“The thing that beats me,” declared the young lawyer, “is the way you Germans stand up for the Kaiser now, when before the war you couldn't find enough bad things to say about him.” “What beats me,” countered Schneider, “is how you Americans stand up for King George. Every newspaper in Wall Street howling for America to go into the war--just because some millionaires got killed!” “You don't seem to realize that the greater number of the men who lost their lives on that ship were working men!” “Ho! Ho!” hooted Comrade Stankewitz. “Vall Street loves so the vorking men!” Comrade Mary Allen, who loved all men, took up the argument. If those working men had been killed in a mine disaster, caused by criminal carelessness and greed for profits; if they had died of some industrial disease which might easily have been prevented; if they had been burned in a factory without fire-escapes--nobody in Wall Street would have wanted to go to war. And, of course, every Socialist considered this was true; every Socialist saw quite clearly that the enormity of the Lusitania sinking lay in the fact that it had reached and injured the privileged people, the people who counted, who got their names in the papers and were not supposed to be inconvenienced, even by war. So it was possible for Jimmie Higgins, even though shocked by what the Germans had done, to be irritated by the fuss which the Wall Street newspapers made. Young Emil Forster spoke, and they listened to him, as they always did. It was a quarrel, he said--and as usual in quarrels, both sides had their rights and wrongs. You had to balance a few English and American babies against the millions of German babies which the British government intended to starve. It was British sea-power maintaining itself--and of course controlling most of the channels of publicity. It appealed to what it called “law”--that is to say, the customs it had found convenient in the past. British cruisers were able to visit and search vessels, and to take off their crews; but submarines could not do that, so what the British clamour about “law” amounted to was an attempt to keep Germany from using her only weapon. After all, ask yourself honestly if it was any worse to drown people quickly than to starve them slowly. And then came “Wild Bill”. This wrangling over German and British gave him a pain in the guts. Couldn't they see, the big stiffs, that they were playing the masters' game? Quarrelling among themselves, when they ought to be waking up the workers, getting ready for the real fight. And wizened-up little Stankewitz broke in again--that vas vy he hated var, it divided the vorkers. There was nothing you could say for var. But “Wild Bill” smiled his crooked smile. There were several things you could say. War gave the workers guns, and taught them to use them; how would it be if some day they turned these guns about and fought their own battles? III