Google This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on Hbrary shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project to make the world's books discoverable online. It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover. Marks, notations and other maiginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the publisher to a library and finally to you. Usage guidelines Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing this resource, we liave taken steps to prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying. We also ask that you: + Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for personal, non-commercial purposes. + Refrain fivm automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help. + Maintain attributionTht GoogXt "watermark" you see on each file is essential for informing people about this project and helping them find additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it. + Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liabili^ can be quite severe. About Google Book Search Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web at |http : //books . google . com/| n~c I ( •' ^ V >'■ "^ ' f SCARS AND STRIPES PORTER EMERSON BROWNE x^ ■< o J ■J o HIS FI8T ONE MINUTE- S SCARS AND STRIPES BY PORTER EMERSON BROWNE FRONTISPIECE BT i ; , PETER NEWELL : ''- NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY ) J * B •^-» u « • • COFYSIOHT, 19x7, BY 6E0KGS H. DOSAN OOMPANY CQFYBZGBT, X916, BY THE MOGLTnUS FOBUCATIONS, INOOSFORAIBD 7BINIED IN IHS UNITED STATES OT AMBSICA TO THEODORE ROOSEVELT 3j*-i6ii-A-a:*>7 CONTENTS One Scars and Stripes 13 Two The Neutral 57 Tbbee "For God and KingI" 85 Pour "Somewhere in " 99 Five Mary and Marie 123 Six "Uncle Sham" i4S Seven "We'll Dally 'Round the Flag, Boys !" 171 CHAPTER ONE SCARS AND STRIPES L SCARS AND STRIPES CHAPTER ONE SCARS AND STRIPES WELL/' I said, '^it looks as though the old man is beginning to wake up at last" "Uncle Sam?" queried my friend. . I nodded. "Don't you think so?" I asked. He considered, thoughtfully. "Perhaps," he answered. "If he isn't, at least he's beginning to toss in his sleep and pidc at the covers." He paused. "But what I'm waiting* for," he went on, "is to get a peep at his face when finally he sits up in bed and props his eyes open and gets a good look at things. He'll certainly wish that he hadn't waked up— or that he'd never gone to sleep in the first place. The trusted employes that he left in charge of things when he undertook his present Rip Van Winkle have certainly messed things up about as perfectly as they could have done had they had 13 14 SCABS AND STBIPES their hearts and souls^ instead of their hands and feet, in the work." My friend shook his head. "I Ve sat for hours,"' he observed, "trying to think of something they could have done worse. But so far, I've got to compliment them at least upon the multiplicity of their mistakes ; for, while I can find scores of errors that they needn't have made, I can't find a single one that they've overlooked. When it comes to doing the wrong thing at the right time, their batting average is a thousand. And the par- ticularly beautiful and naive part of it is the way they stand around and pat themselves on the back about it! " 'America's spirit is reawakened,' they say. *Our honour and integrity cannot be tampered with.' And this when for two hell-bom, bleeding years our honour and integrity have been at will burned and bombed and blown up, torn and trampled and tor- tured ! . . . But at that you must admit that a na- tional honour that can stand such treatment as ours has borne and still be on its feet, is, in the crude vernacular of the proletariat, some honour. So we can console ourselves with the thought that, if noth- ing else, our national honour at least holds all record for endurance. It's bullet-proof, and blood-proof, and insult-proof. It recks but little of women and SCABS AND STRIPES 15 babies ruthlessly slain. Its flag dishonoured, its rights relinquished,' its citizens crying with dying lips for succour that does not come, our national honour still goes teetering along, as supinely helpless as a baby hippopotamus, the while trying to conceal its dead and dying by belching forth oratorical gas- clouds anent the 'higher rights of humanity* and *the world once more thrilled to hear the new world asserting the standards of justice and liberty/ "Germany must be worried sick — to say nothing of Mexico. The first thing they know, the New World will slam a dictionary at 'em, or something. "For heaven's sake, isn't it ever going to pene- trate into the dank and word-tangled jungles of phraseology in which these men think tliey do their thinking that it is one thing to assert and another to act? You can assert until you're black in the face and all covered with lather; but that doesn't affect the assertee except to excite his wander, amusement and pity. "What's the matter with the old lad now?' queries Germany, watching Uncle Sam all worked up and breaking out into an oratorical rash. " 'Oh,' says Austria, 'he's only asserting his rights again.' "'He'll bust a blood-vessel, the first thing he knows,' says Germany, 'getting all het up like that.' 16 SCABS AND STRIFES "*We should worry/ says Austria, 'It's his blood-vessel, ain't it? Come on. Let's go down to the bulletin-board and see what the scOTe at Ver- dun is/ "And off they go, leaving Unde Sam asserting his rights to the circumambient ether, while Mexico, hiding behind a cactus, stimulates him to further assertion by occasionally chunking him with a rock. "Elihu Root said it. You can't shake your fist at a man and then shake your finger. You can shake your finger, if you want to; but before you start in shaking your fist, you'd better be sure there's a brick in it. Also you'd better be ready morally, physically, and financially to fight, and fight to the limit. The man who shakes his fist and isn't pre- pared to back it up with a fight, is a fool. He gains nothing; and he loses ever3rthing. For the minute he doesn't back it up, his adversary knows right off that he's only a bluff; and then is gone even the respect that his adversary thought was due him. "If you want proof of this, you needn't go any further than Mexico. Why are we in all that mess down there? — a. mess that it will take at least ten, and maybe even twenty or thirty, years; and a hun- dred thousand, or even more, men to clean up. Why has all that come to plague us now? Because we tried to put over a dieap bluff. Because we shook SCABS AND STBIPES 17 our fist when we weren't ready, and didn't intend to fight That's why. "And because we've been caught, because our bluff has been called, because the Mexicans found out that we didn't mean what we said, and that back of all our resounding phrases lay nothing but wind; because experience had taught them that, once con- fronted, we would stop shaking our fist and start in shaking our finger again, the Mexicans have lost all respect for us — yes, even all fear of us — and we've got to start in with them all over from the beginning. "To-day, in Mexico, the words gringo (meaning American) and coward are synonymous. Go to Mexico to-day, if you will. But don't admit that you are an American. Say that you are English, German, French, Italian, even a Chinaman ot a Mor- moa But don't admit that you are an American. If you do, in all sections will you be insulted; in some will you be killed. And why not? Haven't Americans time and again been murdered without reprisal ? Haven't American soldiers been sent into Mexico only to be driven out again? Hasn't the American government repeatedly shaken its fist at them only, on the first show of resistance, to shake its finger? Hasn't the American government re- peatedly answered the cries for help of its dying citi* 18 SCABS AND STBIPES zens by advising them to get out of the country if they could, and if not, to do the next best thing? What wonder, then, that American men and women are not safe in Mexico ? What wonder that Mexico neither fears nor respects us, but only despises and mocks us ? "And it is a fact, impossible, incomprehensible even as it may seem, that the Mexicans think the United States is afraid of them! Yet, when you come to analyse, it is neither impossible nor incom- prehensible. Virtually all the population of Mexico is illiterate, vastly ignorant and very vain. The belief of the Mexicans in their own prowess, and in the cowardice of Americans, has been carefully fos- tered by their own leaders, and even more sedulously cultivated by the government of the United States. It is an opinion founded upon fact, and supported by a proof but too ample. Hence why should they not believe it ? "It all comes within the policy of our government of borrowing big troubles to pay off little ones. "During all the chaos in Mexico that followed the withdrawal of Diaz, and the succession of Madero, we kept out ; that is, officially we did. Unofficially — ^but that's too long a story to tell here. "Then came Huerta, personally and politically unappealing perhaps, to our government, but at the SCABS AND STRIPES 19 same time the one man who had it in his power to rule Mexico as Mexico must be ruled if ruled she must be by Mexicans. For, be it known, the Mex- icans are not too proud to fight. They are a hardy lot and, when it comes to pacificism, they are sadly practical. They believe in Peace at Any Price, and stand always ready to pay the price. The only thing they insist on is that the other lad shall furnish the peace ; and to see that he be not derelict therein, they are perfectly willing, and even a bit pleased, to convert him into a facsimile of a colander, or a pin- cushion, or similar article of household use. Which accounts for the vividness and uncertainty of life in that country. ''However, as I say, Huerta, not coming up to our more cultivated northern standards, him we refused to recognise. The further fact that, when it came to diplomacy, he made our most cultivated lights * look like a lot of children playing 'I Spy !' around a flat rock, did not increase our cordiality. Hence we used our moral influence, the hoUowness of which had not then been exposed, to have him bounced. "Once we had him and his family rounded up and corral counted on Long Island, with the over- flow picketed in New York, we looked around to see whom we could recognise the easiest. It seemed to be Villa. So we gave him a lot of guns and cart- 20 SCABS AND STBIFES ridges and boosts in the newspapers, arid support, both moral and immoral, and turned him loose. "Villa starts forth, full of optimism and marital happiness. But he doesn't get far when, to our pained amazement, an old party wearing spectacles comes out from where he's been hiding behind his whiskers and bushwhacks our more or less White Hope and, as they say, bushwhacks him good. *'As Villa lies there, feeling of his bumps, while his devoted wives administer First Aid to the All Bunged Up, we turn to the old party in surprise. ^Hello !' we say. * Where'd you come from ?* 'Me ?' says the old party. * Why, I be'n here right along.' 'But who are you, anyhow ?' we inquire. 'Carranza's my name,' says the old party. 'Though mother always calls me Venustiano for short.' " Oh,' we say. *But what are you doing around here an)rway?' " *Vm president,' he says. ' " 'You are !' we cry, in amazement. " *I sure are,' he says. 'Didn't you see me just elect myself ?' " 'But Villa is our recognised candidate,' we in- sist. 'What qualifications have you got for so great and august a job?' SCABS AND STBIPES 21 *' 'Well/ says Carranza, complacently removing a Gila monster and a couple of stinging lizards from hi^* facial sage brush, *I just licked Villa. What more do you want ?' "It seems sufficient. Also again it seems the easiest way out of it Accordingly we recognise Carranza; and, with a sigh of relief at having so thoroughly and so conscientiously performed our duties to mankind and the higher laws of humanity, we go back home to look over the political situation in Pennsylvania, leaving our erstwhile presidential choice, Villa, hiding in a prairie dog hole, as full of venom as a rattlesnake. He isn't used to being recog- nised and then unrecognised in such a hurry, and it leaves him as peevish as a badger. And so he scut- tles oflF into the scenery, taking for his motto, 'Shoot Americans First' "And he does. The very first crack out of the box, he stops a train. Allowing all the other passengers to go free, he takes therefrom seventeen American mining men that were going back to their work un- der the protection of the Carranza government (and, remember, that is the government we had then rec- ognised, and behind which we then stood) and, giv- ing them a running start, he shoots them in the back. "Unarmed they were. They offered no resist- ance. Deliberately, cold-bloodedly, they were mur- 22 SCABS AND STBIPES dered. And then, their blood-hunger but half glut- ted, did Villa and his men shoot bullet after bullet into their dead bodies; and even then still insatiate, did they jab the mangled corpses with bayonet and with knife! . . . Truly, the government of the United States did well when it gave its recognition to so noble a humanitarian as Francisco Villa! Huerta, whom on moral grounds we could not rec- ognise, may have been, and probably was, all that has been said. But at that he makes some of the Mexican presidents we have recognised look like new-hatched angels with two harps and four sets of pinions. **And then what happens r* Do we take imme- diate and drastic action to punish the murderers? to gain atonement for past crimes and protection against future? You bet we do! "Glancing up from the presidential situation in the Middle West, we ask Carranza what he means by it. " *How dare you permit Villa to murder Ameri- can citizens?' we demand. 'Don't you know that the nobler duties of mankind and the higher laws of humanity, and that American lives shall be held inviolable and inviolate wherever the hand of men has ever trod?' we demand. " 'Sure, / know it/ says Carranza. *I know it ; SCABS AND STBIPES 28 and you know it; but Fm afraid it's a fact that Villa's overlooked. He's an ignorant cuss that don't scarcely know nothing. Why, would you believe it, that feller can hardly write his own name. He never even went to night school !' " 'Never mind about that,' we say. *We demand the punishment of the offenders.' " 'Don't you worry,' says Carranza. TU appre- hend them malefactors or know the reason why. You just give me a week, or a couple of years, or something, and I'll catch every last son-of-a-gun of 'em — if they don't die of old age. And when I do catch 'em, I'll fill 'em so full of holes they won't be worth skinning. You just leave it to me. And pray God no harm comes to 'em in the mean- time.' "At which, again being thoroughly satisfied that we have done our duty to humanity and the higher laws of mankind, we go back to the political situa- tion in Michigan. And there's a state for you! Though since they've put up Henry Ford for pres- ident, it could scarcely be called a state. It's more like a condition. "Carranza, meanwhile, realising that he's got to throw a bluff at making good, calls in his military leaders. He knows, and they know, that they've got about as much chance of catching Villa as you 24 SCABS AND STRIFES have of taking dinner with Christopher .Columbus. "However, they rustle out into the hinterland ; and in a few days they come back with a couple of fresh-laid corpses. *'These they tie on stretchers and prop up against the place where the curb-stone ought to be in the heart of the city of Juarez. 'Inasmuch as they are two of the most complete and thorough corpses that have been seen in some time, they at once become the cynosure of all eyes. Women stop to gaze upon them happily on their way home from market. Men with whom corpses are a hobby stop to accord them a dignified and envious glance. Corpse parties of children fore- gather there of sunny afternoons, little Pancho and Panchita calling shrilly to less fortunate adolescents whose irksome tasks of grinding flour and keeping the flies off father while he takes his daily siesta have combined to constrain them to the less allur- ing atmosphere of their homes; the while the au- thorities, trying not to show the glow of gratifica- tion that subtly fills their inner beings, stroll non- chalantly about pretending a modesty that they cannot really feel. For as an exhibition, it's quite the most successful affair that's been pulled off in Juarez since the Occupation. 'In the meanwhile, Carranza sends us a letter. SCAES AND STRIPES 85 " 'Department of the Exterior, 'Washington, D. C, 'U. S. A. " 'Gents : " 'In re your recent request to capture and exe- cute and otherwise punish the recent perpetrators of the murder of American citizens, taken from train number 36 and killed by the bandit, Francisco Villa, who I don't like any better than you do, will say that I have captured two of his generals which I have had entirely shot. If you don't believe it, you can find their bodies lying in the pl^Lza at Juarez. You can find 'em any time. The weather is good, so we don't bother to take 'em inside. And besides, corpses lasts better outdoors anyway. One is Pablo Gomez. That's the skinny one. The other is some- body else. ^Hoping that you are the same, I remain, T'rs truly, 'V. Carranza, Trimo Jefe. 'P. S. — 'If this ain't satisfactory, let me know and I'll shoot a few more. What's a few corpses more or less between friends?' "And is it satisfactory? Why not? We got what we asked for, didn't we? We demanded the punishment and execution of the offenders. Well, there they are. Two dead bodies, lying in the pub- lic square; lying there while the populace stands around admiring them; while photographers take " 'Viupm^ uiax yuu arc it r it 26 SCABS AND STRIPES pictures, full face, profile, what not; while little children play around. ... "And this within a mile of American soil ! This in the name of humanity and the higher laws of mankind ! "And does it end there? Hardly. Again we are but borrowing big troubles to pay little ones. Villa is still free. Villa is still sore. Villa still has men, and guns, and munitions; munitions that we gave him! "And with these men, and guns, and the muni- tions that we gave him, he crosses the border one night and slaughters the men and women of Colum- bus, New Mexico; American men, American women, and on American soil! Yes, he kills on American soil American men and American wom- en; and he kills them with American guns and American powder and American bullets given him by the American government! If you can find a cuter little idea than this an3rwhere in history, I'd like to hear it. "And what do we do then? Again do we take immediate and drastic action? Of a surety. Don't you know us by this time? "We write Carranza a nice chatty note. We fell him that we are afraid he isn't able to cope with the SCABS AND STRIPES 27 situation and ask his consent to send troops into Mexico. "It takes him a week or so to find out, or not find out, that he will, or won't, or something. Mean- while, of course, we wait. You see, far be it from us to offend anybody ! "But coincidentally popular anger is rising. Hence, with a fine show of indignation, we an- nounce to the waiting newspaper correspondents that we have decided to follow our usual firm and drastic course in upholding the nobler laws of man- kind and the higher duties of humanity and demand Villa's body, dead or alive; or, if they can't find the body, the head will do. "Which, when it comes to humanity, is also rather a unique idea, don't you think? Although at that, it's by way of being what is technically known as old stuff. Old man Herodius's daughter, What's-Her-Name, pulled it with a lad named John the Baptist. "Then, still in a fine frenzy of righteous indigna- tion, we call in the Secretary of War and ask him where the army is. He says he doesn't know ex- actly; but the last time he saw it, it was sitting in the parade ground at Fort Ethan Allen smoking a pipe. But he says he'll write it a letter, and if 28 SCABS AND STRIPES it gets it all right, it will probably show up in a week or ten days. "Thanking the efficient secretary, we leave orders to have the field wireless dusted off, and to see that the eight flyless aeroplanes are in their accus- tomed state of creeping paralysis. Then we look up in the geography and find out where Mexico is. Then we get out a time-table and find that the 7 :20 train leaves at 7 :2o. Then we buy some automobile trucks from Detroit, and take the hospital mules from a fort in California, and tell Carranza that we are going into Mexico anyway. Just like that! *'Carranza says is that so? "That is, if you don't mind,' we say, smiling engagingly. For, it occurs to us that Carranza, being a rude soul, may not appreciate a fine frenzy, being more accustomed himself to the rough, com- mon-or-garden frenzy, such as is commonly found in, and indigenous to, his native habitat. *You don't mind, do you?' we ask. 'No,' he sa3rs. 'I mean yes.' Then you don't!' we cry, hopefully. 'Yes,' he says. *I mean no.' 'Quite so, quite so,' we return, gently, remem- bering that a soft answer tumeth away wrath, and at the same time wishing that Carranza didn't look a r SCABS AND STRIPES 29 quite so much like a Rocky Mountain goat hiding in a cosy comer. We think a minute. " 'But, you see, old man,' we say (thus diplo- matically spreading on the apple butter), 'we've got to go. The people are demanding the punishment of Villa; and if we don't at least show a little speed, they're going to snow us under so deep in November that compared to us a submarine will look like an aeroplane ; I don't mean one of ours,' you hasten to correct; T mean a regular one that will fly. " 'It's going to be terrible,' you insist. 'We'll be buried so far down they'll have to deliver our mail with on oyster rake. We won't be able to write notes or an3rthing. You've simply got to let us go in. That's all.' " 'Well,' says Carranza, while we listen with eager hands clasped as the syllables sift through his whiskers, 'you can go into Mexico on four condi- tions.' " 'Yes ?' we cry, breathlessly. " 'The first,' says Carranza, 'is that you don't ride cm any of my railroads.' " 'Oh, we'll walk,' we assure him. *We just love to walk! We've got new shoes, and everjrthing!' " 'The second,' says Carranza, 'is that you don't go anywhere where anything is liable to happen.* 30 SCABS AND STRIFES it r it r Certainly not!' we expostulate. The third/ says Carranza, 'is that you behave yourself nice and don't act rough. My countrymen don't like you in the first place. They think you're a poor piece of cheese ; and I've got trouble enough fooling 'em about myself without having to bunco 'em about you, as well . . . Well ?' he says. We agree to that, of course,' we assure him. You don't mean you accept those conditions?' says Carranza. " *Why, of course we do,' we answer, gratefully. Thank you. Thank you so much.' "Carranza looks at us, helplessly. ** 'And the fourth condition?' we ask. "Carranza shakes his head. **'Ii you accept the other three,' he says, 'the fourth don't matter. I've forgot it. And anyway, them three's the worst I could think of all by myself.' He looks at us and waggles his whiskers, weakly. One thing,' he says, eyeing us, thoughtfully, I'll bet eleven million pesos, which is seven dollars in regular money, that his nurse sure dropped him on his head when he was a baby.' And, still wag- gling his whiskers, he goes off to his presidential bomb-proof to offer up his usual evening prayer ii ti * SCARS AND STRIPES 81 that the next time Obregon crosses a river on horse- back, there'll be a quicksand in the bottom. "And thus we send our troops into Mexico; send them on foot, on horseback, transporting their supplies by wagon and automobile; send them into a waste of barren, blazing sand, hot during the day as a furnace bed, cold at night as a murderer's heart; send them in, as fine a body of men as ever put shoe on foot, or threw saddle on horse, to suffer of thirst and hunger, and the blindness of the desert glare ; send them in with aeroplanes that will not fly, and wireless that will not work, with lines of communication that are a farce, and against conditions that are a tragedy ; send them in, twelve thousand men, to catch one! And that one in a friendly country, a country that he knows as well as the palms of his hands, a country where horse and man and food are found ever at his will. . . . "It would be tragic if it weren't so funny. As well send a steam roller into the Dismal Swamp to catch a typhoid- fever microbe! "These men at Washington ! What can they say in their own defence, these men at Washington that sent our troops into Mexico to a foredoomed fiasco ? What excuse have they to offer, these men who planned and forced to execution probably the most asinine and inept military movement ever conceived 32 SCARS AND STRIFES outside of a nursery jingle? Condemned, and abso- lutely, they stand between two alternatives. For either they did not know the kind of country and conditions with which the troops would be forced to contend; in which case are they condemned of their ignorance ; or they sent them in for the purely political purpose of satisfying public sentiment; in which case are they condemned of their ambition. Could either be more ineluctably damning? For men of so vast an ignorance are unfit for high posi- tion. Even as men of an ambition so overweening as to sacrifice for its political gratification the lives of their fellows, are unfit to be known as men. . . . "And then what? Doomed to certain failure, as of course, was the expedition from the first, our troops, inadequate in number, helpless in communi- cation, could but penetrate so far into a country that we ourselves have taught to hate, and despise and belittle us. And so, failing ignominiously in our avowed purpose, to the accompaniment of a lot of windy explanations that mean nothing, do we start taking our troops out again ! Talk about military strategy! Compared to us, that well- known king of France who marched his twenty thousand men up a hill and then marched them down again was a nascent Napoleon. SCABS AND STBIPES 88 *'And why do we start taking our trcK)ps out again? ^ "Because Carranza says that we must! "And who is Carranza? "A vain and purblind old gentleman that we our- selves helped put in power and to whom we have furnished arms and ammunition that again have been used to kill us with! A pompous and bom- bastic old party with whom we fuss and fiddle and write letters and make protocols even while the sand foundations of his political fortunes slip and slide beneath his feet ; just as we fussed and fiddled and wrote letters with Villa; just as we fussed and fiddled and wrote letters with Huerta ; just as, ap- parently, it is our intention to fuss and fiddle and write letters with Obregoi^ when Carranza is gone, and with Cabrera when Obregon is gone, and with Somebody Else when Cabrera is gone, and with Some One Else when Somebody Else is gone, and so on, ad infinitutn and ad nauseam. "For Mexico is but a bleeding and prostrate wreck of a nation, around and over which ride murderer and marauder and bandit She cannot help herself; too near to death she is. Ravished and ravaged she lies, at the absolute mercy of her matricides, the matricides that we have stood aloof to watch pursue their bloody work unchecked. 84 SCARS AND STBIPES "To recognise one of her sons against the other is but to court that one's downfall; for the rest will fall upon him and trample him beneath their feet. The might of blood in Mexico carries its own punishment. ''So it is that to write letters to a president of Mexico is like writing letters on the water with a rod of glass. "But letter-writing, while sufficiently absurd, yet in a way is harmless. What hurts is the sending in of a handful of our soldiers to face the thousands of blood-hungry, life-despising descendants of Aztec Indians and Spanish buccaneers; sending them in against certain failure, only to take them out against a failure more certain still. The Mexi- cans all along have known us to be cowards. Now they know us to be fools as well. "And so confident are they now in this oft- proven belief that this time they don't even wait for us to get our soldiers out before they make another raid across the border and use their American arms and American ammunition to kill more Americans on American soil! "And why should they not ? Haven't Americans been raided and murdered along the border for the past three years or more, to the military glory and financial aggrandisement of the raider and mur- SCABS AND STRIFES 85 derer? Haven't American soldiers been fired on with impunity; because, forsooth, they were under orders from Washington not to return the fire? What wonder, then, that they consider an Ameri- can citizen successful prey; and an American sol- dier but a moving target ? "No wonder the game laws are off ! No wonder it's an open season for Americans along the Mexi- can border ! Haven't they shot them sitting, or on the wing? Haven't they shot them in the breeding season, and even on the nest? And all with little said and less done! "We provide game wardens for our deer, our duck and our partridge. For our citizens we pro- vide nothing. "And the laws are going to stay off; the c^n season will remain open; more Americans will be killed, American men, American women, American children, and on American soil ; and no twelve thou- sand men are going to stop it, no matter how brave; nor are they going to stop it in twelve months, no matter how efficient ; and no amount of purblind palaver with provisional presidents is going to put an end to it, for a Mexican president is as evanescent as inspiration, and as transitory as style. Nor is the matter to be corrected by any amount of nice, typewritten notes, no matter how 36 SCARS AND STSIP£S full of resounding phraseology, anent the nobler duties of mankind and the higher laws of humanity. The one conception of humanity of the average Mexican is that it's something 'to be raped, robbed and ravished. The only thing they understand is physical force, and plenty of it. And, until we pre- pare ourselves both physically and mentally to ad- minister that force, we can make up our minds, and make 'em up now, that just so long will Ameri- can men, American women and American children be slaughtered, and on American soil. Pray God it won't be done any longer with American guns and American ammunition. That much, at least, we can prevent. "So much for Mexico. For Germany what? "They have answered our latest note; number 67,706 or whatever it is. They have taken their own good time to answer it; and they have an- swered it in the tone and spirit that best suited them. But the note is meant only in the slightest degree for us; for the Germans feel toward us a good deal as the Mexicans do. To the Germans we are something to which to write notes for the rest of the world to read ; and when Germany feels that it is not to her interest to bother with us any further, then she'll ignore us, as we deserve. Just SCABS AND STBIFES 87 at present Germany feels like using us for a sound- ing-board to talk peace under, and as a means of embarrassing England. If, later, she decides to use us for something else, she'll use us; if not, she won't. If, later, she finds out it's to her advantage to. refrain from the further murder of American citizens, she'll refrain; if not, she'll continue. But whatever she does, or does not, do, we can be sure, and very sure, of one thing: that the course she will pursue will be taken only because it is to her interest to take it, and not from any respect or consideration of us. *Tor under our present leaders and in our now state of helplessness, Germany does not fear us apy more than she respects us; nor does she respect us any more than she fears us. And why should she? Haven't we been a playground for her propaganda ever since the war began? Don't her spies and secret agents know more about our country than do we ourselves? We have answered her insults with notes; we have met her abuses with more notes; and we have greeted the murder of our citizens with wind backed up by nothing but more wind. Why should she respect us? Why should she consider us ? As well respect a typewriter and consider a fountain-pen! "And of one other thing can we be sure : That 88 SCABS AND STBIPES when this war is over, and the nations of Europe all get together to rearrange international affairs, we'll enter into things about as vividly as a one- legjged man at a dance. While they are sitting around dividing up all the plums of shipping and trade and finance, we'll be pestering around on the outside trying to plead past acquaintance as an excuse to get in to the festivities. " 'Who's the old guy with the chin piece that's trying to horn in?' says England. " *You mean the stringy old lad with the striped pants and the plug hat?' says Russia. 'Seems to me I've seen him somewhere.* "'Oh,' says Italy, 'that's only old Uncle Sam. Don't pay no attention to him.' " 'Used to be quite a lad, didn't he ?' says Russia. " 'Yes,' says France, 'but he don't amount to any- thing now.' "'No?' says little Sylvester J. Serbia, shoving Bulgaria into his pants pocket. 'I thought he was quite some pumpkins.' " 'He was once,' says France. 'I helped him out one time when he was a young feller. I thought then he'd turn out to be a regular man.' " 'Didn't he?' says little Albert Belgium, inter- estedly. SCABS AND STRIPES 89 "The other nations all look at each other and have 3 good laugh. " 'Why/ says one, 'that poor old lady ain't got as much manhood as a setting hen. He stayed home and hid under a feather-bed while the trouble was going on. Now it's over, he wants to be in.' ** 'He's making so much noise I can hardly think/ says another. 'Set the dog on him !' " *I would/ says a third, 'only I don't want to insult the dog. I'll set a mouse instead.' "So they chase the poor old man off home, and he swims across the ocean, having a terrible battle with a jell)rfish on the way over, and then he buys himself five hundred sheets of writing-paper, and a box of carbons, and a new typewriter ribbon, and sits down to play the only kind of a game he knows how; and thereafter, when it comes to a conference on international affairs, they don't even ask him what he thinks he thinks about it. And at state dinners, where in other days he used to be right up among the face-cards, he now finds himself sitting just to the left of China, between Patagonia and Iceland. "And that's what these men at Washington have done to your Uncle Sam, to my Uncle Sam, to the Uncle Sam of a hundred million more of us ; to the Uncle Sam that through all these years of blood 40 SCABS AND STRIPES and iron, of peace and happiness, of toil and moil and joy and sorrow we've worked for, and strug- gled for, and loved and honoured and respected; to the Uncle Sam of our fathers and our fathers' fathers before them; to the Uncle Sam with the face and heart of a Lincoln, the mind and strength of a Jefferson, the soul and faith of a Washington ! So low as this they've dragged him. . . . Poor, poor Uncle Sam! "And for all their misrepresentation, for all their emasculation, for the white robes of cowardice in which they have wound him, for all the meaning- less, bombastic phraseology they have placed be- tween his fine, firm lips, do these men at Washing- ton have but one excuse to offer : that they keep us out of war! "Certainly we keep out of war. So does a steer in a slaughter-house. "There are lots of things that keep out of war, keep out consistently, persistently, congenitally. Woolly lambs keep out of war. So do angle- worms. So do jellyfish. So do sunflowers, and Stilton cheeses and hard-boiled eggs. To boast that you have kept out of war is like boasting that you have never had scarlet fever. It means either that you have never been exposed to its influence, or that, exposed, you were sufficiently strong to throw SCABS AND STRIPES 41 it off. But for a man to stand around and boast that he's never had scarlet fever when his wife and children are dying with it, that is certainly a whole lot too many for me! "It's on a par with the conversation of these people who talk against preparedness. "Preparedness, and I mean military and naval preparedness, has always been as much a part of the lives of Americans as the air they breathed, or the food they ate. "When the Colonists landed in Virginia, they carried gun and powder, bullet and sword. When the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, they were armed; yet they too were godly men, and good. The fact that they carried arms did not make them kill Indians. It was the fact that they carried guns that prevented the Indians from killing them. "Preparedness, to our ancestors, was the very germ of life. Without it they would never have lived long enough to give birth to descendants who in turn gave birth to us. "At Concord and Lexington it was the same, and throughout the war that wrung us full-bom from the womb of England to become a people great and free to enjoy the liberty that is now ours to use, and to abuse. . . • "And in the Civil War. Suppose, when this coun- 42 SCABS AND STRIPES try had that to face, that the people of the North, instead of preparing (belatedly, to be sure, as they did, and suffering from that belatedness as they needs must), had sat back fatly and complacently and written notes about it ? Why, had the North acted as these pacificists want us to act now, all that the South would have had to do would have been to put an advertisement in the New York papers warning all Northerners that the South was in a state of war, and that if they didn't want to get killed, they'd better stay at home. That would have settled the whole thing right there. Of course the country would have been busted wide open in the middle. But what's a little thing like that to a pacifist ? "Why, preparedness has been the one thing that conceived this country, that carried it, and that gave it birth. To preparedness we owe everything we have and everything we are. To the armed protec- tion that our ancestors gave us to do we owe the peace that has given us the opportunity to grow and expand and develop. To it we owe our freedom of speech and religion. To it we owe our national wealth and prosperity. All that we have come to be, all that we have come to own, we owe to mili- tary preparedness and naval; to the fact that we were too strong physically to be attacked with im- SCABS AND STRIPES 48 punity. Preparedness and this country's history have always been as inseparable as a man and his heart's blood. And yet at this time, when more than ever in our country's history is it needed, there are people who talk about cutting it off as though it were a vermiform appendix or a couple of ade- noids. "I tell you, it's got me going. It's unbelievable. It's so unbelievable as to be incomprehensible ! "It's like knowing a lot of folks well all your life, finding them reasonable and sane on every topic, and then suddenly having them start a loud and noisy argument with you on the contention that the human race is better off without food. "To be sure, they've always eaten food. Their ancestors ate it before them. There's always been food for them ever since they were bom. Food has been as much a part of their lives as air, or water. Nevertheless, all of a sudden, they begin this outcry against it. "You're sitting down to a modest meal of scram- bled eggs and lima beans, topped off with a hunk of huckleberry pie, . when in hop your friends. "On seeing you thus draped against the festive board, they stand aghast. "What!' they cry, in accents horrified. 'You aren't eating!' 44 SCABS AND STRIPES " 'A modicum/ you reply. Won't you sit down and * "But they all have thrown up their hands in helpless anguish. What's the matter?' you ask. Tor a minute, they can't speak. 'Don't you know,' they gasp at length, *that eatiing is the Most Terrible Thing in the World ?' " *Is it ?' you ask, dropping your fork. *In what way?' In the first place,' they answer, 'it costs money.' Well,' you answer brightly, 'I can afford it. And since it makes for the protection of my health and strength, as well as putting me in shape to perform my arduous duties in the potato patch * €€ i^ 'But look at them people across the pond,' they interrupt, excitedly, 'that HohenzoUern family!' What about 'em?' you ask. 'Why, haven't you heard?' they cry. 'They've got gout and indigestion and cirrhosis of the liver and everything, and they're having the rottenest time! And it's all from over-eating!' " 'That isn't the fault of the food,' you argue. 'It's the fault of the individual. , You can't blame the food for making them sick any more than when a man cuts himself with a razor you can blame the razor/ SCABS AND STRIFES 45 *'But will they listen to you? Hardly! They leave you flat as being too hopelessly feeble-minded to argue with, and go out on the street, telling how Food is a Terrible Thing because it costs money, and the fact that you've got a barrel of molasses in the house makes you try to gulp it all up at once instead of saving it up to put on flapjacks, and how poor Mr. So-and-So like to eat himself to death the other night because his son brought home eight cab- bages and a wagon load of pumpkins, and about old Mrs. What*s-Her-Name that foundered herself be- cause it rained and filled up the cistern and she hadn't the moral courage to resist seeing that much water around without trying to drink it all. "The question of preparedness has always seemed so clear and simple to me that I can't under- stand everybody not seeing it. What is life any- way but preparedness? What is preparedness but life? Why, without preparedness, you and I and everybody else would be dead in a week. *'Look at your own daily life. What do you do the first thing when you get up in the morning? You put on your clothes. And if that isn't pre- paredness, what is it? "And suppose you should decide on being un- prepared and go out without them? You'd catch pneumonia, get arrested and die in a police station ; 46 SCARS AND STBIPES though if you didn't believe in preparedness, there wouldn't be any police station ; for what is a police station but preparedness? So you'd die in the street. . . . No. Wrong again. There wouldn't be any street; for streets are preparedness, too; preparedness to make travel easy; so you'd die in a field somewhere. No, there wouldn't be any fields; for fields ^re preparedness against raising crops; and so Wait a minute. If you didn't believe in preparedness, you wouldn't have had any clothes in the first place; neither would your an- cestors ; and you wouldn't have had any schools, for schools are preparedness against ignorance; nor churches, for churches are preparedness for moral and religious betterment ; so you wouldn't have had any religion or morals. So you see, if you really begin to chase the idea of unpreparedness back to its origin, you'd be covered with hair, and living in a- cave and eating raw meat and mangel wurzels. "And if, even in those days, you were still con- sistent and refused firmly and irreligiously to equip yourself with a stone hatchet, or a club with knobs on the end, along would come a dinosaur, or an ichthyosaurus, or similar faunal monstrosity, and you wouldn't have been at all in the first place. And there you are! "But admitting, which I don't, that you reached SCABS AND STBIFES 47 your present state in spite of preparedness, what then? "We'll suppose that, on arising, it's your custom to take a bath. Why? Preparedness. Prepared- ness against disease. You dress. Preparedness against taking cold, or outraging the sensibilities of the community. You eat breakfast. Preparedness against hunger and for efficiency. Then you ask your wife for a nickel. Preparedness against hav- ing to walk down town. Then you go to work. Preparedness against earning money to pay your bills and buy yourself the food and clothes that prepare your body against privation. Then you eat lunch. Preparedness against more hunger. Then you work some more. Preparedness against losing your job. Then you eat dinner. Prepared- ness so that you can enjoy your evening's rest or pleasure. Then you go to the theatre, or play cards, or dance. Preparedness against all work and no play making Jack a dull boy. Then you go home and go to bed. Preparedness so that you'll be strong enough to go to work the next day, or fish- ing if it happens to be Simday. You exercise to prepare your body for its duties. You rest for the same reason. You read and go to school for the purpose of preparing your brain to cope with other brains. 48 SCABS AND STBIPES *'You have a house to prepare against exposure. You hnf an umbrella to prepare against rain. You pay taxes to pay for the police force, which is pre- paredness against crime, and the fire department, which is preparedness against fire. And you have doctors who are preparedness against death, and undertakers who are preparedness for it. "And then the main argument of the pacifists is that having arms makes you want to fight f "Does having clothes make you never want to undress? Does having a bath-tub make you never want to get out of it? Does having a job make you want to work all the time? Does having an umbrella make you pray for rain? 'Tfou might as well say that having doctors makes you want to be sick, and having undertakers makes you want to die ! "And it is primarily in this question of prepared- ness that we are so wrong, so horribly, so pitifully, so dangerously wrong. "We are unprepared. And how unprepared, God only knows. For not only are we unprepared in an army and a navy; we are unprepared as well physically, mentally, morally. That is why we have shirked and dodged and sidestepped our responsi- bilities. That is why we have shifted and turned and twisted every new obligation that has onne to SCABS AND STBIPES 49 meet us. That is why we have borrowed big troubles to pay little ones. Axiyihmg to avoid doing our duty ! Anything to avoid fulfilling our obligations ! An3rthing, no matter how shameful, to avoid facing our refsponsibilities ! "We, with all our talk of the higher rights of humanity, and the nobler duties of mankind ! Who in heaven's name are we? Let God look after the higher rights of humanity. Let God take care of the nobler duties of mankind. If we can only help Him by helping ourselves, we'll be doing a whole lot more in the future than we have in the past. For the sum total of all that we have accomplished under our present leaders (God save the mark!) in two long years is to borrow big troubles to pay off little ones! Not one solitary thing have we settled. Not one issue that does not remain to be faced, and not one of these issues that has not grown an hundredfold in menace, in danger and in potential ruin. For the little fire becomes a holo- caust. The lion cub becomes full grown. Murder, unchecked, becomes massacre. And the cancer of the body politic, no less than of the body physical, if let alone will rot the vitals that carry it. . • . " 'But what course is open to them,' you ask, 'these men at Washington ? What should they do?' ^What should any man do whose employer fails it^ 50 SCARS AND STRIPES i to give him the tools with which to work? He should go to his employer and ask him for those tools. He should say, 'I have a task to do, but I have nothing with which to do it. Give me tools, and I will work; else will it be your fault if the task remains undone ; for botch it I will not.* "And then, if the work be not done, it is clear who is to blame. '^^But these men at Washington, is that what they do? Not exactly. Instead, they fill the air with vain and futile words! They rush in with a nut- pick when they need a crow-bar, and then come out to get a nail-file! They hop in here, only to hop out there! They belch forth words one minute only to eat them the next ! They talk about protect- ing humanity when they can't protect even the smallest of their own villages ; and they talk about the nobler duties of mankind when they haven't performed even the smallest and meanest of their own. And the heavens ring with their resounding rhetoric when you could write a complete list of their achievements on a gnat's eyelid. "What should these men at Washington do? They should put up, or shut up. Inelegant it may be; but it is the truth. "And meanwhile, fat, flamboyant and futile we sit here while our dead call to us from unmarked SCABS AND STBIPES 51 graves; while suffering and torture and horrprs unnameable lie upon every side. With Mexico we have intruded and then evaded until she lies a bleed- ing pulp. With Germany we have quibbled and squabbled while our men, our women and our little babies have been flung into the blood-red maw of her god of war. From right, from wrong, from truth, from falsehood, from justice, from injustice, from humanity, from inhumanity, have we stood alike aloof. And, after two long years, still have we no means of any kind to fight for the one, or against the other; still have we no means to pro- tect our women from rape or our children from murder. Still have these men at Washington left us so supine, so abject, so pitiful, that a Mexican bandit can come on American soil, murder Ameri- can men, American women, American children and, going Scot-free, turn to laugh at us in our pitiable helplessness. "Is there any answer to that, save one? Truly I cannot see it. The people of Columbus were law- abiding, and had set a high moral example. It did not prevent them from being killed. Also some of them were armed. But it had not made them aggressive. But they were inadequately armed. Hence 'Were they dragged from their beds and slain, murdered in cold blood, while a nation of one hun- 52 SCARS AND STRIPES dred million people stood powerless to save them ; as it now stands powerless to prevent others like them from being murdered even as were these. Even as that nation has stood helpless to see Ger- many murder its citizens at sea, and still stands helpless against other murdei;s that yet may well be. "You're an American. Fm an American. And there are a hundred million more of us, as proud and glad to be Americans as you and I ; loving the word as much; as proud of our country and as jealous of her honour and good name; willing to fight for her, and die for her, to protect and guard the freedom and liberty for which our fathers fought and died; glorying in her patience and her power, her gentleness and her dignity, her kindness and her strength. "How long, then, can we endure to be so help- less? How long can we endure to be so abject? How long can we endure to be so supine? "God knows we do not want war. War is some- thing to be dreaded as disease is dreaded, to be feared as wild beasts are feared. All we want is to be strong, and to be brave; strong enough to help the weak that need us, brave enough to defy the tyrannical that would outrage us. That is what we want, and all. Just that, and no more. "This country that is ours was left us by our SCABS AND STRIPES 53 fathers, watered of their blood, freshened of their hearts, flowered of their souls. They left this trust for men to use, not for cowards to abuse. And if we are deserving of the name American; if we stand for what they stood; if we love what they loved, honour what they honoured and are true to what they were true; if life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness mean but half as much to us as they did to them, then is it now for us to bow our heads to God and ask His help to be the men they would wish us to be. He knows it is in us to do if we but will!'' N \. CHAPTER TWO THE NEUTRAL CHAPTER TWO THE NEUTRAL IT was at the club. Gray was talking ; Drake and I listening. "I," said Gray, **am neutral." I said nothing. What was the use? "Here we are/' said Gray, "the richest country in the world ; contented ; prosperous ; and at peace. And if it so happens that, on the other side of the world, are a lot of crazy people shooting one an- other, and blowing one another up, what business is it of ours? Why should we take sides?" Drake took up the futile challenge. "There's always a right and wrong to every side — to every cause," he asserted. "And a man who won't fight for the right and fight against the wrong, isn't a man; he's a fish, and a mighty poor fish at that." . "Bah!" said Gray. "Do you bah Belgium?" queried Drake. "That crime of barbarism against civilisation, that slaugh- ter of right by might, that ravaging of humanity by bestiality — ^yes, and worse! for beasts only kill. It takes human beings to torture." 57 58 SCABS AND STSIPES "War is war/' returned Gray. "I suppose the aggressors were doing only what they thought was for their best advantage." ''Doubtless," returned Drake. "I imagine Cap- tain Kidd had much the same excuse." He turned directly to Gray. "How about the Lttsitania/' he asked, "and all the other submarine massacres? And the Zeppelins? The murder from the air of sleeping women and children! What extenuation have you for those? Any, except the one you've already advanced?" Gray crossed his legs. "You talk like a magazine article," he said, im- patiently. "All we know is that there are a lot of nations fighting their heads off, and it's up to us to keep out of it, and stay out." "Is that all we know?" asked Drake. "Well, isn't it?" demanded Gray. Drake shook his head. "Not quite," he said. "We know that there are in Europe a lot of nations that, in modem times and under modern conditions, were doing the best they could in the best way they could. We know that among these nations was another that coupled with a national efficiency higher than any the world has ever seen, an Idea that was older than murder. And that nation, combining as no THE NEUTRAL 59 nation ever has or probably ever will again, the brain of an Edison with the soul of an Atilla, has gone forth into other lands to ravage and to ravish and to rape, with its magnificent equipment of the twentieth century — and its brutal ruthlessness of the tenth. What is it up to the rest of the world to do?" ''Go to bed and wait for it to get over,'* returned Gray. He rose, impatiently. *Tor heaven's sake," he said, ''cut' out all this jingo talk. You're one of these Americans that are going to help get us mixed up in this thing. What business is it of ours what they do in Europe? We're out of it, and if only we behave like sensible people instead of like a lot of darned fools, we can keep out. "Here we are," he continued, "three thousand miles away. The country was never so pros- perous; business never in better shape; everybody making plenty of money; ever3rthing going along great. And now you, and a lot of people like you, want to gum up the whole thing by homing in and taking sides and hollering your heads off for armies and navies and things! "What do you mean, you folks that yell for pre- paredness, for a big army, and a big navy ? Haven't you got sense enough to know that big armies and big navies cost a lot of money? Do you want to "] 60 SCABS AND STBIPES go and get your taxes increased, and the price of everything raised? Do you want to give up your business, and leave your home, and go and serve in the army?" Drake nodded. If necessary," he said, quietly. Well, I don't," said Gray. '*And these people that aren't satisfied to let well enough alone; that aren't satisfied to stay at home and attend to their own business and let the rest of the world attend to its, make me sore. And the ones that make me particularly sore are those fool Americans that go abroad knowing that war exists and that they're liable to be blown up, and then put up a holler when it happens to 'em. If they don't want to get tor- pedoed, why don't they stay at home, the darned fools?" He grunted, disgustedly. "They couldn't get me over there, you can bet your sweet life," he said. "No, sir! I'm neutral," he went on, "and I'm going to stay neutral. And furthermore, I'm going to stay at home and mind my own business. I should worry about Europe! They got themselves into all this mess. Let them get themselves out." A boy came in. ^ "Cable for you, Mr. Gray," he said THE NEUTBAL 61 Gray took the envelope; tore it open; unfolded the single sheet it contained, and read. . . . His eyes squinted. He took a short breath. ''Well, my Lord!" he muttered, feebly. "Well, for the love of — now what do you know about — well, I'm a— well, I'll be dad-blamed !'' And without a word he rose and walked out of the room. I MET my friend at the dock. He came down the gangplank tastefully gowned in a rain coat, a pair of carpet-slippers three sizes too big for him, a little boy's cap of white canvas arotmd which was a blue band bearing in gold the words, La Provence, a middy blouse, and a pair of overalls. I stared in startled wonderment. Usually he was sartorially effulgent. He explained as we shook hands. "Von Tirpitz," he said. "Good heavens !" I cried. "You weren't on the Americaf' He nodded. "On and off," he said. "When they torpedoed her?" Again he nodded. "Come to my rooms," he said, "and I'll tell you about it while I change my clothes. I've been hav- MM 62 SCABS AND STRIPES ing a terrible time with these things. I can't re- member whether I'm a stoker or a look-out. Still, blown-ups can't be choosers; and it was very nice of the steward, the stewardess, the mess-boy — mess being correct — and the crew of the captain's gig to give me these things. Otherwise I'd have had to stay in bed or run the risk of disorganising the morals of the entire ship. . . . "Hey! Taxi!" he called; and, casting a cursory glance down at his heterogeneous habiliments, he remarked, "For once, at least, I feel that I am about to enjoy going through the customs." At his rooms, tithed, shaven, in fresh and im- peccable raiment, he told me what had happened. This is how he told it: It was just curiosity, I suppose. I wanted to ^go to Europe to see what made it tick. They dcw't pull off a war like this every year, thank God ; and I wanted to see what it was doing to the people; how they were taking it; and I had a few letters that I thought might get me to the fighting. But I'll tell you about that some other time. Nothing happened on the way over until we got about a hundred and fifty miles off the Irish coast. It was a nice day. Three of us were playing ship golf ; a chap named Henderson, a little lad with eye^ THE NEUTRAL 68 < glasses and a tummy ; I forgot his name ; and myself. I was just squaring away from my drive at the fifth hole, which lay between the bitts, with a cap- stan for a hazard, when the Little Lad let out a ydl. "A submarine !" he hollers. "What!" I asked, slicing my drive into a flock of stokers that had come up for air. *TLook!" he says, pointing about three degrees abaft the lee quarter. Henderson and I looked. And sure enough, there was a periscope sticking up out of the water and not over half a mile or so— anyhow, it was a whole lot too near. "Tell the captain!" yells the Little Lad. And then, without waiting, he piles up the companion- way. He knocks over an old lady and steps entirely on a valuable Pekinese and nails the captain just as he is coming out of the pilot-house. All he can say is, "Look, Cap!" \ It's enough. The Cap looks. "Good God!" he says, and busts into the pilot- house and, pushing aside the officer in charge, be- gins to pull at ropes and handles and gongs and things until he looks like a Family of Swiss Bell Ringers. In about seven seconds there was the most alarm- ing alacrity, to say nothing of the most unprece- dented celerity, that you ever saw. Looking over 64 SCABS AND STRIFES the rail, I see the flock of stokers disappear down a deckhole as one man. It's like chuting coal into a cellar. And in another minute, clouds of smoke begin to pour out of the funnels; white water is whipped up by the screws, and, taking a zig-zag course, the ship starts off like a frightened fish. And the passengers ! . . . It's funny how danger affects different people. Some it makes grim and silent; others noisy and abusive; others weak and pitiable; and still others absent-minded and helpless. The Old Lady, whose dog the Little Lad had stepped on, took a pillow in her arms, and carefully placing the Pekinese beneath her, sat down on it . and began to cry. Henderson, who was beside me, said something that you couldn't print and stood silent, watching tensely, like a spectator at a race. . . . A dignified old party who had been taking a siesta when the alarm was pulled, came out on deck dressed in a silk hat and a union suit. His daughter came after him, carrying his pants. He put his arms into the legs thereof; and they both thought he was dressed. But it was the Little Lad with the tummy that furnished most of the excitement. He stood by the rail, shaking his fist and howling curses, while THE NEUTEAL 65 a female missionary who was returning from her vacation, stood beside him and encouraged him, eagerly to further profanities. "You swine!" he yowls, shaking his fist at the submarine, now awash and ripping through the water behind us. "You double-dashed, triple- asterisked, exclamation-point swine! Attack a peaceful ship full of non-combatants, would you? Why, blankety, blinkety, blunkety blank your triply- qualified souls to noun ! You just let me get to land and I'll fight you with anything from a lead pipe to a supreme court!" My, but he was a wonderful cusser! With him, it was not a science. It was an art. The ship was tearing through the water now, a mile this way, a mile that, the bow wave piling in huge, white masses that slithered along her sides. . . . And back of her was the submarine, dull, sul- len, threatening, his back awash in the seas. . . • Even as we looked, a little port on top opened. . . . Men came out. ... A gun rose from some- where ; and a shell came whining over us. . . . The Old Lady got up from the dog ; but its hope- ful expression promptly vanished when she sat right down on it again. Henderson muttered an- other something. The Dignified Old Party climbed into a lifeboat and his daughter followed. 66 SCABS AND STRIPES But it was again the Little Lad by the rail that shone. The cussing that he had done before was but an amateur tryout to the splendid and truly artistic achievements that he now attained. And the Female Missionary got behind him and boosted hard. She seemed a firm believer in the theory that words constitute force. If such had been the case, the red hot missiles that the Little Lad was dis- charging would have sunk the Queen Elisabeth in ten seconds. Another shell whined above our heads. It tore a hole in the forward funnel and buried itself far beyond in the sea. . . . And then another. . . . I can*t tell you how long the chase kept up. An hour, perhaps; perhaps two; or maybe three. . . • On and on we zigzagged. ... After us came the submarine, firing shell after shell. . . . Three times we were hit, but in no vital spot. . . . And every time a shell screamed by, the Old Lady would get up from the dog and sit down on it again, Hender- son would mutter, the Little Lad would boil over, and the Dignified Old Party in the plug hat would shove his head under a seat of the lifeboat an.d promise his daughter that if she ever wanted to go nursing again it would have to be within the three- mile limit of South Bend. i THE NEUTRAL 67 ■And then somebody said, "Look !" and this time pointed forward. It was a British destroyer. She had got our wireless and was shooting towards us like a tor- pedo, smoke lying flat behind her, spray shooting over her tiny stacks. . . • I have seen many beautiful sights in my time— the Alps, sunset in the Sahara, the Grand Canon, Rio Janeiro harbour and the Bank of England. But I want to tell you, my son, that the sight of that low, lean, hungry-looking destroyer made all the rest of 'em look like a wet afternoon in Lincoln, Nebraska. I wanted to have her picture taken and wear it in a locket ! The submarine saw it, too. With a parting shot, she turned and wallowed away, slowly sinking be- neath the water. . . . The Little Lad sent it on its journey with a parting volley of curse-words, husky but deeply sincere. Henderson threw back his head, straightening tense shoulders. The Old Lady looked at the pillow she was hugging ; gazed about her perplexedly; got up; picked up her flattened pet; and started in to readjust it into its former spherical shape. The Dignified Old Party climbed down out of the life-boat. His daughter got a peep at him; said, "Ah!** shrilly, and both stepped hastily into the engine-room. 68 SCABS AND STBIPES The Little Lad asked the first officer if the cap- tain of the destroyer was coming aboard. He said he wanted to kiss him. • . . It was while we were warping into the dock. The Little Lad with the Tunrniy was standing be- side me, his travelling-bag in his hand. "Know anybody over here?" he asked me. "I mean, anybody of any accotmt ?" I told him that I had some letters to people that rawthah mattahed. "IVe got a tough job ahead of me/' he said ; "good and tough." He paused. "It's my daughter," he went on. "She was in a motor smash-up a little over a year ago. When help came all the others were there, but she was gone. The only explana- tion that any one has ever been able to give is that she was hit on the head and lost her memory. "A week ago I got word that she was in a hos- pital, in Switzerland — Geneva. She had been found wandering about in the streets in a dazed condition, and they had taken her in. The message said that while she was still far from well, she had got back her memory enough to tell them who she was. . . . That's my reason for coming over. . . . And now the thing is to find a way for me to get to Geneva and bring her back with me." "I think I can fix it," I said. I told him where THE NEUTRAL 69 I Was to stay. "Come around to-morrow evening, about nine." He wrung my hand. "You won't be sorry," he said. "She's a wonder- ful girl, that daughter of mine. . . . Like her mother. , . . You must come to see us, when we all get back home again." I said I'd be glad to go. And we joined in the stream of debarking passengers. ... I had a lot to attend to next day. But I managed to arrange so that he should get a pass to Geneva, and to get a letter that would enable him to bring his daughter back to England when she got well enough to make the trip. The next night, at about nine, I was sitting in the lobby of the hotel, waiting for him, when all of a sudden I heard a' gun go off. Bang ! And then another; and almost immediately a whole flock of 'em. At which the bell-boys, the porters, a covey of chambermaids, a couple of clerks and all the cus- tomers poured out of the lobby and into the street. I detained a uniformed menial long enough to ask him the cause of the noise and the ensuing exodus. "Zeps !" he yells, and off he goes. "Zeps ?" I says. And then a light breaks in upon me. 70 SCABS AND STBIFES "Oh," I think. "He means Zeppelins!'* And then, as if to corroborate my discovery, "WHANG !r A bomb! The whole sky was lit up with a flash like a million bolts of lightning. And the noise that accompanied sounded like the explosion that would result if you poured the At- lantic ocean into hell. . . . You could hear glass crashing, and pieces of pavement. . • . A dull rum- bling as the fronts of houses caved in. I rushed out into the street. It was crowded with people, half-stunned, dazed. Just down the block it had happened. There was a hole in the pavement that you could have buried a whale in. The fronts were torn from four or five houses. . . . It had killed a couple of children asleep in bed. . . . The mangled body of one was lying shattered against the jagged wall, blown against it so hard that it stuck there. . . . Bright blood was oozing from beneath yellow curls, to run down a sun- kissed little cheek. . . . We saw it in the light of the burning house next door, from which came first screams, then groans — ^then silence. . . . And an old woman had been killed while alight- ing from an omnibus. . . . And in the morning would come the report: THE NEUTEAL 71 Last night our air craft again attacked the forti- fied city of London, with the usual completely satis- factory results. Two fortified children asleep in a fortified bed! A fortified old lady alighting from a fortified omnibus ! And that's what they call war! We helped bring down the children — dead little bodies still warm with the little lives that so swiftly, so terribly, had been taken from them. ... We laid them on the sidewalk, before the torn front of what had been their home. . . . Their mother and their father, stunned to unconsciousness, came to their senses. . . . They saw their dead. . . . Little dead hands limp. . . . Little dead eyes star- ing sightlessly straight up at the monster that slug- gishly wheeled, and turned, and made ready for more murder — ^more, and more, and more. ... The father stood there, his fingers twitching. . . . God mercifully took again the mother's senses. . . f.i The policeman beside me was cursing thickly. I looked at him. He was crying. . . . He saw me looking. He blinked, apologetically. "Fve two of me own," he mumbled. "Little tykes, too — ^like them/' 72 SCARS AND STRIPES He needn't have apologised for crying. . . . He was not alone. Came from behind us, somewhere in the firelight gloom, a man's voice. It sounded strangely famil- iar. "For the love of heaven," it howled, "take this triply-qualified, quadruply-adjectived blinkety- blankety blunk thing off me so's I can get at 'em. First the doubly blanked dashes try to blow me up ; and then they try to blow me down, double-dash 'em. I only wish to blank I was an angel! I'd show 'em a few tricks about &ying around and dropping things on people!" Yes, it was the Little Lad. He had been coming along in a cab. And the manner in which the cataclysm had distributed things had left the cab on top of him and the horse on top of that. But I'll give him credit. When we rolled the debris off him, he came to his feet with a spoke in each hand. And, drawing back, he slammed first one, and then the other, at the great, sluggish monster there in the air, a mile above him ! . . . And everything he called it, and everj^hing he said about the men that conceived, and made, and operated it, was true ! I took him to my rooms and straightened him out, told him what I had done for him, and, with THE NEUTEAL 78 thanks in which curses were strangely mingled, he departed. I was so busy the next few weeks, that I plumb forgot all about the Little Lad. Imagine my sur- prise then, when, on mounting the gang-plank of the America for the return trip, I bumped right into him. "Now what the " he began. Then he saw who it was and let out a whoop. "I got her all right !" he yells, excitedly. 'TLook !'' He brought her beside him — ^his daughter. In- terestedly, I did as he bade. He had said that she was pretty, it was a cal- umny. For she was more than pretty — ^much more. Grey eyes, she had, clear and soft, with the frank- ness of a child's — and the gentleness of a woman's. And the hand that she laid in mine was little and warm and firm. • . . Dogs and horses and children would have loved her — ^which means far more than the love of men and women. Giildren and animals love with their hearts ; men and women confuse that love with brains. She was about twenty, I suppose. I'm telling you all this about her because — ^because — ^well, I'm a tough old bachelor ; but it's not from choice, and when I saw her . . . There are women, and women. Some you never know. Others, the minute you sec 74 SCARS AND 6TBIPE8 them, you feel as though you'd come home; that you could tell them the things that lie in every man untold ; that in them lie Rest, and Peace and Hap- piness, and all the things that make life worth liv- ing. ... That was the kind she was. . .. The only one in all the world I've ever met . . . I don't know how long I stood looking into her eyes. Hers did not turn. We moved to the deck. The Little Lad was fuss- ing around. He had a steward bring a chair for me, and put it next to theirs. "And I'll fix you at our table/' he said to me, over his shoulder, as he passed ; "that is, if you're alone. If it hadn't been for you, God knows how I'd ever have got her here." He pinched her cheek. "Love the old man ?" he asked. His voice broke a little. She looked up, eyes brimming. "Daddy!" she said, softly; and she kissed him. ... A child she was — ^and yet a woman. . . . We sat up late that night, talking, in the moon- light. . . . God knows all I said to her. . . . Little thoughts that I had held hidden in the storehouse of my soul since time began I took down from their shelves and laid before her. . . . Because I knew that no matter how poor they might be, she THE NEUTEAL 75 would not despise, nor laugh, nor criticise, but would Understand. ... In every man's soul they lie, these thoughts ; in most they die, unborn. . . . The Little Lad fell asleep. . . . We talked on. . . . She let me look a little into her soul, too. . . • It made me ashamed of the smallness of my own. . . . And she was vtry beautiful. . • • The next day, while we were at lunch, it hap- pened. There was no warning — ^nothing! . . • Peaceful men and women, in a great ship, on the great sea that God has given alike to all His people. . . . And then the devil with his hell . . . 'An explosion that* shook the ship to its heart. -, • * Flame, smoke, and flying bits of metal and wood and hiunan flesh. ... A maelstrom of piti- ful, frightened women, horror-bitten men, and help- less, whimpering children that did not understand. ^ . • '., Godf How could they understand? When you can't, nor can I! ... To kill in the heat of battle, yes. . . . But deliberately, thinkingly, calmly to set about in cold blood to murder peaceful, unarmed men, helpless, gentle women, and little children fresh from the arms of the God that sent them through love and pain to live upon His earth. . . . To slaughter these as mercilessly as one would stick a pig! And without even that excuse for 76 SCARS AND STRIFES slaughter. For pigs are killed to be eaten. But why do they slaughter children? I don't know. Nor do yoiL . . . But perhaps God knows. Per- haps they have told him. They seem much in His confidence. Through all the awful inferno, we rushed to the deck, the father and I, the daughter between us.^ . . . The ship was listing heavily. . . . People rushed about screaming, wailing, begging for mercy, praying to God to save them from the awful death that had come so swiftly, so fiendishly upon them. • i.i • And there, across the sunlit waters, lay that death; a dull, sullen, tmdean monster, wallowing swinishly. . . . There were men upon its slimy back. . . . Men that stood calmly watchiiig while fear-tortured women threw their babies into the sea and flung themselves in after. . . . The lifeboats on the port side could not be used ; the list was so great that it had swung them inboard. . . . The number one boat on the star- board side had filled with swarming, terror-stricken souls. ... It began to descend. . . . The block on one of the davits jammed. . . . The human con- tents, struggling, slipping, screaming, fell in little clusters into the sea. . . . You have shaken cater- {Hilars from a limb? ... It was like that Only THE NEUTEAL 77 these were human beings^ like you and me. Re- member that. Another boat, half-filled, had lowered and put away. . . • People threw themselves after it; to miss and disappear in the tortured waters. ... A third was loading. We fought to reach it; but those about us were too many, and too mad. She looked up at me, the girl by my side. "It's no use," she said. "And I am not afraid to die." The ship gave a lurch. We seized the rail, to keep our feet. The father, jaw set, eyes narrowed, looked swiftly about. "She's going," he said, grimly. "Jump!" There came a rush of waters, like a thousand Niagaras. I tried my best to hold her. She was torn from my hands as one might tear a feather from a child's. . . . Down I went, down and down. . . . My lungs were bursting. ... I came once again to the surface where was God's sunlight — ^and the bodies of men and women. There were pieces of her sleeves in each of my hands. I tried to find her. There were bodies every- where. A man's, torn in two parts, floating in a circle of red-blue water. ... A wonjian's, with a baby tight against its breast, her dead arms about 78 SCARS AND STBIPES its dead body, its little dead fingers clasped about her neck. . . . Bubbling, horrid screams! Low, bubbling wails. . . . I saw Her. She was clinging, twenty feet away, to a bit of wreckage. But bodies lay between. I fought them. If you have never fought the dead, don't long to. . . . Hell has nothing new to show me now. I was almost at her side. . . . Her hands slipped from the bit of wreckage to which she clung; she had been long ill, you know. . . . Her head simk beneath the water. Three bodies lay between us. I remember the first. It's dead face came full against my own as I fought it away. It was very like my mother's. . . . The same kind eyes, the same gentle lips, the same loving-kindness that had lived within before — ^before this awful cataclysm of war came. • . . But I fought even that, too. I fought that, and the next. And but one lay between as Her face came again to the sunlight. . . . Her dark hair floated about her in the water, like some strange, silken seaweed. . • . God, how I fought to reach her I . . . She saw me. . . . Grey, clear eyes looked into my own, the eyes that were of a woman-child. She saw me. She smiled, a little. . . . Again THE NEUTEAL 79 the water crept above her lips. But the eyes still looked. The lips beneath the water still smiled. I think I struck the body that lay between us. ... I was quite mad, now. ... I fought it as though it were alive, some brutal, unclean Thing that held me from my own while it did murder. At length I won. I flung myself past it. But she was gone. Where she had been, was only water. ... That's all I remember. They told me afterward that I was picked up by one of the boats which drifted about until La Provence came. My friend finished. He sat, looking out the win- dow into the gathering dusk. "Good God!" I exclaimed. He said nothing. "And what ?" I asked, at lerigth, thinking to turn his mind, "became of the girl's father? the Little Lad?" He shook his head. "Drowned, I suppose," he answered. "Drowned like all the other Americans that the Beast has mur- dered to show us how cultured it is." Of a sudden there came from without the sound of men fighting. My friend leaned out the window. "A row?" I asked. 80 SCABS AND StBIPES My friend nodded. "Let's go down and look it over," he said. "Fd even go to a peace meeting to get my mind off what it's seen." We descended. In the middle of the street a little man with nose glasses and running to embonpoint, was seated on the back of another man who was lying face down on the asphalt. The little man had the other by the ears and was addressing him copiously, em- phasising his remarks from time to time by bring- ing the other's head up and then slamming it, nose down, against the pavement. It was a ceremonial at once picturesque and remorseless. "Why, you double-dashed, triple-asterisked ex- clamation point blank!" the little man howled. "Why, blinkety, blankety, blunkety blink! I'U show you whether ^" My friend gasped. "Good heavens !" he cried. "If it isn't the Little Lad with the Tummy!" I, too, had gasped. For it was also Gray ! Gray, of the club ! Gray the pacifist ! Gray the Neutral ! Gray, who didn't believe in fighting! We rushed to his side. "Here, here!" cried my friend. "What do you want to do? Kill him? Let the man up! Let him up, I say!" I i I THE NEUTEAL 81 Gray looked at us over his shoulder. **Not until the son-of-a-gun gives three cheers for Uncle Sam !" he howled. He turned again to his victim. "D'jer hear that?"* he demanded. "Three rous- ing cheers now! Three dieers, I say! Cm'on, now. One-two-three! Hip, hip, hooray!" The cheers were given. Gray rose to his feet. His victim stood not on the order of his going. He disappeared even before we had had a good look at hitn. Gray dusted off his clothes. "I rather think," he said, complacently, "that I taught thslt poor boob something about prepared- ness that he won't forget in a hurry." "But for goodness' sake," I asked. "What's it all about? What were you fighting for, an)nvay ?" Gray breathed hard, like an old war horse. "Why," he explained, "that triple-blanked pin- head was making a speech against preparedness^ and bawling out Uncle Sam. And I was getting hotter and hotter. SAnd then when he came to the place where he said that if Americans didn't have sense enough to stay at home, they deserved to be killed, I boiled over and hopped him." Even then I didn't fully understand. It had come too suddenly. 82 SCABS AND STBIPES "But/* I protested, "I thought you were neu- tral?" "Neutral be hanged I" he howled. "Wait until I can get a steamer back to France ! I'll show you how neutral I am! To-night I'm forty-four. But the first recruiting office I hit will see me swearing off years as though they were taxes ! Those triple- dashed, quadruply-asterisked blinkety, blankety, blunks can't do what they did to me and get away with it I" His voice changed; changed with a suddenness that was almost startling. He brushed the back of his hand across his eyes. "And I kind of hope they get me at that," he said; his voice was so low that it was with diffi- culty that I heard. "God knows I haven't much to live for now. . . •" Still a bit perplexed, I looked at my friend. "Why, don't you see?" my friend queried, softly. "It was his daughter. ..." And then I tmderstood. CHAPTER THREE "FOR GOD AND KING I" CHAPTER THREE "for god and kingI" A CERTAIN latter-day sage, frcMn beneath the humour of Celtic pseudonym, has as- serted that, when reference be made as to service for God and king, he would wish to be assured that the Senior Member of the firm has been consulted. Connection lies between this and that bombastic bellow of the Dark Ages that the King can do no wrong. Perhaps, in the days when first this cry came crashing from the hairy mouths of men whose only respect was for a hand more heavy and a heart more foul than their own, this was so. Then it was that might made right — only the weak of body and the meek of soul were wrong. However, antedating by a little the coming of the Bible with gold edges, appeared Wrong as we know it But the panoplied phrase persists — as absurdly incongruous and as abjectly ridiculous as a knight in full armour tilting against a twelve-pound pro- jectile; eventually to be as futile. But that is not yet; for the human race is young, slothful of mind and very ignorant. So the Divine Right that is of 85 86 SCABS AND STRIPES might still rules to bathe the world in blood. But it will pass. However—-' Once upon a time there was a king. He himself believed not in Divine Right. It is doubtful if there is a king who does. However, his people did believe ; and that, to the king, was all that mattered. The king did not believe that he could do no wrong ; for he had occasional gleams from an atro- ph)dng intelligence; and his conscience, though fast dying from the undue burdens it was forced to bear, yet was not quite dead, and sometimes called to him in the night when he was not too drunk to listen. However, as the king's subjects believed that he could do no wrong (or, at least, were content not to argue the matter) what booted the personal be- liefs of the king, who was wise enough to keep those beliefs to himself? Any man, even a Di- vinely Righted king, were a fool, and worse, to question his pleasures. Like all kings, this king had a queen. This was (for the queen, at least) unfortunate; but it was unavoidable; for kings, like stallions, are supposed to live mainly for posterity; and queens are only queens when nature has blessed them of her func- tions. It is but a short step from the royal palace ( c FOE GOD AND KINOl'* 87 to the breeding-stables; and even a shorter step back again. The king loved the queen as much as the stal- lion loves the mare ; no more. And the queen But what difference does it make? She was merely a queen. The king was with the queen only at times when his presence was demanded — ^levees, and the open- ing of bazaars, at celebratic»is, and at reviews, and when little potential kings and queens were bom into the world. At all other times he did much as he chose — always taking excellent care not to upset in the minds of his people their, theories anent Di- vine Right, and the regal incapacity for wrongdo- ing. At times, that which the king did caused the queen to spend long, wet-eyed, sleepless nights. But as she was a queen first and a woman after- ward, again it did not matter. How could it ? She had been fortunate enough to give birth to seven children in seven years. What more ought a queen to expect? But while the king did not love the queen, there was a woman that he did love. He knew that he loved her. He knew because he had loved half a hundred other women before. And if he loved those half hundred, why not this? Could one ask for better proof of love than that? 88 SCABS AND STRIFES She was young^ this woman; young and very beautiful; beautiful of face, beautiful of body. Her husband thought that, too, she was beautiful of soul. . . . But, like many husbands, he did not know his wife very well. He made of her what he wanted her to be; and that he loved and wor- shipped. The king had ^ known many women ; he had known many husbands. Some were satisfied with gold ; some with preferment. But this one seemed different. His eye was grey and clean; his jaw square and set. . . . The king was troubled. . . . And then the Great War came. And with it, we come to our story. They had been rushed to the front. The officer in command had received his orders only that morning. . . . He had kissed his wife good-bye, the while buckling on his revolver. She was very beautiful, this wife of his; he loved her as it is given few men to love, and few women to be loved ; and his grey, clean eyes grew misty as he kissed her. . . . Then a confused rushing of armed men, marching swiftly through crowded streets, clamber- ing into, and on, and over long trains of jammed coaches. . . • At length their train stopped. There were other < < FOE GOD AND KINOT' 89 trains, like theirs, many of them. They formed, in companies. . . . From God knew where, in all the confusion, came orders. And they began to advance. They met the wounded first, sunken-eyed, wan- cheeked, in bloody bandages. . . . Ambulances whose floors dripped red upon the bitten road- way. . . . There was a far mutter, like distant thunder. ... And now the enemy htmdreds of them, thousands, tens of thousands. . . . Like great, grey snakes they were wiqding their way across the stricken country- side, stopping now and then to coil — ^and then to loose those coils and leave the Thing broken, bleed- ing, while on they crawled, on, and on, and on Wild rumors reeled through the trembling air. Could it be stopped — ^this sullen, relentless, onward movement? If not His cotmtry, for which his fathers had fought, and fought, and died, to become a conquered province ! The liberties of its people to be taken from them! Its men slaugh- tered ; its women violated f . . . The officer's lean, bronzed hand closed over the butt of his automatic ; his grey eyes gleamed. . . . And then the battle! One may not tell much of fighting. It is at once so incomprehensibly big, and so absurdly little. . . . ^0 SCABS AND STSIPES A countryside aflame with the fire and smoke and tonnent of a hundred hells. . . . The buttons on a man's uniform. , . . The Officer found himself on a little hill with the command to dig himself in. . . . Already the enemy had the range of his position; and even as the men set frantically to work with their entrench- ing tools, came a shell. ... It exploded fair among them. * ^ . It seemed unreal; horribly unreal. . . . Where but a moment before had been men, swear- ing, sweating, digging, was now only ^. vast hole. There was blood, to be sure; there were pieces of flesh — an arm, a leg, a head torn from its quivering trunk. • . . And there were wounded, screaming, muttering. . . . The Officer grew sick. . . . He tried to see who it was that was gone. . . . But there was no time for that. They must dig and fight — dig and fight. . . . That was what war was, digging and fighting. . . . There came another shell. And more men were gone. . • . And now the enemy were charging. Little men, they looked, in dull, dusty uniforms. . . . Even as he watched, his own troops, on either side of the hill began to fall back. . * . A retreat! . . . His jaw set. . . . < < FOE GOD AND KINO!*' 91 His Second in Command saw, too. . . . Sweat running from his forehead, he looked up. * . . The Officer's eyes half closed. . . . "Dig," he said. And that was all. Another shell came. . . . More men were gone. ... A flying fragment killed the horse of an orderly, from headquarters, pitching him off on his head. . . . He came up to the Offcer, spitting dirt and blood. Cursing the enemy that had killed his horse, he screamed his orders to the Officer. They were to hold the position at all cost; to enfilade the ad- vancing enemy when they tried to pass, so that those on either side of the hill might effect a safe retreat. The orderly started off, cursing, stumbling over the corpses. He had gone seventy yards, perhaps eighty, when it happened. ... A sheet of flame The Orderly's field glasses fell at the Officer's feet. The Officer picked them up and stood looking at them, vacantly. * . . He felt a little stinging swish across his fore- head. And his eyes were filled with blood. . . . He drew his hand across them. . . . The enemy were nearer. . . . He looked for his Second in Command. . . . The Second in Command was holding his hand where his jaw had been; over it ran a cataract of blood. . . . 92 SCABS AND STEIPES The Officer remembered his orders. So that was it! They were a sop— a sop to be thrown to the great grey snake to make him pause in his crawling long enough that others might escape. His jaw set a bit tighter. ... If there must be a sop, there must be. All men can't be heroes ; as all men can't live and love and be happy. . . . And if it must be he that is to die that others may live — war is war, and life is life, even as death is but death. . . . There came to him dimly in all the hell- hurled tumult that it didn't matter much, after all — that it wouldn't matter much if only it weren't for Her. . . . And if his going would save her from the Thing so horribly worse than death that conquer- ing men do to conquered women *Godf They were few now, his men, pitifully few. . . . Even as he looked more were down. . . . His own orderly was among them ; hardly more than a boy he was, a boy who loved all men and whom all men loved. . . . They couldn't kill him ! It was unfair, horribly unfair ! The boy whom children loved, to whose feet every stray dog came friendily. . . . The machine-guns had been smashed or silenced save one. . . . Two men were operating this, one firing, the other feeding. . . . And now the enemy were upon them. . . . Like grey waves, they foamed up the hillside, surging **FOE GOD AND KINg!'* 98 along on either side of the base. ... He emptied his automatic blindly at the surging grey torrent. . . . He heard some one calling to him. He looked. One of the men at the gun was down; a bullet through his head, striking as fair between the eyes as you could place your finger. . . . The Officer threw down his empty gun. Drag- ging the fallen body to one side, he took his place, firing, firing, firing at the surging grey waves that came rolling on endlessly, remorselessly. . . . His finger pressing the trigger, he took a swift look about him. . . . All were down now. . . . All gone. . . . All dead or dying, all save only the man beside him and — ^himself. . . . His gun had ceased firing ; he pressed the trigger savagely. . . . But it wasn't the gun ; it was the man beside him. . . . He had slipped to the ground ; there was a red foam flecking his lips. . . . He thrust out his hand. . . . The Officer grasped it with his own, then slipped in a fresh belt of cartridges. . . . Then It came. It was as though some one had hit him on the chest with a stick — ^a fierce, quick, savage thrust. ... It didn't hurt much. ... He felt dizzy and weak. . . . That was funny. He looked down at the breast of his uniform. There was a great, wet, red splotch. His breath bubbled in his throat. He slipped to the ground. • • 94 SCABS AND STBIPES The grey seas engulfed him. G)untless grey forms were all about him. It was the End, . . . And so he died. But before the soul had left his body, came to blood-streaked lips six words. The first was the name of his wife. And the other four : "For God and King r The king sat smoking. Through half-shut eyes he watched the woman before him. She was very beautiful, this woman; kings usually know what is beautiful of wcnnan; kings usually have what is beautiful of woman; for, being kings, they have much money and much power; and money and power bring beautiful things. I could not describe this woman if I would; nor would I if I could. But you have seen beautiful women. This woman was probably more beautiful than any you ever saw. And the king looked at her through half -shut eyes. ... They did not speak. There was no reason why they should. They both knew that her husband had been removed from the board of strategy, where he would have been of ^reat value to his country, and sent to the front, where he could be of but little. And they both knew why he had been sent, and who had sent him. Therefore the Beautiful Woman re- i c FOB GOD AND KINo!" 95 dined before the king; while the king watched her through half-shut eyes. And they both knew, too, the thought within their minds. So she said nothing. She was a very beau- tiful woman and she had chosen what she had chosen. And he? Well, was he not a king by di- vine right ? And a king, you know,