Common Cause

by Samuel Hopkins Adams

  All that man could do to foster this creed, Martin Embree did. To do him justice, he did not admit to himself the imminence of the conflict. His was the type of mind, characteristic of the self-centered, which translates hopes into expectations and expectations into belief. On the whole he thought the time and opportunity favorable for a brief, preparatory campaign for the senatorship. On anti-war, pro-German sentiment combined, he felt sure that he could ride to victory, when the time came, atop the crest of an irresistible wave. He made a short speaking tour in the Northern Tier, where The Guardian as his representative organ had so prospered. Wherever he now appeared, The Guardian’s circulation withered. He had but to quote from the “Under Which Flag?” editorial, with such intonations as he well knew how to impart, and the Teutonic fury of his audiences did the rest.

  At home in Fenchester the paper showed a slight but steady loss of circulation. Verrall went about the office looking, as Andrew Galpin indignantly observed, “like a sob-sister on reduced salary.” The circulation and advertising manager was frankly of opinion that The Guardian was done for. If the hyphen outbreak were not, in itself, enough, the split with Governor Embree was the final madness. Personally he maintained unbroken relations with the Governor. He did not despair, he told Galpin, of bringing about a practicable adjustment if not an actual reconciliation between The Guardian and Embree. How was the Governor to mature his senatorial plans without at least one important newspaper through which to express himself? he argued. The Bellair Journal, never reliably loyal, was now violently opposing him. The Record was out of the question on the political side. He needed The Guardian and The Guardian needed him. The thing ought to be fixed up—he put it squarely to Galpin. Couldn’t it be fixed up?

  Galpin, regarding him with a sinister eye, opined that it might, what time fried snowballs were a popular breakfast food in Sheol.

  Since the publication of the fateful editorial the Deutscher Club had been, officially, mute. Even though, in a later effort from Editor Robson’s pen, it had been invited to gladden the eyes of Fenchester by displaying the Stars and Stripes above its building, it made no retort. Neither did it display the Stars and Stripes. It was quietly busy with other considerations.

  “The Botches are at it,” announced Galpin one morning.

  “What’s their line of action?”

  “Boycott. The Deutscher Club is running it.”

  “Old stuff, Andy.”

  “Not this. They’ve got a committee and an organized campaign.”

  “Print their names,” suggested the editor with a cheery but baleful smile.

  “In a minute if I could get ’em! They aren’t so brash as all that. It’s all very pussy-footed. Nothing to put your hands on legally.”

  “How are they working it?”

  “House-to-house canvass, I’m told. That would fit in with our circulation returns. We’re shy about eight hundred right here in town, Boss. They’re claiming fifteen hundred.”

  “Claims won’t hurt us.”

  “Don’t you believe they won’t! They’re going to our advertisers. The Record is in on it.”

  “Naturally. They could use some added advertising space if they could get it away from us.”

  “They’re getting it; a little. They’ll get more if we hold up to our present rates. The Retailers’ Association had that up in meeting again, and we’ll probably hear one of their mild suggestions about a reduction soon.”

  “They don’t get it!” said Jeremy angrily.

  “No. If we let down now, we’ll be on the slide. Besides, we sure need the money. Those libel suits of Dana & Dana are going to cost something. They’re juggling ’em that way.”

  “Any other cheer-up news today, Andy?”

  “No-o. Nothing special. We’re up against a new paper contract. Verrall’s looking after that. Something’s going on under the surface in the press-room. Maybe the Deutscher Club has a committee at work there, too. I’d like to catch ’em at it—with a press-hammer handy,” he concluded, licking his lips. “It wouldn’t hurt my feelings at all to have to slaughter a few Botches.”

  “Well, you may get your chance. Andy, what would you do if war were declared?”

  “Who? Me? Get out a special, with the American flag all over it, if it was at 3 A.M.”

  “That isn’t what I mean. What would you do personally?”

  The general manager’s face fell. “Nothing. I couldn’t. No good.” He stretched his long and powerful arms and gazed at them sorrowfully. “Old lumber, Boss. They wouldn’t take me.” He touched his injured eye.

  “No!” exclaimed Jeremy. “That’s tough. Are you sure?”

  “Tried it. No go.”

  “Tried it?” returned Jeremy, surprised. “How? When?”

  “Went to Doc Summerfield. He’s been down on the border. Knows the game. He said no go right away. Not a chance.”

  “So you did that,” mused Jeremy with growing wonder. “You never peeped to me about it.”

  “Didn’t want to bother you.”

  “I’m mighty sorry for you, Andy,” said his chief. “But I’m mighty glad for The Guardian. We need you here. And we’re going to need you worse.”

  “How’s that?” The other looked up with swift suspicion.

  “Andy, you could take hold and run The Guardian if—”

  “Not by a dam’ sight!” shouted Andrew Galpin. “You can’t quit. Not now.”

  “But if it comes to war—”

  “This is your war. You’ve got your fighting cut out for you right here. It’s a dandy scrap if there ever was one.”

  “It isn’t the same.”

  “Ay-ah! Sure it isn’t. Hasn’t got the headline stuff in it. ‘Gallant Young Editor Goes to War.’ Hey? Is that what you’re after?”

  Jeremy sat silent, disconcerted by the bitterness and anger in his associate’s voice.

  “You were going, if you could.”

  Again Andy winced. “That’s different. You could run the paper without me—”

  “Not for a week!”

  “You’re saying that to make me feel better about it. Jem, you can’t quit. This is your job.”

  “Until a bigger one turns up.”

  “There isn’t any bigger one,” retorted his general manager with profound conviction.

  In the ensuing days it seemed to the owner of The Guardian that there could be no more racking one. For, step by step, as war drew nearer, the revenues of The Guardian declined. The secret committee work of the Deutscher Club was as effective as it was quiet. Uncertainty in business conditions was producing a logical letup in advertising, and the boycott was borrowing impetus from this tendency. A committee from the Retailers’ Association had approached Jeremy on the subject of a reduction of rates. He had retorted hotly upon them that they were making themselves the agents of an attack upon The Guardian because of its Americanism. Matthew Ellison had attempted to smooth matters over with a “business is business” plea; but Ahrens, of the Northwestern Stores, had sneered at The Guardian for making capital out of cheap jingoism, and the session had ended in taunts and recriminations. Its echo had followed in the loss of some minor advertisements. The department stores, however, could not yet bring themselves to abjure so valuable a medium, no matter how defiant its attitude. Business was business to that extent.

  Meantime Jeremy, amidst all his worries and troubles, was conscious of a great and unwonted inner peace. He was doing his job as it came to him to be done. The present was engrossed in the fight, growing sterner and more demanding day by day. His future was clear before him. He knew what course he must steer. If The Guardian were driven upon the rocks, or rather if the submarines got her (he grinned with cheerful determination over this preferred metaphor), at least she would go down fighting, and the flag that she had flown would be caught up from the flood and carried on. Wavering and uncertain notes from that quaint herald-figure, heading its pages, were a thing of the past. At last it had “sounded forth the trumpet th
at shall never call retreat.” And, when the crash came, he, Jeremy, could find refuge in his country’s armed service. That was an unfailing comfort.

  More potently sustaining, even, than this was the thought that the dear and distant and unforgotten reader of The Guardian overseas must, now and to the end, believe in it.

  33

  Under the far shock of declared war, the sovereign State of Centralia, unready and unrealizing, was rent and seamed from border to border with seismic chasms across which brother bandied threats with brother, and lifelong friends clamored for each other’s blood. Politicians and newspapers, who live chiefly (and uneasily) by grace of public favor, stepped warily among racial pitfalls set with envenomed stakes. Having so befooled the public, and in thus doing lulled themselves to a false security, they were now in a parlous state, not daring to affront a nation in arms, fearful of the unmeasured power of their alien supporters, afraid alike of truth, falsehood, and silence.

  But it was the dear-bought privilege and luxury of The Guardian in these great days to speak that which was in its owner’s soul. Straight and clear it spoke, while for the first fortnight after the declaration the editor hurried about the State organizing the trustworthy newspapers into a compact league of patriotism, meantime living, sleeping, and writing on trains, in automobiles, in country hotels, those editorial battle-cries that variously rasped, enthused, infuriated, or inspired, but always stirred and roused, the divided and doubting people of Centralia.

  After the first stunned inaction and uncertainty of surprise, there crept through the German communities of the United States a waif word of strange import.

  “Deutschtum is bent, but not broken.”

  From mouth to mouth it passed. It was spoken in German clubs and societies. It was proclaimed in lodge-rooms. Presently it appeared in print. Bauer’s alien-hearted Herold und Zeitung published it once and again; first, cautiously, tentatively; the second time, building upon its own impunity, and the incredible tolerance of the stupid Yankees, repeating it as the text of an editorial word of good cheer for struggling Germany—with whom the United States was at war! The Reverend Theo Gunst’s religious weekly spread the rallying cry; and fervent theologians preached it in its own tongue from their pulpits. Soon it had permeated the whole German fabric of Centralia, with its message of aid and comfort to the enemy: “Deutschtum is bent, but not broken!”

  And the Deutschtum of Centralia, unbroken and scarcely bent, set about fulfilling its vengeance upon The Guardian and Jeremy Robson.

  The first attack was a blast of letters, signed and anonymous. Correspondence enough was daily piled upon the editorial desk of The Guardian to have occupied all of Jeremy’s time had he undertaken to answer it. Most of it was denunciation, protest, warning, threat. Several weak-kneed politicians, followers of “Smiling Mart” Embree’s political fortunes, had written pressingly for appointments, evincing in every line their perturbation lest The Guardian’s course might compromise them in one way or another. One correspondent had contented himself with a spirited but unsigned free-hand drawing of a noose overhanging a skull and crossbones.

  In the middle of the heap was a brief and simple note of commendation for The Guardian’s course, from the hardest-worked, most sorely pressed and anxious man in America. It was headed: “The White House.” All but this Jeremy shoveled into the waste-basket; then plunged into his work with renewed spirit. The anonymous threats had cheered him only less than the President’s word. They showed that his work was striking home.

  Uncertainty was what Jeremy found hardest to endure in those days. And the local advertising situation seemed to be about fifty-one per cent uncertainty, and the other forty-nine probable loss. Contracts both yearly and half-yearly were renewable on May 1st. There appeared to be an almost universal indisposition on the part of the local stores to commit themselves to any definite figures or estimates in advance. In the case of the German advertisers, or of the few which still maintained rancor against The Guardian because of its independence in business matters, this was quite explicable. But no such reasons applied in the case of the large majority which were holding off. Nothing in the way of enlightenment could be elicited from Verrall. He “didn’t understand it at all.” He’d “done his best.” Business was “very uncertain.” Probably that was it. They were waiting to see the effect of the war. If anyone should be in a position to make a guess, Verrall was the man; for he was spending enough of his time among the stores. At least he was certainly not spending it at his desk.

  Extra work was thus thrown upon the overworked Galpin. No dependence could be placed upon Jeremy from day to day now. At any hour, the demands of State-wide newspaper organization were likely to call him away from town, and relegate to Galpin all of his duties other than the actual writing of editorials. There were mornings when the general manager would arrive at the office before eight o’clock to find three hours’ work by his chief already completed and on his desk with a note: “Meetings at Fairborn and Rocola today and tomorrow. Back Thursday.” To be obliged to handle part of Verrall’s desk job also, in these circumstances, struck the patient and dogged Galpin as excessive. Besides, there were matters in Verrall’s department which puzzled his tired mind.

  After one of Jeremy’s flying trips into the country, he returned to find Andrew sitting at Max Verrall’s desk. Instead of responding to his employer’s greeting, the general manager asked abruptly:

  “Verrall was a sort of political pet of ‘Smiling Mart’s’ when we got him, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes. Embree recommended him to me.”

  “He’s quit.”

  “No great loss; he’s been laying down on his job lately.”

  “He’s been doing worse than that. He’s been tying us up in a double bowknot. Boss, did he have authority to make print-paper contracts?”

  “Yes; all supplies.”

  “Then God help The Guardian!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “He’s contracted for our next year’s paper at four cents and a quarter.”

  “Four and a quarter! That’s half a cent above the market, isn’t it?”

  “All of that.”

  “What concern did he buy of?”

  “Oak Lodge Pulp Company.”

  “Magnus Laurens’s outfit! They never tried anything of the kind on us before. It looks queer, doesn’t it!”

  “Worse than that.”

  “But, see here, Andy. They can’t make that stick. Half a cent above market for that grade of paper—”

  “Which grade? There’s the kink. Verrall’s tied us up on a special quality.”

  “Good God!” said Jeremy.

  He sat down heavily. A clean blotter on the desk offered him a field for calculations. For a few moments he busied himself with a pencil. When he looked up, his face was queer and drawn. Andrew Galpin waited.

  “It’ll be a pull, Andy,” said Jeremy. “It’ll be a hell of a pull! It’ll suck the yolk right out of my surplus. But we can pull through yet if—”

  “If what?” demanded the general manager, for his chief had stopped.

  “If we can hold the big local advertisers.”

  Galpin looked down on his employer with sorrowful eyes. He cleared his throat, scratched his head, spat upon the floor, and was apologetic about it; hummed, hawed, and glowered. Jeremy regarded these maneuvers with surprise.

  “Baby got a pin stickin’ into ums?” he inquired solicitously.

  “Oh, hell, Boss!” broke out the other. “I hate to tell you. They’re on our trail now. The Botches’ game is working. Ellison, of Ellison Brothers, is in your office waiting to see you.”

  Jeremy left for his own den and the interview.

  Visibly ill at ease, the head of Fenchester’s oldest department store rose to greet Jeremy, resumed his seat and proceeded volubly to say a great deal of nothing in particular, about the uncertainty of the business outlook and the necessity, apparent to every thoughtful merchant, of retrenchment. Adjure
d to get down to details, he painfully brought himself to the point of announcing that Ellison Brothers felt it best to drop out of The Guardian’s columns.

  “Just temporary, Mr. Robson, you understand,” he said in a tone which assured his auditor that it was nothing of the sort. “We hope to resume soon.”

  “But, Mr. Ellison,” said Jeremy in dismay, “there must be some reason for this. Is it our editorial course that you object to?”

  The visitor began to babble unhappily.

  “No, no, Mr. Robson! You mustn’t think that. I—I quite approve of your editorial course. Quite! Personally, I mean to say . . . As a merchant—Well, of course, you have been a little hard on our German fellow-citizens. Haven’t you, now? You must admit that, yourself . . . Oh, it’s all right, of course! Very praiseworthy, and all that. Loyalty; yes, indeed; loyalty above everything . . . But for a business man—We can’t afford—”

  “Wait a minute, Mr. Ellison. How many of your German customers have given notice to quit you unless you quit The Guardian?”

  “Oh, none, Mr. Robson,” disclaimed the tremulous Ellison. “None—not in those terms.”