Chapter 18
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 military-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 fervors 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 businessmen 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 in 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 one hundred percent American, and if there could have been a thing as a one hundred and one percent 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. Well, said McGivney one day, I've got something interesting for you now. You're going into
high society for a while. And the rat-faced man explained that there was a young man in a neighboring city, reputed to be a multimillionaire, who had written a book against the war, and was the financial source of much pacifism and sedition. These people are spending lots of money for printing, said McGivney, and we hear this fellow Lackman is putting it up. We've learned that he's to be in town tomorrow, and we want
you to find out all about his affairs. So Peter was to meet a millionaire. Peter had never known one of these fortunate beings, but he was for them. He had always been for them. Ever since he had learned to read, he had liked to find stories about them in the newspapers, with pictures of them in their palaces. He had read these stories as a child reads fairy tales. They were his creatures of dreams, belonging to a world above reality,
above pain and inconvenience. And then in the days when Peter had been a servant in the temple of Jim Jumbo, devoted to the cult of illutherian exoticism, he had found hanging in the main assembly room a picture labeled Mount Olympus, showing a dozen gods and goddesses reclining at ease on silken couches, sipping nectar from golden goblets, and gazing down upon the far-off troubles of the world. Peter would peer from behind the curtains and see
the chief magistrian emerging from behind the seven mystic veils, lifting his rolling voice and in a kind of chant expounding life to his flock of adoring society ladies. He would point to the picture and explain those golden Olympian days when the illutherian cult had originated. The world had changed much since then, and for the worse. Those who had power must take it as their task to restore beauty and splendor to the world,
and to develop the gracious possibilities of being. Peter, of course, hadn't really believed in anything that went on in the temple of Jim Jumbo, and yet he had been awed by its richness and by the undoubtedly exclusive character of its worshippers. He had got the idea definitely fixed in his head that there really had been a Mount Olympus, and when he tried to imagine the millionaires and their ways it was these gods and goddesses, reclining
on silken couches and sipping nectar, that came to his mind. Now, since Peter had come to know the Reds, who wanted to blow up the palaces of the millionaires, he was more than ever on the side of his gods and goddesses. His fervours for them increased every time he heard them assailed. He wanted to meet some of them and passionately yet respectfully pour out to them his allegiance. A glow of satisfaction came over him as he pictured
himself in some palace, lounging upon a silken conch and explaining to a millionaire his understanding of the value and beauty and splendor in the world. And now he was to meet one. It was to be a part of his job to cultivate one. True, there was something wrong with this particular millionaire. He was one of those freaks who, for some reason beyond imagining, believed sympathy to the dynamiters and assassins. Peter had met parlor Reds at the home of the
Todd Sisters, the large shining ladies who came in large shining cars to hear him tell of his jail experiences. But he hadn't been sure as to whether they were really millionaires or not, and Sadie, when he had inquired particularly, had answered vaguely that everyone in the radical movement who could afford an automobile or a dress suit was called a millionaire by the newspapers. But young Lackman was a real millionaire. McGivney positively assured him,
and so Peter was free to admire him in spite of all his freak ideas, which the rat-faced man explained with intense amusement. Young Lackman conducted a school for boys, and when one of the boys did wrong, the teacher would punish himself instead of the boy. Peter must pretend to be interested in this kind of education, said McGivney, and he must learn at least the names of Lackman's books.
But will he pay any attention to me? demanded Peter. Sure he will, said McGivney. That's the point. You've been in jail. You've really done something as a pacifist. What you want to do is to try to interest him in your anti-conscription league. Tell him you want to make it into a national organization. You want to get something done besides talking.
The address of young Lackman was the Hotel De Soto, and as he heard this, Peter's heart gave a leap. The Hotel De Soto was the Mount Olympus of American City. Peter had walked by the vast white structure and seen the bronze doors swing outward and the favorite ones of the earth emerging to their magic chariots. But never had it occurred to him that he might pass through those bronze doors and gaze upon those hidden mysteries.
Will they let me in? he asked McGivney, and the other laughed. Just walk in as if you owned the place, he said. Hold up your head and pretend you've lived there all your life. That was easy for McGivney to say, but not so easy for Peter to imagine. However, he would try it. McGivney must be right, for it was the same thing Mrs. James had impressed
upon him many times. You must watch what other people did and practice by yourself, and then go in and do it as if you had never done anything else. All life was a gigantic bluff, and you encouraged yourself in your bluffing by the certainty that everybody else was bluffing just as hard. At seven o'clock that evening, Peter strolled up to the magic bronze doors and touched them,
and sure enough the blue uniformed guardians drew them back without a word, and the tiny brass button imps never even glanced at Peter as he strode up to the desk and asked for Mr. Lachman. The haughty clerk passed him on to a still more haughty telephone operator who condescended to speak into her trumpet and then informed him that Mr. Lachman was out. He had left word that he would return at eight. Peter was about to go out and wander
about the streets for an hour, when he suddenly remembered that everybody else was bluffing, so he marched across the lobby and seated himself in one of the huge leather armchairs, big enough to hold three of him. There he sat, and continued to sit, and nobody said a word. End of sections 35 and 36.
