THE CLOUD

Copyright 1918 By E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

All Rights Reserved

Printed in the United States of America

TO MY WIFE

A Cloud Like a Man's Hand

Up on the crest of Carmel a man stood watching. Before him lay the blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea, to the North the curving Bay of Acre, while to the south the white surf was breaking on the reefs of Philistia.

At the other end of the long Carmel ridge another man stood waiting. Before his eyes the great Plain of Esdraelon lay extended with the hills of Galilee to the North and the great bulk of Mt. Gilboa, faint in the summer haze, bounding the vision to the East.

Seven times the Watcher had climbed to the Western crest of Carmel; six times he had returned to report that there was nothing to be seen, and seven times he had been bidden, "Go up again; look towards the sea." Now at last he knew that his vigil was ended; something had risen above the horizon that told him his watch was past. It was a very little thing; yet it sent him speeding back along the mountain's ridge until he came again to the man who was waiting. "Behold," he said, "There ariseth a little cloud out of the sea like a man's hand." And the man who waited sent word to a King of Israel, saying, "Prepare thy chariot."

A man's hand is a very little thing, frail and weak, but we have seen a cloud like a man's hand, a man's hand clad in armor, rising up beyond the sea. The shadow of that cloud fell on Poland, and Poland died. It fell on Russia, and a great Empire went down in darkness and eclipse. It fell on Serbia, and blotted her out, on Roumania, and Roumania passed into bondage. It fell on Belgium, and Belgium cried out a little and then grew still. That shadow fell on France and even the trees withered and died. It stretched out over the sea and touched the Lusitania, and she crumpled and went down, carrying with her 120 American dead. And now that shadow falls upon our own shores and darkens the streets and homes of our towns and cities. So to-day the summons has gone forth to every American, "Prepare thy chariot!" Each one of us has his own—not to all of us is the same kind given. To some of us it is the Red Cross, to others it is the voice or the pen, to every one of us it is the buying of Liberty Bonds, to some of us it is the Training Camp, the Trench, and the Battlefield. But to every man, woman, and child of us the hour has come to "Prepare our chariots." For America has willed with all her might, her soul, her strength, that the shadow of that "Cloud like a man's hand" shall forever pass away; that it shall no longer rest on Poland, Russia, Serbia, Roumania, Belgium, France or on our own America, but that Liberty, Justice, and Democracy shall shine in an unclouded sky and that no shadow of a man's mailed fist shall darken either the homes or the hearts of men.

In 1204 Philip Augustus laid siege to the Chateau Gaillard, which Richard Cœur de Lion had built to defend his lands of Normandy. In the course of that siege, the little town of Les Andelys was destroyed, and the peasants, some 1400 in number, fled to the Chateau for refuge. But Sir Roger de Lacy, defending for England, was already facing starvation, England was far away, John Lackland was slow, and provisions were failing. He did not dare admit these 1400 "bouches inutiles," for that would mean the almost immediate surrender of his trust. Therefore he kept the gates of the castle closed. But the besiegers would not allow the refugees to pass through their lines, their Commandant believing that the compassion of the English would sooner or later compel them to receive these fugitives if they saw them starving before their eyes. So they held them between the lines until they starved to death, so the story goes.

It is a long way from 1204 to the present time, but last year General von Bissing, the German Governor of Belgium, said to F. C. Wolcott, the representative of the Rockefeller Foundation, "Starvation is a great weapon. We mean to use it to force thousands of Belgian skilled workmen into German factories, thousands of Belgian farmers into the fields of Mesopotamia. The rest—the ineffectives, the very old and the very young, the weak and the useless—we mean to place in front of the firing line, put firing squads behind them, and drive them through the French and English lines, that France and England may take care of them." That is what Germany has been doing ever since the war broke out. Wherever her armies have gone, from Armenia to Serbia, Poland, Belgium, and France, she has been driving women, children, and men through our lines for us to care for. Nay, it is more than this; it is not men, women and children, but it is the very essence and principle of manhood, womanhood, and childhood that she has been forcing through our lines and that we have called upon to care for.

I am not going to tell you again what Germany has been doing to men, women, and children; I am not going to repeat the stories of her atrocities. A year ago I should have felt compelled to tell you what to-day I feel I may leave unsaid, for a year ago we were not sure, we could not, many of us, bring ourselves to believe, that men born of women could do such things. But to-day we know. The awful tale of helpless ships sunk so as to leave no trace, the shelling of life boats, the sinking of hospital ships, the bombing of hospitals and ambulances, the crucifixion of men, the outraging of women, the torturing of children, the enslaving of entire populations, all these barbarisms are proved not merely by the testimony of many witnesses, but from the lips of the very soldiers and sailors of Germany herself. So I gladly pass these things by, only bidding you remember that in this war German ruthlessness has driven manhood, womanhood, and childhood through our lines for us to protect.

But there is something else that has been driven into our lines and which we are called upon to guard. We are protecting the freedom and dignity of Labor. I wish every laboring man could be made to understand Labor's stake in this war. The leaders of American labor, for the most part, have understood from the beginning. Their appeals to the manhood of the country have been stirring and stimulating, and to-day Labor is beginning to respond. There are fewer strikes and more effectiveness. But the individual laboring man did not grasp the issues from the first. If he had there would not have been 3000 strikes in the first year of our war, with a total of 6000 years of labor lost. Let me speak for a moment of Labor's stake in this war.

Ambassador Gerard says, "The workingmen in the cities of Germany are worked longer and get less out of life than any other workmen in the world. The laws so much admired, insurance against unemployment, sickness, injury, old age, etc., are in reality skillful measures which bind the workmen to the soil as effectively as the serfs of the Middle Ages were bound to their masters' estates.

"I have had letters from workingmen ... begging for a steerage fare to America, saying that their insurance payments were so large that they could not save money from their wages. Of course, after making these payments for some years the workingman hesitates to emigrate and lose all the