VIII
Early in the year, while America was getting into the war, the people of Russia had overthrown their Tsar and set up a republic. That had pleased most people in America; it was much pleasanter to be allied with a republic. But now, in the fall, came a terrifying event; there was another revolution, this time not made by respectable scholars and business men, but by wild-eyed fanatics called “Bolshevikis,” who proceeded to confiscate property and smash things up. At once it became apparent what a calamity this was going to mean for the allies; Russia was going to desert them, and the mass of the Germans on the East would be set free to be hurled against the half-exhausted Western front. Already the Russian armies were going to pieces, the soldiers were deserting wholesale and swarming back to the cities or to their villages; at the same time the leaders of the new government were starting a world-wide propaganda attacking the allies and their war-aims.
Who were these leaders? It was enough for America to note that a horde of them, who had been hiding in Switzerland, were loaded into a sealed train by the German government and escorted across Germany and dumped into Russia to make all the trouble they could. That meant Lenin and his crowd were hired agents of the Hun; when they proceeded to attack what they called “allied imperialism,” that was the Kaiser’s voice speaking Russian, and when they published the secret treaties of the allies, taken from the archives of the Tsar, the newspapers in America dismissed the documents as obvious forgeries.
Dad, as a good American, believed his newspapers. He considered that this “Bolsheviki revolution” was the most terrible event that had happened in the world in his life-time; his face would grow pale as he talked to Bunny about it. America could get no army to France until next spring, and perhaps not till fall, and meantime the Germans had a million men they could move, only a few hundred miles across their country to the West front; they were jist a-goin’ to roll over the British and French, and take Paris, and perhaps the whole of France, and we should have the job of driving them out again. The whole burden of the war now fell onto America’s shoulders, and it would last years and years—neither Dad nor Bunny might live to see the end of it.
Dad would read paragraphs out of the papers, details of the horrors that were happening in Russia—literally millions of people slaughtered, all the educated and enlightened ones; the most hideous tortures inflicted, such obscenities as you could not put into print. Before long they began applying their Communist theories to the women of the country, who were “nationalized” and made into public property by official decree; the “commissars” were raping them wholesale. Lenin was killing Trotsky, and Trotsky was throwing Lenin into jail. It was a boiling up from the bottom of the social pit, such savagery as we had hardly dreamed existing in human nature. Bunny could see now the folly of that “idealism” he had been prattling, his idea of letting strikers have their way, and turning industry over to the mob. Here was the thing tried out in practice, and how did he like it? Bunny had to admit that he didn’t like it so well, and he was crushed and sobered.
The problem came home to him, because he had to decide as to his own duty in this world crisis. This was his last year in school; then he would be old enough for the draft, and what was he going to do? He and his father talked it out in a solemn conference. Dad thought that he had responsibilities enough to entitle him to the help of one son; he didn’t think he would be a slacker if he were to get Mr. Carey to release Bunny for service in the oil industry. But Bunny insisted that he must go to the front; he even talked of quitting school at once and enlisting, as a number of other boys had done. They finally agreed to compromise, waiting till Bunny was through school, and then see how matters shaped up. But meantime Bunny owed this much to his country, as well as to himself—he should give more time to his studies, and less to playing about. If a young fellow really understood this world crisis, he would surely stick to whatever work he was doing, and not throw himself away in dissipations. Bunny flushed and let his eyes fall, and said he guessed that was true, and he’d do better in future.
IX
He went to Eunice in his mood of high seriousness, to explain how the burden of the task of saving civilization had fallen upon their shoulders. She told him yes, she had been realizing it, she had just been getting a serious talk from her mother, who had explained that there was going to be a shortage of food and all kinds of materials, as a result of the war and the needs of our allies. The club-ladies had decided upon their duty—they would purchase only the most expensive kinds of food, so as to leave the lard and cabbage and potatoes for the poor; Mrs. Hoyt had given away all her clothing to the Salvation army, and spent a small fortune buying a complete outfit of the most costly things she could find. Eunice was of course quite willing to use only luxuries, but found it a little puzzling, because her Aunt Alice took just the opposite view, and had bought herself a lot of cheap things, in order to set an example to the working-classes. Which did Bunny think was right?
But this sober mood did not last long with Eunice. A couple of days later she was invited to a Belgian orphans’ ball, and when Bunny insisted that he had to study, she threatened to go with Billy Chalmers, the handsome captain of last year’s football team—there was no team this year. Bunny said all right, and so Eunice flaunted Billy in front of the whole school, and there were rumors that he was parking his car with her, and that Bunny’s nose was out of joint. This went on for a week or two, until Bunny’s heart-ache was more than he could stand. It was a Saturday night—and Dad had granted that it wouldn’t be wrong to go to one dance a week; so he phoned Eunice, and they “made it up” with tears and wild gusts of passion, and she declared that she had never really really loved anyone but her Bunny-bear, and how could he have been so wicked as to refuse to please her?
But then came Christmas, and the shrewd and persistent Dad arranged a series of temptations—a big turkey, and Ruth to cook it, and two new wells coming in, to say nothing of the quail calling over the hills at sunset. Bunny promised, and simply had to go; and Eunice had the most terrible of all her tantrums, she grabbed Bunny by the hair and pulled him about her mother’s drawing-room, with her mother standing helpless by; she vowed that Bunny was a four-flusher, and a wretch, and she would ring up Billy Chalmers, and they would go off on a joy-ride that very night, and not come back till the Christmas holidays were over and maybe not then.