Эптон Синклер - Oil!

Bunny accepted this explanation without question. He had been in a training-camp for seven months, and had acquired the military point of view. He was keenly alert to the danger of Bolshevik propaganda, and determined that if ever he ran into any of it, he would hasten to denounce it. So innocent was he, and so little aware of the subtlety of the enemy—he never dreamed that he was at this time absorbing the poison; and—of all places in the world—in one of the class-rooms of his most Christian and conservative university!

It was hard on a poor overworked university president. Dr. Cowper’s most trusted dean had engaged this young instructor, upon recommendation of high-up Y. M. C. A. authorities. The young man had been doing relief work in Saloniki, and was the son of a prominent Methodist pastor; he bore the name of Daniel Webster Irving, and how was anyone to imagine that a man with such a name might be suffering from political shell-shock?

This young instructor was subtle in his method; he did not say anything that could be pinned down on him, but would sow his seeds of doubt by asking questions, and advising students to “think for themselves.” There are always in every college class one or more “sore-heads,” the sons of unorthodox parents; one in Bunny’s class was an avowed “rationalist,” and another had a Russian name. All that a teacher had to do was to let these fellows ask questions, and quickly the whole group would be wandering in a maze, demoralized by what the Japanese government in its control of education describes as “dangerous thoughts.”

President Wilson had gone to Europe, in order to bring about the reign of justice he had promised. He was having a triumphal progress through England and France, and our newspapers were full of the wonders of what he was about to achieve. But in Mr. Irving’s class Bunny heard it pointed out that the President had dropped from mention the most important of his “fourteen points,” the demand for “freedom of the seas.” Could it be that this had been the price of British support for his program? And then, more startling yet, Bunny learned that the secret treaties which the allies had signed among themselves at the outset of the war were now laid on the peace table, and made the basis of jealous bickerings. Bunny had never forgotten about those treaties, how Dad had assured Paul that they would turn out to be Bolshevik forgeries. But here the allies were admitting them to be genuine, and furthermore, were setting out to enforce them, regardless of any promises of fair play which President Wilson had made to the Germans!

Bunny took this amazing news home with him to Dad; apparently Paul had been right, and the wicked Bolsheviks had been telling the truth! What did Dad make of it? Dad didn’t know what to make of it; he was much disturbed, and could only say we couldn’t judge, we’d jist have to wait. But the trouble was, the longer we waited, the worse things seemed to get; the more evident it became that our President had done the very thing that Dad had been sure he would never do—he had let himself be “jockeyed.” Like water seeping underneath a dike, a subtle current of skepticism was creeping through those freshman classes in Southern Pacific University which were taking “Modern History 14.”

Mr. Irving wasn’t supposed to be discussing the peace conference at all; he was supposed to be seeing to it that his students memorized the names of battles and commanding generals in the Franco-Prussian war. But one theme led so easily to the other, and it was so difficult to keep the “sore-heads” quiet! This same thing was happening in other class-rooms, and in other parts of the United Sates where men encountered their fellows, and thus became exposed to “dangerous thoughts.” Before long the forbidden ideas were being voiced in Congress, and after that they could not be kept out of the newspapers. It was like a storm that burst over the whole country. A million idealists like Bunny woke up all at once to the cruel fact that their dolly was stuffed with sawdust.

Yes, it was a trying time to be alive in the world. All those golden promises that had been made to us, those bright hopes we had cherished! All the blood of the young men that had been shed, three hundred thousand of them dead or wounded in France—and here were the allied statesmen, grim, cruel old men, sitting at the council-table and putting the world right back where it had been before! Perpetuating all the old hatreds, all the old injustices—with a thousand new ones to torment the future! Tearing Germans away from their own land and giving them to Frenchmen, giving Austrians to Italians, Russians to Poles—so on through a long list of blunders; condemning millions of people to live under governments which they feared and despised, and thus making certain they would revolt, and throw Europe into uproar again!

Men could not realize these things all at once; they got them little by little, as details of the negotiations leaked out. Every country in the world was carrying on its own propaganda, thinking about its own selfish interests; and President Wilson was in the midst of the mess, being pulled and hauled about, this way and that, quite powerless for the good aims he had proclaimed. As the picture of this got back to America, there spread over the land such a wave of disgust as had never been known before.

And then the President himself came home, to declare that he had achieved a complete victory. In the name of “self-determination of all peoples” he was giving the German Rhineland to France, and German Africa to Britain, and the German Tyrol to Italy, and a Chinese province to Japan, and to the United States a mandate over Armenia! Also he had made a perpetual alliance with France and Britain, whereby we bound ourselves to maintain this brand of self-determination forever! When this program had been thoroughly realized, a tone of hilarious cynicism became the correct thing among the young intellectuals of America; fashionable young matrons took to deceiving their husbands in the name of chastity, and college boys began toting hip-pocket flasks out of loyalty to prohibition.

The thing was particularly hard upon Bunny, because he had to go to Paradise every once in a while, and come face to face with Ruth, and explain how self-determination for the people of Siberia meant that her brother must stay there in peace time and hold a bayonet at their necks. In elucidating this singular situation, Bunny became almost as skillful a trickster as if he had had a regular diplomatic job with extra-territorial immunity. For a month or two he managed it, while the Germans were dragged to Versailles and made to sign an agreement to pay an indemnity so vast that it could not be named.

Then one day came a letter that made his task all but impossible. It was an innocent-looking letter, written in a crude hand on some sheets of cheap paper, postmarked Seattle, and addressed to “Mr. Bunny Ross, Paradise, California.” It said:

“Dear Mr. Bunny: You dont know me but I am a returned soldier that used to punch cattle in Salinas valley. Paul Watkins said I should write you because he cant get no news by the censors. I am invalidded back, have had the Asiatic dissenterry, am bleeding at the bowls three months and you should wash your hands good when you have read this letter, because it is an easy dissease to catch. I am in issolation and this will be smuggled, for God’s sake dont let on I have wrote it they would sure put me in the can. But Paul said your father might do something to get us boys out if he knew what a hell it was. Mr. Bunny what are we doing in that place and why do we have to stay? It is forty below zero most of the winter and big storms a lot of the time and you have to do sentry duty and in summer the muskeetoes is big as flies and where they bite the blood runs. And the Japs take shots at us, they are suppose to be our allies but they are sure grabbing that country there is suppose to be only seven thousand but there is seventy and why did we take them in there? Our boys is not allowed to have no side arms and the Japs have got bayonets and we have only fists. We have zones that we are supposed to control but the Japs will not keep out of them and I have saw them put out with machine guns lined up, and if we have to have a war with them over Siberia there will sure be a lot of our boys massacreed at the startoff. And them Russian refugees and officers that we have orders to help I heard our colonel say, you give them money to start a government and they go on a bust and that night you have to pull them out of a sporting house. They have got one idea which is to shoot all the working-men they can get hands on and the women too and they torture them, Mr. Bunny I seen things that it would make you sick to read them. From General Graves down our army is sore on this job and some of them is gone crazy, there has been more than twenty in our regement and some has been sent home in a strait jacket. But the people at home is not allowed to know nothing, there is boys in our regement that is not had one line from their folks in half a year and they are crazy with worry. Why do we have to be there when the war is over, if you know I wish you would tell me. But Paul said not to tell his sister, because it is not so bad for himself, they move him a lot and he is always busy it is easy when you have a lot of carpenter work but for some fellers I seen them carry a stack of railway ties a hundred yards and then move them back to the old place just to keep us working. Please send me some cigarettes that will be a way to say that you have got this letter and if you send two packages I will know that you want me to write some more. Yours respectfully, Jeff Korbitty.”