Frenzied Fiction | Page 9

running feet and of many voices crying came louder from the street. The people at the tables had turned in their seats to listen. The music of the orchestra had stopped. The waiters had thrown back the heavy curtains from the windows and the people were crowding to them to look out into the street. Knickerbocker had risen in his place, his eyes looked toward the windows, but his gaze was fixed on vacancy as with one who sees a vision passing.
"I know the sound," he cried. "I see it all again. Look, can't you see them? It's Massachusetts soldiers marching South to the war--can't you hear the beating of the drums and the shrill calling of the fife--the regiments from the North, the first to come. I saw them pass, here where we are sitting, sixty years ago--"
Knickerbocker paused a moment, his hand still extended in the air, and then with a great light upon his face he cried:
"I know it now! I know what it meant, the feeling that has haunted me--the sounds I kept hearing--the guns of the ships at sea and the voices calling in distress! I know now. It means, sir, it means--"
But as he spoke a great cry came up from the street and burst in at the doors and windows, echoing in a single word:
WAR! WAR! The message of the President is for WAR!
"War!" cried Father Knickerbocker, rising to his full height, stern and majestic and shouting in a stentorian tone that echoed through the great room. "War! War! To your places, every one of you! Be done with your idle luxury! Out with the glare of your lights! Begone you painted women and worthless men! To your places every man of you! To the Battery! Man the guns! Stand to it, every one of you for the defence of America--for our New York, New York--"
Then, with the sound "New York, New York" still echoing in my ears I woke up. The vision of my dream was gone. I was still on the seat of the car where I had dozed asleep, the book upon my knee. The train had arrived at the depot and the porters were calling into the doorway of the car: "New York! New York!"
All about me was the stir and hubbub of the great depot. But loud over all it was heard the call of the newsboys crying "WAR! WAR! The President's message is for WAR! Late extra! WAR! WAR!"
And I knew that a great nation had cast aside the bonds of sloth and luxury, and was girding itself to join in the fight for the free democracy of all mankind.

III. The Prophet in Our Midst
The Eminent Authority looked around at the little group of us seated about him at the club. He was telling us, or beginning to tell us, about the outcome of the war. It was a thing we wanted to know. We were listening attentively. We felt that we were "getting something."
"I doubt very much," he said, "whether Downing Street realizes the enormous power which the Quai d'Orsay has over the Yildiz Kiosk."
"So do I," I said, "what is it?"
But he hardly noticed the interruption.
"You've got to remember," he went on, "that, from the point of view of the Yildiz, the Wilhelmstrasse is just a thing of yesterday."
"Quite so," I said.
"Of course," he added, "the Ballplatz is quite different."
"Altogether different," I admitted.
"And mind you," he said, "the Ballplatz itself can be largely moved from the Quirinal through the Vatican."
"Why of course it can," I agreed, with as much relief in my tone as I could put into it. After all, what simpler way of moving the Ballplatz than that?
The Eminent Authority took another sip at his tea, and looked round at us through his spectacles.
It was I who was taking on myself to do most of the answering, because it was I who had brought him there and invited the other men to meet him. "He's coming round at five," I had said, "do come and have a cup of tea and meet him. He knows more about the European situation and the probable solution than any other man living." Naturally they came gladly. They wanted to know--as everybody wants to know--how the war will end. They were just ordinary plain men like myself.
I could see that they were a little mystified, perhaps disappointed. They would have liked, just as I would, to ask a few plain questions, such as, can the Italians knock the stuff out of the Austrians? Are the Rumanians getting licked or not? How many submarines has Germany got, anyway? Such questions, in fact, as we are accustomed to put up to one another every day at lunch and to answer out of the morning paper. As it was, we