Common Cause

by Samuel Hopkins Adams

  Most conspicuous of the few who braved the local power of Deutschtum was Magnus Laurens. Less than a month after the declaration of war he spoke at a Manufacturers’ Association convention dinner in Bellair, the metropolis of the State. “America and the Future” was his topic. It should have been a safe topic; safe and sane, and in the hands of a less obstinately courageous partisan would have been. Indeed, for twenty minutes, it was. Then the speaker, setting back his massive shoulders, and with a significant deepening of his voice, challenged the sense of justice of the gathering, in these words:

  “What future can America hope for if the policies of nations are to be dominated by the nation to whom the sacredest pledge is but a scrap of paper when it conflicts with her blood-stained ambitions?”

  Gordon Fliess, the head of the great Fliess Breweries, was on his feet instantly. “Order!” he shouted. “The speaker is out of order, Mr. Chairman.”

  Echoes came from all parts of the banqueting hall, mingled with cries of dissent. Laurens raised his great voice, and dominated the tumult. It was a reckless speech; it was violent; it was, in parts, unfair. But it raised a voice in Centralia that arraigned the State before a court of honor for self-judgement; a voice too powerful to be silenced, too clear to be ignored.

  Yet, instantly, the silencers were at work. Their first attempt was through the toastmaster who laid an arresting hand upon the speaker’s arm, only to be shaken off with a violence which sufficiently warned him. Shouts, hoots, hisses, and cat-calls failed to make any impression on Laurens. Galvanized into action the reporters were taking down every word. But there descended upon them an emergency committee hastily constituted by Fliess, Mark Henkel, of the Henkel Casket Company, and other reliable Germans who not only warned them against publishing the proceedings, but also manned the telephones and issued their directions through owners, advertising managers, and editors regarding the event. Out of six dailies published in Bellair, only The Journal, already under suspicion because of its independence, reported the one sensational and interesting speech of the occasion. That single publication, however, gave the matter currency. The German dailies took it up virulently. The Journal was all but swamped with protests.

  Political matters had, on the day when the Laurens speech was published, brought Cassius Kimball, the managing editor and dominant spirit of The Journal, to Fenchester to see Governor Embree, whose fortunes the paper had early backed. After his call, the Governor sent for Robson. They had not seen each other since the war began. Martin Embree’s smile was that of a boy.

  “Well, Jem,” was his greeting. “We’ve got him this time.”

  “Who?”

  “Magnus Laurens. Didn’t you see this morning’s Bellair Journal?”

  “I’ve just been reading it.”

  “That kills Laurens.”

  “For what?”

  “For everything and anything in the State. Governor—Legislature—dogcatcher; he couldn’t get elected to anything, if this is handled properly.”

  “I’m giving his speech in full, in tonight’s paper.”

  “That’s it! And a slashing editorial to follow tomorrow. Eh?”

  “Slashing which way?”

  “Why, into Laurens.”

  “Not me,” declared Jeremy with more emphasis than grammar.

  “You wouldn’t back him up!” cried Embree.

  “Not in everything. There’s a good deal in that speech, though, that needed to be said; that was right.”

  “Jem, are you off your head?”

  “Never felt saner in my life.”

  “They always say that just before they begin to bite the paper off the walls,” smiled the other. “Come, Jem! Here’s our chance to put Laurens out of the game once and for all. Give me a column and I’ll do it myself.”

  “The chance’ll have to wait.”

  “Until when?”

  “Until he isn’t as near right as he is on this.”

  “Jem,” said the Governor suddenly growing grave, “why is it you’re always pussy-footing when Laurens is in question?”

  “I don’t like that word, Martin.”

  “Word the question to suit yourself, then.”

  “And I don’t like the question. It reminds me that the last time I pussy-footed was on an issue that Laurens met fair and square.”

  “And it licked him.”

  “There are worse things than being licked.”

  “That’s cant,” retorted Embree promptly. “When you’re licked politically, you’re through. You can’t get anything done. Oh, I don’t mean that I’m afraid to fight a losing fight when a big principle is involved. My record shows that, plain enough. But this war isn’t our fight.”

  “What’s your view on the war, Mart?”

  “It came in the nick of time.”

  “For what?”

  “For us. For our programme. We can put through pretty much anything we want in the line of reform legislation. As long as the war continues, the German vote will stand by us almost solidly, if only we play fair with them. Even men like Wanser and Fliess and the big business crowd that have always fought us are ready to swing into line, if we don’t rush things too hard. Why, Jem,”—the keen, fine face lighted up with enthusiasm,—“we can make Centralia the banner State of the country in social reform and popular rule.”

  “As to rushing things, isn’t this Corporation Control Bill a little rough?”

  “It’s meant to be. It’ll be toned down in conference. We made it pretty stiff to throw a scare into the P.-U. crowd. There won’t be anything we can’t do to those fellows, if the war keeps on long enough.”

  “What do you really think about the invasion of Belgium, Martin?” asked Jeremy abruptly.

  “I don’t like it.”

  “I hate the whole business.”

  “But I don’t like war, anyway. And this is part of war. I’m going to keep my hands off. Neutrality is our watchword,3 Jem. The President has given it to us, and I guess in international affairs we can afford to follow the President. Let Magnus Laurens and his gang do the fireworks. They’ll only burn their fingers.”

  “Belgium was neutral,” said Jeremy gloomily.

  “Let Belgium alone and ’tend to Laurens.”

  But this the editor of The Guardian would not do. He ignored the Manufacturers’ Association banquet incident editorially. Publication of the mere report of the Laurens speech, however, stirred up a volume of local displeasure chiefly on the part of the Deutscher Club element, and The Guardian received some pointed letters on the subject of neutrality.

  “Neutrality,” commented Andrew Galpin thoughtfully to his chief. “That’s good business for Mart Embree. He can preach neutrality and tickle the Germans at the same time, for our kind of neutrality in Centralia is sure hall-marked ‘Made-in-Germany.’ But how neutral are we going to be?”

  “There’s no such thing as ‘how neutral.’”

  “Oh, isn’t there! Look here, Boss; what’s practically every paper in this State, on this war, except The Bellair Journal?”

  “German. They’re not afraid to be.”

  “Suppose a paper is really neutral; gives both sides an equal show. What’ll it look like where all the rest are pro-German? What’d it look like in Germany?”

  “I get your point, Andy. It will seem to lean to the Allies by contrast.”

  “There you are! Well, what are we going to do?”

  “Play fair.”

  “Sure. But we can be cagey about it, can’t we?”

  “To what extent?”

  “Enough to live. I don’t want to see The Guardian mess up in a fight that’s none of our fight and get done up so bad we can’t help win the fight that is our fight. Let England lick Germany. Our business is to play the game here and lick the corporation crowd for legislative control of the State. Don’t you think it’s going to be a cinch, either, just because we’ve elected Mart Embree Governor!”

  “Expediency is a queer text for you, And
y.”

  “I’m all for expediency as against idiocy.”

  “What about butting into the Wade riot?”

  “That was for a friend. War, right there under my nose. The other thing is four thousand miles away. And I hope it stays there!”

  “Andy,” propounded his chief, “what do you really think of the Governor?”

  “‘Smiling Mart’?”

  “Is that an answer?”

  “Ay-ah. I always wonder about one thing. If you brushed that smile off quick, what’d be under it?”

  “He asked me to sit in his box at the convention meeting of the Federated German Societies.”

  “Oh, you got an invitation from the Societies, did you?”

  “Yes. Issued by Bausch as secretary.”

  “I bet he spit in the ink before he signed it. Going?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Sure.”

  “Expediency again, eh?”

  “Ay-ah. There’s no principle in turning down an invitation, even if it will do us some good!”

  “All right, Andy. I’ll go,” laughed the editor.

  He sat in the Governor’s box at the meeting. There was the same pan-Germanic atmosphere that there had been two years before, but magnified. The Imperial banners were more flamboyant, more triumphant. The verve and swing of “Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles,” was more martial; it defied the world. The speeches were more fiery, more challenging, more instinct with the fierce pride of a dominant nationalism; and again Jeremy felt resentfully, in the references to the adoptive republic, that tone of bland and intolerable condescension to a lesser people.

  The Governor’s box was that which Mangus Laurens had occupied in 1912. Sitting well back in it, Jeremy faced the high balcony. In the far corner a fat, steamy German in a fancy waistcoat roared out “Hochs!” of assent and applause to the speakers. But before Jeremy’s wistful vision he dissolved, giving place to another figure; a figure slender, gallant, boyish, erect. Martin Embree’s touch on his knee recalled Jeremy to realities.

  “Wake up, Jem! What ghosts are you seeing?”

  “None. Nothing,” muttered Jeremy, and stood while the fervid gathering sang thunderously “Die Wacht am Rhein.”

  23

  Step by step The Guardian followed the war through its pregnant early days. In presentation of the news, both Jeremy and Galpin strove to be conscientiously neutral. For Galpin, this was simple enough. It accorded with his creed, that the news should stand of itself and for itself and let the people judge. Jeremy took it harder. There were times when, in the security of his den, he fingered his pencil with a fierce and mounting resentment which cried for expression toward Germany’s savagery and terrorism. On the other hand, he knew that to incite prejudices, wrath, and hatred within America, and particularly within so divided a State as his own, was to thrust the other nation nearer to that hell’s caldron wherein Europe agonized. The President had prescribed neutrality. That, Jeremy recognized, was part of the statesmanship. He appeased his own soul with the argument that it was equally the part of honorable journalism.

  If he had thought by editorial silence to satisfy or even conciliate the propagandists of Deutschtum in the State, he was soon undeceived. The process of the absorption of Centralia by the German-Americans was swiftly progressing, and as a newspaper of influence, The Guardian came within the purview of their programme. Daily the mail deposited on his desk a swelling flood of proselytizing literature; pamphlets, reprints, letters to the editor from writers whom he had never heard of (and who in many cases had no existence) as well as from his own clientèle, excerpts from the German press, editorials from that great and malign force in American journalism1 who, already secretly plotting with Germany, was playing the game of Teutonic diplomacy by inciting fear and distrust of Japan and shouting for war upon and annexation of Mexico. He could not have published one twentieth of them. He did not publish one one-hundredth of them. Hardly a day passed without his being stopped on the street by some sorrowful or accusing or indignant subscriber who wished to know why The Guardian had not reproduced Pastor Klink’s powerful editorial on “The Crusader Spirit of Germany,” or how it happened that The Record printed Mr. Woeker’s letter on Belgian provocations while The Guardian hadn’t a word of it. Suspicion established itself in the editor’s mind that some person or persons were making daily and scientific analysis of his newspaper for the purpose of forcing propaganda upon it by the power of protest. He suspected, and with reason, the Deutscher Club.

  The matter of news soon became an irritant to the apostles of Deutschtum. To the layman, news is simple fact, the product of the world’s activities, finished and ready for the press. To the expert journalist news is a theme and the printed page is an instrument whereon he may render that theme by an infinite variety of inflections and with infinitely varying effect upon his public. Headlines and sub-heads alone may vitally alter the whole purport of an article not otherwise garbled. So long as Germany’s record was one of consistent victories, the course of Centralia newspapers was clearly marked. They had but to print the cables with captions appropriate to the facts, in order to appease their self-appointed masters, the German-American public. But Russia now made her sensational advance. Victory in the West was threatened by disaster in the East. Much ingenious and painful juggling of cable news was imposed upon the harassed journalistic fraternity of Centralia by this unfortunate development. Relegating the Russia campaign to nooks and corners of the inner pages and qualifying it by indeterminate or sometimes satiric headlines, was the most generally approved method. The Guardian, however, printed the news. It printed it straight, for what it was worth, and under appropriate captions. Somewhat to Jeremy’s surprise and more to his relief, the Governor had no criticism to make of this course.

  “So long as you stick to facts, we’ve got a good defense,” was his view. “They’ll kick. Of course they’ll kick. Let ’em. In time they’ll come to see that they’re really just kicking against the facts, not against The Guardian. Just now our German friends are pretty excited and touchy and nervous. If you could give ’em a little more show on the editorial page, while this Russian business is on, it’d help.”

  Kick the German-Americans it certainly did, by pen and voice. No less a person than Robert Wanser, who had maintained a mere bowing acquaintance with Jeremy since the Cultural Language Bill episode, took it upon himself to voice a protest to General Manager Galpin.

  “Why print this Russian claptrap at all?” he asked.

  “All the papers are carrying it,” answered Galpin.

  “Not so much of it, and not so prominently as The Guardian.”

  “We’re giving it what it’s worth as news, just as we give the German advances in the West.”

  “Everybody knows that it isn’t news. It is British fabrications, put on the tables to fool—er—influenceable newspapers.”

  “Influencable, eh?” said Galpin, annoyed. “Everybody knows, do they? You prove it to us, and we’ll print it, all right.”

  “You are making a mistake,” pronounced the banker severely. “For a newspaper to take up the British side is very suspicious.”

  “Bunk! The Guardian’s been square, and you know it. But we’re not going to stand for being censored by a lot of organized letter-writers.”

  “A(c)h, censored!” The banker’s guttural almost emerged upon the troubled surface of speech. “The censoring is inside your editorial office, if anywhere. You refuse to publish our letters—”

  “‘Our’? Have you been writing letters?”

  “I have sent you letters.” Mr. Wanser’s face became red.

  “Funny! I don’t recall any. Sign ’em?”

  “They were signed,” returned the other, with an effort at loftiness.

  “With what name?” demanded Galpin bluntly.

  “I am not here to be cross-examined by you.”

  “You started this. And now you want to duck it. Nothing doing! You let out what we�
��ve suspected; that a lot of those letters are machine-made, and sent in signed with fake names or with real names stuck on as a blind for some committee. That don’t go, in The Guardian. We’ve had too much stuff put over on us.”

  The banker’s dignity dissolved in wrath. “Don’t you get fresh with me, young man. I guess you and your boss, too, are going to learn something one of these days! Going out of your way to insult the best citizens in the State every time your dirty, pro-English paper—”

  “Oh, you make me sick!” said Galpin, and marched away, leaving Wanser brandishing a denunciatory fist at nothing.

  The split between the Germans and The Guardian imperceptibly widened, as time went on, through minor incidents, arguments, and abortive attempts at influence. Seizing upon its opportunity, The Record accepted the whole programme of local German censorship, published nothing that could possibly offend, trimmed its news to the prejudices of the dominant element, and by these methods cut in upon its rival’s local circulation. Verrall, however, reported that as yet there was nothing to worry about, while at the same time earnestly advocating an inoffensive foreign news policy for The Guardian. So 1914 passed into 1915, and the paper held its own.

  On a mid-April day of 1915 there appeared upon an inner page of The Guardian, an item of such overwhelming importance, that when the editor and owner read it, all other news of the day receded and blurred into a dull, colorless mist of insignificance. The article stated briefly that Miss Marcia Ames, cousin of Miss Letitia Pritchard, of 11 Montgomery Street, who was well known to Fenchester society, not only for her charm and beauty, but also as being the only lady intercollegiate golf-player in the country, had left Berne, whither she had gone after the breaking-out of the war, and was visiting friends in Copenhagen. Her many and admiring friends would be glad to learn, etc., etc., in the best society-reportorial formula. After thoroughly absorbing that paragraph into his inmost being, Jeremy sent for Buddy Higman, who had now taken on the additional duty of marking each day’s paper, from the assignment book, article by article, with the name of the writer of each.