'Italy came through all right,' Sandburg said. 'The Japs didn't get hurt bad, either, damn them.'
'Yeah, we'll have to have a heart-to-heart talk with the Japs one day, sure enough,' Moss said. 'They're like England, only more so: they don't really know they were on the losing side.' He thought for a moment. 'The only thing worse than going through the Great War, I guess, would have been going through the Great War and losing. Roosevelt saved us from that, anyway.'
'So he did.' Sandburg's whistle was low and doleful. 'Can you imagine what this country would be like if the Rebs had licked us again? We'd have had ourselves another revolution, so help me God we would. I don't mean Reds, either. I just mean people who'd have wanted to hang every politician and every general from the nearest lamppost they could find.'
'Like this Freedom Party down in the CSA,' Moss said, and Sandburg nodded. Moss went on, 'You know, maybe TR really does deserve a third term. Even if he didn't do anything else, he spared us that.' His friend nodded again. Moss discovered he still had a couple of drops of brandy in the bottom of the shot glass. He raised it again. 'To TR!' he said, and drained them.
XI
'Down with TR! Down with TR! Down with TR!' Along with everyone else in the great hall in Toledo, Flora Hamburger howled out the chant. The air was thick with tobacco smoke. It was also thick with an even headier scent, one never caught before at a Socialist Party national convention: the smell of victory.
'We can do it this time.' Flora didn't know how often she'd heard that since coming to Toledo. Whether it was true or not remained to be seen. True or not, though, people believed it. Scarred and grizzled organizers who'd been coming to conventions since long before the turn of the century were saying it, and saying it with wonder in their voices and on their faces. They'd never said it before.
'Mr. Chairman! Mr. Chairman!' Haifa dozen people here on the floor clamored for the attention of the august personage on the rostrum.
Bang!The gavel came down. 'The chair recognizes the leader of the delegation from the great state of Indiana.'
'Thank you, Mr. Chairman,' that worthy bellowed. The chairman rapped loudly once more, and kept rapping till something a little quieter than chaos prevailed. The leader of the Indiana delegation spoke into it: 'Mr. Chairman, in the interest of victory and unity, the state of Indiana shifts twenty-seven votes from its own great patriot and statesman, Senator Debs, to the next president of the United States of America, Mr. Sinclair! We so act at the specific request of Senator Debs, who understands that the interests of the Party should, indeed must, come ahead of all personal concerns.'
Flora had never been on the battlefield. If the roar that went up at that announcement didn't match that of a great cannonading, though, she would have been astonished. More men, including the chairman of the delegation from New York, waved hands or hats or banners to attract the chairman's attention. After five indecisive ballots, the Socialists had their presidential nominee. Someone moved that the nomination be made unanimous; the motion passed by overwhelming voice vote. That done, the proud and happy delegates voted to adjourn till the next day.
But they did not want to leave the floor. As if they had already won the election, they milled about in celebration, meeting old friends, making new ones, and having themselves a terrific time.
Being taller than most of the men at the convention, Hosea Blackford was easy for Flora to spot as he made his way from the small Dakota delegation to the large one from New York. 'It's done,' he said. 'The first part of it's done, anyhow, and done well.' When he grinned, he shed years. 'Ain't it bully, Flora?'
'Yes, I think so,' she answered. 'And the second part-who knows what the second part may be?' She wanted to take him in her arms. She couldn't, not in public. She couldn't, even in private, not while the convention was going on: no privacy in Toledo was private enough. 'When you find out the second part, please let me know, whenever it is you happen to hear.'
'Whether it goes one way or the other, I will do that,' Blackford promised solemnly. 'Shall we have supper now?'
'Why not?' Flora said. They left the hall and went back to the hotel where they were both staying. Neither of them minded being seen in public with the other; their friendship was common knowledge in Philadelphia. That they were anything more than friends, they kept to themselves.
They were working their way through indifferent beef stew when an excited-looking young man in a brightly checked jacket approached the table and said, 'Congressman Blackford?'
'That's right,' Blackford answered. The young man in the gaudy jacket glanced toward Flora. Understanding that glance, Blackford said, 'Do I understand that you come from Mr. Sinclair?' The newcomer nodded. 'Speak freely,' Blackford urged him. 'You may rely on Congresswoman Hamburger's discretion no less than my own.'
'Very well.' The eager youngster tipped his bowler to Flora. 'Pleased to meet you, ma'am.' He gave his attention back to Blackford. 'Mr. Sinclair says I am to tell you that you are his first choice. It's yours if you want it.'
Flora clapped her hands together. 'Oh, Hosea, how wonderful!' she exclaimed.
'Is it?' Blackford said, more to himself than to anyone else. 'I wonder. If I take it and lose, I go home. If I take it and win, I go into the shadows for four years, maybe for eight. It's not a choice to be made lightly.'
'You can't turn it down!' Flora said. 'You can't, not this year.'
'Can't I?' Blackford murmured. She looked alarmed. The young man in the loud jacket didn't. Pointing to him, Blackford smiled and said, 'You see? He knows there are plenty of other fish in the lake.' Flora sputtered angrily. Smiling still, Blackford went on, 'But no, I don't suppose I can, not this year. Yes, sir: if it pleases Mr. Sinclair to have my name placed in nomination for the vice presidency, I shall be honored to run with him and see if we can't tie a tin can to Teddy Roosevelt's tail and send him yapping down the street.'
'Swell!'' The youngster stuck out his hand. Blackford shook it. 'My principal will be delighted, and I already am. This time, by thunder, we're going to lick 'em.' He waved and departed.
'We're going to lick them,' Blackford repeated. His smile was wide and amused. 'Well, by thunder, maybe we are. What I'm afraid of is that tomorrow you're going to have to listen to nominating speeches telling the convention what a saint I am, and you'll laugh so loud, you'll get yourself thrown out of the hall.'
'I would never do such a thing!' With a mischievous twinkle in her eye, Flora added, 'Not right out loud, I wouldn't.'
And, indeed, she sat beaming with pride as speaker after speaker stood up to praise Hosea Blackford the next day. A couple of other names were also placed in nomination, but Blackford won on the first ballot. Flora clapped till her hands were red and sore, and she was far from the only one who did.
But, even in the nominating convention, the would-be vice president yielded pride of place to the man heading the ticket. A runner went to summon Hosea Blackford (custom had forbidden him from being in the hall while the nomination proceedings went on). The chairman of the convention said, 'And now, my friends'-no ladies and gentlemen, not in the Socialist camp-'I have the privilege of presenting to you the next president of the United States, Mr. Upton Sinclair of New Jersey!''
More applause followed, louder and more prolonged than that which had announced Hosea Blackford's nomination. Sinclair bounded up to the platform. Both his stride and the white summer-weight suit he wore proclaimed his youthful energy: Flora couldn't remember whether he was forty-one or forty-two. Set against the sixtyish Roosevelt, he seemed boyish, bouncy, full of spit and vinegar.
He knew it, too. 'My friends, it's time for a change!' he shouted in a great voice, and cheers went up like thunder. Sinclair held up his hands, asking for quiet. Eventually, he got it. 'It's time for a change,' he repeated. 'It's time for a change in ideas, and it's time for a change in the people who give us our ideas, too.' Flora, to whom even Sinclair was not all that young, clapped hard again.
'What this convention has done here in Toledo marks the first step in that great and necessary change,' Sinclair said. 'This convention has passed the torch to a new generation, a generation born since the War of Secession, tempered by our troubles, disciplined by the harsh peace our neighbors forced upon us, and eager for the freedom and justice and equality of which we have heard so much and seen so little. Tell me, my friends: are you
