Never Victorious, Never Defeated

by Taylor Caldwell

  Senator George Woodland was a short, big-bodied, pale man with a large face and a large bald head and a pair of cold, shrewd eyes and a wide mouth. An expert and subtle politician, he knew that his canny mixture of uncomformity and conservatism pleased both the “progressive” and “laissezfaire” members of his constituency. Each group was certain that he represented it to the full, and that its word was law with him. It would have discomfited both factions to know that he represented only what he himself believed best for his country. He was neither a scoundrel nor a fool, neither an actor nor a believer in “causes.” How, then, asked his colleagues, did he return so constantly unchallenged to the Senate?

  The answer was one no politician would ever accept: the people are more intelligent than their governments. The people, at times, feel that they can afford to send one or two honest men to Washington. The population of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had permitted themselves this luxury for many years in the person of Republican Senator George Woodland. As there is an organic humor always present in humanity, they also permitted themselves the extra luxury of sending a colorful blackguard to the Senate in addition to Woodland, for the people must have their wily clowns as well as men of integrity. “Old George,” they would say, would “keep an eye on that damned Washington, and no nonsense, and Old Jim will regularly raise hell with Wall Street, and dance around on the floor, and give us some fun.” But the people saw to it—being so much wiser than their government—that “Old Jim” did not “get out of bounds,” and that “Old George” had their hearty support whenever he called for it, particularly when he disagreed with “Old Jim.”

  “Let’s go outside; it’s pretty mild for January,” said Senator Woodland to Allan, whom he had known for many years, and whom he liked, though in the main he distrusted men he suspected of being “volatile.” He lived in a fine and quiet house on Massachusetts Avenue, a house which he had bought a number of years ago. White and reserved, it stood back from the street on a long if narrow lawn, and had an excellent garden which he cultivated himself during his stays in Washington, and which he reluctantly delegated to gardeners in his absences. Having a great admiration for the admonitions of Benjamin Franklin, he “kept his fences high,” living fences of thick tall evergreens against stone walls. Here he could sit, on warm nights, and no neighbor could peer at him curiously, and better still, could not seek him out to invite him to a dull party. He opened the door this afternoon to the terrace overlooking his gardens, and contemplatively put his big pipe in his mouth. He appeared to forget Allan; his eyes roved about the trees, looking for premature buds. “Those Japanese maples,” he mused. “I think they’ll pull through all right if we don’t have too much sleet.” He leaned against the door of the house and smoked, and the pale blue smoke rose through the wan sunlight. A brilliant blue jay flashed through the branches of a bare tree, and the senator gazed after it with the nearest thing to warmth he ever displayed.

  Allan was not interested in Washington or its weather. He looked at the cool brightness of the sky, and at the backs of nearby mansions. He thought of the wide avenues of the city, its beautiful circles, and his unfathomable loathing rose in him again. His name for Washington was “the black pit of the black politicians,” and all its whiteness, its long stretches, its lovely parks, expressed to him the very essence of corruption. Acquainted with the capital cities of Europe, Washington seemed no capital to him. It was a small country town, grossly swollen, secret in its vices, scurvy in its plottings, dominated by rascals who must be endlessly watched lest they do a mischief to the country. Little men came here to do little evil deeds, to plot against the Constitution, to connive together to enrich themselves at the expense of America, to compromise for profit when compromise was wicked, to scurry and whisper and wink in cloakrooms. What would the stern and blameless Wilson do with all these, after his inauguration in March?

  The senator said, “You voted for Wilson, didn’t you, Allan? I think I heard it rumored that you gave a large donation to your party during the last elections. And that brings me to a point: what did you come here to see me about?”

  Allan shifted uncomfortably. He said, “Well, I’ve always been a Democrat; Jefferson, these many years, has been a hero to me.”

  The senator laughed shortly. “Any resemblance, now, between the Democratic party of today and Thomas Jefferson, and between Abraham Lincoln and the Republican party, is purely coincidental. I’m a Republican, and so is my colleague, Jim Norcott. Two good Republications together. Do you bracket me with that prancing oaf, ‘the enemy of Wall Street’?”

  He put his hands in his pockets, moved his broad shoulders to a more comfortable position against the door, and let his large belly protrude. His pipe hung from his mouth, and he regarded Allan without curiosity. He looks so damned sick, thought the senator with genuine if hidden sympathy. “How old are you, Allan?” he asked. “I’m not really interested, and you needn’t answer if you don’t want to.”

  “I’m nearly fifty-six,” said Allan. “Why?”

  The senator shrugged. “I’d have thought you older. But you’ve got a lot of responsibility on your hands, and you’re the kind to take it seriously. You didn’t come to me to talk about the road, did you? I own a lot of stock in it, and I hear it’s going down again since Wilson was elected. Never be what it was in the Panic of ’07, though, I hope. Is it the road?”

  Allan became irritable. “We got through the Panic, all right, though I’m under the impression you sold a lot of our stock, during it, Woodland. Didn’t you believe in us?”

  “I believed more in old Rufus,” replied the senator, bluntly. “You did fine, and I congratulated you, I think. I heard, from my father, that Rufus went through many such things in the hoary past with a kind of élan. By the way, Cornelia has that élan, hasn’t she? She must have been a big help to you during the dark days.”

  “She was,” said Allan gloomily. “She’ll always have it. Though,” he added, with involuntary resentment, “she’s going on forty-eight.”

  “Never would have believed it, if I didn’t know, myself. She looks hardly forty. Plays the best damn game of tennis I ever saw, for a woman. Nothing ever bothers Cornelia. I heard she’s quite a power and a terror on the board; read the last newspaper account of her only a week ago. And yet she’s not one of those suffragettes, is she? Well? What are you doing here in Washington? Especially considering you’ve never supported my party in any way, and gave a nice sum last year for the campaign of my Democratic opponent.”

  “I came because I know you for an honest man, and even though I know now that you can’t do anything about what has happened. I mean the coming adoption of the Sixteenth Amendment on February 25th—the cursed Federal income tax.”

  Again, the senator shrugged. “I worked hard enough against it. But the states ratified it. Want to blame it on me?”

  “Don’t be a fool,” said Allan. “I know how you tried. It’s just that I want to discuss it with you.”

  The senator’s broad shadow became sharper on the white wall of the house. “Go ahead, discuss it,” he said. He glanced about his garden again, but a deep line appeared between his eyes. “Have you talked with Jim Norcott?”

  “No, that ass,” replied Allan, his voice rising. “I found out that a year ago, while he was the most vociferous about having this Amendment adopted, he put all his very considerable cash into what will be tax-exempt securities. Want to keep that in mind, George, when he comes up for nomination again?”

  The senator grunted. “Remember? He’s a Republican, too; stands high with the party. I’ve been in this game too long to start target practice at a member of my own organization, except when it will do some good for the country generally. However, you’re a Democrat; bring up Jim’s dark background if you want to, when it will hurt the most.” He added, “Well?”

  “You’ll think me a fool,” Allan began awkwardly. “Perhaps you won’t understand why I came to you today; I don’t quite understan
d it myself, to be frank, except that I have a feeling you can be helpful in the future. It’s not just the unconstitutional Federal income tax—and a thousand Supreme Courts can pass on its constitutionality and it still wouldn’t be convincing—it’s the implications for the future that worry me.” He hesitated. “Ever read anything about Karl Marx and Engels, and the rest of them?”,

  The senator said nothing; his eyes had suddenly fixed themselves on the distant wall of his gardens, and they remained there.

  “Well,” said Allan, more and more awkwardly, “I’ve been reading their sinister writings over a period of many years. One of the things Marx advocated, in order to destroy capitalism and bring about a communist revolution, was the graduated income tax. So now we have put into our Constitution a Marxist philosophy. Oh, the tax is very insignificant as it stands now; it will only be a nuisance—as it stands now. I’m not thinking of the present; I’m thinking of the future, when this Marxist measure really gets under way. I’m thinking, in connection with the Federal income tax—the Communists first measure to destroy freedom—of another outline for the destruction of freedom, as advocated by the Marxists: war, on a world-wide scale. Are you following me, George?”

  But still the senator did not speak, nor did his eyes move.

  “I have documents, secret reports, from Europe,” stammered Allan. “Too much to go into now, but I could send you an outline of it if you wish. There’s a war brewing there; been brewing as far back as 1908. A war for markets and for profit, between England and Germany. This war, which will come almost any day now, has been carefully plotted by the enemies of freedom; they’ve been plotting it for decades—the disciples of Marx and his contemporaries. They know that great wars will undermine capitalism, free enterprise, constitutional government, and will bring about what they call ‘the proletarian revolution.’ It will bring about power for them. And they’re everywhere. George, you think I am talking gibberish, don’t you?”

  “Go on,” said the senator quietly.

  “But it’s the deadly truth,” said Allan, and his voice was louder and more vehement. “And that’s where our Federal income tax comes in. A nation can’t wage wars without vast revenues. How have the European nations raised revenues for wars? By a personal income tax, a tax alien to America, and conceived in European minds for European purposes. It’s true we had an income tax during the Civil War, but it was quickly ended after the conflict, and we had a short taste of it during the Spanish-American War. But our presidents understood that this was a European policy and had no right to exist, except in dire emergency, in America. It had no peacetime reason for existing in America. Yet, now we have this Sixteenth Amendment. So we can engage in a war plotted for the whole world, in order to destroy the existing order of the world.”

  “Go on,” said the senator briefly.

  Allan lifted his arms in a gesture of desperate defeat. “I believe, and I feel I am not alone in so believing, that many of the advocates of a Federal income tax in America are part of the world conspiracy in behalf of socialism, or communism, as it is beginning to be called. In spite of George Washington, then, and his warning against ‘foreign alliances,’ we’ll be manipulated into the European war which is rapidly brewing.”

  The senator slowly turned his head and scrutinized Allan, but made no comment.

  “The war, and wars after it, are not only plotted by the enemies of liberty everywhere, but the tyrants who will arise as the result of these wars, have also been plotted for. The American people, who have been so blandly indifferent to the Federal income tax, won’t understand until it is too late. Millions of them believe that it will be only a tax on the very rich, and a light one at that, for what is already being called “the general welfare.’ But the day will come when the people will understand that ‘the general welfare’ means slavery, and that the Federal income tax is being used not only for deliberately plotted wars to overthrow existing governments but as a personal instrument of coming despots in America. How can a free nation be subjugated from within by domestic criminals in league with the world-wide conspirators? By crushing personal taxes, by designed inflation, by confiscation of the people’s labor in the form of taxation, by attacks on the Constitution, by debasing the currency, and by centralizing power in the State. George?”

  “I am still listening,” said the senator.

  “We’ll see European bureaucracy coming to pass on a grand scale in America,” Allan went on hopelessly. “We’ll see the fears of Thomas Jefferson—the abrogation of State rights, a prodigally spending State devouring the labor of the people, and European entanglements—all be fulfilled. The plot against America, and against free peoples everywhere, did not begin with this Sixteenth Amendment. It is being culminated in it.”

  The senator lifted himself from against the wall, went to the edge of the terrace, and emptied the contents of his pipe on the sodden wintry grass. He said musingly, “Did you think you were the only one who knew, Allan?”

  “You know?” exclaimed Allan. The senator smiled grimly, and nodded. “The enemies of us all, down in Washington, also know,” he said. “Don’t believe for a minute that any one particular party is guilty of what has happened, and will happen. I see you don’t fall into that error,” he added, after another scrutiny of Allan’s face.

  “My God,” said Allan in a dull voice.

  “I’m afraid it’s too late, now, to stop the first act, or perhaps even the second and the third and the fourth,” the senator went on. “Yes; we’ll be in a European war, and in others. Yes, everything will happen as Thomas Jefferson feared. But we, the elected representatives of the people, will be able to do nothing until the people themselves understand the plot against them. And then may come the bloodiest day the world has ever known, in all its history, perhaps.” He made a distasteful grimace. “Much as I, personally, would like to see the coming tyrants and their cohorts openly massacred in the streets, the idea is too European. I’d prefer to see the American people rise and rid themselves of the monsters at the ballot boxes.” He lifted his large bald head and looked at the sky, and smiled again, this time triumphantly. “And they will, they will! In the meantime, we can only keep them aware of what is happening, by constant reiteration, by constant warning.”

  For the first time he regarded Allan with affection. He raised his meaty hand and put it on the older man’s shoulder. “The battle will be for men’s souls and minds,” he said. “And I have faith, not only in the American people, but in the people of all other nations. What will come will be the last mighty stand of the despots against their peoples. And the despots will lose.” He patted Allan’s shoulder before removing his hand. “Depend on it; they’ll lose, no matter their strength, no matter how many Socialists and Communists they’ll have with them, everywhere.”

  “By the Grace of God,” said Allan.

  The senator said, nodding, “By the Grace of God.”

  They went into the house. The long and narrow library glimmered with the pallid sunlight that fell from the wintry sky, and a fire of cannel coal burned richly on the black marble hearth. Here was a kind of ugly, masculine comfort, full of old draperies, worn rugs, and black leather. The two men sat down, and Allan looked at his watch while the senator poured glasses of whisky and soda. Mr. Woodland watched Allan as the latter gulped his drink; he himself sipped with enjoyment. He peered at Allan’s seamed face and large narrow nose, and gray hair which was turning white at the temples. “Tell me,” he said, sitting on the arm of a chair, “what’s changed you, Allan? You were the entrepreneur type, bless their memory, for they pushed back the frontiers, opened the mines and the oil wells, and filled the ranges with cattle and the cities with their smoke. I’ve been reading of your talks to other railroaders all over the country, about a balance between industry and agriculture. And now you are all steaming about a threat to American liberty. Something changed you.”

  Allan cradled the glass in his hands and somberly puckered his pale lips. “Pe
rhaps I never really ‘changed,’” he said. “My brother, who is a monk, once wrote me that. I don’t know.”

  Allan went on: “Above all things, my dad hated oppressive governments. He’d had experience with them. And like all Irishmen, freedom seemed to him the only climate in which humanity could live without dying of suffocation. I used to laugh at him when I was young. I don’t think, however, that anyone ever forgets what his parents teach him, in spite of laughing.”

  “In other words, your father was a very intelligent man,” said the senator. “Do you know, one of my constituents, who is a labor man of much intelligence, and who has given his life to the organizing of unions and in fighting for reasonable wages for everyone, recently told me that he fears that in the future labor will become ‘big business,’ and that in that event, it will become dangerous.”

  “A monopoly?” said Allan, incredulous.

  The senator nodded. “I’ve been around a long time, politicking, and I don’t trust my fellow men worth a damn. And I don’t trust the silent hordes who are now lining up behind Wilson, our minority President. He’s a good man, an austere and even noble kind of fellow, but he doesn’t know who is getting ready to use him. Things are going to be pretty horrible in the future, I’m afraid.” He got up to poke at the coal, which flared vehemently at the touch of the poker. “Anything too ‘big,’ whether business or labor, can be used by despots, taken over by them.” He went back to sit on the arm of the leather chair. “Let’s talk about something more pleasant, and less sinister. Such as your, family. I hear you are a grandfather now. A grandson?”

  Allan’s expression darkened. “Yes. Dolores. They named the boy after me; at least, that is one of his names. Alexander Beaumont Allan Richard Gibson-Hamilton. His father is Richard, Lord Gibson-Hamilton, as you know.”

  How had Dolores come to marry the “Sassenach?” Allan did not know. The year after Rufus’s death in February, 1906, had been a year of dreadful confusion and clouded and desperate hurry, for Allan. It had been a year of grief and strife. There had been no time for his children, not even for his darling, Dolores. The Panic of 1907 had come fast on the heels of all the other events. Dolores’s young and beautiful face came through dimly to her father now, shadowed by those years. She had come to him, very quietly, one night, in the very midst of his inner and outer turmoil, and she had told him that she was going to marry Lord Gibson-Hamilton. He, Allan, had been overwhelmingly exhausted and harried. He had said, “Why?” It was a question in a nightmare-ridden dream, and he had thought: I’ll think about it tomorrow. Somehow, tomorrow had never come. He remembered protesting vaguely to Cornelia, who had kissed him and had declared that all was well, and Dolores wished the marriage after all. There had been two million dollars given to the young couple as a wedding present, composed of cash and stocks, and there had been a wondrous marriage full of fanfare and much lyrical newspaper reporting; and then all at once Dolores was gone, whitely smiling, with a last kiss for her father, and a touch of her hand.