“Hold-ups, pure and simple,” said Andrew Galpin indignantly. “Dana has drummed them up.”
“Can you trace them to him? Safely enough so that we can print it?” asked his chief.
“Print a libel suit against ourselves!” said the general manager, scandalized at this threat against one of the most rock-ribbed principles of a tradition-choked calling.
“All seven of ’em. Tying each one up to Dana. No comment. The public will supply that for themselves.”
The result more than justified the experiment. Dana & Dana, who had not considered the possibility of this simple riposte, hastily withdrew the four weakest suits, amidst no little public amusement. The other three, however, were pressed, causing a continual wear-and-tear of worry and expense, which was their object. Every charge against The Guardian’s exchequer now meant less fighting power later when the test should come.
Politics succeeded politics in Centralia, meantime. Hardly was the legislative campaign over when the presidential election began to loom. Herein Jeremy found fresh source of difficulty and indecision. By training and natural affiliation he was opposed to the party of the President. In so far as The Guardian was committed at all, it was Republican in national politics, and more Republican than anything else in State. Undoubtedly the popular thing to do would be to enter upon a virulent attack against all the presidential policies. Embree urged this. It would go far to reconstitute the paper with the German-Americans who had already instituted the nation-wide campaign of the hyphen in favor of the President’s opponent, taken by them on trust, as nothing was known of him in a world-political sense other than that he was a sturdy and fearless type of American. Possibly it was the very vehemence of the hyphenates that impelled Jeremy to a cool-headed course. Virulent he could not be; there was no venom in him. His first formal pronouncement upon the campaign was to the effect that the United States had never before had a choice between two alternative candidates of such high character and attainment; and this he heartily believed. The Guardian would support Hughes.3 But it served notice on all and sundry that it would be no party to rancorous, unjust, and un-American attacks upon a President whose path had been more beset with difficulties and perils than any leader’s since the day of Lincoln. In a State so violently preoccupied with political prejudices as Centralia, this course was regarded as weak. It lost support to The Guardian.
Throughout the ensuing campaign, Jeremy never seemed able to get his hands free from politics sufficiently to take up and develop a distinct attitude toward the deepening, threatening problems of the war. Embree deemed this fortunate. So did Galpin, upon whom the financial weight of the burden of conduct was heavily pressing. The fewer superfluous enmities The Guardian now stirred up, the better, to his way of thinking. Verrall was all for peace at any political price. But though the World-War was relegated to a place of secondary importance, in the main, it was not consciously neglected or belittled. Slowly there had grown up in The Guardian’s environment the feeling that, after all, here was the one paper which was honestly undertaking to present the news as it developed. This helped to hold its circulation, even among those who bitterly resented its editorial attitude on the submarine, the bombing of defenseless cities, and similar war enterprises. So the paper won through the summer and fall of 1916, losing but little under the secret unremitting pressure of Deutschtum. When the President was reelected, Jeremy Robson spoke out frankly and clearly the mind that was in him, calling for a united nation to be ready for what events might come upon it.
Back at the base of Jeremy’s hard-thinking brain there lay a lurking self-accusation. Had he not used the political stress as a convenient alibi? Had The Guardian truly stood on guard against the subtle and powerful inner war being waged across the hyphen? What of the promise, deadly serious despite its quaint Isaian twist, given to Marcia Ames? He sensed the looming conflict. He shrank from the terms of fulfillment to be exacted from him. But take up his pledge he must, when the hour came, though Hell from beneath were moved for him to meet him at his coming.
29
Dumba1 had gone. Von Bernstorff was preparing for departure. The atmosphere which they had created under the cloak of diplomatic privilege was malodorous with the taint of plottings, corruption, and chicanery. Grain elevators were developing extraordinary tendencies toward spontaneous combustion. Munitions plants were dissolving into fiery fragments, in numbers beyond the reckoning of insurance-risk experts. Strikes were materializing in the most unexpected places and for the most unexplained reasons. An informal morning call upon a peaceful and businessless “advertising agency”2 office in lower New York had laid bare to the heads of Government the extent of Germany’s official treachery, and inklings of it were beginning to leak out to the public. Strident politicians were filling the atmosphere with irresponsible clamor. The American representatives of Deutschtum were frantically explaining, denying, palliating, sulking, or plotting. No corner of the horizon but bristled with imminent lightnings. The earth underfoot trembled with the rumble of coming events. So the old year of 1916 which saw civilization fighting with its back to the wall, the great bubble of Russian might and Russian nationalism already dissipating, France staggering though still resolute, England facing terror and herself the more terrible in that grim confrontation, the lesser nations opponent to Germany crushed to a mere welter of blood, the Hun savagely certain of his triumph, and on this side of the ocean, the United States being slowly, steadily, unwittingly, powerfully drawn and bound by the gossamer threads of a nation’s psychology to the great purposes before it—so 1916 passed into 1917.
With it passed United States Senator Eugene Harter, of the State of Centralia. Time was when Senator Harter had been a useful figure in the Senate, rather by the possession of a vote than for any other and more forceful reason. But even his vote had been lost of late, for the exigencies of war-complications had terrified him and a nervous and overfed stomach had opportunely collapsed. The Senator fled to the tropics for surcease from troublous national questions and in search of health, and there encountered a mosquito in search of dinner. The mosquito being infected with one of the regional fevers, his victim passed, six weeks later, to that country where politics have been unknown since Lucifer’s insurgents met their historical downfall. Thus was left as heritage to the Senator’s already sufficiently bemuddled State a legacy of further complications, in that his successor must be elected in the early fall. Here was benign Fate moving to meet the welcoming smile of Martin Embree, well ahead of schedule. As soon as official decency permitted, he announced his candidacy for the senatorship. With his German following nothing, he believed, could defeat him. The path of glory extended, broad and unobstructed, before his eager feet to the Capitol at Washington; and thence—who could tell? His campaign prospered from the first.
Imagination could picture nothing less like a lion in Martin Embree’s path of progress than the old man who, on a harsh March night of 1917, sat in a scholar’s book-lined study, painfully writing. A bust of Goethe looked benignly down upon him. There were pictures on the walls of Schiller, of Lessing, of Beethoven, of Wagner, and the table was strewn with German publications. By every bond of the old man’s lonely life, he should have been at the Deutscher Club, for good news of the great war had come through private channels, and the brüdern were meeting that evening to celebrate, in good German drink, and hearty German song, and sturdy German sentiment, the promised triumph. Though an American since early boyhood, Professor George Brender had grown old in these associations. He was a lover of sound Rhenish wine and of the noble literature of the mighty German poets, and of that tenderest and loveliest and simplest of all music, the Lieder of the Fatherland, and above all, of the close comradeship of the German-American clan. Tonight he was giving them all up. He had been forced to the sternest decision of his life. Quite simply he wished that he might have died before his seventieth year had set a sword in his hand wherewith he must now sever himself from past loyalties and fellowsh
ips. It amounted to that. For, torn to small fragments in his waste-basket, was a letter upon which he had pondered for a week; a letter from another German-American, a man wise and informed and clear of vision and of spirit, and that letter summoned him, in the name of a lifelong friendship, now to declare himself. From the first reading, he had known how the decision must fall. The Germany of world-domination, of the “will to victory,” of the torn and dishonored “scrap of paper,” of terrorism and the slaughter of the helpless, and violation of humanity’s laws—that was not his Germany. To it he owed no real allegiance. As between it and his adoptive country he could no longer hesitate. He was an American. And as the first step toward justifying himself to his own soul, George Brender, Doctor of many degrees from Universities German and American, head of the German Department of Old Central, feared of its undergraduates for his caustic tongue, loved of its graduates for his leal and generous heart, had resigned from the Deutscher Club of Fenchester, with all that the action implies.
The gravest events of the cumulative international crisis did not more deeply stir Fenchester than the resignation of Professor Brender. Of such import to us human toads are the giant ripples upon the tiny puddles wherein we mightily splash! Rumors of the most violent and inspiring nature were passing from mouth to mouth before his letter was formally announced but verification of his intent had been wanting. Neither local paper had touched it, therefore. So the story grew and took on strange embellishments. Professor Brender had torn down the German flag from over the Deutscher Club door and resigned rather than be expelled. Professor Brender had called upon the Deutscher Club to rise and sing the “Star-Spangled Banner,” and had resigned in fury when they refused. Professor Brender had denounced the Club as traitors and been thrown out bodily by President Bausch. Professor Brender was going to sue the Deutscher Club. The Deutscher Club was going to sue Professor Brender. Gossip, untrammeled by the responsible restraints of print, was having a gala day over the affair. Yet all that the old German scholar had done was to resign, on the ground that his sympathies must henceforth be American and not German.
Now he sat in his study, sorrowful and lonely, seeking to stem the tide of rumor by a plain statement to the press. He wrote in German, for thus his deeper feelings best expressed themselves, then translated into simple and gracious English. This is the letter of Professor George Brender, as offered to and refused (for reasons of policy) by The Record, but published conspicuously by The Guardian:
I have grown old and gray in the service of the German tongue and German letters in America. One of the most vivid recollections of my childhood is the positive declaration of the German elders that I was not a German but an Amerikaner. On the other hand, the Americans were just as emphatic in their declaration that I was a German. Then the “hyphen” came to the rescue and I blossomed out into a German-American with a dicken Bindestrich (thick hyphen). Later I heard that the Kaiser had given it as his opinion that there were only Germans and Americans. The true Americans of my own country endorsed this point of view. So I concluded that I would have to make a place in the sun for myself.
And now, with the snow gathering on my hair, I am an American only: nothing more (if there be such) and surely nothing less.
In my American heart there is and always will be a shrine dedicated to that which came into my life from the soul of my father and mother. But they have long ago gone into the land from which no traveler returns and they have left a son who can love but one flag, although he has often nailed the Star-Spangled Banner to a staff of good solid German oak.
I am now an old man, whose work is almost done. I cherish but one more great hope—that on the stars and stripes of my country’s flag there shall ultimately be written the gospel which will redeem the world—the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.
When he had finished reading that letter, Jeremy Robson dropped his head between his doubled fists and lost himself in thought. It was not pleasant thought. Self-reproach was a burning element in it. Here was a man German-born, German-bred, German by every tie of life except the profounder bonds of conscience and patriotism, saying to the German-Americans of Centralia, in no uncertain tones, that which he, the editor of The Guardian, had had in mind to say—when the time should come. And, behold, the time had come! Any hour in which a man great of soul and clear of vision to meet the issue would speak out, was the appointed hour. He, Jeremy Robson, despite all his good intentions and brave promises, had procrastinated and paltered and dallied, while another, with far more to lose, had lifted the banner and set it up for a challenge to the disloyal, the unloyal, and the half-loyal. A sorry enough champion Jeremy Robson seemed in his own eyes! Doubt of his own courage, smothered under the pressing emergencies of the past few months, lifted up a strident and whimpering voice. And that was a doubt with which young Mr. Robson could not live on any terms.
When the threat of war had loomed, with the dismissal of the German Ambassador, The Guardian had broached the project of a State Council of Defense in a plainspoken but moderate editorial. Further, it had urged it upon the Governor who, with unaccustomed vacillation, had evaded and procrastinated, arguing that the time was not yet ripe, and that the plan would needlessly complicate matters. Naturally the more rabid German press fell foul of it with their accustomed shrillness. Rather than embarrass Embree at the time, Jeremy had refrained from following up his first editorial, but had pressed the scheme upon the Governor by private persuasions. Now, in the stir caused by Dr. Brender’s call to the flag, he would bring it out again. If necessary he would force it upon Embree, who could not well withstand a direct challenge to his patriotism. He sketched out three leaders on the topic; then put them aside and wrote the opening sentence of that editorial which was to declare unequivocally the status of The Guardian. Thus to declare was to declare war.
“The hyphen has two ends but no middle.”
Mild to the verge of banality, in wording. Yet the writer well appreciated the high-explosive potency of that aphorism. Even without what followed, it would be taken up as a defiance, the first open defiance since Magnus Laurens’s speech, to the German-Americans of the State. It would be the first step toward putting them on record. No one knew better than the owner of The Guardian that upon the editor who should first demand of the Centralia hyphenates that they declare themselves as for or against the United States, who should assume the initial responsibility for making the polyglot Commonwealth a house divided against itself in treacherous and deadly enmities, the united and deliberate vengeance of Deutschtum would fall in every practicable form of reprisal. Sharp as was the offense he had heretofore given, it was upon issues of minor import as compared to this. This was final.
When the emotions are deeply engaged, a practiced pen follows the thought of the writer almost without interruption. At the conclusion of his work, Jeremy read it over, altered a word or two, not in the way of modification as is the tendency of re-casting, but from weaker to stronger; then, after a moment’s thought, resumed his pencil and with extreme care and neatness—as a young officer going into desperate action might meticulously brush and set his uniform—inscribed the caption, “Under Which Flag?”
He then did an unaccustomed thing. He made a complete tour of The Guardian plant. Why, he could not have said, at the time. Afterward he realized. It was the pride and satisfaction of proprietorship feeding itself. Beneath it lay the unvoiced monition, warning him that it might not be for long. Nevertheless, Jeremy was happy. He had been in a defensive fight for a weary length of time. Now, at last, he had hit out from the shoulder.
Transferred into typewriting at the hands (two-fingered at the exercise) of Mr. Burton Higman, the editorial had gone upstairs. It returned, galley-proof, in the hands of Nicholas Milliken.
“This yours?” he asked of the editor.
“Yes. Why?”
“Didn’t carry any O.K. For today?”
“Yes.”
Milliken lingered.
“Well
?” said Jeremy sharply.
“Pretty hot stuff,” observed the Socialist. “It’ll start something.”
“It probably will.”
“Somebody pulled a couple of extra proofs on me.”
“Somebody? Who?”
“Dunno. Only I don’t want to be held responsible if they get out of the office in advance.”
The proofs were already out of the office and on their way to the Deutscher Club, a fact concerning which Mr. Milliken probably had his shrewd suspicions, had he cared to voice them. But the hyphen editorial was not destined to burst upon the German-American world of Fenchester that day. For, at noon, Max Verrall entered the editor’s den, his brisk eyes alight.
“Did the Governor get you?” he asked.
“No. What’s up?”
“State Council of Defense.3 He’s going to put it through. I’ve just seen him.”
“Good business!”
“Better call him up. He’ll tell you more.”
Jeremy did not get the Governor, but his private secretary verified Verrall’s report. “Yes. I’ve been trying to get you. The preliminary conference is set for tomorrow at ten.”
“Short notice,” said Jeremy, surprised.
“Call’s gone out over the wires. Will you come to the Capitol this evening to talk it over with the Governor?”
Jeremy assented. He imparted the good news to Andrew Galpin, whom he had sent for to run over the hyphen editorial. “The State Council of Defense is going through, Andy.”
“‘Smiling Mart’ has climbed off the fence, has he? Or did we push him off?”
Common Cause Page 28
