STRICKEN, at the first, by the unimaginable vastness of the tragedy which had befallen Europe, the State of Centralia quickly recovered, and lifted up a thousand voices of acclaim. Germany was being splendidly victorious. Nothing could stop the Kaiser’s perfected war-machine; nothing stand against the valor and discipline of the field-gray legions. Triumph was a matter of only a few months; perhaps only a few weeks. France would be crushed; Russia humbled; England, the faithless and foolhardy, penned in her island and slowly starved into submission. Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles! The loyalest Imperial colony could hardly have rejoiced more openly or fervently than did Centralia, a sovereign State of the United States of America. Slow, still, systematic, scientific propagation of Deutschtum throughout the years now reaped its due reward.
Those there were in the State, and many, who revolted from the brutality of Germany’s war-making. But what voice could they find in Centralia, where politicians and press and pulpit were dominated either by the influence or the fear of organized German sentiment? Let a man but speak a word against Germany’s cause, and the anathema of Deutschtum descended upon him. A highly practical anathema, too; directed to his business affairs and even his social relations. The accusation of prejudice, of Wall Street influence, of British sympathies lay against any who dared question or criticize the “necessary rigor” of German methods. The rape of Belgium was hardly more triumphant than the seduction of Centralia.
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-judgment; 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 war began. Martin Embree’s smile was happy as that of a boy.
“Well, Jem,” was his greeting. “We’ve got him this time.”
“Who?”
“Magnus Laurens. Did n’t you see this morning’s Bellair Journal?”
“I’ve just been reading it.”
“That kills Laurens.”
“For what?”
“For everything and anything in this State. Governor—Legislature—dogcatcher; he couldn’t get elected to anything, if this is handled properly.”
“I’m giving his speech in full, in to-night’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 would n’t back him up!” cried Embree.
“Not in everything. There’s a good deal in that speech, though, that needed to be said; that wasright.”
“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 is n’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 is n’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, is n’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, 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 arewegoing to be?”
“There’s no such thing as ‘how neutral.’”
“Oh, is n’t there! Look here, Boss; what’s practically every paper in this State, on this war, except The Bellair Journal?”
“German. They’re afraid not 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 that we can’t help win the fight that is our fight. Let England lick Germany. Our business is to play the game here at home 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, Andy.”
“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. This 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 itwilldo 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 Magnus 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.”
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 nation nearer to that hell’s caldron wherein Europe agonized. The President had prescribed neutrality. That, Jeremy recognized, was the part of 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 upon 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 journalism 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 had n’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 his 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 the Centralia newspapers was clearly marked. They had but to print the cables with captions appropriate to the facts, in order to please 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 Russian 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 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 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.”
“Influenceable, 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 us 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.
“Buddy,” said the editor, “whose is the Ames story?”
This being an official query, Buddy made pretense of consulting his marked file. “Higman, sir.”
“Oh! You wrote it? Did you have a letter?”
“Yes, sir. But I did n’t write it from that. I would n’t make a story out of a letter from Her. That’s personal,” said Buddy, proud in his rigid sense of ethics.
“Then where did you get it?”
“I figured that like as not Miss Pritchard would get one by the same mail. So I went an’ ast her.”
“And she had?”
“Yes, sir. I told her I was there for The Guardian an’ was there anything she could give out. An’ she gimme the story.”
“Buddy, if you don’t look out you’re going to be a real newspaper man one of these days!”
“I wisht I was one now,” returned the boy wistfully. “Do you? What would you do?”
“I dunno, exactly. Somethin’.”
“You’d need a more definite policy than that, son, if you were in the bad fix of owning a newspaper.”
“I’d do somethin’,” persisted the boy. “I’d soak the Germans. Say, Boss, how old do you have to be to get into the National Guard?”
“A good deal older than you are. Why all this martial ardor, Buddy?”
“That’s what She’d do, if She was a man.”
“Did the letter say so?”
“Yes. Can a feller—is it ever all right for a feller to show a lady’s letter?”
Wondering again as he had wondered before whence this freckled scrub of a boy had derived his instincts of the gentleman born and bred, Jeremy answered gravely: “It might be. That’s for you to decide, Buddy.”
“I kinda guess She’d like for you to see this.” He dug out of his pocket a crumpled sheet, covered with the strong, straight, beautiful script of Marcia. “Read there, Boss.” He indicated an inner page.
“...or later it must come,” the letter ran. “As soon as you are old enough you must learn to be a soldier. Every one in the world who can, must learn to be a soldier. I cannot tell you, Buddy, of the terrible thing that German national ambition is; how it reaches out into every nation to make that nation its tool; how it aims to overrun the world and make it one vast Germany. You will be old enough soon to see what it is doing in your own little city, so far away. Perhaps you do not comprehend. Perhaps you will not understand even what I am writing; but you may find some one on your paper who will know and will explain.”
“I think, perhaps, I was meant to see this, Buddy,” interjected Jeremy.
“But I guess I know what She was drivin’ at all right,” replied the boy.
“How can America be so blind!” Jeremy read on. “How can its newspapers be so blind! The last numbers of The Guardian that I saw, no word of arousing the people to a sense of what all this means. Oh, Buddy, Buddy! If you were only a man and had a newspaper of your own! I have written your aunt about the books and...”
The bottom of the page terminated the reading. Jeremy, with his lips set straight and hard, handed back the sheet. The boy faced him with a candid eye.
“Boss, you’re a man,” he said.
“Am I?” said Jeremy, more to himself than in reply. “And you got a noospaper of your own.”
“Not of my own, wholly.”
“Ain’t it?” cried Buddy, amazed. “Who’s in on it?”
“The people who read it, and believe in it. It’s partly theirs. The men I work with to help keep politics straight and fair. I have to think of them.”
Buddy sighed. “It ain’t as big a cinch as it looks, ownin’ a paper, is it!”
“Not these days, son.”
“Anyway, I guess She knows,” asseverated the stout little loyalist. “She’s lived there an’ she oughta know. What She says goes, with me.”
The clear single-mindedness of a boy! How the editor of The Guardian, feeling a thousand years old, envied his lowliest assistant! How the unstilled ache for Marcia woke and throbbed again at her words! She had begged him not wholly to forget her. Had it been a spell laid upon him it could have been no more compelling. He wondered whether, twenty years hence, her influence would have become less vital, less intimate upon him, and, wondering, knew that it would not.
He went home deviously by way of Montgomery Street. The early shoots had lanced their way into the sunshine of the Pritchard garden, and Miss Letitia was making her rounds, inspecting for the winter-killed amongst the tenderer of her shrubbery. Jeremy leaned upon the fence saying nothing. There were reasons why he felt hesitant about approaching Miss Pritchard. In his campaign against the tax-dodgers he had fallen foul of old Madam Taylor, one of her particular friends.
Shortly after the publication, Miss Pritchard, meeting Jeremy at her own front gate as he was about to enter, had presented the danger signal of two high-colored spots upon the cheek-curves, and a pair of specially bright eyes; also the theorem, for his acceptance, that a newspaper ought to be in better business than attacking and abusing lone and defenseless women. Declining to accept this theorem without debate, Jeremy was informed that Miss Pritchard would disdain thenceforth to harbor The Guardian upon her premises. Interpreting this to mean that the editor of that fallen sheet would be equally unwelcome, the caller had departed, divided between wrath and melancholy. Up to that time the Pritchard house had been one of the few ports of call in his busy but rather lonely life. Now, another of those gossamer links with Marcia Ames was severed. Miss Pritchard soon came to regret her severity, too; for the steadfast, unspoken, hopeless devotion of the boy—he was still only that to her—to the memory of her golden girl, had bloomed for her like one of the flowers in her old maid’s garden.
Now, seeing the lover, forlorn and mute, outside what was once his paradise, she gave way to compunction. But not wholly. There was a sting in her first words.
“Are you reckoning up taxes on my place, Mr. Jeremy?”
“That’s been done long ago,” he said uncompromisingly.
“When are you going to print it?”
“As soon as you try to dodge ’em.”
He looked very tired, and his voice had lost something of the buoyant quality of youth which she had always associated with him. A different note crept into her own when she spoke again.
“I had a long letter from Marcia to-day.”
“Is she well?” The tone was politely formal, but she saw the color rise in his face and marked the pathetic eagerness in his eyes.
“She’s the same Marcia Ames. Even to the name.”
He caught at the opportunity. “She’s not married yet?”
“No. Her fiancé is fighting. Somewhere in the remote colonies, I believe.”
“Fiancé?”
“Surely you knew that she was engaged; a young cousin of her stepfather’s. It was an affair of years.”
“Not when she was here,” Jeremy blurted.
Her surprised regard challenged him. “You seem very certain,” she observed.
Jeremy recovered himself. “I had heard rumors, but nothing formal,” he said. “I thought perhaps you would have told me when it was announced.”
“I assumed that you knew.”
What Miss Pritchard meant was, “I assumed that she would have told you.” She perceived that there were depths in this affair of which she knew little or nothing.
“German betrothals are curious and formal things in her class,” continued the old maid. “When she came here, to ‘see America first,’ I believe it was understood that nothing was to be settled until her return. She went back, and the formalities were arranged. At the outbreak of war her fiancé was somewhere in Africa and, I believe, is still there.”
“I see,” said Jeremy dully.
“Marcia still sees The Guardian.” The spirit of romance in the spinster heartwouldforce the words.
“I know. And that helps. Good-bye and thank you.”
“Come to see me and let’s be friends again,” said the warm-hearted lady.
Most of that night Jeremy spent on the tramp, thinking of The Guardian in terms of Marcia’s letter; haggardly struggling to harmonize cross-interests, cross-purposes, cross-loyalties. Out of the struggle emerged one clear resolve. What next the progress of the war should produce that intimately touched his conscience, should be the signal, the release. Upon that The Guardian should speak its owner’s mind though damnation follow.
Three weeks later the Lusitania was sunk.
LIKE a portent of stern events to come, The Guardian’s Lusitania editorial laid hold on the collective mind of Fenchester. It was a hand set against every man’s breast, bidding him stop as he went about his occupations, and summon his own soul to ponder what a German war might mean. “The Black Flag,” Jeremy had captioned it. Simple and grim words were its medium, and the burden of its charge was plain murder.
The first effect was that of any profound and pervasive shock; the community lay quiet, collecting and rallying its forces. Until now, no newspaper in the State of Centralia had dared lift voice against the cumulative outrages of the conquerors, fearful as all were of the coordinated forces of German sentiment, ready and under arms for the call. To what the initial outbreak might spread, no man could foretell. It was not so much a high explosive as a fire-bomb that The Guardian had cast.
The German press ravened. The dailies howled for the blood of the dastardly and treacherous Robson. They called upon the authorities to suppress The Guardian, without troubling to specify upon what ground. They summoned the Governor to cut loose from a supporter so violent, so vicious, so filled with the spirit of hatred and contention. The German religious press backed up the attack, and even improved upon it. It declared The Guardian and its owner enemies to an all-wise, all-beneficent, and all-German Gott, and shrieked inquisitorially for a holy ban upon it. All of which, combined, failed to keep Jeremy awake o’ nights. Indeed, it had quite the reverse effect. For the first time in months he fell asleep at peace with his own soul, and awoke with untainted, new-found courage to face whatever the day might bring.
One day brought Cassius Kimball, of The Bellair Journal. He was a slow, cautious, weary, high-minded, and plucky man of forty-five who looked sixty behind his lines and his glasses, and he eyed Jeremy, his devoted admirer, with a benign but puzzled expression as he sat in the office spare chair.
“I wish I’d said it first,” was his opening remark.
“I wish you had,” returned Jeremy, quite honestly.
“I never say anything first. That’s why I’m really not much good.”
Jeremy laughed. From the most independent and battle-scarred veteran of Middle Western journalism, this was funny.
“It’s a fact, though,” continued the tired voice. “I always think too slow. What are you going to do next?”
“Next?”
“About the Lusitania issue. You’ve started it in Centralia. Nothing can put out that fire. It may die down and only smoulder. But the embers will be there. And nobody can tell when they’ll reach a powder magazine. Have you seen the recent Eastern papers?”
“Some of them.”
“A lot of them are yelling for war. It’s going to be put up to the President pretty stiff. What are you going to do about that?”
The gravity of the tone, almost amounting to deference, made Jeremy tingle. Here was the greatest journalistic power in Centralia, a man whose clarity and courage of spirit had won for him an almost hierarchic ascendency in his profession, ascribing such importance to the course of The Guardian that he had taken the four-hour journey from Bellair to consult its owner. To do Jeremy justice, his pride was for the paper, semi-impersonal, rather than for himself. To the question he had no ready answer.
“I had n’t thought it out yet. What’s your idea?” Kimball took off his glasses and wiped them carefully. His eyes, without them, seemed squinted and anxious. He drummed on the desk a moment before replying.
“There’s a man down in Washington,” he said in his gentle, reasonable voice, “with a hard job on his hands. He has a lot of decisions to make every day. We newspaper men have the same kind of decisions, but where ours affect a few thousands, his affect a hundred millions. From now on he’s going to have bigger decisions put up to him. He can lift his hand and there’ll be war to-morrow, and six months from to-morrow there’ll be thousands of us back home here in mourning. It’s a hard decision, Mr. Robson. You and I did our best to beat the President for election. We’ve differed from him in many things. But this is n’t politics. It’s something else now. And, knowing what he’s got to face, I don’t feel exactly like yelling in the President’s ears.” He resumed his glasses. “Seen the Governor since your editorial?”
“No. He’s up at his home in Spencerville.”
“It’s going to be put up to him pretty hard, too. Your outbreak is responsible.”
“How?”
“The German legislative outfit in Bellair,” said Kimball, who had an uncanny knack of knowing things before they were ready to be known, “is cooking up a bill to offset your editorial. They intend to put the State on record. The bill will call on the President and Congress to declare that any American sailing on a ship of a belligerent nation forfeits all right to the protection of his own country.”
“What will The Journal do about that?”
“Fight it.”
“Can we beat it?”
“No. But the Governor can.”
“Will he?”
“Ah! What do you think? You’re closer to him than any one else.”
Jeremy shook his head. “Not on the war. I don’t even know what he’s thinking, most of the time. Your paper has more influence with him than The Guardian. If I could think of Martin Embree as being afraid of anybody, I’d say he was a little afraid of The Journal.”
“Of course, he doesn’t want to lose us,” answered Kimball reflectively. “He can’t afford to lose us. But there isn’t much danger of that.” He rose. “I’ll send you a word before the bill is ready. They intend to spring it suddenly.”
Jeremy thanked him, and after he had left, sat down to think out the Governor’s situation. He could appreciate its perplexities. He could foresee that Embree would blame him for stirring up dissension unnecessarily, when he might have held his peace. Therefore he was prepared for a difficult interview when, on the Governor’s return, he was invited to lunch with him. But “Smiling Mart’s” smile was as open and friendly as ever.
“You dipped your pen in earthquake and eclipse that time, my boy,” he observed.
“I had to speak out or blow up, Martin.”
“Therefore you did both. Up in the Northern Tier you’re not precisely popular.”
“No. The circulation reports show that. We’re getting two or three dozen stop-the-paper orders from there per day.”
“I’ve done my best for you, there. But I can’t hold the more rabid elements. There’s one saving grace, though.”
“That’s—?”
“You’ve gone no further than criticism. You didn’t even hint at war.”
“And I’m not going to. Not on this issue.”
Martin Embree drew a long, slow, luxurious breath. “Thank God for that! At least they can’t identify us with the war-howlers in the East.”
Jeremy passed the “us.”
“What’s your view of the Lusitania sinking, Martin?”
“It’s damnable. But it’s war.”
“German war. They’re holding jollifications over it here. There’s to be one to-night at the Deutscher Club.”
“Not a formal thing?” cried the Governor.
“Bausch and Henry Vogt, the florist, are engineering it, I understand. It is n’t exactly a club affair.”
“Ah! That’s not so bad. You’re not going to print anything about it?”
“I’d print their remarks about The Guardian if I could get ’em,” grinned Jeremy. “They’d be spicy. But of course they won’t admit reporters.”
“What goes on at a private dinner is nobody’s business,” said the relieved official. “So you don’t need to stir up any more trouble for yourself on that score. Some of the smaller German organizations have been passing resolutions about The Guardian. That will cut into your circulation, won’t it?”
“To some extent. But we’re holding up.”
“Just keep your head, Jem, and we’ll be all right,” advised the Governor anxiously. “Don’t forget that we’ve got measures to put through here at home more important than a war four thousand miles away. Harvey Rappelje, of the Economics Department of the University, is working on the Corporation Control Bill now. I’m going to have him talk it over with you when it’s ready.”
“Glad to see him. Speaking of bills, Martin, what do you know of a bill drawn by a bunch of Bellair Germans, to keep Americans off British passenger ships?”
“Nothing. And I don’t want to until I have to.”
“That’ll be soon,” prophesied Jeremy. “I’m going to fight that.”
“I don’t know about that,” doubted the other. “There are two sides to all these questions, remember.”
“There are two sides to the war. Admitted. But there’s only one side to Americanism. And this is a question of American rights.”
“But is it quite fair to our Cause, to endanger it now for an issue that you are n’t called on to meet?”
“If our cause isn’t American, then The Guardian is going to quit it,” retorted Jeremy heatedly. “What’s more, Martin, if I ever had to suspect that when the issue comes you would n’t be for America against—”
“Stop right there!” the other adjured him, laughing. “When you hear me speak an un-American word or see me do an un-American act, it will be time enough to worry. But in the business now on hand we need those German votes, and I’ll do just as much to hold them as you can to drive them away.”
On his return trip to the office, Jeremy encountered Eli Wade, the Boot & Shoe Surgeon, and Nick Milliken. Wade shook hands with him, and looked at his feet.
“You’re standing solid now, Mr. Robson,” he said. “I went on my knees and thanked God when I read your editorial.”
“Not me,” put in Milliken. “That ain’t my God. I don’t worship Mars.”
“Don’t heed him, Mr. Robson. He’ll fight, too, when the time comes.”
“In a capitalistic war? Do I look as soft a mark as that!” retorted the Socialist disdainfully.
“In an American war,” said Eli Wade.
“Don’t you think it! Nine tenths of the people are dead against war. There’s a bill coming up this session that’ll tell the war-birds where they get off.”
“Where did you learn about it?” asked Jeremy.
“The Party is going to back it. It’ll carry without any trouble. The yellow-bellies won’t dare kick for fear of the German vote.”
“Then they might as well raise the German flag over the Capitol,” declared the Boot & Shoe Surgeon fiercely.
“German nothing! We’ll have the red flag of brotherhood there yet, Eli.”
Considerations of policy delayed the presentation of the bill. When it was offered, Jeremy put it on record all over the State, in an editorial of protest, dubbing it the “Surrender Bill.” But no leader could be found in the Legislature who dared back this bold course. German intimidation had done its work too well. The most that the opponents of the bill ventured was to obstruct its passage by parliamentary obstacles. Even that much brought down upon the offender the threats of an organized Deutschtum. But the matter bumped and dawdled along the legislative road all that spring and summer before the bill passed to a final reading. Jeremy published his last editorial on the subject “Hands Off the President,” solemnly warning the Legislature against interfering in international matters of which they could know little or nothing. The Record replied with a scathing “leader” denouncing The Guardian, under the caption “An Insult to Our State,” the purport of which was that Centralia possessed the patriotism, statesmanship, and wisdom embodied in its Legislature to lay out the course for the ship of state through the most perilous waters. It was the kind of claptrap which rallies pseudo-patriotism and emboldens vacillating politicians.
The bill passed in the fall by a ratio of two to one. Deutschtum rejoiced exuberantly.
Jeremy hurried to the Executive Mansion. “Governor, are you going to veto that bill?”
“Is this for publication, Mr. Editor?” smiled the Governor.
“Yes.”
“Then I will say that the matter is still under advisement.”
“It’s a rank surrender, Martin.”
“It’s a silly bill, Jem. But where’s the harm? Let ’em blow off steam.”
“Then you won’t veto it?”
“I certainly shall not. Does The Guardian propose to scarify me?”
“My Lord, Martin! A matter as serious as this—I don’t see how you can take it so lightly.”
“Philosophy, my boy. With our Corporation Bill coming on soon I’m certainly not going to compromise its chances by flying in the face of the whole German-American vote.”
“But on a question of national honor—”
“National flapdoodle! Our national honor is safe enough as long as we keep our heads. Will you see Rappelje to-morrow about the Corporation Control Bill?”
“Yes. To-morrow afternoon.”
The lean and dry authority on economics, an ardent apostle of Embree’s policies and his chief adviser on all corporation matters, spent an hour in the editorial den of The Guardian. All points of the bill were carefully discussed. Jeremy committed his unqualified editorial support to it.
“Will you forward it to Mr. Kimball, of The Bellair Journal?” asked the professor.
“Yes, if you wish.”
“We can be sure of his aid?”
“Probably. Though he will be very sore on Governor Embree if the ‘Surrender Bill’ is signed.”
“That has no bearing whatsoever upon this measure.”
“Only as a matter of political barter and trade. What do you think of the ‘Surrender Bill’ yourself, Professor Rappelje?”
“I was requested to come here to discuss the Corporation Control Act,” returned the economist austerely.
“Another dodger!” thought Jem disgustedly, as he bade his visitor a somewhat curt good-day.
Such advisement as Governor Embree bestowed upon the “Surrender Bill” was brief. Two days after its passage he signed it without comment. Jeremy’s editorial on the final step in the enactment was dignified and regretful, but carefully guarded against offense. It indicated plainly that there would be no split between The Guardian and the Governor.
On the morning following the signature, as Jeremy was at his desk, Andrew Galpin burst in upon him, his face vivid with emotions in which unholy glee, such as might be evoked by some Satanic jest, seemed to predominate.
“Come out here!” he gasped.
“What’s the matter?” demanded his Boss, struggling against a powerful grip.
“Come out. I can’t tell it. You’ve got to see it.”
Galpin hurried him downstairs and out upon the sidewalk. The street was full of people with faces turned upward and to the northeast where Capitol Hill reared its height. The typical characteristic of the faces was a staringly incredulous eye and a fallen jaw. Jeremy followed the line of vision to the dome wherefrom projected the State’s official flagstaff.
In place of the Stars and Stripes there blew, stiff in the brisk wind, the banner of Imperial Germany.