In the Clutch of the War-God
Page 4
PART THREE.
In the Clutch of the War-God
THE TALE OF THE ORIENT'S INVASION OF THE OCCIDENT, AS CHRONICLED INTHE HUMANICULTURE SOCIETY'S "NOTES ON THE TWENTIETH CENTURY"
By Milo Hastings
SYNOPSIS: In the year of 1958, Ethel Calvert, adaughter of an American grain-merchant, residingin Japan, because of her father's death in ananti-foreign riot, is forced to take refuge, withMadame Oshima, the French wife of a Japanesescientist. She becomes accustomed to the land andmode of living followed by the Japanese, and isfinally persuaded to adopt the costume of the landof her exile. War is declared between Japan andthe United States, and Professor Oshima, andKomoru, his Secretary, together with Madame Oshimaand Ethel Calvert, sail for the United States in aJapanese war vessel. When near the Pacific Coast,the many men and women who have been passengers onthe vessel, leave the ship by means of aeroplanes,and sail eastwardly toward Texas, where theyestablish plantations and conduct a desultorywarfare by aeroplanes with United States troops.While working in the fields Ethel discovers ayoung American in concealment. He warns her tokeep silent, and immediately runs away.
In a few minutes Ethel had caught up with the man who, morecautiously, ran before her. Checking her speed, she followedsilently.
For a half-mile she pursued him thus. He came to the end of thefield and dodged into the thicket of bushes that lined the fencerow. He moved more slowly now, and she followed by sound rather thanby sight. At length they came to where a brook ran at right anglesto the fence row. The man stopped and crawled under the barbed-wirefence and came out on the turnpike that ran alongside.
Ethel, peering out from the bushes, saw him walk boldly forward andstand upon the end of the stone culvert that conducted the brookbeneath the roadway. For a moment only he remained so, and thenclambered quickly down at the end of the arch and disappeared in thedarkness beneath. She heard a foot splash in the water, and then allwas quiet save the gurgle of the stream.
Climbing over the fence, she top ran forward upon the culvert. Shelistened and looked toward either end, resolved to call to him if heemerged.
As she stood waiting she saw the yellow signal light rise in spiralshigher and higher and then circle slowly in one location. A fewminutes later the dim tail lights of the planes came up out of thehorizon and flew towards the signal light.
After a half-hour of waiting, she boldly resolved to enter thehiding place of the man she had followed.
Cautiously feeling her way, she clambered down over the end of theculvert and peered into its black archway.
At first, dimly and then with brighter flash, she saw a lightwithin. Creeping slowly forward, wading in the stream and stumblingover rough blocks of stone, she made toward the light. Midway thepassage, the side wall of the culvert had fallen or been torn downand there in a little damp clay nook, sitting hunched upon a rockwas the silhouette of the unshaven man.
Beyond him glowed the dim light and by its faint rays he washurriedly writing in a note book.
With a start he became aware of her presence, and turned theflash-light upon her.
"I followed you," she stammered. "I want to explain. I'm an Americangirl captive among the Japanese."
He stared at her quizzically in the dim light.
"I ran from you," he said, "because I was afraid to trust you--thereare a number of Europeans among the Japanese forces. I couldn't knowthat you wouldn't have given the alarm, and for one man to run fromfifty thousand isn't cowardice; it's common sense--even bravery,perhaps, when there's a cause at stake."
"I understand," replied the girl.
"Won't you be seated?" he said, arising and offering her his placeon the rock. She accepted, and he asked her for more of her story.
In reply she told him whom she was and related as briefly as shecould the incidents of her life that accounted for her peculiarpredicament.
"I suppose I owe you something of an explanation, too;" he said,when she had finished. "My name is Winslow--Stanley Winslow; I am--or at least was---the editor of the _Regenerationist_. Do you knowwhat that is?"
Ethel confessed, that she did not.
"Perhaps I flatter myself, but then I suppose you have had no chanceto keep up on American affairs."
Just then a crash, followed by a whirring, clattering noise broke inabove the sound of the man's voice and the gurgle of the brookrunning through their hiding-place.
"What's that?" Winslow exclaimed, starting towards the end of the culvert.
She was washing her woven grass sandals by rubbingthe soles together in the stream.]
Ethel followed him. Before they reached the open the trees in frontof them were lit up by the lurid light of a fire. Beside the road ahundred yards away was the crumpled mass of a metallic aeroplane.The gasolene tank had burst open and was blazing furiously.
"Americans," said Winslow; "let's see if the crew are dead."
The gasolene had largely spent itself by the time they reached theplane.
Poking about in the crumbled debris, they found the driver impaledupon a lever that protruded from his back.
"I wonder what grounded her," mused Winslow, as he inspected thedead man with his flash-lamp. "Oh! here we are! Good shooting that,"he added, pointing with his lamp to a soggy hole in the side of theman's head.
"I guess they're at it," he said, pressing out his light and turninghis eyes skyward.
The woman, speechless, followed his gaze. Across the sky flashedhere and there brilliant beams of search-lights, but far morenumerous were the swiftly moving star-like tail-lights of theJapanese planes.
Now and again they heard the crackling of machine guns, occasionallythe burr of a disordered propeller and once the faint call of ahuman voice.
"Look," said Ethel, pointing to the southward. "See that brilliantyellow light. It's the Japanese signal plane; they are all to fly intowards it, and then, soaring high will escape over the Americanlines."
"The lines are a joke," returned Winslow. "It's plane against plane.And the Japs will get the best of it; or at least they'll get away,which is all they want. They are going to Dakota, where five trainloads of gasolene will be setting on a siding waiting to becaptured. We printed the story ten days ago, though theadministration papers hooted at the idea."
As they walked back toward the culvert, Ethel stumbled oversomething in the roadway. She asked for the light, and discovered toher horror that she was standing in the midst of the remnants of aman who had been spattered over the hard macadam of the turnpike.
"Ugh! take me away," she shuddered, averting her eyes and runningtoward the stream,
"The gunner fell out of the plane when she lurched, I guess,"commented Winslow to himself, examining the shreds of clothingattached to the mangled remains beneath him.
For some reason Winslow did not immediately follow the girl but wentback and looked over the wrecked plane again.
He removed the magazine pistol from the impaled man's pocket andsearched about in the locker until he found a supply of cartridges.
The sky was beginning to brighten from approaching dawn now, and thesearchlight flashes were less brilliant. Winslow stood gazing upwarduntil the forms of the lower flying planes became visible. Suddenlyhe saw a disabled plane come somersaulting out of the air and fallinto a field quarter of a mile away. Evidently there were explosivesaboard, for a shower of flame, smoke and splinters arose where shefell.
The onlooking man hopped over the fence and ran toward the spot.There was little to be seen--a mere ragged hole in the sod. As heunconcernedly walked back he passed at intervals a propeller bladesticking upright in the soil, a broken can of rice cakes and awoman's hand.
The dawn had now so far progressed that the observer could see someorder in the movement of the air craft. He studied with fascinationthe last of the Japanese planes as they circled up toward theiraerial guide-post and moved thence in a steady stream to thenorthward.
The American planes which had been harassing and firing on theJapanese as they
circled for altitude, now turned and closed in onthe rear of the enemy and the fighting was fast and furious. Planeafter plane tumbled sickeningly out of the sky. But for Winslow thesight lasted only a few minutes, for the combatants were flying atfull speed and soon became mere flitting insects against the graylight of the morning sky.
Striding down the roadway past the mangled body of the Americangunner, Winslow reached the culvert.
Ethel Calvert was sitting on a flat stone at the edge of the water.She held her woven grass sandals in her hands and was washing themby rubbing the soles together in the stream.
As Winslow looked down at her in silence, the girl looked up andeyed him curiously. Neither spoke. The man stooped and washed hishands in the brook and then stepping up-stream a few paces he drankfrom the rivulet.
Returning he regarded the girl. She had placed her sandals beyondher on the grassy bank and sat with her bare feet in the shallowstream. Her head, buried in her arms, rested upon her knees. Theslender shoulders now shook convulsively and the sound of a sobescaped her. In the calmness of his cynicism, the man sat down onthe rock and placed a strong arm around the trembling woman.
In another moment, he turned in a gap through thefence and rode down upon the fleeing woman.]
"I know," he said, "it's a dirty damned mess, but we didn't startit."
After a time the girl raised her head. "I know we didn't start it,"she said; "but isn't there something we can do to stop it?"
"Well," he replied slowly, "I rather hope to have a hand in stoppingit, and perhaps you can help."
"How?"
"Surely you can do as much in stopping it as one of those poordevils that get smashed does in keeping it going," he went on.
"How?" she repeated.
"Well, that's quite a long story," he replied; "if you don't alreadyknow."
"I told you who I was."
"Yes."
"Well, the Regenerationists, along with many other sincere men andwomen in this country tried to prevent this war and are trying toget it peaceably settled now. The Japs don't want to die. They wanta chance to live. We've got a lot of vainglorious, debauched,professional soldiery that wanted to fight something, and nowthey're getting their fill. In the first place, there is no need ofwar and in the second place, when there is war, the same staminathat will make efficient humans for the ordinary walks of life willmake good soldiers. But money talks louder than reason. The rulingpowers in American government are a crew of beer-bloated politicianswho are in the pay of a cabal of wine-soaked plutocrats, and theAmerican people under such administration have become a race ofmental and physical degenerates. The Japs knew this or they wouldnever have invaded the country."
"What are you going to do about it? And what are you doing here nowwithin the Japanese lines?" asked Ethel when her companion paused.
"Oh, I am acting as my own war correspondent," he replied, smiling alittle.
"_Pat-a-pat, pat-a-pat_"--Winslow jumped up excitedly and clamberedto the top of the embankment.
Ethel noting his alarm, slipped her feet into her sandals and roseto follow him.
"Quick," he exclaimed, hurrying down the bank again. "It's Americancavalry."
"But let us go meet them," said the girl.
"No, never," replied Winslow, taking her by the arm and hurrying herinto the culvert. "You don't understand. As for you in kimo, yourreception would be anything but pleasant; and as for me, I'm anoutlaw with a price on my head."
Reaching the chink where the rocks had fallen out of the culvertwall, Winslow squeezed into it and pulled the girl down beside him.Carefully he crowded her feet and his own back so that theirpresence could not be detected from the end of the culvert.
"I'm afraid we left tracks on the bank, but we can at least diegame," he said, pulling his magazine pistol from his belt andhanding it to the girl, while he drew from his hip pocket the weaponhe had taken from the dead aviator.
"I hate these things," he said, "but when a man is in a corner andno chance to run, I suppose he's justified in using a cowardlyfighting machine."
They heard clearly now the hoof beats on the roadway above.Presently an officer rode his horse down to the stream at the headof the culvert. "Anything under there?" called a voice from above.
"Nothing doing," replied the other, peering beneath the archway.
"You're a fool sitting there like that," called a third voice."Company C lost two men back there from a wounded Jap under abridge."
The horseman urged his beast up the bank and the troop passed on.
For some hours the man and the girl remained in the culvert;meanwhile Winslow explained the Regenerationist movement, which wasnot as his enemies interpreted, a traitorous party favoring theJapanese, but only a group of thinkers who advocated principles notunlike those which had made the Japanese such a superior race eitherat peace or at war.
As she listened, it seemed to Ethel as if her own dream had cometrue, for here indeed was a man of her own blood with stamina ofphysique and mental and moral courage, who professed and practicedall she had found that was good among the people of her enforcedadoption and in addition much that, to her with her racial prejudicein his favor, seemed even better than the ways of Japanese.
In reply to her questions as to the cause of his outlawry, Winslowexplained that he and other leaders of his party had long been atswords' points with the conservatives who were in power and that theadministration, taking advantage of the martial frenzy of the war,were persecuting the Regenerationists as supposed traitors.
* * *
As the sun indicated mid-forenoon the dishevelled editor of theRegenerationist and his newly found follower sauntered forth andtook to the turnpike.
"We may as well be on the road," he argued. "The sooner the Americanpeople get the inside facts of this affair the sooner they willdecide to stop it, and it's forty-five miles to the nearest placewhere I can get in touch with my people."
Bareheaded, through the hot sun, they travelled rapidly along theturnpike, keeping a sharp lookout for occasional parties of cavalryand hiding in the fields until they passed. Sometimes they talked ofthe contrasted ways of life in Japan and in America, and againWinslow wrote hurriedly in his note-book as he walked.
About three o'clock in the afternoon they stopped in the shade wherea rivulet fell over a small cataract.
"Aren't you hungry?" asked Ethel, after they had drunk from thebrook.
"I don't know. I hadn't thought of it particularly," replied hercompanion. "Let's see, the last time I ate was in a farmhouse northof Houston. That was eight days ago. When have you last eaten?"
"Yesterday morning," replied the girl.
"Then you are probably hungrier than I am."
With their conversation and the murmur of the waterfall they hadfailed to detect the approach of two cavalry officers, who, walkingtheir tired mounts, had come up unheeded.
"Hey! look at the beauty in breeches!" called one of the approachingmen.
He rolled a bundle of "Regenerationists" on the wingof the aeroplane below.]
"Her for mine," returned the other.
"I saw it first--hie!" returned the first, drawing rein.
"Give it to me, you hog; you've got one!"
"All right, all right--go take it--maybe the bum will object,"laughed the first, as the unshaven Winslow advanced in front of thegirl.
"Run quick," called Winslow to Ethel. "They're too drunk to shootstraight."
The turnpike was inclosed by a high, woven-wire fence, and the girlobeying turned down the road. Her would-be claimant put spurs to hishorse and dashed after her, leaving Winslow covering the rearhorseman with his magazine pistol.
"Well," said the drunken officer weakly, "I ain't doing nothing."
"Then ride down the road the other way as fast as you can go."
The officer obeyed.
For a moment Winslow watched him and then turned to see Ethelclimbing over the woven-wire fence with the soldier trying to urge
his horse up the embankment to reach her.
Winslow started to run to the girl's rescue, but no sooner had heturned than a bullet sang past his ear. Wheeling about he saw theother cavalryman riding toward him firing as he came.
With lewd brutality calling for vengeance in one direction and a manfiring at his back from the other, Winslow's aversion to bloodshedbecame nil; and, aiming cool, he began firing at the approachingofficer.
It must have been the horse that got the bullet, for with the thirdshot mount and rider somersaulted upon the macadam.
Without compunction, Winslow turned and sprinted down the roadway.He saw Ethel dashing across the field, hurdling the cotton rows. Theofficer was racing down the road, seeming away from her, but inanother moment he turned through a gap in the fence and rode downupon the fleeing woman.
The athletic Winslow vaulted the six-foot fence with an easy spring,and tore madly through the obstructing vegetation.
The rider overtaking the woman, tried to hold her, first by the arm,and failing in that, he grabbed her by the hair. Winslow wonderedwhy she did not shoot him, and then he recalled that he was carryingboth weapons.
In another instant he was up with them and had dragged the man fromhis horse and flung him to the ground. The soldier kicked and swore,but half drunk, his resistance was of small consequence to hiswell-trained adversary.
"Here," called Winslow to the girl, who had tumbled down in a heapmore from fright than physical exhaustion, "come and get my knifeand cut the rein from the horse's bridle."
Thus equipped, the two strapped their captive's hands and one foottogether behind him.
"There now," said Winslow, as he relieved the officer of his weapon."Hop back to the bridge and look after your comrade. He fell on theturnpike a while ago and I'm afraid he hurt his head. We'll have tobe going."
"Shall we take the horse?" asked Ethel.
"No," replied her companion, beginning to throw clods at the animal,"we'll simply run him away. As for us, we are safer on foot, andwill in the long run make better time."
"You are not tired, are you?" he asked, as they turned into theroadway again.
"No," she replied, "only a bit tired and weak from my scare. How farhave we come?"
"Fifteen miles, perhaps; I really hardly know; we've beeninterrupted so much."
They made a long detour through the fields to avoid a group ofbuildings. Striking the road again, they soon came upon a slightrise of land that stood well above the level of the surroundingcountry.
"Are we not rather conspicuous here?" asked the girl.
"Well, rather," admitted her companion, pausing to look around; "butI guess we can see as far as we can be seen."
"Look! look!" called Ethel excitedly, jerking her companion's armand pointing to the south, where the flat horizon was broken by thederricks and tanks of the oil fields.
At first Winslow saw nothing, and then shading his eyes he sightedwhat looked like a great bevy of birds flying just above thehorizon.
Larger and larger grew the specks against the sky.
"They will be over us in fifteen minutes," said Winslow; "let's getup in that oak over there, where we can see without being seen."
Safely hidden by the enveloping foliage, the man and the girl nowwatched the approach of the planes. As they came over the oil regionthe planes began swooping near the ground and then rapidly risingagain.
"Its Japanese after the American cavalry, I guess," said Winslow. Ina few minutes black smoke belched forth at numerous points from thepetroleum works.
After a time a cloud of dust arose from a great meadow that spreadfor several miles to the north of the oil wells. A group ofaeroplanes hovered closely above the dust cloud and kept up thatperiodical swooping towards the earth.
"It's stampeding cavalry," said the sharp-eyed Ethel, "and theairmen are dropping bombs on them."
The cloud of dust came nearer and nearer until they could see theswift fall of the deadly missiles from the swooping planes and thehavoc wrought in the straggling ranks by the showers of pellets fromthe shrapnel exploding above their heads.
When the foremost of the cavalry troop were perhaps a quarter of amile from the observers, a commanding officer, who was riding wellin the lead, wheeled his horse, threw away his jacket, tore off hiswhite shirt and waived it frantically above his head.
An answering truce flag soon appeared from a plane above and thejaded horsemen, riding up, drew rein and waited.
The truce plane now swooped low and dropped a message fastened to awhite cloth. A soldier caught it and brought it to the officer, whosignalled assent.
Orders were called along the line, and the men filed by and piledtheir weapons in an inglorious heap.
After this most of the lazy circling planes rose and made off to theleft, while a few assigned to guard duty circled above theretreating cavalry, as they moved off slowly in the oppositedirection.
Two belated members of the troop, who had lost their horses, flungthemselves down to rest for a moment in the lengthening shadow ofthe oak tree.
"Oh Gawd!" said one, as he panted and mopped his forehead. "Oh Gawd!I was scared! That damned shrapnel bursting right over us and nochance to fight back or get away. It ain't no fair fighting likethat--you can't get at 'em."
"They've tricked us, they have," returned his companion. "Our ownairmen's up in Nebraska chasing the Japs that gave us the slip thismorning, and here these damn hawks come swooping in. I reckon it'sreinforcements from Japan. The transports that brought the firstbunch must have been back and got another load, and this time itseems to be regular soldiers--here to kill--the others were justdecoys."
"No, they ain't exactly decoys; they're here to stay and raisefamilies, and damned if that ain't what I'm going to do, if I everget out of this. Gawd! our loss must be something awful, and they'reat it yet. Look! see 'em over there by Beaumont like a flock ofcrows. The bunch that got us was just a few of them."
For a time both soldiers eyed the distant fighting.
"When I get out of this," continued the first speaker; "when I getout, I'm going to join the Regenerationists."
"What's that; peace cranks?"
"Yep; but it's more than that, it's health cranks and temperancecranks, and moral cranks, and socialist cranks, and every other kindof crank that believes in people being decent and livinghappy--health, quiet lives, instead of fighting and robbingand--boozing and abusing themselves and each other to death."
"Oh, Hell! don't preach just because you're scared," said the other,getting up.
"Call it preaching if you like, but believe me, I've been gettingletters from the folks back home, and my people ain't such poorstuff either, if I did join the army, and I want to tell you thatsuch preaching is getting damn popular lately. This fall's election,you know, and the way we've been done up here to-day, will have alot to do with the outcome."
"We'd better move," said the other, looking up. "That Jap up therethinks we're going back after our guns."
* * *
With the oil regions again in the hands of the vigilant Japanese,Winslow and Ethel found escape more perilous and difficult. But onthe third night they succeeded in getting through the lines andreaching Winslow's confederates, who were awaiting him near St.Charles, La. From hence they travelled by aeroplane to a secludedrailroadless valley in the heart of the Ozarks.
It was here that the secret printing plant of the _Regenerationist_had been established. Ethel knew nothing of printing or journalism,but a place was found for her in the department of circulation.
While news could be received via wireless, the paper and supplies,as well as the men who went to and fro from the secret printingplant of the outlawed publication, had to be transported by plane.Aviators with sufficient skill and daring for the task were hard tofind. Already at home in the air, it was only a few days until Ethelwas driving a plane on a paper route.
The seven hundred miles to Denver she covered one night, returningthe next. She starte
d out with half a ton of papers--seventy-twothousand copies--which in suitable bundles were dropped by the boyin the center of the triangular signal fires which local agentsbuilt at night in open fields.
Once she lost her load by a fall in the Kansas River, and once sheran out of fuel and held up a rich country house at the point of apistol and demanded the supply of automobile gasoline.
Worst of all, she was chased one night by a government secretservice plane. Despairing of outflying them, she got and held theposition directly above their craft, while the boy rolled atwo-hundred-pound bale of _Regenerationists_ over on the other'swing and sent the Federal airmen somersaulting into eternity.
But these stirring times did not last long. With the second Japaneseinvasion and the Orientals now established in two widely separatedsections of the country, the authorities at Washington soon accededto a truce, and one of the immediate results was abolition ofmartial law and re-establishment of a free press.
Throughout the summer, in the rice lands in the South, and the wheatlands of the North, the Japanese lived, harmless gardeners of theirnewly acquired possessions. But their gasoline tanks were full andthey carried sufficient conflagration bombs to have fired every cityfrom New Orleans to St. Paul, had the truce been broken by Americantreachery.
The _Regenerationist_, now removed to St. Louis, was again afull-sized newspaper. The party in power, supported by thecapitalistic and military classes, preached old-fashioned patriotismand with martial music and flying flags tried to enthuse the people.But the terror of the American soldiery in the unfair battle ofBeaumont had gone abroad throughout the land. The people feared thedraft for military service--they feared the firing of thecities--the poisoning of their water supplies and a hundred otherspectres which in the minds of a degenerate and servile citypopulation the presence of a successful aerial enemy had inspired.
The reform party of the _Regenerationists_ had by the fortunes ofwar achieved a tremendous growth. Their recruits came both from thebetter element who had thus been awakened from their lethargy, andfrom the cowardly rabble who supported peace because of the terrorin their hearts.
Gerald Stoddard, Chancellor of the University of Illinois, a bigsound man of clean mind and clean body, was chosen as the radicalpresidential candidate, and won with an overwhelming majority.
His election meant peace between the warring powers, and stronglikelihood of peace in the world for all time to come. It also meantother things. It meant the complete inversion of the American policyand the welcoming of science as the servant of mankind's largerneeds and not merely a flunky to the degenerate, luxury-loving few.
President-elect Stoddard, with masterful hand, began at once theorganization of the new administration. Among the appointees whom heearly announced was that of Stanley Winslow, to the position ofSecretary of Public Health.
In his telegram of acceptance, Winslow said:
"In signifying my intention of accepting the position of Secretaryof Public Health in your Cabinet, I wish to say that it will be mysole purpose to prove myself possessed of the larger patriotismwhich would defend our race against retrogression and annihilation,not by such antiquated and inefficient methods as immigrationrestriction or mechanical warfare, but by the improvement of therace itself."
And Ethel, too, sent a telegram. It read:
PROFESSOR AND MADAME OSHIMA, JAPANESE OCCUPATION, SOUTH DAKOTA.
As soon as travel is freely established come and visit us. When arethe children coming over?
ETHEL CALVERT WINSLOW, Care the _Regenerationist_.
St. Louis, Mo.
But of Komoru she said not a word. She couldn't forget theunfathomable look in his eyes. At times she even argued with herselfthat the poor fellow had loved her, but had feared to expresshimself because he believed (as he had stated in his scientificessays) that inter-racial marriages were uneugenic and henceimmoral.