The open sea

by Edgar Lee Masters

Now take this speech
Which glorifies the socialistic cause;
Lauds divers martyrs tried, already jailed
For words against the draft; denounces Prussia,
Oh, yes! but in such words as hit the home
Of the brave, the free America! Ouch! Quit!
Says that the master class has always made
The wars in which the subject class was used,
Which never had a voice in making war:
Affirmative universal! What’s the answer?
He means this war, this holy war, the traitor!
Denounces capital, exhorts the crowd
To strive for something better than to be
Fodder for cannon. What? The prize of death
In battle called a foddering of the cannon!
What better thing to strive for? Throw him out!
The price of coal is due to plutocrats;
They’re bleeding you, and say it’s for the war.
They lie! What’s treason? Not disloyal
To those you work for, but disloyalty
To truth, your better self.

If you believe this
Would you become a soldier, or say no,
I will not fight for such a cause or country?...
I see, said Voltaire, three times one are one.
A man in heat might flout the trinity;
But when he studies out some persiflage
With which to flout it—well—here’s Ott who has
Contempt aforethought for the war and draft,
And squirts his venom through closed teeth, the better
To shoot it further, make it hit.

I said:
“Your Mr. Ott is guilty of the charge.
No use to talk of constitutions. No.
He loves the Lovejoys, Garrisons and Paines,
The Brunos, martyrs, let him stand his ground.”
And Marion Strode replied: “Yes, Ott is guilty.
But did he speak the truth? Yes? Very well.
It must have been the time and place that made
The penitentiary for twenty years
A fitting penalty. But when’s the time
To talk against war’s horror? When there’s war,
And words are vivid, or when war is not,
And talks against it sound like when you say
‘Look out for bears’ to children?

“War-lords talk
In peace and war to be prepared. May I
Prepare for peace in war time, when my words
Have demonstrations in the events of war?
You think not? The majority has spoken!
Well, has it? Point me out a plebiscite
That asked for war. But take your point at full
The majority has spoken: why forbid
The back-hall, soap-box rostrum; what will come?
The majority will stick and go ahead;
Or else the soap box will persuade it back
And end the war. Is there another term?
The great majority annoyed, obstructed,
Delayed, distracted, harried! Well, you know
The Tories did that to George Washington.
And Lincoln! Why, the people at the polls
Returned a critical congress. And if trials
Strengthen the character of a man, why not
Obstructions for majorities howling war
To clarify and strengthen them? God works
In ways mysterious, but in every way;
Whatever is is true.

“Ott, as I see it,
Was jailed for twenty years for speaking truth
At the wrong time and place. A heavy fine
For wrong a æsthetics, etiquette.

“I go deeper,
I pass the law that jailed him, all æsthetics,
All etiquette, all wrong of time and place.
Let’s enter in a realm of realer things.
What does Ott stand for in a war or peace?
Is it not freedom, equal rights, the end
Of poverty, disease? Has he not held
The torch of science up, the torch of thought
Interpreting the greatest minds to win
Attention to them and adherence to them?
If he did this, has not his life been given
To making America a brighter light,
A sounder realm, her breed a stronger breed?
If he be not a light himself, but only
A humble trimmer of the wick, let’s say
The wick of Socrates, or Franklin, Paine,
Or Jesus as the prophet in the work
Of freeing for the truth, then what of that?
Who gets the judgment in the years to come,
A parlor lamp of yellow flame, that smells
Of coal oil, or your Ott?

“Let’s take a type:
He woos the average man, appeals to him;
The average man whose morals, art and books
Are just victrola records, microscopic
Echoes of small realities of the past.
He sees what he can do with this America
Of the average man, the common people called.
He follows them and gives them vapid stuff
Of morals, laws and politics. His aim?
Talk which will win the very largest nod
Of ignorant assent. Result? Why look,
He is a daily of a million sale,
He coins the money lecturing, uses too
His following to keep America
Upon the level of the common man
In morals, freedom, thought, virility.
He scoffs at science and the noodles giggle.
Music? Why, who’s Beethoven? Let me hear
‘Lead Kindly Light.’ The drama? Well, Ben Hur
Is moral and historical. Sculpture? Look
At those bronze figures by the mantel clock—
That’s Faith and Hope. Freedom of speech and press?
Within the limits of the law! And war?
I loathe it, I opposed it, but when war
Is by the law decreed, I enter too
And howl for what I hissed, for what I called
An evil and a wrong.

“Now hear me out:
Suppose he could persuade America
To take his books, and music, sculpture, ethics—
That is his purpose, to persuade us all
To take them, as it was the aim of Ott
To stay enlistment and so stop the war—
What of our civilization? It would fall.
If so who should be jailed, this orator
Or Ott?

“Now we’ve arrived, can test these souls.
Ott fights the war and sticks, your orator
Opposes the war and quotes the Nazarene.
But does he stick? Why no! The truth remains.
He changes, lifts his nose for noting when
The noses of the majority are lifted.
Our Mr. Ott winters behind the bars.
Our orator retires to Florida;
Emerges slick and strong when April comes
To lecture, get the money.

“Now suppose
Ott by his talk had balked the war, that crime
Is nothing by the side of the other crime
Of keeping common followers commoner;
Corrupting thought. The war is over now.
With Ott in prison and the orator out.
Let’s test them on the whole, and wholly freed
From war tests; Ott’s a trimmer of great wicks;
Your orator a parlor lamp that smells
Of coal oil. And the larger truth would open
The prison doors for Ott, and push the orator
Behind the doors and lock them.”