody else, is full of friendly and unfriendly germs. Whereby these germs, in their millions, are like the armies of the Kaiser and the King. Day and night, year in and year out, do they battle in the human trenches of our bodies, charging here, routed there, fighting, fighting, fighting. ... In gallant fury, the Fight- ing White Corpuscles rush along the embattled veins driving all before them. . . . Then is a body sick. . . . Come the Gallant Red Corpuscles, hun- dreds of thousands strong. Shouting the battle-cry of Germdom they fling themselves full force upon the Whitened hordes. . . . Back and forth they surge in hand-to-hand combat. . . . Who will win? . . . Along the left flank the White Cor- puscles are w r avering. . . . The Red Reserves are called into action. ... In thousands they fling themselves upon the bulging line of White. ... It shivers from the shock. ... It breaks. . . . Flee, frantic, frightened, broken, the Whitened lines. . . . Follow the victorious Reds. . . . Hurrah! Vic- tory ! Victory is ours ! . . . And we are well again ! "And when all that's going on inside a Pacifist, no wonder he fights ! "I wonder if these Pacifists really realise how ab- "dally 'round the flag!' 197 surd, how pitiful, or how benighted they look as they stand there mouthing their Half Truths, born of their Half Thoughts that are fathered of the wish. In what they wear, in what they use, in even their physical presence is the direct and uncompro- mising refutation of all that they say. "The clothes upon their back, if they be men, are from the hair of animals that have been, or will be, but slaughtered living things of God; if they be women, perchance they wear upon their heads the wings of slain birds, and around their necks the cured skins of God's slain creatures. The buttons on these clothes are from the bones of murdered animals. Upon their feet they wear shoes made of the hides of butchered beeves. And there the Paci- fists stand, prating that they don't believe in force! . . . And the power that gives them even that strength to prate — whence comes that? . . . From lamb chops, perhaps . . . the ribs of gentle- eyed, gentle-souled little sheep across whose pitiful bleating throats knives have been drawn. Or veal, which is of the ravaged offspring of a mother-cow;' the mother-cow with the instinct of the mother- woman who mourns for days of that ravishment. . . . Of venison, perchance; a proud buck, as monoga- mistic as civilised man, a far better lover, a far bet- ter provider, a far better protector; or the doe that 198 SCARS AND STRIPES he has protected ; perhaps a doe with fawn, graceful, full of the prancing joy of young lifet— the same wondrous, unknown thing that makes children romp and run. "For thus it is that in this world the mighty prey upon the weak, and man, the mightiest of all, de- stroys the life, eats the flesh and picks the bones of living things that God has put upon His earth. . . . And the Pacifist, wearing slaughtered life, eating slaughtered life, living on, and by, and with, slaugh- tered life, doesn't believe in force! "But you cannot say that Life is wrong. It is the Pacifist that is wrong. Life is Life. We who live it must take it as we find it. We will make it better if we can. But in the meantime we must recognise it as it is. We cannot give to it the attri- butes that we think it ought to have and then try to live it that way. For that is like trying to walk upon the water, and to try to walk upon the water is to drown. "We have refused to recognise life as it is; obsti- nately and pig-headedly we have tried to argue against all reason that it is something that we think it ought to be. We have gone even further wrong. For we have put down all human life under one block characterisation. We have refused to recog- nise that a Frenchman is a Frenchman, a German "dally 'round the flag!" 199 a German, and a Mexican a Mexican. To us all mankind is alike, to be dealt with uniformly. "With equal reverence, with equal equity, we have written notes to the English who, playing the game fairly, regard them as notes; and to the Ger- mans who, having chucked away the book, regard them as jokes; and to the Mexicans, who not being able to read much and not understanding very well that which they do read, regard them as insults. And all because we have arrived at a point of na- tional prosperity and national security that we have entirely lost our recollection of history, our view- point on life and our common sense about facts. Upon a war-won national existence we have built a flimsy superstructure of idealism that the first van- dal hand that chooses can yank down with one pull. A good strong puff from any nation who really un- derstands Things as They Are would send our fine Palace of Dreams tumbling down about us and be- fore we got ourselves unsnarled from the ruins, something would descend upon our heads and we'd find ourselves with a harp in our hands and a pair of wings at our shoulder-blades, while all the prac- tical angels, like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and King Solomon and Noah (the latter, by the way, being the original disciple of Prepared- ness in that, when popular sentiment was entirely 200 SCARS AND STRIPES against it, with everybody calling him an alarmist and saying what a chump he was to get all worked up when there was no danger, proceeded to build the ark, and when the flood came to sail happily away, while all the followers of Anti-Preparedness, like the Bryans and the Fords of those days, stayed behind and drowned a whole lot) — as I say, all these practical angels, wise and just and good in their day and generation, would we see gathered around us, shaking their heads in gentle, pitying reproach at so vast and unreasoning an ignorance. . . . And what would we have to say in self -extenuation for having so done with the country that George and Abraham left to us of their lifetimes' work and de- votion and love? ... I opine that we'd be the cheapest-looking lot of angels that ever got to heaven. "For it is to Pacifists and Idealists alike to re- member that these men believed in fighting. They didn't argue that Might didn't make Right. They didn't try to excuse their own failure to meet facts as they were by saying that war never created any lasting thing. They believed in fighting. They be- lieved in the Force of Good applied, if possible, by Peace, if not, by War. They believed in fighting, even as Christ believed in fighting. And if you < < ~ . ^ ^ ,^ ' DALLY ROUND THE FLAG! 201 don't believe me, you have His own words for it, when, before Pilate, He said : " 'My kingdom is not of this world! if my king- dom were of this world, then would my servants fight that I should not be delivered to the Jews.' And if that means anything, it means that Christ, being interested only in spiritual things, believed in fighting only spiritually; but that, had He been interested in material things, He would have had no hesitation in fighting materially. Hence Christ fought His way, leaving us, who are not Christs, to fight ours. "Also you can take His advice to 'Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's.' With the substitution of Carranza for Caesar we have rather good counsel for to-day in the Mexican mess. "And have we of America followed Christ's spir- itual teachings? Hardly. Have we followed the worldly teachings of George Washington and Abra- ham Lincoln? Again hardly. Whose teachings, then, have we followed? And the answer is that we haven't been following the teachings of any- body. "Here we are, the richest nation in the world, and the most supine and the fattest, both in body and in head. Wallowing in physical luxury, we have 202 SCARS AND STRIPES become spiritually so loose, so lax and so lazy that we have almost lost the capacity to think and to act. And all that our boasted American hustling has really accomplished is to create these two well- known and justly celebrated American institutions, the quick lunch and the quick hearse, in the first of which you can get chronic indigestion for a nickel, whereat the second will take you from the chapel to the grave in seventeen minutes; so that even in death are we still hustling. "The fact that at last our selfishness, our laxness and our money lust have put us against the iron has raised a certain amount of finer feeling in sec- tions, which is much to be thankful for, but hardly enough, when you come to think that for months now the entire United States regular army has been the plaything of a lot of Mexican bandits. We have called out our National Guard. Thank God for the splendid spirit it has shown; even as God pity us for having so betrayed and neglected it. If, while we're sitting here talking, there should be a call for volunteers, again should we be grateful for the glow of patriotism for which we, as a nation, are in no way responsible, at the same time wondering where in Sam Hill we're going to find guns for 'em, to say nothing of equipment, ammunition, or yet shoes. And we have no officers to lead them; and U_ . _ _ 9 DALLY ROUND THE FLAG! 203 remember, it takes fully a year to make even a very ordinary officer. Remember, too, that three years have passed while we have fatuously and flatulently neglected even so obvious a necessity as that. "And whatever may happen in Mexico, remem- ber that we have no choice but that sooner or later we must go in, or give up the Monroe Doctrine. Whereby, in a final analysis, it all comes down to the question : "Is America going to be a world power, or isn't she? "If she is, it's time, and beyond, when she should begin to stop acting like a weak-willed, weak- minded, weak-principled megalomaniac and begin to behave like the power that she wants to be. No individual can attain success sitting in the corner counting his fingers when other individuals are in active endeavour in the marts of trade. Similarly, no nation can attain respect, power and dignity by side-stepping every issue it meets." My friend turned. "God puts us here. He does not tell us His secrets. He leaves us here, unaided, to do our human best in His human world. In His mysterious wisdom He has put us on a world where there is much thai we do not understand, much that we do not like, much that we love, much that we hate, much for 204 SCARS AND STRIPES which we rejoice, much for which we are sorry. We find upon that earth mother-love and murder, health and sickness, happiness and sorrow, laughter and lying, tenderness and treachery, kindness and brutality, civilisation and slavery, beauty and bes- tiality, rapture and ravishment, religion and rape. We find faith, hope and charity; and we find war, famine and pestilence. We find joy and health and life; as we find sorrow and sickness and death. We find man; and we find beast. We find gentle peo- ple ; and we find savage animals. For even as God has put upon earth you and me, so has He put there the Bengal tiger and the Gila monster. "Why all these things were put here we do not, we cannot, know. Nor has all the time since the world began, nor have all the churches, all the pray- ers, all the civilisation, all the labours of generation on generation of man served to eliminate that which we deem wrong, or to enhance that which we deem right. It is in degree only that has come even the little betterment we find ; and that degree has come only through righteous force backed, if need be, by righteous war. "It is for us to realise that even as God gives to the tiger claws with which to defend himself; even as He gives to the Gila monster fangs, and to the chameleon the gift of changing colour, so to man- i, i DALLY 'ROUND THE FLAGl n 205 kind He has given intelligence. He gives the Eng- lish and the French brains to defend themselves against the German monster; or, if you be German, He gives the Germans brains to defend themselves against English and French oppression. The tiger uses his claws. The rattlesnake uses his fangs. The chameleon changes its colour. The English, the French, the Germans use their brains. And it is now not for us to continue, supine, witless, arro- gant and idealistic, to deny ourselves the use of that which God has given us by questioning His gifts or quarrelling with His world. While other nations have used brains, we have used emotions. Where other nations have used intelligence, we have used idealism. Where other nations have been wise men, we have been fools. And it has brought us to shame, to contempt, to abuse and to murder. Let us in His name stop before it brings us to destruc- tion. "For now, more than ever in our history, do we need to realise, and to make others realise, how great, how grievous, are our needs. For saying what we must say to expose these needs, we shall be criticised ; we shall be scolded by the half thinkers who, reading in their half-thinking way, believe that we are condemning America and Americans. Them we must try to make understand that we are not 206 SCARS AND STRIPES condemning America. We think it is the finest country in the world, with the finest institutions in the world. But we want it so to remain. We are not condemning Americans. We think we are the finest race in the world with the finest racial traits in the world. And we want us so to remain. But we are condemning, and condemning as hard as we know how, that class of Americans who are too fat, too selfish, too vain, too arrogant, too ignorant, too helpless, too supine, too cowardly, too inept, too in- competent, or too sound asleep to be good Amer- icans. It is for them to try to realize what America needs and be good enough Americans to give it to her ; and that it's up to every man, woman and child who loves America to pitch in and help out "Let them try to understand that what we are working for, and all we are working for, is a race of good, united Americans in the great, united Amer- ica that our fathers left us in peace and in power, in the great America that we love and honour and re- spect, in whose traditions we glory, in whose strength we are proud, and in whose dignity and whose God we trust ; and that it is for us so to act that when it comes time for us to join those fine men from whom we sprung, we can go with head erect, with eyes firm, with soul clean. "For," he concluded, "I'd certainly hate to walk "dally 'round the flag!" 207 in through the pearly gates to find everybody ashamed of us, to see George Washington turn his face away in sorrow, and have Abraham Lincoln sadly shake his fine old head in grief of what we had done of the land that he loved and for which he lived and died; and even Diogenes passing us up, without even bringing his lantern over, as not worth while bothering with ; while Judas Iscariot sat over in the corner chewing his whiskers in jealousy be- cause he only betrayed One while we're betraying a hundred million, and Marie Antoinette, who pos- sessed about the same absence of views on anything as Henry Ford, until she entirely lost her head over the matter, smiling beautifully on us from beside Icarus, the premier aviator of his time, who, as we of to-day, neglected to plan ahead until all of a sudden he got an Awful Bump; not to mention Da- vid, like Noah one of the early followers of Pre- paredness who got busy when the time came and fixed himself with a sling and a couple or rocks and went over and got Old Man Goliath ; and the kind- faced, kind-souled people of the gentle hills of Bel- gium, men, women, little children warm from God's own arms, who Know because It Happened to Them. . . . "All these we want to face clean, straight, hon- est. . . . We want them to be glad to see us, not 208 SCARS AND STRIPES sorry. . . . We want them to be proud of us, not ashamed. ... It is much to ask. Yet it is not too much. . . . Do you think so?" I shook my head. For God knows it is not. THE END