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By Root 1551 0

of Fifty-eighth and Prairie. At the elevated station, a half block down, he saw people crowding excitedly around Sammy Schmaltz, the newspaper man. He started to go down there, but heard Red Kelly calling him from the other side of the street. He turned and saw Red waving in front of Frank Hertzog’s shoe repair shop, about fifty yards or so down from the corner. Studs dashed across the street, dodging a truck that just missed him. The driver cursed him. Red said war was declared. They went inside the shoe repair shop, and stood outside the counter. Frank, a middle-aged man with a square face and a mustache, was carefully half-soleing a shoe.

“The extras are out now. And we’re gonna cook the Kaiser’s goose plenty. How about it, Frank? You know we can do it, don’t you, because you’re from Germany?” Red said, slurring and running some of his words together.

“I’m an American citizen now,” Frank remarked without looking up from his work.

“Say, Frank, tell us what kind of a lousy country Germany is,” said Red.

Continuing to work, Frank said that he had come to America because it was a democratic country with more opportunity, and because there was no compulsory military service.

“Yep, it’s the land of the free and the home of the brave,” Red said knowingly.

“We had to do it or the Germans would have come over and attacked us,” Studs said.

“We got to save a civilization. You can see what the Germans are doing from the papers. Only they haven’t told half of it. Why last week, I was reading a book by a Catholic priest telling what the Germans did in Belgium. You know what they’d do? A hundred or so of ‘em would line up, and take a woman, or even a six-year-old girl or an eighty-year-old grandmother, like old Mrs. O’Flaharty, and they’d strip her and rape her one after the other, until she was dead. Then they’d go and do the same thing over again.”

“The book says that? Does it describe the rapes?” asked Studs

“Yeah.”

“What’s the name of it? I’d like to read it,” Studs said.

“I forgot, but I’ll take you down to the library and show it to you and you can read it there.”

“I’d like to. You say it describes the rapes?” Studs asked.

“The Huns, they’re not civilized . . . of course, Frank, you know I don’t mean you because you’re Americanized . . . but the Germans are brutes. Why, they’re destroying Catholic churches, and Red Cross hospitals, and they sink ships without warning, letting helpless women and children drown. Look at the Lusitania! I tell you, they ain’t civilized.”

Frank’s eyebrows rose, and he glanced at the two boys. He thought of other years, back in Bavaria, his fatherland. And friends and cousins, and the children of friends and cousins, boys of fifteen and sixteen like these, being taken off to war and killed. Why? His own brother, shot with Hindenburg’s army on the Russian front! The world was calling them Huns, beasts, brutes, savages. These silly boys had picked it up like parrots, all that awful talk. He tried to work rapidly. He had come to America, haven of peace and liberty, and it, too, was joining the slaughter, fighting for the big capitalists. There was no peace for men, only murder, cruelty, brutality. He was choked with feelings and fears. His own name! His birthplace! His fatherland! He loved it, suffering Bavaria. America would be a war-crazy nation. He told the boys he was very busy, and asked them to return and see him another time. He went to the back of the shop to sit down and try and think and assimilate this terror.

“I want to go,” Red said.

“Me, too,” said Studs, leaning on the fireplug in front of the chain drug store.

Some of the passing people acted as if nothing had happened. Others had their heads buried in extra papers. Groups paused on the corner to discuss the declaration of war. From down the street, newsboys barked:

“EXTRA PAPEE! CONGRESS DECLARES WAR! EXTRY! WAR!”

“Yeah, I want to go,” Studs said reflectively.

“I’m going to try and get in.”

“But you’re underweight and under age.”

“I’ll say I’m eighteen, and I can maybe put on enough weight by eating bananas and drinking