“D-o-u-g-h, then boys.”
“Dat’s silly—dey gonna bake dem before dey go to fight? I ask Fritz—maybe he knows. You see what I say—everyting is changing—every day again someting new, someting not de way it was before, not de way it should be.” Hannah pulled wisps of grass off her carrot patch.
“I found one!” Michael, jubilant, called from beneath the daisy bush.
“Fine,” Hannah called back. “Let me see.”
“No, I’m looking for another one—so he won’t get so alonely.” His voice trailed off.
“Hannah?”
“Yes, Ninnie?”
“That Miss Evangeline, the one who is now Missus Dahlinger …”
“Un-huh.”
“Well, now that she is married and everything I don’t suppose she’s dynamite anymore—right?”
“Why you ask?”
“Oh, just curiosity, nothing important.”
“Well, you just keep it dat way!” Hannah busied herself fussing around her turnips.
“Did she marry someone special?”
“What, you still at it wit de snoopy questions?”
“Sorry, Hannah …”
“Okay, you want to know—I tell …”
“I really don’t have to …”
“Now you don’t, before you did—I’ve got work to do.” Hannah stalling for inspiration picked at the parsley.
“I didn’t mean to make you angry—I only …”
“Enough already! Vell … okay, dat-oh-so-smart-I-got-de-world-in-de-palm-of-my-little-hand Miss Evangeline is now de Missus of Once-I-
carried-all-de-money-for-de-Boss-chaffeur-now-I-got-it-am-convenient-husband Mr. Dahlinger—so der, now you know!”
Jane utterly confused by all the innuendoes of what she had no knowledge of thought it better to keep her mouth shut until another time was more propitious for the satisfaction of one’s curiosity.
“Mama!” the outraged wail of her firstborn split the air. “John is squeezing my worm to dead!” ended any further conversation and not too soon where Hannah was concerned, who, stomping earth off her shoes, walked into her kitchen carrying two scrawny carrots as if they offended her.
In June war as an American reality swept the nation in a tidal wave of jubilant patriotism. At a place called Belleau Wood, an untried division of US Marines not only repulsed a German attack but drove the enemy back without the aid or participation of the more seasoned forces of their allies. At last brave American boys had proven their superior worth and the nation could be proud of its fighting men and of itself. There was even talk that now that America was finally in the war, it could be over by July.
What this victory might have cost in actual lives understandably was hidden within its incredible achievement. The country’s morale was now too high and useful to deflate with unproductive truths. What had started out as a benevolent war, one based on ideology rather than actual need—now that America’s youth was facing possible bloodshed, the hatred of Germans flared anew, this time encompassing all immigrant communities, be they friend or foe, aided and abetted by political utterances and gathering wartime hysteria.
Everyday hatreds never far from society’s perimeter, now ran rampant—their destructive power legitimized by the addition to the Espionage Act, passed by Congress when the country was still neutral, of the new Seditions Act. A sweeping law that could and did imprison anyone for simply objecting to the war in any form and for any reason. As political utterances and gathering wartime frenzy accelerated, witch hunts materialized using the Seditions Act as legal justification. In a country mostly populated by immigrants whose origins were not yet completely distilled through generations, the very configuration of faces, customs, religions, accents, even attitudes were noted, judged solely on the basis of mostly unsubstantiated suspicion of friend and foe alike.
The process that was responsible for the grandeur of this enviable country of immigrants was being insidiously used to erode its still young and vulnerable structure. Those still without citizenship having the potential of being the enemy within the magnanimous country that had welcomed them, given them sanctuary, were particularly singled out.
A country settled, populated, its laudable stature gained though immigration was experiencing a self-erosion not seen since its Civil War. Only the fact that it was enmeshed in a war that was to end all wars, for all time, establish the freedom of its democracy across the world, kept most of the country’s patriotism pure.
John, Zoltan, and Ebbely—perhaps the three most politically astute within their group—were appalled. On those evenings when voices were raised, private opinions aired, Jane managed to find acceptable reasons to be present in her parlor in order to listen. She who had by now devoured the writings of Elizabeth Seaton, followed the exploits and persecution of Margaret Sanger, Jane was no longer the starry-eyed young girl content with the crumbs of male enthusiasm for an automobile no matter how enchanting. First with her duties as Watcher, then with her own perceptive sympathy of what she had seen—she had educated herself sufficiently by now to be equal to the men’s intelligence without seeming to be so, having added the new luxury of decision as to what to accept and what to discard from the process.
“This is utterly astounding—listen to this …” Ebbely began to read, “‘… Enemy aliens’—this man’s referring to Detroit’s German Americans—‘are not entitled to the slightest degree of respect from humanity. The sooner we perfect plans for the total extermination of such monstrosities in human form the sooner will this country and the world find itself again at peace.’”
“I tell you, my friends—I’m worried—where will all this end?”
“I think it has only begun.” John lit his cheroot.
“What do you mean only begun—left and right people are being hauled off to jail for no more reasons than expressing their right, the right they came here for—the freedom to speak without fear of reprisal.”
“That’s just it, Zoltan—I don’t think this will stop even if and when the war ends.”
Knowing what John was getting at, Ebbely looked at Stan, wondering at his silence.
“Ja,” Fritz shook his head, “I heard even the post office of the United States doesn’t allow now any mailing of newspapers that say anything against the war.”
“The Michigan Socialist is already barred from using the US mail,” added Stan.
“You see! And on the line everyone is suspected—no matter who they are or where they come from—even the Negroes …” Stan’s gaze swept the room. “That, my friends, is not the America I left my homeland for, nor, if you are honest with yourselves, did you.”
The room was silenced. For some to agree with him would have seemed disloyal.
John flicked ash from his cheroot. “What worries me is that this Seditions Act is being used as a convenient tool to flush and imprison more Socialists than traitors.”