CHAPTER XXXI
So we came to that determining moment when we held our famous patriotic meeting at the Down and Out.
I call it famous because it was a new point of departure. In all the club’s history there had never been a meeting for any other purpose than to screw the courage up to the cutting out of drink. Other subjects had been suggested from time to time; but we had stuck to our last as specialists. We had not been turned aside for philanthropy, for education, for financial benefit, or even for religion in the commonly accepted meaning of that word; and the results had been our justification. But now the flame at the heart of the earth had caught us, and we were all afire.
I mean that we were afire with interest, though the interest was against war as well as for it. But for it or against it, it was the one theme of our discussion; and with cause.
The tide was rising higher, and the spirit of the nation floating on the top. On one of the first days of April the President had asked Congress to declare a state of war with the German Empire. Two days later the Senate voted that declaration. A few nights after that we got together to talk things over at the Down and Out.
It was a crowded meeting, but as you looked round you in advance you would have prophesised a dull one.Our fellows came from all over New York and the suburbs, washed up, brushed up, and in their Sunday clothes. A few were men of education, but mostly we were of the type generally classed as hard-working. In age we ran from the seventies down to the twenties, with a preponderance of chaps between twenty-five and forty.
What I gathered from remarks before the meeting came to order was a dogged submission to leadership.
“If you was to put it up to us guys to decide the whole thing by ourselves,” Beady Lamont said to me as we stood together, “we’d vote ag’in’ it. Why? Because we’re over here—mindin’ our own business—with our kids to take care of—and our business to keep up—and we ain’t got no call to interfere in what’s no concern of ours. Them fellows over in Europe never could keep still, and they dunno how. But”—he made one of his oratorical gestures with his big left hand—“but if the President says the word—well, we’re behind him. He’s the country, and when the country speaks there’s no Amur’can who ain’t ready to give all.”
Perhaps he had said something similar to Andrew Christian, because it was that point of being ready to give all which, when he spoke, Christian took as his text.
I am not giving you an account of the whole meeting; I mean only to report a little of what Christian said, and its effect upon Cantyre. Cantyre had come because Regina had insisted; but he sat with the atmosphere of hot, thundery silence wrapping him round.
“To be ready to give all is what the world is summoned to,” Christian declared, when he had been asked to say a few words, “and, oh, boys, I beg you to believe that it’s time! The call hasn’t come a minute too soon,and we sha’n’t be a minute too soon in getting ready to obey it.”
“Some of us ’ain’t got much to give,” a voice came from the back sitting-room.
“We’ve all got everything there is, if we only understood it,” Christian answered, promptly; “but whatever we have, it’s something we hold dear.”
“If we hold it dear,” another voice objected, “why should we be asked to give it up?”
“Because we haven’t known how to use it. Think of all you’ve had in your own life, Tom, and what you’ve done with it.”
I didn’t know what Tom had had in his life, but the retort evidently gave him something to turn over in his mind.
“There never was a time in the history of the world,” Christian went on, “when the abundance of blessing was more lavishly poured out upon mankind. In every country in both hemispheres we’ve had the treasures of the earth, the sea, and the air positively heaped upon us. Food, clothing, comfort, security, speed—have become the commonplaces of existence. The children of to-day grow up to a use of trains and motors and telephones and airplanes that would have seemed miraculous as short a time ago as when I was a lad. The standard of living has been so quickly raised that the poor have been living in a luxury unknown to the rich of two or three generations ago. The Atlantic has got to be so narrow that we count the time of our crossing it by hours. The globe has become so small that young people go round it for a honeymoon. People whose parents found it difficult to keep one house have two or three, and even more. There is money everywhere—private fortunes thatwould have staggered the imagination of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba and Augustus and Charlemagne all combined. Amusements are so numerous that they pall on us. In lots of the restaurants of New York you can order a meal for yourself alone, and feel that neither Napoleon nor Queen Victoria nor the Czar could possibly have sat down to a better one.”
“Some could,” one of our objectors declared, with all sorts of implications in his tone.
“Oh, I’m not saying there are no inequalities or that there is just distribution of all this blessing. In fact, my point is that there is not. All I’m asserting is that the blessing is there, and that the very windows of heaven have been opened on the world in order to pour it out.”
“I never saw none of it,” a thin, sour fellow put in, laconically.
“But, Juleps, that’s what I’m coming to. The blessing was there, and some of us wouldn’t try to get what belonged to us, and others of us collared too much, and we treated it very much as children treat pennies in a scramble. We did far worse than that. We rifled, we stole, we gobbled, we guzzled, we strutted, we bragged; the fellow that was up kicked the fellow that was down to keep him down; the fellow that had plenty sneaked and twisted and cringed and cadged in order to get more; and we’ve all worked together to create the world that’s been hardly fit to live in, that every one of us has known. Now, boys, isn’t that so? Speak out frankly.”
Since in that crowd there could not be two opinions as to the world being hardly fit to live in, there was a general murmur of assent.
“Now wealth is a great good thing; and what I meanby wealth is the general storehouse, free to us all, which we call the earth and the atmosphere round it. I don’t have to tell you that it’s a storehouse crammed in every crack and cranny with the things you and I need for our enjoyment. And it isn’t a storehouse such as you and I would fill, which has got only what we could put into it; it’s always producing more. Production is its law. It’s never idle. It’s incessantly working. The more we take out of it the more it yields. I don’t say that we can’t exhaust it in spots by taxing it too much; of course we can. Greed will exhaust anything, just as it’s exhausting, under our very eyes, our forests, our fisheries, and our farms. But in general there’s nothing that will respond to good treatment more surely than the earth, nor give us back a bigger interest on the labor we put into it.”
“That’s so,” came from some one who had perhaps been a farmer.
“And so,” Christian went on, “we’ve had a world that’s given us everything in even greater abundance than we could use. We’ve had food to waste; we’ve had clothes for every shade of temperature; we’ve had coal for our furnaces, and iron for our buildings, and steel for our ships, and gasolene for our automobiles. We’ve had every invention that could help us to save time, to save worry, to save labor, to save life. Childhood has been made more healthy; old age more vigorous. That a race of young men and young women has been growing up among us of whom we can say without much exaggeration that humanity is becoming godlike, any one can see who goes round our schools and colleges.”
He took a step forward, throwing open his palms in a gesture of demand.
“But, fellows, what good has all this prodigious plentybeen doing us? Has it made us any better? Have we become any more thankful that we all had enough and to spare? Have we been any more eager to see that when we had too much the next man had a sufficiency? Have we rejoiced in this plenitude as the common delight of every one? Have we seen it as the manifestation of the God who expresses Himself in all good things, and Who has given us, as one of the apostles says, all things richly to enjoy? Has it brought us any nearer Him? Has it given us any increased sympathy with Him? Or have we made it minister to our very lowest qualities, to our appetites, to our insolence, to our extravagance, to our sheer pride that all this was ours, to wallow in, to waste, and to despise?
“You know we have done the last. There isn’t a man among us who hasn’t done it to a greater or less degree. There is hardly a man in New York who hasn’t lived in the lust of the purely material. You may go through the world and only find a rarefied creature here and there who hasn’t reveled and rioted and been silly and vain and arrogant to the fullest extent that he dared.”
The wee bye Daisy was sitting in the front row, looking up at the speaker raptly.
“I haven’t, Mr. Christian,” he declared, virtuously.
“Then, Daisy, you’re the rarefied creature I said was an exception. Most of us have,” he went on when the roar of laughter subsided. “If we haven’t in one way we have in another. And what has been the result? Covetousness, hatred, class rivalry, capital and labor bitternesses, war. And now we’ve come to a place where by a queer and ironical judgment upon us the struggle for possession is going to take from us all that we possess.”
He thrust his hands into his trousers pockets and spoke casually, confidentially.
“For, boys, that’s what I’m coming to. All the good things we have are going to be taken away from us. Since we don’t know how to use them, and won’t learn, we’ve got to give them back.”
“Oh, I don’t believe that, Mr. Christian,” a common-sense voice cried out in a tone of expostulation.
“Peter, you’ll see. You’ll only have to live a few months longer to find yourself like every one else in America, lacking the simple essentials you’ve always taken as a matter of course. It isn’t luxuries alone that you’ll be called on to give up; it will be the common necessaries of every-day life. The great summons is coming to us, not merely from our government, not merely from the terrified and stricken nations of mankind, but from God above—to give everything back to Him. I don’t say that we shall starve or that we shall freeze; but we may easily be cold and hungry and driven to a cheese-paring economy we never expected to practise. The light will be taken from our lamps, the work from our fingers, the money from our pockets. We shall be searched to the very soul. There’s nothing we sha’n’t have to surrender. At the very least we must give tithes of all that we possess, signifying our willingness to give more.”
“Some of us ’ain’t got nothing.”
It was the bitter cry of the dispossessed.
“Yes, Billy; we’ve all got life; and life, too, we shall have to offer up. There are some of you chaps sitting here that in all human probability will be called on to do it.”
“You won’t, Mr. Christian. You’re too old.”
“I’m too old, Spud, but my two boys are not; andthey’re getting ready now. Whether it’s harder or easier to let them go rather than for me to go myself I leave to any of you guys that have kids.”
“Perhaps it won’t be as bad as what you think.”
“Jimmy, I’m only reasoning from what I see in the world already. When the human race is being trodden in the wine-press we in America can’t expect to be spared. If any of you want to know what’s happening to the kind of world we’ve made for ourselves let him read the eighteenth chapter of the book of the Revelation. That chapter might be written of Europe as it is at this minute. Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen. The kings of the earth stand off from her, crying, Alas! alas! that great city Babylon, for in one hour is her judgment come! The merchants of the earth weep and mourn over her, for no man buyeth their merchandise any more, saying, Alas! alas! that great city, which was clothed in fine linen and purple and scarlet, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, for in one hour so great riches is come to naught. And every shipmaster, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, cast dust on their heads and cry over her, Alas! alas! that great city wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! for in one hour she is made desolate.”
“But that ain’t us.”
“No, Headlights, that’s not us. I agree with you that there’s a difference. America is not in the same boat with Europe—not quite—but very nearly. Perhaps because our crimes are not so black we’ve been given the chance to do what we have to do more of our own free act. From Europe what she had has been taken away violently, whether she would or no. We have thechance to come before the throne of God and offer it back of our own free will. You see the difference! And, oh, boys, I want you to do it—”
“It ain’t for us, Mr. Christian, to decide that.”
“Oh yes, it is, Beady! It’s for each of us to offer willingly in his own heart. Not just to the government—not just to the country—not just to France or Belgium or any other nation that’s in a tight place—but to that blessed and heavenly Father Who’s giving us this wonderful chance to put everything into His hands again, and get it all back for redistribution. Don’t you see? That’s it—the redistribution! A better world has to come out of this—a juster world—a happier world—a cleaner world. And in that reconstruction we Americans have the chance to take the lead because we’re doing it of our own accord. Every other country has some ax to grind; but we have none. We’ve none except just to be in the big movement of all mankind upward and forward. But the difference between us and every other country—unless it’s the British Empire—is that we do it man by man, each stepping out of the ranks in his turn as if he was the only one and everything depended on his act. It’s up to you, Beady; it’s up to me; it’s up to each American singly.”
“Why ain’t it up to every European singly?”
“It is. They’re just beginning to understand that it is. The Englishman, the Frenchman, the Italian, they’re beginning to see that the democracy we talk so much about isn’t merely a question of the vote—that it isn’t primarily a question of the vote at all—it’s one of self-government in the widest and yet the most personal sense. The great summons is not to mankind in nations; it’s to mankind as individuals. It’s to Tom and Jimmy andPeter and Headlights and Daisy and every one who has a name. It’s the individual who makes the country, who forms the army, who becomes the redemptive element. In proportion as the individual cleanses himself from the national sin the national sin is wiped out. So it’s by Englishmen and Englishwomen that England will renew itself—”
I think it was my old friend, the Irish hospital attendant, who called out, “What’s England’s national sin?”
The question brought the speaker to a halt. He seemed to reflect.
“What’s England’s national sin?” he repeated. “I should say—mind you, I’m not sitting in judgment on any one or any people—but we’ve all got to clean our stables, even if it takes the labors of Hercules to accomplish it—I should say England’s national vice—the vice that’s been eating the heart out of her body, and the spirit out of her heart—is sensuality.”
“What’s the matter with France?”
“I’m not an international physician with a specialty for diagnosis,” Christian laughed; “but in my opinion France has been corroded through and through with sordidness. She’s been too petty, too narrow, too mean, too selfish—”
“Say, boss, tell us about my country.”
“You mean, Italy, Tony? Haven’t you got to get rid of your superstition, and all the degrading things superstition brings with it? I want you to understand that we’re talking of national errors, not of national virtues.”
“Have we got a national error in the United States?”
“What do you think, Tapley? Isn’t it as plain as the nose on your face? Isn’t it written all over the country, on every page of every newspaper you pick up?”
“What? What is it?” came from several voices at once.
“Dishonesty!” he cried, loudly. “We Americans have got our good points, but of them honesty is the very smallest. If any one called us a nation of sharpers he wouldn’t be very far wrong. Our notion of competition is to get the better of the other fellow, by foul means if it can’t be done by fair. That’s the case in private life, and when it comes to public—well, did you ever hear of anything that we ever undertook as a people that didn’t have to be investigated before very long? You can hardly read a daily paper in which the investigation of some public trust isn’t going on. Dishonesty is stamped deep, deep into the American character as it is to-day; and for that very reason, if for no other, we’ve got to give everything back. If we don’t it will be taken from us by main force; and we’re not of the type to wait for that.”
He seemed to gather himself together. His face, always benignant, began to glow with an inward light.
“But, boys, what I want you to understand is that we can make this act of offering as a great act of faith. Every good gift and every perfect gift cometh down! We can take our good gifts and our perfect gifts and hand them up! We can anticipate their being taken from us by giving them. We can give them as men who know whence they have been received, and where they will be held in trust for us—not grudgingly nor of necessity, as the Bible tells us, for God loveth a cheerful giver. Now is the time for us to test that love—every man for himself. The appeal is to the individual. Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom, according to the measure that ye mete. For thisgiving isn’t to men, it’s to God; it isn’t a portion, it’s all; it isn’t limited to material things, it includes our love and our life. It’s the great summons; it’s the great surrender. And—boys—my dear old boys who’ve been saved from other things—we’ve all been saved for this—for something we never expected, but which isn’t hard to do when you look at it in the right way—to hand ourselves back, in body, mind, and possessions, to Him from whom we came, that He may make a new use of us and begin all over again.”
And the first thing I saw when he stopped was Cantyre springing forward to grasp him by the hand.