§ 35
All this time the country had been going to war. The huge military
machine was getting under way, the storm of public feeling was rising.
Congress had voted a huge loan, a country-wide machine of propaganda was
being organized, and the oratory of Four Minute Men was echoing from
Maine to California. Peter read the American City "Times" every morning,
and here were speeches of statesmen and sermons of clergymen, here were
cartoons and editorials, all burning with the fervor's of patriotism.
Peter absorbed these, and his soul became transfigured. Hitherto Peter
had been living for himself; but there comes a time in the life of every
man who can use his brain at all when he realizes that he is not the one
thing of importance in the universe, the one end to be served. Peter
very often suffered from qualms of conscience, waves of doubt as to his
own righteousness. Peter, like every other soul that ever lived, needed
a religion, an ideal.
The Reds had a religion, as you might call it; but this religion
had failed to attract Peter. In the first place it was low; its devotees
were wholly lacking in the graces of life, in prestige, and that ease
which comes with assurance of power. They were noisy in their fervors,
and repelled Peter as much as the Holy Rollers. Also, they were always
harping upon the sordid and painful facts of life;
who but a pervert would listen to "sob stories," when he might have all
the things that are glorious and shining and splendid in the world?
But now here was the religion Peter wanted. These clergymen in
their robes of snow white linen, preaching in churches with golden
altars and stained-glass windows; these statesmen who wore the halo of
fame, and went about with the cheering of thousands in their ears; these
mighty captains of industry whose very names were magic — with power,
when written on pieces of paper, to cause cities to rise in the desert,
and then to fall again beneath a rain of shells and poison gas; these
editors and cartoonists of the American City "Times," with all their wit
and learning — these people all combined to construct for Peter a
religion and an ideal, and to hand it out to him, ready-made and
precisely fitted to his understanding. Peter would go right on doing the
things he had been doing before; but he would no longer do them in the
name of Peter Gudge, the ant, he would do them in the name of a mighty
nation of a hundred and ten million people, with all its priceless
memories of the past and its infinite hopes for the future; he would do
them in the sacred name of patriotism, and the still more sacred name of
democracy. And — most convenient of circumstances — the big business men
of American City, who had established a secret service bureau with
Guffey in charge of it, would go right on putting up their funds, and
paying Peter fifty dollars a week and expenses while he served the holy
cause!
It was the fashion these days for orators and public men to vie
with one another in expressing the extremes of patriotism, and Peter
would read these phrases, and cherish
them; they came to seem a part of him, he felt as if he had invented
them. He became greedy for more and yet more of this soul-food; and
there was always more to be had — until Peter's soul was become swollen,
puffed up as with a bellows. Peter became a patriot of patriots, a
super-patriot; Peter was a red-blooded American and no mollycoddle;
Peter was a "he-American," a 100% American — and if there could have been
such a thing as a 101% American, Peter would have been that. Peter was
so much of an American that the very sight of a foreigner filled him
with a fighting impulse. As for the Reds — well, Peter groped for quite a
time before he finally came upon a formula which expressed his feelings.
It was a famous clergyman who achieved it for him — saying that if he
could have his way he would take all the Reds, and put them in a ship of
stone with sails of lead, and send them forth with hell for their
destination.
So Peter chafed more and more at his inability to get action. How
much more evidence did the secret service of the Traction Trust require?
Peter would ask this question of McGivney again and again, and McGivney
would answer: "Keep your shirt on. You're getting your pay every week.
What's the matter with you?"
"The matter is, I'm tired of listening to these fellows
ranting," Peter would say. "I want to stop their mouths."
Yes, Peter had come to take it as a personal affront that these
radicals should go on denouncing the cause which Peter had espoused.
They all thought of Peter as a comrade, they were most friendly to him;
but Peter had the knowledge of how they would regard him when they knew
the real truth, and this imagined contempt burned him like
an acid. Sometimes there would be talk about spies and informers, and
then these people would exhaust their vocabulary of abuse, and Peter, of
course, would apply every word of it to himself and become wild with
anger. He would long to answer back; he was waiting for the day when he
might vindicate himself and his cause by smashing these Reds in the
mouth.
