Part 58 (1/2)

”And what I want to ask you now is that you take no halfway course.

Either send me out of this dock a free man or up the river to the chair.

For this is no year for compromise. Am I a murderer? Yes or no. Decide with your eyes wide open. If you set me free I shall still rebel. I shall join my comrades over the sea who already are going about in the camps and saying to the rank and file--'You can stop this slaughter! You can save this world gone mad! You can end this murder--both in time of war and peace!'”

And the jury set Joe free.

Early in the following week I went down to his room by the docks for a last evening with him there. Joe was sailing that same night. Under a name not his own he had taken pa.s.sage in the steerage of the big fast liner which was to sail at one o'clock. Into his room all evening poured his revolutionist friends, and the chance of revolution abroad was talked of in cool practical terms. Nothing could be done, they said, in the first few months to stop this war. Years ago the man in France, who had led the anti-war movement, had predicted that if war broke out every government rus.h.i.+ng in would force on its people the belief that this was no war of aggression but one of defense of the fatherland from a fierce onrus.h.i.+ng foe. And so in truth it had come about, and against that appeal to fight for their homes no voice of reason could stem the tide.

The socialists had been swept on with the rest. By tens and hundreds of thousands they had already gone to the front. But it was upon this very fact that Joe and his friends now rested their hopes. For just so soon as in the camps the first burst of enthusiasm had begun to die away, as the millions in the armies began to grow sick of the sight of blood, the groans and the shrieks of the wounded and dying, the stench of the dead--and themselves weary of fighting, worn by privation and disease, began to think of their distant homes, their wives and children starving there--then these socialists in their midst, one at every bivouack fire, would begin to ask them:

”Why is it that we are at war? What good is all this blood to us? Is it to make our toil any lighter, life any brighter in our homes--or were we sent out by our rulers to die only in order that they in their scramble might take more of the earth for themselves? And if this is true why not rise like men and end this fearful carnage?”

Already these thousands were in the camps. Into Joe's room that evening came men to give him the names and regiments of those comrades he could trust. Joe with a few hundred others was to make his dangerous way into the camps and the barracks, wherever that was possible, of French and Russians and Germans alike, to carry news from one to the other, to make ready and to plan.

Now and then, in the talk that night, I felt the thrilling presence of that rising G.o.d, that giant spirit of the crowd, not dead but only sleeping now to gain new strength for what it must do. And again in gleams and flashes I saw the vision of the end--the world for all the workers. For in this crowded tenement room, forgotten now by governments, this rough earnest group of men seemed so sure of this world of theirs, so sure that it was now soon to be born.

One by one they went away, and Joe and I were left alone. Slowly he refilled his pipe. I thought of the talks we had had in ten years.

”Well Bill,” he inquired at last, ”what are you going to do with yourself?”

”Write what I see in the crowd,” I said, ”from my new point of view--this year's point of view,” I added. I went on to tell him what the English writer had said. And I told of my book on the harbor.

”Well,” said Joe when I was through, ”I guess it's about the best you can do. You've got a wife to think of.”

”You don't know her,” I rejoined, and I told him how she had changed our home in order not to stop my work.

”But don't you see what she's up to?” said Joe.

”What the devil do you mean?” I asked indignantly. Joe blew a pitying puff of smoke.

”You poor blind dub of a husband,” he said with his old affectionate smile, ”she's making you love her all the more. You're anch.o.r.ed worse than ever. _You_ can't go over to Europe and take a chance at being shot. Don't you see the hole you're in? You've got to care what happens to you.”

”I'm not so sure of that, Joe,” I said. ”Things in this world are changing so fast that it's hard for any man in it to tell where he'll be in a year from now--or even a few short months from now. It's the year that no man can see beyond.”

”You mean you're coming over?” he asked.

”I'm not sure. Just now I'm going to finish this book. I'm going to see Eleanore through till the baby is born. But after that--if over in Europe the people rise against this war--I don't just see how I can keep out.”

Joe looked at me queerly. And with a curious gruffness,

”I hope you will keep out,” he said. ”There aren't many women like your wife.”

He pulled an old grip from under his bed and began throwing in a few books and clothes. From a drawer he swept a few colored s.h.i.+rts, some underclothes and a small revolver.

”J. K.,” I said, ”I've been thinking about us. And I think our youth is gone.”

”What's youth?” asked Joe indifferently.