Blood and Iron

by Harry Turtledove

  “Here is something I want you to think about, ladies and gentlemen: in the years since 1852, the Democratic Party has won every presidential election save two. Every schoolchild knows that, but I am going to take a moment of your time to remind you of it once again. In 1860, the voters sent Abraham Lincoln to Washington, and he saddled us with a war, and a losing war to boot. Twenty years later, having forgotten their lesson, the people elected James G. Blaine, who gave us another war—and another loss.

  “When war came around yet again, the United States were ready for it. Democratic presidents had made this country strong. Democratic presidents had found us allies. And, thanks to the people, we had a Democratic president at the helm of the ship of state.” He preened to remind his audience who that Democratic president was.

  “We won the Great War, with God’s help. We paid back half a century and more of humiliation of the sort no great nation should ever have had to endure. And now, the editorial writers say, now the people are grown tired of the Democratic Party. They say we were good enough to win the war, but aren’t good enough to govern in time of peace. They say the Socialists deserve a turn, a chance.”

  Roosevelt looked out over the crowd. “Well, let them say whatever they please. It’s a free country. Thanks to the Democratic Party, it’s stayed a free country—and, I might add, a victorious country as well. And now I am going to tell you what I say. Ladies and gentlemen, I say that, if you elect a Socialist president in 1920, the mischief he will do the United States will make Lincoln and Blaine’s mischief look like what a couple of skylarking boys might do.”

  “That’s right!” Morrell shouted at the top of his lungs. The whole enormous crowd was shouting, but Roosevelt caught Morrell’s voice and then caught his eye. They’d met several times in Philadelphia, and had always got on well: two aggressive men who both believed in taking the fight to the enemy.

  “Here in Leavenworth, you’ve already seen how the Socialists have gone after the War Department budget with a meat axe,” Roosevelt said. “They’ve done the same thing to the Navy Department, too. If they control the presidency as well as Congress, we’ll be lucky to have a War Department and a Navy Department by the time we can vote them out of office. Here in front of me, I see one of our nation’s most distinguished soldiers, Colonel Irving Morrell, the leading exponent of barrel warfare in this country. I know the pittance on which Colonel Morrell has had to operate since the election of 1918. Like a good patriot, he soldiers on as best he can with what he is allotted, but I know, as you must know, he could do far more if only he had more with which to do it. Isn’t that the truth, Colonel?”

  “Yes, sir, that is the truth,” Morrell said loudly. Agnes stared at him with sparkling eyes. She might have imagined a great many things when coming to hear Roosevelt, but surely she hadn’t imagined the president would praise Morrell for everyone to hear. Morrell hadn’t looked for any such thing himself.

  Roosevelt said, “There you have it, ladies and gentlemen, straight from the horse’s mouth. If you want to keep the United States strong, vote for me. If you don’t care, vote for Sinclair. I thank you.”

  He got another ovation as he stepped down from the platform. Then, to Morrell’s further surprise, Roosevelt beckoned to him. “How’s that test model doing, Colonel?” the president asked.

  “Sir, it’s a great improvement over the barrels we used to fight the war,” Morrell answered. “It would have been better still if we’d been able to build a real barrel to that design, not a lightweight machine armored in thin, mild steel.”

  “You will have such a machine, Colonel,” Roosevelt boomed. “If I have anything to say after this November about how the War Department spends its money, you will have it.”

  “That would be wonderful, Mr. President,” Morrell said, and then, “Sir, I’d like to introduce to you my fiancée, Agnes Hill.”

  “I’m very pleased to meet you, Miss Hill.” Roosevelt bowed over her hand. “I want you to take good care of this man. The country will need him for a long time to come.”

  “I’ll do my best, your Excellency,” she said. “It’s a great honor to meet you.”

  “Fine, fine.” The president smiled at her, then turned away to talk to someone else.

  Agnes had stars in her eyes. “How about that?” Morrell said, grinning. He hadn’t really expected to get a chance to talk with Roosevelt, nor to be able to introduce Agnes to him. Because of his previous acquaintance with the president, he’d hoped something along those lines might happen, but he’d spent enough time playing poker to understand the difference between hope and likelihood. Every so often, though, you got lucky.

  “How about that?” Agnes echoed. “I didn’t know you were such an important fellow.” She studied Morrell. “But even the most important fellows, from everything I’ve heard, ask a woman if she’d like to be their fiancée before they introduce her that way.”

  “Oops,” Morrell said, which made Agnes burst into laughter. Gulping a little, he went on, “I guess the only way I can make amends is by asking later instead of sooner: would you like to be my fiancée, Agnes?”

  “Of course I would,” she answered. “You’ve taken your own sweet time getting around to finding out, but I didn’t worry about it too much, because I always figured you would.”

  “Always?” Morrell asked, still nervous but happy, too. “How long is always?”

  “Ever since we met at that first dance,” Agnes Hill said. “I thought you were a catch, and I figured I ought to be the one who caught you.” She raised an eyebrow. “Now what are you snickering about?”

  “Only that I’ve had my eye on you since that dance where we met, too,” he said. “That comes out fair and square, doesn’t it?”

  “It sure does,” Agnes said. “I think everything will work out fine.”

  “You know what?” Morrell said, and she shook her head. “I do, too,” he told her. He meant every word of it. She knew what being a soldier’s wife was like, and knew it the best possible way: she’d been one. She’d been through the worst that could happen to a soldier’s wife—she’d been through it, she’d come out the other side, and she was willing to try it again. What more could he ask for?

  Only after all that went through his mind did he stop to wonder what sort of husband he was liable to make. Agnes might know what she was doing heading into this marriage, but he didn’t. He had no clue; marriage wasn’t part of the curriculum at West Point. Maybe it should be, he thought. It might not produce better officers, but was very likely to produce happier ones.

  Lucien Galtier looked up into the heavens. He got a glimpse of the sun, which he rarely did these days. It scurried along, low in the south, and soon ducked behind the thick gray clouds that were the dominant feature of the sky as October gave way to November.

  Drizzle started spattering down. Soon, he judged, it would be turning to sleet, and then to snow. “Do your worst,” he said. “Do your worst, or even a little worse than that. You did not do it during the harvest, and you cannot hurt me now. Go ahead. I could not care in the least.”

  “Do you always talk to the clouds, Papa?” asked Georges, who must have come out of the barn while Lucien was mocking the weather for missing its chance.

  “Always,” Lucien replied solemnly. “It is, I am convinced, my best hope of getting an intelligent answer around these parts.”

  “Truly?” Georges glanced toward the farmhouse. “Could it be that I should tell my chère maman of your view in this matter? I am sure she would be most interested to learn.”

  “I am sure that, if you breathe even a word of it to her, I will break open your head to see if it is altogether empty or just almost,” Lucien said. “If I had to guess, I would say you have nothing at all in there, but I could be wrong: you might have some rocks. No sense, certainly.”

  “Mais non, certainement pas,” Georges said. “And do I take after you or after my mother in my senselessness?”

  “I will take after you in
a moment—with a hatchet, by choice,” Galtier said. “Have you done everything with the livestock that wants doing?”

  “Oh, no, not at all,” his son answered. “I am always in the habit of quitting work when it is but half done.”

  “What you are in the habit of is driving me mad,” Lucien said. Georges bowed, as if at a considerable compliment. Just then, a motorcar came to a halt beside the farmhouse. Lucien laughed. “Look—here is your brother-in-law. See if you can drive him mad. You have not done it yet, and not from lack of trying.”

  Dr. Leonard O’Doull seemed to unfold like a carpenter’s rule as he got out of the Ford. Seeing Lucien and Georges, he waved to them and came sauntering over. If the cold, nasty drizzle bothered him, he gave not a sign. “How does it go?” he called around the cigar in his mouth.

  “It goes well,” Lucien answered. “And with you, how does it go?”

  “Well enough,” his son-in-law said. “Today is Saturday, so I have only a half day to put in at the hospital. I thought I would stop by and say good day before I drove up to town, to Nicole and little Lucien.”

  “And I am glad to give you good day as well,” Lucien said. He glanced toward Georges. They both nodded, ever so slightly. No day on the farm was a half day. Leonard O’Doull was a first-rate fellow. The longer Galtier knew him, the more he thought of him. But one thing O’Doull was not and could never be: a farmer. He did not understand—by the nature of things, he could not understand—how hard the folk of his family by marriage worked.

  Georges obliquely referred to that: “With but a half-day’s work today, how can it go only ‘well enough’ for you?”

  “Well, for one thing, what does the last day of October mean to you?” O’Doull asked.

  Georges scratched his head. So did Lucien Galtier. At last, Lucien said, “It is the even of All Saints Day: all very well, but not a holiday to speak of alongside Easter or the festival of our Lord’s birth.”

  “The Eve of All Saints Day.” O’Doull nodded. “We call it Halloween in English. We have a custom of celebrating it with costumes and masks and carved pumpkins and parties—and sometimes pranks, too. It is a jolly time, a time of pretended fright.”

  “We do not do this here in Quebec,” Georges said.

  “I know,” O’Doull said. “I miss it.”

  “Halloween.” Galtier let the English word roll off his tongue. “I remember, when I was in the Army, the English-speakers had this holiday. But Georges is right: we do not do this in Quebec. I would be amazed if I had thought of it three times in all the years since I came home to my farm.”

  O’Doull looked unhappy. “Last year, I carved a pumpkin into a jack-o’-lantern”—another English word—“and put it in the window with a candle inside. I won’t do that again. All my neighbors thought I was a pagan. It’s a good thing Bishop Pascal knows about the custom, or there would have been a lot bigger stink than there was.”

  “You did not tell me about this then,” Lucien said. “Nicole did not speak of it, either.”

  “I think we both felt foolish about it,” O’Doull said. “And it was my own fault.”

  “I know men who go their whole lives without ever saying those words,” Lucien remarked.

  “They aren’t doctors.” His son-in-law spoke with great assurance. “Every doctor in the world knows he has buried patients he should have saved.”

  “It could be so,” Galtier said. “If it is so, why would any man want to become a doctor?”

  “Because we also save patients who would be buried without us,” Leonard O’Doull said. With what sounded like considerable effort, he changed the subject: “And Tuesday is also a day different here from what it will be in the United States.”

  “And why is that?” Lucien’s acquaintance with American holidays had begun only with the U.S. occupation of Quebec. He knew it remained incomplete.

  “Because on Tuesday, we will vote for our president,” O’Doull replied, “and, for the first time in longer than I have been alive, I think the election will be very close.” He kicked at the dirt. “And here I am, a resident alien in the Republic of Quebec. All I can do is wait to see what my country does.”

  “How can the Americans not elect Roosevelt again?” Georges asked. “Behind him, they won the war. Without him, who knows what might have happened?”

  “You have reason,” O’Doull said. “But the war has been over almost three and a half years now. For me, the war was very fortunate, for without it I would not have met Nicole—nor any of you other fine Galtiers, I make haste to add. But many were hurt, and many who now can vote lost loved ones in the fighting. And there has been endless labor strife since. People may vote for Roosevelt, certainly. But then again, they may not. And no one has ever won a third term as president of the United States.”

  “For whom would you vote, if you were back in the United States?” Galtier inquired.

  “I am not really sure,” O’Doull said slowly. “With Roosevelt, I know exactly what the country would be getting. If the Socialists had run Debs again, I would also know what we were getting. But with Sinclair, it is harder to tell. He has the energy of a young man, and, from what I can tell from up here in Quebec, a lot of people think he would lead the United States in a new direction. Maybe that would be good. As I say, it is hard to be sure.”

  “It will be as it will be,” Galtier said with a shrug. “However it is, the United States will still be a large country and the Republic of Quebec a small one. I hope you are not unhappy, having left your country to make your home here.”

  “Unhappy?” O’Doull shook his head. “It was only a lifetime ago that my ancestors left Ireland for the United States. We have pulled up stakes before, the O’Doulls. I have done it again, that’s all.”

  Galtier scratched his head. His ancestors had lived not merely in Quebec but on the ground on which he stood since the seventeenth century. Even having his daughter remove to Rivière-du-Loup seemed an uprooting. He could not comprehend how O’Doull talked about one place as if it were good as the next. For him, that would have been a manifest—indeed, an unimaginable—untruth. His son-in-law took it for granted, as a fact of life.

  O’Doull said, “Well, I had better head back to town, or Nicole will wonder what has become of me. I hope you get the chance to come up before too long, before the weather gets too bad.” He touched the brim of his fedora, then hurried back to his automobile. It roared to life. He drove away.

  “American politics,” Georges said with a shrug. “I care very little for American politics.”

  “Had you said this in 1910, you might have shown some sense,” his father replied. “In 1910, I knew very little of American politics, but they were important to us even then. Saying it now…well, I chaffed you before for senselessness. If American politics were different, would we have had a war? If American politics were different, would we be living in the Republic of Quebec? If American politics were different, would you have the nephew you have?”

  “If American politics were different, I would still have a father who lectures me more than the schoolmasters ever did,” Georges said. Lucien made an exasperated noise, but then started to laugh. Georges was as he was. The right wife might whip him into shape, but, on the other hand, he was liable to stay as he was even married to the most somber girl in the neighborhood.

  Not that Lucien and Marie intended saddling Georges with the most somber girl in the neighborhood. For one thing, Béatrice Rigaud would bring only a small bridal portion with her. And, for another, Lucien did not think it right to do such a thing to his fun-loving younger son. That reason, though, ran in second place behind the other.

  Halloween came and went, unremarked, uncelebrated. Galtier wondered whether Dr. Leonard O’Doull carved a pumpkin for his own family. He would not put it in the window this year—he’d made that very plain.

  Two days later, the American elections also came and went. They produced no fanfare that reached Galtier’s farm. Had Lucien not had a
n American son-in-law, he would not have known on which day they took place. Eventually, he would find out who won: if the news hadn’t got to his farm before then, he’d learn when he went into town.

  Marie said, “I have heard that not all American women can vote: it is for them, poor dears, as it was for us in the days before the Republic.”

  “I do not know anything about whether American women can vote,” Lucien replied. He remained unconvinced that granting the franchise to the women of Quebec had been the best idea in the history of the world. But he’d discovered that saying as much to his wife landed him in hotter water than anything this side of announcing he’d taken a mistress. He knew several men who had taken mistresses, none of them rash enough to announce it.

  “I hope the Americans elect the Socialist,” Marie said. “They will be calmer if they do.”

  “I think they will return Roosevelt,” Lucien declared. “Even if he is a Protestant, he is a very great man. And Socialists, from everything I have heard, do not believe in le bon Dieu at all.”

  He thought that would change his wife’s mind; she cared far more for the trappings of piety than did he. But she said, “Perhaps le bon Dieu believes in them,” a reply so oracular, Galtier had not the faintest idea how to respond to it.

  Hal Jacobs said, “What was that song Lord Cornwallis’ band played when he had to surrender to the Americans at Yorktown?”

  “I haven’t the faintest notion,” Nellie Jacobs answered. Her schooling had stopped early. Not only that, Clara was trying to twist out of her arms and land on her head on the bedroom floor. That kept Nellie from thinking as clearly as she might have done.

  “Now it will bother me,” Hal said. “It is something I used to know, and I am not such an old man that I should be forgetting things.” He smiled at Clara. “If I were such an old man, I would not have a little daughter now.”