“Why should I take off my hat?” he replied.
“Because they’re playing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ and they’re raising the flag, you fool!”
The young man with the covered head did not appear to resent the uncomplimentary remark, but he made no move which might have been interpreted as an intention to obey the order that had been given to him. The two boys had already turned to face the speakers. People in the vicinity who, by reason of the band’s music, had failed to hear what had been said, yet knowing that a quarrel was beginning, began to move toward the immediate scene of the controversy. The defiant young man regarded them with cool indifference.
“The flag which they raise,” he said, “stands too much for the injustice and the wrong, that I should honor it.”
The man who had protested grew red in the face.
“Why, you ingrate,” he shouted, “the protection you get from that flag was what brought you to this free country, and you know it!”
And the defiant one answered:
“The only flag which gives the protection to all men alike is the red flag of the common brotherhood. I honor no capitalist banner.”
He spoke distinctly, decisively, with an accent that marked him as a student if not a master of English. Still his hat remained on his head. More people, attracted by the speakers, began to crowd closer, eager to hear, at short range, what was an interesting if not a heated controversy.
In the meantime, at the foot of the flagstaff, there was confusion and delay. The band was still playing, but the colors were not moving upward. Something had gone wrong with the apparatus by which the flag was to be hoisted. A portion of the blue field and some of the milk-white stars had been drawn up above the heads of the audience, but had refused to go higher. Apparently the halyards had caught in the pulley at the top of the staff, and all the efforts of the young girls robed in white, and all the efforts of the chairman of the flag committee, mingled freely with perspiration and ejaculations, failed to release them. But, even in the face of this attractively awkward situation, people were turning and pressing in ever increasing numbers toward the man who had refused to uncover his head either at the sound of the music or the sight of the folds of The Star-Spangled Banner.