LITMIR.BIZ

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"They caught me writing some inside dope about M.M. graft. It was to have gone to Sissy. Thank God, nothing on it to show who it was for!" Julian had passed on. But Doremus had had time to see that his eyes were hopeless, and that his neat, smallish, clerical face was blue-black with bruises.

      The administration (or so Doremus guessed) decided that Julian, the first spy among the M.M.'s who had been caught in the Fort Beulah region, was too good a subject of sport to be wastefully shot at once. He should be kept for an example. Often Doremus saw the guards kick him across the quadrangle to the whipping room and imagined that he could hear Julian's shrieks afterward. He wasn't even kept in a punishment cell, but in an open barred den on an ordinary corridor, so that passing inmates could peep in and see him, welts across his naked back, huddled on the floor, whimpering like a beaten dog.

      And Doremus had sight of Julian's grandfather sneaking across the quadrangle, stealing a soggy hunk of bread from a garbage can, and fiercely chewing at it.

      All through September Doremus worried lest Sissy, with Julian now gone from Fort Beulah, be raped by Shad Ledue. . . . Shad would leer the while, and gloat over his ascent from hired man to irresistible master.

      Despite his anguish over the Falcks and Henry Veeder and every uncouthest comrade in prison, Doremus was almost recovered from his beatings by late September. He began delightedly to believe that he would live for another ten years; was slightly ashamed of his delight, in the presence of so much agony, but he felt like a young man and—And straightway Ensign Stoyt was there (two or three o'clock at night it must have been), yanking Doremus out of his bunk, pulling him to his feet, knocking him down again with so violent a crack in his mouth that Doremus instantly sank again into all his trembling fear, all his inhuman groveling.

      He was dragged into Captain Cowlick's office.

      The Captain was courtly:

      "Mr. Jessup, we have information that you were connected with Squad-Leader Julian Falck's treachery. He has, uh, well, to be frank, he's broken down and confessed. Now you yourself are in no danger, no danger whatever, of further punishment, if you will just help us. But we really must make a warning of young Mr. Falck, and so if you will tell us all you know about the boy's shocking infidelity to the colors, we shall hold it in your favor. How would you like to have a nice bedroom to sleep in, all by yourself?"

      A quarter hour later Doremus was still swearing that he knew nothing whatever of any "subversive activities" on the part of Julian.

      Captain Cowlick said, rather testily, "Well, since you refuse to respond to our generosity, I must leave you to Ensign Stoyt, I'm afraid. . . . Be gentle with him, Ensign."

      "Yessr," said the Ensign.

      The Captain wearily trotted out of the room and Stoyt did indeed speak with gentleness, which was a surprise to Doremus, because in the room were two of the guards to whom Stoyt liked to show off:

      "Jessup, you're a man of intelligence. No use your trying to protect this boy, Falck, because we've got enough on him to execute him anyway. So it won't be hurting him any if you give us a few more details about his treason. And you'll be doing yourself a good turn."

      Doremus said nothing.

      "Going to talk?"

      Doremus shook his head.

      "All right, then. . . . Tillett!"

      "Yessr."

      "Bring in the guy that squealed on Jessup!"

      Doremus expected the guard to fetch Julian, but it was Julian's grandfather who wavered into the room. In the camp quadrangle Doremus had often seen him trying to preserve the dignity of his frock coat by rubbing at the spots with a wet rag, but in the cells there were no hooks for clothes, and the priestly garment—Mr. Falck was a poor man and it had not been very expensive at best—was grotesquely wrinkled now. He was blinking with sleepiness, and his silver hair was a hurrah's nest.

      Stoyt (he was thirty or so) said cheerfully to the two elders, "Well, now, you boys better stop being naughty and try to get some sense into your mildewed old brains, and then we can all have some decent sleep. Why don't you two try to be honest, now that you've each confessed that the other was a traitor?"

      "What?" marveled Doremus.

      "Sure! Old Falck here says you carried his grandson's pieces to the Vermont Vigilance. Come on, now, if you'll tell us who published that rag—"

      "I have confessed nothing. I have nothing to confess," said Mr. Falck.

      Stoyt screamed, "Will you shut up? You old hypocrite!" Stoyt knocked him to the floor, and as Mr. Falck weaved dizzily on hands and knees, kicked him in the side with a heavy boot. The other two guards were holding back the sputtering Doremus. Stoyt jeered at Mr. Falck, "Well, you old bastard, you're on your knees, so let's hear you pray!"

      "I shall!"

      In agony Mr. Falck raised his head, dust-smeared from the floor, straightened his shoulders, held up trembling hands, and with such sweetness in his voice as Doremus had once heard in it when men were human, he cried, "Father, Thou hast forgiven so long! Forgive them not but curse them, for they know what they do!" He tumbled forward, and Doremus knew that he would never hear that voice again.

      In La Voix littéraire of Paris, the celebrated and genial professor of belles-lettres, Guillaume Semit, wrote with his accustomed sympathy:

      I do not pretend to any knowledge of politics, and probably what I saw on my fourth journey to the States United this summer of 1938 was mostly on the surface and cannot be considered a profound analysis of the effects of Corpoism, but I assure you that I have never before seen that nation so great, our young and gigantic cousin in the West, in such bounding health and good spirits. I leave it to my economic confrères to explain such dull phenomena as wage-scales, and tell only what I saw, which is that the innumerable parades and vast athletic conferences of the Minute Men and the lads and lassies of the Corpo Youth Movement exhibited such rosy, contented faces, such undeviating enthusiasm for their hero, the Chief, M. Windrip, that involuntarily I exclaimed, "Here is a whole nation dipped in the River of Youth."

      Everywhere in the country was such feverish rebuilding of public edifices and apartment houses for the poor as has never hitherto been known. In Washington, my old colleague, M. le Secretary Macgoblin, was so good as to cry, in that virile yet cultivated manner of his which is so well known, "Our enemies maintain that our labor camps are virtual slavery. Come, my old one! You shall see for yourself." He conducted me by one of the marvelously speedy American automobiles to such a camp, near Washington, and having the workers assembled, he put to them frankly: "Are you low in the heart?" As one man they chorused, "No," with a spirit like our own brave soldiers on the ramparts of Verdun.

      During the full hour we spent there, I was permitted to roam at will, asking such questions as I cared to, through the offices of the interpreter kindly furnished by His Excellency, M. le Dr. Macgoblin, and every worker whom I thus approached assured me that never has he been so well fed, so tenderly treated, and so assisted to find an almost poetic interest in his chosen work as in this labor camp—this scientific cooperation for the well-being of all.

      With a certain temerity I ventured to demand of M. Macgoblin what truth was there in the reports so shamefully circulated (especially, alas, in our beloved France) that in the concentration camps the opponents of Corpoism are ill fed and harshly treated. M. Macgoblin explained to me that there are no such things as "concentration camps," if that term is to carry any penological significance. They are, actually, schools, in which adults who have unfortunately been misled by the glib prophets of that milk-and-water religion, "Liberalism," are reconditioned to comprehend the new day of authoritative economic control. In such camps, he assured me, there are actually no guards, but only patient teachers, and men who were once utterly uncomprehending of Corpoism, and therefore opposed to it, are now daily going forth as the most enthusiastic disciples of the Chief.

      Alas that France and Great Britain should still be thrashing about in the slough of Parliamentarianism and so-called Democracy, daily sinking deeper into debt and paralysis of industry, because of the cowardice and traditionalism

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