Chapter I: Steve Brings the News

Steve Chapman turned from Chapel Street into the quieter thoroughfare, metaphorically speaking, on two wheels, bounded up the steps of the fourth house in the row, took the first flight of stairs on high, raced along the corridor, skidded a bit at the last portal on the right and, finally, setting all brakes, came to a standstill in the centre of the floor, while, as the door swung back against the wall, every picture in the study jarred askew.

“War’s begun!” he announced breathlessly. “President Wilson has signed! We’re in it at last, Joe!”

Joe Ingersoll regarded his room-mate calmly across the desk, one hand holding open the book he had been studying. “But why wreck the premises?” he asked mildly. “What do you think you are? The German Army in Belgium?”

Steve, subsiding against the back of the Morris chair, strove to regain his breath and wither the other with a glance, a not particularly successful effort. “You make me tired,” he declared. “Where’s your patriotism, you block of wood? I nearly break my neck to get the joyful news to you, and you sit there like――like――――”

“Calm yourself, Steven. I’ve known it for at least ten minutes. The newsboys have been yelling their little hearts out around the corner there. Let’s see the paper, though.”

“I’ve a good mind not to,” grumbled Steve. But he tossed the crumpled “extra” to the desk and then hurried around to where he could look over his chum’s shoulder. The New Haven paper had done itself proud in the matter of type. Three lines of big, black block letters swept across the upper half of the sheet, proclaiming:

WAR DECLARED AGAINST GERMANY
VOTE IN HOUSE IS 373 TO 50
PRESIDENT SIGNS DECLARATION

“Yes, we’re in it,” said Joe, laying the paper down, “and I’m wondering――――”

“What?” asked the other, impatiently.

“Whether to be glad or sorry,” ended Joe soberly.

“Sorry! Great Jumping Jehosophat! Do you mean that after all we’ve stood for from those――those barbarians――――”

“I know, Steve, but war is serious business. Look what it has cost the others already: millions of men and billions of money: and――――”

“Oh, forget the money part of it, Joe, for the love of Mike! Why, that’s all I’ve been hearing for a year! ‘How much will it cost us?’ What’s money against human life and――and human liberty? And――――”

“And the war’s no nearer won than it was three years ago,” continued Joe imperturbably. “You’ve got to think of the cost, Steve. I’m as keen as you are for licking the hide off those Huns, but I can’t get up and cheer about this. Not just this minute, anyhow. It will be a long, hard grind, old man.”

“Maybe, but just you wait until we land a couple of millions of our chaps over there! Wait till our ships get a whack at theirs! We may be slow at starting, but, by the Lord Harry, when we do begin you’ll see the fur fly!”

“I hope so, but it’s going to take time to get those two millions together, Steve. And as for our Navy, it’ll be months before it is ready to whack anybody. Don’t get it into your head that Germany’s licked because a crowd of legislators in Washington have voted ‘yes’ on this war resolution and the President has written his name at the bottom of it. We’re about as ready to make war on Germany as――as the Freshman Nine is to lick the ’varsity!”

“It could do it in a minute if it had a decent first baseman,” replied Steve, grinning. “Knocking the Army and Navy is fashionable, I know, but I don’t believe either of ’em is as badly off as the ‘sob sisters’ tell us in the magazines. Why, if you believe all you read we haven’t a regiment that isn’t shot to pieces or a ship that isn’t ready to be scrapped. Piffle! Our Army’s as good as we need for a starter and our Navy’s as good as the next fellow’s. And, what’s more, we’ve got the money to build ’em both as big as we need ’em!”

“Who’s talking money now?” asked Joe, smiling. “Of course we’ll get an army together after a while, and when we’ve got it it’ll be a real one. I’ll bank on that. And when our Navy is ready to fight it’ll fight, believe me! But it will take time and money and, I’m afraid, men before either one is fit to start in. I guess all we can do for the next six months is supply money and food to the Allies.”

“Meaning the other Allies,” corrected Steve. “Remember we’re one of ’em now.”

“Yes, that’s so. We’re in it, too. It seems――funny, doesn’t it?”

“Funny? It seems mighty good! I say, Joe, this will make a difference around here, won’t it?”

“Here in college? Well, I don’t know. Yes, I suppose there’ll be a lot of fellows missing in the Fall.”

“In the Fall? I mean right now, old scout! I know a dozen fellows at least who will be beating it in a few days. There’s Han, for instance. He’s said all along that he’d enlist as soon as we entered the fracas. I wish I’d done what he did and gone in for the Naval Reserve. He will fall into a soft snap, I’ll bet. Maybe he will be a lieutenant or――or something.”

“Admiral, likely,” said Joe dryly. “I wouldn’t worry about lost opportunities, Steve. Next Summer will be plenty of time to start in.”

“Next Summer! Start in!” exclaimed the other, observing his companion incredulously. “Where the dickens do you suppose I’ll be next Summer?”

“Where?”

“Well, not around these diggings, anyway. In the trenches, maybe. Anyhow, in training camp. So will you.”

“Not likely. They’re going to draft them from twenty-one up, and as you and I are only eighteen――――”

“Draft! Who’s going to wait for the draft? ‘Not I,’ said the Fly! Nor you either, I hope.”

“Do you mean that you’re going to volunteer?” asked Joe.

“Surest thing you know,” answered Steve stoutly.

“You’re too young.”

“I’m eighteen, and I’ll be nineteen pretty soon. There are lots of chaps in the Army no older than that.”

“You’ll have to go into the ranks then.”

“Of course I shall. I don’t expect to be made a General, you idiot! At least, not right off. Do you mean to sit there and tell me that you haven’t thought of enlisting, Joe?”

“I have thought of it often,” was the calm reply, “and I long ago decided not to. There’s time enough. They’ll draft me when I’m old enough――――”

“Why, you piker, the war will be over before that!”

“And, besides, I want to finish college. Oh, I don’t say that I won’t enlist if things go badly. But there’s plenty to do here just now. You don’t want Harvard to beat us in baseball, do you?” he ended, smiling.

“I don’t give a hang whether she does or not,” answered Steve disgustedly. “I never heard such tommyrot in my life! Of course you’re going into it, man! Every fellow that has a drop of red blood is! I’ll bet you there won’t be a handful of the students left in a month! Why, it’s dollars to doughnuts there won’t be enough fellows left in either the Yale or Harvard freshman team by June to play! Take a tumble to what’s up, Joe. Hang it, man, we’re at war!”

“I know, but it isn’t war of my making. And if I go into it before I’m twenty-one it will be because I see the necessity of it and not because I’m just excited, as you are, Steve. I don’t believe I’m more of a coward than the average fellow, but I don’t care a whole lot about filling a cosy little grave over in France just yet. There’s time enough for that, Steve.”

“You sound like a bloomin’ pacifist,” snorted Steve. “Or a slacker. If every fellow talked the way you talk――――”

“You’ll find a lot of fellows think that way if they don’t talk it. And if you take my advice, Steve, you’ll sit tight and wait for college to close. Then go to Plattsburg or somewhere and get a second lieutenancy. Fellows like you don’t go in as privates.”

“Wait be blowed! Suppose the bloomin’ war was over by the time I got a commission? I’d look an awful ass, wouldn’t I? Why, hang it, I’d be kicking myself all the rest of my days if they settled the Kaiser’s hash without my help! A fellow can go to college any old time, Joe, but only about once in a hundred years does he get a chance to ‘horn in’ in a big scrap like this! Besides, you’re dead wrong about this private soldier business. It’s fellows like me who are privates, and mighty good ones, too. No, sir, I’d rather be a doughboy right now and get action than wait around for a second lieutenancy and miss the fun!”

“Well, don’t lose your shirt,” laughed Joe. “The war will wait a day or two for you.”

“I’m not taking any chances on it,” growled Steve. “It would be just my blessed luck if old Kaiser Bill threw up the sponge about the time I started across. Look here, Joe, you aren’t in earnest about not going, are you?”

Joe nodded. “Dead earnest,” he answered.

“That’s beastly,” grumbled the other. “I’ve been thinking right along that you and I’d be together and have some dandy times.”

“You talk as though this war was a picnic,” objected Joe.

“I don’t mean to. I know it’s a pretty serious business, just as you say it is. But a fellow can’t help being a bit excited about it, and glad that he’s on hand to help out. It _is_ helping out, you know, Joe, this enlisting, and that’s why I can’t get your point of view. The country needs fighters, old man.”

“The country will have all it will need, Steve, without me. I’m no soldier and never could be. I’d never have any stomach for poking a bayonet through another man. I’d probably quit first and get court-martialed. There are plenty of chaps who are cut out for the job. Let them have the first whack at it.”

“That’s rotten!” declared Steve hotly. “Sitting back and letting the other fellow do your work! If I felt that way I’d never acknowledge it.”

“Yes, you would, just as I do,” replied Joe, without affront. “Look at it sensibly, Steve: forget for a minute that you’ve just heard about war being on and are all excited. You know plaguey well that everyone isn’t called on to go into the trenches. A lot of fellows want to go for the excitement of the thing――――”

“It isn’t only excitement,” denied Steve warmly. “There’s――there’s such a thing as patriotism, Joe!”

“Call it patriotism, then. I won’t say it isn’t that with a good many. Anyway, why not let those who want to fight go and fight and let those who don’t want to, stay at home until the first lot find the job too big for them? Seems to me that’s perfectly fair and perfectly sensible. Maybe there’s something wrong with me, Steve, but I’d throw a fit if I had to shoot a man or run a bayonet into him.”

“I don’t suppose any fellow would find much fun in it,” agreed Steve, frowning, “but when you think of――of the _Lusitania_ and of how the Germans have shelled defenceless women and children in life-boats and――oh, hang it, Joe, shooting’s too good for them!”

“I suppose it comes back to the old question of whether it is right to commit murder in revenge for murder.”

“Murder! War isn’t murder! You’re a crazy pacifist!”

“I guess I am――sort of. At least, it goes against the grain with me, Steve, to shoot a man named Smith because a man named Jones who happens to be of the same nationality as Smith has killed one of my countrymen. Oh, I dare say my reasoning’s all wrong, but that’s the way I feel about it.”

“You bet your reasoning’s wrong! It’s punk! You want to do less reasoning, Joe. That’s the trouble with you, anyway: you have to mull things over instead of stripping off your sweater and diving in. There are times, old scout, when a fellow’s heart is a lot better guide than his brain!”

“Well, suppose heart and brain are agreed?” asked Joe, smiling. “Mine are. My heart tells me it won’t stand for killing folks and my brain tells me to keep out of it as long as I can. I know this doesn’t sound heroic, Steve, but I guess I wasn’t cut out for a hero. I’ll do my share behind the trenches gladly, but I don’t want to either shoot or be shot at.”

“You’re talking absolute drivel,” grumbled the other. “If every fellow wanted to stay behind the trenches――――”

“But they don’t. That’s the point I’m trying to make. There are lots of them who are crazy to get into the trenches. Let them. I’m not. So let me stay back.”

“If I didn’t know you I’d think you were yellow,” said Steve disgustedly.

“But you do know me and you know that I’m not,” responded Joe equably. “I don’t think it’s cowardice, although I know mighty well that my knees would knock together and I’d be sort of sick inside me if I had to crawl out of a trench and walk into machine-gun fire. But I hope I’d keep going. No, I don’t believe it’s exactly cowardice, Steve. I don’t know what it is. I just know that I don’t want to fight, not a little bit.”

“What gets me is that you’re a natural-born scrapper,” said Steve, plainly puzzled. “You fight harder than any chap I know in a game.”

“War isn’t a game. Perhaps that explains it,” answered Joe doubtfully. There was silence for a long minute. Then Steve exclaimed:

“It doesn’t, though. You don’t see things in the right way, Joe. This war isn’t just――just a war of revenge. We’re not going after Germany because she killed our men and women and children and blew up some of our shipping. There’s a heap more than that in it, Joe. We are fighting for a principle, for Liberty and――and Civilisation. We’re going into it because if we don’t go into it Belgium and France and England and maybe the whole world will become just a rotten mess of German Imperialism. We’re fighting for World Freedom, Joe. This war’s a――a righteous war, I tell you! Can’t you see that? And if you do see it can there be any question of your duty and my duty? I’m not much of a spieler, and maybe I don’t get it over, but if you felt the way I feel about this thing you wouldn’t sit there and talk about the Freshman Nine and――and letting the other fellow do the job for you! If I could――――”

Steve’s eloquence was suddenly interrupted. Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside and, as he turned inquiringly, a figure appeared in the doorway, the figure of a big, rangy youth of nineteen with a good-looking, good-natured face who, hands in pockets, surveyed the scene with a gravely quizzical smile.

“Go on, Steve,” said the newcomer encouragingly. “You’re in fine voice.”