Kitabı oku: «The Fall of a Nation», sayfa 11

CHAPTER XXVII

THE General hastened to give orders for the retirement. By noon the next day his battleline stretched from Patchogue through Holtsville to Port Jefferson and a hundred thousand men were wielding pick and shovel with savage determination. There was one thing these men didn’t lack whatever was missing in their equipment. They hadn’t enough guns. They had no uniforms – save on the handful of regulars sprinkled among them. They hadn’t much ammunition. They did have courage. They were there to do and die.

For three days the wind blew a steady gale from the southwest and piled the white foaming breakers high on the sand dunes.

Through the pounding surf the sea lifted our bloated dead until they lay in grim blue heaps on the white sands at low tide. General Hood despatched Vassar to see that they were buried. He piled them in big trenches one on top of the other.

The wind died to a gentle caress as Vassar stood and watched them dumped into unmarked trenches – brave boys whose lives we could have saved with a few paltry millions spent in preparation.

His thoughts were bitter.

Had we been prepared no nation on earth had dared attack us. Our fighting force in men would fill an army of 16,000,000. Our strength in money was greater than Continental Europe combined. We had the men. We had the money. We were just not ready – that was all. We could have whipped combined Europe had we been prepared, and combined Europe, knowing this, would have courted our favor with bows and smiles.

The thin line of the new moon broke through the soft fleece of clouds and the stars came out in countless thousands. The lights were playing far out at sea too, the big searchlights of the scouts and battle cruisers. They flashed on the grave diggers now, held steady for a moment and swung in search of guns. They were not interested in the dead.

Vassar’s heart went out in a throb of pity as he watched the scene – pity for the men whom a mighty nation had murdered for nothing – pity for the well-meaning but foolish men and women whose childish theories of peace had made this stupendous crime possible.

He thought too with the keenest pang of the anguish that would come to the heart of the woman he loved when the magnitude of this betrayal of a nation crushed her soul. Men like Barker and Pike would continue their parrot talk perhaps until Death called them. The heart of Virginia Holland would be crushed by this appalling tragedy. If he could only take her in his arms and whisper his love!

At dawn next morning Vassar stayed to watch from the hills the landing of the armada. They had scorned to waste a shot from their big guns to cover the landing. It was unnecessary. Their airmen had reconnoitered and reported the defending army miles away hastily digging their trenches.

“Good!” the imperial commander replied on receiving this report. “The bigger and longer their trenches, the bigger the battle. What we want is one fight and that settles it.”

Through four days the landing proceeded with marvelous precision, each man at his post. The whole great movement went forward without a hitch with scarcely an accident to mar its almost festive character.

Twenty-five huge transports lay in the offing discharging their thousands of troops from barges and lighters. The men swarmed on the sands like locusts. Nothing had been left to chance. Nothing had been forgotten. They had cavalry in thousands – huge artillery that covered acres. Fifty magnificent horses were hitched to a single gun of the largest type. Their food supplies were apparently exhaustless. Each regiment had its moving kitchens, its laundry wagons, its bakery.

The signal corps were already stringing their wires. A wireless plant had been in communication with the commander on the flagship since the work of landing began.

When the last ship had discharged her cargo, it was known that four full army corps, each with complete equipment of cavalry, artillery and machine guns, had been landed and that this first division of the invading host consisted of not less than one hundred and sixty thousand officers and men – every one of whom spoke good English as well as his native tongue.

The news spread with lightning rapidity through the army of defense and on past their lines into the terror-stricken city. The thousands of half-mad refugees who had fled to the country began now to turn again toward New York. They had slept in the fields and woods for more than a week. Their condition was pitiful and their suffering a source of constant worry to the officers.

On the day that the invaders began their march from the beach to form on the turnpike for their final sweep against the trenches, Hood had massed from all sources two hundred pieces of artillery to defend his trenches against more than five hundred of the enemy. What the range and caliber of these hostile guns might be he could only guess. He knew one thing with painful certainty – whatever their range and caliber might be they were manned by veteran artillerymen who had fought them for years under the hideous conditions of modern war. Not a man in his army had ever been under the fire of modern artillery. That his gunners would give a good account of themselves, however, he had not the slightest doubt.

The rub would come when they began to fall. Trained men to take their places were not to be had. If it should come to cold steel, he could trust the raw volunteers in his trenches to defend their homes against a horde of devils. The trouble was but a handful of his men were equipped with bayonets.

He had just inspected his lines and given his final instructions to his brigade commanders when an extraordinary procession marched into his lines from Brooklyn, headed by the Honorable Plato Barker and the Reverend Dr. A. Cuthbert Pike, still president of the Peace Union.

The General refused to see or speak to them. Pike sought Vassar and begged him as an old political associate of Barker’s to secure ten minutes’ interview.

“I assure you, Congressman,” Pike insisted in his nervous fidgety way, “that Barker may be able to open negotiations with the invaders if you will let us through the lines!”

Vassar sought for ten minutes to dissuade Pike from his purpose. His faith was unshaken – in sheer asinine fatuity it was sublime. It was so ridiculous that the young leader decided that the best thing that could happen to the country was to get both Barker and Pike inside the enemy’s lines.

Barker had not been able to reach New York for the Peace Jubilee. He had regarded this great work of his career complete – crowned with glorious success. He had passed on to greater things. So remarkable had been his triumph in the Parliament of Man, so complete the vindication of his theories of arbitration and moral suasion as a substitute for war, that he had been able to raise the price of his Chautauqua lecture fees to five hundred dollars guarantee and one-third the gate receipts.

When the tragic crash came which threatened at one stroke to dislocate his process of reasoning and destroy his lecture bookings at the same moment, he was at the little town of Winona, Indiana, lecturing to five thousand enraptured Chautauqua peace enthusiasts. He had just finished counting the gate receipts, twenty-five hundred dollars on the day. His share was five hundred dollars and the half of the remaining thousand, making fifteen hundred dollars – the largest fee ever received by a lecturer in the history of the country.

With a regretful look at their pile, he was congratulating the management on having so much left over after he had been paid, when the astounding message was read announcing the insurrection of two hundred thousand armed foreigners, their capture of the President, his Cabinet, the Capitol and the fall of the cities.

The great man laughed.

“It’s a huge hoax, my friends!” he shouted in soothing tones. “A wag is putting up a joke on me – that’s all. I’m an old timer. I take these things as they come – don’t worry.”

His soothing words quieted the crowd for an hour until the second message arrived announcing the surrender of Chicago, and St. Louis to the same mysterious power and announcing that the landing from a great armada of the hostile army was hourly expected at New York.

The silver-tongued orator at once took up his burden and hastened East to meet the coming foe.

He lifted his hand in solemn invocation over the vast throng of panic-stricken hearers as he took his departure.

“Be of good cheer, my friends!” he cried. “I have always held the high faith that if we appeal to the heart of the misguided foe who invades our soil we can make him a good American. I, for one, will set my life on the issue. I will go as your ambassador to this foe. He is a man of the same hopes and faith even as you and I. Touched by the same divine influences that have lifted us from the barbarism of war we can save him also!

“Have no fear – this is all senseless panic. Personally I do not believe this wild canard of a foreign invasion. Our cities may be the victims of a wide conspiracy of dissatisfied Socialists and Anarchists – but a foreign foe – bah! I go to meet him with faith serene!”

Pike related the story of this scene with a hush of awe in his voice as if he had seen a vision of the living God and the sight had stricken him partly dumb.

Vassar appealed finally to the General to give them a pass through the lines.

“Tell those two windbags to go through my lines if they wish – I don’t give a damn where they go,” Hood snapped. “I only hope and pray that a friendly bayonet lets the air out of them so that we shall never hear them again. I won’t see them. I won’t speak to them. I won’t give them a scrap of paper. If they dare to pass with any fool proposition of their disordered brains, it’s their affair – not mine. Tell them to get out of this camp quick – I don’t care which way they go.”

At Pike’s solicitation Vassar escorted Barker through the lines and watched the pair disappear arm in arm down the turnpike toward Southampton.

They walked five miles before they found a conveyance. They tried to hire a rig from a farmer. He refused to move at any price – even after Barker explained who he was and the tremendous import of his mission.

Through much dickering they succeeded in buying of him an old horse that had been turned out to graze. The Long Islander drove a hard bargain. After loud protests, and finally denunciation for his lack of patriotism, Barker counted out two hundred and fifty dollars of his last lecture fee. He still carried the fifteen hundred dollars in cash in his inside pocket.

They tried in vain to find another horse. For this one they had no saddle. As Barker was getting stout, and puffed painfully at the hills, little Pike insisted that he ride.

“You first, Brother Pike – “ the orator maintained.

“No – no – Brother Barker, you ride, I can walk!” Pike protested.

They finally compromised on the principles of the peace propaganda and both of them mounted the old steed – the silver-tongued orator in front and his faithful henchman behind holding to his ample waist.

The compromise worked until the horse got tired of it. At the end of an hour’s journey he refused to move another inch, bucked and threw them both in a heap. In vain they tried to move him. He not only refused to carry double, he bucked and threw Barker, who ventured to mount alone. To Pike’s horror the great orator lost his temper, swore a mighty oath and smote the beast with a gold-headed cane which he had received as a token of his supremacy as an advocate of peace.

They now had the horse on their hands as an encumbrance. Barker refused to let him loose. He was of a thrifty turn of mind even in a crisis. He determined to ship that horse West and make him earn the two fifty. So leading the steed, with stout hearts still undaunted, the two apostles passed on toward the coming foe.

CHAPTER XXVIII

WHEN the unique voluntary peace delegation finally reached the headquarters of the imperial army, the commander was conducting a prayer meeting. They must wait.

They waited with joy.

Pike’s little wizened face beamed with good will to men. From the moment he heard that the army was at prayers he had no doubt of the final outcome of their mission.

He turned once more to the soldier who had arrested and brought them in.

“Your General always leads the service?” he asked genially.

“Always – before a battle – ”

“Of – yes, yes, I see – I see – “ Pike fluttered.

“If it’s going to be a real battle,” the man continued, “he prays all night in his tent sometimes. For this little skirmish we’re going into, I don’t think the service will last more than ten minutes.”

Pike didn’t like this soldier’s conversation. He had a rude way of smiling while he talked. The President of the Peace Union decided to withhold further conversation with him.

To the amazement of Barker and Pike the divine services suddenly ended in a shout. The sinister brownish-gray hosts that knelt in prayer leaped to their feet with a fierce cry that rent the heavens:

“For God and Emperor!”

The Peace delegates were slightly distressed by this strange ending of a prayer meeting. It had an uncanny sound. There was something about the leap and shout too that suggested the rush of hosts into battle.

However, they were nothing daunted. God was with them. At least Pike knew that the Almighty was with him. Since Barker’s fall and oath and blows on that horse’s head he had moments of doubts about the orator’s perfect purity of faith. Still for one righteous man the Lord would spare a city!

Pike brushed the dust from his black broadcloth suit, adjusted his limp, dirt-smeared white bow tie and made ready to meet the foe with a plea that could not be shaken.

Barker was so absorbed in thought preparing his noble address that he remained oblivious to his dishevelled condition. His silk hat had been crushed in the second fall, and refused to be straightened. It was this fact that had caused him to lose his temper and smite the horse.

His broken tile drooped on one side in a painfully funny way that worried Pike. He gently removed the great man’s hat and tried to straighten it.

“Permit me, Brother Barker,” he said nervously. “Your hat’s a little out of plumb.”

Barker’s moon-like face was beaming now with inspiration. He made no objection. He was used to being fussed over by women and preachers. Barker turned his horse over to an obliging army hostler and took Pike’s arm from his habit of being escorted through crowds to the platform.

The soldier led them without further ceremony to the tent of the commander of the advancing army.

From the pomp and ceremony, salutes and clicking heels, the peace pioneers knew that they were being ushered into the presence of the Commander-in-chief.

General Villard, who had dashed from Waldron’s side to assume first command, came out laughing to meet them – a tall, stately figure, booted and spurred – his entire staff following. He carried a silver-mounted riding-whip in his hand and looked as if he had been born in the saddle.

“You bear a message under a flag of truce from the enemy?” he asked sharply.

Barker bowed graciously, removing his lame tile, and stood holding it on a level with his shoulder after the fashion of committees at the laying of cornerstones. His bald head and smiling open face beamed. He plunged at once into his eloquent address.

“We have come, General,” he began suavely, “in the name of a hundred million happy, peaceful citizens of this great Republic to bid you welcome to our shores. Our vast and glorious domain, washed by two oceans, stretching from the frozen peaks of Alaska to the eternal sunshine and flowers of the tropics, is large enough for all who bless us with their coming.

“We welcome you as brothers! We want you to stay with us. We offer you the blessings of peace and freedom. We do not meet you with guns. We come with smiles and flowers, extend our hands and say: ‘God bless you!’ ”

The orator was swept away with the melodious sound of his own voice. He replaced his crushed hat and extended his hand in a smile of glowing enthusiasm.

With a sudden crash the silver-mounted riding-whip whistled through the air and tore through the orator’s tile. The battered hat fell into pieces and dropped to the ground revealing an ugly red lane across the great man’s shining bald pate.

Barker was too dumfounded to dodge or protest. The thing happened with such swiftness, it had stunned him into silence.

Pike danced nervously on first one foot and then the other, lifting his hands in little attempts at apologies.

“Hats off in the presence of your superiors!” the General thundered.

Pike’s hat was already off. He hadn’t ventured to put it on. Still he ducked his head instinctively and then rushed into the breach.

“My dear General,” he pleaded. “You do not understand, I am sure. No possible offense could have been intended by my distinguished colleague. It is the custom of our country often to speak with hats on in the open air. The Honorable Plato Barker is a veteran outdoor speaker, your Excellency. He is one of the most distinguished men in America – ”

“That is nothing to me,” the General curtly interrupted. “He stands in the presence of an officer of his Imperial Majesty’s Army. Your greatest civilian is my inferior. Keep that in mind when in the presence of your superiors – proceed!”

Barker was too astonished and hurt to say more. For the first time in his illustrious career as a peddler of words, he had failed to move his audience to accept his wares at any price. His world had collapsed. He could only rub the swelling red line on his head and glance uneasily about his unpromising surroundings.

The preacher’s hour had struck. He rose grandly to the occasion. His manner was the quintessence of courtly deference, nervously anxious deference.

“My name is Pike,” he began tremblingly – “the Reverend A. Cuthbert Pike, D.D., president of the American Peace Union – ”

“Proceed, Cuthbert!” was the short answer.

“We have come, your Excellency – “ he paused and bowed low – “to initiate here today for all the world a constructive policy that will eliminate the necessity for war. Our plan is the appeal to reason.

“We marvel at the amazing delusion that has led Europe into this unprovoked and unnecessary assault. Nobody wants war – least of all I’m sure the great General who knows its full horrors.

“The only question, therefore, is how best to prevent it. This nation has always been too strong, too great in the consciousness of her strength, to desire war. We have sixteen million men ready to die at our call! Why should we sacrifice their precious lives? To what end if we can by any means save them?

“The prime cause, your Excellency – “ again he bowed low – “of war is excessive armament – ”

The General laughed heartily, and adjusted his glasses for a better look at Pike. The little man was slightly flustered at this act of uncertain import, but went on bravely in spite of Barker’s look of dejection.

“We proclaim it to all nations that we are not ready to fight, and that we are glad of it because it is not possible in this condition for us to threaten or bully anyone! An unarmed man has ten chances to one over the armed man in keeping out of trouble!”

Again the General laughed and looked the preacher over from head to foot.

“Boundaries,” Pike proceeded, “when armed constantly provoke clashes of the forces on either side. Boundaries unarmed, as the long line between us and Canada, promote fellowship and good will.

“We say to your Excellency, come let us reason together. We are determined not to be dragged into war. We have negotiated thirty treaties with the nations of the world, some of whom your army represents, providing for a year’s delay before hostilities can begin.

“We claim our rights under these solemn treaties and ask of you an armistice for twelve months for the discussion of our differences.

“Name your demands and we will lay them before our Congress. Tell us your real mission and we will help you to accomplish it. Make us your friends and fellow workers. Why have you come?”

“I’ll tell you,” snapped the General. “For two hundred years you have been keeping a great pigsty on this continent, in which swine have rooted and fattened on the abundance of nature which you haven’t had the brains to conserve.

“Well – it’s time to clean up and make sausage! We have come for that work. We have come to teach a race of slatterns the first principles of law, order and human efficiency. We have come to clean this pigpen, put swine-herders into aprons and give them the honor of serving their superiors – and therefore for the first time in life doing something worth while.

“You are sick with overeating and much prosperity. Our Emperor sends you a tonic of blood and iron warranted to cure all ills. Our benign sovereign is the world’s physician. He takes his crown and divine commission from God alone. On him the Divine Spirit has descended. In his luminous mind is the wisdom of the ages. He who dares to oppose his royal will shall be ground to powder beneath the iron heel of his soldiers. You speak of a hundred million people as if their opinion was of the slightest value. Public opinion is the source of public ills. You speak of treaties. Treaties are the thin disguises by which divinely chosen leaders conceal their ultimate aims!

“Might is right and the right can only be decided by the sword. War in itself is the fiery furnace that tries man’s character. The dross perishes. The pure gold shines with greater splendor. Efforts to abolish war are foolish and immoral. Peace is not our aim or desire. The sight of suffering does one good. The infliction of suffering does one more good. This war will be conducted as ruthlessly as science and human genius can make possible – ”

He paused and turned to an orderly.

“The bald-headed one to the bakery! He has forfeited his life by daring to purchase a horse that belongs to his Majesty. I graciously spare his life. Tell my head cook to make him a scullion. If he’s any good report to me at the end of the month and I’ll promote him to the honor of acting as my valet. He has a beautiful voice. He could be trained to yodel – ”

Barker lifted his hand to protest and the orderly kicked him into a trot. When he turned to protest, the bayonet changed his mind.

Pike watched his chief disappear with a groan of amazement.

The General and his staff gathered around the Reverend President of the Peace Union with jovial faces. They were inclined to like him. He had contributed something new to the hilarity of nations. They put on their glasses, adjusted and removed them, adjusted them again, looked him up and down, turned him around and wagged their heads gravely.

“Well, gentlemen,” the Commander laughed, “we’re all agreed that it’s a rare specimen – the real question is – what is it?”

Each answer brought a roar of laughter.

“It looks like a man – ”

“Can’t be!”

“It might have been once!”

“But not now!”

“A new microbe?”

“Sure – that’s it – the microbe Pacificus americanus!”

The preacher fidgeted in a sorry effort to smile with his tormentors.

“I suppose, of course, gentlemen,” Pike fluttered, “as I’m a tenderfoot you will have your little jokes – it’s all in the day’s work – so to speak – as it were!”

The Commander turned to a sergeant.

“Put an apron on this little man and make him a dishwasher – tin dishes – he might ruin my silver – ”

The officers roared.

“If he’s any good I’ll make a butler out of him. I like his whiskers. They’re distinctly English – ”

With a loud guffaw the staff dispersed and the General turned to his tent.

Pike danced a little jig in his effort to recall the judge and correct the error of his sentence.

The sergeant gave him a resounding smack on the side of his head that spun him round like a top.

Pike was livid with rage. He bristled like a bantam rooster for a minute to the amazement of his guard.

“Don’t do that! Don’t do it – don’t do it again! Upon my soul, this surpasses human belief, sir! I shall denounce the whole proceeding in a series of resolutions that will resound over this nation – mark my word!”

The soldier waited until Pike’s breath ran short and then kicked him three feet, lifting him clear of the ground. When the preacher struck he fell flat on his face.

The blow took out of him what wind there was left.

He scrambled to his feet and edged out of reach.

“I – I – return – good for evil, sir – “ he stammered at last. “I bless them that despitefully use me – God bless you!”

The soldier snorted with rage and gave him another kick, crying: “The same to you! And many of ’em!”

When Pike scrambled to his feet again and wiped the dust out of his lips he shook his head in despair:

“God bless my soul! God bless my soul!”

The Sergeant grinned in his face.

“Cheer up, Cuthbert, you’ll soon be dead!”

Ten minutes later he thrust poor Pike into the kitchen inclosure and shouted to the cook:

“The sooner you kill him the better – go as far as you like!”