Those last minutes before the debate went by in a blur. The next thing Flora knew, there she stood behind a podium on stage, staring out over the footlights at the packed house: a fuller house than vaudeville usually drew, which was the main reason the manager had rented out the hall tonight. There in the second row sat her parents, her sisters-Sophie with little Yossel in her arms-and her brothers.
And here, at the other podium to her right, stood Congressman Daniel Miller, appointed to the seat she wanted. He wasn’t quite so handsome and debonair as his campaign posters made him out to be, but who was? He looked clever and alert, and the Democrats had the money and the connections to make a strong campaign for whatever candidate they chose.
Up in between the two candidates strode Isidore Rothstein, the Democratic Party chairman for the Fourteenth Ward. A coin toss had made him master of ceremonies rather than his Socialist opposite number. More tosses had determined that Miller would speak first and Flora last.
Rothstein held up his hands. The crowd quieted. “Tonight, we see democracy in action,” he said, making what Flora thought of as unfair use of his party’s name. “In the middle of the greatest war the world has ever known, we come together here to decide which way our district should go, listening to both sides to come to a fair decision.”
Here and there, people in the crowd applauded. Flora wondered how much anything they did here tonight would really matter. The Democrats would keep a strong majority in Congress unless the sky fell. One district-what was one district? But Myron Zuckerman had spent his whole adult life working to improve the lot of the common people. His legacy would be wasted if this Democrat kept this seat to which he had been appointed. Plenty of reason there alone to fight.
“And now,” Isidore Rothstein thundered, a bigger voice than had any business coming out of his plump little body, “Congressman Daniel Miller!” Democrats in the crowd cheered. Socialists hissed and whistled.
Miller said, “Under Teddy Roosevelt, the Democrats have given every American a square deal. We are pledged to an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work, to treating every individual as an individual and as he deserves”-the code phrase Democrats used when they explained why they were against labor unions-“to the rights of cities and counties and states to govern themselves as far as possible, and to-”
“What about the war?” a Socialist heckler shouted. Before the debate, the two parties had solemnly agreed not to harass each other’s candidates. Both sides had sounded very sincere. Flora hadn’t taken it seriously, and didn’t expect the Democrats had, either.
Daniel Miller was certainly ready for the shout. “And to keeping the commitments made long ago to our friends and allies, I was about to say,” he went on smoothly. “For years, the USA was surrounded by our enemies: by the Confederacy and Canada and England and France, even by the Japanese. Germany was in the same predicament on the European continent. We are both reaching out together for our rightful places in the sun. Not only that, we are winning this war. It hasn’t been so easy as we thought it would be, but what war is? To quit now would be to leave poor Kaiser Bill in the lurch, fighting England and France and Russia all alone, or near enough as makes no difference, and to guarantee that the old powers will hold us down for another fifty years. Do you want that?” He stuck out his chin. In profile, as Flora saw him, his jawline sagged, but from the front he probably looked most impressively political.
She made her own opening statement. “We are winning this war, Mr. Miller says.” She wouldn’t call him Congressman. “If you want to buy a pound of meat, you can go down to the butcher’s shop and get it. If you have to pay twenty dollars for it, you begin to wonder if it’s worth the price. Here we are, almost two and a half years into a fight the Socialist Party never wanted, and what have we got to show for it? Quebec City is still Canadian. Montreal is still Canadian. Toronto is still Canadian. Winnipeg is still Canadian. Richmond is still Confederate. Our own capital is still in Confederate hands, for heaven’s sake.
“And Nashville is still Confederate. Just this past week, the brilliant General Custer, the heroic General Custer, attacked again. And what did he get? Half a mile of ground, moving away from Nashville, mind you, not toward it. And what was the cost? Another division thrown away. Three-quarters of a million dead since 1914, two million wounded, half a million in the enemy’s prisoner-of-war camps. Poor Kaiser Bill!” Her voice dripped venom.
“And will you have all those brave men die in vain?” Daniel Miller demanded. “Will you have the United States abandon the struggle before it’s over, go back to our old borders, tell our enemies, ‘Oh, we’re sorry; we didn’t really mean it’?” He was sarcastic himself. “Once you’ve begun a job of work, you don’t leave it in the middle. We have given as good as we’ve got; we have given better than we’ve got. The Canucks are tottering; the Confederates are about to put rifles into black men’s hands. We are winning, I tell you.”
“So what?” Flora said. The blunt question seemed to catch her opponent by surprise. She repeated it: “So what? What can we win that will bring those boys back to life? What can we win that’s worth a hundredth part of what they paid? Even if we make the CSA make peace instead of the other way round, what difference does it make? Two thousand years ago, there was a king who looked around after a battle and cried out, ‘One more victory like this and I am ruined!’ He could see. He gave up the war. Is the Democratic Party full of blind men?”
“No. We’re full of men who remember what happened in 1862, who remember what happened twenty years later,” Miller shot back. “We’re full of men who believe the United States of America must never be humiliated again, men who believe we must ten times never humiliate ourselves.”
“A man who makes a mistake and backs away from it has sense,” Flora said. “A man who makes a mistake and keeps on with it is a fool. We-”
“Traitor!” came a voice from the crowd. “You’re just a woman. What do you know about what war costs?”
Tight-lipped, Flora pointed to her family. “Sophie, stand up.” Her sister did, still holding little Yossel. “There’s my nephew,” Flora said into sudden silence. “He’ll never know his father, who died on the Roanoke front.” She pointed again. “David, stand up.” The older of her two brothers rose, wearing U.S. green-gray. “Here is my brother. He has leave. He’s just finished his training. He goes to the front day after tomorrow. I know what this war costs.”
The crowd applauded. To her surprise, the heckler subsided. She’d thought the Democrats would have pests more consistent than that fellow.
No matter. She turned to-turned on-Daniel Miller. “You love the war so well, Congressman.” Now she did use the title, etching it with acid. “Where are your hostages to fortune?”
Miller was a little too old to be conscripted himself. He had no brothers. His wife, a woman who looked to be very nice, sat in the audience not far from Flora’s family. With her were her two sons, the older of whom might have been thirteen. Flora had known the Democratic appointee couldn’t well come back if she raised the question, and she’d been hoping she’d get or be able to make the chance to do it.
And, just for a moment, her opponent’s composure cracked. “I honorably served my time in the United States Army,” he said. “I yield to no one in-”
“Nobody was shooting at you then!” Four people, from four different sections of the hall, shouted the same thing at the same time. A storm of applause rose up behind them. Miller looked as if he’d had one of his fancy clients stand up in court and confess: betrayed by circumstances over which he had no control.
The debate went on. Daniel Miller even made a few points about what a Democratic congressman could do for his district that a Socialist couldn’t hope to match. “Wouldn’t you like to have the majority on your side again?” he asked, almost wistfully. It was not the best question, not in a hall full of Jews. When, since the fall of the Second Temple, had they had the majority on their side? And, after the blow Flora had got in, it mattered little.