Common Cause

by Samuel Hopkins Adams

  Jeremy frowned. “Nobody pushes Martin Embree.”

  “All right, Boss,” conceded the other good-humoredly. “He can certainly push himself ably when the occasion arises. I reckon this is part of his push for the senatorship.”

  “Anyway, Andy, you’ll admit that this State Council move proves where he stands on Americanism.”

  “I’ll admit that,” said the cautious Galpin, “when I see it—in The Guardian.”

  “He’ll be all right,” said his supporter with conviction, “now that the issue is getting clear.”

  “What about your editorial, now?”

  “Well, what about it?”

  “Hadn’t that better wait a day or two? You don’t want to muddy up the water unnecessarily. If the State Council move is on the level, your hyphen stuff will only make hard sledding for Embree.”

  “That’s right, too. I’ll put it on the hold-over hook.”

  Arriving at the Executive Office at seven-thirty, Jeremy was conscious of effort in the Embreean smile, conscientiously directed upon him. That fine wave of the gubernatorial hair, too, so suggestive of uplift in its stressful rise from the broad, even forehead, seemed to droop a bit. Smiling Mart Embree looked like a man who has passed the night in a sleepless torment of the mind.

  “Any late news on the wires?” he asked anxiously.

  “A little. All of one kind.”

  “Pointing toward war?”

  “War,” said the editor gravely.

  “There must be some way out!” The Governor lost himself in a maze of thought. “This is a terrible thing!” he muttered bitterly.

  “It was bound to come.”

  “A terrible thing,” repeated Embree, “for me.”

  “For you?” Jem stared, startled at the out-cropping of egotism.

  “For all of us,” hastily amended the other. “For the Nation.”

  “I’m not so sure. It may be that we needed it, to save us from ourselves.”

  “What is one to do? How is a man to tell what course he can safely take?” said the Governor, pursuing his own line of thought.

  “It isn’t exactly a time for Safety First, is it? There’s only one course for a decent American.”

  “That’s so like you,” fretted the other. “You see your own side and nothing else.”

  “What else do you see?”

  “I see this great State of Centralia which has chosen me for its chief official,” retorted Embree with a touch of that exaltation which, his enemies sneered, invariably crept into his speech when it dealt with his political self. “I see it torn and racked from end to end, and aflame with hatreds, dissension, and distrust. I see all the long fight that I’ve made—that we have made—against corporation control of the State gone for nothing in the new political issues. Have you thought of that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Not matter!”

  “Not if we go to war. Nothing else matters then but ourselves and Germany. We’ve got to think of the country as a whole and of ourselves just as a part of it.”

  “Oh, I’m for the country!” proclaimed Embree. “Of course! But I’m not for this war if it can be avoided.”

  “It can’t be.”

  “Not by any such hot-headed, reckless course as The Guardian is laying. You’re doing everything but yell for war and the blood of your own neighbors.”

  Jeremy’s lip protruded obstinately. “Is that the view you take of it? We’ll do more tomorrow.”

  “For God’s sake, Jem! What has got into you? How can you commit yourself to such a policy of savagery?”

  “This isn’t going to be a polite war, Martin. But if I’m a savage, at least I’ll be an American savage; not a German savage. That’s all we’re committed to in The Guardian.”

  “That’s too much. It isn’t the time for it.”

  “Not when every national right has been violated?”

  “Forget your newspaper rhetoric and listen to common sense. Jem, will you be discreet for once in your editorial life?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “This is deadly serious. Listen: Congress is going to hear from the country. Appeals are going to be made—”

  “Which country?” asked Jeremy with intent.

  “Try to be reasonable about this,” pleaded his friend. “These appeals are going to pour in on Washington, to stop while there’s time.”

  “More German propaganda. You’ve answered my question.”

  “The demand of a peaceable people for peace,” controverted the Governor heatedly. “At the same time the newspapers all over the country will be urged to use their influence toward keeping us out of a war that can mean nothing but injury to their business. We’ll show that blundering fool in Washington—”

  His visitor stiffened perceptibly in the chair. “Are you speaking of the President of the United States?” he demanded.

  “Oh, between four walls,” Embree deprecated. “Since when did you swing around to the Schoolmaster?”

  “Since he gave the word to close ranks.”

  “He’s never given it. His whole attitude is a big bluff. The only danger is that the hot-heads will make capital of it. He doesn’t intend to go through with it.”

  “You’re wrong there.”

  “If he does, he can’t do it. Congress has the final word. And Congress is responsive to the newspapers. Now, Jem, when the arguments from the other side come to The Guardian—”

  “We’re being swamped with ’em already; machine-made letters to the editor, fresh every hour from the Deutschtum factory.”

  “Give them a fair show. Publish them.”

  “I’ll see them damned first!”

  “Neutrality!” commented the Governor acidly.

  “War!” retorted the owner of The Guardian.

  With an obvious effort “Smiling Mart” summoned his beam from out the gloom and set it on guard again.

  “When it comes to the pinch you’ll find me as ready to fight as anybody,” he asserted. “The only difference between your position and mine is that I want to be perfectly sure it’s right and inevitable.”

  “The State Council of Defense is a long step in the right direction.”

  “It mustn’t be too long a step, though,” the Governor pointed out. “It’s defense, not offense, that’s our purpose. By the way, do you know that there is an old act of the Legislature empowering the Governor to appoint such a body?”

  “Fine!” said Jeremy heartily. “Then you can do the whole business at tomorrow’s meeting.”

  “Yes; but I thought it advisable to have the formal approval of a State-wide representative body, such as I’ve called together, for the moral effect—and the political,” he added.

  “You’ve made it non-partisan?” asked Jeremy.

  “Yes, yes! Of course! And representative; representative of all classes. To make it so I’ve been obliged to include some of the German element.”

  “Certainly. That’s all right, as long as they aren’t the ‘Deutschland über Alles’ lot.”

  “Some of them, I’m afraid, don’t like you much; or you them. Now, Jem, don’t go off at half-cock,” he added persuasively as the other looked up at him with a gleam of discomposure. “I can’t ignore my best political friends and supporters, can I? And you know we have no solider, more influential citizens than our Germans.”

  “But what about their loyalty?”

  “Don’t expect too much of them right now. They’ll be all right when the test comes.”

  The editor thought it over.

  “Yes; I get your point. If you go back on ’em now they’ll slaughter you for the senatorship.” In spite of himself, “Smiling Mart” Embree winced. “Well, a few of ’em in the conference, or even on the council, can’t do any harm; in fact, it may serve to bring ’em around, unless they’re too far gone. A lot depends on whom you appoint chairman.”

  “What’s your idea on
that?”

  “Magnus Laurens.”

  “Why a corporation grafter?” challenged the other, eyeing him narrowly; “and one that’s always fought us and may fight us again for the senatorship?”

  “He isn’t a grafter.”

  “He’s an associate of grafters.”

  “And if he has fought us, he’s fought fair. Also, he’s one hundred percent American. That’s the big consideration in this matter. But if you won’t stand for him, how about Corliess, of the Lake Belt Line. Cassius Kimball vouches for him.”

  Governor Embree stared. “First a water-power baron and then a public-utilities manipulator,” he commented. “You’re chumming up with some queer friends, for a radical, Jem.”

  “They’re no friends of mine,” retorted the editor. “You know that. But they’re men we can trust to be right on this war question. However, anyone will do, provided he’s big enough, loyal to the bone, and representative.”

  “Leave it to me, Jem,” said the Governor with his warmest smile.

  Returning to his den for the purpose of preparing an editorial boosting the new project as an accomplished fact, Jeremy saw a light in the business office. Amid ledgers and files of The Guardian sat Andy Galpin, figuring profusely upon sheets of paper.

  “Hello, Boss!” was his greeting. “I’m trying to find out where we stand now.”

  “What do you make of it?”

  “Hard sledding; but we’ll pull through. Always supposing that the dam’ Botches”—thus, now, did the general manager at once anathematize and Americanize that element whose solidity and good citizenship all political parties so warmly and officially endorsed—“don’t lift too much of our advertising, in return for your few well-chosen remarks upon the hyphen. They’ll be after us hot-foot, sure.” After a pause he added: “They’ve been working on ‘Smiling Mart.’”

  “It hasn’t done them much good so far.”

  “On Verrall, too. He’s so far up in the air that his nose is turning blue. And something’s up in the press-room. I think it’s that big gorilla, Girdner. He’s a Botch; belongs to their club. Milliken; he’s another trouble-hunter. The Socialist. Wish I could pin something on him and fire him. Well, you’ve got troubles enough without that. Sorry I spoke. . . . Have a pleasant evening with the Governor?”

  “Pleasant enough.”

  “Hope the morning will be as good,” retorted Galpin, and hunched himself back into his calculations.

  30

  The hyphen editorial spent the following morning on the hook. Its author gave it an affectionate and yearning glance as he passed early to his desk to touch up his substitute leader on the State Council of Defense. Once fully determined upon the casting of his verbal bomb, he was eager for the explosion and the resultant battle which should end the armed truce. But, as Andrew Galpin had said, fair play demanded that he hold off now, lest he hamper the development of the Governor’s new plan. Any time was suitable for his challenge. Meanwhile copies of it from the stolen galleys had been circulated among the elect of Deutschtum, and a synopsis taken to Governor Embree. He had bidden his informants not to worry. There would be no occasion for the publication of that screed. A plan was already completed which would take care of Mr. Robson. It was observed that the Governor looked weary but optimistic.

  Short though the notice had been, the invited conferees responded to the official call for a meeting upon the State Council of Defense plan, almost unanimously. It was a curiously assorted gathering that surrounded the long table in the council room, when Jeremy Robson arrived, a trifle late from his work of re-casting the day’s page. That it was broadly representative was beyond denial. Yet as the newcomer reckoned it up, he felt a more than vague uneasiness.

  Appropriating the nearest vacant chair he found himself between a down-state lawyer and politician named Lerch on one side, and Cassius Kimball, of The Bellair Journal, on the other. Next to Kimball sat State Senator Bredle from Embree’s county, beyond him a lake-district dairyman of indeterminate political sympathies, and then Gordon Fliess, of the Fliess Brewing Company, the Lieutenant-Governor, an imposing and obsequious puppet of the Governor’s, and Ernst Bauer of the Marlittstown Herold und Zeitung. Bunched at the upper end of the table were an ill-assorted trio of The Guardian’s enemies, Montrose Clark, Judge Dana, and that anomaly of Teutonic type-reversion, Robert Wanser, grandson of the Young Germany of ’48.

  In the other direction, the prospect was no less puzzling nor more reassuring. Half a dozen men from the Southern Tier, a section unfamiliar to Jeremy, suggested a predominance of the Swedish type, which, in Centralia, meant anti-war sentiment. Concerning the next figure, tall, plethoric, ceremonially garbed, there was at least no uncertainty. Emil Bausch’s local letter-writing bureau of German propaganda1 was at that moment represented in The Guardian’s waste-basket by half a dozen grossly pro-German and subtly anti-American communications to the editor. Bausch had for neighbor that fire-eating Seminarian, the Reverend Theo Gunst, next to whom, in turn, sat Arthur Betts, of Kelter & Betts, looking uncomfortable but flattered. Milliken, presumptively representing the Socialist element, flanked him on the far side with Girdner, appearing for Labor, on his left.

  But when Jeremy’s anxious glance finally reached the Governor’s high chair he breathed a temporary sigh of relief. In the place of honor, on the right of the gubernatorial smile, sat Magnus Laurens. Surely that indicated an acceptance by Embree of Jeremy’s argument; Laurens was to be appointed chairman of the council, after all. The Governor’s left was occupied by Ensign, the millionaire absentee owner of The Record. In a less crowded moment Jeremy would have given some thought to this curious preferment. Directly across the table from the central group there protruded loftily from between a pursy judge and a northwestern corn-raiser, a figure tall, stiff, and meager, a lean, hard-wood lath of a man lost in the dim, untroubled contemplation of an awful example of political portraiture on the far wall. Why Professor Rappelje should have been included, Jeremy could not surmise, unless it was that Governor Embree could count upon him as an unquestioning follower through thick and thin. In fact the whole composition of the meeting suggested that the summons had been apportioned with a view to safe control by the Governor.

  To the watchful Jeremy it seemed that Governor Embree was nervous. The smile at the comers of the conciliatory lips was disturbed by a restless twitching. After an anxiously calculating glance over the assemblage he began to read from a typed sheet a preamble, concluding: “Therefore, I present for the consideration of this honorable body the following names to constitute the Centralia State Council of Defense.”

  The first nomination fell upon Jeremy’s ears like a burst of thunder. It was that of Emil Bausch, chairman.

  The second nomination fell upon his brain like a bludgeon. It was that of Jeremy Robson, vice-chairman.

  From down the table he caught the confirmatory sneer of Montrose Clark. His eyes darted to Magnus Laurens, squarest and most honorable of enemies, and met in his face a wrathful contempt. Cassius Kimball leaned to him and whispered:

  “First you knew of it?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s put it over on you.”

  Jeremy sat in a daze. His mind was confused by the suddenness of the thrust; his will was blurred. Instinctively he felt that he must do something. But what? Protest? Decline to serve? Announce his attitude? And already his time was past! The monotonous, fateful reading had gone beyond him.

  Wanser and Fliess, Kimball, Laurens, ex-Governor Scudder, Montrose Clark, the Reverend Theo Gunst, Lieutenant-Governor Maxwell, Ensign, Bredle, Girdner, Ivanson, the Swede, and so on with the German and pacifist element always slightly but safely in the majority. Not a word was spoken, except once when in a brief breathing-pause someone shot out, like an arrow through the tense quiet, the contemptuous monosyllable:

  “Packed!”

  Jeremy thought that he identified the voice as that of Judge Selden Dana. Then the reader pronounced the name of Profes
sor Harvey Rappelje.

  “Wait!” said that gentleman.

  “Order! Order!” protested Wanser and Bausch with suspicious readiness.

  “I am in order,” retorted the economist, rising in his place to confront the Governor opposite.

  The Governor smiled, but thrust out a nervous tongue and licked the corners of the smile. The professor’s face was as set and still as a frozen river, and much the same color. Embree, motioning with a placating hand for silence, resumed: “The Honorable Carter N. Rock—”

  “Wait!” The scholar’s keener voice cut off the reading. “I rise to a point of order, sir.”

  “State the point.”

  “Governor Embree, is that your honest conception of a council to fight this war?”

  “Out of order!” cried Bausch again, and was reinforced by Girdner, Fliess, and others. “Who said fight?” “We are not making war.” “Keep to the point.” “Discussion is not in order.” “Sit down.”

  But the hard challenge of the professor’s glare compelled the Governor. “It is my carefully considered selection,” said he with a suggestion of sulkiness.

  There leapt from Rappelje’s lips a blasting oath. From any mouth in that environment it would have been startling. From the lean dry, silent, repressed scholar it had something of the shock of nature’s forces in outbreak. Not less appalling was the single word to follow:

  “Treason!”

  Embree’s smile did not fade; but it shriveled into a masklike grimace, the rictus of a child before the convulsion racks it.

  “You—you will retract—” he began chokingly.

  Two astounding tears welled from the scholar’s pale eyes, tears of a still man’s uttermost fury.

  “I will demonstrate to you,” said he precisely, “what it is to fight.”

  He launched himself across the table at the Governor’s throat.

  The steel-framed Laurens seized and forced him back; but not before Embree had collapsed into his chair. From his place, up the table, the Lieutenant-Governor, quite beside himself, squealed for a totally imaginary sergeant-at-arms. The corn-belt farmer, in thunderous tones with a wailing inflection besought any and all not to forget that they were gentlemen. Girdner, huge and formidable, had jumped to his feet. The white-haired, alert Milliken caught up a heavy paper-weight. Bausch was solemnly, almost sacrificially taking off his coat. A medley of voices demanded “Order!” “Throw him out!” “Arrest him!” There were all the elements of a lively and scandalous mêlée, waiting only the fusing act.