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It was all so new and strange to him and he had nobody to advise him. At home, if there were a Socialist problem to settle, he would take it to Meissner or Stankewitz, or Comrade Gerrity the organizer, or Comrade Mabel Smith, the chairman of the Literature Committee.
Having been done up neat and tight in khaki, with a motor-wheel on his sleeve to show his branch of the service, he stood and looked at himself in the glass, experiencing a demoralizing and unworthy excitement. He was every bit as handsome as Comrade Stankewitz! When he walked down the street would the girls giggle, and turn to look at him, as they did at the sedate and proper Comrade Emil?
Comrade Stankewitz, Jimmie's cigar-store friend, cried out in his shrill eager voice: Vy did we vant to git mixed up vit them European fights? Didn't we know vat bankers and capitalists vere? Vat difference did it make to any vorking man vether he vas robbed from Paris or Berlin?
Jimmie went home one evening to the Meissners, and there got a piece of news that delighted him. Comrade Stankewitz had come back from Camp Sheridan! The man to whom he had sold his tobacco-store having failed to pay up, Stankewitz had got a three days' furlough to settle his business affairs.
He had expected protests and arguments, and was surprised by the lack of them. Had the little bottle-packer been impressed by the experiences of Comrade Stankewitz? Or could it be that he was afraid to voice his full mind to Jimmie just as Jimmie had been afraid in the case of Emil Forster?
And then came "Wild Bill". This wrangling over German and British gave him a pain in the guts. Couldn't they see, the big stiffs, that they were playing the masters' game? Quarrelling among themselves, when they ought to be waking up the workers, getting ready for the real fight. And wizened-up little Stankewitz broke in again that vas vy he hated var, it divided the vorkers.
"I have a right to speak here, and I mean to speak," she declared. "We don't want to have to arrest you, lady " "You either have to arrest me, or else allow me to speak." "I'm sorry, lady, but it's orders. You are arrested." Then came the turn of Comrade Stankewitz. "Vorking men, it is for the rights of the vorkers ve are here." And so they jerked him off.
A number had been drafted which Meissner considered deliberate conspiracy on the part of the draft-boards. Who had been taken? Jimmie asked. The other answered: Comrade Claudel, the jeweller he wanted to go, of course; and Comrade Koeln, the glass-blower he was a German, but had been naturalized, so they had taken him, in spite of his protests; and Comrade Stankewitz
Then he would stroll down to the cigar-stand of Comrade Stankewitz, a wizened-up little Roumanian Jew who had lived in Europe, and had a map, and would show Jimmie which was Russia, and why Germany marched across Belgium, and why England had to interfere.
"Vat you tink?" cried Stankewitz. "I veigh tventy pounds more already tventy pounds! They vork you like hell in that army, but they treat you good. You don't never have such good grub before, not anyvere you vork." "You like it?" demanded Jimmy, in amazement. "Sure I like it, you bet your money! I learn lots of things vat I didn't know before.
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