Social problems -- Fiction; War stories; World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction
All the world saw what happened; it saw the glorious revolutionary
machine, in which Jimmie Higgins had put all his trust, run into a
ditch and land its passengers in the mud. The German armies marched,
and the Socialists in the German armies did exactly what the
non-Socialists did--they fired upon the red flag, as they would have
fired upon the flag of the Tsar. They obeyed the orders of their
officers, like true and loyal Germans; they drove back the
Bolsheviki in confusion, taking their guns and supplies, and
destroying their cities; they led off the Russian women and children
into slavery, precisely as if they were Belgian or French women and
children, destined by the German Gott as the legitimate prey of
Kultur. They sacked Riga and Reval, they overran all the Eastern
portions of Russia--Courland, Livonia, Esthonia; they moved into the
rich grain country of Southern Russia, the Ukraine; they landed from
their ships and took Finland, wiping out the liberties of that
splendid people. They were at the gates of Petrograd, and the
Bolshevik government was forced to flee to Moscow. Of all which
military feats the German Socialist papers spoke with stern pride!
IV
Poor Jimmie Higgins! It was like the blow of a mighty fist in the
face; he was literally stunned--it was weeks before he could grasp
the full meaning of what was happening, the debacle of all his
hopes. And it was the same with Ironton's Bolshevik local; all the
“pep” was gone out of its proceedings. To be sure, some noisy ones
went on shouting for revolution the very next day--men, who had been
talking formulas for twenty or thirty years, and had no more notion
of a fact than they had of a pseudopodium. But the sensible men of
the group knew that their “St. Louis resolution” was being shot to
death over there in the trenches before Petrograd.
It was interesting especially to see Rabin. The common belief of
Americans was that a Jew could not be induced to fight; they told a
story about one who cried out to his son, asking why he was letting
another boy pummel him, and the son whispered in reply, “Keep still,
I got a nickel under my foot!” All through the war the Jewish
Socialists in America had been, next to the Germans, the most ardent
pacifists; but now here was a social revolution managed by Jews,
here was a Russian government which gave the Jews their rights for
the first time in history! So the little Jewish tailor stood up
before these American Bolsheviki, and with tears running down his
cheeks declared: “Comrades, I am already tru vit speeches; I am
going into dis var! I vill put myself vit de Polish Socialists, vit
de Bohemian Socialists--I fight de Kaiser to de death! So vill fight
every Jewish Socialist in de vorld!” And this was no mere
braggadocio--Comrade Rabin actually proceeded to shut up his
tailor-shop, and went away to join the “red brigade”, which was
being organized by the Jewish revolutionists of New York!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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