The Fall of a Nation. Thomas Dixon

National Campaign Committee.

      John Vassar read the letter a second time, touched the tips of his mustache thoughtfully and fixed his eyes on Zonia.

      “And my little sweetheart will join the enemy in this campaign!”

      A tear trembled on the dark lashes.

      “Ah, Uncy darling, how could you think such a thing!”

      “You bring this challenge – ”

      “I only want to vote – to – elect – you – governor – ”

      The voice broke in a sob, as he bent and kissed the smooth young brow.

      She clung to him tenderly.

      “Uncy dear, just for my sake, because I love you so – because you’re my hero – won’t you do something for me – Just because I ask it?”

      “Maybe – ”

      “Go to Union Square with me then – ”

      He shook his head emphatically.

      “Against my principles, dear – ”

      “It’s not against your principles to make me happy?”

      He took her cheeks between his hands.

      “Seeing that I’ve raised you from a chick – I don’t think there ought to be much doubt about how I stand on the woman question as far as it affects two little specimens of the tribe – do you?”

      “All right then,” she cried gayly, “you love Marya and me. We are women. You can’t refuse us a little old thing like a ballot if we want it – can you?”

      She paused and kissed him again.

      “So now, Uncy, you’re going to hear Miss Holland speak just to make me happy – aren’t you?”

      He smiled and surrendered.

      “To make you happy – yes – ”

      He couldn’t say more. The arms were too tight about his neck.

      He drew them gently down.

      “This is what I dread in politics, dear – when the women go in to win. We’ve graft enough now. When the boys run up against this sort of thing – God help us! – and God save the country if you should happen to make a mistake in what you ask for! Well, you’ve won this fight – come on, let’s get up front and hear the argument. I hate to stand on the edge and wonder what the hen is saying when she crows – ”

      Zonia handed his hat and cane and, radiant with smiles, opened the door.

      “I suppose we’ll let Marya stay with Grandpa?” he asked.

      “They’ve been gone half an hour!”

      “Oh – ”

      “I had no trouble with Grandpa at all. He agreed to sit on the platform with me – ”

      “Indeed!”

      “But I don’t think he really understood what the meeting was about – ”

      “Just to please his grandchick, however, the old traitor agreed to preside at my funeral – eh?”

      “He won’t if you say not – shall I tell him to keep off? Marya will be awfully disappointed if we make them get down – ”

      “No – let him stay. Maybe he can placate the enemy. They can hold him as hostage for my good behavior.”

      The hand on his arm pressed tighter.

      “It’s so sweet of you, Uncy!”

      “At what hour does this paragon of all the virtues, male and female, harangue the mob?”

      “You mean Miss Holland?”

      “Yes.”

      “Oh, they’ll all be there tonight. Miss Holland is the principal speaker for the Federated Women’s Clubs of America – she’s the president, you know – ”

      “No – I didn’t know – ”

      “She won’t speak until 9:30. We can hear the others first. There’ll be some big guns among the men too – the Honorable Plato Barker and the Reverend A. Cuthbert Pike, the president of the American Peace Union – and Waldron, the multi-millionaire, he presides at Miss Holland’s stand – ”

      “Indeed – ”

      “Yes – they say he’s in love with her but she doesn’t care a rap for him or any other man – ”

      John Vassar had ceased to hear Zonia’s chatter. The name of Charles Waldron had started a train of ugly thought. Of all the leaders of opinion in America this man was his pet aversion. He loathed his personality. He hated his newspaper with a fury which words could not express. It stood squarely for every tendency of degenerate materialism in our life, a worship of money and power first and last against all sentiment and all the hopes and aspirations of the masses. He posed as the Pecksniffian leader of Reform and the reform he advocated always meant the lash for the man who toils. His hatreds were implacable, too, and he used the power of his money with unscrupulous brutality. He had lately extended the chain of banks which he owned in New York until they covered the leading cities of every state in the Union. His newspaper, the Evening Courier, was waging an unceasing campaign for the establishment of an American aristocracy of wealth and culture.

      Vassar was cudgeling his brain over the mystery of this man’s sudden enthusiasm for woman suffrage and the Cause of Universal Peace. It was a sinister sign of the times. He rarely advocated a losing cause. That this cold-blooded materialist could believe in the dream of human emancipation through the influence of women was preposterous.

      Zonia might be right, of course, in saying that he had become infatuated with the young Amazon leader of the Federated Women’s Clubs. And yet that would hardly account for his presence as the presiding genius of a grand rally for suffrage. There were too many factions represented in such a demonstration for his personal interest in one woman to explain his activity in bringing those people together. His paper had, in fact, led the appeal to co-ordinate Demagogery, Labor, Peace Propaganda, Socialism, and Feminism in one monster mass meeting.

      The longer Vassar puzzled over it, the more impenetrable became Waldron’s motive. His leadership in the movement was uncanny. What did it mean?

      CHAPTER V

      IT was barely seven when they reached Union Square. It was already packed by a dense crowd of good-natured cheering men and women. Seventy-five thousand was a conservative estimate. The air was electric with contagious enthusiasm.

      “We’ll hear the apostle of peace first,” Vassar said to Zonia, pushing his way slowly through the crowd toward a platform with three-foot letters covering its four sides:

PEACE! PEACE! PEACE! PEACE!

      The Reverend A. Cuthbert Pike, president of the Peace Union of America, was delivering the opening address as the chairman of his meeting. He was a funny-looking little man of slight features, bald and decorated with a set of aggressive side whiskers. His manner was quick and nervous, electric in its nervousness, his voice in striking contrast to the jerky pugnacity of his body. The tones were soft and dreaming, as if he were trying to subdue the tendency of the flesh to fight for what he believed to be right.

      He leaned far over the rail of the platform and breathed his words over the crowd:

      “Two great powers contend for the mastery of the world, my friends,” he was saying. “The spirit of Christ and the spirit of Napoleon. The one would overcome evil with good. The other would hurl evil against evil. One stands for love, humility, self-sacrifice. The other stands for the hate, pride and avarice of the militarism of today – ”

      Vassar lost the next sentence. His mind had leaped the seas and stood with brooding wonder over the miracle of self-sacrifice of a thousand blood-drenched trenches and battlefields where millions of stout-hearted men were now laying their lives on the altar of their country – an offering of simple love. They had left the selfish pursuit