Balance Wheel

by Taylor Caldwell

  “Well, they could, and ought to,” said Charles, immensely relieved.

  He was very sorry for Mr. Haas, whose son was going to be a minister, also. What clergymen must suffer! he thought, sympathetically amused. Ten days to Thanksgiving. Friederich, when encountering Charles, looked at him in a bemused way, as if wondering who he was. He was to be married in two months, but he did not speak of it during these weeks.

  Charles’ troubles kept him from noticing, too acutely, that now all his friends were only those of German ancestry, except for Father Hagerty and the Haddens and the Holts. He knew the secret animosity was growing against him and the other “Dutchmen” in the community, but he still believed that Americans had a lot of “common sense” and that when “this thing” was over everyone would forget it.

  Then one day old Mr. Leo Schiffhauer, Secretary of the Board of the Church, and owner of the small brewery on the outskirts of Andersburg, came to see him at his home.

  Mr. Schiffhauer was seventy-four, small, round as one of his own kegs, with fierce little blue eyes and a gentle mouth under a white mustache. He was a good business man, and his beer was excellent, and he had six married daughters and fourteen grandchildren of whom he was very proud. He was an active politician, a fighter, a man of justice, of stern Lutheranism, and of humor. One of his sons-in-law had died in the Spanish-American War; his young grandsons all belonged to the Boy Scouts, and Mr. Schiffhauer, who still spoke with a slight German accent, was regularly called upon to deliver patriotic speeches on the Fourth of July.

  Charles was glad to see this old friend of his father’s, for whom he had considerable affection in spite of Mr. Schiffhauer’s propensity for obstinate argument, especially concerning matters that related to the Board and the church. He had been somewhat haughty towards Charles for the last few months, because of Charles’ disagreement with him over some Board policy. It was Charles’ belief that the old man had come to him in private to see if some compromise could be reached, though this was hardly in character.

  When Mr. Schiffhauer walked, he put each foot down with determined belligerency, no matter what the occasion. It was his “game-cock” way, in spite of his age. But tonight he almost crept into Charles’ house, his head bowed, his manner broken and abstracted. He spoke to Charles in German, to Charles’ surprise: “Good evening, Karl. It is bad, this weather, is it not?”

  Charles had never heard Mr. Schiffhauer speak German, and this surprised him again, and made him uneasy. However, he replied in the same language: “It is very bad. But November is a disagreeable month.” The old man sat down, planted his hands on his knees; his great belly bulged. He sighed; he looked at the fire. He seemed to have aged.

  “It is a serious concern which has brought me to you tonight, Karl,” he said.

  Charles was prepared to be the younger man, and the more indulgent. “Yes, I know. But considering the new high cost of living, I cannot but believe that our minister deserves to receive five hundred dollars more a year.”

  Mr. Schiffhauer waved a little fat hand, on which a diamond twinkled. “It does not matter. You are right, Karl. A thousand dollars a year would not be too much—extra. It is as you say. The prices! A good man, our reverend minister, but a stubborn one.”

  Charles smiled. Mr. Schiffhauer, sighing even more deeply, took out his old German pipe, filled it, lit it. “Beer?” suggested Charles. “Your own, and very excellent, Herr Schiffhauer.”

  “Cold,” said Mr. Schiffhauer, nodding.

  Charles produced the beer. Mr. Schiffhauer drank long, as if very thirsty. Then he put down his stein, wiped his mustache with a white silk handkerchief. He picked up the stein, and studied it. “It is from Bavaria,” he said. “I recognize the fine glaze. Ach, ja, my beer is the best,” he added, absently. “It is not good for a man to praise what is his own, but in this case it is justified. One must not let modesty carry him too far.”

  “Modesty, according to Goethe, is false pride,” said Charles.

  “Ach, Goethe,” said Mr. Schiffhauer, with much mournfulness. “One can read Goethe, forever,” continued the old man, “and each time it is new. There is so much meaning. Do you remember, Karl, that he once said that it is impossible to know anything? I am finding things impossible to understand these days.”

  Charles waited, frowning. Mr. Schiffhauer looked at him with his fiery blue eyes, now so sad but still so indomitable.

  “Karl, you are an important man in this city. A revered man—though, of course, you are still young. A man of power. Your word is taken. That is why I have come to you. What you say will inspire thought, consideration. Your father chose well when he made you president of those fine shops.”

  “Thank you,” said Charles.

  “So,” said Mr. Schiffhauer, drawing a heavy breath, “I could think of no one else who is important enough to form a new society for us. I have given it much thought. We must have our new society, and it must be strong, in this city.”

  “The town,” said Charles, speaking now in English, “crawls with societies. We’ve got luncheons every day. Masons, Rotarians, God knows what else. Why should we have another society?”

  But Mr. Schiffhauer spoke on in German as if Charles had made no comment: “I have discussed this with many friends. We have decided to form a society called The American Friends of Germany.’ All Americans in the city of German ancestry will be asked to join. We wish to make you head of this society.”

  Charles stood up, moving rapidly. “What!” he exclaimed.

  Mr. Schiffhauer raised his hand. His eyes had become filmed, an old man’s tired eyes. “Surely it has not escaped your notice, Karl, that there is now a great prejudice against us of German ancestry, in this city? And my friends in other cities tell me this prejudice is growing there, also. We must defend ourselves. We are being attacked, insulted, ignored, belittled. It is not good. We must defend ourselves.”

  “You’re right,” said Charles, “if is not good. I knew. I understand. I feel it in the air around me. It is a bad thing, and stupid. But one must remember that madness passes, and common sense eventually always prevails. One must be patient.”

  Mr. Schiffhauer laughed hoarsely and bitterly. He nodded again. “That is true. But sometimes it is too late for the victim.”

  Charles walked up and down the room, his hands in his pockets, frowning. Then he stopped before the old man. “Mr. Schiffhauer, you are an American, in spite of idiots who are now taking sides in a neutral country. Your heart is American; your children and your grandchildren are Americans. You are so truly American, for you love America, and America is part of you and you are part of this country.”

  Mr. Schiffhauer looked at him in silence. Then Charles sat down, leaned towards Mr. Schiffhauer, and spoke earnestly.

  “Prejudice is a vile thing. But please listen to me. The worst thing that prejudice can do is to the soul of a man. It is worse than what it can do to his body, and his mind. It serves, if allowed, to split off a man from his own community, from his own country. It sets him apart. He has permitted his enemies to make him a ‘stranger.’ That, he must not allow. That, he must fight, in his own heart. He must refuse to consider himself an alien. In that way he defeats his enemies in the only real victory they can attain against him. Never, for one moment, must he let his enemies make him think: ‘I am not really of this country. I am not of this city. I am not of my neighbors. I am a creature foreign to them.’

  “You, Herr Schiffhauer, are an American. You are more American than your enemies. For, if they were Americans, they would never say of a neighbor: ‘He is a German. He is an Irishman. He is a Jew. He is a Catholic. He is a Pole, a Hungarian, or whatever.’ Americans are of many races; they are one people. He who forgets this is not an American.”

  Mr. Schiffhauer looked at the fire.

  “The men who insult you are not Americans,” said Charles. “They will never be Americans. They can boast that their ancestors have lived here three hundred years, and they’ll s
till not be Americans. We can say to them, as they say to many others: ‘Go back to the place from which you came!’ But these bastards have no place to go! They never came from anywhere, except, perhaps, from hell.”

  Mr. Schiffhauer turned his square white head towards Charles, and blinked.

  “No, Mr. Schiffhauer, you mustn’t let these people, or anybody, let you suspect for an instant you aren’t an American. They want you to think you aren’t. They want to put you outside the pale. You mustn’t let them. Therefore, you mustn’t consider, even for a moment, organizing the kind of society you suggest. Don’t you think I know it’s hard? I know. But I remember that I’m an American, and they’re not.”

  “‘I am an American, and they are not,’” repeated Mr. Schiffhauer, But he spoke doubtfully. Then he looked at Charles with pleading in his eyes, silent and pathetic.

  Charles said: “You don’t like the Kaiser, do you? You hated Bismarck, and everything he was. You came to America to be an American. This is your country, Mr. Schiffhauer. Don’t let anyone take her away from you, or separate you from her.”

  Mr. Schiffhauer lifted his head proudly. “I’m an American,” he said, in English. “What America is, I am. I chose America. I am better, in a way, than those who were only born here, for I know what America is, and how wonderful. I did not need school-books to tell me this.”

  He stood up and gave his hand to Charles. “You are a fine boy, Charles. You made me happy when you made me realize that I’m an American.” Then he added cautiously: “But I was too hasty when I said we should increase our minister’s salary one thousand dollars. Five hundred is enough.”

  CHAPTER LII

  By the fifteenth of November, the madness in Europe had become one enormous confusion. Russia was at war with Turkey, Great Britain was at war with Turkey, and Turkey had declared herself engaged in a “holy, religious war” against Serbia, France, Britain, and Russia. The mighty munitions plants in France and Germany, however, operated peacefully, and were not bombed. The trains ran serenely, loaded with materials of war, from France through Switzerland to Germany, and from Germany through Switzerland to France. There, in Switzerland, in rich secrecy, met the sly, sleek men of England and France and Germany, to dine well, to drink excellently, and to negotiate, not peace, but war, and the profits of war. Later, they discussed available women.

  The young men of England, France, and Germany did not go laughing and singing to the Front any longer. The early winter rains washed through their trenches in a gray and stinking river. The rats ate of the bleeding corpses, and the young men watched them, in bewilderment, horror, and despair, and thought of their homes, and why they were here. The air exploded above and about them; the night was red with fire and death. The sleek men laughed in Switzerland, but the boys in their trenches did not laugh. Some of them cried, for they were so young.

  As early as September, the Kaiser had written to President Wilson: “The old town of Louvain had to be destroyed for the protection of my troops.—The cruelties practiced in this cruel warfare even by the Belgian women and priests towards my wounded soldiers, doctors, and nurses, were such that eventually my generals were compelled to adopt the strongest measures to punish the guilty and frighten the blood-thirsty population—”

  Charles had thought, when reading this letter in the papers: But what were your Junkers, your embroidered generals, your stiff-legged colonels, your arrogant captains and your soldiers, doing there in Belgium in the first place, you madman? Those poor, valiant priests, those poor, beleaguered women—they were only protecting their homes, their churches, and their country. Charles discounted the atrocity stories, but the photographs of ruined Belgian cities were enough to make a decent man hate the sight of a soldier forever, and hate any people who outfitted, armed, and glorified him. But he remembered what Colonel Grayson had said, that the guilty were always the nations who tolerated armies.

  Charles Wittmann knew that America was not neutral any longer. Americans were beginning to sing British war songs, such as “Tipperary.” Except for the great Western plains, where formers thought more of crops and seasons and wheat than war, Americans became conscious of an uneasy hatred for all that was German. It was very easy to understand, when a man once knew, as Charles did. British propaganda, superbly managed, superbly executed and delivered, filtered into the minds of Americans.

  Charles, like millions of other enlightened Americans, understood, and had but one thought: to keep America out of the war. Neutrality was an illusion. Charles surrendered that hope. America could not be neutral. But she might—she must!—be kept out of the war. He, and his fellow Americans, fought a stubborn battle of retreat. The war might end soon. It could not go on much longer. Charles reckoned without the men in Switzerland, who smiled over their wine and laughed through their clouds of cigar smoke, and who figured endlessly, and bartered away the lives and the liberties and the hopes and the dreams of millions of other men. They bartered away the destiny of generations still unborn.

  Three days before Thanksgiving, the three thousand men who worked in the shops and the mills of the Connington Steel Company went out on strike. It happened very suddenly. They wanted more wages. They wanted a union. They went to their homes, and sat there, sullenly but determinedly.

  On the same day Charles received a letter from Mr. Dayton of the Amalgamated Steel Company. Mr. Dayton ordered a tremendous amount of tools. Charles called him, and said: “It’s impossible. I don’t have the steel. The Connington has a contract with Sessions, and they’ve pushed me out. You know why.” He listened for a few moments to what Mr. Dayton said, and he smiled grimly. He waited for two hours, while Mr. Dayton discreetly called Washington. Then Charles called Colonel Grayson, himself.

  “A little matter of restraint of trade, of monopoly, Colonel,” he said.

  “I see,” said the colonel. “The President won’t like that.”

  On the day before Thanksgiving Charles received a telegram from the Sessions Steel Company, in Windsor: “We find that our output of high speed tool steel exceeds the amount of our contract with certain other companies. We are glad to tell you that your recent orders will be filled at once.”

  Charles took the telegram to his brother Friederich, who read it and exclaimed bitterly over it. “There isn’t even honor among thieves,” said Friederich.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” answered Charles. “A profit is always a profit.” He did not tell Friederich of his conversations with Mr. Dayton and with the colonel. There were still some things he did not tell his brother. It would have been too confusing. He only said: “I wonder how long the strike will last at the Connington.” And he smiled and went away, somewhat cheered.

  He tried to forget that Americans were accepting British propaganda with enthusiasm and abject belief, and were rejecting German propaganda, sometimes amazingly the same, with disgust and incredulity.

  But still, whatever their sympathies, the American people did not want to be thrust into the pit of war. In fact, many of them were becoming angered at the arrogance of Britain, who was openly violating the “freedom of the seas” long enough to board American and other neutral vessels in order to examine the mails. Charles thought: Idiots and rascals—all of them. Let them die, if they wish. It is none of our affair.

  On the night before Thanksgiving he and the Reverend Mr. Haas went to the station to meet their sons. Jim and Walter had been gone only two months, but when their fathers saw them they said to themselves: They’re no longer boys. They’re men. They shook hands with their sons, and they were shy, and delighted, and did not know what to say. On the way home both Jim and Walter had their own private jokes, their own fraternal laughter. They would patiently explain all this to their fathers. They were on the way to lives of their own, and these lives did not include the minister and Charles.

  Jim looked about the house with happy criticism, after he had gone into the kitchen to give Mrs. Meyers a hug. “Never knew the old place was so small,” he
said.

  “Small? Twelve rooms aren’t small,” replied Charles. He sat down before the fire, and drank his beer. Then he glanced at his son. “Beer?” he suggested, somewhat reluctantly. Jim nodded, went to the kitchen, and came back with a bottle and a glass. He’s been gone only two months, Charles thought again, yet he seems twice the size. “Good beer,” said Jim. “Old Schiffhauer knows how to make it.”

  Charles then told him of Mr. Schiffhauer’s visit. Jim listened, all seriousness. He sat there, big, black-haired, broad-shouldered—a man. Jim said, looking at his glass: “You gave him good advice, Dad. There’s no place in America, now, where Germans are popular, and forming a belligerent German society, in the face of public opinion, would have been a dangerous thing.”

  Charles was alarmed. But he said as quietly as possible, though with irritation: “You’ve missed the point entirely. What do you mean by ‘public opinion,’ Jim? We’re a neutral country. At the present time, we’re nearer to war with England than with Germany, because of her violation of the freedom of the seas, her censoring of our mail, and her illegal boarding of our ships. Only the fact that we’ve a pro-Ally Ambassador, Page, keeps the American people from exploding and knocking hell out of England, right now! We went to war with her in 1812 because she did something similar to this—boarding our vessels, and such.” Only two months, and his son was a stranger, with strange, unknown friends, a strange life, and strange new ideas! Charles said: “Jim! What’s the matter with you?”

  Jim looked up, surprised. “There’s nothing the matter with me, Dad.” He was thoughtful, then. His father, he said to himself, was looking haggard and old and strained. Things were getting too much for the old boy. He supposed that he ought to ask his father all about the shops, as he formerly did, but somehow they were not of much interest to him now. There were other matters more important. The young man said: “It’s just that I’m studying very hard. I want to be the best damn doctor in the whole country.” And he grinned at Charles affectionately.