Somehow that seemed to bring the war nearer to Jimmie's consciousness than anything that had happened so far. The little Roumanian Jew had given him the greater part of his education on this world-conflict; it was over the counter of the cigar-store that Jimmie had got the first geography lessons of his life. He had learned that Russia was the yellow country, and Germany the green, and Belgium the pale blue, and France the light pink; he had seen how the railroads from the green to the pink ran through the pale blue, and how the big fortresses in the pale blue all faced towards the green—something which Meissner and Schneider and the rest of the green people considered a mortal affront, a confession of guilt on the part of the pale blue people. Comrade Stankewitz's wizened-up, eager little face rose before Jimmie; he heard the shrill voice, trying to compose the disputes in the local. “Comrades, all this vill not get us anyvere! There is but vun question we have to answer, are we internationalists, or are we not?”
“My God!” cried Jimmie. “Ain't that awful?”
He had got to the point where he was willing to admit that perhaps the Kaiser had got to be licked, and maybe it was all right for a fellow that felt like Emil Forster to go and lick him. But to lay hold of a man who hated war with all his heart and soul, to drag him away from the little business he had painfully built up, and compel him to put on a uniform and obey other men's orders—well, when you saw a thing like that, you knew about the atrocities of war!
II.
Comrade Meissner went on. Worse than that—-they had taken Comrade Gerrity. And Jimmie stared. “But he's married!”
“I know,” explained Meissner, “but that ain't what counts. What you got to have is a dependent wife. An' the Gerritys didn't know that—Comrade Evelyn held on to her job as stenographer, and somebody must have told on them, for the board jacked him up and cancelled his exemption. Of course, it was only because he was organizer of the local; they want to put us out of business any way they can.”
“What did Gerrity do?”
“He refused to serve, and they sent a squad of men after him and dragged him away. They took him to Camp Sheridan, and tried to put him in uniform, and he refused—he wouldn't work, he wouldn't have anything to do with war. So they tried him and sentenced him to twenty-five years in jail; they put him in solitary confinement, and he gets nothin' but bread and water—they keep him chained up by his wrists a part of the time—”
“Oh! OH!” cried Jimmie.
“Comrade Evelyn's most crazy about it. She broke down and cried in the local, and she went around to the churches—they have women's sewing-circles, you know, and things for the Red Cross, and her and Comrade Mary Allen gets up and makes speeches an' drives the women crazy. They arrested 'em once, but they turned 'em loose—they didn't want it to get in the papers.”