Dangerous Days

Old Herman assented. He was tired of the house, tired of the frozen

garden, tired of scolding the slovenly girl who pottered around all day

in a boudoir cap and slovenly wrapper. Tired of Anna's rebellious face

and pert answers.

He went inside the house and put a sweater under his coat, and got his

cap.

"I go out," he said, to the impassive figure under the lamp. "You will

stay in."

"Oh, I don't know. I may take a walk."

"You will stay in," he repeated, and followed Rudolph outside. There he

reached in, secured the key, and locked the door on the outside. Anna,

listening and white with anger, heard his ponderous steps going around

to the back door, and the click as he locked that one also.

"Beast!" she muttered. "German schwein."

It was after midnight when she heard him coming back. She prepared to

leap out of her bed when he came up-stairs, to confront him angrily and

tell him she was through. She was leaving home. But long after she had

miserably cried herself to sleep, Herman sat below, his long-stemmed

pipe in his teeth, his stockinged feet spread to the dying fire.

In that small guarded hail that night he had learned many surprising

things, there and at Gus's afterward. The Fatherland's war was already

being fought in America, and not only by Germans. The workers of the

world had banded themselves together, according to the night's speakers.

And because they were workers they would not fight the German workers.

It was all perfectly simple. With the cooperation of the workers of the

world, which recognized no country but a vast brotherhood of labor, it

was possible to end war, all war.

In the meantime, while all the workers all over the world were being

organized, one prevented as much as possible any assistance going to

capitalistic England. One did some simple thing--started a strike,

or sawed lumber too short, or burned a wheat-field, or put nails

in harvesting machinery, or missent perishable goods, or changed

signal-lights on railroads, or drove copper nails into fruit-trees, so

they died. This was a pity, the fruit-trees. But at least they did not

furnish fruit for Germany's enemies.

So each one did but one thing, and that small, so small that it was

difficult to discover. But there were two hundred thousand men to do

them, according to Rudolph, and that meant a great deal.

Only one thing about the meeting Herman had not liked. There were

packages of wicked photographs going about. Filthy things. When they

came to him he had dropped them on the floor. What had they to do with

Germany's enemies, or preventing America from going into the war?