Social problems -- Fiction; War stories; World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction
Old Peter Drew answered that he would be interested to attend the
meeting himself. How would it do for him to come for Lizzie and the
little ones, and leave the latter at his home, and then drive with
Lizzie to the meeting? They could meet Jimmie at the Opera-house,
where he would be spending the day decorating. Then after the
meeting they could all drive back together. “Fine!” said Jimmie, who
had visions of the old soldier becoming infected with revolutionary
fever.
But alas, it did not work out that way. To Jimmie's consternation
the old man turned up at the Opera-house in a faded blue uniform
with brass buttons all over it! Everybody stared, of course; and
they stared all the harder because they saw this military personage
in company with Comrade Higgins. The old boy gazed about at the
swarms of people, many of them with red buttons, the women with red
ribbons or sashes; he gazed at the decorations--the huge flag and
the long red streamers, the banner of the Karl Marx Verein, and the
banner of the Ypsels, or Young Peoples' Socialist League of
Leesville, and the banner of the Machinists' Union, Local 4717, and
of the Carpenters' Union, District 529, and of the Workers'
Co-operative Society. He turned to Jimmie and said, “Where's the
American flag?”
The Liederkranz sang the Marseillaise, and after the audience had
cheered and waved red handkerchiefs and shouted itself hoarse,
Comrade Gerrity, the chairman, made a little speech. For many years
all Socialists had been accustomed to employ a metaphor by which to
describe conditions in their country, and now they would no longer
be able to use it, for Russia was free, and America would follow her
example when she had the sense. He introduced Comrade Pavel
Michaelovitch, who had come all the way from New York to tell them
the meaning of the greatest event of history. Comrade Pavel, a
slender, frail, scholarly-looking man with a black beard and
black-rimmed spectacles, said a few words in Russian, and then he
talked for an hour in broken English, explaining how the Russians
had won their way to freedom, and now would use it to set free the
rest of the proletariat. And then came Comrade Schultze, of the
Carpet Weavers' Union, assuring them that there was no need to go to
war with Germany, because the German workers had been shown the way
to freedom, and would follow very soon; Schultze knew, because his
brother was editor of a Socialist paper in Leipzig, and he had
inside information as to what was going on in the Fatherland.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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