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.
“Good,” said Charles. “Of course, you’ll be that.” He drank his beer, with worry. “You still haven’t told me what you mean by ‘public opinion.’ I know the British are doing a good job on us with their propaganda. But we’re determined to be neutral. What do the boys at your school think of the war, eh?”
“The men at the college,” said Jim, with dignity, “are divided. Some of them are all for going into it, and ending it. On the side of the Allies, of course. Some of them are just as much against it—against all war. They’re the bookish fellows. Hate everything but the old ivy and the libraries and the laboratories. And some of them want to fight England. But most of them, I’d say, are all for keeping out of it.”
“Sensible,” commented Charles. “I remember what Burke said: ‘War never leaves, where it found a nation.’ The best America can do for the world is to stay at peace, and keep her reason. Jim, I’ve come to what you might think is a foolish conclusion of my own: This war isn’t being fought for what is being given as the ostensible reason. It’s being fought, by everybody, to destroy the new ideal of the freedom of man. You’ll see, after this war, that this ideal will be scrapped, and old absolutisms will come up like—well, like poisonous mushrooms. America will be able to hold the balance, afterwards; she’ll be able to stop all attempts to enslave men again.”
Jim looked at his father with deep and shadowy uneasiness, and Charles, with greater alarm, saw it. “In the meantime,” said Jim, “men are dying. I wish to God,” continued the young man desperately, “that I was a full-fledged doctor. I’d go over there and help take care of the wounded, at least. Any wounded.”
Relief came immensely to Charles. “That’s fine,” he said. “Fine.” He reflected, comfortably, that Jim was not a “full-fledged doctor.” “I’m thinking of the wounded and dying, too,” said Charles, pouring more beer, and this time out of Jim’s bottle. “But what can we do? Nothing. Except keep our heads and remain sensible and at peace. Later, we can do something.”
He waited for Jim to ask him about the shops, and all that had happened. But Jim stared at the fire, brooding, and he had thoughts his father could not know. Then Jim said, suddenly, still staring at the fire: “When are you and Aunt Phyllis going to get married?”
“Next August.”
“Not until then?” Jim was annoyed. “Almost a year.”
“Well, we have to wait a year from the time your uncle died, to announce the engagement,” said Charles, lamely. “And then we have to wait a few months after the announcement.”
“It’s all nonsense,” said Jim, impatiently.
He thinks I’m an old fogey, thought Charles. I know I never thought that about my own father. Or, did I? He could not remember.
“There’re some things you can do and some things you can’t,” said Charles. Yes, he was talking like an “old fogey,” and Jim was smiling at him.
“Good old Dad. Always conventional,” said Jim. “Nothing new must ever intrude.” His black eyes studied Charles indulgently.
“All this talk about the ‘new’!” exclaimed Charles, with acerbity. “As if anything new was better than something old, just because it was new! Look at ragtime, for instance. That’s new. Is it better than Beethoven, or Bach, or Brahms, or Wagner, or Verdi?”
Something was running under the surface of their conversation which Charles could not grasp; something had shifted between him and his son these last eight or ten weeks. We’re talking to cover something up, thought Charles. What is it? What has happened to my boy? He’s changed.
Dad’s changed, thought Jim. He’s all nerves. I don’t understand him. He’s never shouted at me like this before. What’s wrong with him?
“The world changes,” said Jim, somewhat irrelevantly. He was really anxious about his father, now. He never used to flush up so easily, thought the young man. He never used to be so on edge. He looks sick.
“We must all sing and whistle and scream the same silly imbecilities, because they’re new,” said Charles. “We must all ride in automobiles—because they’re new. We must all think the same thoughts—because they’re new. We mustn’t have any distinctiveness, any difference, because something ‘new’ has become the pattern of our existence. We’re getting to be faceless. The ‘new’ collectivism! By God, that’s something I’d fight with my last breath!” And Charles stood up, his face a heavy crimson.
“Dad,” began Jim, standing up also. He looked down at his father. He did not know why Charles turned away from him, after one glance upwards.
“The Renaissance was ‘new,’ in its time,” said Charles. “But it was a healthy and vigorous newness, and not the newness of inferior and mean-spirited and trivial men. It emphasized an old concept: the importance of the individual over the unimportance of the mass. The Church had always declared that man, himself, was everything, and that anything that debased that individuality was dangerous. Now we have this modern newness, which wants to destroy the individual and make him just part of the mass, a herd-man, a slave. And I think this war is the culmination, or the beginning, of the idea that man, as a thinking individual, ought to be destroyed.”
He added bitterly: “You’ve just got to listen to Wilson! His ‘New Freedom,’ by God! Freedom was given to humanity by God. But governments, if they can help it, never give freedom. They just hand out slavery with slogans.”
“Dad,” said Jim, urgently, “you’re right. I agree with you. But you don’t have to get all worked up like this—” His only thought was to calm his father. “You won’t be able to digest your dinner,” said the boy. “You’ll have indigestion again, as you always do when you get mad. And then out will come that box of bicarbonate of soda, and you’ll have gas.”
“Much you care,” said Charles, and he sat down heavily. Then he said to himself with consternation: I’m quarreling with my son! He’s just come home, and I’m quarreling with him, as if he were a stranger! What’s wrong with us? There’s something under the surface—
“I do care,” said Jim, earnestly. “Please, Dad. I know how you’ve worked; I know how you’ve worried. You’ve written me all about it. I ought to be ashamed,” he added, with self-disgust. “I oughtn’t to have let you get mad like this. It’s all my fault.”
Charles looked up at him for a long time. His dark flush retreated, and all at once he was pale and very tired, but smiling. “No,” he said. “I know what it is. I just resent it that you’re growing up. I’ve just begun to realize you’re a man. I don’t like it, much. I’m a fool.”
The harsh November wind poured down the chimney, and the fire crackled and blew. The November wind battered at the windows; the November rain ran mournfully in the eaves. I’ve never been so lonely, thought Charles. Not even when I was alone.
“I can’t help growing up,” said Jim. “But you’ve got your own life, Dad. You’re not so old.” He spoke with sympathy, and without conviction, and Charles suddenly laughed.
Mrs. Meyers had prepared a very good dinner, and father and son sat down to it with anticipation. They talked of Jim’s studies. They talked of many things. They did not speak of the war. Jim’s still too young to understand what’s really happening, thought Charles. Besides, it doesn’t matter. The war’ll never touch him, thank God.
Charles said, later: “The Connington’s on strike. Brinkwell’s going out of his mind.” They did not mention Jochen.