John Passos - 1919

for New Freedom read Conscription, for Democracy, Win the War, for Reform, Safeguard the Morgan Loans

for Progress Civilization Education Service,

Buy a Liberty Bond,

Straff the Hun,

Jail the Objectors.

He resigned from The New Republic; only The Seven Arts had the nerve to publish his articles against the war. The backers of The Seven Arts took their money elsewhere; friends didn’t like to be seen with Bourne, his father wrote him begging him not to disgrace the family name. The rainbowtinted future of reformed democracy went pop like a pricked soapbubble.

The liberals scurried to Washington;

some of his friends plead with him to climb up on Schoolmaster Wilson’s sharabang; the war was great fought from the swivel chairs of Mr. Creel’s bureau in Washington.

He was cartooned, shadowed by the espionage service and the counter-espionage service; taking a walk with two girl friends at Wood’s Hole he was arrested, a trunk full of manuscript and letters was stolen from him in Connecticut. (Force to the utmost, thundered Schoolmaster Wilson)

He didn’t live to see the big circus of the Peace of Versailles or the purplish normalcy of the Ohio Gang.

Six weeks after the armistice he died planning an essay on the foundations of future radicalism in America.

If any man has a ghost

Bourne has a ghost,

a tiny twisted unscared ghost in a black cloak

hopping along the grimy old brick and brownstone streets still left in downtown New York,

crying out in a shrill soundless giggle:

War is the health of the state.

If you dont like your Uncle Sammy

If you dont like the red white and blue

smiles of patriotic Essex County will be concentrated and recorded at Branch Brook Park, Newark, N.J., tomorrow afternoon. Bands will play while a vast throng marches happily to the rhythm of wartime anthems and airs. Mothers of the nation’s sons will be there; wives, many of them carrying babes born after their fathers sailed for the front, will occupy a place in Essex County’s graphic pageant; relatives and friends of the heroes who are carrying on the message of Freedom will file past a battery of cameras and all will smile a message recording installment no. 7 of Smiles Across the Sea. The hour for these folks to start smiling is 2:30.

MOBS PLUNDER CITIES

NEWSPAPERMAN LEADS THROUGH BARRAGE

it was a pitiful sight at dusk every evening when the whole population evacuated the city, going to sleep in the fields until daylight. Old women and tiny children, cripples drawn in carts or wheeled in barrows men carrying chairs bring those too feeble and old to walk

JERSEY TROOPS TAKE WOMAN GUNNERS

the trouble had its origin with the demand of the marine workers for an eight hour day

If you dont like the stars in Old Glory

Then go back to your land across the sea

To the land from which you came

Whatever be its name

G.O.P. LEADER ACCUSED OF DRAFT FRAUDS

If you dont like the red white and blue

Then dont act like the cur in the story

Dont bite the hand that’s feeding you

Little Eveline and Arget and Lade and Gogo lived on the top floor of a yellowbrick house on the North Shore Drive. Arget and Lade were little Eveline’s sisters. Gogo was her little brother littler than Eveline; he had such nice blue eyes but Miss Mathilda had horrid blue eyes. On the floor below was Dr. Hutchins’ study where Yourfather mustn’t be disturbed, and Dearmother’s room where she stayed all morning painting dressed in a lavender smock. On the groundfloor was the drawingroom and the diningroom, where parishioners came and little children must be seen and not heard, and at dinnertime you could smell good things to eat and hear knives and forks and tinkly companyvoices and Yourfather’s booming scary voice and when Yourfather’s voice was going all the companyvoices were quiet. Yourfather was Dr. Hutchins but Our Father art in heaven. When Yourfather stood beside the bed at night to see that little girls said their prayers Eveline would close her eyes tightscared. It was only when she’d hopped into bed and snuggled way down so that the covers were right across her nose that she felt cosy.

George was a dear although Adelaide and Margaret teased him and said he was their Assistant like Mr. Blessington was Father’s assistant. George always caught things first and then they all had them. It was lovely when they had the measles and the mumps all at once. They stayed in bed and had hyacinths in pots and guinea pigs and Dearmother used to come up and read the Jungle Book and do funny pictures and Yourfather would come up and make funny birdbeaks that opened out of paper and tell stories he made up right out of his head and Dearmother said he had said prayers for you children in church and that made them feel fine and grownup.

When they were all up and playing in the nursery George caught something again and had monia on account of getting cold on his chest and Yourfather was every solemn and said not to grieve if God called little brother away. But God brought little George back to them only he was delicate after that and had to wear glasses, and when Dearmother let Eveline help bathe him because Miss Mathilda was having the measles too Eveline noticed he had something funny there where she didn’t have anything. She asked Dearmother if it was a mump, but Dearmother scolded her and said she was a vulgar little girl to have looked. “Hush, child, don’t ask questions.” Eveline got red all over and cried and Adelaide and Margaret wouldn’t speak to her for days on account of her being a vulgar little girl.

Summers they all went to Maine with Miss Mathilda in a drawingroom. George and Eveline slept in the upper and Adelaide and Margaret slept in the lower; Miss Mathilda was trainsick and didn’t close her eyes all night on the sofa opposite. The train went rumblebump chug chug and the trees and houses ran by, the front ones fast and those way off very slow and at night the engine wailed and the children couldn’t make out why the strong nice tall conductor was so nice to Miss Mathilda who was so hateful and trainsick. Maine smelt all woodsy and mother and father were there to meet them and they all put on khaki jumpers and went camping with Father and the guides. It was Eveline who learned to swim quicker than anybody.

Going back to Chicago it would be autumn and Mother loved the lovely autumn foliage that made Miss Mathilda feel so traurig on account of winter coming on, and the frost on the grass beyond the shadows of the cars out of the trainwindow in the morning. At home Sam would be scrubbing the enamel paint and Phoebe and Miss Mathilda would be putting up curtains and the nursery would smell traurig of mothballs. One fall Father started to read aloud a little of the Ideals of the King every night after they were all tucked into bed. All that winter Adelaide and Margaret were King Arthur and Queen Whenever. Eveline wanted to be Elaine the Fair, but Adelaide said she couldn’t because her hair was mousy and she had a face like a pie, so she had to be the Maiden Evelina.

The Maiden Evelina used to go into Miss Mathilda’s room when she was out and look at herself for a long time in the lookingglass. Her hair wasn’t mousy, it was quite fair if only they would let her have it curly instead of in pigtails and even if her eyes weren’t blue like George’s they had little green specks in them. Her forehead was noble. Miss Mathilda caught her staring like that into the mirror one day.

“Look at yourself too much and you’ll find you’re looking at the devil,” said Miss Mathilda in her nasty stiff German way.