Dennis cleared his throat. “My young man will be very supportive. He’ll buy Liberty Bonds and whatnot, but he won’t go off and run the risk of leaving his wife a widow and his new son without a father.”
“Hundreds of thousands of our French and British brothers have made that ultimate sacrifice with commendable dignity, Bailey.”
“Dignity, Mr. McCalley? Most of them died gruesome deaths far from the loving embrace of their wives and children.”
McCalley, who had been sitting behind his desk, now got quickly to his feet, knocking a framed photograph of his own family to the floor. “Bailey, dear boy, you astonish me. I had no idea that you possessed anti-American tendencies. Nothing you’ve ever written for this magazine has led me to believe you to be anything but a true-blue, red-blooded American patriot.”
“This war is folly.”
“Perhaps, then, you should be writing for The Masses.” McCalley, having rescued his family’s portrait from the floor, wiped the dusty glass with the elbow of his suit jacket. He returned it to his desk.
“Why? I’m not a socialist. Although I do find much to agree with in what Mr. Eastman and his colleagues have said about our involvement in this war. Like Eastman, I don’t wear patriotic blinders. Where some see only the flag, I perceive opportunities for imperialistic land-grabs and financial aggrandizement on an unprecedented scale. Industrialists in Europe are growing fat and rich as a consequence of this war. The same will happen over here. The French troops have had their fill of it. They’re deserting their battalions in droves. I don’t, by the way, see you publishing that fact in our magazine.”
“Of course not. Our job is to get this war over with and all of our young men sent back home.”
“With or without their limbs and faces.”
“That sentiment, Bailey, is loathsome. I can’t possibly understand why you’ve taken such a stance. Do you not realize that once anti-sedition legislation gets signed by the president talk of that kind could put you behind bars?”
“If I’m not mistaken, sir, the First Amendment guarantees me freedom of speech.”
McCalley shook his head. “In times of war we are required to surrender a few of our freedoms for the good of the cause. That’s the way it’s always been. Otherwise, national morale is undermined and the war lost. Do you wish to live beneath the yoke of German tyranny for all the rest of your days?”
“That’s what I wanted to see you about, Mr. McCalley, and thank you for reminding me.”
“Remind you of what?”
“The particulars of your Memorial Day editorial.”
“What’s wrong with it? I thought it rather good. I wrote every word of it myself.”
Dennis drew a folded piece of paper from his pocket and read from it: “On this Memorial Day we do more than commemorate those who died more than half a century ago in the cause of preserving this Union. We honor as well those American men who will soon be sacrificing their young lives upon French soil to preserve the union of all the civilized people of the Earth. The problem of Negro slavery which pitted Blue against Gray in our homeland could never, even in its worst instances, be compared with that savage inhumanity represented by the slavery presently imposed upon the people of Belgium and Serbia and Armenia.”
“You own to this, Mr. McCalley? Really? Every word of it?”
“Dear boy, we are fighting for the cause of liberty — not just for our own people, but for all the peoples of the world!”
“Most of whom live under oppressive monarchies. Sir, I cannot in any stronger words tell you how objectionable I find this editorial. Not only what it says — downplaying, for example, the inhuman subjugation of the American Negro in antebellum times — but the very fact that you felt impelled by the present jingoist, militarist climate to actually write it.”
“You’re skating on very thin ice, Mr. Bailey.”
Dennis stood. He combed his hand through his mussed hair. The look on his face was that of a man upon the horns of an all-too-familiar dilemma: to stand proudly on principle with all manner of negative consequences in attendance, or to abandon principle for purpose of self-preservation. “I take it you mean thin ice with regard to my employment here.”
“That in the short run, yes — but far more cautious men than you will find themselves ostracized for saying quite a bit less than what you’ve said to me this morning. I don’t believe you to be a traitor to this country, Dennis, but others will. It would be the end to your writing career as well. Do you seek it? You have a wife, three children.”
“That’s right.”
“And Juliet, always in such poor health, and all of those doctors’ bills.”
Slowly, Dennis Bailey returned himself to the chair he had previously vacated.
“This is not a good time to be a socialist, Bailey. Or even a Progressive, for that matter. In times of national crisis, we are called upon to kiss the flag even though it may have stopped representing in totality all those things we have been taught that it stands for.”
Much of the fire was now gone from Dennis’s delivery. “I don’t see the war the way you do, Mr. McCalley. I don’t believe German troops have the wherewithal to invade this country, or that the Kaiser is any more of a monster than those men who will manufacture our own murderous armaments for enormous profit. And I well know why you included that reference to American slavery. I’ve worked with you long enough and have seen you often reward your 100,000 Southern white readers for their allegiance to the Companion—those Sammie and Rastus cartoons, this illusion you put forth on our editorial pages that all is harmony and bliss between the races in the South. I believe I’m reaching the end of my allotted ten minutes. I will think about what you’ve said and talk it over with my wife.”
“And you’ll rework your story so that the young man goes off and fights valiantly for his country?”
Dennis stood. “And comes home without his legs and blinded by the mustard gas?”
“If that was said in jest, Bailey, you’ll notice that I’m not laughing.”
Dennis didn’t answer. He stared out the window at busy Columbus Avenue. It was nearing lunchtime. The street was thick with cars and vans and the occasional horse-drawn delivery wagon. The sidewalks were filled with people bustling here and there — businessmen in suits, working men in overalls, shop girls and female typists wearing monochrome and serge — all seemingly unmindful of the fact that the country they loved, the country which they had always felt had only their best interests at heart, was about to engage in a war which would leave nearly 117,000 of its citizens dead and another 205,000 wounded. In Great Britain, in France, in Germany and Russia they would count their dead and wounded in the millions. The age of modern warfare had arrived. McCalley’s friend Teddy Roosevelt would be left on the sidelines, holding the reins to his obsolete mount.
“This war will be a terrible thing for us all,” Dennis finally said, “while upon the pages of this magazine which has employed me for the last ten years will be found only stories of battlefield heroism, of young boys marking off the days on their calendars until they are old enough to take up arms themselves. You’ve already said in so many words to me that there will be no place within this magazine for exposing the degenerate side of war — the side which sanctions the killing and maiming of others and creates without apology widows and orphans on the home front.
“But I will not be a part of it. I don’t need to talk this over with Juliet. I’ve made my decision already: I am not for this war. I am not for any foreign war. I see no glory in needless bloodshed and no honor in fighting for a nebulous or even specious cause. You are right, sir: no one will hire me. At least not until this country returns to its collective senses. Until then, I will have no choice but to set down my pen, for I have no desire to write for Mr. Eastman’s Masses. I wish to write for the true American masses — those I see below — those whose allegiance to this country has become nothing more to you than a commodity to be traded upon the open market.”