Testimony Of Two Men (51 page)

“That, friends, fellow countrymen, was said fifty-nine years ago, by Victor Hugo, in 1842! What a prophecy! And who will bring it to pass! America! It is our aerial navies which will be grappling in the central blue—to bring universal peace and freedom to all-men! The cost may be enormous, the suffering great, but the destiny must not be refused, the covenant with God not challenged! The parliament of man, the federation of the world! Where will be its alabaster capital? Its emperor? Its heroic man of peace, justing the nations, accepting their homage and their tributes, imposing his beneficent laws on the entire earth, flowing his standards beneath every sun and on every nation and isle? Washington is that alabaster capital, its emperor and man of peace a democratic ruler with tenderness in his heart for all men, and with reverence for tradition and our God! This is America the golden, the new Rome, the blessed empire, gathering her multitudinous nations beneath her shining cloak, granting them eternal peace and prosperity and song and feasting and love!”

Jonathan, no longer jeering but deeply frightened, had listened to all this. Hambledon was only a small city, hardly larger than a town, and this man was but one Senator. But, was he repeating what was being whispered these days in Washington, by men of lust and hate and ambition? Would he speak so boldly, even to these simple people, if that had not been spoken even more boldly before, in the secret corridors of government?

“All this, perhaps, can be brought about by peaceful words and persuasion,” the Senator was crying. “But, if not, sterner measures must be resorted to, for the sake of a world growing smaller by the moment, and closer and closer. How can this be accomplished, and remember, we do this not for our sake—for we have no ambitions—but for the sake of those Jesus so greatly loved, the poor, the deprived, the hungry, the homeless, the oppressed, the wandering, of foreign nations. We can do this with power, and power must be bought with money.

“Soon, dear friends, an amendment will be asked to our noble Constitution, an amendment which will permit Congress to impose a personal income tax on the whole nation. We have had such a tax during the Civil War and again during the Spanish-American War, but an ignorant and greedy minority of the people—who care nothing for our destiny— soon had that tax repealed.

“What stupidity! What lack of love of country! What lack of love for all men everywhere! Shall we huddle between our two oceans, content with our own fatness, while hundreds of millions starve and look at us yearningly, asking us to deliver them from their tyrants? A thousand times No! No! Our destiny calls us! Is our wealth more to us than that which has been graved for us throughout history? No! No! Sacrifice! Duty! Unity! That is the call of the future—that is our call. The sun rises west, friends! The sun rises west!

“As we were delivered from oppression, so it is our duty to deliver others, from whatever nation we receive the desperate call. Our gold is nothing. Even, perhaps, our lives are nothing, nor the lives of our sons. With gold and blood we shall establish the parliament of man, the federation of the world, and let no man deny us!”

“He’s mad,” said Jonathan to Father McNulty.

“No. I don’t think so,” replied the priest, and his round young face was pale. “I wonder how many other small cities are being treated to this speech today?”

“I wish some foreign correspondents were on hand,” said Jonathan.

“—a truly democratic, benign empire!” the Senator was shouting. “Perhaps we shall not see it, but our sons will see it! Destiny will not be denied!”

“God help us,” said Jonathan.

“Amen,” said the priest.

The people were in an uproar of excitement and jubilation, though few had understood the terrible prophesies of the Senator and what implications they had for America. They bounded across the square to shake Campion’s hand, and he reached down, palpitating like the sun, to seize each eagerly upraised hand and piously to bless it, and to murmur a loving word. Every man whose hand was shaken felt himself honored and uplifted, though he did not quite know why. He dazedly smiled at his neighbors, clapped neighbors on the shoulder, said, “Wasn’t that a wonderful speech for the Fourth?” No one said, “But what did he mean?” It was enough to be part of the sweating and enthusiastic crowd, the crowd beloved of the Senator. It was enough to be shouting with everyone else in a fine hot spirit of brotherhood and zeal.

“Something like the Tuileries again,” commented Jonathan, and no one heard him but the priest. “Now, whence comes our Caesar, or our Napoleon? Not with flags and drums,
I
bet. He’ll come with pious sayings and a mealy mouth, a drab little bastard full of ‘love.’ And hatred, and blood lust, and ambition. No lordly Caesar, no Little Corporal. Probably a eunuch.”

“What did you say, dear?” asked Marjorie, coming awake and shivering a little. The Kitcheners were frankly asleep, with their eyes open. But the watchful Mrs. Morgan was still watching the impervious Robert, and he was watching Jenny, who was now gazing at Jonathan, and Maude was staring only at Robert.

“Nothing, Mama,” said Jonathan, and at that childish word Marjorie blinked. Was Jonathan mocking her for her weary and involuntary slumber? No, he was smiling at her and he had never smiled at her like that before. But, while he smiled, his eyes were narrow and thoughtful, as though thinking of something else.

Trumpets sounded. Applause and cheering and shouting died. Colonel Hadley was approaching the lectern.

He stood silent and tall and thin, and the crowd resumed its clapping but with less enthusiasm than before. They knew these old soldiers. They had nothing but platitudes to say, unlike the Senator, who could really arouse emotion and make a man feel splendid and big and powerful. Besides, the crowd was full of beer and food and cake and lemonade and sluggish with sun and heat and wanted to go home. The dignitaries were whispering together behind the Colonel, and the ladies were impatiently flapping their fans and yawning, and there was some scraping of chairs on the stone.

The mayor introduced the Colonel, whom everyone knew. “Our great hero, in the Civil War,” said the short fat mayor, Emil Schuman. “He has a few words to say to us on this glorious Fourth. A few words,” he added, glancing imploringly at the Colonel in his uniform. He wiped his glistening forehead and then his yellow mustache.

People were already leaving many of the tables, gathering up baskets and offspring. The band played louder. The people hesitated, then dropped down at tables of friends and yawned. But many streamed out of the square, wheeling carts and buggies and trailing little children, who howled strenuously.

Then the Colonel’s voice rose, manly and strong and quiet and firm, and even those on the streets paused and stood and waited, in spite of the sun and the heat.

“Fellow Americans,” he said. “You have just heard a ringing speech by our Senator from Pennsylvania, Mr. Kenton Campion.” He paused. He lifted his thin hand. “I have heard many speeches in my life, my friends, but none so dangerous, so mad, so cruel and so irresponsible, and so sinister.”

His voice rang through the suddenly silent square, and now the silence was deep and stricken and aghast. Men came forward to the curbs to listen and then onto the grass. The scufflings and whisperings and chuckles and giggles behind the Colonel, on the stairs, stopped abruptly. The Senator’s broad and sunny smile disappeared. The mayor sat upright in his chair.

“I don’t believe it!” said Jonathan. “Not old Jerry!”

“An empire,” said the Colonel, “is bought with one price only, through all the centuries: aggression against other nations, gold, blood, death, tears, sweat and pain, and slavery. Always the ultimate: slavery. An empire cannot be created’ nor maintained without that crime against God and man, without bankruptcy, without war, without perpetual armies, without chains, without threat and prisons and firing squads and the sword.

“America is a peaceful country. She has no ambitions— yet. She has no international aims—yet. She does not desire to impose her form of government, though it is a free one, on other nations—yet. She is willing to let other countries live and prosper, to rise or fall, by their own will. She wishes only to present an example of liberty and democracy and peace to the whole world. As of this day, friends, as of this day. She remembers the warnings of George Washington to engage in peaceful trade with other nations but to refuse foreign entanglements and dangerous alliances. She has learned her lesson, which all history has proclaimed—that interference in the name of whatever sanctimonious slogan in the affairs of other countries is the way to power, perhaps, but is also the way to extinction and ruin and catastrophe. It is the way of ruthless and ambitious men, who pervert the nobility in the heart of free men to evil uses, men who lust for wealth and desire to rule their fellowmen.”

The Colonel’s voice rose and shook, and he lifted his clenched hand.

“Listen to me, my fellow Americans! No nation ever embarked on the road to empire—with heroic slogans and noble banners and drums—without dying in her own blood! It is the justice of God. It is the vengeance of an outraged humanity. I, too, perhaps like the Senator, have glimpsed the future. We have two choices: peace, internal harmony, eternal vigilance. Or—war and blood and bankruptcy and embroilment in the endless quarrels of other nations. It is our choice. I, for one, pray that we will not go mad, that we will not listen to liars and mountebanks and men of ambition. But when men are led on the course of empire, they lose their minds, they become drunk on platitudes, they thunder on the drums of insanity. Their dead fall about them, the young dead, and they call those dead heroes. They are not. They are sacrifices to Moloch, and always they were and always they will be.

“I am a soldier. I obeyed my country’s call to arms. The Union won my war, in which many others here today were also engaged. What have we now? A divided nation. How long will these wounds take to heal, and a brother’s blood forgotten? How long will it take before the men at Gettysburg are forgotten, and their cannon rusted into the ground? What did it profit us that we fought that war? It was said that it was to destroy slavery, but slavery was already vanishing in the nation, and a few more years would have seen its end. It was said we fought to preserve the Union, but if we had not had
agents provocateurs
in the North and South, that Union would never have been threatened.”

He paused. Then he said, “If this be treason, make the most of it.”

He bowed his head. “These are not the words I wished to speak today. I wanted to celebrate the peace and safety and grandeur of our free country, our blessed country. But I have beard the words of ancient evil and a sword has entered my heart, and I can only lift my voice in warning: The course of empire leads only to death. May God deliver us.”

There was no applause as he turned. He did not sit down again. He walked down the steps, reached the flagstones, then turned straightly and left the square. The crowd watched him go, baffled. They whispered together. The dignitaries wore outraged faces. They whispered and shook their heads and smiled derisively. Some gathered around the Senator to bend and offer him congratulations or condolences at the insult he had been given. He laughed ruddily. “These old soldiers!” he said with indulgence.

The band struck up “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and everyone sang, and there was a feeling that something very portentous had happened and something very threatening, but now the premonition was lifted, and everyone could go home in this late afternoon and rest, and sit on porches and yawn contentedly, and then put the children to bed and brew the coffee for a late supper.

They spoke amiably of the Senator. But few mentioned the Colonel.

“One of your more inspired speeches,” said Dr. Louis Hedler to the Senator. “I’ve heard Bryan, even at his best not half as eloquent.”

“Thank you, Louis,” said the Senator, as he assisted his sister down the steps, and waited amiably for her to finish a little chatter with her friends. “But Hadley! Almost in his dotage, isn’t he?”

“Your age, Kenton,” Louis Hedler could not resist saying. “And now he’s retired.”

“Ah, yes, Louis. It’s fortunate for the country that most soldiers do not believe as he does. We’d have had the Vandals in on us long ago if they did.”

“Now we just have to wait for them to rise from within,” said Louis. Kenton laughed. “Then we’ll massacre them. We Senators won’t be like the old Roman ones who repaired in a stately fashion to the Senate Chamber and sat there, robed and silent, until the Vandals roared in and sliced off their heads. No, indeed. By the time our internal Vandals feel strong enough to strike, we’ll have a governing elite who won’t be forced to wait for public permission or the vote or anything else in order to act. We won’t have public opinion then. We’ll have governmental opinion. This is a new age, Louis, a new age!”

“I don’t like it,” said Louis. “Well, I doubt you and I will live to see America become a despotism; that’s one thing to be grateful for.”

“Yes, isn’t it? My dear, you almost tripped on your hem,” said the Senator to his sister, Beatrice Offerton. He bowed to the lady who was engaging Beatrice’s attention. He turned to Louis and his handsome eyes had a peculiar glaze over them, as if they had been covered by glass. “Louis, may I ask when young Ferrier is leaving Hambledon?”

“Jon?” Louis’ froglike face colored. “I don’t know, Kenton, I don’t know. Frankly, Humphrey and I are trying to persuade him to remain. After all, he was ac—”

But the Senator’s face had lost all its geniality and became vindictive and quiet. “Louis, I want that man out of this town. In fact, I want him out of this state. I have influence in