The Crimson Tide: A Novel

“In other words, I have preached disorder while attempting to combat it: I have preached revolution while counselling peace; I have preached bigotry where I have demanded toleration.

“For there is no worse bigot than the free-thinker who demands that the world subscribe to his creed; no tyrant like the under-dog when he becomes the upper one; no autocracy to compare with mob rule!

“You can not obtain freedom for all by imposing that creed upon anybody by the violence of revolutionary ukase!

“You can not wreck any edifice until all who enjoy ownership in it agree to its demolition. You can not build for all unless each voluntarily comes forward to aid with stone and mortar.

“Anarchy leaves the majority roofless. What is the use of saying, ‘Let them perish’? What is the use of trying to rebuild the world that way? You can’t do it, even if you set fire to the world and start your endless war of human murder.

“If you were the majority you would not need to do it. But you are the minority, and there are too many against you.

“Only by infinite pains and patience can you alter the social structure to better it. Cautious and wary replacement is the only method, not exploding a mine beneath the keystone.

“The world has won out from barbarism so far. It must continue to emerge by degrees. And if beliefs and laws and customs be obsolete, only by general agreement may they be modified without danger to all. Not the violent revolt of one or a dozen or a thousand can alter what has, so far, nourished and sustained civilisation.

“That is the Prussian belief. Bolshevism was sired by Karl Marx and was hatched out in the shaggy gloom of the Prussian wilderness.

“It does not belong anywhere else; it does not belong on the plains of Russia or in her forests or on her mountains. It is a Prussian thing–a misbegotten monster born of a vile and decadent race,–a horrible parasite, like that one which carries typhus, infects as it spreads from the degraded race that hatched it, crawling from country to country and leaving behind it dead minds, dead hearts, dead souls, and rotting flesh.

“For order and disorder can not both reign paramount on this planet! The one shall slay the other. And Bolshevism is disorder–a violent and tyrannical and autocratic attempt to utterly destroy the vast majority for the benefit of the microscopic minority.

“You can not do it, you Terrorists! Prussia tried terrorism on the world. Where is she to-day? You can not teach by frightfulness. You can not scare beliefs out of anybody.

“Method, order, education–there is no other chance for any propagandist to-day.

“I have stood here night after night proclaiming that my personal conception of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, of law and morals was the only intelligent one, and that I should ignore and disregard any other opinion.

“What I preached was Bolshevism! And I was such a fool I didn’t know it. But that’s what I preached. For it is an incitement to disorder to proclaim one’s self above obedience to what has been established as a law to govern all.

“It is an insidious counsel to violence, revolution, Bolshevism and utter anarchy to say to people that they should disregard any law formed by all for the common weal.

“If the marriage law seems unnecessary, unjust, then only by common consent can it be altered; and until it is altered, any who disregard it strike at civilisation!

“If the laws governing capital and labour seem cruel, stupid, tyrannical, only by general consent can they be altered safely.

“You of the Bolsheviki can not come among us dripping with human blood, showing us your fangs, and expect from us anything except a fusillade.

“And your propaganda, also, is not human. It is Prussian. Do you suppose, you foreign-born, that you can come here among this free people and begin your operations by cursing our laws and institutions and telling us we are not free?

“Because we tolerate you, do you suppose we don’t know that in most of the larger cities there are now organised Soviets, similar to those in Russia, that anarchists are now conducting schools, and that the radical propaganda which has taken on new life since the signing of the armistice is gaining headway in those parts of the country where there are large foreign-born populations?

“Do you suppose we don’t know Prussianism when we see it, after these last four years?

“Do you suppose we have not read the Staats-Zeitung editorial of December 8, which in part was as follows:

“‘Hundreds of thousands of our boys are standing now over there in the old homeland, which for nineteen months was enemy country and is that still, but which, as President Wilson promised, will soon be a land of peace again, rich in diligent work, rich in true and good people… As the whole happy life of this blessed region presents a picture to the spectator, it is to be wondered whether his (the American soldier’s) memory will awaken on what he read of this country (Germany) at home long ago, whether he will feel a slight blush of shame in his cheeks and anger for those who, not from their own knowledge but from doubtful sources, branded a whole great people, 70,000,000, as barbarians, huns, murderers of children and church robbers. And whether he (the American soldier) will at the same time make a pledge in his heart to combat those lies and rumours when he is back home again, and to tell the truth about those (the Germans) living behind those mountains.’”

Palla’s face flushed and she came close to the edge of the platform:

“I have been warned that if I came here to-night I’d have trouble. The anonymous writers who send me letters talk about bombs.

“Do you imagine because you murdered Vanya Tchernov in Philadelphia the other day that you can frighten anybody dumb?

“I tell you you don’t know what you’re doing. You’re dazed and scared and bewildered by finding yourselves suddenly in the open world after all those lurking years in hiding. As a forest wolf, his eyes dazzled by the sun, runs blindly across a field of new mown hay, dodging where there is nothing to dodge, leaping over shadows, so you, emerging from darkness, start out across the fertile world, the sun of civilisation blinding you so that you run as though stupefied and frightened, shying at straws, dodging zephyrs, leaping a pool of dew as though it were the Volga.

“What are you afraid of? You have nothing to fear except yourselves out here in the sunny open!

“Behold your enemies–yourselves!–selfish, defiant, full of false council, of envy, of cowardice, of treachery.

“For there would be no sorrow, no injustice in the world if we–each one of us–were true to our better selves! You know it! You can not come out of darkness and range the open world like wolves! Civilisation will kill you!

“But you can come out of your long twilight bearing yourselves like men–and find, by God’s grace, that you are men!–that you are fashioned like other men to stand upright in the light without blinking and slinking and dodging into cover.

“For the haymakers will not climb and stone you; the herds will not stampede; no watch-dogs of civilisation will attack you if you come out into the fields looking like men, behaving like men, asking to share the world’s burdens like men, and like men giving brain and brawn to make more pleasant and secure the only spot in the solar system dedicated by the Most High to the development of mankind!”

There was a dead silence in the place.

Palla slowly lifted her head and raised her right hand.

“I desire,” she said in a low, grave voice, “to acknowledge here my belief in law, in order, and in a divine, creative, and responsible wisdom. And in ultimate continuation.”

She turned away as a demonstration began, and Jim saw her putting on her coat. There was some scattering applause, but considerable disorder where men in the audience began to harangue each other and shake dirty fingers under one another’s noses. Two personal encounters and one hair-pulling were checked by bored policemen: a girl got up and began to shout that she was a striking garment worker and that she had neither money, time, nor inclination to wait until some amateur silk-stocking felt like raising her wages.

On the platform Karl Kastner had come forward, and his icy, incisive, menacing voice cut the growing tumult.

“You haff heard with patience thiss so silly prattle of a rich young girl–” he began. “Now it is a poor man who speaks to you out of a heart full of bitterness against this law and order which you haff heard so highly praised.

“For this much-praised law and order it hass to-night assassinated free speech; it has arrested our comrades, Nathan Bromberg and Max Sondheim; it hass fill our hall with policemen. And I wonder if there iss, perhaps, a little too much law and order in the world, und iff vielleicht, there may be too many policemen as vell as capitalist-little-girls in thiss hall.

“Und, sometimes, too, I am wondering why iss it ve do not kill a few–”

“That’ll do!” interrupted the sergeant of police, striding down the aisle. “Come on, now, Karl; you done it that time.”

An angry roar arose all around him; he nodded to his men:

“Run in any cut-ups,” he said briefly; climbed up to the rostrum, and laid his hand on Kastner’s arm.

At the same moment a stunning explosion shook the place and plunged it into darkness. Out of the smoke-choked blackness burst an uproar of shrieks and screams; plaster and glass fell everywhere; police whistles sounded; a frantic, struggling mass of humanity fought for escape.

As Jim reeled out into the lobby, he saw Palla leaning against the wall, with blood on her face.

Before the first of the trampling horde emerged he had caught her by the arm and had led her down the steps to the street.

“They’ve blown up the–the place,” she stammered, wiping her face with her gloved hand in a dazed sort of way.

“Are you badly hurt?” he asked unsteadily.

“No, I don’t think so–”