Common Cause: A Novel of the War in America

by Samuel Hopkins Adams

When he had finished reading that letter, Jeremy Robson dropped his head between his doubled fists and lost himself in thought. It was not pleasant thought. Self-reproach was a burning element in it. Here was a man German-born, German-bred, German by every tie of life except the profounder bonds of conscience and patriotism, saying to the German-Americans of Centralia, in no uncertain tones, that which he, the editor of The Guardian, had had in mind to say—when the time should come. And, behold, the time had come! Any hour in which a man great of soul and clear of vision to meet the issue would speak out, was the appointed hour. He, Jeremy Robson, despite all his good intentions and brave promises, had procrastinated and paltered and dallied, while another, with far more to lose, had lifted the banner and set it up for a challenge to the disloyal, the unloyal, and the half-loyal. A sorry enough champion Jeremy Robson seemed in his own eyes! Doubt of his own courage, smothered under the pressing emergencies of the past few months, lifted up a strident and whimpering voice. And that was a doubt with which young Mr. Robson could not live on any terms.

When the threat of war had loomed, with the dismissal of the German Ambassador, The Guardian had broached the project of a State Council of Defense in a plain-spoken but moderate editorial. Further, it had urged it upon the Governor who, with unaccustomed vacillation, had evaded and procrastinated, arguing that the time was not yet ripe, and that the plan would needlessly complicate matters. Naturally the more rabid German press fell foul of it with their accustomed shrillness. Rather than embarrass Embree at the time, Jeremy had refrained from following up his first editorial, but had pressed the scheme upon the Governor by private persuasions. Now, in the stir caused by Dr. Brender’s call to the flag, he would bring it out again. If necessary he would force it upon Embree, who could not well withstand a direct challenge to his patriotism. He sketched out three leaders on the topic; then put them aside and wrote the opening sentence of that editorial which was to declare unequivocally the status of The Guardian. Thus to declare was to declare war.

“The hyphen has two ends but no middle.”

Mild to the verge of banality, in wording. Yet the writer well appreciated the high-explosive potency of that aphorism. Even without what followed, it would be taken up as a defiance, the first open defiance since Magnus Laurens’s speech, to the German-Americans of the State. It would be the first step toward putting them on record. No one knew better than the owner of The Guardian that upon the editor who should first demand of the Centralia hyphenates that they declare themselves as for or against the United States, who should assume the initial responsibility for making the polyglot Commonwealth a house divided against itself in treacherous and deadly enmities, the united and deliberate vengeance of Deutschtum would fall in every practicable form of reprisal. Sharp as was the offense he had heretofore given, it was upon issues of minor import as compared to this. This was final.

When the emotions are deeply engaged, a practiced pen follows the thought of the writer almost without interruption. At the conclusion of his work, Jeremy read it over, altered a word or two, not in the way of modification as is the tendency of re-casting, but from weaker to stronger; then, after a moment’s thought, resumed his pencil and with extreme care and neatness—as a young officer going into desperate action might meticulously brush and set his uniform—inscribed the caption, “Under Which Flag?”

He then did an unaccustomed thing. He made a complete tour of The Guardian plant. Why, he could not have said, at the time. Afterward he realized. It was the pride and satisfaction of proprietorship feeding itself. Beneath it lay the unvoiced monition, warning him that it might not be for long. Nevertheless, Jeremy was happy. He had been in a defensive fight for a weary length of time. Now, at last, he had hit out from the shoulder.

Transferred into typewriting at the hands (two-fingered at the exercise) of Mr. Burton Higman, the editorial had gone upstairs. It returned, galley-proof, in the hands of Nicholas Milliken.

“This yours?” he asked of the editor.

“Yes. Why?”

“Did n’t carry any O.K. For to-day?”