Tuez! Tuez!

T is many years now since I knew you, Anna. We used to meet on certain fine mornings in the gardens of the Tuileries. I don't think we had ever been introduced, but we were great friends. I was quite a man already; nearly sixteen, in fact. I don't know how old you were, Anna, you were always such a baffling mixture of motherliness and sheer infancy. I remember you now in your plaid frock, with your pigtail tied with a large black bow, your chubby face, and your shining eyes. Life was simply a tremendous business to you. You used to arrive encumbered by two brothers, a bull-dog, a nurse with a real baby, a toy pram with two unreal babies, one plain, the other colored, a large kite, some colored picture-books, and occasionally a father. Once in the gardens you would shake off these encumbrances, or, if you did not entirely shake them off, you dominated them. Your vitality was irresistible, your laughter contagious, your immediate power over men and women, and even small boys, a thing not to be denied. And there were so many important things to be done in the gardens, and all to be done quickly, tempestuously, and at the same time. Action, invention, romance tumbled over one another in the terrific fulfilment of those crowded hours.

I was your slave from the first, Anna. You told me frankly all about yourself as we sat upon the grass under the chestnut-trees. You told me all about your brothers and your nurse and your bull-dog and your kite and your father and the two dolls, Iris and Daphne (I am sure you remember Daphne, the colored one), and about your home in Connecticut, embellishing it with vivid stories about a mule and a colored gardener, and Aunt Alice and Uncle Ted and popcorn and a dandy canoe you and your brothers had upon the lake at home, where you played redskins and cow-boys. I was breathless under the spell of these epic adventures. Sometimes I was allowed to release the slack as you ran with the kite. In more favored moments I was allowed to run with the kite myself. So great was your power over me that I even humbled my manly pride by making a patchwork quilt for Daphne, that the colored darling should sleep peacefully in the shade while we sought more stirring adventures in the remote parts of the gardens.

It was in connection with this that the great and tragic episode occurred. I am writing this after all these years in the hope that you may remember it. In one corner of the gardens a group of small and rather dirty boys used to congregate. One of their favorite amusements was to bring an old egg-box stuffed with straw, which served as a cage wherein were kept some half-dozen white mice. The boys would set this on the ground and then release the mice and play with them. They would sometimes let the whole lot go for a considerable distance, and then would follow a round-up. I recollect how intensely interested you were in the white mice, but you always looked upon the "round-up" with some misgiving. The boys would shriek, and chivvy the mice until the wretched things were in a perfect state of panic. One day you felt it incumbent upon you to address them on the subject, and you told them they ought not to do it, and that it was very cruel to frighten dumb creatures. The boys were quite surprised and cowed by your outburst for the moment; but I fear that that devilish streak of cruelty and perversity which lurks in the breast of nearly every small boy was only whipped to a finer point of reaction by your tirade, for on the following day I have the idea that they were lying in wait for us. In any case, when we approached there was such a yelling and shouting and rushing hither and thither that all the Apaches from the Paris prisons might have been let loose. I observed your face light up with a sudden passion, and you rushed forward into the group, calling out:

"Arrêtez!"

You singled out the biggest boy, who was leaping backward and forward over a mouse, and clutched the tail of his coat. And then the tragedy happened. Coming down before he intended to, he brought his heel right down on to the hind quarters of the mouse. It was not a moment for sweet reasonableness. You, with tears of passion in your eyes, screamed:

"You little devil!"

You managed to seize a handful of his face, and push him over backward. And the boy jumped up and kicked your shins. In truly heroic fashion I knocked the boy down again and held him there (I suppose I must remind you that I was much bigger than he was). And then the other boys collected, and the pandemonium became indescribable. One of them pulled your hair, but you soon dealt satisfactorily with him, and they all talked and gesticulated at once. Fortunately, the majority of them were more immediately concerned with rounding up the other mice, which by this time had got a long way off. And your attention was concentrated on the wounded mouse. You looked at it with horror. It was obviously past recall. Both its back legs were broken and its body crushed. It was dying. You wrung your hands.

"Kill it!" you said to me, peremptorily.

And then came to me one of those weak moments which I suppose we are all prone to, and which we ever afterward regret. I blinked at the mouse hopelessly, but I simply could n't bring myself to kill it. You looked at the other boys and stamped your feet.

"! tuez!" you exclaimed.

But the big boy, whom by this time I had let go, merely broke out into a torrent of incomprehensible argot, and the others were still busy catching the other mice. I observed you glance desperately around. Suddenly you picked up a piece of board that had come off the egg-box. Your face was white and set. Your movements were deliberate and tense. You knelt on the grass above the mouse, and the idea occurred to me, ridiculously perhaps, that at that moment you looked like Joan of Arc kneeling at prayer, her head bent over her sword. And then you killed the mouse. You killed it thoroughly.

You arose without a word, and your face was still pale and set, and you strode away across the grass. I followed you, and the boys followed me, talking volubly. At length, I remember, I gave them a franc. I salved my conscience with the reflection that a white mouse must have a monetary value, and that we might have been indirectly responsible for its loss. If we had not interfered it would probably have had a longer and more harassed existence. In any case, the boys left us apparently satisfied.

When we were out of sight of them, you suddenly sat down on the grass and cried. And you cried and cried and cried. And, like the booby I was, all I could say was:

"Anna, don't cry! Anna! Anna!"

After a time you sat up and wiped your eyes.

"It 's all right," you said. Then you got up, and we walked on. I felt curiously self-conscious and ashamed. I was aware of not having played so glorious a part in the morning's proceedings as I should have liked; moreover, I felt that you had gone beyond me. You had proved yourself a more competent, a more advanced being. I had disappointed you, and you might never again give me your complete confidence.

However, at the exit to the gardens, where we met nurse, you were quite yourself again. Do you remember all this, Anna? You told nurse that you had had "a dandy time." And when we parted you gave me the old smile, and with a malicious twinkle you added, "Mornin', Mr. Hayseed!"

I know all about that, Anna. I am slow-going and old-fashioned. When I find the world tumbling to pieces I am paralyzed by it, and I yearn for you with your impulse and your genius of youth. The years have come and gone since I saw you. I even doubt whether you would remember me, but I am sure you would remember the incident of the white mice. In these days the gardens of the Tuileries themselves seem shut to me forever, and the world is peopled with querulous old men. Old dynasties tremble and crumble up. Political intrigues reap the fruit of their own sowing. Everything becomes more involved and more difficult. Secret treaties are forged by the few, and quite reasonably repudiated by the many. The old make the laws, and the young pay the price. And how splendidly, how loyally, they do it! And it is always that—the old in their secret chambers, scheming, controlling, and shaking their heads, and the young dying unquestioningly out in the open field, believing. For the young always believe, and the old always doubt.

And if in these days, Anna, I am driven to think of you, it is for a very definite reason. It concerns you and it concerns your country. The Old World is rocking in a death-grip. Everything is thrown into the crucible of hate. The horror of these days is borne only because there lurks in the heart of man a subconscious belief that the horror is to prove a solution; that all the troubles of old days, that all differences and antagonisms, are to vanish. The sword of Damocles will be indeed a myth. If I think of you so intently it is because I am perplexed and worried, and I long for the sound of a young voice again. Let me tell you, for I know that you will understand. I have listened to them all these sages of the Eastern World. And they are very wise and knowing, very cunning and very circumspect; but when it comes to the great thing, the thing which touches all our hearts, they shake their heads.

"No," they say lugubriously. "There always have been wars and there always will be wars."

And when I argue with them, they are so recondite, so full of worldly wisdom. And they quote this act and that act and multiply historical precedents. They speak ponderously of "our national responsibilities," "our ancient rights and privileges"; they crush me with their weight of logic. From across the water I hear the thunder of the guns and the reiteration of the ominous phrases, "The German god," "The German sword." "The German peace." And nearer at home I am further depressed by the arguments of our sages.

"What?" they say, "a league of the nations! An idle term! How could such a thing be worked? Should every nation elect an equal number of delegates? Is the British Empire and all that it entails, embodying a population of four hundred million souls, to be on a par with, let us say, the sovereign state of Bogota, which has a million souls and mostly poets!"

And the politicians' contempt for poets is driven home by that contemptuous shrug.

"There would be no way," they say, "of regulating or controlling such a league. Why, some quite backward states might outvote the British, the French, and the United States! There always have been wars and there always will be wars." I remember it was in such a state of bewilderment as this, and it was in another garden not very far from where I live, that on an evening just as the sun was going down I thought of you again. I had read for the first time some words by a man who will one day be very dear to all the world. He is the President of your country. I was distressed and troubled. The problems and anxieties of national life seemed more and more involved and insoluble, the men in power more rigid and inflexible; and suddenly, as I read the words of President Wilson, I realized that here at last was a man who stood apart from his fellows. Amidst the bitter recrimination of national antagonisms, clear-cut through the chopped logic of the politician, he at least seemed to see things clearly with the eyes of a child. While the others were shouting of "The German god" or of "their national aspirations," he suddenly appeared in the due order of things and spoke quite simply of men and ideas. If he spoke of his country at all, it was only as a medium for the advancement of men, for the freedom of their ideas, for the liberty of their thought. One felt at once that one was in the presence of something big and fundamental, without malice, without ulterior motive, without political intrigue or imperial ambition. And when I read his words, I thought of you, and I thought of America as I shall always think of her, as of a child with shining eyes, disturbed in the pursuit of splendid dreams, quick to grasp realities, quick to act, and quick to forgive. And when the terrible business of killing the mouse has got to be done, it will be done quickly, relentlessly, thoroughly, and though one may weep for the sheer horror of it, the day will come when the tears will be wiped away, and one may smile again in the recognition of the fact that there was no alternative.

And the Old World is waiting for you, for it will not believe, and it knows that you will believe, for you alone have the masterful genius of youth, unaware of perils and difficulties, but with eyes set upon the clear horizon you have set out to reach. And in these days, amidst the maelstrom of conflicting opinion of these wise men of the Eastern World, all who love humanity, all who believe in its ultimate destiny toward a better order of society, are driven to turn their eyes more and more to the west. For the turn of the Western World has come, a world where everything is more fluid and free, where everything is possible and hopeful; in short, the world of youth. It was a Western philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said:

Emerson may say "the old statesman," but he is essentially the old statesman of the Western World; that is to say, he speaks with the authority of youth. And in these days how terribly we want to believe this, that "some particle may become the center of the movement," that some new hope, some free and novel expression of human ideas, may compel "the whole system to gyrate round it." And that is why we turn with breathless expectancy to the Western World, for it is from there that this new star should rise, guiding the stumbling feet of men to the manger where a new birth will prove to them the salvation of their wavering beliefs. Some little thing may fire this sudden spark; the words of a President, the mood of a congress, an article in a newspaper, some grim material necessity producing a climax of horror, the rise of a world-preacher, the tears of a woman. Whatever it is, it will come, this little point round which the ultimate solutions will revolve. And there is no one I would rather have as a leader in these days than this President of yours; for he reminds me of you, Anna, when you ran with flashing eyes among the boys, and when you knelt there looking like Joan of Arc, and calling out:

"Tuez! tuez!"

And forever after one will weep at the terror of that memory; but the heart is uplifted, and the soul of man made stronger and freer.

Many who play an important part in my life come and go, and I see them no more. And you are one of them, Anna. And in these days I like to think of you. I like to think of you married and surrounded by many fine and "real" children. Perhaps you have sons in France and Flanders, and in that case my heart goes out to you. I know what a mother you will be, and I know that, whatever happens, you will be fine and splendid, strong and courageous, "a mother of men," doing your best, believing in the best, the equipoise of your faith untouched by trouble or anxiety. And on the day when the sun once more looks down serenely on those fair fields now stricken with the horrors of war, I can see those eyes of yours shining with a thankfulness and a wistful pity almost too great to bear, and I can almost hear that mellow voice as you look up at me maliciously, saying "Mornin', Mr, Hayseed!"