Winter was coming, and the farm-workers moved to the cities; but this year they did not go as down-and-out-o'-works—they went, each man a little kink. Jimmie wandered into the city of Ironton, and got himself a job in a big automobile1 shop at eight dollars a day, and set to work agitating2 for ten dollars. It was not that he had any need of the extra two dollars, of course, but merely because his first principle in life was to make trouble for the profit-system. The capitalist papers of this middle-Western metropolis4 were furiously denouncing working-men who struck “against their country” in war-time; Jimmie, on the other hand, denounced those who used “country” as camouflage5 for “boss” and made the war a pretext6 to deprive labour of its most precious right.
There was a Socialist7 local in Ironton, still active and determined8 in spite of the fact that its office had been raided by the police, and most of the party's papers and magazines barred from the mails. You could always get leaflets printed, however; and if you could no longer denounce the war directly, you could jeer9 at England's exhibition of “democracy” in Ireland, you could point to the profits of the profiteers, and demand conscription of wealth along with conscription of manhood. Some American Socialists10 became almost as subtle as that German rebel of pre-war days, who, desiring to lampoon11 the Kaiser, wrote an account of the life of the Roman Emperor Agricola, reciting his vanities and insane extravagances.
Late in the autumn came an event which should have troubed Jimmie Higgins more deeply than it did. Along the Izonzo river the Italian armies were facing the Austrians, their hereditary12 enemies; they were at the end of a long, exhaustive, and for the most part unsuccessful campaign, and the Italian Socialists at home were carrying on precisely13 such a warfare14 against their own government as Jimmie Higgins was carrying on in America. They were helped by the Catholic intriguers, who hated the Italian government because it had destroyed the temporal power of the Pope; they were helped by the subtle and persistent15 efforts of Austrian agents in their country, who spread rumours16 among Italian troops of the friendly intentions of the Austrians, and of the imminence17 of a truce18. These agents went so far as to fake copies of the leading Italian newspapers, with accounts of starvation and riots in the home cities, and the shooting down of women and children. These papers were given out in the Italian trenches19, before a certain mountain-sector where the Austrian troops had been fraternizing with the Italians; and then, during the night, the Austrian troops were withdrawn20, and picked German “shock-troops” substituted, which attacked at dawn and drove through the Italian lines, sweeping21 back the army along a hundred-mile front, capturing some quarter of a million prisoners and a couple of thousand cannon—practically all the Italians had.
That Jimmie Higgins did not pay more attention to this terrifying incident was in part because he read it in the capitalist papers and did not believe it; but mainly because his whole attention just now was centred on Russia, where the proletariat was about to make its bid for power. Now you would see how wars were to be ended and peace restored to a distracted world!
The moderate Socialist government of Kerensky was pleading with the capitalist masters of the Allied22 nations for a statement of their peace terms, so that the workers of Russia might know what they were fighting for. The Russian workers wanted a declaration in favour of no annexations23, no indemnities24, and disarmament; on such terms they would help fight the war, in spite of all the starvation and suffering in distracted Russia. But the Allied statesmen would not make any such declaration, and the Russian workers, backed by all the Socialists of the world, declared that the reason was that these Allied statesmen were waging an imperialist war—they did not intend to stop fighting until they had taken vast territories from the German powers, and exacted a ransom25 that would cripple Germany for a generation. The Russian workers refused point-blank to fight for such aims, and so in November came the second revolution, the uprising of the Bolsheviki.
Almost their first action when they took possession of the palaces and government archives was to publish to the world the secret treaties which the rulers of England, France and Italy had made with Russia. These treaties formed a complete justification26 for the attitude of the Russian revolutionists—they showed that the Allied imperialists had planned most shameless plundering27; England was to have the German colonies and Mesopotamia, France was to have German territory to the Rhine, and Italy was to have the Adriatic coast, and to divide Palestine and Syria with England and France.
And here was the most significant fact to Jimmie Higgins—these enormously important revelations, the most important since the beginning of the war, were practically suppressed by the capitalist newspapers of America! First these papers printed a brief item—the Bolsheviki had given out what they claimed were secret treaties, but the genuineness of these documents was gravely doubted. Then they published evasive and lying denials from the British, French and Italian diplomats28; and then they shut up! Not another word did you read about those secret treaties; except for one or two American newspapers with traditions of honour, the full text of those treaties was given in the Socialist press alone! “And now,” cried Jimmie Higgins to the working men in his shop, “what do you think of those wonderful allies of ours? What do you think of those Wall Street newspapers of ours?” Could any working-man who had such facts put before him fail to realize that Jimmie Higgins had a case, and a most important work in the world to do, in spite of all his unreason and his narrowness?
II.
Jimmie was now in the seventh heaven, walking as if on air. A proletarian government at last, the first in history! A government of working-men like himself, running their own affairs, without the help of politicians or bankers! Coming out before the world and telling the truth about matters of state, in language that common men could understand! Disbanding the armies, and sending the workers home! Turning the masters out of the factories, and putting shop-committees in control! Taking away the advertising29 from the crooked30 capitalist papers, and so putting them out of business! Our little friend would rush to the corner every morning to get the paper and see what had happened next; he would go down the street so excited that he forgot his breakfast.
Jimmie had made a new acquaintance in Ironton; the little tailor, Rabin, whose name was Scholem, which means Peace, had given him a letter to his brother, whose name was Deror, which means Freedom. Each afternoon when the automobile factory let out, Jimmie would get an evening paper and take it to Deror's tailor-shop and the two would spell out the news. By God, look at this! Did you ever hear the like? The man in charge of the Bolshevik foreign office was a Marxian Jew who had helped edit the Novy Mir, the revolutionary paper which Scholem had read to Jimmie! He had been a waiter in the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, and now he was giving out the secret treaties, and issuing propaganda manifestoes to the international proletariat.
The American capitalist press was full of lies about the new revolution, of course; but Jimmie could read pretty well between the lines of the capitalist press, and the few Socialist papers that were still in business, and which he read at the headquarters of the local, gave him the rest of what he wanted. To Jimmie, of course, everything the Bolsheviki did was right; if it wasn't right it was a lie. The little machinist knew that the Bolsheviki had repudiated31 the four-billion-dollar debt which the government of the Tsar had contracted with the bankers of France, and Jimmie knew perfectly32 well what was the lying power of four billion dollars.
The American papers were shocked because the Russian Socialists were deserting the cause of democracy, and giving Germany a chance to win the war. The American papers called them German agents, but Jimmie did not take any stock in such talk as this. Jimmie was familiar with the “frame-up” as it is operated against the workers in America. He saw that the first thing the Bolshevik leaders did was to make an appeal to the revolutionary workers of Germany. The Russian proletariat had shown the way—now let the German proletariat follow! Literature was printed and shipped wholesale33 into Germany, leaflets were dropped by aviators34 among the German troops; and when Jimmie and Deror read that the German generals had protested to the Russians against such practices, they laughed aloud with delight. Well might the war-lords squeal35; they knew what was coming to them! And when in January Jimmie and Deror read of the revolting of a brigade of German troops, and a strike of several hundred thousand working men throughout Germany, they thought the end was at hand. The little tailor got up in local Ironton and made a motion that it take to itself the name “Bolshevik”—which motion was carried with a whoop36. And these American Bolsheviki went on to consult with the labour-unions, suggesting that they should form “shop-committees”, and prepare for the taking over of industry a la Russe!
III.
But something went suddenly wrong with the newly built revolutionary steam-roller. The German military chiefs seized their strike-leaders at home and threw them into jail, or shipped them off to the front trenches to be slaughtered37. By terrorism, shrewdly mixed with cajolery, they broke the strike, and sent the grumbling38 slaves back to their treadmill39. And then the German armies began to march into Russia!
It was the crisis to which Jimmie Higgins had been looking forward ever since the war began. Tolstoi had taught that if one nation refused to fight, it would be impossible for another nation to invade it; and while Jimmie Higgins was no mystic or religious non-resistant, he agreed in this with the great Russian. No workers in an enemy army could possibly be brought to fire upon their peace-proclaiming brothers!
And here at last was the test of the theory; here were German Socialists ordered to march against Russian Socialists—ordered to fire upon the red flag! Would they do what their masters, the war-lords, commanded? Or would they listen to the clamorous40 appeals of the international proletariat, and turn their guns against their own officers?
All the world saw what happened; it saw the glorious revolutionary machine, in which Jimmie Higgins had put all his trust, run into a ditch and land its passengers in the mud. The German armies marched, and the Socialists in the German armies did exactly what the non-Socialists did—they fired upon the red flag, as they would have fired upon the flag of the Tsar. They obeyed the orders of their officers, like true and loyal Germans; they drove back the Bolsheviki in confusion, taking their guns and supplies, and destroying their cities; they led off the Russian women and children into slavery, precisely as if they were Belgian or French women and children, destined41 by the German Gott as the legitimate42 prey43 of Kultur. They sacked Riga and Reval, they overran all the Eastern portions of Russia—Courland, Livonia, Esthonia; they moved into the rich grain country of Southern Russia, the Ukraine; they landed from their ships and took Finland, wiping out the liberties of that splendid people. They were at the gates of Petrograd, and the Bolshevik government was forced to flee to Moscow. Of all which military feats44 the German Socialist papers spoke45 with stern pride!
IV.
Poor Jimmie Higgins! It was like the blow of a mighty46 fist in the face; he was literally47 stunned—it was weeks before he could grasp the full meaning of what was happening, the debacle of all his hopes. And it was the same with Ironton's Bolshevik local; all the “pep” was gone out of its proceedings48. To be sure, some noisy ones went on shouting for revolution the very next day—men, who had been talking formulas for twenty or thirty years, and had no more notion of a fact than they had of a pseudopodium. But the sensible men of the group knew that their “St. Louis resolution” was being shot to death over there in the trenches before Petrograd.
It was interesting especially to see Rabin. The common belief of Americans was that a Jew could not be induced to fight; they told a story about one who cried out to his son, asking why he was letting another boy pummel him, and the son whispered in reply, “Keep still, I got a nickel under my foot!” All through the war the Jewish Socialists in America had been, next to the Germans, the most ardent49 pacifists; but now here was a social revolution managed by Jews, here was a Russian government which gave the Jews their rights for the first time in history! So the little Jewish tailor stood up before these American Bolsheviki, and with tears running down his cheeks declared: “Comrades, I am already tru vit speeches; I am going into dis var! I vill put myself vit de Polish Socialists, vit de Bohemian Socialists—I fight de Kaiser to de death! So vill fight every Jewish Socialist in de vorld!” And this was no mere3 braggadocio—Comrade Rabin actually proceeded to shut up his tailor-shop, and went away to join the “red brigade”, which was being organized by the Jewish revolutionists of New York!
If the German war-lords had set out deliberately50 to ham-string the American Socialists, to make it impossible for them to go on demanding peace, they could not have acted differently. They dragged the helpless Bolsheviki into a peace-conference at Brest-Litovsk, and forced them to cede51 away all the territories that Germany had taken, and on top of that to pay an enormous indemnity52. They planned to compel the new Russian government to become a vassal53 to the Central Powers, working to help them enslave the rest of the world. The German armies went through the conquered territories, stripping them bare, robbing the peasants of every particle of food, beating them, shooting them, burning their homes if they resisted. They gave to the world such a demonstration54 of what a German peace would mean, that everywhere free men set their teeth and gripped their hands, and swore to root this infamous55 thing from out civilization. Even Jimmie Higgins!
V.
Yes, even Jimmie! He made up his mind that he would work as hard as ever he could, and produce as many automobile-trucks as he could. But alas56, a man cannot be hounded and oppressed all his life, cannot have hatred57 and rebellion ground into the deeps of his soul, and then forget it over-night because of certain intellectual ideas, certain new items that he reads in his paper. What happened to Jimmie was that his mind was literally torn in half; he found himself, every twenty-four hours of his life, of two absolutely contradictory58 and diametrically opposite points of view. He would vow59 destruction to the hated German armies; and then he would turn about and vow destruction to the men at home who were managing the job of destroying the German armies!
For these men were Jimmie's life-long enemies, and were no more able to forget their prejudices over-night than was Jimmie. For example, the lying capitalist paper which Jimmie had to read every morning! When Jimmie had read a patriotic60 editorial in the Ironton Daily Sun, it had become utterly61 impossible for him to help win the war that day! Or the politicians, seeking to use the war-cry of democracy abroad to crush all traces of democracy at home; to “get” the radicals62 whom they hated and feared, and by means of taxes on necessities and a bonded63 debt to put the costs of the war on to the poor! Or the capitalists, making fervid64 speeches about patriotism65, but refusing to give up the whip-hand over their wage-slaves!
Jimmie Higgins was working in a factory, making automobile-trucks for the armies in France; and the owners of the factory would not let the men have a union, and so there was a strike. The bosses made an agreement to take everybody back and permit a union, and then proceeded treacherously66 to violate the agreement, getting rid of the most active organizers on this or that transparent67 pretext. Jimmie Higgins, trying to help with the skill of his hands to make the world safe for democracy, was turned out of his job and left to wander in the streets, because a big profit-seeking corporation did not believe in democracy, and refused to permit its workers any voice in determining the conditions of their labour! The Government was trying to deal with emergencies such as this, to put an end to the epidemic68 of strikes which was hindering the war-work everywhere; but the government had not yet got its machinery69 going, and meantime Jimmie's little feeble sprout70 of patriotism got a severe chill.
Jimmie got drunk and wasted a part of his money on a woman of the street. Then, being ashamed of himself, and still plagued by the memory of his dead wife and babies, he straightened up and resolved to start life anew. He found himself thinking about Leesville; it was the only place in the world where he had ever been really happy, and now since Deror Rabin had gone East, it was the only place where he had friends. How were the Meissners getting on? How was Comrade Mrs. Gerrity, nee Baskerville? What was Local Leesville thinking about Russia and about the war? Jimmie took a sudden resolve to go and find out. He priced a ticket, and found that he had enough money and to spare. He would take the journey—and take it in state, as a citizen and a war-worker, not as a tramp in a box-car!
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1
automobile
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| n.汽车，机动车 | |
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agitating
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| 搅动( agitate的现在分词 )； 激怒； 使焦虑不安； （尤指为法律、社会状况的改变而）激烈争论 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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metropolis
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| n.首府；大城市 | |
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camouflage
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| n./v.掩饰，伪装 | |
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pretext
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| n.借口，托词 | |
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socialist
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| n.社会主义者；adj.社会主义的 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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jeer
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| vi.嘲弄，揶揄；vt.奚落；n.嘲笑，讥评 | |
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socialists
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| 社会主义者( socialist的名词复数 ) | |
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lampoon
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| n.讽刺文章；v.讽刺 | |
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hereditary
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| adj.遗传的，遗传性的，可继承的，世袭的 | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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warfare
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| n.战争(状态)；斗争；冲突 | |
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persistent
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| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
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rumours
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| n.传闻( rumour的名词复数 )；风闻；谣言；谣传 | |
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imminence
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| n.急迫，危急 | |
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truce
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| n.休战，(争执，烦恼等的)缓和；v.以停战结束 | |
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trenches
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| 深沟，地沟( trench的名词复数 )； 战壕 | |
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withdrawn
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| vt.收回；使退出；vi.撤退，退出 | |
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sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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allied
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| adj.协约国的；同盟国的 | |
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annexations
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| n.并吞，附加，附加物( annexation的名词复数 ) | |
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indemnities
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| n.保障( indemnity的名词复数 )；赔偿；赔款；补偿金 | |
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ransom
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| n.赎金，赎身；v.赎回，解救 | |
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justification
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| n.正当的理由；辩解的理由 | |
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plundering
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| 掠夺，抢劫( plunder的现在分词 ) | |
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diplomats
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| n.外交官( diplomat的名词复数 )；有手腕的人，善于交际的人 | |
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advertising
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| n.广告业；广告活动 a.广告的；广告业务的 | |
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crooked
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| adj.弯曲的；不诚实的，狡猾的，不正当的 | |
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repudiated
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| v.（正式地）否认( repudiate的过去式和过去分词 )；拒绝接受；拒绝与…往来；拒不履行（法律义务） | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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wholesale
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| n.批发；adv.以批发方式；vt.批发，成批出售 | |
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aviators
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| 飞机驾驶员，飞行员( aviator的名词复数 ) | |
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squeal
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| v.发出长而尖的声音；n.长而尖的声音 | |
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whoop
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| n.大叫，呐喊，喘息声；v.叫喊，喘息 | |
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slaughtered
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| v.屠杀，杀戮，屠宰( slaughter的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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grumbling
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| adj. 喃喃鸣不平的, 出怨言的 | |
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treadmill
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| n.踏车；单调的工作 | |
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clamorous
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| adj.吵闹的，喧哗的 | |
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destined
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| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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legitimate
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| adj.合法的，合理的，合乎逻辑的；v.使合法 | |
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prey
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| n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨 | |
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feats
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| 功绩，伟业，技艺( feat的名词复数 ) | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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proceedings
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| n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报 | |
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ardent
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，强烈的，烈性的 | |
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deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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cede
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| v.割让，放弃 | |
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indemnity
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| n.赔偿，赔款，补偿金 | |
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53
vassal
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| n.附庸的；属下；adj.奴仆的 | |
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demonstration
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| n.表明，示范，论证，示威 | |
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infamous
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| adj.声名狼藉的，臭名昭著的，邪恶的 | |
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alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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57
hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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contradictory
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| adj.反驳的，反对的，抗辩的；n.正反对，矛盾对立 | |
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vow
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| n.誓(言)，誓约；v.起誓，立誓 | |
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patriotic
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| adj.爱国的，有爱国心的 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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radicals
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| n.激进分子( radical的名词复数 )；根基；基本原理；[数学]根数 | |
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bonded
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| n.有担保的，保税的，粘合的 | |
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fervid
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| adj.热情的；炽热的 | |
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patriotism
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| n.爱国精神，爱国心，爱国主义 | |
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treacherously
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| 背信弃义地； 背叛地； 靠不住地； 危险地 | |
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67
transparent
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| adj.明显的，无疑的；透明的 | |
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68
epidemic
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| n.流行病；盛行；adj.流行性的，流传极广的 | |
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69
machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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70
sprout
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| n.芽，萌芽；vt.使发芽，摘去芽；vi.长芽，抽条 | |
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